Again, thank you to all my reviewers for the last chapter: Jyra, Sharingan Hikari, hisakata0chan, frogger666, Devil-Speaker, Saria's-crown11, Empress-Dragon, narutworshipper, The Unfaithful One, Bloodluvingirl, blue-nuriel, Firework. It really does motivate me to write when people say nice things! Plus it's spring break, so I've got some spare time, finally. So, to narutoworshipper: finally a little bit of sasunaru. Its gonna stay discrete, b/c I wanna stay in the spirit of what this site intends. To Devil-Speaker: yeah, some explanation of Sasuke's sexuality and what's going on in that pretty little head of his. To Blue-nuriel – uh, thanks, but I'm pretty sure Sakura's gonna get bitchy later on. Redeemable, but still bitchy. Firework: changed. Cheers.

xoxoxooxoxoxo

He sat for three days and nights. There were no other prisoners. The guards fed him and otherwise left him alone. They seemed to be tired, rather desperate men, and Naruto wondered about them, tried to talk to them – but harshly they told him to shut up. They were the mercenaries Kabuto had spoken of, he thought – they spoke to each other, mostly about gold, and nearby villages that might be looted, and the probability of finding anything worthwhile in them.

Xoxoxooxoxoxo

There was one thing bothering Naruto, and as he sat in the cell he tried to think through his situation, and wondered if the one secret he had been keeping from Sasuke would become a problem for him now.

The secret was a big one: before Sasuke had returned to Konoha, Naruto and Jiraya had meet Uchiha Itachi in a small town just inside the border to the Sand Country.

There, they had fought, as they had in the past. This time, though,

through some miracle, Naruto and Jiraya had managed to find the upper hand. They had killed Kisame, and Naruto had managed to come very close to killing Itachi as well...

It had come largely from recognizing Itachi's one major weakness, which was that the majority of his power was concentrated in his sharingan. By that time, Naruto's ability to control the Kyuubi's power had improved (or perhaps the Kyuubi had just decided to cooperate with Naruto a bit more, judging her chances with him to be a bit better than if Akatsuki were to extract her), and he had managed to create a wind of chakra, like a knife, that swept across Itachi's face, destroying his ability to use the mangekyou sharingan in one quick (and, if Naruto was honest with himself) very lucky strike. During that period, Naruto had been improving very rapidly. Itachi had underestimated him.

After that time, rumors began to surface that Itachi had left the Akatsuki. Naruto did not know the reason, but he suspected it was somehow related to their fight. A good medical nin might replace eyes, though the ways in which it was done were not always entirely ethical. Sharingan eyes, however, were impossible to get back.

Or were they? There was, after all, one pair still left on the planet. Those belonged to Sasuke. Was it logical to believe Itachi would someday come to take these from his younger brother? Or was there any other way for him to get them?

When they finally succeeded in getting Sasuke back from Sound, Itachi had been one more subject that was impossible to broach with the Uchiha. Naruto's fight with Itachi was classified anyway, for obvious reasons. He suspected that Jiraya and Tsunade were the only ones who knew. He knew that one of the reasons Sasuke had left Orochimaru might have had to do with Itachi, with his belief that his older brother, having disappeared, might really be gone for good. In the face of that doubt, it had become unclear to Sasuke what he was still doing with Orochimaru.

He did not want to tell Sasuke that he had 'almost' beaten his brother. He suspected Sasuke might see this as a threat, or as meddling. He did not know how Sasuke would react if he discovered the secret now. But, also, he did not know what Kabuto's information about Itachi might be.

When finally a guard came, jangling his keys, opened Naruto's door and unsealed the chakra barriers that were meant to hold him in, he was so relieved that he would be in for a change that he almost hugged the man. The guard tied a bit of rope to his handcuffs and ordered Naruto to walk. They went through an enumerable number of winding, cold stone passages, before entering a room that was well lit with torches, and warm by comparison with the rest of the cave.

"Here is the girl, Kabuto-sama…"

"Fine. Put her on the table."

