Chapter Eleven

It's a late and strange and drunk night, which accounts for Naruto remembering, even as she hears them, Sasuke's words as a quote they can't be; she's saying something very similar, but in her own words, not the ones borrowed from Buffy that Naruto hears, like you might hear something in one language but remember it in another when you've been switching too much.

I may be dirt, Slayer, but you're the one who likes to roll in it.

Which isn't what she says, of course it's not. But it's close, or feels close, despite that Sasuke would never call herself dirt, and hardly talk about rolling, and very likely there would be something thrown in about Naruto's intellect being developmentally stunted.

Sasuke sucks with idle but as it appears intense concentration on a new, unlit cigarette. "Don't you ever think there's a reason you were bullied?"

And this is it, the magic at the core, that Naruto can be flippant because Sasuke will know she isn't really. "I guess I was too awesome for people sucking that bad."

"Come now," Sasuke says, dropping the cigarette and heaving herself up to sit on the railing, her back against the wall, "everybody knows you're not a real victim if you aren't plagued by guilt and shame." But she's grinning, that small secretive Sasuke smirk. Yes, Sasuke can grin a smirk.

Naruto scoffs agreement and steps forward, grabbing at Sasuke's arms to keep her safe and there on the thin ledge, fitting her hands around Sasuke's arms, hugging the sparse flesh with her fingers, her palm curving over a jutting elbow. Sasuke's leg twists, maybe failing to kick at her, finally ends up tangled in the railing and around Naruto's knee.

It's not how she'd imagined it, it's honestly not at all what she'd planned, but she's kissing Sasuke again, pressing their mouths together and their bodies, and, for god's sake, Sasuke's kissing her back. Slowly her head tilts, her stance loosens into Naruto, and the hair at the nape of her neck really is soft as kitten fur; Naruto knots her fingers in it, stumbling as she inches closer, her breast crushed uncomfortably against Sasuke's ribs, teeth locking around Sasuke's lip to keep it. She palms the bubble where Sasuke's spine turns into neck, between the tendons, Sasuke's tongue like an adder in her mouth.

And then abruptly it's over. Sasuke slips away so easily, it's outrageous.

"No," she says, with thoughtful mischief, her lips soft, wet, but her eyes sharper than the cut glass of her accent. "Still not my thing."

"What?"

"I gave it a shot, all right? That's it."

Too high on happiness to grab for her, Naruto remains on the balcony as Sasuke returns inside, pressing her fingertips to her lips, feeling the pulse in them. The idea of leaping onto the railing and shouting, I'm the king of the world! is inordinately tempting, but then so is the option of keeping her neck unbroken.

She reminds herself that she got it wrong, before, thinking of cut glass as glass splinters to cut with – Mum laughed, ruffled her hair, explained that no, honey, it refers to the type of expensively cut drinking glasses that only the upper classes could, well can really I suppose, afford. Which does make a great deal more sense in general, although not in Sasuke's specific case.

But all she is really aware of is the taste of Sasuke's tongue in her mouth, the taste of saliva and cigarettes, heat and expensive alcohol.

Back inside the party, finally there's Gaara, looking rather furtive and frazzled under the stoicism.

Hey, she thinks, maybe sort of says but she hopes not, if Sasuke can be over it, so can he, and sitting around in the Castle Emo that is Gaara's room listening to depressive soundtrack albums is not how a party is supposed to end, even Naruto knows that.

Actually ideally it could've ended in Sasuke's room.

"What?" says Gaara.

She laughs and shakes her head, marching him towards the dancing crowd, loose-limbed and energetic with drink, the beat of the music struggling to catch up to that of her heart.

xxxxx

Sasuke went back to the house on Henderson rather than the beach cottage for privacy, but it becomes clear as she emerges from her bedroom, dripping shower water and yawns, that she wasn't the only one.

