A/N: Hello! Long time no talk ;) Here's some fillery feel-good stuff while I figure out both my life and the entire course of this story. I've plotted to about chapter 37, though naturally I'm nowhere near complete.

Chapter 17

... And sometimes they don't.

Air escaped her lungs in a whoosh as her back slammed into the tree. The wood creaked ominously behind her, as though it were close to falling. In her moment of shock, she fell to the ground on her ass, head spinning nauseously.

"Charlie-chan," Kakashi called from a few yards away. "The point of the shunshin is to go forwards-"

"I got that!" the redhead ground out. How had she gone backwards?

Back now aching and head throbbing, she got to her feet. They had been trying this technique for close to three days now, and she still didn't have the hang of it. It was honestly a little embarrassing- she always had a handle on things, after all. Even Naruto didn't go backwards.

"I need to work on something else before I go crazy," Charlie decided, running an agitated hand through her hair. On the other side of the field, Naruto successfully performed a series of backflips. "That's too flashy and slow!" she called, feeling particularly negative.

Naruto stuck his tongue out at her but offered no further reply.

"Why don't you go bother that Uchiha you seem so taken by? You've been practicing for almost five hours now," Kakashi suggested. "I was about to wrap things up anyway." Charlie sighed, shoulders slumping helplessly. She knew the last part was added for her benefit. She doubted Naruto didn't have enough juice to keep going for another few hours.

"I'm not 'taken' by him, I'm just making him hang out with me to protect him from his fan club. But... maybe I can find a more sedentary thing to occupy my time?" she trailed off thoughtfully, finger going to her chin. Ever since coming to Konoha seven months ago, she hadn't had much time to be still.

"You might like fuuinjutsu," Minato suggested. She almost chuckled; of course he would suggest something like that.

'And what makes you think that?'

"Well, the fact that you'd be extraordinary at it. Your memory would be abundantly useful in such an art." His tone was a bit wistful.

Charlie bit her lip and shucked her jacket back on from where it lied bundled under the tree. "I'll get going, then. Naru-chan, be home for dinner by nine, okay? I'll make noodles~"

"YATTA!" the blond called, standing on his hands. He trembled, before falling. "KUSO!"

Charlie deadpanned. "You're too exuberant," she added. Giving a single wave to Kakashi, she strolled past the chainlink fence of the training area, feeling a little defeated and just a smidgeon hopeful.

It had been over a month since the start of school, and she'd managed to mostly convince Sasuke to be her friend. She'd only managed to get him to train with her once (early in the morning, before almost anyone was awake), but it was just as productive as she thought it'd be, and she gained a bit of respect in his eye. To her surprise, they were neck-and-neck in taijutsu- she bested him in speed, he bested her in brute physical strength, and they were equal on stylistic grounds. It made him the perfect person to spar with.

"Perhaps I'll stop by there?" she wondered out loud, pausing in the middle of the street. She put a finger to her chin; the idea of getting into fuuinjutsu was tempting, as she really did enjoy learning new things, but she also wanted to spar...

Abruptly, she took a 180, deciding to do just that. Naruto would have his hands full for another two or so hours, and so she had plenty of time to bother Sasuke. Shoving her hands into her pockets, she grinned, and began the long walk to the outskirts of the village.

The first thing Sasuke said to her upon opening the door to her smiling face was, "What do you want?" Which, admittedly, was a little rude. She still had a little ways to go with the kid.

Regardless, her grin increased. "I came to hang out, of course!" she exclaimed.

"'Hang out'?" he echoed.

Charlie rolled her eyes and grabbed his wrist, dragging him from the door and pausing only a moment to think up the best way to the nearest training ground.

Sasuke, busy trying to extricate himself from her iron grip, said, "It's a little late to train, don't you think?" Truthfully, the sun had begun its slow descent in the clear sky. Still, there was plenty of daylight left, and the weather was still rather nice.

"No excuses," Charlie hummed.

"If you wanted to train, you should've come earlier," Sasuke grouched.

They made it to a relatively small training area and Charlie rolled her shoulders, a mischievous grin teasing at her lips. She threw her jacket to the ground once more, watching Sasuke as he begrudingly started stretching. 'Wait for it...' She knew he would complain more. It would be the perfect opportunity.

Sure as the sun, a moment later the kid started, "You know, you can't just invite yourself-" and cut off as she lunged at him, barely managing to dodge.

She had a puckish smile on her face as she said, "A ninja should always be on his guard." Her opponent slid into what she now recognized as the Uchiha-style stance, face turning stony. "Feel free to use ninjutsu, by the way, as long as you don't shoot to kill. Let's have a real spar, okay?"

