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The feeling of loneliness. Abandonment.
The rough shards of ice ripping his skin. The sight of a friend sacrificing himself instinctively. Needles. Blood boiling. Rage.
Watching two people who cared for each other pass.
The sounds of fists colliding with faces. Aching bones and sore muscles. The feeling of intense chakra spilling out. The intense stare from an ominous figure lurking in the shadows. Have to protect Sasuke. Blood. More blood. Broken bones.
A giant snake invades my home.
Sasuke is leaving. Have to stop him. Chakra colliding. Bones and muscles that never fully recovered. Saliva. Scrapes and burns. Electricity thrown into my chest. Unconscious. Nothing. Tired. He's gone.
Orochimaru. Unfiltered rage. Released. Blind to anything else but my goal of taking him out.
My dear friend lays dead. Salty tears flow. Begging for help.
Konoha in destruction. Ruins and the blood that covers it. Beaten down. Immobile and helpless. The quiet girl jumps in, only to be slaughtered effortlessly. So tired of losing people.
Sasuke might die. Can't let that happen
War. The sight of old friends and old enemies rise. So many memories flood back, but I have to press forward. The scent of death permeates my senses. Have to keep moving.
Infinite Tsukiyomi. A dream world- no, dimension. Battered and bruised, on the brink of death.
Fighting until we're out of breath. Exchanging our personal pride and sense of justice for a limb.
Naruto springs up, a small yelp coming from his mouth. Sweat coats his body. The noise bounced off the walls of the cave they resided in. Realizing what he had done, Naruto covered his mouth, hoping that he didn't wake his companion. Too late.
"Naruto?" Sasuke calls out.
"G-go back to sleep, Sasuke. I'm fine" Naruto stutters, holding himself. Sasuke was not a master of emotions, or reading emotions well for that matter, but it was easy to tell that his friend was having one of those nightmares.
"Naruto, I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to go back to sleep while you suffer."
"I don't need your help!" Naruto snapped, but immediately regretted it, as a sorrowful look crept onto his face. Sasuke tentatively placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder. He just wanted to go back to sleep and forget all of this.
"Are you having nightmares again?" Sasuke asked, but he already knew the answer.
Naruto did a slight nod, and continued staring downwards. His fingers played with the sleeping bag, desperate for some sort of distracting stimulation.
"Everything just came flooding back." He said quietly. Sasuke almost had to strain his ears just to catch what his friend said. "From being alone for eleven years, to the time you almost died... And when you left Konoha... Left me..."
He inhales and exhaled, trying his best to regain composure, like Sakura had taught him.
"And when Pain attacked and destroyed Konoha and when I got the news that you'd be hunted down..." Naruto continued, as if punctuation did not exist. As he recounted each tragic event that was laid before him, his mind was filled with the graphic and devastating images. Images that would just loop and loop and loop. Never stopping.
"I'm still sorry about that. Leaving you that is."
"It's fine, it's in the past, and you're here now, so I shouldn't be worrying about it." Naruto sniffed, tears staining his eyes as he made attempts to wipe them away.
"Don't say that." Sasuke paused, trying to come up with the best way to phrase his thoughts and feelings. "Your feelings... Are valid. Something like me leaving you.. shouldn't be dismissed as a trivial event."
They sat there in silence, the only noises were the receding rain and the echoes of the cave they stayed in. A type of silence that felt tense but also like a warm hug. Sasuke moved his hand from Naruto's shoulder, and wordlessly asked if he could hold Naruto's hand. The blonde complied.
"Can... I ask you something Sasuke?" Naruto mumbled, almost afraid to upset Sasuke with, what he believed to be, a foolish question.
"Of course, anything."
"How did you cope with your trauma? I mean I know that you made it your mission to get revenge but..." He trailed off. He was afraid to reopen Sasuke's own wounds of the past. "Were you ever able to heal?"
Sasuke sighed. "I think you know the answer, but I never dealt with my trauma properly. Almost every night, the events of the massacre would plague my dreams. I didn't have anyone to comfort me, or talk to me. And that just made the pain so, so much worse." He paused, before quietly mumbling "I was so lonely, that I've even thought about just ending it. But I couldn't do it."
He squeezed Naruto's hand. "After years and years of mourning and wondering what I could have done, or what if I did this, I just... Got so tired of crying. I needed to do something other than be a useless little kid who couldn't stop his brother. I decided I would avenge my parents." Sasuke's voice sounds worn, and he tries incredibly hard to not let himself cry.
Naruto already knew of this, yet hearing Sasuke describe his feelings put more weight on the matter.
"But the nightmares never went away. They just kept coming." Sasuke stared at the cave walls as he recounted his feelings in those moments, "And it only got worse once I killed Itachi. I never dealt with the trauma in a healthy way. I don't even know what the proper way is."
"But," Sasuke leaned closer to Naruto, looking directly at him, "what I do know is how you feel, in a way. These feelings of hopelessness, and fear, and anxiety. Things that stay with you for the rest of your life." Naruto's eyes finally met Sasuke's.
"At the very least, I can empathize." More pausing, "I ... Want to help you. I want to help you push past this. And I'll do anything I can to help." Their fingers were now intertwined with each other, holding onto one another for support.
"I know I have no right to force you to accept my help, especially since so much of that pain was caused by me." Sasuke pulled Naruto into a hug. "But please let me make it up to you. You don't deserve to feel this way. You're such a wonderful person."
Naruto sunk deeper into the hug. The tears won't stop flowing, but it doesn't matter. "Sasuke..."
"Naruto." He hummed back.
