Thank you for reading. As promised, I will now chat a bit.
I have written silly fanfics for my good friends only, nothing like this. So while this is not technically my first fanfic, it still…is. And while my friends and I like the stuff that I have written before, it has only been criticized within our circle. So I would really, really appreciate some constructive criticism of my writing. If I deserve flames, then go right ahead. But please, no "you suck but sasu/naru rocks yeah!" kind of thing. That isn't really helpful.
I am actually not a shounen-ai fan, but I see something in this anime and especially in the relationships of certain characters that indicate to me that there can be real, true love, not "Ooh, let's pair Sasuke with Itachi because they're HOT!!" But everyone is entitled to write what they will; I am only throwing in my two cent's worth.
Enough with my jabbering.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its characters (though that would be nice…what would YOU do with a village of shinobi?)
SPOILERS: If you have not been keeping up with the manga and you do not want any inkling of spoilers, you may not want to read. But it is up to you.
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Run From You
By Doskoipanda
Chapter 2: Meditating
The Hidden Village of the Leaf glowed in the late afternoons. As the sun would sink below the great Wall of Hokage, it would light the rock from behind, giving it a deep gold luster that would bathe the village in warm, tinted light.
It was thus impossible to make out small figures atop the rock wall, unless one wanted to go temporarily blind from the sun's fiery splendor. The last of the Uchiha clan knew that. That was why he was there, so he could be alone.
Sasuke saw the top of the rock wall as a place a refuge. He practiced there, rested there, and in rare instances, took naps there. No one bothered him because no one wanted to make the climb up the rock face to get to the top.
The black-haired jounin stretched luxuriously in the generous warmth. He loved the sunshine. He would never admit it, and one certainly couldn't tell with his white skin, but he loved to soak up as much golden warmth as he could get.
It wasn't quite enough, but it felt almost powerful enough to permeate the frigid nature of his soul.
A brief pang of something hot pulsed through his chest as he unwillingly remembered what he had done.
I am such a bastard.
But he refused to dwell further on that, and turned his attention to a presence that had been steadily making its way towards him. There was probably only one person in the village ornery enough to intrude upon another's sacred place, even if that place was almost physically inaccessible.
But then again, there were no inaccessible places for masters of chakra. Hatake Kakashi's half-covered face suddenly rose level with Sasuke's feet as he finished walking straight up the rock face. "Yo," he said by way of greeting.
"Yo yourself." Sasuke eyed him briefly, then turned his gaze away. Kakashi was undaunted; he merely flipped himself over so that he could sit next to the younger jounin, pulling an adult novel out of his leg pouch in the same movement. A golden silence stretched between them as one man read and one man contemplated Konoha at sunset.
"So, mission was successful, I heard." Kakashi did not move, did not lift his eyes from his book.
"Yeah." Sasuke's voice was as emotionless as ever.
"I heard you failed Naruto again."
"Yeah."
"Hmm….reason?"
"Same as always. He's too obnoxious and loudmouthed to be a halfway decent shinobi. He's got the abilities, but he wouldn't be able to handle a real jounin mission. Plus, he aggravates me."
"Well, I heard he didn't aggravate the other jounin, or the merchants, so I'm assuming that it's personal. And you know, you really shouldn't use personal feelings to judge this kind of stuff."
"Take me off the field trial group, then." Sasuke shrugged. "It's not like I wanted to do it in the first place."
"No…" Kakashi said thoughtfully, folding a page in his book and closing it. "No, you didn't."
Silence stretched between them. Sasuke sighed quietly. Kakashi was something like a combination of elder brother and father to him, and yet he felt that he didn't understand a quarter of the things that the gray-haired jounin did.
"Why do you put me on Naruto's field trial if you know I don't want to judge it?" Sasuke asked softly.
Kakashi did not answer. The sun had nearly sunk completely behind them; the village's radiant appearance was dulling rapidly. After a few more moments of silence, Sasuke rose and brushed off the back of his jacket, a silent dismissal.
While he was doing this, Kakashi chose to speak. "The obvious answer is one that you already know."
Sasuke snorted ungracefully. Teamwork, he thought dryly. The word still held magic for the copy-ninja. "You want my approval for Naruto to become a jounin."
"Yes." Kakashi smiled at Sasuke underneath the face mask. "That's the obvious answer."
"Right." The Uchiha looked away, scoffing, but did not take off. He was waiting.
