Some much needed Team 7friendship-ness. I mean, seriously. Don't own Naruto, don't want to actually.
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Team 7 was made of 3 children, genin, with a jounin sensei. All of them, every single one, had a story to tell, stories of abuse, neglect, trauma, and loneliness. And all of them had been shattered and repaired and shattered again, leaving them broken into pieces, without anyone to put them back together again. That is, until Team 7 came along.
-xXx-
When Haruno Sakura was just a little girl, her family seemed perfect. With a kind and loving father, and a caring and gentle mother, they were the epitome of civilian perfection.
But one day, Daddy lost his job. It was the start of a dark chapter of Sakura's life.
Her daddy drank, drank, passed out, and drank some more. Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly bad, he would take out his frustrations on little Sakura and her mother. He was careful, very careful, to leave bruises and scars and welts only where clothes would cover them. (Otou-san! Don't hurt Okaa-chan! Don't hurt her!| So, little bitch, you want me to hurt you instead? Fine by me!)
Sakura and her mother lived in fear for a full 3 years of her life. During that time, she was also teased by other children, and left alone to wallow in loneliness. Sakura's life was at an all-time low.
But, her mother finally couldn't take it anymore, and went up to the Hokage for help.
Sakura never saw her daddy again.
And just when things started looking up, Sakura decided to be a kunoichi. By this time, she had already met Ino-chan, and was inspired by Ino-chan's dream to be a kick-ass ninja.
But Sakura's mommy hated ninjas. She hated them with every fiber of her body. So, after much sulking and crying and arguing and fighting, her mother snapped. (Sakura! Ninjas are deceiving, lying, and cheating little bastards! I will not allow my daughter to become one of them! If you really are serious about this ninja business, then you are no longer my daughter! I disown you!)
So, little eight-year-old Sakura was left without a home, and a fiery determination to be the number one kick-ass kunoichi, just to spite her mother and prove her wrong.
But by then, poor little Sakura's soul and mind and heart were shattered into a million pieces.
Slowly, the day of graduation came, and she was put into Team 7. Together, they made a bond, an unbreakable bond, and teamed up, because they were more than a team. They became a family.
Naruto and Sasuke were the brothers she never had. They pitched in to help her rent a better apartment than the one she was stuck in now, and they helped patch her back up, and when she was really feeling under the weather, they could always tell, and Naruto treated her to ramen (Sakura-chan, c'mon! I'll treat you!) and Sasuke gave her a half-smile and a less stinging remark (Still bad, but better than yesterday.).
Kakashi was the father she had always wanted, instead of a fading memory of an angry man with heavy hands and a bruising grip. Kakashi also helped her rent her apartment, and he always agreed to help her with her chakra control and stamina. When she was sad, Kakashi would let them out early and sometimes even come with her and Naruto and Sasuke for ramen (Mmm! That was good!| Ehh?? Kakashi-sensei, how do you eat that fast? We didn't even get to see your face!) .
-xXx-
Uzumaki Naruto was always hated and ostracized and left alone by the villagers (Stay away from the demon! Monster! Fox-brat!). He lived in an orphanage until he was seven, which was when the Hokage learned about his horrible situation. The matrons at the orphanage always purposely gave him less food, dirtier, older clothes, and only spoke to him if they really, really, had to. The rest of the time, he sat alone in his room, waiting for the bullies to stop picking on him and throwing insults his way.
The villagers were no better. If he even dared to touch a vendor's products, he would be chased away, usually by angry men with furious fists. October 10th, his birthday, was the worst of all. On that day, he would be beaten up by a mob and left, broken and bleeding, curled up on the floor and told to get the hell out of there before his blood seeped onto the ground everywhere and stained people's shoes. Somewhere during that time, his already broken heart and soul simply shattered into pieces, and many of them were scattered into the wind.
When he was seven, he received the worst beating to date, and when he was lying on the floor, trying to stand on his broken leg and sprained ankle, he met the Hokage. To his little mind, the Hokage looked scarier than any of the villagers, especially with the formal robes and wrinkly face and stern stare. He'd been terrified, and tried to curl up in an attempt to make the blows less painful.
