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He’s developed a strong distaste for people recognizing him, but he’s the Sasuke Uchiha, and after everything, he’s never really had a chance to be unseen, to be unknowable. Sasuke Uchiha, younger brother to Itachi Uchiha, son of Fugaku Uchiha, head of the grand tragedy known as the Uchiha Clan. Sasuke Uchiha, the sole survivor of the Uchiha slaughter. Sasuke Uchiha, rogue ninja. Sasuke Uchiha, Itachi Uchiha’s slayer, murderer, killer. Sasuke Uchiha, Akatsuki member. Sasuke Uchiha, Shinobi.
What he dislikes most of all is how he’s never really sure what version of him the person speaking to him or gawking or admiring is seeing. Some may see the bitter, pain-ridden teenager he was while others see a criminal. His eyes can’t tell him what they’re thinking, and he doesn’t bother to ask. When their distrust and sometimes even hatred for him show in their eyes, browns and blues dyed a prejudice hue, his mind drifts.
It drifts out to sea, and Sasuke has nothing to tether it to, although sometimes he’s not sure if he’s actually trying to stop it . He thinks about what his life would have been like if he had killed Naruto, and how the world would have been after. Sometimes, he thinks about what could have been if Naruto had never gotten in the way, if he had resigned himself from Sasuke’s narrative. He loves Sakura and Sarada, he loves them more than he thought was ever possible, but the word family could still taste so strange during his loneliest nights in lonely worlds. If he doesn’t stop it, if he doesn’t station his mind before the tide rushes in, the thoughts are relentless. What if he had left the village after their fight? Gone to another that hadn’t abandoned his clan after their blood-soaked the earth? He was a free man only because of Naruto and the others, if they hadn’t gained power, he’d be in prison, studied most likely, poked and probed—
It’s the wrong way of thinking, he's pretty sure it is, at least. It must with the way his chest tightens whenever his mind does this to him, why his skin feels too tight and his eyes too hot. It must be why when he realizes that he misses not only Sakura and Sarada but Naruto too, he feels guilty. It feels like mourning and he loathes it. It’s too late to entertain those thoughts, too late to consider any other possibilities his life could have taken, why grieve the impossible, the unlived?
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Every so often, the limb he lost visits him. It’ll reattach itself in the dead of night, and he’ll wake up in a jolt, yelping as his hand clutches onto his shoulder. The pain would be throbbing, and when Sasuke glares at his empty sleeve, he would remind himself that the arm that feels like it’s cramping up and being crushed all in one isn’t there. It hasn’t been for years, and yet it holds such intangible power over him. He refuses Naruto whenever he offers him a replacement like his own, explaining the process of utilizing the cells from the first in his own choppy knowledge of the procedure, but Sasuke can’t help but remember his corpse, reanimated and frowning, knelt by Sasuke’s dying ancestor.
He hasn’t told anyone about the manifestations, not that there is anyone to tell when he’s hidden away in a tree or sitting against the corner of another secluded inn room he’ll never visit again. He wonders if Sakura suspects anything, the few times it had happened when he was near her he immediately excused himself and hid away in the restroom or lied about seeing Naruto before leaving. He’s certain it’s something physiological and not mental, but it doesn’t matter. She hasn’t said anything to him, and they both know Sasuke would refuse to seek treatment even if she did.
A barrage of what feels like puncture wounds erupt and he hisses through his teeth to keep quiet. He’s near Kumogakure, an incoming storm awakening the night sky with a spider web of far off lighting. He chose a cramped cave tucked away into the rocky mountain, the forest that surrounded it coming alive as the wind shook trees and scattered smaller animals. The remainder of his arm, a bit of severed bone and scarred flesh by his shoulder, feels like pins and needles are jabbing into it. Sasuke shuts his eyes tightly, inhaling through his nose and exhaling through his mouth.
He reminds himself then, when there’s a dull lull in the agony, that this is just another facet to his penance. He has yet to absolve himself of his sins fully, their repercussions, and echoes still dwelling in each of his steps. Being reminded of the pain he’s put those he cares about through, in a physical, concrete manner is just .
But tonight is hard, and the pain ebbs and flows, coming to a halt for a few minutes before emerging again, stronger than before. He’s hunched over, his vision blurry from the tears that are brimming his eyes. His teeth are sunken into his lower lip, the taste of iron swelling. In his weakest moments, like tonight, he wishes that someone would find him, that Sakura or Naruto would somehow know where he is and come to him. It’s selfish, and when the pain begins to build after another lull, it takes all of him not to howl at the raging sensation.
