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Late at night when Sasuke is alone with his thoughts and the ceaseless drip of water from the busted pipe above his cell, he permits himself to live in the past. Tsunade has ordered him blindfolded twenty-four/seven—the sharingan are far too dangerous to be left unhindered—but she's permitted him the small dignity of keeping his eyes.
Sasuke knows that the rotating ANBU guard permanently stationed outside his cell can likely sense the slight fluctuation in his chakra signature when he activates his kekkai genkai. However, they've never intervened. There's only one reason that Sasuke uses his clan's precious bloodline limit these days, anyway.
In the first memory, he is a child again, walking beside his older brother on the road to the Uchiha compound. The air smells like cherry blossoms, and Itachi's grip on his hand feels steady and safe.
Then, as a genin—the training field stretches out before him, grass and forest verdant in the late summer warmth. Sasuke can feel the blaze of sun on his skin, the slight breeze through his hair. Kakashi's voice, even and solid from somewhere behind him, coaching his students to maintain chakra control. Sakura's satisfied hmph of agreement; a frustrated holler from Naruto. The blur of orange jumpsuit and yellow hair as they spar, Sasuke smirking as Naruto skids across the grass for the fourth time that afternoon. The flash of his blue eyes, the determined set of his chin as he clambers to his feet and faces Sasuke again.
Walking back along the road to Konoha after their first mission in the Land of Waves, Naruto's arm draped easily over Sasuke's shoulders. Naruto laughing, head thrown back, a pink flush high on his cheeks. The unfamiliar warmth that floods Sasuke's chest, makes his palms tingle.
Older, then, crouching desperate and terrified in the Forest of Death as the chunin exams crumble to disaster around them. Crumpled against a tree trunk in Naruto's arms. His hand tangled in Naruto's jacket, afraid to let go because even then he's unable to bear the thought of losing the other boy. His head swimming. Knowing with certainty that Naruto is a fixed point in the chaos, a place for his heart to land safely.
The memories jumble, time unraveling and becoming unreal. Flashes of the an underground bunker, the hiss of serpents over cool stone. The bleak, empty erasure manifested by the curse mark. The feeling of slipping away from himself, unbecoming, his soul unspooling like thread between his own fingers.
The bright, hot flash of seeing Naruto's face again after all of those months away. Like lightning, like fire. The terrible knowledge that one of them would walk away from the fight, the dark desire to force his hand and let it be his rival.
A burning ache between his ribs when Sasuke's dark eyes meet Naruto's sky-blue gaze. In the memory, he feels something in his chest un-anchor itself.
Faster now, spinning as rapidly as the twin sharingan—a whirlwind of a battle, the realization that this is every one of their juvenile sparring matches made lethal and horrifically real. Naruto screaming his name as Sasuke's chidori barrels towards him, halfway between a warning and a plea. The awful crackle of purple lightning and the smell of searing flesh. Blood running from between Naruto's parted lips as he raises those blue eyes to meet Sasuke's for the last time.
The sound of his name, just barely a whisper, on Naruto's final breath.
If the ANBU in the hallway outside notice anything, they don't let on. Sasuke curls against himself, fighting the howl of agony that has built inside his chest. His hands claw against the thick cloth of his blindfold—he doesn't even want it gone anymore, really, he just wants to stop seeing. Every fiber of Sasuke's being aches with what he's lost. In the cold darkness of his subterranean cell, Konoha's most dangerous prisoner slumps to the floor and begins to cry.