Chapter Two

She still finishes third, although admittedly only because Neji's not present to beat her and Sasuke both, shuddering across the finish line high on adrenaline and lactic acid, low on air. Face and legs pounding with heat, she collapses against a tree and stares sideways at Sasuke's perfunctory stretching exercises.

The sun couldn't spoil Sasuke's pallor, and evidently neither can exercise, because her cheeks are barely pinked. It doesn't match the pulse slugging rapid and wild in the hollow of her collar bone.

Naruto hadn't planned to say, "I'd have stopped for you, you know."

"The difference is you care about beating me."

"I will yet," Naruto says, already hearing the dread sound of Gai approaching, driving a contingent of students before him.

The truly frustrating part is that she's pretty sure Sasuke wouldn't have replied anyway.

Kiba drops into a moaning heap beside her, Shino disgustingly untouchable behind his sunglasses on the far side of him, and this is when a normal teacher would let them catch their breath waiting for the stragglers to catch up, or in Shikamaru's case wake up, but Gai is not normal, and after today there can be nobody left labouring under the delusion that he is.

"All right!" he roars. "Soccer time! Boys on the left field, girls on the right. First and second of each sex picks teams."

Fortunately he himself will be going back on the track to encourage the remaining runners to pick up their pace.

In his absence Naruto follows Sasuke towards the directed patch of grass. There aren't very many girls present yet, and even Sasuke's body language reads as languid, or what passes for languid in the context of perpetually wire-tight angles and edges.

Temari stretches a pair of perfectly tanned arms, standing very close to Sasuke, close enough her movement brushes against the loose fabric of Sasuke's tshirt.

It's odd to see someone so near her, that's all.

"Well," Temari says after some length of time. "Let's get this show on the road, then."

There's really no question of whom Sasuke's first choice is, which leaves Naruto in something of an awkward position.

She never expected it to be awkward, the sudden novelty of being the picker instead of the non-picked, but it is.

"Er, Sakura, please," she says, hand back at the nape of her neck.

She doesn't really know Tenten, and Ino's turned her back on the proceedings.

Next time around is easier, because by then Kiba's would-be girlfriend has arrived. For a moment in between Naruto smiling at her and Naruto's panic being rewarded by remembrance, things threaten to go way beyond awkward, because she recalls faces not names, but thank god, thank god, she pulls through.

Flushing brightly Hinata smiles back, and two rounds later they're ready to play.

It's the death penalty lesson all over again, because Sasuke looks like Naruto's always imagined a ballerina would, with the thin over-bred butterfly lines (or actually, thanks to a certain Ballet Barbie film, Naruto's mental image of a ballerina is both blonder and bustier, but Sasuke has that quality of etherealness and tenacity that she associates with dancers), but clearly what she practices is martial arts. After years of training it'd be impossible for Naruto not to recognise the stances and turns, however modified, that make Sasuke's feints and tackles so devastating and nasty.

Twelve minutes into the game, going by Gai's insistent shouting over by the boys' field, the ball chances to approach Hinata, and Sasuke is too close to her by far.

Naruto gives it all she's got and runs.

Because that thought she had before, about Sasuke not having been cruel, that's sort of person-specific. Saying what she did to Naruto wasn't cruel, but saying it to Hinata would be. Just like tackling Naruto would be a challenge, but tackling Hinata would be abuse.

She really doesn't want Sasuke to cross that line.

Skidding over the grass, she tumbles into Sasuke, and it's the kind of situation Mum insists only ever occurs in fiction even though it happens to Naruto all the damn time: Sasuke twists under the impact but clearly didn't expect it, can't keep her footing, and a resentful glare later they're on the ground, Sasuke's knees cutting into Naruto's stomach.

"Ouch," Sasuke says with great dignity and greater rage. Clearly hell hath no fury like a woman tackled. "Get the hell off!"

Sucking in a sharp breath, because Sasuke's demand was accompanied by a vicious jerk of her knee, Naruto plants an elbow on either side of Sasuke's hips and glares right back.

"Quit it! Look, fine, I will get up, cut it the hell out trying to kick me."

If her legs didn't ache already from the running, they do now from the fall, and the grass stain on Sasuke's arm is accompanied by a fairly large abrasion. She's still panting a little. Naruto wonders if it might possibly be from sheer rage.

