a/n: yo, what's up everyone? here I am, back on my bullcrap again after two months

so. first of all, despite the circumstances I hope you could all still have a wonderful Christmas (for whoever celebrates it) and some very Happy Holidays, take care of yourselves, you deserve it!

now, consider this chapter an interlude of sorts? but it was just really important to me, I had to include this no matter what (also, it was supposed to be super short but, eh, stuff happens?)

I re-wrote this a billion times already, and no matter what I do I'm not satisfied with it, but I just couldn't hold on to it any longer, so here it is. for tonight I'm done with it.

. . .


No The Kids Ain't Alright


Summary of the chapter:

She was just trying to protect him from his own mind, too, just like he himself was when he found out.

. . .


The apartment is grimly quiet, save for the measured, sustained breaths of its guests.

Naruto is in his bedroom, nestled underneath the covers and gripped with an uneasy rest. He had cried himself past the point of exhaustion, wasting every last iota of energy left until finally the unavoidable collapse ensued. He passed out, spent.

Sakura and Kiba decided it would be better to leave him be, give him a few priceless hours of blissful nothingness, that is, if one of his recurring nightmares didn't seize him first. Therefore, the two of them had huddled in the kitchen to avoid disrupting his slumber, speaking in hushed tones, but with the doors left open if Naruto needed anything at all.

Sakura has taken to pacing, she does it sometimes. She is pacing the floor like she is going to consume through the pavement below with the agitated lightness of her footsteps. And Kiba is watching her, sat, unsettled, in one of the few chairs. When Sakura gets like this, it's almost like she fears she will come crawling out of her skin. It's a sensation he had never been particularly accustomed to, but lately he's getting acquainted with. Her bare feet padding across the floor leave imprinted an anxious rhythm that has him on edge, his knee is bouncing in place, a nervous tic, and it feels like his hands have been wrung dry with the way he keeps clutching them together.

Kiba is the first to break this unnerving, chilling quiet coercing them. "Did he seriously forget...?"

Sakura comes to an abrupt stop. She combs shaky fingers over her parted fringe, nervously adjusting the wisps in place, only to mess them up even more. Her eyes are piercing when they settle on him and a low timbre of ill temper surfaces. "There is a reason why some grieving people are in denial, and it's not because they want to be. They need it to–it's–" She bites her tongue, exhaling a stuttered breath, brusquely breaking eye contact. "...before everything falls apart."

He lifts his head even if she has turned away, his own expression mirroring hers. Troubled and unbalanced and at loss.

"It's obviously different from person to person," She continues, quieter. Just as shaken but managing to hide fractions of it. "But, mostly, it's your mind's way of trying to protect you from a traumatic experience, at times even erasing the memories, at times even replacing them. And..."

"And?" He asks uncertain, when it seems like she will let the rest of the sentence stay truncated.

Sakura meets his eyes, the slow raise of her shoulders after is forlorn at best. Her voice is pinched, on the wrong side of raw. "Sometimes your heart just needs more time to accept what your mind already knows."

Kiba thinks he might understand that.

Dropping his face in his hands, he breathes harshly, feeling himself slouching further, as if rammed forward by an unseen weight. Making it harder to do anything but get lost in his already overthought thinking patterns.

"Shit." He clenches his eyes and teeth, fingers stiffening across his scalp. "…Shit. Shit–shit."

Sakura takes an anxious step towards him. "Kiba–"

"This is my fault." He pushes the words, almost wheezing them out. "I knew I shouldn't have agreed to that stupid fucking mission with Shikamaru. Damn it. I knew it, and I didn't–"

"No, Kiba, it's not your fault–"

His head snaps up, surprising even himself. "But look what happened. That day at the Red Tower, I saw the way he was confronting Naruto. It was getting ugly. And Naruto, he was–I thought for sure he was gonna sock him in the face... and honestly? Maybe I should've let that happen."

Sakura pauses, taken up in her own overthinking patterns. But like the friend she is, caring, selfless, ignoring her apprehension in favor of sitting next to him through his own, she does just that. Slowly, she puts a careful hand over his shoulder, mindful of his reaction. When he minutely slackens into it, she exhales softly. "It's not Shikamaru's fault either."

The way Kiba meets her gaze with an opinionated glare speaks volumes for him.

Sakura sucks in a laboured breath, fingers scrupulously constricting in their hold. "...You know Asuma-sensei's passing has taken a toll on him."

