Chapter Text
When Sasuke woke, it was to Naruto at his side. Naruto, who was awake—and not freshly so, beaming at the top of the makeshift tent they'd put up four days ago. But he heard the shift in Sasuke's breath.
Naruto turned his smile onto him.
Sasuke's throat thickened with latent, familiar emotion. He'd yet to grow numb to this. He only seemed to be growing weaker.
"Hi," Naruto whispered, and he looked at Sasuke like he was everything. Sasuke swallowed in reply. His voice was not merciful.
Naruto was flooding with love. He looked as if it was flowing out of him, like it was the chakra that reached out for him, found him, held onto him, enveloped him. Sasuke could almost feel the warmth. He could feel it all through his body.
"How long have you been awake?" he asked, and Naruto's smile stretched—lopsided and exposing. His happiness laid bare for Sasuke to see. Naruto had likely been up since dawn. Maybe he hadn't slept at all, staring at the ceiling, too happy to stand. Too content to move.
Sasuke felt the sigh in his mouth. He let his head roll. His guard didn't return to him.
"Is it that I came back?" he asked, and it was soft. Naruto greeted the question with a small, humming laugh.
"Nah," he said, his eyes sparkling. "I knew you would."
It's a strange feeling, to be known so completely. Sasuke had never grown to be aware of it. It caught him by surprise, each and every time. Naruto's lies were easy to spot and easier to pull apart. This was a truth. He'd known Sasuke would return. He'd known it.
"The kiss?" Sasuke prompted, and Naruto's laugh turned flushed. There was the red in his cheeks. There was the giddy, sighing happiness.
"Sort of," Naruto told him. "Sort of. I did it, didn't I?"
He turned back, biting his lip with a happiness that tortured Sasuke on purpose. Naruto had to know. He had to. He looked as if he was going to cry with all he could feel.
"You did," Sasuke said, and it was too soft. Whispered. It betrayed too much emotion. Sasuke wanted to swallow it back.
Naruto's tongue darted out between his lips.
"You know what it is, through?" he said, and he rolled back to stare at the cloth. Sasuke didn't know if he was seeing it at all. "It's that—you know in the waterfall, you know what I saw, right? I saw the part of me that knew you loved me."
Naruto's eyes turned back to him. It was like a blow.
"I…pieced together as much," Sasuke replied. A confession. He had made so many.
"Yeah. Being loved and knowing I deserved to be loved," Naruto said. "He was such a fucking prick about it too. Made it seem so easy."
Naruto let out a laugh and twisted his hair all up through his fingers again. Sasuke wondered if the motion had lacked the satisfaction when his hair had been short.
"'Cause the thing is," Naruto said, "people love me. Now. Right? Konoha adores me."
Sasuke said nothing. He wanted to say much more.
"But they didn't," Naruto said. "They didn't, before. They hated me. Almost everybody I knew—even Iruka, I had to change his mind. Y'know? Kurama killed his parents. And that's not—I'm not saying Iruka doesn't love me, he does, and in a way that's different from everybody else 'cause he loved me for me, and not the fox, but—y'know. That love wasn't there. And then it was."
He breathed out.
"And I think that I'm just always really…aware. That it could just go. If I do one wrong thing. If I go a little too crazy. The things people would snap at me as a kid were just—I didn't know why any of it was happening," He looked at Sasuke, as if to check he understood. "I didn't know about Kurama. I didn't know why they hated me. They just did and they hated me so much and I could never figure out what it was that I was doing all the time to make everybody hate me so much. So it kind of became everything. Everything could make anybody hate me. They can stop loving me at any time. Y'know? I won't even know why."
Sasuke breathed in—
"But you didn't even have a reason to love me."
His mouth snapped shut.
"I wasn't even powerful. I wasn't even good. I didn't even understand you—I didn't know your hatred. I barely knew your heart, I was just desperate to be noticed by you and half the time I just got in your way, instead and you still—you fed me your lunch. We weren't even a team, and you fed me your fucking lunch."
Naruto swallowed and twisted his hair tighter. A gentle tear fell down the cheek that faced away from Sasuke, but it melted in the depths of Naruto's smile.
"When did you realize you loved me?"
Sasuke breathed in, and it trembled.
"When did I realize?" he asked. "Or when did it actually begin? If you're asking when I accepted it, the timeline will be very inaccurate."
The smile stretched at Naruto's lips.
