Notes: Taking time to say thanks once more. All your reviews are very encouraging. :D I know the stories are getting a bit...odd, and this is no exception. I promised fluffiness, and all I've been delivering is angst lately. Sorry. I promise, after this really, really weird short, I'll go back to the fluff. Enjoy. Oh, and was giving me a bit of problems, so this is formatted kind of weirdly. But Naruto is the one thinking to himself first, and after that, it's all stuff in Sasuke's head. Any questions, just ask.
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"Sasuke?" It was on the fourth call of his name that the black-haired jounin turned his eyes from the window. His companion flinched inwardly at the dull, vacant look in his eyes--like he was no longer here, present, part of this world and this time. He was back in the past again, and with a deep feeling of fear, the blond realized that he could lose his friend to the darkness.
"Mm?" came the half-hearted reply, but he was already staring back out the window, tuning the other man out. Naruto didn't know whether to feel upset or sad.
"Are you…okay?"
A slight nod was his only response.
"Um…Sakura invited us over for dinner tonight…"
Sasuke didn't look around again.
"At seven."
No response.
"It's six thirty now."
Nothing.
Naruto sighed and ran a hand back through his hair. What the hell am I supposed to do when he's like this? What do I say? Nothing came to mind, no great idea came to save him from the awkwardness, and his long-time friend continued to ignore him.
-
I never asked what happened the day you came home. I found you sitting on my doorstep, bleeding and bruised and broken, but alive and you can't imagine how happy I was that you were back. I just welcomed you home with open arms and waited for you to tell me on your own time, when you felt it was the right time. And I still want that. But what I don't want is you wasting away in that corner of the apartment, never saying a word, never truly looking me in the eyes, never really there at all. Like you never really came back. Every day I wake up, I think that finding you on the stoop was a dream and that you aren't here after all, and then I see you in this corner and I'm relieved, but only a little.
How can I be relieved when you're dying in front of my eyes?
-
He called his old friend and told her another time. She sounded disappointed, but the tone of her voice told him she understood: 'He's still the same, isn't he?' He dropped the phone receiver back in its cradle and glanced out of the main room, down the hall, into the bedroom where he saw Sasuke's form still slouched in the chair by the window, one hand laying across his stomach, the other hanging down at his side, fingers relaxed. Briefly, Naruto wondered if Sasuke were uncomfortable in that position, but he knew he wasn't. He slept in that chair, ate (if you called it that) sitting there, eyes hazy and far-off. Naruto couldn't sleep in the room with him anymore, he had moved to his couch. It just unnerved him too much.
"Sasuke…" he walked back to the room and stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at the back of the other man's dark head. He swallowed hard. "Sakura says hi." Just as before, he didn't get a response. "She says we're welcome over whenever we'd like to drop by…" And suddenly, he couldn't take it anymore. Naruto strode across the bedroom and dropped to a crouch beside Sasuke's chair. "Come on, snap out of it! It's been months already! How long are you gonna stay like this? Sasuke!"
Sasuke's lips twitched and his lips parted and Naruto stared up at him wide-eyed, waiting for a voice he hadn't heard in almost nine years. He pulled in a soft whistling breath, shifted slightly in his chair, his dangling hand bumping Naruto's knee lightly, and continued to stare out the window. Naruto's balance gave way and he crashed to his hands and knees beside his teammate, reaching out blindly and finding his pale, lax fingers.
"SASUKE! COME ON, DAMMIT! SASUKE!" Naruto wailed, hot tears stinging his eyes. "WAKE THE HELL UP! WAKE UP! SASUKE!"
-
I've been wandering for months, I think. I don't know, I lost track of the time. Days and nights melted into each other, but somehow, I found my way back to my past. I live in my house with my parents and my brother, and there's no such thing as a Sharingan blood-line limit, Orochimaru, or Team Seven for that matter. They're just distant and faded memories that I had to pass through in order to get here, where I was my happiest.
At least, that's what I first thought.
There's something that's been bothering me for some time now. Aside from my family, there's a voice that occasionally calls out to me. It's loud and annoying and somehow bright, I can't explain how, but it is. I think it's a person from back then, the nightmare place, and I know I don't want to go back there because it's full of things that will make me hurt and cry and feel alone.
And I know what it is to feel alone. I never want that again.
Still… That voice sounds like it's in pain, and it wrenches my heart every time I hear it. No one else does--I've asked--just me. Sometimes I wonder who it is, and I feel myself starting to pull back into that dark nightmare place, and I push it as far away as I can. I don't want that! I don't want that pain, that sadness. I've had it all my life, and I don't want it anymore! Stop calling me! Stop trying to make me go back! I like it here! My mother smiles at me, my father praises me, my brother has time to play with me; let me have the things I lost! Let me be! Let me keep these things alive! I don't care if I die on the outside; I want this!
I…want this…
I…
-
Naruto gasped and looked up at his hand clutching at Sasuke's. His fingernails dug into the skin, making small crescent blood-markings. And Sasuke's fingers were doing the same to his own hand. Naruto felt the pain, but it didn't register. The only thing that he knew was that Sasuke was responding…
"Sasuke…" he sobbed, pulling their clenched hands to his forehead and pressing his brow against the other man's wrist. "Come back! For real, this time! Come back home, Sasuke!"
-
The first thing I lose is my mother's soft, smiling face. I start crying. She fades into nothingness as my father's encouraging words follow her out of existence. My brother's face lingers, shifting from a soft, caring smile to a cold and blood-stained scowl reflected in the blade of a katana. Chilling laugher swirls the face out of my mind and I'm cold. My skin prickles, feels slimy. Snake skin. No! No, I said I didn't want to! I didn't want this! I don't want to go back there, to him! I don't want--!
"Sasuke…" That voice again. And when I hear it, a piercing orange light floods my mind and cuts through the laugher and the darkness and falls on me, warming my body, peeling the scales away from my flesh. It's coming from another part of me; my heart. It throbs with power--it knows I'm listening. "Come back home, Sasuke!"
How…do I get there? I don't think I know the right way. I got lost once before… My heart pulses, the light extends. It moves away from me, drawing a line through the nightmare world, to a door that looks like it's been shut for quite some time. Years. And the voice is coming from behind that door: "Come home… Come home…"
I start walking over to it, and the closer I get, the brighter it becomes. As I reach for the handle, I hear a click. Someone's unlocked it from the other side.
-
"Naruto…?"
He snapped his head all the way up, pulling a tendon in his neck sharply. He didn't care. The black eyes were still looking out the window, but they were here.
"Sasuke?"
A blink. Then, his head tilted down to stare at their clenched and bleeding hands. Slowly, his black eyes rose to Naruto's blue ones.
"How long…have I been go--"
Naruto threw his arms around Sasuke's neck and hugged him fiercely, cutting off any other words he had wanted to speak.
"Welcome back, Sasuke!" he murmured into the long pale neck. "Welcome home…"
-
You mean…this was the person behind the door?
-
"…usuratonkachi." Sasuke hugged him back. "I went through hell to get here."