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The Canalized River	By : susanna Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 944 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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
- 31
- 32
- 33
A/N
at the end of the chapter

Chapter
Thirty-Two: And a third time: Old legends

They
were back in their hiding place, standing in their embrace as they
had in that other dimension. Sasuke broke it – in moments of
weakness he might look for human comfort, but he tried to avoid it.
He wanted to be strong, independent of others.

Karin
was still kneeling next to Juugo, but her attention had been rather
on Sasuke and Naruto than on her patient. She seemed relieved when
they were moving again.

“How's
Juugo?” Sasuke asked her.

“Recovering.
I am not sure how the loss of that dark chakra will affect him. He's
been living with it for most of his life, and his body has adapted to
it. We'll have to watch him, but at the moment all seems well. What
about the two of you? You gave me quite the creeps standing there and
not moving.”

“Travelling
to other dimensions. I had to show him what awaits him when tomorrow
I fight Itachi and that other guy for control over our genjutsus.”

“So
now you're ready to confront them?” Karin asked Naruto, who
looked rather confused.

“Sure
I am. No matter what they try with their genjutsu, we will defeat
them.”

He
took Sasuke's hand. Sasuke was not sure whether he wanted it, but he
let it happen.

“How
do you feel without the kyuubi?” Karin continued. “It's
been sealed within you for your whole life, hasn't it.”

“It
has”, he answered. “I guess I feel a bit empty.”

“From
what I see I can tell that you are already recovering from the
effects it had on your chakra system. Or rather from what I can hear:
Your voice has changed. The lower chakra centers are now returning to
their normal functionality – it may be a bit weird for you, as
the changes might be rather quick, but it is all fine, at least for
the moment.”

“He
can deal with the changes perfectly well by himself”, Sasuke
said. “He does not need your advice.”

He
wondered whether Naruto had grown manlier indeed. He himself had not
noticed any difference.

“You
might want to have a look at the kyuubi”, Karin said. “It
is lying outside.”

She
returned to sleep while Sasuke and Naruto went to have a look: There
it was, huge and frightening, even though at the moment it lay curled
up into all its tails.

It
had been sleeping but when the boys came near it opened its eyes and
lifted its head.

“It's
pure chakra”, Sasuke said. “I can only see it with my
Sharingan. What about you?”

“I
can see it with my heart”, Naruto answered.

He
let go of Sasuke's hand – finally! - and went over to the demon
fox. He caressed its nose which looked rather weird as even the
nose's tip was as big as Naruto's head, but Naruto was not afraid,
and the kyuubi was friendly. Sasuke watched in amazement but also
with some envy as Naruto sank his hand into the thick fur of the
nine-tail – warmth, touch, being near to another sentient
being, one the size of the kyuubi...

He
knew that it was his own fault that he had no one to whom he could
snuggle as Naruto snuggled to the kyuubi. He knew that it was his own
fault that he kept a distance to other people, that he avoided
moments as just now with Naruto in the wintery garden, moments of
weakness and of need. He had always known that there was a price to
intimacy, a price he didn't want to pay. Complying to the other
person's wishes, becoming the person they wanted him to be,
forgetting about his wish for revenge, forgetting about his family,
forgetting about their sufferings and his own, in short: allowing
himself to be healed, as they would call it.

The
price was too high – and still he could not help longing for
some human warmth as he saw Naruto cuddling the kyuubi just as seeing
Karin and Suigetsu had made him realize that he was not beyond all
sexual desire as he had used to believe. It might not be so bad, he
thought, and he did not know where the thought had come from.

Naruto
had never been pretty, and now, his face illuminated by the kyuubi's
chakra so that the shadows were all at unusual places, he looked
really weird, but Sasuke could not turn his eyes from him because
happiness and the tenderness he bore to the kyuubi turned him all
beautiful.

Finally
Naruto left the kyuubi and returned to Sasuke. He put his arm around
his shoulder as if this was the most normal thing in the world; then
they stood side by side, looking at the nine-tail.

“It's
happy now”, Naruto said, “because now it is complete.
It's found the other half, the dark one. People thought that it would
be easier for me if I had only to deal with the light half that
represents day and summer and happiness and hope, all that is good.
But the kyuubi when it was cut in two was not good, not even the
light half, and it was not happy, because it longed to be complete.
It grew angry and evil and cunning, longing for its other half. Now
it's found it, and it's happy, and I feel that I can trust it.”

