Author's Note:. Hey hey, how's it going? Another chapter here, but I sort of rushed it in the prospect of getting up another chapter before Christmas break ends. So if it sucks... I dunno. Then it sucks.
Summary:. There's something amiss in Konoha, and Naruto is determined to find out what's going on even if it means dealing with a less-than-sane Sasuke.
Pairings:. SasuNaru/NaruSasu/SaNa/NaSa/WhoCares
Warnings:. Swearing, shounen-ai/yaoi (later), het, randomness, possibly adult situations, and some very slow updating, to say the least.
Disclaimer:. I don't own Naruto. Wow, what a surprise.
Opening the door without a hint of hurry, he was soon face to face with blue eyes, tanned skin, and blonde hair.
"Naruto," he stated plainly, without conviction, annoyance, or really anything.
Naruto greeted the boy politely with a small grin. "Sasuke. It's been a while."
Locked Crimsons
Unit Two: Identification
"I'd just about given up. Did I wake you?" Naruto asked as a cup of hot tea was placed before him. He drank in the delicious scent and felt the warmth in his hands spread from his fingers and palms to his wrists through his skin and practically his blood all the way up to his elbows and eventually his shoulders. It was even colder outside now than it had been in the afternoon, and he was thankful that Sasuke had let him in. At the back of his mind, there was so much more he wanted to talk about than his party and he didn't want to converse on the doorstep all night.
The Uchiha sat himself down on the opposite side of the table, nursing his own cup of warm liquid. "No, not really."
He didn't particularly want Naruto to know that he had trouble sleeping, though it occurred to him that he must've had some suspicion to visit at all, considering it washe glanced at a nearby clockclose to 11 o'clock. "So, what are you doing here?"
"Oh, well, I wanted to talk to you... about something..s..." Naruto mumbled, casting his eyes toward his tea uncertainly.
Maybe it would be better to get it over with quickly, just come right out into the conversation. He probably doesn't want me here long, anyway.
Looking up at the dark-eyed shinobi with at least a minor amount of resolve in his countenance, Naruto began. "I was thinking earlier, about you. Are we still rivals, Sasuke?" The chuunin paused, waiting for an answer. All he was rewarded by, however, was a blank stare from the other boy, so he took it as incentive to continue. "I mean, I want to train and fight with you and stuff, like the way we used to, but..." He paused again, trying vainly to think of the right words to use. He took a sip of tea, hoping it would lead him to a conclusion amongst the mass of surging thoughts in his head, but alas, he came to nothing.
Sasuke took another sip of his tea, as well, thinking about Naruto's question. Were they still rivals? To be honest, he hadn't thought about it very much since he'd come back. His mind had been constantly plagued by haunting memories, blind ambitions, and thoughts of hopeless futures.
"Agh!" Naruto suddenly yelled, throwing his hands up in anguish. "Why is it that the second I get to talk to this bastard I can't put into words what I want to say!" he mumbled tersely to himself. Bringing his flushed face up to look at the other boy, he was surprised to see him still staring right through him.
And why isn't he saying anything? I just called him a bastard, even if it was kind of an accident! This stuff used to set both of us off like rockets when we were younger!
"Something wrong, Sasuke? I mean, other than the usual?" Naruto knew it was fairly ordinary for the guy to be quiet, but he'd never seen him so unfeeling. It was almost like he was... soulless.
"Hn..." was the only response the blond was greeted with.
Sasuke himself barely heard the questions anymore. The words seemed to enter his ears but go right out the other side. Like how an anesthetic works: one feels the pain, just doesn't care. His thoughts were flitty, never really sticking to anything. He tried to focus on Naruto, but found that he couldn't, like there was no substance for him to cling to. He felt no energy, as if he were numb. He felt empty.
Naruto, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly irritated with the raven-haired shinobi on the other side of the table. He'd been sitting there staring into the distance for over 2 minutes, not speaking or listening or anything, really. At first, he figured Sasuke was just gathering up his words, getting ready to explain something. After a while of silence, however, when the boy still hadn't made a sound, he reasoned that maybe the Uchiha just didn't want to talk about it. So, attempting to maintain his patience, which, though improved greatly by Jiraiya's training, was still very thin, he tried to open a different topic.
