My first attempt at a multi chapter Naruto fanfic. Be nice. Nah, you don't have to. Criticism welcome! Reviews will be loved and rewarded with fast updates. Moving on..
summary: After a ruthless B-class mission, Naruto and Sasuke return to Konoha in a bloody mess. To add to their misery, the two have been forced to stay close at all times because of a seal placed on them. Only chaos can ensue when the two have to move in with each other. Sas/Naru
Unbreakable
chapter one: stitches and surprises
A young blonde groaned, pulling several shuriken that were embedded in his arm and wincing when blood started to carefully drip down his skin, and onto the ground. Naruto Uzumaki was not having a good day. Which was an extreme perplexity considering the hyperactive boy was always the first to tug a grin onto his face, or was the one who stood out amongst a crowd of other ninja's because his determined and cheerful attitude. Only several feet away, his teammate was in the same condition (if not worse), as he was.
Wincing, Naruto pulled himself up higher from his sitting position against a rotting log, forcing his arms to tightly grasp his skull. His head was pounding, as if ready to combust and explode from the pain of being incessantly slammed into the ground.
Their mission had started off easy enough — deliver several scrolls to a fellow nin, who would then transport them to The Wind Country. Initially, the task had been assigned to a jounin by the name of Zudora — oddly enough, he had disappeared several days before the assignment, and thus it was assumed Naruto and Sasuke of Team Seven would be able to handle the delivery. It was supposed to be pleasantly simple — just as Naruto had complained as the two began their journey out of Konoha — and should have been done within only a few hours. They hadn't expected encountering an assassin determined to kill both of them.
Naruto tottered to his feet, swaying slightly before regaining his balance and shouting, "Sasuke! Oi, are you alright?" At the moment, the deadly killer had vanished, leaving the two alone for unknown reasons. When the blonde received no answer from his fallen comrade, he stumbled over, falling to his knees and shaking Sasuke. "Bastard, come on and wake up, will ya!"
Again, Sasuke was silent and refused to move — he was obviously unconscious, but the determined blonde above him seemed to think otherwise. Instead, Naruto continued to roughly try to wake him up in vain. It was minutes later that his breathing was raspy and coming in short gasps, that he noticed something strange on Sasuke's shoulder. Most of his shirt had been ripped into pieces from a previous attack from the enemy, and his upper body was easily visible.
"Hey, what's—" Before he could finish his sentence, he felt the presence of another ninja — the assassin — behind him. His hand, once resting on Sasuke's shoulder, darted for his kunai, but fell limp within seconds. Two fingers were pressed lightly to his arm, and a sudden burning feeling overcame his body as he groaned and fell to the ground, over his teammate, body and eyes going lax.
The assassin sighed, raising himself up and glaring down at the two sleeping boys. A soft wind played with the ninja's hair as he pulled off his mask, and threw it across the ground, running a hand nervously through his light gray locks. He started to strip off most of his attire — including his holster, armor, vest, and cloak. Once finished, he rustled through his pouch and pulled out a sharp kunai, bringing it to his throat as he swallowed deeply, closing his eyes.
"The mission is complete, Sensei," he whispered, speaking to no one as the weapon ran across his throat. Like a dead flower, he fell to the ground and let the blood from his throat spill across the ground. Above, a crow cried out as if in memory of the fallen ninja, and flew off into the distant gathering clouds.
IIiiII
The first thing Sasuke noticed when he woke up, were the two long and firm arms, wrapped around his waist possessively. Second were the locks of blonde, that were shyly tickling his flushed cheeks. Finally, the fact that he was in a bed, the owner of the strands of gold and strong arms being Naruto, his ultimate rival — who was snoring rather loudly in his left ear and it was nearly giving him a splitting headache.
On pure instinct, he shoved the other ninja away, pulled out several weapons, and watched with heated obsidian eyes as Naruto groggily woke up, scratching his head, and then sleepily looking up at the other. "Sas—" A shuriken darted past his head, nearly missing his cheek and instead locking itself into the wall on the other side of the room. "What the...Sasuke, you bastard!" The blonde growled, pushing the sheets tangled at his feet away, and scuttling off the mattress.
"Why the hell did you..." Naruto blinked, glancing around the room and letting his eyes rest back on Sasuke, "Hey, where are we?"
Sasuke was calmly placing his kunai and shuriken back into his holster when he looked up and muttered, "How should I know?" He too glanced around the room, noticing it had a large amount of white — the floors were bleached that way, clean and neat. There was a sink in the corner of the room next to a window with its light tan curtained closed shut, and a small door next to it. The bed Naruto and Sasuke had awoken in were draped with white sheets, and had metal bars that supported the heavy weight of people laying down.