One cool iron clasp went around his foot, and then he started struggling. With effort the guard managed to clasp his other foot, and then began to work on his hands.

"You bastard!" Naruto yelled. "What are you doing?"
"Prisoner-of-war, Kumiko," Kabuto said, smoothly. "I need subjects for my experiments…"

"Argh! Stop that, asshole, I'm not gonna… mmph!" The guard had stuffed a rag in his mouth.

He tested the irons. He ought to be able to break them, but… damn girl's body!... it was a little weaker than his normal body ought to be. Alternatively, he could call on the fox's chakra enough to melt the things… of course, then his cover would be well and truly blown…
"Now, don't worry, Kumiko-chan… I'm just going to put these drops in your eyes…"

Damn! He tried to call up all the chakra he could, but realized that there was some sort of barrier on the table… Kabuto leaned over, trying to pry open his eyelid…

"And what?" Said a cold voice, "Are you doing?"

From his position on the table Naruto couldn't see anyone who wasn't standing directly over him. He resisted the urge to yell out to (at?) Sasuke.

"An experiment…." Kabuto said, simply. "If it works, after about twenty treatments this girl would have enhanced vision, similar to the Sharingan, like you."

"Oh?" Sasuke sounded amused. "Is that something you distilled from my blood, then?"

"Also your sweat." Kabuto sighed, rather melodramatically. "I wanted your tears too, but as I recall, you told me to go fuck myself."

"And if it fails?"

"She will go blind… or die…" Kabuto shrugged. "I don't have a lot of test subjects, so research on this is going fairly slowly."

"Well," Sasuke said, "It'll have to go slower, now, because you can't use this one."

"I can't? Why not?"

"I want her."

"Oh?" Kabuto sounded interested. "What for?"

"That's my business, Kabuto."

He saw the man above him frown, and then, with a sigh, unlock one of Naruto's hands. "If you want her, Uchiha… I hope you aren't still feeling some misplaced loyalty to Konoha, though."

"As if," Sasuke's voiced dripped with sarcasm.

Kabuto paused. Then, with a delibrate gesture, he grabbed Naruto's free hand, wrestled in back into the manacle, and clicked it shut. Inwardly Naruto whined. And I was almost free!

"I've known you for too long, Sasuke-kun… that argument sounds a little weak. Tell you what? Why don't you kill this little kitten instead? Then I'll know that you're loyal, and give you the information about your brother you've been bothering me about."

The room seemed suddenly to become very still, very quiet. Was Sasuke hesitating? Naruto thought frantically. He couldn't be hesitating… Sasuke wouldn't… and yet, Naruto thought, what Sasuke wanted more than anything in the world – what he had been willing to kill Naruto over, in the past… was a path to Itachi…

"That sounds," said Sasuke's voice, sounding cold, as cold as Naruto could ever remember it sounding… it sounded wrong… "Almost as if you are trying to threaten me."

Kabuto continued to look, steadily across the table at Sasuke.

"How dare you," Sasuke growled, "have the audacity to threaten me?"

Still pinned, Naruto heard, rather than saw, the crash of bottles hitting the floor – Sasuke had pushed over a rack of Kabuto's specimens, with one broad stroke. He saw Kabuto grin, and he saw the kunai Kabuto pulled from his back pocket as he rushed toward Sasuke. This is gonna be a smack-down… Naruto thought… and felt a little annoyed that he was going to get left out. By the time he had managed to free his left hand, the lab was destroyed, and Kabuto and Sasuke had very nearly managed to spill foul-smelling things all over him as they went after each other. By the time he got his right hand undone, Sasuke's sharingan-activated eyes were blood red, and Kabuto's left shoulder was covered in blood, and the guards who had rushed to the scene when they had heard the noise had hastily retreated again.With his hands free, he managed to grab a dropped kunai, and was close to unlatching his feet when he heard Kabuto cough – a wet cough that a normal person might not recognize, but which a ninja automatically associated with a person whose lungs had filled with blood.

