Pairing: Sasuke/Sakura, Naruto/Sakura
Prompt: contests
Genre: drama/angst/romance
Word Count: 1,089
Rating: T
Warnings: Unrequited love.
Author's Notes: 12/31/11. Written as a gift!fic for mylasia on LiveJournal. This was also partially inspired by the format of asteriskjam's fic called "Maybe Next Year." Go read it! Also, "Better Days" by the Goo Goo Dolls was on repeat when I wrote this.
The Rules of the Game
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He's five and already annoyed with the loudmouth kid from the other side of town. Sasuke doesn't care what the bright orange kid has to say or how he claims the ability to best anyone in anything because he knows that Itachi-nii-san is better than everyone at everything. He also doesn't really understand why the girls in his class act they way they do, or why there always seems to be a race to be his partner in shuriken practice, but Itachi just pokes his forehead when he asks, so he stops wondering aloud. The annoying kid named Naruto is always talking as if he knows something Sasuke doesn't—as if he's already won something—but Sasuke watches him fall day after day after day, and knows that no kid who so blatantly refuses to play by the rules of any game will ever win anything of real worth.
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He's twelve and already lost and spiraling toward a dark path that he was never meant to travel. He doesn't have time for childish games or foolish competitions with dead last (or so he says), but anything that can be made into training is at least worth a second glance. He doesn't particularly care for the way their fragile teammate dotes over him with unwanted affection, but if he can privately hold it over the the idiot's head, then at least there's something to gained from all of her trouble.
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He's fifteen and numb, but that can't be true because he's bursting at the seams with hatred and loathing and an indescribable fury that burns him to the core. The teammates have become hopeless pursuers, the competitions have become battles, and the world has become his enemy. He fights because there's only one thing left to fight for, and even as he arms himself against the others—Kabuto, Orochimaru, an endless stream of Sound ninja to serve as his training pawns, Naruto, all of them—there is only one enemy that truly matters, and there is no contest as to what is at the forefront—or at the recesses—of Sasuke's mind.
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He's eighteen and now he is numb because the battles have become a war, all the rules of the game have changed, and somehow, after everything, he has come full circle without ever really going anywhere. But at least now he has the right—the privilege, the luxury, they tell him—to take satisfaction in the smaller things in a life post-revenge, post-rehabilitation... such as flaunting the fact that even in the tirelessly long probation period after his return, he was still able to make it to chuunin and jounin status before dead last. His teammates have forgiven him, but there is still tension; he does not let it concern him because if there is one thing he's learned, it's—nothing—that they will always be waiting for him.
The idiot challenges him to reach ANBU before he does, and since he is still not the kind of man to laugh easily, he accepts the proposition with a dark smirk and a knowing taunt. The girl he'd left alone on a bench in the dark is now a woman, and although he remembers—has tried to ignore how he's clung to—the words she's declared to him again and again as he's fallen over precipice after precipice, he has kept the words buried and hidden for far too long. He is still not the kind of man who trusts easily—Naruto has always won that trophy blindly—so he does not speak of them to her. In the end, even amidst all of the battles and losses and startling realizations that he is at war—with himself—and alive yet not living, Sasuke wonders how it came to be that, after everything, he still cannot—was never meant to—win.
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He's twenty-one and life has... settled into routine. The war is over, the new Hokage has risen, and the Uchiha honor has been restored. Vengeance has been wrought, reconstruction has begun, and a new era is on the horizon. The memories of quests that Sasuke has devoted his entire life to have faded to a dull white noise. Even with Naruto's massive load of administrative duties, the candle of competitive spirit is still there... though the maturity that's come with his position of power has softened the flame. Sasuke never once felt the desire to become Hokage, but now that Naruto has everything he's ever wanted—Team 7 together, the title of Hokage, world peace and all that—Sasuke supposes that he has also received more than he's ever hoped—vengeance, restored honor, a second chance.
Sleep still does not come easy, but at least now it offers some reprieve when it comes. The ANBU missions are long, hard, bloody, hollow victories, but they give Sasuke something to keep aiming for and achieving while he works out the next steps to take in life. He is aware that in spite of his past transgressions against the village, there are still a few brave hopefuls who aspire—who'd kill—to bear the next child of the sharingan, and he further knows that he will have no one but her. He knows the time has come to stow away his mask, to wash the blood from underneath his nails, and to ask Sakura—his teammate, his admirer, his believer—to finally—
—and then he is watching from afar in a room crowded with people who have gathered together to celebrate the new year. His mask falters as Naruto boisterously holds up Sakura's delicate hand for the cheering throng of civilians and ninja to see as he proudly displays the ring on her finger, and Sasuke wonders how could he have ever been stupid enough to—to leave, to let himself live, to return, to trust, to hope—to think that what he felt before could be numb?
As he sees the gleam of Sakura's smile as she gazes up at their teammate, he wonders... Perhaps if he'd acknowledged that there was still one more contest to be won against Naruto, if he'd held his guard, if he'd seen that there was a chance yet that dead last could still find a way to come in first... he could have won.
As his fist collides with another tree, barreling through trunk after trunk as the distant sounds of celebration ring in his ears, it occurs to Sasuke that perhaps this was the only contest that had ever really mattered. The one that he could have won all along.
If he'd only been taught the rules.
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And you ask me what I want this year
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
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