We Fall and We Too Shall Rise

Slouching into the kitchen, Kakashi finds Sasuke making tea. Naruto's presumably still asleep, which suggests Sasuke maybe slept with him: given how claustrophobically Naruto's clung to him, it's hard to think he'd remain asleep if Sasuke hadn't offered him some kind of reassurance.

It wouldn't be the first time a good but ultimately insufficient exorcism got Sasuke in the mood.

"Yo," Kakashi mumbles.

Sasuke nods at him, and oh. It's over now, that brief dream of redemption. Sasuke's face is young and beautiful, its expression sardonic, faintly bitter. What was it Orochimaru said? Zankouku na tenshi no you ni.

"You remember me," Kakashi says.

"Some of you." He shrugs. "Enough."

"I see." For what will probably be the last time ever, he pokes Sasuke's forehead, a light touch that feels like it brands itself into his finger, lingering under his skin. He started doing it, once upon a time, not to tease Sasuke but to tease Itachi, who regarded it as his personal gesture. Catching on to Itachi's annoyance, the envy that burnt under his skin, Sasuke had been mostly amused.

This morning he turns around a throws up into the sink. Kakashi blinks, feeling ashy, empty. He reflects that the bond must be more open, because this is so clearly Naruto's panicked projectile vomiting.

Sasuke's never thrown up easily. He ate some poisonous berries once, when he was little, and Itachi had to force several fingers deep, deep into his throat before he expelled them. Kakashi knows from personal experience that what little gag reflex he had has since been trained away.

Sasuke spits, rinses out his mouth and straightens.

"Did you remember something about Itachi?"

Sasuke wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "You're still friends with him, aren't you?"

"I suppose so. In so far as one can be friends with him."

Sasuke picks up a lemon presumably meant for the tea and bites into it before spitting again, cleaning out the taste of vomit. "Out of curiosity, is there anything he could do that would change that?"

"I don't know. Moral convictions have never motivated me to break off a relationship. It's when I start to look down on someone that it's over." He shrugs. "That's always happened sooner or later. But the whys can be surprising."

Sasuke smiles at him, the smile Naruto calls his shark smile. Kakashi hasn't had it directed at him in a while now, had forgotten how edged it is, sharp enough to only hurt afterwards. Sasuke's new, more innocent smile has torn at him in a very different way. But that Sasuke is lost to him now.

"It might interest you to know," Sasuke tells him with no discernible emotion, "that the sick fuck hears me talking to him in his head."

"I'd like to be on your side," Kakashi says.

"Okay," says Sasuke, because he has nothing else to say. Kakashi's a manipulator but it's become obvious that he never knew Sasuke as well as Sasuke liked to pretend to himself that he did.

He bites the lemon again, spits out the last lingering taste of vomit.

The window in front of him is made of reinforced Plexiglas, so thick it barely resembles glass. The outside world becomes like one of those Impressionistic paintings Kakashi likes.

Sasuke's always preferred photographs. Something real.

He does like the much older paintings, the ones that are like photographs: a piece of the world saved from time.

Not an art critic, perhaps, Kakashi used to say, warm and teasing and presumably covering up the disappointment he must have experienced.

Sasuke, who has always written in little square letters and drawn the same way, meticulous and uninspired, supposes he could paint now, in the extravagant nonsense colours that are considered artsy, because Naruto can.

He turns his back on Kakashi.

Inside his head, Uriel's raging against the seal, straining to erase the taint of Itachi's touch, burn his soul clean of it.

xxxxx

Naruto dreams of the final horror, chains and loss and life ending.

A sensation of being lobotomised, the parts of his brain unable to connect to each other anymore. Like he's been cut off from himself, had part of his mind amputated.

On that note he wakes, slips from the nightmare and into reality, which is the same as the nightmare, or almost the same.

Kyuubi's too weak to even howl, shocked still and icy at the abrupt reliving of his crippling. When Sasuke disappeared from him, when the bond was shut down as simply and cleanly as cutting his throat.

The blessed chain is gone from around his neck, he can sit up in bed but everything in the world is wrong, half his head is missing. He's on his feet somehow, staggering, but he doesn't know where to go. That's gone, that's a part of him lost.

He'd thought – he'd thought he could be okay, last night. He keeps reminding himself: I remember some of you.

