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The Blessed Realm	By : susanna Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1746 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the world he lives in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for my pleasure and I don't make any money with it.

Chapter List
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Chapter One Hundred: Childish Games
There'd never be a way to know for certain what Sasuke's parents would have thought of his decision, but with his new grown-up friends it did not take long to get a reaction from them: They all congratulated him and again invited him and Naruto to dinner to celebrate his acceptance. Even people he hardly knew approached him and wished him luck: there was a lot of gossip in the gay community, and now he, Sasuke, was the subject of this gossip. It was the friendly kind of gossip, however, the kind that grew from caring for someone. Even those who did not know him well still cared.
“It's all the opposite of what happened after my family got murdered,” Sasuke told the husband of the guy from Earth Country. “There people gossiped too, but the gossip made them turn away from me. Here people who listen to the gossip come to congratulate me in person.”
“Congratulating is easier than finding words of pity after a loss as yours,” the man replied. “People are people, here just as in Konoha.”
It was not entirely true, Sasuke thought. Not very long ago a man from the gay community had died – an old man in his sixties, which was very old according to the standards of Konoha, but far too young to die in the opinion of the locals. He had died from cancer and everyone had known about it, and when he was dead people went to comfort his partner. Sasuke and Naruto had gone too, even though they had not known either of the men very well, as apparently this was how people behaved on such an occasion.
“I knew how you feel,” Naruto told the man. “My heart would break too if anything happened to Sasuke. I would not know how to go on.”
The man took Naruto's hand and pressed it.
“It's as if life has stopped for you, but for everyone else it's going on,” Sasuke said, and the man took his hand too and drew him to his side.
“The house is all empty now,” he said. “I come home and no one is there to welcome me. He was home all day in the final stage of his illness, and he always welcomed me and did his best to sound cheerful, even though he suffered horribly from the pain. Now the house is silent.”
He spoke for about half an hour, telling the boys episodes of his life at his partner's side, then suddenly complaining that probably he wouldn't be able to keep the house on his own, then again talking about his partner's illness. He leaped from one subject to the next without transition, he talked without syntax or breaks, making it difficult for the boys to follow him, yet on the other hand they were glad that they weren't under any obligation to answer: They would not have known what to say. After some time the man remembered their presence and told them to dance and enjoy life:
“You're young,” he said. “You need something to look back to when you're old and die.”
They left, but they did not dance. They sat down in a corner and held each other without speaking.
Later they got told off for their words. They should not have confirmed the surviving partner in his view that life was all bleak now but should rather have encouraged him to look forward and learn to live without his partner (and maybe look for a new one.) The criticism did not come from the man himself: on the contrary, a few days after the funeral (for both boys the first civilian funeral they attended, without any speeches about sacrifice and heroism) he and his late partner's sister invited them to their place, thanking them explicitly for their friendly words. The man showed them a photoalbum with pictures of himself and his partner, talking now in a much more coherent way, and he presented them two necklaces.
“We bought them when we became lovers,” he said. “It does not make sense for me to wear them now that I am alone, and anyway, I am too old now. We were too old actually when we bought the necklaces, but you always feel young when you've just fallen in love. But you're really young, you may wear them.”
While the people from the gay community all congratulated Sasuke to his acceptance at the training center of the police the young people from the riverside were much more critical.
“You're really joining the police and plan to work for the state,” one of them said. “With your background I would have expected you to be more critical and more sceptical of the system.”
“This is Music Town, not Konoha,” Sasuke replied. “I'd never work for Konoha.”
“There's no difference,” people replied. “In Music Town too the police fight against those who criticize the administration.”
“But here they've rules.”
“That's the point. Break the rules where you consider them unfair or just stupid and then see what happens.”
“Rules for the police, I mean,” Sasuke insisted.
“Rules to increase the amount of force they use in well-defined steps.”
“Rules to avoid fighting, and to limit violence,” Sasuke replied, getting angry. “If you use excessive force you'll get into trouble. They told me so during my job interview.”
“Only in theory,” one of the women said. “Practially they won't give testimony against each other. That's their idea of comradeship.”
Sasuke remembered that comradeship was one of the central values of Konoha.
“I won't do this. I'll stick to the rules.”
“And betray your comrades when they don't stick to the rules?”
“I'll see that they stick to the rules too.”
“You can't fight your own comrades,” another young woman joined in. “No one can.”
“Besides, single policemen aren't the problem,” a third woman added. “The real problem is that they make their own rules, and that they set them up in a way that ensures their victory. Nothing shall endanger the system.”
“You'll see yourself. The rules always give the police a decisive advantage in every confrontation,” a young man said. “And if necessary they change the rules.”
“It's not true,” Sasuke replied, realizing that he was running out of arguments.
“You can try to be different, of course,” a woman said in a more conciliatory tone. “It won't be easy though.”
“It's going to be extremely difficult,” a man said. “They'll do their best to co-opt you and make you part of their organization. They'll imprint their values into you and convince you that everything they do is right.”
Sasuke swallowed – he felt dizzy suddenly.
“Apparently they've begun already. You need to keep a clear mind and not stop thinking for yourself. Otherwise they will use you.”
“They probably plan to use you as an agent of Music Town's interests in Konoha, once you are able to return,” a third man added. “That's why they made allowances for you in the entrance test. You really have to be on the alert.”
Sasuke had never seen it that way. “You think I should leave?” he asked.
