Let the Leaf Fly 2

It seems like I'm just copying 'I think I better leave right now'. The plot's so similar. Must be because I'm too hooked onto it. Sorry, purrfectly679!

...

A gust of wind blew through the deserted street of Konoha as a dark figure appeared at the Leaf country entrance. The guy clad in black moved smoothly through the village, leaving behind trails of dirt in his wake due to the power radiating from him.

People continued their tour of slumber land, not at all taking note of the guy, not at all caring.

But they would care if they only knew who he was.

The guy stopped in front of a house before slowly lifting his head to look at the window above.

Then he just stayed there through the night unmoving.

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"Naruto! Naruto, where are you?"

Uzumaki Naruto looked up upon hearing his name. Never had anyone come looking for him in the morning ever since he started his morning training. Naruto's face fell. It was when Sasuke had left that he started waking up at dawn to train himself.

Anyway, the blonde's caller had already run out of the bushes and into his face. Naruto blinked, then stumbled back and fell on his rear end.

"Itai!" Naruto looked up to see Sakura glaring down at him, hands on hips. "Ah, Sakura-chan! What's up?" Naruto asked.

"Couldn't you hear me? I called you so many times!" Sakura said angrily.

Naruto rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Heh. Sorry, I was thinking about something." Then he looked up at his teammate. "What happened?"

He knew Sakura wouldn't come looking for him for nothing. They hardly spoke after Sasuke went away. She thought it was Naruto who had done something wrong to agitate the Uchiha so much that he left.

Sakura's glare disappeared, but was immediately replaced with a look of seriousness.

"The Hokage needs to see you," Sakura started. Naruto raised an eyebrow.

Then Sakura swallowed before continuing, "It seems... that Sasuke is back."

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5 minutes later, one could see two blurry images racing from one end of the village to the other. But obviously the orange blur was much faster than the red one. It was so fast, so blur, the runner seemed as if... desperate to get to his destination.

2 minutes later, the two blurry images skidded to a stop in front of the Hokage's office.

Haruno Sakura stopped and bent over panting. But the blonde Uzumaki didn't stop. He ran into the Hokage's office, wanting to push through the heavy double doors. Only to get stopped by two ANBUs.

"Let me in! Let me in, you bastards!"

Then a distant voice, a soft voice, but loud enough to hear it was commanding, drifted from behind the two wooden doors. "Let them in."

It was then that Naruto noticed Sakura was already behind him.

The two ignorant ninjas finally put down their weapons and made space for the two shinobis to pass.

Sakura rushed through the double doors just as frantically as Naruto into the large office, only to almost fall flat on her butt as Naruto abruptly stopped. Sakura bit back a rather unlady-like curse as she started to scold Naruto.

Only to have her voice catch in her throat as she took in the guy in black whose body was lazily strewn over the long couch of the Hokage's office.

"S-Sasuke."

Hearing the tremble in the spoken name, Sakura reckoned it was her voice, but what she saw was Naruto stumbling forward toward the Uchiha.

'Eh...? What's Naruto doing?'

But just before the blonde's fingers touched the slightly tanned skin of Uchiha Sasuke, the stoic boy was out of reach. The three other occupants of the room looked up to see him at the corner of the room, scowling at the boy who had tried to touch him.

Nobody expect Sasuke himself caught the unconcealed hurt displayed on Naruto's face.

Right at that moment, a silver-haired jounin appeared in a puff of smoke and Naruto was grateful for the interruption before the atmosphere got too awkward.

"Sorry I'm late. I saw this dead ant on the floor on my way and I had to-"

This time, it wasn't because Naruto and Sakura cut the masked man off, it was all due to the fact that Hatake Kakashi had finally caught sight of his missing-since-three-years-ago student.

He fell quiet, throat too tight for words. Then in an instant, he was by Sasuke's side, hugging him tightly to his chest. As if spurred on by that show of emotion by the normally calm sensei, Sakura too, rushed forward to bury her head in the crook of Sasuke's shoulder.

Naruto expected Sasuke to turn away, to scowl at the two Leaf-nins like how he had scowled at him, but he didn't.

He just stood there, although rigidly. But he didn't pull away. Instead, his scowl had dissipated.

Naruto tried to breathe. Why... why did Sasuke turn away from only Naruto? Why...?

The Hokage seemed to sense Naruto's shock and hurt, as she quickly cleared her throat and requested for the other three people besides Naruto and herself to settle down.

"Uchiha Sasuke," she began, formally, "you have been missing for three years without a word of where you were to anyone, and now you're back. Would you mind telling us where you had gone to spend your young life?"