The Hokage just helped him stand, and asked him who did this to him in such a scary way that Naruto almost screamed but somehow he new that the scariness wasn't for him, but for the villagers that did this to him. So he told the Hokage, who he learned was named Sarutobi, but he just called him Old Man, and the Hokage took him to the hospital to get treated, which took a lot of threats because the medics refused to treat him (You will treat him, and you will treat him better than all the other patients, because it's you ignorant villagers' fault that he is this way in the first place!), and disappeared for a while.
Naruto later learned that he exiled all of the villagers that hurt him when he was gone.
That day was Naruto's favorite day of all, because not only did he make a new friend, the Old Man got him an apartment and got him out of the horrible dump that was the orphanage. The Old Man was the very first person in his precious person list.
That was the day Naruto decided to be Hokage, to help all the people that needed it. His life was slowly looking up, and he enrolled in the Academy. There, he met Iruka-sensei, and he discovered the wondrous joy called ramen. It also helped that Ichiraku's was one of the few places that actually served him and didn't tell him to get lost before he even set foot in, and ramen was cheap, so Naruto could afford it.
Slowly, but surely, graduation day rolled around. He very nearly cried to death when he learned he didn't pass, but was overjoyed when Iruka-sensei very nearly died to save him and gave him his very own hitai-ate. Iruka-sensei became the second person on his precious person list.
He was put on a team with a dark haired avenger (Hn…dobe.), a pink haired civilian girl with a fiery attitude (SHANNARO!), and a gray haired jounin with a scary reputation and a habit of being late and lying (Sorry I'm late. I had to help and old lady cross the street.).
And he loved every single second of it. Team 7 gradually developed into a dysfunctional family, with Kakashi as the father he had always wanted, and Sasuke and Sakura the faux-siblings he loved with all his heart.
When the villagers succeeded in getting his morale down, Sasuke was always there to challenge him to a spar, and Sakura was always there to pay for his ramen, even if he ate 6 bowls. Kakashi always showed him a new technique, and soon enough, they all got spots on his precious person list.
-xXx-
As a young boy, he was showered with praises and compliments. Everyone called him the Famous Uchiha Boy, and they never bothered to get to know him more than to know his last name (You brat! What's your name?W-wha?Uchiha? Oh, no, forgive my insolence! I didn't mean it!) and give him awe-filled comments. Frankly, Sasuke hated it. No one even tried to get to know him. That made a small, seemingly insignificant crack into his mind and soul and heart.
The only ones were his mother and brother, Mikoto and Itachi. They took time out of their shallow Uchiha lives and took care of him, asked him how he was (How was your day, Sasuke-chan?), instead of how training was going, as was the habit of his father. They became his most precious people.
His father, on the other hand, was cold and distant. Sasuke thought that sometimes, his father didn't even know he existed, much less pay attention to him. When he did pay attention to little Sasuke, it was only to say how Itachi was so much better than him at that age, and how a member of the Uchiha clan should perform much better than that, and that if Sasuke wasn't as good as or better than Itachi, then he could barely be called a member of the Uchiha clan. All these put-downs and negative comments took their toll on Sasuke, and soon, another crack appeared on his mind and soul and heart, this one slightly larger and deeper and wider than the first.
And then, Itachi made jounin and then ANBU, and he began to have less and less time for Sasuke, until one day he had no time at all, and the only time Sasuke every saw him was between missions, looking haggard and tired (No time today, Sasuke, why don't you train without me?). With Itachi gone and just his mother who cared about him, a third crack appeared. This one was longer and deeper and wider than all the others, since Itachi was put on top of the same pedestal that his mother was on, if not a higher one.
On his seventh birthday, there was only his mother, waiting with a small sweet and a big hug, with Itachi gone on a mission and his father not even bothering to remember the date. A month after, he started the Academy.
The Academy was the same, if not worse, than the situation at home. Sasuke found himself swarmed with fan girls, and everyone leaving him alone and treading on eggshells around him, never realizing that he was human too, and that he wanted friends. Teachers were the worst of all. They never said a bad thing about him, and always favored him and never even gave him criticism, choosing instead to say that everything he did was perfect (Uchiha-kun, wonderful! You are truly an astounding Uchiha!), even if he missed all his targets during shuriken practice, or couldn't kick high enough, or punch hard enough.
