Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

All In	By : momhuey8 Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1701 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Neji found Sasuke sitting in a hospital corridor, his head leaning against the wall, his arms hanging limp over his bent knees. The Anbu dropped onto the floor and sat in a similar pose on the opposite wall.
"I don't know how to fix this." Sasuke's face was blotchy and his eyes were bloodshot.
"The first thing you need to do is stop blaming yourself." Neji's voice was as rough as Sasuke's.
"But, if I..."
"Stop. If Naruto senses guilt from you, he’ll think you’re guilty." He picked at a piece of carpet fiber sticking up near his knee. "I completely understand the inclination to feel responsible in some way, but you did not do this."
"Then what the hell happened to him? Was it the demon? Did suppressing Kyuubi's chakra..." Sasuke stopped, unwilling to articulate his fear that Naruto might have been driven insane.
Neji was silent for several moments. He finally said, "I don't think that was it."
Sasuke straightened. "You know something."
Neji looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, "Are you familiar with visual access cues?"
Sasuke shook his head.
"Essentially, for a normally organized, right handed person, the brain houses remembered images on the right and constructed images on the left." He had Sasuke's full attention.
"For example, you can often tell if a right handed person is lying by the direction their eyes move when they answer. If they look right, they are telling some form of a truth, if they look left, they are probably creating something.
"This is also where dreams are stored. Dreams are not true memories comprised of the five senses and are not fused into the fabric of the brain. They are, rather, less substantial and often short lived. They, too, reside on the left side of the brain."
Neji scooted closer and lowered his voice.
"Do you remember what we saw in Naruto's head? Use your Sharingan and remember with me."
Sasuke closed his eyes and let Neji talk.
"Try to remember the pattern of flashes that accompanied each memory. The early memories all comprised flashes from the right side of his brain. It wasn't until some time into your relationship with him that the flickers from the right began to be interspersed with those from the left."
Sasuke’s eyes flew open. "Yes. I do remember." His eyes widened as he realized something Neji had said.
"Then you believe that I didn't treat him like that?"
"If I did, you would already be dead and they would be looking for your body for the next thousand years."
Sasuke snorted and felt warmth toward the older brunette. How could he feel anything but gratitude toward someone who cared so much for Naruto's well being?
"Neji., if anything ever happens to me," he sighed in exhaustion, "will you try to make Naruto happy again?"
Neji hesitated. "That means much to me, and, although I can't promise that I will not one day move on, I will always care for Naruto and try to make his life a better one."
Sasuke was surprised at the relief he felt and his head dropped back against the wall once again.
"So," he sighed, closing his eyes, "he's having nightmares. I'm not sure how that helps us..."
"No, I wasn’t finished." Sasuke's eyes snapped open.
"Think again about the constructed images; use more of your senses. They were laced with a very faint trace of chakra. And it was not his, Kyuubi's or yours."
There were many seconds of silence as the import of Neji's words registered in Sasuke's mind. Finally,
"Someone did this to him?" Sasuke growled. "Who?"
"I could not tell. Perhaps you can?"
Sasuke stared hard at Neji. After several moments he turned once again to the memories of his time inside Naruto's mind.
He studied the scene as it was recorded with his Sharingan. The two types of memories in Naruto's mind were very distinct from each other. The older and 'truer' memories were woven into, and inseparable from, the fabric of the brain, much like striations of muscular tissue, twining around and overlapping each other.
The false memories were clustered like grapes on the left side of his brain, and while the individual events were isolated from each other, there were fine threads that connected them to the real memories on the right side.
But as he concentrated, he realized that Neji was right, there was some foreign chakra shimmering in barely visible strands throughout the clusters. He stretched his senses and focused as sharply as he could, but was unable to identify the source.
"Damn it." He snapped off the Sharingan and gripped his hair. "What the hell difference does it make who did this, or why? Even if I figured out who did this and found a way to kill them ten thousand times, what does it matter?"
Neji didn't miss the irony of the lifelong avenger making such a statement. It seemed that Uchiha Sasuke, at least, was healed.
"If I spent the rest of my life, I don't think I can overcome the damage that's been done. He'll never trust me again." A choked sob escaped his lips. "Every false memory was offered as love from me. How do I undo that?"
He dropped his head into his hands.
