As Above So Below

As Above So Below
Chapter 2

When Sasuke woke, it was dark, and thankfully the noise was much reduced, and he’d grown so used to the horrific scent around and now on him, he barely noticed it. What he did notice, to his furious dismay, was that at some point after he passed out, someone had stolen his weapons kit, and even his sandals. Who the fuck stole sandals?

After taking a closer assessment of his person, he found nothing else had been stolen. His wallet was still in his back pocket. Stupid thieves… take the shoes but leave the money. Tch. Guess they didn’t dare roll him over to get it.

Wiping a greasy hand over his chilly brow, he wished he had the byakuugan. His sharingan was useless at the moment. But he had other tricks. He drew on his chakra, to sense what lay unseen around him, to find Naruto’s unique signature that would finally lead him to his dobe, and… and…

And nothing… It was if he was still utterly drained. There was not even a wisp of chakra to draw on. Unnerved, he slowly got to his feet, carefully placing them where they wouldn’t get cut on broken glass, rusty metal, and bits of stone. Taking a deep breath, he tried again.

Again, nothing.

It didn’t make sense. If he was so drained of chakra, he should still be unconscious. He should be in the hospital. He’d been out almost all night; he could tell by the faint glow to the east. He should have recovered most if not all of his chakra by now. Since he hadn’t, something was obviously wrong with him. Yet he felt fine, albeit it dirty beyond belief. He felt fine, but was powerless.

Numb from shock, he made his way out of the stinking alley. To the east were streaks of rose and gold, the rising sun. Tilting his head back, he looked at the remaining stars over head, those still visible this time of morning, and realized with clinical detachment that they were almost identical to the stars he would see this time of day over Konoha. The only difference were that there were several more. Other stars that winked brightly, and as he watched, moved much quicker than the others. Some of them much more quickly than the others. It was with renewed shock he realized some of them weren’t stars at all, but some sort of heavenly bodies that crawled across the sky with horrendous speeds. In fact, as he watched, one of them began to split into two, and as it soared over the streets now displayed before him, he saw the rising sun’s rays gleam across a belly of metal, the muted growling noise growing to a noisy roar, leaving behind a trail of pink and yellow tinted smoke.

What the hell?

As soon as it vanished behind the buildings to the north, Sasuke snapped his hanging jaw shut, and continued on.

This was obviously a city; he’d seen enough to know, even though the materials used were quite different from which he was accustomed to seeing; instead of wood and rustic metal, this place was built from a foundation of brick and concrete and rose into towering spires of metal and glass, winking in the growing sunlight.

The silent streets soon became crowded with huge machines of metal, screeching here and there, honking and filled with sometimes shouting people. It was so very alien to everything Sasuke had ever seen. At first he’d been basically alone in the rising light, but very soon the place became filled with people dressed rather strangely, all rushing here and there. They gave him glances, some filled with disgust, others with pity, and to his surprise, some fat woman halted, clucked in sympathy, and shoved a wrinkled piece of paper into his filthy hand.

Looking down at it, he saw a 10 peeking up at him from a bent corner. Smoothing it out, he realized it was some form of money. He’d seen all sorts of paper money before, but this was unlike any he’d seen before. It brought home with startling clarity exactly far he’d come from all he’d ever known.

He clenched his fist, his heart squeezing painfully. Naruto had passed through here months and months ago. He had to have been as confused and bewildered as Sasuke. Hell, more so… it was Naruto. How had the blonde fared in this alien landscape?

Naruto… where are you?

*************************************************

It had been almost five weeks since Sasuke sent himself to this paradoxically dreadful yet fascinating place. Five weeks of fruitless searches and growing unease. Well, at least he had the way of it now, even if his chakra was utterly gone. When he walked the city streets, he was no longer mistaken for a bum. Gone was his Konohan garb. He looked as casual and appropriate of any youth that stalked the streets at lunchtime. The only concession he kept was his leaf headband, which he wore around his neck like a thick necklace. He couldn’t bear to let it go. Thankfully, there was so much diversity in this foreign place that he didn’t stand out too much.

With a sigh, he went to the pizzeria and deli where he now worked. Money was something he could understand, no matter how differently it looked. And he was smart, saavy and had taken a week to acclimatize himself to this new world. A boy, younger than himself on a curious pair of boots with a row of tiny wheels on them had led him to the library, and to computers, where everything in this place had suddenly opened up to him. Using his natural, if rather rusty charm, and a bright smile, he’d schmoozed the young librarian into showing him exactly how to use the little boxes with the bright pictures in them.

