A/N: Beta-ed by Megyal. Please take note - this fic contains character death.
We Were Never Built To Last
This is the start of the year they turn nineteen, and nothing has changed.
Naruto, Sakura and Sai are still in Team Kakashi. Konoha is still peaceful and safe. Sasuke is still nowhere to be found.
On a Tuesday, Sai wakes up and realises his fringe is now touching his eyes. Hmm. He contemplates cutting it but, on a whim, he decides to leave it until tomorrow.
He meets up with the team, and when he arrives, Naruto and Sakura stare at him with unfiltered horror in their eyes.
"Is something wrong?" Sai asks pleasantly, his palms itching for the book in his backpack. Maybe having a fringe is considered insulting.
Naruto and Sakura hear Sai's voice, but all they see Sasuke.
Yamato arrives suddenly, in a cloud of thick, white smoke. His face is ashen, and his eyes are bright like rain on glass.
"The Sixth Hokage is dead."
And so begins the end.
--
Kakashi is buried by the river, next to Uchiha Obito. It is the last plot on the site, which is technically part of the Uchiha burial plot, since most of the bodies there are that of the Uchiha clan.
He knows that Kakashi would have wanted this.
Sakura keeps glancing at him from the side with her teary eyes, sad but accusing, and he is silent.
That was meant for an Uchiha.
He looks back at her with his own bright eyes, his cheeks gleaming under the moonlight.
If we ever find him or his body, he will be cremated and scattered into the river.
Naruto knows that he will never want to be buried in Konoha, if he does die.
He has chosen the river, because he remembers him sitting by the pier, watching the ocean while Naruto walks at the top, staring down at him.
Naruto hopes he will never make that decision for his friend, but he knows that is nothing but wishful thinking as he stands along with the rest of Konoha, watching as the Sixth Hokage is laid to rest next to his best friend.
He will cremate Sasuke's body and throw his ashes in the river when the time comes.
What starts in flames will end with fire; it is only fitting.
--
Danzo has been exposed and is now a missing-nin, so Tenzo is the new head of Root. The name 'Yamato' died along with what was left of Team Kakashi.
Naruto calls him to the office on Thursday.
"I have a request."
Tenzo nods.
"Use Sai in your next mission."
He frowns, because the next mission, an information gathering one headed for Getsugakure has already been chosen and assigned. Sai is not one of the chosen Root members.
"Is there a specific reason why?" Tenzo asks cautiously.
"No," Naruto replies, flipping open a file.
Tenzo nods. "Yes, Hokage," he says before leaving quietly.
He thinks he knows why.
He has noticed that Naruto can hardly look Sai in the eye recently, and he thinks it has to do with Sai looking more and more like the number one missing ninja on Konoha's list: Uchiha Sasuke.
--
Sakura arrives at her destination countless months after setting off from Konoha, with nothing but a small pouch of her worldly belongings.
There are special medical pills, (some healing but most poisonous), spare senbon needles and a worn photograph.
She ducks into a cave, and a man with a horrible orange mask jumps out at her.
"Oh, hello there!" he says excitedly, as a trap above her head springs open and a huge boulder comes tumbling down in the darkness.
There is nowhere to escape to, so she swings her arm and punches the rock with amazing grace. It shatters, and for a few moments, a cloud of dust dances before their eyes.
"How impressive," the man says as her vision clears, and he starts to clap. "Now what can I do for you?"
"I want to join your organisation."
He shakes his head with great sadness. "I'm sorry, we have already sent out our applications. One of the criteria is that the applicant must not have pink hair. It clashes with our stylish black-and-red cloaks."
"Cut the crap, Tobi," she says, and pulls off the wig.
Sakura dyed her hair jet black a month after Kakashi's funeral, partly as a tribute to the only boy she had ever loved, partly to say goodbye and to mark the end of whatever that remained of Old-Sakura.
"I'm even more impressed: you look much better, and you know my name."
"I know a lot about your organisation. Akatsuki are short of members; Konoha took out three of your newest recruits. And I found out this secret meeting place of yours."
"True, true," he says, tapping a finger to his mask. "But how can I trust someone who goes around voluntarily in a pink wing?"
She smirks. "You can't, but I know you guys need me. You are sorely lacking in a medical-nin. At least one of your members could have been saved, had a medical-nin on your side be there."
Tobi stares down at her through the single hole on his mask. "What is your name?"
"Sakura."
He scoffs. "That explains your horrid hair colour."
"I was trained by Tsunade, in case you need credentials."
"Ooh, a Legendary Sannin. We had Orochimaru here, but that didn't work out too well…he was creepily obsessed with a certain member and that distracted the other members."
"Well?" Sakura asks icily, her heart pounding painfully in her chest despite her bored expression.
His eyes narrow. "Waaait a second: why would you willingly want to join Akatsuki? What do you want out of it?"
Her expression darkens. "I have only one condition, but it's an easy one."
"Complimentary hair dye?"
"I want Uchiha Sasuke's old cloak."
