Naruto completely loses track of what anyone's talking about when Sasuke snaps to his feet and stomps out of the room.

He doesn't go far, though. Naruto catches up right outside the door, where Sasuke directs that haughty what the fuck are you doing look at him.

"You left."

"I'm not trying to run away."

"I know that."

"So leave me alone."

Naruto makes a gesture equal parts exasperation and concern. "What's going on with you now?"

Sasuke's sneer comes easy and without strain, but the pulse in his throat hammers, and his pupils are slightly dilated. "Fuck off. You're not my babysitter."

Naruto refuses to take the hint or the bait, and steps closer. "Is this about Sakura?"

This is a strange, traitorous thought, but it would perhaps be easier if she wasn't here. Once only he got Sasuke really talking, when they were little. They'd barely made it past the first stumbling sentences, touched on things that didn't matter, didn't signify – it was just warm up, the kind of stuff Naruto already knew about because Orochimaru didn't hesitate doing it in public. Only that, and already Sakura started crying. After that of course Sasuke would never say another word on the subject.

Naruto's never quite managed to forgive Sakura for this, although of course that's silly and selfish. She cried because she cared. It's just it would have been nice if she could care in a way that didn't make Sasuke shut down.

"Sakura's got nothing to do with anything," Sasuke says.

"She's been … weird," Naruto argues.

Sasuke looks away. "She thinks you're abusing me."

"What!" It's been years since he talked properly with Sakura, years since Dad sent him off to boarding school in the middle of nowhere, but this is absurd...

Sasuke shrugs, and Naruto gives it another uncomfortable thought. They've both been visibly beat up, which to Sakura's mind will mean abuse. And Naruto has Kyuubi, so if Naruto's the one doing the abusing and Sasuke's defending himself – well, Kyuubi's the perfect excuse, and they can both come out of it relatively innocent. If she knew what they were really like, then…

"I'm not a bad person."

Sasuke declines to comment.

Naruto remembers Mum saying once, on this topic, Her version of a good person couldn't survive outside its gilded cage. And Mum was a good person, Mum never did anything Sakura would consider terrible, but she'd smiled thinly all the same, that time in the kitchen with Naruto too small to climb up on the counter without Kyuubi's help, Perhaps I'm making excuses for who I let into my life.

It was Mum, too, who asked him, in that soft serious voice she got sometimes, Of course it's terrible. But if it were someone else. Not Sasuke, not anyone you knew. Just a child. And it was either give him to Orochimaru, or have the extremist exorcists start war on the shifters, and it would escalate, it would be all of us involved soon enough… Would it still be the wrong choice? This one child, or a war that would kill hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions, when the demons came and the exorcists were occupied.

Naruto hadn't hesitated. Hadn't been able to hesitate. It's not someone else. It's Sasuke.

If it were –

Wrong is wrong. This is wrong.

He hadn't been able to speak to her for a few days. Then he'd had to ask, Would you give me away?

No. But I wouldn't pretend it was the right choice, to keep you at the expense of everyone else.

Naruto had been both devastated and mutinous, hugging his plushie tight and staring up at her carefully and defiantly through his lashes. I would keep you.

I know, she said, dropping a kiss on his head as though this was just theoretical, wasn't Sasuke's actual life. We have different morals.

Mum was the one who put him first in everyday life, who stayed home with him, listened to him, played with him. And still. Dad might be distracted and maybe a complete arsehole, but he'd never in a million years consider giving Naruto up. Even after Mum had left him and wouldn't speak to him, Dad still did whatever he had to, jeopardised the entire shifter federation, to try and keep her safe when she'd been taken.

Even Kushina, who resents Naruto, would risk a war for him, although with her it's nothing personal. It would simply be an expression of her no man left behind policy.

"Shit," he mutters. "This is so fucked up."

Sasuke's still looking out the window, at rolling meadows where the grass is turning from green to brown. "Your mother never liked me."

Naruto snorts. "If it makes you feel better, Dad doesn't like you either."

Sasuke shrugs. "At least he has a better reason."

"She was trying to protect me," Naruto says stiffly. He's still not over – he will never be over – I was involved. I thought you knew that.

How the hell could he have known, how the bloody hell would it even have occurred to him that his best friend would think nothing of being involved in the murder of his mother…!

"She was human," Sasuke says distractedly.

"Yeah, so?"

