ic contact

[acknowledges]

Taco Salad is not happy to help you. Taco Salad hungers for justice, and for a bite of whatever you're eating.

Comments

im so sorry

[penitents]

[ 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. ]

well this is awful

[acknowledges]

[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.

[penitents]

[ 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.