My Heart Still Beats For You

Minato knocks on the doorframe. He says, "Hello, Sasuke." He says how he doubts Sasuke remembers him but he's Minato Namikaze, the Hokage. He says appropriate things about being happy Sasuke's looking well and hoping they could talk. But it's not Sasuke who commands his attention.

Kakashi's the same as always: really, Minato lost him a long time ago. Learning about the specifics years after the fact doesn't change that. Also Minato has no real truck with Sasuke, which means he can't afford to cut Kakashi loose.

Sasuke nods at him. He does look healthier, despite someone clearly having beaten him, an underlying scowling tension wiped away. He's still stingy with his expressions, still obviously an arrogant little arsehole, but on a level that can be dealt with. He smirks a bit. "I suppose you want me to sing for my supper."

Minato allows himself a shrug. He's never done well with Sasuke, and it won't do to waste this new chance. "I believe we had a mutually profitable arrangement."

It's not really surprising – it shouldn't be – that instead of Sasuke, this time it's Naruto who drawls, "Really?"

Minato makes a gesture of peace. "You wanted to exorcise – I presume you still want that? Good. We wanted demons exorcised. There was no conflict of interest there. And we provided the logistics and practicalities – housing, transport, a massive organisation."

"Tch. To think I'd be reduced to allying myself with shifters."

"You're not," Naruto points out, which unfortunately is true. He briefly brushes his cheek against the edge of Sasuke's shoulder, one of those incredibly animal movements that strong shifters are wont to. "You were with me."

Sasuke lifts an eyebrow. "You don't want me looking after your pack?"

"I do," Naruto says. "I'd love that. If you want that, that'd be – that'd be amazing. But it'd be new."

Minato's irritation melts away when Sasuke says, "I figured." This, according to Kushina, is why he's always gone wrong with Sasuke – trying to steer, to manipulate. Naruto on the other hand is being recklessly honest, and really, Naruto's the only one who's ever got through to Sasuke.

"Well," Sasuke says, turning from Naruto at last. "It's not like I mind exorcising."

"That's good to hear. Has there been a decision about the succession in Oto?"

"I'm working on Itachi," Kakashi says.

It's not actually a bad idea, for all Minato inwardly shudders. Itachi's insane, but he would never lower himself to move against shifters, and certainly no fundamentalist would dare stand against God's favourite son.

The conversation, halting as it is, is interrupted by Tsunade's arrival. Naruto stiffens, his face closing down.

Tsunade gives him a quick once-over. "You must've realised I'd be called back quickly when the bond got sealed off."

"Yeah," Naruto agrees. "I'm not surprised."

"Good. Then you also understand that I'll need to examine the seal and its effects."

"No," Sasuke cuts in. "There's nothing you could tell me about the seal, and you're not touching it."

"I am a doctor."

"You're a shifter," Sasuke dismisses.

"Have a look at Naruto," Kakashi suggests. "The seal's not harming Sasuke."

"He let you examine it?"

Sasuke looks at Kakashi in question, and Kakashi shrugs. "You didn't trust me a lot. You see, I brought you here. For Naruto"

"I know," Sasuke agrees. "I was there."

"No, before. The day you were mated. I didn't ask."

Sasuke blinks. "That doesn't make a lot of sense."

Kakashi shrugs, very lightly the way you do when wary of ripping open a wound. "I had to do it. Well, I felt I didn't have any other viable options. So asking would've been pointless."

"If I stayed here, if I kept the bond – I must've been willing to come."

"You weren't necessarily very stable."

Sasuke visibly reassesses his relationship with Kakashi, shutting down so many possibilities. He hasn't moved but he might as well have taken a sharp step away, turned his back.

He's always had that ability to cut people off, Minato thinks, to make them not matter. It's only after they've broken through to him, touched under his skin, that they're irreversibly real to him. And a shifter would have a particularly steep uphill battle, since they're not really people to Sasuke in the first place. I'm a doctor met immediately by you're a shifter, case closed.

"It seems a little strange," Tsunade says dryly. "This is a white majority country. You must have encountered racism yourself."

Being an exorcist will have insulated Sasuke from most of that, but it's simply not possible to live life as a minority and never encounter prejudice or discrimination, and Sasuke's very obviously Asian, in addition to being fairly obviously gay.

