Naruto's eyes blink open, lashes scratching against the pillow case.

Sasuke's asleep in his arms, exhausted to the point of peacefulness. Naruto's claws skim over his back, drawing blood, but he doesn't wake.

Sasuke's always been a quiet sleeper, but he's often tense, there's often a jerk just under his skin, waiting for Naruto's touch to activate, to make him press closer or shudder away. Today he breathes soft breaths right against Naruto's chest and doesn't react to Naruto moving – not even to Naruto hurting him.

Naruto sucks the blood, the stripes of skin, from his fingers. He's tempted to sink his fangs into Sasuke's shoulder, take his pound of flesh.

But he already did.

Bit at Sasuke's thighs and buttocks, biting off pieces, swallowing them down.

Opened Sasuke's chest, ribs splintering, and fisted his heart. Brought his mouth to it. Ate it, tore it up with his fangs and savoured it, before Sasuke could heal and stop him. They were watching each other, eyes locked as Naruto's mouth opened and closed inside Sasuke's chest.

The sooty handprints on his arms burn and tingle as he clutches Sasuke harder. Presses his closed eyes into Sasuke's hair.

This is different from the last time Sasuke let Kyuubi out, because this time, he didn't lock Naruto in: Naruto was aware, all the time that Kyuubi was in charge.

He was in that clearing, everything sharp and heavy with the realisation of the ambush. Kyuubi wanted out, and Sasuke wanted Kyuubi out, and Naruto didn't let him: and then suddenly what Naruto wanted was irrelevant. It had no bearing on what happened anymore.

Sasuke opened Kyuubi's cage, fuelled Kyuubi with the power of an archangel, and Naruto couldn't stop him. His mind was flooded with red, he was drowning inside his own head, and Kyuubi charged.

Naruto's body didn't much resemble Naruto's body anymore. It was just a kernel inside the huge beast that leapt through enemy lines, earthquakes breaking out under its paws.

The enemy army turned to red mush, the clearing became a bloody marsh. Kyuubi wanted more food to play with.

Naruto was starting to rein him in, now that there was nobody left to slaughter, only then Sasuke pushed them on. Wanted the same thing Kyuubi wanted, and again Naruto was washed under.

Stonehall was a vast, thriving city state.

Now it's dust and ashes.

The huge beast that Kyuubi had become stepped easily over it walls, and razed it to the ground.

So many dead, so much carnage and all the ruin and all the bloodshed, civilians and little kids, Kyuubi tore through hundreds of thousands of people.

He shouldn't have had the energy for it, he should've had to stop, but Uriel's power fed him. Made him want to crush more people, only then Sasuke was calling him back – Sasuke did what Naruto couldn't, stopped the slaughter before Kyuubi turned on the next town, and the next. Sasuke could make Kyuubi turn around, because in the end Kyuubi's always wanted Sasuke more than he wants anything else.

Then he was back home and Sasuke was there. Kyuubi swallowed him. Just opened his huge monster jaw and gobbled him up.

Sasuke burnt his way out of the beast, and Kyuubi, drained and damaged, reverted to a more humanoid shape, which in any case was better suited for the sort of fighting he wanted to do with Sasuke.

Very shortly they were rolling on the floor, the desperate straining of locked bodies that might break when unlocked.

Naruto's memories of the brutal coupling that followed are mixed up with his recovered memories of the first night Sasuke let Kyuubi out, up north when Naruto was locked in the cage.

He remembers his pulse beating so hard he could see it in his wrists, his legs, his privates. His chest jumping with it, his ribs looking human again and feeling bruised on the inside.

Remembers splitting Sasuke open, leaving him so full of Kyuubi there could be room for nothing else. Sasuke hitting him, in time with the movement of their hips, Kyuubi's lip splitting, his skull. But the burns weren't lethal, and so couldn't deter Kyuubi.

Kyuubi's hands are larger than Naruto's, the bones formed differently than human bones. He intertwined their fingers, his own and Sasuke's, a pair of locked hands pressed into the floor on either side of Sasuke's head. Kyuubi kept his face over Sasuke's, eyes locked too, and Sasuke – knew what Kyuubi wanted, which maybe wasn't entirely different from what Sasuke wanted.

Sasuke, after all, has always had some incredibly self-destructive impulses.

