Author's note: Three assignments due next week, and I still manage to get a chapter out. Oh, the things I do for fanfiction.

I'm re-watching the Chuunin exam episodes, and it's really quite remarkable: the first time I watched (and I hope you felt the same), to me, Kiba and Neji were the biggest bastards ever. I was on Naruto's side all the way. And then after the Sasuke Retrieval Arc, I absolutely fell in love with them and couldn't imagine hating them. Neji is far and away my favourite character (with Shikamaru very clearly second). But now, watching the Chuunin exams again, I still hate Kiba and Neji in them! Neji less so, but Kiba is so evil when he fights Naruto! What the hell?

Ah well. Enjoy! I hope you haven't yet noticed how many times I've written 'Sasuke raised an eyebrow'. Because I have. A lot.

The Back Story

The next time Sasuke saw Naruto was one whole year later. They hadn't been avoiding each other – no, Naruto just hadn't come out of a coma since his first session with Gaara and was confined to an infirmary bed. That wasn't unusual. In fact, only one year was actually quite good. Only a handful woke up within three.

So when Tsunade, the trauma medic, contacted Sasuke to tell him that Naruto was moving and talking again, he was . . . surprised. It had been so easy to assume that Naruto would be a failure, especially after the satisfaction of seeing Gaara destroy him, but he seemed to have been blessed with preternatural luck. The trial, the transfusion, the arena – no failure could survive so much.

Sasuke was also a bit disappointed. If Naruto had died, he, Sasuke, could have gone back to his isolated, protégée-less existence.

He all but dragged himself to the infirmary to see how Naruto was. It turned out he still looked like shit.

"Sasuke," Naruto gasped as he walked in. "Thank God. When some old lady tells you you've been in a coma for a year, you kind of assume the whole vampire thing was a dream."

Sasuke arched an eyebrow. "You're relieved that it wasn't?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, otherwise I'd have lost a year of my life, which would suck, but a year must be like a second for a vampire."

He was more optimistic than Sasuke expected. A sudden thought occurred to him: what if Naruto's human life had actually been so miserable that becoming a vampire was a relief? It was unlikely, considering the nice neighbourhood where Sasuke had found him, but who knew?

"Tell me about yourself." Sasuke sat at the foot of Naruto's bed.

"Huh?"

"You're still going to be in here for a while. Your body can only heal so quickly. Might as well talk to pass the time."

Naruto cracked a sore smile. "Aw, you don't want to hear about me."

"Then you'd better tell me before I rescind the offer," Sasuke teased, surprising even himself. Was he bantering? He wasn't even sure he knew how to banter.

Naruto also looked like he appreciated how rare this was. "Um, okay. I'm Naruto Uzumaki and I'm twenty – oh, I guess I'm twenty-one now. Do vampires count age? Anyway, I've been an orphan since I was thirteen, flunked out of high school because I was such a wreck, then got a graveyard shift at an actual graveyard." He grinned. "But then, I figured out that I actually wanted to give university a try, maybe become a vet or something, so I got a better-paying job as an assistant and started reading up on entrance tests. My best friend Sakura's training to be a nurse and she's been helping . . . me . . . "

He trailed off, looking thunderstruck. "Sakura hasn't – she hasn't seen me in over a year! She's going to think something's wrong!"

"She probably did. I assume someone put you on a missing persons list."

Naruto looked completely crushed, which Sasuke didn't understand. He himself had been lucky enough not to leave any friends behind when he died.

"I've got to see her," Naruto said. He grabbed onto the side of his bed and tried to pull himself more upright. Still in a weak state, he struggled.

"Why?"

"To tell her I'm fine! She must think I got kidnapped, or joined a gang or something, and just gave up on life, but I didn't! She has to know that!"

"You can't change anything there now!" Sasuke said snappishly. Naruto's emotion was getting on his nerves. "You're dead there. You're not allowed to contact people from your past. And furthermore, even if it was allowed, it would still be impossible."

"But I – "

"It is impossible. Don't you remember anything about your session with Gaara?"

Naruto screwed up his face in thought. Then, comprehension dawned on him and he slumped in disappointment. "I'm invisible too, aren't I? Great. Sakura probably thinks I'm a drop-out loser and I can't tell her what really happened. This officially sucks."