Kakashi's uncovered eye opened and contemplated the young man standing next to him. "I put you on the trial team because I want you to stop fooling yourself."
Sasuke stiffened and whipped his head around to stare at Kakashi's face. The right eye watched him serenely, but seriously.
After realizing what he was doing, Sasuke wrenched his gaze away. Kakashi's right eye closed as he smiled, and he rose, putting his book away and looking down at the village below.
"I want you guys to be happy," he said gently.
And before the words exploded in his head, before Sasuke could open his mouth to say something…anything…Kakashi said, "There's some leftover oden on the stove. I'm gonna be late, so go ahead and eat," and stepped straight off the cliff edge, plummeting down into the village.
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The night was not so kind to Konoha. Soft black shadow dulled every building, darkened every street. The little baubles of light that were street lamps, house lights and the glows of late-night bars only made yellow dents in the sea of velvet black.
Only the moon's luminescence could chase the shadow of night, melt its potency down and give scant visibility to the mortals below. There had been a full moon only three nights ago, so gentle white light rained down upon the village in still copious amounts, filtering down through the tree cover of the forest behind Konoha, lighting in the sunshine-colored hair of a solitary ninja sitting among the trees.
Naruto lifted his face towards the moon and took in the quiet beauty without thought or sound. Only the soft whisperings of the trees around him dared to make comment about his silent conference with the great white orb of light.
He knew that the great Nine-tails—the monster that resided inside him—loved the moonlight, so much so that the emotional barrier between man and beast would weaken and sometimes Naruto would be tempted to howl his adoration of the moon to the skies. But Naruto liked the moonlight as well. Ever since he was a small child, he had taken solace in the great celestial body that ruled the night sky.
When he was younger, it was the only thing that had watched over him at night, laid its cold and gentle light over him like a blanket while he sat on a swing in the playground and cried for love lost.
But now…now he could face the moon without crying. He knew what it meant to be loved now.
He still liked to talk to the moon, though. It was like an old friend, someone that would listen to him, just listen, and never laugh at him, never give him unwanted advice, never criticize him in the harshest possible manner just when he'd thought he'd done something right—
Naruto suddenly wanted to scream. He did not want his train of thought to run in that direction, any direction that reminded him of a certain ASSHOLE who only lived to screw him over and mock him to boot.
But how could he avoid that if he was looking at the moon? A memory only three nights old began to play out in his mind…the last night of the full moon…
Sasuke carefully folded his bedroll and looked around at the seven people camped in the shadowed crevice of several large boulders. Six merchants and one jounin, all accounted for and sleeping well. One of the merchants smacked his lips and rolled over, drooling contentedly.
The black-haired shinobi turned away and vaulted up to the top of the rock formation, where Naruto was keeping watch. Sasuke's eyes narrowed. Instead of constantly scanning the area below, or meditating to sense foreign chakra, Naruto was staring into the sky.
"Are you sleeping with your eyes open?" Sasuke asked quietly, but sternly. Without answering or shifting his gaze, Naruto lifted a hand and made a very rude finger gesture.
Sasuke snorted and flopped down next to the other ninja, who was wrapped in a blanket to ward off the chill of the night. "Your shift's over," he said curtly. "Go get some sleep."
"I'm not sleepy." Naruto swiveled his head to look at Sasuke, blue eyes glowing as if some of the moon's radiance had been absorbed into them. "I can stay here all night."
"That's not going to impress anyone." Sasuke said dismissively. "You don't get more points for doing extra guard duty."
Such a comment would normally receive a classic Naruto scream of denial, but not this time. "I'm just not sleepy." Naruto turned away again. "You can do guard duty if you want, I'm just gonna stay up here."
"Suit yourself."
They stayed that way for a long time, Naruto staring at the moon, Sasuke scanning the territory around them.
"What's so interesting about the moon, anyway?" Sasuke asked suddenly. Naruto stirred slightly, then turned to look at him, a big smile on his face. "I like it. I've always liked it." He turned back to regard the great white sphere. "It's always there for me."
Sasuke lifted his own eyes up to the heavens for a moment, then let his gaze drop. Trust Naruto to attach sentimentality to something as distant as the moon itself. "It's cold," he said softly.
"Huh?" Naruto turned to him again, lifting an eyebrow, then began to pull the blanket away from his shoulders. "Here…you can have thi—"
"Not that, idiot." Sasuke closed his eyes, as if annoyed. "I mean the moon…it's cold."
