With this story having so many options available to it I'm having a hard time coming up with a good solid direction I want to take this. If you want to suggest a REASONABLE idea I'm all ears. I have decided this will not be a Naruto/Hinata fic. As much as I love that pairing it just won't work. I think most of you can figure out where I might be headed, at least in the relationship department.

If the grief of watching his team come apart around him didn't kill Naruto then the two weeks of paid leave shouldn't have. But the mind works in mysterious ways. Naruto had been able to dull the pain and cover it up while on the mission. Likewise the rush he had been swept up in when they had returned had kept him relatively busy.

But now, with no mission and no motivation to do anything, Naruto began to think about his friend's death and the subsequent happenings almost without pause. He went over it in detail again and again, punishing himself for his own mistakes and yelling curses at Sasuke for his mistakes. Self doubt began to chew away at Naruto's soul slowly but surely.

After five days of this Naruto could take no more. Leaving his apartment for the first time since he had returned from his meeting with the Hokage the blond searched out a particularly difficult training ground, one he hadn't had the nerve to try before, and began to run through some warm ups.

The course itself, modeled on a military ropes and obstacle course, was one of the more punishing ones available to lower level ninja. Trip wires dotted the ground. Any one of them, if sprung, would trigger a trap. The traps ranged from hidden water features to low yield mines. Walls for chakra climbing, stumps for taijutsu, ponds for water walking, and various other training items were scattered around the area.

Naruto started off with a run around the perimeter.

By the time he got back to the starting point he was muddy, bruised, cut, burned, and plain tired. After a quick inspection of his person Naruto set off on a different route.

Naruto pushed himself past his limits. He ran until he could run no more then hauled his ass off the ground and did it again. The grounds began to look like a war zone. Craters pockmarked the land. Kunai were everywhere. Exposed traps and felled trees were beyond count. But Naruto didn't care. The challenge and fatigue kept his mind off of his troubles.

The sun had set, leaving a fine rosy pink hue in the eastern sky, when Naruto finally stopped. His cloths had been reduced to tatters. His jacket was missing it's left arm and a good portion of the left side. Slits from kunai and thorns had turned the remaining cloths into barely livable rags. Twigs and leaves were stuck in his hair and mud streaks gave his body and cloths a camouflaged look.

But despite all of this Naruto was happy in a sense. Ten hours of training had ground down his mental activity to the barest minimum. Now all he could think of was how much he hurt and whether he'd have enough energy to eat once he got home.

With a stumbling gate that would have outdone a drunkard Naruto started off for home. He managed to find his way in the correct direction but, when he neared home, he discovered that he was no longer being drawn onward by memory but by smell. And he wasn't headed directly towards home. His nose, which had allied itself with his stomach, was leading him towards his favorite wayside eatery.

The lights and smell of the Ichiraku Ramen stand lifted Naruto's soul out of the gutter. He stumbled in and managed to sit and stay on a stool, but what greeted him when he looked up to order almost knocked him off the stool despite his efforts to stay upright.

A certain pink haired girl wearing a red dress and an apron was smiling timidly back at him from behind the bar. His fatigued mind took a few seconds to register who it was and come up with a name to go with the face.

"Sakura-chan?! What are you doing here?" Naruto asked, his eyes suddenly wide in wonder.

Sakura blushed a bit and went back to cooking ramen. "Well since I'm no longer a ninja I needed a job. I work mornings at Ino's flower shop and evenings here. I just started here yesterday."

Sakura finally noticed his dirty body and the state his cloths were in. Her attitude flipped through a one eighty. She dropped the ramen she was cooking back into the water as she reeled backwards in shock.

"Naruto, what happened to you?! Did you get in a fight or something?" She asked in a horrified voice.

Naruto looked down at himself. The gloom seeped back into his conscience as he picked at the tatters of his cloths. "No, training," he muttered gloomily.

Sakura jolted out of her amazement and quickly searched for a clean cloth which she promptly dipped into some hot water and handed over to Naruto.

"Here, wash you face, it's covered in mud and cuts."

The blond excepted the cloth and began to dab at his face. Sakura went back to cooking ramen and ladled up a bowl for her friend. She placed it in front of him with a smile. "I get a free bowl a day but I didn't eat mine today so you can have it if you want."

