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1.
"Sasuke," a voice whispers at the door, cracked and brittle. Sasuke tilts his head to look, because it isn't Itachi. Naruto stares back, wobbling on his feet - no, the whole room is tilting, trembling minutely. Sasuke laughs, once, not worried that it comes out as a cough. The tub is cool against his back, a thin slick of water under his heels; he slides one foot idly, just for the sensation. Naruto hasn't moved, motionless as a picture, a painting of the inside of Sasuke's head. Sakura says something sharp, out of view, her feet loud on the floor as she runs towards them. She shoves past Naruto, somehow not changing him at all (still just a picture, not a hair moved out of place, so wrong for Naruto to be still, not real at all) and drags Sasuke out of the tub, hands hot under his arms. His nose hits the small of her back and he closes his eyes, falls back and back and back.
34.
Sakura's hands are cold, blue-pale fingers swimming through his vision and wisping away the hair fallen into his eyes. She's trembling, shivering maybe, his breath bursting ice against her palm. There's snow on her lashes, slowly melting to tears caught mid-fall. One of his hands is tucked under her arm, fingers curled in the soft hollow between ribs and shoulder. He can feel every twitch of her fingers from there, echoing through her muscles.
"Naruto," she says, mouth dissonant from her words, "he's stopped shivering."
22.
"Sasuke," a voice at the door exclaims, frantically adding, "He's in here, come quick," and Sasuke tilts his head to see Sakura. One hand is on the doorframe, the other pressed white-knuckled to her mouth, but there's silence. No footsteps, no hurried rush to her side. She begins to turn just as a kunai appears in her hand on the wall, and she begins to scream just as Itachi tears out her throat. Her death-slump isn't pretty, one arm stretched obscenely over her head, kunai slowly ripping through gravity-heavy flesh. Itachi leaves it there, turns to Sasuke's wide eyes without a hint of expression. Sasuke hadn't known he had hope; he feels its lack sharper than any blade.
27.
Sasuke opens his eyes to see his hand, belly-up and pale, tight tendons pulling it almost into a fist. He wiggles one finger at a time, a hairs-breadth motion, just enough for the unaltered eye to see - he can almost see the intent behind each motion, an echo before the clap. There's a heavy weight on his chest, his whole body, pressing him down against twigs and rocks and the lumpy roll of a pack for a pillow - a blanket, a jacket over it, colors and scents screaming Naruto. It's orange and musky, unmistakable, and he ducks a shoulder and moves just so to bring it closer to his face. Naruto's smell almost blends with the forest, animal and natural, but there's the ozone-sharp smog of society as well. Naruto starts to lose that smell on a long mission. It's barely there now.
57.
Sasuke coughs once, and it comes out as a laugh, bitter and broken. Konoha is bright outside his window, the square kind in the hospital. His sheets are a perfect white, crisp and clean, tucked and folded just under his armpits in perfect precision. Naruto is silent in a chair next to him, hands folded tightly, lips a flat line of tension. There's a single flower in a cup on his windowsill. It's pink.
"I'm sorry," Naruto whispers, a little choked and a little sad. It sounds like the middle of a conversation, an admission dragged out over hours. "That I didn't get there sooner."
"It wouldn't have mattered," Sasuke's voice says.
He didn't speak. He didn't tell his mouth to move, didn't shape the words, it just happened, and he can't move his body. His lips curl in a smile, frail and fake, and he has nothing to do with it.
"It was too late already," Sasuke's mouth says, and at least it has the decency to tell the truth.
17.
"Don't move," Sakura says desperately, bare heels sliding on the bottom of the tub. He reaches up anyway, to touch her face just to know she's there, and he can't help but laugh when he can't quite reach her skin. Sakura's hands skitter over his ribs, but he can't feel them, can't feel his own hands, looks to the side and sees Naruto holding one. Naruto smiles, pale and trembling and frightened, and doesn't say a word.
