Chapter Text
Sasuke retreats, again, because as skilled as he and Konohamaru are, they’re not currently equipped to hold off five squads of Iwa invaders by themselves. Especially with Sasuke watching his so-called partner so closely. He wouldn’t do his village the disservice of saying the Sarutobi didn’t deserve his new rank of Jonin, but that doesn’t mean that Sasuke, a seasoned jonin, can lean on him in this battle as an equal. No, this is more akin to a babysitting mission, but one where he has to let the baby toddle into danger before shielding him as discreetly as possible. He has no plans to do something as blatant as openly jumping between Konohamaru and danger, but the last thing the Uchiha Clan needs is for the Hokage’s grandson to die on a partnered mission with the next Head of Uchiha. Itachi would be a perfectly serviceable Clan Head, were Sasuke to die in the line of duty.
Thoughts of Itachi make Sasuke long for his older brother to be here to watch his back, to lessen the feeling of being exposed and alone, but he turns his attention towards problems he can actually fix. And anyways, he already feels the judgment of relying on others too heavily, whether it’s true or not.
“Where’s our backup?!” Konohamaru shouts as they flee through the trees, because he’s clearly not a sensor.
Sasuke just pulls him to the forest floor, just in time for an orange blur to zoom over their heads. “HERE!” The orange blur yells, charging at the Iwa squads that hunted them. Sasuke is jolted, to the core, and doesn’t quite know why. It must be the adrenaline, or maybe even relief, but those have never felt so momentous, so right. There’s a tug almost, on his palm, or an itchiness, but he can’t dwell on it, and he turns instead to the squad of ANBU that the orange blur brought with him.
“Sarutobi-san is injured. He needs medical attention,” Sasuke demands. He can’t reenter this fight while worrying about him. He ignores Konohamaru’s anticipated whining and waits for implicit confirmation from not one, but two people that the medics have “custody” of the Honorable Grandson and not him.
Probably still not enough, but it’s as good as he’s going to get.
Sasuke jumps back into the fray, noting that two of the five squads have already been taken down. The orange blur may be loud and hyper-conspicuous, but he’s certainly efficient. Sasuke settles into the rhythm of the fight and ends up fighting alongside said orange blur, who is revealed to be a blond human, around his age, maybe younger. He doesn’t seem to stop shouting, but he also doesn’t seem to stop winning. Sasuke begins to feel a rightness in fighting alongside him, a rightness he rarely feels outside of his brother, a few cousins (sometimes), and his genin team (rarely, but it does happen). He clearly doesn’t have time to ponder it in the middle of a fight, but that doesn’t matter, because when the orange blur grabs him to get them both out of range of an area jutsu, it all clicks into place.
That’s his soulmate.
Sasuke would like to think he was already fighting in his top form, but even he can recognize his attacks get a little more vicious, his defense a little more zealous, and his focus a little more intense. But that’s his soulmate. The person Amaterasu herself saw and bound him to. He had only gotten the souldreams a few times in childhood, but they had cut off abruptly and never returned. He had had to accept his soulmate may have died. He had thought the souldreams closely resembled Konoha, and at first, it felt like a great blessing to be born so close to his soulmate. But even in peacetime, children died.
That his soulmate survived is almost as unexpected of a blessing as having one in the first place. Sasuke can feel himself starting to vibrate from excitement. Mother is going to be so happy.
He watches his soulmate straighten from his crouch on the other side of the clearing. Finally, they’ve finished off the Iwa invaders. Finally, he can commit to memory the sight of his soulmate standing still, with no motion blur. Ruthlessly beautiful, shimmering in the golden hour. Sasuke steps forward. Finally, they can-
“Uchiha-san.” An ANBU halts him in his tracks, brazenly stepping in between him and his soulmate. “Fall back.”
Before Sasuke can snarl any of his thoughts out loud, his soulmate shakes his head and says, “Calm down, Cat.” He turns to Sasuke and tilts his chin up defiantly, “What do you want?”