Kiba goes rigid at that, only to shrink with the air he expels after. "Yeah, I know, okay? I know." He had seen it, the devastation his assassination wreaked. He himself was heartbroken over it, he couldn't even imagine how Team Ten must have felt. Even now, he still sees barely concealed glimpses of it painted across their faces.

Loss is not just a season you manage to grow out of.

"It's been pretty damn hard for Ino and Choji... and Kurenai-sensei too." He snaps lowly, feeling defensive. A minute wince twists Sakura's features. "But they've never tried to make Naruto miserable about his own loss."

Sakura deflates a little at the emphasis. "He didn't–" Reading it as a lost cause for the time being, she chooses to avoid angering him further. "Every one of us reacts differently." She tries, instead, speaking with dismayed factuality and an undetached certainty. "It was bound to happen, sooner or later. Something would have undoubtedly come up, reminding Naruto of–" She stalls, unable to properly say it out loud, as if, for a second, touched by this tragedy as much as Naruto is. "...of his loss. It couldn't go on forever."

Kiba suddenly pulls back. "...Wait." He blinks, dumbfounded, trying to file his tortuous thoughts inside a line. "You knew about it? You knew he had just–that he didn't remember?"

"...yes." Sakura answers with a saddened drop of her eyes.

"How long?" Kiba himself had found out only due to Ino's reveal during the celebratory dinner they held for Kakashi. But it makes sense, if Ino had figured it out, of course Sakura would have also, with her acute intelligence and cognizance this was child's play for her to put together. He should have known.

"After the first two weeks since the village was razed, I knew something was wrong." Even through her low tone, the shakiness in her voice rings openly across the vacancy of the unlit kitchen. She has her arms crossed now, as if trying to burrow into herself, eyes fixated on an imprecise dot in the pavement. "Beside... the obvious. Naruto started... one day he just wasn't sad anymore. It was too sudden. At first I thought he was back to putting on his usual facade." She mutters the last part, clearly upset.

Far too often they've been on the other end of Naruto's masks. And none of them have been able to do anything about him quashing his pain, wearing a fake layer because convinced only weakness resides underneath.

But how can they, when each and every one of them is grappling with masks of their own, wondering if it is just another shiny fault to attribute to the flawed system the shinobi world is and the life they lead, or if maybe it is a fault they were born with. It's an endless loop—they're unable to help their peers deal with this issue, unable to deal with it themselves, and stew inside the guilt that derives from it.

"He never mentioned him." Sakura keeps going, with no little amount of struggle. "Not even by mistake." Her heavy eyes flicker up to him, for a second. "And after his... breakdown in the forest, he miraculously got better the next day, remember? He started smiling again, started laughing again, as if his loss didn't weigh him down anymore. As if he had just... erased it." Her chin drops again, the heel of her foot scuffing against the bare floor. "That was when I started getting suspicious. I knew that denial can be a coping mechanism and–"

"And you figured it out." Kiba finishes for her.

She nods, tightening into her shoulders, looking just as troubled as she had before.

And suddenly, bits of Sakura's behaviour this past month and then some make very much sense. The way she grew so overprotective of Naruto, how she hovered over him, peeling him away from any situation she deemed even slightly unsafe. It wasn't because of Konoha's destruction, it wasn't that kind of fear taking residence inside her and pushing her towards her loved ones. All along, it was as if she was dealing with a broken patient. But given that the patient happened to be her best friend, it destabilized her.

"Why didn't you–"

She gets up, taking a step back, as if physically shoved. The way she is barely hanging on to her frayed nerves is plain to see. "What do you think I was supposed to do, then? Just walk up to him and say, 'Hey Naruto, I'm sorry, but the man you have come to see as a father for the last three years is now gone and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it? And the buried trauma of it is eventually bound to come up and leave you destroyed again?'" She bites the words out, still being cautious enough as to keep her rash tone under wraps, but clearly rattled. A heavy sheen gleams inside her narrowed eyes.

Kiba stares at her, mouth hanging a sliver agape, not used to seeing Sakura this upset. The meaning of her words hits him two beats later, and he deflates underneath it. A bitter snort pushes past the tightness of his throat. "...good point."

She was just trying to protect him from his own mind, too, just like he himself was when he found out. Sakura was trying to delay the inevitable, scared of the consequences it would have on Naruto.

She seems to gather herself, in part at least, now that she has finally worked some of the threadbare hurt out of her system. She's shaking her head, breaking the tense cross of her arms, apology tumbling out of her. "I'm sorry–I was–"

"No." It's his turn to cut her off, apologetic in equal measure, and the generally shitty feeling that has possessed him since the late afternoon is digging in a little deeper. "...It must've been hard. Knowing Naruto was going through–" He halts, also unable to say it out loud, bearing the share of this tragedy too. "...and you couldn't even say anything about it."