They savaged and ravished each other for a long time, but in the end Kyuubi nudged Sasuke's face with his own, his nose rubbing across Sasuke's cheek. He was making sounds, a very soft growling or a very aggressive purring, noises that might have been humming if he'd been Naruto. He mouthed Sasuke's entire body, licking and sucking from head to literal toe. Over his twitching knees, up his trembling thighs, into the dip of his navel.

He did this, after he'd slaughtered a whole city: after he'd broken Sasuke's skull open and torn his intestines out, sucked the marrow from his broken bones. Half his face burnt off, but Kyuubi rides Naruto's body that way, as something that can't really be hurt. Rode Sasuke the same way, fucked him ruthlessly to the point of prolapse. Punched his teeth out when he bit.

Lost most of his own limbs, at one point or another, Sasuke incinerating him, using his own strength against him to break him apart.

But Sasuke, Naruto reminds himself now, is clearly fine.

Kyuubi's still mostly in charge of Naruto's body, and so Naruto's awareness of Kyuubi's actions is muted, he feels it like a wound under anaesthesia. When his eyes are blue again maybe it'll look horrible, maybe it'll be nauseating, but for now he can only take pleasure in Sasuke being wonderfully marked, all over. The broken bones and ripped-out organs have healed, but the rest remains. Kyuubi's touch, branded into him.

It's rising to the surface like a leviathan, the knowledge that it should disturb him – does disturb him – thinking these things and taking such pleasure in this...ownership, but it's so good to fit his hands against the bruises on Sasuke's body, like it was made for him.

He leans forward, buries his nose in Sasuke's hair, smells it, kisses it.

Clutching Sasuke's unresponsive body, claws twitching against the finger bruises covering him, Naruto thinks of an evening before Sakura went home, when the three of them were watching some show Sasuke and Sakura liked: how Sakura slanted a look at him, and how Naruto thought at once of Kyuubi's covetous obsession with Sasuke, when a character turned to the screen and said something like, I love that woman like a shark loves blood.

He swallows, fingers tightening on Sasuke's skin, cutting through the scabs.

He becomes distracted when Kyuubi picks up on a presence outside the door. Sasuke's eyelids flutter, his face scrunching up, but he must be attuned to Naruto's emotions more than to Naruto's sensations: must register Naruto's sense of Tsunade not being a threat, rather than Naruto's recognition of her.

Sasuke rubs at his face with his knuckles, almost taking out his own eye in a startlingly childish movement, and rolls over onto his back. He's still lying on Naruto's arm. He's still calm, unselfconscious.

"Hey," Naruto mumbles, his voice strange and guttural with Kyuubi's dominance, instead of rolling on top of him. It's so much, Sasuke's face soft and slit-eyed with sleep. "Sasuke!" He inches forward with sudden messy haste, presses his face to Sasuke's shoulder.

"Mmh," Sasuke says, more a grumble than a word. He puts his hand on Naruto's head, positioned to push him away, but doesn't actually push. He does move one of Naruto's tails, swatting it out of his face and down towards the three others curling around his waist and legs.

Sasuke's hand is still there, on his forehead, fingers just touching the edge of Kyuubi's ear, when Tsunade knocks.

She doesn't want for an answer, just steps through the door and the mess on the floor with Kakashi right behind her.

Naruto hasn't seen Kakashi in weeks, months, since before his heart stopped being able to beat on its own.

Naruto freezes. Beside him Sasuke changes in the blink of an eye. He's still calm, but it's a very different sort of calmness, with nothing peaceful about it – summer morning calm versus winter night calm. His head is empty and ringing like after a numbing blow.

"Tsunade," Naruto says, his voice high and strange, stumbling on the last syllable. "Kakashi."

Kakashi isn't looking at him. His face is the colour of ash and perfectly expressionless.

Sasuke too has become distant, blank. He makes no effort whatsoever to cover himself up.

Naruto supposes he looks a little… well, seen with Naruto's eyes he looks savage, but to someone else Naruto supposes he might look savaged.

"Sasuke." Kakashi's voice too is perfectly ordinary. He doesn't move at all. Naruto doesn't know why that should seem incongruous.

"Good morning," Tsunade says, asserting control over the situation at last. She's never seemed so irrelevant. "Kakashi was sent out here." She leaves a pause there, but Kakashi doesn't speak again. "We arrived almost at the same time."

Sasuke says, "Did you want something?"

Tsunade sighs. "Nothing that won't keep until you're dressed. I – heard about Stonehall. We'll talk when you're up." She turns to leave. Kakashi stands still for another long moment but then follows her.

