A Thousand Ounces
Kiba coughs, but at everyone else's exasperated expressions his coughing fit suddenly ceases and his face quickly turns an interesting shade of purple as his chest heaves in exertion.
Everyone in the clearing is quiet once again. Some so still and pale that some wonder if there is even life left in the bodies. Others shift gracelessly through the pain. Ino manually lifts her bloodied leg with tight skinned fingers at her calve, shifting it onto the log she was sitting on to elevate it. She is the second to break the melancholy quiet with her hiss of pain.
He can feel the stares. They're all demanding, questioning him, and judging him with their eyes. He is just a boy in this moment. And he is afraid of what has and will come to pass. Because they are all silently and deafeningly asking, "what the fuck just happened?"
He opens his mouth to tell them, just to try and make them understand.
But there is no warmth in her strong hand as she squeezes his shoulder- the very same hand that could destroy mountains –but the pressure is what is reassuring about her touch.
So no explanations flow to be stemmed and he remains as silent as the rest of them.
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God, the happiness. It's infectious and loud. He has never been more grateful for noise. The celebrations go on but he never even had the chance to begin.
Those people had just lost their mentor to someone he loved. To Sasuke. How did it all work out that way? He wonders.
And there's this wall between him and them, him and the rest of the world; him and Sasuke. Sakura and Kakashi too, for that matter. A wall that began as a brick, a secret, and just kept being built higher and higher.
He searches her out this time. He's out her doorstep and has already rung her bell when he realizes what a bad idea this was.
She answers her door looking worried and frazzled, wearing pajamas of blue cotton. When she sees him her default is anger. "Do you have any idea of what TIME IT IS?!" she demands. And he doesn't answer, because he realizes that there is nothing to say.
There is no connect, no proper way of doing this.
So he says nothing, because there is nothing he knows that will make this any easier and forgoes trying as an alternative to this. He just looks at disheveled, beautiful, angry Sakura, who gets him. And he loves her so much for it that it hurts. But he doesn't say anything. Not a word.
When her tired eyes take in his expression she reverts back to worried, "Ohmygod," the words come out in a rush, "Naruto, what happened?"
Nothing, he says in his mind, willing his lips to move, I'm fine. But instead, "Can I…stay with you tonight?"
Without hesitation she nods her head and moves aside to let him into her home. She cannot possibly understand, he knows, but she will try. And for this he is grateful and repented that he doesn't trust her enough to actually hear the words and not run.
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"Where the hell is she?!" he slams Sai into a wall, because what else can he do but that? All his plans had gone to hell and he still hadn't laid his truths bare.
"She went after the Uchiha."
He paused, "Tell me you're talking about Sasuke and not Madara," he growls ferociously, pressing him against the concrete city wall. With Sasuke she has a chance. Sasuke might let her live. With Madara it would take a miracle and then some.
"Your Sasuke," the former ROOT member assures him, "She believes that if she does you will remain safe."
"That's stupid."
"No it is not." He counters.
"Why? Was it your idea?"
"I contributed, yes," In unresolved anger he knocks him out and leaves him in a heap.
"Naruto?" Hinata does not stutter over his name as he stalks past her, on his way to the gates.
"Does she even get why they want me to stay in the village so badly?"
"To keep you safe," Hinata, the poor girl tells him surely. "Sh-she loves you v-very much," true to her usual martyrdom she does not bring up her own confessions.
"I meant why," because he's Naruto he doesn't realize. And she doesn't answer. "It's because, because-" he struggles over the words. He wants to tell her; it would be easy to. "I-I'm-?" he looks at her imploringly. This is Hinata, who loves him, who is strange and quiet and doesn't faint anymore when he smiles at her. And he supposes that her feelings are pretty obvious in retrospect. "Sixteen years ago the Kyuubi attacked. My father-"
The burden suddenly lifted.
And she wasn't running and screaming. She stayed.
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"You aren't leaving," Kakashi assures him in the voice he reserves for lessons. Life lessons. Things he will teach them that he will make sure they learn whether they like it or not and if it takes him a lifetime. It is a sure voice that he has heard only a few times.
But there are some things, he learns as time goes on, that Kakashi cannot teach them, but that they must learn for themselves.
However, Kakashi can and will stop him. Again and again.
"They let her go alone!"
"She's a big girl; she knew what she was doing." Naruto does not understand why Kakashi is still arguing with him. Sakura is still theirs. The woman who occupied a startlingly enormous chunk of both of their hearts, and she was going to die if he didn't go after her.
"Still-!" He tries to argue, he really does.
