• Sasuke's old apartment is still the same when Naruto sets foot into it; the last part of his hometown re-exploration after three years in the mountains. He visits it again like an old friend--with a little fear, maybe, and some very stupid, very short-lived hope that maybe there would be some new footprints in the layers upon layers of endless dust on the floor. (After all, Sasuke has definitely not abandoned his (first, dead) family, even if he's abandoned everything else.)

    But the air remains dank and choking as it always has, so choking it could break his lungs. Not even the tiniest p***k has disturbed the masses of gray on the floor...those endless gray masses. For a moment he just stands there, hurt leaking into his eyes.

    Then he closes the door again, with a sigh that tries to disguise itself as annoyed and whiney, but really, he just ends up sounding tired. Just a little bit too tired to belong to the same boy that first came here and left years ago in Sasuke's guise, hoping to win a certain pink-haired damsel's affections. Funny, leaving Sakura wasn't really a valid reason in his calculations to stay in Konoha three years ago.

    Swallowing the rising feeling in his gut that Sasuke felt exactly the same about him, he shook his head wildly and started forward, that same old stubbornness burning in his eyes.

    He knows, inside where he's just angrily pushing the thoughts away. His friends think he's just dreaming, tossing back and forth fitful night after fitful night, trying to draw out his sleep for three long years. They think this is just a stupid dream, a desperate hope without hope, and that he's begging into the empty air after someone who will never come back.

    But Naruto is, after all, only fifteen years old and still not yet awoken in this world. And so he is allowed some of these bits of innocence to hold onto. Because to tear the sleeping away from their dreams is cruel, as anyone who has ever cursed their alarm clock with the frightful fury of the half-asleep will tell you. Most of his friends in Konoha just have given up trying. There's just nothing else they can do. He's Naruto. He'll never give up until the day he dies.

    But when Sasuke has his vengeance and doesn't return to Naruto's desperately open, flailing arms--that's when they'll let him wake up.

    In some strange ways, Naruto and Sasuke are still so alike; still so hung up on the past, so unable to let go of things everyone thinks they should've long ago. True; only one of their dream's involves the other, while that other has already forgotten everything he needs and is still stupidly clinging onto the one thing he wants, which won't get him anything in the end.

    But maybe they're both alike in that respect.~

    --

    Years later, Sakura peers over the top of a windowsill, crouched on the floor of a dead dark house. She's silently watching as the Sound tear down all the planks of Sasuke's old apartment...silently watching as they search for one scarred headband, so locked and dried by time it can't even remember the secrets it once knew. She chokes back words. Its so pointless.

    Even when both of them are torn apart from each other, they still have such a strong connection its scary. They have a thing that'll never fade; even when even Naruto has finally let go, achieved his ambition of Hokage and shoved Sasuke firmly as he can from his mind. Though that night will still be there, like a knife slowly digging into his flesh, burying itself to the hilt until all he can do is grit his teeth and try not to scream. How can he ignore it? How can he forget?

    Because its the night when Itachi broke the Kyuubi out of Naruto. Sasuke had killed Itachi with rage of tooth and claw, then gave the briefest flickers of glances towards Naruto. Walked away, telling him it didn't mean a thing. And Naruto had torn off his headband, finally turned away and said "Just forget it"; his hands shaking so hard she could cry to remember it--

    Sakura chokes and swallows; turns away from the window as they finally leave, her white shoulders shaking as she clutches cold metal in the dark beneath the windowsill. Presses the scarred headband to her lips, too dry to share its secrets even now. Its the last bit of him that Naruto has left, and she'll never let them get to it. Her hands tremble a bit as she stares at it. Getting lost in all those other things they could just never get back.

    She starts as she feels a hand clasp those same hands, with a strength that she's never quite found the same in anyone else. That certainty in his burning eyes when he turns his head and meets her eyes, muttering in that way that makes her believe him like no one else can.

    And she smiles, a single brief spill of water down her cheeks in the silence to squeeze them away, because he was there the whole time. He'll always be.

    That's the kind of guy she needs; the kind of guy Sasuke could never be, she knows. And in a way, it hurts, but not nearly as much as she knows it must for Naruto, because when she clenches his hand back, and he flinches, then closes his eyes and smiles so warmly, an almost sad chuckle breaking over his face like "I know, its stupid"; he's such a man now, more than Sasuke could ever be, and she thinks she doesn't need anything else.

    She only hopes she can be enough for Naruto, who still does.~