Archive of Our Own

~

The battle had already been raging for what felt like weeks and the Allied Shinobi Forces had been struggling just to hold their ground. The enemy felt endless and infinite, between the Akatsuki remnants and the army of reincarnated shinobi. Refusing to leave his friends and allies long enough to rest, Naruto had fought himself into a state of near-exhaustion, relying increasingly on the Nine-Tails’ chakra. Under normal circumstances, he knew he would have been unable to summon the energy just to stand, but giving up was out of the question.

Besides, Sasuke didn’t appear to be faring any better.

Naruto had no idea what his former teammate had been up to, but he hadn’t stopped to give it any thought after sensing his chakra. He’d paused only long enough to leave a handful of shadow clones with the allied forces—clones that had since vanished as he burned through his chakra in the fierce fight against Sasuke—before taking off singlemindedly after his old friend. He had found Sasuke alone and wounded, but that hadn’t been enough to keep the rogue ninja from promptly launching an attack before words could even be spoken.

That had been hours ago. The enormous violet form of Sasuke’s Susanoo defense had fallen away at some point after a surge of Kurama’s chakra had briefly replenished Naruto’s stamina. A steady stream of blood was running from one of Sasuke’s eyes and he had pressed it tightly shut, but his movements were just as aggressive and precise one-eyed. Naruto was holding his ground defending and had initially planned on letting Sasuke exhaust himself, but he knew his own movements were becoming sloppier and his chakra reserves were bone dry. He couldn’t keep this up much longer.

He could read the mounting frustration in Sasuke’s attacks, the way ninjutsu had finally, finally given way to desperate taijutsu, but he couldn’t summon the energy to take advantage of the situation when it was taking the entirety of his willpower just to remain upright. He could taste blood in his mouth and the sound of his own hoarse panting filled his ears, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the recollection of the words shared between the two of them the last time they’d met.

"Were you able to read what was inside my heart? And you saw it, didn’t you? That if you and I fight, we will both die.”

Naruto threw his crossed arms in front of him, blocking another sharp kick with his forearms and bracing himself as he skidded back several meters. Those words kept ringing in his ears. Was this the situation he had read in Sasuke’s heart? Had he abandoned the allied forces only to die here with his former friend before he could even fulfill his goal of becoming Hokage?

And someone like that would never have been a good Hokage anyway, he thought to himself with a huffed laugh. Not someone who was so driven by his personal bonds that he would forever put a rogue ninja bent on his destruction before his own village.

He barely registered the slowing of Sasuke’s movements or the way that one visible sharingan narrowed at him until he realized the ceaseless attacks had stopped coming, and his eyes snapped to Sasuke’s in confusion.

“What’s so funny?” Sasuke hissed. His shoulders were rising and falling rapidly as he struggled to catch his breath in the momentary almost-truce, and it struck Naruto that these were the only words Sasuke had spoken to him at all. This was the first opening Sasuke had given him to talk. He swallowed hard before forcing a smile.

“Nothing really. It’s just you.”

Realizing with a sharp stab of alarm the way Sasuke tensed with fury written across his features, he quickly rallied his thoughts. He wasn’t very good at expressing himself, he knew, and a mistake right now could be disastrous.

“Ah, no, that is, it’s just that it will always be you.” He huffed another hollow laugh. “Do you remember what we read in each other’s hearts before? That we’re both going to die? I didn’t want that before, but it’s okay now. Maybe I can’t save you but I’ll never stop trying, and maybe it’s better like this. Because Konoha can’t count on me if I’m always thinking about you, and because I don’t…” he trailed off, suddenly self-conscious, eyes unfocusing, before whispering, “I don’t want you to die alone. So I’ll be here too. Okay?”

The fury on Sasuke’s face had given way to confusion, but he looked angry again and Naruto didn’t know how to fix it. Something wrenched inside of his stomach. He tried to superimpose the recollection of Sasuke’s smile over those pale features but it was all wrong; the image didn’t fit anymore. Had it ever? Maybe he was remembering things that had never been real. He didn’t think there were words he could say to make this right anymore. He had never been able to convince Sasuke to come home. He didn’t have any words left. Only punches. And he didn’t think he wanted to hurt Sasuke, either, but he had never been good at communicating any other way, and besides, he hadn’t been given a choice.

“Shut up.” Sasuke’s tone didn’t sound quite as harsh as he had expected. He sounded almost resigned, and Naruto met his eye, refusing to feel hope that would only disappoint him again. Sasuke’s fists were clenched and he was shaking, whether from exhaustion or anger Naruto didn’t know. “Just shut up. I don’t need you. You’re so sure of your view of the world but you don’t know anything. You want to die so badly? I’ll do you a favor, then.”

Before Naruto could even open his mouth, before he could form a response on his tongue, Sasuke suddenly took a deep breath and closed his eye. Reading the intent as a sharp pulse of chakra, Naruto instinctively forced his sluggish body to brace itself for another flurry of attacks, but the only movement was Sasuke’s eye snapping open again. Naruto had just enough time to catch a glimpse of a pupil he had never seen before, when Sasuke suddenly doubled over with a pained cry, clutching his eye with his hands. Frozen to the spot with shock and confusion and an intense, unfamiliar sort of penetrating exhaustion, Naruto could only watch as a fresh stream of blood trickled out from under Sasuke’s hand, creating a strange sort of symmetry with his other eye. He could only watch as Sasuke’s legs finally gave out and his knees buckled and his built-up chakra dissipated.

Then everything went black.

~

Everything was fuzzy and indistinct. The world was a blur of colors and shifting patterns of lights. A hundred different people were talking all at once, in different voices and at different volumes, and none of the words made any sense. Naruto tried to blink heavily, to focus his eyes, and a section of the voices suddenly rose in pitch and intensity. He winced, or thought he might have, but he wasn’t sure where his own body began or ended anymore. He felt like a floating consciousness. He blinked again with what seemed to be his eyes, and then a few more times for good measure, and slowly, very slowly, a stained white ceiling swam into place.

One of the voices had managed to detach itself from the rest. It sounded like it was so close that it must have been inside of his head.

“…Awake? But y…move yet…shouldn’t even…we’ll…on you…”

He couldn’t make any sense of the fragmented words just yet. He wasn’t sure they were directed at him at all. He wasn’t sure what him even referred to. He was just a floating, indistinct mass and nothing felt real. He blinked again, because it was the only thing he could remember how to do. This time it brought something pink into focus.

Oh yeah. Sakura. Her voice continued to buzz in his ears or in his head and he could hear concern in its tone. He tuned it out and tried to think. The allied forces. Madara. Akatsuki. Reanimated shinobi.

Everything snapped into focus all at once, sending a sharp stab of pain through his skull. The patterns of light merged into a stream of sunlight flooding in through the window. Colors separated from each other and arranged themselves into the shape of Sakura leaning over him, a mixture of worry and relief etched into her pretty features. Even the voices organized themselves into a low hum of conversation and the occasional bustle of movement in the hallway outside of the room.

Sakura was still staring at him and he just stared back for a moment, unsure what she wanted. Had she asked him something? It didn’t matter. It could wait. He just had to know…

“Sasuke?”

His voice was barely a croak. Now that he could feel himself again, his throat felt like he had swallowed needles and washed them down with a mouthful of gravel. His tongue wanted to stick to the roof of his mouth.

“He’s okay, Naruto,” Sakura was whispering, her eyes still wide. “You were both… we found you; you were both… I thought you were dead!”

Something was falling from her eyes, but all Naruto could think about was two twin streams of blood on a different face.

“Is… he…” he managed, but the gravel lodged in his throat dammed up the rest of his question. He opened and closed his mouth several times to try again, feeling strangely like a fish. Was this what fish felt like? Sakura was shaking her head at him and he didn’t know what that meant.

“Don’t, just—he’s fine, okay? He’s still out but he’s fine.” Her words were stumbling over each other. Naruto opened his mouth again but she cut him off. “He’s here. In Konoha. Go back to sleep, okay? He’s here and he’ll still be here when you wake up but right now you need to heal.”

In Konoha.

Something inside of Naruto relaxed.

“Go back to sleep,” Sakura was still whispering, and then he could feel her gentle touch, followed by something warm spreading slowly outwards from his arm and into the rest of his body, and it felt like a comfortably intrusive blanket.

He didn’t think he had ever felt so tired in his life. His eyes fluttered shut and the world faded out.

~

When Naruto was finally released from the hospital, the first thing he did was visit Sasuke. The temporary prison was a joke, and the two ANBU guarding one of the makeshift cells stepped outside to give him some privacy, most likely under the Hokage’s orders, but it wasn’t until he approached the cell that he saw the protective seals drawn along the walls outside of the bars. Although the restoration of the village was far from complete, the prison safeguards were still in place. And from the look of the thin body lying across the cot on the other side of the bars, even that was likely just for peace of mind. He still wasn’t feeling strong enough to fight, himself, and he didn’t think the rogue ninja was in any better shape just yet.

“Sasuke?” he tried, his voice coming out little more than a whisper. Sasuke didn’t react at all. Feeling a bit foolish, he repeated himself with a confidence he didn’t really feel.

That seemed to do the trick. With a muffled groan, Sasuke turned to face him and pushed himself nearly upright, leaning heavily on one arm for balance. Now Naruto could see that he was dressed in a loose-fitting pair of black pants and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and he wondered absently where he had gotten them. Sasuke rubbed his temple with his free hand and shot a tired glare at him through the bars, but Naruto was just relieved to see his eyes were black again.

Then he realized he had no idea what he wanted to say. He floundered for a moment.

“Um, how are you?” he asked. The glare directed at him merely intensified in response, and Sasuke looked like he was about to fall over anyway, so Naruto didn’t think he really needed an answer. He thought for a moment. “They wouldn’t tell me anything. Do you know what’s going to happen now? With you, I mean?”

For a few uncomfortable moments he didn’t think he was going to get any reaction. Then Sasuke took a deep breath and looked away.

“No.”

“Well, are you staying?” Naruto asked hopefully. He wasn’t sure what Sasuke would do; he technically hadn’t passed the chuunin exam but his abilities were well above chuunin level. On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine Tsunade just letting him go back to the way things were before. He could barely even remember the way things were before. Maybe that was another one of those memories he’d been carrying around that hadn’t even been real. He had the feeling a lot of his memories were slightly more wishful thinking than strict accuracy.

“Does it look like I’m going anywhere, idiot?” Sasuke snapped at him, unaware of his thoughts. He was glaring at the bars of the cell now, and raised his arm to show Naruto some tattoo pattern extending across the length of his forearm.