"So that's no reason to dislike me. She couldn't protect you. I can."

"Yeah well, your own mother doesn't fucking like you either."

He bites his tongue clean off, has to spit it out. But that's the thing with truth, it can't be taken back afterwards.

There's no emotion in Sasuke's voice. "That's true."

"Sasuke…"

"You'd think I was the shameful lovechild," Sasuke says lightly.

"Fat chance," Naruto mumbles. Their resemblance is too obvious for anyone to doubt Sasuke's maternity. Naruto saw a picture of Mikoto once, an old school photo, and teased Sasuke about wearing a dress for hours before he finally caught on that it was Mikoto in the picture.

Naruto thinks of her now as an internal wound, rotting through Sasuke's intestines under anaesthesia, so that Sasuke doesn't consciously notice it anymore.

On that thought he reaches out, fingers brushing light and clumsy across Sasuke's stomach. It shudders inwards, away from him.

"Stand still," Sasuke grumbles.

"Hmm?"

"Might as well finish blessing you."

"Um," Naruto says as the first rosary bead lights up. "What's this for?"

"I'm going to mark you."

"Um," Naruto says again. It sounds different, now his throat's suddenly gone dry. "Did Kyuubi possess you and we just didn't notice?"

Sasuke makes an impatient sound. "I won't have you blocking me."

"I know that. I just – what's marking got to do with it?"

"It's how sacred swords are made," Sasuke says, as though Naruto should already know this. "Except I'd start on a higher level with them."

Naruto splutters in indignation.

Sasuke eyebrows goes up. "Your hand did just burn."

"Fine. Okay. So I'll be like – Excalibur. That's cool."

Naruto's only passingly familiar with sacred swords: swords which exist physically, and have been invested with a power of their own, as opposed to the insubstantial blades that exorcists summon out of thin air and which are really just a manifestation of their magic.

Sasuke snorts. "Arthur was a pussy."

"Hey," objects Naruto, who hasn't been friends with Sakura for ten years for nothing. "There's nothing wrong with pussies."

"How would you know?"

"I – like them as a concept?"

"Uh huh."

"Shut up. They push out babies. That's pretty fucking hardcore."

The next rosary bead lights up, and the next, and the next. Towards the end it starts to feel like he's carrying a bomb belt around his neck, heavy and stinging with how suddenly it could implode.

"Are you in pain yet?" Sasuke asks. Bastard that he is, he doesn't stop what he's doing.

"Itches. Not so much on my skin as – in my skeleton or something. My hand. That, um. That kind of hurts."

Sasuke finishes the rosary, and the itching turns into aching. The sore muscles kind of aching, brittle and dull, only it's a soul condition.

Kyuubi grumbles, stalking the points of light like stars against his closed eyelids. It's pointless, a fox can't swallow a star…

Sasuke nods sharply, and then starts to walk away.

"Wait – where are – how did I piss you off this time?"

"You didn't. I'm going to the shooting range."

"But wh – ah. I'm cockblocking your archangel."

They're not far enough north to cross the line into actual warzone, but it's close enough for hostilities to spill over. And the conflict is shifter/human, which means primarily human weapons, which means Sasuke will most certainly want to brush up on his shooting.

Really, Naruto should do the same.

First, though, he promised to stop by the infirmary and let Tsunade look him over before she returns home.

She seems satisfied enough with his hand, humming absently and packing up what little she brought with her.

"You're leaving today?"

"Mmh, yes. Someone needs to keep your grandfather away from Uchiha."

"I thought he was up north."

"I'm afraid he's headed back home. Which will be a public relations disaster, so – speak to your father. He's cooked up some counterstrategies."

xxxxx

Shikamaru contemplates for a long time whether to bring Temari or Sakura, and in the end settles for both. While Sakura's inconvenient, Sasuke's not only antisocial but actively violent, and Sakura's the only possible guarantee of Shikamaru leaving the proposed conversation uninjured.

Sasuke – of course, Shikamaru thinks, of course – is at the shooting range, looking like his satisfaction could only be increased by the targets actually bleeding.

Shikamaru's a pretty good shot himself, but of course there's no comparison. He can't move that fast. No human could.

Beside him Temari snorts, directing a rather more amused glance at Sasuke. "Someone's rusty."

"Oh?"

"He's going for the safe shots."

