The Language of Scars

They called it a pardon, but the word tasted wrong in Sasuke’s mouth.

The audience chamber was too bright, banners hanging heavy over stone. Kakashi stood at the foot of the dais with his hands in his pockets, one eye steady on Sasuke as if he were a wire pulled too tight. The assembled councilors watched like they were waiting for a crack. The official decree was read in an even tone—conditions, restrictions, curfews, the list of what he would and wouldn’t be allowed to do in a village that used to belong to him.

“You will report to Hatake Kakashi daily,” Shikamaru said, voice weary but calm. “No missions outside the walls without explicit authorization. No independent investigations. No unsupervised contact with minors. No weapons except those issued by the armory. You will keep to designated sectors unless assigned otherwise.”

Sasuke didn’t flinch. The Uchiha crest on his back burned in his mind, a memory rather than fabric. He folded his hands behind him to keep them from curling into fists.

Kakashi’s gaze didn’t soften, but it didn’t bite either. “You’ll stay within the Uchiha district for now. I’ll review your mobility in a month.” He paused. “Questions?”

Sasuke’s voice came out level. “No.”

The paper with his signature was thin under his fingers, the ink too dark. Pardoned. Watched.

Konoha’s streets smelled like rain and ramen and dust. When he stepped out beneath the sky, the air caught in his throat anyway. The village was rebuilt in patches—new roofs, fresh plaster, familiar roads widened around scars. People paused to look. Some whispered. He felt their stares like shuriken at his back. Mothers shifted children behind legs as he passed. A shopkeeper froze with a broom suspended mid-sweep, lips pressed thin. Two older shinobi at a tea stand tracked him openly, hands loose near their belts, pretending not to.

He kept his pace even, his face blank, and turned down narrower streets to avoid the afternoon crowd. He knew the way without thinking—every shortcut, every dead end. His sandals were too loud on the flagstones. He caught a reflection in a window: older, leaner, a mouth that didn’t remember how to curve.

At the armory, a bored chuunin slid a tray across the counter without meeting his eyes. Kunai, shuriken, a standard-issue tanto with a seal on the hilt that would mark it if he strayed. The woman’s hands trembled and then stilled as she checked off boxes on a form. Her throat jumped when he thanked her.

“Report complete,” she said too loudly.

“Let me know if you need anything else,” Kakashi’s voice came from behind him as he exited, carrying the bundle. The copy-nin fell into step like it was casual. “I figured you wouldn’t. Still. It’s my job to ask.”

Sasuke didn’t respond. He didn’t need to ask why Kakashi followed him all the way to the district’s edge. The gate to the Uchiha compound stood where it always had, hinges repaired, paint fresh over the wood like makeup on a bruise. The clan fan above the arch was brighter than he remembered. The silence past the threshold was the same. He swallowed and didn’t show it.

“They cleaned it up after the war,” Kakashi said quietly. “Sakura and a few others made sure. The houses are structurally sound. You’ll need to air them out.” He glanced at the empty street. “I’ll stop by in the morning.”

Sasuke gave the barest of nods. Kakashi left without making him say anything more.

The compound air was still and dry. Dust bloomed under his steps, sun cutting across wooden floors in sharp rectangles. He opened doors that creaked and windows that stuck. The past was here in the corners he didn’t look at. He set the issued weapons on a low table, the metal a small, familiar weight in a place that felt like a stage set built for a ghost. His bedroom smelled like cedar and old smoke. He stripped down to the waist and stood at the basin, water cold over heated skin, washing away travel and judgment. There were new scars and old ones over muscle he’d honed into a weapon. He watched the water run down his chest, catching on pale lines, and felt nothing he could name.

He dressed again and stepped back out at dusk. The village lights were soft pearls against indigo. He moved along the wall that had been rebuilt where explosions had torn it open. It was smoother here, new stone not yet weathered, mortar pale in the seams. Two guards on patrol saw him and stiffened for a heartbeat before nodding, formal and strained. Sasuke inclined his head. He could feel the weight of their eyes long after they passed.