Sasuke didn't say anything. He wasn't really the comforting type.

They just sat there for a while, long enough that Sasuke began to wonder if he was allowed to leave, until Naruto forced a grin back on his face. "Okay, your turn."

"What?"

"Your turn. I told you all about myself, you tell me all about yourself."

"I'd really rather – "

"Come on! You said it yourself, I'm not going anywhere. I need you to entertain me. If you don't want to tell me about yourself, then at least tell me about Gaara. That guy scared the crap out of me."

A chuckle came unbidden to Sasuke's lips. It was half out of amusement at Naruto's candidness, half out of satisfaction that he had indeed learned to fear someone instead of asking them out for drinks.

"You smiled!" Naruto accused. "That has to mean I win. Tell me!"

Sasuke shrugged. "There's very little to say. Gaara's believed to be the most deadly killer that ever existed. He's been here a lot longer than I have, but he isn't allowed above ground. His brother and sister are vampires, too, and they're . . . competent. Nothing like him, though."

"I got the impression that he was just a little bit antisocial."

"Yes." Sasuke considered the best way to phrase what he wanted to say next. "Some vampires act normally by your standards, but most came from very different worlds, which made them useful for our goals. They won't be open to you befriending them. And don't forget that everybody here is older than you. A lot older. Just a warning."

Naruto was frowning in what Sasuke thought was scepticism, as if he didn't believe that vampires wouldn't be open to friends. Sasuke felt a stab of annoyance. Fine, I won't give you any help at all, if you won't accept it.

"How old are you, then?" Naruto inquired. Irritated as he was, Sasuke was almost tempted to lie before accepting that lying would serve no purpose whatsoever.

"Three hundred and thirty."

Naruto let out a low whistle that said plainly that he was impressed. "And you say Gaara's older than you? Shit. That means you guys have lived through everything! Did you see the Wild West? Victorian England? Oh! Did you meet Hitler?"

"I'm three hundred and thirty, not omnipresent," Sasuke snapped. "I haven't met every dead celebrity."

"Oh, right. That makes sense. But you still must've been born in, what, the seventeen hundreds? Tell me what it was like back then!"

So, they were back on the subject of Sasuke's life. How quickly the topic had been broached after he'd already refused. Ordinarily if someone asked him personal questions, he made a cutting remark and stormed off, but with Naruto lying helplessly in a sick bed, storming out of the infirmary seemed unnecessarily cruel. Plus, Naruto was so clearly harmless, so it wasn't like he would use any information against Sasuke.

Not that he planned on sharing everything about himself. "I don't remember much. Part of my job here is to keep up with the human world, so there isn't much room for distant memories. But it was different. Things were smaller, people were fewer. What was expected of you was more . . . immediate." He paused, then added, "But some things haven't changed at all. People are still exactly the same."

Selfish. Aloof. Manipulative. But he didn't say that, and Naruto didn't ask.

"But you didn't have electricity, right?"

Innocuous questions like that followed for the next twenty minutes or so. Naruto wasn't interested in Sasuke's misanthropic views on humanity, but rather in whether or not he remembered what everything smelled like, and if toothpaste had been invented yet.

Letting his guard down, Sasuke began to relax into the conversation, even smiling once or twice at Naruto's awed fascination.

"No way."

"It's true."

"No. No way. Nuh-uh. You are not listed as a World War One soldier."

"I am," Sasuke insisted. "I'm on an honour role of people killed in action. I enlisted, told them I was twenty-five, then left shortly after. It was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission, just gathering information on who the top-ranked soldiers were, but I took it a step further."

"Didn't anyone wonder why they didn't find your body?"

"They didn't find a lot of bodies."

"Oh, okay, but what about birth records? And didn't they need an address so that they could contact your family when you died?"

"They probably assumed I was some kind of homeless, family-less vagrant who joined the army just to have a bed. If anyone did find it odd, I didn't hear about it."

"Oh." Naruto spent a lot of the conversation looking like he wanted to ask more questions but was afraid of prying. He tended to ask the questions anyway. "So, did you have a family?"

Sasuke's insides gave a funny jolt. He hadn't really expected that, and since it was a subject very sensitive to him, his automatic urge was to shut down. End the talking. Walk away and leave Naruto here, wondering what he did wrong as he recovered in isolation. But he didn't; he fought that instinct.

