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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.

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Chapter
Seventy-Five: Love is not enough

Sasuke
had seen the place more than once, but he had not dared to enter. It
was an ordinary building like any other in the side streets in the
center of town, housing offices and doctor's practices, but one of
the signs next to the door had caught his attention. He had passed it
and sought it out repeatedly, he had even once entered the building
and taken some information leaflets he had found next to the place he
was interested in, but he had not dared to ring the bell. This time,
however, Naruto was with him, and Sasuke was determined that he would
not chicken out.

Naruto
had no idea what Sasuke was up to, and also he had not seen the sign
next to the door. He was confused, but he also felt Sasuke's
nervousness, and he was determined to protect him, whatever happened.
He got nervous himself when Sasuke rang the bell and the door opened
by itself when they pushed. They found themselves in an entrance hall
with a desk for a receptionist, but no one was inside. For half a
minute they stood around waiting, then a door to the adjacent room
opened and a woman welcomed them and told them that her secretary had
fallen ill so that she had to manage everything by herself, and that
they would have to wait for a quarter of an hour, then she would have
time for them.

They
had to sit around for twenty minutes, sitting around looking at
abstract paintings and at a poster with the announcement that every
woman should have a right to decide whether she wanted children or
not, and when she wanted children and how many children she wanted.

They
still did not talk – Sasuke had behaved in a very mysterious
way the whole morning and Naruto did not dare to break the silence.

The
door opened again and the woman who had received them said good-bye
to a young girl, saying she might return whenever she wanted. She
told the boys that they would have to wait for another two minutes,
then she would definitely have time.

They
nodded, then they watched the girl as she left. She was about their
own age, maybe a bit younger, though they always had the impression
of being older than Music Town teenagers of their own age: more
mature, more serious, having gone through various adventures, having
faced death and having learnt to live without parents. This girl was
serious too, however, and obviously pregnant. She looked at the two
boys as if they were a very strange sight, making them feel
uncomfortable. They did not realize that they in their turn looked at
her as if she was a very strange sight. It was Sasuke who managed to
say good-bye just when she was about to leave, and she whispered
good-bye too and closed the door behind her.

Now
the woman finally had time. They were allowed to enter her room and
asked to sit down at her desk.

“What
can I do for you?” she asked.

“We're
in need of a surrogate mother”, Sasuke answered.

The
woman looked surprised and a bit irritated. Sasuke got something from
the pocket of his jacket – some paper, neatly folded to a very
tiny format – and began to unfold it.

“How
old are you?” the woman asked, watching his hands.

“Seventeen.”
He had never cared much about Naruto's advice to pretend that he was
off age. He had now unfolded the piece of paper, it was the
information leaflet of the organization they were at.

“You
offer this don't you?”

The
leaflet's section on surrogate mothers was right on top now. Naruto
had heard the word, but he wished that Sasuke had shown him the
brochure before coming here.

“I'm
afraid you are a bit too old”, the woman said. “Most
women who long for a child want one who's still small, so that they
can actually watch it grow up.”

She
did it on purpose, Naruto thought. Sasuke must have understood it
too. He remained remarkably calm, however.

“You
misunderstood me”, he said. “We are not looking for a
mother for ourselves. We are looking for a woman who would give birth
to our children.”

It
was a hopeless fight, Naruto thought. Still he could not help
admiring Sasuke's insistence.

The
woman turned now to him, Naruto: “How old are you?” she
asked.

“I'll
be seventeen in a few weeks”, he answered.

“Okay”,
she said, dragging out the word. “I guess you both still live
with your parents. What do they think of your plan?”

Both
boys cringed, but only for a fraction of a second. By now they had
got used to people's default assumption that teenagers lived with
their parents.

“We
have our own place”, Sasuke said.

“And
what do you live on?”

“We
have jobs of course.”

He
sounded indignated, and Naruto saw that he had impressed her a bit.

“What
kind of jobs?”

“At
a restaurant.”

“Cooks
or waiters?”

“Waiters.”

“Is
it your real profession of just a job?”

“What
do you mean?”

“Can you carry five plates at once,
one of them on your lower arm? Do you know which side to pour a class
of wine from?”

“I'm the barista”, Sasuke
answered. “No one's more efficient at drawing beer or at mixing
drinks.”

