"This has got to be the good life...what is there to complain about?"
Summary of the chapter:
"I'd say keep your eyes peeled for any cool phantom on the market." He keeps on, impish hubris laced to his tone as he points to himself with a nod of the head. "But you've got the single piece right here in front of ya."
. . .
The world lies in glass shards, disintegrated beneath his feet, sullied in blood.
Lifeblood he won't ever get back.
He worked for so long to get here, he worked so hard. He put in his aspirations, his dreams, his hope, every last drop he could give, and now—and now to have that completely shattered by something so devastating—
"You need to rest, kid." The voice of a stranger, washed over in lukewarm kindness, barely reaches him. "Get out of here, get some sleep. Come back once you feel better."
He gives a minute shake of the head, stiffened muscles howling in protest. The antiseptic burns inside his nostrils, in the back of his throat, it makes him want to double over himself and heave out all the sweltering acid corroding his stomach, sweltering acid rippling through his veins.
"...please." His rasped whisper is nothing if not a broken plea. But he doesn't even know why he keeps pleading anymore. "...please..." He can't offer anything else; he has nothing left.
Against the crumpled wall, he is crumpled in on himself. Curled up by the cracked tiles on the floor, heart shattered, and the world—his world—is lying in glass shards, disintegrated beneath his feet.
He knows nothing but loss.
.
.
.
Naruto wakes up crying.
Tear tracks mark his temples in frigid trails as he tries to regain sense of himself enough to breathe, to understand, or to try, at least. And only then, through his benumbed senses, does he take notice of how much he is surprisingly struggling to take in air.
He heaves himself up, uncaring of his pillow and sheet already in a heap on the floor. His skin is cold and clammy, goosebumps break out over his arms and legs, shivers race down his back, he feels nauseous. He tries to piece it together, to grasp it, to—
When was even the last time he woke up crying?
It's been so long, so long. He grits his teeth.
How pathetic.
His dreams are shapeless, the memories lacking substance, but not meaning. And their weight sits like a weapon lodged inside his ribcage, threatening to have him cave in on himself.
He presses the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, fighting against the salt-wet proof he finds there. Until his breathing is almost back to regular again. Until the shaking begins to recede. Until the sharp sense of dread isn't as acute anymore. Until he can make out the candid, achromatic gloom of darkness amid all the million little splotches of blazing light taking up his vision.
The headache is drilling into his skull, throbbing with each step he takes, as if trying to strike a rhythm and match it. His eyes are swollen puff, the pearly white sclera threaded crimson and barely hiding underneath the skin of his eyelids, and he thinks he has blinked more in this couple of hours than he has in an entire year, probably. This is what he gets for crying, he guesses.
As a diversion from this aversion he has taken to frivolously dawdling around the street market. Eyes shiftless as they settle from one stall to the other, to the window shops nearby. There isn't a throng of people out yet, and he easily moves between the stalls. The lively atmosphere isn't particularly grating here, surprisingly so, where traders have their wares displayed, where shopkeepers almost bust a lung with how loud they shout out offers to attract customers, and where customers shout back trying to bargain for the lowest price they can.
It's all white noise, a background hum buzzing snugly in his eardrums. Until...
"Looking for something to buy?"
The blithe question comes from behind him and he turns to find Sasuke sporting one jaunty half of a grin. Naruto thanks whatever deity is up there for having him materialize out of thin air now, and not as soon as he came into the land of the conscious that morning, thankfully missing evidence of his weakness as it streamed down his face.
"I'd say keep your eyes peeled for any cool phantom on the market." He keeps on, impish hubris laced to his tone as he points to himself with a nod of the head. "But you've got the single piece right here in front of ya."
It's almost instantaneous the way Sasuke's presence has the edge setting in, and how that edge is lifted off by his presence; the paradox a mystery all on its own.
"Wait, you mean to tell me there's been a cool spirit hanging around here all this time and I didn't know about it?" Naruto pretends to throw a look around in search of the phantomatic spectre in question, much to his guest's chagrin.
Sasuke clicks his tongue, deadpan expression overtaking his face funnily quick. "Oi, oi, what's that supposed to mean."
Naruto raises an eyebrow in the mock of a challenge, with a bit of a grin himself. "Maybe you need to up your game?"
"A few days ago I cut a tree open in front of you just by thinking about it. Not only am I on the cooler side of cool, my game is through the roof, kid."
Naruto's features morph lightning quick into a deadpan this time around. "Don't call me 'kid.'"
"Moxy." Sasuke says with a fuller grin in his strange—'yeah I'm complimenting you but also making you feel like I'm getting the last laugh out of it cause I might find this side of you endearing and don't want to admit it out loud'—tone.
Or so Naruto is starting to think. And in all response he raises his eyes skyward in the imitation of an eyeroll.
