dear_mun | Apping AU into towerofanimus

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Apping AU into towerofanimus

ooc: AU Sasuke; never left Konoha. ANBU, jounin, loyalist. Finally found a game for him... Here to stretch my writing voice with anyone who'll bite! ♥

[Sigh.]

You're really doing this, mun?

Tower of Animus. Because I really needed more animosity in my life.

It's nice to be out and talking again, don't get me wrong... but that couldn't have happened at home instead of in a torture game?

...Yes, horror game. Same thing from where I'm standing.

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[ Sakura is 99.9% sure this whole thing is a joke. ]

You might try standing about four feet further to the left.

[ Warily eyeing... this guy who looks and sounds an awful lot like Sasuke. he can't be Sasuke -- look at him! -- but... she frowns. ]

Outright torture is worse, by degrees. Horror's surprisingly easier to cope with, even when it's supernatural.

[ .. shudder. ]

[A blink. Then he smiles, if a bit bemusedly. It's Sakura, at least, and familiar faces are always welcome in... nonsense like this.]

True in most cases, but muns are... well. Mine has a sadistic streak.

[Shrug.]

There are worse things. I'd heard talk of sex games.

[ Why would he even -- Sakura colors, really frowning now., waving a hand in front of her face dismissively ]

I think they're all sadists. Some hide the tendency better than others, that's all! Though, Sasuke-kun, if you don't mind me asking...

[ She gestures toward his forehead protector. ]

Why are you... with that.

You may have a point.

[He concedes this with only the barest hint of a smirk at the color on her face. It's... sort of adorable. He knows she can talk about the mechanics and biology of sex with all the emotion of a rice ball, but he'd never really heard her discuss it outside a hospital or classroom.]

[Her next question disrupts his thoughts entirely, however - simply because he cannot fathom what she means. A hand lifts to the metal, cool on the air with the leather behind it protecting it from the heat of his face, warming now at the touch of fingertips.]

I'm not sure I follow.

[ It... is enough to give her pause in turn. ]

Why are you wearing Konoha's forehead protector? When did you... I thought that you'd...

[ Sworn to inflict your own pain on Konoha for not recognizing what it'd done to you, carried a burden of hatred os heavy it dogged your very steps through years in other universes, ran fast and hard away from everything good and light to embrace the darkness and the strength that came out of denying all the beautiful, scary parts about being human. ]

If this is a joke, it isn't funny.

I'm not laughing.

[No. If anything, Sasuke is seriously concerned by the direction this conversation is heading. Sakura is surprised by his wearing of the forehead protector? Why? Everything he can think circles back around to that one word. Why is she surprised? Why wouldn't he be wearing it?]

[Memories flutter up from the age of fourteen, and his insides squirm like snakes. ...How apt he hopes that isn't.]

Sakura. What are you talking about?

You see teme, Muns tend to have these 'awesome' ideas that we need to be locked up and tortured for some time to see us squirm, dattebayo.

[So this is what she'd look like as a boy. Interesting. She likes her own self better, though.

... but that's a Konoha jounin vest. Interesting.]

How much worse do you think they can do?

[Pause, eying him thoughtfully.]

Or, for that matter, how much can you handle?

[At least there seem to be a bounty of familiar faces around. Even if this one is a bit of an idiot.]

[A smirk of sorts touches one corner of Sasuke's mouth]

Gathered that one already, usuratonkachi.

[...Well.]

[This is not a familiar face.]

[...And yet a fundamentally familiar person. In a lot of odd ways.]

Don't get me started.

[He eyes her in return, more than a little thoroughly.]

Don't start me there, either.

Unless you're trying to say something.

[ Oh no, no thank you. She's been here before, and this isn't really her cup of tea. ]

You left Konoha when you were twelve. The you I know left.

. . .

[There are no words for this. There is nothing to say.]

[So Sasuke just stares. Not at Sakura, but through her. Yes, fine, he knows about dear_mun, knows about multiple persons and alternates and the like. That doesn't mean he prepared for this. Not even a little.]

[He left? How could he just...?]

Sakura, I...

[He went to the Valley of the End. He intended to leave. But when it came down to it, he just...]

[He takes a step closer to her, not threateningly but still somehow bigger in emotional presence than a moment before.]

I couldn't--

[Sasuke's never talked to anyone about this. The only person that knows even a thread of what he was thinking all those years ago is Kakashi. The Kakashi he knows. And even though it's been years, he still can't form the words.]

