"Tell me again how you got him to agree to this?" Naruto asks, straightening the hem of his shirt.

Shikamaru shrugs. "I just had to beat him." Beat him three to one, though they were fairly entertaining games. "Now put on your tie."

Naruto struggles with it until Shikamaru takes over, and Naruto can slump down in his seat. It's a rather lavishly arranged mock interview, the sitting room dressed up as a TV studio and teeming with their in-house media people.

Naruto's … unexpectedly calm. Rather, he has the same pre-television jitters he always gets – a good jittery, drumming his feet against the carpet – but Sasuke is unexpectedly calm. It's a bit weird to see him dressed like this, slacks and shirt and woollen jumper, since usually Sasuke's either in his work clothes or a complete slob about it. This is how he used to dress as a child, before Orochimaru: back when he was still a preppy kid who actually liked his school uniform and took pride in keeping it clean.

Directing a bright grin at the reporter, Naruto's aware that this could go significantly worse than Shikamaru's expecting: Shikamaru seems to assume that Sasuke's difficult past will have made him a good liar. Naruto on the other hand is aware that Sasuke's actually rather an awful liar, because he's had to learn to expect never to be listened to, never to be believed, and it comes through in his voice.

Sasuke doesn't seem concerned about this, however, and it's party because to him this is just a stupid penalty for losing at chess, but it's also … that he's not expecting to have to do much lying.

"What?" Sasuke snaps.

"Nothing," Naruto says, resisting the urge to lean in like a 50s couple and kiss Sasuke's cheek. He'd lick it if he did, bite lightly at Sasuke's cheekbone.

Sasuke's face grows rather stiff with not showing displeasure, so Naruto leans in after all, mumbles, "Nothing you'd like me to talk about in public."

A lascivious brow climbs up to hide itself under Sasuke's fringe.

"Not like that! Pervert."

"Uh huh."

"No, it's just." He's leaning in really close now, because the attendants have shifter hearing too, his lashes brushing Sasuke's cheek. "You're like, you're here to convince people that this is where you're supposed to be. And you're not thinking about it as lying."

Sasuke blinks, as though taken aback. "I made a choice," he says. "Idiot."

Naruto's stomach burns at the simplicity of it. Insane possessiveness, and the dizzy heat of Kyuubi's love, but also the acid corrosion: really Sasuke has no other place to go. Naruto is the only one who hasn't betrayed, who can't betray.

The reporter shifts in her chair. "I'm ready to begin when you are."

"It's what we're here for," Sasuke says with some impatience.

Naruto sits up properly, with mild reluctance, and smiles at her.

They start out soft. "It's been a controversy in the news lately," she says. "Using shifters for medical research."

Shifters rarely ever fall ill, and there's hardly an injury they can't heal from: if shifter healing could be used to treat humans, it would revolutionise medicine. Kabuto's not the only one who's been experimenting, and there've been a few suspicious disappearances lately, though mostly it's corpses going missing from hospitals, not live shifters.

"Ah, yeah," Naruto says. "I think that's great? They've made some real progress with paralysis treatment, haven't they?"

"Yes, quite a bit, from what I understand. So you're in favour of this?"

"Of course. It's like organ donation, you know? To be able to help people even after you're dead – I think that's amazing. Once I'm gone, my body's just…well, it' just a body. If human scientists can use it to come up with treatments, to help thousands of people, of course I'd want that." He shrugs, still smiling. "You know, I went in for these check-ups they ask for, donated blood and – um, some other stuff I didn't quite get what it was. They explained it to me, but… Well, but the point is, they thought they could maybe use my samples for their research. I hope they can."

"And the disappearances?"

"Obviously taking live people is reprehensible. Unacceptable, ever." He bites his lip, leans in towards her. "But the corpses… I don't know – and I feel the same way about human-to-human organ donation – but a corpse doesn't have any rights. It's not a person anymore. And someone else's right to live has to outweigh the family's wanting to say no – I don't even know what their interest in this is supposed to be. You shouldn't have the right to deny people health and life when it doesn't cost you anything to let them have it. It's basically killing them out of spite. If doctors need corpses, I say take them."

