Author's note: Sorry this is so late you guys. Writing Sasuke kicks my ass. Anyway I hope this will tide you over for a while, because I am going to be having surgery in a few hours and will probably not even start thinking about the next chapter for a week. Review please gets down on her hands and knees and looks pitiful please?

Not Just a Girl

Not Just a Fight

Sasuke had three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a shattered femur. He was however secure in the knowledge that Naruto looked much worse. Naruto had cracked a vertebra, suffered a concussion, dislocated his shoulder and there was a jagged piece of glass through his abdomen. Naruto would heal faster, damn fox, but it was safe to say that he had been the winner.

Tsunade walked into the room with a scowl that was becoming more and more typical as the year without Sakura began to stretch closer to two years. She looked down at Sasuke's chart, which had more than doubled in size since Sakura had been gone. "You are an idiot." Sasuke waited for her to elaborate, but realized that she wasn't going to when she began to wrap a bandage around his ribs.

"Hokage-sama?" It shouldn't be possible to fit so much derision into one word, but if anyone could manage it, it was Sasuke Uchiha.

"This is the thirty-fifth time you have been in my hospital in less than two years, and the thirty-second time you and Naruto have been in the hospital because you beat the shit out of each other for NO BLOODY REASON. You two need to get over what ever it is that is bothering you, or you two need to stay away from each other, because you are my two best ninjas and I am tired of patching you up."

When she finished wrapping his ribs and leg, and pouring a little chakra to seal the punctured lung she turned to leave. Sasuke, who was feeling no better, and looked rather pathetic gave a questioning "Hokage-sama?" It was amazing how he could fit so many different inflections in the same word.

"I see no point in healing you so I can see you in here again in less than a month. You are going to heal the civilian way. And so is Naruto." Sasuke didn't gape, because he was an Uchiha, and somewhere in the thirteen books of Uchiha conduct gaping was forbidden, but his eyes widened minutely and his jaw slackened unnoticeably. As Tsunade left his room he waited, ears tensed, for the inevitable explosion.

"But…" The voice was loud and angry and all of the feelings that Sasuke couldn't express openly were carried in the tone. "NO!" Sasuke gave a small smirk "Are you insane?!" after that last outburst there were no more. Sasuke wasn't sure if it was because Naruto had lowered his voice, changed Tsunade's mind, or been knocked out. But he was pretty sure it was the third option, Tsunade was stubborn and Naruto never shut up.

Naruto was released from the hospital later that day, because even Tsunade couldn't stop him from using the Damn Fox's chakra to heal himself, but Sasuke had to wait another two days before he was released from the hospital. Even then he was forced into a wheelchair; somehow all the crutches in the hospital had 'gone missing'. He was under firm instructions to not attempt to think about attempting to walk for at least a week, which Sasuke translated to 'you should be back to training in two days tops'.

Naruto had picked him up at the hospital, after not visiting for the two days when Sasuke was imprisoned in the white-washed institution, grinning a sickeningly bright grin and looking like he had never been injured at all. Sasuke was in pain, bored, and irritated beyond belief. He wanted nothing more than to plow chidori through Naruto's bright grin. Sasuke reminded himself that without his teeth Naruto could not put voice to all his secret protests, or do that thing he did with his teeth and tongue, and settled on a glare that would have caused Itachi to cower in his huge potato sack of a cloak and beg mercy. Naruto seemed remarkably unaffected; he was going to have to practice glares again if Naruto remained so unafraid after exposure to his deadliest.

"Come on Teme, stop being such a wuss, I've been wanting Ramen all week, and its your turn to pay."

Sasuke frowned, but it went unnoticed as Naruto began to wheel him down the street. It was just so demeaning. He was going to have to add something to the Uchiha books about wheelchairs. He also made a mental note to destroy the next wheelchair he saw, a few katon and a well placed chidori would do quite nicely. Naruto slid him into the Ramen shack and Sasuke was unhappy to note that he couldn't even see over the bar stools in the wheelchairs.

The blond looked confused as he noticed that Sasuke was not on the barstool beside him, but soon looked down and gave an almost Uchiha like smirk, it was unnerving on Naruto's normally easy going face. "Come on Sasuke, aren't you hungry? You have to get up here to eat." Sasuke clenched his jaw so hard a layer of enamel on his teeth chipped away. If Sakura were here she would have smacked Naruto and healed his legs, but Sakura wasn't here and he had eaten nothing but something pretending to be vanilla pudding for three days. He glowered and sulked and looked so much like his twelve-year-old self that it startled Naruto for a moment.

