AN: Ah, finally I have finished editting this enough that I'm happy to post and I have a couple more chapters to cushion the possibility of late updates. I hope you guys enjoy this!

Just a note worth making, all news regarding this fic will be posted on my profile so please head on over there if you want to know what's going on at any given time. Any news I post there will be dated so hopefully everyone will be 'in the know' as it were.

Warnings: SasuNaru, AU, Sasuke first person POV (I've tried to make Sasuke as IC as possible - it's not too difficult when you work in the profession I do XD)

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

1: Uzumaki Naruto

I guess most people would call it a bad day, I would call it a bad life.

The days are irrelevant, passing in a haze of monotonous repetition. Wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, avoid everyone, come home, study, sleep, repeat. It's the underlying taint that makes it a bad life, the thrum that passes through every waking moment, the thoughts that continue to swirl through my mind like water filled with scum because of what's happened to me, despite the years that have passed…

Every day is the same.

I suppose subtle disruptions can make a particular day slightly more unbearable if you're so caught up with the transient presence. I suppose the fact that the sun is shining directly into my eyes as I leave the house for school could put me in a slightly less amiable mood than usual but it changes nothing.

Itachi is still out there, doing as he pleases.

And I'm stuck in this repetitive farce, continuing to stagnate in this endless sea of irrelevance while he proceeds to drift further and further away from me.

My brows furrow as I shove the front door closed behind me and slip my hand into my satchel to pull out my headphones. Though my wayward brother is never very far from my thoughts, it's unusual for him to be sitting so prominently in my mind, taunting me with his continued existence and making me wish I could just succumb to anger and hatred balling inside me, ditch my life here in Konoha and pursue him relentlessly until he's finally dead.

Dead.

I know that as a 16 year old high school student, orchestrating a murder should be one of the farthest things from my mind. The idea alone is enough to commit me to a mental asylum but I can't help it, not after what happened.

Not after I found him standing above them with those cold, dead eyes, the same eyes as my mother just devoid of life of hope…

Except her eyes are just as dull as his now because she was d-covered in blood and oh God the sten-

"Sasuke."

I feel a hand on my shoulder and wince as I jerk involuntarily and accidentally get a burning eyeful of the sun. As I flinch away from the incessant brightness, a long lock black hair sweeps across my face to offer some blessed shade. I glare at Kakashi, my eyes popping with little dancing black spots.

Kakashi merely smiles disarmingly, something he tends to do when he finds me brooding. It's somewhat infuriating.

Kakashi Hatake is the Literature Professor at my high school and just so happens to be my current guardian. It's obvious that we're not related, his silver hair, the slightly drooping set to his eyes, the healthy skin complexion are a dramatic contrast to my ebony hair, slighter stature and translucent skin tone. Our marked differences in appearance are the main reason I never catch a ride to school with him though the incident that rendered me homeless is hardly a state secret. I don't like to be reminded of the whole thing anymore than I need to be.

Well…that and despite how bad it might be, I value my life.

"It's a little early to be spacing out, don't you think?" Kakashi offers me pleasantly as he stretches and picks up his documents for the day, turning to lock the door to the house before walking with me to the end of the drive. "If you're feeling a little off this morning, I could always give you a ride."

He makes this suggestion every morning before school. Irrelevant repetition. I fix him with the usual cold gaze.

"No," I say pronouncedly and turn right, stalking forward at my usual languid pace.

Kakashi follows this with his usual shrug and proceeds to complete his own morning ritual with that death trap of a car of his.

There are only a few times in my life I've ever willingly taken a seat in that monstrosity of a vehicle, a mangled Ford Fiesta with a mis-matching door and a disconcertingly loud engine and every time I've actually ridden in that thing, I've been convinced that the piece of junk is only held together by gum and the collective will of everyone inside it.

I've often tried to persuade Kakashi to get a better car but he'll never abandon that thing.

It was a present from Obito after all so I guess I understand.

It just doesn't mean I have to approve.

