I've Got Nothing for You to Gain

There's a poem Kimimarou used to like. Sasuke didn't get it, when Kimimarou was alive, but perhaps he does now.

Black milk of morning we drink you at night

Someone's kept Orochimaru clean, changed his bandages, but he'll never leave this bed. Their bed, for a long time.

This is home, in a sense that the shifter strongholds will never be home.

But in the end, you can never go home again, not really. You outgrow your past, shed it like snakeskin until you're rawer and smaller and fit to survive.

"Your old friend Tsunade did the blood work," Sasuke says. He rests his hands on the wrought-iron bedframe, feels the metal tremble on the edge of immolation under his touch. It feels a little like a black hole opening in the room. "She claims Fugaku did sire two crusaders. I was never yours."

There's a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes

"Ah, Tsunade. Of course she'd tell you whatever she imagines would matter to you." A papery cough. "You've never been one to just take someone's word for anything."

"She doesn't know me very well," Sasuke agrees.

Orochimaru makes another papery, slithering sound, not very different from his normal laugh. "You didn't have to be mine, but your family made sure you were. You'll always be mine."

we drink you at dawntime and noontime we drink you at dusktime

we drink and drink

"Well," Sasuke says, alighting on the bedside. He lays a hand softly on Orochimaru's brow, feeling the skin split and disintegrate under his touch. Uriel's present in his fingers, but stays under his skin: Orochimaru's just too weak. Dying. "I'm here now."

"So you are," Orochimaru agrees.

Sasuke pulls his legs up underneath him. Someone opens the door behind him and he wipes them without thought.

"You never did share well," Orochimaru says, with a sound that might have been a chuckle, if it hadn't issued from this husk of a man: decaying flesh, held together by magic and obsession.

For a disembodied moment Sasuke thinks he's going to vomit and what comes up will be black, will be rotted blood.

"Sou ne."

Orochimaru reaches for him and Sasuke breaks his fingers.

He realises he's going to have to be more careful than he'd like, going forward, because Orochimaru's burnt bones snap like kindling.

Orochimaru hisses, but then offers him a gift like a poisoned apple. "Your mother came to see me."

He shouts stab deeper in earth you there and you others

you sing and you play

"I don't care."

Orochimaru directs a thoughtful look at him. "Perhaps you don't."

Sasuke leans forward, close over Orochimaru's face, and pulls out Orochimaru's remaining eye lashes.

Orochimaru smiles up at him, black teeth and no lips. Sasuke inches down, kisses him, hears Orochimaru hiss in pain at the pressure of Sasuke's mouth against his naked cranium.

"Ah, Shinigami-chan. When I first saw Itachi, I knew I wanted him." His mouth twists, echoing or being echoed by Sasuke's. "The stupid boy doesn't know, but Mikoto protected him. Silly, silly woman. You're far more than Itachi could ever hope to be, but she sacrificed both herself and you to keep your dear dull brother pure."

Sasuke smiles at him, feels the smile pull at this face, ache pleasantly through his jaw. "If you'd got Itachi, he'd have killed you within a year."

Orochimaru visibly wants to deny it, but there's no seal that could hold God's best beloved.

He reaches up to trace ruined fingers over Sasuke's face. Sasuke turns his head and bites him.

stab deeper your spades you there and you others play on

for the dancing

"And now, Shinigami-chan, you mean to kill me?"

"It's going to take a long time," Sasuke says. He'd imagined this moment as meteor strike dramatic but there's mostly a sense of homecoming, like reaching the place you were meant to go.

"I expected nothing else. Parting is such sweet sorrow, isn't it? One doesn't want it to be over too quickly."

Sasuke stretches, makes himself comfortable. "Did you mean for me to kill you?"

"I meant to live forever."

"How pedestrian."

Orochimaru chuckles, blood beading on the edge of his mouth, where his lips used to be. "You wound me. Well. I suppose I never meant to be killed by anyone but you."

