#i was looking for my og notes for tswm

[fangirlandiknowit101]

Looking through old notebooks i used for writing and found this summary:

"You've got two choices, Sasuke. Fight, and risk losing everyone and everything you've ever cared about, or trust me and only lose half."

When living in a lie might be the only way to protect the truth, and one mistake could bring a fate worse than death, Sasuke begins to wish he'd never encountered love...

SasuNaru, alternate canonverse

And i'm like... damn. And there's a 1k first chapter intro written, I put it under the cut. All of this to sulk over the fact that i never wrote it all out lol. Once again i wish stories could write themselves😔

~~~

When heavy rain turned into a steady drizzle Sasuke sighed, chin resting on his bent-up knee and eyes scanning the foggy mountain slope below. They’d found shelter underneath a protruding rock, agreeing to wait since they weren’t in a particular hurry. Already the chill was beginning to invade his body, something he noticed only because he’d spent the past few days of their trip over in the hot and pleasantly dry Land of Wind.

They’d only been running a few hours since they crossed the border, but they might as well have been on the other side of the world considering the drastic change in climate.

“I still don’t like those guards,” he muttered, thinking back to the procedure at the border.

Their allegiance with Ame might be a little on the shaky side, but he still couldn’t understand why they had to be treated as potential criminals every time they came and went.

“You’ll get used to them.”

Sasuke glanced to the side, his brother sitting cool and composed as always, deep voice seemingly never affected by anything that happened around him. He may love his brother to death, but there were times when he could get on his nerves like no one else. With one exception, possibly.

“I’ve been passing that border back and forth for the past, I don’t know, six years? If I’d get used to them it should have happened already.”

“Yes, well, thinking about the amount of times you’ve avoided passing them altogether, it’s not surprising you would feel a little worried.”

Sasuke ground his teeth, glaring at the innocent landscape instead, droplets hitting the moss in front of him. He hatedhaving to sneak in and out all the time. Oh, he knew being a ninja was all about being secretive and hidden, but they were living in dreary, constant rain at someone else’s mercy, and they weren’t even allowed free passage over the borders of a country that didn’t even have a fucking name!

“Sasuke…” his brother said softly, warning or perhaps reminding him of the situation they were in.

“We should keep moving,” he pointed out instead of answering, standing up and brushing some dirt off his pants.

Itachi simply nodded, dark eyes too knowing as they briefly met his, which only served to aggravate him more. Before stepping out into the light rain he closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath, trying not to think of better places to be than a cold, faraway mountain at dusk. He could feel it in his fingertips, the itch to turn around and go back, the ache inside his heart that he tried so hard to leave behind those godforsaken lines between countries.

Every time was more difficult than the previous one, but squaring his shoulders he stepped out, turning left instead of right, jaw tense and eyes determined.

An hour later they were home, and he thought the word with guilt ridden contempt. It plagued him as he greeted his mother’s kind smile, struggling to get out of shoes that were yet again starting to feel too small.

“You sure grow fast,” she sighed, and he averted his eyes, torn between a sense of helplessness and anger.

It wasn’t his fault they were stuck in this awful place, but his mother was trying her best with the limited resources they had.

“Sorry,” he muttered, kissing her cheek before heading inside their small house, sticking his head into the living room to greet his father with a nod.

It wasn’t until he’d reached his own room that he allowed his shoulders to relax slightly, sinking down to sit on his narrow bed. The walls were undecorated, not even painted, showing the rough wood and the dampness of the outside world breaking through in one corner. He could still remember seeing it for the first time, barely eight years old and proud, jumping onto the bed with a big smile on his face. The memory was hazy, and one of the oldest he had.

The only thing that stood out more that day in his memory was standing in front of the crudely built village gate, staring up at the words in wonder. Uchiwagakure, the Hidden Fan Village, their clan symbol painted in red and white adorning the gate doors. Itachi had told him later, whispered it to him as he laid in bed and tried to sleep, that Uchiwa could also mean family if written in a different way, and that their name, Uchiha, was a word play on both meanings.

He hadn’t understood at the time why Itachi’s eyes were filled with sadness and regret as he told him, but now he thought he could understand better. He’d grown up believing in his father, in his mother, in their clan and in the pride the Uchiha name brought with it.

And now, at the age of seventeen, his brain told him to still believe, still be loyal and make his parents proud as a future leading member of the clan.

His heart, however…

Startled by a faint shuffling noise underneath his bed he frowned, leaning down to peek underneath it. Biting down a frustrated noise he rolled his eyes, trying to ignore his quickening pulse. He stretched a hand out, allowing the too-large-to-be-considered-normal frog to leap onto it.

“I told him not to send anything in at least two weeks,” he hissed at it, the frog shrugging at his complaint as if he’d heard it all before and still couldn’t do anything about it.

Muttering to himself about idiots who couldn’t ever listen to simple instructions, Sasuke accepted the tiny scroll the frog rolled out of its mouth using its tongue, not even flinching anymore at the fact that frog saliva coated the outside of it. He’d complained about that, too, but of course getting nothing in response but a sheepish grin and an apologetic chuckle.

As his eyes eagerly scanned the words scrawled onto the paper he had to swallow against the tightness in his throat. Only that particular moron was able to write such boorishly sentimental crap and get a reaction out of him.

If only, he thought, if only I didn’t need to live in this lie anymore…