Fire: Welcome to Wait for Me: Crystalline Mirage. This is a SasuNaru, or NaruSasu or however you want to call it, so there will be yaoi.
Sasuke: I'm writing a love story about me and Naruto.
Fire: You're just satisfying your ego.
Sasuke: (glaring at Fire) You're going to be mean to Naruto in this one too...?
Fire: But I love Naruto!
Sasuke: My dobe! No one else's!
Fire: A little possessive, aren't you? I'm allowed to love Naruto too.
Sasuke: I'm not possessive!
Fire: Well, enjoy the story. I apologize ahead of time if I'm going to be mean to Naruto.
Sasuke: Yeah…right…
Fire: Well…then I apologize ahead of time if it doesn't make any sense. It's just supposed to explain everything that sort of popped up during the first book, Wait for Me: Leaving. It will end sort of on a cliff-hanger depending on how you read it since it ties right into Wait for Me: Leaving so if you have no intention of reading the first book, you might not want to read this story. This is a prequel. This was what happened. I can't promise that it's going to make a good story.
Sasuke: It makes a good story. Believe me. I lived it.
Fire: Uh…never mind. (turns back to the audience) For the readers out there, all my stories have a moral or lesson, and if you read through the whole story, you'll see it posted at the end of the last chapter. I'm trying my best to make everything comprehensible, so if anything's confusing please send me a review. If it's signed, and even if it's not signed, I promise to reply to you. As for the morals of each story, they're all listed in my user profile in case anyone wants to read them all.
Sasuke: Baka…
Fire: Someone might. That's why I'm posting all of them on my user profile, so check it out...and reread the stories if you don't understand where it fits. Now, on with the story.
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Disclaimer: Kishimoto-sensei owns Naruto. I own Naruto stocks, the verb "to shunshin" and all subsequent conjugations (ie. I shunshin, you shunshin, he/she shunshins…etc, shunshin-ing and shunshin-ed), and the phrase "my dobe" and "no one else's." Try not to use my verb or phrases without permission. I read everything out there.
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Warning: All Japanese terms were used for artistic purposes. If you need a glossary of all the terms, go to my user profile. There is a complete list of every term I use and their definitions.
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Wait for Me: Crystalline Mirage
A Fire Project
Chapter 1: Facets of Snow
The freezing white blanket that fell over Naruto's blond head made him shiver thoroughly. Konoha had never experienced so much snow before, but although he wanted to speculate on this fantastic phenomenon, he was too cold to really care. There was this constant empty anxiety at the bottom of his gut. And he just wanted to go home. But his eyes were fixed on the sparkling white field shining in front of him and he couldn't tear himself away.
"What are you doing?" At that simple question, Naruto felt warm arms slide around him, and for a moment, he allowed himself to melt into the other body. He sank into the warm solid chest behind him, ignored the black tufts of hair that tickled the side of his face. After a short time, the blond stopped shaking enough to look directly at the dark head that rested on his shoulder staring back at him. "You hate the cold," Sasuke stated.
"Watching the snow," Naruto said, answering the Uchiha's initial question as he took his warm hands in his freezing cold ones. He held it for a moment, absorbing his heat. "Were you looking for me?" For some reason, he felt incredibly at peace. The cold anxiety that had griped his chest right before Sasuke's arrival was gone.
"..." Sasuke was looking out at the field now. "No," he said with a cold smirk on his face. He was lying, but Naruto knew that. "I was just talking a walk." He buried his face into the side of Naruto's neck.
The blond's face flushed bright red in embarrassment as he felt the dark-haired shinobi's cold nose against his collarbone, Sasuke's lips catching his skin. "Sasuke!" He shouted, sending the boy's name reverberating through the entire field. He clamped his hand over his mouth as he heard his own voice in his ears. "G–gomen..." he said as he saw Sasuke's glare. He had forgotten that Sasuke didn't like to draw attention to himself. The Uchiha had enough attention as it was...and he was trying to get away from all his annoying fangirls...would be trying to get away from his fangirls if they could only...
