"That's the bottom-line difference between then and now: ninety-five cents."
// Margaret Atwood, "Cat's Eye"

-

1.

One of the girl prisoners at the port skips stones with him, killing time until the boat finishes loading. She tells him ghost stories as they watch the sunrise break choppily over the river: stories about lost souls trapped in carnivorous trees; stories about dead mothers haunting the toolsheds where their daughters were murdered and buried; stories about vengeful soldiers come staggering from their graves, their bodies riddled with gaping holes like eye sockets, their faces clotted with mold. They're unfinished, she says, they drift from one place to the next, seeking revenge, redemption, continuity, a better end. Naruto only laughs. At dusk he leaps out onto the water, sprints across it with his arms waving wilding, trying to catch his team's attention up on the deck. She tells him later that, out there on the lake, with the pearly mists settling in around him, his form blurred and ambiguous in the fog, Naruto looked like a ghost himself: walking on water, weightless.

2.

Back years ago, Naruto hadn't believed that Sasuke would really have gone so far. It had been his belief that he was just mislead: tragic spoiled asshole, all he needed was to have some sense beat into him, he'd see but you really needed to shove it into his face since he was just that dense, Naruto would make him see or die trying, and so on and so forth. Neji had believed that, barring a miraculous recovery on Naruto's part, the sad fuck was going down like a stone. He was locked into a no-win situation; his life had been a crash-course from day one. In the end there would be an irreversible descent into some dark soul-eating abyss where the very fabric of his essence would get sucked in and chewed up and spat out, and the next time they saw him they probably wouldn't recognize any particular part of him, he'd be drooling and cross-eyed, wielding machetes that'd been welded shut to the inner flesh of his forearms. But Neji had fought him a few times since, noted he had retained the surface beauty; and that was worse, because if you're beautiful, people think you can still be saved.

3.

The Village of the Leaf welcomes the heroes of the latest battle back with a handshake, a slap on the back, and a month's pass worth of free ramen at the local noodle bar. The Sound is retreating, the Thunder with them, beaten back across the continuously oscillating boundaries of neutral territory. For days everybody indulges in sake, gambling, loose women - old sport from better times. Tsunade the Fifth drinks too much and Jiraiya ends up with the unenviable task of dealing with her on the morning after. Things get broken: a wineglass, Tsunade's favorite mug, a fluted vase belonging to Tsunade's late great grandpa the First, whose ashes are contained therein. After she finishes hitting him, Tsunade marches Jiraiya straight to the bank and demands he empties the entirety of his account into hers, pointing out that if he hadn't been leaning over her like that upon her waking up, if he hadn't had his dirty paws on her shoulders and his head shoved, peering curiously, right into her face, and if he hadn't been smiling all funny then she wouldn't have thought something Really Bad had happened, and then she wouldn't have freaked out and started throwing things, and - and - in any case it was his fault, so he shouldn't try to get out of it or else she was going to stick him with the most annoying genin brats of next year's crop when this war business was over and done with.

4.

The room's a mess. They broke a table lamp getting everybody in here safely, and now it's in forlorn pieces on the floor. Gaara stepped on a wayward shard coming in; his foot bleeds profusely, refuses to stop.

He's also angry, inexplicably angry, a hot arid feeling in his chest and in the pit of his stomach like when he's trying to kill something but the thing won't die, and the thing's running around and around like an ant, running circles around death, and Gaara is so fucking pissed that he accidentally steps on it and doesn't have the composure to notice because he's already tearing around and by the time he's heaving as if he were going to be sick in the corner the room is down to broken glass, forlorn wisps of curtains, a pockmarked end table standing solitary in the upheaval of derelict furnishings.

(If this feeling had a sound it would be something dry: a brittle sound, wind clicking through trees, leaves crackling like paper. Scrolls of paper, acres of unwieldy, fragile paper; paper catching fire, burning up.)

So Naruto says, "Hey, hey, calm down," and Gaara grabs a plate off the table and heaves it at him. It explodes on the opposite wall in a starburst of green peas and gravy. He sits down and looks closely at the whirls of his fingerpads and makes a conscious effort not to breathe too loudly. Naruto doesn't flinch, tells him Tsunade will have a look at him if that's what he really wants. Gaara leans back on his chair and strains a look at the ceiling, the pattern of it like sea-foam. He thinks he can hear flies in the air, and insects on the floor, the ceaseless skittery noises they make, and it irritates him to the point that he makes an unconscious gesture with his right hand, the one that will have his sand snatching them squirming from the air, pulverize them to bloody hard-shelled bits. But nothing moves and Naruto puts his hand on Gaara's arm. This makes Gaara flinch. Naruto pushes his outstretched arm down, not ungently. His palm is callused, warm. Gaara moves away silently and stands himself against the wall. Naruto is looking at him, the half-frustrated look on his face folds up like old paper. He puts his head in his hands and says things like: "Oh, fuck, Gaara," and, "Damnit," and, "Why isn't the fan bloody working, God!" Useless words like that. Gaara knows that Naruto never used to swear when he was younger, except when he got into contests with the Uchiha, and then they'd hurl futile curses at each other, try to cut each other up with sharp words as a last resort before taking out the kunai, elbows, shurikens, the fists; but even then he never really meant it. Gaara stands against the wall and puts his head against it and hears a keening in the next room.

5.

Naruto told the Fifth that the mission into enemy territory had not produced the desired result. This was not unexpected; Orochimaru moved quickly, so all they had gotten their hands on was a straggle of civilians, the too young and the too old. There had been a leak. Did he know who it was? No, he didn't. Did he think it was typical? Yes, he did; in any case the information hadn't been too reliable anyway. Did he know what form Orochimaru was in now? Yes. No. Not really. He said to Tsunade, sprawled all over her chair, with a shrug: it could be Sasuke, but recent reports indicated that there might be another carrier. So there could be two; Sakura, especially, thought so. In which case they had to keep a strict watch. That's fine, Tsunade said. How was his team doing? Perfect, Naruto spouted. Just effin' perfect. Yamina closed his fridge on her hand the other day and broke her pinky, and Gajiko had come down with chicken pox and both their parents had somehow gotten the idea into their thick heads that he was the one responsible for their conditions when it was obviously the faults of their own childrens' inherited stupidity! Tsunade simply laughed and waved him off. Naruto blew out a sigh and slouched off to the ramen bar, where he devoured as many bowls as he could because it would've been a damn shame for him to waste a whole month's worth of free ramen.

