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Sky-eyed Kitsune and Gomi-kun blab & Updates
Sky-eyed Kitsune: Sorry, I know I said November 1st ^^'' Lordy I have exams coming up . Anyways, thank you all who participated and voted on the pieces of Naruto artwork I posted on my page! Please enjoy the chapter! ;) But you all are going to love me and hate me at the same time by the end of this one…
EDIT: Sorry! During Gomi-kun's rush to translate this chapter names were mixed up in translation, please forgive the confusion!!
For those of you just joining the madness now, I have stopped replying to reviewers because I've got so many that it tends to take an hour to do so! X0 But please know that I treasure each review I get, and read them all. In fact when I read them they made me smile in the way that a writer does when they've realized that they have a reason to write! So sincerely, thank you all who take the time and read and review! I will though be answering questions if someone doesn't understand one part of the story or something along those lines. ^^
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Chapter Dedication: This one's for mmm. kai mmm, littleichigo, and toontwins (check out her art on deviantart!) Thanks for all the lovely reviews!! :D They keep me going!
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Chapter Eleven: Empty
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Naruto breathed in deeply, pulling the warm air around him into his lungs and containing it there for a moment before exhaling from his nose.
He opened his eyes just barely enough to see through his eyelashes so he wouldn't be blinded by light. Deeming it much dimmer than he thought, he let his eyelids raise the rest of the way.
He was facing the black bars of Kyuubi's cage, the air circulating in the chamber warm and tinged a premature ember color from chakra.
Naruto sat up, realizing now that he was lying down on the ground. He felt movement behind him and looked over to his opposite side.
Kyuubi, still in his human-like state, was curled beside him. Four of his soft lush tails were wrapped around himself, and the other four cocooning Naruto in a blanket of orange fur.
Naruto blinked.
"How did I get here…?"
He yawed, his sharper than average canines glistening in the muted light of the demonic chakra swirling around.
"Kyuubi?" he said, nudging Kyuubi with his palm. A low rippling growl emanated from the kitsune, but nothing more.
"Kyuubi," Naruto tired again, this time shaking the fox a little.
"Mrfm?" Kyuubi grunted. He opened one eye. "What are you doing up Naruto?"
"What do you mean? Why am I here? What's going on?" Naruto asked sternly.
Kyuubi sat up, stretching his arms out and cracking his clawed fingers. He shook out his red mane of hair and licked his dry lips.
"Don't worry, you're just in post heat," he said. It must have been a powerful heat for Naruto to loose his memory. Then again it was common when a demon with through heat with a willing partner to temporarily forget their actions in the past week.
"This hasn't ever happened after heat," Naruto murmured, scratching the back of his head.
"Because you've never had a partner during heat."
"Partner? What the hell!? I've never had a partner! Not even Sai!"
"Calm down. You'll remember in a few hours. Until then you need to rest. This was the most draining heat session on you yet and your stamina is extremely low, as is mine."
Kyuubi patted the space next to him on the ground, and Naruto rolled his eyes with an exaggerated sigh and let himself fall back on the floor.
The Kyuubi wrapped his tails around the blond and pulled him against his chest, sharing their body heat.
Naruto at this point realized in fact how drained he really was; that little outburst had worn him completely out.
He felt his eyelids grow heavy, and he slipped into a weak slumber beside his demon once again.
Gaara roused from his light sleep as the felt new chakra presences, and the demon seals on the door to the confinement room dissipated.
It swung open and Tsunade, along with Jiraiya and Iruka, stepped in.
"Naruto's week is up," Tsunade informed the redhead now standing up.
Gaara let his jade eyes follow Jiraiya's hands as they made the necessary seals to release Naruto from his shackles and chains.
He fell limp immediately and Iruka caught him. In the light spilling through the half open door Gaara could make out the dried tearstains on his face, no doubt from worrying about Naruto.
The brunette teacher gathered Naruto into his arms, and Jiraiya led him out.
Tsunade stood beside the door and held out a hand.
"After you, Kazekage-sama."
Gaara admitted, as nice as it was to catch up on all the sleep he had missed while being confined with Naruto, he had missed the pleasant sensation of a soft chair instead of a hard brick floor.
He felt himself melt a little into the comfortable cushioning of the chair in front of Tsunade's desk, and frankly the blond didn't blame him. Of course the kazekage would never let himself look so at leisure if it wasn't just Tsunade and himself.
"I suppose you'll want a full report, ne?" he asked, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.
"Yes," Tsunade said, interlacing her hands on her desk. "Any problems?"
Gaara shook his head.