Sasuke feels unexpectedly close to him, warmed almost. Something hot and curdled sits in his stomach, tasting satisfaction and wanting more, waiting to see if its fury can be sated. "Is that right." He tangles their hands together, then twists until Orochimaru's wrist snaps. "Well, here I am." He slides a leg over Orochimaru, straddling him and putting his hands on Orochimaru's chest, until Orochimaru's heart beats against his palms.

he shouts stroke darker the strings and as smoke you

shall climb to the sky

"For your inheritance."

Sasuke tilts his head to meet Orochimaru's partly melted eyes. "You can't actually imagine I'll take over Oto."

"It's meant for you. I crafted it for you, and I crafted you to – "

"You know me better than that," Sasuke tells him. "You have to realise I'm going to raze it to the ground."

"That'll be the next world war."

"That's not really a problem for me."

It really seems as though Orochimaru only now realises this, and chokes on the realisation.

Sasuke smirks faintly at him. "I'm built for destruction. You know that."

He let his finger drill into Orochimaru's left eye, spearing it. Samael pushes back, but that no longer matters. Sasuke's just stronger.

he hunts us down with his dogs in the sky he gives us a

grave

Orochimaru makes his sounds of agony, which Sasuke hasn't heard before but which are no different from any other man's.

"You'll burn the world," he gasps, when he's recovered himself. "Tashika ni shinigami da. Zankouku no tenshi, ne."

"Sou deshou? Maa, I came to see you first."

"I'm flattered."

Sasuke quirks his mouth. "But hardly surprised."

"Hardly ever that." He shifts a little, his long hair now matted and brittle and rasping against the pillows. "This patricide, will you enjoy it?"

"Yes." The word comes hot and fast as predator breath.

"Will it give you peace?"

"I'm not built for peace."

"And yet you expect your low-rent prince charming to, shall we say, fix you and carry you off into the sunset?"

Sasuke leans forward a little, putting weight on his hands and feeling Orochimaru's breath stutter. "I'm not looking to get fixed."

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night

"Ah," Orochimaru sighs. "I've hurt you, haven't I? But it honed you."

"Don't lie to me," Sasuke says. "You did what you wanted to, because you could."

"Sou ne. Are you going to ask me why?"

"No."

"No? Surely, Shi –"

Sasuke strokes softly across the eyelid covering Orochimaru's remaining eye. "I'm going to be the only thing left in your world."

we drink you at nightfall and morning we drink you and

drink you

Almost everything else has already been eradicated, and anyway Sasuke's always been the realest part of Orochimaru's life.

"When you came here last," Orochimaru says, with the misty, jealous pride of any parent.

"It was easy."

"I thought it wouldn't be."

"You thought I'd know you?"

"Maa, I thought my seal work would be quicker, too."

Orochimaru had touched his neck, and his fingers had been hot with desire and repressive magic.

It had been so obvious, so simple, the natural order of the world reasserting itself: the moment he touched Sasuke, Orochimaru had burnt.

They'd been in Orochimaru's study, and Orochimaru had collapsed onto the carpet on which he first took possession of Sasuke.

Of course, Sasuke hadn't remembered that at the time.

It wouldn't have mattered, anyway. Irony fades in the face of death.

"Do you love me, Shinigami-chan? Let's be honest, here at the end of all things."

"It goes deeper than that."

"Oh?"

Sasuke shrugs, the shrug his mother tried to train him out of and then Orochimaru tried to train him out of. "Whatever we have, it's deeper than love."

"Oh," Orochimaru says again. "Do indulge me."

Sasuke pinches him, feels his fingers sink through rot-soft skin, brush against the naked meat below. His nails scratch against Orochimaru's ribs, until the pads of his fingers whisper across the beating muscle of Orochimaru's heart. "Love fades. This doesn't."

