It's been years since Minato last saw Fugaku's youngest up close. Already, in those half-forgotten childhood days when he sometimes played with Naruto, he was a serious, sullen little boy. Not much has changed: it's the same overly pretty face, distorted by the same frown. The same dark rage and the same ill-fitting clothes over the same bruises.

It was easier to feel sorry for him, when he was a tiny tot.

When Minato wasn't the one who – wasn't the reason to feel sorry for him.

"Sasuke," he says. "Do you understand why you're here?"

The boy glares at him. He has a way of glaring with his entire face, putting his full weight into the glare like into a punch. Minato finds himself thinking it's no wonder Orochimaru beats him. It shames him, that thought, because obviously it's unacceptable to place blame on a child who's been sold by his own family to an abuser. Still, for all Sasuke's stubborn and unpleasant, he's never been stupid, and he has to realise that his behaviour will set Orochimaru off.

Maybe it's easier that way.

He'd have liked to think of this in terms of rescuing Sasuke, but he tries not to make excuses for himself, and he didn't do this for Sasuke, who keeps glaring and doesn't answer.

Naruto could make him smile, once upon a time, but Minato has to question whether that would be possible now. His impression is that Sasuke sees the world through a blur of pain and rage like anaesthesia, through eyes that would run red with lethal magic, were it not for the seal.

The seal… it's an abomination, a cattle brand he wishes gone from the boy, and yet, and yet… Frankly he doubts he could have forced Sasuke to do what he needs him to, had it not been there.

Minato sighs. "I'm assuming that Kakashi has explained about Naruto's – condition." He decides not to notice that the oversize college jumper Sasuke's wearing must be Kakashi's. That Sasuke hasn't showered, and smells, to Minato's shifter senses if not to his own, of sweat and sperm and Kakashi's detergent.

Finally Sasuke shrugs, one-shouldered to spare his bad side. He's a forest after a forest fire, when everything is ash and stumps and embers. Ready to flame up again, only there's nothing left to burn.

He looks at Naruto's father – but there's no point thinking about Naruto – at the man Kakashi feels he owes something, owes Sasuke – but there can be no thinking about Kakashi.

So he looks at the man who leads the shifter community. Minato Namikaze is a big man, and the kind of man who'd look big even if he wasn't. He always tried to act kind, when Sasuke was small enough to still think of him mostly as Naruto's dad, but Sasuke knew better, even then. It makes Sasuke want to rip open his throat and peel his vocal chords from their fastenings with his nails.

Kindness is just deceptiveness, a weak person's excuse for not getting their way. Slave morality, Orochimaru calls it, and Sasuke hates Orochimaru but a lot of the time he hates him for being right.

Minato Namikaze can have no use for kindness.

"Sasuke, I understand that this is a trying situation, but I need you to respond."

Sasuke wouldn't let Orochimaru speak to him like this, like an adult taking kindly charge of a child – except those unspeakable nights, too worn down and desperate to fight it anymore, when he's so tired and it hurts so much – but it hardly matters now. Kakashi's not saying a word.

"Sasuke," Minato says again, with less patience now.

The horrible child collects himself, his blank face coming over spiteful and intent. Of all the people Minato never wanted for Naruto… and it's not Sasuke's fault that he's miserable and berserker furious at the whole world, but it not being his fault doesn't make it any less awful or any less suicidally dangerous.

"Am I to take it you negotiated a transfer of my lease?"

He still has a little bit of an accent, all these years later, consonants smudged around cut-glass sharp vowels: it's possible he actually says, my leash.

In the end, Minato does try not to lie more than he has to. "Some attempts were made," he says, which is true. "But it quickly became clear that Orochimaru would never give you up."

The obvious, awful jokes stay stillborn on Kakashi's lips. Sasuke himself shows no indication of understanding that this is funny, or wretched: the only one who wouldn't give him up, trade him away for the greater good, so the only one who values him as more than a means to an end, is Orochimaru.

"It'll mean war, then," Sasuke says.

It's not exactly spoken like a challenge, but what else could it be? They've had seven years of tenuous peace, exorcist factions and shifter factions and all the human factions, almost a decade of conflicts simmering but not boiling over, bought and paid for with dreams compromised into nothing, goals worn down into tired standstills. Sasuke, taken from his family home and given over to – Minato can no longer allow himself to shy away from the thought – to a sadist and paedophile. To a man Minato would have fought another long bloody war before he handed over his baby boy to. If it were Konohamaru…

Now here they are. Seven years too late, he's rescued the boy. When he's already been soiled and crippled, a sour and bitter little thing.

