A/N: Well, now I've got the time skip. And we're getting somewhere. And, since I couldn't think of anything to do with any other story, nor anything for a one-shot, I wrote this. Which was a lot of fun, since you find out what Gaara does, and you also get a new dream. X3 The plot is thickening slowly.
Right, well, special thanks to all supporters of this story. I forgot to mention this before, but when I asked for help, Recyclables got the largest response. It seems that even though ACE and ANY are my most popular stories, Recyclables has more fans who are loyal and don't want it to die. I was pleasently surprised, and so kudos and cookies to everyone who has ever read this. I wouldn't be able to do this without you.
In answers to questions, or speculation, the blonde from the previous question is the Orioke no Jutsu (Sexy no Jutsu, if you don't know) reincarnation. Just wanted to do something with that... Also, the last chapter was needed to get them to set aside their differences. Otherwise, this wouldn't be a SasuNaru!
And now, no more rambeling. This is in honor of school, starting tomorrow, and just because I'm a twisted fangirl who has to torture my favorite characters. X3 Enjoy!
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Sasuke glared at the bathroom. He couldn't believe that anyone, not even Naruto, could pick such a horrific color scheme. Who in their right minds put a ridiculous color like neon orange in an otherwise calm and collected, revitalizing bathroom?
Apparently, annoying blonde idiots who seemed to have an affinity for eye-straining colors.
It had been weeks since the two teens were assigned the project together. They had just had their mid-terms a week ago, and had a further three and a half weeks until the finals. In that time, they had to know each other a little more. Just a little, as they still fought almost daily, and many times, the fights had nearly escalated to physical brawls.
With little to no help from the sunny student, Sasuke had worked at getting Naruto's apartment to rights again. There were times when, had Sasuke been less of a man than he was, he would have gone into crying hysterics and babbled incoherantly from the things he had found. There were things so bad, things that Sasuke hadn't even seen in his worse nightmare (or so he supposed, since he still couldn't remember his dreams), things that made him wince, shudder, and break out into a cold sweat when he thought about them.
However, he perservered. Now, all that was left in the trash heap that was Naruto's home, was the bathroom. The tasteless, horrid, fashion black-mark room that made designers cry when they saw it.
It was nearly as bad as the other rooms. Sasuke had thought that the kitchen was bad before, but that didn't hold a candle to the bathroom. The only thing that was somewhat clean was the shower, and that had mildew starting on it. There wasn't a fan to take away most of the humidity when the shower was used, which had only bread the mold, moss and other fuzzy questionables that grew on the walls, corners of the floor, in the sink, and out of the toilet. Sasuke had to wonder if anyone would be able to salvage the room, in the end.
Naruto poked Sasuke in the back, causing the boy to jump. "Oi, what's so special about the bathroom? Haven't you ever seen one?" he asked with a smirk.
Sasuke turned to glare at him, and Naruto noticed with the air of a plotting evil mastermind that he had gotten Sasuke's eye to twitch. Again. That brought the total amount of times Naruto could be that annoying up to one thousand, seven hundred and fifty three. And counting.
"How can you live in a place where you can't even use the bathroom?" Sasuke asked, closing his eyes and trying not to blow up. He didn't know if he would attack the smiling annoyance, or just break down then and there.
Naruto rubbed the back of his head. "I have a key to the old geezer's place. I just go there if I need to use the bathroom while I'm here. Besides, I'm not home a lot any more, not since Mr. Hatakenaka started this whole thing," he added informatively.
Sasuke had just spent four and a half hours finishing up cleaning the bedroom. He refused to tackle the bathroom at that moment, and made the decision obvious when he stormed past Naruto and put the cleaning supplies away in a neat fashion, under the cleanly sparkeling sink, in the surprisingly spacious kitchen.
He turned around, nearly running into Naruto. The adolescent was staring at him intently, causing Sasuke to become uneasy. He didn't know it, but Naruto's dreams had taken a different turn. They were getting clearer and clearer, and they were starting to seem as if they were a different life. It scared the blonde immensly when he started to experience odd emotions coming with the dreams, especially when nearly ever dream with the imposter-Sasuke came with an emotion that resembled love a little too much for his taste.
Naruto was lost in thought, until Sasuke broke his reverie. "I know that I'm good looking, but that's sad if I'm attracting idiots like you," he said with his self-important smirk. The bastard.
Naruto couldn't help the slight blush that brushed his cheeks, though. "Shut up. I was just thinking." He had a sudden urge to stick out his tongue childishly, but that would just earn him a scathing remark from the fairly stoic brunette.
"Be sure you don't hurt yourself by thinking too much." So much for not recieving an insult. Naruto supposed he walked right into that one.
An awkward silence fell over the two, a clock ticking away cheerily somewhere in the background. Naruto shifted as Sasuke's gaze peirced through him. It was becoming incredibly uncomfortable, and he wanted to do something about it. Anything to stop the staring. He got an evil idea. "Hey, I want to go visit a friend," he announced.
