Thoughts on the Teme

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. That copyright belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

I wonder what it's like to be him, sometimes. The teme, that is. He's got so many good things going for him. I just sometimes wonder what it's like to have it like he does. The natural abilities from his family. The popularity. The supposed "good looks" (yeah right; I'm way better looking!) and all the girls swooning because of it. How can someone not like all that? He can, I guess. But he's weird.

Don't get me wrong; I like me. Other than the whole "home for a demon that once terrorized Konoha" thing and everyone hating me for it, I like my life. I've got friends, some of which are close enough, I consider them my family. Like the teme. He's a brother to me, even if he doesn't feel the same. He says he already has a brother, and he wants to kill him. Such a screwed up family dynamic. But, I guess I might be the same if I went through what he did.

That's another reason I wonder what it's like to be him. I might be able to understand why he felt that he had to leave us here in Konoha to go to Sound; why he lives for nothing but revenge; why he tried to destroy all the bonds between us. Sometimes I think that, if I could just know what it's like to be him for a moment, then I might be able to justify what he did and I wouldn't have to keep searching for him to bring him back here. I could let it go. Maybe I'm looking for an out from my vow to drag him back home. I never go back on my word. That's my nindo. But maybe if I could see his reasons for leaving, if I could make it all right in my mind, then I would be released from my oath to myself and to Sakura-chan to bring him back.

Sakura-chan… The teme was always mean to her. I can't remember him ever saying a nice thing to her. Then again, I can't remember him saying much of anything to her. His favoured vocabulary consisted of monosyllabic non-words that could mean absolutely anything, and he used them on Sakura-chan more than anyone else. It's like he had a set number of syllables he could direct to her and he was rationing them out, saving them up for a rainy day, or something.

I always got mad at the teme when he was mean to Sakura-chan, or just didn't respond to her words like I thought he should. In my mind, he was getting attention from Sakura-chan; he should have been through the roof with glee and hanging on her every word, like I would have been. Instead, he would either ignore her or shrug her off as quickly as he could, which usually entailed insulting her in some way.

At those times, I always thought he was the biggest jerk I'd ever met and didn't deserve Sakura-chan's affection.

Shortly after he left, I left too, with Ero-sennin. I had a lot of time to think during my training. I found myself reliving every mission we'd ever had as Team Seven. I recalled all our conversations, all our battles, all our time together. And I began to shift some of my earlier ideas about the teme.

I still think he's a huge jerk. Unless he introduces termites to his butt to get rid of the stick that's stuck up there, that will never change. But, I'm not so sure he meant it all. I've come to understand that he's emotionally retarded and therefore doesn't interact well with others and doesn't deal well with new or strong emotions that aren't of the "hate" variety. I call it "Sibling of a Psychotic Genius Syndrome", or SPyGS.

In all of my thinking (which for some reason was always accompanied by a splitting headache and strange squeaking and whirring sounds coming from my skull), I came to the indisputable conclusion that the teme does not hate us. He cares about us. He gets a warm and fuzzy feeling inside when he thinks about us. Yup. We're definitely important to him.

He said that bonds will make him weak. But I know he doesn't really mean that, at least not the way I first thought he meant. If he thought bonds were for the weak, he would have killed me at the Valley of the End. If we didn't matter, if strength meant a person has to remove all affections and ties to everything and everyone, then he would have destroyed all that was once important to him. Just leaving us wouldn't be enough to accomplish that, and he would know that. After all, distance makes the heart grow fonder. And if that's true, then the teme must just be moping about like a lovesick puppy for us.

No, he still cares. I know it. I know it like I know it takes exactly three minutes for ramen to be ready and that if you drink sour milk it will give you Devil's-grade diarrhoea. If we meant nothing, if he cut all our bonds, he would have killed me. And in doing so, he would have become akin to the intended victim of his ambition; a monster; a soulless incubus; Itachi.

