A/N: For those of you readers who are in college or will be in the near-future, a bit of friendly advice for you: DO NOT take classes that have BLOODY EVIL 24-HOUR MARATHON ESSAY FINALS. Seriously. I feel like I've been run over by a truck. But to celebrate the fact that I survived the ordeal more or less in one piece, I'm posting this. Just a short bit of conversational angst. I've had the phrase "I don't know how to be me without you" as applied to Naruto and Sasuke stuck in my head for a while, and then a couple weeks ago I was procrasinating on something in the lounge and ended up with this. Much, much, much thanks to the wonderful and brilliant Al, who betas to an awesome degree, and made me rewrite most of my dialogue. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I would think of a witty disclaimer, but I got less than four hours of sleep last night, so I'll just say: not mine.

Jiraiya was rather startled to walk into the bar and see a familiar head of golden spikes hunched over the bar, in front of a row of half a dozen sake cups, but he took it in stride, dropping onto the barstool beside his pupil and slinging a paternal arm across his shoulders.

"Aren't you a little young to be in here?" Jiraiya asked, gleefully reproachful.

Naruto shrugged Jiraiya's arm off his shoulders.

"I can drink if I want to. Besides, you're one to talk, old man. Usually I have to drag your ass out of these places."

"Now is that any way to talk to your teacher?" Jiraiya asked, shaking his head. "Especially when you're obviously finally following my esteemed example of living the good life."

The blond snorted into his glass. "Esteemed example my ass. S'got nothin' to do with you," he muttered.

"Is that so?" Jiraiya raised one white eyebrow. "Well, if three years of being exposed to my wisdom hasn't made an impression on you, then what are you doing in here?"

Naruto glared up at him a moment before letting his gaze drop wearily back to his glass, and Jiraiya felt his stomach sink at his appearance. The kid looked like he'd been drinking for hours before he'd showed up, and spent a good bit of it crying into his cups – face pale, eyes glazed and red-rimmed, hair limp and falling into his eyes.

"I went to lunch with Sakura," the boy said glumly. "She wanted to talk about – you know. Stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Sasuke," Naruto said, and there was something final in that word, as if it was supposed to tell the hearer everything he needed to know about the conversation.

Inwardly, Jiraiya flinched. This was dangerous ground. Anything involving Sasuke always was, with the blond. And while Jiraiya rarely paid attention to his student's rambling, the name Sakura had come up often enough, especially the first year, for him to know that Naruto had sported a fairly sizable crush on the girl. And Tsunade had told him herself one night while cursing that black-haired idiot how close the village had come to losing two shinobi, because of Sakura's stubborn obsession with him.

He resisted the temptation to growl. This was one of the reasons he'd sworn off taking students; he didn't have the energy or the patience to deal with damned adolescent heartbreak and drama again.

"Ah. So I take it she's still hung up on him, and ignored all your attempts to gain her affection, huh, kid?" asked Jiraiya. He couldn't keep himself from adding with a leer, "I could teach you a few things that would win her over for sure."

Hunched over on the floor, clutching his stomach, Jiraiya had to be impressed with his student; he hadn't even seen the blow coming.

"Now what was that for, brat?" he demanded, climbing gingerly back into his seat.

"Don't talk about Sakura like that!" Naruto exclaimed indignantly. "She's not that kind of girl!"

Naruto fiddled awkwardly with his glass, running a thumb around the top edge. "Besides," he added softly. "That wasn't what we talked about, anyway. She said – she said she's giving up on him!"

"Did she say why?"

"She said it's been three years," he said, scowling. "And it's too hard to keep getting her hopes up, and then getting hurt when he still doesn't come back. And so she's giving up on him, just like that, and she wants me to give up on him too!"

Jiraiya didn't bother saying anything to that. He knew from long experience that once the blond got going, it was easier to let him blurt out everything he was thinking and try to sort it out once he was done.

"She said I needed to 'come to terms with the fact that Sasuke's gone', and 'accept that he won't come back unless he wants to come back,'" Naruto said, pitching his voice high in mimicry of Sakura's. "She said it's been three years, and it's not right that all I think about is finding him and bringing him back, and I need to move on…"

Jiraiya made no pretense of paying attention to his student, or even caring about him all that much, but in three years, one picks up things, and he could hear the strained note in Naruto's voice.