36.
He can't stop shivering. It doesn't matter if he clenches his muscles or lets them fall limp, he can't control his body, so goddamn useless and stupid. The blankets rustle constantly, keeping him awake with jangling nerves, and he's cold everywhere Naruto and Sakura aren't pressed against him. He ducks his face against the swell of Sakura's breasts, seeking out the heat cradled between them, hooking a foot behind Naruto's knee to drag him closer. They're selfish, barely touching him, keeping all that warmth to themselves - Naruto slides an arm over his waist, tentatively brushing Sakura's side, and her hand moves over his side to cover his kidney in a bright spot of heat, but it isn't enough. His teeth begin to chatter, and Sakura laughs breathlessly. It isn't funny, it really isn't, and he tells her as much in growled breaths, every word warmed against her skin. She curls closer, finally, heat from head to toe, and she should be getting colder with all the heat he's stealing away but she stays so warm. His side and back are still trembling, each shiver bringing a new rush of cooler air, so he grabs Naruto's arm and jerks him closer, burrows down between them until the three of them are almost blended into one person. It doesn't even matter that Naruto's hard against his ass, or that he has a breast for a pillow. His nose tucked against Sakura's sternum is almost warm, and Naruto's blush against his neck is blissfully hot, and slowly the shivers fade. They don't let go.
65.
There's a cat in his lap. It's hot through the blanket over his knees, eyes closed in sleep. Its leg twitches. The sun is moving off his lap, leaving one leg chilled, so he carefully reaches for the wheels of his chair and shifts, smooth enough to keep from jostling the cat awake. It kneads his thigh once, twice, and shifts position with its eyes shut. He touches a finger between its eyes, gently stroking back over the curve of its skull, watching the twitch of its ears.
A door slams somewhere behind him, Naruto's voice ringing loud through the flat. He clatters through the rooms, banging pots and slamming drawers shut, an influx of constant chatter - Tsunade did this, Sakura said this, there was this rock that looked like this. Sasuke allows a small smile, aims it at the still-sleeping cat, smoothing its fur gently. Naruto flops down at his feet, rubbing a cheek against the folds of the blanket with a sigh.
"You're still an ass," Naruto mutters, voice almost inaudible, the tone of someone speaking to the comatose. Sasuke rubs a bit of Naruto's hair between his fingers, comparing the texture to the cat's fur. It's coarse.
"Idiot," Sasuke rasps, voice cracking and rough, and Naruto jerks under his hand, face tilting up towards him in a hope clear and bright and glass-sharp.
"Sasuke," Naruto breathes, too many emotions in his voice, and Sasuke closes his eyes and thinks of fire.
7.
He drags himself up slowly, forcing his legs to bear weight because his arms can't, limp and dangling treacherously. He gets his ass on the edge of the tub somehow, slings his legs over the side and falls out. The side of his face presses against the tile, crushing his nose, and he has to breathe through his mouth until he has enough strength to turn his head aside. An arm is pinned under his chest, throbbing spikes of pain whenever he pays attention to it, so he twists his hips until the weight of his body is enough to turn him onto his back.
Itachi watches impassively from the door, making no move to help or hinder. There's blood on his hands, dripping achingly slowly onto the tile. Sasuke breathes in, breathes out, and curls his stomach until he's sitting, forehead against his knees as he pants for breath. The room spins and he spins with it, unable to even conceive of how to stand under this assault. Itachi waits, silent and judging, so Sasuke hisses a curse and tilts to his knees, crawling because he can't walk, reaching for Itachi's robe with his teeth because his fingers are black and unresponsive, and Itachi smiles at him.
"Good," Itachi says simply, and his gentle touch leaves a bloody fingerprint on Sasuke's forehead.
41.
Kakashi stands statuesque beside his bed, dark against the too-bright white of the hospital walls. Sasuke leans back against his pillows, lets his chin fall forward against his collar, stares at the unstained bandages covering his arms. He could very well have lost them, for all he can feel them, numbed from touch by cotton and gauze. He has to squint to see, darken the edges of the world.