Minato shrugs. It's not the sort of gesture he normally allows himself, but Sasuke's family now, God help them all. "If I'm going to fight a war, I can think of no better reason for it than my son's life. Can you say your father would feel the same?"

"My father," Sasuke says, mouth twisting into a misshapen shape that's possibly supposed to be a smile, "will be delighted."

If Fugaku really doesn't care for the boy, then he has every reason to be delighted. But it's hard to imagine, certainly Minato has never doubted that he loves Itachi, and so surely…

Behind Sasuke Kakashi shrugs too. "I'm sure he will."

Sasuke looks at him flatly, the only way he can look at him now. "Leave. Just go. Why would I want you here?"

Apparently for no reason at all, because Kakashi does step away. He's always known that he's a failure, and now Sasuke knows it too.

Minato Namikaze sighs again. He sighs the way Orochimaru sighs, a stage production. "This is not an ideal situation for any of us. If you believe for a moment that I wouldn't have infinitely preferred someone willing, someone –"

"Someone enthusiastic," Sasuke cuts him off. "Some shifter girl, with the right pedigree and a great deal of magic to contribute to the bond. Someone by name of Temari Sabaku, perhaps."

He's wanted that for a long time, Minato, not that Sasuke exactly blames him. He's pretended not to want it, he's the kind of politician who keeps pretending to be decent long after it stops being in any way plausible, and the kind of father who pretends to just want Naruto's happiness, as if Naruto could be happy in a world where steps were not being taken to ensure a fragile peace. Kushina's certainly always been open about wanting the match.

Only Naruto was completely disinterested. Sasuke's gone to school with him and Temari for years, and while she might have been persuadable – might, let's be honest, have been persuaded the same way Sasuke's been persuaded to agree to things, with threats and brute force – the idea of being with her was obviously so implausible to Naruto, he never even took it seriously enough to object.

Naruto had convinced himself at the time that he wanted to marry Sakura, and that she'd get around to wanting it too.

The only time he'd been into political marriage was when they'd done Romeo and Juliet in school, and Naruto decided that marrying Sasuke would be the obvious – and also romantic, Sasuke, think of the romance! All the free press, we would be so famous – solution to bringing about a lasting shifter/exorcist peace.

Sasuke had neglected to immediately point out that such a wedding would have to involve Itachi and Konohamaru, because Sasuke's just the spare and Naruto's just a wild oat, just a weed, which Naruto had of course interpreted as agreement to the whole mad scheme.

All of that was a long time ago.

In the present Kakashi says, quite lightly, "He's irreplaceable. It doesn't matter who any of us wanted, he's the one."

And it's not news, Sasuke knows it's not news, to be talked about as the solution to someone else's problem. Someone's need, someone's weakness, someone's greed.

It's just been a while since he was talked about that way by someone who treated him like a person first.

Minato sighs again. Sasuke hadn't remembered him as someone who sighs: remembered someone brighter, warmer, who made loud baby sounds that Naruto was by then far too old for, so they must have been for Konohamaru.

He takes a moment to wonder if Minato is as disappointed in his younger son as Sasuke's own parents are in him – and surely, after Naruto, Konohamaru must have seemed an unspeakable failure, but there's never been a hint, never any of that public unpleasantness that froze Sasuke out long before he was given away.

They didn't want me. It's not that they stopped loving me after handing me over to Orochimaru – they never loved me to begin with.

Not even Naruto, idealist that he was, burning with it so that Sasuke sometimes thought his fingertips, touching, would catch fire – not even Naruto contradicted him. Yeah. That was my impression too.

And maybe Sasuke had seemed surprised – though why should he have been? Naruto understands some things – because Naruto went on, How could they have done it, if they – you know.

Mmh, Sasuke said. Couldn't look directly at Naruto, right then, like Naruto had had to look away, too, when he said about how could they have if they'd loved you.

I would never.

I know, Sasuke said, which was strange because he'd wanted to fight, but he did know.

I thought… I thought Itachi did love you, before.

I know, Sasuke said again, in an entirely sharper voice.

Naruto sort of hit his shoulder, awkwardly so it was obvious he didn't know how to touch the way he wanted to, and Sasuke angled quickly so he could take it on the chin, and then they did fight.

Sasuke won.

Not because Naruto went easy on him – he would have been dead if he had, Sasuke goes crazy on anger and pain, berserker vicious in his own cold way – but because he hesitated when he saw the marks, Sasuke was beaten hollow at that point, hesitated more from rage probably than anything, but breathless with it and frozen, and Sasuke could not bear it, and punched at him until he had to move or there'd be real damage, permanent damage.