Sasuke remains silent. Naruto's good at this. More puppyish, and more showily sincere that Sasuke will ever be comfortable with, but handling people is Naruto's talent and Naruto's training. He's…warm.

He's also keeping himself reigned in, understanding that this is, really, Sasuke's interview.

Sasuke would've preferred if it was Naruto's, but it is what it is.

They cut to the chase quickly enough, the reporter turning to him. "You've been part of Orochimaru's household for the last seven years, since you were eight?"

"That's correct."

"When you were nine, you obeyed orders to participate in the cleansing of Mist Town, is that right?"

"Yes. No regrets."

The woman's face smoothes over, attentive but expressionless. "You'll forgive me for asking frankly, but there have been quite a few inflammatory rumours that we'd like to get cleared up. You're bonded to Naruto now. Were you kidnapped?"

"I got in Kakashi's car of my own volition." His voice remains expressionless, relentlessly cut-glass superior, as he says the name.

"And now… there's a clip of you saying you're not being held against your will."

"That's true."

"All right," the reporter says carefully. Sasuke figures if it was a real interview, she'd have pressed him harder. "So let's get straight to the point: were you forced into the bond?"

"No."

"No?"

"Eh," Naruto interjects, breaking the tension. "Dying shifter beast versus archangel, who'd you bet on?"

That hurdle cleared, Sasuke leans back a little, letting his hip rest against Naruto's. He lets Naruto talk, lets Naruto answer for both of them. Naruto knows what to say: what Sasuke would say, and how to translate that into PC.

Then eventually Naruto nudges his shoulder, and Sasuke forces himself back into the conversation. They're talking about the bond now, which Naruto's patient about explaining, making jokes and gestures. Humanising himself, which Sasuke doesn't have to.

Sasuke shrugs, the first shrug he's allowed himself since the interview started. "It is how it is. Explaining is pointless."

"That's rather harsh."

"The truth usually is."

Naruto leans forward on a laugh, touches his arm, and takes over. More kindly words, though essentially they mean the same thing.

And then in the end Naruto freezes there, Sasuke can feel his heart stopping in his chest, where it rests against Sasuke's own.

The reporter has remarked on the permanence of the bond, said something about possible enquiries into breaking it, which people have attempted for hundreds of years with zero result. She continues, "You don't seem willing to discuss it? I'm sorry, is it that it's harder to deal with the possibility of hope, when it's such a slim one?"

Sasuke blinks, the slow way he blinked when Orochimaru's minions needed their place explained to them. "But I don't necessarily want it undone."

They'll have to cut here, he realises with impatient relief, because when Naruto's heart starts beating again it's racing, punching like a boxer inside Naruto's chest.

And Naruto will know that Sasuke not necessarily wanting the bond broken is tied to how Kyuubi's healing makes it possible to force magic through the seal, but it's enough. Naruto's face is all flushed, and turned entirely to Sasuke: to Naruto, again, the rest of the world has ceased to matter to the point that it might as well have ceased to exist.

"I," Naruto says, his voice wild and raw and rallying with hope. Kisses the corner of Sasuke's mouth, and then his mouth. "I love you."

In this one moment, Sasuke knows this like he knows his own heartbeat.

Naruto smiles at him, summery with warmth, and declares, "I'm your family."

"Che."

"And you're mine."

"Keep talking like a romance novel and I won't be for long."

"Che," Naruto echoes, scrunching up his face in one of those absurd grimaces of his. "Like you could do any better! I bet that's why you never say anything nice, you'd go all constipated and cliché."

And in the end, Sasuke thinks, hears the words in Kakashi's distant voice, we were only human, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.

"Well," the reporter says uncertainly, looking away from them – presumably towards Shikamaru. "Well, I think we've got what we need?"

"Mmh," Naruto agrees, in that idiot way of his of saying corny things and meaning them so much it hurts, so much it changes the world, "I've got you."

Only later, over lunch, does it occur to Sasuke that everyone has watched the interview. "Oh Sasuke," Kiba moans theatrically, "you're my sun, my moon, my star-studded sky. Without you I am as nothing, and with you I am still a complete dork who'd have been laughed out of any decent chick flick."

