A/N:hope urhaving a nice day? ﾟﾍﾥ?
Naruto wakes with the phantom taste of blood in his mouth and a scream stuck in his throat. It is not the slow swim to consciousness that he had indulged in as a child — and he's still a child, by some civilian standards — but rather a short, sharp jerk that drags him into the waking world.
His senses are scrambled, everything suddenly too bright and blurred, like trying to see into a pond disturbed by hundreds of tiny ripples. It's not just his eyes; it's his sense of smell, his hearing, and even the sensation of touch escapes him, slips away like fine sand between his fingers, to the point where he's not sure if he's lying down or standing up, or dangling upside down by his ankles. The worst of it, the thing that almost turns his stomach, is that his ever-present awareness of chakra is just. Gone. For a second, maybe less, and then it comes back all jumbled and wrong just like his other senses, barely relevant in the scheme of things if he thinks about it. And yet. For less than a second, he'd been completely cut off from everything that made him... Whole? Real?
A shadow comes into Naruto's periphery, sight being the fastest sense to return to him after his chakra. Without hesitation, he attacks. He's vulnerable like this, so vulnerable that the enemy would have to be idiots not to kill him while they had the chance, and the fact that he's not dead suggests that they're dumb enough to think they can hold him. He barely has time to be surprised that his hands aren't bound before he delivers a strike directly at where he assumes is his captor's neck.
Or, he tries to. His palm thrust is swiftly smacked away by the wrist.
"Naruto, calm down! It's me!" Naruto freezes mid-followup punch, and realises, belatedly, that he just tried to kill Sakura.
Naruto attempts to sit up instinctively and finds that his way is blocked by a firm but gentle hand pressing against his chest. "Don't," comes Sakura's voice. "If you vomit on my lap, there'll be hell to pay." Off to the side, someone snorts.
"Wha's happn'ing?" Naruto croaks out. His throat is drier than sandpaper. "Sas'ke?" It's just about his second coherent thought since regaining consciousness, and it pushes his brain into overdrive with half-remembered scenarios that he has envisioned since the fighting began. Sasuke, dead at the hands of enemies while Naruto is fighting on a different front, Sasuke going missing; never to be found again, Sasuke taking a blow, a knife, a jutsu meant for him.
A hand clamps over Naruto's mouth. "Breathe, Naruto," Sakura commands. "With me, now." And she counts, and Naruto breathes, because his limbs are numb again, and he can barely see, and Sakura's steady heartbeat and voice are some of the only things keeping him grounded.
"Good," says Sakura. She slowly withdraws her hand. "I'm here. We're safe. Sasuke is safe." That's... that's good. Safe. Yes. Safe is good. Too good? It only occurs to Naruto now that this could all be a very, very elaborate genjutsu combined with sensory deprivation seals.
Someone touches the inside of Naruto's wrist before he even has time to formulate a proper escape plan, and there's a rush of chakra, so achingly familiar that he almost chokes—
"Sa–" He coughs, swallows thickly, tries again; "Sasuke?" Naruto's vision terrible as it is, clears enough so that he can make out distinct white shapes cast against a blue backdrop.
There's a beat of silence, and then; "Hnn. We made it, dumb-ass."
What?
"We did it," Sakura says shakily. Naruto tastes rich, freshly turned earth, and the sweet scent of dewy grass, and perhaps most telling of all is what he cannot smell: death, ashes—war. "It worked, Naruto. We—we're back."