"Um... okay," he started again, fishing for and pulling out the invitation to his Christmas party and holding it out, "Anyway, the reason I came over here was to give this to you. It's an invitation... I thought maybe if you had nothing else to do, you might want to come to a Christmas party."
Sasuke made no move to accept the invite. He could've just been a stone statue and Naruto wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. In fact, he was beginning to expect a pigeon to suddenly swoop down and land on the stiff boy's head. Unfortunately for the comically inclined boy, though, no such thing happened.
Naruto set the envelope onto the table between them, but still, there was no reaction.
"Sasuke?" Nothing.
Naruto's patience wearing thin, he tried waving his hand in front of the boy's face to get a reaction. Nothing.
He rose partially from the table and made his way to the other side, putting his hands to Sasuke's shoulders and shaking lightly. Nothing.
"Sasuke! Hey, Earth to Sasuke, come in!" He started shaking harder, getting beyond worried for his former best friend. He tried to find his eyes, but found only clouded over orbs of black, without any sort of recognition present in them. Those weren't Sasuke's eyes. About at the end of his rope, Naruto raised a fist and struck out, achieving a clean hit to the other boy's cheek and sending said boy a short way in the direction of the hit.
Registering the pain and the jolt, Sasuke was suddenly jerked back into reality. Not that he was upset, really; in fact, he was quite grateful. If Naruto could do that for him, drag him out of that abysmal despair...
Remembrances of when his rival would bring him away from thoughts of his family, of being an avenger, of everything but his energy and the insults and the punches and the life of a Konoha genin filled his mind, along with perhaps the slight prickling of hope that Naruto could bring him out of this, as well. He must be able to.
He was being shaken again, still quite violently. "Naruto..."
His back was thrust against the floor and his shoulders were grasped by tanned palms, giving him a perfect view right into the blonde's face. Naruto was gritting his teeth slightly, stretching the whisker-like scars on his cheeks. His brow was contorted with worry, and his eyes were filled with both frustration and concern.
He's concerned for me? After all this time and everything that's happened? What an idiot... But the thought made him smile inwardly, and he found himself glad that Naruto's emotions were still present on his face as much as they were when they were younger. He didn't hide them or feel insecure. It was because he was the strongest that he was able to stay that way.
"What the hell is wrong with you, Uchiha?" Naruto practically yelled.
Uchiha...? And then, suddenly, something snapped, and Sasuke felt himself black out.
"Don't call me that..." came a thin whisper.
"Huh?" Naruto let his grip on Sasuke's shoulders loosen. He'd thought he heard the older boy say something, but couldn't discern what it was. Hopefully, the bastard was coming out of his stupor and would tell him what was going on. He wished for a moment that he could see into Sasuke's eyes for clarity - though slightly afraid that the blank, amnesic look he'd been receiving would still be there - but they were closed now. So he took in the rest of the dark-haired boy's expression:
Overall, he looked... angry.
"Don't you ever call me that!" Sasuke growled, the only warning Naruto was given before a great deal of pain lodged itself in his stomach and he was thrown off. Their positions were suddenly switched, the larger boy pinning the smaller to the floor.
Sasuke's knee... well that would explain the pain... but why the crazy mood swing all of the sudden? Sasuke must be PMSing or something... Not wanting to actually hurt the boy whom he hoped was still at least his rival, he allowed himself to stay down, at least until his captor explained himself. "What do you mean, 'don't call me that'? It's your name, idiot!"
The pair of onyx eyes above him narrowed dangerously. "Naruto," Sasuke stated, still growling, but with a faint hint of... surprise? "What are you doing here?"
If he weren't currently pinned to the floor by an apparently very pissed Uchiha, Naruto would have sweatdropped at the obvious ridiculousness of that question. "What the... ?" He mumbled in vague disbelief before yelling in reply, "You let me in yourself!"
"Why would I have let you in? You're not wanted here." Sasuke's hands pressed more firmly into Naruto's shoulders, causing a fair amount of pain, but nothing the blonde couldn't handle.
"Not wanted?" Naruto spat disbelievingly. Those words hurt far more than Sasuke's hands on his shoulders. In fact, they stung. "Well you could've just said that before you offered tea, bastard!" Could Sasuke have... forgotten? There was something very wrong with this situation...