The flat is the twin of Temari's, only more sophisticated; more angles, less colour. If one is not in the mood for sophisticated, as indeed Temari seldom is, appropriate synonyms would be depressive and melancholy, but Sasuke likes the image of a modernist cave. Pausing at the top of the staircase, which falls into the same sharp curve as the Sabakus', she listens for the clinks of cutlery and conversation from the kitchen. Itachi's voice, and somebody else's; it's too far really to identify, as one is able to discern only a murmur, more a particular quality to the silence than an actual sound, but she's grown up with Itachi and would recognise his footsteps and his breathing in her sleep.

In the kitchen there's the smell of his coffee and his shampoo, long loose hair falling wetly down his back. Rather less familiar, for the last years, is the sight of Anko leaning against the counter, sipping from Mum's cup. She's dressed in the large, worn, green dressing gown that Sasuke doesn't even think about as Kakashi's anymore, it's been hers for so long.

"Good morning," she says. "I didn't realise you were sleeping over."

"Hiya," says Anko, with a bit of an awkward wave of her cup, nodding towards the coffee machine. "Want?"

"Yes, please," she says, and lets Anko serve her, then takes the steaming mug, hot white china between her cold fingers, and sits down at the table opposite Itachi, stares at him preparing toast.

He does look rather happier, in that shabby morning after way. His wrinkles have regressed to lines that will eventually become wrinkles, there's a mouth-shaped bruise on his clavicle, visible under the open collar of his shirt, and if she knows Anko right there'll be scratches up his back, although she prefers not to see those.

"I didn't see you, either," he says. "I hope we didn't disturb."

"Not at all." She accepts the buttered and jammed square of toast he slides her, the bread slightly burnt, the spread glittering a dowdy purple, just the way she likes it.

Or at least it's just the way she liked it when she still ate white bread and spread for breakfast, five or six years ago.

She has the impulse to say, Look, see, I've gained already, stop fussing, be – be proud of me?

She eats it in silence.

Anko joins them momentarily, making short work of a large helping of cereal, wiping sticky hands on the dressing gown.

"Right," says Anko finally, pushing her plate away. "I've gotta go." She also says, "See you later, kids", kids being plural, but while Sasuke mumbles, "I'm sure I will", Itachi follows her out into the hallway, presumably to kiss her, possibly to set up a date or make sure she gets her clothes.

"I wouldn't have been here," she says when he returns, after she's finished the toast but not the coffee. "I didn't realise you were so intimate."

He gives her a rather ironic smile, for all its warmth; possibly a replacement for saying, Oh but how often was I only a room away from you and Kakashi, over on Lilypad. When neither of them could stand it anymore, and Kakashi's flat turned into a refugee camp de luxe.

He does say, in a careful considerate voice that's been largely gone, lately, "She came with me to the exhibit."

"Indeed."

"I asked you first."

She looks up from her contemplation of the still life consisting of crumbs and sugar flakes that has assembled itself on the table. "I wasn't aware you were so desperate for company."

"Look," and yes, it is the big brother voice, the one she missed for far too long for it to evoke at present anything but resentment. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have – that wasn't my dressing gown to lend. I didn't think. It's – none of my things fit, and I didn't want to give her Mum's."

"That's all right." Anko is almost a full head taller than Itachi, both their parents towering over him as well as herself.

"I," he says, "I loved him too, you know. It's been horrible."

"I know," she says, and she does know. But is he wanting her to say, He loved you too?

He starts putting the breakfast things away; there won't be any servants until the family returns. Which they ought to have already, considering the beach house is supposed to be for summer and it's November.

"So was it a nice party?"

"Yes, rather, actually."

"That's good." He pauses, his small careful hands hovering over the coffee maker. "I was… Last year, there were some very disturbing rumours."

"Rumours are always disturbing. Otherwise what would be the point of them?"

"Don't deflect."

"I trust you'll excuse me if I was a little too preoccupied to pay much attention to rumours at the time."

It was the first time in four years he'd seriously tried to kill himself. It was also the first time, in longer, that she'd let herself slacken in vigilance.

She'd cried, furious. She hadn't cried over Kakashi but she cried in Temari's room until she couldn't breathe every day for a week after Itachi's attempted suicide.

"I'm sorry," he says, the light going out of him with a sigh that hunches his shoulders.

"Don't."

