Rumors, Sasuke's Defection Plan

"Sasuke?" Naruto froze, as if he had never expected to see him here, and blurted it out without thinking.

Sasuke did not answer right away. He started forward, step by step, treading over the dry grass that rustled underfoot.

From the very beginning, his gaze had been locked firmly on Naruto. Those pitch-black eyes shone with startling intensity, surging with complicated emotions Naruto could not understand.

It was as if they shared the same affliction, and also a resonant kind of pain.

Sasuke finally stopped about three steps away from Naruto.

Between them stood a cluster of nameless white wildflowers swaying in the evening wind.

He said nothing. He only looked at Naruto in silence.

He looked at this dead last, who usually made a racket, who always had "becoming Hokage" on his lips, who seemed forever brimming with endless energy—yet now looked like a fledgling soaked through by a storm, stripped of every sense of direction, tear tracks still wet on his face, his eyes filled with confusion, grief, and helplessness.

Sasuke was no stranger to that look.

Many years ago, after that night of rivers of blood, in countless midnights when nightmares startled him awake, at dusks when he trained alone on the practice grounds until he collapsed from exhaustion, he had seen a similar look countless times in mirrors and in reflections on the water.

It was the bewilderment of someone who had lost everything, been abandoned, and no longer knew where the road ahead lay.

Naruto before him had suffered different circumstances, but that pain and confusion were so very much like what Sasuke had once felt.

The evening wind blew past, carrying the faintly audible clamor of distant Konoha, making the silence here stand out even more.

"Do you want to find that guy?" Sasuke