--YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST READ THIS NOTE BEFORE READING THE STORY!!--

now that i have your attention, i'd like to point a couple things out.

to my sailor moon readers: i am sincerely stuck on "love is a battlefield" and as i'm in my first semester of college, i don't have much time to fight through writer's block. sooo...it's going on hiatus, and no, for my stories, that is not the kiss of death. i finish what i start...it just might be a while. if you have ideas, i welcome them

this is my very first naruto fanfiction, so please be nice. and please review. pretty please?

i am going to deviate from the normal storyline. i have not read or watched very far into shippuden at all, so i'm going to make some assumptions about the plot of the story that are probably horrendously wrong. here they are: sasuke learned from and killed orchimaru (he doesn't have to worry about the curse mark anymore), sasuke is now something of a kaze in the sound village, naruto and sakura are still determined to bring him home, sasuke is still determined to kill itachi and the akatsuki are on the periphery of the main picture after having unsuccessfully tried to capture naruto several times. IF YOU PUT SPOILERS IN YOUR REVIEWS, I WILL CRY. NOT EVEN KIDDING. thank you in advance for not putting them in or explaining how i butchered the plot.

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Haruno Sakura bent over the medical text at her desk and...well, it wasn't so much a medical text as a psychology textbook. She grimaced. She knew her shishou needed her where she was in the hospital, in caring for the often self-destructive psych patients, but it made her nerves fray and bleed—she ignored the fact that medically, that thought made no sense. Each day brought new horrors. Freshly imprinted in her brain was the image of the kunoichi in room 614. Yuuki-san had attempted to peel the skin from her hands. All Sakura could see was the mangled flesh and the exposed bone and the blood seeping onto the white sheets when she sprinted to answer her pager's frantic call. The woman was sobbing uncontrollably, her chest heaving, fighting them—the two girls studying to be medic nin—as they forcefully strapped her arms to her bedframe.

"Make it go away!" she shrieked. "Tell them to let me go! I have to get rid of it! It won't come off!!"

Yuuki-san had her first solitary mission as a kunoichi two months ago, if Sakura was recalling correctly. Trained in the arts of seduction and information gathering, the girl had been totally unprepared for what had happened—namely her killing a man. This wasn't her first psychotic break since returning to Konoha. Several times she'd scoured the top layer of skin off by washing her hands until they bled. Sakura had asked why the very first time, but she already knew the answer. It was clearly written on the girl's face. Yuuki-san had cried her eyes out, thrashing uncontrollably, "I can still see it!...why won't it come off?!...dammit why!...why the hell won't it come off?!" They'd had to put her under that first time. Blood weighed heavy on the heart and darkened the eyes; Sakura was well aware of that. She realized that she and Yuuki weren't so different—it's just that Sakura would like to dig her heart from its place behind her sternum not rip—

Growling, she kicked her chair back and slammed the book shut. She couldn't stand another sentence about boundaries and why not having boundaries did something something something. It was too late for this; she wasn't even processing anymore. Grabbing her white jacket and tucking herself into it, she descended the stairs of the Hokage Tower to the street. The partly obscured moon threw a lurid, yellowing glow over the pebbles she crunched under her feet as she tramped home. Home was a small, comfortable apartment within five blocks of the Tower and seven of the hospital.

Climbing the outdoor stairs, she grumbled to herself about the stupid, frigid wind and the dumb moon for being so ugly tonight. She dug for her keys in her bag, struggling with the medical texts and her wallet and her compact and the grocery list and her lipstick and—keys! Trying to shove them in the lock with numb, unbending fingers, something broke. Dammit! she thought, sinking to her knees on her doormat. Why was everything so bloody hard? She'd been working herself into the ground so she didn't have to notice the way Naruto was working himself to the bone, taking A rank and S rank missions left and right. She tended broken bones and lacerations and internal bleeding and bruising and everything else under the sun. Not that the Kyuubi didn't heal him eventually, but she just couldn't stand watching him grimace and gasp in pain until the Kyuubi's chakra did its work. After all, this was all the hurt she could take from him. He had gouged aching, bleeding, raw holes in their lives and hearts that simply refused to heal. The unspoken shadow between them, the taboo name... Why did he have to leave? Somehow, without him, everything was slowly falling apart. She tried to rub the hot tears trickling down her cheeks with a tightly clenched fist. Ino-pig always said she wasn't one of the women who could look pretty and cry at the same time; apparently, Ino was.

"Sakura...?" Slumping against the door, she admitted that maybe, just maybe, she ought to see if Yuuki-chan wanted a roommate. She was officially hearing things. Damn tears wouldn't stop.

"Sakura?" the voice in her head sounded closer.

"Sakura!" the voice called frantically and she felt to firm hands shaking her shoulders. Her eyes opened a tad—when had she closed them? A blurry image slowly started to focus and she made out the firm jaw and the blonde hair and the...whiskers!

"Naruto!" she wailed and threw herself at him. She felt the arms slide slowly around her, pulling her into him as he rocked back into the wood railing.

"Why aren't you inside, Sakura?" he murmured next to her ear, the confused tone of his twelve-year-old voice bleeding through.

"Couldn't..." unladylike sniff "stupid key..."