"To sum up this week, Naruto was very weak throughout and slept for at the minimum sixteen hours a day. He would frequently wake up every three to four hours in a sort of daze. We would converse if he wasn't too tired, and he would fall back into sleep fifteen minutes later. When he woke in a hot and flustered frenzy, I calmed him."
"Sounds like the usual heat," Tsuande said. "I am a little concerned about his energy level though. He's usually much more active during heat, sleeping at the most twelve hours a day."
"The sealing technique you put him through was excruciatingly painful and tiresome, so I assume he needs more time to recover," Gaara said. "But there's one thing that I saw during my confined time with Naruto that worries me."
Tsunade nodded for the kazekage to continue.
"At times when Naruto would sleep, his newly secured seal would pulse. When I touched it during these times I felt a searing burning sensation, though it left no mark whatsoever on my hand."
Tsuande paused, swallowing hard.
"I believe these were signs of the seal breaking before the jutsu, yes?" Gaara continued. "But I have a feeling that it is not breaking, rather the excess chakra that you pumped into Naruto is searching for a way out, and it finds this through the seal. The seal is not fully contained, so the additional chakra can filter through. It's of course painful, and might take a little while."
Tsunade nodded.
"That makes sense," she agreed. She stood from her desk and walked around, Gaara following suit.
"Well Kazekage-sama, I don't know how exactly to thank you."
"Letting myself and my siblings stay a few more days here in Konoha would be nice."
"Of course."
Tsunade exited her room and walked down the hallway, her hokage robes billowing out behind her as Gaara's fluttered calmly at his heels.
"Do you intend to stay for Naruto's physical?" she asked. Gaara shook his head.
"I'm meeting up with my sister before she throws a conniption fit about me not eating for a week."
Tsunade nodded, and Gaara turned down a flanking hallway.
"Gaara-sama," Tsunade called, and the redhead paused in his walk. Tsunade grinned in a feral manner. "Enjoy being seme?"
Gaara faltered a little in his walk out the door.
Naruto let his eyelids lift of their own free will, slowly and almost cautiously.
He blinked up at the stark white ceiling over him, and closed his eyes again quickly at the brightness.
"So, you're awake."
Naruto opened one eye a crack and turned his head to see Tsunade checking over a monitor attached to a needle in his wrist. He was laying on a white hospital bed beside a window overlooking the village.
"Baa-chan?" he breathed. He attempted to sit up, but the hokage placed a hand on his chest and firmly pushed him back down.
"Maa maa, I don't expect you to be up until tomorrow," she said. She shifted her gaze from the monitor to the blond. "How're you feeling?"
"Kinda dazed," Naruto said truthfully. "Kyuubi said that I won't remember anything about my heat for a couple hours."
"Then I'd go with what he says on that," Tsunade nodded. "There were no unusual reports of anything happening during your heat, so I'd say the sealing jutsu was a success."
Naruto smiled weakly.
"But I'd be careful," Tsunade continued. "Your newly secured seal is pulsing and trying to pump out the excess chakra in your body, so you'll be in pain for a while. I'm prescribing you some painkillers and plenty of rest for at least a week."
"A week?" Naruto said, glaring.
"Yes a week, and if you argue with me I'll make it longer," Tsunade grit out. Naruto shut his mouth. "While you're here overnight you can have visitors."
"No fangirls please," Naruto begged, his blue eyes turning big and glassy.
"Fine, fine," Tsunade said, waving a hand as she made for the door. "Now get some rest or I'll make you."
Naruto sighed and melted into the bed sheets.
During the hours between that morning and well into midnight a flood of visitors came in and out of Naruto's room.
The first were Jiraiya and Iruka. Iruka burst in, bawling his eyes out as Jiraiya followed from behind, rolling his eyes. It took Jiraiya and two other Jounin to separate iruka from the blond after an hour.
A little later Chouji and Ino stopped by with Shino, Hinata, and Kiba. Naruto was overjoyed to see Hinata's belly swelling with her soon to be born child. Shino was smiling proudly as he stood beside his timid wife. Naruto was even allowed to rub Hinata's stomach a little before watchdog (or more like watchbug) Shino mode kicked in and he pulled her away.
Throughout the day presents arrived from those who couldn't visit. Gaara and his siblings sent a vase of rare sand lilies, and Ino and Chouji, who were on their honeymoon, had a basket of ramen delivered.
Shikamaru visited briefly, regaling his captain about what he had missed mission wise, before leaving for sentry duty on the south borders of Konoha.
Sakura of course sent a bundle of cherry blossoms, too busy to visit as she worked at the clinic with other patients.
Naruto was thankful that Tsunade had insisted that Gai stay out of Naruto's room, explaining that he wasn't strong enough yet to handle his youthful greetings.
