A/N: Not much to say here... I know that the writing style changed a bit in
this chapter, but I think it's for the better. It's more readable and I
think that it's easier to write on my part. The rest of the story should be
written more like this. If it bothers you, just think of the first two
chapters as leading up to the plot. Now that I'm actually starting to get
to the point of the story, the flowery descriptions are nowhere near as
necessary. Feel free to tell me what you think, if you like.
Disclaimer: As I'm sure you could have all guessed, Naruto's not mine, nor are any of the characters found therein.
............
An immediate and abrupt and utterly complete hush descended upon the young group who had been talkative and vivacious only moments ago. Fear, palpable and intense, drenched the air that had been fresh and clean a heartbeat earlier. Realistically, the unexpected and unannounced appearance of Sasuke and Naruto represented something akin to an act of war to these jounin. The two men, former friends and crushes and comrades and teammates, were no longer the children that the village had once known. The flashing challenge in Naruto's glaring red eyes that just dared the jounin before him to try ANYTHING made that blatantly obvious. He would go down fighting if it came to that. Both of them would.
A silent and unanimous decision was reached in a matter of seconds, made in the same manner that important decisions must be made on missions where a wayward sound or a wasted moment could mean the difference between life and death, success and failure. Sakura, the green girl who had once upon a time fancied herself in love with the black boy and who had once been loved by the blue boy was unceremoniously pushed to the head of the group which now practically oozed wary readiness. She, being a smart girl, understood the decision and agreed with it in principle; she was the logical spokesperson and they all knew it, but that did not leave her feeling at all safe or confident in her position. The boys she had known and respected and loved and been loved by and entrusted with her life and safety had vanished long ago, replaced by these men who she knew not at all. A fleeting wish that Lee were there passed through her mind, but he was away on a mission reaping the well-deserved rewards of his tenacity and grueling recovery from wounds of long ago. The green boy had vowed to give anything to protect her, and he'd often made good on his word; for that reason, she had come to rely upon him more heavily than she cared to admit. She could have used his support now, but there was no use in wishing for the impossible when reality was busy rearing its ugly head.
For a few tension-packed moments, no one moved. No one so much as breathed. All were staring, waiting for someone else to make the first decisive move. Only a few yards lay between Sakura and the two men, but the distance seemed impossible. To make matters worse, Sasuke had been roused from his apparent stupor by the unexpected halt. Sakura was not the only one who barely suppressed an instinctive shudder as two pairs of cold, red eyes regarded those they had once considered comrades in arms. Sasuke was not supposed to look at HER with that animalistic, hungry look that was made all the more terrible by the barely-visible curse seal that still scarred his neck ... Naruto's eyes weren't supposed to be this dangerously bloodthirsty shade of red.
No use in putting off the inevitable. Heart pounding so loudly she was sure that those on the other side of the village could hear it, Sakura forced words out of a throat that had gone as dry as a dead leaf. She could not find a smile to offer them. "It's been a while, Sasuke-san. Naruto-san." Harmless, easy words that she tried to make as and innocent as possible, but it pained her to think that there was no more familiarity with these two. Never again. Best to consider the Sasuke-kun she had loved as a child dead and gone because he WAS. Vanished along with the loud and obnoxious teammate she had grown to respect and care for more than he would ever know. Both dead and gone and replaced by dangerously unstable look-alikes.
She received no answer to her pleasantries, and truly she had expected none. Two pairs of blood-red eyes simply stared, focusing all of their pent- up rage and frustration and an unmistakable urge to hurt and KILL on her. Staring and flaying her to her very soul, and she knew then that stopping these two and drawing their attention had been a mistake of the worst kind.
Unnerved by the silence and the stares and vaguely hoping for any sort of assistance from her fellow jounin, Sakura glanced back at her companions. All of them returned her pleading gaze with blank looks and barely shrugged shoulders exactly as she had expected. They were your teammates, those looks seemed to say. Sakura knew them the best. They would back her up, but when it came down to it, they were her problem first and foremost for she was the only one present who was at all suited to dealing with them. Uncertainly, she again focused her attention on the men before her.
They had changed drastically during that brief, unvoiced conference. The tension had all but melted away from the pair, and although they still clung to one another's hands so hard that their knuckles were white, it was as though they were two entirely different people. More relaxed. Their eyes had faded from angry red to their traditional black and blue hues and as Sakura watched, Naruto brought his free hand up to rest behind his head in a gesture she had not seen in years and grinned that achingly familiar grin of his and for a second it felt as though they were twelve and innocent all over again.
"Sakura-chan, hi! We were just on our way home from a meeting," the blonde chirped in a tone that was so cheerful and carefree that it could not possibly belong to the boy with the red eyes who had stood there just heartbeats ago. The laugh that followed his words, though - that laugh did not belong to him, nor did the voice that had settled into a light tenor somewhere along the line. The words were his, were her Naruto's, but the voice and the laugh and everything else about him belonged to someone or something else.
She didn't know what to do. In ten years she had learned much, had grown more as a shinobi and as a woman than she could have ever dreamed possible, but she was still wholly unprepared for this. For them. Before she knew what she was doing, before she could stop herself, she found herself backing up those couple of paces to regain the dubious safety of the group. They, all six of them, had known the Naruto who now stood before them, known him and loved him and hated him and grudgingly admired him.