"Er, sorry," she offers, gaining her feet and extending a hand Sasuke pointedly ignores. "It's just I couldn't let you…"

"For god's sake!" Sasuke snaps, standing up considerably faster than Naruto did and aggressively brushing dirt off her shorts. "Like I'd ever tackle Hinata."

Sauntering up to them with a raised eyebrow, Temari interjects, "Everything all right?"

"Yeah," Naruto says while Sasuke snorts and turns her back, marching away towards the others.

"Right, then," Temari says, following her and nodding at Naruto and Hinata to come along. "Let's avoid attracting Gai's attention, shall we."

"Fuck yeah."

"Yes," Hinata agrees very timidly, her voice soft as cream.

It's not a large playing field by any stretch of the imagination; the syllable has barely met the air before the ball meets Naruto's foot, and with a grin she kicks it back, picking up her pace to follow it.

Sasuke keeps her distance, doesn't brush past Naruto again before Gai blows his whistle and enthuses about them being wonderful, lively creatures of spring and youth who should enjoy their muscles crying with joy from the workout, then finally sends them off to the showers.

Stuck in the tepid mass of undressing bodies, Naruto is hit with the fact that in spite of everything she really likes changing rooms, likes the idea of people just being naked together.

She remembers Chouji saying he hates them and someone from another class adding it's distressing to have the intimacy of stripping forced upon you.

Which Naruto sort of gets, but also sort of doesn't, since obviously lots of people are body-shy, but she isn't and she's not even sure she'd want to understand how to feel that way, because really changing rooms should be about bodies not having to be a big deal.

And, well, Naruto likes bodies, likes their warmth and promise and solidity. Also there's something, for lack of a better word, open-minded about stripping down alongside strangers.

Chancing a smile at Hinata, who's blushing at her over the cocoon she's turned her towel into, Naruto moves through the montage of limbs and idle sounds towards the showers, starting to sweat again because the window's been bolted shut.

What stays with her afterwards is the raised circle of scar tissue marking out the centre of Sasuke's shoulder blade.

xxxxx

Thursday dawns chilly, or what passes for chilly this time of year, a faint sheen of mist tempering the air. It's cool enough Naruto is able to sprint for the bus stop and catch the bus she's actually supposed to be on, arriving at school with time to spare rather than slightly late for the first time.

Unaccustomed to the extra time and still absent-minded from sleep, she takes to wandering the main building until, passing by an exit, she catches sight of someone leaning against the outside wall, smoking. Only after she's already edged the door open and slunk through, her mouth curving into a smile quite without her volition, does she realise she had no real proof it was Sasuke she saw. It was, though, it's Sasuke staring skyward, slouching in her too-big jumper, her lips and fingers curling around a cigarette. However Naruto is rather more concerned with the spectacle of two guys circling a kid who must've decided to take the shortcut through Sannin on his way to school.

Spurting forward, she catches hold of the closest bloke's arm before he can cuff the kid. "What the hell are you doing!"

"The hell are you doing, bitch?"

It's not the first time Naruto's had this conversation, but she still doesn't have any words for it; rather, there are too many words, and none of them seem useful, until the only natural argument is a fist in someone's face, and she can't do that, can't blow everything up.

Iruka said once, or said some philosopher or other had said, whichever, that there are instances of 'if you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you': times when a concept is so basic it has to be grasped organically, or when the person you're trying to explain to is so far away you can't reach each other.

Naruto felt the first tentative stirring of genuine respect when he added that he thought that was a coward's way of thought.

"Stopping you being a bullying arse. Leave him alone."

The guy she grabbed has turned to face her, back against the kid, and when the other bully pauses to laugh at her the kid seizes the opportunity and runs like hell, his arms swinging with something like desperation but a triumphant whoop lingering behind as he disappears around a corner.

It turns ugly very quickly, since the vaguely familiar wannabe bullies insist on there not being any harm in administering some peer education, teaching kids they're not welcome to frolic over private property, particularly when the kid is snotty and has been known to paint graffiti while passing through, and Naruto insists that the proper course of action would be to send the kid to Iruka for a talking to if he's really such trouble. This evolves into some rather heated debate about teacher's pets and where the line goes between bullying and a firm admonishing, and what's decent behaviour anyway, and who asked you to pass judgement?