It's silly, yes silly, because the horror of it happened when she was nine, and all the safety in the world erupted like a volcano. She'd maybe tried to tell him that, that he was the only family she had, the only adult, when she opened the bathroom door after her whining hadn't made him open it for her, and he was in the shower and not, well, not conscious really.

Kakashi's stopped him more than once, before it got that far.

She says, moved by sudden benignity, "I never meant to exclude you."

"I know," he says, softly, kindly but not in the big brother way. "I think you even meant not to. I guess that's how natural it was, that it still… None of this is your fault. None of it will ever be your fault. You've done more than anybody should have to, and if I ever hurt you, that's on me and it's unforgivable."

"It's none of it your fault either." Which she knows to be true, intellectually, knew even when she was a child and wanted to scream, But you were supposed to take care of me! She smiles a little, thinly, not quite managing dryly. "I suppose that's the problem with having inadequate parents."

"I suppose. They could be worse, though. They – I think they try, sometimes."

"Intentions aren't fucking magic."

"No," he says, slowly. "No, but they help, a little."

"Not really, no."

"Well, perhaps not, but I'd like to imagine – that they must." He puts away the last of the used cups, picking up the phone instead, weighing it thoughtfully in his hand. "I thought I might call Kisame."

"Right," she says, unable to add anything without collapsing her attempt at sympathy. Kisame after all is the Inuzuka of Itachi's generation.

"He has his moments," Itachi says.

For what it's worth, even when weighed against his fish fetish, this is unarguably true. There was that one comment, framed by the genuine laughter of the outsider, before Itachi's second suicide attempt, when he was still popular, and Kisame had attended his umpteenth Uchiha family dinner: "So first he whines about how he's treated like a walking credit card, and then, and now this is the funny part – then when he's told he's an absent and disinterest fuck of a dad, he says he's always provided well for the family, and he thinks he's really made a solid argument there? What the hell, man?"

There is some more talk, sleepy languid should be comfortable Sunday morning talk. Itachi says, strikingly, in the understated, meticulous voice he uses for oratory, "I doubt very much that it is possible to know somebody – truly know them, really deeply intimately know them, I mean. There's always at some point a stop, where you reach a difference, and must say, 'but if you don't understand this then I cannot explain it to you', and you can't live with them not understanding, and so. It's over, on a fundamental level. This is why we're most alone with others."

He also mentions the movie they watched a few days ago, in which there had been a catastrophe and the characters were struggling to decide who should live and who should die; common fare these days but a commendable production. Sasuke says, "To resort to a lottery – I think that's irresponsible, cowardice."

"Yes," says Itachi. "But is it worse to be a coward than somebody who'd decide in cold blood to leave people behind?"

"You're still leaving people behind. The difference is whether you're leaving the right ones."

"I thought so too, once, before." Before I joined the ranks of those rationally to be left to die.

"No," she says, surprising them both. "I'd take you."

He stares at her like he's not dared to for years, something startled and tender in his expression. "Thank you."

He's hers, for better or for worse.

"Well," he says, heading out of the room with a last smile. "I'll make that call. I'm sure you've got your own intimates to catch up with."

I told her not to date Kiba. She's soft. She'd become fond of him. That wouldn't end well for anybody.

It seems to her the right decision, although Neji was harsh with distress, since beyond the undesirability of Kiba, if one's timid enough to ask permission to pursue a relationship, one isn't qualified to handle it, and no doubt this one would require plenty of handling; skill and tenacity Hinata doesn't possess.

However it's none of her business, because of which everything she said to Neji was, essentially, I see, I understand.

In Itachi's absence, with the fog lifted from him, she leaves the mumble of his voice and steps into the foyer, returning up the cold steps of the staircase. Angling for light, she rests on her elbows with the book propped against her pillows, surreptitiously trying to fasten her fringe behind her ears.

Beyond her dismissal of them as building blocks, manipulative tools, she likes words. It feels to her sometimes like she is constructed from them – or is it that she'd like to be? – an airy fancy being perpetually rewritten and wrongly read around, so she must insist, a core deep down, something volcano-like, associated with adjectives such as thick and dark and hot; in any case something intense and ineffable, almost impersonal.

