Hello all, this has been a long time coming. I am so very grateful to the people who read the horrible, early, first version of Stand My Groud that I posted several years ago. While this has a different title, the original idea is still based off of the original SMG. Thank you so much for all of your love, the time you took/take to read the story, and your dedication if you are coming back to read the second, much much different version. There is a bit of NaruSaku in here, but this is primarily a SasuSaku story still. The plot will be entirely different, events are changed and new surprises await. This is not Stand My Ground, please understand that. It is as close as we will ever get to a rewrite of SMG, but this is it's own story. I will do my best to post two chapters a month, with this first chapter being the shortest one you'll read. I love all of you, and again, thank you so much for all your support. This story is for you.
A woodpecker.
It wasn't very pretty really, more accurately 'adorable' with it's bright, tiny, firetruck red mohawk. It was hammering away on a trunk less than five feet away from where her legs were stretched out across a remotely high branch.
She liked it best when she was by herself; no people to ask her questions, no smiling children depending on her right in her face. There was a wisp of a white fluffy cloud here and there, but mostly the sky was a beautiful bright blue- like Naruto's eyes, she mused. She liked it best when she was by herself, but if there had to be one human near by, Naruto would be that person every single time. He knew how dark she was feeling, the anniversary of the battle that took the lives of Team 8 had just passed. He told her to go meditate- something he had taken up to better control his horrific Kyuubi enhanced temper. She wasn't meditating- just biting her nails thinking about how different her life had turned out from what she had expected as a girl.
There was a song playing in her head. She could hear it faintly, so perfect and soft- so pristine for this moment. But it wasn't quite there, and she couldn't quite place it. The words wouldn't come to her, blocked by the disruption of her inner peace. She shut her own eyes and took a deep breath, focusing on the sound of the woodpecker's work when it all so rudely and abruptly faded away. The awareness was basically instantaneous, like the flick of a switch.
There were birds singing. Squirrels all hopping from tree to tree while they chittered about, a gopher burrowing down into the ground below. The sun was shining, there were even a few gorgeous orange and black fucking butterflies sprinkled across the grass.
She just kept staring, completely frozen. Her breath was caught in her throat. Her chakra raged inside of her, pulsating and pushing to be utilized.
This day had actually been planned out. It was warm, sunny, there was a spring not too far out of the village where they were currently stationed. It was supposed to be a "fun filled day of smiles and down time" with Naruto. They hardly ever got assigned the same missions anymore, both now jounin and with different skill sets. Naruto was still passionately working his way to becoming Homage one day at a time and she always out of town on a mission… or either of them were out on the front lines of war. Needless to say, they didn't get much time together.
But Naruto was instrumental and ever persistent in keeping her from disappearing, as he had always been since those hard teenage days. For months, constantly showing up uninvited to her house, making sure she was fed by dropping her off some ramen or onigiri on his way home from Ichiraku's and even leaving flowers when she refused to answer the door. A part of her had ached to let someone in- and then one day finally she did.
He had grown, that was her first reasoning when her head tried to argue with her. 'Do not pretend you can forget,' it whispered, always echoing inside her head. She would not forget, how could she? But she could ignore, that wasn't nearly as hard. So she filed away all her memories of endless obsidian eyes and raven hair, pale skin and heartache. The mornings when she opened her eyes to be greeted by the largest of grins, the brightest and bluest of eyes… those mornings were a light in the darkness that had somehow become her life.
They warn you in the academy that war still changes even the most resilient of flowers. It was true, she had learned first hand. Once the most delicate pink Sakura blossom, her petals were a little burnt and withered now; the vibrance toned down by the blood and ashes of sacrifice and war. When she returned, she wasn't usually in the mood for company. Or at least, not just any company.
Naruto was different too, quieter. While he still fought for what he believed in, voiced his opinion and chased his dreams, he did it with more weight on his shoulders than she had ever noticed. He did it without the aggressiveness and vigor that he had before. His flame had been dampened, his heart had turned a little blue. Instead, his aggressiveness bled out in the form the of Kyuubi's scorching chakra, giving him one of the most devastating tempers imaginable. He was so angry because he still felt the world was supposed to be different. She often found herself missing the days of her childhood when she had seen less, knew less, hurt less. Every time she looked into Naruto's eyes, she knew it was the same for him, the closest they ever were to their genin selves was when they were together. They could pretend that they weren't so broken. They could smile.