"At the Valley of the End, I told him he was lucky that he'd never had any family. That it was better to never have bonds than to have them and lose them." He swiped at the wetness on his upper lip with the back of his hand.
"I'm such a fucking idiot. He wasn’t lucky. Because he’d never had one, he has no idea what a healthy bond is. He was willing to accept all those...that…
“I’ve been trying to convince him that he and I are family,” Sasuke continued. “Considering his exposure to families here, I wonder why the hell I thought that was good idea.
"His father stuffed a demon inside him and left him to a lifetime of suffering and misery. Your family puts a seal on the foreheads of their babies so they can kill them off at a moment’s notice.
"But my family was the worst." Sasuke’s voice dropped to a whisper. "He idolized my family; was jealous of it. Divisive, plotting, murdering sons of bitches. He watched me spend my whole childhood working for the sole purpose of killing off my last remaining blood tie.
"And I tried to kill him. That defined our bond and it was okay with him." Tears clogged his throat and he had to swallow a few times before he could continue. "It was okay for me to kill him. That's what family...what loved ones do."
Neji finally spoke. "You know that we live in a hidden village, a ninja village. This is all normal here."
"I wanted to show him something else." He dropped his head again. "But now..."
"There may be something..." Neji began.
Sasuke's head shot up. "What? Anything.”
Neji nodded. "The risks are completely unknown to me, and I have no medical training, as you know. But the consequences of doing nothing..." Neji shrugged. "Let us see first how Tsunade fares. Then we will talk and plan."
"Neji, you tell me what you saw." Tsunade gave up trying to understand Sasuke's babbling.
"As I explained to the Uchiha, there seem to be constructed...for lack of a better word...memories in the left hemisphere of Naruto's brain. From their structure and the presence of a foreign chakra, I would deduce that they have been introduced by an outside party."
"How is something like this even possible?" She rubbed her forehead. "How could an enemy accomplish this?"
"You are assuming his enemy is outside Konoha's gates and is somehow transmitting images across a distance?"
Tsunade's eyes widened. "Are you saying his attacker is here in Konoha?" Her gaze slid to Sasuke.
Neji caught her glance and continued. "The foreign chakra is faint, but from the brief time we were inside Naruto's mind, I believe I was able to establish its distinction from Naruto's own chakra, the demon's and Sasuke's."
Sasuke looked up sluggishly at the mention of his name. His entire body radiated grief.
"It is possible the images are the result of dreams," Neji continued, "but I don't think so; they have more substance and the foreign chakra was probably not manufactured by his own body."
"Then what?"
"Genjutsu." There were several moments of silence. Then Tsunade spoke again.
"As Uchiha and Hyuuga, do you believe there’s any way to produce this without being in close proximity to the...victim?"
Sasuke slumped in his seat and his skin was an even more sallow shade of white. He shook his head. "No."
He was thinking about Naruto and their discussions about Kisho and the bonds he'd dared to forge again.
Sasuke had finished the book and the ending had been predictable. The girl had died after an idyllic two years. The two had managed to produce a child and in the end, Kisho had grief but was able to take comfort in and have a future with the child.
But now Sasuke was faced once again with the loss of his entire family. He had advised Naruto that the bond was the important thing and that he would gladly accept the possibility of pain for the chance to grab happiness with both hands.
He almost laughed at his stupidity. Now in hindsight, he realized that there was safety in making rash statements like that when it pertained to Naruto. Nothing was ever going to happen to him; the demon would keep him alive forever.
On the other hand, would he have given up this time with Naruto in exchange for not having this pain...again?
One thing he did know; if he did lose Naruto, he would never do this again.
"Sasuke?" The Hokage's voice was gentle. "What do you think?"
"What?" His gaze was dull and he looked as fragile as the old cob webs fluttering in the corners of the room.
"Do you think you and Neji can go in again, and then, using Sharingan record what you see,” she said slowly as if she was repeating herself to a deaf person. “Then come back out and show me so we can fix this?"
"Fix this?" The muddled look in his eyes cleared somewhat.
"That's the idea. That's what we've been talking about." She put her hand over his. "I told you before, he'll be fine. I won't let it be otherwise."
The next afternoon all three shinobi were sitting in an empty interrogation room, all visibly shaken.
Tsunade shook her head in disbelief. "Gods, I can't believe there is someone with this much malevolence, this much cunning within our walls and we don't know it."