Naruto took a step closer, and then another, until his face was nearly pressed between the bars, looking at the extended arm. He recognized the shape as a chakra seal immediately, but he had never seen such a pattern within it before. His eyes flickered up to glance at Sasuke’s, thinking about the sharingan, but when he saw Sasuke staring back at him, he looked quickly back down at the seal.

“Right. I guess you’re a prisoner,” he offered helpfully.

“Idiot.” Sasuke lowered his arm and returned to leaning against it. Already he seemed a bit winded. Naruto didn’t say anything. He had been fighting for so long to have Sasuke back that he hadn’t stopped to think about what came afterwards. Sasuke was still a criminal. He had defected. He had murdered. He had betrayed Konoha. Maybe they couldn’t go back to some imagined recollection of before, but what if there was no after either? They couldn’t execute Sasuke, could they?

Would they?

“What happened with the fighting?” Sasuke’s voice sounded grudgingly curious, and Naruto snapped his head back up. Sasuke raised an expectant eyebrow and tilted his head in the approximate direction of ‘outside.’ “The war? Kabuto’s army?”

“Yeah yeah, I know what you’re talking about,” Naruto said irritably. He shrugged. “I, uh, didn’t really ask.” He didn’t want to admit that he’d practically run straight here from the hospital. “We were both out for a long time. A week at least. When I left to fight you, the reincarnations all fell or something. Um, did you…?”

“Itachi,” Sasuke said, his expression blank. “He stopped Kabuto. It wasn’t me. Then he…then you turned up.”

Naruto stared at him for a long moment. Itachi had been a reincarnated shinobi too. Of course he would have disappeared. He must have sacrificed himself to stop Kabuto. And Sasuke was just sitting there like he didn’t care. Naruto frowned.

“Are you—?”

“What happened then?” Sasuke snapped, interrupting him. He sounded impatient but something in his eyes told Naruto he was probably just trying to avoid the topic.

“I don’t know. I guess the war ended,” he said. “Without Kabuto’s army, they probably couldn’t have stood a chance against our forces.” He fell silent for a long moment before the question that had been tugging at the back of his mind burst thoughtlessly out of his mouth. “Were you still going to come here to destroy Konoha?”

Sasuke just leveled a long gaze back at him.

“Yes,” he said shortly.

Naruto’s stomach sank. He felt nauseated and tried to remember if he had eaten anything at the hospital earlier. He focused on that thought and turned it over and over in his mind to avoid processing what Sasuke had just said. Sasuke seemed to pick up on his misery and let out a mirthless laugh.

“Naruto, do you have any idea what this village has done?” he asked flatly, sounding for all the world as though he was explaining a simple jutsu to a brand new genin. “What they did to Itachi and to my clan? How they used him to destroy us because they deemed us a threat?”

“I know,” Naruto said, his voice hollow.

“Then how can you stand there looking at me like that? How can you even ask me such things?”

Naruto didn’t answer. He didn’t have an answer. He had tried to put himself into Sasuke’s shoes but he couldn’t imagine lashing out like that and hurting all of his friends. He had felt betrayed by the village too, but he had chosen to try to change things. He had felt invisible so he wanted to prove that he could be great. He had felt hated so he wanted to prove himself worthwhile. He didn’t understand why Sasuke would have given up everything for revenge and destruction, or why Sasuke seemed to think that would turn out well. Still, he had to know…

“And now?” he asked. “Do you still want to…?” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Sasuke didn’t answer, but the hard look in his eyes answered for him, and Naruto’s stomach fell.

~

Naruto returned to the prison cell every day. It became a routine that he had quickly fallen into, and he tried to convince himself that it was only because he still hadn’t recovered enough of his chakra and energy to resume training each day. When he gradually felt his strength returning, he decided that he’d already developed the routine so he might as well keep visiting. Besides, the bastard probably didn’t have any other visitors anyway.

Even weeks after the war had ended, most of the villagers were kept busy. The hospital beds were still overflowing and the reconstruction efforts that the fighting had put on hold were resumed. There were funerals—far too many funerals. Most of the dead were people Naruto didn’t know, and he didn’t want to think about how his stubborn insistence on trying to save Sasuke might have led to some of those deaths. Or how it might lead to many more in the future.

Most of their conversations were stilted and uncomfortable in the prison. Naruto would sit with his back to the bars and try to hold a rather one-sided discussion or tell some inane story that Sasuke just listened to in silence. Sometimes Sasuke would even respond or ask a disinterested question or two, but Naruto thought that was probably just because he didn’t have anything else to do. He must be bored sitting all alone in a cell every day, locked away from the world.

It wasn’t until a few weeks after their return to Konoha that Naruto realized something wasn’t quite right. He had arrived at the prison as he usually did, although he was several hours later than usual because he had run into Hinata on the way and he hadn’t seen her since the fighting. When he finally showed up, the two ANBU on duty seemed strangely reluctant to let him enter, but he knew Tsunade had ensured his visiting permissions. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining their hesitation before they stepped outside, but he had a new story he wanted to tell Sasuke that Iruka had told him about the academy, so he hurried past anyway with some enthusiasm in his steps. He knew that it was bound to be another one-sided conversation, but it was still okay. Sasuke never told him to shut up, and he liked to think that meant Sasuke didn’t hate it either, or was at least listening to him for a change. That thought brought him comfort.

Sasuke was sitting on his cot, slumped over, elbows resting heavily on his knees. He looked up at the sound of Naruto’s arrival and the brief flicker of pain in his eyes wouldn’t have been visible to anyone else, but Naruto knew him too well. He knew all of his expressions. He could see sweat still drying on Sasuke’s forehead, plastering strands of stringy bangs to his cheeks. Even in the dim lighting of the cell he could see the pallor of Sasuke’s skin.

“What’s going on?” he asked, immediately suspicious.

Sasuke merely raised one eyebrow at him and didn’t answer. Naruto stared back at him until Sasuke indifferently shrugged one shoulder.

“I said, what’s going—“ Naruto cut himself off, narrowing his eyes at the movement of the fabric. “Take off your shirt.”

“Excuse me?” Sasuke sounded clearly indignant, but his voice also sounded unnaturally hoarse.

“NOW!” Naruto shouted, fingers closing around the bars as though he was about to tear them out to charge inside.

Wary eyes trained on the other ninja, Sasuke slowly pulled the shirt over his head, wincing slightly at the movements. When he set it carefully onto the cot beside him, Naruto could see why. His chest and upper arms were covered with an impressive assortment of scars, cuts, and bruises, some of them clearly still fresh. Naruto’s eyes slid up to meet Sasuke’s, but he was met with a perfectly blank gaze.

“What did you think, idiot?” Sasuke asked, but the gentleness of his tone belied his harsh words. Naruto swallowed hard and looked away. He thought he might be sick. “I’m still a criminal, Naruto. It’s interrogation; you know that. They just want to ensure I’m not a threat.”

“Are you?” Naruto couldn’t bring himself to meet Sasuke’s eyes again. But Sasuke just snorted in amusement.

“What do you think?” he asked again. “I’m in this god damn cell, aren’t I? What am I supposed to do in here?”

But what if you weren’t? Naruto didn’t want to voice the question. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. If he didn’t hear the answer spoken, he could keep trying to convince himself that Sasuke was here willingly and that he wanted to stay.

“And besides,” Sasuke was speaking again, “you’ve done worse, you know.”

Naruto frowned at that, mildly offended, and looked up. One side of Sasuke’s mouth was curved up in something between a smirk and a smile as he carefully pulled the shirt back on. He felt a little better at the unusual expression of good humor, but it wasn’t enough to erase the slight.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

Sasuke just rolled his eyes.

“Like you ever pulled your punches. I didn’t either; it would be stupid. And without healing chakra, how many scars and bruises do you think you’d still have?”

Naruto thought about that. It was a fair argument; he’d seen Sasuke in worse condition. He’d put Sasuke in worse condition, and vice versa. Still, something about this situation bothered him and he couldn’t quite place it. Somehow this wasn’t the same. Maybe because in all of his fights with Sasuke, both of them had been able to defend themselves. This felt one-sided and unfair.

He wanted to ask what they had been asking Sasuke. He wanted to ask what Sasuke had been telling them. But at the same time, he really didn’t want to know. He didn’t want the reality to strip away his illusions. Instead, he sat down in his customary place next to the bars and launched into his story.

When he was finally finished, he looked over at Sasuke and found him fast asleep.

~

Another few weeks passed and Naruto tried to ignore Sasuke’s injuries. Most of the time he couldn’t see them, and Sasuke never showed any further signs of discomfort. Regardless, he often found himself imagining the bruises blooming beneath Sasuke’s shirt and the blood drying against his skin. The thoughts unsettled him but he couldn’t dispel them.

One morning he was called into the hospital to talk to Tsunade. He was puzzled when she took him into an empty office and leaned against the desk in the center of the room. He had expected a check-up and told her so, but she just smiled tightly and shook her head and pointed out that her skills were more useful in the hospital than in the Hokage tower, and he couldn’t argue that.

“So what is this about?” he asked her.

“It’s about Uchiha.”

Immediately, his vision turned red and all he could see was those cuts and bruises. He thought he must have them perfectly mapped out in his mind despite only having that brief glimpse of them, with how often they swam in his mind and haunted his dreams at night.

“Sasuke?” he growled, clenching his fists until his nails dug sharply into his palms. He wanted to hit something. His voice rose in volume with each subsequent question. “Did you know about him? Did you know they’ve been torturing him?”

“They haven’t been torturing him.” Tsunade looked at him flatly. “Trust me. If he were being tortured, he wouldn’t be coherent enough to talk to you every day. He is being interrogated, but the information extraction team has been ordered to go easy on your little friend. I’ve given him regular examinations and he’ll be just fine. He’s been through far worse.”

Information extraction team. Naruto scowled, but his fists unclenched slightly. Then he paused, rethinking her words. He’s been through far worse? Was she talking about when he had trained in Konoha, or what had happened to him with Orochimaru and the Akatsuki? Before he could ask, she was already moving on to another topic.

“In any case, he has been as forthcoming as we can expect of him and continuing to keep him confined will not accomplish anything so he will be released this week.” Naruto’s heart leapt into his throat. “His chakra will remain sealed for the foreseeable future and he will be supervised at all times.”

Her eyes were trained meaningfully on his, but Naruto was still struggling to process this new information.

“You’re…really freeing him? You’re not gonna kill him?”

“Kill him?” Tsunade looked puzzled now. “Look, I dislike the little brat as much as anyone, but there’s no need for that. The council may have wanted—well, that was never on the table. Not for him.” She paused. “So is this acceptable?”

