acknowledges | ic contact

[ The walk takes a few minutes.

Sasuke had decided on the spot in the hall what to do, after he had dragged Naruto from his room. He hadn't known what to expect, until he saw it. Naruto, after all, had never witnessed that kind of slaughter. Not like Sasuke. The great Shinobi War had casualties, but many of them had been pulled from the brink of death. If not by medical nin, then by Naruto's amazing strength.

He leads Naruto up a winding bath to the public baths. He drops a significant amount of coin on the counter and informs the shopkeep he wants a private mana bath and doesn't tell him when they will be finished. It isn't exactly a hot spring, but it's the closest thing to it. Before the man shows them through, Sasuke turns and nudges Naruto in front of him. ]

[He hesitates outside the shop.

Naruto, usually content to follow another's lead and doubly so when this person is a friend- hadn't given their destination any thought. He'd been aimless like this once before, alternating between laying awake on his bed and meandering through Konoha's streets and alleyways. It doesn't happen often because Naruto is a young man used to encountering walls and finding ways around them. He couldn't do that with Jiraiya's loss, and he can't do it with this.

The shuffle of his feet comes to a halt. There are trees around them- this late they're reduced to twists of the darkest brown and a spread of inky leaves overhead. The path they'd taken up here disappears into them.

Showing no sign of stopping, Sasuke disappears into the building and Naruto follows- belatedly. He's looking at the walls and at the counter the host had been behind. The temperature is different in here and the lights are dim. Nudged to the middle of their procession Naruto takes his time, moving on autopilot right up until they're shown into a changeroom. He barely hears the host's orientation to the space, but then he doesn't really need that either. The door closes quietly as he sees himself out and Naruto mills about- sticking his head into the adjoining room with a sort of vacant curiosity. Looking for the sake of looking.]

[ He lets Naruto poke around aimlessly, getting his bearings.

He's always done this. Curious. There's something innocent about the way Naruto learns a place. Sasuke couldn't help picking out the quick exits, the windows, the doors; his own awareness born out of hyper vigilance instead of a desire to know.

After they're left to the change room and directions to the bath, Sasuke begins unbuttoning his clothing one handed. He's shrugged out of his jacket and just finished with his under shirt when Naruto appears again. ]

It's a mana bath.

[ He says, instead of get undressed. ]

[The thing about growing up beside Sasuke is that somewhere along the line, they found their own way to talk to one another. Conversations take place in silences and glances, the way someone's gaze moves or the way their hands rest just as much as they're made up of words. With his back to Sasuke he knows what he's supposed to be doing. He knows they're here to sit in the baths and he knows that Sasuke knows he never soaks for very long and they are both acutely aware that this is an act of comfort- maybe for them both.

Naruto doesn't know loss the way Sasuke does. He didn't learn it the same way and he hasn't grown up internalizing what it means walk away from a tragedy of that scale and have to live with it.

Sasuke is trying to help. Naruto doesn't turn around. His hands are still at his sides and he stays that way for another long moment- face hidden from view. Somewhere a fountain is running.]

[ He needs it, in a purely logical sense. It's why they came here at all. Naruto is a tactile person in a way Sasuke has never been, but he isn't close to people. It's easy for him to reach out to people that need help, but not to reach out when it's him who needs it. Sasuke has known this about him for years, now. Right now, his body needs the replenishment. Sasuke brought him here because that is an easy hurt to fix. The rest of it...

Both of them, they try to do everything on their own. Sasuke knows Naruto is struggling with what happened. He's trying to do that on his own, too. After so many years of loneliness, that isn't an easy habit to break.

Sasuke makes the conscious decision to close the space between them and reaches out to put his hand on Naruto's stiff shoulder. With gentle pressure, he coaxes him to turn around. ]

[The touch brings him back to himself, and it's only as he looks back over his shoulder at Sasuke that he realizes his mind has wandered in the first place. The air is heavy around them, water hanging in the air. Mana baths he remembers, and urges his feet into motion- pushes through the process of toeing off his shoes.

It's easier to manage now that he has a job to do, even if that job is a menial one. Tasks help keep him grounded. Naruto isn't cerebral by nature, he doesn't make a habit of living in his head- here and now it's not a closing down so much as it is the effect of overload. He doesn't know how not to feel the hurt, or to feel it hemorrhaging out of him. He doesn't look up when he shrugs out of his jacket.]

[ It's enough, for now. When Naruto meets his eyes Sasuke is in some small way satisfied. He doesn't need Naruto to talk to him, they've never been those kinds of friends. All Naruto needs to do is be present in some way.

He leaves Naruto to his task to complete his own with military efficiency. He folds his clothes neatly and leaves them in their assigned places, and picks up the familiar small towel to take to the bath. He doesn't leave Naruto behind, instead waiting for the younger ninja to finish.

