Days turned to weeks, then to months and finally to years. Naruto became acquainted with his healing factor and Sasuke's fist, and his foot, and his knee, elbow, forehead, kunai, shuriken. Lots of fun. The fights had grown more intense, sometimes by the day, sometimes even within a fight. The rules were often blurred and it took some time for them to figure out what Naruto could and couldn't heal from, mostly without disastrous results, save for the missing leg incident which almost ended very badly. By the time they were eleven the distance between each other was the same but they had both grown leaps and bounds.

The only thing more painful than the missing leg incident was the Sasuke fan club. Upon hitting eleven all the girls save for one suddenly realized that Sasuke was the best student in the academy and he would be growing up to be a very handsome young man one day. The lack of interest he showed in anything besides for training and his dark past only made the fans more obsessed. It got to the point that Naruto had to avoid Sasuke in their breaks just to avoid the glares of his adoring fans.

The worst of the fans were Sakura and Ino who had apparently started a rivalry over who liked Sasuke more, which Naruto didn't think was fair seeing as he doubted either of them liked Sasuke enough to break their limbs everyday for him. It wouldn't have been so bad if Sasuke had just gone up to the girls and told them he wasn't interested, but because Sasuke lacked any sense of social ability save for punching it until it stopped causing problems, he was lost. His reaction was then to ignore the problem and hope it went away, but because the girls were into his ability to ignore worldly problems it just exacerbated the entire situation.

The nearer to graduation they came, the worse it got. Sakura and Ino actually had battles over who would get to be on Sasuke's team. It was perhaps the only time that Sasuke actually appreciated their rivalry, claiming it would help them get stronger. Naruto didn't know about that, but he did know that something had to give and if the girls kept sending him threatening glares whenever he walked anywhere with Sasuke it was going to be him.

Thus it was to his surprise that a few days before their graduation exams, Sakura and Ino put aside their rivalry to speak to Naruto. He generally spent his breaks under a tree, going over sealing content and occasionally drawing his own. When two shadows blotted out the light to an extent a bad feeling grew in his stomach. Turning up to face them he grimaced and pretended he didn't see them. It didn't work as they both sat down next to him, Sakura grabbing his notebook out of his hands.

"Hey Naruto. We hope you don't mind us coming over and talking to you. You simply looked so bored doing nothing and we thought we would put aside our rivalry to come cheer a friend up," Ino said after Sakura had stashed his sealing stuff out of reach. It was a shame really, Naruto had a passing fancy for Sakura that didn't last longer than a week when he realized that it wasn't fair to like the girl that liked his friend.

Naruto responded with a growl, saying nothing.

"He doesn't seem very appreciative of our efforts, Ino," Sakura commented, a wry grin on her face. "But we're doing him a great favor, aren't we?"

Ino nodded vigorously, her face matching Sakura's own. "And after doing him such a great favor he should feel indebted to us. But we only ask for something small. All he has to do is tell us. . ."

"Which one of us Sasuke likes?" they both asked in unison, throwing their fists in the air.

Naruto stared at the two girls and wondered if he should just tell them what Sasuke most likely thought, but then figured that he most likely needed his body intact for the exams and they wouldn't react well to being told that they were pigheaded fools that couldn't see outside of their headspace and there was no reason Sasuke should be obligated to be interested in either of them. That wouldn't be a good thing to say and so he didn't say it. Instead he put on his most sincere smile. "Sasuke's great, isn't he?" That seemed to throw the two girls off. "He's my best friend and has been for years. The funny thing is that if you asked Sasuke who his best friend was he would tell you that he doesn't have any friends."

The two girls frowned at that. "But then why is he always with you?" Sakura asked.

"Well Sasuke would tell you that it's because I accepted his offer to train with him and get stronger. That's not true though. We are friends and it wasn't like he offered to train out of the goodness of his heart, it was because we were bored. He won't tell you that though because he can't afford to have friends, or a girlfriend or anything like that because he can't let anything get in the way of his goal," Naruto trailed off.

"So what can we do to make Sasuke like us?" Ino asked.