A quiet, unrestrained whimper makes it past Sakura's lips pressed paper white thin, and Kiba's heart cracks that bit more as he gets up too, walking to her. With her same cautious approach, he reaches an arm around her back.

"I'm sorry." He apologizes properly then, conscience-stricken.

Wishing he could have been able to help, somehow. Wishing, with everything he has, he could help now. But all he can do is hold on, and pretend he isn't clinging to a faith made of smoke, pretend he isn't being held together by a loose thread, until she is doing the same.

"It's okay." He is mumbling out, absent-minded, because it's what his mom used to tell him when he got hurt, what his family and friends have said when they wanted to help him through a rough patch. But now, this is beyond anything he can hope to grasp, and he is scared beyond belief by it.

Sakura shakes in her frame, clenching the fabric of his shirt, face against his shoulder and the lump of tears in her throat. "...is it?"

Kiba stills at the unexpected question... not knowing the answer to it. He doesn't think it is. And the way the ordeal has unfolded, he doesn't know if it will be any semblance of okay ever again, and doesn't know how to make it better, how to make any of this even slightly more bearable.

"Kiba, I..." Sakura takes a step back. With fists still clenched, as if holding to a principle that will leave her stranded if she dares to let go.

And Kiba thinks back to the last mission the three of them took part in together. To the ambush when they were oh so close back home. To Naruto getting struck down. To Naruto looking like a shell of his past self. To the familiar burning that belongs to him only, utterly missing from his eyes. To how it had actually been gone for weeks.

"...It's like he has lost all the fight he had left in him." Sakura had whispered, then.

And, with the heartbreak in her eyes reflecting his own, with the sorrow streaking unconstrained down her countenance, in that same despaired and defeated tone, Sakura is whispering, "...I don't know how to help him..."

His eyes sting with the cutting truth of it.

Naruto is so adrift inside his loss, his soul has been consumed from it. It's eating away at him, day, after day, after day. And they are left on the outside, watching their best friend fall apart before their eyes, not even knowing how to pick up his pieces.

With this hopelessness striking him again, he knows it's a war already lost.

.

.

.

Around two weeks after the triumph against Pain, Naruto had his first real breakdown since Jiraiya's death.

But, before then.

In the wake of Pain's defeat, when rebuilding the village alluded to the peaking of hope, when nearly everyone else was engrossed in the victory and basking in it, it was then Naruto had time to think. Think about how, for him, it also meant a defeat. Think about how much he actually lost.

While everyone else was celebrating, Naruto was mourning.

He had sunk into his loss, then. It was an abrupt shift, born out of nowhere, as if suddenly finding himself standing with his feet touching two different worlds.

After, came the terse quiet, when Naruto would barely string two words together. And with the quiet, came the attachment, almost morbid in nature. Naruto had developed it towards Kakashi, fearing he would lose another teacher. Kiba was a direct witness to it, and so was Sakura.

In the wreckage the hospital had been, against the frailty of it, Naruto would curl up just outside Kakashi's makeshift room. He remained unmoving for hours and hours on end. The sight of him was terrifying, he looked nothing more than a corpse surviving on borrowed time.

It had taken everything to haul him away from that blank corner, and they never could for long. They could barely make him drink or eat, no primary need mattered to him anymore, he always went back there. Barely hoping against hope, pleading someone else wouldn't be taken away from him again.

And then, a couple weeks after the tribulation with Pain, that particular day Sakura practically demanded they went for a mission outside the lingering destruction Konoha was, insisting and persisting on bringing Naruto along, managing to wrench him out of the corner he was burying himself in by a hair's breadth. She had already known, that the quiet was bound to come to an end, shifting into something else. And of course she had been right. And that was the night Naruto had his first, real breakdown since Jiraiya's death. Kiba remembers it so vividly, it has been scarred into his mind since.

Kiba always knew Naruto led a different existence from them, but he wasn't aware back then, not truly aware. The notion was akin to a passing thought, it occupied a nook of his mind, but only for a calculated amount of time, then the day-to-day life's happenings would push this notion back out of reach.

Naruto had been given the short stick in life. Since the very start, not a single scrap was handed to him, never given easily, particularly when compared to everyone else around him. Not only did he have to work twice as hard, but most of the time he was belittled, discouraged and ignored for double the amount of effort he had to put in. And at one point, the loud, boisterous, optimistic kid had stopped complaining about it, had kept quiet about it, and maybe was even afraid to speak up about it.

