A/N: I checked on my story yesterday. It was, only about twelve hours after posting, on page nine of the archive. So I've decided that, until I get at least a few people reading, I'm going to ignore my pattern of maximum weekly updates. So, here's another chapter on day two! A LOT of Sasuke here. He's got a lot to think about. Enjoy.


Chapter 1: Renewed


Naruto's eyes fluttered open slowly. He looked up uncomprehendingly at the off-white ceiling over his head. Then he blinked, looked around. He sat up, his jaw slack.

He was in his old apartment in Konoha. The jutsu had worked.

Of course it did, Kit, said Kurama's voice in his head. Don't tell me you doubted me.

Of course not, furball, Naruto said to him in his mind. It's just… wow. I never would have believed…

I know, said the Kyuubi softly. I know. But now we're here – time for business. Are you late for something?

Naruto closed his eyes, thinking. First priority has to be ascertaining the date, he told the Fox. Am I already a Genin, or still in the academy? Is it a day off, or should I go to whichever it is today? And what's the time? He looked at the clock – 7:30. So, unless it's a day off, I'm late, he determined. I think I had a calendar in here…

The young man-turned-boy swung his legs off the bed and stood. He stretched, the proportions of his younger body feeling oddly different – his head felt a little too big for his shoulders – and opened the door of his bedroom, heading out into his, well for want of a better phrase, 'other room'. His apartment consisted of three rooms – the bedroom, the bathroom, and the 'other room' – a combined dining room, kitchen, recreation room and study (not that he had ever really used the latter two, as he remembered).

There was the calendar, on the wall by his fridge. He made his way over to it – it looked to be Sunday. Good, he was off for the day. His next priority had to be determining where he would go the next day.

He could no longer remember the exact date of his graduation to Genin, unfortunately, but he guessed it had been either late May or early June – and it was still the middle of May. So, he decided, the Academy, almost certainly. Still, he should comb the apartment for his headband – if it was present, he'd graduated.

He looked around and sighed. Only now did he remember just how disorganized he'd been when he was this age. He'd improved since, but he was now back at the beginning. With a groan, he threw himself at the first pile of junk.


Sasuke awoke, but his eyes remained closed and his breathing remained steady. This was a trait that he'd developed through long years of potential threats hanging over him constantly. It allowed him to probe himself and his surroundings somewhat without anyone watching able to detect him.

He was in a bed, he felt. His head seemed oddly large and his body felt too small. His body was tangled in the sheets around him – a sure sign of something odd. In the past few years, he had learned to sleep in perfect stillness so as to avoid presicely this – it hampered his motion should he need to do something instantly.

Fortunately, he could detect no sign of a threat, despite these little oddities. Deciding that he could determine no more without opening his eyes, he did so. As he looked over at the window (he was on his side) it was as though he'd been punched in the gut. He sat up, looked around.

He knew this room. This was where he'd slept in the Uchiha Compound. He was back at the beginning, before Orochimaru, before Madara, before Itachi's death.

The feeling was unbelievably freeing.

Gaara would be over at Sunagakure, he decided. He would leave the Sand-nin to his own devices for now. Idly he wondered what changes he would forge, imagining how different the Chuunin Exams might go, with Gaara and himself so altered.

There'll be time for that, he decided. There were months before the Chuunin Exam, if the calendar on his wall was any judge. But now, he had something else to determine.

What the hell was he doing?

Was he here to follow a path of vengeance, but shortened and allowing him to avoid his mistakes from the previous attempt, or was he here to pursue an entirely different course?

And of course, there was the ever-present enigma of Naruto. He'd been so in the future, and now he was again in the past. Was he an enemy or a friend? Did Sasuke want to kill him or embrace him?

Sasuke fell, landing seated on the bed. Cradling his head in his hands, he wondered how it was possible to be so conflicted. Then, after a short period of inactivity, he stood again. He didn't know what to do, so he would decide as time passed. He would give Naruto his short at converting him.

And, frankly, a large part of him hoped the young Namikaze-Uzumaki would succeed.

But now he opened his door and made his way down into the kitchen below. He prepared a small meal for himself and ate in silence, forcing himself not to dwell on his course for the future. All manner of planning was futile, he was sure – not with Naruto, the most unpredictable of all Ninja, on his team and the uncertainty that was obvious of the exact and far-reaching repercussions of each of his actions. He was certain, for instance, that just because a dice rolled last time had come up a five, it was not any more likely to be a five this time than any number. All of the chances were now to be re-rolled. Who knew where the odds would take him this time?

