Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Happiness, by Accident ❯ Happiness, Elusive ( Chapter 1 )

AN: Ok, the first thing I want to say is that I hope you guys will take my characterization of Sasuke with a grain of salt. It's been a very long time since I've been where Sasuke is mentally and it was difficult to see things through that dark filter again. This being a first person narrative, it's also a bit more difficult for me to show you what's going through his mind than to just tell you about it had this been third person. I'm still treating this fic like an experiment but I'm doing my best to make it a fun read and hope you all like the outcome. ^_^

 

Heads up: NaruSasuNaru, AU, Sasuke POV, some language, eventual romance, drama and action. Change of tenses! From now on all chapters will be past tense.

 

Happiness, by Accident

By: Lotus-chan

Ch01: Happiness, Elusive

 

I don't know what instinct woke me that morning but I cracked open my eyes just as the door to my room swung open. My father stood there for a moment, looking at me. I hadn't moved from where he'd left me the night before and was still on the floor at the foot of my bed. Even now I ached all over and shifted only my eyes to look at him. He sneered, “You know the drill, Sasuke. You're prohibited from leaving the house until the bruises clear up. I've cancelled your lessons for the rest of the week to prevent your appearance from offending anyone. I'm leaving for Boston this afternoon and taking your mother with me. If I get any reports of you acting up I will make you regret it when I get back.”

 

He walked away without another word and I let out the breath I didn't even know I was holding. The wash of relief however, was short lived. I had to get up now and make myself scarce until he was gone because I did not want him to decide, for whatever reason, that I hadn't had enough. I pushed myself up slowly and gasped painfully, wrapping an arm around my chest and resting my forehead against the bloody carpet. Wow… that was hurting a lot worse than I'd expected.

 

I took a moment to just breathe and then hauled myself up into a sitting position and rested the side of my head against the wall, feeling slightly dizzy. My head hurt but the epicenter of that pain was at the back of my head where I'd been hit last night. My eyes drifted to a small trophy I'd won for something or other a few years back, lying on the floor not too far from me and I knew then what I'd been hit with. Goddamn piece of junk…

 

I pulled myself to my feet stiffly, bracing myself against the wall and leaned against it as I slowly made my way out of my room, kicking that gold-plated piece of crap under my dresser as I walked passed it. The hallway was empty, and I made my way to the bathroom as quickly as I could manage. Once the door was locked behind me, I rested against it for a moment and finally caught myself in the mirror. It looked about as bad as it hurt.

 

My left eye was slightly swollen and there was a lot of bruising around the socket. There were trails of dried blood coming from my nose and mouth but luckily the former didn't feel broken, just bruised. One of the hits to my face had opened up a cut on my lip and above my left eyebrow but they had scabbed over during the night. I pushed away from the door and tried to slip my shirt off over my head but winced as the bruised muscles in my chest protested the movement. Unbuttoning the shirt instead, I went to the sink and turned the faucet on.

 

Washing my face and brushing my teeth took only a few minutes and when I looked up again, I saw the bruises I'd been expecting coloring the pale skin of my neck, chest and abdomen. I stared at them disconnectedly for a minute before dismissing them and undressing the rest of the way. I turned on the spray in the shower and stepped inside, intending to stay there as long as I possibly could.

 

As the soothing warmth of the water plastered the hair to my face I felt myself finally begin to relax. But instead of regaining the inner calm I had hopped for, I felt myself trembling. Bringing a shaking hand up to my face, I pushed back my bangs and watched the water as it swirled around the drain at my feet. Why? Why couldn't I get that back??

 

I'd been there last night when he had entered my room; that frozen place inside me where I couldn't be touched, where nothing that happened on the outside mattered. When I was there, the pain couldn't reach me, nothing he could do could hurt me as badly as I was hurting now. A pain that had nothing to do with my physical wounds was threatening to overwhelm me and I reached out to the tiled wall for support before I crumpled beneath the weight of it.