His sunny grin faded so frighteningly fast as soon as people looked the other way. And people were quick to drop the pretence of looking his way altogether. At the end of the day, that little kid was left with a sullen frown and skinned knees. At the end of the day, that little kid was left to walk home alone. He always did.

Kiba didn't understand the why, but he had always known, in the back of his mind, that it was not right, it couldn't possibly be. And growing up, he himself started wondering why he didn't try to do anything about it. At least, why didn't he try sooner.

But, whilst having the abstraction of a concrete idea until then, only that dismal night did he start to truly understand a fragment of what life must have been like for Naruto.

Deep in the forest and out of sight, the perpetual dark closes them in, traps them in root and leaf, in the thick maze of woodland.

Kiba is startled awake in the dead of the night.

His sight opens to the woods saturated in darkness, the thick foliage and wilderness stretch unbroken for miles, unseen, and their quartet is nothing but four dots lost in the blackness of it.

His mind is reeling right away with worst possible case scenarios, and his muscles are straining from the fatigue and overexertion of the passing weeks as he tries to get his bearings, and get into stance to fight the looming threat.

Only to have the realization dawn on him.

Someone is screaming. And unfortunately, he knows exactly who this voice belongs to.

Kiba is stuck into inertness then, shocked into a transparent silence, forced to listen as the desperation bruises, swells.

Just a few feet away, Sai is crouched down, shocked into the selfsame bewilderment. Sakura is kneeling, knees digging into the solid, grainy earth, uneven by the knotted roots crossing through it. And Naruto is splayed over the harshness of it, over her bent knees, clinging for dear life.

The sound of his cries is raucous, ear-splitting.

His howls come choked, violent, tearing deep from within his lungs. Retching out of him coughs and phlegm. Sucking out his oxygen.

His voice is so wrecked it sounds warped, as if a sound so imbued in agony couldn't possibly be part of him.

And Sakura is trying. She is propelled forward, protectively curled over his form, and she is stroking his hair, his back, trying anything she can to calm him down, whispering anything she can think to utter to make it better, to try and help him. And in the end crying with him, in the end stuttering out "Oh, Naruto, I'm so sorry" over and over again.

But Naruto is inconsolable, his kind of hurt knows no relief. His muffled cries don't let up, incessant, torturing him. He keeps calling for his late mentor. Crying his name, over, and over, and over again.

Naruto's blood curdling screams tear the dark of the sky wide and apart; with pain so deeply rooted inside him nothing else could possibly live to grow circumambient to it. Kiba's open, unblinking eyes are besmeared with the heat of tears from the unsuppressed affliction.

He is frozen in place. Guilt comes soaring, a fresh wave that soaks him up, and still, he is unable to even move, to get up and try anything—anything he can to help his best friend through this. He tries nonetheless, he struggles through the fright, he wants to get up and just help, but he is unforgivably glued to the ground. Nails dig into his palms in an unconscious strain, until they are welting with blood. And he listens to Naruto's undiluted pain, laid bare for the first time, and for the first time reaching the worst peak.

Kiba had been stuck in a few threatening situations in his life, he had been to a few funerals too. He had seen first hand what loss did to the people who were left outliving their loved ones on the other side. But no sight of it had ever struck him this way. And this one time when he can't even turn to witness it with his own eyes, he can't bear it.

The way Naruto struggles through loss, it's as if his soul, a piece so intrinsically stitched into him, is being stolen. Forcefully torn away from him. And he is left split apart and bleeding out its murder, cruelly imposed to survive the brink of death itself without it.

And Kiba can only lie awake above the solid ground, paralyzed, nauseated from his own guilt, from his own hopelessness, and shedding his own tears. Unable to do anything but listen as Naruto is being ripped to shreds by his grief.


. . .

a/n:

Naruto's breakdown at the end of this chapter is something I had planned practically since starting this story.

It came out of nowhere and snuck inside my mind, but it just made perfect sense to me. After the 'victory', Naruto just had to have a moment where he actually considered how much he lost. The last paragraphs are just very vivid imagery inside my head.

Everything I'm writing, in my mind I see it as a movie, so in the last few paragraphs, the focus would be completely on Kiba while Naruto's muddy silhouette is barely recognizable in the background, but his agony is the protagonist throughout the whole scene. I don't know if I was able to do it justice with the way I described it, but I knew I had to absolutely, absolutely include it in this story. Even if short, it feels like a momentous part of Naruto's story to me.

also, double update. so expect another chapter in 24 hours (or 48 at the latest)