Sasuke freezes. He blinks, but the image doesn’t change. His soulmate crosses his arms, regarding him with suspicion, instead of embracing him with open arms. “Thank you,” he says helplessly. He sees two ANBU exchange glances out of the corner of his eye. Yeah, pretty uncharacteristic of an Uchiha, but what else can he do? He needs his soulmate to hear his voice.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome,” his soulmate responds coarsely. “You gonna turn off those eyes or what?”
He feels hurt to hear his soulmate disparage his sacred kekkei genkai, but now that he looks for it, he can see his soulmate cycling through kais every few seconds, as if certain he must be caught in a genjutsu. He obligingly deactivates his sharingan, despite the regret that he won’t have their first conversation committed to its memory.
The ANBU around him relax, just a hair, and that confuses him more than it angers him. Certainly, many shinobi feel uneasy around an active sharingan, but this reaction is disproportionate.
Nonetheless, he takes another step forward.
“Stop, Uchiha-san,” the Cat ANBU reiterates, now stepping fully between them, and breaking their eye contact. “No further.”
“But why?” Sasuke bites off.
“Why not?” Cat returns. “What business does the Uchiha heir have with Konoha’s jinchuriki?”
Jinchuriki? Sasuke fights to make no reaction. But that can’t be right.
“Reinforcements should arrive tomorrow,” his soulmate, a jinchuriki supposedly, tells him almost apologetically. “Good luck, Uchiha-san.” His soulmate leans around the ANBU, just enough to reestablish eye contact, and before Sasuke can even register how very blue his eyes are, the entire squad is gone. He and Konohamaru are alone in the clearing.
And he doesn’t even know his soulmate’s name.
“Sasuke-san?” Konohamaru inquires hesitantly. He seems to have felt that something momentous was happening, but who knows what conclusions he will draw from that. Statistically, it’ll be some version of “the Uchiha being evil again.”
“Let’s find a spot to camp,” Sasuke sighs, suddenly drained.
When Konohamaru “wakes” him for his turn on the watch, Sasuke goes gladly. It’s not like he was getting any sleep, still puzzling through the events of the day.
The identity, if not the existence, of Konoha’s jinchuriki had been a well-kept secret from his generation until the war with Iwa started earlier this year. Since then, the jinchuriki (Uzumaki something or other) has been deployed on the frontlines with surprising effectiveness, but almost never with an Uchiha. This wasn’t very noticeable, except for all the ways that it was. The Uchiha still suffer the slander of being behind the Kyuubi attack almost 2 decades ago, and clearly no one is eager to put a sharingan holder anywhere near the biju holder. This may be the closest the jinchuriki has ever been to an Uchiha.
That explains why the ANBU dared to step between him and his soulmate.
But … jinchuriki aren’t supposed to have soulmates. It’s not like soulmates are that common; Sasuke himself is the only living Uchiha with a mark. But soulmates are sacred, said to be a blessing from Amaterasu herself, while demon chakra is said to corrupt the soul. Given that no jinchuriki on record, sparse though those records may be, was ever revealed to have a soulmate, it was a very easy conclusion to make, and repeated so oft throughout the years that it has joined the rest of the legend as truth.
Either way, it seems Sasuke is the lucky one that gets to test that legend.
“You can sit,” Sasuke calls out. “I don’t bite.”
His soulmate appears, sitting beside him with a faint whoosh of leaves. Sasuke fights the urge to drum his fingers on his legs or fidget in any way.
“Can you shut those off?” the jinchuriki whispers.
“I’m on watch,” Sasuke drawls, instead of letting himself feel offended. His soulmate clearly took pains to sneak back, just to talk with him. The least he can do is make him feel safe. Even though he will never be in danger from Sasuke’s sharingan, Uzumaki clearly doesn’t know that. Yet.
“Please?”
Sasuke depowers his kekkei genkai and hopes his eyes will readjust to the pitch dark quickly.
“What do you want from me?” Uzumaki asks tentatively.
