His left wrist is broken, taking the last of his seals with it. It hangs at his side in tatters, utterly useless. They sliced through the tendons of his other palm, identifying chakra points and ripping through them with surgical precision. All his fingers are broken, save one. With every snap of bone and slice of kunai, the lime green walls of the office go stark white.

They ask questions. Questions with no substance or shape, that become heavy like clay, adhering to his limbs and dragging him down. His voice is stuck somewhere at the back of his shredded throat, crucified to the serrated edges of his internal organs.

Interesting to see how I get through this, he thinks.

He's beginning to think he won't.

The Revitalization jutsu doesn't really seem to lose its potency, no matter how faint the edges of his vision are when he comes round again. The ropes around his wrists and ankles are cutting through flesh and directly into his chakra flow. He feels his life pulsing along, sluggish, thick with fatigue and drenched in blood.

They break his arms.

He awakens to the sound of someone saying his name. He sees a figure tied to a post, bloodied and broken and thrown away. That's me, he thinks.

Someone's shaking him. They're only managing to get his blood all over themselves, their uniforms, their gloves. He is a fountain, raining on them, but still they shake him until he hears all that's left of him rattle around with dull metallic noises.

"Sasuke Uchiha," they snarl, their fingers curved like talons, his blood and flesh clutched in them.

The pressure in his skull builds and builds, a wave of red washing over everything that struggles to come to the surface. I have accomplished everything, he wants to tell them. I have no more reason to live. You have no power-

Then: a different voice. A different name.

"Naruto," says the voice. There is no inflection in this voice, which makes the proclamations sound unavoidable. "Uzumaki."

In the land of the in-between, he rasps out, "What about him?"

He's hooked into more machines than he can count when they offer him a commission. "It's a promotion, actually." The captain explains. "Under the circumstances, you may progress automatically to jounin level."

Sasuke stays silent.

"As you have been chosen under special circumstances, you will not be required to go through the formal training of Root ." Behind the mask, the captain's eyes are dark, devoid of the barest flicker.

"That jutsu you used," to nearly kill me and then bring me back, "whose was it?"

The mask remains as impassive as ever. "I'm afraid that's classified."

Sasuke turns his head away to stare at the ceiling. Nervous hysterical laughter seems to keep forcing its way up his throat, buoyed by the poison in his veins, his clan's dark legacy. His brother's blood on his forehead, spreading like a disease. He's drenched up to the elbows in it. His eyes seek the shade more and more often, flinching from the light.

An image of Naruto, standing in the sunlight. That offensively bright hair of his, his irrational smile.

Sasuke blinks. Unexpected.

"Back to Konoha?" he asks.

"It's been agreed you have more pressing matters to attend to."

Sasuke looks at him. And waits.

"Your primary objective is the protection of Naruto Uzamaki, as you've already been told, and by extension, the Village Hidden in the Leaves itself. This particular mission deals with Orochimaru's laboratories, which are still littered around Otogakure," the captain says, his tone deceptively light. At the mention of the name, his hand flickers towards his sleeve for hidden kunai. "No one's more familiar with the layout than you are."

Sasuke's own hands remain conspicuously unclenched on top of the starched white hospital sheets. He drains his voice of all inflection and asks, "And if I don't?"

The captain cocks his head to the side, oddly dog-like. "I believe you're already familiar with the concept of cursed seals."

Sasuke's mouth sets on fire.

He hears the insistent beeping of the machines, shrill, urgent. It permeates through the substance coating his conscious, cutting through the same way, if to a lesser degree, that the white-hot pain on his tongue did. It dies down to the sound of wheezing and hacking coughs. It takes him another minute to work out that the noises are coming from him.

There is now blood on the whiteness of the sheets. He knows what ruptured lungs sound like, and his tongue just split open and cleaved together in the course of a second.

Sasuke leans back on his fluffy pillows –he'd jerked to an upright position- and says, "Fair enough." His voice sounds like broken glass.

"Your first mission will be to sweep out the Kusagakure hideout," the captain continues blandly. "You leave in forty-eight hours."

Forty-seven hours after that, Sasuke convinces one of the nurses to bring a piece of paper and the bluntest pencil she can find. Slowly, his pencil sketches out a picture of his brother as he saw him last. He keeps his mind resolutely blank as he draws, paying special attention to the lines under Itachi's eyes, the curve of his mouth and the way he looked without the sharingan.

Then he folds up the paper and slips it in his sleeve. He doesn't speak to anyone about it for three years.

The briefing doesn't take more than ten minutes. He meets his captain just outside the Land of Earth hospital he was being kept in, Sasuke wearing the short, black midriff jacket he'd been supplied with on top of unremarkable assortment of grey and black clothes. The route is outlined in a map, which Sasuke tucks into his bag.

"Good luck, Uchiha," says the captain.

The journey to Otogakure takes over five days. It's little more than a collection of ruins, just as he expected- there are faint signs of tentative resurrection, too weak to be readily visible. The sand blows with a steady, methodical precision over the destruction he managed to wreak over three years ago. Shading his eyes, Sasuke looks down at the bottom of the crater and picks up only the imprint of chakra he himself left behind.

The village is an hour's distance away. Shops with empty shelves and houses with scared eyes peering through keyholes line the streets, and the cobblestones cracked. On his first day there, he sees a couple of burly men with identical tattoos of the character for peace on their foreheads tip over a cart of tomatoes, one of which rolls to his feet. He looks down, almost uncomprehending, and when the men leave, he follows them. Basic taijutsu does the trick.

A week of lurking and more judicious use of jutsu leads him to the new underground base for carrying out Orochimaru's experiments. Lack of guidance makes the so-called scientists scuttle like frightened beetles when he shows up and smashes a few test tubes. He doesn't kill more people than he absolutely has to, but it still comes up to a fair amount, and at the end of the fifth day, he's wondering whether he'll ever finish cleaning his sword.

The next day he comes up against a group of shinobi, too confrontational to be more than rookie genins. "Leave our village alone," one says, his voice cracking in the middle of the last word. He flushes, but his eyes are a steely, unflinching blue.

He's just a kid.

The ones around him nod, their fists clenched at their sides. Sasuke doesn't need his sharingan to tell what their chakra looks like: raw, unbridled, full of mad optimism.

"Get lost," he says, mildly. His voice surprises him; other than the occasional threat, he hasn't really spoken in years.

The leader's mouth tightens. Just give him blonde hair, Sasuke thinks almost absent-mindedly.

"We know you've been killing Sound Village shinobi," the girl behind the leader says. She's standing at an interesting angle; one of her shoulders tilted directly towards the boy in the lead, the other blocking another kid from sight. Sasuke gets the impression of big dark eyes and white hair before the girl repositions herself with a glare. "We've heard that you use genjutsu, so no use trying it on us."

Sasuke's left eyebrow twitches. "Alright then."

The leader takes a step forward, his eyes flashing fire. Sasuke knows what's coming next: "Take us seriously, damn you!"

