Archive of Our Own ^beta

The irony of Naruto bringing Sasuke back to the village after years of futile attempts is that Naruto is never really in Konoha to begin with. They aren’t the same hotheaded teens they once were who had responsibilities to no one but themselves. Now, Naruto is famous as a war hero, the child from the prophecy, while Sasuke’s infamy is printed in bingo books and etched in the nightmares of citizens, red monstrous eyes that promise the fruition of everyone’s dreams only to have it ripped away from them. Now, Naruto has places to go, people to meet, adoration to revel in, while Sasuke rots away quietly in a cage, awaiting a sentence that justifies the crimes he’s committed against humanity as though all the people he’s loved and lost to the system weren’t humans themselves who deserved their own justice.

He’s not remorseful for the things he’s done when others aren’t, but he’s resigned, and to everyone else, it’s the same thing.

Only Naruto had seen through this facade, through the prison walls, through Sasuke’s feigned indifference while his arms had been bound and eyes blindfolded. Then he promised, with that trademark determination and unwavering spirit that made him destined for greatness, “I’ll change things, okay. And you won’t regret it. Just you wait.”

For months, it was the last conversation the two shared. A year later, they let Sasuke out to see the sun for the first time. Naruto was the only one there waiting outside and asked, “So how does it feel, being a free man?”

Less than 24 hours ago, some shinobi sent by the elders that specialized in sealing techniques came by his cell and broke his wrists, imprinting cursed seals into his skin that would come and cut off all his chakra networks in a split second if he ever betrayed the Hokage. Afterwards, a healer stepped in to fix him up while Kakashi came into view, a blank expression on his face to hide age-old grief. It was supposed to be a small mercy, he explained, because the elders wanted Sasuke wholly subservient to the village, wanted to strip him off any feelings of bitterness to shape him into the perfect weapon. The only reason it didn’t happen was because Kakashi argued on his behalf, saying they had no more need for a weapon in a world that no longer desired war, but they could use a protector.

Sasuke hadn’t said a single word the entire time, but he looked at the spirals etched into his wrists and wondered if freedom meant being confined to another cage. At the very least, the seals were the emblem of the Uzumaki clan, flimsy unfounded comfort he didn’t know how else to justify but that it made him think of the sun.

“Not that different,” Sasuke told Naruto, but he didn’t know if he meant it or not, didn’t know if he said it out of remorse or resignation. In the end, Naruto didn’t ask.

Things don’t change just because Sasuke can walk around the village and doesn’t have an excuse to ruminate in his own thoughts. Naruto doesn’t spend any more time in Konoha than before even if Sasuke is no longer confined to prison walls, because the reality that they have lives that don’t center around each other is undeniable. Sasuke's never been in the habit of waiting for things that had no guarantee of coming anyway.

Despite the large inheritance Sasuke has from being the sole Uchiha survivor, enough for him to never work a day in his life and still be well off, he picks up missions to provide for himself and to get properly reinstated as a shinobi in the hopes of building his resume and make him qualified for chuunin. Not being a shinobi has never been on the table because there’s nothing else he could ever learn to become, though Sasuke entertained the thought once over drinks with Sakura. He spends more time with her even when Naruto happens to be in Konoha, something Sakura explains is because he’s always with Hinata.

“They’re getting married, you know,” she informs him one time. They often meet up in dingy pubs not because they can’t afford anything better, but because Sasuke always shows up a little worse for wear, grime clinging to his skin from labor because they’re trying to live in a society that has no wars to be won. Sometimes Sakura will remark that all his shinobi talent has gone to waste doing menial work, but they both know Sasuke can’t leave the village when his face is saddled with other S-class rogue nins and people will never forgive him for his sins and the sins of his clan. “It’s probably going to be the biggest wedding we’ve had in years, so they’re preparing for it as early as now.”

“Huh,” is all Sasuke can say. “I didn’t know they were dating.”

Sakura tilts her head. “They’re engaged, but they’re not really… together. They plan to start dating and taking things seriously after they wed. It’s complicated, but Naruto said it works for them. He’s different around her.”

Sasuke has never had any romantic entanglements, and he doesn’t know anything about relationships. Weddings are an even more far-fetched concept; in fact, he’s never attended one except for an assassination back when he was in Otogakure, part of his training. He doesn’t mention it to Sakura in case it’ll make her upset.

His wrists throb. He’s hit with the thought of Sakura becoming Hokage, and finds himself annoyed at how murky the terms of the seal’s conditions are. Her words still linger in the air though, and they’re talking about Naruto. It’s been some time, but he still doesn’t know about the seal, and Sasuke wonders if it’s an act of betrayal to keep it from him even if it’s to protect him from the cold, harsh truth.

The thing is, Sasuke’s always seen himself as a loyal person—it’s just that his loyalty has never been with Konoha. But they live in a world where the people and their beliefs are changing, and he’s no exception to that, so he doubts and wonders. Nowadays, he’s come to realize that maybe everything he’s ever known no longer holds true. Nowadays, he’s come to realize that he doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. Nowadays, he’s come to realize that he doesn’t know what he wants, and if he’s still allowed to even want things when he can’t actually get them.

“Well,” Sasuke says to Sakura. “It’s Naruto. He never does anything the easy way.”

Sakura laughs. “You have a point.”

Despite all that Sasuke doesn’t know, he does know this: he and Sakura are now friends. People expect them to be something more. He doesn’t need to wonder because he already knows that people anticipate a day when Sasuke and Sakura will be like Naruto and Hinata, whatever they are—wedded, together. But there’s nothing complicated about Sasuke and Sakura’s situation. They’re simply friends, and that’s all they’ll ever be, and it’s a small want that he’s grateful to have in his hold. Sasuke has never had any interest in her in a romantic way because being interested in her in a friend way is new enough, and Sakura likes someone else that he pretends to know nothing about because maybe feeling secondhand embarrassment for another is what it means to be their friend.

Things are changing. Sasuke is still indecisive in seeing if they’re for the better or not.

Shortly after Sasuke’s promotion to chuunin, he gets recruited for ANBU to make full use of his talents on missions outside Konoha. The mask he’s handed is an exact replica of Itachi’s. It’s one of the few things of the past that Sasuke still has with him. The Uchiha Compound has been demolished and turned into an orphanage because the village needs the space to accommodate orphans who lost their parents in the war; the original apartment he’d been staying at during his genin days before leaving for Otogakure, kept afloat by Team 7’s sentimentality, had been destroyed in Pein’s attack along with all the memorabilia he had left behind there.

Sasuke didn’t have any strong feelings on the matter. These were things that just happened, far beyond his control, and he no longer feels that familiar itch for compensation, for solutions that only he was capable of accomplishing. He looks at the ANBU mask and thinks it’s the same thing. The cursed seals on his wrists aren’t designed to make him pliant, but he wonders if that's the person he's becoming regardless. 

Maybe the answer doesn’t matter. If this is the change Naruto promised, maybe it’s the right one. All Sasuke can do now is try to understand how.

Sasuke’s life in this post-war state is in shades of gray, things he takes in stride and with neutrality, never enough to spark strong feelings in him that don’t go past his usual threshold for assholery. At the very least, the world is no longer simply a violent shade of crimson red. It doesn’t mean the blood on his hands will stop or he’ll stop using his kekkei genkai, but there’s a difference between what he does and what he feels, and he’s learning they don't always have to be tied together. If he doesn’t always act on what he feels, then he won't have any feelings towards his actions. Maybe this is how Itachi survived all those years.

Naruto insists they should celebrate the occasion of him getting into ANBU. They don’t meet up a lot, but when they do, it’s one of the few things that color the greys into gold tints and orange hues, something warmer and more comforting than he deserves.

"Man, I'm jealous," Naruto says, staring at the ANBU mask he nabbed from Sasuke. "Wish I got recruited for ANBU too.”

“Be realistic,” Sasuke replies. “They’d never let someone like you do undercover work.”

“Take that back,” Naruto threatens, waving his chopsticks menacingly at him. “You should know I’m good at a lot of things.”

