Pallium: Clockwise, a naruto fanfic

Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, I wouldn't need to resort to fanfiction, really.

Author's Notes/Warnings: This is full of cursing and violence and vague slash. In other news, it also just had to be told.

Pallium: Clockwise.

Naruto vomits the second time he kills someone. As he shoves rasengan into—through—a chest, he feels the bone and muscle whiplash around his palm, mix together with the spinning ball of chakra air, and, though the ordeal is over in seconds, the way the doe brown eyes blink dolefully back at him makes the moment last forever, and so for a week after he can't sleep until Sakura finally drags him over to her apartment and gets him drunk enough that he doesn't mind crying in front of her, drunk enough to sleep (and she's a medic-nin, helps a bit by adding in some sickly sweet power into the drink and he tastes it, damn well knows it's there, but drinks the stuff anyway). Later, when he wakes up, he looks at the floor and tells her he'll never need this again, so she doesn't need to bother but thank you, Sakura, for everything. His voice is hardened, unnerving, and somehow Sakura isn't surprised when he next signs up for ANBU solo missions, because that's code for assassinations, and Sakura damn well knows that Naruto is the best guy they have out on the field, probably stronger than Yondaime already, terrifying and now completely sealed against the world and himself and feeling anything anymore, ever again…

…she just wishes she hadn't been the one to realign his destiny, and misses the endearing chan he used to add to her name.

The first person Naruto ever killed was Sasuk—Orochimaru—and it was because the man had taunted him in his best friend's body, smiling and telling Naruto in the voice he'd dreamt about since the fucker had left goddamned Konoha, saying don't you know, he told me all of your secrets and weaknesses and Naruto don't look at me like that I'm Sasuke, Sasuke remember? You can't hurt me remember you're my best friend? and the battle was bloody—horrendously gruesome even if Naruto really didn't remember all that much of it—and he'd passed out once and found himself in Jiraiya's arms who really was fighting a best friend, so it was okay for him to help out. The two of them had done it and watched Orochimaru die, finally just die and Naruto held Sasuke's body in his arms when it was so cold and still and whispered silly things in his ear to make the Uchiha feel better about being dead. He didn't feel sick, there was just the calm acceptance of everything falling away, and so knowing that his name would likely never make it onto the memorial stone, Naruto buried Sasuke right there at the edge of Fire Country at the top of a mountain which Naruto thinks Sasuke would have been really mad at him for, wasting time and being all sentimental about things, and when it was done—when his best friend was underneath some dirt, Naruto walked away and finally felt as if he was alone again, really goddamn alone. Jiraiya put a hand on his shoulder as if he understood, which he probably did; Orochimara had been his best friend too, but it wasn't enough somehow because Naruto was more than Jiraiya ever was in all possible ways.

"Ero-sennin," he began, voice cracking. The older man cocked an eyebrow. "Jiraiya, let's go home, okay?"

If the change in address bothered him, Jiraiya didn't say. "Yeah. Good idea kid. Tsunade and Sakura will want to know."

A tug at his shirt and Jiraiya looked down at his pupil, so similar from this vantage point to Yondaime, to the other stupid stupid student of his who got all high and mighty and loved too much and too fiercely and died because of it, but that was the way of a ninja village. You love, and the more you love and the better you are, the harder and faster you fall. It's how Kakashi's gotten through all these damned years and comrades dropping like fleas around him (you live long, you live alone)—he tries not to give a damn and Jiraiya wonders how healthy that is, how bloody Kakashi's lips are under that mask, how goddamn insane that boy really is, but it's none of his business. Another tug and his mind stopped wandering.

"Kid…?"

The face that turned up was raw and beaten but stony and Jiraiya thought that Naruto had never looked more like a ninja and felt sick. "Jiraiya, can you tell her—them—that you killed Sa—Orochimaru?"

He didn't want to ask why. He almost thought he understood. "Sure, kid, if that's what you want."

"Y-yeah. Thanks."

The trip back to the village was long and painful and Naruto had broken almost all of his ribs and kept passing out but Jiraiya didn't know anything about being a medic, and was half dead himself from various injuries and chakra depletion so he couldn't risk any healing jutsus anyway. When they get back, Sakura cried and stuck her fist through a couple of trees and sat by Naruto who wouldn't talk to her even when they both knew that he was conscious.

"Sakura," he said finally. It had been three hours of pretending, two days after the last rib had been healed. "Sakura, just get out."