Keeps reminding himself, telling himself over and over like a useless litany of prayer, that even without remembering him, Sasuke came to him. Wanted him.

But Sasuke isn't with him, the bond's breaking apart and breaking Naruto along with it, and anyway Sasuke almost died, almost went fucking nova, he wanted to go nova –

And the seal is strangling Kyuubi, is ripping Naruto's mind apart, and –

He catches the scent, staggers back into the room, and –

At last he finds Sasuke with his eyes, sitting on the beside.

He looks perfectly normal. His skin is just skin now, ice grey but solid, with no energy bursting through it. He's nowhere close to going nova.

So he's there but he's still missing: what Naruto's been brutally robbed off, the piece of him lost.

The bond lies dying and dull inside his head. And he should be used to this, he'd accepted living like this until they could get it fixed, but it gets worse and worse, instead of resigned he's becoming enraged. He thinks his soul is rotting, piece after piece of it shrivelling and dying.

He staggers drunkenly across the floor, crashes into Sasuke on the bed and has to drag himself up onto it.

xxxxx

"Sasuke," Naruto says, in this shaking, breaking, fucking unignorable voice.

"Are you still on my side?" Sasuke demands.

Uriel's war songs echo through his skull. He's insulated, isolated: locked inside a fish bowl, so he can see the bond but he can't touch it.

It's a rather simpler seal than his previous one, and certainly its destructive potential is directed at Naruto, not at Sasuke himself. Still his whole body is numb with the impotent pulsing of the bond, heavy with sealed power that resonates through him, pounding, screeching –

Itachi's handprints on his soul, sooty and smouldering across his thoughts, interfering with his magic, with what's his –

Naruto blinks, almost uncomprehending. "Yes!"

Sasuke believes him, sort of.

But that last certainty, the certainty of Naruto, is gone now.

"Are you," Naruto starts, "all right?"

"No."

Naruto swallows, but doesn't stop. "I meant."

"I know what you meant."

"So say it!"

"Why?"

"Because I need to hear it, God damn you!"

But there is no one left at all, Sasuke thinks. Not even Sasuke himself: not all of him.

This calls to mind the morning after Orochimaru had first taken possession of him, the dead feeling spreading inside him: the empty darkness and the rage and nothing very much else. Frost over all the new hollow places inside him, icing down the loss that would otherwise have torn him utterly apart.

The worst part wasn't the intrusion, the red violence that broke the world. The worst part was afterward, the knowledge that something – his life, the person he'd thought he was – had been stolen from him and he would never be able to get it back, he wouldn't even be able to recognise it anymore.

It's time for that sleeping darkness to wake up, for the rage to burn away the ice that covers it.

He always knew one day he'd burn the world.

He realises he's clawing at the mark, blood under his nails, when Naruto catches his hand.

Naruto says, with astonishing calmness, "You're going to destroy him."

Sasuke isn't sure whom he means, but he reckons it's true either way. One way or another, he's going to destroy everyone who matters to him, and a lot of people who don't.

"Yes," Sasuke tells him. It comes to him that Naruto's the only person he keeps telling, yes.

But he can't be sure of Naruto anymore.

Naruto's hand closes around his, bigger and hotter than a human hand could be.

Sasuke stills, perched on a knife's edge and feeling the blade slowly slide through the soles of his feet. It's not a bad feeling.

"I do know you," Naruto says. "That part was always real. Bond or no bond."

Sasuke swallows, for no good reason at all.

He'd thought, sometimes, that he wouldn't want Naruto anymore, bereft of the bond. But still Naruto's presence makes life realer, paints it in brighter colours.

He puts his hand on Naruto's cheek, feels the ridges of the whisker scars against his palm and none of the magic behind them, smears Naruto's skin with blood from where he clawed at the mark. "I'm not sorry you're here."

Naruto's face twists, too many expressions to settle into just one. "Okay."

Sasuke quirks his mouth into some approximation of a smile, here at the end. "You gave me magic."

"No," Naruto says, and Sasuke looks away because before Naruto would have known this was code. "It was always yours."

Knowing it was code might not have changed his answer, and Sasuke's fingers clench, must be hurting Naruto's face now, and he thinks it would have been good if he'd been able to give Naruto something. Naruto's taken a lot of things from him, but he'd have liked now to be able to give him something.