"Ah, but I do love you. And you love me as well. Hush, now. Of course you do. It's just that you hate me more." He makes a strange face, as though searching for an expression his ruined face can't support. "I had to make you mine."

he grabs at the iron in his belt and swings it

Sasuke sits back. Orochimaru's hanging on by a thread: this is not, after all, going to take a long time. "Isn't this what people are?" he says, pushing his hand further into Orochimaru's body, rubbing against the bone of his rib cage. "Random acts of senseless violence."

"Sou ka na."

"Your pronunciation's atrocious as usual," Sasuke remarks. He's so close to this hot edge, and yet so comfortably at home. He thinks he was born for this: to dominate and destroy. "I was going to have a demon eat your soul, but I decided I've got a use for you."

"You intrigue me."

Sasuke leans forward and whispers in his ear.

Orochimaru tries to go nova. Sasuke doesn't let him.

They're done talking now. He burns Orochimaru's vocal chords, watches the smoke spill out of Orochimaru's ruined mouth.

Then he does what has to be done. He unmakes Orochimaru: over the minutes and then the hours of pain and nothing else, he strips away Orochimaru's individuality, his humanity, his personhood. Orochimaru believes this is something he taught Sasuke to do, but killer instinct can't be learnt. Sasuke has always known how to destroy, how to make something smaller; how to take something weaker and break it apart in his hands, under his heel.

he plays with the serpents and dreams death comes as a

master

In the end there's nothing left and Sasuke starts, quite literally, burning Orochimaru's soul. It's a failsafe way to make a weaker exorcist go nova.

There are no demons here, so the immensity of power explodes into empty space.

Correction: into Sasuke's waiting hands.

Some of it dissipates, but Sasuke collects much of it, twisting it into shape, into seals he carves into his arm.

Samael is close kin to Uriel, a far more compatible power than Gabriel or Raphael or Hanael.

It sinks into him, locked and buzzing in the seals burning along his arm. These aren't the rounded, intricate designs Orochimaru favours, but the sharp-edged, slashed kanji of Sasuke's earliest childhood. They're his, like much of Samael's power is now his.

He's reached the heart of the labyrinth at last.

xxxxx

It's surreal, more surreal than he'd anticipated, to be back in school.

He and Dad are sort of working at cross purposes at the moment, which means Naruto needs to find Sakura so he can get access to Morino. And Sakura, on an early Wednesday afternoon, is of course in school.

Just a few months back, one the far side of a war, Naruto would've been too.

The corridors are familiar, the lockers and the school uniforms. What's new is the students don't seem to recognise him as one of their own. He was a prankster, one of the Ritalin kids, but he used to indisputably belong to this place.

He passes by his locker. The graffiti he painted on it has been removed, until there's just the usual slurs, a cocksucker here, a die beast there.

Finally there's Sakura emerging from a classroom, detaching from the crowd when Naruto waves at her.

She hugs him quickly, fingers lingering in his shirt as though wanting to check him for damage. "It's so good to see you. It's been far too long, are you all right?" She looks over his shoulder. "Is Sasuke here too? He said he'd lost his memory, but then I heard from Ino that he'd got it back…"

"Yeah, he's good."

"I kept asking to see him – you know that, I kept asking to see you too."

"I know. I'm sorry, there's been a lot going on, and just – yeah, sorry. But now's not a good time for Sasuke."

"Why not? If he remembers, and he's all right, then…"

"Orochimaru just died." Naruto realises this even as he says it, feeling this – fulfilment, this sense of something urgent now being finished.

"But that's – I understand this is a horrible and selfish thing to say, but – but that's good, right?"

Naruto hugs her again, just quickly, a brief press of childhood and loveliness against his chest. But, "Sakura, um, he died because Sasuke just finished torturing him to death."

"Oh."

"Yeah. And I – I really have to go to him. But I want to see you. Soon. And, um. I kind of need to see Gramps too."

Sakura's face stills. "Why?"