"Ethnic racism is baseless," Sasuke says. "But exorcists have objectively been chosen by God, and are the one thing standing between humanity and total extermination. If white people were so genetically superior that they alone could keep me alive, it wouldn't be prejudice anymore, it'd be fact that they were better."

"And that would mean they were free to treat you as they please? You'd have no intrinsic value?"

"If they were genuinely superior, reasonably I couldn't stop them treating me however they pleased." He tilts his head in that birdlike way, another muscle memory. "Ease up, I'm not threatening you."

Naruto leans closer to him, diffusing but also challenging. "You chose me. I've exorcised."

"Seriously? Show me."

"I can't anymore. Without the bond – it was always your power."

"Naruto," Tsunade says. "I really need to examine you. I think you understand that."

Naruto gives a sullen shrug. "All right, all right."

xxxxx

If Kabuto had still been alive, this might have turned out very differently.

But Kabuto's gone, like Kimimarou's gone. Both, as she understands, by Sasuke's hand, one way or the other.

When asked, the shifters handed over Kabuto's remains, the nova bomb he'd been turned into, presumably leery of being seen as in any way responsible for his demise. Mikoto has inspected the corpse. It took a long time, studying it from different angles, before any resemblance to Kabuto – or indeed, to a human being at all – surfaced under scrutiny.

She can't decide if she's surprised that Sasuke did this. He was never like that savage Sabaku boy, didn't kill animals for the pleasure of killing, or people either, though he never hesitated when the need arose. Mikoto considers killing a waste of resources, which is a very different outlook from Sasuke's, who finds most people useless.

In any event he was conceived in sin, was born the cross she has to bear, and there was always something twisted and wicked hiding behind his soft human features and normal behaviour. People used to point out his supposed similarity to Itachi and herself, but she's always seen Orochimaru in him: his pallor is of a different nuance than Itachi's, closer to Orochimaru's corpse-white skin, his hair wilder and full of cowlicks, and his hands are shaped differently than Itachi's, with Orochimaru's ambidexterity.

She looks over Orochimaru's bedroom, which she expects was in effect Sasuke's bedroom as well.

"Mikoto-san," Orochimaru wheezes. "Have you come to kill me?" His lips are gone, his teeth sooth-stained and cracked with heat, but he still manages to sound amused.

"I came to see how you were."

Perhaps he smiles. His face is too deformed to tell with any certainty.

"Please, inspect me at your leisure." He makes an odd twitch, all that remains now of his graceful, grandiose gestures. "Shall I disrobe for your scrutiny?"

She lifts an eyebrow. "Are you able to?"

"Touché, Mikoto-san." He smiles again – she decides it must be a smile – with every appearance of genuine pleasure. "In any case as I recall you were never overly fond of my undressed state."

"Carnal pleasures are overrated."

"What a sad epigraph for Fugaku. Such a failure as a husband, it almost rivals his failure as an exorcist. Though I suppose nothing eclipses his failure as a father."

"Fugaku did well at his task," she says mildly. An organiser, a man who could make other men, stupid and arrogant men, listen and work towards common goals.

They underestimate those abilities, the legendary crusaders. But however strong Itachi or Hanabi or Sasuke may be, they can't be everywhere, can't run the world on their own. For a sustainable future, there is an acute need for cooperation, for utilising every individual. Someone has to feed the exorcists, someone has to house them, transport them, someone has to build weapons and train armies and maintain shields to keep people alive in between exorcisms. The humans have always understood this, and have proven themselves far more essential than people like her sons will ever acknowledge. Certainly they are to operate under exorcist rule, but humans and shifters both have roles to play: if the worm does not do its work, the earth will not be fertile, and the enormous oaks too will wither and die.

But yes, Fugaku was a weak exorcist, and no, he was not a man she ever desired. Orochimaru's the only one who's ever drawn sexual pleasure out of her, an unwelcome and unsettling experience she has never wished to revisit. Certainly Fugaku has been a safe partner in that regard.

But he gave her Itachi, which in the end is all that matters, or close enough that everything else can be overlooked.