Eventually, the torment exhausts him, and his head lolls forward as he’s overtaken with sleep.
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Solitude isn’t a foreign notion to him, he’s had it placed on his tongue forcefully by others, and has singed it onto his hands by his own accord. It isn’t anything uncomfortable or unknown to him, but lately, it has felt different. There is something off-center about its usual rigidity, something more bitter and acidic in its flavor. Sasuke doesn’t realize what it is until he’s back in Konoha, for over a week this time, and Sarada spots him as he opens the door to their home. She stops what she’s doing, carrying a vase with dried in flowers in it over to the kitchen it seems, and stares. Sakura notices and steps into the threshold, and her face immediately moves with joy as she calls out to him, beckoning him into her open arms. He has a home , a family, and that hadn’t been an existing variable to consider before, while he was wading through the murky waters of isolation.
He’s made it in time for dinner, and it passes easily, but there’s an itch under his skin, coagulating in his palm. Towards the end, Sarada perks up and apologizes to him, explaining after how she has practice planned with some of her friends. He holds his hand out and she steps over to him, and the itch subsides only for a moment as he places his hand against her cheek. She leaves after, and Sasuke follows, heading out to visit Naruto. When he nears the front door, he feels Sakura’s hand linger on his arm and turns to look at her. Her cheeks are tinted rose, a bit from drinking and a bit from him being there, and her lips are tied together into an achingly tender smile.
“He misses you, too, you know.”
His palm is prickling and he leans in to kiss her before leaving, the words on a loop in his mind.
The air is cool, a slight breeze brushing against him and tousling the worn ends of his cloak. It’s still surreal to him sometimes, walking through the village like this, taking familiar turns and shortcuts to get to the Hokage office. He’s still adjusting to the village as it is now, shops he doesn’t recognize lining the roads as his eyes dart from them to the screens above, still surreal and strange as they play advertisements, some featuring familiar faces. It’s been years, but if he stayed still for too long, the village he knew as a child and a teenager would emerge, breaking through the paved sidewalks and peeking through the cracks in cement and wood. He could remember where false promises were said and where secrets were buried. It isn’t comforting, but neither is the unfamiliarity that greets him each time he returns. The village is alive, endlessly growing and mutating, and Sasuke isn’t present for the changes, he just returns to more, to another restaurant or clothing shop opening as Sarada grows another inch and Sakura’s hair gets longer.
Even in his own life, in his village, Sasuke is a visitor.
When he arrives at the office, he’s relieved that Naruto isn’t alone. Shikamaru is standing by him, holding out a clipboard with some lists as another assistant, a woman Sasuke doesn’t recognize is searching for something in a stack of binders feet away. It takes Naruto a whole two seconds before looking over at him, a sliver of relief in the twitch of his mouth.
“I didn’t know you were coming, did I miss a message?”
Sasuke shakes his head and steps towards him, stopping on the other side of Shikamaru.
“I didn’t send one.”
“Well,” Naruto starts, “it’s good to see you anyways.”
He doesn’t want to reply, and thankfully he doesn’t have to when the unnamed woman speaks up, carefully plucking out a binder from the heap before placing it on Naruto’s desk, going off about community suggested budget cuts to the police force. Naruto groans and runs a hand down his face, and Sasuke decides it's time to leave.
“I’ll give you my report tomorrow. I just wanted to let you know I was here.”
There’s a flicker of disappointment in Naruto’s expression, and a nervous tension in the woman’s shoulders, but he ignores it.
“Ah, yeah. That’s fine, thank you, Sasuke.”
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The nightmares have never stopped. They’ve only aged alongside him, unfolding their spindly limbs as his own grew, changing shape to morph into new terrors. He used to dream of his mother and father. He used to dream of slipping on their cold, old blood that seemed endless and breaking his chin against the ground, before shoving himself up and running away from his older brother, ever-swirling red eyes damning him. The evolution of those dreams began when he had left the village, slowly changing the faces of the carcasses strewn across the ground and the age of his bones. The ghastly visions had plagued him so often and for so long that they had become another part of his life, as repetitive and mundane as eating and breathing. But when the setting really began to change, and Sasuke couldn’t recognize the newly formatted script of sobbing and pleading that he had devotedly memorized, he felt terror crack through once again.
Instead of his unlit home, he would stand on curved, ancient stone, the sound of nearby rushing water thunderous and rattling his frame. The sky would be so close above him, the clouds a backdrop to the familiar, impossibly blue eyes he’d see once he looked ahead. They were outraged and in mourning, and he would wonder if it was pride to think both those emotions belonged to him as he’d dart across the stone, the water gone silent. He’d open his mouth to scream a name that has become a brittle battle cry, but the dream would shift all at once, a clap of thunder both too loud and too close unnerving him. He’d come to a stop, and a blinding flash of lightning would illuminate the world so only the dead could see.
