Archive of Our Own

When Sasuke was 18 months old, he nearly drowned in the river running through the Uchiha compound. He was too young to really remember, but he’s heard the story enough times that his brain has fabricated its own half-tangible recollections of the event. He can almost feel the current rushing over his chubby little baby chest, can almost sense the weight of it pressing down on him when he closes his eyes. He thinks he remembers seeing his hands claw sluggishly through the thick translucence in front of him, tasting the cool, brackish water filling his cheeks and searing his nose before everything went black.

Itachi pulled him out and resuscitated him, after hearing the screams of the aunt who was supposed to be watching him. They tell him it took nearly a minute for him to begin breathing again, but eventually Itachi managed to force some life back into his baby brother. Sasuke would have been unconscious for this part, but he can almost see his six-year-old aniki calmly pressing water out of his chest and breathing air back into his lungs in the practiced motions he would have recently learned from the academy. Sasuke does not imagine Itachi would have been frantic, or even particularly bothered. What he does imagine is the disappointed look in his father’s eyes when his mother reported the incident that evening. It’s ridiculous, to think his father would have expected an 18-month-old child to swim to safety all on its own, but Sasuke sees the disappointment all the same.

The disappointment stayed with him throughout his early years, particularly when his near-drowning incident manifested itself in a very real, very present fear of water.

His parents pulled him out of the aquatics lessons immediately when they realized. Private tutors, they told the instructors. For Sasuke’s advanced level. Pressing his ear to his parents’ bedroom, Sasuke heard his father tell his mother that he wouldn’t have the Uchiha name shamed by raising a shinobi who was afraid to get wet.

Sasuke forced himself to wade into the water after that, little by little, until he could stand there at chest level without crying and freezing up, until he didn’t flinch every time the current tugged gently at his ankles. Eventually he could put his head under, and soon after he learned to swim by copying Itachi’s graceful movements.

His instructors forgot about it and his parents willfully ignored it, and when Sasuke started at the academy full time at age 7, it was assumed he enjoyed a summer swim as much as any other boy his age.

*

Naruto’s kunai is fiery sharp across his shoulder, and Sasuke leaps back with blood running in between his fingers. The cut isn’t deep enough to do any damage to the muscles or tendons, and the pain is thankfully minor. The fracture in his left ankle is more of a nuisance, but Sasuke has been shaking off discomfort his entire life. No injury seems all that spectacular after the poison needles of Orochimaru’s curse seal.

“You…what is wrong with you,” Naruto says angrily, and Sasuke can hear the frustration in his voice. “You bastard, we could have used you. Konoha needed you, and…” He never finishes his sentence. A clone attacks Sasuke from the air, and Sasuke realizes that, truthful as Naruto’s words were, they were mainly a tactical distraction. It seems Naruto has even found a way to use his big mouth to his advantage.

“Still falling back on old tricks?” Sasuke asks, raising an eyebrow. “And you wonder why I left Konoha.”

Naruto’s mouth is very grim as he lowers his head like an angry bull. He doesn’t move, though. “Tsunade died,” Naruto says. His voice is jerky. “She died. And Kakashi almost died. How can you stand there like you don’t even care?”

“I don’t,” Sasuke says, even though he’s pretty sure Naruto knows he’s lying. He cares. Just not enough. “It’s a war, and Tsunade was Hokage. It was her job to die.”

“Damn you,” Naruto says, and charges.

*

Sasuke dreamed of Naruto when he was in Sound. He dreamed of Sakura, too, but those were nice dreams. Soft pink hair and warm sunlight and the scent of flowers in the air. In real life, he almost hated Sakura for her unearned loyalty, for the puppy-like adoration in her eyes that he refused to acknowledge. In his dreams though, he could close his eyes and lay his head in her lap and let her fingers run soft tracks through his hair like his mother used to do.

But Naruto…he dreamed of Naruto’s death over and over again; woke, shaking and cold, and remembered how close he had come to making it a reality.