Fugaku never understood that. He resented his own insufficiency, his inability to transcend the boundaries of his existence as a creature of earth next to the heavenly children. Itachi was one thing, in Itachi at least Fugaku could take pride, but the sight of Sasuke, sired by a sinner yet chosen by an archangel of the highest order, always burnt his eyes.

To the best of her knowledge, Fugaku's distance never bothered Sasuke, whether because Sasuke dismissed Fugaku as unworthy of his interest or because Fugaku was never there with Itachi either, so his absence was expected, normal. In any event it was always her that Sasuke hungered for. Maybe that's why he likes Ibiki's granddaughter, maybe that's why he's rumoured to be fond of Kushina.

Sasuke gave her what she'd wanted from Itachi – he was a normal baby, tracked her with his eyes, yearned for her to love him. He reached for her, talked at her, felt for her, yes it was so easy with Sasuke, to evoke feelings: to make him angry and to sooth him, to make him happy and then to take that from him, she could do it by accident.

Itachi never loved her. Itachi looked through her from the start.

She's sad to say she only truly realised this after Sasuke was born and did love her, unhesitant, unstinting, ferocious, if he'd been built for nothing else, but the contrast between them made it clear that Itachi would only ever tolerate her.

Worse, then Itachi saw Sasuke, and was enchanted.

It is one thing, Kakashi read once, sounding amused as he often did about the trashy books he adored, to realise that he isn't built for love, that affection doesn't come naturally to him. It is another thing entirely to understand that he just doesn't love you, and never will.

She could've made Kakashi love her, she supposes, and in retrospect she probably should have. He too was normal that away, a child starving for adult attention. But she was very busy at the time, and could hardly stand even Sasuke's clingy hands and relentless stares. Another stray… and one already soiled by his shifter association, his transparent adoration of Minato, though she'd been pleased that Itachi made an exorcist friend at last, showed a care for anyone other than Sasuke.

In the event she lost all respect for Kakashi when he entered into his inexcusable affair with Sasuke.

"How clinical you are, Mikoto-san," Orochimaru says. "Never a very passionate woman, as I recall."

"How would you know? Our circumstances hardly lent themselves to passion."

"Ah, how right you are. It was always Itachi I wanted."

Of course it was. Orochimaru has what people refer to as Greek tastes, though as she recalls the ancient Greeks didn't violate their boys quite that young. He'd hardly have wanted a woman, except as a way to assert power over her – but he certainly wanted her genes, the son she could bear him.

"Of course, Itachi's quite the bore compared to Sasuke." It shocks her that he says it with conviction, as well as greedy, lustful pride. "Ah, it's fortunate that your religious delusions made you keep him, or I'd have had to lock you up. No prison is quite so airtight as one's own mind, ne? And I suppose it would've meant war, if I'd kept you. Though it would have been worth it, to have Sasuke."

"I'm sure he'll come see you."

"Ah, yes," Orochimaru agrees. He seems happy, as if he doesn't understand what that will mean for him.

"I'm considering what to do with your legacy."

"It's Sasuke's now."

"He's laid no claims."

"Why would he need to?" Orochimaru says mildly. "It was always meant for him."

"You seem to be misunderstanding – dare I say underestimating – the current situation."

"You seem to be misunderstanding – shall I say, catastrophically underestimating – our son. Of course, you always did."

"Itachi casts a long shadow."

Orochimaru snorts. "That's what surprised me. Sasuke was the only tool that could ever let you control Itachi, and you never learnt to use it."

They have worked together for many years, with very little unpleasantness. Orochimaru is a formidable enemy, but he operates within known rules, and an intelligent adversary is far easier to negotiate with than stupid allies. Still, of course, he can cut, and sharply.

Something of that thought must show in her face, and he's one of the very few people who can read it. "Shall you kill me after all, then?"

"Not at all. I'll be certain to leave you alive for Sasuke." She smiles her kindest smile, which Fugaku likes to point out isn't very kind. "I'm not trained in torture."

"And that way it'll be his soul condemned, not yours?" He makes a wet, hissing sound. "It's hard to believe you would regard him as your avenging angel."

She smiles her widest smile, unearthing yet another expression she hasn't worn in years. "Would it be so strange?"

His laughter sounds like it tears things from his throat, strips burnt skin from his insides. "Ah, Mikoto-san, I chose well with you."

