A/N: Fucking hell, this chapter is so long. Longest I've written for this story, and also darker because, well. Sasuke. Not in a good place, now or ever TBH.
Things are happening here, folks. Shit is getting set into motion that will cause some pretty spectacular explosions in the near future. Because nothing involving Team 7 can ever be easy or, you know, any kind of sane. Just FYI that this chapter contains some invasive-type things done against Sasuke's wishes-if that is at all problematic for you just let me know and I will do my best to post a brief summary somewhere else so that you don't have to see the details. Please keep your own safety as first priority!
So much gratitude and love, as always, for those of you that continue to stick with this story. I received so many amazing notes, particularly for the last chapter, of understanding and respect in regards to my glacier-like updating speed. That means more to me than you will ever know, and please believe that I have many of your kind words literally taped up around my house so that I may cuddle up to your amazing encouragement when things get rough. I'm going to do my best to start answering some reviews, because you all deserve cookies and magic and love but words are the best I can give.
I do not own Naruto, and am making zero money off of this story.
Chapter Ten:
Blast Radius
Sasuke
Sasuke knew how to have a conversation.
Despite twelve-year-old Naruto's repeated insistence that Sasuke was actually a robot built to be good at ninja-stuff and terrible at people (and 'probably programmed by another Kage to infiltrate the Leaf and steal our women, Granny Tsunade, just think about it'), Sasuke had been raised by a clan steeped in tradition and ritual. Words were just as much a weapon for a clan-family as ninja tactics, and by the age of four, Sasuke had mastered using speech to spin pretty traps, to siphon information, to buy friendship.
Sasuke knew how to have a conversation. The fact that he rarely bothered anymore didn't mean that he thought anything was getting said, with so many different voices shouting inside the room.
"What," Tsunade was demanding, as she stared at the ninja standing on the rug inside her office. "Just-really, what the fuck, Naruto?"
"Mah," Naruto shot back. "What the hell's your problem, old lady?"
"Is he serious?" Kiba asked Sakura. He'd been inside the Tower for a debrief when Naruto had kicked the door in (literally, literally kicked it in).
"Why are you still here?" Sakura asked him back.
From his lazy slouch against the office wall, Shikamaru picked at his ear and wondered in Kakashi's general direction, "How'd you get all the crazy ones, huh?"
"It's a gift!" Kakashi proclaimed happily in a voice that actually meant 'I will cut off your fucking ponytail while you sleep'.
Tsunade thundered, "Don't you take that tone with me, you brat, you've got a goddamn rouge ninja standing on my carpet!"
"Whatever, I am the best present-giver, it's like you DON'T EVEN APPRECIATE MY EFFORT, OLD LADY."
All of the words inside the room-around him, about him-broke against Sasuke's skin like waves on rock, and rolled away. He was stone. Smooth, impenetrable, and only peripherally aware of Naruto writhing his outrage in Tsunade's general direction.
He was here-back inside the Leaf Village where he might have belonged once but absolutely didn't anymore. The familiar little streets they'd slipped through, the scent of wet earth and growing things, needled at Sasuke's skin, itchy and unwanted. Inside his mind, Sasuke pictured a snake trying to squeeze its way back inside a skin it had already shed.
And suffocating in the process.
"It's just a door, Sasuke," Naruto had said, because Sasuke hadn't meant to balk at the Village gates. To lock his knees and ground his heels like a child protesting bedtime. But his chakra was locked up tight and untouchable and he'd needed to do something to show how much he didn't want this.
"Some aren't meant to be walked through."
Naruto's face had scrunched. "I…okay? Like, if they're locked? Locked doors can't be walked through, sure. But Sasuke-that's what keys are for! To open shit up and bam. Walking happens. Easy, so easy."
Sakura had slapped both hands over her face and made garbled noises into her palms. That stupid fucking Sai had blinked at Naruto, long and slow, like he couldn't quite believe he was real. And Kakashi had grinned big with his eyes and congratulated Sasuke on his 'optimistic belief that Naruto possessed enough depth to understand things like metaphors'.
