Title: written in stone
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13 (for theme)
Length: ~700
Written For: Challenge 269: Yarn.
Content notes: Pre-slash Naruto/Sasuke. Warning: suicide thoughts.
Author notes: I went for the Fates / greek mythology for this theme, even if it doesn't have much sense in Naruto universe.
Summary: Lips, hard on his mouth, pushing oxigen he doesn’t want. Hands, hard on his chest, moving his heart and blood.



Long time ago, Itachi told him a story. It was about three goddesses. It was unusual in the Leaf to believe in gods but Sasuke didn’t know that back then, and absorbed the words from his brother as if he indeed was a God. The three women weaved the story of each and every human, Itachi said, carrying his little brother through the woods. He was very young back then, but he didn’t seem like that to Sasuke. Always too far, too high, too adult from him, unreachable. The first woman was the spinner. She spun the thread of life, she was the one that decided when someone would start to live. The second one was the alloter, and would know how long someone will live. The third one, the inflexible, would cut the line, causing death.

He hasn’t think about that particular story in years, but Sasuke can see the face of the inflexible now, pending over his head.

“Hey, Sasuke”, she says and then it’s Naruto, “you have to wake up”.

Another voice, soft in his ear. A hand, soft on his chest. A kiss, soft on his forehead.

“I don’t want to”, he answers, closing his eyes again. “Just take me already”.

Lips, hard on his mouth, pushing oxigen he doesn’t want. Hands, hard on his chest, moving his heart and blood.

“I have done enough”, he says, and the goddess looks at him.

“It’s not your time yet”, and Sasuke knows, “but you can choose”.

“You are not the inflexible, are you?”

She doesn’t answer, but a smile breaks in her face.

Silence for a second and the hands leave him alone. “Breath, Sasuke, please, come back to us”, Sakura is breathless, but Sasuke just can’t. He is so, so tired. He hasn’t done anything good in the last three years, in the last ten, maybe in all his life. Like a weather vane following a wind that lead him only to death.

His family, his brother, anywhere he goes he finds out annihilation.

He thinks he can see his brother, as he was on a time he cannot almost remember. He seemed happy. “I miss you”, whispers, and he could cry if there was anything left inside him. Anything at all.

Naruto’s voice comes again from afar, desperate and coarse. “You have to wake up, Sasuke, you deserve to wake up. You deserve a chance to live, this has not been a life. I know, I understand, I know, but you have to trust me. I promise there is a life better than this for you”.

Sasuke looks at the woman as she measures the wool again and closes his eyes. He thinks of Itachi, of his smile, and his tears. He thinks of Naruto, brilliant and blinding like the sun, always there, always on the back of his mind, nagging him and making him feel something he should not.

He can choose, and doesn’t want to. He wants to go, he has wanted to go in a way since his brother died and found about the truth, that’s when everything stopped making sense. A whisper in his mind, like a feeling (“you are my friend, Sasuke, and I love you”) and Sasuke wants to scream.

“It seems that you have made your decision”, the alotter says, and frustration rages in Sasuke when he knows that it’s true. His whole life, and Naruto’s, has been like this, written in stone, fixed since generations before, Before he even was alive, it was supposed to meet Naruto.

Maybe it's not enough, but it ignites a spark inside him nonetheless, one he cannot ignore.

He shouldn’t want to live. He surely doesn’t deserve it and yet, when Naruto asks him to live, he wants to live it anyway. The woman disappears and Sasuke opens his eyes. Sakura, Kakashi, and, always, always, always, Naruto.

“Hey, stupid”.

He looks at him and smiles. Brilliant, blinding, beautiful smile, just for him.

“Hey, asshole”, he says, even if he is wiping tears from his red-rimmed eyes. Naruto puts down a hand, just near Sasuke’s, touches him lightly with his pinky. “Welcome back”.

“Yeah”, answers, and moves his own hand a little, just enough to nudge him. He is warm. alive. “Yeah, I’m back”.

And he is.