But I suppose we could make him weak in a way. Itachi is, well, just that, an itachi; a weasel. And his conniving mind might try to use the people the teme holds close, against him, like he did when he killed their clan. That freak likes to torture the teme. I think maybe the teme was afraid his brother would hurt one of us to get to him; to spur his hate. He told me, back when we were fighting Gaara, that he didn't want to lose another important person. He didn't want to lose one of us. (Well, at the time, he was talking about Sakura-chan---which I only realized the importance of when I was doing all that painful pondering during my training---but he was referring to all of us.) If he left, if the teme made it look like he wanted nothing to do with us, it might look like he really did stop caring, like he was living as his brother wanted him to, and Itachi would likely leave us be. (Well, except for the whole Akatsuki being after me for the Kyuubi, but that's really beyond his means to prevent and really doesn't have anything to do with him.)

Now, I'm not stupid. I know he went to Oto to get the power he thinks Orochimaru can give him. But, I just know that that wasn't the clincher; that wasn't the real reason he left us.

The teme didn't want Itachi to hurt any of us, so he left…

Which of course is absolutely moronic! Like we could be used for Itachi's whims that easily! We're fighters, darn it all! We got the skillz, er, ah, the skills. We can help. We can make him stronger than that Itachi-psycho-freak. With us, he'd be unstoppable. After all the crap we've gone through, how could anyone think that the three of us couldn't take on that weasel and win? Of course he wants to be the one to do it. And I've got nothing against him dealing the finishing blow. Dealing death to family members seems to be a tradition with them, so it's only right.

A lot of people don't think we should keep looking for him. They think he's a traitor and we should just let the hunter-nins take care of him. They don't get it. If one of their most important people just up and left, set out on a road that they know is gonna lead to nothing but more pain and misery and quite possibly death, they'd do the same thing me, Kakashi-sensei, and Sakura-chan are doing. There's no way we'll stop. That idiot is coming back, if I have to drag him kicking and screaming, clawing and cursing. Ohhh, I'll definitely get him back. Even if I somehow stopped caring about him like a brother and suddenly didn't give a crap about what happened to him, I'd still devote myself to bringing him back, just to spite that dummy. I can't wait to see the look on that ugly mug of his when we "escort" him through the gates of Konoha. (Sakura-chan always clobbers me when I call the teme ugly. I don't get it; I'm so much sexier. And if it's "danger appeal" that she's after; I've got a freakin' demon caged inside me that's desperate to get out. I'm a tickin' time bomb! You don't get much more dangerous than that! … … … Hmmm… Maybe that's not so appealing, when I put it like that. Crap! I'm screwed, aren't I? Awww maaan…)

Anyway, where was I? Mmmm… oh, right! I won't stop trying to get him back! I will not allow one of my first and most important bonds to be pushed aside and ignored so easily. I'll find a way. And Sakura-chan will be happy again.

(Sigh) It's always gonna be him. I know that. I think I realized it when she begged me to bring him back the day after he left. It's always gonna be the teme for Sakura-chan.

You know, sometimes when we talk or eat ramen together, I think she's starting to see me differently. Like she's starting to feel things towards me that I would just die to have her feel. Like she's beginning to feel for me the way she does for the teme. And I start to hope. Not too much, mind you. Hope to high in the love department and the fall will kill you. But I start to think maybe, just maybe, it could happen. She gets this look in her eyes; the same one she used to look at the teme with when Team Seven was first formed.

But then our conversation drifts to our mutual goal of getting the teme back, and she gets a different look in her eyes. The one she used to look at the teme with later on; after we had been together for a while; when she stopped fawning over him like all the other fangirls; when she started loving him.

And she doesn't look at me with those eyes. She looks off into the distance, toward the gate he left Konoha from, with them. She looks at me with the eyes of someone with a simple crush; a supplement for the real thing. She thinks about him with that other look in her eyes. Only him. Like it's always gonna be.

I've learned to accept it, I guess. It sucks, and I wish it was me. I really do. But I also want Sakura-chan to be happy. The teme too. Maybe if I brought him back, Sakura-chan would be happy, and maybe, just maybe, the teme could suck it up and not be so asexual around her. I know there's gotta be hormones in that guy somewhere. And I know she's important to him. Like I said before, he told me when we were fighting Gaara during the Chuunin Exam that she was one of his important people. And you don't constantly push away one of your most important people with insults and cold shoulders unless you're afraid to get too close. And the only thing I can think of the teme being afraid of is being so invested in someone that he can't pull away and it results in Itachi finding out about his important bond and he uses it against him.