As she turns the seventh page there's a crash in the hallway outside, her door pushed open.

"Hi!" Naruto waves at her awkwardly from the doorway before bounding over, landing with a thud on the bed next to Sasuke's elbow.

"Hello?" She keeps her fingers on the page but lets the paperback close around her hand. What the hell are you doing here?

Duh, I wanted to see you.

Pulling up her legs to sit Indian style, Naruto tries to finger-comb her messy hair and ends up getting herself snared. "Goddamn…! Anyway, since when are you back here? I went down the beach house and it was all empty, it was forever before I ran into the security guy and he said you'd left, and then I had to call Gaara for the address." Finally she rips her hand free, grimacing as a few strands of hair follow it. "Also the doorman here didn't want to let me in, so we had to call up for Itachi to tell him to let me through. Like, what is this, the Bat Cave?"

"It's a private residence," Sasuke tells her, flatly to hide that she's a bit – amused? Pleased? In any case something she shouldn't be.

"I wasn't sure you'd be home," Naruto says, calmer, colleting herself against the headboard. "Or alone. I mean, I crashed at Gaara's, didn't want to get home at dawn or anything, and I think most people sort of stayed together."

Suddenly after last night being alone with Naruto means, potentially, kissing Naruto.

You're a lousy kisser, she told Naruto, before, and it wasn't a lie. It's just it somehow stopped being about Naruto being a good or a bad kisser, and in any case Sasuke should have sufficient expertise to see them both through, come to that.

Actually it had felt pretty good – far better, certainly, than her last memory of intimacy, which is Gaara – the intensity of potential; the slickness of tongues and sweat pressing together. A hand on her neck, the inside of Naruto's knuckles against her throat and the warm insipid beat of its pulse, and abruptly she rather wanted Naruto to kiss it.

It had been acceptable then, at the party; indeed, not that far removed from expected.

She'd felt like she'd just passed a test, and passed with flying colours as a matter of course again rather than the mere tired scrap-bys of late. She still feels a little like it.

She'd expected Naruto's body to feel more like her own. Winterson refers to it as a type of mirroring, two women making love, but it's really not.

"Who'd be here besides Itachi?" she asks. For there was a question in Naruto's words, only Sasuke doesn't understand it; it's so self-evident, what was she really enquiring after?

Naruto shrugs. "I guess maybe Temari? I don't know. Friends."

So perhaps it was just Naruto's accustomed ignorance. Good.

Sasuke mirrors the shrug, a light uncomfortable movement given that she's still got most of her weight propped on her arms. "She has her brothers, I have mine."

That is enough of that, which evidently Naruto perceives and, more rarely, accepts. "Yeah, I guess she just hadn't got up yet." She leans forward rather precariously, matted blond hair getting in Sasuke's face. "What're you reading?"

"Mrs Dalloway." She sits up to find the bookmark and deposit the book on the nightstand. She's been rereading Woolf lately; was reminded.

Naruto obediently moves back to let her put the book away, then springs forward again to goggle at the elaborate notebooks piled up on the nightstand.

"You keep diaries?"

"No." It's the height of tiresome egotism, time wasting away between the pages.

"They're not yours?" Her hand hovers over the topmost notebook.

"They are now."

"Oh."

She smiles a little, to show it's all right; surprisingly it is.

"He was always leaving them lying about, obviously hoping to catch me reading them – he must have come up with a really good line for the occasion."

It's just something else she'll never hear, and this one at least she can stomach because she knows about it. Worse, really savage on the bad days, are the millions and millions of things, of futures, she will never know anything about.

She is so unbelievably fucking tired of living a life in the minute spaces between might-have-beens, should-have-beens, have-beens.

Changing tack, Naruto over-reaches herself, almost toppling off the bed, and grabs Pakkun by the scruff of the neck, pulling him from the chair he's been lying on, half obscured by laundry. Sasuke supposes it shouldn't be surprising that Naruto has an eye for finding stuffed animals; she inspects it now with evident delight. "Oh my god, this is like The Fox and the Hound!" At Sasuke's blank look, she makes an impatient gesture. "I have a fox one. Kyuubi."