"I really do regret this, Sasuke," Minato says. "I wish all of this could have happened in better circumstances. But here we are. He'll be home in a few hours. I'll have the guards escort you to a room. They'll find some clothes for you, some food."

Sasuke surprises him by demanding, suddenly defiant, "And how is he?"

"End stage heart failure. The situation's becoming a bit desperate, as you might have gathered. He'll be – intense. Possibly confused."

Sasuke's face puckers in displeasure. "I take it that's code for carpet burn."

They call it that: intense, amorous. It means carpet burn and dry fucking, letting Sakura try to paint over the worst of the bruising and sitting gingerly in class.

Minato's tones go dry and sharp. "No offence, Sasuke, but I didn't imagine you were a blushing virgin."

It occurs to Minato that Naruto might be, might very well be. It further occurs to him that, especially in light of this, it might not be entirely regrettable that Sasuke's…experienced. Sasuke after all is not a shifter: and so will not reciprocate the insane hunger, the berserker need evoked by the bond. If he'd been human, with no magic of his own, or if he'd been sexually innocent – well, that's one disaster avoided.

Sasuke says nothing, which is par of the course from what Minato remembers of him. Minato tries a smile, to no visible avail. He knows, better than Sasuke reasonably can, that Naruto will be desperate. Minato feels desperate too, the familiar desperation of someone who can't be sure of protecting his family, who can only try and try – and he's managed, now, Sasuke's finally here, but at the stage Naruto's reached, his heart could give out any second. Even now, even in this moment when Minato's starting a civil war and extorting sexual services from a child to save him.

It was Temari's voice on the phone, Minato, he's dying, Naruto's really dying.

He encourages them to call him by his first name, "no need for this mister business, we're all family", but only on the understanding that they don't actually take such liberties. Temari's always been quick to pick up on these understandings. Has always had a steady, rusty, daytime voice, a voice for giving commands, a world of terror and trauma away from that needle-thin, needle-sharp whisper in the small hours of the night.

It's Uchiha, of course it's bloody Uchiha. He's really going to die.

Minato had hoped for another shifter, like every parent hopes for another shifter for their child. There's such safety in that, in mutual bond compulsion and mutual magic, the very opposite of getting a human: someone who does not need you, and usually does not want you. Someone who can contribute no magic to the bond, and might die from yours, and then kill you too, just by dying.

Well, Sasuke won't die. Sasuke, beyond that crippling seal, is so full of magic he could burst.

Sasuke says, "Your wife must be furious."

Minato's instinct is to interpret this as a political challenge, as Sasuke testing the waters. But Sasuke's face is distant, distracted, for the first time less furious than tired. There's something pinched about his mouth, despite that unsettling beauty. Very much his mother's son, they all used to say, until it became so painfully clear that neither Mikoto nor Fugaku was at all pleased by that observation.

"Furious isn't an uncommon mood for her, I'm afraid," Minato observers. He keeps his voice mild, his face too. Sasuke's entirely correct, and doesn't need to have this confirmed. "You needn't concern yourself with that."

Kushina's a proud woman, and passionately involved in governing their tribe, steering it safely through all the factions. If she'd just met Naruto, met him as another young man with no ties to them beyond being shifter, Minato believes she would have liked him.

But she entered their marriage and their bond in good faith, prepared to learn to love him, pleased to rule with him and bear his heirs – and so who can blame her, for not loving Minato's lovechild, the son of a human woman that Minato had, at the time, been trying to marry? Who can fault her for finding it unforgiveable that he's now risking so much, so very much, in order to bring Sasuke here for Naruto?

Certainly not Minato.

Sasuke shrugs, that jerky one-shouldered movement, so clearly a bitter concession to the cripple mark, the slave brand. Fifteen years old and already having to spare his bad side, adjust his movements around the kind of scarring that never goes away.

"Sasuke." Kakashi's voice now, and it's odd and jarring, and acutely nauseating. Kakashi spent so many years trying to convince the world he was an adult – which, Minato maintains, he was very obviously not, though it was clear to anyone he wasn't a child, that childhood was ripped out of him when his parents died, and there's been nothing to fill the holes it left behind – and so schooled his voice to come low and grown up. Only today he suddenly sounds his age, and Minato remembers that Kakashi too is young, suddenly so acutely young.

"Fuck you forever," Sasuke snaps without looking at him. "Where are the guards, then?"