 

I wanted… no, I needed an end to this. I wasn't going to last much longer this way but… I didn't know what to do or where to go. I felt like I had tried everything. There was no one to turn to, no one who could help me; I was trapped in this big house alone… My eyes opened as the realization struck me. No… there were others trapped here too. For the first time in a long time I felt a tiny spark of hope. Maybe one of them would help me…

 

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After my shower I slipped on my blue bathrobe, left the bathroom and walked quietly down the hall until I reached the central staircase. I peered over the rail of the balcony silently but there was no one in the sitting room downstairs. Climbing down the stairs as fast as I could, making as little noise as possible, I reached the first floor of the house and rushed to the back. I slowed my pace as I heard a few servants talking in the kitchen and passed them quickly without being noticed.

 

At the back of the house, near the kitchen was a room that was never used. I entered that room and shut the door silently behind me breathing a sigh of relief. If anyone discovered that I'd come here without approval… A chill shot down my spine and I pushed the thought away. Walking to a far corner I slid a hidden panel aside and pulled the short lever within to pop open the trap door on the floor beside me. Lifting it open all the way, I slipped inside and pulled it closed after me.

 

Climbing down the steel ladder into the cavernous space below the house, I wasn't surprised to see every candle and bowl of incense in the vast room lit. They would be lit constantly for days until my father returned from his business trip and could preside over my ceremony. There were no lights besides them and no electricity. The sheer amount of concentrated magick down here simply would not allow it. I made it down onto the cold steel of the catwalk and treaded silently on my bare feet into the room. This underground chamber beneath the house was only the third home of the Uchiha clan in several hundred years to bear witness to this great secret.

 

I was standing on the beginning of a maze of catwalks suspended high above the floor of the underground chamber. Below my feet clusters of candles illuminated a sea of lacquered tablets covered in Shinto wards and seals. This was the legacy of my clan. I walked toward a wooden pedestal at the end of the first catwalk and stopped only long enough to pick up the large and heavy tome resting upon it; the book that contained the spell I would need. Hefting it into my arms, I turned onto a section of walkway branching off toward the center of the room.

 

I glanced over the side of the rail as I walked and considered whether or not there was any irony in the fact that I identified more with the demons trapped below my feet than with the humans above. The tablets below were filled with them. Each captured at different times over the course of several hundred years dating back to the Sengoku era when my clan had first been cursed. It was this curse which drove us to capture these demons in the first place.

 

After the age of sixteen, the men of the Uchiha clan were cursed with bad luck. It is the sort of luck that makes us prone to accidents with increasing severity as time passes. The ultimate goal of which is our untimely death. In order to counteract this, my ancestors developed a spell with the help of a Shinto priest. After capturing a demon, we bind his life to ours which forces his loyalty and obedience, thereby gaining a guardian to serve and protect us from the curse. I shifted the book to my other arm and raised a hand to the mark on the back of neck remembering how horrified I'd been to see it there yesterday - my sixteenth birthday.

 

It was the reason my father had been so angry in the first place. He had never intended to perform the ceremony that would give me a demon protector. I looked over the rail again and noticed all the tablets that were cracked down the middle. We no longer had the ability to hunt down and seal demons; the knowledge of which had been lost long ago. As a result the number of cracked and used tablets versus those still intact was growing. In fact, less than a quarter of the tablets in the cavern were still intact and active. My Father hadn't wanted to waste one on me but with Itachi gone I needed to live long enough to marry and have children, otherwise the clan would die with me.

 

`I don't care if it's selfish but I don't give a damn about the clan.' I thought viciously. My pace slowed as I considered that thought. No… That's not true. I cared about Itachi. I would've done anything for my brother...

 

I quickly rubbed at my eyes when they began to sting. I couldn't get caught up in memories of my brother right now. I had to get this over with; to put an end to this nightmare I was living. I looked up, blinking back the water from my eyes and picked up my pace. I was almost there.

 

There was nothing left of me. That was the only reason I'd gone down there to begin with. I couldn't bare the thought of my father giving me a demon protector who would prevent me from ending my own suffering or from allowing the curse to do it for me. To live years and years more of this torture, trapped in this house, with no way out. I despaired at the thought. I stopped as the catwalk brought me over a tablet in the center of the cavern. This tablet was special. It became tradition for every Uchiha to attempt to release the demon within it first before moving on to a second choice. It's because this one was the most coveted, the most powerful out of all those ever captured but no one had ever succeeded in summoning it.