But, well, he's not wrong about his 'game' at all, reminding him of the astonishing discovery that is only a few days old, of the—oh, Sasuke is apparently capable of telekinesis all of a sudden. Naruto has been meaning to ask more about it, too. But this is the innocent, childlike-wonder side of curiosity he hasn't felt in a while now, making him feel a bit giddy, and good.
Unfortunately, he is cut off rather abruptly by one of the shop owners directing their attention, and loud voice, towards him.
...And suddenly he remembers why he avoids crowded spots like the plague. Crap.
News of 'the savior' catches on like wildfire among people, setting off a chained reaction. And what starts as a hush turns into talking, and the talking is quickly turning into screams. He almost doesn't notice how he is being manhandled at the double, yanked inside one of the shops he had just been looking the windows of minutes prior.
Naruto can barely make out plausible sentences through the racket, shouted offers at him, cut off exclamations of "–have anything you'd like!", and the man who grabbed him is staring at him with a smile a little too wide, round glasses shining almost ominously, showing too many teeth, bubbling friendliness that perhaps conceals an ulterior motive.
He remembers this man. He met him only once, around ten years ago.
The recognition has needles raining over his skin, and he takes a tiny step back, the fine hairs at his nape rise in apprehension. His senses are blaring.
"No, I–" His voice rises, too. "It's okay, really–I–need to g–" But the noise is growing and his polite attempts at refusal keep going unheard.
It's all so disorienting—a mesh of voices and colors and noise, everything is pushing together, thinning and expanding. It's all happening too quickly, too fast, he doesn't understand most of it, doesn't understand any of it. He starts thinking it must be another nightmare, if not for the people shoving at him and tugging him in whichever direction. The uncomfortable is quickly shifting into something uglier. To the point where even someone clasping him on the shoulder sends shudders down his spine, he swears his skin is blistering underneath his clothes. But his invasion of privacy serves no concern to the patrons, who are filling the shop to the point of suffocation.
Naruto tries to back away, fake little smile plastered at the corner of his lips and no one seems to see through it. But no one ever does anyway, he shouldn't be expecting anyone to after this long. He brings the back of his hand up to his clammy forehead in an unconscious gesture that's meant to be soothing, wiping at the beads of icy sweat he ends up finding there.
A weight is being placed on his shoulders next, through to his arms, and before he can get a protest out he finds himself staring from an adjacent mirror at the cloak draped on him, a buoyant color to it, he manages to catch the writing at the base.
Engraved in bold letters curving at the end, is a simple word holding such a convoluted meaning inside it:
'Hero'
His fight-or-flight kicks in with violent roar, his dormant senses wake, scream, scream at him to get the fuck out of here!
Amid the cacophony, a piercing thud echoes, breaking up the mayhem into a loud silence. A steel rack on the far end of the shop has just toppled over, folderol spread beneath it, the anchor bolts fixing it to the wall cut in half and still attached to it.
Naruto seizes the chance, and with speed that borders on unhuman weaves away from the crowd and out out out of there.
Wherever his feet are carrying him is currently outside his perceptive field, but what he knows is he needs to put distance, as much he can, get as far as he can before he stops.
And he doesn't come to a halt until the safe shadow of a lone building comes into view, offering shelter behind.
His knees shake, almost buckle under him, so he crouches down, barely able to hold his own mass without an external support.
He tries to breathe.
It's not like he has ever had any issue with attention, he even used to crave it—before, he did.
But now the attention feels asphyxiating, and he doubts he can deal with it for much longer. And even if he could, he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to put up with it anymore.
Sasuke steps in front of him, soundlessly crouches down until they are meeting eye to eye and waits— waits for him, waits with him.
"You..." It's like being struck down as he pieces the bits together. "Did you just–"
"You seemed like you needed a diversion." Sasuke shrugs, his answer offhanded. "I provided."
Sasuke being apparently willing to help him out of a tight spot should be more astounding, it deserves a reaction far more shocking than he's showing, but his mind is stuck drawing a loop around the last minute, and around the sixteen years he has lived through.
The thoughts are coming in, fast-paced, jumbled, detached, as if they happened to someone else and happened to him solely all at once.
He remembers that man. He remembers being kicked to the curb when he had wandered in his shop just because the colorful display had caught his eye. He remembers himself as a child, sporting bruises on his already marred cheeks, being hauled over the coals for something he had no knowledge of. He remembers it as if it happened only yesterday. The episode had been seared into his memory then, more fodder to feed his nightmares with.
Holding a child accountable for a tragedy that doesn't even belong to them in its entirety.
What a shameful—what a shameful fucking thing to do.
Sometimes, sometimes he wonders about it, sometimes he does. He wonders how these people get by, how they manage to stare back at their reflection in the candor of daylight, how they fall into a peaceful slumber in the dead of the night.