6.

Gaara stands where he is and looks at the clock and its slim hands moving until the numbers register in his mind. He does not move for fifty seconds and on the fifty-first second the door opposite of him opens, the one from the room next door, and the Fifth comes out. Her hands are bloody and there are red welts down her forearms. She moves to the table and snatches a towel off it and scrubs at herself; her mouth opens in an 'o', closes, closes again, opens: a fish mouth. Naruto has his feet on the ground, feet splayed, his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fist. He's looking at her, waiting. The Fifth stares at the table and lifts a hand to touch it, runs fingers through the grooved ends as if memorizing its grain, its steady texture, unmovable, immutable, reassurance in a linoleum table-top, its cloth flowers, its matching salt and pepper shakes. She looks up when Gaara moves. "Let me look at you," she says. Gaara motions at the door, a question. She says, "I've added another seal, to the one Temari put. It should be fine." She talks about him as an 'it' some more. Naruto clambers to his feet and goes to check the hallway. "The Anbu are here," he says, and pops a grape into his mouth. Chews viciously. His face is dark with worry but he cracks a grin for pretense's sake when the knock comes, and two squads of Anbu file in, which is the most they can spare. The Fifth has her hand on Gaara's right shoulder and she turns him backwards, lifts cloth, slides, stripping away to flesh. Her fingers are deft. When she touches the seal he closes his eyes and counts the seconds to when he can breathe again.

7.

It's high noon in Konohagure Village. The sky bears down, bending inward at a curve as if it's got some terrible weight sitting squat on its back. Neji nudges away the stack of paperwork that he's already filled out (guard mission in Lower Fire Country; recruiting in and around the Haze Islands; a missing persons form regarding one Sakura Haruno, which Naruto has yet to explain, because just yesterday he saw the girl at the supermarket, rummaging in the carrots and up to her elbows in a crush of twittering old ladies), starts another. Mission was marginally successful as the team of Anbu was able to bring back a dozen live-ins. Their testimony will be imperative to the war effort and the future well being of Konohagure Village. A long black thread of ink untangles itself from the tip of his pen; he loops his Ls, dots his Is brusquely, with a feeling of satisfaction. (These are facts, obvious, plain. Everything else is transient, blooming or else flattening, graying out. Neji's not use to being bothered by the textually ambiguous, gray things.) It's so crushing cold that he, looking up from his paperwork, brushes the hair from his eyes, squints at the window, and pushes aside the irrational feeling that the sky is going to fall in.

8.

The first thing Neji saw upon arrival was a peck of chickens puttering along the street, hens all of them, scavenging for bugs in the dust. They dispersed in different directions when he took the first step their way, like children running away to hide from the seeker, shrieking agitatedly, flailing and thrashing into the scant bushes edging the village. There were actual children, too, he realized, grubby in the face and distended in the belly. They stood in the shadows, peeking like the game. When Naruto called out to them a girl of about five hurled something that smacked into Naruto's face and jerked his head to one side. "Ow," he said. He lifted his chin, cheek bleeding. Neji thought that he could've avoided it easily. "Where is everyone?" Naruto asked. The streets were blank, stores with their doors and windows sprayed open, their shelves stripped bare of inventory. The houses that peered down on them were decrepit, ornately leprous with infestations of vegetation in various states of rot. Neji motioned the team forward. The surprise attack was not necessary after all; nor infiltration. Naruto approached the kids with no restraint whatsoever, probably thinking that his goodwill was only obvious, that it was clear he meant no harm. He got within three feet of them before one mangy mutt of a boy darted forward and bit his ankle. Neji said sharply, "Naruto!" but Naruto just grabbed the boy by the scuff of his neck, lifted him bodily, and stuffed a foil-wrapped package into his shirt. The others snatched theirs from him like a dogbite and fled without thanks. Neji told him to stop and save it for the team.

9.

They camped outside the village parameter after sunset. Neji came back from double-checking their surroundings for anything Taki might have missed and sat rewrapping his ankles in the dark. Naruto had brought along ramen for the trip ? the boy was impractical as ever ? and the smell of it boiling, spices and miso, had lured out some of the team and lead them, pawing and sniffing, to crouch outside his tent. They whined horribly. Naruto was unmoved by his peers' pitiable accounts of their own rations: skinny rabbit, inedible roots, rats, roaches, ants, the laces from Saki's boots, each one more fantastically unbelievable than the one before. Eventually detaching themselves from the topic of ramen, they began to ruminate about the village: they had found nothing; they had been too late, or else someone had been early in leaving; they had seen what had once been the insides of Orochimuaru's private quarters, which had been peeled clean and now smelled whitewashed and medicinal, clinical. They had not found the Uchiha, who was the old carrier and supposedly recovering here. Nayei asked, "What would we have done if we had? Captured him?"

Taki said practically, "We would've killed him."

Neji stood and slipped their way, walking quickly and silently. Naruto said nothing; his silences were rarely so subdued. After a pause he said, "Yeah. We would've." Neji stopped; he was standing very near now, screened by darkness. He watched the fire spew out sparks as Naruto gave it a prod. "Or tried to," Naruto said after a second, blankly.

10.

Sasuke broke Naruto. It's really as simple as that. Naruto's a tough kid, he's gotten over it, was in fact up hopping all over the place in relatively no time considering the gravity of the situation. But for an alarming period there, after they'd all come back, after the hole in Neji's chest had mended and after Chouji had lost some pounds withering temporarily in his hospital room but had gained weight and gained some more until he was back to (what Shikamaru called) normal again, Naruto was simply not himself. He ate lackadaisically, talked reluctantly, perked up for a little when Sakura came over but relapsed when he found her tearing over the picture, their genin photo with Kakashi-sensei leaning over them, his visible eye crinkled in a smile.