"Shut up," Naruto pouts.

Next to Sasuke, Shikamaru directs an interested, albeit lazy, glance at him. "You're not embarrassed?"

Sasuke shrugs. "Smooth is overrated."

Kakashi was smooth. Orochimaru was very smooth. Being good with words means being good at using words, making them work for you. Anyway at the end of the day, words are only words: excuses for acting or not acting.

Kiba snorts. "What's there to be embarrassed about? I mean, he's always been this way…"

Shikamaru wouldn't know, but Sasuke's soft snort indicates agreement.

xxxxx

Naruto looks up from the endless mess of print-outs on the floor between them. "You meant it." And he doesn't need to say anything else because Sasuke knows perfectly well what he's referring to, but he does need to say it because the words are a spell, he's spell-bound by them. "You don't necessarily want the bond broken."

"Shut up," Gaara says. He's attacking a casualty report with a highlighter, lips pursed.

"Maa, maa," Shikamaru mumbles, lying on his back and reading from a tablet. "Troublesome."

Sasuke also said he wasn't forced into the bond, but then Sasuke's ideas of coercion and consent are warped. He told Naruto, way back in the beginning, You knew it was all right really.

And Naruto – would like to think that he did, and he hopes, he hopes to God and with everything he is, that he would've stopped if he hadn't.

Sasuke, who without question can feel his doubt, pats him on the head. Frowning at whatever numbers he's going over, he's steady and sure. And Sasuke believes in nobody and nothing, but he's still – he's still here, still steady enough for both of them.

"Sasukeeee," Naruto whines, wriggling like a seal across the floor until he's pressed tight to Sasuke's side. Place me like a seal over your heart, he thinks, liking the thought, and then scowling as he remembers the considerable amusement with which Itachi finally explained that seal in the quote doesn't refer to the animal.

"It's time to move forward," Gaara declares.

"Right, okay. Hold your horses." Naruto sits up, and things start falling into place.

They will clear out the area around their posting, following which Gaara will take charge of their defences while Naruto contains the situation south of them. It's not what Gaara would prefer, but the risk of large-scale conflict right by their HQ is negligible, which means Shukaku isn't likely to go berserk – and after his stint with Shizune, Gaara has a lot of trust to earn back.

"But first," Naruto grins, "time to clean house!"

Sasuke's slow, dark smirk matches Gaara's all too well.

It's easily done.

Naruto thinks afterwards, uncomfortably, feels the thought like an itch at the very edge of pain, that maybe it shouldn't be this simple.

His mind caught between Kyuubi and Sasuke, with Gaara beside him, it's easy to get caught up in their enthusiasm: in what Shikamaru would call their enthusiasm, because it sounds better, but what is really their berserker bloodlust.

In less than four hours they've cleaned out the county.

Naruto wipes blood off his face, and that's a clear sign that he let himself get too out of control. He shouldn't have got blood on him, there's no reason to be that close or that gloatingly vicious. It's not efficient. It's not professional. It's not the way to accomplish an unpleasant but necessary task.

He catches Kyuubi's pleased growl between his teeth, the instinct to lick up the blood. Swallows it down, and distracts them both, himself and Kyuubi, by looking past Kiba at Sasuke.

This is presumptuous, maybe, but Sasuke would be – interested, now.

In response to Naruto's staring, Sasuke lifts an eyebrow, tilting his head back: letting Naruto's gaze spill hot and greedy down the sharp line of his throat.

Naruto has to pull himself together, sort things out, but there remains a red haze over his thoughts. Sasuke fortunately handles some of the sorting out, and plays along when it's finally taken care of and Naruto basically drags him up the stairs.

Sasuke laughs as he kicks the door shut behind them, and Naruto's cheeks ache with smiling as he tears through Sasuke's zippers.

Sasuke's hands sink into the back pockets of Naruto's jeans, Sasuke grins up at him from under his fringe. He's … teasing: not snidely, not dismissively, but at ease.

Naruto pulls his own shirt off with one hand, using the other to comb through Sasuke's hair, tugging until Sasuke presses his open, smirking mouth to Naruto's. He might not be as excited as Naruto, but he's clearly comfortable, clearly in the mood to be convinced.