"I never did any of that! How the hell did you get in? And what do you want?" The Uchiha's voice held a twinge of panic, which confused the heck out of the blue-eyed chuunin. They had been sitting peacefully across from each other one minute, and Sasuke started spacing out the next. And then suddenly, this?
In any case, Naruto's irritation level was rapidly rising. "Do you have amnesia or something? You're not making any sense, Uchiha!"
"Don't call me that!" The blond's shoulders were heaved up and thrown back down, with a lot more force than he cared to acknowledge, even as his head came heavily in contact with the floor beneath. "You're the one not making any sense!"
"Uchiha is your name! Uchiha Sasuke!" Naruto boldly defied the throb of his head that accompanied the yell, as well as the boy above him. He glared honestly and angrily into Sasuke's rage-filled eyes, which were miraculously still without the crimson of the Sharingan.
The panic in the pale boy's voice now escalated into a quality that seemed somewhere between suppressed fury and desperation, his entire frame starting to tremble. "You're wrong! You're always wrong! You idiot, can't you see? I stopped being an Uchiha a long time ago!"
At first, the smaller boy was offended at the obvious insult within the other's previous set of words, but after a long moment, the rest of Sasuke's short tirade began to stick a meaning inside his brain. Before letting himself become even angrier and subjecting both himself and his former best friend to the possible consequences, however, he allowed himself to make use of a calming chakra exercise that Jiraiya had taught him during the first year of their training together.
Breathe in...
Naruto slowly, fluently brought most of his chakra to his upper chest, holding it in place for a few moments before exhaling, closing his eyes as he focused on relaxing.
Breathe out...
After shifting flow from his chest to his legs and feet for a second or two and then letting it redisperse itself throughout his body, he opened his now composed, clear blue eyes and stared much more calmly up to the still-shaking Sasuke.
"You can never stop being who you are, Sasuke, believe me. Don't you think it's occurred to me to try?"
Naruto watched with solemn satisfaction as the Uchiha's quivering abruptly subsided, the pitch-black eyes widening for a brief instant before returning to the normal and surprisingly refreshing 'apathetic disdain' that the blond was familiar with. The pressure on his back and legs slowly dissipated as Sasuke rose, freeing him from his position on the floor. Getting himself up, he watched as the dark-haired boy turned back to face the table, away from him.
"Leave, Uzumaki," came the cold command.
Knowing he'd outstayed his welcome (if there ever was one, considering some of his gracious host's words), Naruto wisely obeyed. As he reached the hall closet, where he remembered seeing Sasuke hang the coat he came with, he wondered what sort of farewell the situation warranted.
Was this the end of their lopsided friendship and rivalry?
Would they never see each other again?
Or... were they enemies now, destined to fight?
Naruto smirked to himself. Nope, there was no way that boy was getting let off the hook that easily. They would definitely meet up again in the near future, whether Sasuke liked it or not. And next time, he promised himself, he'd find out what was the matter with the grouchy jerk.
Slipping his shoes onto his feet, Naruto made his way to the front door and gripped the smooth, bronze handle. "See you around, Sasuke-bastard."
The moon was a high crescent, but even so, bared enough light to mist the trees and villages over in a thin shade of bluish-gray. The air was dry and cold, the perfect, untrodden snow beyond the Valley of the End glistening atop fir trees whose tips seemed to point all in the direction of the clear heavens. Hidden deep within the otherwise silent forest, whispers wracked the night.
"Where was the target last trailed?" asked a sweet, yet slimy voice, the speaker obscured by the darkness of a cave's walls.
"We believe he still remains either around or within Konohagakure, sir."
"Excellent," the pleased tone with which the simple word was spoken seemed to make the entire forest shudder in fear. "Now is the time to make our move."
"Yes, sir." Following the distinct rustle of clothing that signified a low bow, footsteps began, traveling toward the innermost workings of the cave until only a faint echo could be heard. One figure, however, still stood at the mouth of the cave, barely shrouded from the ever-rising moon.
"You can run, Uchiha, but you can't hide."
tbc!
(edited 1x)