"Because Dad's not really handling this the right way, and I need to clear some stuff up with Morino." Sakura licks her lips. She doesn't like to go against adults, Naruto knows that, but, "Look. Sasuke's doing a lot of things right now that has really big implications, and he can't stand Dad so Dad's out of the loop. I want Morino to know the real deal, so we can get a handle on this before it explodes."

Sakura nods, uncertain still but then she's always thoughtful, never quite sure of her decisions.

"Thanks, Sakura." Naruto presser her hand, brief but ardent. "I really loved seeing you. I'll get in touch, okay? Sasuke too, when he's stable."

xxxxx

In an odd way, he feels more at home in Orochimaru's mansion than he did in the school he's attended for the last three years: Sasuke thinks of this so clearly, so deeply as his home. In spite of what he's been through, how he's been treated, Sasuke's always retained that basic feeling of entitlement that makes it easy to appropriate each new place as one's home. Usually Naruto resents that kind of staggering exorcist arrogance, but he can't deny it's been a lifeline for Sasuke, that he has reason to be grateful for it.

It's relatively easy to get in: the place has been broken into so many times, a lot of the defences are defunct, and anyway some of them register Naruto as an exorcist now, when he lets Uriel swim to the surface, glimmer just under his skin.

He finds Sasuke in an atrium that feels a little like an aquarium because the entire south wall is made of tinted glass, and the light filters in somehow wetly, tinted bluish.

Sasuke's gaunt and pale – won't have slept, won't have eaten – but the impression from earlier holds true. There's a measure of peace now, something like grace granted.

"Hey," Naruto says, smiling helplessly.

Sasuke nods at him, not quite smiling back. Almost, though.

Naruto's voice hardens with need, "I want to see him."

"He went nova," Sasuke tells him. "There's nothing left."

"I could at least stomp on his ashes."

"There's no ashes. There's not even atoms left."

"He's in his grave in the sky, then."

"Where it's roomy to lie," Sasuke agrees dryly. "But no, not quite." He pulls his sleeve up, exposing a long line of jagged, intricate cuts. "Come here."

Sasuke's already pulling up Naruto's sleeve, but Naruto's distracted, has to nudge his cheek against Sasuke, rub his face against Sasuke's hair. The last few days is the longest he's been away from Sasuke since the bond, bearable only because it had to be, because this was something Sasuke had to do on his own, and because the bond has never been as open as after they unsealed it.

Sasuke shoulders him off. "We can fuck when we get home. Give me your arm."

"You're so romantic," Naruto tells him, holding out his arm next to Sasuke's. Which, he discovers upon closer perusal, looks like a serial cutter's. Every inch, from the edge of his palm and up to his armpit, is covered in cuts that glow white.

They sparkle under Naruto's touch. "What're these?"

"Samael." Sasuke smirks at him, the expression sharp with triumph. Naruto feels like he could cut himself on the lines of Sasuke's mouth. "Your archangel."

"My archangel," Naruto repeats. "Wait, I get Orochimaru's hand me downs?"

Sasuke ignores this, gesturing towards his own arm. "I've locked his power into a sequence of seals. I'm going to transfer them to you gradually. Uriel knows not to burn you, and by going through me, Samael should be neutralised as well."

"This is possible," Naruto says. "Taking power from another exorcist? Upgrading? Why don't you always –"

"Normally one goes nova because of demons. In that case the power's need for the exorcism." Sasuke starts drawing the first seal on Naruto's wrist, fusing their arms together for a brief, burning movement. When Sasuke moves his away, the first of the seals is gone from him, smouldering instead under Naruto's skin. It's a subtly different power from Uriel's, both less protective of Naruto and more open to him, because orphaned, no longer yearning to return to its rightful master. "Obviously it's heresy." He gives Naruto a considering look, half challenge, half concern. "How's it feel?"

"I'm good. Gimme the next."

Sasuke smirks back at him, etching another seal into him, and another.

They're up to five when the opposite wall gives way, letting seven exorcists enter.