But Kakashi is looking at him in that certain way that says that he will go to the ends of the earth to keep him from doing the shit-disturbing that he is planning to. "Don't take this away from her."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Naruto demands, before adding, "And fine, if I can't go then why don't you?!"
"I don't think you're quite getting what he's trying to tell you." And of course, in a dynamically mysterious entrance Tsunade materializes from the shadows. "Sakura needs this. This is her moment. No one is going to interfere."
He doesn't stop to question how or why she's awake or when her coma lifted. He is simply aware of the glaring confusion.
"Sakura is a woman who needs to be needed. And like everyone else she has her battles to fight. This is one of them, and this is one that she needs to fight alone."
"Even if it gets her killed?!"
Tsunade pauses before nodding gravely.
"She loves you," Kakashi adds as some form of consolation, "she loves him too. This is what she believes is best for all of you. Imagine if she could bring him home; how much that would mean to her."
"And she'll die over me and the stupid-!" he doesn't say it. They know, he knows, but he cant bring the words forward; can't make them any more real by saying them out loud once again.
"Have a little faith."
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He doesn't obviously. He's Naruto. He is as he does. Naruto Uzumaki is a doer; the person who does the saving, the rescuing. Not the needing. Not the waiting. He doesn't envy Sakura the years she spent doing it.
So obviously he does what he knows how to do. He follows. Naruto is not a leader, but a faithful follower of whatever the hell fate decides to throw him into that particular day. He does what needs to be done.
It has been weeks since he's seen her. Since she left. Since he found out exactly what sort of person Sasuke was perceived to be.
He finds them after another month.
They are together.
In a strange sort of way he is thankful for this.
Sasuke is the one to find him.
Or- to be fair –he had been too close to finding them.
He comes alone.
The first thing he asks is if she is alright.
"No harm has come to her." In typical Sasuke fashion he is vague. Because alright constitutes as being psychologically and emotionally fine as well. And who is there with them to protect her heart? Certainly not he. And not Sasuke.
Sasuke could never protect her heart with his so thoroughly shattered.
"Why didn't you send her home?" Naruto demands, quiet. He wants to be quiet. As if the low volume of his voice will soften the blow of words, of bad news that the man before him is sure to bring. "Or better yet, come with her?" sarcasm bites. It tears and rips and he wants to reach him. If he can close that space, through any medium, he will do it. Naruto wants to affect Sasuke.
He wants to matter.
"There is still something I need to do," he pauses, "They let you leave?"
Naruto does not say what he knows he should be demanding, 'Then why not send her home? To me?' Instead he glares, "I don't have to tell you why they wanted me to stay."
Sasuke already knows. This is a time in which he need not say a word.
This horror that plagues him, that he unleashed on one person alone, one person too many…Sasuke already knows. Perhaps this is a blessing, because his friend is quiet. His friend looks over his shoulder, almost longingly at the cliff side where there is no doubt a cave lodging his companions. Holding Sakura.
"You risked a lot coming here." Sasuke intones, sure in his perceptions.
"You guys are worth it," he shrugs as if it were obvious, as if they were talking about the weather. As if they weren't everything. "Damnit, aren't you tired of being on your own?"
"No." No to being tired. And, Naruto is starting to suspect, to being alone. Because Sakura is there, he does not forget.
"They are making me stay. You are a part of something that wants to destroy me." He steps closer, "Just promise me you won't hand her over to them." To the people he answers to. To the people who will take her and use her and hurt him endlessly.
"What do they want with you Naruto?" the voice is louder than their when they had spoken; it is outraged and rings of betrayal. She knows that he is hiding something.
Sakura is suddenly standing by Sasuke's side, closer than he has ever allowed in previous years. He wonders what she has done for them, what rewards she has reaped for her shear effort at everlasting.
"Nothing Sakura-chan," he assures her with the first genuine smile he has known in months. She is happy and safe with Sasuke.
He does not tell her because it will ruin that; plunge them all into an endless sea of reality sooner than needed, and making it real and definite. It is something none of them, for all their wishes and hopes and training and knowledge, can change.
"I just needed to make sure you were okay." Safety for now, a lulled ignorance, is the only gift he can give her now.
Naruto does not say a word more.
A/B: AND THEN THEY HAD HAWT OT3 SMEX.
…Kidding.
Happy birthday Ali-dear! And many more…down to the floor, it will not stop…at fifty four…? XD I phail at rhyme schemes.
Sorry honey, it's pretty all over the place but twas' fun. And it wasn't the reaction they actually had of "Orly? Cool…kthxbi." So props in order? Hehe…heh.
Right.
Reviews make for happy writers!
Thanks for reading~