By the time they hit the bed, naked now, heat radiates off his skin, and their kisses have become messy with their panting. Naruto remembers Sasuke saying he doesn't like to ride people, but he obviously likes straddling Naruto's lap, face to face. Naruto has his back against the headboard, his legs drawn up tight behind Sasuke.

Sasuke looks like Naruto feels, flushed and out of control. Every movement is a struggle, almost a twitch, because he's lost track of how to control his body. The only smooth movement is the rolling of his hips, because that's his body acting on its own. No thought, all instinct.

Sasuke bites at the back of Naruto's neck, soft blunt human teeth, and Kyuubi's energy flows over him and fills him, a magma river running through his veins. Sasuke kisses Naruto like he did at the Sabaku's, before Tsunade interrupted. Kisses him like he's drowning, dying, and he's happy about it, like he can't get enough: like he wants Naruto the way Naruto wants him.

Naruto didn't exactly mean to push love into Sasuke, but he can't stop it pouring out, torrential and wild. It leaves Sasuke's twitching and cramping in his arms, body clenched tight in equal parts anxiety attack and sexual climax.

When his eyes blink open afterwards, Naruto has to force himself not to grab harder, not to sink Kyuubi's claws deep into Sasuke's flesh and fist his hands around Sasuke's ribs – Sasuke's about to punch him and shut himself off.

But Sasuke's never been one to run.

Naruto poses a challenge with his eyes, lets his whole face turn into a dare, and Sasuke pushes him down into the bed. Sasuke's fingers trace the seal on Naruto's stomach, bringing it burning to the surface: Sasuke smirks at him, and Naruto's forcibly reminded that Sasuke being freaked out has never stopped Sasuke taking charge.

He scratches Naruto's seal, blunt nails and the prominent bones in his fingers and a slight heavenly burn, and Naruto squirms in overwhelm. It's a feeling like tickling but worse, he's so over-stimulated he feels he's bursting open, even before Sasuke starts licking along the edge of the seal.

Finally he has to escape by rolling onto his stomach, and Sasuke snorts at him. Naruto glares as best as he can, but is quickly mollified when Sasuke kisses under his ear, touching his back instead, the same way he touched his stomach and now without the seal it's perfect, on the very edge of too much.

"You love me," Sasuke says, in a tone Naruto can't decipher. Thoughtful, mostly, but something more than that.

"I love you," he agrees without hesitation, twisting around to be able to look at Sasuke, who's teasing his legs now, firm strokes along his thighs and then ticklish fingertips in the hollows of his knees. Naruto's toes are cramping with how good it feels. Very quickly he starts writhing against the sheets, rubbing his hips into the mattress.

"Be still," Sasuke orders him.

Naruto freezes so abruptly, a little drool drips down his cheek before he starts swallowing.

Sasuke explores his hips, his touch slow and thorough, and Naruto's moans come thick and stuttering, he's beginning to tremble in a way that's almost thrusting into the bed.

Sasuke snorts, giving him a mostly playful smack. "Up on your knees if you can't be still."

Naruto obeys, heat pooling in his cheeks until he's lightheaded. Sasuke strokes through his tails, over the small of his back, in between his legs. Already Naruto's dripping and aching, caught in this helplessness, this almost humiliation: the extreme exposure, the sharp sweet edge of trusting that Sasuke won't scorn him, won't turn away from him.

"Spread yourself," Sasuke tells him.

Naruto groans, deep and wordless – so far beyond words now – resting his weight on his shoulders to reach behind himself, spreading himself open for Sasuke. The room around them has become distant and surreal, swaying as though in a heat haze. Naruto feels every beat of his own heart as the beat of a hammer.

Sasuke leans forward, nudging his face against Naruto's hair and slipping his hand around Naruto's throat.

"Please," Naruto grounds out. "Please for fuck's sake…"

Sasuke's fingers squeeze, not allowing him any air, but his other hand fists around Naruto's cock. Naruto pushes back against him, body coiled in desperation, almost in lockdown, until finally, finally, Sasuke sinks into him.