"Sasuke –"

"Shut up."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm making a choice."

It's maybe a selfish choice, and definitely reckless, but Sasuke's never pretended he's anything but.

"I'm done. I'm not going to live like this anymore."

xxxxx

Naruto has always believed in miracles, in a God helps he who helps himself sort of sense, but it's astonishing to see one unfold.

I'm making a choice, he thinks dimly, dizzily.

Sasuke changes his world by speaking those words.

Climbing up onto the bond-bridge, he can see Sasuke in the distance, encased in something like a snow globe, translucent but with marks on it similar to the seal on Sasuke's shoulder.

The globe encases Sasuke's mind, cutting off the bond.

But the strands of it are interwoven with Sasuke's magic, and Sasuke calls to it now, calls on Uriel with words fit to lay waste to worlds, burn them clean of any life.

Naruto walks across the sleeping energy of the bond like across water, feels it whisper, more awake, under his feet.

He puts his hands on the globe, and Sasuke does too, palms and fingers pressed together on either side of the barrier. It burns Naruto's hands, but that doesn't matter. He pushes with everything in him. Wants Sasuke back more than he's ever wanted anything.

In the outside world Sasuke twists sideways, pulls at his neckline. Naruto lets Kyuubi take his body, and Kyuubi rips and bites, fangs breaking through the seal.

His mouth burns with Sasuke's blood and Sasuke's magic and the tang of the seal, and he keeps pressing against the barrier.

He thinks that really, all this time, nobody gave Sasuke any choice, but now finally, in the end, he made one all the same.

It happens suddenly.

Audible for a moment over Kyuubi's panting, over the thrum of Uriel's war songs, there's a sound at the edge of human hearing, and the globe shatters, Itachi's seal breaking.

Sasuke's magic burns away the shards, burns away any traces of the taint.

Naruto's back in his body and the burning, singing power of Uriel is back in him, and he barely notices because Sasuke is back.

He belatedly detaches his jaw, sits back.

Sasuke smiles at him, a grim, stinted, brilliant smile.

The bond slots into place inside his mind like – like they've been trying to pummel a square peg into a round hole all these weeks, and now suddenly they've got it right, everything matched up and fitting.

"You stopped fighting it."

"I made a choice. I won't be stolen from again." There's no need to elaborate: Sasuke's magic is super nova bright, the whole room tinted white. He's met Naruto's eyes in that head-on collision way of his, but now he looks away, jaw stiffening pugnaciously. "Also I will never trust another human being again. I don't have it in me. But I don't need to take you on trust."

"I trust you," Naruto says.

Kyuubi rolls and tumbles like a demented dolphin under Sasuke's skin, his tails emerging through the small of Naruto's back but his mostly-just-energy teeth snapping along Sasuke's arms and neck.

"More fool you," Sasuke says, but softly, like he understands it's code, though Naruto's not sure precisely what for.

Naruto slips back across the bridge, which is solid now, bright under his feet. Inside Sasuke's mind he grabs a disgruntled Kyuubi by the scruff of his neck and forces him back home, into the cage.

There's only Sasuke and him then, and the black edge of desperation like despair is gone. Greyed down, at least, and Naruto is light and bright and overflowing.

He stands at the very edge of Sasuke's mind, and the bondbridge sings under his feet as Sasuke twines his arms around him, tight as a hangman's noose.

xxxxx

Naruto mouths lazily, contentedly at Sasuke's neck. He's done it now, the thing he's dreamt of and yearned for so long: fucked Sasuke's soul.

Sasuke turns in his arms, fingers pressing hard and possessive against Naruto's back, sinking into his flesh to the first knuckle. Sasuke's memory hasn't settled entirely back into place, and he hasn't got entirely used to Kyuubi's strength again.

But he looks at Naruto with no hesitation and no regret, pulls Uriel's power experimentally through Naruto's flesh and is satisfied with the result.

So here they are, the impossible desire fulfilled, Naruto's first and last wish granted: Sasuke chose him.

"You're it," Sasuke tells him. He's reacquainting himself with Naruto's face, unhurried and careless as if he's always had a perfect right to touch it. Which, actually, he has. "If you're gone, then that's it. I'm done."

