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S P A C E . B E T W E E N . T H E . S T A R S

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It always begins with the stars, his mother had told him once. This magic, these promises of twilight, the stars, the moon, the sky.

Sasuke had not understood, would never understand, but the longing had split seams along his skin, phosphorescent on an alabaster tide. That was before Itachi's voice had captivated him, hypnotizing and beautiful; before he told the child stories of lovers on spheres of starlight, crossing infinite miles of sky. That was before Itachi had decided the stars weren't enough for him, before he had grasped something across the endless universe that surpassed his need for a brother.

"Let us pretend, for a moment," he had said, softly, "That we are lovers, you and I; and that I am going away for a while, and that we may never see each other again."

"But you always come back," Sasuke said. Itachi smiled.

The next day he was gone.

--------------

She wept for Itachi, even after he slid the dripping knife from her pulsing heart. Sasuke drowned out her wordsthat fell likeendless paper rain, the blood on her chest and her lips on his hand. Sodden strands matted to his pale, sunken face, he screamed (and screamed and) ran. Climbed on the empty carousel, bare feet sodden with mud and grass, tears streaming down his already damp face as the music played, hollow and lonely across the field. Rain cascading like constellations falling from the heavens. For a moment, he could see the children shrieking from afar, shops closing, and he clutched onto the wooden horse as it spun him, around and around, the magic of an unfathomable sorrow caressing the silver skies.

Even in death, she was beautiful.

"Hey you!" and the voice is unfamiliar, but Sasuke knows he's heard it somewhere, something distant, something that skimmed along his chest within the heart that beat so fiercely. But the laughter dances through the air, so out-of-place in the clouds where it stood, and for a moment Sasuke forgets everything he'd ever wanted---the blood-laced eyes with the spinning wheel, the hands that had held him once, distantly, for a fleeting August moon.

The cold clenches Sasuke's throat and he just keeps holding on, keeps riding with the current until he is swept away by evening.

"Listen to me, dammit!" And suddenly he is blinded by a burst of gold, the feral grin spread wide across a coppered face, and Sasuke kicks him and the other kicks back, pinning the other to the sleigh and wooden horses are splintering wet skin; both are rolling around in attempt to emerge and declare victory---for what?---and the other is yelling and cursing and Sasuke is smiling to himself. Entangled in a moment where he forgets the wind, the breath of the accursed, unattainable stars, his father's lifeless eyes.

"Who are you?" Sasuke spits. "Where the hell did you come from?"

Both dive in an attempt to wrestle the other to the ground, fires burning, blooming, until Sasuke is heaving his breaths atop the other. Let me go, damnit! Naruto yells, cranes his neck upwards, pausing for breath. Sasuke, in a flurry of confusion, stands in silence to look up with him.

The stars and the sky and his mother's distant, gentle voice: "Don't let go now, little one. We don't want you to fall..."

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The voice shatters silence like a sulfer-powdered fire. "Sasuke, you fuckhead!" someone calls from afar. He doesn't even need to turn.

Naruto slides across the overpass, moon fluorescent against the nighttime sky, city lights glittering in an artificial colour. The insomnia of downtown traffic rushing below his feet, the red lights in the distance with the silken sweep of ever after. Sasuke is silent, gazing out the wired fence of aluminum and steel.

Silence. "Hey, hey," Naruto says. "You're the Uchiha, huh? The one that has no family?"

Sasuke glares, even though he knows Naruto doesn't have one either, even though he's felt the loss and the loneliness but he's the only one who doesn't believe it. Inside, his heart clenches like a fist. "I don't want your sympathy," he snaps tonelessly.

"You're scared," Naruto states abruptly, thoughtfully, even though he's never really one to think about what he says. The words are out before he can stop himself. "An Uchiha. Scared."

"And you're a moron," he retorts dully in return. That's how all their conversations really go, after all. Naruto says something indignantly, Sasuke suddenly clenches his fists vehemently, eyes flaring in an unspoken challenge, but even his words mean nothing to him anymore. He looks away; the murmuring settles in the cage of his chest, somewhere within the bitter interim he still dares to call his heart. "There is nothing I have to fear."

"Liar." Naruto says happily. Sasuke looks at him and the sorrow lingers within the silence, a stillborn crystalline on thread. "You really suck at this, Uchiha."

