A/N:

Here's chapter three. I hope y'all enjoy it, and be sure to leave a review if you do and tell me what you think.

A headache had begun to blossom behind his temple, but he forced himself to ignore it. This was no time to allow his mental exhaustion to get the better of him. He had a job to do.

But how exactly was he supposed to go about it…?

He was no medical ninja. There had been a basic first aid course back in the Academy, but he hadn't paid any attention to it. And Jiraiya wasn't exactly inspiring him to read textbooks on remedying a cold, let alone the injuries Satsuki had suffered.

Naruto ran a hand through his blonde spikes, sparkling white teeth clenched. He was pacing back and forth, like some kind of hyperactive school child. Hands behind his back, eyebrows furrowed… he couldn't help but glance at the slumbering Satsuki every now and then, teeth clenched with worry and anxiety in equal measure.

His heart thumped in his ears.

God.

This was agonizing.

Satsuki was the strong one. She was the one who never backed down, who never turned and ran, who never even considered the thought of giving up. She was powerful, pulsating with drive and ambition.

Seeing her so weak made his stomach clench. It wasn't right; it was unnatural.

He stood, feeling so cold that he was surprised his breath wasn't coming out in clouds of icy vapor.

Naruto crossed the room, dragging a chair behind him. He set it down just beside the blue sofa where Satsuki was fast asleep, sitting himself down in it but a moment later.

He stared at her sleeping face without a hint of shame. It calmed him, somehow. To be able to see her. To know that she was so close. That she couldn't run or jump or do anything to flee while she was in this state of slumber.

Black hair, the color of coal. He'd never touched it before—he wondered if it felt as soft as it looked. Usually she had it done up in a ponytail, but right now it was loose, flowing down her back in a curtain. Her skin was fair, the same color of a fresh set of linen sheets. And Naruto too wondered whether her skin was as soft as it looked. Everything about her was soft, and that felt so wrong to think that he frowned. Satsuki seemed like a wholly different person when she was asleep, compared at least to when she was awake.

'I wonder what she's dreaming about,' Naruto pondered. Did she even have dreams? She'd never spoken of them.

Even back when they were kids. Sakura would share a few of the more interesting dreams she'd have. Kakashi would sometimes quip in with one or two of his own. And Naruto would tell his team about each and every dream he had if Satsuki didn't tell him to shut up.

But Satsuki never spoke a word about what she dreamt of. Not a peep. Naruto knew she woke up in cold sweats sometimes—nightmares. He had them too. Of Zabuza's bloody grin, of Orochimaru looming above in the darkness of the Forest of Death. Of—

The sound of a thousand chirping birds drowned out the waterfall beside them.

"This is the end." Her voice a whisper of death.

Of the worst memory of his life.

Naruto shuddered.

He hated thinking back to that day. The day that—the day that everything, quite literally everything, had gone wrong.

In every way, he had failed.

He wasn't able to beat her and drag her back. He wasn't able to convince her to come back. He wasn't able to delay her long enough for Kakashi to tip the scales in his favor.

All he'd done was nearly die for his trouble.

And Satsuki still walked straight into the arms of Orochimaru.

He blinked.

It took Naruto a moment to realize that he'd leaned forward without realizing, his hot breath fanning across Satsuki's cheek. His hand had curled into a ball, fingernails digging so deeply into his palm that blood had begun to drip down his wrist.

He leaned back, the color draining from his face. Naruto stared, open-mouthed, at his palm. The moment he'd stopped digging into it with his nails, the Kyuubi had begun to work its magic. He couldn't even see the wound any more. But the blood was still there, dripping onto the floor.

Naruto stood up. He near sprinted to the sink, twisting the faucet, throwing his hand beneath the searing hot water. He groaned. With fingernails and elbow grease, he scrubbed the blood off of his hand and wrist.

He turned. Some of it had trailed behind him as he'd ran to the sink; quite a bit of it had pooled just in front of the chair, beside the sofa. Naruto swallowed.

It was so, so quiet as he set to cleaning up the blood he'd spilt. He kept his ears perked; ready to spring at an instant if Satsuki woke up. He didn't want her to see the proof of his weakness.

Naruto swallowed. The paper towels he was using did a poor job of mopping up the crimson liquid, but her persevered and eventually got… most of it cleaned up. Most. He prayed that in her injured state, Satsuki simply wouldn't notice it.

But knowing her… that was all it was. A prayer. She'd notice.

He tossed the sopping wet paper towels into the trash, and put some miscellaneous stuff on top of it to keep it buried. Once that was done, he returned to the chair.

God. Her skin was so pale—had she always been that pale? He wasn't sure. It had been quite a while.