"And what did you say to her?" he asked carefully.

Naruto ran a shaky hand through his hair; blond spikes stuck up for a moment before drooping back into his eyes. "That she was right, of course. That I'd – I'd try. What else could I say? And then I said I had something I needed to do and I left, because – well – She's right. I – she's right, and I know she's right, but she doesn't get it! How can I tell her that I can't do that?"

The glasses on the counter trembled as Naruto slammed his fist against it in frustration.

"It's different for her," he said bitterly. "I mean, I'm not stupid, I know she misses him, I know how much it hurt her when he left, but it's not the same. She can move on. Even without him, she still has a life – she has the hospital, and training with Tsunade, and her family, and her friends, and everything, and I've been home long enough to see how happy she is. For her, Sasuke is just a painful memory that's keeping her from moving on with her life."

"And for you?" Jiraiya asked, and immediately wished he hadn't.

The look on Naruto's face was furious and desperate and a little bit frightening. Jiraiya found himself remembering another time he had seen that expression, when a three-years' younger Naruto, lying in a hospital bed swathed in bandages, stared down at a hitai-ate with a single scratch down the center –and that too had been about Sasuke, of course.

It was always about Sasuke. It was always about Sasuke, and it was always so damn complicated, because Naruto and Sasuke were so damn complicated, in ways he and Orochimaru had never been and that he barely understood and wasn't sure he wanted to.

Naruto cradled his head in his hands, fingers splayed across his forehead and palms pressing into his eyes. "I think if I did what Sakura wanted me to do, and finally admitted he's gone, and not coming back, I would die," he said. "I – I've been defining myself by him for longer than I can remember, by the ways I'm like him and the ways I'm not and the things we've done to each other – letting him go, it would be like losing my reflection or something. I wouldn't know who I am any more. And I thought – I thought it would be different, after three years, after everything he's done, but it isn't! He's still always in my fucking head, always everywhere, and I want to defeat the Akatsuki and I want to become Hokage but when I think about what I'm really working for it's Sasuke. I have to bring him back, or I don't know what will happen to me, cause we're so tied up in each other, me and him. He was my first – my only – and fuck, we're just so fucked up, we always were. I mean, we were friends, but it was so complicated, between the ways he was messed up and the ways I was messed up, and most of the time we only fought and hurt each other but we were always too close, too tangled up in each other to even begin to make sense of it. And now he's gone, the stupid bastard, and I miss him so damn much, and I fucking need him because I don't know what to do without him. I can't give up on him, I can't! I – I won't have anything, then…"

His words cut off with a harsh, choked sound, and he hunched in on himself, shoulders shaking, breath coming in jagged pants. Jiraiya hadn't seen him cry often, in three years, but he'd seen it often enough to recognize it now.

"I think you've had enough to drink," he said gently. "Why don't we get you back to your apartment now, what do you say?" Naruto mumbled an assent, and didn't resist when Jiraiya slipped an arm under his to guide him to his feet, but when the older man let go of his arm, he went limp, crumpling to the floor.

Jiraiya sighed irritably, glowering down at the drunken blond, before bending to wrap an arm around the boy's waist and drape him unceremoniously over one shoulder.

Somewhere around Ichiraku's, Naruto woke up again, lifting his head blearily off Jiraiya's chest and squinting around him, obviously confused as to why he was no longer in the bar.

"Where're we going?" he asked sleepily.

Jiraiya shrugged slightly, trying to shift the boy's weight to a more comfortable spot. "Taking you home, kid, and you're going to go to bed, and everything'll be a lot better in the morning, alright?"

Naruto went silent for several minutes, long enough that Jiraiya assumed he'd fallen asleep again; when he spoke again, it was only years of training that kept Jiraiya from jumping and spilling him onto the street.

"I think Sakura's mad at me."

"Oh geez…I'm sure she's not mad at you, kid."

"I wish she could understand," Naruto said, and Jiraiya was struck by how soft and sad and young his voice sounded. "But I don't – she had that crush, but she was never in love with Sasuke, not really. She let him go. And I - he punched a hole in my chest and I still just want to bring him home. He could betray me a thousand times and I'd still chase after him. I think - I think I'm really fucking in love with him..."

He trailed off, drifting asleep again, and Jiraiya kept walking.

A/N: reviews are appreciated