Naruto understands that it's not real yet, to Sasuke. Sasuke's been on a long leash for years, and this isn't the longest he's been away from Orochimaru: he goes to school, he goes on missions, Orochimaru doesn't mind what he does with his time as long as he comes when he's called. As far as Orochimaru's concerned, he could even venture back to the Uchihas, visit what was supposed to be his home. It's Sasuke who hasn't wanted to, who went the first handful times he was sent but then refused, stubborn and silent about this salting of the wound.

That the leash has snapped, that hasn't registered yet, not in any real way. The impact will come eventually, but as of yet Sasuke's mind is operating under the presumption that this is a temporary reprieve. Remission, not cure.

Naruto sits up slowly, his skin hot and tight – less from Sasuke burning him than from Kyuubi's maniacal desire to rush after Sasuke to assert his dominance and his claim. Naruto pushes that desire away, locks Kyuubi up tight. If he'd thought about it, he'd have thought that that would calm Sasuke down, too.

Instead there's an eruption, the phantom sensation of his mind breaking, he's gagging on a torrent of blood that it takes him a long time to understand isn't his, isn't real.

In that suspended moment of disbelief, Kyuubi tears free and roars across the bondbridge. Naruto helps him along, Naruto claws and kicks at Sasuke's walls, helping force a passage for Kyuubi, because – because Sasuke told him, I might be on the verge of a stroke, and then Naruto lashed out at him through the bond.

Sasuke is on his hands and knees in the upstairs corridor, stroking out.

There's blood everywhere, flooding Sasuke's brain and leaking from his eyes and ears and nose and mouth. He keeps stroking out as fast as Kyuubi can heal him.

"Let me in," Naruto hisses aloud, pushing away from Kiba's concerned hands. "Fucking open up you fucking bastard."

Sasuke doesn't, but his continuous brain haemorrhage means Naruto can force his way in. He tears down Sasuke's defences, claws his way through Sasuke's resistance until Kyuubi can light Sasuke up from the inside, and the bleeding finally stops.

Naruto's up on his feet and two shaky steps forward when Kiba interrupts. "Naruto. What's happening?"

"I have to go to him." That imperative drives him forward, shoulder against the wall for support.

"What the fuck's he doing to you?" Kiba hisses. "Is he still attacking you?"

"He's having a stroke."

Kiba blinks.

Naruto grins. It sits strained and ugly on his face, he can feel it, stiff like the grin of a skull. "Bond's not great for non-shifter minds."

"Jesus," Kiba mutters. "Freak. But you can heal him, right?"

"Mmh. I gotta…" He's steadier now, stumbles quickly past Kiba and up the stairs.

Sasuke too has got his feet underneath him. He's braced against the wall and trying to wipe blood off his face, mostly smearing it around. The whole corridor stinks of it, that precious, faintly burnt copper smell of exorcist blood, and the particular tang that means Sasuke, who glares at Naruto from under his fringe. Kyuubi's burrowed so deeply in him, orange energy sparkles off his fingers as he wipes at the blood.

Naruto walks up very close, as close as Sasuke's menacing prickliness will let him, and sits down on the floor, his shoulder just short of brushing Sasuke's knee. It's not two seconds before Sasuke sinks down beside him, head tipped back to rest against the wall so the last sluggish bleeding from his eyes can trickle to a stop.

He takes Sasuke's hand, gets to hold it for maybe two seconds before Sasuke lifts it away. Before he does, Naruto has time to say, "It's you and me. It's always been you and me."

"You get that you're not the first person who's said that to me, right?"

There's this flash of – but it can't be. Kakashi's not the type to say these things, least of all to his best friend's kid brother.

"Yeah, well, I mean it."

For a long time Sasuke stays silent, and Naruto does too. Just pushes his certainty into the bond, this ridiculous and unquenchable earnestness.

"With Kiba," Sasuke says eventually. "When you freak about him. That's a liability."

"Yeah well," Naruto says, "It's how people are."

Sasuke makes a deeply unconvinced sound.

It's not the first time Naruto's told him, "People need people. That's what being human is."

"But you're not." Sasuke looks at him steadily, more tired than annoyed. Blood clots his lashes, streaks like war paint across his face. His head is still titled back and sideways, and he makes an impatient gesture. "You don't have to be."

And it dawns on Naruto gradually, one of those late-autumn dawns when you'd almost given up on ever being warm again but here suddenly is the sun gilding the dew – it dawns on him that Sasuke doesn't mean that as something negative.