Sasuke could practically hear his stomach acids beginning to digest themselves, but he was not going to ask Naruto for help when he was looking so damn Naruto-ish. Upon realizing that Sasuke wasn't going to admit to needing help Naruto sighed and lifted him gently from his wheelchair and placed him very gently on the stool next to his own, all done with one hand and it looked so infuriatingly easy that Sasuke just wanted to hit something, especially something blond and blue and too damn happy.

Sasuke's homicidal thoughts (he was just figuring out how to dispose of the body when he was as incapacitated as he was) were interrupted and dispersed when Naruto ordered him a Miso Ramen and placed a tomato in front of him while they were waiting for the Ramen to finish. Uchiha's do not melt, so the feeling in his stomach was probably just the hunger.

Sasuke had had one too many glasses of sake; of course Naruto had had about a bottle too much sake. If he were a little bit more sober Sasuke would have been amused by the drunken Naruto, or maybe heartbroken, Naruto was a sad drunk. He had made it clear over the year that he missed Sakura, that he wanted to go after her, and that 'no they couldn't find another person to repopulate the clan'. Sasuke had known he was unhappy, and had been unhappy himself, without Sakura is was good, he and Naruto fit together well, but not quite right. They were proof that opposites attract, but attraction isn't always enough, love isn't always enough. They were two extremes, they were too extreme. Sasuke was too dark, midnight without stars or the moon, and Naruto had been too light, the sun with no clouds protecting the eyes and skin. Sakura had brought the clouds to Naruto, and the moon to Sasuke, she'd been the tempering force in the middle allowing them all to meld together without smothering each other. She'd been perfect because she had a little bit of his dark, and a little of Naruto's light. They needed Sakura.

Sasuke knew he was drunk when he started thinking of things like that, but not nearly drunk enough if he could still think. He took the bottle from Naruto's hand and ignored the snarls his actions evoked. He surveyed his lover, moping and teary, and winced. Naruto was about to start crying, Sasuke hated tears, didn't understand them or deal well with them. He'd left Naruto and Sakura to Naruto and Sakura and only rarely, reluctantly, stiffly, patted backs when people started the waterworks.

"I want Sakura back." Naruto looked at him through pitiful eyes, and Sasuke couldn't help but wonder if he had ever looked at Sakura like that, ever made similar declarations while he was on his 'leave of absence'. "I miss Sakura-chan, and I can't get her back because she is on a mission, and there is no creepy snake molesting her, so I can't just storm in and rescue her, and no one will tell me where she is." Naruto's tears were slow and pathetic, sliding almost unnoticeably down his cheeks, and they wrenched at Sasuke's heart.

He was just drunk enough to willingly pat Naruto's back and attempt to offer him comfort. "We'll get her back. As soon as I am out of this damn chair" Sasuke punctuated that with a slap to the chair and winced when he jostled his leg and ribs. "You and I will go get her back from where ever she is. She's probably gotten herself into trouble again; you know how she attracts it."

Naruto looked up at him through a runny nose and tear fogged eyes. "Really? We'll get her back?" He sounded obscenely hopeful, and Sasuke couldn't bear to point out that they might not be able to get her back. That Tsunade might not let them leave, and that Sakura might not want them back. But Naruto seemed to realize this on his own, because his eyes deadened again, and he felt his heart break a little more. "But Sakura-chan doesn't want us back. She left us, on her own."

Sasuke swallowed a little bit of I-don't-want-to-do-this with the swig of alcohol he threw back. "Since when does that matter? I didn't want to come back either." It isn't quite true, Sasuke had missed his village and his team and wanted nothing more than to come back, he just hadn't wanted to go to the trouble of admitting that to them. But Naruto didn't know that and he looked up with a stupid drunken smile.

"You're right Sasuke-bastard. We'll get her back, not even Sakura-chan can beat up both of us!" Naruto was far too enthusiastic, bouncing around in a dizzying manner. The last thing Sasuke thought before he succumbed to the dizziness and the drunkenness was that it didn't seem quite fair that he was being insulted from someone he had just comforted.

Sakura swore in three different languages. If she survived this she was going to open an ice cream shop in Sand and make a lot of money (because Sand, despite being wicked hot didn't have a single ice cream shop), and never take a mission as a personal favor to the Kazekage again. If she survived this, she was going to make Gaara pay for her ice cream shop. If she survived this she was bringing her cat with her everywhere, the thing could sense trouble. She couldn't remember why she hadn't brought it with her but it was probably a very stupid reason. Damn cat, damn Gaara, damn mission, and goddamn the Akatsuki.