“I believe it was you who snuck away from your minders to come find me,” Sasuke reminds him, even though he can internally hear his genin teammates laughing and despairing in turns at his brusqueness. His idea of conversation has always tended more towards prickly and gruff, and he is very lucky to have been assigned a genin team that eventually learned to overlook that. Though some are not quite as happy about that.
His soulmate scowls, apparently very easy to get a rise out of. Shisui’s going to enjoy that, Sasuke notes. “You’re the one who tried to come at me,” he retorts hotly. “After the battle. Explain that.”
Here goes nothing. “You’re my soulmate,” he says simply. “Now that I’ve found you, I want to get to know you better.” He was never very good at detailed explanations or flowery speeches.
“But jinchuriki don’t have soulmates,” Uzumaki shoots back. A little too quick, and a little too fervently.
“You feel it, too,” Sasuke says, hope rising inside. “Don’t you?”
“I do,” he confirms hesitantly, eyes darting away before returning back. “But I don’t have a soulmark.” Uzumaki holds his gaze, seemingly waiting for Sasuke to sigh and give up. Maybe throw up his hands and admit it’s impossible. But Uchiha don’t give up that easily.
“My soulmark has been gray ever since I received it,” Sasuke tells him and begins unwrapping the bandages around his left hand. “But when we touched today-”
Sasuke makes the tiniest ball of light in his right hand and waits for both of their eyes to adjust. It’s a risk, even as far inside their own territory as they are, but far worth it, to be believed.
Uzumaki peers closely at the whirlpool design on the palm of Sasuke’s left hand. Sasuke had wondered why such a common Konoha symbol would be the thing that distinguishes his soulmate, and now that he knows his name (even partially), he has his answer. No longer a smudgy grey, his mark has finally colored in a ghastly, putrid orange color that looks terrible next to his skin. It’s the most beautiful thing Sasuke’s ever seen.
His soulmate reaches out his right hand out tentatively, and Sasuke moves to meet him. The moment their skin touches, the jinchuriki gasps in pain, hand crushing Sasuke’s in a panicked grip. “What is it?” Sasuke hisses, clutching him back in concern.
His soulmate uncurls his fist, though Sasuke still has hold of his forearm, and light emanates from his soulmate’s right hand. As they watch, a dark purple design etches itself into the palm, the very shade Izumi tells Sasuke his chakra is. When the light vanishes, Sasuke is astonished to see a mark with three interlocking ellipses. He turns to his soulmate and asks with bated breath, “Do you recognize that design?”
The look in his soulmate’s eyes says, yes, but “Show me anyway.”
Sasuke obeys, much happier at being instructed to turn his kekkei genkai on than off. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he opens them, he looks at his soulmate with the mangekyou and knows that he’s convinced now. They’re bonded and they both know it. His soulmate holds up his right hand, now adorned with Sasuke’s own mangekyou, and Sasuke presses mark to mark. Something shifts inside him, and Sasuke knows with unerring certainty: This is the start of their new life together.
His soulmate reaches out with his left hand to trace the corner of his eye. Sasuke leans into his hand shamelessly. No one can begrudge him this.
“What’s your name?” His soulmate whispers, a small smile appearing on his lips like a secret he’s about to tell. A secret Sasuke’s dying to hear.
“Uchiha Sasuke,” he whispers back, almost tingling with excitement to finally hear his soulmate’s name.
“Uzumaki Naruto.”
“Naruto,” Sasuke repeats, savoring it like a prayer. “I can’t wait for you to meet-”
Roots sprout from the very ground they’re sitting on and wrap his soulmate in a wooden cocoon. “Sasuke!” Naruto shouts as his hand is torn from Sasuke’s grasp.
“Naruto!” Sasuke shouts back, terror coloring his name. I can’t lose him already! Not so soon! He forms a quick chakra blade to slice through the prison and gets one last look at his soulmate’s frantic blue eyes before the entire cage is whisked away into the trees, his name the only echo left behind. “Sasuke!”
“Naruto!” He screams, jumping to his feet, only to be stopped again by an ANBU, also a cat, but a different one this time.