Shikamaru takes this to mean that Sasuke's not in the mood to risk missing. Oh well, they've come this far. He nudges Sakura until she calls out a greeting, and Sasuke stops ignoring them, pulling off his ear protection and lowering the gun.

"Sasuke," Sakura repeats, more softly. More awkwardly, too. It's impossible to pretend things are right between them, which is really no surprise. Sakura worked as part of a triangle, a solidly normal counterweight to Sasuke's and Naruto's dysfunctional strangeness. Like this, with one part of the triangle missing, they're completely out of balance.

"We have some ideas," Temari says. "We thought we could talk."

Shikamaru congratulates himself on bringing Sakura, since he can only assume it's her presence that convinces Sasuke to come with them sans gun.

They've settled on the grass, like they're school children after all, when Temari says, "This whole affair is pretty heavily publicised."

Shikamaru might have gone for a more subtle segue, but then Sasuke's never seemed particularly impressed by subtlety. After almost a decade with Orochimaru, Shikamaru can't fault him.

On the other hand, Sasuke's reactions and preferences are largely conjecture. Shikamaru knows the Sasuke that Naruto talks about, and the Sasuke that Ino talks about – this Sasuke, who sits silent in front of him, remains a stranger.

"Fairly heavily publicised," Shikamaru continues, "by the human media." Sasuke gives him nothing, so he has to continue. "Humans are very prejudiced, and very many. Open conflict is getting us nowhere. It's time to play the sympathy game. This is an opportunity for that."

"I don't care what the humans think," Sasuke says.

Right, Shikamaru decides. So Sasuke's point of view is rather narrow. "Well," he says. "We're currently at war with them. And even where we're not, there's a lot of strain. Which is an unnecessary resource drain on both ends. And a shifter's individual destruction potential is several times a human's, but there are billions of humans. So this won't end well. So we need to stop."

Naruto alone can and has eliminated armies, but most shifters aren't Naruto.

"You can exterminate each other for all I care."

"Grow up," Temari tells him. "You care what happens to Naruto, if nothing else then because it'll happen to you too."

Sasuke tilts his head sideways. It's a childish, birdlike movement that Orochimaru will have cultivated. "What's your interest in this?"

"They're my people," Temari says, with some measure of impatience. "And I would've been an excellent Hokage, but I wound up with a human so that's out of the question. That's how it goes. And it might end up I prefer Konohamaru, but there's no telling before he's mated and that'll probably be years. Naruto's it."

The vast majority of shifters bond between ages fourteen and twenty, but it can occur both earlier and later – Minato, everyone knows, was in his twenties, though possibly that was because he was so opposed to a bond with anyone other than Yui. The youngest case on record, which was a public relations nightmare and no great fun for anybody involved, was a girl of eleven. They were certainly lucky she didn't wind up with a human. But that was before Shikamaru's time, before he'd even met Temari.

And Shikamaru would much rather be a kingmaker than a king, but he can see it's a pity: Temari would have made a great Hokage. Personally he believes she still could, but then he has to believe that, to live with himself.

But she'd be an indebted Hokage then, dependent on others to defend her position from shifter-bonded aspirants, people with twice the magic she will ever have.

An exorcist is a far more controversial proposition than a run of the mill human mate. However, it's far easier to make a case for your leadership ability when your bonded can erase any one of your rivals from existence with nary an effort.

Shikamaru sighs. It's telling that nobody bothers mentioning Gaara. Even Naruto admits, sort of, that Gaara's gone off the deep end, after the latest campaigns. After Kankurou.

"What's your plan then?" Sasuke sounds disinterested, rather superior. Again Shikamaru thinks: Orochimaru's superiority. A young child isolated at the mercy of an experienced manipulator and abuser, it's inescapable that's Sasuke's been conditioned, and conditioned well.

"The popular idea right now is you've been abducted and you're being held against your will. That's of course generating a lot of sympathy for Orochimaru and your parents. Shifters are being demonised further." He leans back on his elbows. "Well, it's never a good day for shifters when the mating business comes up." Usually the progressives at least advocate for them – leftists, feminists, anti-racists – but when advocating for shifters slips into advocating the permissiveness of raping humans, support does tend to waver. Shikamaru was a human interest story once, and remembers the tightrope walking of keeping it romantic, keeping the coercive connotations out. He did consent, would have consented freely if given a true choice, but it was always very clear to him that if he hadn't agreed, he would have been forced. "This is an excellent opportunity to throw some shade back. Your parents sold you, and –"

Sasuke's face silences him. Again Shikamaru congratulates himself on bringing Sakura, because he could not have said these things to Sasuke if she weren't here. He remembers Genma, remembers Mami, and doesn't imagine he'd fare any better. For most people, that sort of violence isn't an option. Sasuke very consciously holds himself back from using it right now, on him. He can see Sasuke look at Sakura, evaluate how brutal he can be in front of her.