"You're… not exactly a vixen."

"I never pictured you as a dog person, either. Actually, what I really didn't picture you as was a plushie person. What's his name?"

"Pakkun was a gift."

Not one that she'd wanted, at the time.

"Hello, Pakkun." Naruto's giving the pug a considering look, head tilted sideways and mouth tilted up. "Yeah, you totally look like a Pakkun. Haven't got a lot of love, though, have you?" And she returns her eyes to Sasuke. "No way you got this as a kid." Because naturally Naruto's expertise lies in estimating the age of children's toys based presumably on their wear and tear. Sometimes she displays flashes of normal intelligence and it seems like brilliance against the laissez-faire stupidity: "I really never pegged you for the kind of girlfriend who'd get plushies. Jewellery, yes. Stuffed animals, no."

"That was the point."

"Erm, yeah, that makes no sense."

She twists the ring around her thumb. "Regardless of circumstances, he'd given me his mother's ring. He was – I suppose he was trying to slow down, or discourage me."

Woolf is right in writing that everything and nothing is autobiography; putting words to memories changes them, turns them from memory into words, which aren't the same at all. Fashioning sentences, imposing control by punctuation – the raw reality becomes modified, perverted, a mere simulacrum.

"His mum's ring? You were engaged?"

"It wasn't like that, really," Sasuke says, shifting. "I took a fancy to it, after I'd found it lying around. I'd been looking for something else, I didn't even know… and he just shrugged and said I should have it, there was no better use for it."

"Er, yeah – how old were you actually when… you know, when you got together or whatever?"

"I'm not sure. It didn't matter."

"Hell yeah it matters. I mean, shit, you were pretty young, right."

"It's not really any of your business."

But she still can't quite say whether she's more annoyed or amused.

And Naruto just cares so much, about everything.

"Come on," Naruto says, gliding down to half-life beside her. "Isn't this girlfriend talk? Like, you're supposed to gossip and be intimate and shit?"

She arcs an eyebrow. "I decided to marry him when I was ten."

"Go Team Childbride? What the fuck, he agreed to that? No, no of course he didn't, dating a yucky paedophile wouldn't look so good." Naruto, though still on her back, has half turned towards her, her face close enough to lose some of its structure. And she asks, after some flushing and ellipses, how old were you actually when…? and obviously she means, when you had sex, and in Sasuke's place Naruto would be crude, if she got to the point where she got the words out, would say something like, do you mean the first time he fucked me or the first time he touched me until I came? but Sasuke's not Naruto and says, define sex.

Rubbing at her face, Naruto's hand has dirty nails and startlingly pale skin between its fingers, where the tan has faded entirely. Her leg is hot where it lies against the length of Sasuke's. She smells strong and lively, animal.

Naruto's not very good at defining sex.

Theoretically Sasuke could give her the information quite easily, although in practice of course she's not going to because it's none of Naruto's business, could say, kissing at twelve, mutual orgasm at thirteen, intercourse at fourteen; could say it all neat and tidy, say it was this and it was that, and then Naruto would react like so, with dude! and gross!, because she would maybe find it hot but not romantic, although no doubt she was touching herself at eleven like everybody else, the hypocrite; but Sasuke prefers to fast forward through that, so just says, Mmh, in the voice that always worked on Kakashi, with whom she was perfectly safe, always, safer than she's ever been with anybody else. Herself included.

Beside her Naruto breathes loudly. She can feel every pore, all over her skin.

There is something of the cheap comfort of physicality. After the accident it's been scarce, her body dulled, distanced, everything gone gray. Itachi's hugged her and Mum's tried to, Temari's held on and Dad's done some slapping, Gaara slept with her, but none of it felt like present tense, even while it happened. The time for touch had gone, and everything now must be an echo, an anachronism.

Itachi says his curse is to feel too strongly; first the immense pain pleasure frustration rage hope, then always grief stronger.

