Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the universe they live in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story solely for my own pleasure and don't make any money with it.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Two not so sexless angels
Naruto found himself kneeling on the lawn below the still barren trees, exhausted, with a terrible pain in his left shoulder, but the pain was nothing compared to the pain in his heart. It had beeen a nightmare of a genjutsu, not knowing where he was and what and who was around him, the only certain thing being Sasuke clinging to his left arm.
Finally he had found him, and he had not rejected him, nor attempted to kill him, but he had protected him and helped him complete his jutsu. Naruto felt a bit stupid that he had needed Sasuke to tell him to leave the forth arm blunt, and he was angry at his teachers who had not seen that simple trick but had rather told him not to use the jutsu at all.
Sasuke wanted him to be strong, he thought. He had even helped him to stabilize the wind shuriken with his chidori, but Naruto felt rather uncomfortable about this: He did not want to depend on Sasuke with what was to become his principal jutsu.
Nothing of all this really mattered now: Sasuke was lying next to him, unconscious, hopefully unconscious. Naruto took his friend's lifeless form into his arms, cradled him, searched for a sign of life and found none: The breath indiscernable, the pulse too weak to be felt – or non-existant. He despaired, tears ran down his cheeks, he pressed Sasuke's body against his own, caressed his cheeks and his hair – that he should have found his friend just to lose him immediately afterwards...
"Don't be dead!" he cried. "Please don't be dead! Why did you have to sacrifice yourself for me again? I never asked you to!"
"Let me out!" the kyuubi said. "I will avenge him."
"Not yet", Naruto answered. "Let me hold him for another while, just as long as his body is still warm, and then let me bury him properly: then you may take over."
Because now that all his dreams were gone, all his bonds broken, his home village forbidden to him, he did no longer care to live. The kyuubi might well take his body and his soul, it did not matter, he might use both to go on a rampage and destroy all the ninja villages, it did not matter either. Just a little while, as long as Sasuke's body was still warm, as long as it still bore some resemblance to how he had looked in life, Naruto wanted to go on living.
He looked at Sasuke's pale face, still beautiful, yet not peaceful as the faces of dead people tend to be in stories, but distorted by pain. He bowed down, so that their cheeks touched, he cried again, clinging to Sasuke's body, for he had no other support in his sorrow.
Finally, when all tears had left him, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He drew his kunai and looked up: The hand belonged to a woman, and there was a man standing next to her.
"You may put that down", the man said. "You don't want to hurt anyone, do you?"
"Who are you?" Naruto asked. "What do you want of me?"
"No need to be afraid", the man replied. "We don't want to harm you, nor do we want to disturb you in your sorrow. But Uchiha Sasuke was our captain, so we have come to look for him."
Sasuke had had a team of his own, Naruto remembered with sudden envy.
"How is he?" the man asked. "Still alive, I hope. You would not embrace a corpse as you do, would you?"
"I am not sure", Naruto answered, and then fear, exhaustion and anger overcame him. "If you are his team, why did you not come to his aid in this fight?" He broke into tears again.
"We were engaged in other fights ourselves", the woman said, laying her hand on Naruto's shoulder again in order to comfort him.
"Now, maybe you can lend me your forehead protector so that I can check whether Sasuke is still alive."
Naruto obeyed, as there was not much danger in giving her his forehead protector. He was still not sure whether he could trust her. She took the metal plate and held it in front of Sasuke's mouth and nose, and soon the shiny surface turned blind. Naruto felt stupid because he could have come up with this himself, but then he was overcome with relieve and his tears were tears of joy.
"Will he live?" he asked the woman.
"Probably", she answered. "Can you put him down?"
Gently he let Sasuke glide into the grass without breaking the physical contact. The woman reached out to open Sasuke's clothes, but catching her wrist, Naruto stopped her.
"Don't touch him", he said. "You may say that he is your captain, but how do I know that I can trust you?"
"You should not trust her", the man said. "She is a perverted old bitch who's only thinking about molesting pretty young boys when they are helpless. So you better take care."