Sasuke doesn't mean it like an insult, but Naruto is competitive by default, so he only rolls his eyes. People like Naruto could never become ANBU. It has nothing to do with skill.  ANBU is for those who can afford to get their hands dirty, who already have and don’t mind doing it again, altruistic reasons or not. Sasuke half-expected them to disband with the end of the war, but just because people now care about peace doesn’t mean the fighting has stopped. There are protestors and there are problems, the kind that can’t always be solved with civil conversations. It’s new for their shinobi world to try and solve fights with words instead of fists, but they want it to happen, so they won’t immediately resort to that option and hope they’ll succeed. It’s not that easy to do things differently, which means it’ll be easy for them to fail. The point of ANBU is to weed out and silence those who will make it difficult, those who still have blood sticking to them like second skin, violence running through their veins and living in the remnants and ruins of war, unable to come out of it or truly leave it.

To be ANBU has and always will be about staying hidden in the darkness to make the light shine brighter. In theory, it’s perfect for someone like Sasuke, and that’s why they’ve given him the position. It’s why he has the seals, and it’s why Konoha still keeps him alive.

Naruto should know this, but he’s here insisting they celebrate like the first time Sasuke walked out of the prison walls and he asked him how it felt like, to finally be free.

He doesn’t have an answer for the question until now, but only because the situation is also slightly different. He recognizes the freedom to this newfound position, that he’ll finally be able to cross the borders of Konoha to breathe air and walk on soil that isn’t rooted on a single village alone, that he can travel to places, technically, so long as the parameters of his missions permit it. But if it can ever be counted as freedom, it’s limited, and he can only go with his mask on—not as Uchiha Sasuke, but as a nameless Konoha shinobi. It’s nothing compared to what Naruto can do, where people sing praises the moment they hear his name and see his face because he’s a hero, a leader, a future Hokage, where he can argue with people in power and sway them to agree with his wants even with the hefty load of conditions that come with it, where he will meet people he’s never known before but be loved by them like they’re family.

Sasuke doesn’t resent him for that; it’s what Naruto has always wanted, and he deserves it. But the differences between them have never been more vivid than at this moment, where they share the same histories of loneliness but never the same goals or beliefs, and Sasuke wonders, not for the first time, why they’re even friends. They don’t act like it. Sakura is friends to them both more than they are to each other. The few times they meet up, they talk about anything but all the important things going on in their lives. Sasuke knows about Naruto and Hinata because of Sakura. Naruto finds out about Sasuke’s new status as chuunin, then ANBU, from Kakashi. The suggestion that there’s a restaurant where they can both agree on the food—Sasuke is sick of ramen, but Naruto finds all the places Sasuke likes to eat horrible—comes from Shikamaru. For all of Naruto’s claims that he’s good at a lot of things and the general expectation that Sasuke is too, this isn’t one of them.

When Sasuke asks about Hinata, who he barely knows—hasn’t even seen her before, or at least in a way that he remembers—Naruto’s reply is dismissive, a vague: she’s been doing well and we’ve been busy planning for the wedding that indicates nothing about what he feels for her or who she really is to him. It’s not because Naruto doesn’t want to talk about it, Sasuke realizes, but because he doesn’t have much to say. When he asks about how Hokage training is going, the explanations are a little bit better. Naruto is annoyed at himself for not understanding politics or for lessons not coming easy to him, and he adds that Sasuke is lucky he doesn’t have to deal with this, as if it’s something he’s even truly wanted in the first place.

Sasuke can’t help but poke fun at him for it—once an idiot, always an idiot—causing them to bicker with one another rather than delving deeper into the topic. Naruto almost seems grateful for it. Sasuke doesn’t really think he should care about pressing it, so he doesn’t.

“I used to think that I knew how it would all pan out, you know—what the future would hold,” Naruto tells him as they wander down the streets of Konoha. Citizens wave at Naruto and pretend Sasuke isn’t walking right beside him, but for the first time, Naruto doesn’t notice them. His gaze is distant as he tilts his head up to the sky like it offers all the answers for a question he hasn’t voiced out yet. “But lately, I’ve been thinking that maybe I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’m doing.”

Everyone knows what he’s doing though. He’s getting married, he’s going to become Hokage. Even Naruto himself knows it, despite saying all this.

They pass by a familiar path that Sasuke knows would lead them to the Uchiha Compound if it still existed. The construction going around means that they’ll close off this road soon to make space for more buildings. Somewhere else, a new route will be built, but the trail will lead them towards what once was the ruins of a renowned clan, now a place where those left behind belong to. Sasuke wouldn’t care so much if not for the fact that he’s prohibited from stepping near the area out of the elders’ fear that his “ideals” will infest the new generation of Konoha and lead them astray. Kakashi told him that he has to argue for his case when Naruto becomes Hokage, because the higher ups are becoming increasingly less tolerant with how Kakashi gives Sasuke “leeway” to things.

It’s such a pain in the ass Sasuke doesn’t even know why he bothered to ask. It’s not as if the place actually belongs to him anymore, and he’s never been one for sentimentality. Everyone else is not the same. When they rebuild, it’s in a way that mimics what life once was to them besides a few alterations and accommodations—and it’s in a way that’s even better, because that’s what it means for a war to end. Sasuke looks at all of them through a glass wall he can’t break through despite all his power, and the childlike part in him that didn’t die wants to understand.

But there are other things Sasuke understands more vividly.

“Congrats on finally figuring out what it means to grow up,” he says.

Naruto elbows him. “Take this seriously, you jerk.”

Sasuke shrugs him off. “What makes you think I know what the fuck you’re feeling?”

He doesn’t know what Naruto wants him to say. Sasuke is unsure of many things in the world, but his place and his future isn’t one of them. There’s a reason why he’s in ANBU, why he has the seals in his wrists. There’s a reason why they decided to leave him alive and let him walk relatively free rather than kill him—it’s because Naruto is there, and he’s going to become Hokage, and Sasuke will serve him as his right hand man, his shadow. Everything that’s happening to Sasuke is leading up to that moment. There has never been room for anything else.

All things considered, it’s the kindest cage Sasuke could ever be in, the only one he would willingly walk into. The day they put the cursed seal on his wrists, he thought about screaming to them that they didn’t need to do this to keep him loyal, to make him follow Naruto to the ends of the earth. He would’ve done that for him anyway.

But he's spent so long in the dark that it's the only place he's allowed to return to. Who is he to see the sun for the first time in his life and want to bask in its glory rather than slink back into the shadows?

“Is that a good thing or not?” Naruto questions.

“Ask me at a better time,” Sasuke says. He doesn’t know, and it doesn’t matter. “I didn’t agree to meet up with you today so you could dump all your shitty problems on me.”

Afterwards, he recalls their conversation and the way Naruto talked about things Sasuke has that he doesn't—laughable in its own right, because Sasuke has lost everything he spent years believing he wanted while Naruto has everything he could ever ask for—that has Sasuke wondering if being the embodiment of the brightest star is as worth it as it once was.

Maybe neither of them know what they actually want. Maybe both of them are trapped in their own cages.

The first time Sasuke learns what it means to have the cursed seals on his wrists is when Naruto discovers their existence.

Team 7 hasn’t been Team 7 in years, but Kakashi assigns Sakura and Sasuke on a joint mission to escort an important figure to the Land of the Waves because they need to talk to the leader about their current methods of trade. The details fly past Sasuke, who never had any interest in politics and will never need to learn about them. All he’s supposed to care about—and all he really cares about—is the fact that the important figure is Naruto.

The real goal of this mission is to draw rebels and rogue nin out—people who still hold grudges against Konoha and want to do anything in their power to give them a difficult time—so he dons on a henge. If enemies knew it was actually Naruto in their midst, they would stay away, well-aware of his strength, which makes him an ineffective bait. Sasuke may also be almost as infamous, but he’s in ANBU gear and follows them from the shadows. 

Anyone or any team could’ve done the task, but Kakashi specifically gave it to them for a bout of reasons—that it would be a convenient opportunity for Sasuke to know what he’d be spending the rest of his life doing as a job in the future when Naruto took over the Hokage mantle, that it would be an effective lesson for Naruto who has to understand what it truly means to be patient and not always take everything head-on, and that it would be a good time for Sakura to take a breather and do work that doesn’t involve staying cooped up in the hospital.

