Disclaimer: "Naruto" © Masashi Kishimoto.
Genre: Angst
Rating: Pg 13
Pairing(s): Naruto/Sakura, Naruto/Sasuke, Team 7-ness
Summary: Hatake Kakashi was insane. But sometimes he thinks he still is.
Author's Notes: I really have no idea what the time frame for this is. Warning: no plot, no purpose, no moral. Just emptiness and shallow character exploration.
Uzumaki Naruto is going insane.
He knows life is not fair. He likes to think that Konoha has shrunk, that he stays still. That if he squints just right and angles his face towards the warmth of the sun, that everything is perfect – nothing will ever change. The sun stays constant.
He notices right from the start that Sakura is not quite right. Too fragile, but not in that paper-and-butterfly sort of way that scares him. Fragile in the smallness of her frame, the slenderness of the fingers that curl easily into the chakra-laced punches he has come to know so well, just fragile in the way she has matured so much, gotten so strong, and become much more feminine than anyone really ever expected out of an outcast among outcasts – the sexless girl strewn between the legacies of her male counterparts. But at night, when business is done and they are standing outside the debriefing room picking out crusted blood from underneath cracked fingernails and fidgeting from too many sores in all the wrong places, Naruto invites her back to his apartment: a late celebration of sorts for their induction into Jounin-hood. He is suitably surprised when she accepts.
They agree on only a few cups of sake but as the night grows longer, reason becomes archaic. He starts whispering in her ear. Romantic things. Stupid things. Sweet nothings. But slurred, they come out desperate, lost, and lonely. He finds this ironically appropriate for the two of them – the way they cannot figure out what they want so bad let alone act upon it. He wakes the next morning with more bruises than he came home with and the smell of flowers imprinted on the empty wrinkles of his bed.
-
Haruno Sakura is insane.
She has loved, lost, and loved more than she can set straight. She keeps on smiling at Kakashi's blind, retreating back whenever he passes in the street. He meets with her sometimes: in the park, walking to the market, unexpected. Always in complete silence. They have never done anything more than breathe. Together, in sync, at odds, inhale, exhale, inhale, inhale, inhale.
She remembers the morning Naruto came back. She remembers all the mornings she has spent with him since then. She remembers the ceremony given in honor of the newly appointed Jounin. She remembers every night she has spent with him since then.
Once, she sees Kakashi and Naruto together, through the window of Kakashi's bare kitchen. Arms full of groceries, she stops and the fist that was poised to knock lowers slowly. They do not talk, just sit and stare at hands scarred and callused, nursing identical cups of tea. Then Kakashi says something too short to follow his lips and Naruto gets up to leave. She watches them look at each other for that last couple of seconds. Naruto smiles briefly and makes for the door. Sakura places the brown bag of greens near the corner of the walkway, next to the plain, broken pot full of dried fertilizer, and leaves quickly and quietly, somewhat guiltily.
They are all entitled to their own, private moments of sanity.
-
Uchiha Sasuke is going insane.
His is a very different type of insane – a fire, a slow burning, dull fire that never lets him alone. Even when he sleeps, the insides of his eyelids flicker with the ugly maroon flames of his degenerating mentality.
He recognizes it by the time he kills Itachi. He recognizes it in the way his brother's cloak flutters as Itachi's throat smiles open and wide (wider in death than he ever smiled in life, Sasuke muses) and pukes the waterfall of blood that bleeds the Akatsuki cloak darker.
He had recognized it when he began his return to the Sound village after a brutal training session in the forest but did not quite make it back the last five miles. He had recognized it after, in the way he had hidden whenever he sensed Sound ninja near, equipped with instructions to bring back Uchiha Sasuke, alive…or to bring back Uchiha Sasuke's eyes, intact.
Sasuke does not remember the next few years in great clarity. Not until he finally finds Itachi does the world come rushing back in full color. The palette is almost too much for him to handle but an Uchiha can never complain of seeing the world too bright, too fast, too alive. The color red is the first color he has noticed in a long time. The sound of the unsettling gurgles and the thud of a limp body on stained dirt are the first sounds he has noticed in a long time.
Sasuke sleeps that night and only darkness welcomes him.
He does not hide the next time he sees the glint of sunshine on metal and hears the rustle of leaves stirred up by shinobi feet.
-
Uzumaki Naruto faces insanity.
The heavy pants of his adversary below him snap him back to reality. He nearly stabs himself with his own kunai when the voice rasps out and it is so familiar and unnatural that (what the hell) it must be genjutsu or that snake (bastard) must have taken over Sasuke or it really is genjutsu and Akatsuki are after him (again, but Itachi's dead) or maybe someone is playing a (really, really) cruel joke – either way Naruto is not taking any chances. He stabs downward…but halfway through the motion, the kunai falls from his half-hearted fist and Naruto's chest heaves with huge breaths drawn too shallow and eyes open too large for his face (please, please, please let it be Sasuke) and he grabs the Uchiha by the collar, bends over (never mind the awkward position, fuck that, Sasuke's back) and grinds his knuckles into the pale collarbone of his former comrade, noses bumping, mouths crushing and tastes the iron tart of fresh blood permeated with the scent and feel of everything Uchiha – in the back of his mind, Kyuubi growls his assent and starts to flick his tails back and forth (screw it) so Naruto breaks for air and Sasuke looks a bit shocked (as shocked as that squinty-eyed asshole could get) before glaring through hooded eyes and declaring his surprise and salutations in the only way he knows how.
"Get the fuck off, dobe."
-
Hatake Kakashi was insane.
But sometimes he likes to think he still is. He chides Sakura when she breaks down his door and begins to drawl out a half-formulated excuse for his tardiness when he realizes the impossible is dripping dirt and surliness on his discolored carpet. His toothbrush drops and the towel around his waist nearly falls.
The dog tags clink at his bare throat.
Sakura smiles while Naruto holds up living death.