(Author’s Notes)
I did not wright this chapter i was taking a break and my cuz wanted to wright this chapter! so here it is!!
“Eternity”
Naruto really didn’t mind being alone. He liked his friends, sure, and he’d rather party than pout, but he was feeling anti-social tonight. Sasuke was back. Everything was supposed to be alright now.
It wasn’t, of course.
At least he wasn’t under arrest anymore. No jail was good. Naruto was pretty sure that bringing home Orochimaru’s head made all those past transgressions look a lot better. Sauntering past the ANBU and tossing said head onto Tsunade’s desk probably didn’t help matters, but Naruto expected no less from his teammate.
Afterwards, he had hoped everything would go back to normal, or as close to normal as could be expected. Sasuke had never been a social butterfly, but now he didn’t talk to anyone. Not even his old team. Sasuke had refused to speak during his trial, and if not for Naruto pulling weight with the old hag, he’d probably still be in solitary confinement. However, instead of offering any thanks to Naruto for the trouble he went through, Sasuke was hiding in the abandoned Uchiha district like a recluse.
Naruto knew that it was natural for Sasuke to need time to adjust. But this situation felt wrong. He’d waited for this reunion for three years, and now it tasted bitter on the back of his throat. Nothing to show for all his tribulations and training. Sasuke came back to Konoha of his own will, but he hadn’t come back to his team.
He kicked a pebble, followed and kicked it again. Weaving a stone-bounced path through the city streets, Naruto wandered past a gaily lit inn. The pluck of some stringed instrument encroached beyond the lamp light, seeping into the night. Voices were a low murmur. He wondered if the woman who played it looked as beautiful as the music sounded.
Naruto would not have stopped, would have continued to follow his pebble into the twilight, but for a moment he sensed familiar chakra. He lifted his gaze from his toes. Sasuke? At a bar? An uninhibited grin overtook his face as he trotted up to the entrance.
In a moment of mischievous inspiration, he henged into his famous Sexy-no-Jutsu, entering the crowded drinking hall as a buxom blonde. Heads turned as one. The two circulating working girls gave him the evil eye. Naruto snickered, before composing his face into a seductive smirk.
He loved this game.
He swayed his generous hips, parting the crowd like a shark through water. His eyes darted from face to face, scanning the heads for a familiar mop of upturned, black locks. He frowned. One more time. He circulated the room, politely demurring drink offers, and several more brusque offers, as well.
Sasuke wasn’t here.
“Dammit!” he cursed vehemently, forgetting to be a polite, sexy woman. The nearby customers stared at him in surprise.
“Sorry, boys!” Naruto said with a cheeky salute. Forming the release signals, he popped back into existence as an obnoxious, 15-year-old prankster, who was very male.
He escaped within an inch of his life, laughing so much it was painful to run. The hoodwinked male customers were more persistent that he would have guessed. A handful of them followed him for a good five blocks before relenting and going back to nurse their wounded egos. Naruto caught his breathe behind a dumpster in an alley. His laughter sounded abrasive in the close darkness, and his melancholy quickly returned.
“Ah, well, that was fun,” he said aloud, half-convincing himself.
He turned back to the street.
“Oh!”
Naruto perked at the unexpected sound. A woman’s voice. It almost sounded like she was in pain. He flattened himself against the alley wall. A scuffle of foot moving gravel. She was close. He peered around the dumpster.
His jaw became close friends with the ground.
Sasuke and some civilian woman were necking in the alley. Heavy necking. Her left shirt sleeve, which was facing him, had fallen to her elbow. Sasuke was bent over her exposed neck like a crouching hunting cat, fingers digging into her shoulders like claws. She was making small mewling sounds and hanging onto his forearms as if her knees had been obliterated.
Naruto felt an acute hostility toward this nameless female – that she should be worthy of such attention, while Sasuke refused to speak to him. He stepped from the shadows, intent on confronting his wayward teammate and former friend.
“What the hell, Sasuke?”
Sasuke pulled his head from the woman’s jugular, whipping around as if he’d been socked in the kidney. Naruto had expected surprise, maybe a little guilt, but something else stared back at him. Fear. There was a darkness coating Sasuke’s lips and chin, the woman’s neck. It gleamed wetly. He had good night vision, courtesy of Kyuubi.
Blood. It was blood.
“Sasuke…” Naruto whispered.
“Naruto,” Sasuke said, hoarse and garbled, as if speaking with a mouthful of water. Naruto couldn’t match the tone of voice to the man standing in front of him, couldn’t match the blood with the man he had known for most of his childhood.