He's barely sheathed before Naruto comes, erupting like a natural disaster and collapsing in the wet spot. Which is fine, Sasuke likes to wash off but Naruto rather enjoys the stains and smells, like to wallow in them.

Sasuke rolls off him and lies on his arm, quite close and still quite excited.

Naruto kisses his chin, the edge of his cheek, catching his hand. "Can I, um." He lifts Sasuke's hand to his face, sucks the thumb into his mouth and lets his tongue curl greedily around it. He loves the taste of Sasuke's skin, coated now in traces of blood and gun oil and holy fire, and also Naruto's sperm. He loves it even more when Sasuke's pupils dilate. "Can I suck you this time?"

Sasuke's thumb moves in his mouth, dragging against his teeth. Kyuubi's fangs ache and want to burst into existence, but Naruto manages to keep them down.

"Yeah," Sasuke decides, pulling his thumb free and briefly replacing it with his tongue. "You can suck me."

The grin splits Naruto's face. He's up on his knees immediately, pushing Sasuke onto his back and crawling between his legs.

Sasuke snorts turns into a chuckle turns into a strangled gasp.

xxxxx

"Yeah," Shikamaru tells Temari. "I think I've got it handled. I've got to go."

He hangs up because Sasuke's standing in the doorway. This isn't Shikamaru's room per se, but it's commonly known that he frequents it. Also Sasuke would hardly be wandering into conference rooms at random.

"Uchiha."

Sasuke nods at him, scanning the room. "I didn't know you played shogi."

"I could say the same to you." But Shikamaru lifts the game onto the table in invitation. It's not subtle, but then subtlety doesn't impress Sasuke. Polite manipulation, politic suggestions, Minato's harsher but still indirect approach – all of them have fallen on deaf ears. Then Shikamaru beat him three to one in an unplanned chess game, made a wager, and here he is.

Shikamaru quickly determines that Sasuke's rather better at shogi than at chess, and settles into the game quite pleased. It was a happy surprise that Sasuke is in fact amenable to being beaten at these things.

They're perhaps halfway through the first game when Naruto and his entourage appear. "So," Naruto says, "we'll be going now. Back soon!"

The way he stares at Sasuke is so hungry, so needy, Shikamaru's uncomfortable seeing it. It's the look of a child begging not to be left behind, to be seen, to be saved.

"All right," Sasuke says. To Shikamaru he looks expressionless, but Naruto obviously gleans something from him, because he stabilises. Smiles, reaching out to squeeze Sasuke's arm.

"All right," he repeats. "You hold down the fort, okay? Let's go!"

Shikamaru's fought hard for this, for Naruto to go take care of the worst of the southward conflict without Sasuke. Fortunately the demon activity predictions were centred on the HQ area, which convinced Naruto to give in and go solo.

The conflict is relatively contained, and should be quickly handled. He doesn't need Sasuke for that. Meanwhile, Shikamaru would be unhappy to remain here, with so much predicted demonic activity, without an exorcist.

In the middle of their third game, Sasuke abruptly says, "I hear you're good with technology."

"Well," Shikamaru says, moving his piece sneakily forward, "rather."

Sasuke nods, sitting straight-backed and blank-faced as a doll. "I understood from Kakashi that you're a hacker."

"I dabble."

"Cut the bullshit."

Shikamaru makes a disarming gesture. "I'm good at what I do. What've you got?"

It turns out that Sasuke's interested in accessing Orochimaru's full digital library, and that he took several files from Kabuto's office after torturing him.

"I can't get into Orochimaru's networks," Shikamaru admits.

"I've got an in."

"Let's take this to the computer lab."

For whatever reason, Orochimaru hasn't rescinded Sasuke's internal network access, which is extensive. But what Sasuke's after is whatever information Orochimaru has on sealing, and that's one area he's never had clearance to.

