A/N: Um, to 4everDestined, no. Tsunade says that Sasuke had stopped being eighteen last month. Meaning its now sometime in late August. Sakura, however, is still 18, and will be until March 28. Sasuke's birthday is in late July (oooh, I should so not now this much). Lol. Anyway. P sorry if you got confused.
Disclaimer: No recognizable material belongs to me.
"Oy, oy. Sakura-chan."
Calloused hands pushed at her, nudging persistently at her shoulders and face until she forced her eyes open, barely awake. "Naruto?" She said, her voice soft and groggy as she squinted away from the light. What are you doing here?
"Where's Sasuke?" The blonde haired fox-boy asked.
Smack!
Crash.
Sakura sat bolt up right, eyes suddenly wide, her head cracking painfully into Naruto's, sending the blonde boy sprawling out across the floor before her.
Sakura gasped and covered her mouth, "Naruto!" She yelled, voice muffled by her fingers. "I'm sorry!"
The blonde groaned, rubbing his hand over the sore spot on his head. "Ow, Sakura… you don't have to hit me so hard."
She smirked and let out a little breath that was like a laugh, reaching out a hand to help him up. His muscles were shaky underneath her hands, straining weakly as he tried to sit. Gingerly, she propped him up against the side of the couch.
"You idiot." she breathed, putting her open palm against his head to check for fever, "How did you even get out of the bed by yourself?" She asked in disbelief.
The blonde grinned at her. "Takes more than a few scratches to beat down Uzumaki Naruto!" He said proudly. "Besides, these injuries are nothing!"
She put her hands on her hips and gave him a wry smile. "Yeah, I should know." She said. "I'm the one who looked after you guys' sorry…" she trailed off as her eyes hit the couch and she realized that something really important was gone. Her jaw dropped a little as her eyes scanned the emptiness on the sheets where Sasuke's shape was still imprinted. "Naruto!" She snapped, suddenly angry. "Where's Sasuke!?"
Instinctively, Naruto shielded himself against her hypothetical blows, which never came of course because he was badly injured, but oh, was she tempted. "I don't know!" he whined. "That's what I asked you!"
"How could you not notice him leaving!" Sakura demanded, already rushing towards her bedroom to get clothes.
Naruto's protesting voice trailed after her from the living room. "You didn't notice either!"
Forget it, Sakura though to herself, as she looked at the five-drawer dresser in front of her. There isn't any time. Who knew where that dark-haired boy had gotten to by now? In the extra time she'd take to get decently dressed, he could be half-way back to wherever he had been when Naruto had found him. She grabbed her boots out of the closet and shot out of the room like a rocket.
"I'll be back!" Sakura yelled over her shoulder as she grabbed her keys and jammed her feet into her boots one by one, hopping on one foot and then the other, all the way out the door.
"Wait!" Naruto's head desperately craned backwards as he tried to look over the sofa arm at her racing form, "take me with y - !"
The door slammed shut.
She rolled her eyes at Naruto's cut-off request, zipping up her boot and starting to sprint down the hall. Naruto was too injured to move, let alone try to help her find Sasuke. Plus, if their childhood friend and teammate tried to put up a fight when they found him – and if it was anything like the last time the three of them had fought each other… well, at this point, she'd have the better chance of surviving it than Naruto did. He was in a bad state.
So it was just up to her to find out where the Uchiha had gone.
She tried her best to ignore the tight coil of fear that was growing in her stomach. Could she handle him? Was she strong enough? Would she end up… losing control? Naruto didn't know how serious that so-called "condition" of hers was, and she'd promised the Hokage that she wouldn't… and Sasuke. He didn't even know what had happened to her when he was gone. She swallowed hard and tried to put it out of her mind. She had already lost Sasuke once, and she wasn't going to let it happen again. Not without a fight. She didn't care what that entailed.
Back in Sakura's apartment, Naruto sat on Sakura's wooden floor, staring at the wall, pouting and bored.
His arms were crossed across his bandaged chest as he squinted at the wall, nose wrinkled, chin jutted out stubbornly. Trust Sakura to run off and take on by herself one of the more important things in their lives and just leave him sitting here…. Only Sakura could be that cruel… He thought to himself. "Humph." There was only one thing left to do. With a determined thud, he put his hands on the ground and pressed, hard. He groaned painfully as he started to try and stand. Okay, so maybe they weren't "just scratches". Maybe they really, really hurt.
He hadn't admitted to Sakura that it had taken him a good fifteen or twenty minutes to simply get out off the bed and crawl his way over to her earlier that morning, but now that no one was around to hear him…
"Owww…" he said slowly as he tried to push himself up. "Ow ow oww, damn it!" he stayed put for a moment, breathing hard, trying to recover from the shots of pain that had tortured him. "Heh." He smiled grimly at the wall in front of him. If Sakura walked in right now… she would kill me…
As if one cue, the door suddenly swung open and slammed on the wall. Naruto froze in his spot when he heard the stunned silence behind him.
"What are you doing!?"
Damn it. He sat back down with a thud. How the hell did she always seem to be able to do that?