Sasuke holds out another towel for him, and when Naruto takes it from him, he leads Naruto out to the water. It glows dimly, shimmering like a thousand stars are trapped beneath the surface. It gives Sasuke pause, because whatever he'd been expecting it hadn't been this. He doesn't consider himself especially artistic, but even Sasuke can appreciate the beauty of something.

When he glances across at Naruto, he can see the light cling to his bare skin and his hair. ]

[The process is a familiar one, but the physical act of undressing and putting his belongings away are methodical enough that they keep his attention on the present. His mind doesn't wander, instead staying on the task at hand until he runs out of things to do- until he and Sasuke are easing into the water and there isn't-

The breath locks up in his chest. For a moment he feels like he's been punched, because now that he's shoulder deep in the water there just isn't anything else to hold on to.

His bottom lip quivers and in the silence between them, something breaks.]

What did we do?

[ It was coming, eventually.

Naruto isn't looking at him, but Sasuke watches his profile. The tremble in his expression and the seizing in his shoulders. There's a beat of silence before he says anything: ]

Everything we could.

[ It isn't enough. It won't be enough for Naruto, but it's the truth. ]

So many people died!

[He's furious. He's devastated. Naruto doesn't have the words to articulate this thing that boils up in him- that makes his blood burn and his stomach roll over and his throat tight.

His hands clench into fists and the whole of his body thrums with tension- muscles taut, ready for a fight.]

What kind of decision was that?! We should have done something differently- anything!

[ He lets Naruto shout, and doesn't answer, only bears witness. Nothing Sasuke can say will make this better. When he was Naruto's age, he would have been equally infuriated, and it isn't that Sasuke isn't angry about it now, but he also recognizes that it's over.

They didn't have enough information. Too many civilians died. The reality is that their hands are tied, and until Sasuke can discern how to get more leverage, more intel that the government doesn't have— they're nothing but pawns. ]

Say something. [Sasuke is right, there's nothing he can say that will help- but the silence doesn't either. These questions have been rolling though his mind since they stopped the train. He tries to talk to other people, he stays busy, he trains, he listens- but it comes right back to this.

This is the moment that Naruto would grab him by the fabric of his shirt, but they're both without protection here. He's starting to tremble.]

You bastard say something!

[ He can see the moment, when it comes. When Naruto wildly seeks something to hold on to and ground him. All that's around them is water and mana, there are no shirts to grab, nothing to use as a barrier to close the distance.

Sasuke lifts his hand, dripping with liquid magic, out of the bath and leans forward. He puts his palm on the back of Naruto's head to still him, to look him in the eye. ]

We get stronger.

[He isn't ready to be still. This thing in his chest is molten and dangerous- it feels like its spilling out of him. Like at any moment it'll become chakra, burning red. Naruto lifts an arm equally fast, breaking the hold at the elbow.]

That's not enough!

[ Sasuke feels the superficial sting of Naruto's slap. He takes it, simple and easy. It isn't what Naruto wants to hear, but it doesn't matter.

That's all they have. They have strength, becoming more powerful. They have no information. So they have to keep working. Sasuke doesn't reach out again ,btu he doesn't given Naruto back his space. ]

We aren't in charge here.
That's all we have.

[This is all they've ever had. Even back in Konoha, with a Hokage that cared for their futures- with Kages willing to sacrifice their lives in the hope of protecting them- it was always about becoming stronger. Carrying the will of the previous generation forward. Bearing the burden of history with the intention of finding answers no one else could, of making a better world.

But it doesn't erase what came before.

Naruto's chest rises and falls- breaths that come too fast. He remembers this feeling somewhere before, when everything had smelled like snow. His ribcage feels like its closing in on itself.]

[ Sasuke recognizes this. The symptoms.

He, too, has experienced this uncontrolled swell of emotion. The sensation that it will overwhelm and swallow you whole. For a long time, when that tidal wave came, he had let it wash over him and direct his life— an inescapable pain. Naruto starts breathing too fast, his lungs squeezing each exhale out of him like a punch.

Sasuke is not very good at comfort. He has always been versed in destruction— that capacity to reach out and steady was Naruto's forte. Fleetingly, he wonders who had been there for Naruto while he was gone, but he knows the answer: Sakura. Sai.

He reaches out his mana-wet hand and presses his palm over Naruto's heart. He exerts pressure through his arm and pushes him back against the wall of the spring, pinning him there with the single point of contact. ]

[That single point is like a pin, sticking Naruto to the spot and letting him spin wildly around it- the needle around its center. His fingers spasm at his sides in an instinctive attempt to grab onto something, anything and steady himself. One finds the edge of the pool, the other lands on Sasuke's forearm, completing their circuit.