In the dulled foggy state he's reached by yoga and medication, and she's been drawn into too, she can remember when she was still a child but no longer a sweet one, and control was untenable, her entire being quivering with rage, with love, and the internal alienation: watching with bemusement how she blushed and sneered in ways she had not meant to, didn't intend to permit herself.

It's funny, somebody told her once, or she assumes somebody must have told her because it's an old thought, one implanted when she was too young to have constructed it herself, that it's socially acceptable, required even, to lose control from love, from desire, but never from hatred or anger. It's odd, really, the latter is harder to prevent.

Growing up Sasuke had to learn both, feeling they belonged together; then must unlearn control about the sex to avoid freaking Kakashi out, and so the rage has simmered low and controlled, mostly, and at this point the real anger, the real feeling… well, she'd thought it all spent, before Naruto screamed at her and she started screaming back, which she really shouldn't have allowed herself but won't dignify with regret. It was refreshing, before it became cauterising.

"So you had this fairytale first kiss and everything? Like in kids' movies?"

As a matter of fact her first kiss occurred in the corridor right outside her room, when turning eight gave Itachi aspirations on being a teenager. Kisame and he had been playing drinking games with their juice, and to crown the endeavour Itachi chose to consider being roped into watching Peter Pan with her a date.

Probably what Naruto referred to was later, after Itachi had stopped pecking her and her forehead had been branded by Kakashi's kisses, her eyelids thrilling with them; later probably when she was lying in bed, in Kakashi's bed, half-dressed, inarticulate with sleep and a cold, and his mouth was warmer than the fever.

He'd been coughing too, his chest rutting with it under her hands.

She'd arced a brow – no, she hadn't managed that yet, had had to raise both, and it was explained that endorphins were required to fight off the dreariness of sickness.

"Not exactly, no. How about you?"

It emerges – speaking of fairytales, hah – that this was bestowed by an individual referred to as Toad – like, you know, they didn't deserve their real names, right, if they just called me all that other stuff – in circumstances that after minimal prodding reveal themselves as being highly suspect.

"Are you saying he actually…?"

"What, no, good god, no. No, they were of the mindset, I don't fuck animals."

Naruto moves restlessly like a dreaming cat, little shifts startling through her. The new tilt of her head frames the curve of her jaw, its line stretching then contracting as she again faces Sasuke, wispy hair clinging to her skin. It's darkened a little with the weather, corn blond now instead of wheat blond, but even in its present unwashed state it's quite evidently natural.

Her fingers sneak up Sasuke's arm. Sasuke startles, almost sits up to move away.

"You're not supposed to touch without reason."

Naruto's hold hardens, her hand gripping Sasuke's shoulder; she smiles so wide she's almost laughing, savagely. "Oh, I have reason."

Mmh, Sasuke's sure she does.

With sudden simplicity she palms the ridge of Naruto's spine, draws her in.

Naruto's clumsy and can't seem to get their limbs sorted, but kneeling awkwardly over Sasuke she's the picture of apple-cheeked, flushed a dusky red, grinning so hard all the flesh of her face has been pushed into suddenly rounded cheeks.

And it's stupid but there's a sizzling element of real danger, the thrill and reality of knowing this could do damage. Naruto is devastatingly genuine, and Naruto is a good person. The idiotic escapades with Konohamaru, her witless arguments and dumber unquenchableness when those run out, and the obvious earnestness; the blatant lack of gain, since Sasuke isn't prepared to seriously believe the idiot does it to annoy her.

Shifting to keep her shoulder from being pierced by Naruto's elbow, she becomes aware that she's not wearing very much, Naruto's body heat quite intimate through her pyjamas.

"You smell like sweat," Sasuke informs her.

"Ah, yeah, well, I guess," Naruto agrees, finally getting their legs sorted out, her calf jutting out over Sasuke's ankle because of course Naruto is much taller. "I always start sweating when the hangover lets up, it sucks. Well, not so much the nausea going away, that part's awesome, but the sweating, not so cool. Anyway though I sort of like it, you know? When it's not too much, it smells sort of like – like really ripe almost decaying apples."