It turns out, rather to Shikamaru's surprise, that they make quite an efficient team. A lot of the security would be impossible for Shikamaru to breach, because it's written in holy language unreadable to human eyes. That very fact seems to have left Orochimaru complacent, because with Sasuke translating for him Shikamaru breezes through. All the personally crafted passwords, everything chosen by Orochimaru himself, Sasuke cracks without a second thought. Shikamaru finds himself stopped short by how well, how intimately, Sasuke obviously knows Orochimaru: wondering if Orochimaru knows him equally well, equally deeply. It seems the wiser course of action not to remark on it.

What's been giving Sasuke trouble is the security Orochimaru must've contracted in for, high-end human software. For someone who's clearly self-taught, he's pretty good, but he doesn't have the skills to counter a team of talented professionals.

Fortunately Sasuke's not the only prodigy in the room.

Shikamaru takes longer than he should, because while Sasuke's only interested in sealing, Shikamaru finds a lot of other data far more compelling. When the alarm prompts Sasuke to go exorcise, Shikamaru makes sure to download whatever he can get his hands on, never mind that the most interesting stuff remains unreadable to him. It's no longer inconceivable, after all, that Sasuke might translate for him. Given time, it might be possible to construct a translation program…

It's barely five minutes before Sasuke returns. He must not even have gone properly outside, probably just stood on the balcony. Shikamaru snorts: the holy work of God's chosen ones has become so mundane since Sasuke joined them. Shikamaru's seen him exorcise while towelling his hair, while eating, while arguing with Naruto.

"There isn't much," Shikamaru tells him. "Have a look here, is there anything else that looks promising? No, okay. I'm exiting." Afterwards, high and sweaty with adrenaline, he leans back in the desk chair. "My exorcist books – that's where they went. You were looking through them."

"They can't have been much use to you," Sasuke says, more a question than a snideness.

"No," Shikamaru acknowledges with a shrug. "Not much." He cracks his knuckles. "How about Kabuto's files?"

Sasuke hands him a memory stick. "He was always better at this than Orochimaru. We ought to use a computer than can handle viruses."

"Of course." He chances a smirk. "By the way, what's in this for me?"

Sasuke lifts an eyebrow. "You mean aside from the extras you already downloaded?"

Shikamaru shrugs, plugging in the memory stick.

He's surprised when Sasuke actually asks, "What do you want?"

Shikamaru snorts, starting to unpack the files. "For one, I'd like to stick you in a lab. Get a proper scientific measurement of an exorcism."

"I doubt you'd be able to perceive enough of it to make meaningful measurements." Sasuke's tone is marginally colder, and Shikamaru decides it was perhaps a mistake to bring up the lab rat possibilities. He'd assumed Sasuke hadn't been through that with Kabuto, but it's possible he was mistaken. Or perhaps not, because Sasuke sinks into the chair next to him, to all appearances riveted by Shikamaru dancing around the virus eruption threatening to destroy all the files. "Anyway there should be quite a bit of that in Kabuto's data."

Shikamaru feels himself start to grin.

xxxxx

The following morning Shikamaru looks up from his laptop – luckily Kabuto wrote almost exclusively in English and Dutch, and aside from being a sociopath was quite a genius – and realises that it's here now, the reason he wanted Naruto to go south without Sasuke: the delegates from Forrestfall have come knocking. As expected, they've heard of Naruto's arrival, and have heard also of Naruto being kind, being fair to humans.

All the same, already there are raised voices, strained voices. Shikamaru quickly puts his computer away. He isn't normally one to hurry, but needs must…

"Naruto isn't here." Unfortunately it's Gaara telling the forrestfallers this, head cocked in a fundamentally inhuman fashion.

The man Shikamaru recognises as Gino, one of the Forrestfall leaders, visibly steels himself, pushing instinctive fear away with rage. "Who speaks for him in his absence?"

"You don't, Gaara," Shikamaru cuts in very quickly. Most of the time Gaara remembers that Shikamaru's bonded to his sister, and most of the time that's enough to prevent him hurting Shikamaru.

Presently Gaara seems mostly amused. "Neither do you."

There's a long moment of uncomfortable uncertainty, of people looking around to find someone whose word Naruto would abide by, even in the likely event that the situation turns into a complete shitshow. Someone whose failures Naruto would overlook, no matter their cost. Shikamaru lets it build, and build, and build, before he says, "Let's get Sasuke."

