The man rushed back home as fast as he could, a deep and painful feeling driving him onward no matter how tired or hungry he became, and it gnawed at his heart with each passing second.
5
He stopped, his weight shaking the first light snow clumps from the spider-webbed branches of the bare tree limb. His eyes tried to take in the horizon, scanning for renegade Lightning nins, but his thoughts came rushing forward in a jumble and obscured his vision. He briefly worried about the team he had left behind, but when he tried to turn back and shake off his initial reaction to the note as foolishness, an ache so deep within him nearly brought him to his knees each time. Sasuke took a deep breath to calm his nerves and opened his eyes to scan the layout of the snow-sprinkled land. The cold air spiked into his lungs, almost painfully, and out of the corner of his peripheral vision he saw that his hands were shaking. Big deal. It's cold. But Sasuke knew it was more than that. The note Sakura had written was both abrupt and unsettling, and it sat heavy in the back of his mind: come home…come home…come home…
"Naruto…" he mumbled, his warm breath spilling thick across his lower lip.
POW!
He fell out of the tree.
"Oh, god!" a female voice wailed. "Haiyu! You killed him!"
"No I did not!" a second, male voice countered, sounding put-out. "He's an Uchiha—I'm sure it takes more than a snowball to kill him."
He had flipped in mid-air, recovering and landing crouched in the patch of cold dead earth beneath the canopy of dead branches. It had yet to be covered by snow, but now a sludge of white slipped from the side of his face, neck, and hair and pattered down onto the brown earth. Someone helped him to his feet.
"You okay?" Jun patted him off. He looked from one reddened face to the next, starting at Haiyu and working around, coming back to the older man.
"What are you doing?" he asked them.
"Going back home," Haiyu answered quickly, a grin playing on the side of his mouth.
"We're all headed in the same direction, Sasuke-san," Naori followed. "Why didn't you just wait for us to all leave together?"
"We saw the messenger falcon near the campsite and we assumed you had gotten something urgent from Konoha," Jun explained.
"Besides," Haiyu spoke again, "you're still on a mission. It would look bad on you if we showed up at different times." His eyebrows creased in a rare frown. "Don't you want to become an Anbu?"
Do I? He thought abruptly. Aloud, he said: "It's personal."
"It's dangerous to travel alone on the border—you know that," Naori protested.
"I don't care," he said. "I have to get home. You'll just slow me down." Sasuke paused. How many times had he said that to Naruto? How many times did he think that on missions when Sakura grew tired and called for a rest, or Naruto did something stupid and set them back instead of helping them forward? "You'll just slow me down." How often did he actually think that of his teammates? …his friends?
"Tell you what, Uchiha," Haiyu spoke up, breaking into his thought-stupor. "I bet you this entire mission's paycheck that Naori will make it to the village faster than you."
"What?" Naori, Jun, and Sasuke all blinked at him.
"How about it?" he grinned from ear to ear.
"Haiyu…!" Naori wailed.
"She's pretty fast when she's motivated," he continued, more to Sasuke than the others. "No paycheck means no rent for me or medical expenses for Jun." Naori turned pale, while Jun fixated a glare on him. "Well, what do you say?"
"This isn't a game," Sasuke growled at him.
"No, I guess not," Haiyu shrugged. "But it's a hell of a motivator, isn't it?" There was a pause between the four as they each thought their own thoughts: Sasuke, bewilderment; Jun, apprehension; Naori, a mix of worry and determination; Haiyu merely grinned his joker grin and waited. Naori was the first to break their collective silence.
"I'm sorry, Sasuke-san," she bowed to him from the waist, her orange hair spilling over her eyes and then took off like a rocket, gone before anyone knew where to look for her. Sasuke blinked, stunned.
"What's the matter, Sasuke?" Haiyu laughed. "You'd better hurry, or she'll get there first!" Sasuke glared at the other man for a second, then crouched with a dismissive grunt and disappeared as he launched himself toward Konoha. The last two Anbu were left behind, one glaring at the other.
"How could you do that to Naori?" Jun frowned at him. "You know how she gets when things depend on her!"
"She carries out her task until she nearly dies from exhaustion," Haiyu answered, his smile gone, his eyes looking in the direction the other two had run off in.
"How could you put her in that position?" his teammate stamped her foot.
He was silent for a minute. "…how long would it take us to get back to Konoha from here with regular stops?"
"Three days, but what has that got to do with—?"
"And if we return without Sasuke, what happens to him?"
"He fails the Anbu exam. Haiyu, what are you—?"
"How long will it take to get back to Konoha, running full speed and non-stop?"
Jun quieted. Finally she answered, "One day and a fourth." She started at Haiyu in something akin to wonder. "Naori's not the fastest, you are."
"But with that kind of motivation, will she fall behind?" he finally broke into a smile.
"Haiyu…"
"We'd better start running, or we'll really get left in the dust." He stretched a few times, then gestured to her. "Come on, Jun."
It was afternoon in Konoha when Anbu Team Seven arrived at the gates. Uchiha Sasuke paused to catch his breath, gulping sweet cold air into his burning lungs. His legs felt like rubber and he was lightheaded from dehydration, but all that could wait. Naruto. He started into the city, intent on the mid-class residential district—to Sakura's house.
Haiyu panted, a huge, sweaty grin on his face. "We're back!" he called, looking at his two teammates. Jun didn't speak, but leaned over with her hands on her knees and heaved her breath in and out, forcing herself not to hyperventilate. Naori stopped, looked up at the city gate, and sighed.
"I lost…" she whimpered, and fainted. Haiyu's smile twitched downward for a moment, and he walked over to her, leaning down to scoop her up. Jun watched him from the corner of her eye. He eased Naori over his left shoulder, bracing her with his left arm and hand. He extended his right to Jun.
"Can you walk?" he asked.
"Of course I can walk," she snapped at him but refused to move. In truth, her leg muscles were locked up and in a moment they would become like liquid and she would fall to the floor and be helpless and she wished Haiyu would leave with Naori so that he wouldn't see it. But he didn't leave. He grabbed her about the waist just as she began to fall and held her tight against his right side. She tried to fight him off, even if it meant spilling to the ground. "Don't touch me!"
He reaffirmed his grip and squeezed, knocking the little breath she had out from her. "Don't be dumb," he murmured into her ear and began hoisting the two girls into the city. She fought for another minute, then relaxed and helped him limp her toward the mission center, her cheeks burning.
Sasuke's vision doubled. He stumbled along the path, getting odd looks from some people passing him by. He didn't care—he was used to odd looks. He counted the numbers climbing on the doorframes and the mailboxes and continued onward, searching for number three-twenty-three. He was somewhere in the late two-hundreds, if his fuzzy brain was reading the numbers correctly. Images flashed behind his eyes: NaoriHaiyu, Sakura, TsunandeNaruto, the Fourth Hokage, Jun, NarutoItachiNarutoSakuraNaruto… He didn't' know he had hit the ground and didn't realize that unconsciousness came quickly to claim him. He did see a pair of blue eyes blazing at him, and heard someone shriek his name—a girl, perhaps. He was used to that too. Footsteps came and then there was silence.