"You DARE try and tell me what to do?" Sasuke was yelling. "Listen to me, Kabuto, there is no partnership between us. You do everything I tell you, understand? I killed Orochimaru, that means I'm the one in charge here! I should finish you right here!"

Surprisingly, Kabuto seemed to like this turn of events. He was smiling, in a vague, creepy way that made Naruto's skin crawl. So this is what it's like to live in the Sound, he thought. Was it some kind of miracle that Sasuke had lived among them for such a long time without loosing his humanity all together.

"I'm going to my room," Sasuke said, abruptly. "Have someone bring me the girl."

Naruto felt… shaken. He let the guards capture him, re-cuff him, and lead him through a series of corridors indistinguishable from any of the others. Sasuke was never emotional around him, or the rest of team 7 – he was never emotional in Konoha. He hadn't even shown emotion when he had said that he would go back with them to Konoha. In fact, the only emotions Naruto had almost ever seen Sasuke express were annoyance, and anger, and frustration mixed with the desire for revenge. To see Sasuke enraged at Kabuto… he shook his head, trying to push his negative thoughts away. The guards led him to a room, pushed him in, and shut the door. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the light.

"Dobe," said Sasuke – coolly, ironically – "you can stay here from now on."

"What if they're listening?" Naruto said.

"They aren't listening," Sasuke said, carelessly. "They're all busy being scared stiff."

Sasuke was sitting on his bed. He had taken off his shirt. Beside the bed was a small table with a basin of water and a pitcher. He was using a towel to wipe himself off.

Hesitantly, Naruto made his way to the chair next to the bed and sat down. Sasuke looked at him and sighed.

"When are you gonna drop that girly jutsu?"

"Huh? I thought it was better if no one knew it was me."

Sasuke shrugged.

"Sasuke… what happened back there?"

The black haired boy looked at him, expressionlessly. "I could explain, but I don't think there's any reason you need to understand."

Naruto felt himself getting mad. "No, Asshole, you're gonna explain it to me. Because I need to know." He paused. "I need to know what the hell is going on."

Sasuke looked surprised. "Just trust me, Naruto."

"Not…" Naruto felt, to his horror, tiny tears forming at the corner of each eye. Furiously, he got up, and retreated to the darkened corner of the room, where Sasuke would not see. "Not good enough."

"Hm.." Sasuke said. "Ok, fine. To be blunt: Kabuto is only happy when he's somebody's bitch."

Naruto gaped.

"Not literally, moron! I mean, Kabuto gets off on being bossed around. What happened back there was me doing my best Orochimaru impression. That's what he really wanted, that's why he wanted me to come back, anyway. I just gave him what he wanted. Now," Sasuke sounded confident, "I should be able to get him to spill any information he was, about anything, to me. I should even be able to get him to dismantle this whole operation, if I can make him think its part of some larger plan…"

"And is that what you want to do?"

Sasuke looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?"

"All of a sudden you've got an army of men, the remains of Orochimaru's experiments… his old scrolls and stuff might be here too, if they weren't destroyed at the original Sound… you don't want that?"

Sasuke snorted. "This crap? The men are losers, guys who don't have anywhere better to do. Half of them aren't even ninjas, just riffraff. Everything of true value must have been destroyed in at the Old Sound. Which, by the way, I destroyed the first time. Kabuto has totally lost it, he's a lunatic trying to recreate something that never truly existed. Sticking with these guys isn't…" he looked at Naruto, and paused. "Of course we're going back to Konoha."

"Isn't going to help you find Itachi?" Naruto said. "Is that what you were going to say?"

Sasuke sighed. He didn't like having these conversations with Naruto. It seemed the blonde liked to pry. And, for some crazy reason, felt as though he had the right to do so. This is why I don't like friends, he reminded himself. Friends think it's ok to get personal.

"I'm not gonna lie and say I don't want to find Itachi," he said, finally. "I haven't given up on that – just – put it on hold." He raised his voice. "What else was I supposed to do, anyway? Itachi seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth. Nothing about him for more than a year and a half. Orochimaru was a dead end. Even if I met him now, I'm not sure I'd be strong enough… to…"

Naruto sighed. He walked back towards Sasuke, and sat down on the bed beside him.