Gaara gives him a rather cynical look, but there's nothing he can say. Whatever Sasuke does, however much it clashes with what Naruto would've done, Naruto will get over it, and Naruto will consider himself bound by Sasuke's word. There's no one else with that distinction.

Also Gaara and Sasuke tend unfortunately to agree on a lot of things, though Shikamaru doesn't expect they will this time.

"Let's sit down," Shikamaru says, which means Sasuke arrives to a fairy acrimonious brunch.

It's Shikamaru he looks at when he demands, "What?"

Gino breathes out, "The exorcist. It's really…"

"Have my seat," Gaara tells Sasuke. "I can't stomach this charade."

Shikamaru's glad he hacked for Sasuke yesterday, because he doesn't expect Sasuke would've sat down otherwise. He hopes he won't burn all his goodwill today.

"These gentlemen are from Forrestfall," he tells Sasuke. "They've come hoping to renegotiate the Kira matter."

"The Kira matter," Gino repeats. "Is that what you call it? The brutal murder of twelve of our children!"

Sasuke holds up a hand. "The shifter that went out of control and attacked a kindergarten. What about him?"

"We want justice!"

"Kira is presently being held here," Shikamaru says, rather more calmly. "They want us to hand him over. If not – well, they've acquired two shifter girls, aged five and seven, and are threatening to wreak their vengeance on them instead."

Forrestfall is a strong community, one of the premier city states of the region, but Kira isn't technically beastmad, Kira is pack, and so the matter has been at a standstill for weeks.

"You want to trade," Sasuke summarises. "Fair enough."

"It – you agree?"

Shikamaru draws in a long, silent breath. Naruto could not have made this deal, no shifter could. With pack loyalty valued so highly, with no man left behind their creed, any shifter who traded away one of their own would be politically dead. And Shikamaru couldn't have enforced this order, not in his own name: it had to be Sasuke.

Gaara's absence suggests, or at least Shikamaru would prefer to believe that it suggests, that even he understands that this had to be done, and that Naruto couldn't do it.

"If you want him, you can have him." Sasuke slants a look at Shikamaru. "I assume you've already got a hand-over scheme in mind."

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"And you," Gino begins, flustered. "You speak for Naruto Uzumaki?"

"No," Sasuke says. "I speak for myself. But Naruto won't go back on an agreement I've made."

The conversation's put on hold as Gino, and everyone else, freezes at the sound of the alarm. Normally, people would be running to their stations. Today, with Sasuke calmly getting to his feet, they move rather more sedately.

"Set it up," he tells Shikamaru.

"Where're you…" Gino starts.

"He'll exorcise the demons," Shikamaru explains: reassures. "Shall we watch?"

Sasuke climbs out through the window and stands on thin air. Shikamaru, Gino and Gino's colleagues stand by just inside that open window, watching the show. It occurs to Shikamaru to wonder what it would look like to another exorcist, or to a shifter. His own human eyes see a vaguely humanoid figure of light, surrounded by indistinct darkness. Blink, and there's only Sasuke, standing incongruously in the air. Blink, and the light and the darkness are back.

Later that afternoon, the girls are returned, more or less unharmed. Shikamaru leads the forrestfallers into the prisons, thankfully accompanied by Sasuke. In one of the cells, heavily restrained, is Kira. He looks like nothing special. There's a feral gleam to his eyes, a suggestion of claws when his hands move, but that's nothing out of the ordinary.

"How do you want him?" Sasuke asks.

Gino blinks. "We'll be taking him with us."

"What sort of restraints do you have?" Sasuke specifies.

Only now does Kira seem to grasp what's happening. At first he smiles, bright and fanged, apparently believing that he'll be handed over only to get loose.

"Standard," Gino starts. "Seven-layer steel, the works."

"I'll paralyse him for you," Sasuke decides. He's rubbing at a spot of grease on his hand, perfectly ordinary. "Full sensation, no movement. From the neck down? I presume you still want him able to scream."

This is when Kira changes, becomes wary. "Minato wouldn't – Naruto wouldn't – "

Sasuke smirks at him. "Naruto isn't here."