She breathes out, feels light. "We're finished with each other now. Though I believe Sasuke is not finished with you."

"Karma's a bitch?"

"That's heresy."

He laughs again, a laugh like he finds her lovely, the way stupid and shocking girls can be. "It would be a very silly god to care about that in view of everything else I've done."

"Sou ka na."

Still he looks at her as though he finds her charming. "I did rape you twelve times."

"Is that how you see it?"

"You have a different – ah, you count the ones after I made you like it, too? Then I'm afraid I've quite lost count. Of course, with little Sasuke it was thousands of times."

"He fought you."

"Oh yes. He's not a quitter, that one."

"You never touched Itachi."

It appears she has surprised him. "No, I kept my word to you. Who would want Itachi when they could have Sasuke? Itachi's just an empty shell with hellfire underneath, but Sasuke… Oh, I see you find me depraved. Just look at Hatake, then, he could've had Itachi for the asking, but he only ever had eyes for our Sasuke."

"I've long found Kakashi depraved," she says, mild as milk.

Orochimaru looks at her with what she can only describe as appreciation. "At least he never spread his legs for a shifter, though I doubt it was for lack of trying on his part." He makes a thoughtful face. "You know, your sacrifices for Itachi, the way you'd submit to me so I wouldn't touch him – Sasuke made that same sacrifice, only for the Hokage's bastard son."

"Are you expecting to shock me?"

He chuckles, a dragging sound like snake scales over stone. "Never, Mikoto-san. Let me ask, what shall you do, now, with little Sasuke? Save him from himself?"

She tilts her head to the side, studying him for the last time. "Will you kill yourself before he comes for you? No, you couldn't stand that. You want to see him more than you want to escape whatever torture he'll inflict on you."

"He's wild at heart."

"He's a little barbarian and a sinner. But in this case, perhaps that's for the best."

She walks away from Orochimaru, with the knowledge that while he's entirely wrong in his valuation of Sasuke, he's right that Sasuke's not a quitter. Sasuke, then, will finish this. She can let him have that. It's the only gift they'll ever have from each other, Sasuke and she, the fact that Sasuke will kill his father.

He was a little berserker with Orochimaru, as she recalls. He's not insane: she'd assumed he'd face the facts, submit to them. That's not what happened, it was years of pure and senseless rage and nothing else until he started carving out a new existence for himself. She can remember Naruto saying, You can break in a hoarse. You can't break in a zebra.

That one time Sasuke came home, a few months after he'd been handed over, it had annoyed her that Orochimaru had permitted it, spread his mess over her front step once more. But Sasuke exhibited no more interest in her than in the furniture, as by then she'd long since turned into background noise for him.

He banged on Itachi's door until his hands bled and his voice had given out, and Itachi came out and told him he was dirt and he was sin, that he belonged with Orochimaru, and Sasuke's legs wouldn't carry him anymore. He sank to the floor and he sat there after Itachi had closed his door again. Sasuke was untouchable: the rest of them carried on around him, until Kabuto came to pick him up a few hours later.

Sasuke had been very still, had been silent the way you could drown in, but he erupted when Kabuto reached for him. He fought like something possessed, broke his own arm on Kabuto's face, screamed and howled as Kabuto finally wrestled him into his arms. Sasuke was eight and a small for his age and Kabuto was a grown man, but that fight had been a near thing.

She'd had the carpet thrown away: thrown away the stains of Sasuke's blood, as she'd always wished she could throw away the stain of Sasuke.

The only time for years that he was calm was when he was hospitalised, too drugged and restrained to be able to move at all, even his eyes swollen shut. Orochimaru used to sit on his bedside then, stroke his hair, his face. He was so gentle and so sweet with Sasuke, spoke his accented delighted Japanese as he explained to Sasuke that he would unfortunately have to keep beating him until Sasuke learnt to stop making him…but if that meant in the end they could sit together like this, perhaps it wasn't so bad, hmm?

She understood from the teachers that Sasuke had grown silent, unreachable. Didn't look at people, didn't listen, cut himself off completely. And then quite suddenly he'd go off, having what they called episodes: screaming, kicking, tearing apart anything he could get his hands on. Himself, as a last resort.