And off they went.

"Maaan, this is almost as hard as the bunshin," Naruto complained, muscles finally feeling the fatigue he'd been trying to deny for hours. Night had well and truly fallen over the teacher and student, and he shivered lightly as the breeze picked up. They had gotten over the worst of winter, but it wasn't completely out of the game yet.

"If I recall correctly, you still haven't mastered the bunshin, either," Kakashi said, in a tone that made the young jinchuuriki glare at him.

"Charlie can't do it either," Naruto snarked. It wasn't often there was something that Charlie couldn't do, and so he milked the situation for all it was worth. "She says it's because we have too much chakra. She says-"

"Maa, maa," his sensei waved a hand, "I know what she says. It's not happening. I would get into trouble for teaching you anything beyond the simple bunshin."

Still, the man sat down next to the exhausted boy anyway. When he glanced down at him, Naruto couldn't help but think there was some semblance of affection in that dark eye of his. "You know, you will need it to graduate..."

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto pouted. It wasn't his fault his reserves were so big. Who knew such a thing could end up being a hindrance? He fell onto his back, hands cushioning his head in the tall grass. As usual, the stars were brilliantly clear in the sky. "Hey, Kakashi-sensei?"

"Mh?"

Blame it on his suddenly sentimental mood, but the blond said, "Thanks for teaching us, -ttebayo." He hardly had time to contemplate it when they were together, but Kakashi had truly gone out of his way to train them. That was... a rarity, for him. An aberration. For someone who had had to fight tooth and nail for what he had, it was nice to finally manage to get ahead some, to get recognized some.

Kakashi gave him his signature eye smile and ruffled his hair. "Perhaps you should head home. It's almost nine, ne?"

Blue eyes widened comically. "I forgot! If I'm late-" he cut off, shivering and pale.

Kakashi raised a slime eyebrow. "Is she that scary when she's mad?" he asked. He'd heard much of the fiery temper of some of the women in the village, but from all he could see, she was a relatively calm girl. Sure, she got frustrated, but he'd never felt outright anger from her.

"I-It's worse!" Naruto whispered, holding his elbows and quivering. "S-S-She gets this disappointed look in her eye, and looks like a kicked puppy. A-A-And you start to feel bad, and the mo-moment you do, she whacks you with whatever she's holding!" He wouldn't be able to tell Kakashi all of the things the smaller girl had hit him with over the half-year they'd spent together. A soup ladle was her favorite, followed by her sandal, her kunai pouch, or his least favorite, her fists.

Kakashi chuckled. "Then you better hurry home, huh?" he said.

The boy needed no further prompting before he was off like a shot. Dust kicked up in his wake as he darted through the (thankfully now deserted) streets of his village.

Naruto was this close to trying to use the shunshin as he made his way home, but decided that he didn't want any more bruises today, nor did he want to run into every wall, branch, and person in the 5-yard-radius he currently had for the technique.

Thankfully, he arrived home only two minutes past 9, and only spared a moment to throw on clean clothes before going over to beat down Charlie's door.

The redhead was smiling as she answered the door, though her eyebrow raised slowly in response to his heaving chest. "Are you okay?" she asked, the 'hello' dying on her lips.

"Didn't wanna be late," Naruto got out, before slumping exhaustedly against the doorframe. God, his legs burned.

He watched unamused as Charlie laughed at him and pulled him in by his hand. "Am I that scary?" she asked him, still chuckling as she sat him down in her living room. Bowls were already set out, though the food was regrettably nowhere in sight.

"YES!" he shouted at her innocent look. Sky blue eyes took in the coffee table with a bit of confusion; why had she sat out three bowls? Weren't there only two of them?

"Charlie, you're out of soap," said an annoyingly familiar voice from the hall. Naruto froze as Uchiha Sasuke padded into view with socked feet and a bored expression on his face.

"There's soap in the kitchen, then," Charlie said casually, shoving the sullen boy out of the way with a playful shoulder as she went to retrieve the food. He followed on her tail, washing his hands rather aggressively before coming back out to the living room. Naruto stiffened under his gaze.

Sasuke didn't seem to notice, or care. "I thought I heard you," he said (in that dull tone of his).

Naruto shifted uneasily as his expression morphed into a small glare. Over the past few weeks, the two had come to the same conclusion that they would tolerate each other in Charlie's presence for her sake. But that didn't make it any easier not to call him 'bastard' or any derivative thereof. It was what he'd been calling him his whole life before Charlie came around.