He
paused to think and, as Sasuke suspected, to gather courage. He felt
a bit uncomfortable with Naruto's arm around his shoulder though it
was less bad than Karin's or Sakura's embraces. Maybe it was because
he was a boy, maybe it was because he only wanted to be his friend.

“I
am happy that I have found you”, Naruto said. “I have
longed for you all the time. Without you I am not complete.”

“You
did fairly well without me for several years”, Sasuke replied.
He felt rather embarrassed by Naruto's admissions.

“I
did as long as I could hope and dream of finding you again – as
long as I could think that I was training and getting stronger in
order to win you back.”

“Did
you really think that you could win my affection by becoming strong?
I am not one of these stupid useless girls who have to be protected
all the time.”

“I
trained to become strong so that I might get you back by force. Last
time I was too weak.”

Sasuke
knew that sentence only too well: Last time I was too weak to defeat
Itachi. I have to become stronger.

“You
still think that force is the right way to bring me back to Konoha?”

“I
Don't know... I didn't think about it. We went out in a large team to
get you back, and I did not think about how we would persuade you to
come back. We only thought how we could find you, or not even that.
In the end it turned out to be a deception in order to keep me away
from Konoha, and when we received orders to back up Jiraya we
abandoned our search. Only that I could not abandon you and my
dream.”

“I
thought that your dream was to become Hokage.”

“That
was before we became friends. Now without you this dream is nothing.”

He's
worse than Sakura, Sasuke thought. She also had no dream of her own,
only her love. He did not want Naruto to depend on him like this.

“Have
you at least become strong?” he asked teasingly.

“Have
you not seen me fight today?”

“I
have seen how you needed my help with your jutsu.”

He
did not want to admit that Naruto's jutsu, once it had been
completed, had really impressed him.

“Yeah,
thanks”, Naruto said, suddenly a bit depressed. “You
know, people in Konoha did not help me much in the end. They told me
to create my own jutsu, but when I had almost completed it they told
me to stop because it was too dangerous.”

“You
created it on your own?” Sasuke said, now giving away that he
was impressed.

“With
some help. And then with some help from your side. In Konoha, in the
end it was all about not using my jutsus and keeping the kyuubi in
check.”

He
sounded really down now, something Sasuke was not used to. He did not
mind it though, he just felt an impulse to comfort him, and this time
he gave in and put his arm around Naruto's shoulder.

Naruto
leant against him, accepting the comfort.

“I
have always tried to be happy and optimistic”, he said.
“because I was lonely and because I thought that people might
like me better if I was not given to self-pity. Now I discover that
being sad is not so bad if there is someone to comfort you.”

Sasuke
pressed him even closer to himself. He wanted indeed to comfort him,
to be with him in his sadness, without urging him to be happy again
as soon as possible as people had always urged him to be happy. Yet
he also felt that he was not good at giving comfort and that though
he was glad that Naruto was finally showing some other emotion than
anger or fake happiness, he himself was not able to share his
sadness, at least not at the moment: At the moment he was mainly
angry about what had been done to Naruto.

“Keeping
the kyuubi in check and keeping you in check – that was all
that they could think of”, he said remembering the rather
simple trick that had made the jutsu safe to use for Naruto. “They
did not want you strong. They were afraid of you.”

“Do
you want me strong then?” Naruto asked.

“Of
course I do. I need you to be strong if you are going to fight at my
side tomorrow, strong and courageous and unpredictable. I mean, what
would they say to this?”

He
pointed at the kyuubi that was curled up again, sleeping peacefully,
probably Naruto's most courageous action in all his life so far.

Naruto
stood straight again, thus putting some centimetres' distance between
them, and Sasuke caught himself missing the warmth of his body.

“I
don't know”, Naruto answered Sasuke's question. “Maybe
they just did not know. They meant well after all. They thought that
they were doing me a favor, helping me to control the kyuubi and that
it was an even greater favor that I had only to deal with the light
half of the kyuubi's chakra. They thought that it must have been
wonderful: Only joy, hope, laughter and happiness. No sorrow, no
grief.

He
drew Sasuke closer to himself, and Sasuke felt tempted to lean
against Naruto on his turn now. He wished that Naruto would act less
innocently or naively and remember with all his declarations of how
much he longed and cared for Sasuke that for him, Sasuke, there was
more at stake than just friendship.

