Chapter Text
Sasuke
It was like a crack forming on his skin.
Shattered glass. Cuts like cliffs. Bruises in the shape of a storm, thundering across his pale skin.
He felt hollowed out as if someone had carved the world away. It wasn’t the relief he expected to feel; the accomplishment.
This was dark, decrepit. Dead tree bark crumbling from his ribs .
What was this?
This was despair.
His hate had burned away, unable to consume. There was nothing left to feed the flames.
His memories wait in groups to be fed. Sasuke tried to give them what they wanted. He did. But, God, is it difficult to face them.
Here’s a crumb. There’s a crumb. I am yours. Every piece.
Where they bled into each other becoming one over the other. He couldn’t tell where Naruto ended and he began. He couldn’t say where the screaming ceased because it was still inside of him, held in a cage. He kept it for Naruto in case he ever needed it.
–
Sasuke was a sad lump of blankets in the stark white backgrounds of a hospital room. Far away beeping is a distant ticking of a clock. Reminders that the world is there in the background waiting.
He saw Naruto’s shadow from beneath the thin blankets. He was standing in the room observing him in careful silence. Sasuke remained hidden as if he could be a part of the furniture, an empty bed with him in it. He could picture Naruto with his bandages, dried blood on the white. Dark circles beneath his eyes. His unruly blonde hair weighed down by the damp air.
His skin was made of fire. Their blood was once two parallels that finally intersected.
They had stationed two nameless Anbus to wait at the door outside to watch Sasuke. Yet Naruto stood there attempting to be near him. Maybe they expected him to finish Sasuke off and their troubles would be null and void.
He used to want to hate him but he took that from him too. That ability. Yet there he lies before him. Him who ate away his rage.
The room was too stark and mixed with sunlight. It made Sasuke squint beneath the sheets of bright.
If he released the scream resting in his throat in that quiet room it would have been such a horrible sound. A final sound, like the thud of his brother’s collapsing limbs beside him.
A finger pressed in blood to his forehead. Final signature left on a will of misery.
The Anbu guards were attempting to pull Naruto out of the room as Sasuke let the blankets fall from him.
“Sasuke!” Naruto's sudden yell above the madness. It was as if it was the confirmation he needed that this was real. They took Naruto away, shutting the door to the hallway.
A tear fell from Sasuke’s lashes when he was alone. He didn’t need to keep his screams. There’s no reason to save them.
Sasuke sat up against his puffy pillow with the blankets covering his legs, the pain was a throbbing hollow thing but it didn’t matter. It was nothing compared to what Itachi had felt.
Despite Sasuke gritting his teeth against the throb of it he glared at the shadows in front of him.
“Well now what, Niisan?”
“Where do we go from here?” He asked the room. The room said nothing. These rooms only have voices made for ghosts.
He was falling into an abyss of his own making. The hate he held in his heart belonged to someone else but who was he without it.
Sasuke laid down with his head pressed into the pillow and looked out of those windows.
What did Naruto bring him back to?
–
They don’t tell you how hard it is to simply pull yourself upwards, to eat. He spent days and nights still as if the world fast forwarded around him. They didn’t speak to him while they healed him. They didn’t have words for a traitor.
Sasuke didn’t see Naruto for another week. He kept looking out into that dimly lit shitty hallway wondering if such a thing were real. Naruto, here with him.
That night he couldn’t sleep. He could feel the pain in his aching limbs more acutely but he had nowhere to go except for that sad sorry excuse for a room.
Sasuke huffed a laugh in the hopes that this had been Itachi’s Tsukuyomi all along. He would weep in relief.
“Just tell me,” he said to no one, “Is this real? Are you gone?”
Sasuke laid on his side and gripped the pillow tightly as if he could tear it apart beneath his grasp. When he did sleep he awoke to Naruto in the room again. The Anbu guards had let him in.
He walked to the side he was facing, blocking the light from the window with his form. Naruto looked exhausted, beaten. “They’re going to hate you,” Naruto said softly.
He’ll be the reason why hatred existed, they’d say. He was an Uchiha. That’s why.
He was the war they needed. That’s why.