I purposefully take the long way to school to avoid watching Kakashi make his way through the traffic jams, waving amicably every time he stops or passes me and as I start to lose myself in the dulcet tones of my mp3 player, I'm only vaguely aware as students wearing the same uniform as me are starting to pop up along my route. Most of them are the younger kids, eager to get to school but some of them are from my year, my class even and here's where we hit the possible next petty point for making this day slightly more unbearable than usual.

Normally students favour the direct route so I'm spared trying to make conversation with people I hardly care about but this morning I can already see Sakura and Ino walking together on the opposite pavement, their hair making a far too vivid imprint on my already sensitive eyes.

I stifle a groan and try to surreptitiously increase my walking pace before they see I'm there. Of course, I have no luck.

"Sasuke!"

My left eyebrow twitches but I don't turn to face them, not wanting to invite more conversation than is absolutely necessary. I'm positive that behaviour like this is supposed to put people off from wanting to associate with you and it works wonderfully with the male populace of my school, but weirdly enough, the more hostility I radiate, the more these girls throw themselves at me.

It's as off-putting as hell.

Both girls wait as a silver car flashes past and then dart across the road like well-practiced ninjas, boxing me in on either side so there's no means of escape. Both of them flash me a brilliant smile and I cringe slightly, reacting to them the same way I reacted to the sunlight on my face this morning.

"Oh Sasuke, did you have a good summer?" Sakura asks me, blushing as I glance in her direction. Her eyes hold mine for about half a second before flitting away to look at something endlessly interesting on the pavement before us. One of her fingers is twined in a length of soft pink hair. How she expects to keep my attention when she can't even hold eye contact is beyond me.

"Hn," I grunt by the way of a non-committal response.

It's the first day of the school year today so I should be expecting that question a lot. There's not much I can say really other than I managed to hole myself up with my self defence teacher for 6 weeks without Kakashi kicking up a fuss but I don't really like reminding people that I live with Kakashi for reasons previously outlined. As far as it can be said, I had a good summer. I made a lot of progress in my self defence studies so when I finally encounter Itachi…

"It's always weird coming back to school isn't it?" Ino comments, flashing me a smile as I let my head roll around to face her.

"Don't you just wish that the summer would last forever?"

I keep my face arrantly blank though inwardly I'm letting out a derisive snort. The summer months with the uncommonly hot weather make training particularly gruelling and with the sun constantly in my eyes, I often get headaches related to eye strain. Sure, I want the summer to last forever.

I open my mouth to say something derogatory, hoping to put them both off from speaking further but Ino cuts across the first forming syllable, her face twisting into a mask of indignant fury.

"What are you glaring at Billboard Brow?"

I can actually feel as Sakura's hackles raise behind me and resign myself to what's about to happen.

"Hey, I was having a nice conversation with Sasuke before you had to butt in," Sakura jabs back heatedly. "I'm glaring at your ugly face Ino-pig!"

"You're just jealous because I didn't put on any weight over the summer!"

When did this become an argument about weight?

"Any weight I've put on has gone straight to my chest, you obviously can't say the same."

Did that even make sense?

"Ha! You wish, it's gone straight to your forehead Billboard Brow!"

I take a particularly large stride forward as the girls begin bickering in earnest and speed up, desperate to put some distance between us. The school gates loom before me, carrying the intrinsic dread of having to start another school year with them. I've never had trouble with the academic side of school, if anything, the material is so easy it borders on dull sometimes so for me, the dread associated with those school gates is not to do with that. My dread is more to do with having to socialise with my useless classmates.

I've been with the same peers since the incident happened all those years ago and, though I have no idea what I was expecting, none of them seemed to…

Well…

Forget it.

The point is that they're all useless, a waste of space, not worthy of the effort I have to expel to interact with them. They are all, without fail, caught up in the irrelevant monotonousness of their own meaningless lives and it drives home just how predictable my own life has gotten, how unprepared I really am to progress with my life's ambition.

