Chapter Text
Naruto batted his eyes open, staring into the void. The darkness felt warm despite the echoing emptiness surrounding him.
“Hello?” he called out.
“Naruto.” a voice came from behind him. He turned around and met a familiar face, earning a smile on his own.
“Sasuke!” he said, running over to him. “Where are we? What are we doing here? How did we…” Naruto’s voice trailed off as he looked around, feeling more eerie when being lost in this strange space.
Sasuke frowned and also let his eyes wander. “I’m not sure…but it feels familiar somehow.”
“Familiar?” Naruto asked, mostly because he was also just overcome with a realisation that he’s been there before, he just wasn’t sure when.
“Not familiar…just more like…I should know where I am.” Sasuke said as he started wandering about.
Naruto followed him. “I think something’s off, I can’t seem to remember what I was doing just before this.” he said, looking over his hands. His right one spoke to him, being strangely interesting to see for some reason. He lifted it up above himself to really take it in.
“What are you doing?” Sasuke asked confused.
Naruto let his hand fall, but still had his eyes stare at it. “I don’t know it’s just…it feels like this hand doesn’t belong to me.”
“What are you talking about? It’s your hand.” Sasuke said amused.
“I don’t know it’s just…it feels so cold somehow.” Naruto mumbled.
Sasuke looked down at his own hands and Naruto saw the moment he frowned at his left one. “This is weird. My hand also feels…odd. Like it’s not supposed to be there.”
Now Naruto was curious. What was this place, what was up with the deja vu and how could a limb of his own feel so wrong?
“Let me see.” Naruto asked, holding out his hand to take Sasuke’s. Sasuke opened his palm, offering it to Naruto. Both jumped when a sudden glow erupted from his hand. “What the hell was that?!”
“I don’t know!” Sasuke said startled.
“You don’t know why your own hand is glowing?” Naruto asked distressed.
“Yours is too!” Sasuke said, pointing at Naruto’s hand that was indeed, also glowing.
Naruto screamed and jumped back as he held his hand up. He stared at his palm. In the center sat a circle, giving a bright light. He frowned at it. “What is this?” He looked over at Sasuke who was also studying his own hand.
“It’s a moon.” Sasuke said.
“What?”
“A moon. It’s a moon at the palm of my hand.” Sasuke clarified and held up his hand to show it to Naruto. Indeed, a crescent moon was sitting in the centre of his palm.
Naruto looked between his hand Sasuke’s. He frowned. “And I have…a sun?” he asked, holding up his hand for Sasuke to see, letting their palms face each other.
The moment the lights touched, they intensified and glowing orbs appeared all around them. Both gasped as they stumbled around, looking at the display. Naruto frowned out of confusion once one orb started speaking in a familiar voice. As he walked closer, he saw a younger him being tied to a pole, being fed a lunch by younger Sasuke.
“Sasuke! Look! It’s us as kids!” Naruto said in a gasp and pointed.
“And here we’re fighting.” Sasuke answered him. Naruto looked over his shoulder, seeing Sasuke gaze into an orb, looking lost to the world.
Naruto wandered around, looking into other lights. “Hey, we’re in here too. But you seem…different. Is that an earring?”
“What?” Sasuke exclaimed and rushed over to push Naruto to the side. He frowned. “It looks like me but…I don’t remember ever having an earring. Still, it feels like I’ve had.”
Naruto laughed. “You? Jewellery?” he chuckled, but it slowly faded as his gut also told him that he’d seen that before. He just couldn’t remember when.
“Well look at this, I got more than some jewellery in this one.” Sasuke said, pointing to another orb.
Naruto followed him and saw Sasuke in a great set of wings, black just like his hair. His stomach fluttered a little, thinking that he looked pretty handsome with wings on. “I don’t like the look of me though. Kurama took it to the next level in this one.” he frowned as he saw himself transform in a very vile way, covered in blood, looking more like a demon than ever.
Sasuke wandered further and stopped to linger at one orb, but he said nothing. His curiosity got to him and Naruto quickly pushed Sasuke aside to see what he was looking at. On a stage the two of them stood, scripts in hand, sharing a kiss. Naruto’s face heated up before he quickly coughed and dashed over to the next one.
He looked through each one he passed by. In one he wore an Akatsuki jacket, in another he was sitting hidden in a garden with Sasuke, some of the more embarrassing ones had him and Sasuke wrapped up in each others arms, leaving no space between them.
“It’s strange but…” Sasuke began. “I can’t remember any of this ever happening, and yet it’s all very real. As if I know that I have done that, and I’m so sure of it that I…” he stared blankly between the orbs, as if lost in thought.
Naruto said nothing, for he felt the same way. Looking at all of these scenes before them, it felt more real than like a dream, more like a distant memory that he’d forgotten that he had.
“But, what is this place? How can we see these things here?” Naruto asked.
“Not sure…but I think I know a way for us to see more.” Sasuke said and lifted his hand, holding his palm out flat for Naruto.
Naruto looked between his glowing hand to Sasuke’s. A sun and a moon, so different and yet so alike, sharing the same sky. He swallowed nervously before he laid his own palm flat against Sasuke’s. It felt warmer than anything he’d ever touched without getting burnt.
A hole opened up in the void before them, showing a planet earth below, floating among the stars. They let each other go before inspecting the new object.
“What…What is that?” Naruto asked with big eyes.
“Home.” Sasuke said before he looked around. “I think I get it.”
“Get what?” Naruto asked.
“I think we’re dead.”
Naruto stared at him. He wanted to scream, laugh, anything. But as he tried to, he couldn’t make himself. “What?”
Sasuke passed him a glance. “I think we don’t remember anything, because we’re not supposed to. I think…we’re looking at our collective past lives. Each one a life we’ve lived before and this…is the gate to the next one.”
Naruto’s eyes grew wide. "We're...dead? So what, we're ghosts?" he said in a panic. He'd always been afraid of those.
Sasuke shook his head. "No I think this is the after life, or the brink between, I don't know. But I'm sure that these are past lives and we've just opened the gate to the next one."
Naruto looked down at his hand. "The sun and the moon. We're both needed to get to the next life?"
Sasuke lifted his hand as well, his moon still glowing brightly. "I guess so."
"So it's like...we're joined? Like destiny?" he said, feeling his face heat up.
Sasuke spared him a glance. "Like soulmates."
Naruto's stomach fluttered at the word. He looked around, seeing him and Sasuke in all of these different worlds and different times. Without meaning to, he smiled. “Seems like we spent every single life together.”
He saw Sasuke who also looked around before giving Naruto a smile in return. He passed a glance to his own palm before holding it up to Naruto. “Well, the moon isn’t much without its sun.”
Naruto laughed, taking Sasuke’s hand in his. “You wanna try out the next life together too?” Sasuke nodded, his smile soft as his eyes never left Naruto’s. They walked over to the edge of the ground and took a deep breath. “What do you think we’ll do in the next one?”
“No idea.” Sasuke said. “An idiot like you can get up to anything.”
“Jerk.” Naruto stuck his tongue out.
Sasuke laughed. “I wonder when I’ll see you again. I don’t know how old I’ll be when we meet.”
Naruto’s eyes lingered, taking in his face one last time before he’d wake up and not know of it. “Either way, it will be a story worth telling.”
And then they jumped.