“The bastard not getting killed? Of course it is! How can you even ask me that?”

“No,” Tsunade sighed. “Are you willing to supervise him? I can’t give you a timeframe right now, but both of you will need to report back to me at least once a month while we see how this goes. If things go well, we may be able to loosen his chakra seals eventually. No one else wants—no one else is available for this task right now, and I think you’re probably the only person around here who can get through to him.”

“What?” Naruto echoed stupidly. Tsunade just rubbed her eyes.

“Naruto…”

“You want me to…?” He wasn’t sure the arrangement made a whole lot of sense. He wasn’t too modest to realize how much his strength had grown, particularly with his enhanced control over the Nine-Tails and its chakra. But this wasn’t about sheer strength. Without his chakra, Sasuke could be monitored and stopped by just about anyone. It would make more sense to choose someone more disciplined. A better teacher. “Why not Kaka—“

He stopped short, thinking back to the words she’d tried to backtrack on. No one else had wanted to deal with Sasuke. He didn’t know why he felt a little betrayed by that. And if she thought that he could get through to Sasuke, even though he had never been successful at that before…

“Of course I will! When does he get out? Is he coming back to my place? Is this because you put a good word in for him, old woman?”

“Don’t call me old woman!”

“I knew it! You’re behind this! You really stood up for him!”

“Get off me, you brat!”

~

When Naruto arrived at the prison, the ANBU were already waiting for him. If he really thought about it, the situation seemed a little too convenient to him—he hadn’t expected Sasuke to be released at all, much less so soon—but he was more than willing to accept the stroke of good fortune without further questions. He greeted the guards cheerfully but they just stared back at him through their masks and led him inside. He was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet as they unlocked the heavy cell door and slid it aside to release Sasuke. In the back of his mind, Naruto was surprised that Sasuke wasn’t bound, but he supposed that since the whole point was to release him, it didn’t really matter whether or not his hands were tied.

Sasuke didn’t seem nearly as enthusiastic about his freedom. He pulled himself wearily off the cot and walked over to the cell door. Naruto looked him up and down, but aside from his sluggishness, he seemed to be healthy enough. Tsunade had confirmed as much, and he knew she wouldn’t lie to him. Sasuke came to a stop in front of him and crossed his arms over his chest, looking resigned and more than a little put-out.

“Well?” he said.

“Okay! Let’s go!” Naruto said enthusiastically, spinning on his heel to lead Sasuke outside before he was hit in the face with something soft.

He grunted and took the bag from the ANBU, peering curiously at it.

“His things,” was all the ANBU said, tilting his head at Sasuke.

Naruto followed his gaze, wondering briefly what sort of ‘things’ Sasuke had, then shrugged and grabbed Sasuke’s bony wrist to drag him outside. Sasuke immediately yanked his arm away, but followed placidly and without argument. They made it all the way to Naruto’s apartment building in silence before Sasuke seemed to suddenly remember that he was supposed to be an asshole about everything, and he crossed his arms over his chest while Naruto unlocked the door, glaring critically around the street.

“So you live here now?” Naruto could hear the judgment in his voice, but his brain had already focused in on the word ‘now,’ which implied that Sasuke remembered where he had lived before. He fought to suppress a smile, his back still turned to his old rival. “Couldn’t afford a place in a decent neighborhood?” Still not receiving any response as Naruto turned the key and pushed the door open, he went on. “Though I suppose it’s not like this village even has any decent neighborhoods.”

Naruto whirled around, fingers clenched tightly around his keys.

“It did, you know, before your Akatsuki friends showed up and destroyed everything!”

“They weren’t my friends, you idiot, and you can’t just blame everything that—“ But Naruto cut off the retort.

“Oh right, I forgot that you don’t have any friends,” he said bitterly. “You’re too good for things like that, right? Whatever, come on. You’re only fooling yourself.”

He stormed inside to keep Sasuke from drawing out the argument without waiting to see if Sasuke would follow, which he suddenly realized, while tossing the bag the ANBU had given him onto his couch, was probably not a good idea. What if Sasuke took the opportunity to run? Not even an hour into his new supervisory duties and he’d already messed up. He dropped onto the couch in frustration, feeling as though he couldn’t do anything right.

But Sasuke just walked inside and closed the front door behind him before joining Naruto in the living room and looking around. Thankfully he kept further snide remarks to himself. Instead he held out his hand. Naruto stared at the hand, confused.

“My bag, idiot.”

Naruto glared at him and grabbed the bag, throwing it at Sasuke’s outstretched hand with a bit more force than strictly necessary, but Sasuke just caught it and cast another quick look around.

“What’s in it anyway?” Naruto asked, curiosity finally getting the best of him. Sasuke looked back and him and shrugged one shoulder. The thoughtless, casual movement irrationally reminded Naruto of the day he had learned of Sasuke’s interrogation and he swallowed, trying very hard not to think about it.

But trying to not think about something just means you can’t stop thinking about it.

“Clothes,” Sasuke said, breaking into Naruto’s mental argument. “Do you have a spare room or something?”

Suddenly all too conscious of how empty his place looked, Naruto forced a smile. It wasn’t his fault he had spent so much of the last few years training or fighting. In fact, it was technically all the asshole’s fault anyway since he’d spent so much time chasing after him, so he hadn’t had time to buy things. Or decorate. What sort of things was he supposed to have, anyway?

“Yeah. Down the hall on the right. Try not to get lost.”

“Idiot,” Sasuke only responded.

~

Aside from a few minor disputes over the sadly limited (and largely expired) selection of food in the kitchen, the first day passed without incident. Sasuke spent most of his time in his room, which Naruto didn’t really understand, because why would he just want to lock himself in an empty room all day? Wasn’t that what he’d been doing in prison anyway? What was the point of exchanging one prison cell for another?

But he should have known better than to think this temporary truce would last. Sasuke hadn’t exactly been social at the best of times, and during his stint in prison he had barely spoken more than a handful of sentences to Naruto every day, but now freed, he was becoming increasingly vocal, picking fights about every minor annoyance and irritation that he decided warranted his wrath at any given time. And Naruto sometimes even found himself wishing that Sasuke would go back to being the cold, distant bastard that he’d been so often in the past.

“What the hell is your problem?” Naruto finally snapped after his new housemate had seen fit to criticize the way he put dishes away, the frequency (or lack thereof) with which he did dishes in the first place, and, inexplicably, his hair.

Sasuke, still leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, just smirked at the outburst. Something that resembled satisfaction flickered briefly in his eyes, and suddenly Naruto felt like this was all some big joke at his expense.

“What did I do to you, you asshole?” he shouted, storming into Sasuke’s personal space just to watch the bastard try very hard not to flinch. “I’ve been trying to make this stupid arrangement work and you do nothing but come up with stupid reasons to insult me! You should be happy, you know! No one else in this whole place wanted to look after you. If it weren’t for me, you’d probably still be rotting in jail!”

Sasuke’s eyes darkened at that, and every sign of humor fled from his features. Naruto could see his throat contract involuntarily, and wondered if he’d crossed some sort of line he hadn’t seen drawn in the first place. Whatever; the asshole deserved it anyway. Still, he couldn’t quite shake the hint of guilt taking root in his mind.

“Then why did you?” Sasuke said, his voice far calmer than it had any right to be. “Why didn’t you just leave me alone?”

Suddenly, Naruto wasn’t sure if Sasuke was still talking about his current situation or about the years of running. He took a step back, lowering an arm he hadn’t even realized was raised.

“Because I won’t,” he said. “I never will. I don’t care what you do or what an asshole you are. I’m used to that. You can yell at me and insult me and try to hurt me all you want and I’ll still run after you. You can screw up your life and make stupid decisions and I’ll still keep trying to save you. Stop trying to push me away. You know it won’t work. It never worked.”

Sasuke just stared back at him for what felt like a long time, expressionless.

“Why?” was all he said, sounding sincerely uncertain, and Naruto just wanted to strangle the guy and somehow beat some understanding into him at the same time.

“Because you’re my friend. And I don’t care if you don’t want to be. You don’t get to make that decision. And,” he broke off, his voice shaking a little, “neither do I.”

He turned and stormed out of the room, leaving Sasuke still standing there, bemused.

~

Sasuke settled down a bit after that and they began to fall into an awkward routine. Both of them were still too drained to start training again, and Tsunade had threatened to put Naruto back into the hospital if he didn’t agree to take a short vacation from training, so they spent most of the time in Naruto’s apartment generally trying very hard not to give in to the urges to kill each other.

On occasion, Naruto needed to go out to buy groceries or run minor errands, and since he was supposed to be supervising Sasuke, he would drag a grumbling Uchiha boy along with him by the wrist. He quickly learned to keep their outdoor excursions to the later hours after realizing how sharply Sasuke would jerk away when a stranger would brush him on the street. At first it alarmed him, but then it occurred to him that Sasuke didn’t react quite so harshly to his own touches, and then it just confused him. He tried to broach the subject but Sasuke didn’t seem interested in the discussion so eventually he just dropped it.

But most of the time, Sasuke just kept to his own room. Naruto peeked in a few times out of a combination of concern and curiosity, only to find Sasuke sitting cross-legged on the floor, seemingly meditating. Each time he checked in, Sasuke noticed immediately and shot him a glare until he saw himself back out.

Despite Sasuke’s relative compliance and Tsunade’s positive reaction to their progress report to her after the first couple weeks, Naruto kept finding himself thinking about the things Sasuke had said to him back in prison. Sasuke had carried a tremendous amount of hostility towards Konoha, but he hadn’t acted on it or even openly expressed it since his wry remarks about Naruto’s neighborhood. Naruto wasn’t quite so idealistic as to believe that those feelings would magically have dissipated, but he found himself hoping and wondering if maybe he could show Sasuke that Konoha wasn’t as bad as he seemed to think or remember. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who had an inaccurate set of memories that he had convinced himself were the truth. Maybe he could talk some sense into Sasuke and explain to him that vengeance would only be self-destructive.

So the next time Sasuke left his room and began rummaging in the kitchen for something to eat, Naruto followed him and sat down at the kitchen table. Sasuke didn’t immediately react to his presence and continued preparing himself some noodles and vegetables, so Naruto took it as his cue to start talking.

“What do you expect to get out of destroying Konoha?” he asked directly, unable to come up with a delicate way to ease into the conversation. Sasuke’s shoulders stiffened slightly but he didn’t falter in his preparations.

“Satisfaction,” he said flatly.

“Okay, but…” Naruto thought about that. “But what then? Where will you go? How do you know you’ll be any happier there? How can you expect to be happy after killing everyone who cares about you and destroying their home?”