The
woman looked suspicious. He was making her doubt her decision, Naruto
thought. He was doing quite well, actually, given that the fight had
been hopeless from the beginning.

“It's
a job”, she concluded, “not a profession. How much do you
earn?”

“It
depends on how much we work.”

“Per
hour?”

Sasuke
told her.

“That's
not enough”, she said. “You cannot raise a kid on that
little money. And you cannot raise a child if you are paid by the
hour, not by the month.”

“So
you have to earn enough money to be allowed to have a kid?”

The
woman had to think for a few seconds before she found an answer:
“When we organize surrogate mothers we want to make sure that
the child is doing well.”

“And
for this you need money?”

“Yes.”

There
was an aggressive undertone in her voice, Naruto thought, probably
because she knew that it was problematic to deny someone a child just
because they were poor. He could not help admiring Sasuke: he had
managed to corner her. He was not certain what he thought of this new
adventure Sasuke had dragged him into, but now he decided to support
his friend:

“Money's
no problem”, he said. “I am the heir of Jiraiya, the
author of the best-selling Icha-Icha series.”

The
woman looked stupefied and irritated. This time it took her a minute
before she could continue.

“Well,
actually, the real problem is that you are too young. You have to be
grown-up if you want to care for a child.”

“I
have considered this”, Sasuke replied. “A child does not
simply spring into existence. I'll be off age by the time it's born,
and Naruto probably too.”

“You'd
still be extremely young.”

Sasuke
did not give up. “In your brochure you say that you support
teenagers with children.”

“Girls”,
the woman said.

“Why
only girls? It's not fair!”

“Girls
get pregnant.”

“And
that's why you support them when they have kids, not us.”

“We
don't encourage them to get pregnant. We encourage them not to get
pregnant. But sometimes it happens all the same, and then we support
them as they are still too young to cope with the situation. Help
them raise the child themselves, or get an abortion, or get the child
adopted.”

So
far Naruto had followed the discussion without caring much about its
outcome, but when he heard the word “adopted” something
clicked with him.

“We
can adopt such a child”, he said. “We can care for a
child whose mother can't cope.”

He
took Sasuke's hands and leant against him.

“That's
what we really want. Be parents to a child who has no parents.”

It
was not what Sasuke wanted, but he did not contradict Naruto. He
caressed his hand: the woman was very irritated.

“It
does not make sense to give a child whose mother is too young to care
for him properly to a couple of boys who are too young to care for
him too”, she said. “Besides, normally we don't have
difficulties finding adoptive parents. There's a long waiting list,
and you'd be put right at the bottom of it, if you are allowed on it
at all.”

It
took Naruto some time to grasp the implications of her words: “You
mean there's more people here who want to adopt a child than children
who need to be adopted?”

“Yes.
Didn't you know?” She paused for a few seconds, then she
understood. “You are not from here, are you?”

“No.”

“Where
are you from?”

“Konoha.”

“Ah.
I can imagine that there the situation is reversed, considering all
the war orphans. Well, here most people get kids because they want
kids, and they live long enough to see their grand-children grow up,
if they don't die from accidents or some illness, so there's few
babies who need to be adopted. It's a bit different with older
children who had to be removed from their families as their parents
could not cope. Most people want an infant who is all theirs to
influence, not an older kid who has already accumulated a host of
trust issues and behavioural problems.”

Naruto
listened. His left hand lay in both of Sasuke's. Now he pressed them.
He was excited and felt a bit dizzy, as if he was slightly drunk.

“We
could take one of these”, he said. “We'd love it all the
same. We'd help it gain trust. That's what we really long for, isn't
it, Sasuke? Be good parents for a child who has never had anyone for
himself.”

The woman looked very sceptical now. “You
have very romantic ideas”, she said. “But love is not
enough. You need to be tough and strict and patient and not give up,
no matter how much trouble the kid causes. A lot of people who are
older and more experienced than you have to realize that they're
overchallenged and return the kid. You will understand that for the
kid this is another horrible experience that will increase his or her
distrust of people. We want to avoid this.”

Naruto
could understand. “We would not do this”, he said. “We
would not forsake such a kid. We'd stick with him, no matter what. We
know what it means to feel betrayed and lonely.”

Sasuke's
hands hurt now, so hard did Naruto press them.

