It is when Sasuke wakes slung across a man's shoulder does he realize the danger he is in. His hands are bound; his mouth is gagged. His eyes are blindfolded. Somewhere close by, he hears Naruto screaming and cursing to the amusement of a man, probably the same man from before and Sasuke aches with the need to tell him to shut up.
.
At some point night turns to day. He knows this because Naruto told them. And because the kidnappers are making camp. And while they unbind his feet and change the rope around his hands to avoid clotting, they do not remove the blindfold.
.
Their kidnappers make camp. Sasuke clings to Naruto as best he can with pinkies curled and shoulders pressed together. The night is quiet. The forest is thinning. Two more days and they'll be out of Konoha territory, Naruto whispers him to one night. Sasuke blinks against the black cloth of blindfold and asks Naruto what the sky looks like.
.
It's on the third day that Sasuke finally manages to loosen the ties around his hands enough to work his thumbs and pointer finger. That night he loosens Naruto's in the dead of night as one of their kidnappers yells amongst the campfire.
.
Halfway through the fourth, Naruto breaks one of the kidnapper's knees and the first thing Sasuke sees is the blade headed for Naruto's back.
No one had told him how the Sharigan burns.
.
Naruto screams as he hits, ripping the blade from the man who'd held it to his neck far too often and stabs him like they're taught to in the academy, between the third and fourth rib before twisting and ripping it out and going for the throat. There is blood in his hair and on his hands. There is blood falling from a shallow cut above his eye.
Near him Sasuke moves with a speed that is almost inhuman and he feels his byakugan activate before he can stop it just in time to deflect a series of quick blows from another man double his size. The world slows down, becomes crisp and clear in the way only a byakugan could offer. Sasuke comes into focus, his steps something Naruto could finally match.
The two fall in line, back to back.
.
In the aftermath, Naruto and Sasuke sit in silence, waiting. Konoha will find them. Naruto has faith in this. Itachi-sama will not loss his son. Kaka-sensei will break the world for him.
(He might not be Naruto's father, but he is more.)
"Can you use it?"
"What?" Naruto asks, even though he knows what Sasuke means. Sasuke whose a Uchiha and has the just activated his Sharigan. There are rope burns on his wrist and he can't stop touching them, can't stop staring.
"Has someone taught you?" Sasuke asks again.
"No." Naruto says, because it's the truth. No one will teach him, the bastard Hyuuga, the clan secrets. Certainly not a head family member and not a branch member who cannot breathe without direct orders. There are some mercies in being a bastard, some kindness in his freedom (but still he suffers and perhaps that is the price.)
He is twelve years old and he has activated his bloodline twice. Once for his mother. Once, just now, for Sasuke. He does not need their blood, after all. He has made it this far on his own.
"We'll find you someone."
"It's not that easy," Naruto laughs bitterly. He has tried. When he was younger and angrier at the world, not yet aware that Kaka-sensei and Mama are more than enough, he had tried. He had gone to Hinata-sama, the fallen clan heir in hopes of sympathy until she was punished for her kindness. It was then he learned to hate his clan.
"I'll make it that easy," Sasuke promises. There is a smear of blood along his cheeks. Naruto reaches up and wipes it away. Sasuke's Sharigan lazily spins into focus.
Naruto realizes he might be falling in love.
.
Coming home doesn't feel right.
His mother and father greet him as he returns to consciousness in a hospital bed. Naruto only a few steps away. They tell him how they were worried and they tell him how they missed him. He cries when they hug him and they tell him everything is going to be okay now.
Sasuke isn't sure he believes them.
He thinks a lot after that as he watches the Uchiha work around camp. He has not returned to school since. Naruto has not visited since. But that is not what he focuses on. He remembers the feeling of cloth around his eyes and finds it hard to sleep at night.
.
One night he gets up before the camp begins to stir and finds his way somewhere in the heart of the village. There are people about. Older men and women. Drunks and nin. Someone nearby slurs, laughs, throws a bottle, and he hears a shattering of glass. At some point he finds himself by a fountain.
This is where the Hokage finds him.