At this point Sasuke sits up to push her away, only she ends up sitting straight up into a kiss, and falls back on her elbows. Naruto's still abominably bad at it, hard-lipped and over-eager, earning a hard grip on her neck and a sigh that prompts a moan, prompts Naruto to collapse over her, resting most of her weight on Sasuke. It does improve the angle of the kiss, considerably.

Sasuke's used to her breasts being smoothed out against the flatness of a man's chest, not opposed by another pair. Naruto's at least are protected by her jumper, where Sasuke's are agonisingly bare under her thin sleep shirt, the nipples visible knots of tension.

Taking control of the kissing, Sasuke lets her free hand sneak up Naruto's jumper, over the hot damp skin at the back of her hips, with the curves and dips and extra flesh. It's – all right, it's good.

Leaning sideways a little, mumbling into Sasuke's mouth because she never does shut up, Naruto fumbles over her front, over her breasts, her nipple, and sort of pulls, and desire happens again her. It's good, as Sasuke clings to her and tries to get her hands further down her shirt, that Naruto doesn't tease, doesn't lick around and around when all you want is for her to plunge in.

"Oh, fuck, ouch," Naruto mumbles, mouth slippery against Sasuke's cheek, jaw, neck, one of her hands all soft on Sasuke's face, the other still groping her breasts. "Fuck, wait, my shoulder."

Sasuke's hands fall free when Naruto removes hers to push herself up, rearranging her clumsy over-large body. It shouldn't be that difficult, as objectively it's pretty average, larger than Sasuke's certainly but smaller than half the class', but then objective reality has never had much truck with Naruto.

Naruto's blushing now rather than flushed, breathing a bit hard and smiling harder still, trying awkwardly to shift into a comfortable position. There's a shine to her eyes – wet? Feverish? – that had better be from the hangover.

Sasuke's relaxed, in the imbecile comfort of another's body on hers, not properly propped up but lighter all the same than what, even now, she was expecting. Although she's rarely taken Kakashi's full weight, only for a few moments sometimes after lovemaking, before he caught himself.

"You know," Naruto says, not moving off her but tilting her head to avoid suffocation by pillow, her chin jutting into Sasuke's shoulder when she speaks. "This room – actually this whole place – is a lot more you."

"Really?"

"Yeah." She sighs rather happily, fingers playing lazily with Sasuke's. "The beach house is all light and airy and modernist, which, not really you. Now, this, on the other hand," her free hand flaps about in an incomprehensible gesture, "this is the dark heavy stuff, more like a castle. Old treasure, heirlooms, gloomy majesty."

The red carpet reached her ankles when she was a child, before it'd been trampled down. The draperies are heavy, and the furniture as well; heirlooms, indeed, continental pieces of lovingly preserved and in some cases restored woodwork. It's true this is home, although the walls are blue in both her rooms, edging towards slate in this one.

From this the story is born; they start to invent, although 'they invent' might be more properly understood, at first, to mean Naruto embarking on a wild flight on fancy and Sasuke, along for the ride, reclining with an arced brow and much acerbic criticism. Still, as the undisclosed quotation claims, One's relationship to another is, at heart, the telling of one's stories, of one's mutual, communal stories.

It's human nature, she supposes, telling stories. Today, she's prepared to indulge.

So the story goes brushing past caves – dude, you are not Batman! – and medieval fantasy – castles without floor heating are not desirable – on to elven lands, sidestepping a bit of a tiff regarding Naruto having read YA and Sasuke having read Shakespeare, and stumbling into the eastern lands, regarding which Naruto claims, as she obviously thinks ingeniously, "It's not appropriation if you're actually Jewish!"

"My maternal grandmother was a European Jew. My father's of pure white stock."

"Oh," Naruto says, nevertheless sounding content, burrowing into Sasuke's neck, one arm curving around Sasuke's hips. "Well, we could…"

"Let go."

"Wha? Why?"

"Bathroom," Sasuke says shortly, slipping from the suddenly lax hold.

When she returns, face washed clean of expression, Naruto beams, gesturing with one of Kakashi's notebooks. "He's a genius! Kakashi, I mean! Genius! We should totally be magical ninja!"