Naruto was curiously looking at a vase of red roses that were set on the table next to the bed — a strange contrast to the overall plain nature of the room. "Uh...I think we're in a hospital," was the conclusion the young blonde came to. Sasuke rolled his eyes in response and pushed himself from the bed, wincing when a sudden pain shot up his body at the small movement. He stumbled back, sitting on the edge of the mattress and clutching his side while quietly observing the many stitches and gauze on his limbs.
If Naruto had not noticed the deep pain etched into his teammate's face, he probably would have made some remark on Sasuke's weakness. Instead, he kept silent until he noticed the mark again — the one on Sasuke's shoulder that he had tried to observe before being knocked out by the...
"We were attacked!" Naruto complained, as if suddenly remembering the previous events, and forgetting his previous thoughts, "And the bastard tried to kill us."
"You do realize you're stating the obvious, right?" Sasuke groaned at the other boy's idiocy and lifted his shirt up to analyze his bruises and cuts. Unlike Naruto, who healed quickly, he took a slightly longer time. The pain itself he could ignore, but the marks on his body only represented his weakness, and lack of strength to defend himself.
With a deep sigh, he let the loose clothing flutter back down, when several people entered the sterile room. The three included Sakura, Kakashi, and Iruka who stood at the entrance before advancing on the pair still perplexed at the situation. It was Sakura who spoke first, launching herself at Sasuke as she cried out, "Sasuke-kun! You're alright! We were worried that the seal would—" She halted in her steps when her master firmly grasped the young girl by the shoulder and held her back.
Both boys looked up in confusion, asking at once: "What seal?"
While Sakura nervously rubbed the back of her neck, the two adult ninja's sighed at her outburst and stepped forward, ready to explain the situation.
"Wellll," Kakashi began, trying to distract himself by looking at the ceiling, "It seems while you two were on your mission, there was a seal placed on you." He started to hum before the intense stare of Sasuke made him seemingly crack. "Alright, alright," he muttered, his hands waving about innocently, "It seems the seals on your arms restrixt your...proximity."
Naruto, as usual, looked lost at the use of certain vocabulary. He satisfied himself with looking at Sasuke's left shoulder — where the mark was. It appeared to be a cross that had a snake curling around the middle, the top of the snake curling into an arc on the upper part of the gothic symbol. The same mark appeared on the opposite arm of Naruto — on his right shoulder.
While the blonde continued to figure out what Kakashi meant, Sasuke dove forward and demanded a direct answer. "What do you mean 'restrict our proximity'?" Apparently, Iruka decided to stay out of the conversation, and was trying to calm a nervous Naruto who was asking about the assassin while Sakura stood on the side quietly.
"I mean that you two can only be a certain distance away from each other. The seal that both of you have is called a restraining seal." He lazily scratched the back of his neck and pulled out his latest Icha Icha book, calmly continuing, "They used to be placed on fellow ninja's centuries ago, when it was a disgrace to leave a teammate behind. Some people used them on belongings, so they knew if their possessions were stolen. The seals are restricted now because they break a ninja's freedom — they're also potentially dangerous when enemies use them on their foes, to keep in close contact so they can kill the other."
Once Naruto heard this, his ears perked up as he slipped next to Sasuke, rubbing his eyes. "I still don't get it," he grumbled, and huffed when he heard Sasuke mutter a short 'dobe'.
"To be short," Iruka interjected, "you and Sasuke cannot be more than fourteen feet apart from each other."
For a moment, there was a long silence before Naruto leaned over, slapped his knee and burst out in laughter. "Ha! What a nice joke to come back to, sensei." Grinning, the blonde began walking towards the door to exit. "I can get outta here now, right? I think I'll just go get some ramen, and..."
Iruka jumped, his hand reaching out. "Naruto, wait!"
"What?" the blonde asked, his hand resting on the knob, "You wanna come too?" He turned it, and walked out the door. "Then come on and—" Before he could continue his cheerful speech, a sudden spark appeared between the distance of Sasuke and Naruto, and the two shouted, before collapsing on the floor.
"Sasuke—kun!" Sakura rushed over, her hands wavering just about Sasuke, but not touching him. Kakashi had warned her that touching either of the boys directly would cause them extreme pain in the earlier stages of the seal. The nin who had found the pair, next to the dead assassin, had to slip on gloves and roll them onto blankets to carry them back. The man who had advised such things was standing above her, his book hanging loosely from his fingers as he looked down at the unconscious Sasuke.
He turned to observe Naruto, across the room, laying on the floor. With a playful laugh, he continued his reading as a smirk played on his lips and a mischievous look in his visible eyes. "This should be fun."
