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Sasuke finds himself chasing after Naruto. Again.
"You know I always catch up to you, dobe!" He yells, just for something to do with the sheer helplessness he feels.
He breaches the edge of the forest and doesn’t wait for his eyes to adjust to the direct sun, launching himself at the rock formation ahead. He scales it quickly to gain a better vantage point and scans his surroundings.
Naruto is waiting across the river, standing on a face Sasuke knows almost as well as his own.
Uchiha Madara. The fucking traitor that Sasuke’s spent half his life being compared to.
We're at the Valley of the End, Sasuke realizes. He couldn’t believe they had made it as far as the border already.
Sasuke rips his eyes away and focuses on his objective. “Naruto!”
“Sasuke!” The dobe yells back, but makes no move. “Did Sakura send you? I already told her-”
“How could you do this to Sakura?!” Sasuke interrupts. “To Kakashi-sensei?! Come home!”
Naruto shakes his head and backs away. “I can’t-”
Sasuke refuses to think as he launches himself across the river, landing on his beloathed ancestor’s head. He channels as much momentum as he can into a powerful, fluid attack. Infuriatingly, Naruto counters every punch, every kick, without even his trademark shit-eating grin. Sasuke has no idea what they did when Kakashi took him away for solo training before the Third Stage, but whatever it was has improved his hand-to-hand. Whatever, he’s not the only one who learned new tricks. Sasuke activates his sharingan, just one tomoe for now.
“Who sent you?” Naruto asks, not even having the decency to be winded.
“Does it matter?” Sasuke grits out, between handstands. “Everyone loves you.” The universal hero worship is like the number one thing Sasuke hates about him. What kind of person could possibly be loved by everyone? That kind of person isn’t possible. It’s all a lie, like That Man.
Sasuke had been incensed to be put on the same team with this airhead faker, especially when their teacher showed such blatant favoritism to his former sensei’s son. They fought every day, and Sasuke instigated his fair share of their impromptu “sparring matches.”
Sasuke lands a kick and flips back onto his feet. “Everyone wants you back.” He yells across the statue. “Who cares who signed the mission scroll?” Not that there’s a mission scroll. This is strictly an under-the-table mission, Lord Fifth was clear about that.
Naruto tackles him and pins him in a hold that Sasuke had never quite figured out how to wiggle out of. “Look, you don’t even like me.” Naruto pants into his ear. “Just let me go. You can say you never even picked up my trail. Sakura will believe you. She’ll get over it; everyone will.”
Sasuke rears his head back, and Naruto moves to cover like he always does. Sasuke finally finally slips the hold and advances to all three tomoe, careless of the chakra drain. “I won’t get over it! How about that!” He moves back in, striking and punching recklessly. “You spend all these months trying to be my friend, trying to pry open my shell, and you’re gonna leave me just like that?! How dare you! I was just fine hating you before!
“Sasuke-” Naruto finally looks stricken, but Sasuke’s not done.
“We're Team 7 for life!” Sasuke ruthlessly throws Naruto’s words back in his face. “Or were you lying about that too?”
Naruto rears back, and Sasuke slips under his guard. He hears a cr-ack! sound, and Naruto crumples to the ground. Did I shatter his knee?
Before he can check the damage, he’s thrown onto his ass by a red explosion. He raises his head to see Naruto cloaked in the fox’s chakra. Shit, one-tailed mode.
Sasuke grits his teeth and mentally prepares. I just have to get close to him.
Fighting Naruto on one-tailed mode is very different from fighting Gaara and Shukaku in that forest, but Sasuke uses the same basic principle. Just get close enough and hope these cursed eyes are good for something.
As with Gaara, he was able to, well- he did something. He thinks he just put the biju to sleep, but he’s no expert.
He starts tying Naruto’s limp body up. If Gaara was any indication, the host will wake soon, even if the biju is down for the count. “Look, you were the first person to believe in me.” He tells the unconscious Naruto. “To look past my family history and dirty blood. I’m more than my family legacy and stupid cursed eyes, I know it. But everyone just wants to lump me in with the other psycho murderer freaks. Everyone but you. Because you’re crazy, to be clear. No sense of self-preservation. You try to save freaks like Zabuza the fucking Demon of the Hidden Mist. But the problem with us freaks is that if you save us, we’re your problem for life. No takebacks.”
“I don’t want to take it back.” Naruto’s voice is quiet, but firm.
“Then what the hell was all this for? Why can’t we just go home?” Sasuke drops down to lie down on his back beside him.
Naruto takes a breath. “I know you think everyone likes me. But you don’t know how fake-”
“How fake they all are?” Sasuke interrupts. “Yeah, I kinda noticed.” Sasuke looks over and notes Naruto’s incredulous face. He rolls his eyes, and says, “Okay, I didn’t know at first, but I’ve figured it out by now. After hearing the hundredth stranger babble about your mom that they were totally best friends with, I kinda get the picture.”
