Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, the anime or the manga. If I did, I wouldn't be angst-ing about it so damn much.

Written in honour of Naruto's birthday! Have a good one, you blonde bombshell, you.

Worthless

"Aw, come on, Sasuke! You should stay!" Naruto was yelling, again. He flailed his arms as he came chasing after me, as if his wild antics would make me stop when his asking wouldn't. If anything had remained unchanged over the years, it was the idiot's inability to take a hint. I suddenly felt incredibly frustrated with him. It was immediate, and it was vicious, probably more than it should have been, but that was always how my temper seemed to manifest.

"Listen, dobe," I spat the insult with more venom than the situation called for, but I was angry and frustrated, and there was a convenient blonde in front of me whom I could take it out on. "There's absolutely nothing that is worth anything to me at that damned party. I don't want to be there. Can you get that through your thick skull or do I have to beat it into you?"

I didn't wait for a reply before I turned and walked away. He didn't run after me this time. He didn't even yell at me for what I called him. In retrospect, that should have been my first warning.

It was Ino's birthday party that I was leaving from. It's not like I had actually wanted to be there in the first place. Just because I've gotten older doesn't mean I've attained a sudden passion for social gatherings. But that's never stopped Naruto from trying. I guess it's a good thing, though, because I wouldn't even be back here if not for his obsessive attitude.

The next few days were quiet. I've never complained about that before, but this quiet was different. There was a distinct lack of Naruto in my life. It was the way I had expected to be treated when I had first come back, and was still branded a traitor to the village, but Naruto had never acted that way towards me until that moment. My life became as it had when I was away: horribly, horribly empty. At one point, I had reveled in the emptiness, because I thought it would make me powerful. But it didn't. It made me weaker than ever before, feeling as if I was doing nothing more than slowly drifting to my death. Naruto was the only thing that made it go away. I never told him that. I should have, because maybe then he wouldn't have left me in this wretched silence.

But Naruto's state of constant chaos was different than it normally was. If not on a mission, he was rushing to the store, or to meet with the Hokage, or to train with someone who wasn't me. His smiles were bright, loud, and never in my direction. But I still didn't think anything was wrong, or maybe I just didn't want to believe it. It was normal, I thought, that Naruto would be busy. It was normal for someone who dreamed to be Hokage, and especially so if their dream was practically within their reach. It was normal, and this was the worse part of normality, for people to move on from past friendships. I told myself the crippling pain at the thought of being forgotten meant nothing, because Naruto was busy, and I was never one to reach out to other people, no matter how important they were to me. So, I said nothing.

The weeks passed. Naruto remained busy. I remained empty. I began to wonder if it really was possible to suffocate from silence.

That was when Naruto ended up in the hospital.

It wasn't such a strange event in itself; Naruto was brave, but reckless. Him getting hurt was a fairly regular situation, but never a serious one. The demon sealed within him always saw to that.

That is, until that day.

They told me he was in a coma. He fell into it because he had very nearly died. He had been working himself to the point of exhaustion, both mentally and physically, and had paid a price so high that you could literally feel the panic in the red aura that surrounded him for the first few days. I forced myself to make it back to my house before I let my stomach empty itself.

A week later, Naruto was healed, and we were waiting. Two weeks later, we were still waiting. Each time I came back from a mission, I went to the hospital. Each time, I expected them to tell me he had been discharged. Each time, I was wrong.

I wasn't able to get a vacation from my duties, because a ninja taking time off, without injury, is near unheard of, and I was never particularly popular with the Hokage. She also dealt with worry in the same way I did, so putting the two of us in the same room during that time always ended badly.

I hated seeing him so quiet. The silence that had started to gnaw away at me became a thousand times worse when he was right there, and my ears were still empty.

"I don't think he wants to wake up." Sakura told me one day. Her pink hair flickered when she moved her head, and I wondered if I would find her beautiful if my thoughts weren't so consumed with Naruto. It was odd, because she barely ever talked to me anymore. But maybe she was just trying to push away the silence, too. "He hasn't really been the same since Ino's birthday party."

But even then, I didn't get it. They say I'm a genius. I don't know where they came up with that, because I have done an incredible job at failing spectacularly at everything that mattered. I liked to think I was strong, being able to survive empty and alone, but I was really just a coward.

Sakura's musings never left me as I returned to Naruto's bedside. I needed something to fill the air with, before they kicked me out again. Visiting hours were ending soon.

Sakura had been with Naruto when I was not. It was only natural that she would catch things that I would miss. I knew Naruto had exhausted himself while telling me how busy he was. Maybe he hadn't been busy at all. Maybe he was just avoiding me.

The thought made me angry enough to voice my thoughts. They weren't exactly what I wanted to say, but my words never are.

"If I find out that you've been asleep because you were too scared to face me, I'm going to beat the shit out of you."

After that, I started talking to Naruto's sleeping form more often. I never said very much, but I think it helped stop the silence from getting to me. I told him that, as well. It was probably the closest I'd ever come to being able to tell him I missed him.

The fifth day after I started talking to him out loud, I brought up what Sakura said.