Teacher's pet? Wow.

It doesn't have quite the same ring as queer retarded bitch whore.

Then quite suddenly Sasuke says, "Enough."

It doesn't seem quite real: one moment there are loud voices and absurd insults and grabbing hands, then that one word and the next moment there's scuffling shoes and Naruto is alone in the silence with its speaker.

It seems very real when she looks at Sasuke.

With her pulse still picking at her skull as though trying to break through it, Naruto stares in something like awe, like rage, at Sasuke not really doing anything at all and yet being so much, so intensely there.

She meant to say, to not quite scream: And why the fuck were you just standing there?

She says, not quite screams: "I don't need your help!"

"Really?" Eyes hard and dark and something else, something complicated and aggravating, Sasuke stares at the whisker scars, and Naruto goes bone-cold.

"No," she says.

Sasuke doesn't reply beyond the standard raised eyebrow; checks her watch, shrugs, and goes inside.

It isn't the first time Naruto's had this conversation but it's the first time it's not ended with her beaten up.

xxxxx

Friday is golden, sunlight gilding every surface. Golden too is Iruka's expansive mood, which allows them to finish the otherwise trying day, seemingly designed to drive home the fact that math is not only entirely useless but also extraordinarily painful, on a light note.

Naruto's not sure how exactly the film is supposed to relate to the anti-ism project, seeing as it's about what her mum, in one of the stress-crazed harangues prompted by finishing her graduate thesis on The Gendered Gaze in… er, in some art guy's work, might have called two cis-gendered, fully abled, white, heterosexual middle class twins who, to the profound disappointment of half the class, are not sleeping together. Still, it's a goddamn awesome movie all the same.

Since Naruto also tears up over Disney films, her crying when the smart twin dies in a traffic accident might not in itself be indicative of cinematic genius, but she's not the only one whose eyes are going misty.

"So," Iruka says at last, clearly trying to maintain a suitably solemn tone in spite of his success as he cuts off the credits. "That was the film adaption of Peter Pohl's novel I Miss You, I Miss You. I hope it gave you some food for thought – I see we don't have any time left today, but we'll be discussing it next week. Until then, everyone have a good weekend."

It's one of those films, the ones that leave you new inside, bloated and unbalanced, as if things inside you have been shifted around to make room for what the film imparted. Feeling blotchy, she waves to Kiba taking off with Shino and Chouji, and to Sakura saying she'll be in touch about the anti-ism planning later. Lucky bastards whose busses actually come by more than twice a day.

Left to wait, and feeling … not just good, but oddly full, Naruto heads accidentally on purpose towards the toilets. For one reason or another she hasn't been to a school bathroom since she got her face cut up in one, and now she opens the door with baited breath, but stepping inside is nothing special and nothing very much like last time.

Sannin Academy is posh and proud of it, and certainly keeps its toilets fresh, with none of the filth or graffiti she'd have expected, just a faint unpleasant smell caught in the tidy white-tiled room. Only one of the booths is occupied; only Ino is standing in front of a mirror, adjusting her ponytail.

"Er," Naruto offers. "Hi."

"Hi," Ino replies, not taking her eyes off the reflection of that single closed door. Even when it's pushed open and Sasuke emerges, Ino keeps talking to the mirror: "Putting our fingers down our throat again, were we?" The anorexicbitch is added in enough of an undertone to be discreet, but not enough of one not to be clearly audible.

"Unlike some people," Sasuke says, "I'm not quite that desperately in need of dieting."

Ino blanches. "Look, I was just… I'm sorry, okay."

"Fuck off," Sasuke says. "You're not my friend, and despite whatever delusions you harbour on that account, you're nowhere near being my social rival either. So really, fuck off."

"Fine," Ino says, looking down, looking fragile and determined as she leaves. "All right, fine."

After the door has swung shut behind Ino but before Sasuke can leave as well, or try to order her out too, Naruto says, "Why would you do that?"

For a moment Sasuke stares at her blankly. Her face is white and her lips mutely parted around another fuck off, but she doesn't say it. When things get bad, get really bad, they silence Naruto, but Sasuke, who seems so quiet even when she talks, apparently puts words between herself and the bad shit.