"When did you accept it?"
"...When I lost."
Naruto wasn't surprised. It was the answer he expected. His smile grew.
"Yeah. When did you realize?"
Sasuke let out a long breath.
"Somewhere around the Wave mission," he said. "That's when I really became…aware. Of what had begun."
"And when did it begin?"
Sasuke looked at him.
"I don't know. I really don't know."
Naruto studied every inch of his face.
"There's nothing I could do to make you stop loving me, is there?" he said. "There's nothing I could do."
"There's nothing either of us could do," Sasuke muttered. "I tried all that. With everything I had, mind you."
Naruto's blue eyes still, caught by whatever Sasuke had looked at him with. He couldn't even manage the grin anymore. His smile was filled with shattered emotion. A child's hopes and dreams realizing they had always been fulfilled.
For a moment, Sasuke grieved not allowing this sooner.
"Yeah," Naruto whispered, his eyes gently darting around the frame of Sasuke's face. "This is why I can't sleep at all."
He let out a laugh. It sounded like a breath.
"Is this where you tell me the love was utterly unrequited until about a year ago?"
Naruto laughed so hard he started coughing.
"Are you kidding? You—you are fucking with me, fuck you," Naruto said, shoving him in the arm and rolling onto his stomach. Sasuke only smiled, letting his head loll to the side. His hair was caught by Naruto's fingertips. He allowed it to be.
"I was obsessed with you the second I saw you," Naruto said. "I just wanted you to look at me at badly. Like really look at me, look and me and see me. Sometimes we'd fight and you'd just be somewhere else. I hated that. Drove me nuts."
Sasuke hummed out a bemused note. His thoughts had been easily spiralled when it came to fighting. They still would be, he thought. Sasuke's blood had always run hot under his skin. He had that fury. He had that emotion.
"I didn't really let myself think about why, though. For years. Not even after you left."
"Of course," Sasuke told him, unable to resist. "I was your friend."
"Hey," Naruto told him, "hey. Fuck you."
A soft chuckle rumbled out of Sasuke. Naruto hit him in the stomach with all the force of a falling leaf.
"I didn't know what love was," Naruto insisted. "I'm telling you. I didn't even have the village telling me they loved me yet. Even Sakura only pretended she was in love with me to stop me from going crazy after you."
"...What was that?"
"I—oh, she fake confessed. Didn't I tell you? I thought I told you."
Sasuke blinked at him.
"She—no. No, you did not. What did you say?"
Naruto looked at him in surprise.
"Sasuke. It was fake. Are you jealous?"
"I thought you thought you were in love with her at the time."
"She was pretty and she got the best marks in the class."
"Sometimes."
Naruto laughed at him.
"You were pretty and you got pretty good marks, too."
"I'm going to put your face in the dirt."
Naruto peered in closer, as if tempting him to follow through, before he pulled back.
"I didn't actually have a crush on her. I just really, really wanted to. I was so not normal, y'know? I knew I wasn't. And if I could just have a crush on the person that I really should have—it'd be normal. I'd be normal. Right?"
Sasuke looked at him.
"If you wanted to fit in," Sasuke offered. "You could have had a crush on me."
"See, no, that was real, and I didn't know how to deal with feelings," Naruto told him, laughing. "That's what that was all about. I looked at you and I felt all weird inside and so I had to fight you about it."
Sasuke breathed out a laugh. He did know that feeling. He definitely knew that feeling.
"When did you realize?" Sasuke pushed back, and Naruto sighed. He pouted his way down onto Sasuke's shoulder, trapping his arm beneath his chest. Sasuke's knuckles were just at the hem of Naruto's pants.
"After waves," Naruto told him. "Before you tried to die for me, actually. I—Haku kept talking about precious people, and I just…I knew it was you."
Sasuke paused.
"...Kept talking about?"
"Oh, yeah, I met Haku when I passed out from training once. I didn't know it was him. I thought he was a girl."
Sasuke let out a deep, longsuffering sigh.
"How have you survived this long?" he asked, and Naruto laughed.
"As if I know," he said. "But that's sort of when I started to realize it. And then I really, really pressed it down. Especially when you left. Because there was no point, right? Nobody would love me back."
Sasuke breathed out.
"Stupid," he told him, and Naruto's smile returned to them.
"Yeah?" he said, and his hand found the fabric of Sasuke's shirt.
"Yeah."
