10. Keyhole

"Hey, Sakura-chan, why am I in hospital?" Naruto asked as Hinata finally made her escape. "Did we get attacked on the way back? Did Sasuke wake up yet?"

Sakura didn't answer, just pointed and watched. It was always something to see Naruto when he was truly happy, the way he seemed to inhale joy and become twice as tall, eyes twice as blue. He drank in the sight of Sasuke as if looking at him fulfilled some need which had been starved, as if he was taking a breath for the first time in years. But he didn't grin, or shout, his mouth shifting into a sombre smile, sad and strangely accepting.

"Are you back, Sasuke, or are you just here?"

"I don't know."

There was no surprise in Naruto's face. For all his outward optimism, he'd shared Sakura's doubts.

"Why not? If you decided not to kill your brother?"

Sasuke closed his eyes, his face calm. When he opened them again, the sharingan's bloody gleam gave his features an alien, inhuman aspect.

"What he told me, that night, I heard it as a challenge, heard: 'You are weak. If you want to kill me, get stronger and try again. But you'll never surpass me.' I wasn't listening properly. Wasn't seeing what he was saying. 'You are weak. You must get stronger, and try again. Surpass me.'"

He let the sharingan fade and went on, voice flat and weary, with an edge of bitterness. "These eyes, they're part of that group's purpose, just like the monster in you. When I saw that what Itachi wanted most was for me to surpass him, to have his blood on my hands as he had my clan's on his, how could I finish that strike? What does it achieve to give him what he wants? Besides, if I am to avenge my clan, I need first to know how much of a puppet Itachi was. At what point he came in contact with these Akatsuki."

"None of that's any reason not to come back," Naruto said, inescapably single-minded.

"There was one other thing my brother told me to do, Naruto. To kill my best friend. I'd prefer to not have the opportunity again." As Naruto's jaw sagged in shock, Sasuke's brooding anger surfaced, and the black glance he gave to the senior nin in the room was far from friendly. "Besides, Konoha's interest in bringing my brother to account has always seemed, shall we say, lacking? More energy appears to have gone into preventing me from doing so."

"Wait! Why would he want you to kill me? That doesn't make sense. They're trying-"

"Ironic, yes. Our team makeup was beyond his predictions." Sasuke's dark eyes had remained on Kakashi-sensei, who had long since put away his book. "What is the name of the man belonging to that eye?"

Kakashi-sensei sighed, looking down. Then, ignoring his former student's fulminating gaze, he turned to Sakura and said: "I owe you an apology, Sakura. I shouldn't have disbelieved your description. But for the man who gave me this eye to be alive means that I failed him even more than I knew. My team-mate. My friend. Uchiha Obito." He nodded toward Tsunade-sama. "As you said yesterday, it is unreasonable to believe it to be anyone else. The right side of his body was crushed. His dying wish was that his left eye be given to me. And we left him, deep in enemy territory, could never recover the corpse."

"No matter how fierce his loyalty to Konoha may be, such an experience must change a man," Tsunade-sama said.

"I'll never believe –" Kakashi-sensei stopped, his visible eye narrowing to a slit. "Well, let's just say that it must have changed him beyond comprehension."

"Call it a working theory," Tsunade-sama said dryly. Sakura could see the signs that her already thin patience was stretching to the limit. "Uchiha Sasuke. If the seal has not weakened, explain this." She gestured generally to Naruto and Yamato-taichou, who had seated himself on the floor in the corner, worn from a long night watching over Naruto.

"Something has been added," Sasuke replied, the question seeming to distract him at least momentarily from remembered anger. "You have a fox and a frog living inside you now, Naruto. It must be getting crowded."

"E-eh?!" Naruto, perplexed, pulled up his shirt to reveal the markings around his navel. "Are you sure?"

Sasuke's gaze was turned toward Tsunade-sama. He'd been watching for her reaction, and had not missed the way golden eyes had widened, but commented only with the faintest curl of his lip before going on.

"The frog is a key, Naruto. The key to the Kyuubi's seal, sitting right by the lock. By being there, it makes the shape of the lock obvious. The Kyuubi cannot reach the key, but picture the lock as a tiny moving pinprick of a hole in a very large wall. Barely enough of a weakness for more than mischief, but apparently entertaining while it lasted. It was controlling you, until I made the lock a little harder to see."

Sakura wasn't certain Naruto had followed the details of the explanation, but he understood the last part of it well enough, cheeks draining of colour.

"Did I hurt anyone?" he asked, voice small.

"Enough." Tsunade-sama had reached her limit. "You." She pointed to Sasuke. "You know nothing of the efforts made regarding Uchiha Itachi, and while you are in this village you will acknowledge its rule. Kakashi, take him to my office. Sakura, you have patients: I will see you at sunset. Yamato, you are overdue rest. Report to me in the morning. And you –" Her tone softened. "You hurt no-one, Naruto." She glanced at the door, where the rattle of crockery heralded Hinata's hesitant arrival. "Eat your ramen."

Everyone obeyed. No-one looked happy.

---

Notes:

Thanks for the colour dinks, Gabzilla.