Naruto knew that his former teammate was not very good with words, but this was still too sparse for him to understand. "Huh?" he said again.
Sasuke was quiet for a moment. Then he began to speak softly, but rapidly. Naruto did not interrupt, as moments like these were rare for the Uchiha.
"The moon's light…" Sasuke faltered, then seeing that Naruto was actually going to listen, went on. "It's a generous light, and it's beautiful, but it doesn't have any warmth to it. Not like the sunlight. Sunlight warms you, not only physically, but deep in your soul, it makes you feel stronger and happier, it somehow fills the emptiness inside you. Moonlight is gentle, but so cold. It makes me……makes a person feel naked somehow," he amended at the end.
He waited for the pealing laughter that would follow, that would grate on his ears and further freeze the feelings that lurked deep inside him, those feelings that no one bothered to understand. But the laughter did not come.
"D'ya know…" Naruto was looking at the moon again. "D'ya know…I know what you mean, but that's not how I feel at all. I've always felt that the moon watched over me…like when I was a kid…a really silent but…uh…." He struggled for the word. "Uh…er…someone who's always there, what's that word again?"
"Omnipresent?"
"Yeah, that one! An ommi-present protector!" Naruto said triumphantly. "And then sun…the sun is always obnoxious about itself and how powerful it thinks it is, with its heat and light. You can't talk to the sun like you would the moon, it wouldn't understand."
"Talk to the sun?" A ghost of a smile was playing about Sasuke's lips.
"Yeah!" Naruto's eyes crinkled up into slits, not to hide anything, but instead to make way for his enormous smile. "I talk to the moon all the time. Seriously, it listens, and it doesn't say jack to you. It's great."
Sasuke laughed. It was rare to hear the Uchiha laugh, and Naruto beamed along with pleasure. And after the laughter died, there was only a contented silence and the moonlight's gentle glow.
Naruto was beginning to feel very sleepy, and he gave a great jaw-cracking yawn. Sasuke didn't seem to notice. The golden-haired shinobi began to snuggle down into his blanket and let the comforting falling sensation of sleep overtake him.
"You remind me of the sun."
Naruto's eyes opened slowly and focused on the young man beside him, who was not looking at him. It was as if he'd spoken to himself. Naruto smiled a sleepy smile.
"You remind me of the moon," he said.
And the last thing he remembered before falling asleep was that Sasuke had turned to him, and he had beheld something like fear in the deep black eyes.
"And then after that, he just started being an absolute ASSHOLE about EVERYTHING that I did." Naruto glared at the silver-tipped grass below him. "I mean, like, yeah, I made a few mistakes, but they were little ones! He didn't have to go and fail me AGAIN! It's not like I dropped a kid in the river like I did last time!" He huffed and crossed his arms.
The moon made no comment.
"I don't know what his problem is." Naruto tried to wither the grass with the ferocity of his scowl, but for some reason, the scowl was melting away, to be replaced by a rather sad bewilderment.
"I don't understand him at all," he admitted quietly.
"Understand who?"
Naruto fell off the tree stump he'd been sitting on and jumped back up with a yelp. "I..Iruka-sensei!" he yelled accusingly he beheld the jounin's torso and head hanging out of a nearby tree. "You scared the shit out of me!"
Iruka laughed and dropped neatly to the ground. "Thinking hard?" he asked pleasantly. "You're at a level where you should be able to sense me coming, you know. Well, then again, you were never really good at multi-tasking."
Naruto muttered sullenly, knowing Iruka was right. The older man smiled. Though Naruto was now nineteen years old, he had not lost most of the traits of his youth, one being sulking.
"Speaking of tasks, I bet you haven't made anything at home, huh?"
Naruto jumped guiltily. Iruka laughed and came forward to pat him on the shoulder. "It's ok, you had a lot on your mind today." He turned his head towards the village. "I just got out, and we're both tired…let's eat out. I bet the cafeteria's still open—"
The words he was about to utter lodged in his throat. Naruto had leaned forward to rest his head on Iruka's shoulder. They stood silently for a few moments, Iruka's hand frozen on Naruto's shoulder and Naruto just resting, trying to empty out the tangled web of feelings and events from his head.
"Can we please have ramen?" Naruto asked quietly.
Iruka swallowed and resisted the urge to hug the young man. "Sure."
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Thanks for reading, please review!