She pulled the tie from her hair. "How is this person getting so much access to Naruto with no one knowing it? Without him knowing it." She sighed. "It scares me."
The fabricated memories seemed to be layered, the most recent up front and the oldest far enough back as to be unreachable without removing the newer ones. Tsunade had prescribed the removal of just a few memories at a time followed by periods of observation to see what, if any, side affects Naruto would suffer. Other than some disorientation and an even more befuddled awareness of time, the process was moving fairly smoothly.
In fact, the procedure seemed to be harder on the pair inside Naruto's mind than on Naruto himself. Sasuke waffled between fury and despair as he was subjected to the false memories.
What were almost worse however were Naruto's actual memories.
Tsunade had introduced a light narcotic to help 'loosen' the thoughts in Naruto's mind. Unfortunately this caused the real memories from the right hemisphere to dance and swirl around the two dark haired shinobi all the while they worked.
As Sasuke was bombarded with images from Naruto's life, he swung from pity to profound respect. And shame. As he witnessed the almost constant struggle just to survive and the utter loneliness of Naruto's life from the very day he'd been born, he felt ashamed. He had thought he'd made the hard decision to leave Konoha for training in Sound. Now he realized that he'd been weak. And a coward.
He'd let circumstances and the wishes and deeds of others buffet him around. As he watched Naruto pick himself back up again and again and then refocus on goals that were always bound by threads of hope and optimism, he saw true courage and determination. Naruto did the hard thing...he lived his life.
On the fourth day, Sasuke watched a real memory play out before him, only this one was different. It was opaque, shrouded in a kind of fog. But the emotions contained within the fog were enough to force him back a step. He felt Neji move beside him.
"You've been in here before," Sasuke said, never taking his eyes from the scene before him.
Neji sighed. "Yes, I have. Almost three years ago."
They watched Naruto crying on his knees in the middle of a strange room, papers crumpled in his hands. Bottles of alcohol littered the floor around him.
"What's wrong with him?"
"Those are reward flyers from Sound."
Sasuke nodded, understanding. "He just decided to quit coming after me." He remembered his own room littered with flyers and a bottle of Sake, and the same gut wrenching tears. If Toshio hadn't been there...
Within the shroud, they watched as, after several minutes, Naruto was no longer alone in the room.
"We were patrolling on the border of Leaf and Rain. I felt his pain."
They watched the scene unfold. Neji swooped into the room through a window and rushed to his friend.
XXX XXX XXX XXX
"Naruto, what’s happened?" Naruto flung himself into Neji's arms and wept into his chest. Neji picked up a rumpled sheaf and smoothed it open on the floor. Then he buried his face in the tan neck.
"I am so sorry, my friend." He stroked the blond's hair and rubbed his back in gentle circles until he calmed somewhat and slid to lie back in his arms. His drunken gaze slid to Neji's hair and he reached up to play with it for several minutes.
"Sasuke?" Neji just stared at Naruto. When Naruto slid his hand into Neji's shirt, the pale jaw worked, but he still said nothing.
"Please tell me you came back to me." Naruto's slurred voice took on a panicked note. “Please, Sasuke…”
Neji stared at the wall for several moments then finally said, "Yes, I'm here."
Naruto became a blur of movement. He had Neji undressed and under him in moments.
XXX XXX XXX XXX
Outside the memory, Neji reached a hand toward the fog and whispered, "It was my first...my only...
"It was glorious." He looked down, his eyes closed. "It was awful."
"Why did you cover it up?"
"I told him that I love him."
Sasuke faced the other brunette.
"He thought I was you." Neji glanced at Sasuke. “It didn’t seem fair to either of you to propagate such a fabrication.”
"You should unlock it."
"Absolutely not! How can you even suggest such a thing?"
"If this doesn't work, he’ll never be happy with me. I don't want him to be alone again."
"Sasuke..."
"I was serious in the hospital. He deserves love and a family more than anyone I know. He'd never take it for granted like I did, or put conditions on it like your family does."
He turned back to the disquieting scene playing out before him. "You can give him that."
"Let's not discuss this now. It is premature to give up." He turned to the memory just as Naruto threw his head back and cried out, ‘Sasuke.’
"If we put this in the hands of fate, I believe he will be yours again."
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