He picks Sasuke's hand back up, keeps hold of it when Sasuke tries to jerk it free, and bends greedily over it. Sasuke's fingers twitch when Naruto licks in between them, but he doesn't exert enough force to get free. "Naruto."

"Shut up," Naruto says, licking Sasuke's palm clean of blood, pushing away Sasuke's sleeve to suck it from his wrist. "I'm cleaning up after myself."

Kyuubi visibly rolls around inside Sasuke, orange energy rippling through Sasuke's skin. It sounds like he's purring.

With Kyuubi filling Sasuke up from the inside, Naruto can't be sure whether Sasuke meant for this, or knows about it: about Naruto caught in a memory rendered incongruous by Sasuke's chilly expressionless face. It's a memory of Orochimaru's voice in his ear, whispering it's you and me, which shifts into a memory of crawling across the floor in a too-large plastic suit, scrubbing so hard he's getting bruises on hands that aren't his own, child hands he hasn't seen in years, because Sasuke has long since outgrown them.

Boots in front of him, the fancy kind of wellingtons that are made to look like leather. Orochimaru standing over him, and having to take a break from cleaning up Orochimaru's messy ways of dealing with defiance to suck him off. The grainy, bitter taste that makes Naruto gag, even though he didn't mind the second-hand experience of it in reality, downstairs before everything went to shit: how his mouth is so small here, how it takes technique not to choke.

Orochimaru saying something, he misses the exact words on account of the panicked ringing in his ears. And then Sasuke's voice, clear and echoing in the tiled room – the abattoir – younger but unmistakably his: "Do you imagine this is what I dreamt of, what I planned for? A life on my knees."

Orochimaru's indulgent laughter, and he pulls Sasuke to his feet. His hand is enormous on Sasuke's shoulder, and he bends to say, "All this I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me."

All this appears to be a roomful of corpses.

Beyond that is the knowledge that this room is where Orochimaru taught Sasuke not to have that liability, the liability of caring for anyone else. You could spare them, if only you would do as I ask… If you don't, I will hurt them. Torture them. Kill them. The lesson was finished when Sasuke would no longer concede even to blink his eyes in order to spare someone being tortured to death in front of him.

It sounds so melodramatic, but Sasuke's memory of it is dusty and ordinary, an everyday memory of boredom and discomfort. He thinks of it as one of the easier lessons Orochimaru taught.

xxxxx

Sakura mostly only knows Shikamaru as Ino's friend, not as someone bonded – and there's a joke in there somewhere about Of Human Bondage – so walking with him is ordinary and everyday, if a little awkward.

She rounds a bend in the corridor, and everything changes.

They must be distracted, Naruto and Sasuke, because otherwise they would have heard. Would presumably have stopped.

She blinks, feeling like Alice looking into Wonderland, seeing something so outside of her experience that she's ill equipped to interpret it.

Naruto, crouching predatorily over Sasuke, clawed paws covering most of Sasuke's torso. He appears to be – it appears Sasuke has had a very heavy nosebleed, and Naruto appears currently to be licking the remains of it off his face.

More startlingly, Sasuke too glows orange, which clashes rather ridiculously with his red eyes. His head falls back as Naruto's mouth slips down off his jaw and attaches itself to his neck. White light twitches across his fingers with every heave of his chest.

Beside her – and suddenly he's a comrade, not a friend of a friend with an uncomfortable tendency towards sarcasm but a fellow human being – Shikamaru's blasé expression has come over brittle.

Naruto never turns around.

It's in the lounge downstairs that Shikamaru finally responds to the silent question she directs at him, her unspoken insistence on reassurance.

"Well," he says, "It's easy to forget. Ino's just this girl. But one shouldn't let oneself forget. Sasuke's no more human than Naruto."

"What up?" Kiba demands, waltzing in. Sakura's ashamed to twitch, to think, shifter. She remembers her mum talking about Naruto's father, saying, he's very human for someone who's not. Dad had got angry, but it was Grandfather Ibiki who ended the discussion. Grandfather, who's the reason she can walk unmolested through friendships with the likes of Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki, and who can be very particular about how shifters are spoken of. "Is Uchiha freaking again?"

"He had a lot of Kyuubi in him, is all." Shikamaru shrugs. "Hadn't seen him like that before. It was just a reminder that he's not really human at all."

Sakura blinks. Feels slow, muddled. "But you must have… You're bonded to a shifter, you must have, yourself."