Behind his mask, Uchiha Madara raises his eyebrows.
Sakura meets the only other female member of Akatsuki a week later. Konan greets her in the rain and notes the girl with bright green eyes, short black hair and a ratty cloak with its frayed hemlines, burn marks and a large bloodstain at its collar.
"Is Akatsuki so short of funds that they have to recycle outerwear for new members?"
Sakura laughs humourlessly.
--
Sai is put onto a team along with two other members, one of them a brand new recruit, for the mission.
Getsugakure is two months away from Konoha, acting on new intelligence reports that the newest Akatsuki hideout is located nearby.
As they run under the cover of trees, Sai's fringe is constantly pushed into his eyes. It makes his eyes water, but he's used to it now. It's part of his new look: from now on, he is Hashi.
When they pick a camp site, set up the camp and place traps around the area, the new member sit across him. He is young, with small eyes and dark grey hair.
"You look very familiar. There is this missing-nin—"
Sai speaks as he fishes out the brushes and notebook from his bag, his tone mild but his words are miniscule shards of glass. "I do not know who you are talking about."
--
Sasuke's head is heavy with the layers of bandages wrapped around his eyes. He is sitting on a mat, and Karin is gently peeling off layer after layer. So far so good – Karin hasn't tried to grope him.
Yet.
"You shouldn't have used that last Tsukuyomi. Maybe then you'd still have your sight," she says quietly, and he is amazed at how natural her voice sounds.
Not squeaky or whiny or Karin-ish. Maybe it's just the fact that his hearing is impaired by the bandages or that her voice is filtered by the thick fibres of the bandages.
"I'd rather be blind than dead."
"True, but it still sucks. How did he possess the Sharingan without even being an Uchiha?" she says, thinking aloud as peels off the final layer of the bandages.
"It was transplanted from his best friend, who was an Uchiha," Sasuke says automatically.
She stills for a heartbeat before dabbing at his closed eyes with a wet cloth. "And you know this how?"
Sasuke is silent, and Karin wipes away the dried blood around his eyes and cheeks.
"Can you open your eyes?" she says finally, after minutes and minutes of silence.
It is excruciating, but he manages to. It is dark, and there are flickers of shadows or ghosts but nothing concrete.
"I cannot see you, Karin," he says calmly.
There is another bout of silence, and Karin touches his shoulder. It's more of a grip than a touch, her fingers digging into his shoulder and anchoring him to the Present, reminding him that yes, you are alive and this is real.
He pushes the panic down and focuses on her touch. He thinks of the way she dresses his wounds and the way she treats them. He has heard that Sakura is now one of the best medical ninjas in Konoha and maybe even in the world, and he thinks that Karin would make a perfectly adequate one as well, even next to Sakura.
"Sasuke—", she says, but he hears I will be there for you and he wants to kneel over and vomit because he doesn't need anybody. He doesn't want to need anybody. He cannot need anybody.
He can feel his body shaking as it hits him that he is blind, and he can see terror itself, swirling and thick, in the darkness of what is left of his sight.
--
Her second month in Akatsuki is hardly surprising.
She is ambushed by a team of ANBU members, along with her partner, Tobi.
Tobi disappears into the darkness with two of them close behind, leaving her to take out the remaining member.
It is a damp, dark night and after a couple of throws, she gets lucky: her kunai nicks her opponent's mask and the porcelain falls in perfect halves to the ground. In the flittered moonlight, she catches sight of her opponent.
"Sai," she says, jumping from branch to branch to avoid a torrent of kunais.
He ducks her assault of a handful of fine needles. "That is not who I am any more, Sakura."
"Neither am I," she replies easily, jumping down from a branch and punching the hard ground beneath his feet. He leaps up, and falls right into her trap as a shower of silver poison fall from the thick foliage above his head.
Tobi returns an hour later, hopping casually over the broken earth up to Sakura. "Konoha is making things too easy. I swear, one of them might still be learning how to drink from a cup – that's how young they are these days."
As he arrives nearer and nearer, he notices she is kneeling down next the fallen boy, her hands aglow, and he frowns.
"Hey, we don't take prisoners, you know that right?"
She is silent, concentrating on smoothening out the puncture wounds and scrapes, and he steps a little closer.
He has longish dark hair, and even in the dark, he can tell that his skin is extremely pale. His eyes are closed, serene, and if his chest wasn't still, he would have though the boy was merely asleep. The surface of skin is smooth and flawless – like fine porcelain.
Madara notes that he looks strikingly familiar.
The glow on her hands subsides, and she touches the boy's forehead gently with a grim smile.
"What are you doing?"
She doesn't lift her gaze from the body.
"Practice makes perfect."
--
The first thing Naruto does as Hokage is burying his old sensei and the previous Hokage, Hatake Kakashi.
The second thing he finds out as Hokage is that Uchiha Sasuke was the one who killed the Sixth Hokage.
The third thing he does as Hokage is declaring Haruno Sakura a missing-nin as Konoha has ample evidence that she has joined Akatsuki.