Sasuke's eyes have gone opaque as black glass, like trying to look in the windows of a house at night and all you get is your own reflection.

He shifts, making an annoyed face when their knees touch, which for a moment makes Naruto go cold hot cold very quickly, but it becomes clear it's about the bruising, not about Naruto.

He reaches for Naruto's magic like the most obvious thing in the world, like it's always been his to use.

Kyuubi, more teasing than territorial by an extremely narrow margin, and in love with his handprints covering Sasuke, attempts to block him. It barely slows Sasuke down. He's impatient about it, hardly even irritated, and Kyuubi retreats to pace in the bowls of Naruto's mind, infuriated and more infatuated than ever. Most of Sasuke's injuries heal.

The background smells of blood and ash become abruptly more disturbing.

But Sasuke does offer every indication of being fine, lying warm and close and clearly pissed about still being tired but no longer sleepy. Not ready, Naruto surmises, to be pissed about Kakashi, or about – about Naruto.

Naruto is not fine.

The smell here is nothing compared to the smell of Stonehall, which was…biblical. Old testament destruction, infants with smashed heads, buildings collapsing and the earth opening to swallow everyone down. Searing energy burning people, a monster crushing them underfoot.

For a moment Naruto's not sure if it's him or Kyuubi rolling on top of Sasuke, slamming abruptly into him. Sasuke groans in surprised pain, kicking at his hip. Naruto leans over and casually breaks the kicking leg.

More importantly, he claws at Sasuke's mind, which erupts in aneurysm.

Sasuke's eyes are wide open and bleeding. He lies limp under Naruto, his brain drowning.

For a long still moment he stares into Sasuke's eyes. Then the moment breaks, and Naruto feels so does he. Feels he should be dead, before he did any of this.

He scrambles off Sasuke, pushes healing energy into him. Finally they're both sitting up, Naruto with his back against the headboard and his face buried in his knees.

"Idiot," Sasuke says sharply. Sasuke never lets anyone run or hide.

Naruto looks up, has a hard time seeing him because his eyes are red, Kyuubi's tearless eyes, but it feels like he's crying, he has to keep blinking. He swallows useless words and empty howls.

Sasuke's eyes on him are absolutely steady.

"I…" Naruto starts.

"You caught me off guard," Sasuke says. "You had less control over Kyuubi than I estimated."

"I – but you – didn't you…"

"I was aware of his impulse. I didn't think you'd act on it."

"I was angry," Naruto says, his voice thick and raspy but his own again. "I'm really angry with you."

"I know," Sasuke says, standing up and locating a shirt. "What's your point?"

"So that affects how much I can hold him back. How much I can protect you."

Sasuke has this odd look on his face, as if Naruto's not making sense. "I don't need you to protect me."

Naruto swallows and swallows. There's too much saliva in his mouth, vomit in his throat. He always was an easy crier but Kyuubi doesn't allow him that. "When I came back…"

Sasuke's found a pair of tracksuit bottoms and pulls them on. "You were pissed. You needed to get it out of your system."

"By…!"

"I know what you're like. I knew I upset you." He shrugs. The seal's been bitten so many times, it's barely visible beneath the teeth marks and the heavy bruising. "You have no business pissing people off if you can't handle them when they're angry."

Naruto tries to say that he's not like this, this isn't who he meant to be, but the lie of it stops him. He does cry now, stupid helpless tears that can't wash anything clean.

Sasuke grabs his chin, forces his head up. "Is there anyone else who could make you this angry? Who could make you do this?" He says this with a certain finality, as though expecting an argument he will win.

Naruto shakes his head, in the jerky little movements Sasuke's grip will allow. Sasuke smirks, seeming for a moment furiously pleased.

Sasuke's the only one who could piss him off like this, and Sasuke's the only one who could calm him down. Who could break him apart and who could put him back together.

"Stonehall," Naruto begins, starting to hyperventilate. "I killed – I killed over a million people – I – they were fucking innocent, they were just people, civilians – I – I – "

"I did this," Sasuke interrupts him. "Not you."

Naruto blinks, keeps blinking, unable to get a proper look at the situation.

"Isn't that why you're angry? I used you to kill 1.4 million people, against your will."

And Naruto roars. "Why would you fucking do that!"