He didn't want to leave, he realised. Against all precedent, he actually wanted to keep talking about himself.

That was quite unsettling. Why would he now, of all times, suddenly feel like opening up a three-hundred-year-old can of worms by telling Naruto about his family? Nobody else talked about it. He usually just glared at people who asked, and then they never asked again, because they knew that he wasn't someone to cross.

Meanwhile, Naruto had crossed him several times already, even if he didn't know it, and for some reason Sasuke was letting him get away with it! Was it really that cathartic to talk to him?

Some of Sasuke's conflict must have shown on his face, because Naruto quickly said, "You don't have to tell me, if it's a sore point. Don't worry about it. Sorry I asked." But his voice was burning with curiosity. Somehow his insincerity was even more annoying.

"It's not a sore point," Sasuke said coldly, surprising Naruto with his attitude change. "If you're so desperate to know, vampires had been targeting my family for a long time. We were some of the only people to know of their existence. We were rich and powerful, and that was what they wanted. They attacked us – me, my parents, my brother – and brought us here. Only my brother and I survived the A.D. when it happened."

Naruto listened, dumbstruck, which was good because Sasuke might have snapped if he got interrupted. When he stayed quiet long enough that Naruto knew he was finished, it was another question that followed.

"You have a brother here?"

Sasuke gritted his teeth. "Had."

"What d'you mean?"

"He was a mistake."

And I still believe you are, too. I think.

Itachi Uchiha, Sasuke's older brother, was the precise sore point, if Sasuke would ever admit it. Naruto had probably been thinking that going through this transformation with a brother would be helpful, making everything easier and more comfortable. That was not the case at all. It would have been better if Itachi had been shot rather than bitten.

Finally getting that this conversation was unwelcome, Naruto heaved a deep sigh and changed the subject again. "I miss colour."

It took a while, but Sasuke eventually simmered down. While talking about his family put him on the defensive, ready to lash out and hate Naruto, when they talked about mundane things it was practically friendly. Sasuke actually acted like a mentor, explaining to Naruto how he could still identify colours without being able to see them.

He was so engrossed in their conversation that he didn't notice a third person enter the infirmary – quite a feat, considering his perfect hearing. Tsunade the medic leaned against the door frame and caught enough of what they were saying to interject.

"Sasuke, it's a good thing you're in the trauma ward. You must have had quite a bump on the head to develop such a new personality. Chatting? Being nice? I hardly recognise you."

Feeling his face heat up slightly, Sasuke instantly regretted teaching Naruto how to recognise red. "You should have knocked."

"In my own hospital? Don't be ridiculous. You might be special and important, but in here, my word is the law."

Sasuke saw Naruto tilt his head at the words 'special and important'. He decided to switch focus. "When will Naruto be out?"

"As soon as he can walk. I wouldn't send him back to Gaara for a couple of weeks, though."

"Did you know he broke my knees twice?" Naruto chimed. Sasuke ignored him.

"So what am I supposed to do with him if he can't train?"

Tsunade shrugged. "Show him a good time? Hell, you can try to kiss him better for all I care."

Sasuke scowled at her, though she didn't bat an eyelid. "Just because you work with Inuzuka doesn't mean you should make the same jokes."

As Tsunade laughed and left the room again, the bed shifted under Sasuke, catching his attention. Naruto had managed to roll himself onto the floor, where he was now grimacing in pain.

"You're on the floor."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"The old lady said I had to walk."

"If you could walk." Sasuke shook his head in disbelief. "Did you expect to be cartwheeling out of your bed? Idiot."

Naruto wrinkled his nose. "Are you going to sit there calling me an idiot or are you going to help me?"

"Take a guess."

"You're a bit of a bastard, aren't you?"

Sasuke's mouth curved into a small smile. He couldn't remember anyone talking to him like that in his life – either of his lives. He expected to loathe it, but something about it was refreshing. Right at that moment, he couldn't have hated Naruto if he tried.

Then in the next moment, he thought of Gaara, and the compliment of Naruto's fighting, and a little bit of the hatred stirred again. But he still bent down to help Naruto stand up and start walking again. He didn't know why.

Author's note: So, review please? I enjoy them! And I sometimes even reply!