Sasuke's absence left behind a discontinuous space, broken up in slashes of real life and alternate realities. It made sense that Naruto would hate it, hate that Sasuke could have that effect on him; so he took the space, his irregular life, squeezed its edges together, hauled and leveled and pinched and forced until he had something that made sense, something that fit into an uninterrupted timeline, something that was continuous and whole.

But Naruto still thinks sometimes, what if.

11.

When Gaara opens his mouth a sound comes out. He realizes he's never sounded so pained in his life. (Later he realizes that this realization in turn is not a truthful realization and is therefore a lie.)

"Gaara, Gaara, hey, man!" Naruto's yelling at him, Tsunade's still got her hand on his shoulder, a pained look on her face. It hurts where she's touching him; she probed too deep, and now she's going to tell him she's sorry. "Come out of it," and Naruto snaps his fingers at his face, waves frantically. Tsunade whaps him on the head, shoves him out of the way. "Gaara," she says, bending down to him. "I can get some specialists to look at it if you want. I - I can't promise anything, though - " and then Gaara rasps something, the words straggling from his mouth, and she says, "What?" And he says, "You're the best," but Tsunade's a good liar, she says, falsely self-deprecating, "No, I've been out of practice for years. Honestly, you have to see the state of my medicinal kits, the gloves and the things that must be festering in there by now - " but Gaara doesn't say anything back to that as is expected and respectful. He steps aside and speaks Naruto's name, because Naruto's standing in front of the door and Gaara can see he's looking determinedly at his feet and that his hands are balled up into fists and that he really wants to go in, because now that Naruto's older he never restrains himself unless it's something he really really wants. If you have good food he'll snatch it from you. If you have pocket money and he's in need of it, he'll do the same. If you have an easy mission he'll whine and beg and say things to try to convince you to swap clients, and if that fails he'll sneak through the Fifth's records and rearrange everything to suit himself. But Gaara can say, from the sidelines from where he has observed Naruto for years past, that Naruto's only ever really wanted two things. The first was - and still is - to become Hokage, a Someone, an Important, an Essential; and in the name of this Naruto has been forced to develop restraint and patience. The other time Naruto had acted out of pure fury, had not so much controlled himself as he had exploded outwards in an ultimately futile rush, an implosion. Ineffectual, impotent desperation. That was why he'd lost Sasuke so hard, why he'd been hurt so badly, why he'd taken it so personally. It's why the present Naruto stops to think. Gaara knows that the only other thing that Naruto's ever really wanted and still wants now is to bring Sasuke home.

12.

Two tonal:

Gaara did it for him.

13.

On the night before they left the village, Neji said to Naruto, "Keep a leash on it."

"On what?" Naruto asked, and Neji said, "Your emotions. Keep them under control, it's your job as an Anbu. I trust I don't have to remind you." Naruto stared at him for a moment, mouth working, and then demanded, "Are you fucking nuts? Since when has that ever been an issue with me? Tell me, Oh-Mighty-Captain - "

"Don't get soft," Neji rapped out, "You gave those kids our food. They bit you and you passed our rations out like free candy. It could happen on a larger scale, a more serious one. You could get hurt." He let a deliberate second go by. "We can't afford the loss," he said.

Naruto let it go with a rebellious harrumph, a "whatever", and a brief sulky silence over the washbasin. Later Neji mentioned, carefully casual, what did he, as the second hand of the team, think would've happened if they had come earlier, if the village hadn't been cleared, safe? To which Naruto answered, after a suspicious shifty look of his eyes, he supposed they would've infiltrated it. Gathered data, put together information reports, tried not to get captured or killed: those sorts of things.

"And if we had caught Sasuke?" Neji said, washing his hands. The water was cool to the point of cold, cool like the air he was breathing in, cool like his head, his thoughts, cool and waiting for the correct answer and the motion - a twitching, a shifting from foot to foot, a too-quick tilt of the voice - that would contradict it.

"Killed him right on the spot," Naruto reassured him.

14.

Neji finds out quickly. As an Anbu captain he has the advantage of superior positioning: he receives intelligence from higher-ups who hold him in favor, intercepts what he wants when necessary. He has his own network of little birds. (Sometimes he wishes he were one of them, free and vital even in careless mid-flight, as he is only vital to the general scheme of things when he is locked up, safe in a cage. They know he is too driven to be a danger to himself.) They catch details like fish, naturally, skimming: these accidental, unwanted things; these crucial, life-altering events. The last time he had received a report of this magnitude had been when Hinata had gotten herself near-killed by one of Orochimaru's two months back. Upon waking she had recalled a pale face, fast as a shadow, the acknowledgement of red eyes, the cold sliver of a knife pricking into her throat.

15.

"Who is it in there?" Naruto asks Gaara. "Orochimuaru-Sasuke, or Sasuke-Sasuke, fucked-up-Sasuke?" He whirls around and sags with his back against the wall. "Oh, hell." Knuckles on the doorframe. "If I go in there now will he recognize me and then try to strangle me with that fucking tongue of his? Or will he recognize me and then try to strangle me period? Oh, man, oh," he's laughing now, head back. "This is fucking crazy." His throat works as he swallows. Gaara stares at it. Naruto snaps his head back down as if he senses his gaze. He says, talking to Tsunade now, "How's his condition?" but Tsunade shakes her head.

"Is he alive?" Naruto asks. Tsunade says, "He will be." And Naruto snaps, "What the hell does that mean?" and Tsunade bites back, voice serrated with tension: "Don't take that tone with me, boy!" Naruto retreats. "He's sleeping like the dead right now," she says. "He could be dead for all I care, because honestly, the trouble he's caused. Orochimaru wouldn't be so far along if he hadn't sold him his body like that." Naruto flinches as if he thinks she were blaming it on him; as if she said the word whored instead of sold. "The waste of lives," she's saying. "Years. What he's done to Gaara. The Hyuuga heir awhile back, her family's yet to forgive me for putting her in that situation in the first place. God."

Naruto says that's blasphemy because she doesn't believe in God, so she can't use the name, and she tells him to shut up. Naruto does and sits down abruptly, sliding down the wall to rock forward on his haunches. "It's not Orochimaru, is it?" he asks. "It's just Sasuke."

