VotE II
Naruto and Sasuke, bloody and exhausted, lay on the rocky shore at the Valley of the End.
"Just stop, Naruto," he choked out. "I'm not going back, and I don't want to kill you."
Naruto, still catching his breath, looked confused.
"What?" he said. "Oh, you thought…!" and he began to laugh.
"…" Sasuke raised a delicately sculpted eyebrow, either in question or disapproval.
"I'm sorry," said Naruto, scratching the back of his neck and chuckling nervously. "But I'm not here to bring you back. I thought we were fighting because you didn't want me to come with you."
Naruto explained that, if Sasuke felt the village was holding him back, it wasn't his place to tell Sasuke it wasn't.
"We're teammates, so we should help each other to reach our goals," he said.
Sasuke simply stared in disbelief. Nearly everything he was sure he knew about the world had just been turned upside down.
"Besides," Naruto continued. "You remember back in Wave, when you took that hit for me? You asked me to kill your brother for you. You made me promise. So you kind of brought this on yourself."
Sasuke considered this new situation. Naruto was much stronger than he had ever realized, he had to admit that; strong enough to be a worthy rival, and teammate. And he always kept his promises.
"But what about your goal?" he finally asked, clearly settling into the idea. "Didn't you always want to be Hokage? That will be rather difficult to do, as a missing-nin," he smirked.
"I said that I would be 'greater than all the Hokages'," Naruto clarified, eyes flashing red. "All the Hokages have given their lives for the village. What could be 'greater' than that? Try thinking outside the box for once."
Sasuke's eyes widened as he, too remembered something from the mission to Wave: something Naruto had said to a small boy named Inari, about what his life had been like in the village.
It seemed that they had much more in common than he had ever realized.
"Besides," Naruto continued with a smirk, "I did promise Sakura I'd bring you back. And I can't wait to see the look on her face when I do."
A.N.
I think a big problem in a lot of stories is that Naruto is always dead set on changing Sasuke's mind - without bothering to understand Sasuke, or what Sasuke wants. People try to oversimplify these characters to make them match up - "Oh, they're both orphans, and they're both trying to get stronger, and they're rivals..." But that's hogwash. They are both orphans, but they both have completely different life experiences. They aren't brothers and they aren't best friends. And as far as being rivals goes, Sasuke is gunning for Itachi, a top-ranked ninja by anybody's standards - why on earth would he be interested in comparing himself to a buffoon like Naruto? Naruto is not even on his radar.
That's not to say that there aren't moments where Sasuke's armor cracks - on the dock where he learned the fire jutsu, on the bridge in Wave where he took Haku's senbon in Naruto's place - and I think these are opportunities to develop that show that Sasuke is capable of caring for other people. But when all Sasuke gets is, "You bastard! You can't leave the village! You can't have your revenge!" - Well, no wonder he thinks selling his body to Orochimaru is the better choice.