“Caring
for a child is not a way to make up for your own unhappy childhood”,
the woman said. “You'll inevitably mess up.” She got up
and went to the door. “It's already ten minutes into my lunch
break”, she said. “Come back in ten years, and then only
after you've discussed among yourselves what you really want.”

The
boys got up, feeling numb and rejected. They had to force themselves
to smile at the woman as they passed her and wished her a good-bye.

Naruto
was the first of them to recover. He wondered what had got into him.
He had not had any intention of raising a child before he had entered
the building. Still, coming to think of it, he would like to care for
a child one day, a child who was lonely as he himself had been, and
give him the love he himself had missed. The women's words that he
would inevitably mess up had hurt him.

He
led Sasuke to some bench in a nearby park, overlooking a small canal.

“It's
not fair”, Sasuke said. “Having to tell this person our
age and our profession and how much we earn so that she can decide
whether we're fit to raise children. And a girl can just get
pregnant.”

Naruto
took his hand. “She meant well”, he said. “She
wants to ensure that the child is happy.”

“It
would be happy with us”, Sasuke replied. “We'd love it.
We'd care well for it.”

Naruto
thought about it: for the first time he concretely imagined a baby
living with them at their place. “We have no idea about
new-born infants”, he said.

“We'd
learn it. Other people learn it too.”

“You
can't simply use your Sharingan on them.”

Indeed
Sasuke was quite certain that this was one of the cases where his
Sharingan would not work.

“I
can learn the same way other people do”, he said. “Most
people manage, after all.”

“But
what about the rest? We can't give the child a home. Our place is too
small. Juugo's fostermothers told us.”

“We
can look for a better place. And for better-paid jobs.”

“We
still could not give the child a home, because this is not our home.
Our home is Konoha. And we can't take the child with us when we
return to Konoha to take down Danzou.”

Sasuke
chose his words carefully before he replied. “We could stay
here”, he said. “Then for our kid this place would be
home, even though we ourselves will remain strangers.”

To
Naruto the suggestion came as a surprise. He also took a long time to
answer:

“So
you no longer intend to die after taking revenge against Danzou...”

“I've
considered it. Maybe people are correct. Maybe refounding the clan is
really more important. You know, it was Itachi who encouraged me to
become an avenger, and I guess the administration of Konoha was
behind him on that. I guess my parents would have been okay with my
decision to make refounding the clan my first priority.”

On
any other occasion Naruto would have answered that yes, probably
Sasuke's parents would have been okay with this decision, but now he
was not in the mood.

“Why
now? Why here?” he asked. “Why can you stay here in this
place and let go off your revenge? Why could you not stay in Konoha?”

Again
Sasuke hesitated before he answered. “I can live here”,
he said. “In Konoha, life seemed like a dream to me: Playing
ninja and doing meaningless missions while all the time I was
thinking about how my family had died and how I had found my parents
lying dead on the floor. I never knew what was real: my memories of
that day, or the life I was living day by day. Here I know that this
place is real, and that the murder of my family was real too. Even
Konoha as it is now is real too, while the Konoha I was made to
believe in was an illusion built upon the deaths of countless people,
among them my family. That's why I can live here.”

“What
about me?” Naruto asked. “I wasn't an illusion, was I?”

“You
weren't. You were one of the few things that weren't.”

He
reached out to touch Naruto's shoulders and cheeks, but Naruto had
not finished.

“And
what shall we do about Konoha`? Shall we just let it go to ruins?”

Sasuke
hesitated before he answered.

“I
don't much care about Konoha.”

He might have his revenge
after all, he thought, not only against Danzou but against the whole
village. He did not even have to do anything, just stay in Music
Town, enjoy life and occasionally pick up a newspaper.

It
did not work with Naruto: He really cared. He was still friends with
Sakura, with Hinata, with Kakashi and Tsunade, with Iruka. He cared.

He
took Naruto's hand. “We'll drive Danzou out of office”,
he said. “You shall become Hokage. We won't allow him to ruin
Konoha.”

Silently
he let go off his revenge. Naruto relaxed and leant against him.

“You
really want to raise a kid with me?” he asked.

“Yes”,
Sasuke answered. “You shall be my new family, and I will be
yours. That's what wanted when we fought at the valley of the end,
isn't it?”

It
was not entirely correct, but Naruto did not mind. Being lovers was
better than being brothers, he thought. It held a promise for the
future. And it was more fun.

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
.It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the
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