“Happy?” Sasuke turned around, setting his knife down on the counter and giving Naruto a curious look. “I don’t expect to be happy.”

“I don’t understand.”

Sasuke sighed and crossed his arms, causing his short sleeves to slide up over his biceps. Naruto noticed at the back of his mind, with some relief, that the cuts and bruises on his arms had mostly faded away.

“Did you think that I fought and killed Itachi so that I could be happy?” he asked. Naruto could only stare at him, surprised by his directness. That was a topic he had continued to avoid, assuming Sasuke would deem it unwelcome at best. “I didn’t. I never expected to be happy afterwards. I never expected an afterwards.”

“You expected to die?” Naruto asked, puzzled. “But you were trying to beat him.”

“I was.” Sasuke raised an eyebrow pointedly at Naruto. “I expected that we would both die in that battle.”

Just like I expected when we fought, Naruto realized.

But Sasuke had survived against Itachi. And Sasuke and Naruto had both survived against each other. And now Sasuke wanted to take on the entire village, from the Hokage down to the newest genin. Naruto frowned.

“You expect to die.” It wasn’t a question. He pounded a fist on the table at the realization. “This is a suicide mission for you!”

Sasuke didn’t answer. His expression remained unreadable. Naruto could feel himself growing angrier.

“Why do you want to kill yourself so badly? Why do you keep trying to throw your life away for stupid causes, you asshole? Don’t you even care?”

“Stupid causes?” Sasuke laughed in disbelief. “You don’t understand anything at all! I asked you before if you knew what Konoha had done to Itachi. To the Uchiha. The council manipulated him. They had the entire clan slaughtered because they decided we were a threat. My mother, my father. What do you think my mother ever did to deserve this? Do you think she would have orchestrated a coup someday? They didn’t even think about any of it. They didn’t care who got hurt or who they had to manipulate. And how can you even begin to understand? You didn’t grow up with parents. You didn’t have a family to lose. You started with nothing so there was nowhere to go but up. I started with something and it was taken away.”

Something inside of Naruto felt like it broke in two. How many times did he have to hear Sasuke use that excuse, as though somehow growing up completely alone and hated by the entire village for something he now knew hadn’t even been his fault was supposed to be easier than feeling loved and cared for. There was some saying about that, and Naruto had never really thought about it, just accepted it because, to him, it was the indisputable truth.

“It’s better to love and lose something,” he said softly. Images drifted in front of his vision. His mother and father. Sakura. Kakashi. Iruka. Tsunade. Konohamaru. Gaara. Sasuke himself. “Better than never having loved.”

The image of Sasuke aligned with the Sasuke in front of him and slotted neatly into place.

“You’re wrong.” Sasuke’s eyes reflected his frustrated fury. “You still don’t understand. Just shut up. You don’t get it, all right?”

“What don’t I get?” Naruto demanded. “Explain it to me then! I want to understand!”

“Do you understand how the sharingan forms?” Sasuke took a deep breath and leaned back against the counter, collecting himself. Naruto shook his head, deciding it was best to let Sasuke just start talking. “It’s tied to the emotional center in the brain. The bloodline limit, it’s formed by chakra in the brain. We feel love in a very specific way, not the way that you do. Not the way anyone else does. When that is taken away, the despair causes that chakra to create the sharingan. Do you remember when mine first manifested?”

Naruto could still see Sasuke’s body falling onto the bridge, broken and bleeding. He could only nod.

“There are advanced forms of the sharingan too,” Sasuke continued. His gaze had slid away from Naruto and he was staring at the empty wall. “The more advanced the sharingan, the more painful the experience required to unlock it. It’s the curse of the clan. Greater love becomes still greater hatred. Do you understand why it doesn’t matter what happens next? This was the risk Konoha saw.” He laughed hollowly. “I almost can’t blame them. But then, they can’t blame me either…”

His eyes flickered back to Naruto.

“Do you understand now? I’m not seeking out death. I just have nothing left; only hatred and revenge. It will never be otherwise. It’s impossible.”

“You’re wrong,” Naruto said. “It’s not impossible.” It can’t be. Because if it is, that means… “I’ll make you a bet, okay?”

Sasuke raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll bet you that I can prove to you there’s more for you. That you won’t just end up hating everything. And that you can even learn to appreciate Konoha so that you won’t want to destroy it anymore. Okay?”

Sasuke stared at him for another long moment, then burst out laughing. Shaking his head, he turned back to the counter and picked up the abandoned vegetable knife.

“Whatever, idiot. I guess I can’t stop you from trying.” He paused, and there was something strange in his tone. “But you might regret that you did.”

~

It was a long time before Sakura showed up at the front door for the first time. Naruto knew that she had been keeping busy at the hospital, but the clear discomfort that she radiated as she stepped inside with her grocery bag suggested that perhaps she’d had another reason for not visiting.

“This is okay, right?” she said again as Naruto followed her into his kitchen. “I know I didn’t give you any notice, so if you already had plans…”

“We didn’t.” Was it his imagination or had she flinched at we? He grinned broadly at her in an attempt to put her at ease and lighten the mood. “You know you’re always welcome here. You don’t even have to ask! Really, day or night!”

The soft sound of fabric behind him caught his attention and he glanced over his shoulder just in time to spot Sasuke disappearing down the corridor. A moment later a door closed firmly. Naruto sighed, realizing that perhaps he should have checked with his more permanent houseguest before letting people come over, especially with the way he tried so hard to avoid contact with strangers. But this was no stranger; this was Sakura. And maybe this was the perfect opportunity to set his plan in motion.

Operation: Make Sasuke Not Hate Konoha.

Okay, so the name still needed work. Still, Sakura was a former teammate. Leaving her to her dinner preparations, Naruto went to track down his brooding housemate and predictably found him sitting on the floor of his darkened bedroom.

“Sakura is here,” he said. “She brought dinner for us.”

Sasuke grunted noncommittally and didn’t open his eyes.

“You’ll come eat with us, right?”

Another grunt. It didn’t sound much like assent. Naruto frowned.

“She saved you, you know! You could try to be grateful! She healed you in the hospital and now she’s still looking after you. She just wants to make sure you’re doing okay!” Not the whole truth, perhaps, since she hadn’t even seemed comfortable with the idea of Sasuke’s presence, but that wasn’t the point. One of Sasuke’s eyes cracked open and he shrugged indifferently before closing it again.

Naruto scowled, anger battling irritation. It was a flood of feelings that Sasuke constantly seemed to evoke in him.

“You stubborn, selfish bastard!” he accused, pointing one furious finger at the subject of his frustration. “She was your teammate too, you know! She was your friend; doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

The silence was the only answer Naruto received. He chewed on his lip, glaring daggers at Sasuke and trying to force back his growing anger. Sasuke seemed wholly oblivious to the situation, still seated and breathing calmly as though he had never been disturbed, as though he was better than Naruto, better than Sakura, better than the mere mortals who had to be aware of the world like human beings. Naruto’s fists clenched, and then he leapt upon Sasuke with an enraged cry, tackling him to the floor.

Sasuke’s back hit the ground with an audible thud and he looked just as furious as Naruto felt, but at least his eyes were open now. At least he was finally seeing Naruto. Naruto was only barely aware of the grip at the front of his shirt, forcing the collar to tighten around his neck. He was too busy throwing a punch right at Sasuke’s stupid, smug face—a punch that Sasuke dodged with the quick twist of his head. Naruto’s fist slammed painfully into the floor, but the sharp stab of sensation only fueled his anger.

Sasuke threw Naruto off him and tried to roll away, but Naruto had already grabbed his shirt and used the momentum to force Sasuke back down, slamming him hard onto his back again. Sasuke let out an animalistic growl and reached up, but Naruto registered the movement before he could work out Sasuke’s plan and blocked with his own forearm at the same time as he slammed his knee into Sasuke’s stomach. To Naruto’s satisfaction, Sasuke’s angry expression scrunched up in pain, so he did it again just to keep that look on Sasuke’s face a little bit longer.

It was a graceless scuffle between the two, lacking any of the dexterity and power to which either of the two had access. It wasn’t a contest of ability or a means of gauging the other’s growth. This was something far more primal and basic: the need to cause pain directly and physically, and to dominate the opponent through sheer force.

“Why can’t you just do this?” he managed. Sasuke was struggling beneath him now, trying again to shove him away. “You can’t just avoid everyone forever, asshole! Anyway, it’s just Sakura! She saved us!” He barely registered the struggles beneath him slowing. “If you won’t do it for yourself or for her, just do it for me!”

He looked down. Sasuke had fallen entirely motionless, staring right back at him with an unreadable look in his eyes. For a moment the room was silent. Naruto wondered in the back of his mind if Sakura had overhead the commotion. But Sasuke suddenly turned his head away, glaring into the darkness.

“Fine.”

“What?” Naruto wasn’t sure he had heard right. Sasuke hissed out an irritated sigh.

“I said fine, now get off me, you idiot.” Still stunned by the uncharacteristic concession, Naruto didn’t move, but he could hear the smirk in Sasuke’s voice. “I don’t cuddle.”

With a yelp, Naruto leapt up as if he’d been burned, glad the darkness hid his flaming cheeks.

“That’s not—I don’t—dinner will be ready soon!”

He took off back into the safety of the hallway and the kitchen and Sakura, slamming Sasuke’s door behind him, but not before hearing the low, amused chuckle floating out behind him.

~

Dinner itself was uneventful. Sakura gave no sign she had overheard anything, but she was quite obviously walking on eggshells around Sasuke. Naruto didn’t think she was still in love with the asshole, and why would anyone be, besides, but she was visibly nervous and Sasuke seemed just as aware of it, if the small smirk pasted on his lips throughout her visit was any indication. Still, she made a noble effort to include him in conversation, and when he offered little more than monosyllabic responses, she didn’t push.

When she left a few hours later after putting away the cleaned dishes, she gave Naruto a hug and Sasuke a small bow that he returned, to Naruto’s surprise, with a short nod. It wasn’t until he closed the door behind her that he caught himself wondering when his feelings towards her had shifted.

Because they had, and that was undeniable. He loved her just as much as he ever had, and the very thought of something happening to her made something twist painfully inside of his chest, but that was how he felt about Tsunade and Kakashi, too. She had hugged him and the flutter that he’d once felt in his stomach wasn’t there anymore. Maybe that was a sign he had grown out of some childish infatuation. Maybe he was just growing up. Maybe—

“Don’t hurt yourself thinking so hard,” Sasuke muttered behind him, dropping back down on the couch cushion he’d been occupying earlier.