In his dreams, Naruto always drowned.

He knew this was fallacy. When Naruto died, it would be in a great explosion of sparks and sound. There would be fire and blood, showy displays of power and jutsu, lots of yelling and movement, and maybe a few cheesy one-liners in the mix. He would die smiling.

But Sasuke could not stop seeing the water flowing in deadly ripples around Naruto’s body, could not stop remembering Naruto sinking below the surface again and again at the Valley of the End. Each time, Sasuke’s own throat had closed up at the sight, his childhood fear attacking him with a renewed vengeance. It wasn’t until Naruto had surged at him again, full of foxfire and brimming with rage, that Sasuke had been able to make his limbs move.

When he put a hand through Naruto’s chest, it was not the slimy ridges of Naruto’s lung that made him shudder, but the sight of Naruto’s blood hitting the water in drops and disappearing forever.

They were both drenched by the time the battle was over. The exploded waterfall showered down on them, and Sasuke remembers feeling like the water was a glass case around him. Heavy, immovable, suffocating. Four years later, and he still hasn’t managed to shake that feeling. Even in the heat of the summer months, Sasuke always has the sense of drowning.

Naruto will not die by water, but Sasuke will. He knows, in his last moments, he will see the surface closing over his head.

*

Naruto doesn’t tire; Sasuke always seems to forget this until he faces Naruto again on the battlefield, feels his own chakra waning, and realizes that Naruto’s barely begun to feel the strain.

“Stupid…stubborn…asshole,” Naruto growls, aiming a blow at Sasuke’s jaw. Sasuke’s gone before Naruto’s hand even comes close, ten feet away before Naruto can blink.

“You were there,” Naruto rages. “You were there and you just watched. You didn’t do anything.”

“I did what I came to do,” Sasuke corrects him.

Naruto bends over, panting, and braces his hands on his knees. Sasuke knows he hasn’t really let his guard down. He’s most likely thinking up his next attack and doesn’t want to telegraph it with his eyes. The trick is to read your opponent’s gaze without letting any information into your own. In this, Naruto is at a distinct disadvantage; his eyes have always been blindingly expressive.

“Was killing the elders so important that you had to ignore everyone else?” His voice is muffled, but Sasuke hears it loud and clear.

“Yes,” Sasuke answers truthfully.

“God damn it, Sasuke, we lost half our forces, and you just watched.”

“Actually, I didn’t,” Sasuke says calmly. “Pein’s attack presented an opportunity, and I took it. Konoha itself holds no interest for me.”

Naruto raises his head, and his irises are a pale red. Sasuke knows it’s dangerous to bait him like this, but Naruto has always had the ability to impair his logic. Nothing is different about this fight.

“If Konoha is so undermanned,” Sasuke continues, “then why are you here bothering me, dumbass?”

Naruto’s reply is nothing more than a snarl.

The question was rhetorical anyway; Sasuke already knows the answer. The moment Naruto realized Sasuke and his team had been in Konoha, he would have dropped everything to give chase. That’s Naruto, and it shouldn’t send such a shiver of emotion through Sasuke to know that he’s still so important to the his former teammate, to realize that nothing has changed. The only time Sasuke ever felt such a driving obsession, it was fueled by revenge. Naruto’s, incredibly, is still fueled by friendship, and that’s something Sasuke will never understand.

The next time Naruto draws blood, it’s with his claws instead of a knife. He slashes straight across Sasuke’s stomach, and Sasuke stumbles back into the nearest boulder.

*

The Uchiha clan has never been friendly with water. Water is the enemy of fire, and even Chidori doesn’t spark on a drenched fist. Sasuke thinks he knows why Itachi chose drowning as a fate for Shisui. Before Sasuke knew the truth, he would have chalked it up to Itachi’s cruelty, to his madness and brutality. Now, he realizes: Itachi wasn’t trying to punish Shisui, he was trying to punish himself.

