Title: Run

Summary: Sasuke & Naruto run from Kumo to Ame. Complications and Adulthood ensue.

Betrayals during war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace. New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything.

He could hear Sasuke's quiet breathing from beside him and he turned over to look at the other boy. Curled on his side his body had left an imprint like a question mark in the mud.

Dew had settled over their clothes and the outside of his cloak was damp and cold. The sooner they got up and left the better. Naruto bit his lip in thought. They would need some sort of misinformation or diversion to throw the Kumo ANBU off them, and they wouldn't be able to return to Konoha. Not yet. That would be expected. He pulled his sandals out from under him and clapped them together to try and get some of the mud off. The mud was a sign they were getting near Ame, at least.

The land had turned to sludge right after they'd passed the borders of Grass country, and that had been the last time they ate too. Stopping in at one of the shacks near the rice paddies to eat shrimp. The shells before they'd been thrown into the pan had been an unremarkable grey and nearly translucent. They were cooked in their shells with garlic and served up as orange as his jumpsuit. Hot burst of oil and juices in his mouth. Sasuke had managed a bowl of rice and few shrimp and Naruto a little more than that when the Kumo ANBU had caught up with them and they'd raced along the footpaths between the paddies and then across the water itself.

"Uzumaki Naruto, we are here on behalf of the Raikage with orders to take Uchiha Sasuke back to Kumo to stand trial for his attempted assassination. We would appreciate your cooperation."

He'd told them where to go.

The rice was just being planted and they'd skittered across the surface of new green shoots; keeping their balance harder than ever because of all the plants breaking the water tension. Another set of bodies was paralleling their movements a ways off. They would make an attempt to pin them between the advancing team and the team in pursuit the way you'd corner a set of hares. He yelled a warning to Sasuke and veered out of the way to catch the ANBU off-guard keeping a Kagebunshin running in his place. Sasuke swerved to the side, blocked a downward cut with his arm guard and stabbed the other shinobi through the shoulder and knee. Naruto took the two on the side out with the Rasengan.

From a distance it became obvious that the fields had been laid with architectural precision to form the character '喜', for happiness. His rasengan had blown a hole in one of the major retaining walls and the brownish water was spilling over into the other side. The villagers were hurrying over to try and stem the flood but it continued to gush water and silt. A few took the time to kick the ANBU soldiers who were still lying unconscious or, in turn, steal their shoes. Sasuke nudged his shoulder and handed him a soldier pill. He hesitated, turing the pill over in his hand. It occurred to him now that it could have been poison or drugs, something to drain him of his chakra, but it wouldn't have mattered if it was a women's libido enhancer. That little contact, the unspoken trust taken was what he'd swallowed hand to mouth, faint chalk taste and all.

He'd followed Sasuke's back unwilling to look away in case the other boy decided to bolt. They'd run through the night and part of the next day before they'd stopped to sleep in the few hours before dusk. The tree trunks were black and full of old growth and water rot. The light barely filtered through the forest where they had curled up in their cloaks. Nothing had been said.

The gash on the other boy's neck and shoulder from Raikage's armor had only managed to half heal and the greasy ointment Sasuke had smeared all over it showed around the edge of the bandage. Apart from the mud he was still every inch the pretty boy, a ceramic smoothness to his features. Naruto couldn't remember if his eyes were different or the same—that was Sakura's territory-but they were open and looking at him.

"Hey."

He flinched back, "Uh hey, morning. Or night."

"We should go"

"Yeah."

There were markers for each of the hidden villages, and they come across the first one the next afternoon. From the dense bamboo forests of Kumo they'd skated along the Konoha border into the badlands of Oto where they hadn't even been able to drink the water and down into Rain country. The hidden village had been built on the flood plain of the other nations. The land was completely flat and even sloped downward at the city borders as if this place was the collective low point of the world; its churned fields and trees full of shrapnel testaments to the hatred bleed out of other nations and buried in shallow graves. It was why they had run here. After the disappearance of Pein the elders had struggled to keep the city afloat, but it was rumored you could buy and sell anything here. Since then Ame collected missing nin and had no extradition law or law to speak of.