Shikamaru's look at her is frank, not really dismissive, not really judgemental. "If Temari's beast went that deep in me, I'd be obliterated."

"Sasuke…!"

A sigh, as Shikamaru sinks down on the couch, fluffing up a pillow. "Sasuke's mind can hold an archangel. I'd think he can handle a shifter beast."

"Right," Sakura says. "Right. Of course. That makes sense." The silence grows and grows, until she says, in this too-fast voice, "I guess it's good it was Sasuke. I mean, that it wasn't a human. Naruto couldn't have – Sasuke couldn't have stood for that."

Silence again, but of a different kind. Shikamaru lifts his eyebrow, but it's had time to descend again before he speaks. "Let's be real here. If Naruto got some reluctant human and that's what he needed, we all know Sasuke would have held them down for him."

Sakura understands intellectually that her cringing away from this statement is illogical. If Sasuke really thought that was a fate worse than death, Sasuke would have killed himself a long time ago, which would have been a horror and a waste. And Sasuke's no stranger to killing – she doesn't question that he'd kill for Naruto, or for her – so she can't make sense of why this seems to her somehow worse.

"Naruto wouldn't," Kiba breaks in. "I mean, for Kankurou, he didn't…"

"He wouldn't hold someone down for you," Shikamaru agrees. "He would for Sasuke."

"Hmm," Sakura says tonelessly. Wonders if he had to hold Sasuke down. If that's something Sasuke would think he deserved to be forgiven for.

That's what they fought about, Sasuke and she, that's why Sasuke's been giving her space.

To forgive, she'd said, nonplussed into toneless quoting, is an act of compassion. It's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it.

The way Sasuke looked at her, with those high-intensity eyes distant, let her know that he didn't get that sentiment in any meaningful way. He understood the words of course, but the idea behind them wasn't graspable.

Much like she felt when he replied, Itachi acted in accordance with God's will. He doesn't need forgiveness. Anyway I'm going to ruin him.

Sasuke – no…

And every word came oddly familiar and inevitable: this scene had been a long time coming. Why are you more disturbed by me turning on someone than by other people turning on me?

Because then you're not guilty! They were in her room, a thunder storm outside like they'd stepped into an old novel, where the weather always matches the mood.

I'm not martyr material.

That's not fair. That's not what I'm saying.

What is it you want to hear? That I never wanted to do any of it? That I hate killing people? That I tried to avoid hurting anyone, and if I had to do it, I always tried to make it quick?

Oh, Sasuke… and she was reaching for him, and maybe this was another choice with no good outcomes.

Because none of that is true.

She saw herself in the dark window behind him, saw herself visibly rearing back. Are you…trying to drive me away for my own good or something?

He smiled thinly, not an expression he'd ever shown her before. Didn't speak.

Did you ever really think of me as your friend at all? You obviously never trusted me.

You were – restful, he said, his eyes too going to the window, going past her. And I was your bad boy charity case.

I feel like… everything's gone so wrong so fast, and I'm looking back to try and see where we went off the rails so I can fix it and I just don't know.

I think we were always headed this way.

There was nothing to say. Sakura's mouth opened and closed on the emptiness of words.

Now too there is nothing to say.

xxxxx

The skin under Sasuke's chin stretches like a treasure map, marbled with veins trembling and ready to rupture from the force of his pulse. He pushes at Naruto's head, and Naruto lets himself be pushed downwards but not away, sliding his face down Sasuke's throat and chest until it's pressed against his heart.

"Off," Sasuke grumbles. It's a deja vu sort of grumbling, the kind Naruto recognises from a childhood of Sasuke feeling at home in his house and defaulting to a comfortable, relaxed bristliness.

He hears himself say, in a pass the milk kind of voice, sunny and ordinary, "You can't leave me. I'll kill you first."

"I know."

Naruto blinks, lashes catching against Sasuke's shirt. That's Sasuke's warmest voice, the one reserved for things that don't need fighting or questioning and so exceptionally rare.

Naruto can ease up then, for the first time since the bonding, because whatever Sasuke's feeling, and it's complicated and sharp-edged, it's not exactly rejection. He lifts his face, to get a proper look at Sasuke's, and they're so close now, he's breathing Sasuke's air and feeling the warmth from Sasuke's skin. "I really mean that," he says, and still his voice comes simple and without strain. The truth is too obvious for strain. "I really will." Speaking brushes his lips against Sasuke's, and Sasuke's mouth moves with his.