I think maybe Sakura-chan was the most dangerous of us to the teme's ambition. I remember, before the rescue team left the gates in our failed attempt to get the teme back, Shikamaru said something I didn't catch at first. But like I said, I analyzed all our conversations as they related to Team Seven. And since Sakura-chan was there, that one was included. Shikamaru said, "Even you couldn't convince Sasuke, right? Seems like we gotta force him to understand. Sakura, your job is done," when Sakura-chan showed up at the gates. I didn't catch it at first. But it seems that lazybones had noticed something I hadn't. That if anyone could have convinced him to stay, it was her. She had that much influence over him, I hadn't even realized it. And Shikamaru is the one who said it, so I know it has to have some substance; his genius mind and all.

And when I was thinking back, I remembered what happened in the Forest of Death. When Sasuke's curse mark thingy went Chernobyl and he was all dark-purple-aura-ie. He was gonna kill those Sound ninjas. And he was enjoying it. He was becoming a monster. But Sakura-chan hugged him and asked him to stop. And he did. If I had asked him to stop, he would have sneered and said some smart-aleck remark. But he just stopped; for her. She could do that to him. That's the influence she has on him. Shikamaru was there too. I guess he would have realized her influence then. In my defence, I was unconscious at the time, so I didn't actually see it happen, but when I heard about it, I should have caught something. Sometimes I think I'm not as great as everyone thinks I am. (What? I can bolster my self-esteem any way I want. Dattebayo!)

I don't know what happened between the teme and her when Sakura-chan saw him the night he left. She never gave me specific details of what was said, just an abstract of what happened: they talked; he knocked her out and left. I know there's more to it. I know, because she gets that look in her eyes when she thinks about it, and then she skirts the subject as best she can. Sakura-chan is a straightforward person. I like that about her. She's not afraid to speak her mind, so when she avoids a topic, it means there's something about it that is either painful or personal, or both. Ah, I probably don't wanna know what happened. Probably just make me angry or somethin'.

But I'm tired of mourning over the past. That's all long done. The future is my goal; a future where my family is complete again; where my brother is at home in Konoha…so we can resume beating the crap out of each other every chance we get! (I mean, that's what siblings do, right?)

I'm not gonna stop 'til he's back. That jerk, Sai, just doesn't offer the same brand of insulting banter the teme does. And I just know that when I'm hokage, my greatest joy will come from ordering the teme around and sticking him with the real crappy missions, as little reminders of his place in the village, ie: lower than me! He'll be the dobe! Ahhh. That'll be sweet! Dattebayo!

The End

Guttersnipe's Word: This has been kickin' around for quite some time now. Most of my fics have been, actually. And there are so many more just sitting there. It's depressing how lazy I am.

This was really only supposed to be a Naruto and Sasuke friendship fic, but it mutated into a semi-sasusaku fic instead. I don't know what's happening to me. I do not write romance in any form. Something has corrupted my precious mind. Anyhoos, please review.

Coming Soon: Public Service Announcement- After Sasuke returns to Konoha (coughdraggedbackcough), Tsunade orders him to perform community service to atone for being a missing nin. One task is to make a string of PSAs, which means he must work with Lee and Gai, who produce, write, and direct them. (If you've read my other fics, you know that I like to write for Lee and Gai. Despite my mistreatment of them in my stories, I actually do love these two characters. This fic is taking longer to write than I'd like (I've been working on it since I started writing fanfics), but I feel that if I apply myself, you should be seeing it in no more than two weeks (Hey! It's not like I don't have a life outside of writing fanfiction, you know! Geez!).)

And…I'm also working on three continuation stories (amidst my one-shots; got a lot of those on the run), but I haven't laid out the whole outline for each yet, so expect those to begin a little later on.

Oh! And at the risk of sounding redundant, please review! Thanksies!