In the end Kira's carried out unconscious, gagged and chained, but these are formalities. He can't move anymore.

"He won't heal?" Gino asks.

"No," Sasuke says. "If he lived a thousand years, he wouldn't heal."

"He won't live a thousand years," Gino says.

Sasuke shrugs. "I'd be disappointed if he did."

Back upstairs he watches the girls rush into their families' arms with a rather odd expression: blank not because he's controlling his face but because his face doesn't know how to respond.

"That one," Shikamaru says, nodding at a woman lifting the smaller girl into her arms, "tried to get her daughter back on her own. Her husband attempted to get his hands on Kira, to arrange for the trade. They had to be confined, of course, to avoid further mishaps, but in light of the circumstances any punishment was suspended."

Sasuke, still looking at the girl clinging to her mother, at the mother crying into her hair and the father embracing them both, has nothing to say to that.

The older girl eventually walks over to Sasuke, staring up at him shyly but with determination. "Thank you." Her voice is low and shaking, stuttering with sincerity.

At first, Shikamaru's really worried that Sasuke will say something truly terrible in response.

"Thank Naruto," Sasuke tells her, turning on his heel. "I didn't do it for you."

It's the first time Sasuke's said something unflattering about himself that Shikamaru doesn't believe.

xxxxx

Next day Naruto isn't back yet, but then nobody except Naruto himself expected that he would be. Shikamaru's lounging on the floor, playing chess against himself with one hand and scrolling through Kabuto's notes with the other. He's reached the parts littered with non-human terminology, which is…he wouldn't say frustrating, but troublesome. Fortunately Sasuke so far has been amenable to translating – unfortunately Kabuto seems largely to have used these words because there aren't any English equivalents.

Gaara finally asks, "Why are you helping him?"

Sasuke shifts on the couch, seemingly relaxed. Really they've aggregated together because none of them trust each other out of sight, but there were a few demons to exorcise this morning and that always improves Sasuke's mood. Presently he shrugs, looking up from the print-out of some obscure volume on sealing. "He wants to create exorcism simulacra. Which isn't possible, God can't be replicated. But if they get some better DEW shields or whatever out of it, all the better."

Shikamaru refrains from argument. Sasuke has a high school student's understanding of science, which is to say almost none – but then again the world's foremost scientists have devoted their careers to creating anti-demon tech for generations, with precious little result.

That's when it happens.

Sasuke freezes, his face bleached white as ice.

"What?" Gaara snaps.

The ice shatters, expressions rushing across Sasuke's face. Even his lips are moving, but he's not speaking to Gaara – arguing with Naruto, as upset as Shikamaru's ever seen him.

Finally he makes a sharp motion with his hand, as though slamming a door shut.

"What is going on?" Gaara bites out.

Sasuke evidently becomes aware of them again. "Someone fed us false information. It's not a task force, it's the entire fucking stonehallian army. He's in an ambush."

"Kyuubi," Gaara says, on his feet now. "Tell me he's let Kyuubi out."

"Idiot," Sasuke grumbles, the word like a coal ready to flame up again at any moment. "Thinks there's too many civilians close by. That it won't be such a terrible thing for him to get captured, that he could talk them around…!"

"That is not possible," Gaara says, his voice flat but with this depth, the inhuman depth of Shukaku's roar. "Get up. We have to go."

"It's too far," Shikamaru says.

"We still – "

"Kyuubi will have finished them before we get there," Sasuke cuts in.

Gaara turns on him, with something almost hysteria. "You said he wouldn't let him out!"

"I did," Sasuke says, calm now as the eye of a storm. "I let Kyuubi out."

"Ah."

Sasuke remains sitting, on the surface placid. "He'll annihilate the army. I'm going to let him raze Stonehall City too."

Shikamaru blinks. "Does he have enough energy for that?"

"Uriel does."

"Right then," Shikamaru says, already speed dialling Temari. "I'll start sorting out the false information. Gaara, maybe you should contact Kiba?"

It's much later that Sasuke stands up. "Keep out of the way," he says. "He's upset."

Through the window Shikamaru can see Kyuubi thundering towards them like a comet on track to hit the earth.