"I have depth-I am a fucking magic ninja ocean Kakashi-sensei, shut the hell up," Naruto had argued, and Sasuke had held very still and refused to let the memories overwhelm him. Of being smaller and snarky and warmer somehow, standing at these same gates as Naruto bitched and Kakashi smiled and Sakura fluttered between them, and feeling like coming home as he walked between them instead of forced.
"Fuck it," Tsunade decided, back in the present, and then came the sounds of a violently opened drawer and glass bottles clicking together.
Ah. The 'Naruto Survival Stash'. She'd expanded it to an entire drawer-full since Sasuke had left the Village.
"You disobeyed orders," Tsunade continued, bottle clenched tightly in her white-knuckled fist. "You disobeyed orders and went off-mission without approval. All to retrieve a missing-nin who is not actually slotted for retrieval because he is on the kill list, Naruto-meaning you are supposed to kill him on sight, not wrap him up like a birthday present and put him in the Hokage's office."
"Well, yeah," Naruto said, rocking back and forth on his heels. "I know that Sasuke's on the kill list, Granny-that's why I had to go after him. How was I supposed to bring him home if some other ninja killed him first?"
Tsunade threw the bottle in her hand at Naruto's head.
"She's going to kill him," Kiba was whispering, as Naruto ducked and glass shattered on the wall behind him. "Just-actually going to murder him, wow."
"Kiba, I will punch you in the face," Sakura said.
"So nice, having all the children back together," Kakashi beamed, and Shikamaru muttered, "You all need fucking treatment," at the ceiling.
Stone-Sasuke was stone. Unmoved and unbroken, and what did stone care about words anyway? Safe inside his rock-like casing (a jagged and broken thing once, with cracks big enough for the idiot to wiggle through, but smoother now and so much more dangerous after his time with Orochimaru) Sasuke thought of keys instead. Keys and the locks they opened.
"Why are you like this," Tsunade mourned in Naruto's general direction. "He has made so many bad decisions. He put his hand through your chest, Naruto-you know better than anyone how bad his decisions are."
"Meh. The only kinds of decisions Sasuke knows how to make are bad ones-you get used to it, so used to it Granny. That's why having a Sakura is so important!"
The sounds coming out of Tsunade's mouth shifted from mystified honking to murderous growls.
"This is such a beautiful disaster," Kiba whispered almost worshipfully, and Sasuke could feel the weight of his eyes burning the back of his neck.
"Your entire face Kiba," Sakura said.
"If they order his execution, will they ask you to do it?" Shikamaru asked Kakashi, and couldn't be bothered to flinch as Kakashi flooded the room with killing intent, despite the fact that his happy eye-smile never wavered.
"That's it-everybody out!" Tsunade roared. The others made immediately for the door, following orders even though the sideways look Shikamaru slid in Sasuke's direction promised that the entire Rookie Nine would know about his return approximately seven seconds after Shikamaru left the tower. But Naruto just stood, cheeks puffed mutinously in Tsunade's direction. She surged to her feet in response, desk rattling ominously, and stomped around to seize Naruto by the back of his jacket.
Naruto yowled and twisted like a scruffed kitten, yodeling a whole bunch of embarrassing nonsense, never mind the fact that Sasuke didn't need his chakra reawakened to know that Naruto had enough power to wipe out the entire tower if he felt so inclined.
But then, raw power had never been Naruto's problem. So many, many other things were.
"If you kill him I will PISS IN ALL OF YOUR BOOZE BOTTLES!" Naruto bellowed as Sakura filed out into the hallway after him and pinned him against the wall with a long-suffering sigh. "ALL OF THEM, GRANNY!"
"OH MY GOD!" Tsunade bellowed back, and then slammed the door in Naruto's face.