Sasuke studied Naruto’s pale face in the moonlight and it didn’t look like hate personified to him. Naruto held nothing but sorrowful adoration in his blue eyes.
“I’m a monster,” Sasuke said, “People tend to hate monsters.”
“I’ll make them see like they did for me!” Naruto replied with conviction.
“I don’t want that. I don’t want that from you,” Sasuke snapped as his voice trembled.
Naruto admitted with a shrug, “If they can’t see you then they never saw me.”
He could see his bright face beneath the cuts and bruises that he had given him. Sasuke closed his eyes tightly. He felt the bed dip behind him as Naruto laid next to him.
“Stop,” Sasuke’s voice broke as Naruto rested his hand on Sasuke’s back, it felt like a burn. He didn’t deserve it. Not now.
Rain began outside, sliding down the window like a lament. It felt like the Hidden Leaf Village was mourning his presence. He didn’t fit. He was a puzzle piece without a puzzle.
It wasn’t long before Naruto had fallen asleep behind him. He could hear his soft exhale of breath tickle his neck.
Sasuke waited a few minutes more until he slowly extricated himself from the bed. He limped to the window and opened it enough to let the rain in. He glanced back at Naruto’s sleeping form before using the ledge to climb up on the roof of the hospital.
His bare feet stood on the smooth shingles, his hospital gown blew in the wind surrounding him, his hair was pressed against his skin in water rivulets. His tears, their tears.
Let me give them to you.
His toes pressed at the edge, slipping slowly as he held himself. The moon was hiding from him as he spotted the telephone pole that used to haunt his nightmares. It seemed so far away. The spaces in which his brother occupied.
“You left me here,” Sasuke whispered against the rain.
“Sasuke!” Naruto’s voice rang out behind him. He had followed him onto the roof. Sasuke turned to see him struggling against the slick shingles.
A scream ripped from Sasuke’s raw throat, “Fuck off!” but Naruto didn’t flinch. He stumbled over to him until they stood side by side.
“No,” Naruto said as he caught his breath.
“Please…” Sasuke pitifully pleaded but it was a hollow request.
“We go together or not at all, remember?” Naruto said with shining eyes. Sasuke yelled a frustrated lament towards the buildings.
“Let me go!” Sasuke called over the storm that rumbled overhead. There was lightning flashing against the mountains. He ran towards it, as fast as his legs could carry him. He was exhausted, nearly toppling to the ground. He jumped across the rooftops as Naruto followed fast behind. Sasuke stood below the dark clouds as the lightning flashed. He raised his hands to it as the build of energy formed, he felt lit up like a star.
As the bolt was about to strike him, Naruto grabbed him and pulled him from its grasp. They tumbled off of the side of the roof and fell onto someone's porch, breaking the table and chairs that rested now in pieces there.
Sasuke blinked against the rain with his cheek plastered to the ground as Naruto crawled over to him. He grabbed Sasuke’s shoulders with his hand, forcing him up, face to face.
“ENOUGH!” Naruto screamed as Sasuke’s wide wild dark eyes beheld him. Naruto shook him and said, “Stop!”
The hatred that was his companion for all these years had left him on their battlefield but what did that make him? Who was he without it? What purpose did he serve?
“What am I?” Sasuke asked Naruto, his voice ruined.
“Uchiha Sasuke,” Naruto replied with such open warmth, “My closest friend.”
The sobs that were released from Sasuke were full body trembles. Naruto pulled Sasuke into a tight embrace to share the grief that held him.
Sasuke’s right hand gripped Naruto’s hospital gown as he wept onto him, giving him his burden.
Without a thousand knives at my back.
Naruto helped Sasuke back to the open window. He helped him lay soaking wet against the sheets of his hospital bed while Naruto was dripping all over the floor, leaving trails behind.
“Don’t do that again,” Naruto’s tone was low, “Promise me, Sasuke.”
Sasuke eyed him, hardly able to move from his wary state.
Naruto’s voice was loud and boomed with the thunder, “Say it!”
Sasuke swallowed as the room became blurry and before he passed out, the quiet words left his tongue, “I..promise.”