Naruto piggybacks Sasuke's understanding that these are Orochimaru's men, intending to erase the stain of his unworthy heir affiliating with shifters and committing heresy.

Naruto always figured you had to be kind of stupid to follow Orochimaru. This proves it.

Given the way they search for cover, they don't even understand that this is a suicide mission.

They do seem to understand, however, that Sasuke's out of their league: concentrating on Naruto, who's enveloped in burning power meant to erase him from existence.

Sasuke wipes three of them instantly, incinerating a fourth.

Two of the others turn on Sasuke, the last one continuing the attack on Naruto.

"Wipe him!" Sasuke snaps.

Samael's power, still more attuned to Sasuke than to Naruto and guided now by Uriel's will, flows to the surface. Kyuubi seethes but curls obediently underneath the angelic energy, keeping Naruto whole and safe as Samael's fire leaps from the seals on his arms, immolating his opponent.

There's a moment of pushback, but whoever the stranger channels can't stand against Samael.

The power burns blinding, until there's absolutely nothing left of the attacker. His very soul has been incinerated.

Naruto turns towards Sasuke, who must have wiped one of his opponents and is now slowly burning the other.

Sasuke takes his wrist, stroking the seals until they sink deeper under Naruto's skin, tangling irreversibly with Naruto's native energy.

"I wiped a crusader," Naruto says.

"So did I."

"Duh, not like it's your first."

Sasuke shockingly snickers. "This is proof. You're an exorcist."

Then there are steps, heavy but human. Ibiki Morino enters the room flanked by Anko and surprisingly few guards. He nods curtly at them. "They were broadcasting from the moment they entered."

Anko smirks, savage and volatile and so, so weary. "Welcome to World War IV."

xxxxx

Shikamaru isn't used to understanding things gradually. Realisations tend to hit him immediately, no space for thought between fact and conclusion. But it's only slowly, in numb increments, that the commencement of WW4 dawns on him.

It begins when Naruto calls him, a rather short call, Naruto's voice drawn and intense.

Shikamaru catches on to the hurry, takes the bag containing Sasuke's latest experiments in constructing sacred swords for Naruto and gets Temari to drive him to the assigned location.

It's a windy day, mostly sunny, thin clouds chased quickly back and forth across the sky.

Naruto and Sasuke, accompanied by Anko Mitarashi and a small entourage, are standing on top of a highrise. Naruto starts to fill him in on what's happened – and Shikamaru scrambles for the media outlets, to see Naruto channelling the power of heaven, the magic exclusive to God's chosen children. To see Sasuke turn on his own kind without hesitation, wiping several exorcists attacking Naruto – while Sasuke opens the bag and starts working on the swords.

"Orochimaru's dead?" Temari confirms.

"Yeah," Naruto says. "And now – well, there's no use holding back. We're going all the way with this. Shikamaru, you got your equipment, right?"

Shikamaru starts to set it up without comment. He understands what's going to happen, agrees that it's the only logical course of action, and still his stomach twists, brain momentarily freezing at the utter horror, the world gone dizzingly wrong, when Sasuke reaches up. He moves his hand as if he's wrenching at something, and Shikamaru supposes he is, because heaven opens.

Shikamaru can't actually see demons, but he does see darkness, a horrifying and utterly unnatural darkness. Actual evil, which shouldn't have a place in a civilised, scientific, secularised world, but which is invading it now anyway.

Naruto smiles.

He steps into the sky as if it's always been his domain. There's light around him, heavenly light, possibly wings.

Sasuke remains on the roof, to all appearances uninvolved in what's happening, as Naruto exorcises.

He doesn't seem to need incantations now, angel blades forming in his hands as if they were his birthright. After a while, Sasuke apparently finishes with one of the sacred swords and throws it up towards Naruto, who catches it, and glows even brighter.

Shikamaru streams it live. He feels disembodied, unreal.

