Chapters will start off short and begin to get longer as we progress.
Chapter One
It's unfortunate that the story will begin amongst such confusion, but there is no better place to begin it. It was the night that this disastrous ordeal occured. You see, Uchiha was being chased. It was all a huge mistake, really. They thought he defected. They thought he betrayed them.
He was fortunate enough to know the area well. The ones chasing him did not have the same advantage.
Well, except one that is. I would tell you who, but I don't want to ruin the surpise. Just wait.
A war was errupting behind him and he was running in the opposite direction. He could hear the gunshots, the sounds of metal hitting metal. He had to force himself to not turn around. Was he a coward?
Something hit him, and hit him hard. He found himself tumbling down a hill, tangling up with another body. It was dark. He couldn't see his surroundings well, but they had been trained for this. They would be able to fight with their eyes closed.
They both stood up in fighting stances, ready to take each other out.
"Uchiha!" A soft voice breathed out.
He didn't respond.
"What the hell are you doing?" She asked, looking around for her team. She wasn't sure if she wanted to find them or not. She didn't know what condition they would be in.
"I didn't defect." Their eyes met. He was begging her to believe him. He knew she had no real reason to and he had no right to ask it of her.
"Why are they saying you did?" He didn't understand how she could even think to believe him when everyone else-his own team-had immediately shot him down.
"It's a misunderstanding."
"Why not explain it to them then?" He raised an eyebrow.
Really?
His eyes said. Do you think they'll even let me talk?
"Fine then," she said, and he was already leaving. "But I'm going with you."
He looked back at her. His own team that he had shed his blood for wouldn't even go with him. They had only asked that he stay.
"Hurry then."
And they disappeared into the night.
He was nothing more than a statistic. They didn't even know his name. He was referred to as "guy" or "male." He was one of fifty other males. They all wore the same t-shirt, same shorts, same socks, and even the same uggly white scivvies. They weren't people anymore. They were recruits.
He didn't have an opinion, and certainly didn't get to speak unless spoken to previously. His only repreive in this strange place was letters. He was allowed to write once each week and send letters to whomever he pleased.
While the other males around him were writing to their parents, girlfriends, wives, he was not. He was staring down at the blank parchment in front of him, at the pen wavering a few inches above it. Who would he write to? Who was there to write to when you had no one?
The only living family member he had was-no, he wouldn't write to him. He refused. Not after what he had done. Not after all of the pain he had cost him. Sasuke would never write to his older brother. He doubt he even could.
Sasuke didn't realize that the pen was digging into the parchment and that it had ripped right through it. That was until one of them realized and yelled at him.
"Writing on the ground? Drop!"
Sasuke was in the push-up position in only seconds. The other recruits around him were trying to watch without making it obvious.
"One, two, three, four...!"
One thing he could do was do push-ups. He could handle the physical demands. This would help him in the end, he would tell himself. This was all to reach his goal.
"Everyone on their six-packs!" Sasuke watched the other males around him through the corner of his eye. A lot of them were like him and could handle it just fine, but a lot more couldn't.
They won't make it, he realized. They'll be sorted out. Maybe slowly at first, but it was already obvious who would not make the cut.
Will I make the cut? Sasuke crushed that thought as soon as he had thought it. There was no way he wouldn't make it. He was born to make it. After all, it was in his blood.
"Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight...!"
He was slowly learning to tune out their voices, to hear the commands but not let them click. He was slowly becoming a robot and didn't even realize.
Some nights he would wonder if he was changing. He wondered if he wanted to change. He would shrug it off. He was too tired to think about stupid shit like that.
She watched him, aware what following him meant. It meant that they would label her as they labeled him. It meant that she wouldn't be able to go home to her family anytime soon-maybe ever. So why was she doing this?
She looked at the man running beside her. Wait just a bit longer.
If she were to admit it to herself, she would have to admit it was a mixture of things. She never believed him to be a quitter or a coward. He didn't have it in him. So the fact that he was running now meant that something was really really wrong. He was also the person she looked up to, the person who got her to where she was now. He deserved someone to believe in him like he had believed in her.
A branch snapped in the distance and both figures immediately stopped, observing their surroundings.
"Uchiha!" The voice yelled, more animalistic than it had ever sounded before. Uzumaki stood in front of him, twigs in his hair and scratches on his face. Uchiha stood at his full height, standing taller than his rival, his friend, his teammate. "I'm not letting you go!"
Tenten took this time to fade into the background.
"I'm not going back, idiot."
"Then I'll have to drag you back!" The blond had always been too hot headed for his own good. Uchiha dropped into a fighting stance. Would he be able to hurt his own friend? To what extent would he go to accomplish his goal?
He had been asked that before. He had said, "Anything." Not giving it another thought. He wasn't so sure anymore.
Sasuke rushed toward Naruto. Tenten got there just in time, hitting the soft spot on the lower part of Uzumaki's neck. He dropped. They began running again like nothing had ever happened.
An old Tenten would have said, "We're just going to leave him there to die?"
An old Uchiha would have argued, saying, "What other option do we have?"
But the new ones knew better than to waste their breath.