“Asshole,” Naruto said, sitting down next to him, but the insult held none of its usual bite. It was just habit and Sasuke seemed to know it too, from the careless roll of his eyes.

Naruto turned his head to look over at his housemate, and he frowned. This was the most relaxed he had seen Sasuke in weeks. Was that because he had finally deigned to interact with someone else, or was it because Sakura was gone now?

“What are you staring at?”

“Do you still want to destroy Konoha?” Naruto blurted out.

The good humor in Sasuke’s eyes fled at once. Naruto felt a sharp pang of regret for being the cause of that and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to bring it back. But at the same time, he really wanted to know. He really wanted the answer to be what he didn’t think it was going to be.

“Stop it,” Sasuke growled, looking away. “Asking me every other day won’t change anything. You can’t annoy me into giving up.”

“I can try?” Naruto offered. Sasuke still seemed unamused, and he sighed. “Okay, I know that. But you seemed a little happier today. It wasn’t really so bad, right? Sakura is part of this place.”

Sasuke’s lips tightened but his expression remained otherwise unreadable.

“I don’t care about Sakura. I don’t care about this village. This isn’t my home, Naruto.”

“Well then what is?” Naruto cried. “Do you even have a home?”

He wanted to take back the words the moment they escaped automatically from his mouth, and that feeling was so familiar to him that he really didn’t know why he hadn’t learned yet to stop letting his emotions get the best of him. He was pretty sure he saw a flash of pain in Sasuke’s face, but he quickly looked down. He didn’t want to see that. He opened his mouth to say something else, maybe to apologize, but Sasuke interrupted him, his answer slow and measured.

“I had one once. But do you know what happens? Sometimes the things you care about are taken away from you and you can’t ever have them back. Sometimes things—people—die and you can’t ever bring them back. No, Naruto, I don’t have a home. I don’t want a home.”

“But you need a home,” Naruto said to the floor. “Everybody needs one.”

Evidently that was the wrong thing to say. Sasuke was on him in an instant, bracing himself against the back of the couch with one arm as his other hand gripped Naruto’s collar and yanked him forward. Naruto looked up into an enraged set of black eyes.

“What the hell do you know?” Sasuke shouted. His anger sounded as though it could be laced by an undercurrent of desperation, but Naruto wasn’t sure if he was imagining it. “What do you know of what I need? How could someone like you possibly understand?”

Someone like you.

A stab of pain shot through Naruto’s stomach, and all of his frustration and anger and guilt tangled into a mixed up bundle of whirling emotions inside of him. He couldn’t think straight anymore and he only knew that he didn’t want to hear another one of Sasuke’s snide lectures about how he was too stupid to understand anything. Without thinking, his hand flew up and he buried his fingers in black hair, jerking Sasuke’s head down and silencing his bitter housemate the only way he knew how.

Sasuke went perfectly still above him when Naruto’s mouth closed over his, and time seemed to stop. Naruto’s heart was pounding in his chest as realization of what he was doing started to sink in, and slowly, one by one, his fingers loosened their grip on Sasuke’s hair and his arm fell back to his side while his mind ran through possible excuses.

I didn’t know what else to do.

It was an accident. Like that’s never happened to you before.

Just a joke. Get it? Ha ha ha.

Sasuke pulled slowly back, looking utterly shocked, and some part of Naruto wanted to start laughing and never stop because the whole thing was really just so ridiculous, and besides, he’d never seen that expression on Sasuke’s face before. It really didn’t suit him, and it was about time the bastard was put in his place like that.

But he also didn’t find the whole thing funny at all, and cold tendrils of sheer terror were beginning to wind through his chest. Was Sasuke going to hit him? He wouldn’t even blame him. Hell, he’d probably let him.

Or was Sasuke going to… what? Naruto wasn’t even sure what he was so afraid of. What could Sasuke possibly say that would hurt him? Was he going to stop being Naruto’s friend? It wasn’t as though he’d acknowledged that friendship himself in the first place. Not verbally, anyway. That didn’t explain why Naruto was just desperately hoping to find himself hit in the face for his impulse rather than suffering some theoretical terrifying fate he couldn’t even imagine right now, but one that seemed to have taken up residence in his subconscious nonetheless.

The shock on Sasuke’s features gave way to something else, something foreign that Naruto didn’t recognize on his face, and Sasuke shoved Naruto back and pulled harshly away until he was standing and glaring down at him.

“Do you think this is funny?” he hissed.

“No.” Naruto didn’t know what else to say and the tangled knot of worry and guilt in his stomach was growing tighter and tighter until he thought it might slide up into the back of his throat and suffocate him. It took all of his willpower to meet Sasuke’s eyes, and what he saw in them silenced anything else he might have said. Because it wasn’t just fury. It was pain.

Somehow he had hurt Sasuke.

~

He didn’t see his housemate for most of the next day, so Naruto took the time to think about what had happened. He was on autopilot as he went through the motions of what had become day-to-day life: Stumble of out bed, make breakfast, leave the dishes in the sink for Sasuke to deal with, take a shower, exercise a little. Normally Sasuke was moving about by then and preparing lunch or chiding Naruto for being a slob, but without his presence to provide distraction or entertainment, Naruto sat back down on the couch and replayed the previous day’s events in his mind.

He had been thinking about Sakura and about home, and Sasuke had refused to acknowledge that he had a home, but he had obviously been lying to himself because this was his home. Not just Naruto’s apartment, and not even the village itself, now that Naruto thought about it. Because locations weren’t really home. Even the apartment was still relatively new, but he had never stopped to miss the housing in which he’d spent his entire childhood. The surroundings were nothing to him; they were replaceable. Even now the village was being reconstructed and he knew that very few of the structures would look as they had before, but that wasn’t the point. The community was coming together and the efforts counted just as much as the outcome.

It wasn’t the surroundings that made a place into home. It was the people.

Naruto leaned forward, wearily rubbing his eyes. He had known all of this before. Maybe he hadn’t ever needed to put it into words, because he hadn’t been trying to shout sense into a stubborn bastard of a friend, but it was the reason why he had felt like something was missing for the past few years. The people of the village—his friends—were his home, and Sakura and Sasuke were at its core. With one of them missing, it had been like half of the home had been torn away. Sasuke had to see that, didn’t he?

But this was the guy who had tried so hard to cut away all of his bonds so he wouldn’t feel tied down or held back by other people. Naruto sucked in a sharp breath. That meant that Sasuke already knew all of this. He understood the value of his bonds perfectly or he wouldn’t have been so desperate to separate himself from them. And he had already admitted that the reason for discarding them had been fear of losing them. Okay, he hadn’t said it in quite those words, but that was effectively what it amounted to. Just about everything Sasuke had said on the subject spoke of the pain of losing what he cared about.

So Naruto would just have to show him that caring was worth the risk. That sounded considerably easier than he had the feeling it would be in practice, but that was to be expected when he was dealing with a guy who thought that the best way to avoid losing something was to throw it away himself before someone else could.

He had been approaching this all wrong. He didn’t need to convince Sasuke that Konoha could be his home. He needed to convince him to accept that his home already lay in Naruto.

Heartened by his decision, Naruto leapt to his feet and ran straight to Sasuke’s room without a second thought, barging right in.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Sasuke was lying on his futon, back facing the door. He sounded wide awake, and besides, it was the middle of the day so Naruto couldn’t feel too bad about it. On a whim he flipped the switch by the door, flooding the room with a dull yellow light that made Sasuke bristle.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “About what happened yesterday. What I said. I thought about it and I—”

Immediately, Sasuke rolled over to face him and sat up, eyes flashing.

“You have some nerve,” he growled, cutting Naruto off midsentence. “This is stupid, even for you. So let me make one thing clear. If you ever do that again I will slit your throat. Are we clear?”

Naruto was stunned into silence. His first thought was, Am I supposed to tell Tsunade about death threats? What would she do to him? But that was quickly followed by, Why would he think I would do that again? But then that thought sent a rather unpleasant sensation into his chest that he didn’t really understand. Either way, it sounded like a reasonable demand and maybe addressing that issue first would smooth things over.

“Uh… yeah,” was all he said, puzzled. “Yeah that’s fine. Uh, anyway, I wanted to—“

“Good,” Sasuke said, lying back down again. “Then get out. And turn off the lights.”

~

With Sasuke clearly unwilling to discuss matters further, Naruto decided he didn’t need to let that stop him. Instead, he began to work on plans for repairing the bond between them that Sasuke still refused to acknowledge. After putting up with a day of relatively awkward interaction, with Sasuke occasionally starting to leave his room again, Naruto brought up the idea of training. They were both healed and well-rested, and even Tsunade couldn’t possibly be angry when Naruto had held off for such a long time. Sasuke’s chakra was still sealed, which seemed to include his sharingan, but it was probably a good idea to ease back into the activity anyway, so Naruto didn’t mind holding back.

When he suggested the idea to Sasuke, he didn’t expect Sasuke’s eyes to light up with no attempt at concealing his interest. Clearly he had been growing just as bored meditating in his room all day as Naruto had felt in his own idleness. The training grounds were a long walk away and Naruto didn’t think Sasuke would particularly want to brave the masses in the middle of the day, so instead he led him a few blocks away to the outskirts of the city where rubble that hadn’t yet been cleared out gave way to a sparse scattering of trees.

“No ninjutsu then, agreed?” he asked tentatively, chancing a hesitant glance at Sasuke who was wrapping a binding around his wrists and forearms. With Sasuke’s explosive temper lately, he wasn’t sure that a reminder of his sealed chakra would be appreciated, but it was important to him to fight on fair grounds and to make the rules clear in advance.

Sasuke lifted his head, rolling his shoulders, and looked perfectly at ease. The tension in Naruto’s stomach unknotted all at once and he grinned broadly.

“Okay then! I’m gonna wipe that stupid smirk off your face!” he shouted.

“In your dreams, idiot,” Sasuke shot back.

And then they were off.

It had been years since they had just sparred. The last time had been before Sasuke left Team Seven to defect to the Sound, and their encounters in the years that followed had been laced with hostility. The taijutsu-only test run reflected but a shadow of their potential. Still, all of Naruto’s anxieties that had been building up since the end of the war had dissipated within mere moments of the first easily deflected attack, giving way to sheer elation. Even without chakra to supplement his movements, he felt like he was flying, and he couldn’t keep the foolish grin off his face.

As he ducked one of Sasuke’s fists and snapped a leg out to knock Sasuke’s feet out from under him, he caught a brief glimpse of Sasuke’s own lips curved into a small, satisfied smile. It sent a rush of warmth flooding through his body, just distracting enough that Sasuke’s dodge and counter threw him off balance.