"You can't be sure, I can't be sure. He could be here, he could be in the other carrier," Tsunade says. "And it's not just. Thinking like that's going to get you killed." Naruto mutters something about it all being relative, but lapses back into silence like he's supposed to. And Gaara doesn't say anything, doesn't say that he could've killed Sasuke if he wanted, doesn't say he doesn't know whether it was a conscious decision that he had let him live, doesn't say, what about me?; thinks: futile, useless words.

16.

Once, when Gaara was little, Yashamaru took him out to see a cold desert. They traveled lightweight for five days, and on the eve of the sixth it began to rain. Water poured from the sky in sheets, water beat at his sands until they gave way, dispelled his wariness, took him apart with a touch. Water welled in his hands, filled the dents in the earth with shining mirrors that winked and wrinkled at every needle of rain.

It snowed two days later. He woke to find a pair of what Yashamaru called deer nuzzling at shoots outside the camp, which he didn't kill because he'd never seen deer or anything like them before. He'd never seen snow either, drifts of it feathering down from the sky, hilling with snow, laced powdery in his hair. The desert was a frieze of ice, the sky above them crisp with sunshine. His feet sank in cushioned ground. Sparse clumps of bushes emerged from the landscape, straggling, their spiny leaves white with cold. His clothes were crusted with ice, his sand weighted down by little fragments that had stuck in miniature crystals. He tried to shake it away. Snowflakes swirled up as the deer, panicking, shot away in a sudden flurry: he'd scared them off.

He saw Yashamaru slip ice into his mouth, so he put ice into his mouth too. He waited a while, swallowed when Yashamaru did; jerked at the initial feeling, cool sliding down his throat. He didn't make the connection until Yashamaru showed him a small, transparent block of what he said was condensed snow, ice, its insides furred by an infinite number of colorless needles, and set it up over the fire, a bucket deposited expectantly underneath.

17.

Gaara's so unused to sleep that on the first night after Sasuke, he woke up discomfited by cold toes and the feeling that he'd just taken several hours extricating himself from the grip of death.

18.

Naruto takes him home in the afternoon, supposedly because he has nowhere else to stay (Temari's still recovering). In actuality it's to keep him safe. Gaara is a very well known ally of the Leaf; in his present weakened state there will be people after him, people with kunai and shruriken, exploding notes, people wielding hefty wallets, harboring any number of discreet deaths. Naruto is an Anbu and, although he doesn't look it, enough to deal with whatever a desperate village head or mob boss might send his way. (Naruto is also enough to deal with Gaara himself, if something in him were to act up, which is not so much said as it is implied.)

His house is a flat located a short distance off from the Anbu grounds, squat and nondescript. Naruto, telling him that he should keep a low profile here for the next week or three, unlocks the door with a grimy key fished out from the depths of his back pocket and shoves his way through the screen door. Before Gaara takes even three steps inside he knocks over a knee-high stack of jutsu texts and trade manuscripts. He feels instantly ungainly, loud and stupid and clattery, like he's missing a limb, but if Naruto notices he's kind enough to ignore it. Already he's clearing the way to what is, presumably, the kitchen: sweeping away paperwork, trampling absentmindedly through the contents of an overturned drawer, kicking aside heaps of clothes with a careless arching jerk of his foot. He punches a button on his phone and the answering machine beeps on: a child saying he'd finally chased away his chicken pox (no thanks to Naruto-sensei); the voice of the Fifth, demanding paperwork that was evidently a few weeks late; a woman saying, high and tight, that she needed to see him right away. Naruto's voice overlaps the machine's like he doesn't hear it. He wants to know if Gaara wants a drink: water, milk, no ice.

19.

It rains at night, several nights in a row. They sleep in the same room, Gaara on the bed, Naruto on a sofa he dragged in earlier. The light out in the hall is still on; Naruto's not taking any chances, says that it's better to trick anyone unduly interested into thinking that they're still awake, aware. Naruto's closer to the window and the door (because if someone were to come in they'd have to go through him before getting to Gaara) but Gaara can still see the sky outside, massed with clouds, opened up and leaking rain. Water slashes at the windowpane, nails night down in hard spikes. Inside it's quiet, the quality of it not at all like an absence, an emptiness; instead it's the presence of something, stillness that has a form, silence given shape and meaning; if he makes a sound now he'll wake Naruto up. It's a small room. He can see the rise and fall of his chest, an ankle poking out from under the sheet, the soft shadowed hollow of his throat. His hand draped over his eyes, mouth slightly open. Soft light on his hair, legs scissored and bent at right angles as if he's running, moving even in his sleep. This is subtle like Naruto never is.

Outside the clouds part briefly; a haze of stars shines through. Tonight there's a sliver of light up there, thin, veiled: a fingernail moon. Gaara watches it so he doesn't look at Naruto, but he lets the sound of Naruto's breathing shift him gently down. For the time being his sleep is peaceful, strange and new, unmolested.

20.

On the second afternoon Naruto has an argument with Sakura. Gaara can hear it from the next room over. She came over earlier armed with a bowl of radish soup and a big mammoth book of jutsus, claiming concern for the general state of Naruto's health as her excuse; also Lee said Naruto asked him if he could borrow the book the other day, and since she was coming over, she said she'd take it for him (Lee had some official business to go out on today, so she really didn't have that much to do; it wasn't like Naruto should feel guilty about her coming over), and could Naruto help her out in the kitchen with the soup? Because she really didn't want to go tripping over any previously unknown lifeforms in his fridge if she could help it, and the soup did require refrigeration, and, well.

But things disintegrated from there. Now Gaara sits with his back to the corner and listens to Sakura's voice as it rockets in outrage, dips in consternation, explodes again. Naruto merely grumbles. Sakura says: it's an idea - I just thought - she makes a frustrated sound, slams something down in the sink. Naruto says: well, I bet he wouldn't want us to. He's like that, the stubborn bastard. Sakura says: I could take a little pity if I were going to die.

21.