Naruto's smile tapered off, and Sasuke erased the last of it from his lips. He stole it away with his own mouth. Naruto was soft and warm and so impossible. Sasuke felt Naruto's hand trail down his chest and there was a noise in the back of his throat, he held it there, he held it there—
Naruto broke the kiss, and pressed his forehead to Sasuke's chest. His hand was still low on Sasuke's stomach. His breath was so warm.
It was even warmer when he began to laugh.
"I'm not sure this is the correct response," Sasuke offered, and Naruto laughed harder. He rolled onto his back and the smile returned, that same stare at the ceiling, that same unwavering, unseeing gaze—
"I can kiss you now," Naruto said. "I think I can kiss you now."
He was breathless. He was glowing. Sasuke wished he knew what had convinced him so he could do it again, and again, and again, and—
With a trembling smile, Naruto returned to him.
Sasuke felt it with all that he was. It wasn't a cure. It was not a wipe of their memories—Naruto's smile was shaky, but it was firm, and the relief bloomed so widely Sasuke thought the fear might die to it, soon. The fear might be consumed by it. The relief might destroy it completely.
(Sasuke resolved to destroy it, too.)
The kiss deepened; Sasuke felt his hand on Naruto's waist and the warmth of his mouth, the tension and release of his muscles as they pushed and pulled each other, gentle demands for touch, gentle demands for more. Naruto's shirt was riding up. Naruto's hands ignored Sasuke's shirt completely. There was something physical and automatic in them, like they were moving together, like they were sparring, like Sasuke had never felt Naruto's body like this but he knew it, he knew it intimately, this was where they were always meant to be—
Naruto's hand pressed lower than it had, and the sound Sasuke made was involuntary. Stifled by the heat of Naruto's mouth, but only for a moment before his smile tried to break them apart. Sasuke felt all of his embarrassment in a familiar, violent urge to retaliate. Naruto broke through one of his blocks. Sasuke would make him feel the next blow.
He pushed Naruto onto his back and pressed his hand under all the layers of fabric he could find. Naruto gasped and twitched as Sasuke grabbed him, as Sasuke felt the searing heat and addictive, numbing lust. He barely had the sense of mind to pause—checking for a wound, checking if the blow had hit too hard—before Naruto grabbed him in return.
He wasn't falling back. He was refusing to. Naruto kissed him with all the fury of someone who would not lose. Sasuke trembled with the memory of someone who had. It would be so decadent to. It would be so easy. Lay back and let Naruto do all he had ever wanted—
Maybe if Sasuke was less stubborn.
Maybe over the course of another hundred battles. Sasuke would have to win one, first. It wasn't looking good for today. He couldn't control his legs. He was stiff and gasping and angry every time Naruto pulled his mouth away for air. Naruto's cock was so hard in his hand, Sasuke had precum all over his palm, he had to be so close, he had to be so close—
Sasuke couldn't take it anymore.
Naruto tensed and twitched and for a moment, Sasuke thought Naruto must have been cumming, he must have been, he studied every inch of the euphoria and it was that mistake that broke him, it was that mistake that was fatal—
His only victory was that he might have been right. He didn't know who came first. Another tie between them. Sasuke pressed his head to Naruto's and breathed in the sounds of his pleasure. The sounds of his relief. Naruto broke into laughter, like Sasuke knew he would, looking at him through sparkling, tired eyes.
The eyes of someone who had gotten everything he'd ever wanted. The happiness was so blatant. Sasuke let it flood into his lungs. Into his blood.
He collapsed his head onto Naruto's shoulder. A bow. A request. Naruto offered his support and asked for his own. They were both barely sitting up. They were both barely able to speak.
"I love you," came Naruto's voice, and Sasuke didn't even know if he'd said the words out loud.
He replied nonetheless.
"I love you, too."
They truly didn't plan their actions through. The search for the next source of water became a good chunk of uncomfortable travel—although, in the Land of Rivers, they knew it wouldn't be long. It was that stubbornness that stopped Sasuke from cleaning himself with fresh clothes; no point in soiling something for barely an equivalent clean. Naruto laughed at him, but what else was new. Naruto hadn't stopped laughing since they'd woke. That smile seemed to be growing permanent.
Sasuke only wanted to complain because of its damn infectiousness. His own face wasn't used to all this. Muscles he hadn't worked in years. Never to this extent. He could barely look at Naruto without his own smile demanding a return.
