Falling Leaves

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, but once I put my plan into action, I totally will! Kekeke!

Any similarities between this fanfic and any others are entirely coincidental. These are all me ideas and I would prefer it if you didn’t, I dunno, steal it!

The little poem thing isn’t my own… I just can’t remember who wrote it. I’ll add it in when I find it.

Authors Note: This has already become my favourite story. The words just seemed to flow smoothly. It’s going to be angst ridden and hopefully one of those things that make you go ‘aww’ and shed a tear or two. XP

While there is going to be a strong love relationship between Sasuke and Naruto, I’m going to get to it slowly. I’m not going to rush anything, so if you’re looking for a quick fix of hot sex, you’re in the wrong place.

First chapter isn’t all that big, but that’s only because I’m just introducing characters and getting into gear.

Setting: Modern day AU – the entire story will take place in Sasuke’s house, and then pretty much just in his room.


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Falling Leaves


One by one
Likes leaves on a tree
All my faiths
Have forsaken me


It was an old oak, its far reaching limbs soaring towards the sky. Each season it changed. In summer the leaves were a dark luscious green; in autumn they changed to fiery shades of orange and red before dying and falling off for winter. Spring heralded the return of the leaves, curling slowly to life, a light green gown.

Sasuke watched it all with the distaste of someone who knew that he didn’t have long left in this world. The oak lived, died and was reborn again. There would be no such thing for him. Unlike the tree returning for spring, winter would be the end of his life. Though he professed to have come to terms with his impending death, it was a blatant lie. No matter how tired he was with the pointlessness of each day, the thought of actually dying scared and saddened him.

One thing that worried him the most, but he only allowed himself to think about in the darkest part of night, was that he would not be mourned. In his short lifetime, approximately twenty-seven years, he had not been the nicest of people. In fact, he had been downright nasty most, if not all, of the time. There was no family to stand over his grave and even if there had been he doubted one tear would have been shed. Once he was gone he would be forgotten completely, as if he had never existed at all. That thought frightened him so badly that he would take his bed sheets in a white knuckled grip and not sleep until dawn, his troubled gaze locked onto the white ceiling.

When morning came, light slowly filling up the room, he pushed all his troubled thoughts away and then slept until midday. During the day he never allowed himself to think those desperate thought. They were taboo.

Each day his vision got a little worse. The tree was still there, a looming presence ten metres or so from his window, but it was becoming a solid hunk of colour. No longer could he pinpoint the various limbs, or see an individual leaf.
His slowly going blind didn’t worry him too much. There wasn’t much left in the world worth looking at. Sasuke spent everyday confined to his bland little room, either staring out the window or flicking through a book he had already read. His existence was not one to be envied by anyone.

Although his house was large he never left his room. Most days he felt too weak to even get out of bed. His housekeeper cleaned all the empty rooms, made his meals and helped him to the bathroom when he felt too tired to make it himself.

If asked what day it was Sasuke would have been unable to answer. He measured time now by only what season it was, as told to him by the oak. Right now it was summer. The leaves on his tree were a deep, deep green, and when the sunset rolled around the crickets droned on and on.

In the second week of that summer something in Sasuke’s life changed. During a routine check-up his doctor made a suggestion that he should acquire a full-time nurse. Sasuke had consented, knowing that if he refused he would be forced to spend the rest of his life, admittedly small as that time was going to be, in a hospital. This was to be a necessary, if unwanted, change. Sasuke could no longer take care of himself properly and when the pain began in earnest a few aspirins wasn’t going to cut it. He needed someone qualified to watch over him.

While waiting for the intruder to finally arrive Sasuke watched the oak and hoped that the nurse would mind his or her own business, leaving him to his sad, lonely world. Though the sorrow in which he lived was sometimes hard to bear, he had created himself a comfort zone that he dared not stray from. As far as he was concerned, he would remain here in this room, watching the leaves until he vision finally became black nothingness, and then until he died. That was his fate. That was the only future his weary mind could foresee.

The days turned and there came that long awaited knock at his bedroom door. Of course his housekeeper had already announced the new nurse’s presence, but as someone’s hand rapped against the maple wood of his door, the reality of the next few weeks, months (?) set in. Seated next to the window in his usual chair, dressed in a dark blue nightgown, Sasuke did not want to turn around as the person stepped into his room; his private sanctuary that hid him from the world.

“Uchiha Sasuke? My name is Uzumaki Naruto, I’m your new nurse.” The voice was soft, as if the thick melancholy of the room had hushed it.

Sasuke finally looked around and for a moment was struck dumb. To him it seemed as if the sun itself had stepped down from the sky and into his room. The blonde hair framing a lightly tanned face could have been made of sunrays. It seemed so impossibly soft, curling gently against a smooth cheek. If the hair was the sunlight than the eyes were part of the sky. They changed shades constantly. As Sasuke watched it moved from a pleasant cornflower blue to a darker shade that showed Naruto’s confusion as Sasuke continued to stare with an unblinking ferocity.

Abruptly Sasuke turned away, shocked at himself for being so easily enraptured by the looks of another, angry that he had let his self control crack if only for a second and feeling a bright flair of panic that just his gaze was somehow tainting the sun in human form. Then all he felt was disgust.

“Uchiha-san?” The concern in that voice made him angry. It made him want to rise up and yell until his throat was sore, but there was no such energy in him anymore.

“Go away.” Though he had spoken at a normal level, there was so much venom in his voice that Naruto reeled back as if struck. Sasuke felt a pang of regret at seeing the hurt on that god-like face before he buried it away somewhere deep in his core.

“Yes sir. I’m going to go get settled in my room, it’s just down the hallway. If you need anything give me a yell.” The sun god paused, licking pink lips, eyes dark with uncertainty. “I’ll be back later to check on you.”

Sasuke nodded once and that was that. The man who as the sun had walked into his life, into his room… but he wouldn’t get any further that that The walls would come up and Sasuke wouldn’t break again.

~-~-~

Naruto had accepted the job with trepidation. This was a patient that didn’t have much time left and he would be expected to oversee it all Caring for and living with a man whose only future was to die. Naruto didn’t believe he had the guts to do that. But he had accepted because as much as he knew it might hurt him the chance to enter someone’s life and perhaps give them comfort had been to tempting to give up.

Now as he stood in the doorway of the room that would be his home for however long it took for Sasuke to die, he felt a weight settle on his shoulders. The unbearable sadness he felt in that room had pierced him to the core. As soon as he had stepped in and saw the man he was to care for, he had completely lost his composure, just the sight of that figure, framed by the window had shattered him.

Sasuke, it seemed, was a cold and bitter man, but Naruto could see the loneliness in those dark unreachable eyes. Skin paper white, the man was a picture of frailty. For a moment he had been sure he had walked in on a ghost, one whose weariness was absolute.

Even thinking about it now made him quiver slightly, because although Sasuke seemed like a mean untouchable spirit, he was also the most beautiful being Naruto had ever seen. An ethereal creature wrapped in webs of sorrow, capable of shattering into a million pieces should the slightest wrong move be made. So fragile… and so captivating.

Sitting down carefully at the edge of his bed Naruto gazed around the larger than average room he had been given, bags already placed neatly in the corner by the old, dutiful housekeeper. He was almost afraid to start unpacking, knowing that once he was done he would have to venture back to that cold, plain room and do his job.

Curling up into a ball, he wrapped an arm around a pillow in a gesture that showed his search of comfort. He felt so tired and confused in this unfamiliar place. Such a sad, empty house filled with nothing but memories and one man who had forgotten how to live even before he had died. Naruto closed his eyes, and without meaning to, fell into a dreamless sleep.