Naruto blinked at the bowl in front of him for a moment before risking a smile of his own. "Thanks Sakura-chan." He broke apart his chopsticks and began to slurp the noodles up in delight. He didn't notice that Sakura had leaned forward and was picking twigs out of his hair until she pulled a little too hard to get a tangled one out. He jerked back which made her pull harder. He yelped in pain and rubbed his head. He could have sworn he was missing hair but when he looked at the offending twig that now sat in Sakura's palm there wasn't a golden hair in sight.

Sakura's mouth twitched in amusement before returning back to neutral.

Silence dropped a curtain between them. Naruto worked slowly through his ramen while Sakura busied herself behind the counter. Time passed by in a dream like slowness for the both of them. Both in their own little worlds yet seemingly linked.

Naruto didn't realize he'd finished the bowl until many minutes after the broth had cooled. He pushed it away and asked for another which Sakura promptly dished out for him. It took four bowls before either of them spoke more then the required 'another please' or 'there you go'.

Sakura was swirling noodles in the cooker, her back partly turned to Naruto, when she spoke. Her voice cut through the silence like a sword and her single statement brought the world crashing back in on both of them.

"I miss him Naruto."

Naruto was in mid slurp when she spoke. He paused to look at her before dipping his head and finishing his mouthful. When he was done he began to swirl his chopsticks in his broth, playing with the noodles, trying to engage his brain in something other then replying to Sakura's statement. The turning, writhing noodles beneath him managed to keep him occupied for a moment or two but Sakura's words had ruptured the thin membrane Naruto had just managed to put up around his feelings.

He sighed loudly and dropped his chopsticks next to his bowl. "I miss the bastard too," he said. Sakura flinched when he spoke. Whether it was because he had replied or because of his choice of descriptors for the dead boy Naruto couldn't tell.

Sakura turned towards him, her work forgotten, and met his eyes. "Why does it hurt so much? Why won't it go away?" She asked. Her sadness could be heard just below the surface, just barely suppressed.

The blond boy's eye flickered away from hers for a moment as he thought. He idly kicked at the wall below him for a moment before answering.

"I don't know. It just does. Iruka-sensei would probably tell us to just move on and keep living or something like that." Naruto took a deep breath and let it out in a long shuddering hiss. "But I can't move on. It seems wrong, like I'm abandoning the bastard or something."

Naruto let out a sharp bark of a laugh that set Sakura back on her heals. The boy's face twitched into something resembling a smile as an image of a cocksure Sasuke materialized before him. "The bastard would probably say he didn't need someone to watch his back, that I was just a dead last and that I wasn't worth the effort of keeping around. Damn you Sasuke. Damn you and your friggen ego. I won't let you get the best of me."

Naruto had spoken in a mild monotone voice, almost like he was mumbling out loud. It's coolness so contradicted his choice of words that Sakura had to suppress a giggle. She'd heard words like that many a time from her loud blond teammate but always with much more passion and volume. For some reason she found this light, almost conversational tone, funny.

The blond glanced up at the sound of Sakura's half smothered laugh then chuckled as he saw her laugh turn into a coughing fit mixed with a laugh. She looked so ridiculous as she held her stomach with one hand and tried to cover her mouth with the other. Tears were streaming down her face as she coughed and laughed at the same time.

Soon they were both smiling and laughing together, reminding each other of funny incidents they remembered from training or missions. Even the most mundane things like a casual insult suddenly took on new, hilarious, meaning in light of Sasuke's absence and their new bond of friendship.

They talked into the late hours of the night, even after the owner had returned and closed the shop up with Sakura's help. They sat together on a couple of stools they had pulled out from under the awning and talked like they never had before.

A pink glow in the east was spreading before they went their separate ways.

"I'll come by again tonight. Save me a bowl if you don't want it Sakura-chan," Naruto called as he walked off towards his apartment.

Sakura smiled. "I'll be waiting. Later...Naruto-kun."

Sorry it was so short people but I've been seriously looking for a job now that summer is almost over for me and I need money both for school and life. If anyone's wondering why I put Sakura to work at the Ichiraku I give one simple reason. I had to keep her in the story some how! And I personally think it was a rather cleaver twist.