Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

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
- 70
- 71
- 72
Chapter
Sixty-Eight: The Fifth Letter

When
they had returned home Sasuke sat for a long time in front of the
photo of his family. He pondered about his new friends' words: Your
parents would have wanted you to be happy. Happiness was not a value
in Konoha, but they would have wanted him content, fulfilling his
duties towards the clan and the village. Now the duties towards the
village had become meaningless and the duties towards his clan had
been reduced to avenging them. They would have wished for a better
life for him and for themselves, he was sure. They would have wanted
to stay alive.

He
wondered what his father would have said about Music Town. He would
not have approved of its relaxed sexual mores, and he would probably
have disapproved of him being gay. His mother would have been more
open-minded, probably. Maybe he would have employed the same strategy
as a lot of his acquaintances, first coming out to the most tolerant
family member and then to the rest of the family. A lot of them had
actually chosen a brother or a sister for this: He wondered whether
Itachi would have accepted his homosexuality or whether he would have
despised him for being weak. It was difficult to tell: Itachi had
murdered the clan and left the village when he had still been too
young to know about sex, and after this, he had been a spy at
Akatsuki and never had any opportunity to have sex with anyone.

He
also wondered what his father would have thought about the local
police. He would have considered them too laid-back, probably. He had
always been a very correct man. But the police here was very correct
in their own way, insisting that everything was done according to the
rules. His father would never have searched a woman for weapons.

Naruto
had stayed behind, talking downstairs to their patroness. How he
joined him on the bed, sitting next to him and snuggling him.

“They
would have wanted you to be happy”, he said.

Sasuke
pressed his hands. Slowly he returned to the present. His eyes fell
on a letter Naruto was holding: Sakura had written again.

“She
writes to you, too”, Naruto said. “More than to me.”

He
gave the letter Sasuke, who unfolded it.

Dear
Sasuke!

I've
understood that you consider yourself gay now. Please reconsider it.
It must be the influence of the place you are staying at. I guess
that back at a place where people still know what's appropriate and
what's not you'll soon return to normal, I'm sure.

Better
stay in Music Town, Sasuke thought.

Returning
to Konoha now would not be a good idea, however. It's not a good
place to live at, and those who have the opportunity escape. Most of
them simply don't return from missions. Some faked their own death,
so that Danzou made it obligatory that teams retrieve the bodies of
their fallen comrades to prove that they are really dead and haven't
deserted. Others desert openly, and don't care that their comrades
and their families will be punished: their comrades for allowing them
to escape, their families just because it's impossible to punish the
deserters. Clans whose members deserted are dishonoured, all their
ninja are demoted to chuunin, their property is confiscated and they
can only keep what they need for survival. It happened to the
Akimichi-Clan when Choji stayed in Suna after Shikamaru's wedding.
They're extremely poor now, and they lost their place in the Clan
Council. They are glad, however, that he is safe and alive, and he
sends them very funny letters to keep them in good spirits.

It's
still Shikamaru's mother who sees that letters can enter Konoha
without having to pass censorship, just as Naruto's and your letters.
Some of her allies among the guards have deserted too, but she has
found new ones. Together with some other women she has founded a
network to support families who have lost a son or a daughter, be it
through death or through desertion. They comfort each other and they
distribute letters from those who have deserted. A lot of them would
not know that their children are still alive if it were not for the
network. They call themselves “Mothers of Konoha”, but
they let me participate too, even though I don't have any kids. They
tell me to keep a low profile, however, as they need me in the
hospital: I listen to those whose kids got wounded and try to figure
out whether they are rather proud or worried, and if they are more
worried than proud the women of the network will contact them.

It's
about a third who's more worried than proud. My mother says it's a
lot, but I think it's far too few.

Ino
got crazy when she realized that Choji had stayed behind in Suna. She
calls him a traitor, and blames him for letting down his team, even
though Choji was not a member of any team when he deserted, just a
wedding guest. She thinks that Shikamaru is a traitor too, forsaking
Konoha for his treacherous love of a daughter of the enemy. I've
almost ceased to talk to her: She's only parroting Danzou, so that
meaningful conversations have become impossible.

I'm
now closer with Hinata instead. She's as critical of Danzou as I am.
Her father died recently on some mission. The exact circumstances are
rather mysterious, only that it's clear that he's really dead, not
deserted. His body was carried back by his teammates. Hinata was
allowed to see him for some minutes before it was cremated. She had
planned to take his body home to her clan's place so that he might be
burnt according to the family's customs, but Danzou denied her
request.

“A
Hyuuga's body contains too many secrets”, Danzou said.

“It's
the clan's secrets”, she answered.

“The
clan's secrets are Konoha's secrets”, Danzou replied, and with
this her request was denied.

Of
course the real secret is the manner of Hiashi's death. Hinata had
asked me to do an autopsy before he got cremated, which was
impossible after Danzou disposed of his body as soon as possible. We
went to talk to the men and women who had been his team members on
this mission but they gave only very vague and contradictory
information. The rest was classified, they said. They were all very
loyal to Danzou anyway, or even from Root, and would not tell.

I
discussed with Yamato and Kakashi the tiny bits of information we
gained, and also what Hiashi told us before he left, and both of
them said that if what Hiashi has told us was true it would have been
really irresponsible to send him on that mission. They advised us to
remain quiet about it, however: lots of people are now sent on
irresponsible missions and don't return, and their families don't
complain.

Sasuke
put down the letter, thinking about what Sakura had not written: that
while others were sent on irresponsible missions because Konoha's
forces were overstretched Hiashi had purposely sent into his death.

