Title: In Silence Shatters
Type: oneshot
Summary: Sometimes the most important thing is having a place where you belong.

A/N: Unchanged from the one I had posted on my LJ. Lots of thanks to spacetart for the beta.

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He is there when I wake, but he remains inside, the light a muted yellow through the windows. The night is cold. I feel the chill against my skin, but I am warm. He draped a blanket over me as I slept and I look up, the scent of wood on my skin and on my clothes. The wood is solid, rough and familiar beneath my touch and for a moment I imagine my fingers curl to claw at it; mindless destruction. Instead my fingers find the edge of the blanket and pull it tighter around me as I stand.

I had arrived shortly before twilight only to find him gone. So just like other days that have come before, I had ended up at his rooftop, watching as the sun set and falling asleep just as dusk settled. He's seen fit to give me a key to his place, if only to keep me out of the cold during the nights. Perhaps he hasn't realized that I have no business inside his house if he is not there. I haven't used the key he's given me once, although I keep it with me for what it symbolizes if nothing else.

He had learned, long ago, that I liked to sleep beneath the sky and so he leaves me be, knowing that I will come to him when I wake.

He draws me to him in this silence, motionless at his table save for the slight motion of his hand as he writes. Before, once youthful impatience had settled into what he called grudging self-control, I used to watch him for hours as he wrote. There was nothing fascinating about it. It was boring, to say the least, but I didn't mind. Because he was here and I would be here with him and for just a few hours I would belong the way I could never hope to with anyone else.

Even now I can never be sure who acted first; whose touch had turned from one of light and warmth and aching familiarity to one that was all heat and want and innocence long gone. Maybe I did. A child's old wishes returning even after all those years. You acknowledged me once. Acknowledge me again now, for who I have become.

I had reached for him then as I reach for him now, satisfied as he stops his writing at the lightest brush of fingers upon his back; stops and does nothing else but wait. Wait as he's always done. Wait because there is always something to wait for.

He smells of the wind and of autumn burning, the scent of seasons past, and... My touch falters and it is with a smile that he casts a question at me, eyes forever gentle. I cannot hurt you, as if to say, and I know... wild berries that grow far beyond the village borders, a scent not his own but someone else's. I breathe, and the wildness grows, stronger this time, a brand to claim him. A reminder that he was never mine, but hers.

His touch replaces mine and I let him, hands and mouth as familiar to me as my own. Gentle, the way he has always been, and sometimes I loathe him for it, this masquerade that we play, but I have no right. For this was never a lie. No untruths between us. I have always known, as he has, that there is nothing that binds us but kindness.

Once, this had been enough, where this most intimate of non-attachments had been all I asked for. Yet somewhere between fleeting caresses and empty words, somehow, it had changed. Changed into something old and so achingly familiar I could not possibly know what it was. I refused to because illusions are as fragile as the lies they're built upon.

He was truth and kindness and salvation. He was the answer to dreams that almost couldn't be. He became everything I ever needed and everything I never wanted.

He is heat and muscles and strength and lies that should have never been as his body arches beneath me. And he lets me because I will always be the lonely little boy in his eyes. He has given me everything, just as I have denied him everything.

He says my name, breathless in the aftermath. He means it as a blessing. I hear it as a curse. My name does not belong here, not like this. Tangled and drowning in each other's embrace. There is nothing binding us, not even this.

I wish... I wish.

That this touch.

The silence wakes me.

It is a cloak more suffocating than that of darkness, because the silence speaks in a way the darkness never can. It speaks of the past and of ruin, of the present and of the future born from the breaking of it. It speaks of lies and lies and lies and of truth.

It speaks of not belonging.

It is in silence that I leave him, the key that he'd given me now left abandoned on his table. He had known. Maybe not tonight, but it had been inevitable from the moment he'd allowed me this, whatever this is. I had known, as clearly as he had, that I would be the one to leave him. He had told me as much, as the evening air cooled our bodies that first night.

I can't hate him, not even after all this, for I had chosen him as surely as I had chosen to be where I am now. It's true, what they say, that life is made up of infinite choices and that it is only as good as the next one you make. I had told Neji once, that there is no such thing as a destiny that cannot be changed, for it isn't destiny that scars the past and paves the future, but the choosing of the present.

The past has shown me hope, while the present teaches me of regret that has no place in tomorrow. For the future is only as clear as the past you cannot remember. I walk away from him without looking back. This is one choice I do not regret, for my leaving him has set us free from the cage of our own choosing. Mine because I hadn't known any better and his because he preferred it to be him than someone else.

What was that fucking cliché again? When one door closes, another opens. Yeah, right. How was I to know that my proverbial door would take its form in the guise of music?

I hear it almost as soon as I step outside, and I wonder briefly if this is what had woken me up in the first place. This stranger come to visit, the nighttime broken by haunts of a memory once buried.

It is a melody I am acquainted with. Music so slight one can mistake it for the wind. Yet I know the song of the wind, learned it from hours spent on the boughs of trees kept out of sight. If silence had a song then this would be it, shattering itself in soundless words that meant nothing, but said everything. It was a silence that said I know you. I know you as well as you know me.

How many times are we to meet like this? For I know who it is without having to see him. There is only one person who knows the sound of my own silence. We had said our goodbyes this way once. Already it seems like a lifetime ago.

