Chapter Text
It was all going well up until that point. Sasuke grinned viciously with pleasure at the feeling of his newly awoken Sharingan, the way that everything he saw was suddenly so clear. But before it had woken, both he and Naruto had suffered from various injuries, and there was a long scratch directly above one of Sasuke’s eyes.
A moment was all the fake hunter nin needed.
A moment when a trickle of blood made its way into Sasuke’s eye and he had to blink furiously to try to get it out. He missed where the fake hunter nin had appeared, missed how he was aiming towards where Sasuke was presenting a weak spot.
But Naruto didn’t.
There was a flash of orange at his side and Sasuke wanted to yell at his blond teammate for getting in his way—
Naruto fell heavily against him, needles sticking delicately out of his neck, and all Sasuke could do was catch him reflexively, bear him down to the ground.
“What—?” he started, but it was all too apparent.
“Guess your eyes…aren’t as special as you thought,” Naruto wheezed out, trying to grin up at him.
“Naruto, you idiot,” Sasuke said furiously, but he still held him, and even the fake hunter nin was standing back. “I had it under control!”
“Yeah,” Naruto said, coughing. “We’re even…now. Hunter nins. ‘M not…a scaredy cat.”
“Shut up,” Sasuke hissed, but he could feel himself starting to panic. The fake hunter nin had said that he wasn’t going to hold back anymore, that he was aiming to kill now, and Naruto’s breathing was becoming fainter and fainter as the seconds went by. “You can’t – we’re not even! You have to stay alive, to even the score. I’ve saved you more than you’ve—you’re going to be fine—”
“Was gonna be…Hokage,” Naruto said, looking past Sasuke. He dragged his eyes back with obvious effort. “Least I’ll take…the stupid fox…with me…”
And then he went utterly still in Sasuke’s arms, and he couldn’t believe it.
“Naruto, wake up,” he pleaded. This was like everyone in the Uchiha district, lying still and sprawled out as he came home. Like his parents, freshly killed by his own brother.
“Is this the first time a friend has died in front of you?” asked the fake hunter nin, voice calm and unconcerned.
Friend.
Naruto was his friend, and he had died for Sasuke.
His death was Sasuke’s fault.
He felt his eyes burn with something like tears and he barely held them back, still staring disbelievingly down at the body in his arms.
Is this the first time a friend has died in front of you?
He was so tired of watching people die.
“This is the way of shinobi,” the fake hunter nin continued, but Sasuke wasn’t interested in paying attention to anything else he said.
All he wanted was for him to burn.
Around him, black flames burst into being.
Sakura ran through the clearing fog towards where that large dome of ice had been. Where Sasuke and Naruto had been.
Everything was over now – Kakashi-sensei had taken care of Zabuza and then turned his dogs on Gatou when the man left the safety of his mob to desecrate Zabuza’s body. The assembled might of the villagers, who had shown up just after Gatou’s death, managed to scare off the mob itself.
Sakura could make out guttering flames, so she knew where the boys of her team were, and as she threw herself into a skidding halt, she could see them, or at least Sasuke, safe within the heart of the flames. There was no way for her to get through, though, because the flames were still burning, however lowly.
And they were black.
She didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t be anything good.
“Sasuke-kun?” she called out tentatively. A slight twitch of shoulders was the only response she got. “Sasuke-kun, your flames—”
They abruptly went out even as she said the words, and she could see clearly as she moved closer. Sasuke was kneeling with Naruto’s head resting in his lap, and the blond was lying stiller and more contained than she had ever seen him, even in sleep.
His chest wasn’t rising and falling.
“No,” Sakura said, and even as she shook her head, she felt her eyes filling up with tears. Shinobi rule number 25, she thought to herself, but she couldn’t make herself believe in it or try to stop the tears. “No.”
She may have always thought that Naruto was annoying and too loud and nowhere near as cool as Sasuke was, but that didn’t mean that she wanted him d—
That she wanted him—
Kakashi-sensei was suddenly there, crouching in front of Sasuke.
“What happened?” he asked, and Sakura didn’t think she had ever heard his voice so dark and cold.