Naruto rubbed his arm anxiously. She'd been out for a while now; surely she had to wake up soon. He was going crazy here with nothing to do. Even if Satsuki's awakening would only unleash a whole new set of problems, it would give him something to do, something to focus on. He had never been one to sit and lose himself in his thoughts. He needed action.

He bit his lip.

'I can't take it anymore.'

The blonde reached forth, placing a hand on Satsuki's shoulder. She tensed, enough that Naruto had to resist the urge to flinch. He shook her slightly; not enough to throw her around, but enough that any slumbering person ought to be jolted awake.

But this wasn't any ordinary slumber. Naruto frowned as Satsuki didn't budge.

Eventually, she came around. It took a good minute of shaking, but her eyes snapped open, so suddenly that this time Naruto indeed did flinch. "Shit!" he swore, as Satsuki's fingers locked around his wrist.

"What do you think you're doing…?" she muttered darkly. Her voice was quiet, so soft that he actually strained to hear it.

"Uh…" He wasn't quite sure how to answer that, actually. "Waking you up?"

Her brow knitted together; that peaceful look on her face had faded with the first moment of consciousness.

She merely stared at him in an unnerving manner for a few moments. Naruto squirmed—his face suddenly felt hot.

"Ah," she said. In that infuriating way that made it seem like she knew everything and he knew about as much as an earthworm.

Naruto frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Satsuki let go of his wrist, leaning back. It was clear she had to press her lips together to suppress a groan of pain.

"You got bored and decided to wake me up to alleviate that boredom." It was a simple statement of fact. There wasn't even the tiniest inflection of it being a question.

"No…?" Naruto swallowed. "I—just… ugh. How do you do that?"

She didn't say anything, closing her eyes.

Naruto's frown deepened. "Hey, don't you go to sleep on me again!" He reached his hand forward, only to find Satsuki gripping his wrist again. It seemed a little weaker than before.

"I'm injured, you moron," Satsuki growled. "Let me rest so I can get better. Or is that beyond your capacity to understand?"

If Naruto had fur, it would have bristled. "You can't 'rest' and talk at the same time?" the blonde countered. "Is multitasking beyond the oh-so-great Uchiha Satsuki?"

"It's not," said Satsuki. "The problem being that I don't want to talk to you."

"Well too bad." Naruto smirked in an uncomfortably similar way to the Uchiha beside me. "And you're talking to me right now by the way, moron."

Satsuki sighed.

She could recognize when a battle was lost. And until she recovered, it was best to try and stay on Naruto's good side… as unbearable as the idea seemed.

"What would you even want to talk about?" she grumbled. "The weather? How my day's been?"

"Well, it is pretty nice out…"

Satsuki's face darkened.

"... I'm joking!" Naruto said, grinning from ear to ear. "But, like, there's plenty of stuff we could talk about." A pause. "Like—how're things with Orochimaru?"

She turned her head toward him, staring the blonde down. "How do you think?" Satsuki said. "Take a wild fucking guess."

"Not… good…?" was Naruto's response.

Satsuki exhaled. "Yeah. Not good." She shook her head, leaning back once more. "That's a way to put it."

Naruto grimaced. "Alright—maybe we should talk about something else." He literally twiddled his thumbs for a moment, Satsuki having closed her eyes and begun to relax once more. "There was something I'd always wanted to ask you, but never had the chance to."

"What?"

"Back in the academy… when all everyone else knew was like, the henge and a regular clone… you knew how to do that fireball thingy of yours."

"I did."

"How—I mean, uh. Who taught you that?"

There was silence.

The kind of silence that one could almost bite into it. Pungent—it filled the air of the entire room. Cold… Naruto shuddered as Satsuki stared off into the distance listlessly.

"My father." Her fingers twitched—he watched as one of her hands formed half of a seal. "My father taught me how to."

"Oh."

Naruto gulped.

"And—" There really was no going back now; he'd already brought it up. "Did he teach you the, uh, other ones? You know, the one will all the little fireballs… or the one that looks like a dragon or whatever?"

Satsuki's demeanor relaxed a little. Not much, but at least she didn't look as if she were a marble statue anymore.

"No," she said. "I taught those to myself." Another pause, briefer this time. "It took me years to figure out how to do them—even when we graduated from the Academy and became genin, I was still having trouble with those two."

"Really?"

Satsuki's lips were pursed together. "The scrolls detailing how to use those jutsu were meant for use with an instructor to help you. I didn't have one, obviously, so I had to start from scratch. It wasn't until I unlocked the Sharingan that both of those jutsu clicked. After that, I mastered them near immediately."

"Cool." Naruto beamed at her. "I kind of wish I knew how to do those fire jutsu things. They're awesome to watch."

"I could teach you. But I doubt your affinity is fire."