And so armed, Sasuke got himself the job necessary to fund his search, and feed his growling gut. And this job was perfect for him. Not only did it teach him the complete layout of the city, it took him all over it everyday. Surely, somewhere, Naruto was walking these same streets, and their paths would cross. Surely.

But he was rather disheartened. What if Naruto had left this city, had moved on in his search to find a way home? It didn’t bear thinking about. Finding a single person, one that didn’t belong here, in this mass of humanity, was like finding a needle in a haystack; if Naruto had left, it could be another year and half before he found his lost lover. Another year and a half… or more.

Fighting off another wave of despair, he entered into the small establishment, only to find controlled chaos.

“No deliveries today, Uchiha,” he was told by his harried boss. “We got a last minute order for five dozen pizzas and twelve gross of calzones to be delivered to the annual Madara barbeque. Humph. Never wanted these things before. Why now? And of course it had to be on the very day.”

Sasuke barely heard his complaining superior, he was frozen to the spot by one word.

Madara.

In this alien city, he’d very seldom come across any names that were familiar to him, and today, he had his long dead ancestor’s slapped across his face. In the ensuing hour and a half that he was rushed into food production, then into some sort of fancy uniform, he couldn’t help but feel his spirits rise. Even when said boss tried to force him to forgo his headband, which he simply pocketed planning to don it as soon as he left to go to the park where the barbeque was being held, didn’t dampen his spirits.

Sasuke was not a religious or superstitious man; but he couldn’t help but feel this was a good omen. At last.

Naruto, I’m getting closer.

****

Stefan and Nathan stood with a much older woman, long hair blond and blowing loose over her shoulders, burgundy eyes watching Naruto with her two children smiling as she bought them ice cream cones. The day was bright and sunny, and they were surrounded by laughing merrymakers.

“So what do you think, Aunt Suzie?” Nathan asked anxiously. Since the day Naruto broke the mirror, she’d awakened from dreams that made her cry and withdraw into herself once more. For her husbands’ and children’s sakes, she was making an effort to act normally, but they were not deceived.

They could no longer blame the cold medicine their wife had been taking that day five weeks ago. She had long recovered from it, and still the dreams kept coming. Hence, at the yearly picnic Stefan’s family business put on, it was a perfect time to meet with his ‘aunt and uncle’, who knew Naruto almost as well as they did, and get their take on it.

Thus Nathan’s adoptive family were at hand to observe her actions. Neither man wanted to bring professionals into their lives again. Yes, Suzanne was a doctor, and her husband Jason was a psychologist, but they were family; hopefully Naruto would accept help from them without giving her husbands those wounded and betrayed looks she’d given them before when they forced her to get help for her ‘otherworld delusions’.

They had almost lost her then; only the fact she was pregnant with Nathan’s daughter had kept her with them. They’d never risk that again. They loved her too much to let her slip away from them.

Suzanne regarded the ‘woman’ in question. Naruto was leaning over, smoothing her daughter’s wild blond hair, blue eyes smiling into blue. She was wearing an ultra chic dress, smart heels on her feet, her unruly blonde hair, cut short as Nathan’s own, as wild as Narue’s wind tossed curls. Every inch the wife of two affluent businessmen. The only thing out of place was the metal plate bolted to black cloth she wore around her waist. According to Stefan, she’d taken to wearing it again, since the first dream weeks ago. Suzanne had thought the accursed thing long gone.

“Every time I see her, I can’t help but be stunned by the fact she could be your twin sister, Nathan,” Suzanne said slowly, shaking her head.

When Naruto had come into their lives, she’d been a rather startling addition to Nathan’s unorthodox family. Yes, homosexual relationships were more common now than ever before, but Suzanne had not expected it to crop up in her family. But she loved Nathan with every fiber of her being. If the dark and rather cynical Stefan made him happy, who was she to say nay? Nathan was the only child of her best friend’s daughter. The only child of her husband’s best friend’s son. When they had both died so tragically, it had broken both her and Jason’s hearts; of course, they’d taken the boy in and raised him as their own.

Then Naruto had shown up on their horizon, fifteen years ago. The lost and bewildered young girl had been a hop out of ken. She looked so much like a feminine version of Nathan that they’d been shocked. But there was no way there could be any relation between them. Their friends had been immigrants from Sweden, come to America because they’d both been orphaned in the war. No relatives at all. That was when they’d met the couple. Minato and Kushina had been a little old when they’d discovered they were going to be parents, but they had been overjoyed. They’d long ago given up hope of having children. But Kushina had died from complications a few days after Nathan’s birth, leaving Minato a shocked shell of himself. He’d been killed in a car accident less than a month later, very drunk, and unable to deal with the loss of his wife, his childhood sweetheart, his lifetime companion.