Topmost on the nightstand lies the file of drawings, open to a colourful tableau. "That's the New Year's party," Sasuke says blankly. In the middle of one of what was still referred to as his intense phases, Itachi had wanted a masked ball, and so of course he had got one. The photo, altered by brush, shows Sasuke in what Itachi had considered a splendid warrior princes costume, and Itachi himself as, she believes, Robin Hood against a backdrop of fireworks.

Peaking out from beneath it is the twin picture, the one called Lethe and bearing the rather pretentious caption: put stones in his pockets and push him into the river.

"It is a New Year's party," Naruto allows, "which has been invaded by magical ninja! Come on, this is genius! See, see, these are the magical ninja attacks!"

Sasuke takes the picture away from her before her pointing leaves oil stains on the fireworks. "Don't touch my stuff."

Naruto gives her a look that says, Erm, dude, you just let me touch your boobs, but says, "I was just sitting up and stuff fell over, and then I saw the picture. Sorry?"

"Whatever," Sasuke huffs, but rejoins Naruto on the bed, where the latter is sitting cross-legged, leaning forward over her ankles. Too close, really, smelling strongly of sweat and toothpaste. "I should know better than to leave anything around for you to break."

"Hey," Naruto objects, but laughingly, moving her hand to rest her knuckles against Sasuke's knee.

Fairy tales, even ones unconventional enough to feature magical ninja, demand extremes, and really the only way to make Naruto more of an outcast would be to render her an orphan, as well. There'll need to have been some extraordinary event, involving prophecies or demons, but it can wait. Her father will have been somebody significant, more like Sasuke's oddly, a hero of the land – yes, yes, the dead hero king. On the other hand her mother, no longer secretive in spite of all her translucent words, is the secret instead. Indeed Naruto herself will be a secret, sort of, the way children are if their mums are, tied to them for the eternity of childhood.

The new leader, then – should it be the customary old man, crushed and crippled under the weight of all those who have been lost or maybe, maybe Tsunade? Yes, Tsunade could work, they could even keep Iruka on as a ninja teacher.

Pakkun perhaps could be a familiar – do ninja have familiars? If so then Naruto of course must have Kyuubi, except in the lore to which ninja belong foxes are treacherous creatures, magical in and of themselves, so maybe a rather more august position would fit him better. Well, well there'll be time for that eventually.

In order to properly come into her own, Sasuke too needs to be orphaned – but they were hers, she'd need revenge – and also how are they supposed to have died? Well maybe she snapped, right? She, or Itachi, or both of them – no, no, Itachi must go, Sasuke is very firm on this, so all right, then, say he snapped and killed them all, and then… disappeared? Well he can't be around, it stands to reason. So eventually Sasuke will need to make a bid for vengeance, although she can honestly say she'd rather he killed them than himself.

They are negotiating over the bit players – Gaara is Naruto's, and Kiba, whereas Neji and Temari are Sasuke's, Sakura's a nice compromise – when Itachi knocks.

"We were thinking we'd get some Thai food. Would you like anything?"

"Yes," says Sasuke. Kisame's the one who really enjoys the cheap grease of takeout, well, he and Kakashi; they've not had it much lately, she or Itachi.

"The usual? Yes, I remember. How about you, Naruto?"

"Ah, sure – er, what time is it?"

"Let's see… five forty-five."

"Oh shit. Sorry, shit shit shit. I have to go." As it turns out her parents were informed she'd probably sleep over in town, the long tired journey home during the predawn hours not being a tempting prospect, but she was supposed to have called, to have been home, quite a while ago, damn it, I was just going over here for a bit, you know? I didn't think it was this late already!

She dashes away with a wave and a glitter of smile that would probably, had either the time constraint or Itachi's presence been removed, have been a rather ardent attempt at a goodbye kiss.

"Should I offer her a ride?"

"Nah," says Sasuke. "She's a good runner."

Eating bad food and watching bad television between pages, she feels all right, feels good, until eight eighteen when she has to purge herself utterly, throat and mouth burning with acid as though she were new at it, and then afterwards when she's empty she's all right again.