Bridgebuilder

Bridgebuilder

-A/N: This story occurs after the current storyline (Naruto and his teammates are about twenty) so any discrepancies between this story and the manga has happened because I can’t see the future of Kishimoto-sensei’s stories. ;) The yaoi/yuri will come in later; promise!

Chapter 1: Broken Things

Bridgebuilder, bridgebuilder, where is your son?
He’s gone to the meadow to play and run

Bridgebuilder, bridgebuilder, why not go with him?
I fear I cannot, I know only to swim

Sometimes, in this world, there are wars that begin and end in an instant, without death or carnage; that end without a drop of bloodshed. Such wars are signed away with a flick of the leader’s pen, and conflict burned in a thousand years of hatred collapses and turns to ash. Treaties placate those who would fight, land changes hands and names, but the anger and the pride and the hate remain, unspoken but understood.

This was not that kind of war; conflicts between ninja rarely are. In the forest that stretched around the barrier of the fire country hundreds of bodies were strewn on the ground; pools of blood stretched beneath them like the shadows of the falling evening. In a clearing by the edge of the Konoha gate, (it was just possible to make out the symbol of the leaf on the distant, enormous doors) the body of a young man lay, utterly ignored by the carrion crows that had gathered on the battlefield. His name in life had been Yuukinchu; he was of the Aburame clan, and the bugs that had crawled through his body in life had burst out of the wounds in his ribcage and begun to eat the flesh from his bones. They gleamed white in the dying sunset, picked clean by the insects. The young man’s headband had fallen over his eyes, and the bugs had stopped their ravenous feast at the edge of the fabric, so that the flesh of his cheek was untouched, but his jaw and teeth were exposed.

His mouth was fixed opened in a silent scream of pain, and a lone beetle crawled out of the chasm of his throat. Like the other bugs that hid in the flesh of the Aburame ninja, the beetle could sense gatherings of chakra. Its antennae twitched as it sensed the raw energy in the clearing up ahead. The insect’s brothers had already departed; flown off to places unknown, out to seek new hosts. The chakra in the distance swelled, and the insect hesitated for a moment on the edge of Yuukinchu’s jawbone. Then the sudden feeling faded, and the insect turned away again and crawled down along the line of the dead man’s cheek; under the fading light of the sun, the beetle disappeared into the grass.

* * *

Uzumaki Naruto wandered through the forest in silence. He was listening to the woods; a gentle wind rustled the leaves in the trees, but everything else was quiet. He maneuvered gently around a pile of corpses, they were the renegade nin that had been thrown unceremoniously into a heap by their opponents. Naruto’s nostrils curled and he winced; a putrid, metallic smell was coming up from the corpses, and his fox nose was acutely tuned to it. Sweat, flesh, and blood mingled in his nostrils and he choked. Whoever said death is ugly doesn’t know shit. Death stinks. It stinks like hell, he thought, burying his face in his sleeve. The sooner he got out of the forest and back to the village to report, the better. He’d only taken a few steps, though, when his ears pricked. Someone was coming—fast.

Naruto barely had time to slip into the bushes and crouch when a pair of ninja burst through the trees in the clearing ahead of him. They were moving so quickly that he couldn’t tell who they were. The two of them were locked together, their bodies twisting and jerking as they wrestled. There was a flash of metal, a muffled shriek, and one of them fell to the ground. As he watched, Naruto saw the ninja’s neck twist; his head hit the ground with a sickening thud. He was dead. The other person was panting heavily, and his (or her) face was curtained by a mass of black, unruly hair. Naruto couldn’t tell if the person was one of the renegades or a Konoha nin, but he hadn’t seen anyone with hair like that in the village except Neiji-san, who hadn’t been in the fight anyway. He gripped a handful of shuriken and prepared to launch them when the person in the clearing turned around and stared straight into his eyes.

“Come out here, Naruto.”

He obeyed. It kind of sucked, after all this time, having to meet again on his terms, but Sasuke had this keen ability to see through every one of Naruto’s guises, and he would be ready for tricks.

Naruto came out into the clearing and stared into the face of a grown Sasuke. He was pale, even in the harsh red light of the fading sun, and his cheeks were sunken. That dark hair fell all over his face, but his eyes, still blood red from calling on the Sharingan, gleamed through them. Naruto paused. He clenched his fists. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to strike Sasuke or embrace him. So he stood in the clearing and stared down at his feet in awkward silence, gripping his fists so hard they were numb.

