Chapter 5

"You're still a TRAITOR!" 

The cause of the sudden pain was none other than Sasuke Uchiha.

The man, as soon as he saw the blonde and the children, ran up to them and hit him on the back of the head, making the blonde stagger and fall to his knees. "Sasuke!" from a distance they heard the voice of a pink-haired woman who, along with purple-haired woman, reached their husbands.

"Do you have any idea how much we were worried!? You haven't told ANYONE that you are going to leave the village, especially since you are taking Sarada with you!" The blonde didn't get up, he was kneeling quietly listening to the snippets of his 'friend'.

"You're the Hokage goddamn it! Grow up finally you-" The salvo of more screams was interrupted by a worried violet-eyed woman's voice, "I think you should calm down a little" Sakura, seeing a good opportunity, immediately approached the black-haired man and hugged him from behind, mainly to prevent further blows towards the blonde. "Hinata is right, you need to calm down."

Naruto looked away, looking at a pair of his friends, a successful, loving marriage. He looked at them with reproach and contempt. 'Isn't that funny, it's like I saw you reassuring Sasuke during our Chunin exam.'

Looking at them he remembered the second stage of their chunin exam, the first time Sasuke had used that hideous power he had gotten from Orochimaru, the first time he lost control of her.

He couldn't look at a couple who denied the words 'happy marriage', even though he himself was in the opinion of others. "Isn't that funny?" he said, raising his head still not even glancing for a moment in the direction of the other three adults, he was looking away, further than the children stood in front of him, further than the Konoha gate.

"You said you were friends..." The image of black-haired men appeared in the head of the blonde, when they were still teenagers, when he tried to kill his current wife. Uchiha betrayed him, he proposed to another, even though they were together.

He knew about it, he saw it.
It hurt, but he knew that the Uchiha didn't regret it, he never regretted it. Despite the pain, he tried to forget his old feelings, he tried to forget that he loved him, but it hurt.

He acted as if nothing had ever happened, as if he had never had love for the black-haired boy.
Any feelings that would exceed the limits of their brotherly bond. He behaved normally, talked to them normally, even congratulated them and was the black-haired man's best man on their weending!

He loved him,
showed him affection,
gave him support in his darkest moments when he needed it most,
but it never mattered to him.

So he forgot.
He hid it deeply and forgot about the feelings, he was slowly getting melted and cold, he was like that.
He started to hate his old lover,
he hated him with all his heart,
for all these years of suffering,
he was so sick of pretending!

"You didn't cheat on me." he said mockingly, getting up from his knees. He really enjoyed this, they thought he was irresponsible, and they didn't know the whole truth.
He turned his head slightly towards a pair of his former friends, looked at the black-haired man, implying that it was for him, he didn't understand.

"You are still a traitor!"

There was a deafening silence, and no one spoke. Sasuke looked at his former lover in disbelief, he expected everyone, EVERYONE, but not him.

Despite the past years, some still called him a traitor, he never paid attention to it, even though his wife was with Naruto more than once. She asked, making fights, "How can you allow someone to call Sasuke a traitor!" she screamed furious.
"He's a hero just like us! And you know it best!" Her words always echoed through the village.

Sasuke had his suspicions, but they were wrong. They never got an answer from the blonde, once he didn't reprimand anything, didn't answer, didn't direct them.

Everybody in the village knew when the blonde became Hokage, he was going to make sure that he would forbid saying any bad things about the last Uchiha.

But he forbade to speak badly about the clan itself, he never mentioned anything about the black-haired man.
They could offend him, talk badly about him, as long as it didn't come down to the subject of the clan itself, ironic, wasn't it?

Today, however, Sasuke finally got an answer, an answer for which he had been waiting so long, and yet he was not ready for it. He preferred to hear it from anyone, except the blonde, whose mouth had spilled that hideous word, making him sick.

Naruto considered him a traitor

Yet he seemed to understand and not understand at the same time. Was the reason the blonde thought so because he broke his heart? Did he think they would be together after he got back? He never said he loved him, at least he didn't remember him saying that. Was his 'brother' suffering because of him and that was the reason? He had been struggling with it for years, he couldn't stop thinking about it, how much pain it caused them, how much they suffered because of it, but he never thought it was that serious...

It was cruel of him, how much he was unaware of his feelings.

He was cruel, cruelly blind. His behavior was selfish, cruel, he contradicted himself, and for so many years, nothing has changed

He was a hypocrite and never realized it, and the blond man standing in front of him decided to show it to him after many years. 

He had stopped pretending and was not going to put his mask back on.