But they found a river. Shallow and rushing and good enough; ninja had small soap bars that could make quick use of water like this. It was a good thing, too. The sweat had not mixed nicely.
Naruto looked at him, brilliant and smiling.
"What?" he said, but he knew. He knew. If this river was deeper, Sasuke would have pushed him right in.
"You're an idiot," he settled on, and he tried to walk around him. He made the mistake of looking back, catching the small bite Naruto pressed into his lip, smiling his flushed happiness at the floor below him.
…
Sasuke's sharingan activated.
He didn't know why Naruto looked so startled. He'd done quite well to hold it for this long.
"Oi!" Naruto said, barely covering his crotch with his dirty clothes. "Hey! No pictures!"
Sasuke couldn't help but laugh. He didn't cut the chakra. He couldn't seem to bear to.
"Yeesh," Naruto muttered, and he came to join Sasuke at the riverside. His face was flushed a bright red. Sasuke felt his smile widen. "You gotta warn me or something."
"I'll try," Sasuke said, rubbing the soap to the cloth. "Although recently, it's been activating as more of an…instinct."
The whole thing ought to be soaked through, really. Who knew when they would next come close to a town…
"Really?" Naruto asked. "Like you can't control it?"
"I can," Sasuke said. "Like stifling a sneeze."
"Ow," Naruto said, as if it was a question. Sasuke's lips twitched in response, but he gave no other reply. It was an...urge. A strong urge, growing stronger, like a bell ringing in his head with every perfect moment, reminding him that this was real and true and theirs. It was theirs. Sasuke had never been able to control himself when it came to Naruto.
He looked back, and Naruto's eyes had never left him. He was going to have the worst eye wrinkles. He was already starting to develop them. Too much smiling. Too long laughing.
Sasuke forgot his pants, and stole a kiss. Naruto breathed out in surprise, and then in offense—he hadn't allowed the kiss to be returned. It'd been too quick. It'd been barely anything.
Sasuke tilted his head at Naruto's complaints, and let the argument be pointed more…directly.
The languid kisses and water left behind by their fingertips ended with mud in Sasuke's hair. Grass stains on the clothes Naruto had only begun to wash. They camped next to the river out of necessity, convenience, and utter, lovely laziness. The sun hadn't even begun to set before they decided they would travel no further today. They were too distracted to walk. There was too much to be done on the ground.
Their clothes returned to them with the cold. The night sky overhead. Sasuke burrowed himself into the feeling of being loved. Should it be torn from him, then he would die with this feeling in his hand. In his eyes. Permanently burned into his memory. Naruto didn't need to give him chakra—Sasuke had used his eyes for longer than this—but he did, and Sasuke took another piece of him and put it into himself. Wove it into him like it was part of him. His chakra was purple speckled with gold. Glinting highlights, shards of the sun at Sasuke's command.
Tearing through the darkness of the night, Naruto disturbed the sleep of the insects, the light of the moon, the subtlety of the stars. The moths flocked to him. Sasuke felt like another one of them.
"How did things go with Kakashi?" Naruto asked softly, and Sasuke found the smile on his lips.
"About what I expected."
Naruto's light flickered with the turn of his head. His grin said he was ready to tease. Sasuke, expecting things to go well? Pull the other one.
"It went fine," Sasuke replied, grumbling at the way Naruto's joy only brightened. "It went well. I told him to go to the waterfall."
Naruto laughed in surprise.
"Did you?" he asked, but it was not a true question. "We're going to start a trend. They'll be a line all the way through Yugakure."
"Kumo will be thrilled."
Naruto snorted out a laugh and leaned back. The moths darted all around him to find a better way to flutter at his skin. It was a wonder he didn't seem to notice.
"They'll have to widen the falls," Naruto said. "Find somebody to completely change the land."
"This is sounding worse and worse by the minute."
A waterfall for the use of the world. Traumatized ninjas by the hundreds, gathering together to willingly emotionally exhaust themselves. Sasuke could see no fault in the plan, surely. But then, they weren't the first to have a similar idea.
"Sakura's building something like that," Sasuke said, and Naruto looked at him. His chin poked into Sasuke's chest. "Not a waterfall. What? Did you think I wasn't listening?"
"I did, yeah," Naruto told him, his chakra reaching forward to flood Sasuke again. It grew worse every time he felt Naruto's eyes on him. It grew worse every time Sasuke felt himself be called closer. "It'd be something, though. It's gonna be amazing."