Let us pretend, for a moment...

"Shut up, dobe," Sasuke says, quietly, voice merely a whisper. The terror gripping him now, so foreign and so beautiful, throat tight with something constant, something forever: "You know nothing."

A lingering silence. Moonlight casting his face with shadows, cerulean bottomless as sky. Naruto finally turns.

"Do I really?" he asks.

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Sasuke remembers dying.

But that can't be, his father had said, It can't be. It must have been a dream.

But he still remembers it, still remembers dying, even after he wakes the next day and the dreams have been forgotten.

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He can feel the moving rhythm, the drumming pulse of artificial veins---the screaming of sirens in the distance, the unsung echoes of an empty sky. Dodges a swift kick to the chest, sidestepping roars, spirals of rage, burst of sunlight hurling fists at his face. Adrenaline rushing to machinery that seemed to have been dormant for much too long.

Must be the wind, he thought. Remembers the night where he sits with Itachi, Itachi's voice like magic, the winds blowing west and pines bursting into flame.

"Traitor's winds," Itachi had said. "Lovers' winds. Burns the silken thread that reminds us who we are." Had turned around, and Sasuke had seen, for the first time, the eyes wild and fleeting. Dangerous. "Do you know what love is, little brother?"

Dodges another kick, spins around from behind, pins Naruto to his knees.

Itachi's voice resonates in his head. "It is a pain of the most beautiful, the most beautiful kind..." Naruto is screaming now, smashing his bloody fists in rage, ferociously gripping Sasuke's heel into his back as he screams and screams and screams.

And Sasuke isn't quite sure what makes him do it.

He slams his palm against the other's shoulders, grips his neck with raw need clawing through the sanctuary of his fingers. Wrenches a kunai from his side, tearing it deftly along darkened skin, blade glistening in the myriad of lights. The fluid movement slicing down Naruto's hand, gold-hilted blade searing through the fluttering air, tearing through invisible cloth like water-woven fabric. Naruto's hiss of pain.

Both of them stare at the thread of blood that begins to surface.

"What the...?" Naruto's voice rising into a familiar crescendo.

Sasuke turns. Flees. The nighttime breath whispering, whispering--It must be the winds, he thinks again, and his heart is hammering insanely against his chest.

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Haruno Sakura, eyes of hickory-mint, turns in exasperation towards Sasuke. "That Naruto," Sakura says airily, flipping her cherry blossom strands from her face. "He's such an idiot, always parading around and thinking he can do what he does. Don't you think, Sasuke-kun?" She flashes him an awkward smile. Sasuke is silent.

Sakura falters. "Don't you know Uzumaki Naruto?" she gestures lamely.

"Who?" he says.

That night, he dreamed of the moon. Phosphorus against twilight, black blood like the endless space between the stars. Dreamed of the vertical horizon, of bleeding alabaster skin, of the bare feet running and running into the vanishing point, emerging at last into a separate world behind him. Sidewalks and windows spray-painted with arrows pointing in every direction, rain erasing the glass-blood footprints of who he was instead. There were stars, always the stars, always the endless nighttime sky.

Naruto followed, but found he could not remember why.

"What are you doing here, dobe?" Sasuke said without looking up. The ocean at his feet, cold water foaming at his ankles.

"None of your business, Uchiha-bastard," Naruto shot back. And the waves folded over, rippling into a swirling dance of gypsies spinning diamonds out of air.

Sasuke watches in mild disinterest as Naruto hitches himself over kelp and boulders, the water splashing down from the ragged seaside cliff. Scaling the walls until he reached the halfway point-- "Look at that, Uchiha," Naruto hollers in triumph--- and Sasuke shakes his head, darting up footholds, feet dodging rivulets of water, fingers plunging into crusts of debris as he launches himself over the waterfalls. Naruto's laugh is music, the drums of his voice pounding in Sasuke's chest, wind screaming past him as he tastes the seaside air, rising faster and faster, Naruto's bare foot growing closer and closer and--

"Shiiiiiit!" Naruto yells, and Sasuke smiles faintly as he spins around to kick Naruto off, the water plummeting down below-- gasps in surprise as Naruto grabs his ankle at the last moment, drags him down, the ocean at their feet, and Naruto writhes in his grasp and yells and smashes the other face-first into the crashing waves.