“He wasn’t supposed to—” Sasuke said, head still bowed and his body shaking, and at the words, his voice cracked. “My Sharingan was supposed to—he shoved me out of the way, he saw it coming when I didn’t and he, and he—he took the hit for me, he—it’s my fault, it’s my fault he’s dead. I killed him.”
“Sasuke,” Kakashi said, very quietly. “I need you to look at me.”
Sasuke finally raised his head, blood dripping down his face, and Sakura saw that his eyes were not his normal black, but red, with lines traced in them that folded into a six-pointed star.
When Kakashi got to his genin, all he could do was pray that he wasn’t too late. When he saw Naruto lying so still in Sasuke’s lap, he knew that he was.
It was all he could do to keep from flinching at Sasuke’s words, at the way that they echoed Obito’s terrible sacrifice for him. Then he heard the dull finality of Sasuke’s last words, and a dark suspicion filled him.
“Sasuke,” he said. “I need you to look at me.”
The boy did, and Kakashi couldn’t help but recoil.
But almost as soon as he saw it, Sasuke’s eyes faded back to black and slid shut as he fell over. Kakashi barely caught him, laying him down on the bridge more gently than he would have landed, then reached out for Naruto.
Please, please, he thought, feeling desperately for a pulse. Nothing, but the fake hunter nin had made Zabuza seem dead, and maybe, just maybe, he had hit one of those points rather than a fatal one. Please.
Kakashi removed the senbon from Naruto’s neck as delicately as he knew how, well aware that doing it too carelessly could cause damage. He knew barely anything of medical jutsu, but he had sparred with Genma and if the man’s poison didn’t get you, his pinpoint accuracy for pressure points would. Usually removing the senbon was sufficient enough. Combined with the Kyuubi’s chakra, which boosted Naruto’s healing capacity—
Almost a minute, but Kakashi felt a faint heartbeat that was steadily growing stronger, and Naruto took a faint, shuddering breath in his arms.
Thank you, Kakashi thought, not even sure who he was directing it at. He tilted his hitai-ate back over Obito’s eye and let himself relax the tiniest bit. Thank you.
After the massacre, Sasuke woke up in the hospital and had a few moments of peace before he remembered. This time, he didn’t even get that. He woke up and knew that Naruto was dead.
He let himself lie there for a few minutes, keeping his eyes shut, then made himself sit up. There were a few bandages that he could feel under his clothes, and he dully supposed that Kakashi must have dressed his wounds before putting him to bed. He must have passed out from chakra exhaustion.
Despite himself, he found his eyes drifting to where Naruto’s futon had laid during their stay in Wave. He wasn’t sure whether he could deal with seeing it empty, sheets crumpled in the way that Naruto always left it when he woke up—
Naruto was sprawled out on the futon, snoring lightly, and very much not dead.
“Pressure points,” Kakashi said from the door. “Like the fake hunter nin used on Zabuza. He wasn’t actually trying to kill you.”
“He said he was,” Sasuke said, mouth feeling dry. He made himself look away from Naruto. “Naruto stopped breathing. I thought the hunter nin—”
“He’s fine,” Kakashi said, but something about the way that he stood alarmed Sasuke. The jounin’s posture was stiff and there was some kind of indecipherable expression in his visible eye. “I need you to come outside with me.”
Sasuke’s eyes darted back to Naruto, a nervous gesture before he could even help himself.
“Now, Sasuke,” Kakashi said, almost threateningly, but his voice softened as he added, “Naruto’s fine. I promise.”
Reluctantly, Sasuke stood and followed his teacher outside. They walked to a rain barrel, which was filled up to the brim. Their reflections wavered in it.
“You told me you woke your Sharingan during the fight,” Kakashi said, and Sasuke felt a very faint thrum of pride at that, but mostly he was still numb and reeling. “Activate it.”
Sasuke did as he was told, catching his eyes in the reflection. Two tomoe in his right eye, one in his left. It was good that he had finally gotten them, that he had told Kakashi, but why…?
“What do you know,” Kakashi asked, “about the Mangekyou Sharingan?”
Someday, when you have the same eyes as I do…
Sasuke flinched back.
“So you’ve heard of it,” Kakashi said, lone eye narrowing thoughtfully.
“He said,” Sasuke made himself say, “that you have to kill your closest friend. To get it. They questioned him about Shisui. Before.”