He smiled, but a tone of sadness followed the curve of his lips.
"If it works," Sasuke said, but Naruto shook his head.
"It will," he said. "The world will be better, after us. That'll be good."
The sadness was left unspoken, unsaid, untouched. Naruto felt the same wistful bitterness as Sasuke. If only someone had come before them. If only it had all happened sooner.
Impossible asks. Certain things had to be set in motion—and Sasuke would be hard-pressed to find a replacement to stand in Naruto's place to set in motion all that he had been able to. Some things needed some people. Some things needed some sacrifice.
Sasuke reached out and flicked Naruto across the nose.
Naruto jumped and yelped, rubbing at it—
"What the hell was that for?!"
"You have plenty of life left to live," Sasuke told him. "Some of all this might still benefit you yet."
Naruto's mouth opened, and then closed again—whatever he was going to say being replaced with a small, bemused smile.
"What is this, optimism?" Naruto asked. "From you? I thought you thought it might not even work."
"It might not," Sasuke pointed out, but the argument was weak, and he had little evidence to back it up beyond his own caution. Even Naruto had challenged Sakura on the mechanics.
Naruto took the silence as an opportunity to shuffle closer, and Sasuke watched the way their chakra continued to intertwine. Twisting, but not mixing—together, but separate. Whole, and yet fitting together; so easily fitting together.
No, it wasn't optimism Sasuke felt.
It was peace.
Sasuke felt…at peace.
Naruto watched him still, and Sasuke met the gaze. Blue replaced by yellow, but Naruto's eyes still looked the same. There was that same intensity. Same determination. Same…relentlessness, that felt like it pierced through Sasuke into his very core. He felt it all at once, like the night putting him to sleep, like the world tilting on his head. Sasuke stared into Naruto's eyes, and then…
And then…?
He blinked.
The world around him turned white.
Shapeless.
Whisps of fog around his feet, blurring the boundary between floor and air. Unrelenting distance everywhere around him, like forever and nothingness, all at once. He felt a strange…calmness, although it didn't dull his senses. This didn't feel hostile. But it did feel…
…
…familiar.
With a sinking feeling, Sasuke caught sight of the small, hunched figure. The white bench. The frail body. He looked young. He looked younger than Sasuke remembered him.
Sasuke had outgrown his brother.
Sasuke stepped forward, and Itachi's head darted up.
His face grew a pale, stricken white. He sat up straight, alarmed—frozen—as if he'd not been expecting anyone at all, let alone his brother. Sasuke scanned his tired body, watching the tension return to him. Itachi's mouth opened, but he stayed quiet. It was like he couldn't bear to speak. Guilt?
No. No, some sort of fear.
Sasuke scanned his senses again. The fog lapped against Sasuke's calves, threatened to consume Itachi's bench entirely. He was still wearing his clothes, but Itachi…Itachi's feet were bare. He had no weapons. He barely even had clothes. A frayed shirt and thin pants. A hair tie for his ponytail.
He looked like a civilian.
He looked like he was harmless.
Itachi looked away. He wrung his hands. Sasuke felt as if he could turn and leave, if he wanted to. He could. He felt a way out.
He took the empty space beside Itachi instead. Like they were waiting for something. A boat to swim along the fog. He felt a prick of annoyance in the back of his mind—raised bumps along his skin in answer to Itachi's persistent, staring question. He examined the feeling with some kind of…amusement.
Not white-hot rage.
Not screaming, anguished pain.
Not a grieving, clawing love.
Just a simple, easy annoyance.
Sasuke had missed this feeling.
"Are you waiting for a grand decision?" Sasuke asked. "If I've decided whether you're damned or forgiven?"
He answered Itachi's stare with his own challenge, and he was not surprised to see Itachi falter rather than face it. Of all things, the control of this had always been in Sasuke's hands: the burden of deciding Itachi's fate. False information and a deck stacked in favor of damnation, but still—the blood had remained on Sasuke's hands.
Not anymore.
"I haven't," Sasuke said, watching for the disappointment. "It's your turn to choose."
Sasuke was cleaner, now. Washed. Renewed. This blood on his hands was never his own. Let him hand it back. Itachi ought to have kept it all to himself to begin with.