So how could this girl show up, looking exactly like Nathan, save she was female to his male, and had six curious whisker marks adorning her face. Both Nathan and Stefan had taken her in, unable to help themselves. There was just something about her. Then, five years later, she’d shyly offered to be a surrogate mother for Stefan. He and his lover were so in love, and so unable to have children. Surely she could do this for them, since they’d taken her in, despite all her wild, farfetched tales of another world and strange powers.

Somehow, it had developed into a full blown sexual relationship between the three of them. Once more, Suzanne was struck by the oddity of her ‘son’ bedding his biological duplicate if gender opposite. At first, Nathan had loved her like a sister, but that had soon changed. Now, she slept with both men, every night.

But it was in her first pregnancy, with the boy she’d insisted be named Sasuke, that her personality became rather frantic. With every passing week of gestation, desperation had filled her. She had to go home! She had to find her own lover! Her own homosexual lover. Homosexual, not lesbian. Poor woman, she’d been convinced she had once been a man. But Suzanne had completely examined her, both when she’d arrived in their lives, and when she’d become pregnant with Stefan’s child, and knew a knife or a laser had never touched that beautiful and flawless body. She was no transsexual. She was a woman, born and bred. Suzanne could tell. She was a doctor, for christssake!

Once Sasuke had been born, Naruto had lapsed into a long depression. Deeming it postnatal, they’d treated her accordingly, and she’d slowly revived. But five years later, when she’d discovered she was pregnant again, unexpectedly, for neither Nathan or Stefan wanted a repeat of before, she began to get desperate again. She began to roam the city, pregnant to the nines, and they’d have to chase her down, and bring her tearfully home.

She kept crying out for Sasuke, but her own son didn’t seem to soothe her. By the time Nathan’s blond haired, blue eyed daughter had been born, Naruto had been seeing a shrink for two months. After that, she closed herself off from both her lovers and her children. She watched them with hunted and betrayed eyes, and wept almost continuously, calling for Sasuke, but then pushing the boy gently away every time they brought him to her. She wanted ‘her’ Sasuke.

Finally, unable to stand the armed camp their household had become, the men had dismissed the psychiatrists, and simply got as close to her as she would allow. Finally, the depression passed, and over a year after Narue’s advent, she seemed as normal as she ever had. She never mentioned ‘her’ Sasuke, or this strange world and powers again. She was quiet, reserved, distant.

But she’d finally become once more the bright and glowing light in their life again, as if none of this ugliness had ever happened. She’d been the Naruto they both loved so much.

And now… the dreams, the tears, the damned ‘headband’ again.

Well, they’d loved it out of her once, they would do it again.

When Nathan stubbornly refused to respond to her comments of Naruto’s sisterish qualities, as he always did, she sighed again.

“Well, the desperation she exhibited during her pregnancies is absent. At least you don’t have to worry about getting her pregnant again.”

Both men had vasectomies after Narue’s birth. They didn’t ever want to see their Naruto in such desperate straits again. She’d given them both a child each, it was enough. Especially in the light that they’d never expected to have any in the first place. Naruto had given them such precious gifts, and they wouldn’t be greedy. They both had the surgery done, rather than ask it of her.

“We love her so much, Aunt Suzanne. I don’t know what I’ll do if she gets ‘sick’ again.” Nathan fretted in a choked voice.

Stefan, quiet as ever, simply tightened his grip on the other man’s hand, silent agreement to everything said.

To Stefan, she was a bewitching enchantment. The dark haired man hadn’t really been gay, or bisexual like Nathan. He’d never had a love interest before the bright haired boy had crashed into his life when he’d been twelve. Literally crashed into his life, from the branches of a tree overhead. He’d taken one look at the blonde boy and had been smitten. Of course, he hadn’t realized it at the time.

The two had become inseparable, insulting each other as often as they complimented. As they grew up, Stefan never looked at a girl. By the time he was fifteen, he realized with a shock that he lusted after his blonde friend.

Stefan had been groomed to take over Madara Enterprises since he was eight, when his older brother, Ethan, had committed suicide. The older boy, screaming that he wouldn’t listen to the voices in his head, he wouldn’t kill his family, had shot himself in his bedroom one night. Since that day, Stefan knew he would inherit, and had behaved accordingly. In every manner, save one.