Neji is walking the grounds with a file in hand. He rounds a corner and continues down the hallway, passing rooms clinical and flooded white with fluorescent lights, phosphorescent against the press of the dark. It's raining outside, battering trees, wind hurling itself silently, against the windows. He bypasses an Anbu guard, who acknowledges his rank with a preemptory tilt of his head. A second stationed two rooms down waves him on, and then another, followed by a crush three feet deep at the door. They ask him why he's here. He says he has questions, hands them his paperwork without being asked. While they shuffle through the thick packet - red tape, official, stamped with pompous seals of approval, letters that use words like pacification (armed raids), revenue enhancement (price hikes), nonretention (firing), even body count: language sugarcoated, things you use to cover your ass - Neji thinks about Sasuke on the other side of this wall, thinks: they, the two of them, are souls cut from the same devious cloth. Had Neji been the one born a Uchiha it would've been him out there, Neji hacking indifferently through forests of once-comrades, Neji selling himself for power, Neji bleeding at Orochimaru's whim, Neji smashing apart his future with the wrecking ball of the past. Perhaps this is why Neji resents Sasuke so much: to know that, in retrospect, Sasuke had refused what Neji himself had, with so much difficulty, taken to heart. At the same time he realizes their parallels. Sasuke's been squeezed into this hard, edged shape, crammed himself into this mold of someone he thinks can defeat his older brother. But what is Sasuke now? What is he doing, is he lying there, counting the threads of his pillow? Peeling at the wallpaper? Is he insane, does he slaver, does he babble, has his mind served vessel to Orochimaru too many times for even the infamous Uchiha blood to handle? Neji can see it, can see him in his mind, misshapen and grotesque, thinks: it would be preferable.

22.

They let him in with a rope looped around his waist. He doesn't know how bad things have gotten with the Uchiha, and in so short a time too. Once they were forced to shoot him up with tranquilizers, they couldn't even go in for fear of their lives. In the end they had to drag out the body of the guard with a hook through the belt, because even unconscious Sasuke'd jerked and quivered and made vague threatening motions with snarled fingers; nobody was sure if Orochimaru hadn't taught Sasuke to kill in his sleep.

23.

Naruto makes them breakfast one morning. Gaara sits in his kitchen and eats his soggy pancakes. There's too much syrup, it pools in the depression of his plate, sticks to his fingers. His glass is ringed with something white and organic, his skin shivering from the cold. Every time his toes graze the ground he has to draw back, it feels so frozen. He's wearing one of Naruto's jackets because Naruto saw him rubbing quizzically at his arms - he's not use to cold, Shukaku occupied his attentions to the point that he could tune out physical trivialities - and wouldn't stand it if he got a guest sick (Tsunade would kick his ass in, and besides - Naruto gives a quirk of his mouth - the last thing Gaara needs right now is a runny nose and watering eyes). It's loose around his shoulders, warm, and smells of mothballs, musk, Naruto. Naruto himself is slurping his milk, eyes still heavy with sleep. His hair is mussed, skin splotchy with color. He sits across from Gaara, straddling a chair, yawning so wide that Gaara can see halfway down his throat. Immediately he snaps his mouth close and mutters a sheepish apology, scratching at his head. "It's not very nice here, sorry," he says. There's a half-grin on his face and the thought crosses Gaara's mind, very fleetingly, that no, this is perfect.

24.

A lifetime ago, Sasuke changed Naruto, and Naruto let him. None of them have ever been able to change Naruto in the same significant way Sasuke did, not even alter him a little bit. Neji does not go to such extremes because he thinks it's below him to do so; Gaara cannot go to such extremes because it is an inability, a metal leg, a ball and chain. But sometimes Neji thinks: Naruto does not chase so much after Sasuke as he chases after what Sasuke represents. Sasuke is untouchable, it's like chasing the sun, around and around you go, for hours and weeks and years until you collapse and your breath stops, your flesh sloughs off to rain and sun, the birds pick your corpse clean, your bones bleach white. No; but that would imply that Sasuke's nice like the sun, good and warm, someone you can press up against if you wanted to melt away all your barriers because you don't have the means to do so yourself. But Sasuke was never a sun, nor a star of any kind, which doesn't make any sense either, because the only relative thing Sasuke's comparable to is what's left over after a star dies: a neutron star, a black hole, the density of which is so big, so crushing, that even electromagnetic waves can't get out of it, they're all sucked in and swallowed whole - light, particles of matter, planets, other stars, decompressed on the level of the electron, dismantled: the blurry pixilation of death.

25.

Seven days ago Gaara and Temari found Sasuke at the edge of Thunder country, where he had walked two days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs. Nevertheless he put up a good fight, disposing of Temari's ferret spirit with a fist through the chest, evading Gaara's sand like water off oil, nearly eviscerating Temari herself. In the end it'd come down to Sasuke's snake summon and Shukaku, the two of which had torn holes in the landscape, gave it hills where there'd been gullies and basins where there'd been hills, then littered it with craters and snapped trees like toothpicks. Afterwards, when he'd opened his eyes, he'd found Sasuke kneeling over him, panting, nearing collapse, leaking blood down his stomach from where Temari had gutted him with a kunai. His eyes weren't red, they were black, his face crusted with muck. It was raining, hard and vicious, needles down from the sky that burst apart like white sparks on the ground. Gaara closed his eyes as he bent over him, blocked out the rain. His sand was barely holding, and it was the only thing that was keeping Sasuke from sawing his throat open. Sasuke spat something low in his ear. The sound of his breath was distended, caving in one moment, blowing out wetly the next. You do the Leaf's dirty work so you're everybody's favorite pet, but you'd bite them just as soon as their back's turned, isn't that right. He was scrawling out jutsus in the mud with wide, swiping motions: the snake, the bear, the tiger claw. There was blood on his lip and he crouched over Gaara so that Gaara could see nothing else, only dilated eyes, sodden skin, the Uchiha so mad with cold and rain he was nearly unrecognizable as human. Sasuke sealed Shukaku with a word. Gaara finished it with a nondescript knife, up between his ribs, grounding it in until Sasuke reeled back, retching. He realized he'd aimed too low and known he'd aimed too low but had done it anyway. He heaved, seismic; he screamed or maybe it was Sasuke, he couldn't tell. His mouth was open, the rain kept pounding down, filled it up until he swallowed and choked. Darkness eating away at his vision in great brutal bites. Water in cool ribbons down his throat.