They all know these are just excuses; Kakashi had given them the mission as an excuse to see if their sense of teamwork has improved since they’ve been spending so much time working with others in their respective fields, as if they’re twelve and not almost twenty, still in need of a teacher’s guidance and to be tested by him.

The thing is, they may work amicably enough with their coworkers—politicians, fellow ANBU shinobi, medical nin—but Team 7’s teamwork hasn’t improved in the slightest.

“God, you fucking idiot,” Sakura hisses, tearing through Sasuke’s clothes to see his injury. It’s a deep, gaping wound at the side of his stomach, so much blood spilling out that it’s hard to make out anything else, but besides the ringing in his head that makes him less focused than he typically is, it doesn’t feel so bad. Sasuke can’t help but let out a weak noise of protest when she rips the fabric of his clothes, but Sakura only glares at him. “Suck it up. This is your fault to begin with. If only you and Naruto had just shut up for one second and paid attention to your surroundings instead of bickering like kids, we wouldn’t be here right now!”

Sasuke would argue if he was in a state of mind to do so, but she’s right. Despite the clear conditions of the mission, they debated going against it. Naruto hated putting on disguises and thought it would be more efficient if he made a clone do it while he tracked down the surrounding area they were traveling to ambush any potential ambushers. Sasuke scoffed at the idea because that was his job as ANBU, to scout ahead, not Naruto’s, and he argued that Naruto had to deal with his role of being the sitting duck until their enemies came to them if they ever managed to slip by Sasuke—something that wouldn’t happen since he was good at his job.

They managed to apprehend a rogue nin impulsive enough to attack them, one they suspected was part of the group planning to sabotage them, but Naruto and Sasuke went a bit overboard with their attack, leaving Sakura to heal him in order to let him regain consciousness for a proper interrogation. Too busy debating the right strategy to use to fish out the other members and trying not to resolve it using their fists, they didn’t notice another shinobi had snuck up on them with a special jutsu until it was too late. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if not for the fact that the ability was unique, capable of making someone lose control of their capability to harness and manipulate their chakra.

Kurama had been unleashed without warning and lashed out at the nearest person—Sasuke. He could’ve easily avoided it with Susanoo, but his wrists suddenly felt like they were buried deep into a scorching fire, and he was caught off guard with the flare of pain. Right then and there, he understood why—to use his Sharingan around or to Kurama would mean using it on Naruto, his host, and that was a form of betrayal that violated the conditions of the cursed seal.

“I can help,” Naruto insists from the side, frantic and pleading. It echoes around the cave they’ve taken refuge in. “Sakura, let me help. Kurama’s chakra can heal—”

“Absolutely not,” Sakura snaps. “Kurama is the reason we’re even here in the first place! His chakra tail stabbed the side of Sasuke’s stomach and killed our hostage!”

“I’m sorry! I don’t know what—”

For a brief moment, Sasuke blacks out, though he wakes up immediately after. But the look on Sakura’s face is absolutely horrified, and she mutters something about checking his pulse, peeling through his arm guards and wrist warmers. Despite the blood loss, Sasuke can feel his heart speed up, and he starts trying to pry her hands off him. “Sakura, don’t—”

His armor falls to the ground. Sakura’s eyebrows are knitted together, puzzled as she traces over the swirl patterns etched in black ink on his skin, his bony wrists in her hands. “A curse from the Kyuubi because of the attack?” she asks. “Or—”

“No,” Naruto says, and his voice is so grave that Sakura’s anger at him dissipates as she snaps her head towards him. Sasuke’s gaze flickers to Naruto. His mouth is pressed in a thin line, but his eyes are blue and cloudy, like a storm gradually brewing, giving way to the furious feeling he’s keeping down with an even voice. “I know what that is. That’s—that’s a cursed seal, Sasuke, fucking hell. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sasuke suddenly misses the Naruto who didn’t know a single thing about jutsus that didn’t involve kicking someone’s ass in a flashy way, because that would’ve left more time for stalling, would’ve made it too easy to fool him with an answer that only had something to do with the matter at hand right now—a temporary thing rather than something permanent. But the thing is, they’re no longer kids. And there’s a reason his seals take the form of spirals.

“Fuck you.” Sasuke is surprised by how steady his voice comes out, given his state, but then he feels something thick and foreign rising up to his throat the moment the words leave his lips. “You weren’t supposed to find out.”

Naruto’s eyes narrow. “You bastard,” he says, voice rising as he clenches his fists, as if gearing up to punch Sasuke right in the face. Sasuke thinks about pulling up a genjutsu at the last minute to briefly knock him out before he makes the situation worse, but the searing pain in his wrists returns as if in warning. It’s not like he has the concentration to make it work anyway. “Don’t fuck with me, goddammit! You know that’s—”

He’s interrupted when Sasuke suddenly coughs and spits out blood. It makes his throat scratchy and his mouth feel disgusting, but he can’t bear to make a sound and simply slumps back. Sakura lets out a yelp but catches him at the last minute, settling him down on the cold rock ground of the cave gently.

“Sasuke—” Naruto begins, but Sakura abruptly smashes her fist onto the ground, stopping him.

“Not now, Naruto,” she tells him. “We are not going to talk about this now. Your chakra is unstable. As far as we’re concerned, the effects of the jutsu inflicted on you are still there, which means Kurama can come out again anytime so long as you’re in this state. That makes you a danger to the patient and me. So calm down first and get a hold of yourself, or I’ll kill you.”

"Fine!"

It’s far from the first time Sasuke has been critically injured, but this is the first time since he became reinstated as a Konoha shinobi. The wound feels surreal. Sakura is healing it with her medical ninjutsu, but even with the faint glow of the green chakra trying to meticulously repair severed tissues, it’s taking longer than it has to. There are tears of frustration gradually building up in her eyes from confusion because it’s not working. Naruto should know why even because it’s Kurama who stabbed him, but the idiot isn’t here anymore, taking Sakura’s advice and heading out the cave to cool off or find some unorthodox solution. Outside the cave, the rain pours.

It takes some time before Sasuke can muster the energy and volume to speak over the downpour, but he manages. Despite how everything is physically difficult to do, he can’t process the pain. “That won’t work,” he rasps out.

“What?” says Sakura.

“Kyuubi’s chakra—it’s intervening.”

It dawns on Sakura what Sasuke’s referring to when she finally sees it: the ominous, orange chakra swirling around Sasuke’s stomach wound, undoing what she’s fixing. Sakura looks around the cave and curses when she can’t find their teammate anywhere. “Naruto, that knucklehead. He’s the only one who can help me heal you! Where the fuck did he go?”

Somewhere far away so I can die in peace, Sasuke wants to mouth off, just so Sakura will stop looking so distressed and can whack him in the head instead for the tasteless joke. The logic is simple—better to let a bird wither in its cage than to let it live without the promise of ever letting it take flight to the skies. He’s been subjected to his fair number of sealing techniques, of bearing cursed marks, but this is something he knows has always been different from the rest.

His wrists itch. He’d done some studying on sealing techniques back when he was in Otogakure, under Orochimaru, and how it was inevitable that the cursed seal would fade with the death of its possessor. When he first learned about it, he found the fact redundant, practically self-explanatory that no printed text was needed to explain it. Now, he thinks that the reason the data explicitly mentioned it was to remind him of the reality that cursed seals don’t spread from one person to another for a reason. It’s not something meant to be shared; it’s something that belongs to the person alone. It’s their cross and burden to carry. It’s something only they can live with for the rest of their life, and it’s only in death that the two can part.

He thinks about Kurama, sealed inside Naruto, something that was initially a curse but eventually became a blessing. Even with the sealing no longer in place, Kurama and Naruto refuse to separate. Sasuke wonders if that’s why Kakashi let them put a curse seal on him; it may have mimicked the cursed seal Danzo would give his Root members, but maybe Kakashi intended it to be more like what Minato gave Naruto and Kurama instead. Not a curse, but a blessing. Not a matter of something being taken away from him, but something given to him. His freedom in exchange for Naruto. The sky in exchange for the sun.

It would be a true act of kindness, to have that returned to him. But Sasuke doesn’t want to die. He’s tired of death. He thinks Naruto is the same.

Besides, Naruto is many things, but around Sasuke, kind has never been one of them.