Resignedly, I trudge through the school gates and rummage through my satchel to pull out my schedule, irritation flaring in my gut as I pass over my form tutor's name - Kakashi Hatake - to the room number. As 6th formers, we gain a few perks this year, like a common room complete with stereo and kitchenette. The form rooms are located around the common room in a building set aside exclusively for 6th form study so it's a room that I've never been in before.

Familiar faces start to make up the crowd as we break away from the main student body, ambling towards the building set on the edge of the school grounds. Nobody seems to have changed over the summer, a few of them might have gotten a little taller.

When I finally reach the classroom with only a few minutes to spare, I find it completely unsurprising that Kakashi isn't there. He has a notorious habit of being late to everything even going so far as to miss a few lessons completely. People used to speculate about what he could be doing to make him so late (including a far-fetched story about him having wild sex with the General Studies teacher, Iruka Umino) but after a while, people stopped caring.

Living with the man, I happen to know that he has an addiction to some rather unwholesome books and once he gets engrossed…

I take my seat at the back of the class by the window as usual and no-one complains. The only point in my classmates' favour is that they don't have qualms about where to sit because we've all been together so long. I let my eyes roam nonchalantly around the room, taking in the familiar faces and watching reunions. The only person I can truly sympathise with in this class is Shikamaru Nara, whose sleeping at the front of the class without a care in the world.

It's almost 20 minutes past the hour when Kakashi sticks his head round the door and I find myself scowling at him disapprovingly despite the fact that in the school environment, I have no power over him.

He is probably the only person on Earth unaffected by the power of my full force glare.

"Yo," he greets in a friendly tone, shuffling forward and dropping straight into the swivel chair behind the teacher's desk.

"Sorry I'm late but I was busy stopping a purse thief from stealing an old lady's bag on the way to school this morning."

The class, as one, blink disdainfully. Over the years, we've gotten used to Kakashi's late excuses and most of the others are no longer enthralled with his more creative tales.

"Uh…sir, your car's been in the car park since I got here at 10 to," Kiba Inuzuka pipes up, smiling smugly at Kakashi. Kakashi, however, is rather admirably unperturbed by this revelation.

"Just because I arrived at the building on time doesn't mean I didn't see a heinous crime taking place and, as the good citizen I am, decided to help out even though I knew it would make me late to greet my new precious 6th form class. You could learn a thing or two from my inspiring example of courageous integrity Mr Inuzuka."

Kakashi bats his eyelashes at Kiba who recoils.

"Sorry I said anything," Kiba mutters, to the general snickering of the class.

I fight the urge to roll my eyes.

Insignificant little nuances like this are one of the many things that make this existence so unnecessarily aggravating.

I tune out the rest of the idle banter, letting my eyes move outside to the slowly discolouring leaves indicating the coming Autumn is on its way. I only really start paying attention again when Kakashi's tone changes into something more serious, a slight lowering of his voice that can really only be picked up on when you live in close quarters as we do.

"Now before we get into all that back to school 6th form stuff, I'd like to take the opportunity to welcome a new student to our class."

A ripple of curiosity spreads out over the class. We've all been together since we were small, someone new is bound to stir things up a bit.

"Well, he's not so much a new student as a returning one," Kakashi corrects himself.

And with no more than that, I know who he's talking about.

Even before Kakashi gestures to the door which swings open with such force that it cracks against the back wall, I know exactly who I'll see.

He's been gone for a long time and the difference in his appearance is more pronounced than it is in the rest of my classmates. Last time I saw him, he was a scrawny, scruffy kid with unruly spiky hair and an aggravatingly defiant chin. Though the defiance in the set of his jaw is still there, it's less prominent than it was before though his chin itself is more angular and he's grown though even from here, I can see he's still shorter than me, something that makes me smirk before I can stop myself. He's still skinny but underneath his collared shirt, I can see the defined set of his shoulders and the line of lean muscles pushing the fabric to sit just so. His hair is still unruly and still obnoxiously bright, like the unrelenting sun outside and his eyes are a deeper blue than they were when he disappeared back in year 8, currently ringed with low set dark bruises like he hasn't slept at all since he's been gone. Somewhat surprisingly, he still has the thin whisker-like marks marring both his cheeks in perfect symmetry.