A child’s laughter buoyed up from a side street, pure and high. It stopped when he turned the corner. Three kids stood in a knot, one with a wooden shuriken in his fist, one with missing front teeth, one clutching a training scroll too big for his hands. They stared, then the oldest tugged the others back by their sleeves, chin out, brave in the way boys are in front of each other.

“Come on,” the oldest hissed, but loud enough for Sasuke to hear. “Don’t get near him.”

The smallest asked, “Is he the one?” whisper-shrill.

Sasuke kept walking. Their whispers followed him like insects, more irritating for their insistence. He turned up a lane lined with lanterns, passing a shop taking down its awning. An old man froze on the ladder and then pretended his hands were busy, eyes sharper than his movements. The woman beside him, folding fabric, made herself smaller and looked at her feet.

By the time he reached the memorial stone at the edge of the training grounds, the sky was nearly black. The names were etched deep, colder than the air. He stood there, arms loose at his sides, and let the quiet settle. The hum of the village behind him was a separate world. He could feel the shape of it, a place that accepted and rejected in the same breath.

Bootsteps approached on packed dirt, measured and familiar. Kakashi again, or someone else assigned to make sure he didn’t vanish before sunrise. Sasuke didn’t turn. He didn’t speak. The night wind slid over his skin, raising the hairs on his forearms, carrying the scent of pine and damp earth. He could taste iron where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek without realizing.

Pardon. Probation. Conditions marked like seals on his skin. Eyes watched from windows and doorways, judgment pressed into every small silence.

He let the feeling settle into a hard, small place inside him and made it still. He could live with this. He had lived with worse. He stood in front of the stone until the dark fully took the light, until the village behind him quieted to a low breath. Then he turned back, alone.

The announcement came the next morning in the mission hall, where the boards were crowded with postings and the air buzzed with shinobi chatter. Naruto stood at the front with Kakashi, feeling the weight of a dozen gazes settle on him and then slide past, curious and assessing. He kept his expression easy, hand propped at the back of his neck in a familiar gesture.

“Uzumaki,” Shikamaru called from the desk, a stack of paperwork in hand. “You’ll be acting as Uchiha’s primary partner on all village duties and approved missions for the foreseeable future. Kakashi’s orders.” He glanced up, lazy eyes meeting Naruto’s with a flicker of sympathy before it smoothed out. “Consider it… a long-term assignment.”

Naruto hooked a grin onto his face that felt almost natural. “No problem,” he said, loud enough for the room to hear. “Got it. Babysitting’s part of my skill set.” A few snorts of laughter broke the tension. Someone clapped him on the back as they passed. Kakashi’s visible eye curved.

“Think of it as team management,” Kakashi said mildly, like he was describing the weather. “You’ll file joint reports daily. Keep me updated.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Naruto said, putting a hand over his heart in mock solemnity. “You can count on me.”

It played well. He knew how to perform this version of himself—confident, irreverent, the one who could make a room breathe easier. It had always come easy, even when it was covering a knot in his chest. As he stepped away from the desk, he felt the knot pull tighter.

He found Sasuke at the end of the corridor near the back exit, half in shadow, a single sheet of mission protocol in one hand. Sasuke’s gaze flicked up, unreadable. Naruto felt a rush of heat in his ears, remembered too many endings and one word that didn’t belong in Sasuke’s mouth—pardon—and shoved down the urge to fidget.

“So,” Naruto said, too brightly. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”

Sasuke’s jaw worked for a second, a tiny movement. “Didn’t realize I needed a handler,” he said, flat as the paper between his fingers. No sarcasm, just cool acknowledgment.

Naruto laughed and immediately hated the sound. “Handler? Please. I’m your partner. We’ve done this before.” He leaned against the wall like the concrete held him up. “You’ll be bored. It’s all village stuff. I’ll show you where the good stalls are. Ichiraku—”

“I can find my way,” Sasuke cut in. His eyes shifted past Naruto toward the door, then back. “I’ll report to Kakashi at nineteen hundred.”