Sasuke can imagine himself killing Naruto in hundreds of different ways, but he cannot imagine holding him under the water. For Naruto’s head to be under the water, Sasuke’s fist would have to be there, too, holding the blonde head steady. Just the splash of the river makes Sasuke flinch; he knows he could not immerse himself in the shallows and stand quiet and motionless for as long as it would take a human being to die.

Water means vulnerability to an Uchiha, and Sasuke cannot allow himself even a little.

If he were asked why he and Itachi both chose water nin for teammates, he would give the predictable answer that it’s about balance. Sasuke’s tactical weaknesses are Suigetsu’s strengths, and Sasuke guesses it was the same for Kisame and Itachi.

The real reason is far less sensible. It’s about fascination for someone so fluid and transient, someone to whom water is not only a weapon but life itself. Suigetsu is made of water – he can’t drown. Sasuke watches him liquefy around the thrust of a sword, and he feels envy.

His nightmares are not made of the senbon needles that nearly killed him, but of Haku’s ice mirrors, so colorless and inescapable that being trapped inside their merciless flash was like sinking on dry land.

*

Rock Country is a misnomer, Sasuke thinks as his back slams into a particularly jagged outcropping of stone. It scrapes away a few layers of skin, and that’s some more blood that Sasuke can’t afford to lose. Rock Country has rocks, yes. But it also has dirt and scraggly trees, hardy bushes poking out of the granite ledges, and harsh cliffs dropping straight into the sea.

Naruto is like red lightening, a darting streak that his Sharingan can’t catch up to and his body can’t evade. There’s no place to find cover in this bare landscape. It’s not quite Suna, but it’s almost as bad. Sasuke takes refuge on a tree limb, but Naruto’s Rasengan plows right through the trunk, sending the whole thing crashing to the ground. Sasuke manages to evade being caught in the shuffling branches, only to run into Naruto’s fist.

The blow cracks a rib and sends him skidding back toward the drop of the cliff. “I will take you back,” Naruto threatens him. “Even if it’s in a body bag.”

Sasuke believes him; this is coming from the genin who defeated Pein. The ninja world has exploded into an endless series of clashes, and Naruto’s village is right at the center. Konoha destroyed in the process of protecting Naruto, Pein destroyed in the process of destroying Konoha. Suna, coming to Konoha’s aid, and thereby making itself an enemy of Akatsuki, Madara, and by default the Mist Village. The Raikage’s right-hand-man killed in the Konoha clash in the midst of pursuing Sasuke, causing the Cloud Village to officially declare war on Mist, Sand, and Leaf alike. Rock Country has yet to announce an alliance, but Sasuke expects them to side with Mist any day. And knowing the class of shinobi populating Sound, the first attempts at coup can’t be long in coming.

Sasuke finds himself leaning over, winded, as Naruto approaches. He’s caged in, he realizes. In front of him, a tightening semi-circle of Naruto’s shadow clones; behind him, thin air. There is no place to run to, nothing to use as a shield. His sword is lying in two pieces a hundred feet away, and he doesn’t have enough chakra to manufacture a leap across the gaping crevasse and escape that way. All he has left is the Mangekyo, Itachi’s last gift and a weapon that, like its giver, Sasuke both loves and hates.

He picks out the real Naruto from the copies and turns the full force of the Tsukuyomi on him. The result is instantaneous. Sasuke doesn’t actively choose the scenario – he just thinks pain, and then Naruto is doubling over, keening like an animal and holding his head. The clones disappear, but Sasuke doesn’t move. He’s horrified by the sounds Naruto is making, and he’s stuck to the spot like roots have caught his feet.

It lasts only a second – one second and then Naruto collapses, pitching forward to the ground. His shoulders are shaking, and then Sasuke realizes which illusion he used – the fox breaking out, breaking Naruto’s body apart.

Naruto is practically a picture of health compared to Sasuke, but Sasuke knows the blonde’s brain is telling him differently. Naruto just experienced days of being torn to pieces, over and over again, and he won’t be moving for a long time.