It was never like that between her and Orochimaru. Mikoto is a rational person, and Orochimaru was, at the time, the strongest crusader in the world. There was very little to be done, and so her focus must be to move forward, to not let it touch her. For a time, this was possible.

If Itachi had been only a little older, the very idea of Orochimaru threatening him would have been laughable, but he was still shy of four when he caught Orochimaru's eye and never understood that he was in danger. She did what had to be done to protect him, or rather had it done to her. The first time she fought back, but then after Orochimaru had made it clear what the alternative was, she stayed placid: submitted her body, kept her mind out of it the best she could. On a purely physical level, it was no worse than sleeping with Fugaku.

The problem was Sasuke.

Orochimaru had intercourse with her – to be frank, mounted and tried to breed her – sixty-three times, spread out over about eleven months. This was something that could be moved on from, an unpleasant necessity like illness, or menstruation, or torture resilience training. The act took twenty minutes at most.

But Sasuke growing inside her was a non-stop process, an invasion that couldn't be halted. Even when she slept, he continued to advance, right into the heartlands. She'd rather have had nine months of coerced intercourse than nine moths of that pregnancy, and there was no escape. This was for life. Her body would never quite feel like hers again.

Though it was an easy pregnancy. Even the birth – there's no such thing as an easy birth, but it was quick. Unlike Itachi, who had lingered and resisted, Sasuke wanted out into the world.

Indeed, he wanted so much from the world, had such expectations. He tried to explore, and grow, and be loved as if he had a perfect right to it.

Of course, he learnt better.

He was taken care of, she kept him fed and clothed and trained, arranged for him to have all the education and medical care he could need. He learnt to stop talking to her, to stop reaching for her: so still under her touch, as if waiting for it to disappear, to quiet in her presence. Sometimes when Itachi had been away and Sasuke rushed out to meet him on his return, Sasuke's voice would be raspy and strange, and she'd recall that he hadn't been allowed to speak during Itachi's absence.

Quite aside from her personal feelings for Sasuke, she could see he was a strong crusader, and would need to be honed to do God's work. She could also see he was a little heretic. Not in the sense of Kakashi or Orochimaru, who quite simply do not believe, who have always known there is no god the same way they've known that water's wet, that the night is dark – the same way Itachi and Mikoto have always known there is a god. She's found Kakashi's friendship with Itachi amusing, because Kakashi's unable even to take religious belief seriously, to really believe that someone could truly, at the deepest level of their soul, have faith.

Sasuke just was never very interested in religion, and wouldn't obey its rules whether there was a god or not.

So he wasn't hers and he wasn't God's, and eventually the question of who turned away from whom became irrelevant: Itachi, instead, became the beloved god of Sasuke's empty world.

She has never understood it, how Itachi could be drawn in by Sasuke's love, but he was – arguably he even reciprocated it. He'd train Sasuke, touch him and feed him, listen to him and tell him stories. He was a harsh task master, his expectations should have been impossible to live up to, and indeed Sasuke didn't always manage, but Itachi forgave him that. This meant that Sasuke could recite much of the bible by heart before he could spell his own name, that he learnt to kill before he learnt to talk, could exorcise on par with an adult before he could button his own jacket.

Mikoto could see it was abnormal, but Itachi preferred her to wash her hands of Sasuke, to let him keep Sasuke for his own. He even allowed – encouraged – Sasuke to sleep in with him.

She remembers mumbled voices, and her first, instantly repressed fear for Itachi's sanity. Sasuke explaining some game he'd made up, some nonsense fantasy, and Itachi responding as though it was real, as though imaginary beings could speak…and how Sasuke grew still and frowned, curled under Itachi's arm. Even Sasuke, then, understood what Itachi couldn't, knew that it wasn't real.

Mikoto had felt cold, because of course there's a difference between an adult belief in God and thinking evil slithers through the world in the shape of talking snakes, of believing holy voices whisper in your thoughts telling you to burn the world.

But Itachi has been chosen by God, singled out by Lucifael for his especial grace, and it's not her place to question the divine plan.

She'd left them alone. In any event, Itachi would have permitted nothing else.