 

My goal however, was not to bind such a powerful thing to me. I was going to mess the spell up on purpose. Remembering how it had been done during Itachi's ceremony, I put the heavy tome on the floor and opened it to the right page. The magicks involved were so powerful and yet so delicate that many priests in the past had refused to assist us. They had gone on to tell us that if we didn't have the proper respect for the magick or didn't say the spell correctly the spell could backfire on us and kill us, or we could accidently free the demon completely and it would finish us off itself. … My plan was to do that intentionally.

 

I looked at the first couple pages of the spell which paid respects to the demon and asked the gods for protection and skipped it. Once I got to the page where the important part of the spell began I stood up and realized I'd forgotten to bring a knife. `Damnit…' I couldn't go back upstairs and risk getting caught… My lip throbbed as I considered my options and I realized that I already had the answer. I bit down hard on my lip and ripped the scab off. The coppery tang of blood on my tongue signaled my success and I brought a finger to my lip to collect it.

 

Bringing the finger to where I knew the mark on my neck would be, I encircled it to activate the magick behind the spell and leaned over the rail. I bit down again to collect more blood from my lip with my finger and let a few drops fall onto the tablet below. “I, Uchiha Sasuke, heir of the Uchiha clan call upon the magick of this spell to summon my demon protector from its enchanted sleep.” I had no wards with me, no priest, no secondary spell caster, no protection of any kind and it sent a thrill through me. This was it. If I woke this demon, I would have it kill me. If it refused to be summoned by me as it had refused every other Uchiha in the past, I would simply move on to the next one until I woke one.

 

A noise brought my attention back to the tablet below and I caught a glimpse of the last of the paper wards going up in a sudden burst of flame. My eyes widened. It was working..! Kneeling down, I turned back to the spell book and continued reading. “By my blood I release you from your prison and summon you before me. Take your true form and show yourself!” A deafening sound echoed throughout the cavern and I looked through the steel mesh below my feet to see that the lacquered tablet had cracked in two down the middle. I could feel my heart racing and I turned back to the book quickly. “Awaken from your slumber and head the command of your new master!”

 

The more I read, the more I began to realize how deeply the spell meant to tie the demon to me and I rebelled at the thought. I skipped the next paragraph which pertained to binding it and moved on to the one after, reciting it aloud and felt the catwalk sway as the room shook. This was going to alert the people upstairs that I was down here but hopefully I would be done before they could stop me. I quickly finished the part of the spell pertaining to the demon's eternal servitude and realized that it should have appeared by now. `Damnit, was this because I skipped that other part?'

 

A noise from above startled me and I looked up to see my father open the trap door entrance and begin descending down the steel ladder. “Sasuke! What the hell are you doing?!” I stared in horror as I heard the rage in his voice and saw him followed down the ladder by his own demon protector. I turned back to the book. I needed to keep going; I couldn't let him stop me when I had come so far!

 

But going back to the paragraph I'd originally skipped, I hesitated. I had never intended to bind the demon to me. The only parts of the spell I'd read so far called for its absolute obedience. I needed that if I was going to order it to end my life but if I completed the spell and bound it to me, killing me would be the one order it would not be able to carry out. The purpose of the spell was to establish a demon protector and it looked like I wasn't going to be able to manipulate the spell to suit my needs as easily as I had thought. I hadn't even been able to summon it completely yet!

 

Not knowing what else to do I turned back to the book and began reading aloud. “By this mortal bone and flesh be made whole once more but yield not your eternal spirit. Take form and arise to serve… and protect…” Damnit! The spell book was hundreds of years old and the next line of text was too badly smudged to make out! The pages rustled in my hands and I looked up. The sheer amount of chakra being released from the tablet below was causing a pseudo wind to scream and buffet against the walls of the underground cavern. Most of the candles below had blown out, plunging the room into semi-darkness. I had to reach out blindly in that darkness and grab the book to prevent it from sliding away as the catwalk swayed dangerously.

 

In the distance my father had reached the walkways but the way they were violently swaying was slowing him down. I didn't have much time to worry about it though because a red light behind me caught my attention and I turned around in time to see an apparition rise from the tablet below. It floated up through the floor of the catwalk and took form right in front of me.