Itachi breathed in and then out again, a worry and confusion in his eyes. His face still remained impassive—an expression he'd honed for his entire life—but Sasuke knew how to read the nuances of Itachi's emotion.
"What are you doing here?" Itachi asked finally, and Sasuke blinked. He didn't really have an answer for that. Did Itachi not have an answer for that?
"I'm dead," Itachi said. "I've been—you're not—"
"I'm not dead," Sasuke said, with a confidence he wasn't sure he ought to have. Logically. The world could have exploded all at once, he supposed. He just found it impossible to believe.
Naruto would have still found a way to him. Even in death. Naruto would rip him from the gates of hell. Even if this was death, he'd hardly be here for long.
Sasuke felt the smile on his face.
Besides, he knew the way out. Death, surely, didn't have so clear a path.
"I'm not dead," he reassured him, although it did beg the question as to where this was. What this was. He could feel Itachi here. He could sense his chakra. Weak, not nearly as strong as it had once been, but…he was here. A part of him was here.
"Oh," Itachi said, and he seemed relieved. Sasuke watched it with some bemusement. Live. Live, and hate me. He supposed those had been Itachi's demands, although he certainly had focused on the latter.
"What are you doing here, then?" he asked. "Is this what your death is meant to be?"
A bit miserable. Maybe a personal hell of some kind, locking Itachi in an endless room with only his thoughts. Perhaps he had walked and walked until he'd found this bench. But then—did he not know the way out?
Sasuke looked towards it.
A shimmering yellow hue. Distant. Barely there. But against the white, it may as well have been a beacon.
"I think I'm waiting," Itachi answered, and Sasuke's eyes returned to him.
"For what?" he asked. Itachi looked at him, studied him, as if Sasuke might be the answer. But he said nothing.
Perhaps Sasuke had already given him his answer.
Sasuke gave him a wane smile. A disappointing answer, to be sure, but a true one. Sasuke could not offer a final judgement. He felt the blame and the love. Neither without the other. This confusion was in conflict, but it was true. It was so much more real than his hatred had been.
"For what it is worth, I am sorry," came Itachi's quiet voice. "I wish…" A breath. Not a sigh. The air moved more painfully. "I wish a great many things."
Sasuke looked at him.
"I would have appreciated if things had gone differently," he replied, another unsatisfying truth.
"I know," Itachi said. "I know."
"You couldn't have taken me with you?"
"I was loyal to Konoha. You would be safe there. A life on the run—"
"Would have been my own," Sasuke interrupted. "You didn't kill me, but I certainly didn't retain my life. Isn't that what you wanted? For me to live to kill you?"
Itachi swallowed.
"It was the only way I could think to atone. But I—"
Sasuke looked at him, waiting for the excuse.
Itachi just looked sad. He shook his head. He knew the words were feeble, no matter how he offered them. Sasuke was sure they had once felt like everything—like a truth to hold onto, to keep him moving, keep him doing whatever it took.
But time had a way of changing the truths you thought you knew.
"Where were these apologies when you were alive?" Sasuke muttered, shaking his head. Did they need an eternity to resolve the things between them? Sasuke hadn't. Sasuke would have forgiven at the slightest word.
But then…
That wouldn't have been fully true either, would it?
In spite of himself, he smiled. A resigned, answering sort of smile—like a fool that had finally solved a riddle. He hadn't realized he'd become so comfortable in this confusion. Maybe this was how Naruto felt all the time. Maybe they had needed an eternity.
"I'm sorry," Itachi offered again, and Sasuke found the chuckle on his lips.
"I know," he said. "I've known it for a long time."
Maybe he hadn't needed to hear it at all. Maybe he'd seen the sorrow in the eyes of the man that tortured him. Maybe it had been obscured by the blood all around him. The bodies all around him. This inhumane life they had lived. Itachi had never had a choice. Itachi had chosen so poorly.
And like the little brother he had always been, Sasuke had followed.
"What happened to your arm?" Itachi asked, and Sasuke chuckled. He couldn't help it.
"Naruto and I traded," he said simply. "An equal fight that should have killed us both."
"But it didn't?" Itachi asked, and Sasuke looked at him as he shook his head.
"It was long ago," Sasuke said, and that same small relief graced Itachi's face. Sasuke watched it as it flickered. He watched it as some sort of understanding sunk deep into him.
"You just wanted me to stay alive, didn't you?" Sasuke asked. "You didn't really care how it would happen."