And Gaara was here. That, too, would be certain to have some kind of odd repercussion. There was no way of predicting ANYTHING. Every battle might go differently. Every fork might be taken differently. Every choice might be decided differently.

When he was done eating, he cleared the table, washed the dishes, and neatly put them away. After this was done, he was disappointed, because now he had to decide what to do.

With a shrug, he resigned himself to what he really had no choice but to do, except by just staying home. Stepping out of his door, he walked the silent avenues of the Uchiha Compound, and then made his way out into the streets of the village he had intended to destroy.

As he walked among villagers, whose faces ranged in expression from respectful to pitying, the idea of simply making for the Foundation headquarters and killing Danzo now came to him – or simply destroying the other two elders immediately. But he dismissed the idea, realizing that despite all the strength of his jutsu and Yin chakra, he was still no match for the ANBU and Foundation in this weak, youthful body.

"Hey, Sasuke-kun!" a voice came suddenly to his ears. A voice he knew a little better at this time of his life than he wanted to. Sakura had found him.

Without the slightest change of expression, he pushed off of the ground and, with a speed even he shouldn't have possessed at this age, made a chakra-assisted leap onto a nearby roof and then leapt down into the adjacent street. Hopefully that'll keep her off of my back for at least a few minutes, he thought without conviction. To think just yesterday she was enslaved by my jutsu…

That thought hurt him more than he'd have liked. Sakura had always been an odd point. He'd have liked to say that since leaving the village she'd meant nothing to him, but it really wouldn't have been true. Only in his darkest times had he ever really felt like killing her – the rest of the time he thought that if she came before him, he'd be most likely to send her away as gently as he could. No matter what he himself said to the contrary, after all, they were both fellow members of Team Seven. Not much could change that, though he might want it to.

Thoughts of Team Seven, unfortunately, brought him back to the most irksome source of his own second-guessing and half-wishes – Naruto. Of course, it didn't help that his feet had on some subconscious command carried him to a street corner which gave him an absolutely perfect view of his blond former/to-be teammate's run-down apartment.

He stopped there and, against the wishes of a large part of his mind, looked up at the small area for a time, thinking. Remembering.

"Sasuke-kun!" cried Sakura again, catching up to him. "Hi! How are you today?" she asked, somewhat breathlessly.

"Fine," he said without thinking. It was surreal, being back to the point where he'd still been the object of Sakura's affection rather than the main object of her fear and hatred.

"I'm good too, thanks for asking," she said happily in classic Sakura style – he remembered her as always being so obsessed with receiving his attention that she'd almost had herself convinced that she actually did.

In an instant, a decision was made. Screw the consequences, he thought. He always had felt surprisingly guilty about his treatment of Sakura. He couldn't of course give her what she really wanted, which was his love, but he could at least give her what she deserved – his attention as a classmate.

"I didn't," he interrupted her. She blinked at him in surprise – he knew he'd never done this before. "I didn't ask how you were doing," he said, turning to face her – another thing, he'd never really done last time. "But I will now. How are you?"

She stared at him for a second and then stuttered, "I'm, uh, great. Th-thanks for, uh, asking." Then she seemed to compose herself and quickly transitioned back into her normal pre-recorded tangent. "Well, Sasuke-kun, if you're not busy, do you want to go to lun—"

"No," he cut her off, barely containing the urge to roll his eyes. It was amazing, really, how he'd been able to reduce this girl of almost genius-level IQ into an idiotic, fawning fangirl. If only he'd been able to do something similar to Shikamaru. That would save a lot of problems from the damnable tactician.

…On second thought, not really. Bad mental images.

"No, I won't go on a date with you," he said, forcing himself to continue holding her gaze – he'd started this, and he'd be damned if he wouldn't finish it. "But if there's something you want to talk to me about as a classmate and not as some idol, then feel free."

She stood there in amazement, staring at him. Now he did roll his eyes. "God," he said. "There's more to life than some ridiculous crush, Sakura." With that said, he turned back and looked up at the old apartment again, determined to give her the next move.

He half expected her to find some excuse to leave – she was way out of her comfort zone, he knew – but she surprised him. "Well, uh, what are you looking at?" she asked, following his gaze.

It's a start, he thought, almost grinning, idly wondering how she'd have acted if he ever had taken her on a date. She'd probably have been unable to think of anything to talk about and gone home ashamed of herself – or perhaps she'd have been to drunk on the high of defeating Ino to have bothered with the latter. "You see that apartment?" he asked her, pointing the object of his attention out to her.