There were three Akatsuki surrounding her. The blond one that she was sure they had killed years ago, the one with the sickening orange mask (she hated orange, it was Naruto's color and didn't belong on something so evil) and Kisame, who should have died with his partner. She was almost positive that Akatsuki traveled in twos, but then maybe they had just never replaced Itachi.

She was sure that she could take the blond one if he would get close enough for her to hit, and the orange one was already laying unconscious (she didn't have the time to kill him, not with two others right there) as a result of one lucky chakra infused hit. She was also almost positive that she could hold her own against Kisame, if she was at her best (which she wasn't, stupid Gaara, and the stupid mission, and now she was bruised and had the same level of chakra she had possessed as a fresh genin, all that before they had shown up), but they were evil bastards and evil bastards never played fair.

She narrowed her eyes and narrowly avoided a swing from the blue man's chakra stealing sword. She debated punching the ground and getting him away from her, but she didn't have that much chakra left. They didn't want to kill her, which was small consolation. Her mind moved as quickly as her body as she avoided the blond's bombs and the fish man's sword. She smirked as she began the movements necessary for Sakura Blizzard. It was a rudimentary attack, one not likely to do much against the trained killers, but it would provide the cover she needed.

As the blossoms that she was suddenly very glad she had taken the time to prepare, flew around the sandy land she quickly moved her hands bit her finger and moved her hands in a distinctive summoning gesture, two small slugs, the fastest and least noticeable of her summons appeared in her hands. She whispered their instructions to them as she tossed them as far away from the blast as she could get them, and then she took a split second to pray.

As she was unable to get away from the resulting explosion it knocked her out, as well as the bomb maker, if she hadn't been unconscious she would have noted the poetic justice. The only one free of the blast the blue man smirked, impressed with the kunouchi who incapacitated two akatsuki members and had reportedly killed a third. He slung her over a shoulder and kicked at the other two until they groaned and regained consciousness deciding that it was going to be so much easier to transport the prink-haired girl if she was not awake for the transportation.

He never noticed the two slugs, one on its way to Konoha, and the other nearing Suna. He would have regretted that, if he'd known.

Gaara scowled at the slug, who in return looked at him as if it was his fault. Which it may have been. Naruto was going to kill him, but first he had a score to settle with the akatsuki and the perfect reason to do it. The slug wisely vanished as the sinister smirk crossed his face.

Sasuke watched Naruto clutch his head as he bent over the toilet and wheeled himself instead over to the tub. He was going to have to pay some genins a D-rank to clean it up later. Just as he was wheeling himself over to the sink and scrubbing his mouth vigorously Tsunade burst through their door and easily dodged the fifteen shruriken that her action caused (twist the doorknob in the wrong direction twice to disable the trap).

She scowled at the messy apartment and Sasuke wondered when it had gotten that messy. He always kept it clean, maybe he would pay for two D-ranks and hope no one stumbled upon his traps, maybe he should make it a C-rank. "Get up you pitiful fools." She snarled and Sasuke was tempted to point out that he couldn't get up since she had refused to heal him. But she seemed to realize that as he pushed himself into the living room.

Naruto had simply groaned and hugged the toilet closer.

She cursed before she crouched in front of him. One hand over his leg, another on top of his ribs, and pushed her chakra into him. It was a painful healing, burning and shifting and wrenching bones back into place, but it was a fast healing, and as Tsunade slumped he stood up, his face grim as he went to haul Naruto up.

Naruto groaned again and Sasuke rummaged through the medicine cabinet until he came upon the last thing of Sakura's in the apartment. It was a bottle of Tsunade's famous hangover cure, which Sakura had gotten very good at brewing. He threw it to Naruto, who drank it down gratefully, turning his devotion from the porcelain god to the glass vial.

They both walked back out to greet the grim Hokage, who wasted no time informing them of her purpose there. "You are both on an S-ranked mission. You are on Shikamaru's team" here Sasuke almost interrupted. He had been the team leader for years "You will be accompanied by Neji, Kiba, Hinata, Lee, and Ino."

"What's the mission Granny?" He was back to being so rude and annoying that it was impossible to guess that mere minutes before he had been miserable. It was really a testament to Sakura's skill.

Tsunade's mouth formed a grim line, and she didn't rise to the taunt and hit Naruto. "It's Akatsuki." Both men stiffened "They have Sakura." They paled and began to pack with a speed that she had never seen either exhibit. "Your team leaves in an hour." And with that she left them to prepare.