Sasuke blinked. "Oh? And just what does that have to do with me?" He folded his arms over the white shirt that belonged to his uniform. It was getting colder and colder, as summer slowly transformed into fall, and so the shirt was long-sleeved this time.
"Hey, you're the one who wants to pass the class," Naruto pointed out as he ran into the bedroom. He shut the door and locked it, quickly stripping and changing into some (mercifully) clean clothing- a pair of ragged jeans and a black shirt that read, in bold white lettering, 'I'm Ninja (You can't see me)' on it.
He walked out, and smiled inwardly at Sasuke's scoffing look and the twitching eye. Fifty-four. He motioned for the Uchiumi to follow him, slipping on a pair of old tennis shoes and grabbing his keys from a hook that the brunette youth had so kindly installed a week ago.
Sasuke followed him out, thinking about what he had learned about the blonde. He was a lot more complicated than Sasuke had first thought, his mind more complex than Shikamaru's. The young student had learned that Naruto liked to write and draw, and that he was incredibly good at art. In retrospect, he couldn't count more than ten without taking off his shoes. It also seemed that the chipper adolescent could only ever find odd jobs to work at to pay the bill, even though he ought to have been recieving a stipend from the city for being an orphan.
They also shared incredibly similar tastes. They liked nearly all the same bands and forms of music, had the same like of a decent sundae (Naruto had been shocked to find that Sasuke was an avid fan of fresh strawberries over chocolate ice cream), and enjoyed reading similar material.
However, they also had their differences. A gaping example was their taste in fashion, and the amount of tact they used when people insulted them. Naruto was a fan of sticking up for his thoughts and beliefs no matter what, oftentimes standing and shouting his opinion to the world, whereas Sasuke took a more subtle approach to insults and jabs at his preferences.
Still, they were starting to get along fairly well. One could almost say that the boys were on their way to becoming friends. Almost, but not quite. They still had too much between them to become the best of friends overnight, but maybe, in the future, if they could get over their differences, if they could agree to disagree on many things, if they could start to stand each other...
Sasuke nearly ran into Naruto's back. He hadn't been watching where he was going, his eyes instead being trained to the ground, watching his feet. He looked up curiously, to see a bright, rainbow-colored building. There were flowers everywhere, writing that looked like it was done by a second grader, chalk drawings covering the front entry, and a fence leading to a wood-and-metal playground peeking timidly from behind the building. Children screaming and laughing told tale that this was quite obviously a daycare center, if not a preschool building. The sign gave evidence to the former.
Naruto grinned, his smile malicious and oddly twisted for someone whose grin could light up a third-world country for nearly a decade. "See, this is where one of my good friends works. And I haven't seen him here for a while, so I'm going to go help him out with the little demons," he announced. His eyes told Sasuke that if he followed, he would be dragged into things as well.
Sasuke didn't like children. Rather, he could stand them, but they had a habit of running screaming when he so much as glanced at them. Hence, he had never really spent time around the brats. It just didn't fit in with his personality.
Still, he decided to follow Naruto in. He wondered which friend worked there. Right away, Lee and Gaara wouldn't work there. Lee would scare kids even more than Sasuke himself due to those bushes he called eyebrows, and Gaara's stare would kill a kid. That left Kiba, and he worked with puppies and possessed the energy needed to keep up with energetic children. He supposed that it would be Kiba that worked there.
They walked into the place, Naruto talking quickly with a young woman at the desk. He handed Sasuke a visitors pass, and they walked deeper into the building's confines with a smile and a nod. A handful of lefts and a right, through a threshold, and then they entered a playroom full of screaming children running around chaotically.
Toys of all shapes and sizes littered the floor. Plastic blocks stacked against each other haphazardly provided caves and places for children to hide. There were games and crayons and coloring books and multitudes of cushions and pillows littering the battlefield that made up the room. And, through it all, the children played.
Naruto ran into the fray without a care. "Hey, all! I'm back!" Cries of "Brother" and "Naru" were sent through the air as each and every child made a mad dash to the blonde. Sasuke couldn't help but think of him as a magnet, and each child had somehow honed into him and found a place to cling to the laughing high schooler.
Sasuke hung back, unsure about what to do. He didn't want their grubby, messy and germ-stained hands to wipe themselves all over himself, so he stood there, scowling and glaring at Naruto (who was acting like the idiot he was, rolling around and taking turns tickling and being tickled).
One young boy, with messy red hair and bright, innocent eyes walked up to Sasuke and started staring at him. Sasuke turned his glare to the child, thinking that the boy would just run away crying. He was mildly surprised when the boy just cocked his head to the side with curiousity. "What's your name?" he asked.
Sasuke debated not answering. "Sasuke Uchiumi."