Sasuke's grip on his chin hardens, Naruto's jaw cracking and bending under his thumb. "You're such a fucking hypocrite. If it had been me, what would you have done?"

Naruto growls. "I'd have killed them all for even thinking of taking you away from me."

His jaw cracks sharply. "Then shouldn't you be happy?" Sasuke sneers at him.

Naruto feels dizzy and beaten up, like inside tides have pulled him this way and that. "You – for me – " And despite everything he feels himself start grinning, one of those glowing grins that take up your entire face.

Sasuke's voice comes dark and twisted in on itself, inhuman as Kyuubi's. "I won't have anything taken from me again." Sasuke's thin, unforgiving lips are bloody and swollen around the words. Naruto did that. Sasuke let Naruto do that: Sasuke fought him but was also responsive to him.

Sex and violence go together for you, Sasuke told him once. Naruto thinks now, they do for you too.

He can hardly contain himself, feels he's shaking apart even though his hands are perfectly steady.

Sasuke looks down at himself, dirty and messy, and makes a face. "I'm taking a bath." He tugs at Kyuubi, too, forcing him to heal the last of the scratches.

When the swelling and bruising fades, the seal is…far fainter than it used to be.

Naruto reaches for it on instinct, feels like Sasuke's skin burns his hand, but Sasuke doesn't immediately step away. Smirks at him first, clearly having noticed, before walking away.

Naruto doesn't want to let him go but has no right to stop him. There's nothing to it – he grabs onto Sasuke's feeling, Sasuke's wanting to leave, being fine with putting distance between them. Pulls it into himself, until it's Naruto's feeling, too. It doesn't sit as comfortably in him as his native emotions, but he can do this. He has to and he will.

Tsunade wants to talk to him, he remembers. But he's not – he can't talk about Stonehall yet. Ambles aimlessly through the house, until he stumbles over Kakashi, who's staring out a window while giving every indication of being utterly blind to the view.

Naruto comes to a halt beside him. Things are surreal and strange, for no clear reason. This is Kakashi, he's grown up with Kakashi, they're family, for all Naruto hasn't seen him in months. For all Kakashi was the person Sasuke chose – that Sasuke felt for and trusted, with no bond or bleedover emotions. The person who responded by selling Sasuke, to save Naruto's life.

Kakashi says, without looking at him, "You look better."

Naruto snorts, a short embarrassed sort-of-laugh. "Those weren't my most alluring moments." Photos taken up north, when Dad had started calling every day and didn't sound angry on the phone anymore, just scared.

He still looks fucking awful, face hollowed out with horror.

Kakashi seems to barely register that. "Well, you look better now."

The laughter, the possibility of laughter, dies away. "You don't. You look terrible."

Kakashi's always been pale, but this is different. This is a dead, internal pallor, like there's nothing underneath to light him up.

"Yeah, well. I don't have a boyfriend to impress with my fancy looks." He says this lightly, easily.

"You saw Sasuke."

"I did."

They're simple words, unpretentious and quite mild. That's the same way Kakashi often kills people.

"I don't understand. Sasuke's fine. He's – pissed off and messed up, and. And lots of things. But he's fine."

"I'm sure he is."

"I…"

"What the fuck were you thinking? You let Kyuubi loose on him, what kind of monster fucking does that." He stops speaking abruptly, the way you do when you've not run out of things to say but you've run out of things you can say without starting to scream.

"But! He, he let Kyuubi out. He could have locked him up again. That was - he did that." His chest's acting funny again, tight and heaving like he's been running underwater.

Kakashi looks at him like BEASTers look at him, like he's not even human. "His magic's crippled and Kyuubi was entirely released. He could hardly have locked him up."

"Yes he could," and then in a louder voice, like he needs to convince himself even though it's the truth, "He always could, he can!" Then in the strained impossible silence trying to strangle them both, a desperate chorus, "He's fine. He's really - I get that it sucks and he maybe looked rough but he's fine, if you knew..."

"I know Sasuke quite well," Kakashi cuts in, and of course he does. He's known Sasuke for as long as Naruto has, he was still there while Naruto was exiled to boarding school. "Aside from the obvious impossibility of him being fine in these circumstances, that's not the face he makes when he's fine."

Naruto blinks, a slow blink like it'll help him see things clearer. "You brought him here."

"Yes."

"He was – upset about it."

