Chapter 9

This way to the stars
You told me where to go but please tell me how far
Tell me what should I do
If I reach the stars but get you
And what if I make it there
Will my heart still be lonely and bare
Will the darkness wrap me in tight
Our will my heart be the star that shines so bright
This way to the stars
If only I knew how far

-Sora Jr (Thank you!)


"I'm home."

The door slammed shut, and the only answer that came back was the distant echo of his voice and the pitter patter of the rain outside. Sasuke stood for a moment by the entrance of his house, listening to the last of the echo disappear into a heavy silence that seemed to haunt the house. For someone who was quiet as himself, he didn't much appreciate it.

He had forgotten to set the timer on the heating before he left for school. Again.

Sasuke let his bag slither off his shoulder and land onto the floor with a thump, catching against the puddles forming by his feet.

It was suffocating.

Spurring into movement, Sasuke turned and ran out the door, trying to block out the buzzing in his ears as memories threatened to surface again. He didn't want to remember. He would spend his whole life forgetting.

Today was a bad day—he grimaced, as he ran out in the rain; running, running until his thighs burned and his lungs protested for air. Rain had always put him in a bad mood and it was harder to keep his mind from wandering.

He leaned against a nearby pole to catch his breath, resting his forehead against his arm.

To add to his already foul mood, something was nagging him on the back of his mind, like an elusive fly that wouldn't go away.

That blond idiot was avoiding him.

Sasuke gritted his teeth—he was so obviously avoiding him. He wouldn't even look in his direction, when before, he had spent weeks sneaking glances he thought Sasuke never noticed. Not that he noticed. Whatever. The idiot was not doing it now.

But: So. Fucking. What. Right?

He didn't give a flying fuck that the dobe decided to turn a 180 and completely ignore him. At least… he shouldn't be giving any fucks.

So, then… why?

"He's shacking up with the Red Demon."

The school was abuzz with the rumors that Sabaku Gaara of the Sand was seen spending time with a blond freshman in the same class.

"Birds of a feather…"

"Didn't he get into a fight recently?"

Some of the more outrageous speculations claim that Gaara had taken up a lover.

"They were holding hands."

"Are you serious?! Gross!"

Sasuke hated to admit it but deep down, it bothered him. He had watched as the blond, normally so loud and vibrating with movement, limped into the classroom one Monday morning, head bowed and hiding behind the shadow of Sabaku Gaara. The blond was sporting new bruises and a swollen eye. The entire class fell into a scandalized hush for a whole minute. Before the first hour, the entire school was raging with speculations.

Sasuke was disquieted by the nature in which the blond had attached himself to Gaara, who had not once shown a shred of compassion for another human being. It was alarming, therefore, to catch the red-head quietly reaching out across the floor with his foot and resting it against the blond, who had tapped his shoe against his in acknowledgement.

An ugly emotion rose within him that Sasuke had been wrestling against ever since. It was juvenile and unreasonable and it didn't make any sense. But it fucking pissed him off.

Wait—

Sasuke blinked the rainwater from his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things. There was no mistaking that bright hair and god-awful jacket.

The boy was still nursing a limp, and walking without an umbrella, and Sasuke once again had to suppress a spark of irritation. What was that idiot doing wandering around in the rain like that?

Sasuke's feet automatically moved towards the other boy, and he had to stop himself mid-way. He had absolutely no business with him, and the idea of going up to make idle conversation made him nauseous. Despite that, he could not make himself turn around and move the other direction.

Resigned, he followed the other boy, falling into step behind him and contemplated his recent life choices.

The blond ended up heading to the local supermarket, and though Sasuke kept his distance, he watched him wander through the aisles, listlessly picking up eggs and milk and other groceries. No matter how you looked at it, it was too much for one person to carry.

"That idiot." Sasuke muttered, irritation bubbling up again as he watched the blond struggle with the bags.

Before he could think much about it, Sasuke grabbed an umbrella from the stands and ran after the blond.