26.

Despite the arrival of Gaara, his gaggle of genin brats, and an intimidating accumulation of exam paperwork, Naruto's still got the time to think: he's been waiting to go back this whole week. They need to figure out if Sasuke is Sasuke; he says he's Sasuke but he might be lying, though by the looks of it it probably is, because why would Orochimaru wander for so long in Thunder Country, all by himself, castoff, critically injured? Only a hand-me-down would, which is, pathetically, what Sasuke is now. It's essential, this scrap of knowledge. The situation will be handled differently if it's Orochimaru. That's how Tsunade puts it: differently. Automatically glossing over the unpleasant details. Naruto thinks she's getting soft in old(er) age. Nonetheless, he says there might be a way. (Which is a lie, because Orochimaru would know Sasuke's memories and Sasuke himself inside out: his quirks and his peculiarities, his fallibilities, the pigeonholes of his character. Naruto has no way of getting around that and thus no way of differentiating between the two. Orochimaru is a wolf in sheep's clothing, a wolf in wolf's clothing, a greater evil that has already assimilated the lesser.)

27.

Neji doesn't want to watch it again. He's seen it before, mothers scavenging for their children in the ash heaps, homeless boys scurrying through the day's trash: false, mislead hopes: dashed, deconstructed, dissipated. Faith in undeniable pieces on the floor. Himself in the mirror, three years old and aging already.

What does Naruto expect? Why does he cling, why is he so stubbornly pig-headed, why does he balk at Sasuke's name? If it were anyone else Neji would throw him to the proverbial shark. For Naruto, he thinks, he owes him one. Life debt, repaid. He isn't Naruto's mother, babysitter. The only thing he is is a distant friend, ordering his missions, waking each other up at daybreak when duty calls, reprimanding him for cramming ramen into his travel pack and expecting Neji not to notice. He is not Naruto's savior, he is not anyone's savior, and indeed there is nothing to save or be saved from. It's pathetic, a waste of time. He frustrates himself; he can't help but do it, he's never done it in his life. Fate is irrevocable, its timeline premeditated and absolute, and even if anyone could divert it it wouldn't be someone of the likes of him. He should wait this out, should've. Intervening isn't an option, but too late, he's already made the first move.

28.

They're waiting. Naruto feels like he should be pacing, expending himself, signaling to the others what he feels, language through extraneous movement. One of the guards, jittery, is telling him to be careful. Naruto snorts at this, taps his foot, fidgets. (Sakura still teases him about it, saying, real shinobis don't fidget. It's against protocol to fidget, it simply isn't done; it's like sucking your thumb, it's unseemly, embarrassing; honestly, it's utterly scandalous. According to the manual, they aren't even supposed to breathe visibly; their job, on off hours, is to sit like statues, look legendary in case some tourist with a camera happens by, and gather dust. That's - Sakura says, giggling - a real live shinobi for you.) It's midday, there's sunshine in nails along the ground; a shaft of dust and light lifts itself from the floor as Neji scrolls at the blinds, twists it open. Naruto can see his hands from where he's sitting: long-fingered, white and thin, expressive unlike Neji himself. The unwinding of his fingers, turning over and over on end, is almost sensual. Naruto realizes this, the actual articulation of the thought, and is instantly embarrassed. He jumps up, moves around, fumbles with his sleeves. When he hazards a look back Neji is gazing at him, the muscles of his face rigid, his eyes still. Once Neji watched him with an almost predatory grace, cat deciding the fate of an insignificant mouse, superior laying out the sentence of an inferior, the high and mighty, the peasant. Now Neji watches him with something akin to curiosity, asexual. It's the patience in his eyes - as if he's waiting for something, a signal, a gesture, one word, Yes - that troubles Naruto the most.

29.

This is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment. Naruto has already passed through.

30.

"The Hyuuga came to see my yesterday," Sasuke says. He's facing Naruto as he comes in, expectant. He doesn't look particularly insane: his eyes are forward, his face composed, his hair thick, black, if a little unwashed; real, pieces still attached, relatively cohesive. In the afternoon light he looks almost gauzy, transparent, as if you could take that face, that placidity, peel it away like a stocking. He sits in the chair like he's staked to it, pinned at the shoulder, everything else hanging out limply. His hands are loose and empty. "He threatened me. Said if I tried anything he could personally guarantee a quick trial, maximum penalties, capital punishment. You should've heard him." Sasuke stretches out, fingers laced together over his head, arching back against his chair. "'Systemic pressure.' 'Target of opportunity.' 'It is in your personal interest to avoid bringing up matters involving your past residence here.' After a while he cut the crap and said, to sum it up, if I touched one hair on your head, he'd tear me a new one." He cocks his head, a bird, a crow circling carrion. "Through red tape, of course. He doesn't want to get his hands dirty."

31.

Naruto says, "The hell?", follows up immediately with, "You're lying," and then drops himself down on the nearest seat he can find, which happens to be a box, packed full and cardboard (so as to not give Sasuke any bright ideas concerning sharp wooden pointy things and the relation thereof to, say, his wrists. Or the guards' wrists. Not that Sasuke needs anything more than his hands). Naruto finds this idea to be so preposterous he feels like he should make some effort at snickering, call Sasuke's effort at spooking him pathetic, lame, stupid; because, really. Neji. "Oi, you really are crazy," he says. A part of his fidgets, says, don't disregard this, take this seriously. For once. He shoves it away; even if it were true - and it's probably not, Sasuke's just messing with him here, same old Sasuke, for old time's sake, very funny, ha, ha - the implications make him feel disoriented. Like when he's waken up in the middle of the night and there's the sound of another person breathing and it's not himself, but he's forgotten the fact. "I have questions," Naruto starts. Sasuke says, "I'm not Orochimaru. I'm Sasuke. I almost died in Thunder Country because Orochimaru has a new toy. He doesn't need me." He pauses. Naruto gapes at how casually he states this, I am second-hand, I am inferior. A genuine Sasuke would never debase himself like that. On these grounds alone he is tempted to march right back out and denounce this Sasuke a fraud. He's not real. Orochimaru still inhabits his brain, a killer hermit crab. But Naruto's not here for that. "I'll show you I'm not Orochimaru," Sasuke says. He explodes forward so fast that his chair slams backward with a dull thunk. The back of Naruto's head smashes into the wall. Whiplash coils hard and fast up through his spine. He can't get in air, his breath is rammed halfway up his throat, shoved against some blockage like a choke collar. He blacks out momentarily.