"What if Itachi became weak?"

"Then beating him would have no purpose."

"Huh? Even though what you wanted was revenge in the first place?"

"I'd still kill him."

"It just wouldn't be as satisfying, you mean."

Sasuke glared at him.

"What if someone else defeated him first?"

Sasuke glared some more. "I don't know, Naruto. That would never happen. Now shut up."

"So what you're basically saying is, we're going back to Konoha, because that's still a better opportunity for you than staying here."

"Yeah," said Sasuke. "I guess so. Is that so bad?"

Naruto held back a sigh. I thought I had gotten Sasuke back six months ago. But it seems I never did at all.

They sat together, side by side on the bed, in silence. Sasuke felt annoyed. He couldn't see what he had said that was wrong. Despite that Naruto seemed depressed. It still felt weird to Sasuke to see Naruto in his girly form: long hair, thin arms… breasts. Not that Naruto hadn't been good-looking as a boy, too.

It had been Sasuke's foolish dream, long ago: the one he had repeated to himself, late at night, when he was feeling weak in the village of Sound; the one he would swear to himself never to think about again, at times when he was feeling strong: the details might change a bit, here and there, but the essentials were always the same.

He had returned to Konoha. Or Naruto had left the leaf. Itachi was dead. Somehow, they were together: together, even though that was the kind of relationship Sasuke had never imagined while he had still been in Leaf. Well, when he had left Leaf, he had been only thirteen years old: he had only just been starting to think much about sex at all, frankly.

It was in Sound that he had first become aware of the possibility of a relationship between men. And the possibility had intrigued him. Right away he had begun to wonder about his relationship with Naruto: there was no other person on Earth who could make him feel as charged, in a positive way, as the blond when they were sparring.

Women had never been attractive to him, so Sasuke began to assume that he was gay. He had even taken a lover, for a little while. He had told himself that he had done it to forget Naruto: that a real physical relationship might chase the fantasies out of his head.

He told himself that, but the Sound-nin he had chosen to sleep with had been blonde haired, and blue-eyed, and there was absolutely nothing else that Sasuke could remember about him.

Sex hadn't been as big a deal as everyone had made it out to be. After that little experiment, he had never wasted his time looking for it again.

Then he killed Orochimaru.

Then he went back to Leaf.

And found Naruto, the same kid if in a slightly bigger body, still ready to spar and to joke around and to be Sasuke's best friend, but otherwise untouched by time: still making the same naïve come-ons to Sakura or the other girls; but somewhat seemingly ambivalent to sex, somehow completely unaware of the huge tension that seemed to Sasuke to be filling the room whenever the two of them stood together. It looked pretty obvious that Naruto wasn't interested in men.

That drove Sasuke crazy. How could Naruto not even notice him, when he spent half his nights jacking off to thoughts of the blond? But realizing that it was hopeless was even worse: Naruto's completely asexual attitude towards him made him feel like a pervert lusting after a little kid.

So he had tried to distance himself from his old friend, as much as he could – but still spending time with Naruto, as much as he needed to. It was a delicate balance: ok, a farce, if Sasuke wanted to be honest with himself. If he really been ready to give up the blond, he would have gotten the hell out of Konoha as soon as he realized how one-sided his feelings were.

But.

But…

That comment of Sakura's had intrigued him the other day. Sasuke had always assumed that he was gay, because for as long as he had been capable of sexual feelings he had been lusting after Naruto. But Naruto in a girl form wasn't bad either. Surprisingly, Sasuke found his teammate attractive either way.

And, apparently, Naruto in a girl form thought Sasuke was pretty.

"Hey, Naruto," Sasuke said.

"Huh?" It seemed the blond was on the verge of drifting off – his legs were still danging off the side of Sasuke's bed but his body was flopped over, resting.

Sasuke heard a noise in the corridor.