Keys and locks. As Tsunade returned to her desk and settled behind it, Sasuke thought of keys and locks, not dangerous at all except when they were. Some doors were meant to stay closed, to keep secrets back and darkness out. Some doors knew that things would be better if they were left to rust and rot and strain against the weight of the bad things they were holding back. Those doors probably resented the keys that could open them, those little bits of metal that believed so arrogantly in their right to twist inside and rip them open.
People could be keys, Sasuke mused, and thought that Naruto's hair always had been shinier than most metals.
"Fuck." Tsunade rooted through her desk drawer, glass clinking. "Fuck," she repeated wetly, around her chosen bottle. "Okay, kid. I need you to give me something."
Sasuke blinked at her.
Thought of stone. Keys and locks and doors made of impenetrable rock.
"Anything," Tsunade elaborated. "You-let's be clear. You walked away. You walked away when your team needed you most, and you never looked back. Teams are-they're a body, a pile of limbs and blood and bones working together and you ripped yourself away and left your team bleeding out behind you." The memory of Orochimaru was there in her voice, shaking it loose and jumbled. Sasuke wondered vaguely if she even saw him when she looked at him, or if the perception of too-pale skin and cut-glass smiles was too strong. "You did all of that, and it's not okay, and I do not regret putting your name on the kill list. Alright?" Her fingers started picking at the label on the bottle, peeling and peeling the paper away. "But…well. You've had a rough go of it, kid, no one can deny that. It's not an excuse, and I'm sure as shit not going to let you off the hook for it. But I'll listen. I will listen, if you have something to say."
Sasuke felt his head tip ever so slightly to one side.
"The Council will be here soon, Sai went to report as soon as your team hit the tower. Give me something I can use, something I can tell them, because Naruto will just never let me hear the end of it if that kill order is given." Tsunade sighed against the mouth of her bottle. "He will follow me forever and try to annoy me into righteousness until I punch his face in, and then Sakura will be sad. That will be my life. So, give me something, and we can avoid that all together, okay?"
Sasuke wasn't even bothering to blink anymore. He could tell by the lines between Tsunade's eyebrows that it unsettled her.
"Kid…Sasuke. Sasuke, please."
Sasuke sucked in a tiny breath, just enough to inflate his lungs, and asked, "Did Itachi know? When Danzo ordered him to kill our entire clan, did Itachi know that our mother was pregnant? Did the elder know, and send him to do it anyway?"
Every drop of blood drained from Tsunade's face, leaving it white and waxy in the absence.
Sasuke didn't care. Couldn't care. The genjutsu-created echo of Misami had faded with the disruption of his chakra flow but the memory of her still remained behind Sasuke's stone casing. Tucked carefully away and remembered as a warmth around his heart and the phantom brush of tiny fingertips against Sasuke's forehead.
Sasuke was already mourning the loss of one sibling (by his own hand and Sasuke's stone casing was so important, it was everything right now, because he was ripped raw underneath). He'd never, ever been prepared to do it twice, to feel that weight of grief doubled.
And so, Sasuke knew how to have a conversation. Because once, it had been the hallmark of his clan. But they were gone. They were gone, and Sasuke was more than content to let this silence stretch and echo with the weight of other voices that were no longer there to fill it.
#######
"I am going to eat his fucking head."
"Naruto, you cannot say shit like that in front of the village elders."
"But Sakura, he is staring at me, look at his stupid, smarmy face-his entire head, I swear I will do this thing."
"Shut up, shut the hell up, you literally cart-wheeled into the room and demanded that no one hurt your sad panda best friend. That is why they are staring, Naruto, stop giving them reasons."
Sasuke ignored the hissing whispers drifting not-at-all quietly from the corner of the Council room. Ignored Sai, standing slightly to the left of Danzo's chair and looking blankly sick to be there. Ignored everything, really, because behind his blank exterior, his vision was tunneling.
Danzo.
Danzo was there, sitting inside the room. So arrogant. So sure. Wearing the birthright of Sasuke's clan beneath his skin like he had a right to it, even though it had never belonged to him, should never have belonged to him.
And so Sasuke ignored everything and also kept very still, because the rage boiling and burning and scraping away skin inside his throat and stomach felt stronger than the chakra they'd locked away.