It took a while for Sasuke to answer, or so it seemed to Naruto. But when the Uchiha finally spoke, it frightened Naruto to once again hear his voice.

"Training," was his short and simple reply. Naruto snapped his gaze to Sasuke. Why didn't he tell them he had gone to look for Itachi like he had told him?

"Sasuke," now the Hokage had dropped the tone of formality, "you know that answer is not good enough."

Sasuke merely stared indifferently at the leader of the village.

Tsunade sighed, tired of trying to force the answer out of the stoic boy.

"May it be because you went looking for your brother?"

Naruto saw Kakashi turn to his dark-haired student, and Sakura as well.

Sasuke's response was evident even before he voiced it.

A moment of silence.

"You know that's prohibited, Sasuke!" Sakura finally yelled, breaking the tense silence as she jumped up. "You could have gotten yourself killed! It's so wrong Tsunade-sama even warned us to keep you captive if you ever went off, but there you went, off to Hell! What were you thinking!?"

Tsunade let the pink-haired girl get the worry off her chest. It was expected. Even she herself was itching to yell at the boy for not thinking about the others' feelings.

"That's enough, Sakura."

Eyes turned to the silver-haired jounin who had not spoken a word ever since ten minutes ago.

He stared at Sasuke straight in the eye, sending a warning to show he was pissed, and it worked even though only one eye was visible.

"Sasuke. I believe you not so irresponsible to not inform anyone of your whereabouts. Just out of curiosity... tell me who you told."

Naruto, who had been sitting and silently watching the scene unfold in front of him felt his heart skip a beat. Was he going to get into trouble for not telling anyone where Sasuke had gone?

But what the Uchiha did was not expected.

"No one."

Naruto stared dumbfounded at his pale teammate. 'What? He told me!'

The blonde wanted to shout at his rival, wanted to shout at him for ignoring him, to shout at him for taking his presence so lightly.

Kakashi's single eye narrowed to a slit as he doubted his student's words, but just gave it up in the end when he realized he wasn't going to get any answer out of the boy anymore than anyone else.

Finally the Hokage took hold of things again. "Uchiha Sasuke, I want you to stay in your house and not come out to the public's eye. It will only bring much commotion. If you want anything, you can inform the ANBU that will be outside your door 24/7, watching you to make sure you don't run off again," Tsunade said in a commanding tone. "Is that understood?"

She finished her speech even though she knew she wasn't going to get an answer.

"All dismissed."

Instantly, Kakashi disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a room full of smoke. He didn't want to get anymore angry than he already was receiving nothing but the dark-haired boy's silence.

Sakura waited to see where Sasuke was going before following in his footsteps out the office and to the ANBU waiting for him outside.

Naruto lingered behind for a while, still feeling as if Sasuke being back was all a dream.

"Naruto."

Naruto blinked, then turned to look at the Hokage.

"I need a word with you. Come," Tsunade said.

The blonde numbly nodded as he proceeded to sit on the other side of the Hokage's desk.

"You heard the conversation just now, so you shouldn't be so surprised. You know what happened between Sasuke and his brother, don't you?"

Naruto nodded. "Itachi killed the whole of Sasuke's clan and now Sasuke wants revenge," Naruto summarized.

"Correct," Tsunade said. "And to prevent Sasuke from claiming his own brother's life, and most probably his own, I passed a rule to forbid him from going to Itachi, and that if anyone were to know of his plan to go on a search for his brother, they were to stop him by all means, no matter what they had to do. Be it injuring or even killing Sasuke."

Naruto tried not to wince at the image of Sasuke lying bloody on the floor that flashed through his mind.

Then he thought of something. He stared straight into Tsunade's eyes.

"Why wasn't I informed?"

"That's the thing. After much discussion, we finally decided not to tell you about this," Tsunade informed.

Naruto blinked. Then sprang up. "Why not?! I'm his friend too! I have the right to know!"

"Naruto, calm down. Sit down and let me finish."

Naruto glared at the old woman before plopping into the seat once again, chest heaving from the sudden outburst.

"Well, you yourself should know your temper when you're angry. So we thought, letting you know and getting you all fired up just to risk losing Sasuke's life was not worth it. You know you can get protective," Tsunade finished off.

Naruto wanted to shout at Tsunade-baba for leaving him out – again. He wanted to protest that he, too, was a member of team 7, no matter if his teammates hated him or not. He wanted to know why he felt so useless.

As the old woman's word reeled through his mind again, he thought of only one thing.

'What if Sasuke had just told me what he was going to do because he knew only I didn't know about the rule?'

And that thought ached.