"Uh, yeah…" she said, clearly very unsure of her footing. "W-what about it?"

"Calm down, first of all," said Sasuke, rolling his eyes again. Now that he was in the middle of it, her actions suddenly weren't such an annoyance to him as they were just an obstacle he felt compelled to help her overcome. She couldn't stay obsessed over him – that would only be detrimental to her, and since it would be no good to him whatsoever, all he wanted to do was avoid inflicting that pain on her. "Look at it this way…" he stopped. "Actually, never mind," he said. "That was a bad idea. Look, stop looking at me like an idol, like I said. Right here, right now, I'm a classmate. And I want to be treated as such."

For a moment she stared at him with eyes almost glazed with her glorified perception of him, and he wondered what on earth made him so appealing to her and to Ino. He was nothing more than a boy with a misguided perception of the world and a darkened view of life. What was good about that? Even he was repulsed by himself – his only drive was vengeance, and that, as he himself knew well, led nowhere near happiness. It only led to pain. It was a path he followed only because he didn't know how to turn aside.

Then she seemed to shake herself, and he was astonished by her ability to control herself. He'd made his desires clear, and she was willing to conform. "Okay," she said. "Uh, sorry."

"If you're going to stutter about it, don't be," he said, causing her to blush. "Now, do you know who lives in that apartment?" he asked her, wondering how well she knew Naruto at this point, if at all.

"No," she said, blinking. "Should I?"

"No," he said slowly. "No, I guess not. You know Naruto?"

She nodded vehemently. "That idiot! Does he live here, then?"

He nodded. "Is that all you think about him, then?" he asked softly. "That he's an idiot?"

"Well, yeah," she said looking at him oddly. "Why, do you…" her voice faded, and her eyes widened as a though occurred to her. "Sasuke-kun, are you—"

"I'm not gay," he said instantly, predicting her questions, "And I'm not stalking Naruto."

"Oh… okay, then," she said, sounding relieved – and, oddly, a little disappointed.

Damn fangirls and their perverted tendencies, Sasuke thought, barely suppressing a shudder. "Have you ever wondered why he lives in a place like this?" he asked, gesturing to the slums around.

"Well, he doesn't have much money, does he?" Sakura said. "He's an orphan."

"So am I," said Sasuke sardonically.

She blushed. "Well, yeah, but you've got the Uchiha fortune."

"And why didn't he inherit any of his parents' money? Do you know?" Sasuke asked, almost certain she wouldn't.

She blinked in surprise. "No," she said, slowly. "Maybe his parents were poor?"

"Maybe," said Sasuke, but at the same time he thought, I can't believe we were all this stupid! I mean really, how many Nordic blonds has this village turned out over the years? The Fourth wasn't poor, so why doesn't Naruto have the money he should? Why doesn't he live in the Namikaze estate? He knew the answer, of course; anything given to Naruto of his father's could be used to trace the boy back to being his father's son by the man's enemies. Sasuke's questions could really be summed into one: Why is life so unfair? Why on earth was he, a boy with nothing but dark ambitions, given so much while the one who deserved it all was left in the slums?

Perhaps… perhaps it was because of the circumstances of his upbringing that Naruto had become the upbeat, strong young man he had. But enough was enough.

And in that moment, Sasuke chose his path. Danzo was his enemy. So were the elders. But Konoha itself he would forgive for his friend – for Naruto. Sasuke's path would be different this time. No matter what, he swore to himself, This time I'll be the friend Naruto deserves.

"Sasuke?" Sakura's voice broke into his reverie. She was looking at him worriedly, and only now did he realize his face had set itself into a mask of determination. He allowed his muscles to relax. "Is something wrong?"

"No," he said, smiling slightly at her, causing her, despite her admirable self-control, to blush again. "Nothing. Call it… an epiphany."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked bewilderedly.

His smile widened a little. "Make of it what you will," he said.

As he turned and walked away down the street, he thought he heard her mumble, "So… cool…"

Then she started to follow him, and tried to start another line of conversation. As he'd asked, it wasn't related to dating.

And for once, he didn't mind in the slightest.


Now, there's one question I'm sure is foremost in many of your minds. Is this a SasuSaku fic? Well, my readers, I invite you to guess. Nyeck nyeck…

Anyway, this came out with a lot of Sasuke, as I said and you saw. I didn't intend that originally, and Naruto is supposed to end up with more of a spotlight by story's end. But for now Sasuke's character has got a lot of evolution to do. Here's the first, all-important part of it. Hope you liked the chapter. Please review!