"Something's wrong," he says softly, whispering without meaning to.
"Yes," Kakashi says, betraying nothing. He might as well have said nothing. It means nothing.
Sasuke laughs and looks over Kakashi's shoulder, waiting. He can be patient. It's only a matter of time.
"Expecting someone?" Kakashi asks, and that almost sounds normal, so Sasuke can't hold back the urge to ruin it.
"My brother," he tells his teacher pleasantly, and although Kakashi doesn't flinch, he doesn't ask any more questions. Just waits with Sasuke.
68.
"Where is he?" Sasuke asks, because this is the third time he's been left in the tub. He takes the washcloth away from Sakura when she stops scrubbing his back, rinsing it and working slowly on his chest.
"Who..." She stops to clear her throat. "Who do you mean, Sasuke?" He considers carefully while he works, blinking water out of his eyes when she turns the spray on his hair, tilting his head back to rinse out the soap.
"Itachi," he finally decides. She flinches, pulls his hair just enough to hurt. "Ow."
"Sorry," she says reflexively, soothing his scalp with a rub of fingertips. He might possibly make a small noise of pleasure - it feels good, casual comfort. "Why should he be here?"
He gestures vaguely at the tub, not explaining further because he shouldn't need to. Sakura tilts his head forward again, rubs soap from his back until there's a sharp burst of pain just under his shoulderblade and he yelps. Her fingers find the spot, light and careful, and she mutters something before getting up and clattering through a cabinet, coming back with a knife. He holds still, doesn't ask questions, and the thin burning line in his back isn't a surprise.
"What is it?" he ventures, looking back over his shoulder. His blood is diffuse on her wet hands, the cut apparently shallow enough to not need bandaging. She slides a finger along the edge of the knife, and there in the blood is a tiny sliver of glass, an even smaller fraction of metal pasted to its back. A mirror. He reaches out to touch it. It pricks his fingertip just hard enough to stick to his skin, not drawing blood. There was a dream once, where there had been a mirror and Itachi and pain. He's sure of it. It was a dream, but the sliver stays on his fingertip, irrefutable reality.
73.
"Naruto," Sasuke says to the dark ceiling, and the bed across the room creaks. Naruto yawns, staggers out of bed, trips on his sheet, wraps it around his shoulders and stumbles over to Sasuke's bed, sitting heavily on the edge. He fumblingly pats Sasuke's hand, murmuring sleep-blurred words of comfort. It's distracting, drawing him back to the edge of sleep against his will, but he has to ask.
"Listen," Sasuke insists, his own voice slow with weariness. "Can the sharingan be used inside the sharingan?"
"Go back to sleep, Sasuke," Naruto groans, "It can wait until morning. I'll see if Itachi has any scrolls on it, alright?"
"Okay," Sasuke sighs, already closing his eyes. "He's gonna say we're pestering him, though."
Naruto snorts, waving that aside. "He doesn't mind. Sleep, Sasuke." Warm lips brush Sasuke's brow, and his head sinks back into the pillows.
75.
Naruto is late. He's not sure when Naruto was supposed to be back, but he isn't home now. Sasuke pushes himself out of his chair by the darkened window and staggers to the bathroom, then wobbles to the kitchen. He trips three times, and catches himself the first two; the last sends him tumbling to the kitchen floor, and he rests there. Getting back to his feet is a struggle, clawing at anything he can reach to pull himself up, until he leans panting against the counters. There's crackers left out, softly stale, and he soaks them under the sink before eating them, too exhausted to chew. The cat jumps onto the counter and sniffs at his face, meowing anxiously. He steadies himself and pushes off towards the door, clinging to the walls with fading strength. He has a half-formed idea of going to find Sakura, but can't figure out how he'd make it there or even where to go. The doorknob slams into his hip and he tilts unexpectedly, landing in a tangled pile without the strength to get up again.