That mad, impossible dream: to become a crusader, to wake up from the Calvinist nightmare of predestination and helplessness.

If Naruto said, Take up your cross and follow me, Shikamaru would seriously consider it.

xxxxx

Shikamaru supposes he shouldn't be surprised that they're having what amounts to a war council spread out on the carpet and sofa in one of the rec rooms. The adults are elsewhere, which is too bad for the adults. Naruto and Sasuke started this war, and Shikamaru's increasingly certain that Naruto and Sasuke will finish it.

After Naruto's exorcism, when Naruto was busy having a screaming match with Minato, Sasuke shrugged everyone off and went to bed. Apparently torturing Orochimaru to death was tiring work.

To be fair, Ino showed him some of the pictures taken after Sasuke burnt Orochimaru, and Shikamaru's prepared to acknowledge that it must've taken skill and patience to torture a man so badly hurt while avoiding the killing blow. He imagines Sasuke drilling through his teeth, precision burning nonessential body parts.

He notices Sasuke's return by noticing how Naruto abruptly relaxes. And it's – remarkable. Sasuke climbs over the back of the couch, settling against Naruto's side. He's still pale with sleep, maybe he had a nightmare, and he moulds himself to Naruto like the most natural thing in the world. Naruto slips an arm around his shoulders and tilts his half-finished dinner plate towards him, and Sasuke starts eating the greens.

For the first time since the bond business began – no, since the first time Shikamaru met Naruto, way back in boarding school, Naruto doesn't seem starved. It's so clear now, that Sasuke's available to him: Sasuke's magic, Sasuke's body, Sasuke's mind. It's evident from every line of their bodies that Sasuke too has decided that they belong to each other.

Which is cute, if you're into that kind of stuff, but Shikamaru's far more concerned with the news playing on the widescreen.

All over the world, shifter are rising up. Naruto responds to the footage with less wonder than Shikamaru had assumed: it comes to him that Naruto has always known this would happen, in the same bone-deep way he's known Sasuke will be his – in that way of his of knowing things will happen that everyone else knows are impossible. Sasuke remains unimpressed, spearing a piece of broccoli and making Naruto shift his arm so he can lean on him more comfortably.

"What?" he grunts when Naruto turns to him after all with a rather stunned grin.

Naruto makes an extravagant and incomprehensible gesture. "This is the revolution!"

"I can see that," Sasuke say. "Sit still."

Naruto snorts but obediently stills. He wouldn't want Sasuke to move away. He finger wrestles with Sasuke, eventually emerging victorious and seizing the last pepper, chewing open-mouthed in triumph. Sasuke frowns at him but remains curled into his side, resting his head on Naruto's shoulder and rubbing at something – a mark? – that glows on Naruto's wrist.

Shikamaru had never imagined he could look so domestic, as if he's a human child after all, a person who gets tired and likes to be comforted: someone fundamentally approachable and understandable.

He thinks then of Sakura, of all people, saying a lynx trying terribly hard to pass itself off as a house cat. Of Mist Town, and Kabuto, and New Suna. Remembers the level of violence between Sasuke and Naruto, the ease with which Sasuke hurts Naruto and accepts being hurt by him.

But Shikamaru needs to get over these reservations, get over himself. If you can't play advisor to the sort of leader you'd prefer…well, take what you can get, and all that. Minato won't listen to him, and in any case Minato is no longer in charge.

This becomes clear to Minato himself only a few hours later, when he returns from wherever he was – some meeting with Ibiki, Shikamaru surmises, or perhaps with the exorcists or the media, or even the more radical shifters – and corners Naruto at first opportunity.

With palpable reluctance, Naruto disentangles from Sasuke, who must be in a strange mood, because he leans up to catch Naruto's neck, pulling him down and looking at him like there's nobody else in the room.

Shikamaru's always known they sleep together, of course. He's just not always been sure Sasuke's particularly into it.

This time, he looks like he's in love, and really, looks like is all Shikamaru needs.