The Blessed Realm

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Three: Just Talking

When the door had closed behind them and Sasuke and Naruto were standing outside the social worker's office, they both took a deep breath.

Sasuke had found the man's words deeply disturbing. Even though on the surface they had been about Itachi he knew that they were about him and Naruto too, and in fact about all children in all the ninja countries.

“So that's how people in Music Town see us,” he said. “They consider us monsters, highly-trained killing-machines, and they try to turn us back into human beings by treating us as human beings.”

He laid his arm around Naruto's shoulders, and to his shock he felt that Naruto was all stiff and tense, unable to respond. He drew him closer to himself.

“For you it's a joke, but for me it isn't,” Naruto said after a few minutes had passed. “I'm really a monster.”

Sasuke shrugged and turned around to embrace him.

“I don't care. I'm your fellow monster then.”

He tried to kiss Naruto, but Naruto didn't return the kiss.

“It's not the same. I really have a monster within me. They sealed it into me in order to turn me into a weapon. They kept me from all human contact in order to prevent me from realizing that I'm human too.”

“You are human,” Sasuke said. “Everyone here perceives you as human.”

“The kyuubi's still inside me, even if people in Music Town choose to ignore it. I do my best to be friendly to everyone and to help people and not be a force of destruction, but the kyuubi remains all the same.”

“We'll manage,” Sasuke said. “Together we'll tame it. We'll ask Killerbee to continue our training.”

He sensed that his words did not give any comfort to Naruto, he was not even sure if Naruto had heard them. He had no idea what to say, and not knowing what to do he drew Naruto closer to himself and slowly steered him to the place where Juugo's fostermothers lived, hoping that they might find words of consolation. Naruto did not offer any resistance but just followed him.

The policewomen who were watching over them noticed that they did not take the way back to the training center. They approached the boys, and when Sasuke explained that Naruto was not feeling well they nodded understandingly.

“Sasuke's ill, not me,” Naruto protested.

The women looked from one to the other.

“You both look as if you need some rest,” they said. “Are you going home now?”

“We'll visit some friends. They're our legal guardians too.”

“Don't they work at this time of the day?”

Sasuke shrugged. The problem had not occured to him.

“If they are not at home we'll find some other place for you to go to,” the policewomen said.

It turned out that they were lucky: Both Juugo's fostermothers were at home. They often went home to have lunch with their kids. They asked the boys to come in, and when they had taken seats in their living-room they asked them what had happened.

“Naruto's not feeling well,” Sasuke answered again.

“I'm not ill,” Naruto said. “It's just that Sasuke insisted on talking again to that social worker to discuss his brother's crimes, and the social worker explained to him that people like us who've been trained as fighters from their early childhood are considered monsters and killing-machines here.”

“That's not true! We regard you as friendly likeable young men and treat you as such.”

“But we're monsters nonetheless! Trained to fight and kill! That's what people here truly think.”

“It's not what we think! We think that you're much more than this, and now that you live in Music Town you can show what's in you beyond fighting and killing.”

Sasuke heard the panic in the woman's voice, and it resonated with his own panic. Their words did not reach Naruto either.

“That's what people always told me. They pretended to treat me as an ordinary human being, but when push came to shove they were all afraid of the kyuubi and reminded me of the necessity of controlling it.”

“But you do subdue it, don't you? You don't need to be reminded of it.”

“I'm subduing it all the time,” Naruto replied. “I subdue it when I talk, when I dance, when I listen to our teachers at the training center, when I practise the guitar or when we make love. It's always with me, and I'm always busy keeping it down.”

The women did not answer. Sasuke recognized the silence – the silence that followed when people in Music Town realized that they were confronted with suffering beyond their imagination. The silence that was the only adequate response to the gap that separated him and Naruto from people in Music Town. At the moment there was a gap between him and Naruto too – he had no idea what it meant to live with a demon inside oneself. He laid his hand on Naruto's shoulder: Naruto did not respond to it, but neither did he shake it off.