"Because," she says with a big blank smile, glittery like fake diamonds, "as a girl raised in a patriarchal society, I've been taught to despise myself and turn my rage inwards, so that when frustration turns to violence I attempt to assert control over the situation by directing the aggression towards my own body. It's called a coping mechanism." She leans forward to inspect something in the mirror, adding in a tone of weary disgust, "Or so my therapist keeps telling me."

Ignoring the clichés, which obviously aren't lies, exactly, but equally obviously are too simple to be truth, Naruto focuses on the central issue: "Actually I think that's called self-harm."

"Well," Sasuke says lightly. "I needed something to replace the cutting, didn't I."

"Cutting," Naruto repeats.

Mercurial and strange, this is not how she's ever pictured Sasuke. Or, strange, yes, but not with these brittle mood swings, not saying, "God, you dipshit, as if I'd cut. Emo is out, even you should've picked up on that."

"Um. Hey," Naruto says, into the weirdness of Sasuke clearly having learned from whatever idiot therapist she's been seeing how to lie with little bits of truth, how to use words to avoid communication. "Tell me."

Very astonishingly, Sasuke does. Sort of.

She sounds like she's in shock or something, like one of those news anchors who are new on the job so you can tell they're cheating, reading their lines off a prompter.

"Thirteen months ago I was in a traffic accident. With this guy. Who died." When she laughs, mouth half obscured by the hand covering her face, it sounds like a cough, rusty and thick. "Well technically he's comatose, but that's just semantics, isn't it. He might as well be dead for all the good he is now. Fuck, he is dead, they just haven't turned off the heat and air yet."

"Sasuke…" She's standing close now, standing helpless, horrified, and yet… alight with, with trust, with you're talking to me.

"It's not like it's a secret," Sasuke interrupts. "Everybody knows."

Really? Because if so, what the hell kind of business did Iruka think he had showing what amounts to a trigger flick? It doesn't seem like him at all.

"Well," Naruto says, and this she knows: "It's not like that makes it matter any less."

Sasuke sneers at her. "Don't. You do not get to think I'm a pseudo-psychotic fascist bitch and then pretend to give a shit." She says pseudo-psychotic fascist bitch very levelly, without any hint of accusation.

"Still caring is kind of what makes me not a psycho bitch." Her wrist burning where it almost touches Sasuke's arm, she tries a bit of a grin, because this is the kind of bad that's way beyond the scope of conventional grief respecting practices, and Naruto's never been any good with solemnity. "Also I don't think that's all you are."

"Spare me." She swallows, but her voice is even and supercilious. "I neither want nor need your sanctimony. I'm not your friend."

"No? Then why are you talking to me?"

Talking to me about things hurting so much you can't stand them, talking to me about this guy, which in Sasuke's voice means my guy, means, this guy whom I love.

Amazingly, Sasuke doesn't actually sound nasty as she says, "Because you're nobody." There's a smirk, sudden and elusive, and then quite a lot of nastiness after all. "I could tell you anything, it doesn't matter what you know because it doesn't matter what you think. I realise probably somewhere in your head there's like a Kantian category reinterpreting reality into something in which your sad existence isn't pointless, but the reality is you're nothing." She tilts her head to the side with an expression almost of curiosity. "It's funny, really – you're no one, and you're the last to know it. Well. People are bullied for a reason."

Naruto thinks about the kid on the schoolyard yesterday, she thinks about herself, but most of all she thinks about Sasuke as she snaps, "People are bullied because there are arsehole bullies who can't lay the hell off them."

"I don't care what lies you tell yourself. It doesn't change anything."

"Shut up."

Relentless, Sasuke does not seem to have heard her. Well, if you're nobody you can just stay quiet, right?

"You're still nothing. You'll always be nothing."

"Shut up. Shut up!"

Sasuke does when Naruto hits her.

"I heard scream– Naruto!" someone says behind her over the oddly sharp sound of her hand impacting with Sasuke's face, snapping it sideways.

Flesh meeting flesh normally causes a heavy sort of noise, but maybe it makes sense for Sasuke to be atypical. She's always doing that, looking at you like you're real, because she would never see anybody who didn't matter, then saying you're nobody, you're nothing.