"I swear..." he said as he buried his face in the shorter blond chuunin's hair, taking in the jinchuuriki's warm scent. "I don't know what to do with you."
Naruto felt the soft brush of the dark-haired shinobi's lips against his skin before Sasuke let go of his body. For a moment, there was only the cold white air surrounding him, and the warm hand in his grasp. He didn't have to look to see Sasuke at his side.
"What are you doing?" Sakura appeared suddenly from Naruto's other side, the same question Sasuke had asked him, the same tone of voice with which Sasuke had asked.
Naruto quickly turned to Sakura, his face a little pink at the sudden intrusion. He hadn't even heard her footsteps in the snow. He hadn't thought that Sakura would be here.
"Sa–Sakura-chan!" Naruto's face lit up with such sudden joy that he had almost forgotten the apprehension he had felt only a moment ago. "Are you cold? I–"
"No," she said pleasantly, still beaming at the blond shinobi. "What are you doing out here alone?"
"Hn." At those words, the phantom of Sasuke turned away from the two chuunin and began to walk away.
Naruto couldn't help but feel an arrow of pain shoot through his heart at that. For a moment, his heart had stopped beating. "Sasuke..." Naruto said softly to himself as he tried to grasp the light that was moving farther away with each slow invisible footstep in the snow. He had forgotten that this Sasuke wasn't real...again.
Naruto shivered as the cold world of loneliness returned, as he pulled himself out of that other world of warmth, that other world where Sasuke still existed. His clear blue eyes were still fixed on Sasuke walking away, even as his body stood frozen in that unforgiving universe of winter. He was daydreaming about Sasuke again...but that was okay. He could find something else to take his mind off him.
"Sakura-chan, want to get some ramen?" He grinned at her expectantly, trying very hard to hide the heartbreak that shredded his body from the inside.
Sakura turned slowly to Naruto. "Uh...okay, Naruto." She was looking in the direction that Naruto was looking only a moment ago. But she didn't see anything...because there was nothing there.
She stared for another moment before she followed after the blond boy. She wasn't in much of a mood for ramen, but she was sure that the blond shinobi was bound to eat more than enough noodles on his own to warrant her sitting there without anything to eat.
At the very edge of Hi no Kuni–near Taki no Kuni just to be sure that the Konoha-nin wouldn't find them so easily–there was the ominous rhythmic ring of bells with every slow step, and beside that continuous ringing was a more erratic, choppy ringing. But, Itachi wasn't impressed. He swung his hand around in a large arc and smacked Kisame in the head, signified with a single large ring...then, silence.
"Stop shivering."
"What!" The blue man shrieked at the Uchiha. He couldn't believe what Itachi had said to him. "I'm cold!"
"..." But Itachi didn't have to say anything else. He needed to concentrate if he was going to finish this jutsu. He needed to make sure that what he was investing his chakra in, was actually going to get accomplished.
"Hey!" Kisame wasn't going to be ignored though. "D-d-did you h-hear me!" He was shivering again.
But, Itachi wasn't going to answer him. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to melt into his surroundings once more. He had just discovered another function to this technique. It was actually more interesting than he had initially thought.
Kakashi looked out at the village from one of the tall windows of the Hokage's office. At his side, Tsunade was reading over a thick document. It was rare to see her awake in the afternoon–she usually took a nap in the afternoon since she often slept late and woke early to work on urgent documents–but then, it was impossible to sleep when the office was freezing cold. "So...?" Kakashi asked as he turned to look at the blond woman. "What does it say?" Worry saturated his voice.
"Nothing that we don't know already," the woman said as she placed the thick pad of paper down onto her desk. She had ordered an investigation into this strange weather when the snow first began falling, but the report had turned up nothing. "We have no idea what's happening." This snow... They had no idea where this snow was coming from!
"Hmm..." Kakashi could see that there was nothing about it. "Snow in winter...?" It didn't snow here in Konoha, in Hi no Kuni, even at the height of winter. This certainly wasn't natural...but he couldn't imagine what, or who, could be doing this.