His hands inch towards the pouch at his side. Sasuke meets his eyes, holds them for the longest time. They widen. Slowly, his hands return to his sides. His eyes fall to the ground, but not before Sasuke sees the mist forming in them.

Sasuke looks at the girl. She's biting her lip, still protecting the smaller boy, reaching out towards the other. When she looks back, she doesn't look angry anymore.

"They say you weep tears of blood for every life you end," she says quietly. "Are you going to kill us?"

Sasuke thinks, huh.

"Right now, you're not worth the effort," he tells them. His tone is cool and matter-of-fact, and they look at him with wide eyes. "Grow stronger, and then we'll see."

He insinuates himself into another underground base a week later on a chance rumor. It's built as an extension of the Northern Hideout, but the attached laboratory is fully functional, and, as Sasuke finds out as kunai come flying towards him with eighteen-degree intervals, somewhat heavily guarded.

The shinobi he fights there are jounin level. One of them has chakra receivers in his palms, which he seems to be using to replenish the two who use the most ninjutsu –Earth and Water style, mostly- and somehow guide the sensory type shinobi's attacks. The sensory type has an uncanny knack of predicting his chidori blade as well, irritatingly enough. One of them manages to get him in the side with a combination of shuriken and an Earth Release jutsu, and Sasuke isn't even aware of Susano'o's appearance until the last of the jounin crumples to the ground at his feet.

Well.

He stands in the middle of the room, inhaling deeply, his eyes closed. A familiar trickle of sticky wetness runs down his cheek. He's exhausted. It wasn't just this battle: meaningless attacks on everyone who was stupid enough, or reckless enough, to engage him, to defend whatever manifestation of spineless evil that they were in charge of.

The seal mark on his tongue burns. Sasuke very deliberately keeps from thinking about Itachi.

He's still recovering from the ultimately successful mission to sweep out Kabuto's medical laboratory on the island when he realizes he hasn't seen Naruto in a year. They actually saw each other more regularly when they were on two sides of a clear line, instead of this vast, nebulous grey area that Sasuke's more or less trapped in these days.

He contemplates sending a message: You wouldn't survive here an hour. No ramen. There's a special kind of hopelessness here, one that's clogged up his arteries and is slowly rotting away at his internal organs. He sometimes thinks that maybe even Naruto would truly despair in a place like this.

His captain visits his bedside, and brings him a chess set. "To pass the time," he says blandly. "Until your arms heal."

There isn't a hospital this time, no nurses to frighten into compliance or sterilized surgical instruments gleaming in a row. It seems that Root saves its medical budget exclusively for recovering potential recruits. The likes of him have to make do with dimly-lit rooms and chidori-cleansed blades for operations.

Sasuke's beginning to really regret not paying enough attention to the subtleties of healing in the Academy. He studied the subject matter left and right, of course, but only as a nicety. After nearly tearing his vertebrae to pieces after trying to adjust his twisted spine after a battle, he's begun actually listening to what the medical-nin say when they show up.

The captain talks. He talks in his usual soothing monotone, relaying the relative successes of missions and interesting aftereffects. Sasuke gets the feeling that, among a squadron of pathologically unemotional sociopaths, he's something of a favorite. It certainly explains Root's growing trust in his success rate.

The captain mentions Danzō's name once or twice, uses the phrase 'officially pardoned'. Sasuke half-listens, and wonders.

"Anyway," the captain says one day, pushing a scroll in Sasuke's direction, "We've got new intelligence. You'll be headed to the Land of Wind as soon as you recover. Specifically, Sunagakure."

"Hidden Sand?" Sasuke echoes incredulously before he can stop himself.

The captain nods. "There are rumors of a coup against the Leaf to capture Naruto Uzumaki. It's not the most reliable of sources, but it's still a source and that's good enough."

Sasuke's eyebrows rise. He dismisses the first thing that comes to mind, then the second, and the third as well.

"The kazekage is not involved, as far as we can tell." The captain admits.

Sasuke nods after a moment. "So, a rebel faction?"

"We can only assume so."

It still doesn't make sense. The Sand and Leaf have stronger ties than ever since Gaara came into power. Anti-Konoha ideals wouldn't be tolerated on any level, and if the Fifth Hokage was anything like the Third, sand and leaf shinobi were probably carrying out missions of mutual interest together. Ruthlessly weeding out ill-will, probably, and already ensnared in a complex diplomatic web.

There are certain things Sasuke has come to appreciate about this solitary desert life of his.

The captain stands up from his chair. "It probably won't be anything," he says, "But it's our mission to eliminate even a hint of a threat against Konoha."

Sasuke manages a nod. The captain disappears, and Sasuke finally succumbs to the painkillers.

He spends four months stealing through the deserts of Sunagakure before he was sure he was chasing shadows; the Akatsuki was keeping busy, yes, but not this busy. He sends a message to his captain and turns back towards Otogakure. He's about two-thirds into his return when he senses a massive outpouring of chakra and his feet freeze of their own accord.

He stays frozen for nearly ten minutes. The chakra flow shifts and changes color, from blue to red to blue again, then gradually dissipates.

He wonders if Naruto won.

Six months later and half a world away, he accidentally challenges the king of the hawks to a fight and wins. It looks up at him with its single good eye and says, "Your chakra is too corrosive for you to be human. What are you?"

Sasuke thrusts his sword deeper into the creature's breast. The words slip through his gritted teeth without forethought: "I am an avenger."

It screams, a high-pitched tseer! that causes the wind around them to form a rudimentary funnel. Sasuke uses the last of his chakra to escape underground. When he comes back up, the forest of a radius of 10 kilometers has vanished, and the giant bird lies in a puddle of blood.

Later, he smears his blood over a seal in a scroll and comes to an agreement with the new king.

It's a six day journey from the Water to Otogakure, through groups of missing-nin and arms dealers. He finds out that the price on his head has gone up to 50 million ryou, restocks on kunai, and runs across an interesting Genjutsu that bends both space and time, almost an advanced form of Tsukuyomi if not for the obvious physical toll it had on the user. Once arrived, he finds his captain managing to convey displeasure through his mask. "You're a week late."

Sasuke shrugs.

The captain clears his throat. "Potential Akatsuki members in the Land of the Earth," he says. "Two brothers."

Sasuke looks at him sharply. "I was under the impression my primary objective was to keep a low profile."

The captain grunts. "True. But they're directly targeting Uzumaki, so we need someone to wipe them out before the ANBU butt in and make a mess of things."

And that's that.

In Earth country, with the Hanasaki brothers, Sasuke comes the closest to actually being killed since he joined Root.

He has to deal with a shinobi of the re-instated Swordsmen of the Mist, who don't seem to recognize him at all; he manages to avoid capture and escapes with one of his eyes and several shallow cuts on his arms bleeding, just as the ground rattles with the sound of backup- Suigetsu himself, judging by the weight ratio of man to sword. Maybe someday later, Sasuke thinks.