"I'm never gonna be gone," Naruto says. "Wherever we go, we go together."

Sasuke twists, seems almost pained. Then he rolls Naruto over onto his back, lying on top of him. They kiss each other until Sasuke's thin, chapped mouth is red and swollen, looking almost lipsticked.

"I love you," Naruto says, in between kisses. "You have no idea how fucking much I love you."

Sasuke's fingers lift his chin, inexorable. "But I do." It's not quite a smile that he presses to Naruto's lips, but it's close. "That's the point. I feel it." His fist opens, spreading his hand over Naruto's heart. "I know you."

xxxxx

Minato knows the moment he sees them. The brief respite is over. Back is Sasuke's disdain and open dislike.

But back, also, is Naruto's impossible ability to exorcise. Minato finally sees it with his own two eyes, in the mundane surroundings of one a training facility. Naruto's been running laps, still sweaty and flushed, orange energy sparkling around him.

Sasuke's not even here, and still Naruto can close his eyes and open them a different red than they've ever been before, crimson rather than vermilion. The orange energy fades, and in its place Naruto can summon the white on white light of heaven. He frowns, biting through his lip and sweating even worse, but a blade of angelfire arcs from his hand.

It fades shortly, and Naruto looks up at him in breathless triumph, with the biggest shit eating grin. "I can do this," he says. "They'll follow me. All of them. Even against the humans – which, don't start, we're not going to war with them. I'll get them to come around."

"They're far more likely to ally with the exorcists against us."

"Well, yeah, the exorcists will be experiencing a bit of a shift in leadership."

Minato takes a deep breath. "Where exactly is Sasuke?"

"He had some stuff he had to do."

"Naruto. I need you to talk to me. I have to make decisions, decisions that might end up being catastrophically wrong because you don't tell me what's going on."

Naruto bites his lip again. "He's at Orochimaru's."

"I see."

"He's probably going to be there a while. Orochimaru won't be alive anymore when he leaves."

"And the Council…?"

"It's not like they can stop him. Hanabi and Itachi won't step in, and the rest of them," he shrugs, "they're not strong enough."

"Right. So – he's taking over Oto after all?"

Naruto looks at him the way Minato's spent so much time looking at Naruto: fondly, but as though he should know better. "He was never going to take over Oto."

xxxxx

"I'm dealing with him," Temari says. "No, I won't. He's not as crazy as you think. Yes, well, he's my family. Look, I'm simply informing you of matters – this is not up for discussion."

She can remember a time when she was happy to have Shikamaru call, when their bickering was foreplay and teasing. She can, in short, remember a time when she was in love with Shikamaru.

It faded quickly enough after their bonding.

She's not a fool: he was never boyfriend material, he was a fun fling before she expected to bond with someone on her level, of her kind.

It didn't turn out that way, and looking at Kankurou and his mad girl, at Naruto's demented crusader, perhaps she shouldn't feel cheated. People have built amicable relationships on much less than she has with Shikamaru. But life is about expectation management, and it's harder to be satisfied when your expectations were expectations of a loved one.

It is not Shikamaru's fault that he cannot contribute. It's not his fault that he can't understand. It's not even necessarily his fault that he can't accept these facts.

It not being his fault doesn't matter as much as she'd hoped. It doesn't change the fact that he's what Sasuke Uchiha called a loadstone around her neck.

She doesn't believe in shifter/human relationships for the same reason she doesn't believe in massive age differences, or a boss or master getting involved with their employee or slave. There are power imbalances that are too large to overcome, that will poison any relationship, until it's corrupted the people in it, turned one of them callous and abusive, neglectful at best, and the other into a victim, something suppressed and to be used.

She commanded armies while Shikamaru slept through AP classes.

She's never resented Minato for the things Naruto does – not that it's her place to resent him at all – but she always perceived something unhealthy in his attachment to Naruto's mother. What's wrong with him, that he wanted a human woman instead of an equal partner, someone who could truly know him and match him? Love after all isn't enough, can't bridge any distance. She's heard Minato himself say it, though he was trying to explain to a very young Naruto that mating with exorcists was impossible: a fish may love a bird, but where would they live?

Naruto had frowned and protested, but it was Kakashi who said, The question denotes a failure of imagination.