Naruto makes to step closer, crowd her, whether to hit her again or shake her or touch her she isn't sure, but a hand grabs onto her arm and keeps her in place.

Right. Iruka.

"Stay put," he orders, then turns to Sasuke. "Are you all right?"

The act of straightening alone, facing forward again and adjusting her shirt, is proof Sasuke qualifies as an ice princess; measured, immaculate, her face absolutely blank.

Naruto is anything but, fracturing around too strong emotions and too many questions.

"I'm fine," says Sasuke.

"Good," says Iruka. "Then you're both coming with me to the headmistress."

Herded through the mostly empty corridors, in a private silence unbroken by outside noises, with Iruka's hand not gripping anymore but just a warm presence on her arm, a reassurance almost, Naruto notices Sasuke's neatness and prettiness in a new way, a way that has to do with how proper and expensive her clothes are, and how convincing she can sound, and how much authority figures always love that.

The vividly red place where Naruto hit her is an extreme contrast to her collected pallor, looks like vandalism.

Naruto's been dragged off to the headmaster's office for brawling, or any number of other offences, most of which at least loosely based on reality, countless times before, and she knows how it usually ends. While Tsunade is supposed to be her grandmother, and while Iruka has always seemed fair under the naivety, there's an "estranged" to go before "grandmother", and probably you wouldn't need even half of Iruka's naivety to consider Sasuke the resident Miss Perfect.

When they reach the green door bearing Tsunade's name Iruka doesn't bother waiting, but knocks on and opens it in the same one move, ushering both of them in before him.

Tsunade looks up from a stack of papers and a glass, reclining in her desk chair with a rather testy, "Yes?"

Naruto doesn't listen very closely to Iruka's narrating how he passed by the girls' bathroom and heard yelling, then found them fighting, walking in on Naruto getting violent.

She looks at the antique desk and into the sun-blasted greenery outside the window, until finally Tsunade demands attention. Most headmistresses can't do that, that thing where they just look at you and you don't even need to be looking back to know that it's time you listen, and listen well.

"Right, then. Does either of you contest Iruka's version of events?"

"No," says Sasuke, and Naruto shakes her head.

"Then," Tsunade continues, piercing Naruto with a glare in that way that's also really, devastatingly rare, "I take it Ms Uchiha deserved it?"

Fake understanding she's met before, and mocking, but this particular combination is new. It doesn't matter.

"Yes. No." She struggles, embarrassed, horrified. "I mean. What she said wasn't okay, but it wasn't all right for me to hit her either."

"And what did she says?"

Naruto hears herself saying, "Nothing."

It's not because she doesn't rat people out. It's not because she doesn't think she'd be believed.

Mind, she doesn't rat people out and she doesn't think she'd be believed, but that's not why she clings to secrecy.

It's no one else's business.

"Sasuke?"

"We were debating people's ability to avoid unpleasant situations," Sasuke says, not quite ironically.

Naruto supposes it's even kind of true, if you're a spoiled idiot who thinks of systematic abuse as an unpleasant situation.

"And that's what set off this… incident?"

"Evidently," Sasuke says coolly, every eye in the room focused on the redness smearing her cheek.

That's when the lectures start, as if Naruto didn't know violence is an unacceptable response, doesn't know it's a potentially expelling offence, especially when the victim's daddy is a self-important prosecutor.

Sasuke's been sitting immovable and distantly pretty in one of the visitors' chairs for a good long while when they're done, and she nods along with leaving "this regrettable incident" in the past.

Naruto, who's been standing there nodding and not doing much else, stares at her with something that's not quite surprise, then hurriedly turns her attention back to getting out of here.

She's missed the bus now, she thinks, walking doggedly beside Sasuke through the main corridor. She'll have to go down to Central Station and wait for the next one.

Through the door, and the outside air is dumpy, thick.

They aren't kicking her out. Fuck, they aren't even punishing her. Tsunade might tell Dad, in fact probably will, but Iruka said nothing about calling, so presumably it'll be a family thing not a school discipline thing when Tsunade does.

Is it… do they know, then, about Sasuke's beauty being barely skin-deep? Or are they, what? Trying to keep things quiet, hoping it'll blow over? Sasuke did remain crazy calm the entire time.