"Tell me about it," she insisted, leaning over the bed, breathing into his face. He still loved her, he thought, heart aching as the pretty pink of her lips curved into a slight smile. "Tell me how he was, tell me Naruto." He knew she didn't even love Sasuke anymore but goddammit can't she understand that Sasuke had been dead for a long time, he killed Orochimaru, and before he exploded, before he went insane with trying to explain what couldn't be said, Jiraiya dragged the girl out and shut the door and spoke in soft soft whispers to Naruto who dug his fingers into his palms and watched himself bleed.

Naruto kills a whole host of people as the ANBU Rat, but he never looks into their eyes like he did with number two. He's given number two a name and a history and a family who is still waiting for their doe-eyed pretty boy son to come home from a mission. He's a got a girlfriend who works in a flower shop and she's the quiet type, blushes a bit, and she's just a civilian so she doesn't understand that when her boyfriend says he's going on a mission it means I might not come back I love you ohgodiloveyou. So she waits by the door every night and leaves a light on and will probably do so for years and years until she's not so pretty anymore and the blushing doesn't work so well on younger men and he's ruined her, Naruto's ruined a family. He dreams of their potential kids and names them too and gives them futures—dull, boring, non-ninja futures full of smiles and warmth and secrets the fantasy away inside his head and lets himself smile behind his mask on missions, smile as bone and muscle contract around the rasengan, smile as he thinks about a house full of bright, smiling doe-eyed kids who he might as well have killed.

Naruto takes off his ANBU mask at the age of twenty three, older than anyone else (they never let him retire because he was too good, too damn good and not insane enough to be written off yet), because Tsunade dies from overusing her rejuvenation jutsu and finally his dream is coming true, he's becoming Hokage, and the smile he gives the dying women is fragile and doesn't meet his cold, dead eyes and he says, "I don't think I can do this. I'm an assassin. I don't work with living people anymore." Jiraiya isn't dead, though, so he takes the boy's hand and says, it's okay, you don't have to, Naruto you don't have to be that boy anymore, and finally Naruto gets it, gets the whole damn picture, and almost laughs himself to death.

In the end, Naruto finds out that the most powerful ninja doesn't become Hokage. The most powerful ninja who remains sane enough to care, does.

Jiraiya becomes the Sixth, then, and takes Naruto under his wing again, saying next time by god it'll be you. He strips away the little bits of steel Naruto has grafted to himself, and slowly the blonde begins to break and rebreak and relive all those hundreds of thousands of missions and hundreds of thousands of deaths. He tells them all to the Sannin, every single story and remembers every single one, somehow, and cries every single time as the older man traces circles onto his back, petting his hair and hugging him tightly when the shaking doesn't stop. Sometimes Naruto throws things and Jiraiya has to stop him and pick glass shards out of his palms tacky with blood. Sometimes it's worse. Not always, though.

Jiraiya dies protecting the village before he ever gets to hear about number two. Naruto, though, is fairly stable and his eyes aren't as dead anymore so the council proclaims him as Hokage and Sakura watches from stage left, biting her nails until Lee has to grab them away from her, saying SakuraSakuraSakurawhatisitwhatcanido.

"I don't—he isn't, Lee this doesn't feel right, Naruto just—"

Lee pats her hand uncomfortably and watches Naruto pledge allegiance to the Leaf, hands never shaking, and wonders where the grief for Naruto's sensei went.

In the end, the ironic thing is that Naruto has become too soft to be Hokage. When his time comes, when the village depends on him, he goes out into the forest after the goddamn murderers who pillaged his hometown and finds himself battling with a doe-eyed kid a few meters from Konoha's walls and suddenly, lost in memory, he drops his hands, forgets all his jutsus, and feels a knife plunge through his chest. When the kid looks up, vaguely sick, Naruto can't help but smile and say, "hey, relax, it'll pass. I threw up after my second kill too."

When the world finally goes black, it goes red, and Naruto feels a hand in his and says Sasuke because this time it is him, and Naruto's gotten back to where he started, back to being the sixteen year old idiot he was and always should have been and figures he can find the perverted hermit later and tell him the rest of the damn story another time.

Sasuke's fingers tighten between his own and for the first time since his first murder, Naruto really smiles and forgets about dreaming big.

-fin

Concluding notes: Concrit is always really really helpful, and really easy and, hey, look, the button is right there!