"What are you doing here?" the blond couldn't keep the accusatory note out of his voice, as much as he tried.

Black eyes rolled as the Uchiha sat seiza-style in front of the bowl opposite to him. "Charlie invited me," he retorted flatly. Naruto narrowed his eyes at him- now that he looked, he could see the fine layer of grime and sweat on the other kid's face, his clothes. She must've taken Kakashi-sensei's advice to seek him out.

It still bothered him that she actively sought the guy's friendship. Wasn't he enough? Well, logically he knew he was- Charlie still hung out with him every day, and she was right- nothing had changed between them. But the fickle green monster of jealousy was not one to calm easily. Naruto couldn't help wanting Charlie all to himself- she was his best friend, after all.

And so the air between the two boys was a bit uneasy as Charlie returned to them with a large wok balanced on her hip. Naruto's mouth watered as he smelled the unmistakable aroma of udon- it was not ramen, but it was a close second in his mind. Charlie always made the best food.

The redhead smirked at them as their stomachs growled in unison. "Eat up, I made a lot," she said as she dished out the food with tongs. Udon noodles in some sort of spicy and salty sauce with chicken and cabbage and onions and carrots- oh, he could eat this all day, but he waited impatiently as she dished it out and sat down to join them.

"Itadakimasu!" the trio announced grandly, before the feasting began.

Nothing much was said during that dinner. Naruto was okay with that- he was too busy stuffing his face, anyway. Charlie seemed to relish the comfortable quiet, a small curve to her lips as she finished first and watched the two finish after. It became a bit of a battle to him to eat more than that bastard, but if Charlie cared, she didn't say so. She just continued to fill their bowls more and more before they both tapped out at the same time, stuffed.

As his food coma took over, Naruto leaned back into the couch, allowing his head to fall onto the cushion languorously. Despite Sasuke's presence, the meal had been good, and the atmosphere was cozy. Charlie's apartment was warmer than his own- he had to suspect the landlord for that one- and he found his eyes closing a bit.

He could've complained about Sasuke, could've grumbled more about how he was in Charlie's house, eating her food, when it usually was just the two of them. If he tried, he would probably be able to get angry at him. But... what use was it, he told the green monster, to be angry that Charlie was making friends?

Hadn't she made enough food for all three of them?

If he got past his pride, Naruto knew logically that while Sasuke was, indeed, high and mighty, and while he- his eye twitched- was a teensy bit better of a student, he wasn't necessarily a bad guy. Sure, they butted heads, but Naruto didn't hate the guy- he was just a little jealous of him. Didn't that reflect on himself, though? Didn't that mean that he needed to work harder, so that they stood on equal ground?

Before he could think more about potentially trying to be friends with Sasuke, his head rolled a bit, and he fell asleep right there.

Charlie was careful to be quiet as she stacked their bowls three-high and grabbed the chopsticks to be washed. Sasuke was staring pensively out her window, watching the lights of their village dim one-by-one. Naruto was well and truly dead to the world, a thin line of spit trailing from the corner of his mouth to his ear. If she'd had a camera, she'd have taken a picture.

Alas, she did not, and contented herself with chuckling at the sight before bringing the dishes with her to the kitchen. She turned the sink on low and began the tedious task of cleaning them- she never liked dishes to pile up, after all.

"This evening seems peculiarly solemn," Minato noted, speaking the thoughts she'd been having for the last half hour.

'It does feel a little weird,' Charlie acquiesced. Thin eyebrows furrowed in concentration as she reached a particularly tough spot on Naruto's bowl. 'Like this is the last time we'll eat together for a long time.' She would never have mentioned it to the boys, but darker thoughts had been swarming in her head tonight. It felt as though some dark cloud leered over her head, casting an odd mood over her. Like it knew things would go downhill.

Like it knew she could never be so lucky for things to remain the same.

She didn't want to think about that. That the world was on some sort of precipice, and that everything would change the moment the two boys went home for the night. She couldn't help her hand stilling on the scrub brush, fingers tightening. 'I want everything to stay like this,' she thought, chagrined. 'I don't- I don't want the future to happen. I want Naruto to be safe.'

"I want those things, too." Minato's voice was appropriately plaintive. "When I... was still alive, I thought those things desperately. I fought to keep those children safe, and yet- and yet, the war broke us still. I wasn't strong enough to protect them from what they saw on those missions. I couldn't keep it from coming home with them. So... we did what we could. We'd have dinners just like this one, my precious genin, Kushina. And we savored them with every fiber of our beings."

