The door's metal was cold beneath her fingertips and she paused for a second, a fraction of a second, before turning the key and opening the latch with a soft click, as softly as she could.

Something was wrong this time- she could just tell.

The entire apartment was quiet, but that was fine considering the time of night she had deemed to enter it. The lights were off and the darkness expansive and despite this, with the accuracy of the shinobi she was, she locked the door behind her and perfectly manoeuvred around the furniture so that she could place her belongings on the kitchen island.

Nothing was out of the ordinary so far, according to all of her senses, but something in her chest told her otherwise.

Years of being one of the strongest ninjas in the entire world had taught her to trust this feeling more often than not, and so with it, she carefully navigated towards the main bedroom maintaining the same silence as before, ignoring that it was her own home and therefore should be just as safe as she left it.

She opened the door even more carefully than the one before it, making sure to make the operation seamless and soundless. It was an easy feat, considering her practice, but the person behind the door was perhaps the only individual who could match her prowess and as such made a fair target for infiltration, despite his apparent dumbness and reckless tendencies.

She knew better. Naruto was not nearly as dumb as he let on and as reckless as he seemed. Everything was calculated, especially when you were powerful enough to lower mountains with your pinky, and waking even the most prepared shinobi was not something you did without precaution.

The lights were off, so he was still asleep, and with the wood creaking shut behind her she heard the soft hum of his breath against the darkness of the bed.

When her eyes spun red, it seemed apparent what she had felt was wrong. His face was scrunched up, as if in pain, and his fists were clenched tightly by his sides, already having ripped the mattress where his powerful fingers had torn through the soft material.

He was not making a sound, however, and she understood that this made him that much more dangerous. Shinobi often had nightmares, such was the nature of their work, but people dealt with their daily scourges in different ways and it seemed Naruto was like a ticking timebomb.

She stepped forward, quickly but quietly, and hesitated before moving her only good arm to stroke across his tightened face muscles slowly, watching extremely carefully with her eyes still bled red as his eyes suddenly snapped open and the blue cerulean irises latched onto her.

For a moment, so brief, she saw the pale seriousness that shone in them, the promise of death and destruction and complete control that was demonstrated to his enemies, and her chest caught when it was once again directed at her, after so long.

But it was gone, as fast as it had come, and instead his eyes showed only a confusion before they seeped into a slow calming, and they darted from her face to his surroundings.

"Sasuke…?" he questioned, quietly and slowly, and she only then noticed the rise and fall of his chest and how fast his heart must be thrumming.

And with the slight curiosity and disbelief that shone in his eyes once he had judged his surroundings were safe, and had focused back onto her, she knew that he was not fully convinced that he was out of his nightmare and in the present world.

She gave him that. It had been months since she had last been back in Konoha and so he was forgiven to mistake that she was not truly here- to seek further evidence that what he was seeing was not merely an illusion of his mind.

Lest she would never admit it, she had made the same mistake before whilst camping in the alcoves of trees and shivering through cold-bitten nightmares.

"I'm here…" she began slowly, and noticed how he watched her mouth move like a hawk. She told herself it was to make sure that she was real, and he was merely checking that she was still not an illusion. - you're alright. You were having a nightmare when I arrived, and you're awake now."

He seemed to think for a few more seconds, still attempting to control the rhythm of his heart at a normal rate, before he sighed and looked back to her eyes- still seeped red- and a small smile played on his features.

"Dreams don't reason themselves." he said.

"Is that an admission that you dream about me?"

"In your dreams, Sasuke. It wasn't me that snuck into your room whilst you were unconscious and having a nightmare."

She blinked, hesitating. Now that she looked at it that way, it did look quite bad. She had snuck into his house in the dead of night and woke him with a cold, soothing touch.

-but as she looked back at him, she caught the smile rising slowly into a more familiar grin, and she found that she did not have the energy to defend herself or her dignity from this minute slight.

"Are you alright?" she asked, because despite their close proximity and quiet peacefulness, his chest was still rising slightly and she caught the edges of his eyes still scanning his surroundings, as if he expected something to jump out at them, as if the nightmare was still real.

She knew that they both had enough experience in the ninja world to have come up with a way to deal with these nightly events. They had both committed so much tragedy, seen so much tragedy, that they would not have been able to continue otherwise. She did not know how he coped, and it was not her place too, but she knew that there was definitely a method to it.

He was breaking now, she realised, because he still thought that this was a nightmare and he was still on edge.

Unless there was something else she was not realising?

His smile dropped slightly, and he took a few more seconds to appropriate his senses and calm himself- no matter how many times he had done so previously- before sighing and looking away, not meeting her eyes.

"I just… haven't been getting much sleep recently, and when I do… you saw what happens."

It was resigned and tired. Unlike anything the old Naruto had been like. She appreciated that he trusted her enough to drop any facades, any masks- but to not see the sly cheek of his smile and the humour behind it, and instead someone as tired as this, did things to her stomach that she did not want to think about.