He falls asleep in a small abandoned house in the outskirts of Earth with a headache and his cuts still bleeding freely from whatever anti-coagulant that had been on the sword, confident that he could find the Hanasaki's within a week. Unfortunately, the Hanasaki's find him first: he wakes up with his chakra system and several internal organs traumatized.

"Sasuke Uchiha," says a melodic voice with great relish, and Sasuke looks up from the puddle of blood he'd coughed up to meet vacant silver eyes.

Greenish-black hair and small, even features. The boy smiles sweetly , and executes a flawless Gentle Fist technique as Sasuke counts in his head. Six-seven-eight, and at the very end, Sasuke doubles over and crumples.

A foot gently pokes him on the side, causing him to cough up even more blood. "Are you alright?" the same girlishly high voice asks, exaggeratedly concerned.

Sasuke attempts to stand up, and the boy laughs, tinkling, bell-like. "Oh, I wouldn't bother. All your tenketsu have been blocked, even the ones hidden in your heart. You see," he says, tone chastised and apologetic, "we were worried you might try to kill us. We've heard you aren't a very nice man, Sasuke Uchiha."

"How did you-" and his arms give out again. He barely manages to save his head from hitting the hards tone floor this time. "You're blind."

When he looks up, the boy is smiling beatifically. "Well-spotted! Yes, I am. But my brother isn't." His grin grows wider. "In fact, I'd go as far as to say that his vision is more than compensates for my lack of it."

He stands there looking pleased with himself, but makes no move to elaborate.

"Byakugan," Sasuke states flatly, his voice a wet rasp.

The boy nods, casually kicking away the kunai Sasuke had slowly drawn out of his bag. "Straight from our accursed Hyuuga blood." He smirks, and for a second, he doesn't look even human. "Kicked out for being freaks among the freaks, my brother and me. But it didn't matter: I gave him my eyes and he gave me his strength, and we'll be the ones laughing soon enough."

Sasuke feels the steady trickle of blood down the side of his mouth. "Let me guess: you're planning some sort of extravagant revenge on Konoha." His sharingan activates sluggishly; it keeps darting away from his attacker.

"It seemed for a while that you'd do the job for us, after Itachi's death." The boy's bow of a mouth curls, revealing unusually sharp canines. Sasuke keeps his face impassive. "Turns out you're no less of a slave to the Hidden Leaf than Hokage-sama himself." He sneers.

Sasuke struggles to his feet, and the boy kicks him in the ribs. He blinks rapidly, his eyes refusing to focus ahead, instead prowling the enclosure of its own accord. "Branch House, I suppose." Stalling. His injured shoulder felt like it was being continually shattered and put back again, and he couldn't really feel anything below his left knee. His lungs, thanks to the well-aimed kicks, had exploded in searing, white-hot pain that didn't seem to be inclined to relent anytime soon. "You've probably got a sob story about destiny and your tragic clan, kid. I don't wanna hear it."

The boy crosses his arms, his face freezing up in fury. He lands a few more kicks, one above a kidney and two more to his ribs and Sasuke coughs up yet more blood. His hands are covered in it, and the white spots in his vision are taking longer and longer to disappear with each kick. "They ripped my eyes out," he snarls, accompanying the words with three more kicks in swift succession. Sasuke rolls over and lays flat, so the kid goes for his wounded legs. "Just because I had no blind spot. They-"

Abruptly, his stolen eyes widen.

Blood begins leaking from a corner of his mouth and Sasuke's left eye at the same time.

The kid turns around, slowly, his knees shaking. "Shunsuke?"

In the corner of the cave furthest from Sasuke, a small figure shimmers weakly. He can barely make out the shape of a boy with red hair, on all fours.

"Shunsuke!"

Susasno'o's arm shifts into view, running straight through the boy's pale chest. Two Byakugan on either side look at the purple-tinged chakra, looking, if possible, almost scandalized.

The handful of torches extinguish simultaneously, and the other boy roars.

Sasuke wipes his mouth savagely and pulls himself to his feet. His mangekyo returns to normal of its own accord. If he had any doubts as to whether a part of Itachi had come away with them, they've crumbled like dust.

His right leg refuses to take his weight, and Sasuke grits his teeth. A shinobi never-

Three kunai fly directly at his face. He feels one groove the side of his face, below his ear, peeling back a flap of skin from his jaw as he jerks away from its path.

"Isn't this fun, Sasuke-san?" shrieks the remaining boy. His voice ricochets about three octaves, finally landing on a note high enough that, had it come from a Sound village shinobi, Sasuke would have believed was a cruel and unusual jutsu. "I don't need eyes. As long as you breathe, I'll find you. That's a promise, Sasuke-san."

The last words are whispered directly in his ear. Sasuke feels his hair rustle with the boy's exhale, and dodges a lightning-fast series of punches and kicks. It seemed that without his Byakugan-wielding brother, this kid didn't bother with Gentle Fist.

"What will you do now, Sasuke-san?" he trills, as Sasuke twists to avoid one punch and the next in quick succession. "None of your fancy genjutsu works here, in the absolute dark."

He lands a blow to Sasuke's already possibly-damaged-beyond-repair ribs and Sasuke flies through the air in an ungraceful arc.

"Because," pants the kid, appearing at his side just as Sasuke crumples to the floor, "this is my world, Sasuke-san. And-"

Sasuke uses the last of his strength to pummel him sideways. He doesn't stagger as far as Sasuke would've liked, but it gets the job done.

The boy is still mid-sentence, even giggling a little, when Sasuke's paper bombs trigger around him.

Sasuke gets knocked down by a piece of flying dismantled rock as the room caves in. He rolls into a crevice where it's dark and cold, and closes his eyes.

He wakes on a hard, narrow bed, dizzy and disoriented. He's still trying to figure out where the blankets over him end and the wall opposite begins when the captain steps into the room, adjusting his mask. He nods companiably when he sees that Sasuke's eyes are open. "Uchiha. Good work."

"They were after Naruto," he says, because that's the first thing that comes to his head.

The captain grunts. "Like I said before. It all comes down to protecting Konoha."

His arms and legs are swathed in bandages – those damn cuts from the swordsmen got infected, probably, on top of the kaleidoscope of damage from the Hanasaki brothers. He can't really feel his lower body at all.

"Anyway, their bodies were taken to the Hyuuga clan. They betrayed the Main House a few years ago, as it turns out, and one of them had his eyes removed. But you probably knew that."

Sasuke isn't really listening. He feels the opiates coursing through his system, and the healing chakra, and the combination is making his thought process woozy and lethargic. "He said himself." His eyelids drag down. He's so unbearably tired. "That kid. He said Hokage-sama himself. And just now, you said-"

The captain sounds the closest to amused as Sasuke's ever heard him. "What is it?"

"Naruto's Hokage, isn't he?"

There's a silence. "You didn't know?"

Sasuke's body relaxes into the unyielding mattress. "'S good," he mumbles, barely pronouncing his vowels. "He's a good choice."

The captain chuckles, and it almost sounds affectionate. "Go to sleep, Uchiha. It's only going to get harder from now on."

