Naruto ranted and hollered about how he had been arguing with Sasuke-kun all night. There was nothing he could do or say that would change Sasuke-kun's mind. Sasuke-kun was leaving.

I felt my world crashing down around me the more Naruto spoke. The three of us, the quaint, strange little picture that only worked because of how out of the box it was, the answer to everything, was an answer to nothing. It wasn't working. Why should I have ever thought otherwise?

Naruto was the only person that could convince Sasuke-kun into staying. Part of me wanted to yell at Naruto, tell him to march his ass right back to Sasuke-kun and try again, harder and better, even though I knew it was useless. Naruto always tried his hardest. He always put in his all. Him failing wasn't because he was being lazy. It was because all of this, the idea, was too sick to begin with.

I could see how upset Naruto was just by looking at him. He didn't lose his cool like this too often anymore. He was too busy not giving up to cry about it. He was doubting himself. That's what made everything so more terrifying.

We were heading to the Hokage's office, because there was a sliver of a chance that Sasuke-kun wasn't legally allowed to leave the village alone. It was the only thing the two of us could come up with. Him coming out with us on our 'vacation' was most likely not known by the council. Kakashi-sensei being the Hokage could have easily kept it under wraps, with Sasuke-kun back in the village before anyone could notice. But permanently? Surely that couldn't be allowed. We didn't fight so hard to keep him, just to lose him again.

"He keeps saying he doesn't belong here. That he doesn't deserve shit. He doesn't make any sense. I can't talk sense into him. I've never been good at talking. I can only just beat the crap out of him. That's the only reason why he's here. I beat him up and he had no choice but to come back here because I forced him. He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to be with us. He doesn't want to be with me."

"Naruto... Maybe we're overreacting," I said, trying to blink my own tears out of my eyes, but all I could think about was that Sasuke-kun had explained that there was nothing between the three of us. It wasn't supposed to continue. It wasn't him that blurted out he was in love, but me and drunken Naruto. It wasn't him that started any of this. He had only been caught up in the middle.

We got to the Hokage's office, dodging all the procedures of security and making a meeting first. If Naruto had been anyone other than Naruto, all his cursing and yelling would have most likely gotten him thrown into jail.

"Naruto, what on earth is the problem?" Kakashi-sensei asked from his desk, Naruto just finishing cursing out an ANBU for some sort of sly comment he made about Sasuke-kun. I hadn't heard what it was. If I had, I probably would have punched the shinobi through the wall.

"Sasuke's leaving!" Naruto blurted out.

"I know," Kakashi-sensei replied calmly with his hands folded on the top of his desk.

"Isn't... Isn't he like not allowed to or something?" Naruto's voice cracked over the sentence.

"As of right now, no he is not. He is not allowed to leave the village alone, but permission has been submitted, and once the paperwork is looked over, it will be weighed and thought through if Sasuke will be allowed to leave on his own. He is a rogue ninja but his actions from the war could grant him forgiveness. Especially if he accepts to do certain services for the village. Orochimaru has already been given pardon because of his deeds. It is unlikely Sasuke will be denied."

"First off!" Naruto shouted, pointing his finger dramatically. "Orochimaru being allowed to do what he pleases with just a small slap on the wrist is utter crap! What's he even doing?! More sick experiments!? He kidnapped Sasuke!"

Kakashi-sensei's expression did not change from its normal lazy collected-ness. "Orochimaru is being monitored to ensure that he is no longer practicing on live humans, and he has proof that all past human subjects had signed a waiver so there isn't much we can do about that. Especially since the majority of this was done outside of any village but his own. Also, Orochimaru did not kidnap Sasuke. Sasuke left freely with him."

"Bullshit!" Naruto rammed his fist on Kakashi-sensei's desk. "He killed the Third Hokage. That's not unpunishable!"

"Well technically that was deemed as a sacrificial suicide at the trial."

Naruto cried out with his arm in the air.

Kakashi-sensei stared back at Naruto balefully. "Orochimaru has already done a number of community services-

"Fucking bastard is just fucking with us! That's why!"

"You know the real reason why we're keeping Orochimaru happy."