It takes five tries to turn the knob enough to open the door, and he crawls onto the landing to lean against the railing, tilting his head back to watch the stars wheel over his head. It's not long before someone crouches next to him, pale cat-face luminous in the dark, and a blanket is draped around his shoulders. The shinobi says nothing, but doesn't leave either. Sasuke closes his eyes.
Naruto's voice jostles him out of something not quite like sleep, calling worried questions at the silent ANBU. He makes a little frightened noise when he sees Sasuke huddled under his blanket, dropping a bag of kunai and falling to his knees beside Sasuke, fingers searching for wounds. Sasuke bats at his hands irritably until they still, one splayed over his collarbone and the other on his cheek.
"You're late," Sasuke whispers, not able to speak any louder than that, and the sound Naruto makes is something like a laugh and something like a sob.
84.
Sasuke's hands are curled in a little nest on his lap. His fingers lace with each other, and he carefully pulls them apart, untangling the knots. He rubs the sleep from his eyes, slow and gritty, and stretches until the place between his shoulderblades pops. His dream is already fading into a blur of snarls and sickening laughter and red eyes like wells.
"Did you sleep well?" Sakura asks, bustling in with a glass of water and a handful of pills. He doesn't bother to answer, just waits for her to lightly touch his jaw, press the pills against his tongue and hold the water to his lips. There's a comfortable familiarity to it, a matter-of-factness where he thinks there should be awkwardness, even though he doesn't remember doing it before. She doesn't seem to really expect an answer to her question, just moves on around the room, making the bed and opening the window. She hums while she works.
"Can the sharingan be used inside the sharingan?" he asks, because it seems important.
She jumps, spins around with kunai in hand before smiling shakily and tucking it away. "I wouldn't know, Sasuke. I can ask Kakashi, if it's important."
He considers that, flexing his fingers slowly. The fingertips tingle as the nerves stretch out. "No. It's not important."
"Sasuke..." She crouches next to him, catches his hand between hers. She looks serious, intent. "You're here now. You're safe."
"I've always been here," he murmurs, closing his eyes and feeling the hard curve of the tub against his back. "All of time fits inside the sharingan, you know that."
86.
He sits by the window, looking out into the branches of a tree. They sway slowly, dappled early summer light seeping around the edges. The breeze is nice, warm and cool all at once. Naruto is making the bed behind him with breeze-crisp linens. It's terrifyingly domestic.
"There's bits of mirror in my back," Sasuke says conversationally. "I think there are, anyway. That's what started bothering me."
"Why - why would that bother you?" Naruto asks, clearly confused but willing to go where Sasuke leads.
"Because Itachi pushed me into a mirror," Sasuke tells him, wriggling his fingers. "But he also never did that." He hesitates, not entirely sure admitting any more would be useful. Naruto isn't helpful, watching him with wide eyes. He finally has to look away to keep talking, quiet and listless. "I miss him. I should never have pushed him like that. I should have..." But he's not sure what he should have done instead. He's never been able to keep from pushing back. "I need to be stronger. That's the deal."
"What deal?" Naruto asks helplessly.
Sasuke just smiles to himself and murmurs, "Something I can believe in."
90.
Sakura is making tea, cups clinking together gently. The water hisses ready, dies off as she adds the leaves. It would be sickeningly domestic, but there's four places at the table, four cups laid out. Sasuke sits in his place, to the left of the head of the table. Sakura pour the tea and sits at the foot, calling to Naruto, who scrambles in, dirty and grinning, to sit to the right. Kakashi sits at the head, eyes closed but uncovered.
It's wrong.
Kakashi glances at him, casual and red-eyed, and Sasuke flinches. He can't help it. No one says anything, but Sakura's smile dims and Naruto glares at their teacher. It's not right, none of this is right.