It takes him seven weeks to fully recover from the extensive damage to his chakra flow. Like before, the captain visits him regularly and brings reconnaissance reports from the areas they've identified as locations of 'anti-Konoha activity'. Now that Sasuke knows about Naruto's change in status, it's easy to see the links between the increased frequency of the attacks. It's not just the Akatsuki after Naruto anymore; underground political powers seem particularly determined to wipe him out.

Sasuke rolls his eyes. Trust Naruto to assume one of the greatest ranks of the shinobi world and still be the most hunted man in Konoha.

He spends the rest of his rehabilitation studying case reports and practicing basic taijutsu with a surprisingly accommodating captain.

One evening, nearing dusk, he asks the nurses for a pencil and paper after the captain's left. It takes him nearly three hours, but in the end, he sets down the stack of rough sketches, satisfied.

The first is of Sakura, her hands clasped in front of her and mouth curved into a wide grin. Then comes Kakashi, the way Sasuke can remember him best: perched precariously on the railing of a bridge, one visible eye crinkled in laughter. Several of Karin, Juugo and Suigetsu, because they were the ones he saw last.

And Naruto.

There are two heavily-erased and redrawn pictures of Naruto: one of him as a child, wearing that obnoxiously bright smile with his hands behind his head. Each individual spike of his hair has been carefully drawn to face a different direction: the result, if unrealistic, is very very familiar.

The other is based on the ten chaotic minutes of battle in the Kusagakure hideout. He's tried to remember the physical changes in Naruto, the way he'd seemed like a stranger with his best friend's eyes. He tries to remember whether those ridiculous whiskers on Naruto's cheeks had survived adulthood, and whether, from the top of the crater and then up close, he had seen the faint trace of stubble or he was just imagining it now.

That second picture takes him an hour on its own.

He thinks of writing something. A caption, maybe, to make this rather silly display of nostalgia complete. I miss my favorite tree. Has Kakashi finished reading those ridiculous books yet? These kunai are lighter and faster, Sakura.

Instead, he ends up just scrawling the date on each one.

Sasuke nods a little to himself and looks out the window. It's dark already, the winter approaching and the day and night becoming blurred together. He folds up his sketches one by one and methodically slides them in the pouch where he still carries a sketch of Itachi.

He falls asleep with the beginnings of a smile on his face.

He starts using his new Summoning jutsu a month later. The hawks, while perfectly capable of coordinated attacks, are much more useful for quick escapes, compared to creatures like Mando. A long time ago, Sasuke would've thought this a great disadvantage.

But he's finally learnt to choose his battles.

He takes out a small, band of reckless missing-nin from Amegakure, who tell him about the wild instability of the rulers since Konan died and rumors about other coup's regarding the Leaf's Hokage. He spends a few weeks nosing around until he's lead to a relative of the feudal lord, who seems to recognize him. He admits to plotting against the Leaf just before Sasuke cracks his skull with the butt of his sword.

Sasuke makes his way through Lightning Country, targeting all parties his captain briefs him about and then some. He doesn't kill, not always: eventually, there comes a time when the mere mention of his name is enough for full-grown men to forsake their leaders. Sasuke doesn't much care for the reputation he's managed to achieve, but it certainly helps.

Two and a half years after he joined Root, however, he gets trapped in a genjutsu for three days straight.

Sakura won't stop screaming.

There are knives embedded in his torso and he's watching, frozen, as Naruto dissolves into a puddle of blood and flesh, but Sakura keeps screaming and screaming and screaming.

Naruto become whole again, only to have his skin slowly teased off his bones. Sasuke can't look away.

Sasuke's eyes –his brother's legacy- urges him, snap out of it! But he's immobile, watching in horror as Naruto gets shredded apart over and over and over.

Itachi appears at his side. Quietly, he asks, "What exactly have you managed to avenge, little brother?"

Sasuke doesn't look at him. You're dead. You're my dead big brother and-

"How dead am I now?" Itachi asks, sounding genuinely curious as he reaches into Sasuke's chest and pulls out his heart. He looks at it interestedly as it pulses in his hand. "I wasn't aware you had one of these." He begins squeezing, and Sasuke's vision goes stark white. "I suppose it won't be for long, though."

"Itachi," Sasuke rasps, and Sakura screams some more. And then some more.

Over Itachi's shoulder, the sun glows like blood.

He wakes up in a hospital. Again.

A man is sitting by his bedside, reading a magazine. His posture is loose, casual. He has strong, regular features and pale blond hair and dark eyes, a startling contrast.

Familiar.

"…captain?" Sasuke hazards.

The man looks up and grins. "With us at last, Uchiha?"

Sasuke relaxes. Whatever alternate dimension he'd woken up in, it probably wasn't worth the effort of activating his sharingan. Besides, absence of mask aside, he's been briefed by this man enough times to recognize him by the way he held his body alone.

Sasuke falls flat on his back after his first attempt to sit up. His captain tsks, but makes no move to help him.

"How long was I out?" Sasuke addresses the ceiling.

"Just under a week," the captain says cheerfully. "You're lucky we found you at all. You've got a nasty habit of vanishing off the map and walking back in. A day later, and you wouldn't have made it."

Sasuke grunts in acknowledgement, but doesn't move to thank him. Instead, he takes stock of his injuries and isn't surprised to discover that aside from a bone-deep weariness and a chill he couldn't shake off, he was more or less intact.

"Whose-"

"It wasn't a sharingan," the captain says, when Sasuke trails off. "A Komogakure equivalent, I think. It was the same kind of dojutsu you use, but with much more endurance."

Sasuke nods. "So it really was three days?"

The captain nods. "Nothing to do with the manipulation of time, as far as we can tell. The files say that it feeds on your worst nightmares. Boring in theory, terrifying in practice, I expect."

So my worst nightmares aren't actual memories after all, Sasuke thinks, beginning to smile. Who knew.

"Oi, Uchiha," the captain says, his grin broad and warm. Sasuke's seeing now that without the mask, his captain was probably one of those obnoxious brats who smiled a lot, and infectiously. Sasuke makes an effort to make his mouth keep the shape it's in. "There's more. Aren't you going to ask about the mask?"

"I thought it would be rude to beg you to put it back on."

The captain rolls his eyes. "You're a prince among men, Uchiha. No, it just so happens that as of yesterday, Root has been dissolved under the Hokage's orders."

Sasuke stills.

His captain's voice is clinical, but not unfriendly. "Danzou challenged the new Hokage-sama to a battle, and was defeated. It looks like Naruto-kun doesn't believe in his ideals, because directly after Danzou's death, he assumed the leadership position of Root and disbanded it completely."

When he doesn't say anything, his captain says, almost gently, "It's over, Uchiha."

They don't speak again until the captain stands up from his seat and stretches. "Well, I'd best be going if I want to make the ANBU recruitment tomorrow."

Sasuke raises his eyebrows. "You don't really seem the type," he confesses.

The captain grins broadly. "That's what I thought, too. But the masks and the secrecy," he shrugs. "It becomes too familiar." He rubs his chin thoughtfully. "But not for you, though. You always were too confrontational for our tastes."

