This was a prompt on the Naruto meme over at Live Journal. I do not have a beta, so there are probably some mistakes for which I apologies, but hope you can enjoy the story anyway.
Naruto wasn't crazy. He used to be but not now. Now he was fixed. The doctors said so. He thought they might be wrong, because the voice in his head was still there, still making snide comments and dangerous suggestions to him, but the doctors disagreed. He was fixed. Ready to get back to his life and finish that semester of university that he skipped out on after the voice got to be too much. He had medicine now, little white pills that dulled the world and muted the voice. Muted, but did not eliminate, but the doctors said he was fixed, so it was fine.
Naruto remembered vaguely what he was doing at university before his roommate turned him into "the proper authorities" for his problem. Having two people in one head was difficult. Naruto wanted to be a history major, so he signed up as one. The voice told him he was stupid, university was stupid, the person sitting next to him was stupid. The voice wasn't helpful, so he normally tried to tune is out.
Now thought, now things were different. With the voice on mute and after a three month stay in a psych ward Naruto was beginning to reevaluate some things. History wasn't really his niche, but psychology might be. At the very least it might help him learn to deal with the voice even without the little white pills.
That was why he enrolled in the biology class. It was a prerequisite for the upper division psychology class he needed to take, so Naruto went into each lecture determined to learn. He left each lecture fairly certain that he was going to fail. He couldn't help it. On the first day a guy picked a fight with him. It was a good thing that the little white pills worked, because it became harder to ignore the voice when he was angry and the guy had definitely made him angry. Insulting Naruto like the guy actually knew a thing about him, insulting the pretty strawberry blond girl that tried to talk to him, insulting the professor when he was forced to participate in the class discussion; it would have made the voice go crazy. It didn't mater how much room Naruto tried to put between himself and the other boy, they always ended up too close for comfort. Naruto was positive he was going to brake something if he had to hear another snide comment from that guy again.
This, understandably, made the tutoring session that he signed up for a bit difficult. Upon finding the spot in the secluded corner of the library where the tutor told him to meet, Naruto growled. The basterd boy sat there with the pretty strawberry blond girl from class. He assumed the girl was their tutor, because "Haruno Sakura" didn't sound like a boy's name.
Sakura gave him a bit of a tight smile as he sat down next to her, so that he was on the opposite side of the table from the asshole.
"Alright then, introductions first. They we'll get started. I want you to introduce yourself and tell me what you need help on specifically, if you can. That way I'll know what we should be focusing on," Sakura said firmly, her tone all business.
There was a moment of silence. Naruto decided to fill it himself, because they could be here forever if they had to wait for the asshole.
"I'm Uzumaki Naruto. I don't really understand the system we went over the other week, so any help on that would be good," he said. His voice sounded slow to his own ears, like it always did when he took the little white pills.
Sakura nodded before shifting in her seat to look expectantly at the other boy. He tugged absently, or maybe nervously, on the sleeve of his black shirt and then answered.
"I'm Uchiha Sasuke. I don't understand the brain functions and the hormones that we discussed last Tuesday," he said, for once not sounding like he needed to be hit.
Sakura nodded, reaching for the textbook she brought with her and flipped it open to the appropriate chapter. "Alright. Some of your difficult arias overlap. You brought you're books? Good. Open to page 175 and lets brake down that diagram."
Sakura, Naruto discovered in the weeks that followed, was one of the most intelligent people he'd ever met. She was a pre-med student, a senior like he would be if he hadn't missed half that semester, and she was ambitions. She was also much better at explaining biology then the professor ever could be. She managed to keep Naruto and Sasuke on peaceful terms after their first and only altercation by threatening to drop them from her tutoring roster if they acted up again.
Sasuke wasn't so bad most of the time. He had a sarcastic personality, but once Naruto got to know him he realized that there was little hostility behind it. On some days he could be foul tempers, and on those days he tended to look like he hadn't seen a bed for more then a week. And he twitched. All the time.
On their third week of meeting every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at six o'clock Sakura turned up late. Naruto gave a quiet sight of relief when she dropped her bag and the textbook onto the their table, only just realizing how agitated her absence had made him. Sasuke actually managed to look concerned when he saw the expression on her face.
"What's wrong?" he demanded, which was his way of being nice.
"My housemate bailed out on me two weeks ago, rent is do tomorrow, and she wont return any of my calls or emails and I have no idea where she moved to, but she still owes the rest of this month's rent. I can't pay it on my own, not when I already covered for her last month.
'So I either move out and look for a place even cheaper or come up with another $500 out of thin air," she growled, slamming the textbook open to a random page and then kicking the table leg for good measure.
