Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Thirty-One-

Chronophobia (Part III)

"I...don't understand," Sakura forced through lips that felt as if they'd gone numb.

Tsunade-sama interlaced her fingers and rested her chin on them. "When Orochimaru approached your teammate, he was flagged as a flight risk. Given his kekkei genkai, a high-priority one. At the genin level and even in some chūnin specializations, there are officially recognized methods of transferring your citizenship to another village. In Konohagakure, that includes an interview with a Yamanaka to determine just how much sensitive information you intend to take with you. Jounin are ineligible for this and there are some kekkei genkai we cannot allow to leave this village. The Sharingan is obviously one of them.

"The chūnin assigned to that particular patrol district had instructions to check the Uchiha's home and verify his presence. Toward dawn, they found him absent and his mission gear missing. At that point, I had two options. Send a proper retrieval team to return him to the village no matter his feelings on the matter or send a group of his agemates in an effort to convince him to return of his own accord.

"I am aware of how Orochimaru works," she told Sakura with just a hint of wryness. "He is very good at sowing confusion, doubt, and using just the right touch of physical force to manipulate a situation. In the long-term, dragging the Uchiha home would have fed into any persecution complex that Orochimaru erected. So I gambled on getting his willing cooperation. And lost," Tsunade-sama admitted gravely.

"I underestimated how badly Orochimaru wanted him. Usually, making it to him is a test in itself. If you can't make it to him, you aren't worth his time." There was a distant, reflective look in Tsunade-sama's eyes. "That's just the way he's always been. But this time he sent retrieval teams. If there'd been fewer of your agemates or if they'd been less skilled, it could have been a disaster. As it was, no one died, but Uchiha Sasuke belongs to Otogakure now."

"This was...yesterday?" Sakura asked, her voice strange and quivery. Because she remembered yesterday, all pretty clothes, delicious food, and the uninterrupted view of the ocean.

"Yes," Tsunade-sama confirmed. "You'll need to do an interview. Inoichi-san has volunteered to conduct it himself. If you were aware of his intentions, helping to conceal them is a crime against the village."

Sakura shook her head slowly. "I knew he was unhappy," she whispered. "And I saw—," her hand traveled up to clutch at her neck where Sasuke's seal had lain quiescent. She swallowed. "I was there, when he met Orochimaru. I still didn't think—I don't understand why he'd join him."

Tsunade-sama only gave her a bitter, twisted smile and dismissed her to her interview with Ino's father. When that was over, Sakura plodded to the hospital, her eyes fixed on her feet. She'd expected her thoughts to be loud and tangled, but they were silent and still. Sasuke was gone, that was the one thing that mattered. For all that he'd made her uncomfortable and afraid, he'd loomed so large in her life until these past few months that thinking of living without him was like contemplating life without the sun rising in the morning.

She stood for long minutes outside the room with the placard for 'Uzumaki Naruto', sharply reminded of the last time she'd come to visit a teammate in the hospital. Was that fight part of the reason he'd left? She couldn't wrap her mind around that idea. Orochimaru had said he'd come to him seeking power, but hadn't that fight showcased plenty of it? Sasuke's Chidori, Naruto's Rasengan—if you weighed one against the other, they would both kill a human just as dead for all that one left a bigger impact crater. And she'd been promoted to chūnin in her first year out of the Academy.

Team Seven had been poised to become the most powerful combat squad of their generation. Even if Sasuke had taken it in his head to go hunting Itachi—her deductive reasoning skills were intact enough to realize that once she'd swallowed the uncomfortable fact that Sasuke's stated life goal was murder—their team was powerful and capable. Though the village might never have authorized a mission against Uchiha Itachi, they would have followed Sasuke. She could see it in her mind's eye: using village intel to establish a search area, taking just enough leave to accomplish the mission, a hunt made swift by the ninken.

That was all so many shattered ideals now, she recognized as she slid the door open.

"I tried to bring him back," Naruto burst out the moment he recognized who'd stepped into the room. "I did," he protested before she could say anything, hands clenched tight on his cover.

"I know," she replied simply, which made some of the wildness fade from his eyes.

"You...you do?" he blurted.

Sakura frowned at him as she made way to a chair, scooting it next to Naruto's bed. What kind of person was she in Naruto's eyes? "Yes. Tsunade-sama and Ino's father explained."

Naruto nodded slowly, then his eyes fell to his hands and stayed there. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring him back for you, Sakura-chan," he told her.