Without this criticism, his skills took a nosedive, giving his father more and more reasons to be ashamed of him. His mother could only comfort him for so long, and Sasuke found himself more and more lost in the world of the Uchiha. Slowly, more and more cracks form, all small and shallow and insignificant by themselves, but together, they made his heart and soul and mind look like the cracked pavement at the outskirts of Konoha.
Then, just 3 months before his eight birthday, he came home after a (not so) healthy round of training (beating himself up with insults and harsh words) to find the usually bustling Uchiha compound eerily quiet and empty.
He stepped into his aunt and uncle's sweet shop, expecting to find them sweeping the floor or his uncle making more of those watermelon candies he loves so much, but instead, he sees blood on the walls, flung there in such a graceful manner that it could almost be called art, and the cold, dead bodies of his beloved aunt and kindred uncle.
He goes to every building, every room, every compound, in the Uchiha mini-village, and finds it all to be the same, the same gory art. Finally, he reaches his parent's room, hoping against hope that they are still alive, and that they will tell him that this all a genjutsu, and that his aunt and uncle and cousins and other relatives are all alive, because even though he didn't know them, they were family, and family had to be loved.
But, as he opened the door, frantically, he saw Itachi holding a glinting katana, still shimmering with Uchiha blood, and the kneeling figures of his father and beloved mother. Aniki!, he yells, Aniki, what are you doing?! Don't hurt them! Don't hurt Okaa-chan!
Later, he realizes that he only yelled not to hurt his mother, not his father, and he wonders if it makes him a bad person. But then, all he saw was Itachi (gracefully) swinging the katana down and draining his parents' of their life, which was seeping onto the floor and still warm.
What happens next was blurry to Sasuke. He recalls that he foolishly attacked Itachi, only to be punched back, and thrown into the world of Tsukiyomi. Here, he saw the Uchihas murdered, one by one by one, their blood making art on the walls and staining the grounds. It is during that time that he realizes that Itachi was no longer the Itachi he knew, and he was truly, truly, alone now, because now Mikoto and Itachi were gone, and it is then that his mind and heart and soul shatter.
Much of him is missing, taken away just like the lives' of the dead clan members he barely knew but still loved. He turned cold, setting up a barrier between him and the rest of the world, making him cruel and unforgiving.
The rest of the Academy passed by like a summer breeze, quickly and quietly. He graduated with top marks, and was put onto a team with the last of the class and a civilian girl and a jounin with horrible habits. At first, he resented them, resented them for being so open and caring and for wearing their hearts on their sleeves, and although Kakashi was excluded from those bad points, he was resented for being too un-serious, and so un-like how a jounin should be.
But slowly, they found their way into Sasuke's barrier, and wormed their way into his heart. They, unlike the Uchiha clan, actually cared about him, and showed their care in (not so) subtle ways.
When he was down, Naruto would always drag him to Ichiraku's (C'mon, teme! Ramen is the perfect food, you'll love it!),and Sakura would comfort him and be a gentle reassurance, and Kakashi would offer to teach him another lightning jutsu. They slowly became they family he had often dreamed of, where people actually loved each other, instead of worrying about strength and power and prestige.
-xXx-
Kakashi was a prodigy. He graduated the Academy at six, and became Chuunin almost immediately after. He had a kind, caring, and powerful father, and a mother that had died during childbirth, so he never really knew her.
His father, the White Fang, was, at the time, one of the most elite ninjas in the village. But, rather than be power-hungry and cold like most of the other elites, he chose to have morals and care for others. If there was a comrade on the brink of death, then the White Fang would always opt to fail the mission and save the fellow ninja (The lives of fellow ninja are always more important than the mission.). This, however, barely deterred him from getting quite a few missions under his belt. Enemies feared him, and allies loved him.
However, when Kakashi was seven, the famous White Fang took a mission that could have a vital impact on the entire village. It was to sneak around the enemy base, and find out if they were planning anything hostile against Konoha or her allies.