"What's your name?" Sasuke asks, rolling his eyes. "Now that you aren't my captain anymore."

He looks fleetingly surprised, and then he smiles coyly, causing Sasuke to roll his eyes once more. "Morinaga," he says, tilting his head in a bow. Sasuke tries to figure out how to return the gesture, and fails. "Morinaga Tetsuhiro."

"I'll send you an escort to take you to Konoha after you've recovered," his captain –Morinaga- says, folding up his magazine. He fixes Sasuke with a steely glare. "Don't even think about running away."

Sasuke grunts noncommittally. Morinaga snorts. "Later, Uchiha."

A week after that, he's transported by a group of rookie chuunins to another hospital with larger beds and fluffier pillows. The narcotics relent mid-journey and Sasuke opens his eyes to see the sky through the open roof of the carriage and listens to the chatter of the shinobi guarding him.

I could kill all of you in a heartbeat, he thinks, before he closes his eyes and falls back asleep.

This hospital has actual female nurses with actual uniforms and actual medical training. They have soft hands and hushed voices and call him Sasuke, and tut disapprovingly at old, half-healed injuries.

The full process of recovery takes a month, and at the end of it he's twitchy and restless. The head nurse is a terrifying woman, however, so he reluctantly keeps his promise to Morinaga and stays put until the jounin arrives.

Sasuke'd been half-expecting someone he knew- Shikamaru, perhaps, or that bossy blonde girl Sakura hated- but this is a face he doesn't recognize. She looks older than him, and has pale, non-descript hair and big green eyes. She smiles when she sees him. "Uchiha-san," she says, inclining her head. "My name is Akari, and I'll be escorting you to Konoha."

Akari has a change of clothes, and Sasuke slips into them gratefully. They're the standard issue jounin uniform minus the forehead protector. When he comes back out, the nurses are clustered around, smiling hugely. "Take care, Sasuke!"

Sasuke almost blushes. Almost.

"Ready to go?" Akari asks, her eyes twinkling knowingly.

Sasuke huffs and bids a hasty but sincere farewell to the staff, after which they take off.

Akari doesn't seem inclined to talk much, keeping up with Sasuke easily as they leap through the trees. Sasuke's grateful- he's never been at ease during journeys the way Naruto and Sakura were.

They reach the gates of Konoha within half a day, and walk in side-by-side. Konoha, wonderfully bright and unexpectedly warm, and Sasuke has to fight the urge to press his face in the grass and take it all in – the Konoha of his dreams, bursting with laughter and light, Konoha that he hadn't seen in eight years. He drinks in every street corner and familiar landmark, and tries to ignore all the unfamiliar ones-new shops and restaurants, new statues, and old haunts that simply aren't there anymore.

Home, sings something deep in his heart, home home home home.

Akari smiles a little when she sees the expression on his face. Sasuke grins back, feeling mad and young and happy. Irrationally, blindly happy.

Akari takes him to a restaurant that was still being built the last time Sasuke was here. She weaves through the tables gracefully and comes to a stop near a corner table where an unmasked Morinaga is sitting, looking through a menu.

"Uchiha," Morinaga's eyes light up. In the sunlight of Konoha, he looks more ludicrously young than ever before. "Welcome home. Take a seat. Order something. My treat."

Akari quietly takes her leave, vanishing the same way she came.

"I suppose you're in charge of this whole mission," Sasuke hazards. "Rehabilitating me."

Morinaga looks furtive, something that Sasuke fails to miss. "I guess you could say that," Morinaga says easily. "Since Root was dissolved, most of the cleanup fell on me."

Sasuke confirms a private theory that, were he to get his hands on a standard-issue bingo book, Morinaga's name would probably be in it. There's something uncannily Kakashi-like about him.

"However, before we show you your new jounin living area and paperwork," Morinaga begins, just when the waitress brings their orders.

"You were saying?" Sasuke prompts impatiently, as Morinaga shows signs of getting distracted by his ramen.

"Oh, it's just that you have an appointment with the Hokage first thing next morning." He eats slowly, methodically, as he speaks.

Sasuke grits his teeth. "And?"

Morinaga sighs and puts his chopsticks down. "Uchiha," he says awkwardly, "you understand that Root operated under a web of concealment and outright lies."

The hairs at the back of Sasuke's neck stand up. "What are you saying?'

Morinaga looks him straight in the eye. "As far as the Hokage is aware, you died with Itachi Uchiha three years ago."

There's a moment when the whole world stops, and Sasuke stops with it; there are no thought in his head, no sound but roaring silence, nothing but the sluggish, syncopated beating of his heart. Memories rearrange themselves in the corners of his brain. His whole universe slowly crumbles under the weight of this cruel new fact.

"Naruto didn't send you to get me," he says, his voice frighteningly brittle. Out loud, the statement sounds grotesque, life-threatening.

Morinaga's eyes widen as he shakes his head. "I didn't have any orders. I acted of my free will."

"Who else?" Sasuke says, his voice still totally bare of emotion. "Who else thinks I'm dead?"

"Everyone who wasn't my superior in Root." Morinaga says, his eyes still wide and shocked. "So that's everyone alive in Konoha now, minus myself."

Sasuke looks down at his clasped hands. I'll bring you back to Konoha if it's the last thing I do. "I see."

He takes a sip of water because his body needs the fluids. The facts in his mind are shifting, re-shifting, and keeps coming back to the fact that in the end, he had had more faith in Naruto than Naruto had reason to have in him.

He feels like he's going to be ill.

"It was necessary, in the beginning." Morinaga says, his voice hardened. "You were an S-class criminal with an enormous bounty on your head, and a missing-nin. Your supposed death solved nearly all the diplomatic issues that could have come up if you were captured."

Something clicks into place. "The seal," he says.

Morinaga nods briskly. His movements have become a degree more precise, and Sasuke would be amused if he wasn't worried about being sick. "Yours was easily mistakable for a reanimation juinjutsu. No one can prosecute a corpse."

Sasuke snorts. "Fine, then." He stands up, and smirks at Morinaga's expression of wary astonishment. "Let's set this to rights."

Morinaga looks confused, but stands up as well. "Okay," he says doubtfully. "Just let me pay first."

The Hokage's office and living quarters are childishly easy to infiltrate. Sasuke should know, he's been doing it since he was eight. The door to the main rooms was just as he remembered it, except for a luridly colorful mat someone had added under it.

He studies it, the cheap material, the weave and the pattern and probable uses, before he admits to himself that he's stalling and sets to picking the lock, pointedly ignoring his trembling hands. It takes him an insultingly long time to realize that it's not necessary; the door isn't locked. It swings open smoothly when he pushes.

He'd heard the Leaf was more peaceful than ever, but this was just ridiculous. Sasuke forced himself not to speculate as he stepped inside. He tells himself that at the end of everything, the universe isn't sufficiently cruel to throw some other tragedy in his face. He'd taken care of the chief contenders to take Naruto's life personally; Naruto was safe. He wouldn't find any blood-soaked horrors in these rooms.