"Oi, dobe!"

Naruto jumped, dropping one of the bags and cursing as he quickly bent to save it from the puddles on the ground. Sasuke wrestled the bag from him and shook open the umbrella.

"What are you going to do with wet groceries? Are you an idiot?"

"What are you doing here?" Naruto stared like he'd never seen him before.

"Start walking." Sasuke jerked his head to the side. "Before you cause us both pneumonia."

Naruto stepped back from the shelter of the umbrella.

"I don't need your help." Naruto tried to retrieve the bag. "For fuck's sake, give that back."

The blond made a wild grab for it. But his hands slipped under the bag's weight and caused the sides to rip open; a few apples tumbling out and rolling across the wet cement of the parking lot. For a split second, Naruto's mask broke and his face crumpled up like he was about to cry, before a world of weariness replaced it.

Sasuke wordlessly crouched down and helped him retrieve the apples. This time, when Sasuke took the bag from him, Naruto did not protest.

They walked away from the parking lot, the steady thrum of rain against the umbrella soothing the silence between them. Sasuke watched the blond from the corner of his eyes, noting the slump in his shoulders and the bruises along his neck.

His neck?

"Oi." Sasuke's eyes flashed darkly as he grabbed the boy's arm. "Who did that to you?"

"Huh?" Naruto raised confused eyes to him and Sasuke suppressed the urge to shake him.

"Your neck." Sasuke said pointedly. "If you're being beaten up, you need to report it, you dumbass."

Naruto jerked back as if he'd been slapped. His hand shot up to cover his neck and Sasuke saw the fear flash in his eyes.

"I-it's nothing." Naruto muttered. "I'm fine. I just bruise easy."

Sasuke gazed at him for a pregnant moment.

"…was it Sabaku?"

"What?" Naruto startled before scowling heavily. "No! What the fuck. Gaara isn't like that."

Naruto walked away with a huff and Sasuke followed, pressing the issue.

"What the hell do you know of what Sabaku Gaara is like?" He challenged.

"None of your business, Uchiha."

Sasuke couldn't help but thrill at the spot of color returning to the boy's cheeks.

"Thanks for your help." Naruto said stiffly, stopping along the curb leading down a residential street. "I can take it from here."

"I'll walk you home."

"No." Naruto refused bluntly. "Give me my bags."

Sasuke refused to let go of the package until Naruto finally gave up, tossing his head in disgust.

"Don't you have better things to do?" He stomped away. "Honestly!"

Sasuke recognized the street now. It was an uptown, high-society residential area not far from where he lived. He glanced at Naruto's garish orange jacket and the scruffy quality of his shoes.

"You live here?" Sasuke asked skeptically.

Naruto did not reply and kept a moody silence all the way up to the gate of an old, Victorian-style house.

"This is it." The boy mumbled. "Can I have my bags now?"

Sasuke wordlessly handed it over.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?"

Naruto gave a slightly hysterical guffaw. "In no universe will that ever happen. Goodbye, bastard."

Sasuke watched as he shuffled towards the entrance of the house. The blond hesitated by the door and turned to look back. He opened his mouth as if to say something, when the doors burst open and a girl came rushing out with a high-pitched squeal of delight.

"Sasuke-kun! It's really Sasuke-kun!"

Sasuke reeled back in shock as his senses were assaulted with pink and a wave of strong perfume. Oh. It was that girl. In the same class. The one who had hit the blond in the face and tried to frame him instead. What the hell was she doing here?

Sasuke's eyes swiveled back to the entrance of the house. The blond had disappeared.

He let out a frustrated breath and glared down at the girl who hadn't stopped talking the entire time.

"Hey, you—"

"Sakura. My name is Sakura, Sasuke-kun."

He disliked her instantly.