"Quick, I think someone's coming," he said, and lowered himself onto Naruto, allowing himself to kiss as much as he wanted, grope- Naruto's eyes opened wide, and then he caught the meaning of what Sasuke had said and went along with it, even letting Sasuke lift up his arms and pull off Naruto's shirt, which was halfway over his head by the moment when Kabuto walked into the room.

"Oh," said the former Sound-nin, amusedly. "You weren't joking, Sasuke-sama, when you said that you wanted the girl."

Sasuke looked away from Naruto, glaring. "How dare you interrupt," he snarled.

Kabuto bowed slightly. "My apologies. But I thought there was something you might like to see."

xoxoxooxoxoxo

Naruto sulked. Why was he left alone – locked in Sasuke's room, and with an armed guard in front of the door, no less – while Sasuke got to go and look at all the cool stuff, the top-secret awesome weapons that Kabuto was hiding?

Oh, yeah – because Sasuke was the one playing the part of the super-evil, super-powerful Orochimaru-successor, (and doing a freakily good job of it, too) while Naruto was playing the part of the weak, sucky, captured Konoha ninja and damsel in distress.

He was surprised to feel his own hand brushing his lips. He hadn't just been thinking about Sasuke kissing him, had he? Naruto frowned. Sasuke's hand had been on his boob too, which meant (if you wanted to be technical about it) that Naruto had now gone further with the Uchiha than anyone else.

He shuddered.

The scarier thing was, that it had felt pretty good.

"Stupid female hormones," he muttered. This must have been what Sakura was talking about when she said that girls reacted to Sasuke even against their will. How could he even be thinking that Sasuke was….

"What are you thinking about, dobe?"

The bastard was back. Leaning against the doorframe casually, smirking in a way that always particularly made Naruto's blood boil. It didn't help when Sasuke sauntered into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him.

"Wait," said Naruto, feebly. "Can't you leave the door open?"

Sasuke looked at him scornfully. "Are you a complete moron? The whole goal is to have some privacy. So we can talk. I sent the guards away, so they'll think that we're having sex."

He said it so clinically that Naruto felt like an idiot. "Oh yeah."

Sasuke smiled. On the scale ranging from true smile to smirk, this one ranked somewhere in the middle, and might have been described as 'predatory."

"Hey, Naruto?" He said, just when Naruto said. "So, what did you see?"

Sasuke frowned. "It's pretty bad, Naruto."

"Really? How bad?"

Sasuke considered. "Maybe not bad for Konoha. I mean, Kabuto's 'secret weapon' – if you can call it that – strikes me as being so far off the deep end that – I dunno, it may be that he's totally just lost it."

"Yeah?" Naruto was impatient. "So what is it?"

"Do you remember that juice he was trying to squirt into your eye before? To give you the Sharingan?"

"Uh huh,"

"Well, he thinks that with a few more test subjects he can nail it down. Then he's gonna give it to a whole bunch of mercenaries. Then he's going to use his army of sharingan-users to destroy Konoha and anyone else who stands in his way." Sasuke looked impassive.

Naruto gaped. "I think he's really lost it."

"Me too. He didn't even seem concerned when I reminded him that the Sharingan takes years of practice, just to learn how to activate…" Sasuke stopped.

"Regardless," Naruto said, "This is bad, though. Even if his world-domination plan is entirely impractical, we can't let stuff like that get onto the black market. What if Akatsuki or even one of our allies got a hold of it?"

"Yeah…" Sasuke said. He was impressed with the way Naruto was thinking – politically, almost like a Hokage. He had been thinking more about all the flaws in Kabuto's idea, not the inevitable fall-out from it. "We need to work on a plan…"

"And send a message back to Konoha."

Sasuke nodded. "Quickly, before Kabuto has time to complete his formula. He's so anxious that he's using soldiers as guinea-pigs now, not just prisoners." He stopped.