"Yes," Kakashi says again. His face is bone-white with sleeplessness, which is odd because Kakashi betrays and destroys people for a living. The realisations that would make it not odd are realisations that Naruto can't have, right now. He makes Kyuubi eat these thoughts, tear them apart with his teeth and gobble them up into the dark inaccessible depths of his stomach. "Of course he was. He got in the car because he trusted me. More fool him, I suppose."

The world becomes bleaker. He still has that airless underwater feeling, deep down in the darkness and losing sight of the surface. "If he was devastated, that'd be – but he's not! I mean he's devastated but he's not devastated devastated. He's… devastated in a way he can deal with and get over. I don't, I don't think I should have to die because he's uncomfortable! If he couldn't live likes this then I'd have to, but he can."

"That's what I thought too," Kakashi says, light as ice. "Your life is just beginning, his wouldn't have to end. I thought – well. You're not Orochimaru, you're his friend – I thought you'd be better. Anyway I owed Minato. But it's… Orochimaru wasn't forever."

Naruto's always, always known that Kakashi too would've let the world burn before he handed Sasuke over to Orochimaru.

"No," Naruto says, and he's falling and there's no ground to hit. "I don't know how to do this," and he's reaching out desperately, with his teary-thick voice and the little brother hands grabbing for Kakashi's sleeve.

"I'm the last person you should ask." Kakashi turns away, walks away from him.

Naruto straggles to his room, and then on the far side of the door sinks to the floor. Chaos outside matching chaos inside, the room is torn apart and so is Naruto, and he cries again.

That's what he is from Sasuke's perspective, what he is to someone who cares for Sasuke: the monster, the end of Sasuke's future.

That's how Sasuke finds him, stomping in with his hair still wet but his clothes immaculate. "Enough with the self-loathing, or I'm blocking you off completely."

Aside from the obvious impossibility of him being fine in these circumstances, Sasuke does seem fine. But then that's how he'd want to seem.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Sasuke demands.

"I - crashed. I was, I was all right, and then I wasn't, how could I be, I don't know. I ran into, um, I ran into Kakashi and I just…"

"Kakashi," Sasuke says with great deliberation, "is an arsehole and a liar."

Naruto snorts helplessly, still curled around the hurt.

Sasuke swallows, undeterred. "And he obviously doesn't know me as well as he thinks he does, and fuck him. I'm stuck with you now, so stop being a little bitch and get over yourself."

"Get over – how the fuck can I get over! I murdered one and a half million people – I – !"

"If I'd done it, you'd get over it."

Naruto licks his lips. "Yes."

"I did do it."

"I should've stopped you."

"You alone against me, Kyuubi and Uriel? How arrogant can you be?" Sasuke sneers.

"How could – how could you do that? How the fuck could you do that to me! You bloody knew I didn't want that!"

Sasuke kneels in front of him, lifting his chin again. "I told you. I won't have you taken away from me."

Naruto's lungs expand and collapse, falling out the bottom of his chest. "They'd have just captured me. I could've talked to them, it – we'd have arranged some exchange, or I could break out. It would've been fine."

"You believe that. I don't."

Naruto's breathing is coming thick and ragged. He leans forward, until he can rest his forehead against Sasuke's. In spite of everything he knows about Sasuke, it's still strange to realise that Sasuke really doesn't understand why Naruto's so upset about Stonehall, or about what he did to Sasuke. Massacres and sexual violence are everyday to Sasuke, it makes no sense to be destroyed by them. Other people mean almost nothing, and being beaten and violated is no big deal. He's not upset about directing Kyuubi to the slaughter, or about burning Naruto almost to death when they were fighting.

Naruto knows, though, that if he'd eaten Sasuke's limbs instead of his organs, or if he'd whispered sweet nothings when he bent him over, he would've triggered an explosion that might've destroyed them both.

"You liked that," Naruto says, growing less tentative as he speaks. "That I – lose myself about you."

"Yes?"

"But, what, so you're just…you're just going to go along with it? With the kind of shit I did to you!" And that's an accusation, and there's no reason for him to pick at this and every reason not to, but oh he's picking off every scab.

"You're not some bloody hero!" And if he'd stopped there maybe Naruto could've stopped too, but it's obvious Sasuke too feels the scabs itching and can't stand them, needs them torn away. The air actually crackles with static electricity, Sasuke's fury taking magical shape but remaining impotent. "People are shitty. You kill them or they turn on you."