The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back with Sasuke staring smugly down at him. Inexplicably, the warm feeling inside of him intensified. He felt suddenly restless, as though there was something he wanted to do with his hands, but he had no idea what it was.

“That all you got?” the asshole said mockingly. “You weren’t kidding around when you said you needed the practice. Are you really this desperate to hold on to the title dead last?”

Although he knew just how much he had improved over the years, that stung a little. Cheating a little, he used just enough chakra to throw Sasuke back to reset their positions, and both of them rolled to their feet. Without giving Sasuke a chance to regroup, Naruto dove straight at him, then feinted to the left at the last minute, his elbow connecting with Sasuke’s ribs. Sasuke recovered quickly and landed the next few hits himself, looking increasingly smug with each success. That smile was playing around his mouth again, and Naruto wanted to kick himself for noticing it when he suddenly found himself pinned a second time.

“Which one of us has their chakra sealed again?” Naruto ground his teeth together at that arrogant tone and opened his mouth, but Sasuke didn’t give him a chance to point out the “no chakra” ground rules again. He leaned down and his voice was low and rough in Naruto’s ear. “If you liked me on top of you so much, all you had to do was ask.”

An involuntary shiver ran down Naruto’s spine and his face was burning. An alarm bell had just gone off loudly in his head as all of the pieces he hadn’t even realized he was playing with slotted in place, and his thoughts flew back to the kiss the other day. His body had worked it out well before his mind had caught up. Did he want the bastard?

Why wasn’t he moving?

Sasuke leaned back and was eyeing him warily, gauging Naruto’s reaction. His face was otherwise devoid of expression and his tone was flat.

“I was just teasing you.”

But now that Naruto was aware of the undercurrent of their interactions over the previous weeks, his own reactions weren’t all that he had noticed. He remembered Sasuke jerking away from physical contact on the streets—but not from him. He remembered Sasuke’s displeasure at Sakura’s arrival, his joke about cuddling, and the words that had finally convinced him to tolerate dinner with Sakura: Then do it for me. He also remembered that brief look of pain on Sasuke’s face when he hadn’t been able to provide an explanation for the kiss. Even in prison, Sasuke had seemed to increasingly tolerate his presence and his inane stories, which he’d initially attributed to boredom.

For a guy who was so obviously afraid of developing attachments again, the asshole sure wasn’t doing a very good job. Naruto wondered if he had realized it himself yet. He pushed himself halfway up, resting his weight on his elbows, and looked Sasuke in the eyes.

“Were you?”

For once, Sasuke seemed to have no answer. He sat back on his knees, putting some distance between the two of them, and his eyes were unreadable. Well, if he wasn’t going to let Naruto talk him into understanding the concept of home, then Naruto would just have to show him. He sat up.

“I’m going to kiss you now. If you don’t want it, you can push me away or kick my ass or something.”

Before he could second guess himself or give Sasuke enough time to collect his thoughts and decide to force himself to keep hating everything, Naruto leaned in and gently pressed his lips to Sasuke’s.

Sasuke seemed frozen in place, but that meant he wasn’t in immediate danger of being murdered, so Naruto tentatively parted his lips to run his tongue across Sasuke’s lower lip, prodding for some response. He was just beginning to feel a bit foolish, like maybe he’d made some irreversible mistake and all of his assumptions had been ridiculous misinterpretations, when Sasuke’s lips twitched.

Suddenly, a hand gripped the back of his neck and pulled him in closer. He shifted his body closer as Sasuke’s lips closed over his, and then teeth tugged at his lip so he opened his mouth wider, and then a tongue was swiping roughly and wetly against his own and everything was lost to delicious sensation.

Sasuke’s unexpected enthusiasm sent a shiver through his body, and maybe it was all of the sparring or just his competitive nature, but he instinctively pulled his head free from Sasuke’s grasp with a growl and yanked Sasuke firmly against him instead. The body felt pleasantly warm and solid against his own. He buried his face in the crook of Sasuke’s neck and bit down hard enough to bruise. The distinct hitch of the body against his and Sasuke’s sharp intake of breath shot straight to his groin. He dug his fingernails into the planes of Sasuke’s back, mentally cursing the fabric in the way, and backed off just enough to lick at the indentations of his teeth on Sasuke’s neck and tug at his shirt.

Then he was shoved forcefully back.

He blinked his eyes dizzily and stared over at Sasuke, but the indignant insult on his tongue died when he took in the sight of the asshole looking so flushed and debauched with his chest rising and falling rapidly. Naruto couldn’t quite suppress a self-satisfied grin at being responsible for his state. For the first time, he thought maybe he could understand why girls seemed to find him so attractive, but that thought was immediately followed by a sharp pang of possessiveness at the idea of anyone else seeing him like this.

Slowly he climbed to his feet. Although he’d been pushed away in the end, Sasuke had obviously been receptive. It couldn’t be long before he realized his own feelings and came to accept them, and that gave Naruto a foothold. He was in no rush now. If Sasuke wanted to take it slow, it was okay.

“Let’s head back,” he said simply, holding out his hand to Sasuke.

Sasuke stared at it for a long moment, seeming surprised at Naruto’s straightforward acceptance of his hesitation, then jerked his head in a short nod and rose, collecting himself. Without a word to Naruto he turned and headed back in the direction they’d come. Grinning to himself like an idiot, Naruto followed him, feeling more cheerful and optimistic than he had in years.

~

Tsunade summoned the two of them into her office early the following morning for a progress report. As a result, Naruto found himself standing in front of her, trying desperately to keep his eyelids from drooping shut again, with a brooding Sasuke at his side. His hands were clasped behind his back, hiding his grey sleeping cap from view. In his rush to drag Sasuke out into the village after receiving the Hokage’s summons, he hadn’t realized he was still wearing it, and Sasuke, the asshole that he was, had diplomatically elected not to mention it until Naruto was already knocking on her door.

His knuckles twitched and he shot Sasuke a disgruntled look. He would have directed his fist at Sasuke’s head rather than at the door if they hadn’t been let in just then. Sasuke merely leveled a bored gaze at the Hokage as if unaware of the angry ninja beside him. But the slight twitch of his lip was enough to give him away and Naruto scowled harder.

Tsunade picked up on the tension between the two and glanced between them.

“I see things are going well between you two,” she said dryly. “Let’s hear it.”

Sasuke managed to look even more bored in response. Naruto rolled his eyes, but his recollections flashed quickly back to a very different look on Sasuke’s face and he grinned.

“They are going well!” he insisted. “Sakura came to visit, but you probably knew that already. And we sparred yesterday!”

“Oh?” Tsunade’s eyebrow lifted and her gaze flitted to Sasuke’s arm, where his sleeve concealed the chakra seal before returning to Naruto with a hint of concern. “Any problems?”

Sasuke was grinding his teeth together in irritation at the Hokage’s concern for his weakened state, but Naruto just shook his head.

“Nope! Feels good to train again. You’re not mad, are you, old lady? I waited as long as you asked! Actually I think I waited even longer than that, but—why are you looking at me like that?”

“Don’t call me old lady!”

Sasuke cleared his throat, cutting the customary exchange short as two heads whipped around to look at him. He hadn’t spoken up without being directly addressed in his previous reports to the Hokage, and he seemed to be struggling to form the words.

“It is difficult to train under the current circumstances,” he ground out, his tone forcibly formal and polite. He lifted his arm to indicate the seal and he took a breath, clearly casting for a proper way to make his request. Tsunade’s lips curved in amusement and she leaned back in her chair, clearly quite content to watch his discomfort. Naruto finally let out a loud sigh.

“You guys are really making me into the adult here? Fine!” He waved the sleeping cap at Tsunade, which she glanced at curiously. “When can Sasuke get some of his chakra unsealed? Sparring like this is boring! It’s no challenge at all!”

“Yeah, I could tell how easy it was for you after I pinned you twice in a row,” Sasuke said irritably. Tsunade’s smile widened, this time at Naruto’s expense.

“That has nothing to do with it, bastard!” Naruto glared at Sasuke. “I was distracted!”

“Sounds like you could use the practice then.”

“Don’t say that like you’ve never made any stupid mistakes yourself!”

When Sasuke fell silent rather than being baited further, Naruto realized what he had said and how it might have been interpreted. He could feel his face burning, and looked helplessly to Tsunade. Her expression had turned serious again.

“We forgive mistakes,” he said to her, but even to his own ears it sounded like a question.

“Hmm.” She looked at Sasuke, but he was avoiding her eyes. “Was it a mistake then? Can you convince me that you are no longer a risk to my village, Uchiha?”

Say yes! Naruto’s eyes were burning a hole into the side of Sasuke’s head. Come on! Say yes and mean it.Please…

Sasuke lifted his head to look back at her.

“No,” he said slowly, and Tsunade looked about as disappointed in him as Naruto felt. “I can’t convince you of that. I will never be able to convince you of that. Will I?”

She didn’t respond, but looked thoughtful. Naruto’s head was spinning. He wasn’t as much of an idiot as Sasuke seemed to think. He knew Sasuke hadn’t completely given up on his desire to burn Konoha to the ground, but he also knew that eventually something needed to give. One of the two sides needed to extend an olive branch and he didn’t think it would ever come from Sasuke. Maybe if that branch could be extended while Sasuke wasn’t in any condition to follow through on his plan yet, his mind could still be changed. The only thing that would be different is that Naruto would have a deadline for his plan, and he was determined enough that he could succeed. He knew he had already gotten to Sasuke’s heart, even if only a little bit.

“Treating a person like a criminal will only encourage them to act like one,” he said quietly.

Two identically astonished pairs of eyes flickered to him and he bit back a laugh.

“Well, it’s true, you know. Don’t look at me like that; I have learned some things about people. I think if you give someone trust and respect, they’ll feel like they need to live up to it. If all they get is suspicion and mistrust, then they’ll only be pushed away.”

Sasuke huffed an annoyed breath but didn’t argue the point. Naruto wanted to think it was because he agreed with the sentiment, but he wasn’t really that idealistic. Tsunade, on the other hand, was smiling softly. He almost found it hard to face. It hadn’t been all that long ago that he’d felt like no one would ever look at him with that kind of compassion, when it seemed like all he saw was the villagers turning their backs on him in fear and disgust. It reminded him that Sasuke was in those shoes now, with everyone distrusting and hating him, and that hurt. He didn’t feel like he deserved Tsunade’s smile if Sasuke couldn’t have it too.