Sasuke doesn’t die.

Naruto returns to the cave right on time, having left to singlehandedly search, hunt down, and annihilate the group of rogue nin. Sasuke never knew Naruto was the type, but Sakura doesn’t look incredulous when she finds out, only exhausted, and despite the haze in his mind from all the blood loss, Sasuke can’t help but think that the two have really grown up in different, almost unexpected ways. He wonders if he’s the same, because if he was, that likeness is what makes them a team to begin with, despite all their dysfunctionality.

From there, he drifts in and out of consciousness, barely aware of how Naruto, chakra back in his control and mind settled, pulls out the chakra of Kurama that’s stopping Sakura from properly healing him, even using the tailed beast’s regenerative abilities to help her. Sakura declares Sasuke patched up shortly after but not in any state to deal with the explosive arguments that he typically engages in with Naruto as a warning to the latter, and Naruto promises to behave and watch him recuperate as she rests for the night.

By the time Sasuke wakes up, it’s early in the morning. Sakura slumbers next to him, curled into the cloak she’s made into an improvised pillow with Naruto’s own cloak draped over her. Naruto sits next to him, watching the rain.

“You’re getting old, Sasuke,” Naruto comments. “It didn't take this long for you to get back up on your feet before.”

Sasuke rises slowly, barely managing to hide his wince even though there’s no more sign of the wound across his stomach. “Not all of us can have your extraordinary regeneration.”

He glances at Sakura and grabs Naruto’s cloak from her to drape it over himself since he hadn’t brought one and Sakura technically ripped his clothes apart. Sakura doesn’t even twitch. Naruto gives him a look. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Weather’s cold.”

“Sakura will kill you when she wakes up.”

She won’t. They both know it. For all of her no-nonsense attitude towards their antics, she’s always been soft on them, especially when something bad like this happens. “She’s the one who ruined my clothes.”

“For good reason,” Naruto points out, but that’s all he really says on the matter. “I won’t bring it up now because I promised Sakura I wouldn’t, but we’re going to talk about the seal later, when we’re back in Konoha.”

Sasuke really does miss the days when Naruto was more of an idiot than he is now, when he didn’t know much about jutsu or didn’t choose to do things the mature way like talk things through rather than just solving everything with a heavy-handed punch to the face. It’s still ingrained in him—that instinct to fix problems with a fight because words have never been his strong suit; it’s why they squabble until now—but for the things that really do matter, he cools down and then approaches them sensibly, responsibly.

“Whatever.” Sasuke reaches for his wrist warmers, slipping them on so Naruto will stop looking at the seals. Sasuke himself doesn’t spend so much time glancing at them, and he covers them so often that it feels unnerving, the knowledge that they’ve been out for this long. The only time that happens is when he’s asleep, alone. There’s a tingling sensation in the area though, triggered at the words coming out from Naruto’s lips, but Sasuke can’t tell if it’s because the cursed seal is actually getting worked up or because the feeling of it burning his skin is still vivid in his mind. He ignores it. It hurts the same way Orochimaru’s mark once did, and his pain tolerance has gotten infinitely better since then. What happened earlier happened because of shock, a moment of weakness that wouldn’t happen again. “Shouldn’t the priority be the mission? A day has passed. We’re behind on schedule.”

“I talked to Kakashi about the situation through the messenger hawk while you and Sakura were asleep,” Naruto says. “The mission’s technically accomplished, so we can head home now.”

“What about the meeting you were supposed to have with the head of the Land of the Waves?”

“Not urgent. I can go another time.”

Sasuke huffs. “That easy, huh.”

“Kakashi’s gonna kill us when we get back though,” Naruto laments with a sigh. “Who in their right mind would hold a test of teamwork with a B-rank mission though? That guy is insane.”

“Someone with S-class shinobi for students. Don’t know why he expected anything else from us though.” You can’t improve if you never practice, and the three of them don’t even see one another as friends often to do so—what more work together as a team.

Naruto frowns. “What does that mean?”

“You know what I mean,” retorts Sasuke. It’s stupid that he has to explain this. He’s the one among the three of them that hates working with others the most. “We’re a crappy team. We may know each other’s skillset, but that’s not all there is to teamwork. We don’t even know anything about each other’s lives.”

“Yes, we do."

Sasuke shoots him an unimpressed look. “Tell me where I live then.”

“Somewhere that’s not… the Uchiha Compound?” Naruto tries.

In the first place, Sasuke hates small talk, and that’s where trivial things about their lives like these come up. But for some reason, something in his mind insists it’s important to know about these things. Or at least it’s important for him to press on this topic until he gets something out of Naruto. He just doesn’t know what.

His head throbs, and he decides he’s already exhausted with this conversation. He lies back down, but can’t bring himself to fall back asleep. His wrists don’t itch, but he wants to sneak his fingers beneath the fabric of the warmers to pick at it simply to have something to do with his hands.

“This is dumb,” Sasuke says, because it is.

Naruto snorts. “That’s what you think about everything.”

“Because it’s true,” he replies. Naruto scoffs. The earlier tension between them has waned ever since Sakura told him off, but it’s only now where Sasuke feels like it’s truly eased away. The drizzle is a pleasant backdrop, noise that lulls him into comforting simplicity he realizes he hasn’t felt in a while. Like this, he remembers that there is merit to peace, despite his affinity for all the things that create war, and violence, and hurt. “I don’t even know a thing about Hinata.”

“Hinata isn’t a thing for me to describe, she’s a person for you to meet and get to know.”

They sound like words he’s pulling out of his ass. “Is that why you never talk about her?”

Naruto shrugs. “I didn’t think it’d interest you.”

It doesn’t, but since when has Naruto ever cared about Sasuke’s feelings about something if he wanted to talk about it that badly? “And you thought mentioning the wedding instead would?”

“Hey, it’s cooler than you think!” Naruto exclaims. “Or, well, there’s a lot more thought put into it than I assumed, and mostly it’s a pain in the ass, but there are some things that I think are pretty awesome.”

“Hn.”

The conversation turns mostly one-sided from there, Naruto now rambling about the logistics of ceremonies and little anecdotes that he’s experienced, but Sasuke doesn’t tell him to shut up, listening without meaning to even though he intended to let all the chatter fade into the background until he felt tired enough to sleep once more. It shouldn’t be surprising that Naruto knows a lot about weddings when he’s been spending most of his time preparing for it with Hinata when he isn’t busy on missions or training, but there’s a difference between knowing a lot and having to say a lot regarding it, and it’s a new side to Naruto that Sasuke is learning about. What’s familiar, at the very least, is the way his blue eyes light up in excitement, the most colorful thing in the dreary weather and cave they’re in. Though he stumbles on his words because his enthusiasm is miles ahead of his own thoughts, his volume is moderately toned to keep Sakura from waking up, a gesture of unconscious consideration that Sasuke has no words for but sweet.

He doesn’t know Hinata, doesn’t even remember what she looks like, but he understands why she’s fallen in love with someone like Naruto, and he thinks she’s lucky that he’s fallen for her back, despite their strange dating arrangement. It’s part of his charm, Sasuke supposes—charm that Hinata accepts wholeheartedly because it’s what makes Naruto who he is.

Sasuke ignores the twinge in his gut at the thought, something that aches like the seals on his wrists even though it shouldn’t exist.

“—something that’s been taking a lot of our time is picking songs too,” Naruto is explaining. “Actually, we’re behind schedule. Shikamaru’s been helping me a lot with it since he’s the most trustworthy one in our year and he thinks I’m being ridiculous for taking so long.”

“Because you’re tone deaf?” Sasuke cuts in.

“No.” Naruto raises his fist, as if about to punch him, but he stops when he remembers what he promised Sakura, and just waves his hand warningly at Sasuke, who only rolls his eyes. “The songs have to fit the mood of the wedding, that’s why, but they also have to sound nice for the people attending to enjoy and be songs that we like a lot so that we mean it when we say it’s our favorite. But for me—I like a lot of songs, but I can only choose a few.” It sounds like a pain, everything Naruto is telling him, so stupid to think about, so terribly mundane. “You’d get it if you were in my place.” Sasuke highly doubts it. “Do you have any songs you like?” Naruto wonders, though it seems mostly to himself because he says, “Never mind, you probably don’t since you’re a stone cold bastard with no hobbies and probably thinks listening to birds chirping is the same thing as a shamisen performance.”