The woman stared at the man, who was just smirking, then she punched his face. The man did not parry the blow, obviously not having expected it, but his head turned into water, and transformed into a head again after she had withdrawn.
"But as chance would have it", he continued, "Karin is quite a competent medical ninja as well. So it would be wise to let her examine Sasuke, but take care that she does not more than is necessary to check on his health."
Naruto watched and listened in wonder, and when Karin turned back to him, he allowed her to take off Sasuke's shirt. These were crazy people, he thought, but he was confident now that they did not want to hurt Sasuke. Still he closely watched Karin, keeping the man's warning in mind: he really did not want her to do anything indecent.
As far as he could tell, she only felt for Sasuke's chakra, moving her hand above his chest and his belly, not even touching him directly.
"That should be enough", the man said. "You are not doing this to have fun. How is he?"
"His chakra level is low, and what's worse, the flow has almost stopped."
"Can you make it flow again?"
"Yes – if you would trust me that I am not doing it to molest him."
"Oh, well, do what you have to do."
She pushed the waistband of Sasuke's pants a few centimetres down, so that the navel was exposed – not more, and Naruto was glad of it. She touched his body with the tips of her fingers, and Naruto watched the rising and falling of Sasuke's chest becoming visible again.
"There are no outer wounds", Karin said. "Do you know how it could happen that he ended up in this state?"
Naruto shook his head. "He was fighting by my side, and just when I thought that we had finally got his brother he broke down."
"Must have been one of their genjustsu things", the man said. "It was quite creepy, seeing you standing opposite your opponents and not moving at all until you suddenly threw that giant shuriken. That was a hell of a jutsu by the way. I would not want you to be my opponent."
Naruto tried to figure out what the man was attempting to convey to him, but before he had succeeded the man continued to speak:
"Anyway, I prefer a decent sword fight to all these mind techniques."
So do I, Naruto thought.
"I have done everything I can", Karin announced, covering Sasuke with her cape. "He will recover, but it will take some time. It would be quicker if I had been allowed to include the lowest center as well, but as you were against it..."
"I just assumed that Sasuke would have been against it", the man replied.
Karin did not answer. "Keep him warm", she told Naruto. "I have not yet fully understood what has happened, but I am quite sure that holding him and keeping him warm were the best things you could have down. You probably saved his life."
Naruto nodded, understanding that she was trying to reassure him. He could not stop wondering about these two people who had appeared from nowhere as if they were two angels, changing his situation from absolutely hopeless to quite fine, strange angels to be sure, always joking and everything but sexless, as true angels are supposed to be, but angels nonetheless.
"Is it safe to move him?" the man asked.
"It should be", Karin answered, waking Naruto from his own thoughts.
"Why?" he asked. "Where are you going to take him?"
"There's an empty fortress not far away", the man answered. "It offers more protection than the open countryside, so we have set up our camp there. Our forth teammate is there as well: He is badly wounded, so you will understand that we don't want to leave him alone for too long."
Naruto nodded again. Emptiness was creeping up to his heart and he fought hard not to break into tears again, this time for himself. He had always dreamt of saving Sasuke, leading him back to Konoha, to the friends he truly belonged to, but now it seemed that Sasuke had found new friends, had formed new bonds, while it was him, Naruto, who was friendless and alone, without any companion but the kyuubi.
"You and me, we will carry him", the man said.
"If you feel fit for it", Karin added. "I am sorry. I should have asked before whether you were wounded."
"It's fine", Naruto answered, though the pain in his left shoulder was now making itself be felt.
"I have the kyuubi sealed inside me, and it takes care of all my wounds."
He had meant to say it cheerfully but his voice broke when he remembered that the kyuubi had been the source of all his sufferings as well – and besides, he did not know how these two people would react to the announcement.
"If you are wounded, I will help carry Sasuke", Karin said, making Naruto's heart drop down.
"It's fine", he said, but he knew that he did not sound very convincing.
"Always looking for an opportunity to touch him", the man said. "Naruto will help me: this is a job for men."