And that stops her short, belatedly, because Naruto remembers being hit for the first time, that nauseating twist in reality into someone's hand on your face, doing violence to you, and so it's inconceivable that Sasuke wouldn't have reacted to the slap-punch hybrid Naruto dealt her. Hell, it wasn't even an active non-reaction, it was that she simply didn't react.

That is to say, there is, or there can be, a difference between the two, like there can be a difference between being quiet and just not saying anything. She'd not have been surprised at Sasuke being quiet, staying blank, but her just failing to react – that's wrong.

Sasuke's not staying silent now, though.

"If you ever touch me again expulsion will be the least of your worries."

"I, yeah," Naruto says, relief tugging forcibly at her face. "I mean, I wasn't going to. But you'd better not give me reason to again."

Not replying, this time very actively not replying, Sasuke veers off sharply to the left, towards the fancy part of town. Naruto's left alone with the smell of boiling tarmac and the sound of fornicating insects.

She walks, she catches the bus, and she fumes and she's elated and nothing makes sense. Which, well, sense is overrated, but.

The weekend is hell.

She comes home late and Mum's snapping at her, stressed and annoyed about managing the new classes and having some difficult patients, and now also about Naruto not being on time, so that everything's been delayed and she'll be late.

"I'm sorry," Naruto says. "You didn't have to wait."

"I promised I'd drop you off at the garage before I went to work. I just – I'm sorry, I know you didn't mean to be late, but I've got a bit of a tight schedule here and I think you're old enough to show some consideration."

Naruto doesn't say sorry again, because while she is sorry, she's also angry, and frustrated, and really confused, and she doesn't do so well with words.

That was certainly proven today.

"Are we going, then?" she says instead, and Mum picks up her purse and her new nurse shoes and ushers her hurriedly to the car.

The drive is silent. Mum leans over and kisses her cheek before taking off, but it's still a relief to get out of the car.

You don't get used to being a disappointment. Or, you do, but you also grow goddamn tired of it.

Kiba's there already, giving a lazy wave from over by the Volvo: they're not allowed to touch the car they actually joy-rode into the vehicle equivalent of the ER, but have been directed to work off their dept on less refined machinery.

An hour's good, two, but it's Friday and Kiba's taking off early, there's a family dinner and then there's Shino. And, possibly, some pseudo-stalkerish attempt at befriending Hinata.

"You're not going with them?" Dad asks afterwards, when Naruto's sitting on the cement, letting its coldness soak her. "The dog brigade, I mean."

"Nah. It's their – you know, their thing. It's like the bff version of makeup sex." She leans under the car to look for the screwdriver and also to hide, a little. "You know he started hanging out with me because he and Shino weren't talking."

"I'm sure that's not the only reason…"

"I know!" she cuts him off. "I know, I know."

It's cool and safe under the car, but increasingly uncomfortable, and the smell's bloody awful. She crawls out.

"Er, Dad? I got in a fight. I – I didn't mean to, and they're not doing anything about it or anything. But I – I guess I should tell you before Tsunade does."

"What was the fight about?"

"Nothing. Stuff. She said some things."

Except it wasn't really about that. No, it was, but not only.

It was about ice princesses melting and cracking a bit, as well, and Naruto not right knowing how to handle that, or how to handle wanting so badly to handle it.

But mostly it was about bullying, and about how having a crappy life isn't a good excuse to indulge in it.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says. "Damn it, just talk to Tsunade."

"All right, then," says Dad, with a sigh and that hurt slump of his shoulders.

Later that night Tsunade calls, and Naruto jumps from the table to pick up the phone. It's strange she should be so positively weak-kneed with relief that Mum or Dad didn't answer; she's already told Dad, after all. Still.

Hi, she says, and Tsunade says, Hello Naruto could I speak to Minato, and Naruto walks back into the kitchen to hand over the phone. She's glad when Dad retreats outside for the conversation, then ashamed when she sneaks a glance at Mum, who chews energetically on a carrot stick and doesn't comment.

"Um," Naruto starts, but doesn't know how to finish. Things went to shit so quickly in the bathroom.

Which, yeah – no, she's never been that good with words.