The Hokage is an interesting man. Sasuke has no real opinion of him. His father says he is a good man so Sasuke believes he is. His mother says he is a smart man and Sasuke believes he is. Naruto loves him. The Hokage offers him a drink of soda and asks him why he is out.
"Thinking," Sasuke says honestly. He hasn't found any proper answers. But he knows something isn't right. He thinks about how easy it was for him to be overpowered. How easy it was for them to threaten Naruto and blind him and whispers things about his eyes and Sasuke shivers.
"I knew a Uchiha," the Hokage says at some point. "Your great uncle."
"Obito Uchiha," Sasuke offers. "My father has his goggles."
Kakashi hums.
Sasuke finishes his soda and takes a deep breath. "Can you tell me… Can you tell me what the Uchiha used to be like? Before we left."
"Why do you want to know?" the Hokage asks, not looking at Sasuke but up. Past the Hokage monument and to the stars. Sasuke follows his line of sight.
"It's important."
"Very well."
.
At some point, Naruto finds Sasuke again. It is not that they sought each other out. But more like they gravitated towards each other. As if they could not stay away, not after everything.
There is a certain bound born of helplessness.
(But that isn't really true is it? Every since Naruto saw him, he's never really been able to take his eyes off Sasuke.)
"Hi," Naruto says because he doesn't know what else to say.
"Hi," Sasuke says because that's what you're supposed to say.
"How are you feeling?"
"Better."
"Good."
"Yeah."
They sit there in silence, neither one able to look the other in the eye. Neither one knowing what to say. And then Sasuke turns, grabs Naruto's hand and says, "I'm sorry."
Naruto frowns. "Don't be. What happened wasn't your fault."
"You were taken because of me," Sasuke offers, "because you were with me."
And that is true. But it wasn't fair. "You're not the one who kidnapped me, Sasuke," Naruto rephrases, "You were hurt too." After a moment of silence he adds, "I missed you."
Sasuke reaches out and takes Naruto's hand in his own, twisting their fingers together like they had attempted to on those nights they sat huddled away from the fire. "I missed you, too."
.
Sasuke begins his training with Kakashi-sensei before his father can stop him.
Lightning, Sasuke soon realizes, comes to him easier than breathing, easier than fire. It flows from his fingers through his body and out, arcing brilliant and beautiful against the evening sky as Kakashi-sensei sits, content with his tea and scrolls. This is where his mother finds them, practicing against a windstorm that breaks trees and makes the very mountain creak.
"This is not what we teach you," his mother says in way of greeting when Sasuke pauses, to glance at his mentor and finds his mother sipping slowly from Kakashi-sensei's teacup.
Sasuke knows this. That the Uchiha do not specialize in combat, anymore. Has learned from Kakashi-sense what their past of warriors had once meant. Fire not meant to simply cauterize and warm, but to burn and ravage. Scalpels and senbon not simply for the use of sedation and surgery but for assassination, for the taking of life instead of saving. At one point their paths diverged. Sasuke from his ancestors, his ancestors from their descendants.
Sasuke is still not convinced this is a wrong thing. The taste of freedom and travel is too engrained in his bones to ever consider returning to Konoha. But he has thought of this too much to be content with the way things are. Weakness and guilt itch under Sasuke's flesh like a poorly healed chakra pathway. Perhaps a balance? Warriors and healers. Who said one must choose? So Sasuke turns to his mother, lightning still fresh from his fingers and says, "I know."
She frowns. "Come home, Sasuke. Your father would like to speak to you."
.
Itachi Uchiha is a good man and a good father. But he is also a private man. His emotions are not something Sasuke is familiar with. His weaknesses almost nonexistent. So when Sasuke enters the tent only to be met with his father's rage, Sasuke does not know what to do, what to say.
"Dangerous," his father snaps, pivoting on his left foot to continue his pacing. "Reckless. A complete abandonment of what I have taught you. Sasuke," he snaps, eyes burning, "did you enjoy it then? Killing those men and women?"
His mother makes a disapproving noise from where she sits in her corner as Sasuke jaw clenches despite the burn of tears in his eyes.