“Just because I’m recuperating doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you,” Sasuke says blandly. With the cloudy weather, he could activate Kirin easily. “Music is okay. The flute sounds good.”

“Why that?”

“My mom and Itachi knew how to play it,” Sasuke answers without thinking. “It’s one of the few things that I still remember about my family.”

From the corner of his eye, he spots his mask, sitting right beside the kunai pouch and other weapons he, Sakura, and Naruto brought along. He doesn’t reach over to touch it, as if wanting to ground himself in its familiarity, because he puts it on every day, slipping into a role that should make him feel closer to Itachi, yet instead only leaves him no different than before. When he was first given his mask, it didn’t even occur to him that it replicated the one his brother had in his ANBU days until Kakashi pointed it out, adding that it was a move done on purpose, courtesy of Naruto’s special request. Until now, neither of them have talked about it, but that’s only because Sasuke doesn’t know what to say. Knowing Naruto, he probably asked for it without much thought. He didn’t do it out of kindness; he just did it because he thought of Sasuke.

“How much do you remember of them? Your family, I mean,” asks Naruto.

“Not much,” Sasuke says, pausing. “I think, one day, they’ll be more of an idea I recall having rather than something I actually had.”

“I think I know what that feels like,” Naruto says, a hint of wistfulness in his tone. His expression is thoughtful as he looks to the forest that awaits them outside the cave, as if searching for something. “Does it make you sad that you don't remember them as clearly anymore?”

Sasuke expects the question to be difficult, but the answer comes out easy. “Not really.”

The sincerity in his own words catches him off guard, but it doesn’t make it any less true. What made losing his family so hard was because he went from having everything to nothing, left alone with no one to turn to for solace, to make up for what he lost. It’s not the case anymore now, he realizes, because there’s a strong girl who sleeps next to him, unconsciously leaning into him for lost warmth, and will bitch at him for stealing her substitute blanket, but ultimately let him off the hook because they’re friends. There’s a bright-eyed boy sitting on his other side, feet stretched so that they’re slightly touching his own, with a loud mouth and infuriating idiocy to him that he might never be able to shake off despite the years that may pass, but he also has the kind of recklessness Sasuke would follow no matter where they went.

To Sasuke, they are family, and he doesn’t need to say it for them to know.

Naruto takes his reply in stride, doesn’t fish for more details the same way Sasuke doesn’t even ask about how Naruto feels, growing up with nothing, only catching things in glimpses until this point he’s at now, where he can actually keep them, because even if they don’t talk about things like these, even if they’ve never been the type of people who do, they understand each other.

Still, when they eventually return to Konoha, they don't talk about the cursed seal, even if Naruto wants to. Sasuke avoids him with missions, increasing his workload subtly enough for Kakashi to not raise an eyebrow but for Naruto to know and for him to be angry at him for it. But Naruto is also swamped in his tireless, almost never-ending training, so it changes nothing.

Sasuke thinks it’s fine—that they can live like this. They may understand each other for some things, but this isn’t one of them.

Kakashi’s donned on the Hokage robes for years, but Sasuke still isn’t used to him actually being a Hokage. It’s not often Sasuke meets him in the office; Kakashi gives him mission files when he’s off-duty, wearing his familiar jonin vest as he meets Sasuke either in ANBU headquarters or somewhere else nondescript. Kakashi says it’s because he doesn’t like the stiffness of the title weighing on him when he’s around familiar faces, and it’s why Sasuke thinks of him more like a squad leader or a jonin commander than anything else—someone more reachable.

Today is different though, even if Sasuke doesn’t see why it should be, wherein Kakashi tells him to go to his office when he drops by the individual report for his last mission even though he typically turns those in with his squad leader since the last job wasn’t solo.

Inside, Sasuke stares out the window and watches the clouds drift across the skies as Kakashi sorts through the papers piled on his desk, looking like he’s two seconds away from declaring retirement. Work doesn’t lessen just because a war it’s over, because some battles can’t be waged and won with bloodied fists and a trail of dead bodies.

Sasuke doesn’t like the stiffness of the office, unused to the lack of space and how the walls seem to close in on him because the room can’t afford to fit him inside without sacrificing something, but lets the light from outside flood in like it belongs. He prefers the rooftop of the office more, where he can easily tilt his head to the sun and watch the birds fly from the corner of his eye. He wishes Kakashi had arranged for them to meet there instead.

“You’re been in ANBU for more than a year and not once have you filed for a day off,” Kakashi begins.

Sasuke blinks, not expecting the comment. He’s not in his ANBU gear because he isn’t on duty, but his wrists are covered by the black wrist warmers. Still, his gaze flickers down anyway, like he’ll see the very thing he’s trying to hide. It’s never been anything like Naruto’s seal, despite having the same engraving—his has never faded from view, inked on his skin like a tattoo. “I didn’t know I was allowed to do that sort of thing.”

“As an ANBU, as a Konoha shinobi, and as one living in a world where we don’t do wars anymore—you’re entitled to request for it.”

“And as an ex-rogue nin?”

Kakashi pauses. “You could fight for it.”

All of a sudden, Sasuke feels this inexplicable mix of exasperation and exhaustion weighing down on him. “Don’t tell me you summoned me here just for this.”

“What do you think this is?”

Sasuke shrugs. “A vacation.”

“No, I’m not that nice. I just wanted to know if you were ever thinking about it.”

“Why would I?”

“We’ve had you back for almost three years,” says Kakashi. “But you’ve never asked to go visit Itachi’s grave.”

Sasuke doesn't flinch. “I didn’t make that grave.”

“I know.”

They never found Itachi’s body, but he has a makeshift one stationed in the ruins of the Uchiha Hideout, where a small patch of land in the surrounding forestry of the mountain exists. There, a tree stands, indistinguishable from the rest besides the fact that the crest of the Uchiha clan is engraved on the wood. Sasuke hadn’t been the one who created that; it was Naruto, and he was the one who also told Sasuke that he did it. Naruto had also been the one to tell people of Itachi’s good deeds, that he was a hero, not a villain, in the tragic story of their clan’s downfall. Naruto has done more for Itachi than Sasuke ever has, and Naruto didn’t do any of it for Itachi.

“What do you want me to say?” Sasuke finally sighs. “It’s outside the village. I can’t leave unless it’s for a mission. Is that what you called me in for? You’ll order me to visit his grave?”

“A mission like that would be a waste of our resources and valuable manpower,” replies Kakashi. “But even I think a bird in a cage needs to stretch his wings every once in a while.”

He slides Sasuke a file. Inside are new mission details. It’s a solo job to track down and capture an infamous S-rank rogue nin who has been making random townsfolk disappear and leaving behind their corpses—dead or alive. The location is, for the first time, near the destroyed Uchiha Hideout, which means he can stop by the grave if he wants to and it wouldn’t affect anything about the mission. He’s set to leave in five days. “Why now?”

Kakashi hums noncommittally. “Can’t I show my student that I care every once in a while?”

“Not when I’d never believe it.”

“You’re the most difficult student I’ve ever had, you know that?” Kakashi slumps into his chair. “It’s six months long,” he continues, as if Sasuke can’t read the fine print. “Your longest mission yet.”

He can probably wrap the mission up faster if he wants to, but there’s a reason the timeframe is this stretched out. “You’re hiding something from me.”

“I’m hiding you from someone,” Kakashi corrects, but he doesn’t elaborate even when Sasuke raises an eyebrow. “I meant what I said. Don’t question it, Sasuke. I’m still your superior.”

He doesn’t say Hokage; Kakashi has never used that title to win over an argument with his students before. He’s always been soft around them, even if it’s not always obvious. But Sasuke wonders if he imagines the faint burning in his wrists, a reminder to know his place. It shouldn’t be surprising, given that the cursed seal is designed to keep him loyal to the Hokage, but it only really acts up around Naruto, because that’s why the elders gave it to him—because he’d hurt their beloved war hero far too many times for them to risk another instance. Kakashi’s tone, despite being relatively light-hearted, is a reminder that the technique binding him down is more complicated than that.