Everywhere underfoot were cement chunks and mud. Naruto wrapped his cloak around himself. It was easy to blend in. The gutters were all clogged with trash and overflowing and his feet in their sandals were wet and miserable. Sasuke winced too when they went through the runoff from the sidewalks. The skyline was high and against he felt miniscule. He and Sasuke could have been the only living shinobi in a land of giants, they could have been farmers or regular school kids or complete strangers. Maybe.

Like Kakashi had said to him brow creasing, "It's been almost seven years now since—he's not the same person."

Time enough for Naruto to have stopped the reminiscing and 'what if's years. Time enough to gain an adult's humble acceptance of a simple life-something he'd swore he'd never do as a child. Except for this. Except for this one thing.

"I can't live like this" and as he said it he gestured around to the half-empty Hokage's office, but the movement went further to the shouts outside and the bursts of chakra, the construction crew in charge of carving his face onto the mountain.

Stacks of paper for Tsunade were piled haphazardly on one side of the room, but Kakashi's desk was always suspiciously empty when he stood in for her.

"Are you telling me if you could go back in time and save Obito you wouldn't give up everything?" Kakashi's eye glittered and Naruto looked away embarrassed, "This intel is directly from Bee and it's the first solid lead we've had in years."

He'd taken the information on faith and as he looked up at Ame the tops of the broken buildings looked built to resemble temples to an absent god. The buildings themselves showcased a transmutation of architectural styles and reused scrap metals. There had at one time been a format for the roads which he'd memorized before he'd left, but it was clear the inhabitants had adapted the city to suit their needs. Buildings had crumbled and been rebuilt. Streets had been closed off and made dead ends after rubble had blocked passage. Telephone and electrical lines were strung from one building to another, but they lacked the haphazard playfulness of Konoha creating instead a network of crisscross lines like this place had been etched out from above. But Sasuke was there walking just a little ahead of him.

A hot exhale of the dry pavement beneath them as the rain came down and they ducked into something that looked like a convenience store. Scents came with the rain, cooking grease from the street stalls and stale piss at doorways. Most of the shelves in the store were empty or full of cans with the labels turned to pulp by the humidity. He managed to pull enough change together to buy a can of condensed milk. This he took and wedged between a doorframe and his sandal and made two puncture marks in the tin then picked it up and downed some of the syrupy sweetness. His throat worked and he stopped after what felt like half the can was gone and handed it to Sasuke who took it wordlessly and grimaced through the sugar of it.

Naruto felt something move in him at that. Maybe some things stayed the same.

"Remember when we used to see those midnight flashbacks? Or uh, how we'd play chicken on the docks and hot springs? You were a douche." He said it abruptly.

Sasuke ignored last comment and didn't look at him. When he final spoke he stared across the street, "The Raikage isn't going to stop his pursuit...Are you sure you are willing to harbor a missing nin." He was choosing his words carefully.

Sasuke's hair was stuck to his face and as Naruto watched he brushed it back behind his ears. The whole familiarity of it made his stomach hurt and he swallowed, "Bee will help him come off it. He just needs time."

"I was surprised. I'd heard you were to be inaugurated as Hokage soon."

Someone slunk around the corner and they both tensed, but it was just a drunk looking for a dry place to sleep.

"Yeah. Yeah-well I can run a lot faster now." He cracked a smile and stood up, "Let's find somewhere to stay."

They found someone who would rent them a room. It was a half burned out building and the land lady grew plants in the burned section and rented out the other half. She didn't have keys for any of the rooms, but there was deadbolt on the inside that they threw as soon as they got in. There was a screen leaned against the wall next to the window and as an afterthought Naruto took it and opened it between them. It had a painting of cranes done in watercolor, but someone had put a fist through one panel. He sat down and shucked out of his pants, unzipped his jacket and undershirt, and laid them over the space heater to dry. Sasuke was doing the same, stripping and leaving his clothes over the top of the screen. The land lady had given them some candles and matches, but there was no need to light them. It didn't get properly dark for hours. The city remained in a grey twilight, the sky churning and clouded like smoke caught in the furnace bellows.