Sakura's legs burned under the brazen rays of summer sun. She cringed as the grated stone of a wall she got t a bit too close to brushed along her thigh, which was already reddening from the heat. Her skin stung, her hair she had tied up as best she could into a sloppy, pink bun, which was windblown from her speed, and her lungs were starting to burn almost as badly as her legs.
But she was looking for him.
Sasuke-kun… She thought to herself, annoyed and concerned. Where are you? Seamlessly, she jumped from the ground to the roof above her, using chakra without a second thought. Maybe if she had a higher view she would be able to find him. Before it was too late. Skidding to a halt for a moment, she brushed her hair away from her face, thinking. "If I were him…" She thought quietly to herself, staring absent-mindedly. "Where would I go?"
She'd already checked his old house, the Uchiha estate, and found only some dusty memories, and a photograph of old team seven when they were children, taken out of a wooden frame and shredded, dropped into the garbage. The first rip went right through Kakashi's good eye, and her own left cheek, the other through the center of Sasuke's entire face. Only Naruto had been left whole…
She frowned as she continued to think. That was the way it had always been between the four of them back then. Three strong men, and one silly girl, who couldn't even fend for herself. She stared at her hands, as she sat, crouched on the corner of a roof. Naruto always had been the only one out of the three children who Sasuke had shown any semblance of respect for. But what would happen now?
Now that everything had changed so much? Both her, and Naruto, and Konoha? She knew that she had become stronger, more level-headed, less of the sugar-coated, emotion-crazy girl that she had been. She cringed as she remembered the way she used to chase Sasuke around like a fly on sugar water, or fought with Ino over him until she was about ready to claw the other girl's eyes out. And then… there had also been that change. The one that Tsunade had asked her to stay away from.
"Power is a drug." Her mentor's words echoed through her head. "And this power is no exception. It is dangerous, Sakura. I want you to resist using it, no matter how tempting or desperate your situation may seem. If you don't, or you can't, hold back, then I'm afraid-"
Sakura tried to cut her train of thought off. If she disobeyed Tsunade, she would probably able to find Sasuke. It would be her first time in five months. But… if she did disobey the Hokage... Tsunade's sharp glare flashed into her mind, and Naruto's concerned blue eyes. She felt the bile start to creep up her throat, and swallowed down on it, hard.
"I promised myself I'd only use it as a last resort." Sakura said firmly, closing her eyes before she opened them again. "As a last resort…"
She stood and let her green eyes sweep across the ground below her again, let her senses become prone to anything that might be Sasuke's chakra, but, as usual, there was nothing.
"Sasuke…" She said out loud, shaking her hands a little and then gripping them into fists at her sides as if to scold them, not noticing the way black color had started to swirl around her fingertips. It dissipated after being shaken, before she could even notice it. "Why couldn't you have just stayed put?"
She let her eyes wander off towards the horizon as she felt the entity stirring within her. She tried her best to calm it, to resist. For once… why couldn't you have just allowed us to stay?
"What are you doing?"
Slowly, Naruto craned his neck upwards and twisted it to the side over the arm of the couch he was propped again, recognizing the voice…. He practically sighed with relief when the person scolding him was not wearing a long-sleeved PJ shirt, and neither was her hair rose pink, but pale blonde instead. Safe!
"Heh." He laughed nervously as a train of people he knew filed into Sakura's apartment. She must have forgotten to lock it on her way out… Naruto thought, as several pairs of eyes stared at him. "Hi, everybody!"
Silence.
And then, Ino's pale blue eyes hardened to slow, critical orbs of ice. "What happened to you?"
The fox-boy gave Sakura's best friend a loose grin. "You'll never guess, Ino-chan."
The blonde girl stared dryly at him. "Oh, yeah?"
"Heh." Naruto's grin grew wider, if that was even possible.
"Naruto you look horrible!" Lee interrupted, his dark eyes impossibly wide and on the brink of shining tears. "What has happened to beat back your youthful flames of vigor!" He clenched his fist in a tragic pose. And Naruto's grin was bordering idiotic now, so he just let it spill. "I brought back Sasuke!"
Very slowly, Ino's folded arms and suspicious stare fell slack.
And the whole room went silent.
"Hinata-chan! Wait!"
The small, blue-haired girl froze in her place on the road when she heard her name being called. She blinked only once when she turned around to see Sakura descending towards her from the rooftop, her white shirt plastered to her body, hair growing sloppier by the second. She instantly felt nervous. Not because she didn't like Sakura, in fact, she liked her a lot. But, a lot of things had changed recently, and seven months ago, when Naruto had decided to make his and Hinata's "unofficial" relationship "official", the timid, white-eyed shinobi had grown a lot more self-conscious about what Sakura thought about her. They had grown closer, as friends, sure, but she still kept it in mind that Naruto talked to the pink-haired girl about everything. And that meant, everything. Sakura was important to Naruto, everyone could see that, so, because Naruto was so important to Hinata, Sakura was now important to her too. So, of course, she was now extremely nervous around her.
The other girl landed kneeling, one hand shooting down to steady her drop. Hinata grew startled when she thought she saw something strange about Sakura's hands… But she decided to ignore it. "Sakura-chan?" She asked, her voice soft as always. "Are you okay?"