“Sometimes you’re surprisingly wise for such a young brat,” she said affectionately. Then she sighed. “You’re not wrong. But at the same time, my job is to protect this village. I’m responsible for every single life here. My hands are tied for now, but why don’t you update me again in a week or two and I’ll see what we can do. If this continues to go smoothly, I think we can reach an agreement.”

There was the olive branch, even if it was a bit smaller than Naruto had hoped. He looked at Sasuke to find him inclining his head in acknowledgment, back to his detached formality, and Naruto grinned broadly at Tsunade, his chest swelling with gratitude.

“Okay! Come on, Sasuke!”

“And next time, leave your sleepwear at home, brat.”

Naruto flushed, realizing he was still waving the sleeping cap around, and grabbed Sasuke’s hand, dragging his smirking housemate hurriedly out of the office before things could get more uncomfortable for him.

Back on the street, he smacked Sasuke in the arm with the cap.

“Why didn’t you tell me, you asshole?! I ran in there looking like an idiot and it’s all your fault!”

Sasuke rolled his eyes, but his tone held a note of humor.

“Believe me, Naruto; you don’t need my help looking like an idiot.”

With an outraged cry, Naruto threw a punch at Sasuke, the cap still clutched in his fist, but Sasuke easily caught his wrist and shot him a smug look. Naruto couldn’t help returning a giddy grin, his spirits still high after the outcome of the progress report. Besides, the playful atmosphere seemed to effectively be keeping Sasuke’s attention away from his usual displeasure with the streets waking up around them. Naruto could imagine the hostile glares shopkeepers and villagers were shooting at their backs.

As though attuned to his thinking, Sasuke’s features suddenly fell somber and he dropped Naruto’s arm.

“You know it won’t be that easy, don’t you?” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“The Hokage won’t just unseal my chakra the next time I walk in there. She’d be a fool to do so. The Hokage is many things, but she isn’t a fool.” Sasuke shot Naruto a pointed glance, but Naruto wasn’t going to be pulled into another argument just yet.

“Are you calling her a liar?” he demanded. “She said she would remove the seal so she will!”

“Were you even listening to the same conversation?” Sasuke sounded genuinely incredulous. “She never said she was going to unseal my chakra. She said we would make an agreement. She definitely has something in mind.”

Naruto fell silent, thinking back to Tsunade’s phrasing. It was true that she hadn’t made any explicit promises, but Sasuke was being a pessimist. The implication was there, and if she changed her mind about it or tried to twist her words, she would be deliberately misleading, and that was the same thing as lying. He frowned to himself. Sasuke was probably at least partially right. There was bound to be a catch, but he didn’t think Tsunade would ask anything unreasonable of him. Convincing Sasuke of that wasn’t likely to succeed, though. He was probably just overthinking things anyway.

He was interrupted by a long, low growl that it took him a moment to realize was his stomach. Sasuke offered a low, amused chuckle that, for some reason, shot a spark through Naruto and left a pleasant warmth pooling low in his stomach. If they weren’t still in public… He shot a dark glance full of promises at Sasuke but it seemed to go unnoticed.

But he was interrupted once more by his growling stomach and let out a whine.

“I didn’t even have time to eat breakfast! Let’s get ramen. I haven’t been to Ichiraku in ages!”

“That’s not my fault,” Sasuke pointed out, although Naruto privately disagreed since Sasuke was the reason he’d stayed in so often lately. He wasn’t about to admit that out loud, though. “And I don’t like ramen.”

“Well you don’t have to eat any! You can watch me eat it.”

“I don’t want to watch you eat. You’re disgusting.”

That stung a little, even if all of Sasuke’s actions thus far spoke to the contrary. He was just talking about Naruto’s eating habits, anyway, and besides, Naruto knew that if he was waiting for Sasuke to suddenly stop insulting him, he’d be waiting for the rest of his life. He rolled his eyes and grabbed Sasuke’s sleeve, steering him in the direction of the ramen stand.

“Just for that, we’re getting ramen, whether you like it or not!”

“Fine, whatever.”

~

Naruto had just enough energy to put away the leftover ramen he had brought back home, which Sasuke had insisted he buy so he didn’t need to keep getting dragged out for ramen, before collapsing on the couch and falling asleep. He hadn’t slept much the night before, too amped up from the sparring and emotional impact of what followed, and then the Hokage had summoned him during some hour of the morning that had to be too early to even qualify as morning yet in the first place. He barely registered his body crashing into the soft cushions before he was swept away into a dreamless sleep.

Naruto didn’t know how much time had passed, when he was suddenly awoken by an incredibly unfamiliar sensation. Something slimy and wet was in the process of trying to crawl quite insistently into his ear canal.

He shot upright, a kunai already grasped between his fingers, and collided bodily with Sasuke, who was straddling him and smirking down at him. Naruto could only stare at him for a long moment, kunai pressed dangerously against Sasuke’s throat, as his chest rose and fell rapidly. The panic and alarm began to subside and he slumped back to tuck the kunai back into his pouch, overtaken by weariness and bewilderment.

“What the hell are you trying to do, asshole? I could have killed you!”

Sasuke’s smirk just grew and he leaned in closer.

“I don’t think so,” he murmured, hot breath fanning Naruto’s face. “I grew rather bored while you slept. It was quiet for a change, which was nice, but then I started thinking.”

“Oh great, what’s the brilliant plan now? Decided to defect again to get that seal taken off and assassinate the old lady on your way out?” Naruto teased.

Sasuke pulled back slightly, looking irate, but shot Naruto a considering and somewhat ominous grin a moment later.

“Now that you mention it, it does strike me as a valid option.” He seemed to notice Naruto turning slightly green at the thought, and reached out a hand to smack him playfully upside the head. “I’m joking, idiot. I thought about some of the things you said before. And some of the things we did before.”

“A-and?” Naruto swallowed hard, hating the way his voice betrayed his anxiety. Sasuke’s face still looked a bit more serious than he would have liked. He wasn’t getting a vibe of imminent rejection, but it was still hard to feel especially confident around someone as moody as his housemate.

“And,” Sasuke continued, leaning back in, “I think I’m interested.”

“You think?” Naruto echoed dubiously.

Sasuke’s lips pressed into a thin line and he paused.

“Just shut up, idiot.”

“I’m serious!” Naruto leaned back, away from Sasuke, just enough to look him in the eyes. “What changed? What are you thinking?”

“What?” Sasuke was sounding increasingly incredulous and Naruto wanted to kick himself. “Are you for real? I don’t want to talk about it like a girl! Why are you making such an issue out of this? It doesn’t need to be a big deal!”

And, oh right, communication wasn’t really a familiar concept to Sasuke. There was a reason that Naruto had traditionally communicated with him using fists—and occasionally using weapons and chakra as punctuation. Sasuke had clearly only just begun to untangle his own thoughts, and if he shut down around everyone else, it seemed unlikely that he was significantly better at figuring himself out either. Still, perhaps there wasn’t any harm in helping him out with a different form of communication, except Sasuke was already pulling away, and there was that hurt look again that he was trying to mask.

Naruto lunged forward and yanked Sasuke back against him, crashing their lips roughly together. Despite his irritation, Sasuke seemed receptive, his tongue darting out immediately to taste Naruto’s lips. Naruto opened his mouth, and the feel of Sasuke’s tongue sliding alongside his own without any hesitation sent a full-body shiver coursing through him. Sasuke chuckled into his mouth and he couldn’t bite back a groan at the sensation. He slid his hands up underneath Sasuke’s shirt, marveling at the tight muscles concealed within such a slender frame, and tried to remember how many times he’d fought Sasuke in the past without ever fully taking notice of his body.

It was a few more moments before Sasuke finally pulled away to allow Naruto to pull the shirt over his head. He made no move to return the favor, so Naruto quickly shed his own and then pulled Sasuke down with him as he lay back, reveling in the sensation of a warm torso pressed to his. Sasuke dropped his head on Naruto’s shoulder and lazily licked circles along his jaw, each stroke raising goosebumps on Naruto’s skin.

Dazedly, Naruto rubbed his hands up and down Sasuke’s scarred back and tilted his head back, exposing more of his jaw and neck to Sasuke’s tongue. He was utterly lost to sensation. His entire world consisted only of the planes of skin where Sasuke’s body met his own and the feeling of a dexterous tongue against his neck and jaw.

“Pinch me,” he murmured, half to himself. Sasuke rumbled an inquisitive noise against his neck but didn’t stop his attentions. Pressed into the couch beneath him, Naruto could feel Sasuke’s heartbeat echoing his own. “Is this real? You’re so affectionate.”

Sasuke tensed abruptly beneath his fingers and Naruto could feel his throat move as he swallowed involuntarily.

“It’s fine; it’s okay.” He stroked along Sasuke’s sides with soothing motions, fingers catching lightly on some subtle scarring that still hadn’t fully healed. He wanted to memorize the feeling of every inch of Sasuke’s body. “I like it. I’m not judging you. Just surprised. You’re usually such an ass. I like you better when you’re like this.”

Sasuke frowned into his neck and paused what he had been doing.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said, lips moving lightly against Naruto’s skin as he spoke. Naruto just smiled to himself. He could hear the lie in Sasuke’s words.

“Who are you trying to convince?”

With a growl, Sasuke pushed himself up and scowled down at Naruto, evaporating Naruto’s good mood.

“Why do you always have to be such an idiot? You really don’t understand anything, do you?”

“Stop saying that!” Naruto propped himself up on his elbows angrily. It always comes back to this, doesn’t it? “This isn’t about me not understanding! This is about you being too damn afraid of getting close to someone because you’re scared you might lose them! Well that’s life! Grow up and accept it! It’s not supposed to be easy!”

Sasuke was on his feet in an instant. Naruto didn’t even see him grab the discarded shirts until his own was hurled into his face. When he pulled it away, Sasuke was already storming down the hallway towards his own bedroom. The door slammed loudly behind him.

“Why do you have to be so damn moody all the time?” Naruto shouted after him.

Then he fell back against the couch with a weary groan. He wasn’t even sure anymore if he was making any headway. For all he knew, he was making things worse.

~

The rest of the week passed without incident. Granted, the reason for that was Sasuke’s absolute avoidance of Naruto unless it was unavoidable. Naruto roamed boredly around the apartment, only ducking out once for groceries, once for ramen, and a few times to stretch and exercise a bit outside. He was never gone long, but somehow Sasuke managed to time his meals during precisely those moments, because the lingering scent of food still hung in the air when Naruto came back inside and some of the dishes were still damp.