'I keep thinking that if I plan enough, somehow I'll be able to protect him, protect everyone, from what happens in the future. But...' But at the end of the day, she was a drop in the ocean.

"There is something I realized long ago, and that is that no matter how much you fight to keep the innocent innocent, people still die. That is a fact of life, a fact of their lives. Peace... is not so easy to come by. So, Charlie- and I mean this in the nicest way possible- get over it, and smile. The future will happen whether you're standing alone in the dark or sitting out there with your friends, so you might as well embrace it, right?"

Charlie's lips pressed together ruefully as she carefully set down the half-clean bowl. 'You're a pretty good councilor, Minato,' she said, and padded back out into the living room. Okay, so maybe he was right and she was just being a downer. She wasn't trying to be, truly, but- well, she was the type to worry until she was blue in the face. And, well... she could hardly look at Sasuke without thinking about whom he might become. She couldn't look at Naruto without thinking about what he might have to go through.

Such was the frailty of knowing the future, she supposed.

Her boys were where she'd left them, still alive and warm with their bellies full. Sasuke turned to give her a confused assessment, and Naruto was still slumped against the couch.

"What's wrong with you?" Sasuke asked, eyebrows furrowing.

The redhead sweatdropped. "Ah, still so cold~" she replied, satisfied when the boy rolled his eyes. "Nothing's wrong, besides Naruto getting his spit on my couch." She came around to sit on her cushion again, and leaned her elbow on the coffee table and her head in her hand as she watched the tired blond. "We were training for hours."

"You almost won our spar, even after hours of training," Sasuke said dully. "If you can stay awake right now, he should be able to as well."

She gave the boy a close-eyed smile. "Oh, quit being sullen. You're just mad that we tied. Didn't I say you could use ninjutsu against me, by the way? I'm sure you would've won that way."

To her surprise, a faint dusting of pink came to his pale cheeks, and he glared at a space above her head. "I didn't want to throw a fireball at you," he revealed, grimacing.

"Oh? Going easy on me, were you?" Charlie leaned forward, smirking. "Well, I guess I'll just have to do something about that, huh?"

Sasuke gave a longsuffering sigh, and looked towards the heavens as though they would save him from her taunts. "Please stop."

When Naruto woke up again, it was to quiet voices a few yards away from him. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep for, but given that his neck wasn't cricked from that weird position, it probably wasn't long. Exhausted cyan eyes opened, staring around lazily until they caught sight of Charlie and Sasuke a few paces away. They were out on the balcony, the door half shut and allowing cold air to permeate the apartment.

Groaning as his body gave a full-force ache, Naruto heaved himself to his feet, slumping over to greet them halfheartedly. "What time izzit?" he mumbled blearily.

Sasuke made an annoyed sound. "Almost midnight, dobe. You should be going home." He shoved his hands in his pockets.

Naruto ignored the attitude and turned to Charlie, who was giving the Uchiha a nasty look for calling him 'dobe'. The blond would never get over another person defending him. "How come you guys are standing out here? It's cold."

"But look at the stars, though," Charlie said, one nimble finger pointing skywards. Bright luminescent specks dotted the indigo space, not a cloud in sight.

Naruto puffed out his lip. "S'nothin' special," he insisted, "it's always like that." The weather in Konoha was famously mild, after all.

"Doesn't it make you feel tiny?" Charlie asked, blowing right past his blunt statement. Her face was turned up to the stars, and she didn't turn to look at either of them. She looked lost in thought.

"Nah," Sasuke mumbled, "just that the world's big."

Finally, Charlie's finger flagged, and she glanced at the two boys with a little smile. "I guess that's another way to look at it."

hotxhotguy: Do it I thirst for death! I'm jk I hope u don't mind that this was kind of filler-y.

IronyIsMyName: I originally wrote this for my home state which is not tree-y and never changed it, I apologize that I've offended u enough for you to comment on it. I hope u can forgive this offense and comfort yourself with the knowledge that I have changed it just for you!

GraceHeart27: Aw thank you so much for your sweetness! I hope you enjoyed the chapter, it's just a lil somethin while I figure out the destination for this story. I'll make sure to put more Minato into the coming chapters!

Lyrigami: I do hope so with all the extra work he's putting in! I do eventually hope to put ~some~ fuuinjutsu into her repertoire, but it'll probably be a bit of a ways off. You're probably right regarding the Hiraishin- I've been kind of 'meh' on adding it in because I feel like that's a bit corny, but what do you think? I hope she gets a summons too~. Thanks for your continued support!

AomeAzakura: I hope you liked this one~! Thank you for your review friend :)