32.

Sasuke has him caged up against the wall, elbow jammed painfully into his solar plexus. He should be screaming bloody murder right now. (But that's just weak. He doesn't make a sound.) There's a commotion outside, milling, guards at the door, fists driving into wood. He brings his hand up, fast, wraps it around Sasuke's wrist. Sasuke watches him do it, not moving, cast into place. His face is very close to Naruto's, inches, closing, his breath is warm and smells like cheap soup, whatever they feed him here, eyes slitted and dark. Hair in his face like straw, vaguely bristly, ticklish, jolts him back to where he is, pinned to the wall, up on his toes, sharing breathing space with Sasuke the Uchiha, in caps bolded and underlined three times. He shifts his arm, eases down, and Sasuke lets him. With this leverage Naruto could break his wrist. He yells, "It's fine, it's fine, I've got everything under control. I tripped over a chair, sorry, sorry!" His eyes don't leave Sasuke. This is meaningless, a contest between an Anbu and a cripple, a quadriplegic, Sasuke's power amputated from him like any cast-off limb. Sasuke knows it too. He's leaning in, his mouth drawing up in a false smile. "If I were Orochimaru," he says, fast but not rushed, Sasuke doesn't do rushed, "I'd be able to splatter your guts all over this room. With half his strength he'd still be able to do that much. I'd have taken this chance to kill you. I already got through a few guards, nobody will take you for any different. He'd have taken out one of the Leaf's finest, it's worth whatever consequences that would come after, and they wouldn't be able to kill him because he'd say he's me. They don't want to kill the Uchiha when they could interrogate him. 'Negotiations.' 'Peace treaties.' Torture some answers out of him. Me. But since I'm not Orochimaru I'm not trying anything, because," Sasuke says slowly, enunciating slowly, "I don't care." His nails are stippling absentminded crescents into the skin of Naruto's neck. It's a game; it's chicken, where bluffing too hard means overreaching your limits which in turn means running yourself off a cliff; and even if it's been taken to the extreme, this time, it won't be Naruto who backs down.

So he asks, "Aren't you going to ask how Sakura's doing?"

33.

Nine days ago Sakura disappeared in Thunder Country, whisked off like one of those fabled sylphs of legend who drew the eyes of Gods and were usually next seen leafy and nestling from an impromptu home in divine brows, or else flowing out to sea in the convenient disguise of a burbling stream. She left some spatters of blood in her wake, clots of pink hair, the remains of a summon scroll - not hers - a nondescript ribbon. Naruto trampled over mission orders looking for her, tore through the surrounding acres of land searching, skipped meals, overturned hills, rocks, as if convinced they'd hidden her under a stone in the same way worms hid in dark moist places, shiny beetles burrowing in logs, woodlice falling out from a peel of treebark if you picked at it just the slightest bit. As if she amounted to only that much. He thought, his pulsebeat so loud in his head, pounding away like a hammer, clicking, clicking, thudding, a manic drumbeat, he'd kill them.

He grinded at his food with his teeth when Neji made him eat, broke his pencil stabbing at a missing persons report, cut himself swiping at his katana with a cleaning cloth, and leaked so much chakra that he flushed a rabbit from the scrubby bushes bordering the camp without even so much as having moved its way. Later Neji told him that it was amazing that the Uchiha had even gotten in and out at all, because everyone had been unable to sleep, jittered, frazzled awake by Naruto's excess worry.

34.

Temari gestured Gaara over. There was a man lying splayed in the bushes to their right, two black lines of ants crawling from inside the slip of his pants leg. His head was turned to the side, so shiny and glutinous with blood the features were inscrutable, hands flung up as if surprised, his face slack with death. The wound was a neat one, a red slit across the throat, effective, economical. No crude gashes, cratered grounds, unsightly holes. Gentle killers, Gaara thought, contempt solid in his stomach. "The whole thing's so ladylike," Temari told him later, disgusted. "It's pathetic. I almost feel sorry for her."

35.

Eight days ago, with morning a dirty watercolor across the sky, Sasuke hauled Sakura to camp, covered only by a tatty blanket which she clutched desperately over her shoulders, tossed her in front of Naruto's post, and, with no explanation whatsoever, left. He was on his shift, Sasuke must've known he was. Sakura in an untidy heap in front of him, white and still. Someone had hit her across the face; her cheek was a mottled green-gray, her arms pimpled with strings of hard red bug bites. She said his name. He was already on his feet, that drumbeat in his ears, hatefully loud. He'd kill him. He would. He'd -

Sakura grabbed his ankle. "I'll kill him," he yelled, yanking against her hand. She was stronger than he thought she'd be. "Fucking, I - I, Sakura - " And now he could barely see the shadow of him, imagined or not, darting atop trees, away. "Let me go," he growled. "Naruto!" she was screaming. Her nails dug into the flesh of his ankle, drew bloodpoints in hot lines across his calf. "He - he - " Naruto shouted. "What did he do to you, Sakura, what - "

He ripped free, stumbling backwards. A rumbling from the tents, zippers scratching down. Sakura sprang up and slapped him across the face. His head jerked back. He brought it back around slowly, the motion aching in his bones. She hit him again, just for good measure; he let her. She faltered on the third time; she was crying, the shine of tears in her eyes. "Listen to me, he saved me," she said, "Naruto, Naruto, it was from his same crowd, he went against them, his own," but her voice was thready clutching at strength, dignity. She'd forgotten the blanket, they both had; it was a trivial scrap of cloth on the floor. Her form white in the darkness, an hourglass shape, opaque, time compacted for a transient moment. The ghost press of dawn. "Something bad's going to happen to him," she said.

36.

"I don't owe you anything," he declares, not moving. "I could leave. I will. You're the same asshole as before and I hope they stick you into a pit for the next century or something and," he sucks in a breath, plows onward, "you can find your way out of this mess alone. Serves you right, too."