"My parents sacrificed for the greater good," Sasuke says. For the first time Shikamaru wishes he knew Sasuke, because it sounds – incredibly, it sounds like Sasuke might actually believe this.

For once in his life, Shikamaru talks fast, "That's a viable line of defence, of course, but it won't sit well with anyone, selling your child. And your mother's cold in a way that doesn't appeal, especially not from a mother."

"Doesn't Mr Namikaze still have the amputation video?" Temari says. The words run smooth, lazy, over an absolute readiness to defend against attack. "Suddenly Naruto will seem a romantic hero dashing to the rescue."

"He will say it made me a better exorcist." Sasuke's voice and more interestingly his face is level. "Which is true."

It's Sakura who finally speaks up to say, "You can't honestly think any of this is an acceptable way to treat a person."

"The human government obviously does," Sasuke says, still shut-down calm. "Your grandfather's seen me around for years, let's not pretend he doesn't run things. It's never mattered to him."

Sakura's grandfather, indeed. Ibiki Morino, who has little love to spare for his son but is fond of his granddaughter, and who will certainly be well informed on Sasuke's situation.

"He has other priorities, of course," Shikamaru says, silencing whatever Sakura was going to burst out with. "But it's far easier to ask someone not to mind us interfering in your situation, than to ask them to risk exorcist protection by doing so themselves."

This seems to be when Sasuke's patience runs out. "What is it you're asking me for?"

"An open mind, I suppose" Shikamaru says. He's painfully aware of the difficulties of negotiating with someone whom you've got nothing to offer.

"I still don't care what the humans think," Sasuke says. "But in the unlikely event that you swayed them more towards your side, exorcist support for BEAST would skyrocket."

"Huh," Shikamaru says. "I'll take that into consideration."

That's not what Ino's told him, but Ino likes to think better of people than they deserve and Ino doesn't know the upper exorcist echelons like Sasuke does.

"You do that," Sasuke says, an obvious dismissal.

"Right, right," Shikamaru mutters, dragging himself to his feet and walking off with Temari. They're far enough away to be out of human hearing when Sakura and Sasuke start talking, and Shikamaru nudges Temari's elbow.

"You can't possibly know they're saying anything interesting."

"I know because I'm a very great genius. Now what're they talking about?"

"You know the usual. He deserves better than this, he is better than this, whine whine whine."

"I'm really more interesting in what he's saying."

"He's not – wait." She cocks her head a little. "Okay, he says to stop trying be friends with him as a good person. Either be friends with him as a bad person or don't be friends with him."

"Well, well, well."

xxxxx

"Naruto." Sakura's voice comes tentative. "What's going on with you and Sasuke?"

Naruto scratches at the back of his head. "I don't know what you mean?"

"I thought… I hoped he'd be happier. Calmer. It's a better situation, surely, it has to be. And you wanted him back so much – I thought, well, I thought you'd be happier, too. But everything's tense and you're obviously not happy, either of you, and… And so, what's going on with you?"

"It's – complicated, I guess you'd say?"

For the first time she smiles. "I'm pretty good with complicated."

"Sakura. You can't expect me to talk about Sasuke behind his back."

"That is not what I'm asking."

"You know he'd see it that way."

Before she has time to reply, the door opens behind Naruto. It's Sasuke, opening Naruto's door the same way he might open his own, without announcement and while unzipping a mud-splattered fleece jacket.

"Ah." He directs a brief glance at Sakura, and immediately turns to leave.

Naruto stands still for a long moment, because if he runs after Sasuke now it will be Kyuubi running. With his hand having finally fully materialised, with the memory playing on repeat of Sasuke pulling down the zipper, fabric parting across the long white line of his neck, receding from the seal and the bite marks bisecting it – Kyuubi's refocused on the bond with a vengeance.

Distantly he's aware of Sakura talking to him. He gets out an, I'm sorry, but in any meaningful way he's already left her behind.

Sasuke hasn't gone far.