"I'm sorry for waking you."

"Don't be daft, you did me a favour. I prefer being awake than sleeping with nightmares. Besides… we shouldn't be depressing ourselves any further." he said, mood slowly swinging with his words, and by the time he was done he had the same small smile from before, the genuine one that he hid from everyone else apart from her, something apart from his giant grinning facade that despite being so much smaller, was so much more precious.

And despite her own facade and dignity, she did not refute his embrace when his arms reached out to engulf her roughly, squaring their bodies together in which she hid her face over his shoulder, letting him hold her just as much as he wanted.

His presence, the distinct smell and very aura that he permeated… it was the only thing that Sasuke coveted as something to be protected aside from an ideological ideal.

"I missed you." he breathed, and she forgave him for using her hair as a curtain for his face, digging his chinbone as far as he could.

"I…" she began, but could not finish- because she really missed him too, and she wanted him to know that. Wanted him to know that he was truly the only reason she had returned in the first place, to know that if it weren't for him living in Konoha, she would have never returned there ever again. She knew it would hurt him, for her to hold no regards to something he held so dear, but she was a selfish creature and she only protected Konoha because in doing so it protected him.

But with him how he was now, so tired and so obviously relieved to see her, she wondered if she needed to hide her disregard for Konoha anymore-

But that was besides the point, because she did miss him this much, but she was scared of what would happen if she said it out loud.

Because Sasuke Uchiha had to remain the perfect emotionless killer, and to hold a weakness as big as an affection like this was to be broken during a battle. She did not have friends. She did not have a family. She did not have anything closer to her- apart from him and that was why she was so scared to show him the true her, the fragile her, the one that didn't have the time to act as an emotionless facade and display nothing on their face.

Because as much as that had become a part of her identity, and her personality, there was so much more complexity to her emotions than just soft grunting and a stoic mask. She had urges, as well. She had human emotion, much more of it than normal according to what Uchiha were supposed to feel, she had just never let anyone see it and quite frankly- she had never had the time to indulge in it.

There had been other important subject matters to attend to that she did not place any value on feeling and connections to tether her down, which was exactly why Naruto was the only person she placed significant value in, not that she wanted to expand that repertoire any longer.

Because having just Naruto was absolutely fine. In fact, whilst she did not mind facading as acquaintances for any others, she did not care at all if Naruto were to remain the only person who understood her in this lifetime at all, for the rest of its entirety.

But she was not used to this, and she did not know how to convey what she wanted to show without selling her honour and dignity.

"You don't have to say anything." he whispered again, and she felt the warm air hit her neck and her body went rigid.

Of course. He knew her well enough to guess her thought process.

She did not let the action take her that simply, however, because she knew how much it meant for him to acknowledge that and let her deal with things at her own pace, and because of that, she sank into his embrace even more so, exhaling deeply as her head was lowered into his shoulder.

She didn't know how long they stuck together, but it was long enough to fall gently back onto the pillows of his bed, and she found that the warmth of his body was enough to not care that she was not under the covers and still in her travelling clothes. The moment was too precious and she did not want to move, she did not want it to end, because his very presence was enough to reassure her of most of her worries and woes.

And she knew her presence did the same for him.

And so when she was sure that he was asleep again, the change in his breaths from his chest the sign, she made herself more comfortable and sighed once more against his shoulder before sliding downwards into the bed, using him comfortably as a pillow.

And only then, when she made sure the dead of night would claim anything that might hear what she said, did she whisper how she missed him too and how grateful she was for his patient understanding, his unspoken words and perfect responses.

Because he truly did know everything about her, and knew how to make her as comfortable as possible. She only hoped that she would learn how to reciprocate as well as he did, and how to progress from where they were, but she was content nonetheless because his arms were still around her and he was no longer having nightmares.

If that were the extent of how she could help for now, she would indulge in only doing that, but she wanted to do more. She wanted to change, just for him, so that he could be as comfortable as she felt, because she had noticed the wariness of his eyes and the tiredness of his gaze, because she knew his thoughts almost as well as he knew hers. He was tired, ageing despite the fact they were still in their prime, and she knew that there were methods to stop it. He helped her so much, almost like a drug, that she had to learn how to help him as much, and whilst he would probably praise how she was already doing enough by just being there, she wanted more.

Sasuke had belonged to a family, once before, and she had never been able to give anything to them in time before they had died- she had always been on the receiving end of advice and comfort even as she had killed her own brother.

She would never make mistakes like those again. She had promised herself years ago, now, and whilst that had held true it also meant that she needed to learn how to do the opposite and comfort her family just as much as they comforted her.

Even if that family only consisted of one man.

If he was this tired, this defeated, she could likely accurately estimate the reason. She would make it better for him.

She promised both him and herself that, repeatedly, as his arms tightened around her smaller frame and she felt the warm rise of his chest beneath her cheek. It had been long since she had slept well as well, after all, and the protection that his arms offered was a solace that no one else was afforded and one she would willingly sell her dignity to keep.