Sasuke feels ill.

He’s shaky and tired and his vision is starting to waver when he takes the first step forward, prepared to walk around Naruto and leave him behind. Again.

A crack under his feet makes him look down. Uchiha Katon, Hatake Chidori, and Uzumaki Rasengan. Fire, Lightening, Wind, and icy, deadly Water. These are the elements that haunt Sasuke’s waking hours. The one he always forgets about is Earth.

There are pebbles rolling past his sandals, and Sasuke realizes how far he’s backed up. His heels are inches from the edge. He suddenly notices the wind whistling by his ears, the slap of the waves, the ominous shift of the ground beneath him. The problem with exhaustion is that it dulls the senses, and they never come back until it’s too late.

Sasuke doesn’t even have a chance to scream as the cliff crumbles out from under him.

He may not get a chance to drown if the impact kills him, he thinks. His feet kick through thin air and then his body jerks like a yo-yo as his plummet is halted.

Naruto has caught him, two fists knotted into Sasuke’s collar. Sasuke’s legs dangle over the abyss as he looks up into swirling eyes.

“I’ve got you,” Naruto says.

*

“Yaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Naruto’s figure made a joyful arc over the grassy ledge, two clones following. All three copies hit the water with a splash, and Sasuke was able to spear three of the fish to the tree before the rest swam away.

“Again,” he told Naruto.

Naruto’s whiskered face screwed up in annoyance. “This is really tiring,” he snapped. “You do it!”

It was easier to call Naruto a moron than to explain why he would never, ever be leaping into that river. “Three more times,” Sasuke ordered, just to see if he could make Naruto do what he wanted.

It was true that they needed more fish. But it was also true that there was also something intoxicating about watching Naruto’s exuberant leap from solid ground to flowing water. His confidence that he wouldn’t drown, his assurance that the water wouldn’t win. Naruto’s whole torso was smooth and sun-browned, and Sasuke imagined he swam every chance he got, diving in the shallows for the pure fun of it.

Sasuke wanted to make him do it over and over again, to see if that self-assurance would last, to see if he’d be able to catch any of his own fear in the blonde’s face, recognize any uncertainty.

But Sakura called, and he never got a chance.

*

“I’ve got you.”

Naruto’s voice is hoarse and his face is strained as he holds Sasuke by the collar. His grip is firm, though. His eyes flicker blue and then red, then settle on blue as he stares down into Sasuke’s face. Sasuke can feel Naruto’s knuckles pressing painfully against the underside of his jaw, holding on for dear life.

He shouldn’t have been able to move. He shouldn’t have been able to make it to the edge in time, let alone catch Sasuke before he fell. Naruto shouldn’t be able to do half the things he does, and Sasuke has to fight back a hint of fear now. Not of death, but of Naruto.

Naruto’s mouth is a thin line as he struggles to pull Sasuke’s dead weight back up over the edge. From his precarious position, Sasuke can see the instability of the out-cropping that Naruto is crouched on. Any more strain and that will break off, too.

“Let go,” Sasuke says in a voice that’s far calmer than he feels. “Let go or you’ll fall, too.”

Naruto’s mouth is tight. “No,” he says, and continues to pull. The tendons are standing out on his forearms, and Sasuke can see how bloodless his fingers are, clawed into hooks of flesh and bone.

“Let go,” Sasuke says more forcefully, and twists. The wind is making them both sway.

“Quit it,” Naruto snaps. “Do you have a death wish?”

“Do you?” Sasuke snaps back, and this is a ridiculous conversation given how hard they each just battled to stay alive.

Naruto is sweating. “Grab my arm,” he grits, “and I’ll pull you up.”

Sasuke could. He could let Naruto save him from a long fall and a watery death. He could give in, and let Naruto pull him to safety, and then it will be one point to Naruto. One fight that Naruto’s won, among their thousands of conflicts. One admission of weakness.