Naruto opens Sasuke's door the same way Sasuke opened his, as though he has a perfect right to. Sasuke, standing in the middle of the barely furnished room, lifts an eyebrow but doesn't speak. His hand has returned to the zipper, pulls it all the way down until he tosses the jacket on his bed.

"Um," Naruto says. He needs to say something, because his hand has found its way around Sasuke's elbow.

Sasuke pulls it away but keeps hold of it, fingers locked tight around Naruto's palm and wrist. "Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae. Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus –"

The words catch on the layer of Ave Maria hanging around Naruto's neck, gleaming like sparklers against the inside of his skin. It's still Virgin Mary's brilliance, forgiving and lovely, so there's no burning, for all it's a more complicated incantation.

" – exsulses filii Hevae. Ad te Suspiramus, gementes et – "

Naruto covers Sasuke's mouth with his own, swallowing holy words and also blood as Sasuke bites him.

"I want you so much," he mumbles, looping his free arm around Sasuke's neck, fingers curling around his shoulder, slipping below the neckline of his tshirt. "Can I have you?"

Because Sasuke said he didn't want sex, didn't want Naruto to want him – but then he got on his knees and then into Naruto's bed, into Naruto's body, and maybe. Maybe.

"No," Sasuke says, but he's not stepping away and unless he does Naruto can't either. He pulls the shirt entirely away from Sasuke's seal, sees his own bite mark across it and sees the world narrow down. His lips part over the mark, he licks as lightly as he can, and Sasuke draws tight as a cramping muscle in his arms.

His hand goes to Naruto's neck, pulling sharply at his hair, but not hard enough to remove him. "– flentes in hac lacrimarum valle. Eia ergo – "

Naruto licks harder, sucks on the skin.

Sasuke's breathing is coming harder, a human ear could hear it.

"Sasuke. Sasuke, is this okay?"

Sasuke shrugs, even tenser now, and steps away from him. Eyes still all pupil, he sits down on the bed like it's pissed him off.

Naruto sinks to the floor at his feet, resting his arms on Sasuke's knees, which are taut and antsy with stillborn kicks but don't remove him. Two tails come out and wind themselves around Sasuke legs, seeping through his jeans.

Sasuke finishes the incantation in a distracted voice, sourpuss face and smouldering eyes. "Did you set a date for the exorcism? You were talking to your father, right."

"Mmh, he doesn't know. I mean we all want it asap but he has no idea how fast I can learn to shield enough, so."

"You can't," Sasuke tells him bluntly. "That's why I'm marking you."

"Well, he's got no idea how long that'll take either, so anyway. He's thinking of moving more people north to settle things with Rock. Also he thinks we'd be great media bait."

Sasuke snorts. "I thought that was only Shikamaru."

"Him too? Huh. I guess it could work."

"No," Sasuke says. "It wouldn't."

"What Orochimaru's doing needs to be put out there. You're not at risk from him anymore, not like before – we can't just let him go unchecked."

Sasuke dons sardonic amusement as armour. Naruto pretends, for now, not to see the cracks in it. "I don't understand how you don't understand that he'd lie. He's a liar."

"What's he lie about?"

Because Naruto's main problem with the things Orochimaru's said to him has always been that they're true. Orochimaru's voice lilting, indicating paraphrasing, because Naruto doesn't even merit his own insults.

You're worthless, Naruto. You have changed nothing. You will achieve nothing. Keep this up, and you will die for nothing, and Sasuke will still be mine.

"For one, he says he loves me."

"That's not true. It's not!"

"That's my point."

But on some unspeakable level he understands that Sasuke has believed it, intermittently and desperately, when Orochimaru at least wanted him: when Orochimaru alone wanted him enough to act on it, and he wasn't worth anything to anyone else.

"Anyway," Sasuke says, "if it was put out there – it's torture porn, you'd go publicly apeshit. And Orochimaru's worth more to humanity than you are."

"He's not," Naruto hisses, although of course if you're playing the numbers game he is, because Orochimaru can channel an archangel and exorcise hundreds of demons. "And I wouldn't just…"

"Go crazy?"

"Would you want me to?"

"Would that affect your reaction?"

"No," Naruto sighs. "No, it wouldn't, but I wouldn't just…"

Sasuke snorts, a suddenly brittle sound. "No. With how you've been around me lately, you'd probably get off on it."

"No!" Naruto clings to him harder. "You with anyone else – I could never accept it, never."