She could hear Naruto's voice, piercing sharply across what was supposed to have been the perfect day. He was struggling not to yell- probably wary of alerting her just yet to the situation that had so suddenly and unexpectedly presented itself. If it weren't for Naruto, she would have crawled inside her shell forever once she had come back from the war. But he didn't let that happen. He stood by her, and now in this moment- despite everything inside of her screaming that she can't deal with this- she needed to stand beside Naruto. His temper needed to remain under wraps or not only would they blow their mission (on their day off!), but the Kyuubi had not lost it's bad habit of making a very large mess. Most of the surrounding villages had made it extremely clear that despite Naruto's social and political status having gone up over the years- they still would not tolerate the Kyuubi's appetite for destruction.
She took a deep breath when she began to finally feel light headed. She was so filled with emotion- anger, bitterness, annoyance… nostalgia, heartache, sorrow, love. It hadn't been as hard as expected, ignoring it all for so long. At least not with Naruto around to fight her demons. She kept it deep, deep down… Truthfully, she had been in such a state of calm lately that she had begun to enjoy the day again. A familiar roar echoed through the trees pulling her from her thoughts and reminding her yet again that the situation could not be ignored, "Over my dead fucking body, Teme!"
Without another pause, she flung herself from the branch and into the clearing— her fist raging with scorching green chakra. It crunched into the ground directly in between the two men standing in the area, creating a small crater, five feet across and a few feet deep. Both men in the clearing had jumped back a couple feet as the dust settled, and Sakura's eyes landed on the shape that was forming behind the cloud of earth. "No, Sakura! You need to go! Now!" Naruto's tone was urgent- she could hear the worry in his voice.
Without taking her eyes off the dark silhouette across the crater, she tilted her head towards the blonde haired man to hear him better before she asked her question. "Why?"
Naruto remained silent. He just glared across the clearing, his fists shaking at his sides, knuckles white. She stepped back as the figure stepped forward into the light, and her own eyes filled with contempt as she took in the sight of him.
"Because I came here for you," Sasuke said flatly. They locked eyes for a moment and she couldn't help herself, she laughed. The smile slid off her face with his next words, "And I'm not asking."
She laughed again, this time humorlessly. "I don't really care if you're asking or not asking, I'm not going anywhere with a traitorous selfish prick who doesn't give a damn if his teammates live or die. Do me a favor and stop wasting our time, go crawl back to Orochimaru or whatever other disgusting place you've decided to call home instead of Konoha. If you think you can just take me, you're going to be very upset."
Sasuke chuckled, a dark, empty sort of sound. "We'll see."
He took another step forward and Naruto's Rasengan whirred blue in his hands. "Don't take another step towards her," Naruto warned, his voice raspy and thick with something in-between anger and panic. "Don't make me hurt you, Sasuke."
Sasuke scoffed and then let a smirk creep over his face. "You aren't going to hurt me, Naruto. You can't hurt me. Believe that. But I will extend the offer to you as well, if you insist on making things difficult. But I will take Sakura, whether you want to join us or not."
A sickening crack signified the earth breaking away beneath Sasuke's feet, and when he landed on a tree branch a few feet away, he found himself diving away from another aggressive attack from Sakura and her brute chakra. "I love the way you dismiss me," she spat, throwing another punch that cracked the tree down the middle as they bounced away from it. "I love the way you demean me, fucking speaking about me as though Naruto has more say in my freedom than I do."
The dark haired ex-member of Team 7 disappeared for a moment and she found herself being pulled back towards the original crater she had made by Naruto, who still had a look of panic in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he grumbled, but said nothing else.
She shrugged away from him, keeping vigilant of Sasuke. They could both sense he hadn't given up. "Why do you want me?" She called out to him, her eyes narrowed on the tree lines. Naruto reached over and grasped her hand, slipping his fingers between hers. She could feel his worry… and his jealousy. Her sea foam green eyes met with Naruto's cerulean ones and she silently apologized for the memories she was about to bring up. She broke eye contact and looked back towards the trees, waiting. "All that time all I wanted was for you to notice me. Return my affections. Respect me. You couldn't stand me, I repulsed you," She called. Naruto squeezed her hand as the wind blew through her hair. "So why are you here, Uchiha? What could you possibly want from me? What can I possibly do for you?"