"Affinity?"

Satsuki rolled her eyes. "Crack open a book for once," she said. "Natural affinities and the five elements are taught in the first month of the academy."

"Hey, I know about affinities!" Naruto proclaimed. "But—uh, you know, if you wanted to give me a refresher, I wouldn't mind."

She repressed a snort.

"I'm not going to explain something that simple to you," she said. "If you care that much, then find a book and read up on it."

Naruto frowned. "Why would I read when I have you here?" A pause. "Okay, so affinity… affinity. I know about the elements—fire and water and stuff. How would I find out about my affinity?"

Satsuki glowered at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Any decent sized town will have a shinobi supply store," said Satsuki. "Go there and look for something called 'Chakra Induction Paper'."

"Right now?"

"What else are you doing to be doing?" Satsuki grumbled. "Might as well get it over with so you won't bring it up again."

Naruto patted his pockets. "Okay. I've got some cash on me; I—I'll be right back, I guess."

"Mhm." Satsuki rolled over, closing her eyes once more.

The blonde stood up from his chair. Casting a glance at her, he sighed. And then at a sprint he ran for the balcony, sailing over the railing and descending to the town below at record speed.

She was right. There was a shinobi supply store, cradled in a corner of the town. It was dingy, dark, and the windows were barred. But it was there. He had gotten there just before it was due to close—dusk had begun to wind down and soon night would come.

Naruto sped through the doors, wincing as a loud and rusted bell rung above his head.

"Heyo," he said to the shopkeep, an old woman that could have been his great-great grandma. "Where's… um… the chakra induction paper?"

The woman raised a wrinkled finger. "To your right," she croaked.

Naruto grinned. He saw it instantly—swiping a pack of ten of them, he didn't even look at the price tag. He tossed it upon the counter, drumming his fingers on the top as the woman rung them up.

"That'll be a thousand ryo."

He reached into his pocket, pulling out a messy, small wad of bills. He counted them. A hundred, two hundred… four hundred, five hundred… eight hundred, nine hundred.

Naruto gulped. "Uh-oh," he said.

"Hmm?"

"I only have nine-hundred ryo…" the blonde sheepishly admitted.

The woman stared at him for a moment.

It was quite the contrast. The lively blonde, limbs pulsing with energy, blue eyes and blonde hair seeming to radiate light. Compared to the wrinkly, battered, old woman who had see each of the shinobi wars and had lived to tell the tale.

She pushed the pack of chakra paper toward him, taking the bills he'd set on the counter.

"Give me the rest as soon as you can," the woman said. "Preferably within the day."

Naruto's eyes widened.

"Thank you, baa-chan!" he said, grinning from ear to ear. "I swear I'll pay you back!"

Taking the chakra paper and pocketing it, he sprinted out the door. The bell rung behind him; the woman returned to what she'd been doing before.

Naruto ran full pelt back to Satsuki's hideout. Leaping onto the balcony, he was met with yet another surprise.

Satsuki was not only awake, but she was sitting up.

She looked up at him. "Those drugs finally wore off," the girl mumbled. "My head doesn't feel so… fogged up anymore."

Naruto grinned. "I got the chakra paper!" he said. "What do I do with it?"

Satsuki looked up at him. "Open it, take out a piece of the paper, then put a tiny bit of chakra into it. Just a bit. No more than you'd use for a bunshin."

There was the tearing of plastic. Naruto pulled out a piece of paper, tossing the rest of the pack onto the counter. He held it in front of him, staring at it intently.

He took a deep breath.

'Just a bit. Just a bit.'

He opened his eyes.

The paper had… cut in half?

"Ah," Satsuki said vaguely. "Your affinity is wind, then."

Naruto blinked. "Wind?" he mumbled. "Really?"

"The paper doesn't lie."

"What's yours?"

Satsuki closed her eyes, exhaling slightly.

"Not what you might think," said Satsuki. "Give me one of those papers."

Naruto took one of the pack he'd tossed onto the counter, handing it to her. Within a second, the paper had crinkled up in her hand—once he'd had enough time to see it, she balled it up and toss it away.

"Lightning," she said.

"Lightning? Not—"

"No, not fire." Satsuki cut him off. "I didn't know my affinity was lightning until Kakashi and I started training for the third stage of the Chunin exams all that time ago. Until then, I'd assumed it was fire." She was silent after that.

Naruto flexed his fingers. 'Wind, huh?' he thought. 'Cool.'

"I kinda remember some of the stuff they said about the elements in the academy," said Naruto. "Doesn't wind like… do something with fire?"

Satsuki stared him dead in the eye. "Yes," she said. "Fire and wind are unique in the aspect that they compliment each other. If you were to use a wind jutsu in conjunction with my fireball for instance, it would enlarge the fireball and multiply its destructive power."