"My life had been death," Itachi answered quietly. "It's the only thing I knew. Kill someone, or die yourself. If you grew strong enough to kill me…"
"I would survive," Sasuke finished, quietly. "No matter the cost."
Itachi didn't agree, but he did not argue. Sasuke huffed out a breath.
"Did you consider that some of the cost may have been my will to survive?" he asked, and Itachi's head snapped to him. "I did not plan to live for very long once your death had been secured."
"But you did," Itachi challenged, and Sasuke snorted.
"Because your secret was revealed, Itachi," he said. "Because I could hate Konoha instead, and live to see them destroyed. That was not part of your plan."
"No," Itachi said. "No, it wasn't. That is why I…"
Yes. The technique that had been meant for Sasuke. A final manipulation in Itachi's haphazard plan. Sasuke was being lost to madness. Secure that madness for Konoha, and Sasuke would live for them.
It was a life that would have made him sick. But then, it was the only one Itachi had ever known.
Sasuke breathed through his nose, and then shook his head. Itachi had always seemed so much older than him. So much wiser. He was almost painfully human, now. Almost painfully flawed. Sasuke revisited his nightmares and saw that the man towering over him had only been a child. A desperate, stupid child.
"There are other ways of gaining strength enough for survival," Sasuke pointed out. "Did you manage to learn that much before you died?"
Itachi breathed out, something like a smile almost making it to his face.
"Yes. From Naruto, I think."
Sasuke pressed his smile to his palm. Yes, that would do it. Naruto had a very clear source of strength. He shouted it for all to hear, after all.
"If only he had taught me sooner."
Sasuke huffed.
"You could have taught yourself, Itachi," he said. "I hate what the world did to you, and I don't hate you, but that doesn't mean you can dodge your own blame. Both can co-exist."
Itachi breathed in, but for a moment, his breath only held.
"You—surely you hate me. On some level," Itachi said. "You must have."
Itachi's one order Sasuke had never been able to obey.
"No."
No, he had never been capable. When love rooted itself in him, it was permanent. For Itachi. For Naruto. He'd fought them both. He'd crushed them both. He'd tried to strip everything that had made him himself if only to kill the emotion that had dug into him, buried into him.
It had been too deep.
He would have to die with it.
"I…see."
Sasuke didn't think Itachi did. He was staring somewhere into the white, his eyes just a touch too wide. He swallowed. Sasuke found his gaze wandering back towards the yellow glow. It was brighter, now.
"You're well, then?" Itachi asked, and it was quiet. His gaze was not low, but it wasn't high, either.
Sasuke leaned back on the bench. It wasn't cool to his touch. It was not warm, either. A perfect neutral.
Well. Not only alive. Not only surviving. But well.
"I am," he said, and something softened in Itachi's face.
"I'm glad," he said softly, and Sasuke breathed out the emotion before his chest grew too tight again. Itachi's happiness had always been subtle. Always almost imperceptible. But to Sasuke, who knew the slightest change in the lines of his neutral face—
It was blatant.
A brother who wanted the best for him. In his own flawed, unknowing ways. Doing everything wrong, and relieved at finding out that in spite of it all, Sasuke had begun to heal.
"Naruto and I are traveling," he said. "We're in the Land of Rivers. But we travelled through Wind and Lightning for some time, too. I don't know how long we've been away."
Had it been a year? It had, hadn't it? Had it been two? Sasuke should have paid more attention to the day he'd given up outside the gates of Konoha.
"Travelling," Itachi said. "Just the two of you?"
Something about his voice made Sasuke look at him.
"Yes," he said, neutrally. "Just the two of us."
The invisible smile on Itachi's face grew just a touch more…prominent.
"He cares for you," Itachi attempted, and with no small amount of bemusement, Sasuke realized this was the second person who had attemped to convince him of the strength of Naruto's feelings.
"You know he loves me," Sasuke said, and it wasn't a question. It was damn nearly a laugh. "How—"
He didn't need an answer. He didn't need it at all. Naruto was so obvious that even his enemies understood everything he stood for. Ridiculous. Ridiculous.
Itachi looked at him, and Sasuke lost the battle against his smile. Itachi lost, too—he turned away, but there was a laugh in his voice. A chuckle Sasuke had barely known he remembered. With a small flicker, the chakra made it to Sasuke's eyes. Just for a moment. Like a photograph.
