AlexandriteSky: This is a yaoi fanfiction – don't like? Don't read! For everybody else who does, I hope you enjoy this new story. It takes place in the Naruto universe but the plot is original and does not follow the manga. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Red

Ever since the murder of his parents, Sasuke Uchiha had seen the world in shades of red.

Blood was equivalent to life. Without it people became cold and hard, no different than the dirt others walked on as they continued on with their lives. In life, actions had meaning – afterwards, only stories remained that could be twisted and manipulated to suit the teller's needs. There was no glory, no immortality; people lived with blood and people died without it, and those who died could never return. Blood was what had drained out of his parents' bodies as they lay on the floor dying, with hallow blank eyes staring directly at him commanding him not to look away.

Look. They said. This is Death.

Sasuke never forgot the sight.

He became perfectly aware of what now awaited him at the end of his path, urging him to grow stronger with every memory of their decapitated heads. They had been normal parents, every bit as loving and strict as any others, and they had died as such, leaving only Sasuke to avenge the blood that ran in each of their veins.

It would have been easier if they had been cruel. Because they had loved him, Sasuke felt hurt beyond anything he had felt before. That very night, Sasuke had taken his father's kunai from the drawer next to his deceased parents' bed and began training. It took only two days before the village began taking notice of the Uchiha family's peculiar behavior and instigated an investigation, only to find Sasuke standing in his backyard with the corpses of his parents still resting within the house. His father's kunai was clenched tightly in his hand as faceless strangers lead him away, and he refused to let it go despite efforts to relinquish it from his grasp.

The night of his parents' funeral, he returned to training.

In this way he had continued forward, fighting his way from genin to jounin in record time. He kept his head low in order to escape the sympathetic gazes of those around him, focusing only on growing stronger as he dreamed of one day walking away from his brother's corpse. Every day he blended into the normality that the rest of the village lived in, and every night he returned to the empty manor, with his parent's blood still staining the carpet of the dining room.

The villagers had attempted to remove it in the past, but Sasuke had been adamant that it remained.

The blood that stained it was not only his parents'; it was also their murderer's, and it was Sasuke's as well.

What blood does, blood must undo.

When Sasuke met Naruto, he began to see color.

At first it was such trace amounts that Sasuke barely noticed, but he slowly began to sense the change as time passed. One day, the raven-haired man had looked up, only to see that the sky was blue. It was a shocking moment that had left him dazed for several moments, and it wasn't until weeks later that Sasuke realized that the sky was the color of Naruto's eyes.

Except his were much more dazzling.

Like so, Sasuke's world began to change. The grass was green, his house was white, Sakura's hair was pink – slowly, slowly, Sasuke began noticing things that he had ignored for the past eighteen years, along with the change within himself.

Naruto was warm and cheerful; everything that Sasuke was not. When they had first been assigned to the same team, they had started off on a horrible note that had ended up in an all-out brawl. The tension was inevitable; they were like light and darkness forced to mix, and the blonde had been a surprisingly difficult opponent. Sasuke had been horrified to discover that Naruto was the only one who had managed to match his record of becoming jounin at the age of eighteen, despite his idiocy and tactless remarks. However, after many missions and many lectures, the two had finally reached an understanding, and each began compensating for what the other could not. When the day for team reassignments came, Naruto had been completely unyielding in his desire to stay in the same squad as Sasuke, though the raven-haired man had half-heartedly attempted to pull away.

"We're complete opposites, Sasuke, but we fit." The blonde laughed openly, though cerulean eyes shone with sincerity. "That's why we gotta stick together. Who else would be able to deal with either of us? I feel sorry for the pitiful bastard that tries."

Though it was his sunny disposition that had cracked Sasuke's shell, it was the blonde's more candid moments that had saved him. For the first time, Sasuke realized that he wasn't the only one alone. Naruto had never mentioned not having parents, but the truth had been impossible to withhold during a mission that had left the blonde fatally injured. Any normal man would have died within seconds, but the blonde's wounds had healed so quickly that Sasuke had known there was something the blonde was hiding. Though it took a good amount of insults and coaxing, the blonde had finally come clean with a secret so big that Sasuke marveled at not having heard of it before.

Trapped within the blonde was a demon fox that had once threatened to tear the village to pieces, thwarted only by the willingness of the fourth hokage's willingness to seal the demon within his own newly born son. Sasuke learned of how Naruto's parents had died only moments after their heroic sacrifice, and he realized the true meaning behind the villagers' annoyance and cold looks towards his teammate.

"In the beginning, I pulled pranks because I knewit would piss everybody off." Naruto spoke with a wry grin, uncharacteristic of his usually brilliant smile. "Because hey – at least they were angry at me because of something I could actually change, right?"

Sasuke had been baffled. How could Naruto still fight for a village that despised his very existence? He had asked him this once, only to receive a chuckle in reply.

"Do you despise me, Sasuke?"

The raven-haired man had paused before giving his answer. "Not particularly, no."

Naruto had smiled, face radiating with sincerity. "I fight for the people that don't."

He had learned, Sasuke realized later, to react to everything with a smile. Even when shop keepers threw him out upon realizing who he was, the blonde still rose to his feet and dusted himself off with a smile.