"Why are they here, Tsunade?" Danzo demanded, waving his good arm in the general direction of Team Seven.
"Oh, you know me," Kakashi answered breezily before Tsunade could open her mouth. "I always end up in places I don't belong. Irresponsible and all that, it's a flaw." Flanking Kakashi on either side, Sakura and Naruto stilled. Which made sense, because Kakashi only ever sounded so sweet when things were about to shit-storm. "But I do wonder why you're here, Elder Danzo? As such a responsible and respectable ninja yourself who is also no longer a part of the Council."
"Yeah, yeah, kick his ass Kakashi-Sensei," Naruto chanted under his breath, blue eyes narrowed into slits, and then yelped when Sakura kicked at his leg hard enough to dent it.
Danzo's face went purple, and a tiny quiet spot underneath Sasuke's rock and rage gave a happy hum.
"Enough," Tsunade barked, before Danzo could launch the insult obviously building on his tongue or Naruto could make everything worse just by opening his mouth. "Team Seven is here by my invitation, Danzo. This is their teammate, and they were the ones to bring him in, and so the issue concerns them twice as much. Naruto, people are staring because you are the loudest little shit. Knock it off."
Naruto offered several deeply offended bleating noises in Tsunade's direction before falling reluctantly quiet.
"What we need to do," Tsunade continued, "Is to decide together how to proceed, now that this situation has arrived."
"I rather think that's obvious," Danzo returned stiffly. "The boy is a traitor. He's actively worked against Leaf Village interests for years."
The boy. Danzo wouldn't even give him his name, wouldn't even honor the clan that he'd slaughtered by speaking of them, he would take that from Sasuke, too. Take his family and his brother and even his identity now-
Fingers-Kakashi's fingers-curled down tight on Sasuke's shoulder. Sasuke didn't want them, didn't need them, but that had never actually stopped Kakashi in the past.
"Kill orders are typically given with the expectation that they will be followed through with," Danzo finished. "I'm not sure why that would be different now."
"You—," Naruto blurted furiously. "You-!"
"Naruto," Tsunade snapped, and there was zero give in her voice. To the council, she said, "That may be, Danzo. But I think we can all agree that there are circumstances surrounding this situation might require a different kind of consideration."
The woman on Danzo's right, council member Utatane, wrinkled the thin and fragile skin of her forehead. "I dislike the idea of special treatment, Tsunade. Sasuke Uchiha's actions have been deserving of punishment since he left the Village. It sets a dangerous precedent should we choose to ignore that."
Tsunade shook her head. She was so different here, strong and sure, than she had been back in her office. "Deserving of punishment, absolutely. That can't be argued, Councilwoman Utatane. But not a kill order."
"Ridiculous," Danzo snapped. Out of the corner of his eye, Sasuke caught Naruto curling his hands into fists to hide the claws that were popping from the tips of his fingers. "The boy defected to join our most dangerous enemy. He spent years working with the man who killed the Third Hokage." Danzo's tipped his head in the air, offering Tsunade a disgusted look. "Of all people, you shouldn't need to be reminded of the harm Orochimaru has caused, Tsunade."
Tsunade's spine went stiff and straight, like Danzo had hit her with a whip instead of words. An enraged snarling sound came drifting from Naruto's direction, only to be strangled into silence by the elbow a stone-faced Sakura planted into his gut.
"No, I don't need to be reminded," Tsunade said, the words fragile and sharp like broken glass against her tongue. "But I am not asking for a laundry list of the wrong-doings of another man." She was still so careful, skirting around Orochimaru's name, and Sasuke wondered blankly if she ever said it even to herself. "I am asking you to approach the current situation with more than just the most recent years in mind."
"That wouldn't change my opinion, wouldn't change the truth of what needs to be done and what you have always been to gentle to do-,"
But the graying man on Danzo's left, Councilman Mitokado, was cutting across Danzo's words with a thoughtful hum. "While there should never be a good reason for defection, Sasuke Uchiha did not leave the Village in order to act against its interests. His primary motivation has always been stopping the man who murdered his family."