Naruto pinched himself to stay awake long after he heard Sasuke's breathing even out, afraid. He used to dream about Sasuke a lot. At first it had been hero dreams. That he'd been better. He'd charged into Orochimaru's hideout, punched Orochimaru's gross pervert face when he came after him, and when he'd meet Sasuke again they'd talked and the other boy had agreed and taken his hand and they'd raced home to be surrounded by everyone they loved. Both their parents were alive and smiling. How proud they were of their sons. Bells chimed. Victory drums beat across Konoha. The end. The credits rolled. Other times they crossed each other while travelling. Had sex. Communicated through the hot, sweaty calligraphy of their bodies all that needed to be said. Sometimes he dreamed they had never been ninja at all, that they met at school. That they walked home together after class. As he aged the dreams became more unstructured. Emotions ranged up and down the scale but they always returned to the key chords: remorse, longing, regret. Each dispersing across his mind with their own colors and unique pain.

It became apparent later that the screen had been intended for the window which didn't have any glass. Naruto woke up damp along one side of his body and Sasuke was already dragging it over to the window. He was naked to the waist and lifted the heavy frame between Naruto's futon and the window easily. Naruto sat up and Sasuke paused on the other side of the heavy paper. He wasn't sure if Sasuke was looking out the window at the street below or if he had turned and was now looking at Naruto.

"Uh thanks." He said and touched the screen in an affirmative gesture.

Sasuke's outline paused. His shape through the screen wasn't the kind made by projectors and shadow puppet shows, it lacked the detail, the swinging hinges at elbows and knees. It reminded him of what time had taken. How it stood between them now turning each other unrecognizable.

"Yeah" he heard from the other side. Sasuke's silhouette turned to the side and crouched so their faces were level through the paper, "I remember...the movies and docks. The answer to what you asked today."

"I think-" Naruto's voice broke, but he continued on "I used to think about it all the time."

"And now?" Sasuke opened his palm along the screen's surface where Naruto had touched.

He could see the shadow of Sasuke's fingers and he touched their outline pushing through. The paper tore with a heavy rough sound. He clutched at the man's hand, "No. I don't."

The hospital was full of old nin that had to be admitted after a certain age. The consequence of living a life constantly on guard for assassinations was that paranoia set in and in nine cases out of ten retired nin attacked their spouse convinced they were in a genjutsu. Was this the fate of a shinobi romance? Shikamaru smoked outside of Kurenai-sensei's house regularly and there was in some way a longing about them. Iruka-sensei had broken it off with Kakashi and the latter could still be found most often at the memorial stone tracing and retracing Obito's name. He and Sakura had almost slept together, but as they'd reached for each other in the dark both had stopped short. It was too much like reaching for a ghost, each expecting someone else to be there. It was hard to place judgment on casting genjutsu over a partner to pretend it was someone else when one did it for a living. A certain type of occupational hypocrisy. But to actually do it felt too much like an admission and Naruto preferred the moral grey zone. A body to fill a gap even if the shape of that loss was different. Neji had stopped seeing him after two months giving him a soft look. He hadn't made any comments about the Byakugan or seeing through him, sometimes emotions were clear enough. At night he'd licked his way up the soft planes of Sai's stomach pretending in the night that the shadow and tastes were of someone else. Waking up to the morning drained the illusion, although it astonished him now how easily that longing had been fulfilled simply by being with Sasuke. By sleeping next to him. The body knew.

They spend a week in Ame watching the rains come again and again. Watched the streets flood and dry. Sweated through the humidity. They stole mostly root vegetables by night. Yams and turnips, that they roasted over a charcoal fire that Naruto had rigged up on a cinder block, and finally peeling back the blackened outer skins. These were all things they had done as children and they fell in step easily picking up the old routines but the familiarity went unacknowledged, as if speaking would cause it to shrivel and die. They ate in silence biting into the soft flesh at the center and not looking at one another.

At night in the dark when the shapes of their bodies drifted Naruto would occasionally talk and Sasuke would listen. It was not "like old times" the stories he told were new and never included anyone from the village. Only one story included himself and it he'd told it when Sasuke had reached out and grabbed his hand as he'd traced the seal on his stomach for the 30th time.

"What are you doing?"

"Uh, sorry. Nervous habit. Someone tried to take the kyuubi a while back. Scared the shit out of me."