Nevertheless, he hesitates a little and listens. The whole wing is quiet, nothing but the sounds of Konoha outside slipping in, people talking and the street vendors. Naruto probably isn't home, which makes this whole thing much easier, or much harder.

The sitting room is almost exactly the same as Sasuke remembers from the days of the Third. Upon closer inspection, he finds hints of violent oranges and blues littered around in the form of cushions and throws, but the overall color scheme is warm and earthy. There's a hideous ceramic frog on the mantelpiece watching him with beady eyes, and nearly every flat surface is dominated by photographs.

Sasuke snorts. He knew Naruto was the sentimental type, but surely this was a bit much, even from him.

There are signs of Naruto's immediate presence in the room as well – precarious stacks of papers, a kunai holding them in place. Several half-empty cups of tea and decidedly empty bowls of ramen. He gives the papers a cursory glance, picking out the words Sunagakure and combined training exercise before completely losing interest and tossing them aside. Then he leans down and peers into the wilderness of photos.

There are unhealthy amounts of pictures of everyone off-guard, which Sasuke supposes Naruto must find endearing. Neji Hyuuga, pride of the Hyuuga clan, stuffing his mouth while his quiet cousin watches with a look of fascinated revulsion, Kakashi reading a battered copy of Icha Icha Paradise, Sakura watching Rock Lee with a dreamy expression; Kiba and Akamaru tussling around with Naruto, several of Shino with the same blank expression on his face; even some of Gaara and his siblings, looking bored out of their minds; those kids that used to follow Naruto everywhere, though Sasuke barely recognizes them with their forehead protectors and serious expressions.

Sasuke's not really surprised to not find his own adolescent face looking back at him from any of the pictures. It would have thrown him off too badly. What truly surprises him is how relieved he feels when he realizes that there aren't any wedding photographs among the ones dominated by pink hair and blue eyes.

He tries not to think about that too much, either.

He moves on to the ones of the new Team 7 together. Sai looks as strangely reptilian as Sasuke remembers, despite the wide grin. He'd been in Root, probably was spying on Naruto even after he became Hokage. Nothing major, nothing worth spying on, but Danzou had probably…

Over his shoulder comes a thump, and Sasuke feels the unmistakable edge of a kunai against his throat.

His hand reaches for his sword immediately, but there's a hand at his wrist cutting off his movement completely. Instinctively, he twists and ducks at the same time, but his opponent anticipates this and kicks him backward. Before Sasuke can even push himself up on his elbows, five kunai come flying at him and pin him to the ground, and a sneaker-clad foot plants firmly on his chest.

When Sasuke looks up, Naruto's teeth are bared in a snarl. "Talk," he growls.

Sasuke's heart is lodged somewhere in his throat. He couldn't speak if he wanted to, because here was Naruto, in the sitting room of the Hokage, limbs readied for battle. He looks the same, fundamentally the same as when they last met; maybe he's a little taller, a little leaner. His hair's still a mess of spikes, and his eyes, if possible, look bluer. Sasuke can't tell in this light, but it looks like there are faint cuts above both his eyes, and the whiskers are still there.

It occurs to Sasuke, after the first blinding rush of alarm, that Naruto Uzumaki: the Greatest Hokage to Have Ever Lived and bane of the Akatsuki, had been sneaking up behind him. That he had-tripped, or something-and was pinning him down now, alive and whole, looking, despite the superficial rage, perilously close to hyperventilating.

Naruto had tripped.

The foot grinding down on his chest increases its pressure when something like a giggle escapes Sasuke. "You," Naruto snarls, undeniably alive. "Who the fuck are you?"

Sasuke looks straight up at him, schooling his features into something more appropriate than the hysteria threatening to break out.

"My name," Sasuke says, channeling the eleven-year-old he once was, the Sasuke Naruto was bound to recognize, "is Sasuke Uchiha. There are many things I hate, and not many things I like."

In hindsight, Sasuke realizes, this was a mistake.

He begins realizing this as Naruto pulls him up by the shirt and proceeds to beat the shit out of him. Sasuke is too shocked to even deflect his first three blows.

"Don't," and Naruto doesn't even sound human anymore, "say that name!"

He keeps saying that over and over in hoarse snarls. "Naruto, blockhead, it's me!" Sasuke grunts, as soon as he recovers enough air in his lungs to speak. Naruto ignores him, hitting his face repeatedly with a brutal, vicious savagery that almost scares Sasuke. He blocks a few and expects Naruto to go for the vitals instead- the heart, the lungs, the kidney- but Naruto keeps coming back to pummel his face until he hears the distinct sound of nasal cartilage tearing and his whole face is covered in blood. Only some of it is his; the skin over Naruto's knuckles split a long time ago, and he doesn't even seem to notice.

Sasuke's vision begins to blur dangerously. He has no idea why he's not fighting back; maybe Naruto's not giving him a chance. But there isn't much finesse to Naruto's attack, just bare-teethed fury at-

What?

"Hokage-sama!" a voice cries, along with a feminine "Naruto, stop it!" Perhaps Sasuke blacks out, his face mangled and heart broken. He isn't sure.

When he comes round, no less than five people are holding Naruto down. He scans the faces quickly with his good eye: Kakashi is one of the jounins physically holding Naruto away from him, and so are Sakura and Shikamaru.

Naruto looks…wrecked, is the word Sasuke can come up with. Absolutely wrecked, miserable and furious and bloody. He's panting heavily and struggling intermittently, his eyes never leaving Sasuke's face.

The warmth against his side shifts a little. Sasuke looks up and sees Morinaga's the one acting as his human crutch, his fingers solid and firm around Sasuke's waist.

"You bastard!" Naruto screams, and Sasuke's head snaps in his direction, his heart hammering painfully. "I'll kill you!"

"Naruto, shut up," Kakashi says in a firm voice, and gets a fist in his ribs for his trouble.

"Please listen, Hokage-sama," Morinaga says, his voice taking on that cool, practical lilt of poorly-lit briefings in war-torn villages and abandoned warehouses and hospital bedsides. "I can prove without a doubt that this is the real Sasuke Uchiha, former agent of Root."

Naruto's expression doesn't change, but Kakashi looks more alert. "Root?" he repeats thoughtfully, rolling the words around in his mouth like a sweet. Naruto struggles in his death grip once more, and Kakashi grunts as he lands an elbow in the side. The rest of the jounin are beginning to look slightly battered as well.

Sasuke keeps looking at Naruto vacantly. You did it, you brought me back, a very small voice in his head keeps telling the killing angry look in Naruto's blue-crimson eyes. You said you would, and you kept your promise.

Sasuke would have done anything to keep from feeling as young and naïve and foolish as he does when Kakashi has to knock Naruto out to keep them all from being killed.

Morinaga talks, and talks, and talks. He's brief and matter-of-fact, but it still takes over two hours for him to tell the whole story, during which his audience –now restricted to only Kakashi, Sakura, Shikamaru and Neji- take turns to cast coolly assessing looks at Sasuke.