“Dumbass, what are you so quiet about? I thought you’d be jumping around like a puppy, yelling ‘Sasuke-kun! Sasuke-kun! You’re back!’ Aren’t you even going to say hello?”

That did it. Naruto launched forward and slammed his fist into Sasuke’s jaw. Stupid son of a bitch! Who does he think he is? I’ll kill him! I’ll fucking kill—Sasuke laughed.

“Naruto, you’re an idiot,” he choked through his sniggers, “but I guess I should have expected it.” He stared up into Naruto’s face with an exhausted but happy expression. “ It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Naruto watched silently as his former teammate raised the kunai in his hand, but neither of them tensed. Sasuke was pretty straightforward when killing intent was involved; none of the ugly bloodlust that seemed to follow him guided his actions. He grabbed his long hair in his other fist and began haphazardly chopping hunks of it off. Naruto watched in mild curiosity, until Sasuke stopped and looked at him, with his remaining hair sticking out raggedly and the skin on his pale neck exposed.

Naruto gasped. There was no curse mark.

“See? Pretty good, huh, Naruto? I bet you couldn’t do that, pussy.”

Sasuke laughed again; then his legs buckled under him and he collapsed.

* * *

During battles that happen in the territory near the villages of the ninja clans, the sight of a shinobi carrying a wounded fellow into the village is not an unusual sight, but Uzumaki Naruto, hefting the weight of the renegade nin Uchiha Sasuke on his shoulder was something that no one could really believe they were seeing. People stuck their heads out of shop doors and windows to get a look, people murmured and hooted and yelled. They threw bottles at the boys, but Naruto knocked them away casually, and kept walking. He had no idea what was wrong with Sasuke—probably exhaustion, but he had no intention of making a mistake and letting the situation get worse. Konoha’s number one idiot had already made too many crucial mistakes. Besides, he didn’t want Sasuke to die…just yet.

About half way to the hospital where the ninja were treated, Naruto was met by about a dozen jonin. They all started asking him questions at once.

“Yeah,” he grunted, shifting Sasuke on his back and trying to answer everyone at once, “It’s really him. No, I’m not taking him to Tsuna- the lady Hokage until he gets checked out. Un-uh, he’s not that heavy. I got him.”

Some of the men around him looked grim, or excided, or nervous; no one looked happy to see Sasuke back in their midst. Whatever, Naruto thought, I’m not even sure if I want him back or not. At the door of the medical building he was met by his sensei and the Hokage. Kakashi looked disdainfully bored, as always, but Tsunade-sama’s eyes were cold and accusing as she looked form Naruto to the unconscious boy on his back.

“Naruto, the medical nin will take it from here,” Kakashi said coolly. “You can put him down.” His former pupil obeyed wordlessly. Sasuke’s limp frame passed from him to the pair of medics who laid his body on a stretcher and carried him away into the building.

“This is trouble.” Tsunade said, talking to no one in particular. “All the scandal, and of course, the business with Orochimaru. People are not going to be happy about this.”

Naruto growled reflexively. “Who cares about that? What matters is that Sasuke’s back. Besides, he—” Naruto stopped. He remembered the patch of bare skin on Sasuke’s neck. “The curse mark is gone.”

Tsunade stared at him in disbelief. “What?”

“Yeah, it’s true!” Naruto yelled, “he came up to me in the forest as I was coming back from the fight. He showed me his neck, and there was no mark. He was gloating about it too, the bastard!”

“But if that’s true, then…”

“Then it means Sasuke’s not dangerous, and it means that pedophile snake freak isn’t controlling him anymore!” Naruto blurted.

Kakashi’s exposed eye took on a serious expression. “Quite the contrary, Naruto. If the mark is gone, it may very well mean that Orochimaru has already taken Sasuke’s body as a vessel. If that’s the case, he could be very, very dangerous.”

Naruto slouched, looking like his pitiful thirteen-year-old self for the first time in many years. “I talked to him. I know Sasuke, and it was him.” He looked at the elders imploringly. “If it had been the old guy, I would have killed him.”

Nobody spoke for a long time. Then Tsunade sighed. “I’m going to see how things are getting along.” She left Naruto and his teacher to stare at the people in the street who were pointing and talking; no doubt wondering if the gossip going around was really true. They looked at the medical building, their faces filled with curiosity. And everyone was asking the same question. “Has the Uchiha heir really returned?”

* * *


-Afternote: If anyone is interested in Beta-ing, let me know!