"But, do you think," Tsunade said slowly, "that this might have something to do with Naruto?" Her expression was as worried as her voice. There was great anxiety in her nervously shaking hands. "I mean..."
She didn't want him to take her words the wrong way. She was sure that there were plenty of other shinobi in the village with enemies as strong as Naruto's enemies...but as the Hokage, it was her job to have the jinchuuriki foremost in her mind. Any attack on the village was a direct cry for the power of the Kyuubi.
"I meant..."
"The Kyuubi is a fire demon," Kakashi said, almost reading her thoughts. They were both thinking the same thing for the same reasons. "They might think the snow will weaken him." Although there didn't seem to be any change in him when they went to Yuki no Kuni. These people didn't really know what they were dealing with if they thought this was going to work.
"I can't help but feel as if someone's using this to get Naruto." Her voice was shaking, and it wasn't because of the cold blizzard that was blowing in from her windows.
"Yes. I feel it too." And Kakashi couldn't shake the feeling at all.
Naruto shivered as he walked out of Ichiraku Ramen into the cold wind. After sitting in front of a steaming bowl of ramen, the street seemed even colder than before. In his heart, he was strangely calm, although his mind was in a state of panic. He was hallucinating about Sasuke again...even though he knew that he shouldn't be thinking of him. It was just that...with Sasuke's leaving for Orochimaru, he couldn't help but feel a little...
He couldn't really describe the hollow feeling at the bottom of his stomach, but he guessed that he felt rejected...because Sasuke didn't give him enough thought to know that he would help him...could help him. Sasuke didn't think that he was strong enough to help him kill Itachi.
"That's not true..." Naruto felt the ghostly arms of Sasuke's phantom wrap around him from behind, freezing him in place as surely as the cold white snow was freezing his body. "You ARE strong, Naruto... I'M just not strong."
Yes... Those were the words that Sasuke had said to him at Shuumatsu no Tani. He had said that it had nothing to do with Naruto. Sasuke just wanted to become stronger.
Then...why does it hurt so much to think about him?
"Sasuke..." Naruto said as he shrugged the phantom's arms off. "Onegai...just leave me alone..." And he stumbled away before the phantom could do anything about it.
Anyone who was watching from afar could see the pitiful behaviour of the blond in the light of his best friend's abandonment. Anyone... It wasn't hard to see. With every step, the snow melted beneath another group of falling tears.
"Sasuke..."
Naruto didn't want a phantom. He wanted the real thing!
End Chapter 1
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Fire's English tidbits for those who care:
I use a lot of irony in my stories and if you read on you'll know what I mean. Irony is one of the most important devices at an author's disposal, mainly because it has so many uses. First of all, a definition: Irony is when you expect something to happen and the opposite happens. Or in my case, I use: Irony is when you expect something to happen and it doesn't happen. Nothing happens at all. Irony comes out of misleading foreshadowing (which I will explain next chapter). One way that I use irony is to make a story more tragic, or more angsty. During the time you foreshadow something to happen and the time it actually happens, suspense is created and your characters are directly affected by that suspense. Make good use of it. If things always happen the way you expect it to happen, it wouldn't make a very interesting story.
Fire's babbling:
Sasuke: Hey! This is supposed to be a romance between Naruto and me. If I'm not even there, how can it be a romance!
Fire: What…? Romance? I never said anything about a romance.
Sasuke: You said this was a SasuNaru!
Fire: It is. (smiles)
Sasuke: That bastard Itachi's in it more than I am!
Fire: Well, he is the villain in the story.
Itachi: We're just giving the people what they want.
Sasuke: They want me and Naruto! Together!
Naruto: (shocked) What!
Fire: Uh…story development is very important.
Sasuke: I don't care about plot development!
Naruto: (still shocked) What…?
Fire: Be patient. I swear it will get more interesting.
Sasuke: It better!
Naruto: (trailing off) What…?
Fire: Review, review, then review some more!
Sasuke: See you next chapter.
Naruto: What…?
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