 

A bright orange kimono and hakama decorated with a print of red claw marks clothed the semi-translucent humanoid form the light was shaping into. Nine furry tails swayed in the wind as they peeked out from behind him. I looked up into his face to see what appeared to be whisker marks on his pale skin and above them were eyes with cat-like pupils and irises as deep a red as the blood I'd used to summon him. The blond hair falling slightly over those dazed, half-lidded eyes was short and straight, caressing his face as they swayed lazily as if the chaotic wind around him were nothing but a gentle breeze. The fox ears at the top of his head were the last of the evidence that this unexpectedly striking creature before me was without a doubt, not human.

 

“Sasuke!!!” I jumped and looked back to find my father had covered more ground than I'd expected given the instability of the catwalk and the wind of pure chakra that was still howling through the cavern. I had forgotten that he'd brought his demon guardian with him, and it was protecting him and helping him advance.

 

I turned back to the demon in front of me and screamed, “I order you to kill me!” The spell was incomplete so I didn't know if it would obey but I was desperate and running out of options. I heard my father scream in defiance of my request but he was still too far away to stop me. I braced myself and waited but nothing happened. Looking up, the demon was still there. He hadn't moved, still translucent and still looking at me with that dazed, half-lidded gaze. “Damnit, what's wrong?! Why won't you do as I say??”

 

I looked back at the spell book and tried hard to make out the rest of it. “Protect… protect… your master…?” I was guessing at this point and getting more desperate by the minute. “Be a shield… unto sword or curse… and exist on this mortal plane as… as I… require.” I stopped when I noticed the glowing red aura of light surrounding the demon had faded away and was surprised to see him completely solid, no longer looking like a ghost. That last line about the mortal plane must have been what it needed. “Do it now.” I begged. The wind had died down and I could hear my father's steps only a few feet away.

 

He didn't move, but there was an echo in my ear and I heard my own voice like a whisper, `…protect… your master…' “No…” I heard myself say in a small voice. I shook my head and thrust my hands into my still damp hair like I could rip it out in frustration… or defeat. “No, that's not what I want.” I felt the touch of a breeze on the skin of my face and looked up in time to see my father's hand being pulled away from me by his demon. Suddenly, I could feel a foreign chakra prickle invisibly along my skin. It sparked in warning and I saw the red glow of it had covered both me and the spell book before it disappeared from sight again.

 

“It will not allow you to interfere until the spell is complete, master.” I looked at the orange mask my father's demon used as a face, startled. I'd never heard him speak before.

 

My father looked back at me and in his eyes was an intense and unmistakable disdain. “Finish it, Sasuke. I'll decide what to do with you later but make no mistake, you're going to pay dearly for this.” With that, he stepped back and crossed his arms to wait.

 

I looked at the page in the book again feeling as though I had been sentenced to a fate worse than death and it was there in the smudged and yellowed paper waiting to be read aloud. I breathed in carefully and decided to get on with it, knowing that I no longer had a choice. Squinting slightly in the semi-darkness, I tried to make out the words. “Taste my blood and be bound to me through it. Hear my voice and obey no other... Come to me as I call, obedient only to my command… and share with me the strength of your eternity as I offer up the mortality of my flesh.”

 

At this point I was just winging it. I could only make out every other word and I was eager to be done with it. If the spell backfired and blew up in my face, well… all the better. “By the blood that I have offered tie yourself to me forever and protect me from death as I offer up my life and soul to give you strength.” I heard my father make a confused sound above me but I didn't stop reading. I knew I wasn't saying it right but it was too late now. “Take my will and make it yours, speak to me in truths and offer me undivided loyalty. Through this spell I command you as your master, reveal your true name, make me one with your life force and take what I have offered to seal this spell and oath from now until forever.”

 

The rustle of fabric beside me surprised me and I watched as the demon finally moved for the first time. He kneeled down next to me and reached out for my face. I pulled back, startled but he raised his other hand and captured my face between them both. I was too stunned to react to what happened next. He leaned forward and captured my lips with his. There was a sound of disgust from above but I was too busy freaking out to pay it any mind. There was a sharp stab at my lower lip and I tried to pull away but his hands held me firm. The demon … was sucking at the cut on my lip. In the time it had taken to complete the spell it had stopped bleeding and he… he needed that blood.