It’s only later in the day does Sasuke gain an inkling as to what Kakashi had been referring to. When he stops by the hospital and Sakura’s office so he can get her help in restocking his med supplies for the upcoming mission, she tells him that the date of Naruto and Hinata’s wedding has been confirmed, at last—in two months time.

Sasuke won’t make it, and he tells her why. He leaves her as she curses at Kakashi and his unconventional timing with these things, wondering why he’d done that. I’m hiding you from someone, Kakashi said, as if there’s something Sasuke has to be shielded from. It irritates Sasuke—he’s not pathetic enough to need that sort of thing, but it doesn’t change the fact that he agreed to take on the mission, so he can’t do anything about it. As he returns to his apartment, he stares at the clear sky. No birds fly. 

On the night before Sasuke has to depart for the mission, Naruto knocks at his door and says, “Take me with you.”

Sasuke’s reply is automatic. “Fuck no.”

“Don’t do this to me,” Naruto hisses, and he’s not really begging so much as demanding. Sasuke wants to slam the door in his face, but it’s a feat enough that Naruto actually knows where he lives now, and despite the ungodly hour, Naruto doesn’t look haggard, like he ran to get here out of impulse, so Sasuke feels like he should give him so credit. Besides, if he cuts Naruto off now before he says what he really wants to say, he’ll just find another way to get his message across. Sasuke doesn’t want his windows shattered because of Naruto’s stubbornness, especially when he’s about to embark on a mission in a few hours, right before the sun will break through the black sky. “You owe me.”

Sasuke bristles. He’s already dressed in his ANBU gear, halfway through packing things, and though Naruto tells him, take me with you, he doesn’t have anything with him. Sasuke isn’t even going to ask why, even if it may be important. He’s too annoyed to care. “For what?”

There’s no light by his front door, but the moonlight is bright enough to illuminate Naruto’s features, able to catch the way his brows furrow like he can’t tell whether Sasuke is bullshitting him or not, the downward curve of his mouth, the shine in his vibrant blue eyes. It’s the first time they’ve spoken since that mission to the Land of the Waves. “For lying to me.”

It doesn’t take a genius to know what Naruto is referring to. The feeling that Sasuke’s wrists have suddenly caught on fire returns in a jolt that almost makes him flinch. He hasn’t done anything, and Naruto is referencing something that happened months ago, but maybe it’s because the idea of lying to Naruto about the cursed seal, keeping it from him, is the same as betraying him, even with the irony of hiding it as an act of protection at the same time, because there was no way Naruto could find out about this without getting hurt.

“That’s not my decision to make, idiot,” Sasuke says, pretending like the pain is a dull throb he can push aside rather than something that gnaws at him with knife-sharp teeth, leaving behind marks that will never fade from his skin or memory. Even with his high pain tolerance, this is a sensation he doesn’t want to get used to, even more so when he knows it can reach a point where he'll actually die. “It’s a solo mission, and it’s for ANBU only. You’re not ANBU.”

“That’s never stopped me before.”

Sasuke’s eyes flash, and before Naruto can even react, Sasuke grabs Naruto by the collar and spins them around to pin him to the wall right beside his door. “We aren’t fucking sixteen anymore, Naruto. You can’t just run around doing whatever you want. There are things tying you down, stupid. You have responsibilities. You have training. You’re going to become Hokage soon. We’re growing up. Act like it.”

He lets him go. Naruto looks bewildered, and it’s what keeps him rooted in place. Despite everything Sasuke has just said though, up close like this, a part of him thinks that he’s grateful for what hasn’t changed, at least until now: the naivety and hope in Naruto’s eyes that things will work out if he just insists they will, the kind of unyielding outlook that could move mountains and break down the strongest walls—so steadfast and sure of himself that it makes others feel safe. He’s so loyal to his own self and his beliefs that it could burn Sasuke’s wrists with envy, not in caution, and the thought makes his chest ache. Sasuke thinks about how he’s scared to lose these things that he always thought made Naruto Naruto, and he thinks about how it becomes even more terrifying that it may be inevitable, because that’s what it means to grow up.

So he slams the door, grabs his things, and disappears in a shunshin so Naruto can’t find him. The marks on his wrists pulse against his skin in a way that feels akin to approval, but Sasuke feels like his heart has been cleaved out of his rib cage, leaving him hollow.

Sasuke thinks he can get the mission wrapped up in around a month, if he’s really lucky, but he’s quick to realize after more weeks have piled up on top of each other that there’s a reason Kakashi said it would take nearly half a year for a typical shinobi to complete the job. The rogue nin he’s after is elusive, good at covering her tracks, and it takes seven weeks before Sasuke even gets a clue to her whereabouts that doesn’t lead to a dead end. Moments like these remind him that despite all the traveling they do from country to country frequently, the places that fall under them—towns and villages, ever changing and diverse landscapes of forests, deserts, riversides—are as large and imposing as a horizon. If you look around enough, it feels like there’s never an end to them.

A month in, he caves in and visits Itachi’s grave. The engraving has faded a little, so Sasuke pulls out a kunai and re-carves the symbol. He feels awkward, unsure what else he’s supposed to do, and he wonders if that means he’s doing better nowadays, that he no longer knows what it means to grieve when he’s distantly aware it’s all he’d been doing for most of his childhood.

He hunts a wild animal and leaves its dead body in front of the tree. After some time, crows begin flocking towards it, and they don’t fly away when Sasuke tentatively approaches them. He doesn’t touch them, stays a respectable distance away to not make them afraid of him, but he’s there as they feast on the carcass, and he wonders if this counts as company.

The unexpected stretch of time means detours lead to casualties. A shuriken had found itself buried in his shoulder while he was passing by a lawless town, all part of a trap he sensed but didn't avoid because he had a suspicion that the culprit wasn't hostile. A minute later, a small girl emerged from her hiding spot, wondering if he was there to kill them all. Places like these reminded him that there was a reason some weren’t on board with the peace treaty the five nations were doing—they didn’t see how it would change their lives anymore than their waged wars did. No wonder Naruto had so much work to do as a Hokage, one part of this new world that strived for peace.

Sasuke realizes Naruto is tailing him earlier than the blonde will later claim. He conceals his presence well enough that people wouldn’t notice unless they were actively on the lookout, which Sasuke isn’t, but his wrists throb, and they never do that unless it’s for a reason, so it doesn’t take long for Sasuke to draw two and two together. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s strange though, because they only get like this when it relates to the conditions set before him, weighing Sasuke’s actions based on scales of loyalty and betrayal.

Still, the feeling doesn’t hurt; it simply buzzes against his skin. Sealing jutsus have always been confusing, never enough information on them to cover every single detail until you experience it yourself, and even then, it’s not always explainable. It doesn’t help that this is an Uzumaki-based technique, and the archives don’t have enough information on the clan. Maybe this is just one of those mysteries Sasuke will never learn of.

He deals with it for three days, Naruto keeping a notable distance away that has Sasuke thinking he can pretend to be ignorant for the sake of indulging in the personal space he still has. Anything more than that—it’s practically impossible. The chidori-laced kunai he abruptly throws at a seemingly random direction into the darkness of the forest, loudly hitting something and causing a startled yell to echo around the forest, is a testament of that.

“Asswipe,” Naruto grumbles, finally revealing his presence as he lands on the ground a few meters away from Sasuke. It’s slowly getting dark, so Sasuke decides that he might as well set camp here. He walks in the nearby area, gathering wood to maintain the fire he’ll make. “What if you killed me?”

“I told you to grow up, not grow pathetic,” Sasuke simply replies. Enough time has passed, and he’s not petty enough to still hold onto whatever anger he had at Naruto’s attitude the last time they talked. But his mood is soured now that he’s not alone anymore. “I hope you brought dinner.”

Sasuke has the funds to afford staying in inns with comforting beds and ventilated rooms, but it limits his mobility if he always has to return to a certain place, and surrounding himself with people for longer than twelve hours means running into their problems, which derails him from his mission. Regardless of whether Naruto understands the logic, he isn’t happy about it. He must’ve been spending most of his nights staying with nearby townsfolk until he was close to Sasuke’s location.