"What happened?" he said after a pause.

Naruto took a shaky breath and laughed. "Some crazy lady and compnay from some ruined village. I don't know. She knocked me out somehow, sealed me down. She talked to me and she-she asked me where I was from. I said 'Konoha'," his hand drifted to rub the seal and stopped mid-motion, "and she laughed and said 'where is your blood from. You think because you were born with something it makes it yours?'"

It had chilled him to the bone. Even when he'd escaped she'd been the one to come after him and caught him when he landed with the flying thunder god technique and cut into his Achilles tendon. He cursed and crumpled pulling the second kunai for the technique out and managing to jump some distance away. He was sweating heavily in the humidity, jacket already soaked. He could see her some distance off, a grey dot circling the switchbacks along the mountain trail and coming closer. She'd charged him again as he'd shuffled along and he'd twisted to the side and caught her hair. Dragged her head back and she'd bit him. The semi-circle her teeth made in his arm turned black and spread immediately and he'd swore and thrown her aside. They'd inscribed a five element seal to keep him from accessing the kyuubi's chakra, but he could reach sage mode and the next time she came at him he threw her into the cliff face.

The throw had left her body in the guise of a rag doll, spine broken but he crawled closer just to look at her. He knew he should have left immediately. She had broken the mould of story book characters. A spurned mother from a spurned clan—utterly rational. Her hair made a curtain across her face, and he'd thought her beautiful. She had been a medic nin as well; he wondered if Tsunade had known her.

"I'm surprised she thought she could take you."

Naruto could barely hear his own voice over the rain, "Well…there is a time when the seal is weak."

"When?" The question hung in the air.

"When the host is pregnant."

There's something that sounds like a dry cough from the other side of the room. Naruto realizes after a moment Sasuke is laughing, "Good thing we never had sex then."

He shouldn't be surprised when they reach the borders of Fire country and Sasuke stops short, "I'm not going back."

Naruto draws himself up from where he'd been crouching at the crossroads shrine. He throws and catches a rock he'd found on the road two times then says "Was it worth it, selling your soul to the devil?"

"Only an idiot thinks about it in turns of worth. I did what I had too."

"No, it's a simple question. You chose them over us. Did you ever regret it?"

"No."

"You're lying."

"Maybe you should take your own advice and 'believe it'".

He paled and shifted his stance. Sasuke caught the movement and adjusted.

"I hate you."

"Fine."

"Fine."

Naruto threw the stone at him and they went down. Their sandal heels chiseled grooves into the mud as they struggled. Naruto tries to grab his wrists but he twisted out and nearly broke his thumb off. Sasuke hit him hard across the face and while he was stunned blew a katon at him. Naruto stayed on the ground and felt the heat of it pass over him; the mud all around him hardened instantly. They fought kicked and punched using the same moves they had as children, tempered now by the time they had spent fighting strangers and wanting it to be each other. It wasn't the elegant all out battle. Hair was pulled, balls punched, clothes ripped. And then bruised and scraped, when they had exhausted of all the petty kicks and punches Sasuke stood in a close quarter's stance favoring the leg Naruto had gotten in a good jab on. He grinned when he saw it and dabbed at his bloody gums with his filthy sleeve. Sasuke sneered looked like he was going to say something then grabbed him by the ears and bit his bloody lip, slid his tongue in his mouth.

Naruto made a hurt noise and groaned. He dropped to his knees and jerked the fastenings on his clothes open in one rough movement because he wanted to see it. The mud squelched under him and above Sasuke surveyed him, his eyes as black and glassy as an animal's until Naruto leaned forward and put his mouth on his dick. He choked and then adjusted and pulled Sasuke's pants down to the tops of his thighs and pushed his fingers into him. In retaliation he dug his nails in behind Naruto's ear.

"Let me fuck you" he said and pressed his face into Sasuke's bare stomach. He smelled like rain and vegetation, thick scents that clogged up his head. Sasuke made a wordless noise when Naruto pushed deeper and added a third finger. Felt his knuckles rub together slick and hot and his eyes roll in his head cause he couldn't quite take it all.

"No".