And then, the silence was broken as uncomfortably as it had been set. The small, sharp intake of breath that caught in Hinata's throat as she forced herself to truly LOOK into Naruto's eyes did not go unnoticed, nor did the protective and concerned glance that Kiba immediately shot her way. Sakura felt her stomach lurch, felt a sudden wave of pity for the snow-white girl who had still never felt the stain of enemy blood on her hands and who still loved Naruto in the same practiced way that Sakura still loved Sasuke. Or rather, the memory of what the two men had been when they were still boys. Hinata had seen what Sakura had seen. These were no longer their boys. At the moment, Naruto's eyes were baby blue and naïve as the twelve year old eyes she remembered but the faint traces of reddish purple never quite left them.
Naruto heard Hinata's gasp and his eyes narrowed angrily, the red flooding back into them as he shifted his renewed glare to focus on Kiba. Wisely, Sakura bit back the sudden foolhardy urge to smack him and yell at him and ask him what the hell he had expected to happen after all these years. After all these years. It hit her then all over again and with a finality that nearly broke her heart. These were not her boys. They weren't the boys from oh so long ago and she could do nothing but stand aside and let them pass because she no longer had the RIGHT to do anything else.
She opened her mouth to tell them to go on, that they would not be delayed any longer, but the words died in her throat as an unexpected surge of chakra whisked Naruto and Sasuke away as if they'd never been there. Sakura could have followed them easily; any jounin could follow the traces of chakra from a ninjutsu like the one Naruto had used, but she and her companions wisely opted to let well enough alone. There was no reason to pursue them when they had very obviously moved in the direction of Uchiha Sasuke's residence. Best to leave them be and try to forget that they had ever seen these two red-eyed ghosts from the past. As jounin, they had more pressing matters to attend to. With a silent accord, they continued on their interrupted way and tried as a group to shake off the haunting feeling that they had not yet seen the last of Naruto and Sasuke.
None of them noticed the blonde boy with the blood red eyes and the brutally suppressed chakra who watched them from the camouflaging branches of a distant tree as he turned over the ways that he would make each of these marked young men and women suffer. None of them would have suspected that Naruto of all people would ever master the art of hiding his chakra so thoroughly that he could remain inconspicuous to six competent jounin. It was because of this that none of the departing jounin saw the positively, sadistically evil smile that deformed the blonde's face as he disappeared in earnest to rejoin the companion he had temporarily left in the company of a shadow clone. It pained him to be apart from Sasuke, and in a small part of his mind he worried what the other boy would do in his absence. Even these few short minutes were too long to be separated from the man that he considered his other half.
Disclaimer: As I'm sure you could have all guessed, Naruto's not mine, nor are any of the characters found therein.
............
An immediate and abrupt and utterly complete hush descended upon the young group who had been talkative and vivacious only moments ago. Fear, palpable and intense, drenched the air that had been fresh and clean a heartbeat earlier. Realistically, the unexpected and unannounced appearance of Sasuke and Naruto represented something akin to an act of war to these jounin. The two men, former friends and crushes and comrades and teammates, were no longer the children that the village had once known. The flashing challenge in Naruto's glaring red eyes that just dared the jounin before him to try ANYTHING made that blatantly obvious. He would go down fighting if it came to that. Both of them would.
A silent and unanimous decision was reached in a matter of seconds, made in the same manner that important decisions must be made on missions where a wayward sound or a wasted moment could mean the difference between life and death, success and failure. Sakura, the green girl who had once upon a time fancied herself in love with the black boy and who had once been loved by the blue boy was unceremoniously pushed to the head of the group which now practically oozed wary readiness. She, being a smart girl, understood the decision and agreed with it in principle; she was the logical spokesperson and they all knew it, but that did not leave her feeling at all safe or confident in her position. The boys she had known and respected and loved and been loved by and entrusted with her life and safety had vanished long ago, replaced by these men who she knew not at all. A fleeting wish that Lee were there passed through her mind, but he was away on a mission reaping the well-deserved rewards of his tenacity and grueling recovery from wounds of long ago. The green boy had vowed to give anything to protect her, and he'd often made good on his word; for that reason, she had come to rely upon him more heavily than she cared to admit. She could have used his support now, but there was no use in wishing for the impossible when reality was busy rearing its ugly head.
For a few tension-packed moments, no one moved. No one so much as breathed. All were staring, waiting for someone else to make the first decisive move. Only a few yards lay between Sakura and the two men, but the distance seemed impossible. To make matters worse, Sasuke had been roused from his apparent stupor by the unexpected halt. Sakura was not the only one who barely suppressed an instinctive shudder as two pairs of cold, red eyes regarded those they had once considered comrades in arms. Sasuke was not supposed to look at HER with that animalistic, hungry look that was made all the more terrible by the barely-visible curse seal that still scarred his neck ... Naruto's eyes weren't supposed to be this dangerously bloodthirsty shade of red.