“Right.” The lightness cracked for a heartbeat. Naruto shoved his thumbs into his pockets. “We’ll walk the east sector after that. D-rank routine.” He swallowed the other words, the ones that wanted to push out—How are you sleeping? Does it hurt being here? Do you hate me for smiling in rooms that still ache?—and let the air fill the space instead.

They moved through the day like they were on either side of an invisible line. People reacted to Sasuke the way Naruto had feared—tight smiles, stiff nods, voices that softened at the edges as if they were speaking to a dangerous animal. Naruto caught a flash of a little girl peeking around her mother’s skirt, eyes wide. He made a face at her and she giggled, but her mother pulled her away quickly, apology tripping from her mouth without meeting Sasuke’s gaze.

Naruto kept his grin in place and his shoulders relaxed. When villagers addressed him instead of Sasuke, he answered easily and left a space for Sasuke to speak if he wanted. He didn’t. When a genin squad crossed their path and fell into a whispering buzz that had the same shape as rumors always did, Naruto felt something hard coil in his stomach and wanted to turn, to say something sharp that would cut the noise. He didn’t. Sasuke’s expression never shifted.

They reinforced the section of wall assigned to them in silence. Naruto worked fast, chakra steady beneath his skin, settling stones with practiced care. He caught glimpses of Sasuke’s hands—efficient, precise, strength controlled down to each motion. Naruto remembered those hands breaking the air beside his face, remembered them steady on his arm when everything else had been falling apart and pushed the memory away before it could turn into something else.

“Hand me that seal mortar,” Naruto said, because it was easier to say anything than nothing.

Sasuke passed it over without looking at him. “You’re overcharging your chakra flow,” he said, after a beat, quiet enough that it almost got lost in the scrape of stone.

Naruto snorted. “I am not.”

“You’ll crack the joint when it dries.” Sasuke’s voice lifted a fraction. “Lower it by a third.”

Naruto adjusted. The stone settled with a satisfying thud. He hated how relieved he was at the small give, at the familiar cadence of Sasuke telling him he was doing something wrong. “Whatever,” he muttered, but it was a weak protest. “Thanks.”

Sasuke didn’t answer.

By late afternoon, Naruto’s face hurt from holding onto ease. His talk with Kakashi dragged at him as they wrapped up—keep him with you, read the temperature of the village, don’t let the old wounds fester into new ones. Naruto wanted to be enough for that. He wasn’t sure how to be anything but too much.

On their way back through the market, a vendor called Naruto’s name with a cheerful wave. “Uzumaki! Try the new dumplings—on the house!” The plate was thrust into his hands before he could protest. He turned to give one to Sasuke, felt the weight of the eyes around them, the way the vendor’s smile faltered when it slid to the dark hair and the fan on the back of Sasuke’s shirt.

Naruto offered the dumpling anyway. “It’s good,” he said, quieter now.

Sasuke hesitated, then took it. Their fingers brushed—barely, accidental, nothing—and Naruto felt it like a spark up his arm. Sasuke ate the dumpling without comment, gaze on the middle distance. The vendor exhaled relief he probably didn’t realize he’d been holding.

They parted near the training grounds, a splay of evening sky bleeding into the horizon. Naruto watched Sasuke’s back for a second too long, then jammed his hands deeper into his pockets and stared at his own shadow until it blurred.

By the time he reached his apartment, the mask was heavy on his face. He closed the door and leaned against it, listening to the quiet. His place was a mess—open cabinets, a plant he’d forgotten to water, a half-finished stack of reports—comfort in its disarray. He sank into a chair and stared at the ceiling.

He wanted to make it easy. He wanted to be angry on Sasuke’s behalf and also angry at him for making this hard, for standing there like the village had no right to touch him, for being himself. He wanted to be seventeen again and also anything else. He scrubbed a hand over his face and laughed without humor.

Tomorrow, he’d do it again. He’d be loud and sure and steady in front of everyone. He’d walk beside Sasuke and talk about nothing when the silence got too heavy and say nothing when that felt like the better choice. He’d find the places where the old rhythms still fit and avoid the edges that cut. The unease sat under his sternum like a stone, but it was familiar. He could carry it. He had before. He would again. And maybe, if he was careful, the weight would shift into something they could both hold.