He has always wanted to be Hokage, and now that he is, he wants to laugh even though it's not funny at all.
The fourth thing Naruto does as Hokage is opening Konoha's first ever museum. All of Konoha's treasures and ancient scrolls are kept on display in the Main House of the Uchiha district, and he decides that opening hours start from ten in the morning to five in the evening. Every room in the vast house is filled with artifacts and paintings and scrolls, except for the room where Sasuke's parents were killed.
There, he places a single flower in a plain white vase right by the screen doors.
That room, and the room on the second floor on the right, is off-limits. Many assume that the room houses the most precious treasure of them all, as two ANBU guards stand by their locked doors at any given time.
Inside, it is rumoured to have seals over the door that paralyses anyone who isn't the Hokage himself.
The Seventh Hokage just chuckles whenever asked.
Naruto spends his time hunched over paperwork, smiling at the villages, checking on the museum and when it's time to retire home, he walks to the museum, locks himself in Sasuke's old room, thinks and hyperventilates.
He'd never been a thinker, he was a doer. He never analysed the reasons behind why the sky is blue or the physics behind walking on water or up tress. Nowadays, all he can do is think, think and overthink.
Uzumaki Naruto then has terrible panic attacks.
It is when there is not enough air in the world left for respiration, where each breath he takes drains the precious, precious supply and he cannot help but breathe faster and harder. It is when this huge, invisible pressure starts to settle anywhere from the corner of his eyes to right above his chest and builds and builds. It is when his limbs tremble so much he cannot hold his hand still, let alone stand up.
A panic attack is all of that happening, simultaneously.
It happens whenever he thinks about the things that have happened (or might and will happen), and it occurs just as badly in his own apartment as it does in Sasuke's room. He likes sit on Sasuke's floor for that to happen, because he's surrounded by Sasuke's clothes and Sasuke's scrolls on the walls and Sasuke's broken picture frame of Team Seven, and it makes his panic attacks make slightly more sense.
When he comes to think of it, it does.
It makes more sense than Sakura joining Akatsuki just so she can kill Sasuke with her own hand. It makes more sense than Sasuke fighting Kakashi, Mangekyou Sharingan against Mangekyou Sharingan, and Sasuke killing him. It makes more sense than having Sai or Hashi or whoever he is now resemble Sasuke so much that he has been mistakenly captured by other ANBU forces.
He thinks that the worst panic attacks come when he thinks about how to classify Sasuke in his mind. On one hand he is Hokage, and it is his duty to do anything to protect the walls of Konoha from an attack. On the other hand he is Naruto, the boy who idolized and hated everything from that smirk to his signature stance, the boy who would always think of Sasuke as his best friend and first kiss.
There is also the sickening thought that Sakura does in fact kill Sasuke before Konoha gets to him, so he would be able to order Sakura's death without choosing between Seventh-Hokage-Naruto (who thinks any person who betrays Konoha deserves death) and twelve-year-old-Naruto (who thinks Sakura is the girl he will one day marry).
He thinks that that is Sakura's intention.
Maybe?
Maybe.
Uzumaki Naruto, Konoha's reincarnation of the Yellow Flash and the Seventh Hokage, falls to the floor, gasping heavy and uneven breaths as the world in his mind crumbles around their foundations.
--
One month before the arrival of the New Year, Sasuke arrives in Konoha.
"Naruto," he says and Naruto wonders how he can tell pass the thick bandages. He should be surprised, but he is not.
He thinks of fire: of how it cleanses, warms, and kills.
He thinks of standing too close to the fire, and of Sasuke.
There is a girl hot on his heels: a strange girl with dark, dark hair and a lingering air of weariness around her. "Sasuke," she whispers, senbon needles in hand, her cloak of red and black billowing behind her.
Naruto should not be surprised, but he is. "Sakura," he says, and it's not a question. It's a statement, reassurance for himself, because the girl standing before Sasuke is more brittle than the girl he once knew.
It is strange, because it is like looking at a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't fit right. It's Sakura's voice, yes, and those are her green eyes, and she is still beautiful, yes.
But her voice is sharper, and her eyes are duller, and she is beautiful but in a hopeless, shattered way.
Sakura looks at him, and he looks at Sasuke, who is facing Sakura. Because Sasuke can't be looking at her when he cannot see, right?
They look like funny-mirror versions of themselves, same hair, same height, same voices, but different motives, different objectives, different ghosts. Sasuke blind (now literally and figuratively), Sakura evil, and it seems like he is the only one who got what he had sought after, yet not. Warped yet similar and frightening.
He thinks that maybe Team Seven was never about friendship or bonds or belonging. Maybe all they were was a front, nothing but three people building up and preparing for the inevitable end.
Naruto's breath quickens painfully and his hand trembles as he reaches for a kunai.
They (should) turn twenty next year.
END
A/N2: Aren't you glad I'm not Kishi? But really, I think Sakura would be so kickass if she were to join Akatsuki in order to try and take Sasuke down.