Sasuke learns him so fast. How to drag his fingers along the edge of Naruto's jaw, nailside up. How to tease his earlobe, of all the ridiculous places. This is really no surprise: Sasuke always has preferred to go on the offensive.

And it's – Sasuke's mind turned once before into an echo chamber for Naruto's desire, multiplying it endlessly between them, but Sasuke feels now that Naruto belongs to him and touches him accordingly: staking claim, revelling in his possession.

Naruto's mouth gapes open, so eager to be possessed, and Sasuke has claimed it utterly by the time he sucks Naruto's tongue back into his own mouth.

"You don't want to," Naruto gaps at last, "go after Sakura?"

"No."

"You could – "

"I could go," Sasuke agrees, and his voice is so raspy Naruto twitches in his pants. "Or I could stay." He hisses as Naruto kisses messily over his face, as Naruto licks his eye. It tastes like he thought it would, more holy water than human tears.

Sasuke's fingers tighten painfully on his jaw, but when he forces Naruto's mouth away from his eye, that's all right, because it ends up back on Sasuke's, before trailing down Sasuke's throat, and it tastes so good, and god, Sasuke has a neck thing, arching up under him.

"You'd really…" Naruto mumbles. Remembers that there was the idea, at first, that being physical with Naruto would mean something, in a way that this doesn't, and the remembrance makes Naruto want to stop, but he – can't.

"It was good, right?" Sasuke says, his voice harder than Naruto would have liked but punctuated by his heavy breathing. "Even the first time, that was good for you."

"Mmh," Naruto says, around Sasuke's windpipe. Even the first time was good for Naruto, and now, with the bond, it would be good for Sasuke too. He sucks on Sasuke's throat, remembering half an hour ago, Sasuke on his knees and desperate, gulping down Naruto's erection as if starved. He dares to ask, cocky, "Never had sex like that before?"

"No."

"Yeah, me either."

Sasuke sounds unfairly dry, despite his hammering pulse. "Have you even had any sex at all?"

"…no," Naruto has to admit. "Wasn't any point. You weren't there."

He doesn't have to look up, and indeed doesn't want to because his face is comfortable in the warm crook of Sasuke's neck, to know Sasuke's eyebrow is rapidly climbing his forehead. "Is that so."

"I would have – wanted you to be jealous."

Sasuke's quiet for a long time before he says, "You're so stupid."

"Mmh." Naruto gives him a sad, quivering smile that is unbelievably provoking, abruptly switching topics. "Kakashi and Sakura, at the same time almost, that – that sucks. Them turning away."

"I'm better off now," Sasuke tells him. "There's no one left now."

That's the good lesson Orochimaru taught him. When everyone is gone, when everything has been taken from you, there's still you. Emptier equals lighter.

"There's me," Naruto offers.

Sasuke scoffs at him, looking away. "You don't count."

"Hey!"

He shrugs. "You don't have a choice."

Naruto swallows. "I don't need a choice."

"Naruto…"

"I mean it," he insists, with those burning blue eyes, "I'd always choose you."

"You can't know that. You're crazy."

"Mmh, maybe. But let's be honest, you like that. That I can't choose anything else."

The bond pulsates and burns through his mind. "You know what I'm like."

"Yeah," Naruto says. "You're lucky I'm apparently into bitchiness and trust issues." He makes a soft sound, snuggling against Sasuke. "I don't get it. About Sakura, why she's so upset. I mean I get it partly. But she's known what you're like for a long time."

"I thought so."

Sakura has seen Sasuke be violent, has seen Naruto be violent too. Sasuke after all was small and quiet, looked like a sweet little mummy's boy long after he wasn't, and Naruto has no self control and so is visibly shifter. Which meant they had to occasionally beat the shit out of anyone bothering them. These were the brutal kinds of beatings, when you kick away their legs, and sit across their chest, and beat them until they know in their bones who's in charge.

"You were such a little kingpin," Naruto mutters. "Some of those guys were like three times our size!"

"It's not how big you are," Sasuke mumbles. "Lucky for you."

"Hey! I'm not – small!"

"You kind of are. Kyuubi's huge, you're – pretty smallish."

Naruto protests loudly, sitting up in a huff with his cheeks puffing pink. He seems, surprisingly, genuinely affronted. "I am not!"

"I'm pretty sure I've been up close and personal with a lot more dicks than you, and let me tell you, yours is not that impressive."

Naruto makes an inarticulate sound of unspeakable outrage, and feels… not hurt exactly, but certainly not like he's joking.

Sasuke blinks. "It's not a bad thing."