“Uchiha-san, restrain yourself!” She barks.
“No!” Sasuke grasps at straws. “The Uchiha Clan invokes the Rights of Amaterasu!”
“What’s that?” Konohamaru interjects. Sasuke has no idea when he appeared, but he clearly got woken up in the ruckus.
“The Rights of Amaterasu have no place here,” she answers, hiding her surprise well.
“If I have to go to the high council, I’ll go to the high council,” Sasuke spits.
“I mean, they have no place because Jinchuriki do not have soulmates,” she amends smoothly. “By all means, you may go to the high council and inform them that the Uchiha heir abducted Konoha’s jinchuriki and was found hours later, entrancing it with your mangekyou.”
“Him,” Sasuke corrects vehemently, all too familiar with Konoha’s tendency to dehumanize power. “Uzumaki Naruto is a human with a soul,” he emphasizes.
“So you say,” the ANBU says flatly. “Do not follow, Uchiha-san.” And she’s gone, whisper-quiet.
He and Konohamaru are alone again. He tries to bundle all the feelings up inside himself, small and hidden, because if he thinks too hard about it, feels too hard about it, he’s going to explode.
“What was that about?” Konohamaru asks him.
Sasuke starts to brush him off, but reconsiders. Konohamaru is the only one who can vouch for him. But will he? “What time is it now?”
“Huh?” The fresh jonin answers eloquently, though he does dutifully check the time.
“And what time did you wake me for the watch?” Sasuke continues. “Do you think I had time to, within the few minutes that you woke me up, somehow hunt down a squad of ANBU, subdue the jinchuriki, and bring him back here? Even though they’ve apparently been searching for hours?”
Konohamaru thinks it through, and though Sasuke itches to further defend his case, he forces himself to be patient. He cannot cajole his only possible ally into believing him. This must be unassailable. “That seems highly implausible, Uchiha-san,” he finally answers, looking more awake, though also more cautious than before.
You’ve gotta give people a reason to trust you! He hears Tenten’s voice ringing in his head, high-pitched the way it was when they were genin, and follows her instructions. She’s never steered him wrong. “I just met my soulmate today, and all I wanted was to talk to him.” He extends his left hand, palm-first, so that Konohamaru can see the now-colored soulmark.
Recognition flashes in Konohamaru’s eyes and he studies his mark solemnly. “I would like to say congratulations, Uchiha-san. But as she said, Jinchuriki do not have soulmates.” He says, less like a statement and more like a leading question.
“That’s what I’ve always heard, too,” Sasuke sighs, lowering his hand. “But I felt it, today. Exactly the way everyone describes it.” He leaves out the fact that Naruto clearly didn’t, though he’s sure Konohamaru won’t miss it. “Do you know anyone with a soulmark?”
“My uncle,” Konohamaru confirms.
“Did he ever tell you how right it feels? How certain?” Sasuke presses, hoping that was the right direction. He wishes Shisui were here, or maybe Obito. They don’t have as much trouble talking to people as he does.
“Yes, many times.” Konohamaru smiles.
Maybe this will work. Sasuke presses on.
Three months. Still nothing.
He does go to the High Council with his father and, surprisingly, Konohamaru, to claim the Rights of Amaterasu and demand them produce one Uzumaki Naruto.
“Konoha’s jinchuriki is needed on the front lines,” one of the Hokage’s geriatric genin teammates drones on.
“Our heir apparent’s soulmate is needed in the village to nurture the bond!” Fugaku argues.
“Uchiha-sama!” Danzo reprimands. “You dare question Konoha’s ability to do what we want with our jinchuriki?”
“You dare deny our Amaterasu-given rights?” Fugaku counters.
“Jinchuriki do not have soulmates!” Danzo repeats for the hundredth time.
“Prove it.” Sasuke steps forward and unwraps his soulmark. “Here’s my proof. Where’s yours?”
“Soulmarks are hardly proof,” Danzo sneers.
“And yet you don’t have any.”
And so it went.