Sasuke's voice comes calm and rather coldly interested, "Would you rather I was with someone else because I wanted to or because I was forced?"

Naruto breaks a few of the bones in his fingers and also the bed frame, clenching his fists in frustration. "I don't – Kyuubi and I feel differently about that."

"Of course you do," Sasuke drawls, falling back to rest on his elbows.

Naruto stares at him with stupid yearning and remembers Kakashi, of all the people he doesn't want to think about what with Sasuke's hurt feelings and his own confused and gritty gratitude/betrayal: Kakashi walking with him when he was still too young to walk around outside alone. It was snowing, powdery snow that made lousy snowballs. And Kakashi's voice, People always say, oh I just want them to be happy. But what you mean is you want them to be happy with you. He reached down without breaking stride, pulling Naruto up from drowning in a snow heap by the scruff of his neck. I wanted to be happy too. Is that so terrible? A sigh. It's a lonely business, being in love.

"If you're trying to get me in the mood, don't bring up my ex," Sasuke sneers.

Naruto loses control completely, so completely it doesn't even scare him. One moment he's cuddling Sasuke's legs on the floor, the next he's on all fours over Sasuke on the bed, new hand fisted in the collar of Sasuke's shirt.

Sasuke scowls at him with no little impatience. "Don't bloody pretend you're all shocked we were fucking."

"Why would you fucking do that!" Naruto roars, feeling the sky shatter above him.

Because Kakashi didn't need a bond prodding Sasuke into his arms. Kakashi, Sasuke chose.

Sasuke glares back at him, absolutely unintimidated. "Why the hell wouldn't I?"

"Because – because!" It's a growl, almost impossible to get words past the fangs.

These, he thinks distantly, are Sasuke's snake eyes. The ones Orochimaru loves, the ones that tell you you're going to lose everything you bet.

Naruto expected a punch to the face, would have welcomed a punch to the face. But Orochimaru's taught Sasuke to cut deeper than that. "You know I always liked him. And he – either he liked me or I guess he was into Itachi, only Itachi doesn't do sex."

"You said you didn't like him," Naruto almost sobs.

"Of course I said that," Sasuke tells him, angry still but with very ordinary condescension.

"He treated you like shit," Naruto spits, and at least in this moment believes.

"People do."

"I –"

"Yesterday," Sasuke reminds him, "you told me you'd kill me if I ever tried to leave you. Don't try to tell me you didn't mean it."

If anyone had said that to Sakura and meant it, or to Konohamaru, Naruto would have crippled the arsehole.

He gets in Sasuke's face. "Don't try to tell me you didn't like it."

Sasuke gives him that shark smile: half-smirk, half-sneer, still wholly Sasuke.

Naruto drops down on top of him. Sasuke grunts under the impact, pressed so close. Kyuubi's tails are out in force, three four five of them, sweeping over Sasuke and tingling against the inside of his skin. Sasuke always has liked that.

But Sasuke looks at him now rather searchingly. "In the infirmary. You know I did that because of your hand."

"Yeah," Naruto says, after a while. He puts his head down next to Sasuke's, on the pillow, and edges a little sideways, so Sasuke doesn't have to take his full weight.

Sasuke makes the sign of the cross on his forehead, and places another set of Salve Regina on him. Naruto's starting to doze off, warm after all and safe now, when O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria slips into Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. The words thrum and sizzle with power, insinuating themselves into Naruto's being. Burning out gaps for themselves, hollowing out places where they can fit.

"Say it with me," Sasuke demands at last, and Naruto's tongue skids and stumbles around half-remembered words that he nevertheless knows by heart because Sasuke knows them with far greater certainty than he knows his own name, Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae. Et in Iesum Christum, Filim eius unicum, Dominum nostrum…

These words do burn, his lips and tongue are incinerated and must be regenerated again and again, he's gagging on ash by the time they reach Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem, remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem, vitam aeternam.

His soul feels a flayed thing, edges singed and battered. Kyuubi growls continuously like purring, licking his wounds.

Sasuke pushes at him. "Go back to your room."

"No. I want to stay with you."

Sasuke kicks him off the bed.

"Ouch! Bastard! You just gave me, like, soul sunburn!"

"Get out."

"But…"

"Naruto. I can't be any clearer. I don't want you here."

In his own room with the door locked he sits on the floor for a long time and cries.