Hinata
is now head of her clan. She has retired from active duty as a
shinobi to order the affairs of her clan, as it is the right of every
head of clan except in cases of an immediate threat to Konoha. But
we're just waiting for Danzou to withdraw this privilege, due to
extraordinary circumstances, just as he did with her father. We are
thinking of counter measures. At the moment she enjoys her new
position and has begun to change her clan's rules.

Sai
and I have ceased to search the reports on your clan. We don't think
we will find any information whether your clan was really planning a
coup d'etat. Sai has started to search Danzou's private offices,
hoping that they contain something more substantial. We have very
little contact now, as he has to avoid any actions that might make
people suspicious of him.

I
told Kakashi of your suspicion that your clan was murdered on orders
of the administration of Konoha because allegedly they were planning
a coup d'etat. He told me that he has always known that the clan was
being spied on, as he himself was a member of ANBU at the time and
participated in the spying. He confirmed that what they found out was
meaningless, but their superiors constructed evidence of a conspiracy
from their casual observations to encourage them to go on. The public
did not know, of course. Kakashi now thinks that the main purpose of
having an eye on the clan was to keep them in a state of permanent
alertness: Never feeling safe, always taking care what to say and
what not. They did not even care much about staying hidden from view:
they wanted people to know that they were being watched. With their
ANBU masks they were safe from being recognized anyway.

When
Kakashi heard that Itachi had murdered your clan he was mainly glad
that his spying duties were over and that they were ended by a member
of the clan itself, not an outsider, sparing everyone a lot of
trouble. In hindsight, however, it makes sense to him that there had
been an order from the top level of the administration. Itachi always
kept himself apart from the other young members at ANBU: at the time
Kakashi thought that it was because he was younger than the rest of
them and could not participate in their conversations and their
flirting and what else they did during breaks. But this was not the
only thing: he had a special role in a lot of other ways too: He was
always on extra missions and received his orders from the top
administration, not from their regular superiors and was summoned to
meetings with them on a pretty regular basis.

He
was always very serious, which Kakashi again ascribed to his young
age, and later, when he had murdered the clan, there was talk that
rising so high and having such a steep career in such a short time
must have turned him first depressed and then crazy. But now Kakashi
thinks that if you are right and Itachi really murdered the clan on
orders of the Leaf it makes sense that he was so serious: knowing
that he had to kill everyone he loved and then lead a life of
loneliness as a spy among Akatsuki must have turned him desperate.

Sasuke
paused again. It had never occured to him that Kakashi had been a
member of ANBU at the same time as Itachi and that they might have
known each other. It had never occured to him to ask Kakashi about
what he knew of Itachi.

On
the other hand, during the months of his training with Kakashi he had
still believed that Itachi had murdered the clan from his own choice
and that there wasn't more to it. His hatred and his revenge had been
enough. He returned to the letter.

Kakashi
also told me that during all these years he kept visiting the parents
of his best friend, Uchiha Obito, on his birthday and on the
anniversary of his death. He learnt more on these visits about the
clan's situation than with all his spying, but it never came to his
mind to tell his superiors of what he had learnt from Obito's
parents. There weren't any hints of a conspiracy anyway: They
suffered from their poverty, from not being allowed to leave the
ghetto except for their duties as shinobi, they suffered from being
stuck in a narrow space with the rest of the clan, where they often
got on each other's nerves, even though they did their best to
support each other. There was a great pressure on everyone to be
loyal and not cause any trouble or conflicts. They also suffered from
not being allowed to place a candle on the cenotaph with Obito's name
on it. They hoped that one day the ban on the clan would be lifted,
or that one day they might leave the village, but then thier lives
ended on the night of Itachi's murder of the clan.

So
this is what information I could find concerning your clan. I will
try to find more.

It
was quite a bit, Sasuke thought. Having just heard his new friends'
considerations that for a coup d'etat you needed allies, which his
clan had not had, he was quite convinced now that there had never
been any plan for a coup d'etat. He just needed some confirmation
that Itachi had murdered the clan on orders, that he had been
manipulated and betrayed.

People
here thought that the murder of the clan was a crime in any case,
even if they had been planning a coup d'etat. They should have been
put to trial, not murdered.

He
read the last lines of the letter:

Stay
well! I wish you all the best and hope you're doing fine with Naruto,
but please reconsider whether you really want the mores of Music Town
influence you.

Love
Sakura.

Sasuke
looked at Naruto, who had been sitting next to him, reading the
letter with him.

“She
still doesn't believe I'm serious about being gay”, he said,
drawing Naruto into a kiss. For about a minute they enjoyed playing
with each other's tongues, then Naruto dissolved Sasuke's embrace:

“Let's
see what she writes to me!”

It
was a very short letter:

Dear
Naruto!

What
do you mean: he's gay and I can't do anything about it!`You seduced
him! You want to keep him all for yourself! What has happened to your
promise that you will bring him back to me?

Sakura.

P.
S. Hinata cannot believe either that you're gay.

Naruto
felt irritated and confused: Since when did Sakura discuss his love
life and his sexual orientation with Hinata?

“I'll
tell Hinata that now you belong to me”, Sasuke said, drawing
Naruto into a kiss again, and this time they did not stop after a
minute.

They
did not discuss Sakura's letter to Sasuke. They never discussed what
happened in Konoha.

A/N:
Thanks again for
your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at
http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=14965

I
would prefer to answer here, but this is against the rules. I think
that they have changed the settings and that now it is able to access
the thread without registration at the forums.
- 70
- 71
- 72
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Blessed Realm