The next morning came with the grit of too little sleep and the pale light of a sky that hadn’t decided on sun or cloud. Naruto met Sasuke at the eastern wall where the stone had bowed and cracked from the last of the war’s tremors. The section was roped off with simple barriers and a posted notice, letters crisp and black against weathered wood. Civilians gave it a wide berth, glancing at the two of them as if the damage might spread.

Kakashi’s notes were brief. Stabilize, reinforce, reseal the chakra lattice. No more than a day’s work if they didn’t waste time. Naruto cracked his knuckles and tried to pretend the quiet was normal. Sasuke stood a few paces away, eyes tracing the fault lines up the wall, profile carved into something stiller than stone.

Naruto set shadow clones to sorting rubble and clearing the edges while he mixed seal mortar in a shallow basin. The paste was tacky, tinged with faint chakra hum. He worked his fingers into it, measuring out the charge, and kept his mouth shut. Beside him, Sasuke ran his palm across the stone, Sharingan dormant but focus sharp. He marked points with chalk where the structure needed anchoring, each X neat and precise.

They fell into a rhythm that felt like an echo of old missions. Naruto lifted, set, held. Sasuke braced, smoothed, etched sealing lines with a steady hand. Sweat gathered under Naruto’s collar despite the cool air. Dust coated their skin. The smell of crushed earth and limestone sank low in his lungs.

He tried not to watch Sasuke’s hands, but it was hard to ignore the economy in each movement. Fingers pressed along a seam to test for give, wrist turning to draw a line that curved just right to catch and direct chakra flow. Naruto remembered those fingers wrapped around a sword hilt, lightning racing along a blade that had met his own fists, and pushed the thought away. He concentrated on the weight in his palms, on the roughness of stone against callus.

A couple of academy kids wandered too close to the rope, whispering to each other with the particular cruelty of the young. “That’s him,” one stage-whispered. “The traitor.” Naruto didn’t look up. He set a stone. The other kid snickered. “Why’s he fixing a wall? Shouldn’t he be in jail?”

Naruto’s jaw tightened. He kept his hands steady. Sasuke didn’t react. The chalk moved across the stone, white against gray. The kids waited, and when they didn’t get a rise, they grew bored and drifted away. Naruto released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and forced his shoulders to loosen. The silence felt heavier after that, like the trench between them had filled with something thick.

Midday crept up. Naruto rolled his shoulders and reached for the canteen. “Drink?” he offered, holding it out without looking too hard at Sasuke’s face.

Sasuke accepted it with a brief nod, his fingers brushing Naruto’s for an instant. Warm skin, a clean line of knuckle, a spark that ran along Naruto’s nerves and made him set his jaw. Sasuke took a measured swallow and handed it back. No thanks. No commentary. The water was cool in Naruto’s mouth, and he swallowed it down like it could smooth the rough edge of the day.

They resumed. Naruto pressed chakra through his palms to activate a seal line, and the mortar pulsed in response, light seeping into the cracks like veins. He willed it to settle slow, to avoid the brittleness that came from overcharging. Sasuke watched the glow, eyes narrowed, and adjusted the next line to compensate, the tip of his finger leaving a faint trail in the wet paste.

“You’re angling that seal wrong,” Naruto muttered after a while, unable to keep the words in. “It’ll pull too much from the base when the weather turns.”

Sasuke didn’t bristle. He dipped his head closer, recalculated, shifted the mark by a finger’s width. “Better,” he said, almost to himself. Then, after a breath, he added, “Good catch.”

The praise landed with a strange weight. Naruto nodded, throat tight. He reached for another stone and steadied it against the wall. The Ohagi stand down the way clattered a pan; somewhere, a dog barked. The village’s life rolled around them and didn’t touch them.

He found himself stealing glances—the slope of Sasuke’s neck where hair stuck with sweat to pale skin, the way his lashes cut a clean shadow on his cheek when he looked down, old scars faint and pale along his forearms. Naruto’s palms tingled. He rubbed them discreetly on his pants and focused on the seal arrays.