[So instead, he takes hold of his left shirt cuff with his right hand, tugging and rolling unceremoniously up, yanking past the elbow, stretching the material up to the top of his shoulder. There, stark flat black on the natural pale of his skin, is branded Konoha's ANBU tattoo.]

I wouldn't.

[ Don't. She almost says it out loud, but she bites back on the word, swallowing it down with the strangely bitter taste. It all gets stuck on the lump forming in her throat.

It's all so damn unfair.

Sakura doesn't move, feeling her stomach drop down to around her knees and her head go light as Sasuke stepped closer. Yanking on his sleeve, her eyes were dragged away from his face to his movement. She remembers those hands in very different ways, revealing truths she preferred not to see.

One tattoo didn't -- didn't mean what he wanted it to. Not when she knew about Itachi. Not when there were lengths of loyalty that pressed far beyond the boundaries of sanity and into the realms that were much harder to define.

ANBU could still leave, if ordered to. Sakura reaches out without realizing she has, fingers hesitating over the ink of his tattoo'd skin. She can feel the heat under her fingertips, feel him in that sort of electric sense that one person felt another when trying to understand the depth of something revealed as possible when long thought impossible.

Her eyes teared up, her throat swallowing convulsively. Naruto, she wants to say, In some realities, it was okay. In some realities I never had to make you promise the impossible.

In some realities, I didn't stand aside to watch the men I love kill each other, or die trying to stop the movement of a monumental hatred. ]

No. Maybe not you.

[ She chokes those words out as a mangled whisper. It isn't fair. ]

But you could in another time. In another place.

[ Hand trembling, she starts to pull it back toward herself. She's afraid to touch him. If he's real --

That hurt in a whole new way. ]

[God. It hurts him to watch the emotions twisting through his teammate, see them choking in her blood almost as clearly as if she were speaking all her thoughts aloud. His irises are red. Tomoe spin at odd intervals. He doesn't even notice, not consciously. He's just trying to see, to understand.]

[He doesn't move when she reaches out. Not an inch. Just holds the sleeve up out of the way, periphery seeing - nerves feeling - her hand coming closer, as his focus remains upon her face. She's good, she's guarded, she's strong, just like the Sakura he knows. Sharingan can see all the same.]

[When she pulls back, then, then he moves, automatically, unthinking; his hand leaves his sleeve in a fast dart for hers. Don't. Don't pull away.]

[He frowns, gaze still strong on her face, trying to find her eyes behind the aversion and tears. I didn't pull away from you; don't punish me for that.]

[Aloud, at first he has nothing. When he speaks, his words are almost as soft as hers.]

I'm in this time and place, Sakura.

[ She feels his hand, and it's enough to break through the paralysis that's otherwise set in. Reversing grip, she tugs on his arm, taking a half step into him and pulling him into an awkward, one armed hug. Crushing not because she used any strength as taught to her by Tsunade over long years of hard work, but because she was having to say hello and goodbye all at once. ]

I'm glad we were enough at least once.

[ Mumbled into his chest. ]

[He allows all of her tugs and motions with no resistance whatsoever, letting her cling to his hand, grip him too tightly in her hug. His free arm, his bare arm, wraps around her shoulders, curling tail of ANBU tattoo still peeking from beneath slipped sleeve.]

[His chin rests atop her head, nestled softly in pink hair. God. What the hell did this other version of him put her through?]

[What had he put all of them through?]

[His head turns, brushing a kiss through her hair and resting his cheek instead of his chin against her scalp. If he sees his own team again with any of these memories, he's going to hold onto them and never let go.]

You were.

[It's soft. It's low. It doesn't begin to carry. He wonders if she even hears him.]

You. Naruto. Kakashi.

[There's so much more he wants to say, but he doesn't know where to start. And after six years, he still can't form the words.]

[Just how thoroughly are you eying her, hm?]

I don't try. And if you're who I think you are...

[But is he, there's the question. On the one hand, that face... but yet on the other, Uchiha blood and a familial similarity. She could be wrong.]

[... No. No, she's not. He's...]

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Apping AU into towerofanimus

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i have no appropriate icons so have a wildly inappropriate one

now i wish i had the icon space for sasuke with a condom in his teeth

Wow, thanks for telling me this was tagged, DW >.<