Yeah! Naruto had agreed, pumping his fist in the air. Also of devotion!

He'd have loved a human Sasuke, she thinks. That relationship would have been twisted in a different way, resentment and humiliation interwoven with care and painful carefulness, as any power Sasuke had would be the power he had to affect Naruto, his only importance the colossal importance Naruto gave him.

She's less certain Sasuke would've loved a human Naruto. Even if he did, he destroys anything he touches, and a human Naruto wouldn't have had the resilience to survive Sasuke's attention.

Speaking of destruction, it's time to leave. Gaara's cleansing Rain County, and there's no controlling Gaara, only a hopeful, partial managing of Gaara, and so Temari has never protested his atrocities, but simply pointed him in the least undeserving direction. Today the humans are making a stand, rallying behind what they seem to perceive as a hero. Temari notices an unflattering haircut, green spandex, and pre-battle ranting to rival Naruto at his verbose worst.

It would be funny, if she wasn't so eager to get home to a shower and a hot meal she'd find it funny, that he actually seems to believe he has a chance, as if bravery and determination were enough.

Gaara doesn't even look at him, doesn't slow down for an instant as he moves through him.

The hero is blood and broken bones, and nothing very much more.

The town he tried to defend has had half its population slaughtered and has bowed down in defeat within half an hour.

Temari wipes her hands clean on her jeans. Tsunade will take point on the surrender negotiations, so the shower beckons. There should still be some hot pockets left, too…

Later that evening, when she's painting her nails and shouting down Shino Aburame and his gung-ho faction, Shikamaru calls again. She doesn't kid herself that it'll be a pleasant conversation – he'll have found something to be passive aggressive and biting about, he always does.

A few hours later, when she's finished up the day's business and indulged in a heap of hot pockets, she calls him back. It turns out he's upset about that local celebrity, the idiot hero.

She could almost laugh. Isn't this rather the wartime equivalent of fighting about the milk?

But of course it's often like this. All these trivial details seem so terribly important to him.

Shikamaru tells the world stories about not caring, maybe he even believes them, but it's all a crumbling defence mechanism. The coward's, the survivor's, foolproof way: you can't fail if you don't try. Because at the end of the day, most people aren't Naruto. If they attempt something impossible, they will fail, like Lee failed.

"You needn't concern yourself that he'll become a martyr," she says. "Because I wasn't born yesterday. He'll need a feeding tube down his throat the rest of his life, but I'm not stupid enough to let him die. His devotees are more than welcome to come see him. He'll just be a crippled reminder of what happens when you disobey your betters. There's nothing glorious about it. No, trust me, the heroic aura fades quite quickly when you're wearing an adult diaper. Yes, right. No, I'm going to be kind, actually – as soon as the point's been made, I'll put him out of his misery."

Really Shikamaru's less the person he tries to be – detached, too lazy to be more than mildly bothered by anything, finding the world nothing but troublesome – and more like that exorcist friend of his than he'll ever admit. She thinks of Ino and thinks of naked, hopeless striving and that relentless cheerfulness to cover up the knowledge of inevitable, inherent failure. A different mask, but it covers the same face.

Shikamaru tries to be dismissive, to cover up his defensiveness: Ino's a good kid, she does good.

Well of course she does. She does what is in her nature to do, saves humanity the way Gaara tears it apart: the way she's been built to.

Sometimes Temari thinks Shikamaru might really not realise that she knows he's slept with Ino. The fact that he hasn't been frank about it, hasn't let it be understood between them, suggests he believes she might be upset. That's cute. But she doesn't love him anymore, and so can't fault him for straying to another girl who doesn't love him, whose world he can never really touch either.

xxxxx

Orochimaru is laid out as though on his lit de parade. His face is cracked and blackened, but clearly recognisable – definitely to Sasuke, probably to other people as well. His right eye has melted a bit, but there's still awareness in it. Samael flaps his wings like a baby bird, unable to stretch them out of Orochimaru's living carcass.

The room is still luxurious, but like the rest of the house has clearly been raided. Though Orochimaru's defences are strong, at least a few people have made it through. Sasuke killed some of them, coming here. Most bowed out of his way.

Orochimaru smiles at him. "My prodigal son returns."