Sasuke released his hold on the woman and she slipped down into the filth of the alley, her gaze wide and luminescent. She had deep, green eyes, and her auburn hair was plastered to her neck with drying blood. Her fingers twitched spasmodically, like the legs of a dying spider.
“Sasuke,” Naruto gasped, a shocked sob clenching his throat shut like a vice. “Wh-what did you do?”
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“You killed her.” Naruto backed up, giving ground as Sasuke approached him with arms wide and hands open, as if to prove his passivity.
“No, Naruto,” Sasuke explained. “She’s not dead. You can check for yourself.”
Naruto squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, bangs flying like the tossing of a horse’s mane.
“Dammit, Naruto! Look at me!”
Naruto’s eyes flew open. He saw Sasuke’s face – haggard, cheeks almost gaunt. Skin, which had always been pale, was near translucent in the moonlight, the branching blue of his life blood shining through. His eyes were black, darker than Naruto remembered them being, but it could have been a trick of the alley’s sleeping shadows.
“Look at me,” Sasuke repeated, inching toward him again. “She’s not dead.” There was a barely perceptible tremor in his voice. A hand reached for him, and Naruto saw more blood on the fingertips.
“Don’t touch me!” Naruto ordered, louder than he intended. “Just…don’t,” he added more softly.
Sasuke closed his eyes and lowered his hand, then gave the briefest of nods. When Naruto was sure he would remain put, he inched around him and bent to examine the woman. Her lips were parted, breath rapid, breasts rising and falling fast as the chest of a rabbit. Her eyes were still open, and they seemed sightless. But when he felt her wrist, because he couldn’t bear to touch her neck, her heartbeat was strong and solid, though accelerated.
Naruto rocked back on his heels. She would live. In fact, other than her aroused state, she seemed fine. Her face almost looked ecstatic.
“I told you.”
Naruto felt his skeleton try to jump out of his skin. “What did you do to her?”
“I can’t explain here,” Sasuke said, his voice low and hurried. “I need to heal her before someone else comes. We can talk at my place.”
Strange and stranger. Naruto examined his face. Sasuke seemed sincere, and even if he’d been a b*****d in the past, he’d never sugarcoated his intentions.
“OK,” Naruto agreed. “I want answers.”
Sasuke only nodded, bending to his unpleasant task.
Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
In the face of the disturbing events of the evening, Naruto was ill at ease. The Uchiha district was hardly a welcoming place. The buzz of humanity was gone. It felt as if they had stepped through to another world, full of ghosts and vengeance and old blood. Naruto tried not to think too much about it, but, given his current state of mind and his propensity for superstition, it was an exercise in futility.
Sasuke hadn’t opened his mouth since the alley. The man was on edge. Naruto could tell from the stiffness in his stride and the erratic dance of his irises that he was afraid of being followed. ANBU were still watchful of Sasuke’s whereabouts, so Naruto couldn’t blame him.
They halted in front of one of the largest homes in the district. Sasuke slid the paneled door open, stepping past the entryway and into the dimly lit interior. Naruto followed cautiously, half expecting a ghost to creep out of the shadowed corners.
Something cold, cold touched his shoulder.
“AHHHHHH!”
Naruto levitated to the ceiling, defying gravity, holding onto the wooden panels with chakra-enhanced claws, crouching, shivering uncontrollably, eyes perfectly round.
“********!” Sasuke growled, hands firmly pressed against his ears, as if to block out the echo. “What was that about?”
Grinning sheepishly, Naruto fell back to the floor. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Your hands are really cold.”
Sasuke glared daggers at him, but then he looked at his hands. His eyes became glassy, distant, barely focused. “Yeah,” he whispered, “I guess they are.”
“Um, Okaaaaay,” Naruto said, slightly confused and definitely freaked out. “So, um…” Why was he here again? Oh, yeah, that.
Sasuke lowered his hands to his side and shook himself, dispelling the mournful air clinging to him. He turned his back to Naruto, stripping off his bloodied shirt as he went and tossing it in the trashcan on his way to the kitchen. “Want some tea?”
Naruto followed him without saying anything. Tonight was too surreal. First, Sasuke is biting some random woman’s neck in an alley, and now they’re going to have tea? What’s next? Talk about the weather?
He started growling unconsciously. Sasuke stopped filling the tea pot in the sink, sensing Naruto’s intent. “Naruto,” he warned, setting the pot down to face him. “Calm down.”