Kakashi sighed. “Not entirely accurate. The Mangekyou Sharingan awakens from the grief of watching of someone you care about die and blaming yourself for it. It could come from killing them yourself, but it doesn’t have to. When you thought the hunter nin had killed Naruto on the bridge…”
And suddenly Sasuke could see where this was going, but that shouldn’t even be possible. He just got his Sharingan, hadn’t even got two tomoe in his left eye, and Kakashi thought he had a Mangekyou?
“You’re wrong,” he said shakily. “I don’t—”
“Just think,” Kakashi said. “Think back to what you felt when you thought he had died.”
He could. Easily. It was frustration that he wasn’t strong enough, a terrible and consuming grief that he hadn’t thought he’d ever feel again, the knowledge that Naruto had taken a hit that was meant for him, a deep burning behind his eyes—
“Look in the water,” Kakashi said, and Sasuke’s Sharingan was suddenly different and wrong and he felt his breathing speed up because he had watched Naruto die with his Sharingan blazing and felt his chest stop moving and Itachi had made him watch as he killed everyone in the compound, burned it into his mind with Tsukuyomi, and you must kill your closest friend—
“Calm down, Sasuke!” Kakashi shouted at him, dragging him away from the water. Distantly, Sasuke noted that he was shaking and gulping in panicked breaths, but all he could see was the way that Naruto stopped breathing.
“I can still see it,” he gasped. “I can see it, I could see him die, he stopped breathing.”
“Naruto’s fine,” Kakashi said, gripping his shoulders. “But I need you to calm down, Sasuke. Can you take a deep breath for me?”
He made himself take a deep breath, hold it as Kakashi instructed, and let it out slowly. Kakashi made him repeat it a few times before stepping back. He looked very tired.
“I can try to teach you how to use your Mangekyou, along with your regular Sharingan,” Kakashi said. “But I don’t know all the secrets of the Sharingan. You have access to more materials than I ever did.”
“Do you have…?” Sasuke asked.
Rather than directly answering him, Kakashi pushed up his hitai-ate. A fully matured Sharingan stared lazily at Sasuke, before the tomoe shifted into elongated triangles that formed a twisted pinwheel.
Sasuke didn’t ask how he’d gotten it – the eye itself or the Mangekyou – and Kakashi didn’t tell him.
Sasuke wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Sasuke had been acting weird around him ever since the bridge. He’d been really withdrawn and moody and was talking even less than usual, which Naruto hadn’t even known was possible. And he definitely hadn’t said anything to Naruto – not even a thank you, ungrateful bastard – but sometimes he caught Sasuke staring at him.
Sasuke would be standing in the corner of his vision, apparently just watching him, and Naruto would turn and see him and then Sasuke would look away.
Getting a whole bridge named after him cheered Naruto up for a while, but the walk back to the village was a whole other matter. It was weirdly tense between all of them. For one thing, Kakashi kept dividing his attention between Naruto and Sasuke, like he was afraid Naruto was going to collapse again and Sasuke was going to…well, Naruto didn’t really know what Kakashi thought he was going to do, but he could definitely tell that Kakashi was concerned.
The first thing that Naruto had seen when he’d woken up after the bridge was Kakashi, sitting by his futon. Their sensei had barely cleaned himself up from the fight and he hadn’t even had his book out. It was like he’d just been sitting there, waiting.
Naruto hadn’t been sure that Kakashi cared for him that much, no matter what he said about teamwork, because no one liked Naruto, but Kakashi had sat by his futon for hours on end. And when Naruto had finally managed to get up, even with most of Kakashi’s features covered, Naruto had seen the huge amount of relief that had flooded across his face and the way that his shoulders lost their tenseness.
Sakura had actually hugged him, and she hadn’t hit him at all over the past couple of days. She was almost walking around him on eggshells, which was cool because she cared, like Kakashi-sensei did, but Naruto almost wished she’d go back to how she always acted around him.
And Sasuke…
That bastard was just so weird around him now and Naruto didn’t have a clue what to do about that, so he just glared at the back of his head. Some kind of gratefulness or happiness – if the stuck up bastard could even be happy – that Naruto wasn’t dead would be nice.
Pfft.
Naruto probably shouldn’t have expected anything else.