His voice was soft, and just behind them when he answered, "I need my family."
"Your family is dead," Sakura answered back quietly, "We were never your family. We were your team. We wanted to be your family, but you never wanted that. We were less than that to you, or you wouldn't have left. You wouldn't have thrown me aside."
Silence fell over them for a moment. The birds had all flown away, and an eerie kind of quiet settled among the trees.
"There was a time and place for the words you said to me that night," His voice floated on the wind and seemed to echo inside her skull, "It wasn't then, but it's now."
"How convenient for you," Naruto scoffed, his grip tightening around Sakura's fingers. "Now you're ready for a family so you come back for something and act like it's yours. But Sakura-chan's not a possession, she's a person."
Sasuke sighed, his patience nearing it's end. "I can't explain this now, but I see you're not going to make this easy." He looked into Naruto's eyes for a moment, and then turned his head to meet Sakura's. A few moments passed as they stared at each other. Sakura held her breath, her heartbeat filled her ears. She could feel Naruto begin to get restless, made uncomfortable by their silently held gaze. And then Sasuke suddenly snapped his fingers.
Sakura's eyes flitted to the edge of the clearing. Two teenagers had appeared there, a boy and a girl. They were both white blonde with dark eyes, the male had a large sword on his back. Sakura frowned and pulled her hand from Naruto's as she gathered chakra to brace herself.
She glanced back to Sasuke to find that he had disappeared. Naruto's eyes were on the kids who were slowly approaching. The boy had pulled his sword off his back and held it in front of him. The sun glinted off of it and she could see it was wide and had several symbols on it. A large chakra feeding sword, like Kisame and Zabuza.
"Are you sure you won't come willingly?" The girl called, her voice sounded like glass. Her hands were already forming signs for some kind of jutsu.
"You don't have to do this," Naruto called, "You don't know who that Teme is! He's a bad man, we can help you. We don't want to hurt you." Sakura could feel the Kyuubi's chakra building next to her, Naruto was losing his temper with the situation.
The boy smiled, and shook his head, "We know exactly who Uchiha Sasuke is," he said, raising his sword higher. "So we'll apologize in advance and remind you that he did ask you to come nicely."
All she saw was a dark brown ceiling. She frowned and blinked, taking a minute to let her vision adjust. Her body felt weak, and heavy. Her limbs were stiff. She took a breath and pushed herself on to her elbows as her eyes dilated and she could finally see. She was in a very dimly lit room, on a bed. Her mouth felt dry. Her hands were in chakra cuffs.
"You must have a lot of questions."
Her neck snapped towards the voice and she cringed in pain, "Sasuke? Where the fuck am I? What have you done?"
Her eyes jetted down to her cuffs as she searched them for any weak points. After quick inspection, her eyes landed on her fingernails and widened. They were long- they had been cut, but they were longer than they had ever been… she was a nail biter. Especially in times of stress. And her finger nails hadn't been bitten in a long time.
"Soon you'll have all the answers," He said. He stopped and looked at her for a moment, and she thought she could see some kind of emotion in his eyes. Then he pulled the curtain aside and stepped back into the shadows. The sun spilled into the room in a stream of light that cut across the bed and lit up the corner of the room where she sat. Across from her was a mirror, revealing her reflection. Her cerise hair billowed around her and curled at the ends, the length even longer than it had been in her genin days. Horror filled her as she realized the amount of time it would have taken for her hair to have grown that long.
"What have you done?" She repeated, her heart in her throat.
Just then, the door burst open, and a small child ran in. "Is she awake yet!? Is she awake?" Sasuke grabbed ahold of him before he could get within reach of her. The child's face lit up in the stream of sun and Sakura gasped. His hair was dark, even in the sunlight. The boy reached for her, wiggling in Sasuke's arms; his sea foam green eyes met hers and a smile grew large across his face, "Oka-san!"
To be continued….