"She said you weren't the same since the party. She didn't tell me why."

I paused for a moment to wonder if something happened after I left. But that wouldn't make sense, because Sakura would have been there. Or she would have heard about it, at the very least. But what wouldn't have she seen?

Well, me leaving the party, for one.

"Listen, dobe." My thoughts reminded me. "There's absolutely nothing worth anything to me at that damned party."

"Absolutely nothing worth anything."

The words reverberated through my mind, inflating a bubble of panic that expanded so large I thought I might burst.

"You know, you're worth something to me, right, dobe?"

There was no response. It hurt.

"Naruto," my voice came out broken and dry. The emotions I suppressed were fighting their way to the surface again. Each day felt like one step closer to a life without Naruto. I didn't want that life. I didn't want it at all. I should have berated myself for being so weak, so hopeless, but I was too busy being absolutely terrified.

My head dropped like it was made of stone, and I gripped onto the sides of Naruto's bed to keep the rest of my body from falling with it. I closed my eyes and forced the lump in my throat to stop choking me.

I told Naruto I loved him.

The nurse kicked me out, not two minutes later.

The next morning, I was interrupted during breakfast. It was Sakura. I wondered why she would come here, when she still didn't like me very much. I think it was because she felt personally betrayed by me. She was probably angry with herself for liking someone who turned out as awful as I did. She wasn't very good at hiding her expressions, so it was easy to see how disgusted she was with me. I understood that. I was disgusted with me, too.

"You should go check on Naruto," she told me.

I don't think anything could have gotten me out of the house faster. My mood turned itself into glass and started to shatter from the horrible situations my imagination whispered into my mind. I was shaking by the time I got to Naruto's door, just barely keeping my breathing level. I stood outside of it, staring down at the doorknob like it was the man who had killed my family.

And I wondered if whatever I saw through that door would turn into the same kind of nightmare.

I don't know how long I remained lost to my thoughts, but when I returned, I didn't give myself a pep talk like I knew Naruto would have. I didn't tell myself that I was weak, and if I was strong I would walk right in with a smirk on my face, like I knew I once would have. I didn't want to visit Naruto because I was afraid of being afraid. That would have sullied him, somehow.

Instead, I let myself be empty, and let my mind become a blank slate for whatever emotions would splatter themselves across it as I walked through the door. But I stopped as soon as I opened it, because there was a pair of the bluest eyes boring straight into me.

I made a noise somewhere halfway between a laugh and a sob, and I think that surprised Naruto, because his eyes grew a little bit wider, and he pushed himself up a little more.

"You're awake," I said stupidly, feeling the uncontrollable urge to state the obvious so I could convince myself it was the truth.

He smiled at me, and I think I might have stumbled if not for the doorway I was still clutching onto.

There was a moment where we watched each other. He seemed to be deciding what to say. I was just admiring the smile I had felt so cold without.

"You love me." He told me, and I think I may have stopped breathing completely. Sakura later told me that he had been starting to wake up ever since I had started talking to him, but none of the staff had felt the need to share this information with me, since I wasn't technically a part of his family. Personally, I think it was a bit of Sakura's own personal revenge against me.

"Come here, teme," he said, and I obeyed, if only because I was still in shock. He looked up at me, and I felt myself be caught. Sometimes I think Naruto was very strategic in choosing the family he was born into, because I had never encountered any sort of trap that was able to imprison me as effectively as the whirlpool of his gaze.

"You told me I was worthless to you," he commented.

And I swallowed thickly, because I wanted to tell him that I hadn't meant it in that way. That I would never mean it in that way, because Naruto was so far from worthless to me that some people would find it sick. But I didn't tell him any of that. I stared at him, and I know my eyes were sorry, because I watched his face soften as he looked into them.

"I am a stupid teme." I told him.

He barked a surprised laugh, and his face finally looked as it was meant to.

"Well, I really must be a dobe, then, to love such a stupid teme."

He smiled up at me and my heart swelled so large it pulled my chest down to lean over him.

His smile melted away against my lips, and I had never felt so far from empty.

A/N: Welp, can you tell I wrote this the day after I finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower? I read the book in a day, and my emotions haven't been quite right ever since. I completely lost it at the poem.

I've been experimenting with first person, and this idea came to me at 2 am and I couldn't sleep until I had it written. I'm not even kidding, I wish I was, because I had to be up at 7:30 am for a mandatory trip. This is the first year I've actually had something written for an event, though! I haven't posted on Naruto's birthday or Sasunaru day or anything like that before. I'm proud of myself for actually pulling through :D

If you're wondering about HTBaM, it's coming. School's really my priority right now, but I'm doing my best to write. Usually I only write if I'm hit by a plot rhino nowadays (it was no bunny, I can tell you that), 'cause I'm pretty much exchanging sleep for writing, and I can only do that so often before I wipe myself out.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you thought. This is kind of my head canon for Sasuke. I don't think he would like himself very much, and I think he would realize this. Being back in Konoha would help him put it in perspective, but that's not really happening in canon but let's not talk about that because that makes me want to start crying all over again ;(

Love Always,

- Kinomi