On the way there, they ran into a barrage of traps, ranging from slightly irritating to downright lethal. While running from a slew of assorted weapons, one of the White Fang's squad members was captured by the enemy (Michio, watch out! Their right behind you!), Iwa. They were all trained not so spill any information in the case of interrogation, but the White Fang opted to save the comrade instead.
To make a long story short, they went in, saved the comrade, failed the mission, and started the war. All in the span of one day.
On their return to village, they were greeted by hostile villagers (After starting the war, he actually still has the nerve to show up here again?), pointing out the war was all his fault, and that he should have just left the ninja there to die and prevented the war instead.
Overcome with shame, Konoha's White Fang committed suicide.
Seven-year-old Kakashi came home to see his father bleeding out on the floor, never to wake up again. Needless to say, he was shaken up with grief, and his heart and soul and mind took quite a battering. Cracks lined them like a sort of abstract art. He turned cold and distant, and from then on, he always put the mission first.
He got stuck on a team with an uncharacteristic Uchiha and an aspiring medic-nin, along with the Yellow Flash. He thinks they are all childish and they should not wear their hearts on their sleeves because they would get hurt, get hurt like he did, when the person he loved the most died right in front of his eyes.
Then, he becomes jounin and they get the mission of destroying a bridge. Minato-sensei won't be coming with them, because he has a mission of his own, but they can travel together for a time. Sometime during that mission, he shows them Chidori, and Rin and Obito are stunned and Minato-sensei just says to be careful when using that technique.
And then, Minato-sensei is gone, and they are to find the bridge and destroy it so that Iwa won't be able to receive supplies from that path and they will have a shortage of supplies and hopefully surrender.
Kakashi, Rin, and Obito all think the mission will be successful and they will go back to Konoha and live to do other missions and continue to serve under Konoha. But they were so, so, so utterly wrong.
They were ambushed by enemy Iwa ninjas. Upon capturing Rin, Kakashi and Obito had a clash of morals. Kakashi put the mission before Rin's life (Mission first, Obito. The mission is always first.), and Obito wanted to save her (Don't you care? She's our teammate!).
So, Obito ran off to where Rin was, and Kakashi had no choice but to follow. They met up with the Iwa ninjas, and in that battle, Obito was crushed by rocks, Kakashi got a Sharingan eye, and Rin became overcome with grief. During that mission, when he saw Obito die, and the flame of Rin's soul flicker out, leaving her a body without a soul, but very much alive, Kakashi's heart and mind and soul shattered, sometimes in big chunks, sometimes in shards that were as fine as sand.
Afterwards, he joined ANBU, because ANBU had no time to feel, to remember, to regret, to be broken, because ANBU went on the hardest, most suicidal mission available. Assassinations, infiltrations, massacres, the ANBU did them all. In that time, Kakashi barely remembered anything, only that he was feeling numb and empty and hollow on the inside, and there was no one left for him but Minato-sensei, but even he was killed sealing the Kyuubi.
So, Kakashi was stranded in the world of ninjas, the world of death and sorrow and grief and lies and deception, and there was no one to save him.
Until he got saddled with Team 7. He met them, a hyperactive blonde, a timid yet fierce pink haired girl, and the witness of the massacre of one of Konoha's most prestigious clans. He saw how they were innocent, but not as much as normal twelve year olds should be, but that was okay, since nothing was normal in the world of ninjas.
Somehow, he became a father to all of them, helping them through their lives, guiding them through their troubles, and sticking with them through thick and thin. Somehow, they became his children, that he cared about and would die for anytime, any day.
-xXx-
So, they became a family, and they saw each other's shattered minds and souls and hearts, and slowly, they started to piece all of the shards together, even if they got cut with them, forming one big unit known to the rest of Konoha as 'Team 7', and when they were finished, their heart and mind and soul looked more like the kind of tempered glass that looked like it was made of many, many pieces, which was what their heart and mind and soul were made of, and it was so well put-together that they could no longer tell which part was Sakura's and which was Naruto's and which was Kakashi's and which was Sasuke's.
And when it was finished, they were more unified than ever, and they knew that, after all the hardships they endured, together, they were whole once again.