"Where's Neji?" Sakura asked, her voice rough as she swallowed.
Hinata's eyes grew more concerned, "I think he's already left, today" the youngest of the Hyuuga clan said, taking a small step forward. "Why?"
Sakura frowned, making Hinata even more concerned. "Do you know when he'll be back?"
The younger girl shook her head. "I didn't ask him."
Sakura stood for a while, battling with herself. Tsunade-sama had implied that she didn't exactly want word of Sasuke's return to be released world-wide yet. She had hoped that she could have found Neji, who'd already known about it, but… there was no one else she could go to now, and Hinata wouldn't tell anyone. Would she?
"Hinata-chan," Sakura said, looking directly at the smaller girl. "I need your help."
"Tchk." Was the sort of noise that came out of Neji's throat, who had been standing at the back of the troop. It was enough noise that it even surprised Tenten, standing beside him.
"A-are you sure?" Ino stuttered, for once, her sharp voice faltering and failing her. "Sasuke is back?"
"Yup!" Naruto grinned, "Yesterday I – wait." He tilted his head at Ino curiously. "You mean, you haven't heard about it?'
Ino glared at him, "Of course I haven't heard about it!" She leaned down so she was only inches away. "Do you think I'd be reacting like this if I'd already heard about it you dimwit!" Her voice escalated to a furiously high pitch.
Naruto blinked, obviously caught off guard. "Geez… what kind of rock do you live under?"
Before Ino could explode, Lee shoved her roughly out of the way. "This is absolutely wonderful news!" Lee said, eyes still wide, suddenly he smiled, and lunged at the boy on the floor. "We must rejoice!" He declared, proudly, tears now freely flowing from his eyes. "Tonight! Tonight we must-"
He was interrupted however, by the fifth member of their party.
"What a nuisance…" Shikamaru said absently, looking lazily out the window. "You really can't keep your mouth shut about anything."
"Uh? Hey! What's that supposed to mean!" Naruto demanded.
"It means that Tsunade-sama told us to keep news of the Uchiha's return under control." Neji said, monotone as always. "Not inform the entirety of Konoha."
"Wait! You two knew?!" Ino said, rounding in a second on Shikamaru and Neji.
Shikamaru shrugged. Neji remained relatively expressionless.
"And you didn't tell me?" Ino seemed stunned.
"Sakura told us to be discreet." The Hyuuga said.
"Discreet does not imply cult-ishly secretive!" Ino retorted.
Neji did not very muchlike this girl's tone. He didn't actually remember the last time someone had directed that kind of attitude toward him, or anyone who bore the name of Hyuuga for that matter. Not if they wanted to live afterwards anyway. "We merely separated our mission from our personal lives." The prodigy said coolly when Shikamaru offered no support for himself. If he could read people well, and he could, the lazy but brilliant boy was starting to feel a little guilty. "We did what was expected of us."
"Oh yeah? Well, she didn't seem that surprised." Ino snapped at Neji, indicating towards Tenten.
Neji's opalescent glare hardened to steel in a heartbeat. "Are you trying to suggest something, Yamanaka?" His voice low and dangerous, matching the chill inside his eyes.
"You know what I'm suggesting, Neji." Ino glared.
"Alright, that's enough." Tenten finally spoke up, annoyed, just as the electricity in the room was about to explode. "Naruto," she said, turning away from the petty arguments and finding the blonde, who hadn't really followed what the heck had just happened. "If what you're saying is true then… where's Sasuke now?"
Naruto's jaw tightened a little and his lips formed a thin line. "I… I don't really know."
"For Sasuke-kun?" Hinata seemed stunned, her pearl colored eyes staring at Sakura.
The other ninja nodded. "I know, it doesn't make any sense, but please, can you try?"
"A-alright." Hinata agreed, reluctantly. "I think I can…"
Sakura smiled, and without a word, the two girls ascended to the rooftops. Sakura waited, patiently, but all the while it felt like every nerve in her body was on fire. She hoped this would work… it had to…
"Byakugan!"
Sakura watched the skin around Hinata's eyes tighten, veins reaching up like hatch-work beneath the frail girl's expression. Moon colored eyes shifted around the streets below them, moving at amazing pace back and forth along the buildings and walls, scanning.
After a while, Sakura saw the younger girl start to strain, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out over her face. As a medic nin, she should have told Hinata to stop. And plus Naruto would kill her if any thing happened to Hinata… Sakura resisted the urge to reach out to the smaller girl. "…Hinata." She said tentatively. 'You can stop now. …He's probably gone already.' The words were half way out of her mouth when Hinata let out a small breath. It wasn't much, but Sakura could instantly pick up on her surprise.
The veins sunk back into Hinata's skin in the time it took for her to blink, her chakra level falling back to normal.
"Did you see him?" Sakura pressed, and Hinata gave her a small smile.
"Yes."
A/N: Hm… should I continue or not? I could have made the chapter longer, but I'm worried that it will make the story hard to read. What do you guys think? … Ok. Ok. Er. I'll be ending it now. Sorrrryyys! (the next chapter should pick up the pace a bit, I promise, i realize that this is really, really slow...).