"Come on," he half-picked her up, yanking himself off the floor using the railing. "Let's get you inside." She clung to him like a child to its very favorite teddy bear, and he kept an arm protectively wrapped around her. He shoved the key in the uncooperative lock, and when she heard an unholy crack, she was afraid he'd broken something...but she couldn't be bothered to look. The door swung open, and she was half-carried, half-dragged inside. The door slammed shut against the harsh late-autumn wind and was bolted tight.

He deposited her gently—more gently than she expected of Naruto—on the couch. She watched him with wide, curious eyes as she struggled her way out of the coat. He would walk toward the kitchen then spin and head towards the hall, then back to the kitchen, but he wasn't pacing. Finally, he stopped, looking very uncertain. She let out a tiny, mirthless laugh.

"What is it, Naruto?" she murmured quietly, dragging the white fleece off the back of the couch and over her arms.

"Well..." he scratched the back of his head, "I can't decide whether to grab you another blanket or go put on hot water for tea. Your lips aren't the right color," he informed her solemly.

Oh Naruto...how did he keep on doing these things for her? Their friendship was messed up and jumbled and tangled and she wasn't really sure if friendship was a good enough word for it anymore. How had he become the center of the world, her very bright, very potent sun?—even when he was discouraged, he tried his best to shine for her, to push the clouds of her very dark world away and shed a little joy—even when he hadn't seen daylight in his own world in months. She knew it was a great sacrifice, one she would never have asked of him and one she couldn't do without.

"Here," she patted the spot next to her, "Now. You make a better heater than either of those." He looked a bit reluctant but came quickly when she gave him a withering glare—or maybe it was a poor excuse for one that gave him a window into just how bad it was today. Either would have worked. He gracefully—hah, Naruto, graceful? years ago she would have scoffed—fell onto the couch beside her and gathered her into his arms. She nestled against his chest, wondering if this was wrong? Was this a betrayal of him? But how did you betray the betrayer? She dug fingers into his coat and sighed—oops!—she hadn't meant to whimper. But Naruto was looking down at her in that genuinely concerned way of his, the corners of his mouth turned down and his very very blue eyes just a little murky, so she ducked her head, breaking eye contact because she didn't trust her voice to answer his question without breaking pathetically. He was worried enough as it was.

He ran hands tenderly through her hair, something she often found soothing, and the floodgates opened. With a choked sob, she clutched at his jacket and began murmuring incoherently.

Naruto just rubbed circles on her back, but Sakura knew from prior experience that his expression was probably frantic with uncertainty and marred by the slightest of frowns because he couldn't really make it all better like he wanted to. What did she ever do to deserve him?

"I'm sorry," she murmured into the folds of fabric.

"What for?"

"For being a terrible friend and putting you through this," she sniffed.

"You're a wonderful friend," he insisted, his voice low. Over the years, he'd gotten better at keeping it down. There were still those moments though...

"You're wrong," she shook her head, tracing the weave with a finger.

"How?"

And then it came tumbling out before she had a chance to close those particular doors. "Because I selfishly asked you to make a promise you shouldn't have to keep." Not that she didn't want him to, but he just couldn't. She understood.

Naruto froze for a moment, and then he shook her lightly and leaned her back. "I would have made it anyway," he replied, shock filling those beautiful blue eyes. "After all, it isn't just you who needs..."

And then Sakura allowed the forbidden name to trip from her lips. "Sasuke..." Their gazes jerked upwards to meet, and then she was stuck, unable to pull away. Her hand clamped her mouth shut as though she just realized the grievous error she had made. Shit. His face crumpled with pain.

This wasn't fair. To either of them...his not being there had shattered something flawless. Naruto was right; he was such a bastard. He broke her heart and left his best friend—the only two people who understood him, the idiot. But he was their bastard, and they'd be damned if they let him get away from them. Which is why she was going next time.

"Any new leads on Sasuke?" she forced out and his head jerked upwards at the sound of the taboo.

"Shouldn't be hard to find him," he muttered angrily, frustration boiling to the surface.

"Then let's go," Sakura decided. She pulled away to stand.

"Wha...a...?" Naruto looked at her like she was the crazy one. She stifled a snort.

"I said let's go," Sakura grabbed his hand and yanked him up. He stood, bewildered, on his feet only because she'd sock him if he stayed put. "We're bringing him back."

"But you can't!" Naruto protested, finally catching where she was going with this. "It's not..."

"What? Safe?" she snarled, fists curling. "Then the only safe place for me is next to the hospitalized kunoichi who tore her skin off today." Naruto gulped. He was trying to think of a way to talk her out of this too.

"That first time you went it was a disaster!" he argued, and then realized it had sounded like she was a hindrance. "Not what I meant!" he scrambled, backing up to the couch, nowhere to run from her fury. "I just don't want you to get hurt, Sakura." The genuine emotion flashed in his eyes again, and she understood. That didn't mean she was going to stand down.

"He's my bastard too, Naruto," she grabbed a kunai off the coffee table and shoved it into the holster. "We're going to bring him home this time. Together." Because there's no other way to do it, she thought. "Promise of a lifetime," she smiled and it was as close to a real smile backed with real emotion as she'd been in months. Grabbing his collar, she bounced up and planted a small kiss on the corner of his mouth. "Sasuke's coming home."

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hey, author here. since i've never written naruto before—but absolutely love it!—i'd like to know how i'm doing. please review. and this is written as a standalone one-shot, but i could make it into a short story if somebody thought it was worth something—but they'd have to say so. what do you think? thanks for reading! ja ne!