Itachi finds him Naruto’s highly classified file, and Sasuke soaks up as many details as he can about his missing soulmate. He had apparently crossed paths with him at the Suna Chunin Exams, back when they were both around 13. But Naruto’s team had been disqualified at the first stage, and Sasuke hadn't taken a second Chunin Exam.
“Look at this date,” Itachi points out the day Naruto was quietly withdrawn from the Academy.
“That’s right before my souldreams stopped,” Sasuke recognizes.
“Indeed.”
Mikoto regales him with tales of her hotheaded friend, which he also soaks up, even though they don’t directly involve Naruto, for obvious reasons. He’s almost glad that he found Naruto after the law was repealed; it would have been so hard on his mom to pretend she had no idea who his parents were.
Tenten visits him while he’s training. She avoids Uchiha clan grounds now, even though she shouldn’t have to, because she understands that Sasuke wants to avoid a fight. The Uchiha elders would never try to prevent him from seeing his soulmate, and Sasuke tries not to think about how lopsided that is. Something inside Sasuke whispers that he should be grateful the Uchiha elders would allow him anything, but Sasuke is growing to hate that whisper.
“I hear you got good news and bad news!” she calls out and gives him no more warning than that before unleashing a maelstrom of weapons on him, which he deflects handily.
“Hn,” is his only response.
“I guess, I’ll say congrats and I’m sorry, buddy.” She lands on top of the training stump he was using and twirls out her scrolls. Sasuke can tell she’s switched from training dexterity to volume. There’s about 50 more weapons than there were in that scroll last month, but they’re all flying more predictably.
“I’m sorry that you lost yours,” he returns. He hadn’t even gotten to meet him or her. Tenten had been very private about the whole thing. He had known it must have felt awful, but to feel it … to feel it is different.
When she doesn’t throw anything pointy at him, he knows something’s up. “What happened?” He asks sharply.
“Oh, don’t get your britches in a bunch,” she grins, but her heart isn’t in it. She drops the grin. “It happened a long time ago.”
“I know.”
“Well,” she sighs and sits heavily on the top of the stump, one leg swinging freely, and the other encircled in her arms.
Sasuke wordlessly jumps up and sits cross-legged on the adjacent stump.
“You actually don’t know, but that’s because I didn’t tell you.”
He nods, even though she’s not looking at him.
“I did lose him, but not because he died. He’s a Hyuga branch member. We talked about it for a long time, and we eventually decided we couldn’t raise children in the branch clan.”
Sasuke’s stomach dropped.
“I know your clan puts a lot of stock in soulmates, so much so that you’re the heir and not Itachi.” Inheriting the Headship wasn’t contingent on finding his soulmate, but on having the soulmark. His own father doesn’t have a soulmark, but he was a single child. Between himself and Itachi, Sasuke having the kiss of Amaterasu was the deciding factor. But that has no bearing on this discussion.
“I wouldn’t have pressured you,” Sasuke assures her, though even now, he is fighting to understand how she can live like this.
“I just wanted to say that it doesn’t always work out, and if it doesn’t, you know someone who might understand.”
“Hn,” is what he says, but what he means is “thank you” and “I’m sorry” and “are you okay?” He knows his genin teammate understands.
Sasuke is stationed at a bridge on solo watch, when Itachi comes to him.
“What is it?” Sasuke whispers, fearing the worst.
“I found him,” Itachi whispers back. It takes Sasuke a second to realize Itachi can’t be talking about their father, but is instead talking of his soulmate. He rips open the scroll Itachi hands to him, pointing out exactly where Naruto was last sent. “Father issued your recall notice, and I am to take your guard rotation while you go home.” Sasuke opens that scroll as well and notes the deadline he has to be back in Konoha by. It won’t be an issue. As long as he can get to Naruto, his soulmate will gladly go with him.
“Thank you,” Sasuke says, for lack of better words. A common predicament for Sasuke.
Itachi pokes him in the forehead and says, “Run along, Sasuke.”
Sasuke runs.