His father's eyes stray to her for a moment before he turns back to Sasuke, fear and anger clear as day on his face. "Well then? Explain yourself," he barks.
Sasuke takes a deep breath. "I-," his voice breaks and his face burns before he tries again, "I will not be caught weak again."
His father scowls, moving to tower over Sasuke. "Better men than you have searched for power and lost themselves," his father promises, red eyes swirling with memories Sasuke can only imagine.
"The world will not allow us to be weak," Sasuke rephrases, desperate to make his father if not understand then at least think. "So we must become strong enough to refuse battle. I am a healer," Sasuke says. "I do not want to fight. I do not want to hurt. But I will. I will because I will not be weak. Balance, Father. We must have balance."
And with that he leaves before his father can see the tears on his cheeks. Not now. Not yet.
He is not strong enough to be weak just yet.
.
Naruto finds Sasuke at their spot near the fountain with a look in his eyes that Naruto has grown familiar with. Sasuke is a will and a force and Naruto is content to be swept up in it.
"I have kept my promise," Sasuke hisses to him, urgent and gleeful, hands warm against Naruto's as they make their way to their village.
"Your promise?" Naruto asks. He is tired. His mother had kept him awake with her night terrors, constantly checking up on him at night as Naruto wills himself still in an illusion of sleep to put her at ease. She has not been the same since he came home. Careful and quiet and, at times, fearful. Insistent on a guard following Naruto around until Kaka-sensei put a stop to it.
He does not know how to help her.
"I found you a tutor," Sasuke grins, pulling him past the gate of the village to the outskirt farming communities. Banking a hard left along the river to break into a run that Naruto is quick to follow. "Kakashi-sensei helped me."
"Sasuke," Naruto cries, "no branch member can train me without the main household's permission. It's impossible."
Sasuke grins, feral, as they stop in front of a humble cottage. "This is no branch member."
It takes little time for the owner of the house to open the door. The first thing that strikes Naruto is that he is a Hyuuga. A Hyuuga Naruto has never seen before. With the traditional long black hair tied back and the common pale skin. But what truly steals his breath away is his eyes.
He is blind.
.
Sitting at Neji Hyuuga's kitchen table as he makes tea, graceful despite his lack of sight, is not something Naruto ever expected. "Sasuke," Naruto hisses, eyes following the older man as Sasuke sits content with himself next to Naruto. "What are you doing?"
"I've found you a teacher," Sasuke repeats. The fire in his eyes ever present as he simply exudes happiness from his grin to the lack of tension in his back.
"A blind teacher," Naruto hisses.
"The clan might have taken my eyes," Neji Hyuuga cuts in, making Naruto jump, as he sets three tea cups on the table. "But they have not taken my sight. There are many things I could teach you, Naruto. If you'd let me."
Naruto frowns, cautious, "Why do ya want to teach me?"
Neji Hyuuga smiles. "Call it what you will but I feel you were meant to come to me, Naruto Uzumaki. Fate does not give without reason. It is our job to take what is given."
.
"We'll be leaving soon," Sasuke warns later that night as they make their way back from Neji-sensei's cottage. Naruto aches. His chakra is low. His arms will be sore tomorrow. And yet there is a spring in his step, a promise on the horizon. And yet… Naruto blinks and looks up to see the moon is close to full. He cannot believe it's already been a month…
Sasuke pauses half way over the bridge to look over the water. "I will miss you, Naruto."
Naruto hums, taking his place beside Sasuke. "This won't be it," Naruto promises, feeling a fire begin to kindle as he swears, "No matter what, I'll become chunin and I'll find you."
Sasuke leans away from the banister to look at Naruto as Naruto looks back before slowly coming closer and kissing Naruto softly on the forehead. "Don't promise that. Don't give up your dream," Sasuke whispers, though he does not mean it. Not really. Fate… yes, perhaps that is it.
"I will find you," Naruto simply repeats.
And they both think, I won't lose you.
.
Somewhere in the heavens the Rikudō begins to count the days his boys will come home.
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