Fugaku suggested giving Sasuke away, sending him off to be fostered. It was one of his better ideas: it would've been better for them all, especially for Itachi.

It would've been a coward's attempt to cheat their way out of a trial, of the rightful suffering of a sinner, but yes, it had been tempting.

But she couldn't send him away. You cannot cut the sin out of your soul, and Sasuke in so many ways is everything impure about her taking external form, ripping free of her body to stare up at her with those relentless, hungry eyes. Sasuke always wanted things – people – that way, wanted them like he was starving and would devour them.

He doesn't have that from her. Nor, she can recognise, from Orochimaru. It's just his, this demand that the world give him what he desires, and the furious ferocity of that desire.

It reminds her of the shifter boy Sasuke's currently letting himself to be defiled by: she's seen it reflected in his eyes, that certainty, that desire like death. Even Fugaku has remarked on it, and claimed it's no surprise Sasuke would allow the beast such liberties. Mikoto, in spite of Sasuke's parental heritage and heretic leanings, had thought of better of him, had thought pride at least would keep him from shaming their name by whoring himself to a subhuman creature. Demon spawn, they used to be called, and modern biology has yet to prove the slur wrong. And what else is left for Sasuke to take pride in, but his birthright as an exorcist, his inherent and inarguable superiority to humans and shifters?

Sasuke's always been stupid with his affections, has given his loyalty to people he shouldn't and then not taken it back.

For a long, long time, up until she gave him up to Orochimaru, she could've won him back.

She never did and perhaps Orochimaru was right, perhaps that was a mistake, because Itachi too has been careless with his affections and unable to rescind them as he ought.

Mostly, she couldn't send Sasuke away because naturally Orochimaru would have wanted him, and she didn't want to give Orochimaru anything.

More importantly, Itachi would not have permitted Sasuke being sent away: would have gone with him, would have left her behind without hesitation to follow.

In the end, when she could no longer deny that Sasuke was corrupting even Itachi, she cut her losses. Better Orochimaru get what he wanted than that she lose Itachi, better she reveal the depths of her shame than let Itachi remain blind to Sasuke's filthy nature.

She can still remember, in vivid and unpredictable flashes, the flutter of a child inside her. Itachi, and the breathless love that even years of his insanity and disregard has not managed to dampen. Sasuke, and the dark stain spreading through her, her body feeling ever since like a frozen, rotted corpse.

Outside Orochimaru's compound the air smells of spring flowers and burnt flesh. She breathes in, breathes out, and walks away.

xxxxx

It didn't use to be awkward to sit half-dressed in Tsunade's examination room, in this heavy, chilly silence.

"Is this a permanent state of affairs?" Tsunade asks, in the impersonal voice she usually fails to use with her patients. "I understand if it is, I'd just like to know where we stand."

"I don't know," Naruto erupts. He wants Sasuke so much – a Sasuke who knew Mum, who remembers about her death, who mocked and comforted Naruto after they found out who was behind it.

But that's also a Sasuke who started to go nova and meant to go through with it, who tried to eradicate himself from the world…

Tsunade sighs. "Well, there's not much I can do unless I can have a look at the seal. But there's no way for you to function long-term in this state, so one way or another we have to break it open."

It's flattering in a way, that Itachi must have assumed Sasuke would immediately take steps to remove a seal that directly hurt Naruto.

But of course Naruto can't live like this. Already Kyuubi's tearing him apart, crazed and self-destructive with frustrated need, scratching at the inside of his skin.

When he returns to the conference room, immediately soothed by Sasuke's smell, Sasuke turns from the computer, holding out his phone to Naruto. "Explain."

The screen shows one of the photos Shizuo took: Naruto kneeling over Sasuke on the muddy ground, Sasuke's face broken and bloody and rather deranged.

"We had a fight," Naruto says. "I'd made a mistake. I – hurt you."

Sasuke's stare doesn't get any less demanding.

"It was the first time you slept with me. Or, well, no, it wasn't – we'd done it before, to make the bond, and when I burnt my hand off you had sex with me to boost the healing – but it was the first time you did it because you just wanted to. And you hadn't been, you hadn't liked being tied so tight to me, so I thought – I thought it was okay to leave after. I maybe wanted to, I don't know, to show I was – that I didn't always have to run after you. Anyway it was a shitty thing to do, and dumb. It's fucking rude, and… well, you weren't happy with me. So we ended up screaming at each other on the roof, and you wiped some people, and I pushed you off the roof, and – well, that happened." He gestures at the photo, of a Sasuke starker and more strained than this Sasuke can probably imagine.