"Please", he bit down on Sasuke's hip and scraped his teeth over the subtle ridge of it. The head of Sasuke's cock had left a wet slick spot on his stomach and he smoothed his mouth over it. It left a flat taste in his mouth. He licked his lips and said it again, "Please."

Sasuke closed his eyes once and nodded and Naruto rose and took his hand and pulled him through the forest to a one room shrine that had fallen into disrepair. His hair felt the same as he remembered, but it was different now. Not nostalgia but stark and utterly real. Sasuke on his knees and bracing his forearms against the wall. The tight muscles in his jaw moving when Naruto pushed into him. He fisted Sasuke's dick in slow tight strokes and put his fingers in the other boy's mouth before he finished. Sasuke shivered and cursed dropping to an elbow when he came, and Naruto followed spilling on his lower back.

That night Naruto woke up to Sasuke kneeling over him and grabbing this hair. He wrenched his skull to look him in the face and too late saw the mangekyo spin and tried to shut his eyes.

He felt pain.

Pain as if his eye was being ripped out. A pair of bloody fingers moved away from his face so that Itachi's death mask stood before him teetering and he felt anguish and triumph shoot through him, and he felt Kabuto working deftly at tattooing the summoning characters on his hands and wrists. He felt each pause as he dipped the needle in ink and returned to the design, each excruciating pin prick of pain along his fingers and Orochimaru rested a hand on his shoulder and stroked the curse seal. Naruto saw himself at the valley of the end, saw his hand withdraw from his own shoulder bloody and the bones already aching like they always did after using chidori. He felt rage and suffocating helplessness and the cold still birth of remorse while his body was still cold and smeared with the blood of his brother-a new war paint for a new cause. He felt the howls of madness from the Sound base and among the chorus of the insane Madara told him to look and he did and he saw Danzo's mutated body with the eyes of his family members inset like wares on the arm of a dealer, and Madara himself loomed above him playing him like the best of instruments, the best of weapons for his own unknown orchestrations within the screech of his terrible chamber music he heard the collected anguish of unknown lands full of burned fields and empty towns, of a landscape of corpses all enclosed within the design of the Uchiha compound, the beams stretched upward extending forever like the pillars of heaven and a he is a five year old boy running from room to room only to find each as silent and empty as the last and the void consumed.

Naruto feels the Kyuubi shift inside him and feels an answering movement from Sasuke.

"What?"

His hands and feet were tied and Sasuke was lying beside him watching his face.

"Were" he cough a bit the sour taste of vomit in his mouth "were all those things you showed me true?"

Sasuke sneered and turned away, "I can only use memories or perversions of them. Unfortunately I'm not as 'adept' as my brother. Madara told me all his tortures in the mangekyo were originals. I wondered for a long time if they weren't things he wished he could do to himself."

"Everything, when we were kids all of it…"

He turned back to look at Naruto his face so pale it was almost luminous, "'Everything when we were kids.' Look at you chasing some boy you hardly knew for seven years, for a promise to a girl. You told me before 'There is a time when the seal is weak'. Even if you misunderstood the significance of what you were saying. When the host's life force is weakened it's easier. I want the kyuubi. Give it to me."

"So," he smiled even though it hurt his face and dropped his head back on to the wood boards of the shrine "so that was why you didn't leave. Makes sense now. I thought maybe you were beginning to like me."

This was it he thought dizzily, the ugliness of real life the adults always warned you about. They were both splattered with muck and Sasuke had a hickey on the tendons of his shoulder that Naruto didn't remember putting there, but it didn't matter. As they had fled Kumo the forest going up in ash from Amerterasu the Raikage had called after him. His body huge like the musculature of old demons chained beneath the earth. Even over the burning forest Naruto heard his voice, "Hokage, you should know blood follows blood and the Uchiha betrayed Konoha. Only a fool falls for the same trick twice."

He was foolish; this he knew for a fact.

Jiraiya had written his life into a book, but the story was not a happy one. The two of them were the monsters at the end of the book, the wife you realize is a ghost, the magician who is dragged down to hell by his own demon, the protagonist reaps the rewards of his conquests old and dying alone, crushed under the beam of the ship he sailed to victory. It was not for them to end on a happy note, but it was always Sasuke, it had always been. He'd always loved him.