"What the hell are you doing here? "

She smiled sweetly at him. "This is my house! Ah, you're getting wet from the rain! Won't you come inside? I was just having some tea—"

"In no universe will that ever happen." Sasuke said before abruptly walking away, ignoring the cries of protest from the girl.

His head, which had gone blessedly silent in the moments he spent dealing with the blond, was once again swirling with violent thoughts and emotions as he contemplated the recent events.

And yet, when he entered the house and kicked his sopping shoes to the side, not once did he stop to glance at the photo hanging in the darkened area of the hall, for his head was filled with thoughts of yellow and electric blue and a particularly hideous shade of orange.


To be honest, he had been expecting it for a while now.

Naruto slammed his books shut in alarm as he heard heavy footsteps thundering up towards the attic. No one ever ventured up anymore, so it could only mean one thing. He scrambled off the bed and rushed to bolt the door with shaking hands—but it was too late, and Naruto screamed as the door flung open and he was grabbed violently by the hair and dragged into the room.

"You useless piece of trash! Useless. Worthless. Fucking. Trash."

Naruto struggled against the iron grip, hands scrabbling for purchase as each verbal abuse was punctuated with a vicious slap to the face.

"I'm sorry! I won't do it again!" Naruto cried out, blood spilling over his face.

This was bad. Sakura's father was an angry man, but when he was drunk, he turned violent.

"How dare you." He seethed, voice shaking with alcohol and rage. "How dare you make a fool out of me. Out of Sakura. Raising a hand to her? You dare?"

"I didn't!" Naruto begged. "I swear I didn't!"

"You're a filthy LIAR."

Naruto felt his vision darken as he was flung across the room and his shoulder hit the wall with a sickening crunch. Pain and fear filled his mind and he could only watch with tear-filled eyes as the large man hunkered towards him and began kicking his prone form.

Naruto tried not to cry out. It only spurred the man to kick even harder. He blocked out the string of abuse being yelled down at him and begged for his consciousness to fade.

He must have, at some point, because when he came to, he was lying on the cold floor of his room, bones aching and face sticky with tears and dried blood.

He took a moment to do what he'd always done, breathing in deep and testing out the extent of the damage. Nothing seemed broken, at least. But it hurt.

Everything hurt.

Naruto didn't move for a while, face down on the floor and watching the light flickering from the window with dull, heavy eyes. Gradually, as his heart rate slowed, he could feel himself becoming numb.

At some point, when he couldn't feel his toes from the cold, Naruto slowly sat up, bones creaking and muscles clenching in protest. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to limp towards the bathroom, where he struggled to open the tap with shaky hands.

He hadn't been beaten up this bad in ages. The last time was three years ago, after Grandpa Sarutobi had gone, and Naruto had tried to run away. He hadn't even made it outside the village when he was found by the police and returned to the Haruno's that same day. It had been the neighborhood gossip for a whole month.

He was beaten within an inch of his life and left to starve for almost the same amount of time it took for the gossip to die down. It discouraged him from running away ever again.

Naruto stared hollowly at his reflection in the mirror. He almost didn't recognize himself. The blue eyes that he had inherited from his nonexistent parents—they were dark, almost black, and Naruto frightened himself by how much they looked dead. Unbidden, his hand came swinging down and his reflection cracked with a satisfying crunch of glass. He watched the blood slowly drip from his fingers and stain the porcelain washbowl.

Emotions welled up in him like a giant wave and he was gripped by the intense desire to be anywhere else but inside the four walls suffocating him. Mind blank, he ran back out to his room and threw open the window. The main doors would be locked at this time and he would be caught sneaking out the servants' quarters. He had no other choice but to climb down from the third floor. In that instant, Naruto neither worried nor cared about the consequences. He wanted out.

He needed out.

With agonizing slowness, Naruto clambered down the balcony, reaching out to a nearby branch and practically falling onto the arms of the large cherry tree. He stifled his cries on his way down, slipping and stumbling, his hands faltering, too weak to carry his weight. And when his strength failed, he simply shut his eyes and allowed gravity to drag him to the ground, where he landed with a painful oomph.