"Class, allow me to re-introduce you to Uzumaki Naruto," Kakashi says in a bored voice.

Naruto.

Naruto, my loud mouthed self-proclaimed rival. The only one in the class dense enough to truly get on my nerves, the only one that insisted on continuing to harass me when I made it clear I don't want anything to do with anyone. I don't need distractions from my revenge against Itachi, especially distractions initiated by a tactless idiot.

Naruto beams at the class as a few of the guys at the front erupt into chatter and his eyes are so blue it's almost like looking through a set of windows to the ocean.

"Hey guys, what's up? Miss me?" he asks jokingly, like he's been away on a weekend trip rather than AWOL for the last 3 years. I glare pointedly at him as his eyes lock with mine and he scowls openly at me, sticking out his tongue.

I blink.

Did he really just do that?

Just how immature can you-

"Naruto, I don't really think pulling faces at your classmates at this point is going to help you settle back in," Kakashi points out lazily, gesturing to the affronted expressions on some of his classmates faces.

Slowly, Naruto's eyes widen as realisation dawns - idiot, did he forget he was still at the front of the class? - and he retracts his tongue, looking somewhat sheepish for a split second before throwing his arms out, gesturing wildly.

"No, no, you got it all wrong sir! I was just showing my arch-nemesis a proper greeting is all!" He points wildly in my direction and I simply glare back, neither confirming or denying his story. It's moronic to think that he still sees me as his rival after the amount of time that's passed.

Kakashi slowly lets his eyes rove to mine and I can feel my lips thinning. If he makes a big deal out of this, I'll shred every one of his Icha Icha Paradise books, make no mistake.

Kakashi seems to catch my murderous intent and lets his eyes fall back to Naruto who is looking a lot like someone who's aware that they're digging a proverbial hole.

"I suppose it's a little belated to say welcome back if you're already falling into old patterns," Kakashi says dismissively. "Take your seat."

He lets his hand sweep out over the classroom and I feel myself stiffen suddenly in my seat.

If there was truly a contender for making this a particularly 'bad day' it would be this simple fact: there is only one empty chair left in this classroom, an empty chair that I have carefully encouraged to remain empty since I've made it clear to the student body that I want to be left alone. That empty chair is right beside me and has been beside me these past 3 years without fail in every class.

I turn on my full Uchiha charm and death glare Kakashi so hard, I'm surprised he doesn't spontaneously combust.

It takes Naruto a few seconds but eventually, he catches on to the grievous error about to be made in seating arrangements.

"Oh no way Mr Hatake, I'm not sitting next to that bastard all year!" His overused finger flies out in my direction again and I'm able to see the calluses lining the length, carefully not wondering what he's been up to these last 3 years.

Honestly, I thought he'd moved schools, it's not a secret that Naruto was the by far the most hated person at this institution being brutally bullied by most of the guys in our year and some of the guys in higher years too. He disappeared after an altercation with Neji Hyuuga, something I only heard about third hand and assumed he had been moved for his own safety more than anything else.

I make it sound like Konoha High is like some sort of gang school but that's not the case. Naruto's situation is a little special…and he doesn't exactly help himself.

Kakashi sighs audibly, rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"Naruto, we generally don't swear on school premises as you should know and I'm afraid there are no other seats available."

"Can't you move someone?" Naruto presses anxiously, scanning the room for help but he's met with either scowls or blatant blanking. I suppose I'd feel sorry for him if he was someone else, anyone else. After 3 years, you'd think their hatred would have died down a little bit but it seems Naruto's as popular as ever.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Sakura start to raise her hand, her eyes fixed firmly on the chair next to mine and I automatically shift my own chair closer to the window but before she can say anything, Ino has grabbed her wrist, shoving it back down beside her.