“Hold that,” Sasuke said, palm flat to the stone, voice low. Naruto stepped in, shoulder to shoulder, bracing his weight against the wall. The heat of Sasuke’s body seeped through his sleeve where their arms nearly touched. Naruto didn’t move away. He didn’t lean in. He just stood and held, chest tight with things he couldn’t name.

They worked through the afternoon without breaking for food. Naruto’s stomach growled once, loud in the quiet. He laughed under his breath. “Guess I forgot lunch.”

Sasuke glanced at him, a flicker of something like exasperation in his eyes. He reached into his pouch and pulled out a neatly wrapped rice ball, thrust it into Naruto’s hand without ceremony. “Eat.”

Naruto stared. “You—didn’t know you packed snacks.”

“I plan,” Sasuke said simply. He didn’t watch Naruto eat, didn’t comment when Naruto finished it in three bites, didn’t react when Naruto said, “Thanks,” softer than he intended.

By dusk, the wall stood smooth and solid, lines of chakra quietly interlaced, the lattice humming in a way that felt right in Naruto’s bones. He swept a palm over their work, and satisfaction settled somewhere low in his chest. Sasuke brushed dust off his hands and stepped back, eyes cataloging the seams as if looking for reasons to be displeased. He found none. His mouth eased by a fraction.

Naruto wanted to say something—about how they hadn’t broken under the day, about how the silence had edges that didn’t cut as deep as they used to—but the words dried up on his tongue. He wiped sweat from his temple and rolled his neck until it popped.

“We should file the report,” Sasuke said, finally, like the hour itself was a task to check off.

“Yeah.” Naruto gathered the empty mortar basin and the chalk. He hesitated. “We… did good.”

Sasuke’s eyes flicked to him, then away. “It holds.”

It was the closest thing to agreement they had. The evening air cooled as they packed up. Shadows lengthened along the base of the wall, the lines they had drawn sinking into the dim. Naruto shouldered the basin and glanced once more at the neat, seamless face of stone. The memory of the kids’ voices flashed behind his eyes and faded. He squared his shoulders.

They turned toward the village, walking in step but not touching, the space between them full of all the things they weren’t ready to say. The road ahead was familiar, the routine simple. Naruto kept his gaze forward, the weight of the day settling into something he could carry. Sasuke’s expression was unreadable in the half-light. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t have to. The work was done. The quiet went with them.

They had just reached the busier stretch of the market road when the first voice cut through, thin and high with the sharpness of a dare.

“Hey! Look!” A boy in an oversized academy vest pointed, tugging his friend’s sleeve. “That’s him.”

Naruto felt the shift before Sasuke did—the way chatter dulled around them, the way glances sharpened. He kept his stride even, kept his hands loose at his sides. He could feel Sasuke at his shoulder like a line he didn’t want to cross.

Three kids, maybe ten or eleven, had stopped just outside the produce stall. One leaned on the rail like a stage, chest puffed. “The traitor,” he said, louder this time. The word dropped into the street like a stone.

Naruto’s jaw clenched. He heard paper rustle as the stall owner pretended to rearrange cabbage. He saw the way a kunoichi paused, then kept walking. He tasted dust in his mouth.

Sasuke didn’t turn his head. He didn’t alter his pace. If anything, his expression smoothed further, eyes on some middle distance past everything that mattered.

The shortest kid scowled and stepped off the curb, emboldened by Sasuke’s silence. “Why is he even here? My dad says people like him—”

“That’s enough,” Naruto said, even, without raising his voice. He didn’t stop walking, but he pivoted slightly, angle shifting so that he fell half a step ahead of Sasuke. His chakra pricked under his skin in a quiet warning he didn’t intend to send.

The oldest boy’s eyes went wide. “What, you gonna fight us, Lord Seventh?” he mocked, and his friends snickered, but their laughter was thin. The title landed like a pebble thrown too hard.

Naruto stopped then, because it was easier to face it than keep moving and let the words slide over their backs. He turned, shoulders squared, and the kids faltered under the full weight of his gaze. He didn’t glare. He didn’t have to. He looked at them the way Iruka had looked at him when he was small and too loud and hurting in ways he couldn’t name.

