acknowledges | ic contact

[ 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?

[His shoulders soften by degrees and Naruto becomes a gentle slope, disappearing into the water around his chest as his elbows come to rest on his knees. The longer he stays here, trying to catch his breath and pull himself back together, the easier it gets. It's a strange feeling- when the body surpasses the mind. His heart still feels tender and raw.]

Eh? What d'you mean?

[ Sasuke watches him a moment longer before looking away, down at the glittering water. It's obvious that it's a mana bath, the way light seems to bounce of the surface. If Sasuke didn't know what it was, he never would have stepped foot into it. ]

At the summit.

[ He knows what happened with himself, but back then he'd been so estranged and wrapped up in his own darkness that he realizes... he has no idea what those years of his friend's life was like. Any of them. ]

[His head shakes, a little like he's dispelling a thought.]

We never got to the summit.

[His hair, damp in some places and wet in others, leaves single droplets hitting the surface of the pool. They ripple outwards in a series of small, slow moving rings.]

I found out they were gonna start hunting you, after you took Bee. They told Konoha that they were putting an execution order on you.

I went to the Raikage to ask him not to.

[It feels like so long ago, but maybe that's when things really had started to change. When this thing between him and Sasuke existed everywhere. Naruto sighs.]

Even after I begged he didn't listen. And then I found out that you attacked the Summit. And that everyone in Konoha, all our friends, voted to follow the bingo book. Even Sakura-chan was resolved to kill you.

I thought it really was over. [Even with all this time that's passed, even exhausted from crying, it still chokes him up to think about.]

I wasn't afraid of chasing after you on my own, I always knew it would come down to that somehow. But I didn't know if I could beat everyone else too- everyone in the village, everyone from the other villages.

I knew I wouldn't stop. So back then, it felt like I lost everything.

[ Sasuke has never heard the stories about his abandonment of the village. He left his peers behind, the only people who had really mattered were Naruto... Sakura. There was no love lost on him to turn his back on all of them to go after his goal of revenge.

It's easy to see the way people love Naruto. They all support him in the village, in ways Sasuke never would have thought possible as a boy. It would have been nothing to them, with no bond to Sasuke, to agree to come after him. He'd joined Akatsuki, been a vessel to help them forward their plan. Everything had seemed so much smaller to him, then— narrowed and thin. Kill his brother, raize Konoha, kill the kages— steps toward the conclusion of wiping the Uchiha off the map.

Revolution had come later. Acceptance, later than that.

He can't bring himself to look back at Naruto when he speaks. This isn't the first time he's heard this raw quality to his friend's voice, but somehow it seems... more personal.

Even after I begged—
I didn't know if I could beat everyone else too—
...it felt like I lost everything.

Sasuke can see the reflection of his own face in the water, warped and hazy by the steam and the sparkle of magic. He's probably as old as his father had been, now, much older than his brother ever had the chance to be— and only here, with the young mirror of his best friend, does Sasuke realize just how much Naruto had been willing to give up.

His life was one thing. As ninjas, their lives had always been forfeit. He thinks of Naruto begging the Raikage, when Sasuke had callously taken the man's brother to further his own ends. He thinks of what it would have been like for the woman who became his wife to tell Naruto that it was too late and that the only due course was death— for everyone to turn their back on his cause after he'd spent years forging bonds that weren't Sasuke.

Sasuke glances up through hooded eyes, forcing himself to look— to watch Naruto from under the shield of his lashes.

How selfish he had been.
He never would have survived if Naruto hadn't come for him. ]

You're so stubborn.

[ Sasuke's voice is so soft that he doesn't recognize it as his own. He hadn't even known he could sound that way. ]

Edited 2016-08-27 09:15 (UTC)

[The words almost seem to startle a laugh out of him. The sound isn't as bright or loud as they usually are, but just for a moment it feels like they're little kids again- walking together after a mission, sprawled out on the grass after training. Sitting side by side on the edge of that dock.

Naruto had played those memories out over and over again in the years after Sasuke had left. How he might have changed things if he'd known the truth about Itachi sooner, if he'd been able to beat Sasuke in the Valley of the End, if he'd caught up to him just a little faster, if he's gotten to them in the forest before Orochimaru had laid that curse. If he'd reached out sooner. If he'd just reached out to Sasuke instead of being embarrassed.

He'll probably never stop feeling those things no matter how the future turns out. There had been so much pain.

The truth was that no matter how far Sasuke went- no matter what he did in those years- he was also still that boy that had protected his teammates. He was still the boy willing to die to keep Naruto's worthless little life, willing to sacrifice his own dreams- the boy that put himself in front of him and in front of Sakura-chan. I don't want to watch those precious to me die before my eyes again.

Maybe without reason, Naruto smiles.]

You're the one that wouldn't come home. Bastard.

[ It's true.

But even now, home doesn't mean what he thinks Naruto intends it to be. Konoha had stopped being his home long ago, back when he lost his family, and then so easily turned his back on the people that formed any kind of fragile connection with him. All of those people, in the end, had responded in kind. It was only Naruto who had never given up.

Sasuke has a family now. He has a wife and he has a daughter, and each of them he loves dearly, in his own way. Home still isn't the place he returns to after his travels, it isn't the kitchen or the pictures on the fireplace or the welcome back he gets from anyone in the village.

Home is the silences he shares with Naruto. It's the way Sakura looks at him. It's the way Sarada chased him down demanding answers, her eyes red pinwheels. ]

Well [ Sasuke sighs, relaxing back against the pool's edge. ] you brought me back eventually.

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im so sorry

well this is awful

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