“I was never meant to live as an ordinary human being,” Naruto said. “The kyuubi was sealed into me a few hours after I was born, with the intention of turning me into the village's ultimate weapon. My father was pressured into doing it himself, and then he was pressured into sacrificing himself. I was meant to grow up without family or friends, knowing nothing but fear and hatred, anger and loneliness. I was meant to know nothing about bonds, or good and evil, so that people could give me orders at their liberty, and I had no ground to stand on and disobey them. A perfect weapon.”

“But it didn't work out, did it? You have friends both here and in Konoha, and you're in love with Sasuke.”

“Still it's with me all the time. I try to hide it, and to pretend it doesn't exist, but it's there. It's always there.”

Sasuke caressed his shoulder and kissed the other shoulder.

“Is it okay if I have a look with the Sharingan?” he asked. “Just to see the kyuubi's chakra.”

“It's okay,” Naruto replied, too exhausted from his outbreak to say no.

It was not much, just a thin layer of chakra surrounding Naruto's body. Sasuke had hoped that at the end of their last training session with Killerbee he had managed to push it all back, but as Naruto had told him it had not worked a hundred percent.

"It's grown worse since we last trained with Killerbee, hasn't it?” he said.

“It's grown worse since we became lovers,” Naruto replied. “It's not possible to remain controlled all the time when you have sex. It's not possible to pretend.”

Sasuke looked sad, or rather very serious.

“I don't regret anything,” Naruto continued. “I would not miss anything of what we did together... I would not want ot move back in time to the moment before we became lovers.”

Sasuke smiled again. Naruto caressed his neck and his hair, he sought Sasuke's mouth with his own, they kissed for several minutes, and while they kissed it happened that Naruto looked into Sasuke's eyes, forgetting that his Sharingan was still activated.

They found themselves in front of the kyuubi's cage. For a while they kept kissing, then Sasuke dissolved the embrace to look at the kyuubi: It was hidden behind its cage's bars, and when Sasuke looked into its eyes he suddenly felt the strange fearlessness of the people of Music Town he had always wondered about: he was without fear, not because he was stronger than his opponent, but because there was nothing to be afraid of. He would not even need his Sharingan, except to stay within Naruto's mind.

He went forward, and when he reached the cage he removed the seal, opened the door and went inside.

Naruto held his breath. He expected the kyuubi to attack Sasuke, and then to try to escape through the open door and take over, but instead the kyuubi retreated.

Sasuke went forward, not even raising his hand's. Instead he opened his palms in a gesture that offered peace.

“You don't need to be afraid of me,” he said.

He stopped when the kyuubi had arrived at the back wall of its cage. He did not want to literally drive it into a tight corner, and risk an attack just because it felt threatened.

“I don't want to fight you,” he said. “I just want to talk.”

The kyuubi didn't reply.

“Don't you want to come outside?” Sasuke continued. “There's people out there, friends. You should talk to Naruto too.”

“You offer me freedom,” the kyuubi replied. “But only freedom within the limits of what you think appropriate.”

“Ah, yes, you can't go on a rampage of course. People would be killed, and their houses would be destroyed.”

The kyuubi did not answer.

"It's my nature. It's Naruto's nature.”

“It's not Naruto's nature. He wants peace, and he does not want anyone to get hurt.”

“It's the same with him as with me: you only grant him freedom within the limits of what you think appropriate. He accepts this, and subdues his true desires.”

“His true desires are peace and being with the people he loves.”

“Peace with people who hate him.”

“They don't hate him. I don't hate him. People in Music Town don't hate him.”

“People in Konoha do. They hate him – they hate me.”

“This is Music Town, not Konoha. They don't hate you. I don't hate you.”

Actually Sasuke felt increasingly annoyed, but annoyance was not the same as hatred. He even felt pity for the kyuubi.

“Now come on. Naruto is waiting for you, he's standing outside. You don't need to overwhelm and control him – you need to follow him, and allow him to introduce you to his friends.”

“Friends who don't want to get to know me.”



“They will. They're from Music Town, after all, not from Konoha. I want to get to know you.”

He reached out with his open hand, touching not the kyuubi's nose, which was as big as his head, but the soft fur above it, and then the fur beneath the kyuubi's snout, and then its throat... It was a fox, after all, not very different from a dog.

“Now come on,” he said again. “Naruto is waiting outside.”

 

 

A/N: Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/14965-blessed-realm/ .It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the forums.