“Say what you want about me,” Naruto said, keeping his tone controlled, “but watch your mouth about my teammate.”

“Our teacher says we shouldn’t trust—” the smallest began, defiance wobbling.

“Your teacher didn’t fight beside him.” Naruto’s voice edged warmer, steadier, because this was the part of him that never wavered. “He’s here because the Five Kage agreed he deserves another chance. He’s here because he chose to come back. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He softened it at the end because they were kids. He could feel the way Sasuke’s presence behind him went even more remote.

The eldest boy swallowed, bravado slipping. “He left,” he muttered, like it still counted for everything. “He hurt people.”

“So did I,” Naruto said, and the admission made the boy look up, startled. “We all make mistakes. What matters is what we do now. What we build.” He tipped his head toward the repaired wall down the street. “You like sleeping safe? Then maybe don’t spit at the hands making sure you can.”

Color climbed up the boy’s neck. He shifted from foot to foot, glare flickering, no longer sure of his lines. The stall owner suddenly found a reason to smile at nothing. A couple of passersby slowed, listening without wanting to look like they were.

Naruto didn’t push. He had learned where to stop. He took a breath and stepped aside, opening a line that didn’t force Sasuke to stand behind him. “Go on,” he said to the kids, not harsh, not kind. “Get to class. Learn something that’ll make you worth trusting.”

They hesitated, then went, scuffling, whispering that wasn’t brave anymore. One threw a look back over his shoulder like a warning he couldn’t deliver. They were gone in a moment, swallowed by the moving street.

Naruto let the breath out slow. The quiet that followed had edges again. He turned, ready to say something that might ease it, and met Sasuke’s gaze at last.

There was nothing there he could catch. No surprise. No gratitude. Just that cool, flat distance Naruto hated on sight because it meant Sasuke was somewhere he couldn’t follow.

“I don’t need you for that,” Sasuke said, voice low, even. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t anything. “I don’t need your protection.”

Naruto’s mouth went dry. “It’s not—” He broke off, swallowed, tried again. “I’m not protecting you. I’m—” He flailed for a word that didn’t make it worse and grabbed the wrong one anyway. “You’re with me. That’s all.”

Sasuke’s mouth twitched, not into a smile. “Exactly,” he said. “You made it about you.”

Naruto flinched as if struck. He hadn’t meant it like that. He’d meant to pull the boy’s aim toward the part of Naruto that could take it. He didn’t know how to say that without sounding like he was asking for thanks. He dragged a hand through his hair and looked away, down at his feet, at the dust that clung to his boots. “They were out of line,” he said, and even to his ears it sounded weak.

“They were children,” Sasuke replied. “They’re afraid. Their parents are afraid. Let them speak.”

“And let them run their mouths about you?” Naruto snapped, heat climbing up his neck before he could choke it back. He kept his voice quiet, at least. “Let them think it’s okay? You think that’s helping?”

Sasuke’s eyes cut sharper. “I don’t need you to manage my reputation.”

“I’m not—” Naruto forced his palm flat against his thigh to stop its shaking. “I’m not managing anything. I just—” He looked straight at Sasuke and let the edge drop. “I can’t stand there and pretend it doesn’t matter.”

For a second, something fractured on Sasuke’s face. Something quick and small and gone too fast to name. He folded his arms, shoulders tightening back into the armor Naruto recognized from a hundred fights. “You do what you want,” he said. “Just don’t use me as the excuse.”

It landed in Naruto’s chest and lodged there, prickly and wrong. He opened his mouth and shut it again because anything he said now would be messy, and the street was watching them out of the corners of a dozen eyes. He swallowed the hurt and turned it into movement.

“Fine,” he said, and it was too flat, too defensive. He shifted his weight and stepped away, not far, just enough to put air where their shoulders had almost brushed. “Let’s file the report.”

Sasuke inclined his head once, short, final. He started walking. Naruto hated how automatically his feet matched the pace, how easily their bodies remembered patterns their words couldn’t find.