When he’d regain his vision again, dots of black sporadically appearing and fading, his arm would be enshrouded by warmth. It would be puncturing Naruto’s chest, the slivers of bare skin on his fist granted the mercy to not be covered in blood would be cold, misted by the nearby waterfall. He’d feel his stomach constrict and his throat burn as he turned his head away, vomiting at the sensation of pulsating flesh entrapping his arm, desperately trying to heal. His eyes would drift to the viscous blood that would dribble from the corner of Naruto’s lips as they formed his final words, except Itachi’s voice would flow out, asking over and over again do your eyes see? Do your eyes see?
As an adult, the nightmares don’t lessen their hostility. It seems that with each outlandish and surreal experience Sasuke endures, his nightmares’ creativity expands, absorbing colors from the world around him. They’d rob the world of gentle pinks, bright oranges, and humble greens, only to deposit them into the horrors that plagued him, sinking into the muted black and blues of his dreams.
The nightmares always felt so vivid, so real. Maybe they were fueled by his eyes. Maybe, just maybe, the suffering of those in his clan was a genetic trait, the terrors and loss they had all faced individually spun into the ringlets of their pupils, passed along to each infant for the sake of community.
But his nightmares still have Itachi, and he can’t imagine him haunting anyone else. They still have him witnessing his clan —his parents— be slaughtered over and over, except that now in the nightmares he’s older. He’s a grown man and Itachi is still barely a man, his eyes black, and the cracks in his skin from death growing. Through tears he asks Sasuke to forgive him, as if any of what happened to them were really his fault, begging him to understand as his slender blade cuts through a cousin’s tender throat. There are new additions to the bodies that turn the ground into an obstacle course, Sakura’s bloodied hair peeking out from underneath Sarada’s uncurled hand. They’re two bodies he can remember the names of, and he repeats them to himself as he turns away from Itachi, trying to find a way out. There are corpses everywhere, the earth swallowed by their still hearts and blank eyes watching him, and Sasuke realizes he doesn’t remember most of their names, he struggles to connect faces to aunts, uncles, and family he knows he had once.
Naruto is there, watching from behind him, no matter what direction he turns in. Sometimes, he’s a child, his hair dirty and his cheeks still pudgy and smeared with cheap white paint. Other times, he’s an adult, the Hokage robes draped over on his shoulders, their ends stained crimson. When Itachi is finally done with the massacre and stands motionless, the entirety of his blade and the hand holding onto its handle drenched in blood, Naruto places a hand on his shoulder.
Sasuke doesn’t turn to look at him when he says, “you should come home more often.”
He wakes up sweating and panting after those. He’d look to his side and on the good nights, like tonight, and Sakura is sitting up, a hand on his shoulder as the other holds his hand. Her lips are unmoving and still, but her eyes are pleading, and Sasuke wouldn’t dare look at them. On the bad nights, he’d be alone, the smells of ichor putrid in his nose as all he feels are the phantoms of Itachi and Naruto’s words clinging to his skin, beseeching him to not forgive them.
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He visits Naruto again not long after. Sarada is away on a mission with Boruto and Orochimaru’s child, and Sakura is planning on spending the day with her parents after she meets up with Tsunade. He’s not sure why, but he checks for him first at his home.
Sasuke stands on the porch, glancing over to see the evidence of a lived-in home. There are flower pots painted haphazardly by a child lining the porch, a series of flowers and cacti growing and breaking through the soil. Next to the front door, there is a wind chime hanging, slowly spinning in the air as the sunlight filtering through its stained glass dots the sides of the house in an array of colors. He’s forgotten to knock, but when he raises his fist the door opens to reveal Himawari, her head tilted up to ogle at him. She’s barely ever seen him, and yet her face breaks out into a grin and she shouts, “Uncle Sasuke!”
He looks down at her and places a hand on her head, ruffling her hair, “You’ve grown.”
She raises her arms enthusiastically and is absolutely beaming, “I have! Papa says I might be taller than my older brother when I’m older.”
He pulls his hand away and huffs a quiet laugh, but then asks, “Is Naruto home?”
She shakes her head as he hears a door from the inside creak open and close, Hinata stepping into view behind her daughter.
“Oh, hello, Sasuke. I was wondering who Himawari was talking to. Are you looking for Naruto?”