Naruto scratched his head and frowned. "Can you kill his evil brother and bring back the Uchiha clan?" he asked. Sasuke's brother, the bloody Uchiha, was on kage level and couldn't be brought down by kids, no matter how many were sent after him. The girls knew that, he knew that and Sasuke knew that most of all. "Because if you can't then I would tell you to wait him out until he's finished doing what he needs to do and become strong enough for him to come home to," Naruto finished sagely, thinking his words at least sounded very wise.

Sakura and Ino locked eyes, a battle going on between them in their minds.

"So we just need to become stronger," Sakura said.

"So strong that we can keep this place together while Sasuke does what he needs to do," Ino concurred.

"The answer is simple."

"I just need to become. . ."

"Hokage!" both of them yelled.

"Actually that's not what I meant," Naruto tried to say but realized quickly that neither of the girls were listening, apparently having fallen back into their rivalry, just about a different detail now. Palming his face, he sighed. Maybe he shouldn't give advice so readily in the future.

While Naruto didn't graduate with flying colors it wasn't the hardest he'd had to work in his life, the missing leg incident would always hold that trophy. Sasuke had drilled him on all of his jutsu, the clone jutsu taking the longest amount of time, even if it did take far too much time for it to be normal. In the end what they discovered was that if Naruto wanted to pass the exams he would just need to be on the verge of chakra exhaustion. Upon that realization Sasuke had an evil smile on his face for the rest of the day and the night before the exam he approached Naruto with two leg weights. The next thing he knew, Naruto was doing laps of the entire village with weights around his feet.

Sasuke found Naruto's haggard body draped over a desk in their classroom and woke him quickly enough when his name was called. Barely conscious, Naruto stepped to the front of the class, automatically forming the hand signs and creating an almost perfect clone of himself. The clone looked tired and half ready to collapse which was in fact what Naruto looked like at that moment. Iruka frowned but noted Naruto as passable seeing as the similarities were too perfect even if it wasn't what he wanted. Upon hearing that he passed, Naruto went back up to his desk and promptly fell asleep, not even opening his eyes when he was finally awarded his headband.

As the day ended, Sasuke looked on Naruto's sleeping figure and allowed himself a small smile. It was gone a moment later and he was folding Naruto over his back, getting ready for the walk home.

Being genin meant that they were officially adults and as such weren't supposed to be staying at the orphanage anymore. Where Sasuke dropped Naruto wasn't back at the orphanage, but rather in a house at the exterior of the Uchiha compound. Knowing that it brought back bad memories, Naruto had tried to persuade Sasuke to rent an apartment with him in a more central part of the village but Sasuke wouldn't have it. There was no point in spending an excess of money when there was a perfectly good thirty or forty houses without occupants.

Sasuke was regretting his decision now somewhat. The compound had been cleaned, but those cleaning had been doing so to ensure the lack of dead bodies. There was still several years worth of dust build up, insects had come out and made their home and last but not even nearly least, was the dried blood that stained the walls and floors. Seeing the bloodstains, Sasuke grimaced but didn't falter. He had lied to Naruto about his reason for staying in the Uchiha compound, the truth was that as long as he was surrounded by those bloodstains, as long as he was coming home to them, he wouldn't be allowed to become complacent, to forget his goal.

When he walked through the compound he would be forced to see all the faces that were no longer there. Mom, dad, Shisui, his cousins, his uncles and aunts, Itachi. . .

Plucking a particularly brave spider from Naruto's cheek before it managed to find its way into his open mouth, Sasuke sighed, muttering a short, "Home sweet home," before grabbing a broom and beginning the long job of cleaning the entire Uchiha compound.

Naruto woke to a caterpillar climbing down his cheek. Being groggy in the morning, he brushed it off before realizing what it was. Standing and eyeing the caterpillar, he was able to see the individual hairs on its body. It started to wriggle towards him and Naruto kicked it out of the house, watching it roll over and curl into a circle. He watched it until it started moving again shuddering as it passed out of sight. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes he paced around the new house, trying to find their new bathroom and hoping there was still running water.