"And that's fucked up too, ya know!? We need him as an ally!? As a weapon or something?! Shit like that's gotta change. We gotta change it so we don't ever need to do sketchy shit like that ever again!"

"Kakashi-sensei sighed. "We are getting off topic. I know that the real issue here is Sasuke. What's the matter, Naruto? You begged and fought to give Sasuke back his freedom and now that he has it you want to take it away from him again?"

"Because!" Naruto sobbed. "He wasn't supposed to leave again!"

"You know very well that you can't force a person to do something that they just don't want to do."

"No, Kakashi-sensei, you don't understand." Naruto began to pace back and forth. I stood there, broken. "Sasuke's too damn stubborn to let himself be happy! He'd be happy here! But he's just too much of a fucking bastard to admit it. That god damn asshole! He won't admit that he loves us, but he does! I know he does!"

"Naruto," Kakashi-sensei stopped him. "You can still care about your friends even if they're not with you."

"We're not friends," Naruto stated coldly before motioning us with a circle of his arm. "We're a family. We have to stay together because we're a family. People aren't meant to be alone. That's why they get married and have children and shit. We love Sasuke, and Sasuke loves us! We're a fucking family!"

Kakashi-sensei sighed again, rubbing his eyes with his fingers.

"You have to talk to him, Kakashi-sensei. You have to knock some sense into him. Tell him it's okay that he loves us, because he's not gonna believe it coming from me or Sakura-chan."

"Naruto, Sakura, you three are all adults now, and you're shinobi. You should be able to handle your problems without me. Talk to Sasuke yourselves. I'm not your sensei anymore."

"No, you are!" Naruto slapped his hand on the desk. "You are and you always will be! Until you're dead!"

Kakashi-sensei looked slightly alarmed by Naruto's declaration, clearly thinking that this was not what he had signed up for when he agreed to train a few genin ninja all those years ago.

"Some... stuff happened," Naruto started. "Like awkward stuff. Well not really. It wasn't awkward, but stuff definitely happened and because the stuff happened, we need an outside person to talk to him, otherwise, Sasuke's just gonna say that Sakura-chan and my feelings are making our brains too cloudy to think right!"

"What stuff are you talking about Naruto?"

I held my breath, giving Naruto an alarmed look. Naruto stepped away, stuffing his hand into his pocket and looking embarrassed for the first time in a long time. "I can't tell you that for privacy reasons, Kakashi-sensei."

"And I don't know how to help you. You want me to just take away his pardon and lock him back up? It's too late for that now."

"That's not what we want." Naruto gave me a desperate look, begging me to explain the situation.

I took a deep breath. "What Naruto means to say is that Sasuke-kun may be making a decision he'll regret based on a situation that could have had him... emotionally out of bounds." Naruto seemed impressed with my large word choice, but Kakashi-sensei was not.

"Then that's something he needs to figure out himself. He can always come back if he so wishes. We're not banning him from coming back to the village. That's the whole reason for the pardon."

Right. Sasuke-kun could come back. If he wanted to. But he was a stubborn bastard.

Kakashi-sensei convinced us that the only hope of us getting what we wanted was to talk to Sasuke-kun ourselves, as adults.

We didn't move as fast to Sasuke-kun's living arrangements as the Hokage's office, because I was trailing behind. Naruto was storming ahead, but he kept having to stop to wait for me. I was really banking on Kakashi-sensei of being more help. I'd never been able to convince Sasuke-kun of anything in my life.

At Sasuke-kun's door, Naruto rammed loudly. There was a muffled, "Go away," from the other side.

Naruto knocked even louder. "Sakura-chan's here!" he shouted. "Tell it to her face that you're running off again! It's the last decent thing you could possibly do at this rate! Are you a complete heartless jerk?!"

The door cracked open. I barely saw Sasuke-kun's mouth and the end of his nose as he simply said, "I'm leaving," before trying to close the door again. Naruto got his good shoulder in the way before it could latch.

"Oh no you don't! Do it properly! Come on Sakura-chan, get in here." Naruto grabbed me as he shoved his way through the house. My eyes locked on Sasuke-kun, afraid that this could be the last time I would ever see him. I tried to remember every detail all at once, so much so that I couldn't really see anything. Oh wait, that was because my eyes were watering. "Tell her, Sasuke! Tell her how you're breaking our hearts!"