"If you even think of leaving me alone to deal with Naruto all year, I swear, I'll steal all your P.E equipment so you'll be forced to pick out mismatching stuff from the smelly spares box," she hisses at her companion.

Sakura's face colours unattractively and she keeps quiet too.

"Looks like no-one's willing to move," Kakashi says in a slightly tight voice, a sign that he's growing impatient with the proceedings. "Now I won't tell you again, take your seat Mr Uzumaki."

Naruto looks like he's just been told he has to be castrated to keep on living and for a moment, it seems like he's honestly going to fight Kakashi on this but at the last second, he thinks better of it and stomps along the rows of the classroom, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like: 'tight ass' as he throws himself unceremoniously into the seat beside me.

As Kakashi begins the first roll call of the year and starts explaining a few administrative things, I fix Naruto with a cold gaze and he meets this with a heated scowl.

"What the hell are you looking at?"

There are numerous things I could say to discourage further disruption and to get the wheels turning to put an end to this rivalry he's deluded himself into having with me but I just can't help myself. Call it temporary insanity, call it an accumulation of the frustrations the little things of the day have brought on but I smirk again, leaning back in my chair in a completely uncharacteristic way, showing my superiority.

"An eye sore," I hiss venomously, making sure that even someone as mentally challenged as Naruto gets the full cruel intent of those words.

Yes I know, I'm goading him. It goes against all pre-conceived notions that I don't want anything to do with my classmates so sue me.

Sometimes, when you're having a bad life, you have to appreciate the little things. Pissing off Uzumaki Naruto was always something I took a little pleasure in. No-one gets riled the same way he does, even now.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Naruto blurts out, leaning across his desk so he can grab onto my collar, his other hand wound back in a blatant fist. The sea in his eyes is tempestuous as he regards me, disrupted by the storm of his anger. His teeth are clenched and bared so he almost looks like a wild animal.

This sort of behaviour specifically won't help him win any friends.

They all, all of them, treat him like some sort of rabid vermin. This kind of thing only confirms his lack of civility.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see some of them recoiling from this behaviour, sheet white or otherwise completely dumbstruck that someone can act so outrageously to a little taunt. I make a point of taking it all in my stride, fixing him with a thoroughly unimpressed expression as Kakashi blows his top.

"Uzumaki Naruto, sit down and shut up!" he barks out, making the frantic storm in Naruto's eyes die down until there is only clear blue once more. Without letting go of my collar, he pulls the kind of face that anyone would make whilst getting scolded and tilts his head so that Kakashi is in his line of vision. When he sees the look in Kakashi's eyes, he chances a small half grin and finally lets go, shifting back until he's sitting properly on his own chair once more.

As soon as it's clear that Naruto isn't going to be trying to beat me up any time soon, a couple of rippling snickers start spreading across the classroom until nearly everyone is trying to keep a straight face.

"Uchiha Sasuke," Kakashi says, still authoritative. "I would appreciate it if you would make an effort not to taunt Naruto on his first day back, am I clear?"

Initiating Uchiha Death Glare Mach 2.

This time Kakashi's right eyebrow twitches and I am triumphant.

"Yes sir," I say simply, pleased enough that I was able to dent Kakashi's unflappable demeanour that I don't mind relenting in this fight.

Kakashi nods and then waves his hand as the bell goes, signalling the end of form period. I make a point of packing up as speedily as possible, ignoring the others as they round on Naruto for the first verbal pounding of what is looking to be a very long school year.

As I stride brusquely forward, I can just make out the faint clap of flesh hitting flesh as Sakura hits Naruto upside the head, proclaiming angrily:

"Why the hell do you have to make Sasuke's life miserable you loser?"

Yeah…because it's just Naruto that makes my life miserable.

Yay - first chapter el finito! (does little dance). If you made it this far, enjoyed it and have a little time to spare, please do drop a review. I'd love to hear from you.