Because even this is a competition. And Naruto wants to save him, but Naruto also wants to beat him. Even if it’s in a body bag, Naruto said, and Sasuke would rather be taken home in a body bag than be dragged back like a naughty child. Above him is friendship, and safety, and home. Below him is an ocean deeper and rougher than any that Sasuke’s encountered.

The elders are dead, Itachi is avenged, and it’s hardly a choice at all. Sasuke has one kunai left in his holster. He reaches down, grabs it, and slices through the fabric of his shirt.

Naruto’s left with a handful of bloody cloth as Sasuke plummets backwards into nothing.

*

For a long time, Sasuke saw Itachi’s face in the water. He never told anyone, but he could scarcely look into the reflection on the pond without Itachi’s eyes materializing, cold and dead and red as blood. Itachi had saved him from the water once, and now he was encompassed in it. Because it had all been a lie, a cruel trick…or at least that’s what Sasuke thought back then. Itachi had saved him from the water only to steal away everything else that Sasuke held dear. For years, every time he dipped his toes in, he expected to feel Itachi’s white fingers pulling him down, drowning him in the depths.

A few times, he gave into his youthful rage, letting anger overtake fear as he attacked the image. He splashed and thrashed until Itachi’s face wavered and disappeared, and then he’d find himself alone in the water, exhausted and shivering and panicked. He never stopped to think that life might be like that after Itachi was dead – heavy and empty and cold.

He never sees Itachi in the water anymore, and he wishes he did. He sees nothing, now, and that’s somehow even more terrifying.

*

Falling into water from a great height is akin to slamming through cement. Sasuke does not black out, even when he feels his bones break and his skin tear.

This does not surprise him.

The water has been waiting for him his entire life, and it takes him now, pulls him under. He sinks like a stone, his heavy clothes dragging him down. He doesn’t fight – he’s in too much pain to do anything but blink dazedly. It’s a cloudy day, and there’s nothing to lighten the blackness of the water stinging his eyes.

His lungs begin to burn almost immediately. It’s hard to take a good breath when you’re crashing through the air. There’s no time for drawn-out goodbyes, and Sasuke decided a long time ago not to regret anything. He pictures Itachi’s face in his mind, and then Naruto’s. Those are the faces that really matter, and he takes them with him as he closes his eyes and inhales.

…and exhales a lungful of water as Naruto crouches over him, slamming two palms against his chest.

“Damnit,” Naruto screams, shaking him. “Breathe, you asshole.” He presses his mouth against Sasuke’s, forcing air into Sasuke’s lungs, and Sasuke convulses and coughs.

Naruto wipes his mouth, and Sasuke sees that Naruto is soaking wet, that they’re both soaking wet, and somehow laid out on the rocky shore by the water. Blonde hair is dripping on him and blue eyes are furious and there’s an unbroken stream of curses being tossed on the wind above Sasuke’s head.

“You bastard,” Naruto chokes out, and then Sasuke realizes that the moisture on Naruto’s face isn’t all seawater. Naruto presses his forehead to Sasuke’s chest, shuddering, as his fingers dig into the dirt by Sasuke’s ears. “What’s wrong with you?” he whispers.

There’s a war raging, and Konoha is newly Kage-less, and Naruto should be at home, letting Sakura cry on him and bolstering the village with his brash voice and doing his tireless best to make things right. Instead he’s here, saving Sasuke’s life.

“Idiot,” Sasuke tries to say, but all that comes out is a mouthful of water. He should have known, even back in Konoha, that Naruto would never hesitate to dive headfirst into the waves.

Naruto punches him across the face.

Sasuke feels his nose break, and it feels good; it feels like life. Naruto punches him again, and Sasuke’s limbs are numb – he can’t lift a finger to stop it.

“We’re going home,” Naruto says, teary.

“Fine,” Sasuke slurs. “But only because I want to.” And then he passes out.

*

Sasuke will die by water; he’s known this for a long time. But he also knows he’ll have to run fast and far to do it. Because the thing is: it won't happen on Naruto’s watch.