They moved through the market like a cut through water, the street closing behind them. Naruto could still feel the ghost of Sasuke’s earlier nearness along his arm, a residual heat he refused to acknowledge. He kept his gaze forward, jaw set, breath measured. The villagers’ murmur rose and fell, none of it touching them because Sasuke wouldn’t let it, and Naruto didn’t know how to anymore.

At the mission office, they signed their names on the same line, one after the other. Their hands didn’t brush. They turned without speaking, the weight between them heavier than it had been this morning, dragged down by two sentences and everything they hadn’t said around them.

When they stepped back into the waning light, Naruto tucked his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t reach out without thinking. Sasuke angled his face away, profile carved into something untouchable. The space stretched, tight and thin.

They walked toward the edge of the compound where their paths would split, and Naruto could already feel the night pulling them apart. He wanted to fix it, and the wanting was a dull ache he was tired of carrying. He swallowed it and kept going. The gate loomed, simple and bare against the sky.

Sasuke didn’t look back. Naruto didn’t, either. They passed through the archway one after the other, and the silence that followed had a new shape, sharper and colder, settling between them like a wall they had not reinforced.

The sun bled out behind the rooftops, leaving the compound in a flat, gray quiet. Naruto hadn’t meant to come back, not really. He’d told himself he’d go home, shower, eat, sleep. His feet carried him anyway, down the familiar alleys, past the vacant houses with their shuttered windows and moss-covered steps. The Uchiha crest on the gate caught the last light and turned dull. He pushed through.

Sasuke was where Naruto had thought he’d be: seated on the low stone in front of the memorial slab, legs drawn up, one arm balanced loosely across his knee. His hair was uncombed, a few pieces sticking up stubbornly. The memorial’s surface reflected the dim sky. Names were hollowed into it, a long list of endings.

Naruto slowed, the gravel crunching under his boots louder than he wanted it to be. He stopped a few paces back, swallowed, then closed the distance because he knew himself—if he didn’t, he’d walk away and regret it until morning.

“You always end up here,” he said, keeping his voice soft. It felt wrong to be loud in this place. “I guess I do, too.”

Sasuke didn’t move. His gaze didn’t leave the stone. “Do you,” he said, flat, like it didn’t matter.

Naruto sank down a respectful distance away, careful not to crowd him. The air was cooler in the compound, the scent of damp earth and old wood. He watched the way Sasuke’s fingers curled, the pattern of calluses he knew as well as his own. He cleared his throat. “About earlier,” he started, forcing each word out. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You always mean to,” Sasuke cut in, not sharp, just precise. “That’s the problem.”

Naruto flinched. “I meant what I said to those kids,” he said, losing some control over his volume. He reined it back. “I wasn’t trying to make it about me.”

Sasuke’s lashes lowered. “It’s always about you, Naruto. Hokage-to-be. Hero. The one who forgives. You step in, and suddenly it’s your lesson to teach.”

Naruto’s jaw worked. He looked at the stone because looking at Sasuke hurt. “It wasn’t a lesson. It was— I just didn’t want them to think it’s okay to spit on you.” He swallowed. “I can’t stand it.”

“It’s not your job to stand it,” Sasuke said. He unfolded, straightening slowly, then set his feet flat on the ground again, as if anchoring himself. “You don’t get to decide what I endure.”

The words slid under Naruto’s skin like a blade with no edge, more pressure than pain. “Then what do you want me to do?” he asked, the question raw. “Walk past? Pretend I don’t hear it? Ignore it when they call you—” He stopped himself.

Sasuke’s mouth tightened. “It doesn’t matter what you do.”

“That’s a lie,” Naruto said before he could stop himself. “It matters to me.”

“What matters to you,” Sasuke replied, still looking straight ahead, “is how it makes you feel.”

Naruto closed his eyes, counted to three. “You’re doing that thing again,” he said, quieter. “Turning everything into a reason to push me away.”

“And you’re doing that thing,” Sasuke said, “where you refuse to hear me.”

Silence spread again, heavier. A bird hopped across one of the abandoned porches, the faint tap of claws on wood. Naruto rubbed his palm against his thigh, remembering the way his hand had shaken earlier