 

I realized then what was happening. He was obeying his first order. I had offered him blood through the spell and he was taking it. I felt his fang on my lip again, making the cut bigger and winced. He pulled me forward roughly and I had to hold onto him or loose my balance. Tilting my head back he laved at my lips with his tongue and I felt my body shudder. After a moment he pulled back and I noticed there was a bit more awareness in his eyes but they were still slightly dazed and vacant. Then I blinked and touched my lip. The cut was gone!

 

The hands on my face moved away, bringing my attention back to the creature in front of me. He was looking at me as if lost and that's when I felt his hands roaming my chest and arms as if looking for something. “The mark, Sasuke.” I heard my father say, not bothering to hide the disgust in his voice. “He needs your curse mark.”

 

I grabbed the demon's hand as it started drifting towards my lap and drew it up. “It's here.” I said to him, pulling his hand towards my neck. His red eyes widened and he yanked the bathrobe down over my shoulder to reveal bare skin as he leaned over me. I tilted my head to one side in order to give him space and felt the sharp claws of his left hand on the other side of my neck holding me gently. I wasn't surprised when I felt his lips on my skin and his searching tongue licking up the circle of blood I'd drawn around the curse seal when the spell had begun.

 

I closed my eyes at the foreign sensation and felt my heartbeat pick up. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this close to someone. Close enough to feel the heat of their body against mine. The warm-wet sensation of his tongue on my skin tore another shudder from me and I brought my hands up to hold him as he drank up the dried blood around the mark. `Naruto.' I blinked my eyes open and realized I'd heard that voice in my head. “Wha…?” Fangs grazed gently against my skin and I heard the voice again, `You asked for my name. It's Naruto.'

 

One last lap of his tongue against my skin and a sudden burning pain bowed my spine. I gasped painfully and Naruto pulled up quickly. The curse mark burned! I reached up but stopped just short of touching it. It burned where the blood had been. I felt the burning sensation as it made a complete circle around the curse mark and grit my teeth as I held onto Naruto with my other hand until it was over.

 

Once the pain began to let up, I breathed a sigh of relief and massaged the area with my hand. The skin really was warmer on that spot and I resolved to get a better look at it later. “What the…” I looked up into the face of my new demon guardian and saw that his eyes were no longer distant or vacant, rather they looked a bit confused. He looked at me and I watched as the realization of his current situation dawned on him. “Oh, crap…” He began inching away from me. “How the heck did you summon me?! And where am I?!”

 

“Your demon's got quite the mouth on him.” I tensed at my father's voice and quickly lifted the robe back over my shoulder, suddenly chilled. He walked around me and approached Naruto, who stood up and glared defiantly at him. “I expect you to teach it the manners befitting a servant of the Uchiha clan.”

 

Naruto sneered, “Kinda full of yourself, aren't you old man?” I blinked and my eyes widened.

 

My father glared, “…and discipline him for any disrespect.” Naruto grinned menacingly as if daring him to try it but my father was suddenly distracted by Naruto's tails as they swayed excitedly behind him. He took another few steps around the demon, eyes widening. Naruto moved with him, staring at him suspiciously as my father inspected him. “Nine..?!” Father walked toward the railing and leaned over to see the cracked tablet beneath us where Naruto had been imprisoned. I'd seen my father angry a lot in my life but this was the most shaken I'd seen him since my brother's death.

 

“How?” he asked turning to look at me. “How did you do it?” He walked over to me and hauled me to my feet by the collar of my robe. “How damnit?!” I took hold of his arms as he shook me. I was starting to panic, my robe was coming undone and my father had the same crazed look in his eyes that he'd had last night. “That's the Kyuubi's tablet!! No one's ever been able to summon him before! How is it that a failure like you managed when even Itachi…!” He stopped and stared at me with that chilling look before he raised his fist and I closed my eyes in anticipation.

 

Nothing happened. I opened my eyes to see Naruto's hand on my father's wrist, holding back his fist. I hadn't even heard him move. He was baring his fangs and growling deeply as my father's demon watched from behind, ready to move at any moment. “Take back the hand if you don't want to lose it.” Naruto's warning prompted the other demon to take a step closer.

 

Father shook his head and said over his shoulder, “It's alright, Tobi.” He yanked his wrist away from Naruto and let me go. “I forgot about this new inconvenience.” He said it looking at Naruto but… there was something in his face as he looked at the demon that I couldn't identify.