They'd tied him up- extra precaution in case Naruto came in, they'd said, and Sasuke had grunted and let the lie slide. A length of rope around his wrists that they all knew he could get out of in the blink of an eyelid. He almost does, just to spite them.

No-one seems to question the logic of kicking Naruto out of his own house and locking all the doors when said Hokage was unconscious. They don't quite manage to hide their nervousness, however- whenever there's a sound even remotely resembling a bang, all three of the younger jounin flinch, and reach for various weapons. Thus far, this has allowed Sasuke to note that all of them have several weapons hidden literally up their sleeves, and that the carrier bag at Sakura's side has something a little more lethal than the narcotics that the logo on the cover suggests.

Sasuke half-listens and evaluates the audience on pure instinct.

Shikamaru and Neji aren't really much of a challenge; he's already seen their jutsu's and encountered mutations of the same. Individually, they'd take up maybe one tenth of his chakra. Both of them were geniuses in their own right, but in the past three years, Sasuke's encountered much, much worse than genius.

Sakura, then. She'd grown strong, with that Sannin teaching her, and her chakra control had been formidable even as a child. But truthfully, the only shinobi in the room he'd have to use his mangekyou against were probably Kakashi and Morinaga.

These decisions flood his mind, fast, efficient, and he knows that everyone else has made similar decisions about him. Not quite bloodlust –something more polite, civilized. Yet, he knew that if Morinaga failed to convince even one of them, Sasuke wasn't leaving the room alive.

He tentatively flicks his tongue towards his lip, which Sakura half-healed. It's bleeding again. Sasuke supposes he ought not to complain.

Morinaga passes around copies of his mission reports, each bearing Danzou's seal at the bottom like a blot of blood. He sees Neji's lip curl in distaste.

"Kakashi-sensei," Morinaga says, his tone changing. Up till now, his words had been clipped and precise, rehearsed, almost. He gestures at Sasuke. "This man is Sasuke Uchiha, and he is not a traitor. I swear this on my life."

There's a hint of finality in both his actions and his words. He places a hand on Sasuke's shoulder, which Sasuke takes as a signal to stand up.

"Morinaga," Kakashi says, and Sasuke's former captain stills, going a shade white but setting his jaw resolutely before turning to face his mentor.

"I would love to say that it wasn't like you to make such bold statements, but that's not the case." Kakashi pauses. "You're a talented leader and a first-class shinobi, but you must admit that your faith in your men hasn't always been justified."

This, too, doesn't surprise Sasuke. Morinaga reminds him almost painfully of Naruto, standing at the bottom of a crater and shouting at the top of his lungs, then why didn't you kill me?

Morinaga's face doesn't so much as twitch, but his fingers dig painfully into Sasuke's arm. "That may be true, sensei. I do tend to take people at their word."

He inhales deeply, closing his eyes. When he opens them, they're set and determined. A true shinobi going to war. "But no matter how much anyone has claimed to love Konoha, I've never seen anyone so absolutely bent on its protection the way Uchiha is. I'm not speaking as his superior, I'm speaking as the man who watched over him in hospital after he'd taken on the most powerful shinobi in the world and came back with broken bones and nearly depleted chakra, all in the name of Konoha."

There's a silence. Everyone, including Sasuke, stares at him, and he stares back at Kakashi.

Finally, the latter nods. "You may go," he says, inclining his head. "We've heard your case and-"

The table rattles a little as Sakura stands up. "No," she says. Her voice is firm. "I know and trust Morinaga-san. This has gone on long enough." She walks around the table, and Sasuke sees that despite her tone and rigidly neutral facial expression, she's shaking badly. She stumbles twice, but keeps her chin up and her eyes locked on him. When they're within hugging –punching – distance, she says, very quietly, "Welcome home, Sasuke-kun," in an unsteady voice.

"Sakura," he bows his head. Something indefinable and strange is happening in his chest – it feels a lot like drowning. "It's good to see you."

She half-laughs, half-sobs, and then he finds himself in a tight hug, her hands grasping his jacket, her hair soft on his face. Behind him, Morinaga chuckles and cuts his hands free, and they wrap around Sakura automatically, like he's been doing this all his life. He holds her close, comrade-close, sister-close, as she sobs into his chest, deep, wracking sobs like she'd found out he was dead instead of the opposite.

"There, there," he pats her back awkwardly, and she pulls back a little to give him a fierce glare through her tears.

"You idiot," she says, voice rough with crying, "You're home now and that makes me so happy I can't really understand what's going on, but you're so stupid, Sasuke-kun. I can't believe I ever liked you."

Sasuke can't believe it either, nor the fact that his childish fantasies of returning home to find his friends waiting for him are belatedly coming true. He closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of her hair and feels mildly guilty about the blood he's leaving in it.

He lets himself be yelled at and sobbed at some more from Sakura, and then she yanks him, his hand firmly in hers, to face Kakashi. His former mentor's single visible eye looks bemused.

"Count me in on the people willing to lay their lives on the assertion that this is Sasuke-kun," she says firmly.

"It's just you and Morinaga for now," Kakashi says, but his eye crinkles with good humor as he says it. "I don't think even Sasuke's as passionate about it as you two are." His eye drags towards Morinaga and back to Sakura, and then on to Sasuke.

Sakura gasps. "So you believe us, Sensei?"

"I still have to think about it. If this is an elaborate jutsu, it's not one that my sharingan can detect."

Sasuke doesn't point out that if he was creating a jutsu, the first logical thing he'd do is make it sharingan-proof. He has a feeling Morinaga and Sakura might actually kill him if he does.

Kakashi turns to the pale-eyed Hyuuga. "Neji?"

The Byakugan comes on for perhaps the sixth time that night. Apparently the Hyuuga clan was fond of being absolutely certain. Or maybe he was just showing off. "As far as I can tell, this is Sasuke Uchiha."

"See? It's settled." Sakura says, grinning conspiratorially.

Shikamaru adds, with a pained grimace, "Yeah, and all that's left is convincing Naruto."

Sakura's grip on his hands tightens to the point of pain. Any tighter, and Sasuke wouldn't be making hand signals for at least a week. "We will make him see." She turns to Sasuke, her expression apologetic and pleading. "It's probably because he was the one who wanted you back the most."

I'll bring you back if it's the last thing I do!

Neji and Shaikamaru drift out, each with a seemingly heartfelt good to have you back, Sasuke-kun. Sakura sets to work healing his cuts and bruises while Morinaga explains the directions to his new apartment painstakingly.

His whole face feels numb by the time Kakashi calls him over to stand by the window with him.

"How long since your mangekyou sharingan activated, Sasuke?" Kakashi asks quietly, as Sakura fusses over Morinaga's former injuries in the background.

Sasuke stares at him for a long time. "You knew." He states, the end of the sentence barely curving up in a question.