Despite his clear distaste though, Naruto stays. Neither of them say anything besides a few muttered instructions on setting up for the night, and Sasuke doesn’t want to be the first to break the silence with demands as to why Naruto is here, even if he does want to tell him off, maybe to tell him to go away because they both know Sasuke hates team-up missions and only puts up with it because it’s part of being ANBU. It’s strange, actually, that Naruto isn’t even saying anything when he’d usually be the first to crack, always unable to deal with quiet atmospheres unless it’s absolutely necessary.

But his face is unreadable, so Sasuke can’t figure out what Naruto’s thinking except the fact that he’s thinking about something hard. Even that feels unnerving. Sasuke wonders if the reason Naruto’s here—clearly intending to stick around but not talk to him—is out of petty revenge, still mad over the cursed seals and the last thing Sasuke told him before leaving Konoha.

There’s no doubt that Naruto will want to talk about it, because the silence can’t stretch on forever. What can Sasuke do then, when he doesn’t have anything to say and Naruto still won’t take that for an answer?

He sighs and lights the fire just as Naruto takes out food Sasuke assumes is from the town close by. They still don’t talk. He has to find a way to resolve this so he can complete his mission in peace.

Before turning in for the night, Sasuke sends a message to Kakashi about the situation in the hopes that Naruto will be sent back because he’s not authorized to leave the village and track Sasuke down when he’s supposed to be on a covert mission. A few hours later, Sasuke wakes up to a reply from Kakashi that he actually sent Naruto to Sasuke in an effort to “talk some sense into him”. Sasuke has no idea what this means until five hours later, when he’s sneakily left a sleeping Naruto to continue tracking down his target and Naruto appears next to him rather unceremoniously, squatting on a tree branch as he inspects trail marks presumably left by the rogue nin, and says, voice hoarse, “I called off the wedding with Hinata.”

That’s when it occurs to Sasuke what day it is today—a little bit over two months since the set date Naruto and Hinata were supposed to tie the knot and have their wedding. He hasn’t thought about it in a while, too distracted with his mission and its relative uneventfulness and even more distracted with finding distractions to keep his thoughts from wandering.

Naruto isn’t done speaking. “I don’t know if I want to become Hokage anymore.”

I know. The words rest on Sasuke’s tongue, which is odd, because he’s never been consciously aware of it. But it’s hinted across the subtlest things, when he thinks about it, moments his mind picked up distantly but never put in the forefront. He replays the urgency and abruptness of Naruto asking Sasuke to take him with him to the mission, probably knowing how long it would go, probably desperate to leave because dedicating so much to something—to somebody—didn’t mean loving them. He replays the sparse conversations shared between that he never bothered to look too deeply into, maybe because he wouldn’t like the answer.

“So you came all the way here?” Sasuke says instead.

All Naruto does is shrug. “I realized it a while back, but it was still so sudden, you know. I didn’t know what else to do, where else to go.”

Sasuke wonders if this is what it means to lose one’s sense of self. It’s a scary thought, but it probably scares Naruto more than it scares Sasuke, and a familiar thought settles in his mind, the kind that remembers, rather resignedly: this is inevitable. Even if Sasuke would ask why and Naruto would spill all the details, all the little moments and the big things that built up inside him and led to this very moment, this life-altering realization, it would always be encompassed by a single, simple reason Sasuke already knows. This is what it means to grow up—to change your beliefs, your dreams, yourself. People don’t just stay the same all their life. It doesn’t matter who you are, some commoner or humanity’s destined savior. The world is not the same as it once was just as Naruto is not the same as he once was, and it just happens to be that he’s only realizing it now, right when it feels like it’s all too late.

“So you decided that running away from the problem was your best option?” Sasuke asks. Naruto lets out a half-hearted huff.

“Not really, if you think about it,” he replies. “This isn’t really the kind of thing I can escape from.”

“Maybe you just need to stretch your wings,” Sasuke says. At Naruto’s confused expression, he adds, “Something Kakashi said, before I left.”

“‘Stretch my wings’?” Naruto echoes scathingly. “What am I, trapped in a cage?”

“Probably. Who knows.” It may be different—Sasuke has gone from voluntarily walking into cages made of vengeance to being trapped in one, but Naruto has gone from trying to break free of many to building a new one out of thin air. But a cage is still a cage, no matter how gilded and glorious. And a trapped bird is still a trapped bird, no matter how pleasant the song it sings. “It’s not that hard, dumbass. If you can’t leave, if you can’t fight it, then just accept it.”

Naruto scoffs, but follows Sasuke as he lands back on the ground. He kicks at the dirt. “You’re fucking depressing, you know that?”

“If you wanted some magical solution to all your problems or useless sympathy, you shouldn’t have come to me,” is all Sasuke says, glancing around. A gut feeling tells him he’s headed in the right direction to where the rogue nin is. “There’s a reason I’m not the child of the prophecy and a well-loved war hero between us.”

“Why do you have the seals?” Naruto demands. “You’re not supposed to. You’re not… some dog who has to be held down to behave.”

“You know why, stupid,” Sasuke retorts sharply. “To keep me that way.”

Naruto’s face twists in anguish, but Sasuke ignores him, weaving his way through the trees to continue his mission, searching for more clues to pick up. “How come you never told me?”

He sounds betrayed, unbelievably hurt. Sasuke stops. For once, it’s not his wrists that ache, but his chest. “It wouldn’t have changed a thing," he answers. "All it did was make sure I’d stay no matter what because I didn’t want to die.”

“That’s stupid,” Naruto mutters, voice muted. “You would’ve stayed regardless of a seal or some rule.”

Something warm spreads through Sasuke’s body, an unfamiliar feeling of being moved by the sincerity in Naruto’s unexpected words. Naruto is the only one who has ever mentioned it, the only person who believes and understands the depths of Sasuke’s loyalty and how it has influenced everything he’s ever done and will continue to do.

This is why Naruto is someone he’d follow to the ends of the earth. At the end of everything, it’s only Naruto who knows him like this.

Sasuke says none of this, however. What he says instead is, “You’re alone in believing that.”

“I’m alone in a lot of things,” Naruto says, and his tone is self-deprecating. “It’s far from new.”

Besides the power it wields, Sasuke has never actually seen the appeal of becoming Hokage. It means piles of paperwork and excruciating, pointless bickering with fussy authority figures, doing things for the greater good, making painful sacrifices that are permanent solutions to temporary problems, turning one’s back to the suffering of a few to seize the betterment of the perceived majority. It’s an honorable position, but it’s thankless and bloody. It means steeling your heart, it means becoming selective to who you care about.

It’s why Sasuke has never once thought that being Hokage was suited for someone like Naruto.

But his opinion doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter what reasons Naruto has for not wanting to become Hokage, because they can be big or small, petty or traumatic, and it won’t change the fact that Naruto just feels like it’s something he’s no longer meant to do, that maybe it never was. It’s the same thing for the wedding with Hinata, but Sasuke knows even less about that, doesn’t understand what it means to tie oneself to another when his only reference points are his family, his team, Naruto, but all in different ways and nothing like that. Maybe Naruto didn’t love her enough, or maybe she wasn’t enough for him. Maybe there was nothing to even amount to anything close to enough to begin with.

Sasuke doesn’t ask; some things he’s better off not knowing. There’s a reason why Kakashi sent him on a mission that coincided with their wedding, after all. Hiding you from someone, he had said.

Yet the situation and priorities have changed, and it irks Sasuke. Kakashi is out of his mind if he thinks Sasuke can convince Naruto to not back out from all the hopes and dreams pinned onto him, to stop doubting himself, to do what everyone has always expected of him. It doesn’t matter that his worth to Konoha hinges on Naruto becoming Hokage; it doesn’t matter that he’s in ANBU in the first place to later on help Naruto when he takes over the mantle, to become his right hand man, to be someone who can steer him in the right direction and support him through it.

It doesn’t matter that he can do it, that it would be an act of kindness to do it, because the thing about Sasuke is that around Naruto, he’s never been kind. This, at least, is something he’s sure will never change, no matter what.

Still, he understands why Kakashi thinks there’s a chance in the first place for things to right themselves—Naruto will always have the heart of a hero. Naruto has always cared about others, has always gone the extra mile to change others in a more profound way, has always wanted to be important and needed by others. Becoming Hokage is practically a fast pass to all these things, the first thing that comes to anyone’s mind if he wants to continue doing this; it’s what he’s destined for.