“I am.”
Hinata frowns apologetically, “You just missed him. He should be at the office within a few hours, though.”
He nods and as he turns to leave he hears Hinata say, “It’s good to see you.”
He doesn’t go to see Naruto until it’s nighttime, and there’s only one light on in the office that Sasuke can see from the ground. He misses him , not the Hokage, and it was always easier to talk to the man he knew when they were alone. It takes him a few minutes to reach the top floor of the building and raps his knuckles against the open door of the office once. When Naruto looks up at him from behind his desk, half-lit by the light, their eyes meet.
“It’s late,” he says.
“It is.”
Naruto hums and taps the pen he’s holding against the desk, “I really don’t understand how there’s always so much more work. I sign one thing and ten more show up.”
“Maybe someone’s cloning them.”
It’s a crack at a joke and Naruto raises an eyebrow in disbelief at him before laughing and motioning for him to come closer.
“I think I’m done for the night. A guest from Kirigakure gave me some fancy booze, what do you say we drink?”
“Are you still a lightweight?” Sasuke counters, but he’s already walking towards him.
He unwinds easily alongside Naruto, resting his weight against the desk as they both stand next to one another, enough space in between for the bottle of sake and cups. He nearly spits out his drink once when Naruto mentions rumors surrounding Kakashi about a secret lover, and Naruto in turn laughs so hard he has to clutch onto his sides when Sasuke tells him that a young girl had stopped him for a photograph while on his travels. They’re talking about everything and nothing at once, and Sasuke is watching him through it all, memorizing the depth of the dimples that emerge and the crinkle to his eyes. There’s a quiet ache muted by the warmth of the alcohol, but it won’t subside entirely. He wonders how it would feel to hold his hand as he watches Naruto grip the bottle and pour, and wonders how his lips would taste as his gaze lingers on him taking another sip.
“You can come home more, you know,” Naruto says.
Sasuke bristles at the comment slightly, it isn’t something he hears scarcely.
“Sakura and Sarada understand what I’m doing and why I can’t stay long.”
Naruto smiles fondly and taps a finger against his cup. Sasuke realizes it’s from Ichiraku, it’s logo painted on the side.
“I guess I’m the selfish one.”
What? What? What did he mean? Sasuke tears his gaze away and stares straight ahead at nothing, lifting his half-empty cup to his mouth to drink. He doesn’t say anything, he’s not sure what to say but like always, Naruto opens his mouth first.
“Did you ever think, did you ever consider what we—,” he pauses and Sasuke tenses, his entire spine rigid, “what we could have been?”
He wants to run, he wants to bolt out and leave and come back when Naruto is Naruto and not whoever this is, but his legs are part of the wood from the floor and a quiet voice from somewhere he’s tried so hard to ignore whispers, isn’t this what you wanted?
His arm aches and he’s silent for a long while, until Naruto shifts beside him, fidgeting with his cup.
“Crap. I must be drunker than I thought, I’m sor—“
“It hurt.”
Naruto turns his head towards him and stares. Sasuke breathes and lowers his shoulders and decides to go , if he stops now he knows he won’t ever again.
“I didn’t understand when I was younger, I barely do now, but it hurt. It still does, sometimes.”
Sasuke finally looks at him, and the manner in which those blue eyes are watching him as if he were a prayer, makes him want to burn. No flames erupt when Naruto steps towards him, closing in the space between them. He feels his eyes warm and swirl and he’s thankful that Naruto doesn’t comment, just pauses for a moment to look before leaning his head in. He doesn’t kiss Sasuke immediately, his breath is hot on his lips for a nervous moment before he actually does.
He wants to remember this. He wants to archive it somewhere in his mind until his body is rotten in the ground because he knows this is it, there won’t be more.
His hands end up on Naruto’s waist, tugging him impossibly closer to him. They keep kissing; Naruto tastes like liquor and something sweet, and when Sasuke bites his lip, a hint of a moan spills out. He coils strands of Sasuke’s hair in his hand but doesn’t pull, just keeps him close as they continue to kiss, a drunken mess of teeth, lips, and tongue.
Whatever spell the two are under breaks and they stop, their deep breathing thunderous to their ears but quiet in the room. Naruto has his eyes closed but Sasuke is watching, memorizing, regretting.
He thinks of returning to his home now. He thinks of resting beside Sakura in their bed and Naruto beside Hinata in theirs and feels his limbs freeze over, brittle and cold. He’s about to apologize and leave when Naruto laughs, but it’s an empty sound and Sasuke hates it.
“Look at us,” he says.
“All I do is look,” Sasuke replies.