Together, in whispers, the two boys talked long into the night. It was agreed that, in the morning, they would incapacitate the guards – allowing Naruto to go down to the dungeon, where the prisoners would be freed: hopefully creating enough panic for Naruto to escape back to Leaf in the confusion. Kabuto would assume that Naruto had killed the guards alone, and Sasuke would stay on, waiting for Naruto to return with reinforcements. If necessary he could try to kill Kabuto and destroy his equipment by himself.

xoxoxooxoxoxo

Naruto had almost finally drifted off to sleep when he felt Sasuke's hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, Naruto."

"Hmm?"

"That thing today – when we kissed."

That woke Naruto up a little. "What?"

"You want to try it again?"

"Huh? Is someone coming?"

Sasuke sighed. "No, dobe. I just thought – I mean, you're a guy too, you must want to… try it out. It felt good today, right?"

Naruto looked at Sasuke, and groaned. "I guess so."

"You guess so?" Sasuke's face was dangerously close.

"Yeah," Naruto mumbled. "It did."

"And what if I do… this?"

Naruto squeaked a little. "Yeah,"

"And this?"

"Uh huh…"

And that certainly gave Naruto a lot to think about. In fact, even as he was in the process of knocking out the two guards, and dragging their bodies into the closet, he was mostly thinking about the night before. Even when he made his way down to the dungeon and used his chakra to open the locks of the prison doors, he was thinking about Sasuke's tongue in his mouth. When he ran among the prisoners, urging them to overpower the guards at the main entrance, he was thinking about Sasuke's hand on his hip, and the feeling of Sasuke – he blushed – hard, brushing against him through layers of clothing. When he escaped into the wasteland separating the Sound-nin's hide-out from the forests of Konoha, he ran faster, thinking about the way his breath had hitched up and the way Sasuke had held his hands above his head and his hand traced the line of hickeys still left behind, right where the Uchiha had placed them.

xoxoxooxoxoxo

Sasuke waited. He sat on a broad chair engraved intricately with Snakes, one he remembered being in Orochimaru's possession from long ago. Kabuto had brought it to him from somewhere, and, as much as it creeped him out to sit in it, it was still better than nothing.

"How long until you can complete the formula?" He asked Kabuto, coldly.

Kabuto frowned. "Any day now, Uchiha-sama. I promise."

"Your life depends on it, Kabuto." Sasuke smirked. Inwardly, he frowned. Maybe it was best just to kill Kabuto now. Naruto had been sure that he could bring reinforcements within four days, but it had been five, and that was really pushing…

From somewhere distant in the cave, they heard a crash. Moments later, a nin rushed in.

"It's the Leaf!" He yelled. He saw Sasuke and cringed with fear, but it didn't stop him from hissing, "you betrayed us! Again…"

"Did you really?" Kabuto asked, smiling, looking strangely happy.

"Of course," said Sasuke, and, leaping from the horrible snake-throne, activated his Sharingan. Kabuto leapt back, into a fighting pose. "Oh, why fight me?" Sasuke hissed. "Wouldn't you prefer to die by my hand?"

Kabuto's eyes narrowed, but Sasuke felt his resolve waver, just for a moment.

"You know," Kabuto said. "When you do that, you do look so much like… Orochimaru-sama…"

"Your wet dream, unfulfilled," Sasuke snarled. "If you like, when I finish you, you can pretend it was him."

xoxoxooxoxoxo

Leaf swept through the remains of Sound like a hurricane crushing a village of ants. Tsunade wasn't taking any chances – and this time she had the men to do it.

One man, a member of Root, was the first to reach Kabuto's laboratory and dosed himself with Kabuto's drops, the use of which had been briefed to him from Naruto's report. For his trouble, his eyes began to burn, and the man went blind: it seemed to prove that Kabuto's formula had been incomplete.

There was no chance this time that Kabuto had slipped away, either. His battle with Sasuke did not last long: these days, there were very few people who could last any length of time against the last Uchiha.

Sasuke wasn't really thinking about Kabuto, even when he killed him. He was thinking about Naruto, and wondering if Naruto would have fought with more mercy. Or how Naruto was able to kill with mercy. Or if he himself was a heartless being for killing with no emotion at all, and wondering if Naruto would ever be able to forgive him for it.