Naruto appears taken aback. "It's not?"

"No."

Orochimaru was big. Orochimaru was very big, especially when Sasuke was little.

His head throbs, sharper and sharper, and he could think, you did this to me, but they're beyond that now and anyway it's not true, not really. He turns away from the sensation of the seal burning like a branding iron against the inside of his skull.

Naruto grabs for him, always so greedy.

Sasuke twists his wrist out of Naruto's hand, breaking his own pinkie in the process. It's healed before he's stopped glaring, and Naruto tries a sheepish grin. "See? I come with benefits."

"Hn." Sasuke gives his hand a considering look. He didn't always like Kyuubi's healing abilities.

Not when he'd wanted to mark Naruto up, scar him forever. Not when it made it easy for Naruto to just not mention getting hurt.

He was essentially a refugee, when his Mum took him and moved to one of those human neighbourhoods with a noticeable shifter population. And shifter refugees, like any refugees, are poor and damaged and fundamentally unwelcome. Naruto had hidden it from his parents, the shunning that Sasuke welcomed but Naruto experienced as a slow erosion of existence. He won't have needed to hide it from Kushina, who will have seen it as a good lesson.

He didn't exactly try hiding it from Sasuke. Finally fought back when Sasuke appeared, because it was clear to Naruto if not to his attackers that Naruto might be forgiving but Sasuke – well, Sasuke's guardian angel is the incarnation of vengeance.

What are you doing.

Naruto shrugged, looking uncomfortable before looking defiant. They were human, you know? Kyuubi would've eaten them alive, and it still – it wouldn't have mattered. They just – they don't want me. That's what it was all about really.

You have such a bloody Jesus complex sometimes.

Still that was the end of it, because Sasuke would permit nothing else, and Naruto would rather take care of himself than let Sasuke take care of the humans.

It was weeks later that he said, I know you wouldn't have let them hurt you.

It wouldn't have let them hurt you either, idiot.

Yeah? It was like sunrise across Naruto's face, before he shrugged. But like, I cared that they hated me. Obviously they were wrong and I'm going to change their minds, but – you wouldn't have cared.

Sasuke shrugged. People are shit.

People are awesome. They can be awesome.

Sasuke snorted. Kindness is such a trite, boring emotion.

That's just bad publicity! Naruto argued, talking with his hands and incidentally swatting at Sasuke. Kindness is fierce!

"Dumbarse," Sasuke mutters in the present, starting another nosebleed but able to wipe it away quickly.

Naruto grins, leaning over to put his head over Sasuke's heart. "I love this sound."

"Enjoy it while it lasts." He doesn't mean anything by it but Naruto stiffens as if struck.

Sasuke's just looking at him though, annoyed maybe but calm. He hasn't forced Kyuubi to heal the bite marks on his neck.

"So," Naruto says. "About these Rock bastards."

"Mmh," Sasuke says, stretching lazy and lovely.

"They're not gonna like you, so," he chances a kiss to Sasuke's collarbone.

Sasuke unfortunately stiffens: the time for intimacy is over. Naruto curls more tightly around him, nudging his cheek against the war drum beat of Sasuke's heart, and thinks, but I'm yours. It's a stupid, childish thought, like: I'm hungry, or My name is Naruto. Something so obvious it can hardly be spoken.

Sasuke shifts, restless fingers picking at Naruto's whisker scars. "Nobody likes me."

"That's not true!"

He can hear Sasuke lift his eyebrow. "You might need me, you sure as hell don't like me."

"Do too."

"Liking is what happens when there's not enough feeling to amount to anything meaningful."

Naruto clings to him more tightly. There's not enough air now. Sasuke's popular, everyone – with the notable exception of both their parents – everyone used to like Sasuke. It's never meant anything. It's never been enough.

He could say, you have friends. Sasuke would deny this, but Naruto knows the names to counter with. Sakura, Kakashi, Neji. People who have stood around for years outside the bars of Sasuke's cage. Talked to him, maybe thrown him scraps, but nobody's unlocked the door, nobody's seriously tried to let him out.

He thinks he's going to faint.

Sasuke's phone starts to ring. The caller ID says Orochimaru.

Sasuke looks at it blankly. He makes no move to answer.

Naruto takes it from him and throws it away. It keeps ringing even after it's cracked against the wall, but not for very long.

"I don't understand," he says, and his voice comes childish, too loud, "I will never understand how anyone is even still talking to your parents."

"Haven't you heard of Abraham and Isaac?"

