The sun and the moon.
Those were the seals he and Naruto had received.
The mark has since faded from his palm, but Sasuke Uchiha thinks of them every day.
Thinks of him everyday.
He doesn't try to swallow it anymore, doesn't store the shame in his stomach, burning and angry.
He lets it live in his throat instead.
Lets it coat every word, lets it choke his sentences.
He thinks about the three of them; the sun, the moon, the star.
It was who they were. Who they always had been. Who they always would be.
Sakura, the star between the three of them, was fated for him. She was a sweet breeze, calming and gentle, the type of love that swept over him, that surrounded him.
She was the type of love that he could belong to. The same way the moon belonged to the night sky. He could change, could wax and wane, could flee Konoha, could return to it, and she would be there, ever present, patient, twinkling. The North Star itself, there, to guide him home.
Naruto, Sasuke thinks with a violent tenderness, was a fucking hurricane.
Clumsy and destructive and brash and so fucking beautiful that it ripped his heart out of his chest. He had come through Sasuke's life, had rained over him, soaking him to the fucking bone so that even his very marrow was imbued with him.
Maybe, Sasuke thinks with a grimace, he is a masochist. What other explanation was there? He lived at the periphery of Naruto, always just a little too close to be safe, always toeing the line between standing in the storm and being swept away.
Sometimes, he wishes he could be.
He wants to ask Naruto to run with him.
Away from this, away from everything.
They could do it, Sasuke tells himself.
They could forget about the mountains of responsibility handed to them with bloody fingers. Could ignore the screams of the world behind them.
But he was the moon, and Naruto was the sun. They were cursed, never to share the same sky, to circle each other for a lifetime. Through lifetimes.
I have missed him, he thinks, for a millennia.
Somedays, it feels like it.
Other days, he comes home to Sakura's sweet smile, he watches Sarada's eyes brighten, he watches the world they've created, he and Sakura and Naruto, bloom around him. He thinks of children whose parents do not die in war. He thinks of the orphans who are never cast aside.
He might give it all up anyways.
Naruto is a hurricane. The type of storm that sent water flooding up the land, that made shutters rattle against trembling window panes, the type of destruction that had devastated Sasuke's life every single time it has blown through him.
With him, he lives and dies a thousand deaths, coming up on the other side only to throw himself back into the storm.
He is looking for the eye of the storm. The quiet middle where he can, just for one fucking moment,
breathe.
Where he can watch the chaos of the world spin around him, where he can sink into the ocean blue and be cleansed. Be purified of the fate he has had wretched upon him.
He would swim to the bottom of that sea. Would feel his lungs scream in his chest, would endure anything, if it meant he could meet Naruto at the bottom.
But, Sasuke knows, with the same certainty that he knows the swing of his wife's hair, with the same certainty that he knows the peal of his daughter's laugh, that he could reach through blue for an eternity and Naruto will never be waiting on the other side.
He is the moon and Naruto is the sun. They were cursed, never to share the same sky, to circle each other for a lifetime. Through lifetimes.
Sasuke Uchiha will live one thousand lives without him, will live one thousand lives beside him.
Maybe, he thinks, somewhere in the lives they will live, there will be an eclipse.