Lee and Tenten came later in the evening, and Naruto was happy to hear that fuzzybrows had finally mustered up the courage to propose and the two were now happily engaged.
"So Narutooo," Tenten chimed, a chesire cat grin spreading across her lips. "A little birdie told me that Sai proposed to you too!"
Naruto swallowed hard, a blushing creeping up on him.
"Ano…uh…"
"So? Whatcha gonna say???" Tenten pressed. If she had a tail it would have been going wild.
"That's enough," Lee said, pulling his fiancé with him to the door. "Let's let Naruto-kun rest now."
Tenten waved enthusiastically and Lee grinned widely before they exited.
Naruto sighed deeply, and tilted his head to look out the window.
The memories of his heat had come back to him, just as Kyuubi had said they would. He didn't know how he would repay Gaara for staying with him the whole time. But what really was scraping at the doggie door of his mind was what Sai's reaction would be. He had to tell him about what went on sometime or another.
Then there was that proposal.
…marriage? To Sai?
Naruto bit his lip and looked down to his lap.
He loved Sai, he did, but enough to marry him, to be together with him always? Did Sai really love him that much? Would he really be willing to make such a serious commitment?
Naruto closed his eyes, and suddenly he remembered whose name he had called out in the darkness of the confinement room.
"S-Sa…Sasuke!!"
Naruto pulled his pillow from under him and mashed it over his head, shutting his eyes tightly.
Sasuke? He knew that he loved Sai, so why did he say Sasuke? He hadn't spent time with Sasuke in years, and only saw him once or twice since he had come back.
Naruto sighed again.
He knew that he was lying to himself, trying to convince himself otherwise about his feelings for the raven. Sasuke had, and always would take up a place in his heart that no matter how hard he would try to erase, would always stay there.
This needing for the Uchiha ran deep like a wound, never healing or closing up. It ran in rivulets through his body, maintaining the connection to Sasuke that neither he nor the raven could sever.
But just how deep was "deep"? Deep enough to hold off Sai's proposal to give the raven a chance? Deep enough to fall again, hopelessly, madly, passionately…?
Deep enough to make him leave Sai?
Night fell and a blanket of darkness overlapped the hospital room Naruto slept in, save for the shard of moonlight spilling in through the open curtains of the window by his bed.
The moonlight was blocked however, by a figure casting a long shadow over the room, perched on the window sill.
The dark figure swept forward, moving soundlessly around Naruto's bed to the other side.
A pale had reached out to the sleeping blond's face, when the wrist was caught in an iron grip and the figure was pinned down to the bed, a kunai digging into its neck.
Naruto blinked away the sleep in his eyes as he identified his intruder.
"…Sasuke?" he said as the handsome face framed by raven locks came into view.
"Still alert I see," Sasuke said, smirking a little, and Naruto felt his heart sting. That smirk was so familiar, so comforting to see after so long.
"Why are you here?" Naruto said sternly, pressing the kunai further into the pallid neck, drops of ruby blood spilling in a line down it.
"Why else dobe? To see you."
Naruto blinked a few times, before gritting his teeth and pressing the kunai as deep as he could into Sasuke's flesh without killing him.
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" he hissed. Sasuke furrowed his brow in confusion.
"Joke?" he repeated unsurely. "Why would this be a joke?"
Naruto leaned his arm back some as he took in the serious look on the Uchiha's face.
He finally let his arm go limp, letting it drop beside him and the kunai clatter nosily to the floor.
He looked away from Sasuke, not wanting to see his face.
"Why…?" he said so softly that Sasuke had to lean in to hear.
"Because I was worried about you," he said. Naruto scoffed harshly.
"Me? You're worried about me? Were you worried about me when you slammed a chidori through my chest? Or maybe your katana? The only thing you were ever worried about was your brother. Getting power no matter what the cost, just to kill him. To even subject yourself to serving someone like Orochimaru, just so you could destroy him…" Naruto shook his head and chuckled lightly.
"Naruto, you don't understa-"
"What? I don't understand how it feels to be alone?" Naruto cut off. "I don't know what it's like to watch something being taken from you, something you know that you'll never get back? I haven't felt the addictive sensation of revenge? How it pours into you like a drug, and you won't be satisfied until the addiction is answered?"
Narutp gripped the fabric around Sasuke's shirt and tugged him forward so that they were eye to eye.
"You know nothing about me," he said.
"But I want to," Sasuke said, staring Naruto down. "I want to know."
"Why? Why the hell would you care?"
"Because…"
"Because what Sasuke?"
Sasuke withdrew his gaze and pulled back, Naruto releasing his grip on his collar. The raven sighed and sat down on the end of Naruto's bed.