"Did you tell your landlord what happened," Sasuke asked in a way that made it sound like she had better already have thought of that or he'd be pissed. Whether at her or the landlord was unclear.
Sakura looked ready to threw her notebook at him. "Yes, I thought of that. He said it didn't make a difference, he still wants to be paid that same amount and at the usual time."
The little voice in the back of his head began to whisper. Naruto ignored it for a moment before he realized it was actually saying something helpful. It liked Sakura. She was the reason that he had decided to cut back on the little white pill, to take only half of one instead of a whole. Not that she actually knew about the pills or why he took them. She just remembers how energetic Naruto used to be, remembered him from before the time he left. So the voice approved of her, so much so that it was willing to help.
"You should get a new roommate," he suggested carefully.
Sakura tugged at her long hair in frustration, her green eyes flicking to Naruto, then up to the selling to glair, before dropping back down to Naruto. "Yeah. I've been looking, but so far no takers."
"How big is the place?" Sasuke asked, not really sounding at all interested in the answer. He was beginning to twitch slightly, his fingers jerking without his control.
"The apartment isn't all that big. It has a kitchen, a single bathroom, a small balcony and two rooms. The one my housemate was in happened to be the biggest one, big enough for two, but she had to have it to herself because 'a third person might skip out on the rent'" Sakura snorted, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
"I'm looking for a new place actually. My old one it too expensive for just me," Naruto put in, trying not to sound too exited or eager. The voice wanted this, wanted Sasuke to come along as well, and there were very few things that the voice and he agreed on but this was one of them.
Sasuke and Sakura just looked at him. So Naruto looked back and his mouth moved, and the voice spoke and not him, " Sasuke should come too. He should be made to socialize, it's good for him."
Sasuke's entire right eyebrow twitched along with his fingers as he frowned. Sakura, on the other hand, found the comment amusing. She laughed, looking almost instantly happier.
"If you're serious and willing to put down money for rent right way. Say, about $500?" Her tone was teasing. She thought Naruto and the voice were joking. They weren't, but that was alright. If she was in a better mood they could work on convincing her later, and then all three of them could work on convincing Sasuke. Once he stopped twitching.
They spent an hour trying, and mostly failing, to concentrate on biology. By the time their session ended Naruto had worn Sakura down enough for her to agree to show him the apartment and had bothered Sasuke enough to antagonize him into coming as well. They walked because Sakura didn't have a car, and Sasuke took the Metro, and Naruto wasn't allowed to drive for another year or so. He liked to walk, so it was fine. And Sakura and Sasuke were good company for the most part. Half way to the apartment and still twitching at random intervals, Sasuke pulled out a litter and began to flip it open and closed, on and off.
"You smoke?" Sakura asked, surprise evident in her tone and displeasure evident in the arch of her brows.
"Sometimes," Sasuke admitted. He looked uncomfortable with the question. "Mostly I like lighting things of fire."
He didn't sound like he was joking, which seemed to have made some small alarm bells start going off in Sakura's head. She pointed out as dryly as possible in an effort to make it a joke, "They call that pyromania."
Sasuke shrugged. It was getting too tense. The voice didn't like it, said that Sasuke and Sakura didn't get along at times back then too and Naruto had no idea what it meant by 'back then'. Naruto flung his arms around both there shoulders, pulling them both against his side and smiling brightly.
And then things started to go wrong.
Five men, all larger and older then the group of three, stepped out of the alleyway between two buildings. They all had bandanas on with the same insignia, so Naruto's first response was "they must be a team" but the voice's first response was "gang, bad". One of the men brandished a knife in his hand, another displayed a heavy looking mettle hammer. The others just looked smug and amused.
"Hay Sasuke," the man with the knife said, his voice sounding oily and mean. "You haven't been around lately."
Sasuke said nothing for a moment, very pointedly not looking at Naruto or Sakura, who had grown very still. He shrugged Naruto's arm off his shoulder, prompting the voice to growl in anger, before answering.
"I'm not planning on coming by again. I don't want anymore. I told you that already." Sasuke flicked the lighter open-closed-open-closed at lightening speed, the only outward sine of his unease aside from the twitching that continued on.
"You've said that before, and you always come back. We like you kid, you and all the money your rich daddy left you with," one of the unarmed men said, but it didn't sound like they liked Sasuke at all.
"What's going on? Who are they?" the voice and Naruto asked as one.
"Nobody. Nothing. Stay out of this," Sasuke snapped.
The men laughed. "That hurts, princess. We've been your supplier for almost a year now. Got the best stuff in town and he knows it," the knife wielder said, his smile unpleasant. His eyes lingered on Sakura longer then they should. Naruto growled and puller her behind him, Sasuke moving to stand between them and the group of men.