Maybe to make up for that, words being so important to Mum, important enough that sometimes Naruto thinks the sentences describing them matter more than the pictures themselves to her even though she's supposed to be an art student, Naruto gets up again and starts picking up the dirty dishes.

Of course, today she doesn't seem to be doing so well with her hands either, because she trips on the kitchen carpet and drops two of the plates.

Not the favourites, at least, she thinks, not quite numbly and not quite grimly but distressingly closer to it than she's been since they moved.

"Ah, fuck."

"Jesus," Mum mutters, then adds, "Watch your language," before retrieving the broom from its hiding place.

Naruto spends the remains of the evening in her room.

By the time Dad comes by to say goodnight the place is a mess of things that have failed to amuse her, failed to relive the restless, palpable anxiety, and the hard rhythms of indie rock are lulling her to sleep.

"Good night," she – she'd like to say she mutters it, but really it's a whisper, unhelpfully wistful. Things could be… better.

Well. Tomorrow they will be, you'd better believe it.

She clutches at Kyuubi, one hand closing defiantly around the tail of the old plushie, familiar and dear. One of the good things about summer ending is the nights growing dark again, so you can rest safely in your den, and soon enough she does fall asleep. That's never been a problem.

Waking up sort of is, this time, because, as compared to Friday night, Saturday morning is brighter only on the surface, only outside. Nothing's easier.

She kicks the sheets off with more aggression than joyous energy, questing downstairs for breakfast and a run of Gaian proportions.

Sasuke says, or said really but it feels like present tense, feels like says: You're nothing.

That you're nobody and you deserved it, that's not exactly inventive, any schoolyard bully can tell you that.

Given time, Naruto supposes they can even make you listen, and believe it. She didn't, but then they never told her, or so my therapist keeps telling me.

And this is …fucking shallow, really, but they didn't look like Sasuke, and more importantly they didn't look at Naruto like Sasuke does, either.

Naruto runs from a stupid conversation on the school steps and, and that dumb argument in class, and, damn it, from that P.E. lesson.

"You're home," Mum remarks when Naruto emerges from the shower, reclining on the porch with her laptop balanced on her knees. "I thought you'd be off with Kiba."

"Yeah, no," Naruto says, right back where she started running from. "Not today."

Later Dad finds her inside and asks doesn't she have any homework, then?

While Naruto must grant him the point that pouting around the house is not very productive, that's only a theoretical point, because she doesn't do pouting. Doesn't have the mouth for it, nor the patience.

"None I feel like doing," she says, and it doesn't work as a joke because frankly it's true.

"Naruto…"

And she's so fucking tired of hearing Naruto don't you know better, Naruto shouldn't you control yourself, Naruto there aren't infinite chances here.

Nobody told Sasuke she'd better consider her actions more carefully in the future.

"I'm sixteen years old," she says, feeling like the goddamn little mermaid. "I'm not a child anymore. Whether I do my homework or not isn't really any of your business."

She feels like shit about the words even before she's spoken them, but she can't regret them because this moment they're so true they cut.

"You'll always be my business," Dad says. "Mum and I, we're just worried. There's this whole future ahead of you, and I know it's difficult to focus on that now but it's important. That's why we worry about academia."

"Well, you do that," Naruto snaps. "I'm kind of busy trying to survive the present, myself."

She retreats outside, not because she wants to avoid him as such, god she doesn't, but because she doesn't want to say any more nasty stuff, and there's so much of that trying to break out of her.

"Well," Dad says, after he's followed her to the shadow under the plum tree, where's she's made herself uncomfortable leaning against the trunk, knees drawn up to far they brush her boobs. Given the distinctly modest size of the latter, that's something of an accomplishment. "When I was your age I wanted to be a police officer. Or a mayor. Or maybe a travel agent. So I guess there's plenty of time yet. I just think it'd be good if you had something concrete to aspire to, to make the school stuff more relevant."

She smiles up at him, wanly and with her eyes squinted practically shut against the sun, but genuinely. "I'm gonna be a rock star."

She can hear the grin in his voice, and the worry lines around it. "In that case you might want to try learning an instrument."

"Hey!" Naruto objects. "I give great Guitar Hero!"

There's no way he, nor any sane non-deaf person, could possibly argue with that, and for a while things are better.

Still, Sasuke said, you'll always be nothing, and Kiba's MIA, and, well.