Naruto didn't think. He staggered to his feet and blindly ran the opposite direction, all torn pants and bare feet.

He ran, and ran and ran, until he couldn't feel his lungs, but forced himself to keep going as he couldn't shake off the terror of being caught. Of being forced to go back. His body seemed to be giving up on him, though, and Naruto's breath caught as his knees gave out, and he stumbled onto gritty sand.

Sand?

The world was spinning, but Naruto could barely make out the shadow of trees and an abandoned pair of swings under the light of a faint, flickering lamp. He picked up the last of his strength and crawled towards the shelter of a dome-like structure, where children might have once-upon-a-time played hide-and-seek.

Exhausted, Naruto slumped against the dome walls, resting his swollen cheek against the cool smoothness there. His tears had started again at one point and Naruto found that he didn't have the energy to hold them back anymore. His chest ached like something heavy was pressing down and crushing him, and Naruto let out a shuddering breath, crying out in sheer, utter misery.

He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that, unmoving against the stone wall.

But suddenly, there was a crunch of sand and a voice piercing through the silence like lightning across the sky.

"You can't stay here."

Naruto slowly lifted his eyes at the speaker. He must be hallucinating.

"…Gaara?"

If this was a hallucination, it was a very good one.

Or a bad one, because the Gaara standing over him, stark against the weak light of the lamp, was not glaring hatefully at him, but looking… looking like...

"You'll freeze." The Gaara of his hallucination spoke again, and Naruto had to admire the way his mind had captured the scratchy quality of his voice.

"I don't care."

"Do you want to die?"

Naruto closed his eyes. "Who cares?"

There was no reply for a long time and Naruto wondered if the hallucination had disappeared. His eyes snapped open when he felt the sand next to him give under the solid weight of a real person.

"…Gaara?" He asked again, hesitating, because how the heck was he here?

"Sometimes," Gaara finally spoke after a long silence. "I think about dying too."

The haziness in his mind cleared a bit as Naruto sat up, regarding the red-head more fully as a not-hallucination. Gaara's words were casual, but Naruto felt the fragile truth between them, the brittleness of his control. Naruto swallowed heavily.

"…why do you think we were born?" he whispered.

Gaara turned to look at him, and they shared the silence for a while, heads bowed and knees almost touching.

"...you can't stay here." Gaara said again.

"I can't go back." Naruto felt the tightness in his throat as the words struck home. "I… I can't."

Gaara stood up, holding out a hand.

"Come."

Naruto considered the outstretched hand, feeling almost detached from his body as he contemplated the gravity of what it meant. Somehow, he understood, if he took that hand, he would have to face tomorrow with all the consequences of today. A part of him, the part that was half mindless with terror, was screaming at him to push the hand away; to never get up from the cold ground and close his eyes from the pain.

But a bigger part of him, the part that had always been desperate for a hand to reach out, was giving him the strength to lift up his arm.

All his life, he had been alone. Hated, ignored, punished for being who he was, without understanding why. Why him? What crime had he done to deserve such punishment?

Despite all that, despite constantly being hurt by other people… he was an idiot who constantly struggled to be closer, to be acknowledged by people—starved for their affection and acceptance. He was an idiot, and yet…

Naruto grasped Gaara's hand tightly, like a drowned man, but the other boy didn't even flinch. He simply tightened his own grip and helped the other boy to his feet, supporting him on one shoulder.

They walked out of the playground, slowly, their shadows moving like a grotesque figure in the night. Naruto felt the pain wracking his body with every step, and his breath came short as he fought to stay conscious.

"Gaara…"

The red-head simply gripped his arm tightly in response.

"Promise me…"

Naruto felt himself sinking into darkness. As he fought to hold on to the last of his consciousness, he caught Gaara's lips moving in response and the scattering of stars in the sky that witnessed their unspoken oath.