Each scribbled-out face in Naruto's memory is a loved one. After all, they'd spent their childhoods together and lost them together, too. It's the pain that does it. Time, too, but that takes longer and by then, memories have already eaten away at themselves until you can't even remember the faces of the people you'd gone to war with.
But, even without their features visible, Naruto could hear their kindness in the soft way they talked to them sometimes; see it in the way they slowed down their movements because speed is a threat to soldiers; feel it in the gentle hands encircling their throat when they thought about them for long enough. Throughout Naruto's wandering life after the war, they have all appeared. Sometimes, it was when Naruto wanted them most–the yearning deep and desperate enough to take a blade to the wrist–where they'd whisper-shout, "Keep going, go, go, get up." Other times, they were the last thing Naruto wanted to think about. But even then, they'd soothe, "We know, we know, it's not your fault, get up." Every time, Naruto had needed them. And every time, they came. All but one.
He doesn't appear often in Naruto's memories either. It takes searching and Naruto remembers he had always been a master at hide and seek. But sometimes, when their guard is low enough or, more often, their spirits, he'd crawl out of their two-child, one-man bunk bed and face them. He'd face Naruto as if he wasn't everything they'd been searching for for the past sixteen years. He never says anything to Naruto in these moments–he never had before, either–but then again, he doesn't need to. All the kids would appear then, whispering and shouting their encouragement. They'd all come to help him at one time or another. All but this one.
To Naruto, he was the only one.
That little boy in his big black shirt, sleeves so long they'd pool and fit like wings. Naruto likes to think he'd flown away from it all. That some way, somehow, he'd escaped the attack that took the rest of them. But then, he remembers finding that big black shirt. It wasn't so black anymore, caked with mud and tinged crimson. But Naruto could recognize it anywhere. Because, as they pulled it closer in a sobbing fit, the scent of mahogany and rainwater held them together even as it tore them apart.
Naruto smells it even now, as they open their eyes.
The first thing they see is a pair of crooked lips on the face of a quiet man.
He wears a black shirt with sleeves that pool like wings.
Naruto registers that he is the Black Man. But as they open their mouth, they call him "Sasuke ."