He wanted Nathan. And he would have him. And this string of male and female lovers his friend had been going through, would end. Each one had cut him to the bone. In a fit of rage, finding Nathan crying because his latest ‘love’ had left him, he practically assaulted the blonde. Nathan had been shocked. He’d never expected anything like this from his dark and reserved friend. He’d often teased the raven for being asexual. The sex was rather violent, but Nathan had come harder than ever before, screaming his friend’s name. Afterwards, Stefan calmly told Nathan that if he ever took another lover, Stefan would kill the hapless person. Nathan was his. Forever. Then he’d taken his new lover again, longer, harder, deeper, and Nathan was lost. Not that such drastic measures had been necessary; he’d been in love with his dark haired friend since the day he fell on the older boy’s head from the tree. But Stefan had never once evinced any sort of sexual interest in male or female. Disheartened, Nathan had tried to find satisfaction in others, but they always failed, because Nathan couldn’t love them. He’d already given his heart to his friend.

Leaving Nathan passed out in exhaustion in his bed, Stefan had showered, dressed, and went downstairs to tell his father his choice for a mate.

Oh, how Phillip had raged. They’d argued, fought, and left little emotional bombs everywhere for each other. The Madara household had become a battleground. That day Nathan was hauled naked from the bed, shoved into his clothes by an enraged father, and tossed out on his kiester. Stefan was not allowed to see him again. Stefan promptly left the manor, chased his stricken friend down, took him to Nathan’s house, and made love to him again. He told his lover nothing had changed, nothing ever would. Nathan was his. Stefan continued to see him, and war continued to rage in the wealthy Madara home, until Phillip, having enough of his son’s insubordination, had threatened to disinherit the boy. Stefan had stared at him in disdain, went upstairs, packed a bag, and moved out. Convinced his son would come slinking home once he no longer had all the material things he’d been raised with, Phillip allowed this.

A year later, he was astonished to find that Stefan and Naruto now had a rather nice apartment in a decent side of town, and that Stefan was doing well with a lucrative website he’d designed himself and ran with Nathan. Both boys were doing well, and were very much in love, and Phillip realized his son didn’t need him nearly as much as he needed his son. Begrudgingly, he arrived one day on their doorstep, with Stefan’s tearful mother, bearing what was more appropriate to wedding gifts than peace makers. He told his son in a strained voice that Stefan could sleep with whomever he wanted. Phillip formally welcomed Nathan into the family, even going so far as to grit his teeth and kiss the blonde on both cheeks. Shocked, both boys stared at him. The Madaras stayed a couple of hours, then departed, leaving a copy of Phillip’s latest will, showing Stefan as his heir, with Nathan as a beneficiary as well, as well as full restitution papers.

Phillip was proud, even as he was annoyed. Stefan was truly his son. Sixteen, and already well on his way to getting into Fortune 500. However unwanted Nathan’s relationship was with his son, Stefan was obviously thriving, and Phillip had never seen the boy happier. He could live with this. So both boys suddenly found themselves in possession of a private tutor, Stefan went in to work in his father’s offices, Nathan took over the website, and life went on.

Then, two years later, they both met Naruto… and both fell hard. Naruto was everything Nathan was, and female. When she offered to surrogate for them, they were both over the moon. Then they’d both shocked the beautiful girl that had come to mean so much to them both. Naruto had thought they would use a clinic, and artificial insemination. But Nathan and Stefan had talked long and hard about it. They wanted Naruto in their lives, permanently. She fed something, in both their souls. And neither of them wanted a child conceived in such sterility as a lab, in the ruthlessness of syringes and such.

So Nathan lured Naruto into their bedroom from her own, and Nathan gently held her as Stefan made love to her. The sight of both those beloved, almost identical faces, below his, made it a moving, exceptionally pleasurable event. And when Naruto came, as she did several times that night, each time she cried out the word ‘Sasuke’, and wept. But she’d stayed with them that night, and every other one since then. Once they knew she’d conceived, then Nathan seduced her. They turned Naruto’s old room into a nursery. Naruto finally stopped her wild ranging, which neither really understood, but allowed to happen since she seemed to need this unnamed search so much. In a little and not quite legal ceremony, witnessed by only the Madara and Arashi families, they both married her. Then she began to fall apart. Both boys loved her so much, they couldn’t bear her endless pain, and did what they thought was right. And it had ended so badly. But their love finally got all of them through it. And their love would get them through this resurgence of Naruto’s ‘illness’. One way or another, they would abide. All five of them.