It wasn't dignified or overly romantic but it was how he always loved the village, deep down and engraved to the bone. The simplicity of it startled him. He'd come to the conclusion long ago, but it had been muddled, hidden behind other frivolous creatures.

He'd walked out of the village while they were preparing for the inauguration. Even outside the walls the sounds of Konoha's preparation for his inauguration was a living breathing thing. He'd come to read her moods, know what made her angry and sad. People were baking, boiling, gossiping. Print shops worked overtime turning out sheets of butcher paper and the heavy pigment smell of ink rolling out signs that wished his happiness and success in all his ventures. The old clans were pulling out ceremonial robes from storage, dusting out mothballs ironing shirts. The ANBU were on high alert and everywhere an excitement. The village had not had time for celebrations during the time he'd led them during the war and or during the end of Madara and now they exploded full force into anticipation. From the hill above the village he watched the flurry of colors in the town below, the tile roofs broad and curved upward. It was home in every sense of the word and he'd walked out.

"Fine. Do it." He wasn't wearing a shirt and his chest heaved under the ropes. His expression screwed into acceptance, sacrificial like Itachi's must have been before he died. On his skin the seal looking as black and fresh as if it had just been painted.

"What about your dream of becoming Hokage?"

"It doesn't mean anything now."

It was a selfish thing to do, but he was a fool and he'd foolish fallen in love. The first Hokage he knows had chosen the village over Madara. He had married and had children but loved only once, and out in the wilderness Madara had twisted into something else become calculating and cruel. He had looked at the face of Hashirama Senju for some time before the day he stood in the Hokage's office listening to the pounding sounds of his face being carved outside and he knows then that the other man was a coward and tells Kakashi "I'm going."

The weight of the seal shifted on him. Sasuke touched his stomach and there was almost no difference in the way he touched him now and they way they had touched earlier in the shrine as almost-lovers. In his chest the kyuubi's anger felt enormous like a weight pressing down on him, and him unable to draw breath. Naruto gritted his teeth and felt Sasuke's fingers dig into the circular seal on the gate, felt them hit the chakra points and twist. He felt each of the 88 brushstrokes that made up the seal design in reverse as Sasuke tore at them, and Naruto felt the chakra rush out of him and burn his body. His eyes rolled up in his head and he saw:

The great engine of Susano'o as a beacon on the landscape as he came over the hill into Kumo. The skeleton as bright as burning phosphorus in the night and the heat from it was so great he'd already broken out in a sweat. Down in the center of it a familiar shape. Amaterasu was burning in the bamboo forests beyond and cast no light, and he could see now the great dwindling shape of Susano'o. The musculature evaporating off like steam and there at the center like its beating heart, there he was. iSasuke/i.

His mind spun. The way these stories ended was never happy. No one went back on their word, conceded, forgave. Sasuke would take the kyuubi and another Madara would be born and blood would follow blood. It's what should have happened, but didn't. The phrase 'not with a bang but with a whimper' filtered down through his consciousness. His stomach hurt but he felt whole and Sasuke was leaned over his body breathing heavily. The tips of his fingers where he had touched the seal were raw and pink from the backlash and ropes around him had burned to carbon. He couldn't tell if the other boy was crying; it might have just been the rain. The only sound was a vendor a long ways off sneezing wetly into his handkerchief unaware that he had almost been obliterated.

It was still raining. Their sandals squeaked in the water and he bent and pushed the gunk out of the straps to tug them tighter. They walked to the main road and crouched under an awning to get out of the rain. Naruto bought something from a street stall all wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. They sat holding them for a moment the steam warming their faces. He hands one to Sasuke and undid the twine, peeled back the layers the insides were full of sticky rice and mung beans, water chestnuts and marinated pork and they scooped the hot sweet stuff into their mouths burned a little by how hungry they were. Naruto licked the grease and bit the remaining rice off the leaf wrapping when they were done. The world was pared down to the two of them on a roadside. A frog croaked somewhere. No fanfare, no parade. Together they took the road home.

A/N: Someone asked me how I thought the series should end. Like this. Originally written for the sasunaru exchange on lj.