"You're well," Itachi said again, as if to himself. A repeated sentiment, as if reassuring himself. He sat back, against the bench, looking up at what should have been the sky.
"Good," he said, and it sounded like a sigh. "Good."
The last of the tension left his body. Sasuke watched, confused, as Itachi's eyes closed—a worn, tired fighter, finally going to sleep.
"Sasuke? Sasuke!"
The yellow had bloomed.
Naruto stood within the clouds, parting the fog like a sun demanding its release from the clouds. A shooting star breaking through the night. Sasuke stood from the bench and Naruto burst through the white, waving his arms like he was swatting at bees.
"The hell is this?!" Naruto greeted him. "You okay?"
Sasuke's mouth opened and he turned back to the bench—
It was empty.
As if no one had ever been there.
"Yes," Sasuke said, letting his senses spread out as if some residue of Itachi might still have been here, but…
No.
All that he'd sensed had vanished. A soul finally laid to rest. A soul that had found what it had been waiting for.
"Good," Naruto says, reaching out his hand. "Come on, let's get out of here."
Sasuke breathed in and out again. None of this made any sense. He took Naruto's hand.
"Dunno why my mind looks like this—it's usually more like a sewer," Naruto said. "I can't even find Kurama. C'mon—"
"Your mind?" Sasuke asked, sparing another glance behind him. "That's where we are, is it?"
"Yeah. Hang on—incoming," Naruto said, and with one more pull, Sasuke was wrenched back into consciousness.
"Whew," Naruto said, kneeling in front of him. "You okay? That was weird. Kurama's okay, I know that, but that was—can I ask—did that feel like—"
"Itachi?" Sasuke interrupted, quietly. Naruto looked visibly relieved, spared from speaking the name himself.
"Yes," he said. "You felt that too?"
"I met him," Sasuke said, and Naruto's eyes widened. "I think he was…waiting for me."
He didn't know. He didn't know exactly. He needed several more months sitting with this memory before he'd be happy to say he'd made sense of it. But…
"Maybe I still had some of his chakra in me," Naruto offered, and Sasuke breathed out a long breath. "What did he say?"
"In a nutshell?" Sasuke said. "That he's happy I'm happy."
Naruto blinked, and then some strange expression flashed across his face. It was enough for Sasuke to immediately know he'd said something wrong.
"What?"
"Nothing," Naruto said quickly, but there was something sparkling in his eyes. "That's all he said?"
"He apologized too, I suppose," Sasuke said. "And he knew you loved me."
"Me—wha—?"
"Stop avoiding the subject," Sasuke demanded. "Why are you making that face?"
Naruto's mouth opened and closed.
"You—" He rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't think you've said that you're happy. Before. I think that just—that makes me really—"
Naruto bit his lip so hard, Sasuke thought he was going to break skin. He pushed Naruto's shoulder and pulled it back again, sending him rocking away and then back. Whatever. So he was happy. Whatever. Whatever.
Sasuke huffed out a breath and fell onto his back. Naruto fell with him. The night sky was clear, and Sasuke was tired. The weight of Naruto's body was warm beside him.
"This is too much for one day," he muttered, and Naruto breathed in agreement.
"How is he still finding ways to fuck with us?" Naruto said, quiet, but Sasuke let out a deep, rumbling chuckle. So stupid. All of this was so stupid. He sat up and rubbed at his face and his eyes and all the wetness all over him. Naruto's stubborn hand stuck to his and ended up draped all over his body.
It was still deep into the night. There was no one anywhere close to them. Their chakra wasn't subtle, nor was this power—and with the Land of Rivers sandwiched well between Fire and Wind, no one would risk disturbing the peace that had been so bloodily built. It was the explanation Sasuke gave himself at the sense of contentment that returned to him so easily.
He felt as if he understood something better, now. Maybe something about himself. Maybe something about his brother.
"Are you scratching my head?" Sasuke asked, and Naruto's hand stilled.
"Oh—yeah," he said, "sorry. I didn't realize I was—I can stop."
"No," Sasuke said. "I just didn't…"
Sasuke trailed off. Didn't understand. Wasn't used to this feeling. He'd had his hair ruffled, an infuriating sort of motion, but these soft, slow ministrations had his thoughts…slowing. His eyelids falling. His weight was almost completely on Naruto, now.
"If you feel me in your head again," he muttered, "run faster."
Naruto's small laugh lulled him to sleep.