Minato presses the intercom button, and very shortly Sasuke's marched off between Genma and Raidou.

This is the same building Naruto lived in, back in the distant days of childhood, but it's been destroyed and then renovated again and again, to the point Sasuke couldn't be sure to find his way around it unescorted.

"He's a really good kid," offers the guard Sasuke doesn't recognise. Clearly a miss-hire.

Sasuke gives him the look he learnt from Itachi, before Itachi turned it on him: a look to remind him, down to the marrow of his bones, that no matter what has been done to Sasuke, Sasuke is and always will be the hand of God upon this earth, while this make inu is the beastly result of ancient demonic interbreeding.

"What Raidou means," Genma cuts in, "is that this is far from the worst that could happen."

Sasuke's prepared to grant that this is a more realistic proposition.

Genma continues, lightly, the same kind of lightness as Kakashi's, "Just imagine if it had been your brother."

Of course it's the same lightness as Kakashi's. Kakashi grew up with this man, grew up owing Minato Namikaze–

"Then Naruto would die," Sasuke says, cutting off his own thoughts.

"I'd imagine so," Genma agrees, shrugging philosophically. "And so – to be perfectly frank what's going to happen is he's going to put his dick in your arse and move it around until he comes, but it won't take long and he'll be nice about it. I'd think him being nice about it is the only part of this that'll be news to you."

It's a dumb thing he's doing now, Genma knows that. He's not generally given to dumbness, so it stands out all the more, the colossal stupidity he's indulging in.

It's easy to forget yourself, when Kakashi teases the kid so easily, when you've seen him around mostly as Naruto's friend. When Naruto's really dying, and this selfish little bitch who's supposed to be his friend, whom Naruto has always defended as his friend, is pouting about being asked to save him. Being asked to do something for his friend that, let's be honest, everyone knows he's doing on a regular basis for far less deserving people…

But these are excuses: it's easy to forget yourself, when the seal keeps Sasuke's magic locked up inside him, safely inaccessible as if he were really human.

Which is of course not at all the case. Fugaku's spare but Orochimaru's heir, and the seal won't last forever. When it's gone, Genma's already certain, Sasuke will have neither forgotten nor forgiven.

He seems harmless now, just a sullen teenager, but Genma saw Mist Town after the massacre. Saw Sasuke, after Mist Town Massacre, and couldn't doubt for an instant the connection. Not ten years old, and with more lives on his conscience than Genma's collected during a decade as Namikaze's security.

He'd possibly saved the continent. And it's a good continent, Genma likes living here, but Genma knew people in Mist Town, too, people who don't live anywhere in this world anymore.

It doesn't behove people like Genma to forget these things, to forget that in this one matter Sasuke Uchiha is like Naruto, like Minato: people who operate on a different scale than Genma and his ilk.

"I'm sorry," he says, and he doesn't mean it but he's aware that he ought to. "I shouldn't have said that."

"You have no business speaking to me at all."

"Here we are," Raidou interjects, pushing open a door. "Please."

Genma takes a moment to be glad that Uchiha doesn't object, that they're all spared the nightmarish awkwardness of having to force him.

Sasuke enters what they've all referred to, laughingly and then not, as the princess tower. They lock the door behind him, and good riddance, Genma's glad of it.

He'll let slip a hint of this later, much later, to Kakashi, who will have joined him and drunk with him. And that too will be a mistake, because Kakashi will look at him as Genma looks at Sasuke, as someone who's no better than they ought to be, and he will be reminded that Kakashi isn't really his friend, could never be his friend, because Kakashi too operates on a different scale.

xxxxx

Naruto did not, in point of fact, know the moment he saw him. It just feels like he did, now in retrospect, when Sasuke is all he can see.

"Naruto! Naruto, for fuck's sake, we gotta scram." Kiba's voice, and then Kiba's arm, steady around his shoulders. Naruto couldn't stay on his feet without it, probably, and it's warm and friendly and he's glad of it. It's also a redhot yoke: the wrong arm, and Kyuubi, all berserker craving and already dying, bites and claws on the inside of him, trying to break out into the world and tear it off. "Gaara, shit, come get his other arm!"

They remove him from the car by main force, under a steady stream of curses. Naruto hears it like that: a steady stream of sounds, not words, not words that he can understand.

He stumbles into the house, Kiba still too close at his side but then Naruto might need someone to catch him, needs it bad enough that the admittance hardly galls anymore. The world is like this now, because that's what happened: Sasuke changed the world.