“What the ********!” Naruto roared, charging without warning. Sasuke barely had time to dodge before a tanned fist smashed through the window behind him. He moved away from the counter to avoid being cornered, blocking high as Naruto jumped, spun, kicked. He hopped when a sneaky clone tried to slide for his legs, dodged to the left when a hook would have sent him flying.
“Stop it, idiot!” he ordered, trying to yell sense into him.
“You b*****d! You don’t bother talking to me for months and then I find you with some slut in an alley and your drinking her blood and now you want to have ******** tea!”
“Calm down!” Sasuke ordered, even as he bent backwards to avoid an uppercut to his chin. Naruto’s fist was bleeding from the broken window. The blood was bright and a few drops flung onto his cheek. Warm. Sasuke watched the blood with rapt attention as it dripped onto the pale tatami. Licked his lips. Sodium and copper.
Red became the center of his universe.
The next punch took Sasuke completely unawares, connecting solidly with his right temple.
Naruto stood over him, panting, fists clenched and vibrating at his sides with the force of his adrenaline. “b*****d,” he growled, but the anger was settling. It felt better to punch the smug, aloof p***k.
“You’re bleeding.”
Naruto narrowed his eyes at the uncharacteristic response. No name calling, no anger, no wounded pride. The dark gaze was intensely focused on his swollen knuckles. Naruto brought his hand up to examine the damage. Kyuubi was already working his magic, stemming the flow, knitting torn skin.
“I’m fine,” Naruto said gruffly. He extended the hand to help his arrogant friend stand. “Now start explaining.”
Naruto wouldn’t have been surprised if Sasuke didn’t take the hand out of principle, but he was surprised when Sasuke withdrew from his bloody appendage like it was the plague. “Naruto,” Sasuke spoke lowly, in a gravely voice that set Naruto’s hairs at attention. “Wash up.”
“Eh?”
“I don’t…can’t…” Sasuke was shaking too hard to speak, like he was holding himself back from an overpowering urge. “Hurry!” he gasped.
Naruto darted to the sink, rinsing his hand and hissing as the healing flesh made contact with the water. There was glass. He worked out a large piece with thumb and forefinger, but couldn’t get to the rest. He shrugged indifferently, grabbing a towel and bunching in around his fist. He turned around to see that Sasuke had regained a measure of his composure, hanging his head between his knees and taking deep, settling breaths.
“Now you really have some explaining to do.”
Sasuke lifted his gaze, staring into Naruto’s eyes from underneath the fall of his bangs. His mouth was slightly parted, shallow inhales and exhales stirring the hair in front of his lips. Those eyes were like the blackest opals, lit with demonic fire. Naruto resisted the urge to step back.
“What the ******** were you doing tonight?” Naruto said, impatient this time.
Sasuke’s lips pressed in a thin line, his expression defiant.
But Naruto remembered the fear in the alley, remembered the shadow beneath that gaze. He knew there was something dark hiding behind Sasuke’s fiery eyes, something darker than his near black irises. Naruto could feel his anger stirring again. He slammed his good hand against the kitchen counter. “You owe me the truth!” he snarled at his dark companion. “Answer my question! What are you afraid of?”
Sasuke’s eyes narrowed at the challenge. “Nothing,” he hissed.
“Then tell me already, you p***k.”
The smirk that crossed that pale face had a hint of something familiar, the first familiarity since their encounter, and Naruto felt relief flood his veins. “I’m…” Sasuke paused, and then continued his explanation along a different route. “Orochimaru was looking for immortality.”
Naruto nodded, crossing his arms across his chest and encouraging Sasuke to continue.
“He found it.”
“The snake sannin is dead,” Naruto argued. “You killed him.”
“I didn’t say he was immortal,” Sasuke replied. “I said he found immortality.”
“What does this have to do with tonight?”
There was a pregnant pause as Sasuke collected his thoughts. He seemed to frown in consternation, before picking himself off the ground. His hand went to his weapons pouch, and Naruto tensed instinctively.
“What are you doing, b*****d?”
“He was not immortal,” Sasuke said as he removed a kunai. He casually pressed the blade tip deep into the tender flesh beneath his elbow and drew it down the length of his forearm. Blood fountained with its passage, running like a brook on the valley of his arm to the pool in his palm. Naruto gasped, an unsteady mix of surprise and horror.
“But I am.”
TBC?
xdeath_angel_sayax Community Member 
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