 

That's when I realized I was two seconds short of flashing everyone. I quickly moved to fix my robe when a loud bang echoed throughout the cavern and the catwalk listed violently. One of the thick cables holding this section of the catwalk suspended above the floor had snapped. I felt a clawed hand reach out and pull me back as another cable snapped and swung dangerously close to where I'd been. The second cable however had done the trick. The catwalk banged loudly as one end of it fell several feet and got caught on a separate walkway below us.

 

I felt Naruto's arm around my waist as he pulled my back to his chest and held onto the railing for support to keep us from sliding down. There was a screeching sound of metal on metal as the catwalk grazed along the side of the one below us. I saw my father and Tobi as they slid forward a few feet before the demon recaptured his grip on the railing. He was holding onto my father in much the same way Naruto was holding me. “What the hell?” I heard Naruto say above me. “You stupid humans really are cursed, aren't you??”

 

The screeching stopped when the catwalk gave a last lurch and finally pitched forward vertically as it came free. Naruto cursed and held onto me as it fell. A loud reverberating crash shook the silence of the cavern as one end of the walkway hit the ground. The vibrations that went up the catwalk caused the metal structure to groan loudly and we both looked up to see another of the cables ready to come free from the ceiling. Naruto and Tobi both let go of the railings simultaneously and he held onto me as we slid down to the floor of the cavern.

 

Once our feet were on the floor, Naruto yanked me forward just as both of the cables gave under the extra weight and that entire section of the catwalk fell to the floor with several loud crashes. Naruto looked behind us and breathed a quick sigh before turning to inspect me for wounds and stopped suddenly. “Um…” For a confused moment I didn't understand why his cheeks had gone red but when he turned his head to the side and reached out to close my bathrobe I felt my own blush heat my face up to my ears.

 

I snatched the robe away, “I don't need your help, thanks.” I said, tying the robe up quickly.

 

Naruto looked at me then back at the catwalk, “Oh? I think you need all the help you can get.” He said crossing his arms and sparing me another glance.

 

For some reason I felt an embarrassed sort of anger welling up inside me for the first time in a long time. “I don't remember asking for your opinion.” The sudden rush of emotion through me was thrilling; heady. I'd been so long feeling nothing at all… except maybe fear.

 

Naruto looked at me for a split second and then smirked, “I give it free of charge, bastard.” There was no real malice in his voice and I realized he was testing the waters; trying to figure out how to react to me while still being himself and I felt that thrill again. The desire to rise to his bait, to give as good as I got.

 

“Sasuke!” My father called, distracting me. I turned to find him a few feet away and a small sense of disappointment crept up inside me to see him standing there unharmed. “Get back up to the house. The two of us together in this place is a recipe for disaster. I'll deal with you and that,” he said indicating Naruto, “later.” With that he started walking towards a ladder on the far side of the room, the one that led up to the trap door.

 

“Kind of an asshole, isn't he?” Naruto said next to me, glaring at my father's back and I felt the beginnings of a small smile tug at my lips. The comfortable silence that followed however was interrupted when Naruto's hand reached out and grabbed mine. He turned it up, exposing the scars on the inside of my wrist. “So this is how you were able to summon me.”

 

I pulled my wrist back, “What the hell?!”

 

“I thought I saw them before but I had to be sure.” He said indicating the scars.

 

I glared at him and folded my arms over my chest self-consciously. “They're none of your business.” I said angrily.

 

Naruto glared back at me. “Yes, they are. Because maybe you have a death wish but I don't and seeing as how I'm stuck with you, I'm not interested in knowing you plan to do that again.” He stopped abruptly and shook his head as if it hurt him.

 

I choose to ignore it. “It has nothing to do with you!”

 

Naruto ran both hands back and forth through his hair quickly as if trying to dispel a headache. “What are you, stupid?” he said in frustration. Grabbing my hand quickly, he started pulling me toward the ladder. “C'mon, we got a lot to talk about.”

 

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AN02: I'll try to have the next chapter out by this coming Friday. If you guys liked it or even if you didn't, please drop me a review and let me know. It encourages me to keep going and helps me fix things that seem off. Thanks ^_^