"Also an enemy of the Leaf," Danzo snapped, and Sasuke's vision snapped blindingly white with rage.
There were two hands on his shoulders now-Kakashi pinning him to his seat as Sasuke shook and shook from a place so deep and furious that it burned cold instead of hot. The flames of it licked at his insides, organs and tissue and muscles turning to ash and leaving a cracked and blackened shell behind.
Sorry, Sasuke. This is the end.
The end. And Itachi had never had a beginning, not really.
No-calm. Cool. Stone could withstand fire.
But. How dare he-how dare he.
"Don't," Sasuke heard Naruto shout, over the buzzing whine filling his ears. "Don't, you can't-,"
"Naruto!"
"Don't talk about Sasuke's brother!" Naruto roared, over Tsunade's warning. "He's-you don't get to talk about him."
"What-," Councilwoman Utatane began, halfway between offended and confused, and then Sakura's quiet voice somehow cut across everyone in the room.
"He's dead. Itachi Uchiha is dead."
The words were a different kind of rock that wrapped around Sasuke's neck and dragged him down, squeezing all the air from his lungs.
Naruto was gaping at Sakura, and that fucking Sai was blinking at her from across the room, and Sasuke couldn't see much right now, but the green of Sakura's eyes was somehow perfectly clear and sharp like shattered glass.
"Sasuke killed him," she added, and oh. Of course, she'd-she'd known the words would hurt but she'd used them anyway, because suddenly Utatane was looking thoughtful instead of condemning and Mitokado was nodding.
It was calculating. Clever. Almost cold in its practicality.
It was something Sasuke might have done himself, and had he ever known her really?
"An enemy of the Leaf," Tsunade was saying softly. Running with Sakura's cue in spite of the stab of it, and weren't mirror images amazing when they were separated by generations? "That Sasuke Uchiha eliminated at great personal risk and obvious stress. And now he's back inside the Village gates."
"By force," Danzo spat. His fury at being deprived of vital information was there in his voice, and although he was too dignified to glare outright at Sai, the delicate flutter of the boy's eyelashes suggested that he knew how much trouble he was in. "He wouldn't be here otherwise."
"He's still here. And that's a chance-if we give that kill order, there's no chance at all."
Sasuke didn't want a chance. He didn't want redemption from the Village that had taken everything from him.
He wanted to be stone. To fill up the burned-out hollows of his insides with solid weight until the hurt stopped. Until everything stopped.
"Let's take the vote," Tsunade said.
#######
They didn't give the kill order.
Naruto, the giant fucking moron, had leapt upwards like one of his giant fucking frogs almost before the council had finished sharing their decision.
But even through the haze he'd wrapped around himself, Sasuke noticed that Kakashi didn't move, that Sakura's eyes stayed dark and flat. They both waited and watched, eyes fixed on the lines creasing Tsunade's forehead, the torn and ragged skin around her thumbnail. Waited and watched and eventually Naruto came back to earth, frowning at his teammates and shifting uneasily from foot to foot.
They didn't give the kill order.
They decided to take Sasuke's eyes instead.
Not physically. Even Danzo wouldn't be so bold as to suggest that in a room full of Konoha's elite. But the end result was the same-Sasuke's gift, his legacy, was going to be stolen by Danzo's ambition.
"They're going to let you do it," Tsunade said, and Sasuke had the vacant thought that she looked exhausted, somehow older than both of her teammates had turned out. "I-it's not much, I know. But I thought, maybe-maybe that should be your right."
"You can't. Granny, it's-you can't."
Tsunade's eyes were ancient. "There were always going to be consequences to this, Naruto. You knew that."
"I am blonde and pretty but not actually as dumb as everyone thinks," Naruto snapped. "Yeah, I knew. But this is-you can't let them do this, not this."
"Sasuke's eyes are his biggest weapon," Sakura said softly. "It makes sense, from their point of view." Naruto shot her a furious look, and she repeated, "From their point of view."