"That's bullshit! If Dad had done that, if he'd given one of us away – he'd be shunned. There's no coming back from something like that."

Sasuke's tone is colourless and cruel. "You know perfectly well that he was the only one who could reign in the extremist factions. Now with this deal we're all on the same side, and you lot aren't exterminated."

BEAST isn't an exclusively human phenomenon. Quite a lot of exorcists believe shifters to be halfbreed demons, see it as part of their calling to purge them with the light of God.

"About Rock," Sasuke says.

"Mmh, yeah. Yeah, they're not gonna be all happy to see you. So I should do it. The exorcism."

Sasuke lifts an eyebrow. "Why would that make them like me more?"

Naruto pushes at his shoulder. "Arse. It would make them like me enough to warm up to the idea." The idea of Sasuke, and the idea of being absorbed into a shifter federation.

Sasuke sighs. "If you could actually do it, every shifter in the world would follow you." A long look, before he shrugs. "But you can't, so it doesn't matter."

"I could."

"No, you couldn't. If you really thought so, you'd want to exorcise for the humans too, get them to come around."

"That'd be nice," Naruto agrees. "But it's not – Rock's ours." Rock will be part of them, and so must come willingly. He nudges Sasuke's knee with his own. "Come on. Let me try."

Sasuke's never been one to turn down a challenge.

He holds out his hand, long fingers curled slightly inwards. Naruto has to get his knees abruptly out of the way as the blade materialises, humming lightly in a language that stings his ears, at the very edge of understanding.

Sasuke says nothing. He doesn't need to.

Naruto reaches for the sword, closing his fingers around the hilt.

It burns.

It burns so sharply, most of his hand's gone before the pain hits.

It feels like he screams for a long time before the noise can turn into words. By then, the blade is gone and Naruto's curled around the burnt mess of his hand.

"Would you fucking shield me!"

"I did!"

He's evidently screamed long and loud enough for footsteps, and very shortly for a whole horde of people to descend on them.

xxxxx

Shikamaru hadn't particularly wanted to venture back upstairs. Normally, other people leaving him alone by doing so would be a pleasant development. Normally – well, normally he would have extended his nap.

He stands up with a sigh. "Sakura. Stay here." He says this in his most adult voice.

Upstairs, Naruto and Sasuke are still on the floor, and Sasuke appears rather to be snarling at anyone attempting to pull Naruto upright. Naruto of course manages to spare him a besotted look over this, for all his face is ash-white and visibly dripping with pain sweat. His lips are bitten bloody, and he must have been crying because there's something that looks like snot smeared over them.

Since no one else is likely to have the sense to, Shikamaru starts dialling Tsunade's assistant's number.

Someone will have to look at the mangled, burnt remains of Naruto's hand. Shikamaru, as Temari's Achilles' heel, has tended to be protected, and so kept well away from mutilated body parts: he's not absolutely sure he would have recognised this as a hand, if he'd seen it severed from the wrist. Black skin and cauterised blood cling to stumps of skeleton, which must have burnt too, a bit, because there are pieces missing.

In the end it's Temari who says, "Can you not heal yourself?"

"Trying," Naruto mutters. He leans against Sasuke, which seems for the first time the smart course of action. If Sasuke has to smack Kiba away again, there can be little doubt that he'll do so with angel hands, so really leaning on his arm is a sound preventive measure.

It also turns Naruto and Sasuke into more of a unit, signalling to back off.

Kyuubi's healing energy is so thick around what used to be Naruto's hand, Shikamaru fancies for an instant that he can see it shape new fingers, and bring them to life. Magic, he read somewhere, is the soul acting directly into the world, forcing its will raw without the mediation of the body.

He wonders, absently, that part of him should still feel this as witnessing a miracle.

Then Sasuke abruptly winces. "Stroke."

"Shit. Sorry." And Naruto bends towards him with fucking concern, the energy around his hand thinning. "Okay?"

"Your hand."

Naruto gives an unconvincing laugh. "It'll be fine. Just needs a bit more time."

Shikamaru resigns himself to the fact that Shizune isn't going to answer.

Close to his foot, he spots another mobile, which he recognises as – surely it couldn't be Sasuke's? But yes, he discovers, picking it up as discreetly as he can. It is Sasuke's, display cracked but otherwise functional. It doesn't take him ten seconds to hack through the password.

It also doesn't take Tsunade ten seconds to answer.

Of course it doesn't. Sasuke's essentially the son-in-law.

Shikamaru sighs. "Naruto's down a hand."