He was growing increasingly anxious about the situation. It troubled him that Sasuke seemed perfectly content to avoid him so thoroughly; it felt like the longest he’d been ignored since Sasuke’s arrival in his apartment. He caught himself pausing in front of Sasuke’s bedroom door several times as the time stretched on, but he couldn’t bring himself to give in. Instead, the discomfort in his gut continued to grow unchecked and his thoughts just kept making him increasingly miserable.

He was surprised when he received a summons from the Hokage that weekend. It had only been just over a week since the last time, and this seemed a bit too soon for the next progress report. The good news was that it was in the afternoon for a change, but the bad news was that he was going to have to face Sasuke’s temper again.

With a sigh, he rapped on the closed bedroom door. He expected no response and was not particularly surprised that his expectations were met. Maybe it was just childish or competitive of him, but he really didn’t want to be the first to break the uncomfortable silence that had grown between them. Sucking up his pride, he knocked again, more loudly.

“Sasuke. The old la—the Hokage wants to see us.”

He fell silent, waiting for a response, but none came. He took a step back and sighed again, already trying to work out what he could tell Tsunade if he showed up without Sasuke in tow, and how that would affect the situation. He had just turned away, resigning himself to getting an earful from the old lady, when the door creaked open behind him. Sasuke stepped out into the hallway and Naruto snuck a glance at him. He looked just as he always had, standing up straight with a disinterested expression pasted across his face. It hadn’t been until very recently that Naruto thought he could see just how forced that expression was. He shrugged and headed for the front door.

“Well, let’s go.”

They crossed the village in silence, Sasuke trailing just a bit behind Naruto. Although the walk really wasn’t particularly long, it felt like it lasted a lifetime. The town seemed cold somehow and the vibrant colors of Konoha were dulled and subdued. He didn’t understand how Sasuke couldn’t feel it too.

Tsunade was already waiting for them when they arrived at the tower, her door wide open. They filed inside and Naruto looked at her expectantly.

“Who died?” were the first words out of her mouth.

Naruto frowned, then noticed Sasuke doing the same in his peripheral vision, and quickly scowled instead, just to be contrary.

“Long day,” he muttered. “What’s going on?”

Tsunade looked skeptical but didn’t press the issue. Instead she turned her attention to Sasuke.

“I discussed your situation with the council over the past week. As expected, they were resistant to the idea of releasing your chakra. However, with a significant shortage of manpower already, we can’t afford to keep resources tied up.” Her eyes flickered pointedly towards Naruto and then back. “The council still views you as a threat, which I think you can agree is reasonable.” She paused long enough for him to nod shortly in acknowledgment. She smiled gently. “But in the interest of moving matters along, they have agreed to allow for a partial unsealing of your chakra. Call it a test run if you like. Your supervision restrictions will be loosened as well, but you will be monitored by ANBU anytime you leave your apartment.”

Naruto’s stomach sank and he fought to keep his discouragement from his face. If he was no longer required to supervise Sasuke, then he couldn’t keep Sasuke from continuing to avoid him. Everything felt like an enormous step backwards.

“I will finish the preparations this week and you are to report back to me then. Understood?”

“Yes,” Sasuke said flatly.

If Tsunade was at all taken aback by his lack of enthusiasm, she didn’t let on. Naruto supposed that it wasn’t exactly uncharacteristic of Sasuke. Still, he tried to force an appropriate reaction by plastering a smile on his own face.

“That’s great news!” he said. He tilted his head towards Sasuke without looking at him. “I told you it was just a matter of time.”

Sasuke grunted his assent after a long moment. Tsunade looked between the two of them one last time, then clapped her hands.

“Okay, then! You’re dismissed. See you in a week, Uchiha.”

~

When they arrived back at the apartment, Naruto fumbled with his keys before unlocking the door to let them inside. He moved to let Sasuke pass, and part of him desperately wanted to reach out to pull the bastard aside and somehow put an end to the chasm that had grown between them. Sasuke’s expression was still blank as he walked inside. He’d shown no emotion at all about Tsunade’s announcement. For reasons he couldn’t even begin to explain, Naruto felt like his heart was breaking. He couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

But in the end, he didn’t get a chance to speak. When he closed the door behind him and turned around, Sasuke was facing him, looking almost uncertain.

“I don’t like you like this,” he said.

Although his voice was still flat, Naruto could tell that the admission had been incredibly difficult. He’d probably been summoning the strength for it on the entire walk back.

“Like what?”

“Quiet. Like you…” Sasuke closed his eyes briefly, and they looked pained when he opened them again. “Like you lost your best friend. Naruto, I didn’t mean what I said.”

Naruto laughed quietly, a heavy weight lifting from his shoulders. It was just like that bastard to keep proving him wrong, he supposed. He had never expected Sasuke to be the one extending the olive branch. At the same time, he didn’t think it was likely to happen again. He had known Sasuke for years. The guy was a stubborn bastard with more pride than anyone he’d ever known, and he had never even heard an apology from his lips. This was probably as close as he’d ever get to one.

Well, he had known all of this about Sasuke from the beginning. He knew exactly what kind of person he was dealing with. He knew that wasn’t about to change. The fact that Sasuke was willing to make any concessions at all spoke volumes. And a guy like that… he didn’t think Sasuke would really find it within himself to hurt him later, no matter how much he thought he still wanted to chase after some irrational sort of intangible vengeance.

Even if he did, maybe that was okay, too. Naruto gazed at him. Hadn’t he been trying to convince Tsunade only a few short weeks ago that everyone makes mistakes? Sasuke would never be perfect; he would probably keep on making more, and Naruto would too. But Naruto was probably also the only person who could actually stop him from making the particularly destructive ones. In the end, it was still Sasuke’s decision what path he would choose to follow. All Naruto could do was try to show him the one he believed was right, and deal with the consequences when they happened.

He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought about it sooner. He’d spent so much energy trying to decide how to force Sasuke to change that he had forgotten the alternative: simply accepting him for who he was.

He smiled. Suddenly he felt lighter than he had in years. His best friend was here and wasn’t going anywhere. This was exactly what he had wanted; how could he be so selfish as to demand even more? How could he expect the world to rewrite itself just for him?

“I know. I know. It’s fine,” he said, lifting his arms. Sasuke stepped closer without hesitation and allowed the embrace. “I hate it when you ignore me. It feels like you’re gone all over again and I don’t know how to live with that anymore.”

Sasuke exhaled slowly and dropped his head on Naruto’s shoulder, his hair tickling Naruto’s neck.

“I don’t care what you decide,” Naruto went on, tightening his arms around Sasuke. He never wanted to let go again, not if he could help it. “I know what I’m hoping for, but that’s all it is. You are who you are and I know you’ll think about things and make your choice. I’ll clean up your mess when you do, and I’ll still be here waiting for you in the end. I’ll still accept you the way you are, no matter how messed up or angry you get.”

He could feel Sasuke swallow against him as he realized what Naruto was saying. Slowly, his own arms lifted to wrap around Naruto.

“Why?”

Naruto pulled Sasuke tightly against him, burying his face in his dark hair. He didn’t know what Sasuke was questioning, but it didn’t matter because the answer was the same.

“Because I love you, you bastard.”

He never heard whether or not Sasuke replied to him because the world suddenly jerked and Naruto felt a pull behind his belly button and then everything swirled out of focus.

~

When Naruto opened his eyes, he was sitting on the ground outside in a very familiar clearing with the sound of approaching footsteps in the distance sounding in his ears. Sasuke was kneeling a few meters away with his back to Naruto and he looked like he was trembling, one hand pressed to his eye. Fresh blood was running down the wrapping on his forearm. He was wearing the same clothing he’d been wearing a lifetime ago, the day they had fought, the day that the war ended. Naruto looked down to find that he was back in his own torn clothing, too.

He blinked heavily, trying to clear his head. Nothing made sense. He couldn’t possibly have traveled back in time.

“Izanami.” It was Sasuke’s voice, utterly devoid of emotion.

“What?” Naruto said dumbly.

His mind wrapped around every syllable of the foreign word as though he could make some sense of it, but he just felt like he was stuck in some strange dream that he wouldn’t really understand until he woke up again and everything was back to normal.

“It’s a genjutsu that traps the target’s consciousness in a replicated sequence of events until the target acknowledges the outcome of their actions and accepts their reality rather than seeking to force a change. When combined with Tsukuyomi, the nature of the illusion is completely under the user’s control.”

Sasuke’s voice sounded detached, as though he was reciting from memory, but that didn’t stop the sharp pain of betrayal from coursing through Naruto’s body. He swallowed hard, feeling sick to his stomach and incredibly cold, and realized that he was shaking. How could Sasuke sound so unaffected?

“Then nothing was real?” His own voice was barely a whisper, his words filled with every ounce of the disbelief he was feeling. “You’re not making any sense, Sasuke.”

“One’s reality is another’s illusion. We all live inside our own fantasies.”

Sasuke’s voice sounded utterly hollow to Naruto’s ears, and something about the phrasing struck him as slightly off, as though it were part of some other conversation Sasuke was having, but that didn’t make him feel any better. It only intensified his growing horror as the realization fully sank in.

The entirety of the past few weeks that had evidently been imagined up flew through Naruto’s mind in a whirlwind of memory and emotion. He wanted to summon the energy to throw himself at Sasuke, whether to beat him senseless or to kiss him hard until he woke up from this nightmare, he wasn’t sure. He wanted to tear out Sasuke’s cursed eyes. He wanted to scream.

“He’s over here!”

He distantly registered Sakura’s voice. A moment later, she was at his side, flanked by Kakashi and several masked ANBU.

“Naruto! Are you okay? What happened to you? You just ran off; we’ve been trying to find you for hours!”

He felt hands on his shoulders, but his eyes were still focused on Sasuke’s back. Unable to move, he could only watch, eyes still wide, as three ANBU pulled Sasuke to his feet.

“…S-Sasuke?” Sakura sounded alarmed, as though she had only just noticed his presence.

Naruto’s mind was still playing back everything that had happened; everything that hadn’t really happened at all. Everything that Sasuke had set up just to teach him some stupid, cruel lesson. But it had backfired in the end, hadn’t it? He knew he wasn’t imagining the misery in Sasuke’s voice, but did that even matter now?

Sasuke’s legs could barely carry his weight. It was clear that he was still hurting and thoroughly drained of chakra from their battle. He didn’t seem like he could even see where he was going. The ANBU were half carrying him as they pulled him past Naruto, and his bangs fell into his face, concealing his expression. It almost looked like his lips were curved slightly up in a self-deprecating and weary smile.

Naruto’s ears could just pick up the broken whisper as Sasuke was hauled away, devoid of the harshness he usually injected into the word.

“Idiot.”

To him, it sounded an awful lot like I love you, too.