"Amazing how the story changes depending on who's telling it," Kakashi agreed in the cheerful way that meant he was contemplating the best way to assassinate the council members.
"Granny. Granny, please-,"
Tsunade sighed, and tipped her head against the doorframe. "Get the fuck out of my tower, brat."
#######
Maybe it was supposed to be a kindness, Mitokado suggesting that they perform the ritual inside Sasuke's old house. Maybe he thought Sasuke might like to see it before they trapped him inside of it, reorient himself to the layout so that he could better adjust without his eyes.
Stupid. He shouldn't have bothered. Sasuke hadn't forgotten-could never forget. There was the kitchen, where Sasuke's mother had laughed and sliced him fresh tomatoes after catching the faces he'd made at his mid-afternoon snack. There was the library, where Sasuke's father had pulled down dusty scrolls that told the story of their clan. He'd let Sasuke touch them with careful fingers, and radiated quiet pride at the way Sasuke had lingered over the Uchiha symbol, tracing it with reverent awe.
There was the door Itachi had walked through after ANBU missions, looking pale and drawn but smiling, always smiling for Sasuke.
It was the same door he'd walked out of years later, leaving the bodies of his parents bloating the floorboards with blood and Sasuke shocked and shaking against the wall.
No. Sasuke didn't need any help remembering this house at all.
"It isn't permanent," Sakura was saying, face pale but eyes steady and firm. "It's-the seals will block the Sharingan completely, but only as long as the seals are in place."
It really was a pretty bit of jutsu. Sasuke could almost admire it from an intellectual standpoint. Kakashi had created the seals, smiling as he'd inked the designs and only stopping once to vomit in the bushes outside the house. Sakura, with her medical training, would apply the seals to Sasuke's eyes and stabilize the jutsu once Kakashi activated it.
Naruto would provide the chakra, pull the raw power from the well he possessed in order to power the seals. That was his job, and he was so very, very pissed about it.
"I am going to light the tower on fire," he announced, with an eerie amount of calm. "Use all of Granny's booze bottles as fuel and just torch the shit out of it."
"You'd feel bad about it later," Sakura said to him. Her fingers were shaking as she pressed the black ink around the hollows of Sasuke's eyes, down across his cheekbones. "The seals-they'll disrupt your chakra flow as well, Sasuke. There will be a rebound effect if you try to access it, so I wouldn't recommend that."
"My chakra is already blocked," Sasuke pointed out. He knew his voice was flat and lifeless, but he also didn't care. This house had been home to dead things for years, after all. "Why bother?"
Across the room, Kakashi gave him a happy-eyed smile even as his shoulders continued to tremble. "You figured out how to counteract Sakura's chakra-interrupting pressure points shortly after Sai arrived in the forest. You've been shaking them off a little faster every time she reapplies the technique."
"Nobody here has actually forgotten that you're a genius," Sakura said with a tiny, sickly smile. "Well. Naruto. Naruto probably forgot."
"I am the champion of beating down shiny brains with my fist," Naruto agreed, even as he hugged the wall to Sasuke's left. His hands were cupped carefully across his stomach and his eyes were just a little too wide and Sasuke registered dully that it probably made him angry all the way to his toes, being used as a power source by the people who had shunned him for being exactly that.
But not Naruto-explosion angry. The kind of angry that made him quiet because it made him afraid of his own insides.
"What would you have done?" Sasuke asked, and even he was a little bit startled by it. "If they'd given the kill order, what would you have done?"