“Well, I've met some nice policemen,” one woman said. “The ones in our quarter are quite okay, actually. They once helped me out when some guys tried to molest me. Since then they know me, and when they catch me drinking beer at a place where this is not allowed they tell me to leave quickly and don't charge me a fine.”
“With those from our quarter I get along too,” a man said. “With them, negotiations are possible. Once we had a spontaneous demonstration, which normally is not allowed, but they were ready to close an eye on the condition that we avoided certain sensible places. Police from other quarters would have set up a kettle and arrested all of us.”
Sasuke still did not know what a demonstration was, nor had he any idea what they meant when they spoke of a kettle. (He understood that it was not a household item.)
“You'll manage,” one of the young women said, closing the subject and indicating that Sasuke was still part of the group. “Just don't stop thinking for yourself.”
He remained silent for the rest of the evening: the young people had made the police of Music Town appear as evil as ANBU from Konoha. It was not the impression he himself had gained of the police, and he did not know what to trust: his own impressions or his friends' words.
He did not discuss the matter with Naruto, as Naruto was just as ignorant about these questions as he himself. He rather asked Juugo's fostermothers for explanations the next time the boys visited them:
“I've come to appreciate the police of Music Town because they are bound by rules and don't act like ANBU who kill whoever they are ordered to kill. But now people tell me that the police themselves set up the rules to their own advantage and change them when they consider it necessary. On the other hand, our friends themselves don't seem to care much about rules, they break them deliberately and think it's all okay. Also they don't have any issues with the police bending or breaking rules in their own favour, making them get away with it when they break the rules.”
“What kind of rules do your friends break?” one of the women asked.
“Making music after ten. Drinking alcohol in places where this is not allowed.”
“But these aren't crimes. It's just childish. It's not the same as breaking the old rules that are common to all mankind, as ‘don't kill’.”
“Still it's not just a trifle if people drink alcohol in public places,” her partner contradicted her. “You don't want our kids to run into drunk people on the street, do you? And if the police always turns them a blind eye they will never learn that what they do is not okay.”
For a while they discussed whether the police should be stricter when it came to alcohol. That's people in Music Town, Sasuke thought, discussing trifles for hours because they don't have any real problems. He observed however that with time the subject of the discussion slightly changed: It was no longer whether it was okay that the police turned a blind eye on people drinking alcohol in public places but rather whether the rule itself was sensible and proportionate.
“Our friends think that rules only exist to protect the system,” he tried to get the discussion back to the original subject. “They think that this makes it legitimate to break rules.”
“You don't change the system by drinking alcohol in public,” the first woman said.
“You need to break rules in a meaningful way,” her partner joined her. “That's how you really change the system.”
Both boys were surprised to hear this from people they had always considered conventional, law-abiding citizens of Music Town.
“When we had just fallen in love and were still active in the political section of the lesbian community we sometimes participated in kiss-ins,” the woman continued. “It was still forbidden at the time to kiss a same-sex partner in public, because allegedly it offended the moral sentiments of the majority of the population, and several times we got arrested. We paid our fines and planned the next kiss-ins, and while we persisted, views on sexual mores changed, and now it's the people who attack us who get arrested. But of course a kiss-in is not the same as getting drunk in public.”
Again the boys needed some explanations.
“That was a significant way of breaking the rules,” the other woman added. “Getting drunk is not such a significant way. Or take those who climb on the roof of the old concert hall in order to protect it from getting torn down. They are doing something. Sometimes peaceful demonstrations or petitions with a lot of signatures just aren't enough. Sometimes you have to break the rules in order to achieve something.”
“How does climbing on top of the old concert hall protect it against being torn down?” Sasuke asked.
“They cannot take it down while someone is on top,” the woman said, sounding as if Sasuke was asking a rather stupid question
“Why not?”
“People would get hurt.”
They would have brought it upon themselves, Sasuke thought, climbing on top of a building that was about to be torn down, then he remembered that this way of thinking was not approved of by the local police. Here people climbed on top of some roof and trusted that no one would tear down the building as people must not be hurt.
“Then there's of course those who block the road to the building,” the other woman added. “It's not as spectacular as climbing on top of the roof, but it's effective too.”
“What do people do?”
“They sit in front of the building.”
“And that's enough to stop the authorities of Music Town?”
“It slows down the machines.”
Again Sasuke tried to imagine it and wondered.
“Of course if the administration insist in the end the building will be torn down all the same.”
“So what happens to people who sit on the road or climb on top of the roof?”
“They get carried away.”
“So there is some fighting, after all.”
“No, they are just carried away.”
“People don't resist?”
“You must not resist the police.”
Sasuke tried to imagine the situation, but he couldn't.
“It seems like a childish game to me,” he said. “And I don't see its use if the new concert hall will be built all the same.”
“Sometimes people manage to significantly slow down the project, forcing the government to overthink its decisions. Last time for example some people had locked themselves to some heavy concrete parts on top of the roof with thick chains, and thrown away the key. The police were not able to get them off the roof, but they had to get some specialists with extra strong saws. They made quite some fools of themselves on that occasion.”
Again the two women had to explain this particular form of protest, but even with explanations Sasuke had difficulties to understand the logic behind it.
“So no one's fighting, and no one's getting killed,” Naruto asked.
“No. The side that first takes resort to violence loses. People must perceive you as the good guys.”
Sasuke considered it. “It wouldn't work in Konoha,” he said. “In Konoha, people who don't fight are considered weaklings and cowards. ANBU doesn't take responsibility when they get hurt.”

A/N: Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/14965-blessed-realm/ .It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the forums.
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The Blessed Realm