No use in putting off the inevitable. Heart pounding so loudly she was sure that those on the other side of the village could hear it, Sakura forced words out of a throat that had gone as dry as a dead leaf. She could not find a smile to offer them. "It's been a while, Sasuke-san. Naruto-san." Harmless, easy words that she tried to make as and innocent as possible, but it pained her to think that there was no more familiarity with these two. Never again. Best to consider the Sasuke-kun she had loved as a child dead and gone because he WAS. Vanished along with the loud and obnoxious teammate she had grown to respect and care for more than he would ever know. Both dead and gone and replaced by dangerously unstable look-alikes.
She received no answer to her pleasantries, and truly she had expected none. Two pairs of blood-red eyes simply stared, focusing all of their pent- up rage and frustration and an unmistakable urge to hurt and KILL on her. Staring and flaying her to her very soul, and she knew then that stopping these two and drawing their attention had been a mistake of the worst kind.
Unnerved by the silence and the stares and vaguely hoping for any sort of assistance from her fellow jounin, Sakura glanced back at her companions. All of them returned her pleading gaze with blank looks and barely shrugged shoulders exactly as she had expected. They were your teammates, those looks seemed to say. Sakura knew them the best. They would back her up, but when it came down to it, they were her problem first and foremost for she was the only one present who was at all suited to dealing with them. Uncertainly, she again focused her attention on the men before her.
They had changed drastically during that brief, unvoiced conference. The tension had all but melted away from the pair, and although they still clung to one another's hands so hard that their knuckles were white, it was as though they were two entirely different people. More relaxed. Their eyes had faded from angry red to their traditional black and blue hues and as Sakura watched, Naruto brought his free hand up to rest behind his head in a gesture she had not seen in years and grinned that achingly familiar grin of his and for a second it felt as though they were twelve and innocent all over again.
"Sakura-chan, hi! We were just on our way home from a meeting," the blonde chirped in a tone that was so cheerful and carefree that it could not possibly belong to the boy with the red eyes who had stood there just heartbeats ago. The laugh that followed his words, though - that laugh did not belong to him, nor did the voice that had settled into a light tenor somewhere along the line. The words were his, were her Naruto's, but the voice and the laugh and everything else about him belonged to someone or something else.
She didn't know what to do. In ten years she had learned much, had grown more as a shinobi and as a woman than she could have ever dreamed possible, but she was still wholly unprepared for this. For them. Before she knew what she was doing, before she could stop herself, she found herself backing up those couple of paces to regain the dubious safety of the group. They, all six of them, had known the Naruto who now stood before them, known him and loved him and hated him and grudgingly admired him.
And then, the silence was broken as uncomfortably as it had been set. The small, sharp intake of breath that caught in Hinata's throat as she forced herself to truly LOOK into Naruto's eyes did not go unnoticed, nor did the protective and concerned glance that Kiba immediately shot her way. Sakura felt her stomach lurch, felt a sudden wave of pity for the snow-white girl who had still never felt the stain of enemy blood on her hands and who still loved Naruto in the same practiced way that Sakura still loved Sasuke. Or rather, the memory of what the two men had been when they were still boys. Hinata had seen what Sakura had seen. These were no longer their boys. At the moment, Naruto's eyes were baby blue and naïve as the twelve year old eyes she remembered but the faint traces of reddish purple never quite left them.
Naruto heard Hinata's gasp and his eyes narrowed angrily, the red flooding back into them as he shifted his renewed glare to focus on Kiba. Wisely, Sakura bit back the sudden foolhardy urge to smack him and yell at him and ask him what the hell he had expected to happen after all these years. After all these years. It hit her then all over again and with a finality that nearly broke her heart. These were not her boys. They weren't the boys from oh so long ago and she could do nothing but stand aside and let them pass because she no longer had the RIGHT to do anything else.
She opened her mouth to tell them to go on, that they would not be delayed any longer, but the words died in her throat as an unexpected surge of chakra whisked Naruto and Sasuke away as if they'd never been there. Sakura could have followed them easily; any jounin could follow the traces of chakra from a ninjutsu like the one Naruto had used, but she and her companions wisely opted to let well enough alone. There was no reason to pursue them when they had very obviously moved in the direction of Uchiha Sasuke's residence. Best to leave them be and try to forget that they had ever seen these two red-eyed ghosts from the past. As jounin, they had more pressing matters to attend to. With a silent accord, they continued on their interrupted way and tried as a group to shake off the haunting feeling that they had not yet seen the last of Naruto and Sasuke.
None of them noticed the blonde boy with the blood red eyes and the brutally suppressed chakra who watched them from the camouflaging branches of a distant tree as he turned over the ways that he would make each of these marked young men and women suffer. None of them would have suspected that Naruto of all people would ever master the art of hiding his chakra so thoroughly that he could remain inconspicuous to six competent jounin. It was because of this that none of the departing jounin saw the positively, sadistically evil smile that deformed the blonde's face as he disappeared in earnest to rejoin the companion he had temporarily left in the company of a shadow clone. It pained him to be apart from Sasuke, and in a small part of his mind he worried what the other boy would do in his absence. Even these few short minutes were too long to be separated from the man that he considered his other half.