The stranger who had scared him into tears when he was defenseless now looks at him like he carries gold in both hands. And maybe he disregards the incident entirely, or maybe doesn't even recall it anymore. And wouldn't it be that much worse if this were the case?
"Everyone who hated you is now impressed with you. Isn't that exciting, isn't it what you wanted?" It might even be an attempt at provocation—if it wasn't for Sasuke's cautious, cautious tone, interlaced with a nick of despondency, with a hint of acerbity.
"No!"
Naruto finds himself blundering before he can put a lid on the overflowing ire.
It's rising and stirring, messing with his head even more. Heaving, hands in his hair, he's pulling, pulling. But something underneath the anger threatens to billow out and ruin him, and he's willing to admit to himself that it hurts.
He always wanted to be acknowledged, for everyone around him to recognize that he was more than simply willing to work hard for what he dreamed to accomplish. And with that hopeful, self-absorbed yearning children have, he wanted more than anything else a pat on the back, and he wanted warm words, and he wanted a proud smile for all the effort he put in. For all the endless hours. For the physical pain it brought him. For the blood, the sweat, the tears he spent. But not like this. Not like this.
"...S–So what–" His inhales-exhales have turned into an irregular pattern, surging out of him in the same way what he wants to say is leaking out. "I'm–I'm just supposed to–"
"Forget about all the shit they put you through because they suddenly decided to turn the other cheek, put you on a pedestal and bask in your presence now that you've saved their sorry asses?" Sasuke keeps going for him, holding his gaze, this time the smallest of opinionated smirks lifting the chariness in his expression.
Naruto is struggling to get his words out, but finds himself wanting to nod along to every single one coming out of Sasuke's mouth even if he feels wrong about it. "...You...you can't just..." Wasted anger, sheathed fury, and it hurts—it hurts. "...treat someone like–like dirt for years and then...t–then it's over–then expect it to be over. Just like that." He gasps, shakes his head, breath coming in ragged and shorter, shorter. "...It...it doesn't–" He can barely get the hiss out, can barely think, barely feel now, and still feels like his lungs are shrinking up inside of him and his supply of oxygen is running out and—all this anger burns. "–it doesn't work like that!"
"No." Sasuke whispers, eyes and tone a bit softer, a juxtaposition to his own. "It doesn't."
What manages to catch him off guard the most might be Sasuke agreeing with him, or the threads of sorrow he glimpses beneath his eyes, as if he could care about these fractured parts of his self and life as much as Naruto does.
Sasuke moves his hand, a flick of the wrist that is just for show, and the fabric tears, the cloth falling from his shoulders. And with the weight of it off, Naruto breathes, his lungs expand again.
He takes in air and watches the cloak flaunting this broken title somebody else put on him lying on the ground, crumpled by his feet.
"Naruto." Sasuke begins, quietly so, after the suspended stillness of a couple of dissonant moments.
It takes another few erratic heartbeats for Naruto to avert his swollen, half-lidded eyes, to raise his head enough to look at him. Both crouched, a few feet across them, eye level and standing on the same level, on the same principle, somehow.
"There are people in this life that don't deserve your forgiveness, that never will."
Sasuke says, low and resilient, says this importantly.
"And it's entirely up to you if in the end you decide to grant it to them. No one else can make this choice for you. And no one else has the right to."
The after effect is immediate, stunning him into wide-eyed silence. This is breaching another subject, a conundrum that runs deeper, that stems farther, so much farther than this. But they don't leap over that gap, not today.
As Sasuke keeps talking, he strings along words in a way that makes sense to him, in a way that doesn't make him feel selfish for harboring resentment and having it amass over the span of all these years, in a way that doesn't push the sorrow back into the cut open wound. And he talks him down from this gnarly precipice of ailing-fueled-dormant rage.
And in between the words and their meaning, he wonders if it would have been easier, if Sasuke had known about his pitiful childhood in its pathetic entirety all the way back then, if Sasuke had known about the monstrous entirety of what was sealed into him, and the hate that dictated his life and shaped his ambition since they first met.
He wonders if Sasuke had been there with him through the lowest of the lows he has ever been in, through the worse of the worst he has ever been through, if he knew that underneath all these scarred tissues his wounds are still clotting over with a fresh wave of blood...what would have happened then?
And Naruto knows then—he came to the realization a night ago, but the certainty to it sweeps in now—that even when his betrayal burned through fragile layers of skin like nothing else ever had before, even if it still does now, even if he is being stretched hollow in between holding in faults and tossing out blame; he never truly stopped thinking about Sasuke and that first, unsteady step they took as part of a team. As part of something so much bigger than they could ever be. And everything that came next.
He hasn't stopped thinking about it since he first found him sitting on his bed with that thin, arrogant-glazed expression he brandishes like a mask, and with the small, playful smirk of his aimed his way.
And for the first time, admitting it to himself doesn't hurt quite as much.