That's the fundamental difference: Sasuke believes this like he believes in gravity, while Naruto still can't imagine it as his baseline reality, can't countenance the thought of it.

"Even if," he says, because Sasuke's belief is solid reality, unignorable, "even if I'd be prepared to – to turn on other people, which I'm not – but you!" Sasuke, who understands being callous about strangers and won't trust any refutation of that, will also understand protecting loved ones: protecting yourself by protecting the people you need.

In his own way, he protected Naruto.

It's just Sasuke understands hurting loved ones, too.

"Are you going to tell me again that you'll never hurt me?"

Naruto hits his arm. "I never told you that."

"No," Sasuke sighs. "No, I suppose that wasn't you." He scoots over, sitting beside Naruto.

Naruto breathes in and out, and it gets more bearable.

"When," he says at last, strangely distant from his own words, "when Kakashi came – he looked…"

"He looked destroyed."

"Yes. You – you liked that."

Sasuke has that knife-slash smirk, his voice coming dark. "Maybe he did care."

Naruto stops himself slamming Sasuke into the wall. He doesn't know why it suddenly matters, "Did he ever tell you he loved you?"

"No," Sasuke says, startlingly calm. His mouth quirks, not quite into a smile. "He told me he believed in the lust of the flesh and the incurable loneliness of the soul."

Naruto feels like his ribs have broken again, and are turned inside, searing through his heart and lungs. "If you hadn't felt any bleedover – if we'd just been us. Would you ever have wanted to be involved with me? Would you have slept with me?"

"Before you bit me, I couldn't have stopped you."

And Naruto doesn't want to say this, but – but Sasuke's been lied to so much, pressured into so much, and this has to be real, something about all this has to be real. "Before, when I – I wanted to hurt you. I liked hurting you." Sasuke has no reaction, as though this was always obvious. "But I wouldn't – even if you'd been all sealed up, your pain would still be my pain." Much like Naruto's upset, his bloodlust and his lust were Sasuke's.

"Maybe," Sasuke says. "But it wouldn't have killed you." He's gone paler, a bleaker fury, subdued, an inside fire that still rages but burns only himself. "Anyway what would my other option have been – being chained up and used at your convenience?"

"No! No, God, that is never an option." Things can calm down then because he knows. There's no more uncertainty to be upset about. "I need this. You don't. That's, that's not your fault. And I don't think it's really mine either but it's - I'm the one who's like this. That can't be something that ruins everything for you. I can't let it."

"Then you'd die."

"Then I'd die. I could never live with that."

Kankuro's girl in the cage, ravaged and insane, kept like an animal. She screamed you're an animal you're an animal and seeing her in that cage he knew it was true.

There are things you do not do. Fewer than Naruto once thought, fewer than he'd like, but non-negotiable.

"If that's what you need, I'll die. I hope, I really hope it's not, but if it is then I will. I won't – I won't do it just because you want me to. But if you need it." He laughs this thick stupid laugh that doesn't sound like one. "I already told you that. Then I thought it was fine, we were doing better. But now I…"

"If I wanted you to die," Sasuke tells him with icy fury, "I'd kill you. Do not fucking dare kill yourself on my account, you selfish fucking hypocrite coward."

Naruto lets himself collapse sideways, falling into Sasuke. Buries his face in Sasuke's chest, head tucked under Sasuke's chin. Clings tenaciously as a child, fingers shaking in Sasuke's shirt.

Sasuke's arm locks around his back, tight as a straightjacket. For the first time Naruto sees a way forward, past the atrocities and towards a liveable future.

Sasuke's free hand lifts his face. Sasuke leans forward, so close they're sharing air. "You're mine, do you understand that?"

"Yes," Naruto gaps. "Yes, yes, always, yes."

"Completely?"

"Completely!"

Sasuke's blunt human teeth close around his lower lip, bites off a mouthful of it. Naruto stares at his throat, transfixed by the swallowing movement.

Sasuke says, "Good."

xxxxx

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who's read and responded, it really means a lot. I recently graduated and started my first real job, which is why updates are suddenly a lot slower - but I'm very much committed to finishing the fic. In better news, I have managed to start posting an imaginiatively titled Grave AU Collection, because I apparently have AU fever or something... The first chapter of a "what if Itachi hadn't given Sasuke to Orochimaru" twoshot is up. Please feel free to check it out - if nothing else, it's a respite from the sometimes relentless grimness of main!grave, and I hope you'll enjoy.