Disclaimer. NarutoKishimoto MasashiYes.
Risen from the grave! I know it's been a long time. I would make some excuses, but they'd all fall pretty flat. Let's just leave it at 'one thing after another'.
At any rate, ever since the return of Sasuke (Naruto ch. 300, woo!) I've felt that I need to get back on this. I've laid my bets on what I think is going to happen in the manga, and I'm very much anticipating Sasuke and Naruto meeting again (fight fight!), hopefully with Sai present to drag away Naruto's bloody corpse (muahahaha...to bad it won't happen. Though I'm kidding, really. Really).
This chapter might be a bit confusing: Italics are flashback, regular is present.
Vengeance
How many times had they fought already? Sasuke felt like it had been every day of his life. Their present actions were merely replays of what they'd already done a dozen times before.
"Sasuke!" Naruto struggled to suppress the Kyuubi in his headlong rush. Sasuke smirked and countered, tightened knucles impacting the other boy flat on his nose. The crunch of bone and a choke from his opponent told him what he wanted to know.
This would not be a fight. This would be a slaughter.
While Naruto reeled from the impact, Sasuke grabbed his arm and threw him to the ground in a swift circular movement, pinning him on his stomach with his arm behind his back. Sasuke knelt on his back, fisting his hair and slamming his face into the ground, once, twice, three times. Naruto's free arm flailed in vain.
"You're pathetic," Sasuke hissed. "I thought you would at least present a challenge, but it seems as if the years have only seen you grow weak."
Naruto went limp as Sasuke raised an arm to strike Naruto's shoulder blade with a flat palm, aiming to dislocate it. Sasuke could taste the victory already.
A quick movement in the corner of his eye. What? Sasuke was thrown backwards, tumbling out of contro, grinding through the dirt on his shoulder's skin to a skidding stop. Naruto was pushing himself off the ground, left hand bent upward in a claw; half of the seal for the Serpent.
"One-handed seals?" Sasuke slid to his feet. "Perhaps you will provide some entertainment after all."
"Entertainment!" Naruto growled. "Is that all this is?"
"Yes." Sasuke stared straight at Naruto, settling into a an open-palmed crouch. "You present no threat to me as I am now. I told you already, this is different than the last time."
"This is different than the last time." Sasuke's palms slapped together, fingers linking and shifting too fast for the eye too see.
"You're wrong." Naruto cut through the flames that had encircled him in rings and feinted to the side. "There's you. There's me. It's been the same every time."
"That's the problem with you, Naruto," Sasuke's hands clicked into a final seal and the rings of flame surrounding Naruto grew into blazing columns. "You can't accept it when you're wrong."
"You can't accept it when you're wrong. You have this crazy idea that you're going to defeat me and drag me back to Konoha with you."
Naruto's bared teeth told Sasuke that he was right. "You're a fool. Orochimaru offers me more than those pathetic fools in Konoha ever could. Peace is only a breeding ground for weakness."
"Are you saying that the time you spent with us meant nothing?" Naruto grouwled, eyes narrowing.
"The memories I have of that time are emptiness and wasted space. I no longer know anyone named Naruto."
With an animal roar the Kyuubi that Naruto had struggled to restrain began breaking its bonds. Sasuke smirked. He had been right; the Hokage-clone had instructed Naruto to not use the power of the Kyuubi. If Naruto would not use the fox-demon, then it would use him. "Sasuke!"
"Your cries annoy me." Sasuke's eyes widened and shot through Naruto, the triad of tomoe weaving through Naruto's head in patterns that felt familiar and yet totally unrecognisable.
In an instant that was eternity thoughts and uncertainties that Naruto could barely remember having clawed their way to the front of his brain, throbbing with the intensity of a screaming child. In that moment he gripped himself, desperately trying to confirm his existence. He fell to his knees and crawled towards Sasuke, needing to know that he was there. In that moment, he knew despair.
Sasuke, who had been braced for impact, was trouwn off his feet again when the suffocating wave of chakra hit him, surrounding him and beating upon him with a red-hot burning that went far beyond human.
Forcing his eyes open against the storm, he saw Naruto in the centre of a bubbling cloud of steam. Far away he thought he heard cries, people yelling to each other, to Naruto. Sasuke could only watch as skin was ripping itself in bloody strips from Naruto's arms and face and exploding into bubbles of burning chakra. An immense, malignant face loomed over him, the demonic chakra pressing him down and down until he felt he would pass out. Naruto's screams were barely audible over the rising roar as the fox sprouted one tail after another. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
Sasuke didn't see anything else after that.
xxxxx
When Naruto woke up, he was swathed in bandages, strapped to a bed in a barred chamber. The last thing he remembered was Sasuke's words.
"I no longer know anyone named Naruto."
He would have felt angry if he had had the strength. He lay there and waited for someone to realize that he was awake.
The first person to enter was Yamato, Sakura second.
"What's happened to Sasuke?" The first words out of Naruto's mouth.
Yamato was silent. Sakura also said nothing.
Naruto wouldn't accept their silence. "Tell me what happened! Where's Sasuke!"
Still they said nothing. Naruto was as suffocated by the silence as if it had been the immense chakra of a demon. What would have been screaming cries of agony emerged from his ravaged throat as only weak and pitiful sobs. Through the tears in his eyes he saw the claw marks that slashed the inside of the bars in his cell, the deep gouges in the floor, and the blood stains that covered the thrice-repainted seals that covered the room floor-to-ceiling.
"Tell me what happened."
Naruto was met with the deafening silence.
"For two years I thought I'd killed you." Naruto's barrier dispelled Sasuke's flame. "I truly believed I was a monster. I wanted to die."
Sasuke unflurled twin chains of curving blades, jerking and rattling, a deadly toy. "Spare me your life story."
"When I found out you were alive, I was furious. Why was I the last to know! I know you better than anyone!"
Wrists flicked and steel snakes licked droplets of blood off Naruto's cheek, bit a slice of flesh off an arm that moved a fraction too slow.
"What am I to you!" Naruto dropped to the ground, placing his palms on the earth. The ground cracked and shattered underneath them as pieces flew into the air, smacking violently against his cheek and flinging him sideways, sending them both down to skid through the dirtslide into the bottom of the muddy trickle that was a branch of a subterrain creek. A dozen muddy hands rose from the sludge to grasp Sasuke, pinning him into filth that absorbed him as he struggled. "Haven't I told you that you're the closest person to me?"
The right words were on the tip of his tongue. As Itachi, these were the words he would have said. "Naruto... You..." He trailed off. "You mean..."
The ring on his left hand burned into his flesh, the reminder of a promise left unfufilled. Sasuke branded the words into his mouth with his tongue, imprinting them there as a memento that must not be forgotten.
"You mean nothing to me."
Naruto coughed, holding himself upright with strength born of desperation. "I'll believe that when you say it without crying."
Sasuke's face was so numb that he couldn't feel the tears that webbed his cheeks.
xxxxx
The thing Sasuke pulled earlier was supposed to be the same thing he did to Sai. Which was Orochimaru Knows What, really. I also hope the 'chakra is so overwhelming that it's suffocating' thing isn't too obviously lifted from Bleach. :P