The sleep that he fell into was the quiet darkness he hoped for. He had curled himself into a ball within its cocoon.
–
The sun was high in the sky when Sasuke took a rock to the face. It had connected with his cheek, leaving a streak of blood that rolled down to his chin.
Itachi’s whispered voice, ‘Welcome home, Sasuke’
The shinobi of Hidden Leaf were escorting him through the streets after he was released from the hospital to be brought in front of Tsunade. The crowds had gathered screaming their hate at him as if he were a dream catcher for their rage. He used to be but he didn’t have the ability to hold it inside of him any longer. A mixture of aromas filled his senses, red hot, burnt hue. He looked ahead at the pathway that cut through them as his escorts pushed beyond them.
It was its own dance. They’d push and they’d pull like a tug of war until Sasuke felt outside of himself, existing somewhere else. Food was thrown, collecting in his hair, staining the thin gray robe they had given him to wear. His cheek burned like a match struck his skin.
“Monster!”
“Traitor!”
The Hidden Leaf Village had a corporal fiend to blame. One that was tangible and in front of them that didn’t exist in myth. A villain they could tear into without retaliation.
A villain they once loved, a villain they used to swoon over and follow with praise to give. Sasuke felt like laughing but he knew it would only come out as a sob. He didn’t want to cry in front of them. He may deserve their ire but they didn’t deserve his tears.
Inside Tsunade’s office, the Anbu guards pushed him down on his knees at the beginning of the large bright room. Tsunade wasn’t sitting at her desk, she was standing in front of it. Kakashi stood at her right and Iruka at her left as concerned sentries.
The tension in the room swelled as they all took in the sight of him. There was a pause before anyone spoke as if assessing their thoughts. Sasuke moved his eyes to the windows that overlooked the bright day. Glancing out at the horizon he could pick out the crumbling burn mark that was once the Uchiha compound. There was a pang in his chest as if something was chiseling to get inside.
Iruka’s brows knitted in concern, “What happened to him? He’s covered in food and he’s bleeding.”
The Anbu guards turned to look at him with disinterest as one of them shrugged, “The crowd was difficult to control.”
Iruka glanced at the others, “That’s unacceptable.”
There was a back and forth he wasn’t privy to, an awkward forward momentum. Sasuke didn’t know if they were going to throw him in prison or exile him. He’d take either one at this point, he just wanted it to be done.
Kakashi’s masked expression held a cautious sorrow, “We should provide somewhere for him to stay so he can get cleaned up.”
The door practically busted apart at the hinges as Naruto crashed into the room with a loud, “He can stay with me!”
Tsunade sighed, “Naruto you are not allowed to be here.”
Naruto cursed under his breath and insisted, “He’ll stay with me!”
“You both nearly killed each other. I won’t allow it,” Tsunade lectured.
Naruto clenched his jaw in frustration as he eyed Sasuke before departing in a huff to wait in the hall.
“He can stay with me,” Iruka interrupted with conviction of his own. He knew that Iruka and Kakashi still felt responsible for him. He wasn’t sure why it was worth the effort.
“Is that wise?” Tsunade questioned with a squint.
Kakashi’s voice was low in the room, “It’ll be fine. It’s temporary.”
“Until the council and I decide his punishment,” Tsunade said as she eyed Sasuke. He could tell she was trying to understand his position. He didn’t need their pity or charity. This is what he was. Their villain, their monster at the end of the book.
It was always going to be like this, wasn’t it?
Iruka was observing him with his kind consideration, “What do you think, Sasuke?”
The entire room grew silent. He could hear the crowd screaming outside. They wanted to tear him apart.
“That’s fine,” Sasuke managed a halfhearted shrug.
It was all fine, wasn’t it?
The silence of his fury had left a hole inside of him, emptying him of what he was, but it was fine. He chose this didn’t he? Or was it a spiraling path of the inevitable?
Ever onward.
Outside beneath the shadows of the buildings, he listened to the raucous shouts of hate mirrored back like a continuous ricochet. Naruto had insisted on coming with them as he faced the crowd with a steadfast truth that Sasuke had never been able to reconcile.