"Why don't you just tell her!"

"I'm not going to do this for you," Naruto said in a low growling, angry, hurt voice.

Sasuke-kun's eyes landed on me with a look of panic that was only there for half a second. Then he was the Sasuke-kun that he had always been. "I'm leaving the village, Sakura."

My breath hitched as a sob threatened to escape.

"Tell her why!" Naruto demanded.

"The both of you should know why."

I shook my head, eyes squeezed tight. "I don't. I never did, and I never will!"

"Stop it," Sasuke-kun uttered, halting my sobs on the spot. "You're being annoying."

My heart froze. It was happening again, Sasuke-kun leaving me over and over. It always happened the same way. I was annoying. Perhaps it was this one great fault of mine that continued to chase Sasuke-kun away. My head couldn't wrap around how silly the thought was. I was too busy reliving every time he had ever left me.

"I can't stay here. I don't belong here. I'm just going to bring the both of you down."

"That's fucking-"

"It doesn't matter how much the two of you can accept me." Sasuke-kun interrupted Naruto. "Most of the village doesn't and never will. You can try to force them. They might even try to pretend that they do, but they won't."

"You think we fucking care!?" Naruto shouted. "My whole life's been about people judging me, and hating me! You think being associated with you is gonna make a fuck of difference!?"

"Naruto's right," I said, my voice gaining back its strength. "Besides. The people already know how we are closely knitted together. It's a bond that won't be broken. We had to deal with it when we refused to give up searching for you. We'll have to deal with it even if you're not here, because our feelings for you won't change and we won't hide the fact."

"Exactly!" Naruto chimed in. "Where always going to be Team Seven, no matter where you go. We're always going to be that fucked up team. It's okay. We accepted that."

"That's not... That's not what I'm saying," Sasuke-kun shook his head. "It's so much more than that. It's not just because of Team Seven. What do you two expect if I stay here?"

I expected Naruto to blurt something out instantly, but he didn't. I pressed my lips together. I didn't really care so much what would happen if Sasuke-kun stayed. I knew things could very easily get complicated. Anything could turn sour, but I was preparing myself for whatever end I thought might happen by Sasuke-kun staying. I might be crushed by Sasuke-kun's decision, but I was sure that his happiness would lessen such pain. If he wound up choosing Naruto over me that was okay. If he simply stated that we couldn't be more than platonic with all three of us, that would be okay. As long as he was here. As long as I could see him be happy.

Finally, Naruto found his voice. "To be together."

"Be together how?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Because it does matter. Naruto, you're not the kind of person who can hide what you feel. Just by looking at you people know exactly what you're thinking."

"That's not-"

"And for Sakura," Sasuke-kun tilted his head toward me. "She could be forgiven for having a crush on me when we were kids, but she's also too obvious. Her voice changes when she talks to either of us and she does that thing with her head."

"Wait, what thing with my head?" I blinked.

Naruto turned to me, staring at me for a second. "Yeah, but Sasuke that doesn't have to mean anything. Any girl-"

"What thing with my head?!"

Naruto stopped, before running his hand through his hair. "You sometimes do this cute little head tilt thing when you talk to us."

"I do not!"

"I mean you do it way more to Sasuke than to me. And not all the time." He turned back to Sasuke-kun. "She doesn't do it all the time! And besides, I don't see what that's got-"

"Because. What are people going to think? People love to gossip and if her having a relationship with a traitor isn't disgraceful enough, what will they think if they start to suspect you're also involved-which they will," Sasuke-kun added while Naruto was opening his mouth to say something, "They might pity her, if it was just me. They might think, she's too stupid and young to realize that love can't fix a person like me, but with you involved it changes their perspective in thinking she's just a slut that doesn't give a fuck who she's with."

"You take all that back right now before I shove my fist all the way up your ass! Apologize to her!"

"That's what the people are going to think. You could make every single one of them forcefully apologize to her, but it wouldn't fix the damn problem. You want Sakura to have to deal with that? Because I wouldn't be able to stand it. I would fucking murder someone."