The boy smiled, missing two front teeth and obviously not caring. "My name is Tatsui Kuwabara. Are you here with brother? Are you going to be our brother, too?" he asked with all the naivete of a five-year-old.
Sasuke was at a loss for words at answering, but he was saved the strain by a new person entering. Wearing jeans and a blue shirt, looking as if he would be better seen on a date than at a daycare, his red hair a bright contrast to the outfit he wore, Gaara walked into the room. It explained why Sasuke didn't terrify any of the brats, and he realised this with only a small, unused portion of his brain. The rest of his mind was too shocked at discovering a cold-hearted person like Araya.
Gaara's gaze flickered to Sasuke, the only movement that acknowledged the brunette. Otherwise, he waded into the sea of children, pulling them off his friend. The kids obeyed the silent command with surprising speed, backing up obediently while still telling 'Brother Naruto' everything he had missed.
Gaara stuck out a hand and helped Naruto to his feet. "It's been a while," he said simply. His gaze flickered once more to Sasuke, asking the silent question that he didn't vocalize.
"Oh, we're still working on the project," he offered as an explaination. Gaara looked at him skeptically, but didn't say anything else to refute Naruto's claim.
"We're going to have some stories," Gaara said over the noise made from little chattering voices. They immediately raised a cheer, scrambeling to take places on the various pillows and seating mats placed chaotically about the place. Twenty or so hands went up, eagerly waving to try and get the red-head's attention. "Tatsui," he called, picking the brave soul that had stood up to the infamous Uchiumi stare.
"I want the new guy to tell a story!" he exclaimed, pointing to Sasuke.
Sasuke blinked, and got an uneasy feeling as Naruto, Gaara and all of the children looked at him expectantly. "I don't do stories," he said, glaring at Naruto for bringing him there. The children began to pout, whine, cry, and demand a tale from the stoic teen. Even Naruto joined in, flopping on a cushion and folding his legs under him.
Sasuke became annoyed, but as he didn't know where the place was, and because he needed Naruto to get him back to familiar territory, he couldn't just leave. So he angrily shouted "Fine, just shut up already!" to the cheers of innocent kids and began to tell the first story that popped into his head. As soon as he finished, Naruto took a turn, and then (surprisingly) Gaara, before the cycle started all over again until the children's parents returned to pick them up, freeing Sasuke from the impromptu hell and allowing him to return to his home for some much needed aspirin and sleep.
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It was dark. The night swept across the town, a town filled with mercenaries and children training to take the place of their elders. He was in the most expensive district, the one that he lived in, the one that held the most prestigious family. He was walking home, unable to get there fast enough.
It seemed like he was walking in a dream. One minute, he was making his own innocent way to his house, and the next, he was looking upon the bodies of fallen family members. He was in the street just before his own, the one that harbored the branch members, aunts, uncles, cousins and other extended relatives. They were all dead, littered across the lane in no pattern, bleeding from wounds that had taken their lives within moments.
He was running, then, running to them, hoping that the killer hadn't made it to his house, hoping that he would find the same bloodbath. His bag hit his side, bouncing in an ominous tandem as his breathing became quicker, a stitch formed in his side, fear engulfing his heart.
The door opened in front of him without prompting. He saw his parents there, saw them standing, smiling, waiting to welcome him home. Then they were falling, blood spraying from their wounds. His brother, his idol, the person he loved almost as much as life itself stood over them, the bloody murder weapon in his hand.
He attacked. Rage, betrayal and grief ate at his soul. He couldn't stand it. He had thought his brother had loved him, had cared for his family, had been someone worth being. It was all a falsety, all a lie, a lie, a lie, lies lies lies lies lies...
Then love. A warm feeling. A sunny person, someone he could relate to, a fellow orphan, someone who had been betrayed and hurt like himself by countless people. Someone who wouldn't back down, or act like a lovesick fool, or betray him. Someone he was free to love, free to be with, free to spend the rest of his days caring for...
A blonde streak. A sharp pain. A windmill of shadows, his weapon of choice, flying at him. He couldn't dodge, he had been poisoned, he could feel himself dying, being dragged from the world of living, could feel the demon wind shuriken imbedding itself into his stomach, tearing, shredding, ripping through.
Then a laugh, the cheery smile he so loved, the one person he thought wouldn't abandon him, standing over, an evil gleam in his once laughing gaze. Words, barely penetrating the roaring that came with the last breath, "You should have known better", should have known, I should have, should have, should have, should, should, should, I knew it, why did I believe it would be different, not different, all the same, same, same difference, different, different, different, never different...
And a promise. A promise broken, a heart shattered, a soul shredded to peices, death in anger. Finally, darkness, darkness, dark, dark, dark, keep the dark away, the neverending night the point of no return, keep it away, keep it away, keep it away, away, away...
For the first time in his life, Sasuke awoke screaming, the events of his dream forever etched into his mind.
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End Chapter
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