Naruto is the first to surface for air. "What the hell was that, asshole?" he roars, dragging his sodden feet in the sand. Golden strands plastered on a sun-coppered face, and he is exhausted but he has never felt more alive in his life.

"You first, dobe," Sasuke says, crawling out of the water and struggling to stand, and Naruto grinds his teeth at Sasuke's triumphant smile. The sky is dark now, Sasuke collapsing by Naruto's side.

And Sasuke still isn't sure what makes him do it.

"You--" Naruto's eyes widen as Sasuke's lips descend upon his, the fevered skin tasting of salt and sand, the shortened breaths of exhaustion and something else, something like passion, hot on his lips, something like--...what...?--and suddenly Naruto can think of nothing but kissing in return, thoughts spinning, burning, trapped in a fiery insomnia as he rolls his tongue on sun-dried skin, the bitter sweetness of a something-ever-after.

Shhhh...

And Sasuke lowers his trail down Naruto's heated neck, runs his hands through the golden mass of tangled hair, and Naruto feels him unzip his jacket with the translucent hands holding his bare back, burning lips kissing down his chest, his stomach, his gasp as Sasuke takes him, large and whole, trembling into his hands.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," Sasuke murmurs, and Naruto holds his neck against his chest, rises with the ocean beneath them, heat shattering within his skin as Sasuke fills him with his stars.

----------

And Sasuke remembers dying.

"That can't be it, asshole," Naruto says, and kicks him before Sasuke kicks back. "You're alive now, aren't you?"

Sasuke says nothing, knees bloodied with dirt as both are on the ground and struggling for breath, Naruto's blows blossoming bruises on his porcelain skin, his retaliating attacks painting black on the other's face. His heart is roped against his chest; it is beating and it is breaking.

"Well?" Naruto says again. "Aren't you?"

Tonight, Sasuke says, and he closes his eyes. Just for tonight...let us pretend that we are lovers, you and I---

And Naruto curses at him again, but he can feel the sorrow and anger in his throat, the incense of terror and regret and hatred and love all at once, but he pulls himself on Sasuke's chest and kisses him, bruising and helpless, the hands sliding down Sasuke's hips and his chest against his, rising and falling with something so whole and so desperate that he could not contain it, the sorrow and apology of everything that could have been.

But it's not, Naruto whispers, and he is holding Sasuke in his arms. A child and a murderer, and Naruto turns his face to the heavens where the stars fade with the dawn.

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There are some things Uchiha Sasuke can never understand.

"Wait for me," Sasuke had said, so many years ago. Wait until the stars are forever.

Itachi gazes at him now through the scars of his eyes, the fiery bloodlust of a humanity he still cannot remember ever possessing. A blood-soaked Sasuke stands with his hands clasped in prayer, the painful intoxication of the hatred he had harbored and the fire in his eyes, the loss and the regret still dying within his throat---"I have hated you," he says aloud, to confirm something he has forgotten already. "I have lived only with this hatred for you."

Itachi has not spoken, but Sasuke can still hear those haunting words: Oh, my dearest, foolish little brother.

Sasuke lunges and Itachi moves, the heated flash scarcely skimming his face, and he calls upon the demons that he knew had haunted them both: Sasuke screams but he reaches through the illusions, tears apart the webs of lies, grasps the memory of Itachi's hands, his throat, and---

"You cannot," Itachi has said. For he has loved the other so much that he cannot fathom the progress his little brother had not been making, cannot find within himself to forgive the last of his bloodline's redemption. And Sasuke sees in his eyes the blood-tinted crimson, the spinning Sharingan wheel, the rising fires of a monster dormant long within the ashes.

Shhh...

Rising within Sasuke is such a pain that as he falls to the ground, as Itachi grips his throat in slender promise, he can see the black and the red and the blue, the watercolour-cerulean that he could not remember ever knowing. Can hear the familiar song of laughter, the eyes wide and spirited, the coppered skin and golden hair---

Who are you? he finds himself asking. Who...?

"Forever, Sasuke," Itachi whispers huskily, and Sasuke reaches out, holds in an empty, aching breath, the memory of a fleeting eternity, of the last stars of sunlight---and the world is fading as he throws his head back to the sky, yellow, marigold, sunl-... Sees the ocean-eyes that extend to forever and he knows that he has

lost.

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lovers alone wear
starlight.
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