"It's not real," he whispers into his tea, takes a sip to still his trembling hands. Kakashi watches his weakness. It's alright in front of Naruto and Sakura, it's almost safe with them, but not with those eyes. Never with those eyes.
"Sasuke," Kakashi says quietly. It's an order. Sasuke thinks about ignoring him, but he doesn't have the excuse of delusion this time; he looks up and meets Kakashi's eyes.
"What do you remember?" Kakashi asks, and it's so familiar Sasuke's chest aches.
"Everything," he says flatly.
"Hmm," Kakashi says, thoughtful, and then he reaches over and breaks Sasuke's finger.
91.
"It hurts," Sasuke says faintly, with something like wonder, because his finger hurts and it hurt a minute ago too and it's not hurting because of torture, and the hurt isn't going away, and time keeps moving on in an orderly fashion. "Naruto, it hurts."
"That happens to broken fingers, dumbass," Naruto growls, trying to capture Sasuke's scarred wrist long enough to set the finger. "Let me see it. I'm gonna kick his ass."
Sakura is yelling in the other room, Kakashi's replies drowned out beneath her anger. It sounds wonderful. Sasuke tries not to hope, learns forward and grabs Naruto's hair too tightly so he can meet his eyes and -
The Sharingan spills into the empty places in his chest where anger and pain and hope had been, fills them to bursting. Naruto freezes mid-yelp, terror in his wide eyes, and Sasuke laughs.
"Can you use the Sharingan inside the Sharingan?" he asks, but he already knows the answer.
"You're hurting me," Naruto says softly, like he doesn't want to startle Sasuke.
"I know," Sasuke grins.
His finger still hurts.
93.
Sasuke is in the bathroom by himself. He tries not to look at the tub, at the cold metal fixtures, tries not to peer to see if the bottom of it is pink with spilled blood. It isn't. He strips in front of the mirror, Naruto pounding on the door behind him, and feels out his scars. He has to twist to see the jagged slashes in back, knows the puckered curves of his wrists by heart, finds how his shoulder clicks when he rotates it. He stares at the smooth, featureless skin of his fingers, compares the shape of his fingernails to the deep-red divots in his left wrist. They match, when he accounts for the tightening of healing, the odd jut of the broken finger Naruto set.
Naruto finally forces the door open. He stops cold seeing Sasuke in front of the mirror, just stares as Sasuke takes inventory. Sasuke doesn't mind. He remembers the cold, remembers Naruto warm and hot against his spine. Being naked is less exposing than being weak.
Sasuke takes Naruto's hand, wraps it around one wrist, the one so thick with scar tissue he can barely feel his fingertips. "He didn't do this to me," Sasuke tells him urgently, needing him to understand. Naruto makes a small sound, shifts uncomfortably. Sasuke holds him still, meets his eyes mercilessly. "He didn't do any of it to me. He's never done anything to me."
95.
"I need to get better," Sasuke tells Kakashi. He makes a fist. His finger still hurts, despite the splint.
Kakashi doesn't say anything, but Sasuke thinks he smiles. Sakura bursts into tears of joy, and Naruto hugs him ferociously. None of them understand.
100.
Itachi was right. Sasuke needs something to fight for, something to urge him to grow stronger. He has time. He has plenty of time.
Sasuke carefully rights splintered tables, blows dust from tangled linens, patches decayed screens. He sorts kunai and lays them out carefully. He washes his parents' blood from the floor, but the stains never fade, no matter how he scrubs. He comes here every day after practice with soap and water, hauled up from the river, muscles already aching from being pushed too hard.
He may have time, but he is impatient. He only has a hundred years to be ready. He grows stronger, and he smiles at Naruto and Sakura now and then, and he scrubs at the stains of sin on the floor.
"Not for you," he whispers to the dark shapes sunk deep into wood. "I won't fight to avenge you any longer. I'll fight for myself."
He'll fight to avenge himself.