Naruto's life, even his past, looks different to him now, like it means something else because it has to be understood in relation to this new change that Sasuke's wrought.

"Hey, Naruto. Naruto! Good to get back home, right? Remember when we left? Seems like forever, huh? Come on, now, slow and steady…"

When they left… then too he was sitting in a car with Kiba and Gaara, then too he was looking out the window at a rainy day. Everything was everyday, saturated with tension but ordinary: his friends, familiar basically since life began, and familiar now on the way north, to war.

And he'd looked out the window, waved to Konohamaru's desolate figure, and tried and tried not to feel that the world had stopped. He knew it was just his heart, which stilled for long, long seconds until it started beating again but all different, trying to match someone else's.

It's all fucked-up now, beating triple time and then stopping for too long before juddering into motion again as though someone's drop kicked his chest from the inside. End stage heart failure, Granny Tsunade says. He's so dizzy and it keeps constricting, and he can't stop visualising it as Sasuke fisting it, right there inside his ribs.

Naruto was still telling himself then that it was just a phase, that it was something that could be got over and moved on from, but he looked out the car window and suddenly the world was black-and-white, muted, in slow-motion. Only Sasuke was in vibrant, blinding colour, his voice the only sound Naruto could hear. Even after, when the car turned a corner and Sasuke was brutally out of sight, he looked around and Kiba and Gaara were in fading pastels, almost already grey.

Bloody ridiculous, Kankurou told him, almost the last thing Kankurou told him. Mate bonds can't be got over.

Bloody ridiculous, Naruto knew, he always did know, because Sasuke has never been someone who can be got over.

And really, it wasn't Sasuke he'd been trying to get past. Just this insane compulsion, like Naruto wasn't a person at all but just a creature helpless before its instincts.

Sasuke deserves infinitely better than that.

He'd read up on shifter bonds, Sasuke, as part of reading up on shifters in general. He was raised to believe, Naruto knows all too well, that they're filth: half-animal creatures, descended from the very demons that exorcists exist to repel. But then there was Naruto, and before that the knowledge that Kakashi, exorcist prodigy, makes occasional references to shifter friends, that Orochimaru in fact employs a few shifter guards. Aggressive, desperate men who stink of animality and power – not meaningfully different from Orochimaru's other enforcers.

He remembers Sasuke's tiny face, scrunched up in what looked like distaste, and probably was distaste too, but mainly confusion. But it's nonsensical. Evolutionary contra productive is an understatement, it's completely insane… Well, so are you, so I guess that makes sense.

Naruto gave him the finger. Swans are the same. They never remarry or anything.

Sasuke lifted an eyebrow. He'd just learnt to do it, and took every opportunity to showcase it. While I'm sure the church approves your hardcore stance against divorce, orthodox Catholicism isn't actually a great survival manual. He talked like that sometimes, in the artificial phrases of a child raised among adults.

Heh, guess you wouldn't have so many saints if it was. He'd got a bit of a smile out of Sasuke with that one, just a glimmer at the very edge of his mouth before Sasuke remembered he was supposed to be a good son of the church, or that he was born depressed or something.

Be that as it may, how could it possibly –

Naruto interrupted him to grind out, in hoarse tones that turned lighter and lighter with suppressed laughter, You're like my own personal brand of heroin.

People quit heroin.

Yeah, Naruto had agreed, slowly, sobering.

There's a famous description of refusing the bond craving being like refusing to breathe, where the author points out that the usual similes, food and water, are inadequate because it's possible after all to starve yourself to death. Not so with breathing – you can hold your breath, but eventually you'll fall unconscious from it. Eventually, you will come to a place where will doesn't matter. Eventually, you will breathe.

The only option, the only way to stop, is to die.

In his memory, standing at the edge of a spring schoolyard, Sasuke shrugs. Well it sounds like a perfect nightmare.

And Naruto had gone cold, out there in the May sun. His future sounded like a perfect nightmare, to someone whose own parents plainly didn't want him.

His name is called again in the present, and Naruto looks up into Dad's ice-grey face. It's not just that Sasuke stole all the colour from the world, he thinks, the man actually blanches. Naruto must look about as shitty as he feels.

Even Kyuubi is still now, a dead thing inside him like a stillborn child.

Dad hugs him, and it's good despite the badtouch burn of any touch but Sasuke's. Feels like home, for a second, before it just feels like home used to feel like.

"I'm sorry. I should have got you home sooner."

Naruto shrugs, his shoulder jostling and jolting against Dad's ribs. "Things got out of hand. And with Kankurou…"

"Yes," Dad agrees. "But that's over with now. Come on in."