There's one too long moment where he thinks his legs might give out beneath him and he'll black out again. The water sloshes, he trembles like a leaf, and it's there inside him- the words he can't, won't say aloud. I can't do this. It's too much. I don't know what to do. It's too much. It's too much. I can't.

He starts to cry instead- a rattling, bone deep sob.]

[ There's something horrifying about watching Naruto come apart at the seams. Sasuke forces himself to watch because he's been looking away for too long. He'd looked away in his own pain. He's looked away to protect the Village. He watches Naruto's walls come down in his expression, the catastrophic crippling of his defenses. The grip Naruto has on his arm is needle sharp— his nails dig into Sasuke's naked skin and leave perfect crescent moons behind. The sob that shakes out of him punctures the tranquil quiet of the hotspring— not a shout, or a scream, but the low boom of a structure collapsing under the pressure.

Sasuke had cried like this when he lost his family. He'd cried like this when he realized what had happened to his brother, that he had killed the only man who had loved him unconditionally despite it all. Back then, it was all that had mattered. He'd been too blind to recognize that Naruto had been offering him the same thing for years.

He doesn't try to shush him. Theres no feeble attempt at comforting words. Sasuke keeps his heavy eyes trained on Naruto's face as he holds him pinned to the wall and accepts the weight of this. That with this choked weeping he can feel his own heart rend sympathetically.

This loneliness, he's shared it with Naruto ever since they were small. The burden of something that feels too big, and the inadequacy that follows.

It hurts. ]

[He can't describe where the sound comes from. It wrenches out of the bottom of his stomach like his insides are being scraped raw. He cries until he feels like he's going to run out of things to cry about, until he isn't able to feel sad anymore or lost or wretched. Sasuke keeps him still and Naruto, with nothing else to do and no idea what he needs to stop feeling so horrible- reaches for him the way a drowning person reaches for the surface. He's just trying to find something that doesn't move- something to keep his head above water. Naruto has cried infront of people before but it's never been like this.

It's never been so... all of him.

He hugs Sasuke, arms wound around the man's chest and forehead pressed into his collar. Naruto stays that way until he has nothing left in him, slowly growing quiet as his breathing evens out.]

[ The water sloshes in the movement. Naruto seems to choose to reach for him the same moment Sasuke recognizes what it is that he needs. He moves forward into his reaching hands with no resistance and wraps his only arm around the younger nin's shoulders. Naruto sounds like he's splitting apart, raw and terrible. Sasuke threads his fingers into the jagged cut of Naruto's wet hair at the nape of his neck, secure and solid, cheek pressed against his temple.

He doesn't track how long it takes to crest and fade. Naruto's ribcage rises and falls against Sasuke's bare chest. Even here, so much smaller than Sasuke and shaking with emotional fatigue, he still seems strong, somehow.

Sasuke waits. He doesn't pull away until he feels Naruto shift, and then only lifts his head and smooths his hand to Naruto's shoulderblade. ]

[It's quiet in here. There aren't any outside noises, not from people or from music, there aren't any ambient sounds. It's just the trickling of water and their breathing and- a loud, almost comical sniff. It's wet and embarrassing, the sort of thing that would break the silence in a funny movie or give a protagonist away while they were trying to be stealthy.

Naruto shuffles back a little at a time, his left hand drawn out to scrub at his eyes as he starts to get it back together. There's nothing self-conscious about the gesture, which is maybe the most surprising thing of all for a boy so often jumping to extremes when caught out. His head shakes. He doesn't look up.]

Sorry'ttebayo. [Another wet sniffle. His voice sounds hoarse, but not as fragile as it had before. Maybe he's just too tired.] For a second I thought I was gonna fall over again.

[ Sasuke's eyes are lidded as he watches Naruto recover. He's never watched this happen before, never seen the way it looks on himself. Naruto looks exhausted, but unbroken, his voice is wobbly but it doesn't falter. ]

Again? [ He probes, gently. ]

[Water sloshes noisily around his knees as Naruto backs up. It feels like his legs are wobbly, but it's probably just because he's been standing so long all hunched over. Actually, he'd cried so hard that his head kinda hurts. One hand lifts to reach for the side of the pool and he uses it to guide himself backwards and down, taking his time with the process.

The question is more or less waved off.]

It was a long time ago, with the Kage summit.

[Naruto sinks back into the water by degrees, his face still feels hot from crying, and he's tired- but at least he doesn't feel like... like that anymore.]

I don't really remember what happened. Yamato-taichou made me stay in bed to recover for awhile after. It's a little embarrassing to think of now.

[ A long time ago was such an understatement for Sasuke. It feels like a different life, almost. The stranger he was, ready for blood. He watches Naruto settle and Sasuke shifts, water sloshing against his chest as he takes a seat next to Naruto. They're close enough that if he moved his knee, they'd touch. Sasuke tips his head back against the edge of the pool. ]

What happened?

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im so sorry

well this is awful

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