"I wanted to tell you," he said. "I thought that if I did, maybe you could help me figure something out, but then I thought, it's nothing at all." He looked back at the blond. "When we were thirteen, going on missions together with all of team seven, I felt something, like an aching…" He pointed to the center of his chest. "…right here. I only ever felt it when I was around you though, so I avoided you and trained more to get my mind off of it. I thought I was maybe sick of you. But I found that I wanted to go and meet you on the training grounds, just to talk to you, to be near you somehow. All the times I tried to ask you what I was feeling, I ended up sputtering this string of insults that would end in us having a glaring match."
Naruto examined Sasuke's face as he talked, the emotions that passed over it softly. He had never seen the raven so expressive before.
It was beautiful.
"When we fought at the valley of end, I realized that the ache I was fearing was still there, and I couldn't kill you. So I left. Three years later the aching I felt didn't recede, but instead grew stronger. I could feel it pulsing through my chest whenever I thought of you back here in Konoha. I wanted to see you again…just for the sake of seeing you. It was at this point I realized that I felt something for you, something more than friendship. To cure my aching I asked Orochimaru for spying missions in Konoha so I could see you. Even though we couldn't talk, I could still watch you train and get stronger for the next time you would chase me. I always looked for ward to that chase, to actually stand right in front of you, and even spar together."
"Then Orochimaru stopped giving me spying missions, and any and all connections with you were severed from me. So instead I sated myself with the thought that in a year or two your would come to chase me again, and I would see you."
Sasuke narrowed his eyes.
"Then you stopped chasing me. Why?"
Naruto's mind was reeling with this new information that he almost didn't decipher Sasuke's words. He tore his gaze away from Sasuke and looked down at his lap.
He felt a force grip his chin lightly and push it up so that he and Sasuke were once more eye to eye.
"Why," the raven said again; not a question this time, but a demand.
Naruto felt the back of his eyes sting with tears building up, and he did his best to block them out.
"I gave up," he said hollowly.
"You gave up?" Sasuke repeated as if he had heard wrong. "You, Uzumaki Naruto, gave up?"
"You say it like it never happens. People give up all the time Sasuke."
"Not you, Naruto. You always talked about how you would never give up, not on me. That you would break every bone in my body and drag me back to Konoha if you had to. Was that all a lie?"
"No," Naruto said firmly. "I meant it. And after years of chasing you, I reached my breaking point. Sasuke, Kyuubi said I was dying."
Sasuke's pupils dilated in the moonlight spilling in through the window.
"He said that I was training myself too hard, to the point where I was physically harming my body. Even Tsuande said that if I had kept going at that rate, I wouldn't be alive right now."
Sasuke let his hand fall as he released Naruto's chin.
How could he? How could he demand an explanation? How could he be mad at Naruto for giving up when it was literally killing him?
"You were my dream, Sasuke," Naruto said quietly, and Sasuke looked at him to see tears spilling down the whiskered cheeks and pattering on the bed sheet softly.
"I never wanted to give up on you Sasuke, but I couldn't take it anymore. After I stopped chasing you I hated myself for it. I didn't talk to anyone for over a year and took missions every chance I could to keep my mind off of it. Even today I still take on heavy and long missions so that I won't ever let my mind drift back to it, so that I won't feel so…"
Naruto screwed his eyes shut to stop the flow of tears as he gripped the stark white sheets between his fingers.
"…empty."
Sasuke's mind was in a daze as Naruto's shoulder shook from suppressing his tears. He reached out his arms and cautiously placed them around Naruto.
The blond stiffened but made no objection, and let the raven embrace him lightly.
"Naruto," Sasuke breathed, and Narutp felt like he had been punched in the stomach. Hearing his name through the lips of someone he thought long gone, someone he would never see again…it burned.
"I didn't come back to satisfy the ache I was feeling because Itachi was out there, and I knew he would hunt me down, along with anyone I held close," Sasuke continued. "So I waited until I had killed him and Orochimaru to come back."
Sasuke released his embrace and moved back to look at Naruto, whose eyes were open again and glassy with unshed tears.
"Now I'm here. Now I can say without the worry of Itachi or Orochimaru or anyone else, that I came back for one reason and one reason always."
Sasuke cupped Naruto's face in his hands, smoothing out the wetness the tears had left behind on Naruto's whiskered cheeks.
"I love you, Naruto."
Cliffie, I know, hehe. I apologize for any grammar mistakes, but Gomi was studying for his exams and could only translate the chapter and then look over it for grammar briefly, so pardon any mistakes!
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Sky-eyed Kitsune
Translated by Gomi-kun