There’s a surprising look in Naruto’s eyes and Sasuke doesn’t understand how he hasn’t noticed, how he hasn’t known, after all they have gone through together. He puts a hand to Sasuke’s cheek and he leans his head into the touch. They’ve touched one another so liberally during their battles over the years. They’ve intimately come to know the peaks and valleys of their knuckles and the angles of their jaws and the planes of their stomachs and chests. Touches like this were so foreign, and they would remain that way, he reminds himself, there is no space for familiarity like this between their prophetic bones.
Naruto moves his hand away and Sasuke realizes he’s been holding his breath.
“You can stay here tonight. The futon turns into a bed you can sleep on, just put the papers on the floor.”
“Alright.”
Naruto doesn’t push for more, what he does instead is pull out a mat and a series of blankets and place them all on the floor by the futon. Sasuke gives him a look but Naruto decidedly ignores it. Once he’s outstretched on the futon, he rolls onto his back, his arm dangling off the side purposefully. Naruto is on the floor beside him, half covered by the blankets he brought over. The seconds it takes him to reach out and touch Sasuke’s hand are excruciating, but once his fingers slip awkwardly in between his, Sasuke closes his eyes and squeezes, once.
For tonight, his imaginations and yearning are turned physical, and he indulges in them. He vows to memorize the warmth of Naruto’s clammy palm and the hushed sounds of him breathing and predictably falling asleep first. He knows when the sun rises and daylight infiltrates their sacred space, that Naruto will be intangible in the way he craves. He reminds himself that it doesn’t mean that Naruto isn’t there as a whole, just in a facet that Sasuke wishes, more often than not, was more. Even so, he knows their time has passed, and as he feels sleep weighing down his eyelids and he slips his hand out of Naruto’s, he understands it and he acknowledges it and he’ll continue to live with it.
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There’s a thin, glowing veil draped over the world around him the next morning. As he threads through it, careful not to tear it, he feels obscenely out of place. He isn’t touched by its gleaming fabric, his skin far too many shades pale and his eyes too hard, too violent. He feels the veil tug and snag on him as he reaches his house, Sakura’s shoes by the front door as he steps in. Sarada isn’t home yet, and Sasuke knows it's now or never. The veil rips around him as he finds Sakura in the kitchen, humming to herself as she flipped through a recipe book.
“Sakura,” he says, and she looks over to him almost instantly.
“Could we talk?”
“Of course,” she says.
She walks around the counter and towards him, gently slipping her hand into his as she guides them to the dining table. He sits beside her but looks over to the wall next to them. Sakura doesn’t push him into talking, she waits and listens. This isn’t the first time he’s come to her like this, his eyes weary and far off as his body knowingly betrayed the composure of his face. There are some drawings and sketches Sarada had made with Sai’s son framed on the wall, alongside a few family photographs they had all taken together, moments captured since Sarada was an infant up until now, and a single photograph Sasuke had found of Itachi and his parents before he had been born.
“I kissed Naruto.”
The string of words sound ridiculous when he hears them out loud, but they’re the truth. Sakura stares at him, blinks, and then looks down at their hands.
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Is this the first time?”
Sasuke shouldn’t be amused but an ounce seeps through.
“Other than as children, yes.”
Sakura chuckles at the mention of them as brats, shaking her head lightly.
“Sasuke, I’ve never seen you or Naruto love anyone else more than each other.”
The words churn his stomach, and he feels a bit panicked, but he stays still and looks at her, eyes wide. What has he done?
“What? Sakura, I–”
She squeezes his hand and Sasuke closes his mouth.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t love me, because I know that you do, or that he doesn’t love Hinata. It just means you two love one another too, in your own way.”
He doesn’t know what to say, his tongue feels too far for his mouth, and every time he tries to drag it across his teeth to speak it gives up halfway.
“If this is once, you don’t have to explain yourself to me or ask for forgiveness. You two are some of the most important people to me, and you’ve never had a chance to stop and to think, now you do and well,” she pauses, mulling over her words. “You deserve peace, Sasuke, in more ways than one. If he gave you that, just for a moment, I’m still thankful to him.”
“It was just once,” Sasuke says, and he can taste the permanence of his words. “I’m still sorry.”
Sakura leans in and presses her lips against his forehead. Sasuke feels something crumble upon contact, something slowly chipping away somewhere inside of him, and he reaches for Sakura. He places his forehead against her shoulder and trembles. He doesn’t know what’s coming over him, but he can’t stop himself, and his wife holds him close to her as he continues to shake and rare tears wet her shoulder.