Naruto grinned. "Cool," he said. "Does wind do anything with lightning?"

Satsuki frowned slightly.

"The lightning element is weak to wind," she said.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"So, if I had a super strong wind jutsu, I could beat your chidori?"

"I suppose so."

"Awesome!" Naruto said, his grin widening. "Know any wind jutsu you could teach me?"

Satsuki opened her mouth—then, she paused. Naruto stared at her expectantly.

"I do, actually," she said after a few moments. "Not many, but one or two."

"Ooh! Can you teach them to me? Can you, can you?" Naruto almost felt like clapping his hands together like a giddy child.

Satsuki scowled.

"Don't you have a sensei that should be teaching you this stuff?" she said. "Surely Jiraiya of the Sannin could teach you much better than I could."

Naruto folded his arms across his chest, huffing.

"His teaching is boring," he said. "He always insists on going over super basic stuff… you know, kicks and punches and sweeps and stuff like that. Not to mention we're traveling all the time so the Akatsuki can't track us. It's kinda hard to train when three-fourths of your day is either sleeping or walking."

Satsuki shook her head. 'There's probably something else to it,' she thought. 'That man trained the Yondaime Hokage for God's sake. Is it Naruto himself? Or something else.'

Not that she cared.

"Fine," Satsuki grunted. "When I've recovered sufficiently, I may teach you a wind jutsu or two." She was caving a lot today—perhaps the drugs were still affecting her? That was the last time she'd ever take any damn painkillers.

Naruto smiled.

"Great… great," the blonde said. He glanced out the window. "It's getting dark; I've got to head back before ero-sennin thinks something's amiss. I left a shadow clone behind to pretend to be me, but I don't wanna risk it."

"Just go," said Satsuki. "I'm not going anywhere."

He grinned nervously. "I'll be back tomorrow, first thing in the morning," he told her. "Don't miss me too much!"

"I won't."

He turned and sprinted to the balcony again. Once more, he leapt—this time taking to the rooftops. He was gone, out of sight within seconds.

Satsuki closed her eyes.

There were a thousand thoughts running through her mind, and she didn't want to acknowledge a single one of them.

After a few moments, sleep claimed her.

And she slept more peacefully than she had in ages.

A memory from not too long ago, a few months at most. It occurred to Naruto as he sprinted back to where he and Jiraiya were staying.

They were seated on a bench, the area around them deserted. The sun beat down on them.

"Ero-sennin," began Naruto. "Why—I…" He paused. "I've never heard you say your opinion about Satsuki. Not since just before we left the village."

Jiraiya blinked.

It'd been one of the first times the blonde had mentioned the last Uchiha since they'd departed Konohagakure.

"I think you recall my opinion," Jiraiya said. "And it hasn't changed."

"I don't mean about whether I should try to rescue her or not… 'cuz I'm gonna do it not matter what you think," Naruto continued. "I meant, like—about why she did it."

"What is there to say?" Jiraiya looked at his student. "She did it for power."

"I get that," Naruto said. "But I want power too. The power to become Hokage. And yet I'd never even consider something like going to Orochimaru."

"You and Satsuki are different people." Jiraiya sighed. "And the circumstances are different, too."

"What do you mean?"

Jiraiya stared at the ground.

"Let me put it like this," he said. "How would you rate becoming Hokage to yourself?"

"Well, it's my lifelong dream," Naruto said obviously.

"It's the most important thing to you, no?" Jiraiya said.

"Yeah."

Jiraiya nodded. "Let me start this off by saying that I don't condone or support what Satsuki did. Not at all. But to an extent… I understand it."

A garden snake slithered past Jiraiya's foot.

"What do you mean?" asked Naruto.

"Becoming Hokage is the most important thing to you, Naruto," Jiraiya said. "And you might compare that goal—and the desire to gain power in order to attain it—to Satsuki's goal of killing her brother."

"I would."

"That's where you're wrong."

"Huh?"

"Killing Uchiha Itachi isn't just the most important thing to Satsuki." Jiraiya couldn't look Naruto in the eye.

…

"It's everything."

A/N:

Foreboding ending aside, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. For those craving some action, don't worry. There should be some fun in the near future. You've got to build these kind of things up so they're that much sweeter when they arrive, no?

Thank you for reading. As always, I'd love if you could leave a review on the story, telling me what you think. Each and every review really does help inspire me to write another chapter of this story. If you'd like to get in contact with me, you can go ahead and message me here on FanFiction. I reply to every message I get, so don't think I'll ignore you; any question is accepted.

There's nothing else for me to really discuss here, so I'll bid you farewell. Thanks again for reading, and have an awesome day!

P.S.

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