It took him quite some time do so and in the meantime he decided that before they were assigned teams they were putting up wallpaper, just to cover up the bloodstains. Sasuke had mentioned the compound hadn't been looked after for some time but this was just ridiculous. He wondered vaguely if he was breaking any laws by staying in the Uchiha compound, shrugging a moment later when he realized that Sasuke was in fact the clan head and could do what he wanted, sort of like how Naruto could allow Sasuke to stay in his village if he ever found out where the Uzumakis actually owned property. Did they even have a clan compound or was it just the village they came from? That was something to look into later, besides, people weren't defined by where they lived.

When he eventually found Sasuke he was cooking breakfast, something that they did on the weekends and Naruto supposed that it was the weekend, the last weekend they would ever get. Once they got their team assignments they would be doing missions whenever and wherever. They were adults now and they had to act like it. Sure they would probably have some time to relax, but that would probably be after a lot of work.

Everything Sasuke cooked had tomatoes. It was weird. Naruto didn't have anything against the vegetable/fruit/whatever but sometimes it was just too out of place not to notice. Tomato soup he could understand, tomatoes in mushroom soup, not so much. Admittedly Sasuke had the same qualms about Naruto's miso ramen obsession.

"We're getting wallpaper," Naruto declared. "Today," he added, before walking out the way he had come. He didn't care if he had to use up all of his saved money, there was no way he was sleeping surrounded by the remnants of dead people, no matter how closely Sasuke was related to them. In the meantime he pulled on some clothes he had decided were going to be his ninja outfit now that he was an adult and he still didn't have a cool jacket like the chunin had. At first he had wanted his outfit to be black but Sasuke quickly shot down the idea, claiming that black wasn't a very good colour for a ninja if they wanted to camouflage themselves. It was why he was wearing a very dark green cargo pants and a shirt of the same color, covering that with a grey jacket that was supposed to be able to repel cuts. He hadn't tested it out against Sasuke and was hoping it would last long enough for him to actually get some use out of it. Maybe he should just fight Sasuke naked, then at least his clothing wouldn't get damaged.

After eating breakfast Naruto headed down to the academy to speak to either Mizuki or Iruka about his sealing lessons continuing. He had joined the academy for the sole purpose of learning sealing and he wasn't about to forget it. As he leaped from rooftop to rooftop he found himself occasionally overshooting to his annoyance and more than once he had almost fallen off a building, narrowly avoiding a drop that would guarantee two shattered legs. It was the weights from the other night, he had gotten so used to them that he had trouble adapting. Hopefully after a day of normal movement he would be better. He couldn't imagine training with weights anytime soon, it was just something that seemed too volatile, even though he was sure that Sasuke would love the idea.

Arriving at the academy he wasn't surprised to see that both Iruka and Mizuki were hard at work, most likely trying to figure out team assignments.

". . .so if we put Sarutobi with those three. . ."

"No it won't work. Kakashi requested him. Claimed they were the best match."

"Well he's not wrong."

"Doesn't mean he can just walk in here and take what he wants."

"I think the Hokage gave him permission."

Mizuki growled, looking up to see Naruto, his features immediately becoming more pleasant. "Naruto. Congratulations on passing. Very impressive. How can we help you?"

"I was wondering what's going to happen with my sealing lessons, now that I'm not in the academy anymore?" he said nervously. He hoped he didn't have to fight with them about it.

Iruka raised an eyebrow before paling. "Oh no. I forgot." Looking down at the papers in front of him he suddenly seemed very haggard. "Do you think we can delay team assignments?" he asked, turning to Mizuki.

Mizuki shrugged. "I'm sure Hatake would be a week late anyway. But no, we need this done quickly. I have other responsibilities."

Iruka groaned, looking like he wanted to cry. "Naruto, you and Sasuke train together sometimes, right?"

Naruto shrugged. It was more than sometimes, more like every day. "Yeah, something like that."

Iruka scratched his head. "I think we can make this work."

"Great."

Naruto cleared his throat impatiently. "About my sealing lessons," he prompted.

Iruka looked up surprised to see that Naruto was still there. "It's sorted out. Alright?"

Naruto locked his eyes, but seeing that Iruka wasn't going to give he sighed. "It better be, otherwise I'm coming back to the academy and Sasuke can go fight the Hokage faces or something."

If Iruka misunderstood the statement he didn't let on. Watching Naruto leave he looked over the names of the new genin. If they all made it past the initial exam they were going to be an interesting year. Or more correctly an absolute pain.