That got Naruto to shut up for a moment.

Sasuke-kun continued. "And for you? Not only are you in this sexual polygamous relationship, it involves a man no less, a traitorous untrustworthy man who you are so willing to share carnal pleasures with. Are people going to want that for a Hokage? Are they going to trust and follow someone so reckless and heinous?"

"It's nobody's business. We don't have to tell-"

"Don't you want a family, Naruto? Don't you want kids? You've told me so. How's that gonna work?" He looked at me. "You too, Sakura. I know you've talked about raising a family as well." I blushed, because I had only had ever talked about raising Sasuke-kun's children, and never directly to Sasuke-kun himself.

"It could work-"

"How? Sakura baring the both of our children? Without marrying one of us? Have our bastard children never knowing who their father is for the sake of face? Or if she marries one of us, and then she has a child that looks too much like the other? People will find out. She can't marry both of us. It's illegal. It's also illegal for you and I to get married."

"When I'm Hokage-"

"You're gonna change the laws? There's a reason it's illegal, Naruto. People don't like it. And people will always not like it and the problems will never go away."

We were all silent. I knew. I knew Sasuke-kun was right. I had known that there was no future for the three of us since the beginning. It was just such an attractive idea to believe in Naruto. I had always believed in Naruto. It was a natural thing for me to do, even in the most impossible situations.

"I don't have to have kids," Naruto finally said. "There's other Uzumakis out there... somewhere. I'm fine with that. You though. You should carry out your bloodline. You deserve to have a family again. I know you miss it, right? Just try it again. You'll be happy again. I don't have to interfere too much. Hell, I don't need to be a part of it at all. I'll step back. Just stay. Please stay."

Sasuke-kun's face was expressionless, but I could see him shaking just ever so slightly.

"But Naruto," I sobbed. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand seeing the both of them suffering like this.

"It's fine," Naruto waved his hand. "I'm used to being alone anyway."

"Shut the fuck up," Sasuke-kun snapped. "You're not used to it. You were born not used to it. I can't accept this from either one of you. I don't deserve it. The Uchiha bloodline doesn't deserve it. I can't stay here." Sasuke-kun covered his face with his hand. "I can't forgive myself. Every time I look at you two, Naruto's missing arm, the lost look in both of your eyes. It keeps reminding me everything I did to you. It makes me want to die."

"No." Naruto said stubbornly, shaking his head and clenching his fist. "No one's gonna feel that way. No one's gonna be unhappy. We'll work together and fix this."

"I need to fix myself, Naruto. I need to leave to find myself," Sasuke-kun said, staring at nothing. "Listen. If I... get better. If I think I'll deserve to ever be in the presence of you two or inside this village ever again, I'll come back. If I ever think I'm forgivable, I'll come back, and maybe help you make this place the way you say it should be."

"And what if you're too stubborn to forgive yourself?!"

Sasuke-kun paused, and I had that frozen fear. The fear that Sasuke-kun would hurt himself if he was alone and not being watched. He then answered, "Then I'm gone for good."

"That's fucking-"

"Take it or leave it."

Naruto swore under his breath and turned away violently, ramming his fist into the door.

"Okay," I announced. Both Naruto and Sasuke-kun seemed surprised with my agreeing. "Sasuke-kun needs to find himself outside the village. It's something he needs to fix on his own. Only ourselves control our destinies. Fearing that Sasuke-kun won't come back is the same as doubting him, which is the same as not believing in him. I believe in him. He's coming back."

I saw Sasuke-kun staring back at me with a strange sort of look. After considering it for several moments, I realized it was relief. I knew it wasn't relief that I had granted him permission to leave. He would have done it anyway, and he was not the type of person that cared if other people didn't like his decisions. It was because I had declared that he would come back. Sasuke-kun had said something to me the other night, that he needed me to care about him. He needed my faith in him because it was the way he gauged his self-worth. Even if I was afraid that he wouldn't make it, I couldn't let him see. I couldn't let him see that I was the fool yet again.

"Of course, he's coming back," Naruto said, rolling his eyes. "He's just gonna owe us so big when he gets back. So big. Like every day for the rest of his life big."

Sasuke-kun smirked.