But there’s a difference between what’s immediate and what’s best, and being destined for great things doesn’t mean he no longer cares about himself, something small in the grander scheme of things. Being a hero means having a life that no longer solely belongs to you, but Naruto is also a hero who is obnoxious, selfish, and human.

“I think I’ll hate the person I’ll become if I do all those things,” he tells Sasuke. “Even if everyone insists I should.”

Sasuke isn’t surprised. Naruto has never done things the easy way.

The atmosphere between them is solemn and pensive by the gravity of Naruto’s situation, but Sasuke can multitask and pours most of his energy into the mission, because that's what he's here for. Naruto is not annoyed as Sasuke expects him to be about it. It occurs to him midway that the person he’s currently tracking isn’t actually the rogue nin he needs to capture, but a close associate, making the chase not completely useless. Getting them would at least mean one less foe to deal with and one more source of intel to gain, ideally one that’s actually reliable.

They pass by a waterfall, so Sasuke figures it’s a good opportunity to clean up while he can. Nudity isn’t something either of them are embarrassed about, but there’s a certain weight to Naruto’s stare as Sasuke strips his clothes and slips into the lake, a look that would make most shudder. When Sasuke follows his gaze, he finds them lingering on his wrists, as his arms have floated up to the surface so he can gradually wade through the water.

“Do they hurt?” Naruto asks, coming to swim beside him. There had been an almost dazed look in his eyes the entire time he’s been here with Sasuke, but now it seems like the water has cleared his mind up a bit.

“Only when it wants to prove a point,” Sasuke answers, drifting away so he can reach the waterfall to rinse his hair. The coolness of the water relaxes him, makes his movements more sluggish than they normally are. The wilderness has its natural noise, but this is one of the few areas where things are muted, so distant it might as well be silence. Years ago, they finished a low-stakes mission and celebrated by climbing to the top of the waterfall and letting gravity pull them down without a hint of fear, laughter carefree and shoulders light, not weighed down by expectations and consequences that threatened to drown them once they reached the bottom. It was one of the few moments Sasuke remembers where he wasn’t burdened with his own revenge, wings outstretched despite still being trapped in a cage.

“I’ll do something about it,” Naruto abruptly vows. “I’ll tell Kakashi to have the seal removed.”

Sasuke can’t help but snort. “He won’t do it. The elders would never let him.”

“He’s the Hokage. He has the power to overrule them if he really wanted.”

“Yeah, and what makes you think he would?” Sasuke scoffs. “Just because I used to be a precious student of his? That’s not enough.”

“It should be,” Naruto huffs. He pauses, thinking to himself as Sasuke ducks his head under the harsh stream of the waterfall and letting it wash over him. He scrubs his shoulder; the wound has already healed, gradually in the midst of becoming a scar. The moment Sasuke pulls away from the water, he hears Naruto say, “If I become Hokage, I can get them to remove—”

The heart of a hero. The mind of an idiot. “You don’t want to become Hokage anymore, remember?”

Naruto hesitates. “I know, but—”

“Stop saying you’ll do things you’ll come to regret,” Sasuke interjects. “Especially if it’s for others. They’re not worth the effort.” He is no exception. “And this is my own problem to deal with, not yours. I don’t need you to get in the way of something I brought upon myself. Besides,” he adds, finding himself glancing down at the marks imprinted on his skin. Despite the spiral design, he thinks it looks more like the sun. “It’s really not that bad. It’s just—stupid.”

From the furrow in Naruto’s brow, it looks like he wants to argue, maybe point something obvious like how Sasuke never really had a choice in this fate to begin with, but in the end, nothing comes out. Sasuke hopes it’s because he realizes that it’s a dumb thing to be worked over, that he should focus on other things, like figuring out what he really does want in life, if not to settle down, if not to become Hokage.

And Sasuke does mean what he says, because there are worse fates. At the very least, this one keeps him close to those important to him. His loyalty has never been conditional. He has never been someone to do things in halves.

“I’m sorry,” Naruto tells him, at last. “That I wasn’t able to fulfill my promise to you—to change things for the better.”

They’ve resumed hunting down the rogue nin, jumping from tree branch to tree branch to get a wider scope of their surroundings as they inch closer to the enemy. Sasuke isn’t on edge despite his tendency to always fall to the side of caution, regardless of the fact that he’s stronger than most people. It could be because Naruto is here, because even if Sasuke is strong, with Naruto, together, they’re stronger. The strongest, even. Things can still go terribly wrong, and they have, because that’s how they operate, but it doesn’t make them weak.

Sasuke glances at him from the corner of his eye. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit,” Naruto immediately retorts. “You know they caged you with this. And I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t change anything, even though I should’ve been able to.”

Up ahead is a dome created by an Earth jutsu, meant to imitate a cave. Sasuke suspects that's where the rogue nin’s associate is resting, so he and Naruto stop by one of the trees, a safe distance away from their enemy, keeping their presence hidden. Despite being certain that the enemy is inside, he doesn’t have any plans on engaging with them immediately. Their ability relates to sound, but he has yet to figure out what, and he’d rather take his time to strategize or wait for their move before doing anything rash.

Naruto isn’t looking at him, so caught up in his own emotions and perceived failures and burdened by them. For his sake, Sasuke doesn’t look at him either, but he does rest his back on the tree and ponder on Naruto’s words. He realizes that it isn’t that difficult.

“You shouldn’t be sorry for not being able to change things,” Sasuke tells him. “Be sorry for having an inflated ego instead. For being an idiot. Just because you were born to save the world doesn’t mean you were born in a world where everything would go your way.” He lets out a deep sigh. “You can’t solve everything with pure pigheadedness alone. I thought you knew that already.”

Naruto is simply quiet. There are better ways to say it, but Sasuke can’t think of them, and he’s never been one for words. Tired of the stilted silence between them, he considers catching Naruto off guard by kicking him off the tree, not really to resolve the situation but to end the conversation because he has nothing more to say and they’re still in the middle of a mission.

But when Naruto lifts his head, it reminds Sasuke of tilting one’s gaze to bask in the sun, and the look in Naruto’s eyes is—bright. But with something different instead. Sasuke, to his surprise, does not feel afraid. 

“I did,” Naruto says, after a moment’s pause. “I know.”

The words carry themselves heavily despite their brevity, burdened with meaning. It’s not an answer, what either of them have, but it’s not supposed to be. The solutions to their problems are no longer in their hands like they once were, when the world gave them the center stage and the power to alter fate as it were, even for just a moment. It’s no longer about conquering the impossible; it’s about growing up and trying to make sense of it all. This is how things change. This is why Sasuke thinks, it isn’t all that bad.

Just then, a noise reverberates through the forest, and the two of them turn their heads towards the source. It’s coming from the dome, a continuous stream of sounds that morphs into melody playing from a flute.

“That’s our cue,” Sasuke says, glancing towards the direction of the music. He doesn’t stop to think if it makes Naruto think of the wedding that never happened, all those months of preparation and time spent together gone to waste. He’s different around her, Sakura had said, but Naruto is different around Sasuke too.

“It’s definitely a trap.”

Sasuke knows. He wasn’t born yesterday. “So?” Naruto rolls his eyes. The thought of him being hesitant, even cautious, is amusing to Sasuke, and he can’t help but grin a little. He’d tease him about it if it were any other time, but instead, he asks, “Do you trust me?”

“I shouldn’t,” Naruto says with ease, but there’s the shadow of a grin on his face. It’s warm, brighter than the sun. “But you know I do. I’d let you take me anywhere.”

Maybe they do understand each other with this—an unwavering brand of loyalty, a promise to not be left behind with no words needed to be said. Maybe they are similar, despite all their differences, and the thought makes Sasuke feel less alone. It makes him feel a little free, because if they can make their own cages, they can make their own freedom too.

“Okay,” Sasuke says. He’s never needed a cursed seal branded on his wrists to remind him of what it means to be loyal. He knows it deep in his bones, in the carved space behind his rib cage, in the words he’s about to say and everything in between. “Take my hand.”