“You
know, there's a story”, Naruto continued, “that humans
themselves used to be whole and complete and perfectly happy, so
happy that the gods themselves got envious and split them into two
halves, and now people are never happy, but constantly looking for
their other half. But if they find their other half, the right one,
the one they used to belong to before they were split up, then there
will be a truly happy love.”

“I
have heard that story before”, Sasuke answered. “It says
that in the beginning there were three sexes, male, female and
something that might be called male-female, or androgynous. The
male-females when they got divided into two halves became the people
who are attracted to partners of the other sex, and they are often
shameless and adulterous, both men and women. From the ones who used
to be all female come the women who don't care about men but are
given to sapphic love. Those who used to be all male however are now
the men who love other men, and these are the most virtuous ones and
will best serve the state.”

Sasuke
was not sure why he had told the story. He was glad that Naruto had
brought it up however, glad that there was a story that presented the
love between men in a favorable light.

“What
do you mean, Sasuke?” Naruto asked. “Are you going to
return to Konoha with me – at my side – as my friend -
and serve them well again?”

For
a second Sasuke felt as if his knees were going to give in: There was
his little boat on the river he had just got on and that he had just
managed to stabilize, and now Naruto was jumping onto it, making it
rock wildly so that he feared it would capsize and drown him.

Naruto
could not help being Naruto, after all, and Sasuke was not going to
keep him in check, but would somehow deal with it.

“What
do you still want in Konoha?” he asked. “There's nothing
for you – they made you fight for what should have been your
birthright.”

“Becoming
Hokage?”

Now
Sasuke was perplex. “That's no one's birthright. For that you
have to be strong. Why do you think that you might have a right to
become Hokage?”

“The
Yondaime was my father.”

“Was
he? Why didn't they tell you?”

“I
don't know.”

Again
it seemed to Sasuke that he had struck a sore spot. He drew Naruto
into an embrace, a fake embrace, where he was all in control, as he
had done in Orochimaru's lair, he knew it and he hated it and still
he did it because it protected him against having to open up for real
and because it prevented Naruto from thinking clearly. I might even
seduce him and he would give in without being gay himself, Sasuke
thought.

“There's
nothing for you in Konoha”, he repeated. “They don't care
for you there. They want you weak and humble and ashamed of the
kyuubi, not proud that your father gave his life and your happiness
for the well-being of the village. They don't want to be ashamed, as
they should be, to owe their survival to the sacrifice of a small
child.

“Don't
return to Konoha! Stay with me and my team! We want you to be strong
and free!”

He
meant it and still it sounded all wrong.

Naruto
pulled himself out of the embrace. “It appears that I don't
have any choice at the moment”, he said.

He
was better able to think straight than Sasuke would have imagined.

“You
have already made your choice”, he said.

“Yeah,
and I don't regret it.”

Naruto
put both his arms around Sasuke and drew him to himself, and finally
Sasuke gave in to the embrace.

“Let
us go and sleep”, he said.

A/N:
Old legends - the legends in chapters 9 and 26 I made up
myself, using material from real old stories that I half remembered.
This story however I looked up - everyone is familiar with Naruto's
version, and most people think that the story is meant about men and
women complementing each other. But the real story is different, and
so for Sasuke's additions I had to look up the real text.
If you
want to look it up yourself: Platon, Symposion, the speech of
Aristophanes, 189d (Go and read it. It's hilarious. Did you know that
if we got inobedient once again, we would be split another time, so
that then we had to hop around on one leg?)

Spoon:
Thanks again for your review! I hope that this chapter answered your
question about the kyuubi! :-)

XZanayu:
Thanks again for your review! I like Juugo as well, and I thought
that he needed some time in the spotlight even though he talks less
than Karin or Suigetsu...

lexjamandme:
Thanks for your comments. They are always appreciated, even when you
miss a chapter. (So far I managed to keep up my pace of one chapter a
day, only on Sunday I posted it earlier than usual.)

That
my story gets you thinking is one of the greatest compliments I can
imagine. You are under no obligation to write „good“
ones, but I am interested in your thoughts.

Dkf:
Ah, someone noticed that part about Suigetsu and Kisame. ;-) I liked
that idea of mine... I had to look up „pot calling kettle“,
but I am glad that you like my story and particularly that part about
Juugo.

LadyRonin:
Thanks again for your comment! You don't miss a chapter, do you? I
have always planned to explain the title in this chapter, and now I
did it... I am glad you liked the chapter – it's the one I feel
most insecure about.
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The Canalized River