"They're drug dealers, Naruto. They're pissed that Sasuke stopped coming to them for drugs," Sakura hissed, trying to be quiet enough to go unnoticed, but loud enough for Naruto to hear her.
Naruto would have asked how she knew that Sasuke was on anything, and why he hadn't been told about it because they were all friends and friends shared things with each other, but he got distracted. One of the men made a move to grab Sasuke, who responded by stepping to the side while he flipped open the lighter again. The man's hand closed over Sasuke's, forcing the lighter closed, but it didn't mater. Sasuke had been playing with the thing all night. The mettle top was hot. Hot enough to make the man curse and draw his left hand back, his right coming up to drive his knuckles into the side of Sasuke's face.
Naruto saw red. He remembered thinking that he really wished Sakura had a weapon before the voice took over. He grabbed Sasuke from behind and tossed his slighter frame back towards Sakura and then pounced on the man that had hit him. His body moved fluidly, in ways that it never had before, but the voice was the one in the driver's seat now. It was cheering and screaming and roaring in triumph as he dropped onto his hands and swung his leg out, knocking the man hard to the ground.
Flashes of tall trees and bubblegum pink hair and black-red-swirling eyes filled his head and the voice laughed as it broke the hand trying to grab him.
Naruto's head swam as he heard Sakura scream, turning in time to see her weave to the right of a man's fist, catch it in a tangle between her arms and then somehow fling him over her shoulder and away, all in the fluid, seamless way that only came from years of practice. He remembered dark gloves and mountains braking and green-green eyes telling him that next time they'll go together and realized all at once that Sakura remembered as well.
But she wasn't looking at him, she was looking at Sasuke, who wielded his lighter like a sword and a tiny flam thrower all at once and it shouldn't work as a defense but it did. He burned the man with the hammer, somehow managing to pull the fluid cylinder out and brake it on the man's hammer-holding hand, only to pull out a second lighter and catch the whole aria on fire. The man screamed and dropped his hammer in order to smother the flames trying to bloom to life on his hands.
And Naruto remembers fire. He remembers massive balls of it being spit out at enemies, he remembers cocky grins and dead eyes and heartbreak and how could he leave us?
The last man still on his feet pulled a switch blade out of his pocket and lunged at Sasuke. Sasuke dodged, twists just far enough away to avoid anything more then a slight scratch, and Sakura and Naruto attacked. She drove her finger hard into the hollow formed between the man's neck and collar bones, making him gag and drop the knife. Naruto punched him hard in the gut and the voice told him to keep going, keep attacking, but he remembered strong arms wrapping around him and telling him to calm down.
He remembered people cheering for him.
He stood back, breathing deeply, harshly, to see five unconscious men a his feet, and Sakura's feet, and Sasuke's feet. Sasuke looked between Naruto and Sakura as if he had seen a ghost, the twitching turned to full blown shivering now, and that was how Naruto realized that he and Sakura were shivering as well.
The voice is triumph, is Kyuubi, and Naruto remembers a broken bridge and a broken promise and a broken bond. He remembers dying with the two people that meant the most to him and being furious. He remembers a promise he made to a Sakura long ago about a Sasuke that once lived, and the new promise she made to him three years later. As she pulls Sasuke into a hug and Naruto pulls them both into and even tighter one he knows they remember as well.
"I killed you guys. Oh fuck, I killed you, I killed--" Sasuke babbled, his voice high and tight and his eyes maybe too bright because of tears.
"And we killed you too, and then found you again, together, and if you ever leave us again we'll be so angry Sasuke," Sakura babbled back, smashed between Sasuke and Naruto's chest, but she didn't seem to mind.
"Missed you. Missed you both so much, missed you," Naruto said, his eyes definitely too bright from tears.
Naruto wasn't crazy. He had a voice inside his head. It was called Kyuubi. It used to be an evil demon fox that was just a dick, but now it was only an annoying, not-very-morally-sound presence that was still a dick. He lives with Sasuke, who he killed once and who killed him, and with Sakura, who helped him kill Sasuke and who was killed as well. They used to be people that slipped in and out of shadows, could climb walls and level mountains, people that used to be able to do impossible things. Now they're people trying to graduate from college and pay rent, and Naruto has never been happier. Neither have Sasuke or Sakura.
Naruto used to be a ninja. Naruto used to have a demon inside of him. Naruto used to dream about a place, time and people that couldn't possibly exist. But he'd found his precious people again, his Sasuke and his Sakura.
Naruto is not crazy. Not anymore.