"Hn. There's an interview, I don't think it was published – I say I don't want the bond undone."

Naruto nods. "There were… pros and cons. You always liked the healing." He shrugs, uncomfortable with everything he can't do anymore, really realising only now how many liberties Sasuke actually allowed him. "You liked that I couldn't lie to you."

Sasuke sits back in his chair, eyes intense and locked on Naruto's. "They're wrong, you know – Kakashi and Hanabi. I wouldn't have ruled Oto. I'd have burnt it to the ground."

"Yeah," Naruto agrees. "I know."

"I still could. Well, I don't have the insider knowledge to completely exterminate it anymore, but I could destroy it. The fanatics would no longer be a threat."

"I'm more worried about the Council turning on us."

"Che, the Council."

"Itachi, then."

Sasuke nods. "We'd probably end up with a critical shortage of exorcists as well. I'm not necessarily opposed to culling the human population by a third or so, but…"

"But I am. It'd be – they'd try to control exorcists, some countries at least. And then you'd turn the demons on them. Fuck," Naruto groans. Kyuubi pounds in his head, a red-hot sledgehammer against his thoughts. It's not the first time today that sharp spikes of orange energy break through his skin. It feels like that, like breaking, like they're cutting through him.

And then it stops.

Sasuke's fingers lift his chin. Sasuke's close now, dangerously close. Naruto knows achingly well that so many things that would've been impossible before – walking casually behind Sasuke, hugging him without warning – are suddenly all right, but so many things that Sasuke used to accept – their level of violence, and sexual intimacy, and stalkerish craving – wouldn't be permissible now.

"My old seal broke gradually," Sasuke says. "That should work with this one too."

Naruto understands that he must look crazy, starved and overwhelmed, but Sasuke doesn't back down. Sasuke, really, has never backed down.

Kyuubi reaches for the seal, and Naruto can't muster the will to stop him. Sasuke's jumper tears open, revealing a thick slice of skin marred by the horrible seal locking Naruto out, and Kyuubi claws at it.

Sasuke hisses, and Kyuubi's claw burns away – Naruto barely manages to pull his hand away before it incinerates, and even so he's lacking two fingertips. With the bond sealed off, he won't be able to heal them without cutting.

"Fuck you," Sasuke says, pressing the torn edges of his jumper against the cut. It's a stark, horrifying reminder that Sasuke doesn't heal anymore, that Kyuubi might in fact have damaged him. Skin is one thing, pain and scarring Sasuke can deal with, but Kyuubi might have nicked an artery or a ligament… It seems not, though, Sasuke can move the arm.

"Don't be such a whiner, bastard," Naruto says. "But, um. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you up like that. Can I – can I clean you up?"

"I'm fine."

"It might help with the healing," Naruto points out, trying not to wet his lips. God, he wants to lick. "It does for human mates." Unlike Sasuke, a human mate can't heal of their own volition, but their bonded shifter can choose to heal them. He might possibly be able to do that for Sasuke.

"If you cut me again, you're losing a limb."

Naruto nods, his jaw trembling loose, fangs erupting and he ducks forward quickly so Sasuke won't see the saliva running down his chin. He's so dizzy he has to grab for the armrest of Sasuke's chair, moaning as he licks across the seal. It burns under his tongue, the skin of his lips crystallises into ash.

Sasuke tugs at his hair. "Off." He has to actually pull Naruto off, Naruto can't make himself sit back, but at least he manages to stop himself struggling. "Don't say clean up when you mean lick." Sasuke wipes excess saliva and leftover blood away with his hand, inspecting the cut by touch. "It's not any better."

"Right," Naruto forces out. Words are a struggle.

"Che." Sasuke appraises him. "Shit, you want me bad."

"Yes," Naruto grits out. The word tastes of blood and sooth, Kyuubi's too desperate and messed up to heal his mouth.

Temari knocks on the doorframe. "Sasuke. Your mother's here."