His playing stops just as I find him, leaning casually against a tree with his head tipped forward, a leaf whistle still pressed to his lips. He's gotten better at it, it seems, since the last time I heard him play. Why wouldn't he have though? He's had three years to practice since then after all.

This time, the silence is real when he looks up to meet my gaze. Three years isn't long, even if sometimes it can feel like forever. We are kids again, engaged in a childish display of stubborn will and pride, daring the other to break whatever peace the night has lent us.

"I didn't know you were back." My voice is hoarse, rough from sleep and disuse, yet I am unable to keep quiet any longer. I was never one for peace anyway and I deserve to know at least, the reason for why he's here.

A shrug and the soft rustle of cloth as he shifts his weight. "It was unexpected."

His answer is a lie of course. I can tell by the way his fingertips press slightly into his thigh. It's an unconscious gesture, something I'd taken wicked delight of taking advantage of in the past. It seems he's never figured out that small idiosyncrasy of his. This time I choose to let it slide.

"Sakura told me where I could find you," he says matter-of-factly. As though it is only natural that one goes looking for an old teammate in the middle of the night.

I'm caught off guard by his volunteering the information and I blunder up a reply with the first thing that comes to mind. "She wouldn't have." It is harsh and bitter, and the closest to an accusation I could have given without calling him a liar.

Sakura knows about this of course. She asked me before if it was alright. She called it compensation for something I'd lost. I told her I hadn't lost anything, and wasn't compensating for anything. For a moment she looked like she was going to argue then thought better of it, instead settling for a smile and an invitation for ramen.

"Don't you think so, Naruto? He'll be back for sure." She'd been smiling, staring up at the sun.

I remember thinking then that I loved her, more than anything in the world. It was no longer some stupid schoolboy crush where I felt I had to do everything possible to impress her. No, I didn't want to be with her, not like that. I just wanted to see her happy. The same way she wanted me to be, eyes alight as she turned to look at me. "He'll come back. You'll see. He promised."

Except he hadn't. When I cornered him the night he left, he told me nothing of where he planned to go, or the reason behind it. "Tell them I leave because I want to." Don't try to follow me is what he really meant.

"Are you coming back then? Give her that at least."

"I don't know."

So I had lied to them instead, assuring them that he'd come back, while swallowing back the bitterness of the truth behind that lie.

I discover suddenly that I don't really want to know why he's back. I care even less about why he's out here in the middle of the night. I think of walking away from him, this childhood rival, reluctant friend. The irony of it is almost laughable. Why has he come here tonight of all nights? Yet I'm as unwilling to leave him as much as he's unwilling to tell me the reason for why he's here.

"She looks happy." He sounds mystified, as though he wasn't expecting it upon his return.

I smile despite myself, realizing that Sasuke must have seen Sakura with Lee. "Yes. Yes, she is." I ignore his unspoken question, the one he searches an answer for while he studies me. Are you?

Am I?

I remember warm summer days out in the fields with Sakura. I remember the sky and her smile and her eyes bright as sunlight. I remember bonfires in the spring and snowball fights in winter. I remember laughter that chased the emptiness away.

Of course I am.

I remember nights such as this. Where reality is all about dusty corners and shadows by the window and that cold spot in the bed that you could never keep warm.

"It's late, Sasuke." My tongue wraps around his name strangely. The way it does when you speak the name of a ghost that haunts you. The thought is unpleasant and I turn away from him quickly, not wanting any of this. "You should get some sleep."

I remember how it was like to have you walk away from me.

"I wanted to see for myself," he hesitates, "if it was true."

I stop walking to face him and all I can think about is how much I would love to smash his head against the tree until he bleeds. The moon filters eerie light through the branches, and I wonder briefly if blood would look as red in the moonlight.

"See what, Sasuke?" I make no move towards him and my tone is death cold, reminiscent of his own from years ago and I nearly wince for my hatred of it. The message is clear. Say it. Say it and I swear I'll fight you right here.

I remember how it was like to want you.

"Naruto..." It bothers me, the way he says my name, as though it pains him to say it. I'm suddenly startlingly aware of how tired he looks. "You don't belong here."

I freeze. His face is covered in shadow, but I can see his body tense, expecting an attack. I turn my back on him instead. "I don't belong anywhere." I am surprised at how bitter that sounds.

His hand is around my wrist before I can register his movement and his other hand rises to stop the fist aimed at his jaw. I glare up at him, making no move to free myself, knowing that I cannot and not wanting to give him the satisfaction of proving it. His skin is hot where he grips me. I realize belatedly I'd been expecting him to be cold.

"No." His voice is barely above a whisper. No can mean so many things.

No can mean that we're both right and he leaves me with the affirmation that I have nothing else left to me but the path I choose to take.

No can mean he's right and I'm wrong and reality is only a hairsbreadth away from my fingertips.

No can mean that we're both wrong and that there are some things even I cannot run away from.

I shake my head slightly and his hold loosens. His touch is still warm. I know exactly what it is he means to say. I think no can mean a million other things, but already he is life and fire and truth right at my fingertips.

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A/N: And in case anyone missed the very very subtle hints on who Naruto was with in the first scene, it's Iruka.