"I never asked for it any other way," Sasuke says placidly. "You assume. Idiot."

"Bitch," Naruto says.

A dry intake of breath. "I'm hurt, really," Sasuke informs him. He grins, shows teeth.

37.

"Don't let me get in your way," Sasuke's saying. "Kill me. That's what you're here for, right?" The smile that lights up his face is as affable as that of a stuffed animal's and as displaced as snow in desert. It's a button smile, or a snowman one; Naruto can reach out, close the few inches in between them, and pick that face clean, snip away thread, pry out pebbles. A smile come to pieces; he'll keep the bits in his pocket, absentmindedly, until he remembers to throw his pants to the mercies of his washer weeks later; and in there those small stones will clog the machine, jam up the water pipes, the buttons chewed up and spat out as what they are: frail plastic, some unnatural synthesized material. Manmade. That is what Naruto thinks when he sees Sasuke smile.

38.

Sasuke says he doesn't want to fight anymore. Naruto says that if that is the case, will he kindly move his ass off him and stay that way, pretty fucking please, for the rest of their respective lives. (The only reason Naruto doesn't do it himself is because he realizes Sasuke will take the action as a retreat, a weakness, and attack as such; he's never been the one to run, no matter how many awkward, potentially life-endangering situations his bravado's gotten him into.) Sasuke doesn't move. Naruto's neck is beginning to cramp. Sasuke shifts forward, that smile on his face. It's really beginning to spook Naruto out: it's vacant and pinpointed, it's way too close for comfort. Sasuke's hand is warm on his throat, fingers tracing light lines down sinews, hollows, thumb pressing slow into the pulse, testing, fleeting gentle; Sasuke can't do a thing, Naruto knows, and if he tries Naruto will fry him to bits. Nevertheless, he feels he should be panicking. Sasuke's other hand has dropped down to hang by his waist; he leans in, intent, attention riveted as if occupied by something of utmost importance. Naruto turns his head and his mouth brushes against a bristle of Sasuke's hair. Sasuke says, "You're the same, fucking gullible as ever." Naruto says, "Not when it comes to you," knows Sasuke can't strangle him because Naruto will break his hand first, can't channel chakra because he's bounded, sealed up in his own body, a bottle of inert flesh, Sasuke can't do a thing to him, Sasuke can't do a thing to him he can't but Sasuke can, and Sasuke is, because Sasuke moves forward and Sasuke's mouth is biting suddenly into his, the languid curl of his tongue in his mouth, and Naruto freezes and stands very still, wonders if he should tear off his fucking head or take it as another game, another attempt at manipulation, the herky-jerky motions of puppet strings.

39.

Naruto tells Sasuke later, after he's done trying to carve off a large chunk of his horrible smug face, that he doesn't swing that way, and he doesn't know what Orochimaru's been teaching him but it's really really twisted and unless he has a premature death wish he should back off on anyone who comes in: the guards, visitors, interrogators, any other unfortunate male soul. Sasuke is amused, tells him he's only queer - Naruto balks at the word - when it affords him an advantage. Naruto points out that he didn't try to kill him when he could have, so what's the advantage in that. Sasuke merely smiles, says very politely he hopes Naruto will send his regards to Sakura. Butter wouldn't melt in that fucking mouth, Naruto thinks. The visit ends in Sasuke slumped in his chair, answering questions in a monotone, no he didn't, no he has no idea why Kabuto had disappeared a month before and never shown up since, yes he'll point out the spot but he needs a map to work with first. Naruto stands over him and stares, sees his eyes all glassy, body lax, completely unraveling and not caring any less: he's somewhere else, having already subtracted himself from his own body, easy as erasing sums off a board. He's disappeared under his skin. Naruto finds himself wanting to bring him back.

40.

Sakura makes him tea in the afternoon. They sit in his living room, the cups her own set, lacy with flower designs, delicate fine-boned porcelain. Naruto tries his best to drink appropriately but only ends up gulping tea, spilling a little down his chin, clattering them absentmindedly into his sink, which makes Sakura thrwap him smartly across the head. He tells her everything later, an abridged version with only a bit cut out, thinks of it as damage control. She says it's for the best if they don't do anything outright; but she's still going to push, through Lee, through him, through Kakashi-sensei. Nothing's changed. She washes her cups in his sink, the skin of her hands whiter than the bubbles.

Neji calls to tell him they've been teamed for another mission, A-rank again. No ramen in the bag this time, he says. Naruto complains, laughs, nags; imagines he can hear Neji smiling on the other end, lips tilting softly upwards.

Gaara is to stay until he decides his situation, or until it is decided for him, which looks like it will be a long while, as the Sand is in a turmoil and no one can decide which way or how or what side is up. Naruto likes to lie awake and listen to him breathe, late at night, knowing he isn't so incompetent. (He let Sasuke slip but Gaara's different, Gaara likes leafing through his jutsu textbooks, drawing patterns on his maps that are incomprehensible to everyone but him, peeling and eating oranges picked from the gaggle of stubbornly subsisting trees in Naruto's backyard. Gaara likes sleeping for hours on end. Sometimes Naruto will stand over him and pass his hand over Gaara's sleeping face to see if Shukaku is really gone, if what he's left behind is simply human, nothing else.)

Naruto dozes that night. There's a thin light straining down from the sky, the wind blowing clouds like skeins of cotton across the moon. He falls asleep, dreams nice dreams, wakes to white sunshine slotting through his blinds, the lilt of birdsong outside his window. He has a schedule today, he realizes blearily. He'll get up, make breakfast. He'll check up on Sakura, send her flowers because by now Fuzzy Brow's probably already deluded himself into thinking he's won. He'll take his genin pack down to the river, and Gaara, too, if Yamina doesn't act the part of a scaredy-cat, hiss and bristle and spit. Oh, hell, maybe he'll bring Gaara along anyway, 'cause Yamina's been long overdue for a backbone transplant, and Gaara will like it there, he's sure. He'll show his students the right way to skip rocks, instruct them on how to catch fish with their bare hands. After that, if they've been extra good, maybe he'll teach them to walk on water.

- fin -

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