"Don't worry about it." he spoke quietly, grabbing the back of Sasuke's shirt in order to stop him from going back into the shop. "Those people have already suffered enough grief."

"Haven't you?" Sasuke demanded, though he stayed still.

The blonde shook his head, his grin growing wider. "We're special, Sasuke. Both of us. Our relationship with grief is different than anybody else's. It makes us stronger."

Naruto gave him hope. He showed him an alternative path, away from all of the blood and hatred –a path that still lead to strength, through different means. Sasuke had first followed him just to witness his failure, only to be surprised when it never came. The blonde was full of love but kept none for himself, and in the end, he was every bit as lonely as Sasuke.

For a few years, Sasuke allowed himself to be happy. After much contemplation and an overwhelming amount of pleading from Naruto, Sasuke had finally agreed to share an apartment with the blonde, leaving behind the bloody carpet for the first time in twenty years.

"Now neither of us is alone!" Naruto exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air with excitement. "And it helps me cut costs." He added with a satisfied grin. "We can't all be rich bastards like you."

He never once mentioned Sasuke's home, but the raven-haired man knew that the blonde had done it for him as much as he had done it for himself. In the past, the blonde had often gone to his manor to spar, but he had never once stepped inside of the house. It was as if Naruto had known that the house masked a hidden insanity, and though Sasuke had never asked why, the blonde avoided it almost religiously.

It wasn't long before the two became intimate. The emotions between them had swelled to the point where they could no longer be ignored and after one horrible fight (an entire field had been completely obliterated during their tussle) they gave up and began sharing a bed. Naruto was his teammate, his best friend, and his lover – it wasn't long until it became apparent that the blonde was his entire world, and that was when Sasuke began to feel fear.

It was a fear that Sasuke had promised himself never to have, with an opponent that he had promised himself to never fight.

Death.

Being alone meant that there was nobody to lose. There was only one thing Naruto was unable to promise, and that was his own life. In a village that had grown accustomed to death with a job that almost ensured it, Sasuke grew more and more afraid with each day that passed by that Naruto would one day walk out of the door and never return. His fear only made him hate himself for his weakness, and it wasn't long until Sasuke hated himself so much that it almost completely consumed him.

And in his hate, Sasuke discovered something he had momentarily forgotten – his family.

The realization hit like a bucket of icy water that had been dumped on his head. It took only two hours for Sasuke to pack up all of his things, and when Naruto came home after his most recent mission he found an empty apartment with every trace of Sasuke erased. He found his lover in the first place he looked: the Uchiha manor. Sasuke knelt beside the blood of his parents, and he had spilt a bit of his own on top of it to promise he would never forget again.

Nothing Naruto said could change his mind. The shell that the blonde had so meticulously taken down was now rebuilt, only with more layers designed to keep the blonde out. Sasuke no longer heard anything Naruto had to say, no longer saw anything the blonde wanted him to see – he could only focus on his own failure and Itachi laughing at him from within the darkness.

Naruto had made him weaker.

From then on, Sasuke distanced himself from the blonde, only interacting with him during missions and ignoring him at all other times. When Orochimaru began his assault on Konoha, Sasuke had had nothing else but admiration for the man's apparent strength, completely indifferent to the suffering of his village. It didn't take him long to accept Orochimaru's offer of a new, darker power, and the only obstacle had been Naruto.

The blonde had tried hard, so hard, to convince Sasuke to stay, but nothing he said had any effect. Soon after, words turned into fists, and the battle to keep Sasuke in Konoha commenced. They fought with only the Hokage Mountain as witness, and in the end, Sasuke was met with a final choice.

Beneath him lay the only person who had ever given him any happiness. Naruto had saved him, pulling him out of the vat of infinite darkness that Sasuke had slipped into. He had brought color back into his life, basking him in gentle cerulean instead of copper-tasting blood.

However, Sasuke no longer wanted to be saved.

He wanted to be angry, and he wanted to be full of delicious hate that fueled his desire to grow stronger. He wanted to kill Itachi, and he wanted to see every drop of his blood drain from his brother's body as it grew cold beneath his hands.

He did not want the warmth that Naruto offered.

Using an incantation Orochimaru had taught him, Sasuke extracted the demon fox that kept Naruto's body practically invulnerable to fatal blows and lowered his blade.

"Sasuke." Naruto sighed, hands tangled in Sasuke's hair as they pulled him closer. "Sasuke, I love you."

The dazzling cerulean that Sasuke loved so much dimmed like a cloudy sky, and Sasuke knew he would never be happy again as he lay his dead lover's body on the lake and motionlessly watched it drop to the bottom. As Naruto faded away from sight, Sasuke felt every emotion sink with him, leaving only emptiness when he finally stood to walk away.

"You'll never have to be alone again, Sasuke. I promise."

Sasuke's lips twisted upwards in a smile even as tears streamed down his cheeks – the first tears he had shed since his parents' death.

"Liar."

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AlexandriteSky: Please R&R! I would love to know what you guys think! The next five chapters are already finished, so I hope to update this fic weekly depending on the response.