Naruto blinked at him. Sakura's hands stuttered on Sasuke's face. "I-listen. I know I'm, like, just a little bit loud about the things that I want," Naruto said, and Kakashi snorted delicately from his corner. "Shut the fuck up, Sensei, I have reasons to be loud, you all are terrible listeners. And I'll still get those things, I know I will, because I believe that I can. But if couldn't." Naruto took a tiny breath. "If I couldn't have them all, it's-look, it's not like those bullshit pick-and-choose tests Iruka-Sensei used to give because secretly he enjoys watching students cry over his assignments. I want to be Hokage. I want you there with me, all of you. But if I couldn't…" Naruto's smile is small but still true and Sasuke marvels that it always is, somehow. "Well. What would be the point, because it would be a disaster, just a fucking mess we all know this to be true. Can you image, me as Hokage without Sakura there to actually tell me what to do? Without Kakashi there to smile the other council members into terror and shame, or without Sai there to keep the books and maybe create a special ops program that doesn't spit out crazy-eyed tragedy ninjas?"
Naruto's fingers were tight against his stomach, almost digging now. "Without you there to keep people from stabbing my face, Sasuke? Because people like to stab my face, it's a fucking mystery of the universe, and you've always been good at saving it. Not from other people but for yourself because someday? You will be the one to stab my face. I know you did not start carrying a katana by accident, Sasuke, and I have accepted this."
"I am not fixing you," Sakura said. There was laughter in her voice and wet in her eyes. "You will deserve it when he finally face-stabs you, Naruto, and I will not fix you."
"That's fine," Naruto said comfortably. "Sasuke will feel incomplete if he doesn't leave at least one visible scar on my person." Naruto stepped forward, away from the wall, because Sakura had finished painting the seals, was pulling ink-stained fingers away from Sasuke's face. Sasuke fought the urge to move, to get away, channeling the impulse into the tight curling of his fingers around the chair he was sitting on. Because where was there to go, really? "That's what I want, Bastard. All of it, not some of it. Couldn't have that if they'd given the kill order, you know?"
Kakashi made a soft humming sound. "They are nice houses by the water, on the edge of the Earth Country," he suggested idly. He was moving into place as well, and Sasuke hated that he couldn't stop his muscles from tensing. "I'm just saying. If there had been a kill order, Earth Country has nice houses."
"I could get a traveling ninja job. Hero for hire, or some shit." Naruto was still smiling, but it was a soft and kind of sad thing, because no, he couldn't. This was never an option, not for him, not really. "Sakura could be the boss of something, or everything maybe, and make lots of money. Support Kakashi-Sensei and his job as the porn-reading housewife."
"Mah, mah, why am I the housewife?"
"You are fucking terrible at people, why would we let you out in public?" Naruto's hand reached out, touched the ink on Sasuke's face. The other hand pressed against his own seal, where the well of power waited. "And Sasuke could sneak around and-I don't know, do whatever Bastard ninjas do during the day. Brood at walls, or some shit."
"Sounds nice," Sakura agreed, even as she took her spot at Sasuke's back. Her voice was thick, definitely tears now. Mourning the future that none of them could have.
It was too much. The wishes of the others and the death still lingering inside the house burning Sasuke's throat, like coffee laced with sugar, both bitter and sweet. He wanted to close his eyes but couldn't, because he wasn't going to give away these last few moments of color and shape.
"I would burn it down," he said, because it was better than the scream grinding against his vocal cords. "I would burn that fucking house down."
Naruto's smile stretched the tiniest bit. "Of course you would. But we'd rebuild it. Again and again, we'd rebuild it, because it doesn't have to be permanent, you know?" Naruto's eyes were very blue, and Kakashi's blade-thin smile was a pressed pink in the dark, and Sakura's hands on Sasuke's shoulders were mottled with tiny white scars and swirls of black ink. "A broken thing doesn't have to be broken forever. That's what fixing is for, Bastard."
Sasuke wanted to laugh. It was the weirdest impulse, and absolutely not one he was going to indulge, but the laugh was there, jittering hot and sharp in his chest. "Fuck you," he managed instead, and the last thing he saw before everything snapped dark was Naruto's eyes, the bright blue turning wet, turning liquid, and running down his cheeks.
#####
A/N: What to do, what to do, when going home is not a happy thing? Next Chapter: Kakashi's POV-All the King's horses, all the King's men, couldn't get their shit together at all, come the fuck on you guys