“… you do?”
Sasuke can't stand to look at his face with him looking all vulnerable and shit. He can't help but accuse, “You know you play into that, right?”
“Well, what choice do I have?” Naruto snaps. “I’m not a person to those people; I’m a symbol of hope. People look at me and see the legacy of a father and mother I’ve never met. I’m not a person to Konoha; I’m an idea. An idea they want to use.”
Sasuke looked away. “Well, fuck them. And their fucking ideas about us. They don’t know shit.” Sasuke pointedly did not notice Naruto’s sharp glance.
“At least they’re comparing you to heroes,” he continues bitterly. “All anyone ever tells me is how I'm destined to try and destroy Konoha like Madara. How the village would be better off if my entire family had died, but they all have to put up with me because they don’t kill kids,” he quotes.
Sasuke chances a glance over at Naruto and quickly looks away. He hates pity. He tries not to think about how this is probably the longest Naruto has ever been quiet in Sasuke’s presence.
He kinda hates it.
“You're the only one who ever looked past that.”
Sasuke’s not talking to Naruto. He’s just telling that cloud up there.
If he squints, it kinda looks like a frog.
“I don't give a flying fuck about the Yellow Flash or his son,” Sasuke tells the cloud. “My best friend, though? He matters.” It looks like a nice cloud. It won’t tell his secrets. “Not because he's super fast or amazingly talented or some shit. But because I can depend on him.”
Sasuke rustles up enough courage to turn his head to the side. Have Naruto’s eyes always been so blue? “So fuck them,” he whispers.
“Sasuke-” Naruto starts.
Sasuke sits up quickly. His heart is pounding like an idiot. We’re not fighting anymore, he wants to tell his traitor heart. Except that would be insane, so he doesn’t. He gets up and paces. “Those idiots don’t know anything. They told me I would grow up to be a traitor and look at which one of us is trying to defect.” He turns toward Naruto and motions between them.
Naruto wiggles himself upright and his voice sharpens. “You're right. Fuck the civilians. They don’t know shit. But the leadership? To them, I’m not even a nice idea. I’m a weapon.” He slips his bonds, and Sasuke can’t even bring himself to care. “A weapon they want to unleash against their enemies, no matter what it would do to me. You know they said if I couldn’t get one-tailed mode to work, they’d just rip off the seal and try again with a different baby?”
Sasuke hates that idea. “Lord Third never treated you like that.” Sasuke doesn’t know if it’s a statement or a question, and he hates that idea, too.
“Not quite,” Naruto says, begrudgingly. There’s a story there, Sasuke dispassionately notes as he watches Naruto brush himself off. “But the honorable Lord Fifth did. And at the old man's funeral, no less. I'm not defecting to Jiraiya; I'm escaping Danzo.”
Sasuke wracks his memory for a clear picture of Danzo’s eulogy, but nothing from that day is very clear. It was a dark, grueling day. Sure, Danzo’s tone was a bit strange, and Naruto looked uncomfortable being forced to stand next to him, but kami- everyone was uncomfortable that day.
“I will never go back to Konoha willingly. You'll have to drag me back.” Naruto stares at him, challenge clear in his eyes.
Sasuke looks down at his hands, frozen. He knows his village isn't perfect, knows that fact intimately. But to betray it? Help its biggest weapon get away?
And here he is, dehumanizing Naruto himself. His supposed “best friend.” He suddenly can’t stand to look at himself anymore.
Naruto must notice him softening. "Look, Jiraiya might be willing to take us both in. What's a second high-caliber fugitive?" Naruto reaches out, offering his hand. Sasuke stares at it for a good five seconds.
It’s five seconds too long.
Wood sprouts all around Naruto and drags him to the ground, restricting his movement, and constricting his air. "Sas-," Naruto gasps.
“Naruto!” Everything happens so fast, Sasuke can hardly make heads or tails of it.
“Great job, kid!” A jonin Sasuke has never seen before melts out of the shadows of the forest. He’s wearing the Leaf symbol, but somehow, that doesn’t set Sasuke at ease. “My name's Yamato. My jutsu’s great for subduing tailed beasts, just like your sharingan.” He reaches Naruto’s limp body, and Sasuke has to physically ball his hands into fists to prevent himself from making an extremely stupid move.
The jonin turns to him and gives him a wooden, perfunctory smile. “Thanks for capturing him, Sasuke! You know, I think everyone’s wrong about you. You're a true hero.” He hefts Naruto’s body (not corpse, NOT corpse!) onto his shoulder and starts for the forest. “C’mon, kid. Let’s go home.”
Sasuke's never hated his eyes so much. He wants to never see anything again.
But he knows the image is burned in his brain.
Of his best friend trusting him.
And getting captured for it.