Kakashi looks out, so that the uncovered half of his face is on Sasuke's side. "I had my suspicions when Itachi's eyes were missing." He admits. "And of course, there were rumors. My particular favorite was of a shinobi prince who rights wrongs and weeps tears of blood for his victims."

Sasuke makes a light "tch" sound. "Then why-"

"Because we need all the proof we can get." Kakashi interjects. "We need people the village trusts in to trust in you."

"No point if the Hokage keeps trying to kill me," Sasuke says, in as even a voice as he can manage.

Kakashi snorts. "Naruto'll come around. He's just shocked."

"So were you," Sasuke points out dryly. "You didn't try to rip my face off."

Kakashi raises his eyebrow. "Don't pretend you don't get it, Sasuke. Naruto became Hokage after he thought you died just to prove a point to you, and you've been defending his life all this time without letting anyone know. He has a right to be upset." He looks calm, comfortable, as he slips an arm around Sasuke's rigid shoulders. "Just give him time."

Kakashi's plan to let Naruto cool off and come to his senses would have worked perfectly if Sasuke hadn't looked out the window the next morning at Konoha, his Konoha, and realized that he was in love with Naruto.

It's a quiet sort of epiphany, already accepted by most parts of his being. He doesn't drop anything, and the sun doesn't fall out of the sky. He stands in the sunlight, midway through his weapons check, and thinks, huh.

After that, still with a calmness that he can't quite comprehend, he goes over to his bag of belongings and roots around until he finds a frayed cloth pouch. Tucking it in his belt, he closes the door of the apartment behind him and sets off to find Naruto.

An hour and a half later, he's more or less wandered down all the streets of Konoha, hands in his pockets, looking around. That's fine: he's not in a hurry. Sakura would probably make disappointed faces at him if she knew, but finding his somewhat homicidal love of his life isn't something he feels he needs to rush.

His feet direct him towards the bridge eventually, and that's where he finds Naruto. He's standing looking over the side, his hand cupping his face. Sasuke can see him clearly from where he's standing, better than yesterday: can see the too-bright yellow hair and too-bright blue eyes and too-bright jacket underneath his Hokage robes.

Abruptly, his absolute calm of the morning drains away to nothing, and his heart begins hammering dangerously.

He's musing on the inconvenience of this new development when Naruto decides to look up from the water, and immediately spots him.

"You," he begins, mouth twisting into an ugly shape, but Sasuke holds up a hand.

"Save it, I know how you feel about me." He walks over to Naruto, hoping the Lord Hokage wouldn't turn rabid on him again. He wouldn't notice until he was dead, anyway, thanks to this infernally loud thumping of his heart. "I just came to give you this."

He shoves the pouch in Naruto's hands quickly. Naruto's skin is sun-warmed and his hands are unusually large. Sasuke has a sneaking suspicion he's blushing, but thankfully, Naruto's too busy staring at the pouch.

"What is this?" Naruto asks, running his fingertip over the embroidered Uchiha crest.

"You have to open it, moron."

Naruto looks up at him, eyes flashing fire, and Sasuke rolls his eyes. "Fine. Open it, Hokage-sama."

Naruto looks briefly confused, and then his cheeks go an inexplicable pink. He quickly ducks his head, mumbling "I knew that," but even his ears are red.

He makes no move to open it, however. Sasuke's about to tut and do it himself when he says, "So, Sakura-chan kinda yelled at me for beating you up last night."

Sasuke keeps silent.

"She…thinks you're who you say you are." Naruto continues, still addressing the pouch. "She says Kakashi and Neji and Shikamaru do, too, and those guys are way smarter than me, so-"

"And you're the Hokage," Sasuke cuts in sharply. He doesn't know what he was expecting; he knows that it wasn't this. This, this relative calmness, like Naruto's grown into an actual adult. If so, then what was that last night?

Sasuke starts feeling vaguely ill again. He doesn't think there's anyone who knows him who'd think he was lying when he says that he'd rather be taking on all seven swordsmen of the mist, ally or no ally.

Naruto looks surprised. "Well, yeah, but-"

Sasuke rolls his eyes, no mean feat since his heart's about to come up out his mouth. What is he saying? What does it mean? "Apology accepted, idiot. Now open it."

Naruto looks suspicious, but teases the knot loose without resorting to violence. He draws out the folded papers, his expression curious. "What is this?"

Sasuke doesn't reply, watching his face intently as he flips them open and examines them. "Did you start drawing, too? Don't tell me you're turning into Sai, because one of-"

He stills, the rest of his words freezing away. Sasuke suddenly has an irrational fear that he's cursed the lead somehow – maybe he cast an unconscious jutsu on it? His minds runs through the options semi-frantically, coming to a halt when Naruto says, in a hushed voice, "This is us."

Sasuke stares at him. "Wait, what?"

Naruto looks up, and his eyes have begun shimmering tellingly. "Me and Sakura-chan. You drew us." He looks back down, and Sasuke sees that his hands are shaking. His knuckles look sore and painful; Sasuke swallows. He's still mostly confused until Naruto says, "Is this really how you see us?"

He peers through Naruto's blonde spikes. "Oh." He blushes. "You can tell?"

"Sai taught me to recognize how much work and love goes into a picture." Naruto says, in the same shell-shocked voice. "Sasuke, this…"

Sasuke sighs. So he'd taken a little time to straighten out a few lines, to get that irritating button of Sakura's nose right. It wasn't a big deal. No, the big deal was-

"Go to the next one," he says impatiently.

Naruto shoots him a dirty look, but complies with one final, longing glance at the first. When he sees the second, his eyes bug out unattractively.

"Sasuke," he breathes. He looks up, and Sasuke nearly gives himself a heart attack trying to figure out this reaction. "Sasuke, this-"

Sasuke shoves his hands in his pockets. "It's you. Tch, it's not that bad."

Naruto looks as if he may burst out crying any second. "But…why?" he asks, his forehead crinkling in confusion.

Sasuke takes a deep breath. "Because I needed to remember," he says simply.

Naruto's eyes widen. "Sasuke, what-"

Sasuke smiles, a little sad, a little proud. The words don't trip on his tongue like he thought they would, instead fly out like freed birds. "You brought me home, you idiot."

He almost closes his eyes at the relief of it, the sheer weightless delight of saying something he feels down to his bones, something he recognizes and accepts with every cell in his body.

Naruto moves faster than Sasuke's sharingan could probably track; his hands are warm, and his fingers are obscenely long as he cups Sasuke's face. And his mouth –oh- is on Sasuke's in a hard, sweet kiss.

It takes Sasuke a while to register what's even happening. Then Naruto's too-warm fingertips brush the skin of his stomach, under his shirt, and Sasuke jerks away. He holds Naruto's wrists away from him. Naruto's electric blue eyes are fever-bright: his lower lip shines.

"Sasuke," Naruto says, in a low, husky voice that sounds like the pebbles under the stream on a very very good day. He looks a little like how Sasuke feels, like he might be sick, like he might start laughing, like his heart's so full it's bursting. "Welcome home, bastard."

They're both smiling when they kiss again.