Naruto has never been one of those secretly cool losers, like Sheldon Cooper or Peter Parker or Willow Rosenberg. She's not secretly pretty or super smart, or an astonishingly good person, who was just oppressed by a shallow, non-comprehending society. She really is just completely awkward.

So she's not a cool loser but a loser loser, because of which it kind of matters a whole lot more than it should what the local ice princess has to say on the subject of her mattering or existing.

Besides, if she's honest, and Naruto's not good enough with words for lying to work, that's not the worst of it by far.

The worst is that regardless of everything that came after, the voice she cannot escape says, I can tell you anything, and even now Naruto feels sick from it, feverish.

If you're nothing means I can tell you anything, doesn't it follow that you're nobody, you don't matter to anyone means you're somebody to me, you matter to me?

Something more than a replacement friend or a pity case.

"Shut up!" she sneers, snaps, gasps at herself.

Jesus, this is mental.

Sunday isn't any better, and she ambles out of the house to meet Gaara in the park. He likes feeding the pigeons; she realises it wasn't a random impulse but a sustained habit, catching him again surrounded by a snowstorm of birds. Standing in the middle of the winged hurricane distributing bread crumbs, he looks small and scruffy and like the antithesis of a scarecrow.

Naruto wades through the birds and stands next to him for a bit, but she's restless. Scuffs her feet, jangles what little change her pocket holds, until she can't stand it anymore and pushes him into motion. The pigeons follow them, or him rather, as they start making their way around the lake.

"I used to kick them," Gaara says, in a low and rather contemplative voice. "The pigeons, I mean. They called me the pigeon kicker."

Naruto stares at him in disbelief. "Who the hell calls someone the pigeon kicker?"

He shrugs. "People. Soccer mums. You know. People from school."

"Well, I guess it's not really any worse than Dr Octopus. Or Spiderman, actually."

"I guess not," he agrees. He's dressed in what looks like his sugar daddy's clothes, although knowing Gaara it's more likely the skin of his downed enemies. Naruto likes oversize herself, but the bright colours and baggy lines make him smaller and paler, a very little boy needing a very big hug.

Naruto touches his arm, roughly enough he can take it as a punch if he likes.

She's glad when he reciprocates, even though it'll leave a bruise, but it fizzles out when he says, "What's up? You're all," he gestures, a jagged move, "all broken and jittery." His eyes are flat and level, and not answering would be cheating, would be something she can't do to him.

"I, er, got into a bit of a fight."

"Kiba?" he asks with a calm that is suddenly dangerous.

"Sasuke."

"Oh." He deflates abruptly. "That's more… complicated."

"Yeah. No. It shouldn't be." She squares her shoulders, but can't quite lift her gaze from the ground. The threat of violence has sunk back down through Gaara's pores, but violence was never the issue: violence Naruto understands. It upsets her and occasionally it frightens her, but she can handle it, she knows it, owns it.

Sasuke, on the other hand, is balancing on that fine unravelling line between friendly teasing and cold-faced abuse. Has actually fallen down on both sides of it several times, but unfairly ignores this and just gets back up on it again.

Enough is enough, Naruto decides. The least she deserves is some basic clarity. She blurts, "D'you know where she lives?"

"Yes," Gaara says immediately, point-blank. "In what amounts to a castle, complete with a number of dragons." He pauses. "I could give you her number."

"You've got it? Yes please!"

He shrugs a little, dislodging the neckline of his sweater. Drowning in layers of thick fabric he should be sweating buckets in the intense late-summer sunlight, but he looks icy. Maybe it's a rich kid thing, maybe he and Sasuke have miniscule ACs sewn into their clothes. "She's friends with Temari. Temari's my sister." He finds his mobile in a pocket and manipulates it with rather clumsy finger-stabs before letting it slip back out of sight. "There. I've texted it."

"Thanks." She can't stand people delving into phone conversations when in irl company, so tingly frustration aside it's pretty fortunate she forgot her mobile at home. She always does, much to Mum's chagrin, but it's not as though anybody calls her.

She took the bus home but is winded when she grabs her phone, which is suddenly heavy with the significance of Gaara's text.

It's a mobile number, she realises. No need for landlines, anymore.

She dials it.

TBC