"I – can't," he discovers. "This isn't where I need to be. I just – no. I'm sorry. Of course I'll come. God. Sorry. I just have to – I…"

He feels he'll have to die in the gutter outside Orochimaru's compound, worst case, if he can't get to Sasuke. Which doesn't seem real because he knows, he knows, that he'll find Sasuke. He will because he has to.

Only Naruto dying in Orochimaru's house would be an international incident, would be another war, and he can barely even stay on his feet so how could he possibly get through Orochimaru's security? He'd find a way, he would, and…

He could maybe call Sasuke, he thinks. Sasuke would maybe answer. Naruto would like that, there's so very little life left now, so very little that he can have, and that's the only thing he wants.

He's maybe mumbled some of this aloud, because Dad's grip around his shoulder changes, and Dad finally smiles, strained but succeeding. "I think we can do a little better than that."

Naruto's heart picks up speed, but steadier now, like it might not crash. Kyuubi raises his head, claws kneading through Naruto's intestines. "Sasuke," he rasps out, and it doesn't sound like his voice. If Minato had heard it over the phone, he would've never recognised it.

More arrestingly, there's no real recognition in Naruto's eyes.

He has eyes only for Sasuke, Minato surmises. Everyone else is just a blur.

In all the years of his life, all the people lost to unfulfilled bonds, he's never seen anyone as matesick as Naruto, and yet alive.

"This way. Let's hurry."

"If you ever loved me even a little bit," Naruto says, in this strange voice at the edge of death, "you won't give him back to Orochimaru. You'll look out for him, when I'm gone."

"Naruto," and he hauls him by main force into the lift, as if Naruto was a child again, a little tyke who couldn't walk on his own. It's so hopeful, then, when it's someone who can't walk on their on yet, as opposed to this: someone who can't walk on their own anymore. "Sasuke's here. You'll be fine."

Naruto looks at him then, with perfect recognition and a coldness, unintentional and all the more chilling for it, that he could never aim at Sasuke. Naruto's eyes tend to make you forget this, but Minato's reminded now that blue is actually a cold colour, the colour of arctic seas.

Naruto who never has and never will forgive him for not saving Sasuke.

Minato wouldn't really want him to.

"I abandoned him."

Minato would however like for him to forgive himself. "I'm the one who sent you away. If memory serves, you tried to escape and return for him at least four times a day."

"How would he know? I didn't succeed, did I." The words are old vomit in his mouth.

"Naruto…" They step out of the lift, he barely has to drag Naruto anymore. Naruto will feel it now, Sasuke's presence beyond that locked door, will feel it like a hand around his heart, pulling him in. No, really, more like a hook through his heart. "Sasuke was the one who came to me and said I had to get you away."

Minato has clung to that memory, during the cold nights of knowing his best case scenario hinges on coercing sexual services from a little boy.

Naruto stares at him, shocked beyond any relief and any horror.

It had been after Naruto inevitably tried to kill Orochimaru and inevitably failed; after Sasuke had somehow made sure he got out of that attempt alive.

Under the laws of war, Sasuke belongs to Orochimaru, but Naruto does not, Naruto lives in a circle of protection drawn by Minato's love and shifter loyalty. In ordinary circumstances, Orochimaru cannot touch him.

If Naruto attacks him, things are different.

If Naruto, after attacking him and after being saved by whatever unspeakable measures Sasuke took, returns to see Sasuke, then… well, Minato has come to understand that Orochimaru thought it a wonderful game. You don't like this, do you? Well, perhaps it can be prevented? I wouldn't have to amuse myself with Sasuke, if someone else were to entertain me. Perhaps if you were to–

He hadn't understood this from Naruto, who came home shell-shocked and bristling and destroyed, but who'd been shell-shocked and bristling and destroyed ever since Orochimaru first took possession of Sasuke.

He'd understood it from Sasuke, who stepped into his office one day, and said how he had to take Naruto away, before very shortly things would happen that there was no going back from.

It had been uncomfortable, the realisation that when Sasuke spoke of unbearable he referred only to Naruto: that it plainly never occurred to him that anyone would help him. It had also made things easier.

"Even aside from that," Minato tells them both, "I'm sure he doesn't want you dead. Go on. You'll be fine in the morning."

He will, Minato believes, be fine in the morning, because either Sasuke will agree or Sasuke will refuse long enough for Kyuubi to win his perennial tug-of-war with Naruto, and what Sasuke wants will no longer matter.