"How can you offer to help, when you haven't fully healed yourself?" Naruto pulled back from his friend. His blue eyes staring into Sasuke's black ones.
Sasuke's reasoning was hard to explain, at least to him. Would Naruto believe him if he said that he'd be willing to put his own feelings on the back burner if it meant he could offer his support? It would be considered uncharacteristically odd of Sasuke. He's never done this for anyone, ever. Except now.
"Just let me do this for you."
"But Sasuke--"
"Please, Naruto." Sasuke pulls back to stare Naruto head on. "For once let me help you. You've always tried to help me, whether it was with those silly arguments, or your brash antics. They were able to take my mind off of things. And it made me feel like I could finally open up again."
"Literally if it wasn't for Orochimaru, I would've ended up a better person, and not like this," he gestures to his whole self. Past Sasuke would have never exposed himself in such a vulnerable manner, nor admit that he wasn't right. But things were different now, especially with Naruto's mental health wavering. "Being with you helped me heal a little." He said softly.
Naruto knew what he meant; every time he and Sasuke interacted, it was always through jabs and minor insults, or arguing for the sake of arguing. But these verbal bouts were their love language, in a way. It may have seemed cruel or rude to an outsider, but to them it was their own secret way bonding, one that no one could understand except each other.
He breathes heavily, and before he could come up with a rebuttal, Sasuke cuts him off, sounding almost angry, as if he's had these thoughts since their genin years. "And don't you dare think you don't deserve to heal. You're always helping people, whether it's through your actions or your willingness to listen to others' problems. But they never offer the same service."
"Sasuke," Naruto responds with a half-laugh, "I do those sorts of things because I want to." He lets go of Sasuke's hand. "I'm not expecting anyone to give back to me. I like helping people, it makes me happy to be of use to others."
Sasuke rubs his hand against his forehead, "That's the issue. You think that the only way to be accepted by others is to be useful. All of these people never gave a damn about you until they think "I need help. Naruto will help me no problem." And then you do help them! Because you're a good person!"
"You... You're wrong." Naruto turns his head away from Sasuke. "I help people because I want to."
Sasuke grunts to himself. He's so bad with words sometimes, especially when it comes to things like emotions and feelings. Despite all of his experiences outside of Konoha, he never emotionally grew up, at least not properly. He racked his brain, trying to come up with the best way to tell what his thought process was without misconstruing it.
"I'm not saying you don't want to help people. I'm saying that," a hesitation. "you subconsciously think that by helping people, you'll get their attention and affection." He pauses again, afraid of the words he'll say next. "Because you never got that when you were younger."
Naruto simply stared at him, and for a minute Sasuke was worried that he messed up somehow.
"I know."
Sasuke blinks back at him. Wasn't he just disagreeing?
"I'm aware that I enjoy helping people not only because I like helping, but because it meant I was valued enough to be even asked. Like how all of the pranks I pulled as a kid were just a way for people to notice me. You know why that is." Naruto stares down at his legs, and fidgets with his sleeping bag yet again.
"No one noticed me when I was sad or moping or crying for attention. So what better way to handle that other than pretend it wasn't an issue?" Naruto said with a smile.
"Naruto, that's a terrible way to deal with your issues." Sasuke said bluntly. He inwardly groaned at his tone.
"If you keep giving yourself away like this, you won't have anything left for yourself. You can't live like this." He continued. "Be selfish for once. Take the advice you give to others."
He's practically pleading at this point, and Sasuke Uchiha never pleads nor begs. It's in his blood to be assertive and prideful, not passive and meek. Any other day, Sasuke would grovel at what he perceived to be his own incompetence as a Uchiha. But Naruto is an immovable force when it comes to his own inner feelings and thoughts, and will not budge.
"If not for yourself, at least do it for me. Let me help you, for once."
Naruto looks at his partner with a melancholic expression in his face. He knows Sasuke isn't wrong, but how can you just undo almost two decades worth of trauma? Wouldn't it just be easier to continue the way things were, and let time do its thing? He hates being a burden. He doesn't want to be that kid that clung onto every bit of attention and affection again. But the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that that hasn't changed much at all, he merely just used a different method of asking for it.
And Sasuke stared back, waiting for a response. The anticipation was sort of driving him mad.
Suddenly he feels Naruto lean into him, his arms surrounding Sasuke like a safe cocoon. It's been a while since they hugged... Not counting minutes earlier of course. He feels the tickle of a warm breath against his ear.
"Okay."
Sasuke pulls back and cups Naruto's cheek, a sense of relief passing over him. They both lie back down on their sleeping bags and stare at each other. Eyes that held the galaxy looked at the endless ocean.
"Did... Did you want to talk about them? The nightmares?" Sasuke offers. Naruto shakes his head.
"Right now I just want to sleep." Naruto mutters. He gently paws at Sasuke's hand, asking to hold it once again. "I just need to know you're here, so I don't feel alone in my dreams." Sasuke takes Naruto's hand.
A curt nod. He watches his beloved friend close his eyes, watching, waiting for him to fall into a peaceful slumber.
Sasuke waits for what feels like hours, but he doesn't mind. He refuses to fall asleep until he felt that Naruto was safe. As he watched over him, he notices all of the little changes Naruto's form has gone through throughout the years. A more defined jawline. His hair getting longer and messier. And was that a new freckle?
He smiles to himself. If he knew any better, he would admit that he's been developing feelings for his one and only. He places a chaste kiss on Naruto's forehead, before allowing himself to sleep as well.
These were both of their first steps into overcoming their pasts, with Naruto finally learning to be selfish, and with Sasuke learning to be selfless. It would not be easy, but both knew they had each other for support for years to come.