"It was Sasuke who chose to leave," Sakura replied. Saying it was almost painful, like chewing needles, but the truth was like that sometimes. Gozen-san had shown her that, told her that sometimes it was like trying to drink a cup full to overflowing with fire ants—difficult and bitter to swallow.

She glanced up from her contemplation of her own hands to find Naruto staring at her. "You're not mad at me?"

"What right do I have to be mad when I wasn't even here?" Sakura asked him bitterly.

It was Naruto's turn to develop a perplexed wrinkle in his brow. "How would you know to be here? Did he tell you he was going to pull a dumb-ass stunt like this?"

"I just—," Sakura struggled to find the right words to express something that sounded stupid even as it coalesced. "I just should have known. If you love someone, you're supposed to be able to tell if they're about to turn traitor. Or at least you'd think so. Sasuke never told me anything," she finished softly, betrayal rippling like a sour note in a symphony through her words.

"Well, I like you, Sakura-chan, and I thought you'd be yelling by now, so I guess we don't get everything right," Naruto offered gamely, though his grin was crooked.

"...I never understood that either," Sakura admitted. "I've never been nice to you, Naruto."

That crooked grin faltered and then fell away entirely. "I guess not. But you were polite when we first met. Not "nice," I guess, but you treated me exactly the same as the rest of the class. Later, when you were annoyed at me, I could tell it was me annoying you, not that weird scum-on-my-shoe thing that everyone else was doing even when I hadn't done anything to them. That I knew of," he clarified, his expression so soberly thoughtful that it was almost like looking at a stranger. Then he grinned again, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "And you're cute."

That earned a weak smile. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but you can do much, much better than someone who's genuinely annoyed by you," Sakura replied. "I won't ever find pranks that cause property damage funny or think that breaking the rules and getting promoted to the next class regardless is something daring instead of irritating. But the world is full of people. Ones we haven't even met yet, as my mother keeps telling me. I am your teammate, Naruto. Maybe, one day, we'll be friends. But I don't think I'll ever like-like you."

Naruto grimaced. "I guess I knew that. And your mom was right, you know. There are plenty of other pretty boys that aren't Grade-A assholes. I guess. Somewhere."

"...I can't believe we're having this conversation," Sakura said with a wobbly laugh, the first warmth of tears blooming behind her eyes.

Naruto nodded, his own eyes suspiciously watery. "You're really not mad?" he asked tentatively.

"I'm really not much of anything. Mostly sad, a little convinced that this is just another nightmare. Angry will come later, I guess. But you almost killed yourself trying to bring Sasuke back."

Naruto visibly hesitated, then glanced up at the door. "Not that you can tell," he told her, voice tempered with his own bitterness. "They'll discharge me this afternoon. I—about the Forest of Death, I'm sorry."

"What do you mean?"

His hands were clenched in his covers again. "It just seems stupid now, but it wasn't like anybody ever got really, really hurt during training at the Academy. I just thought it was like that for everyone. It hurts and you suck it up until it doesn't anymore. Here, look at my hand," he said, thrusting it toward her.

Glancing up at him from beneath raised brows, Sakura did as he asked. "What am I looking for?" she asked at last, finding it unremarkable. It looked the way a hand ought to look, but then it dawned on her what she wasn't seeing. "This is the hand you stabbed, isn't it, back on the way to Wave? They removed your scarring?" Tight-lipped, Naruto only looked at her expectantly, so she reached forward and ran questing fingers along skin so smooth that Ino would have had a fit of jealousy. "You don't have any scars," she remarked in surprise. Not even the tiny ones that accumulated from a lifetime's handling of weapons, no matter how careful you tried to be. "And you hardly have weapon calluses."

"See?" Naruto said. "That's what I didn't realize, back in the Forest. I didn't start putting it together until I saw how long it took you to heal and how bad your scarring was. I don't heal like you do, so I don't hurt like you do. Sorry, Sakura-chan. I didn't know."

Sakura just sort of gaped at him, but then she forced her jaw shut, her thumb stroking over unscarred knuckles one last time before her hand retreated to her lap. "So you have some sort of regenerative bloodline?"

"Something like that," Naruto muttered.

"That's," Sakura searched for a word, "useful."

"That's it?" Naruto demanded. "Just, "That's useful"?!"

"It also makes me feel even less guilt about hitting you upside the head, which pretty much puts it in the negative," Sakura informed his irritably, gritting her teeth only slightly as she tried to keep her temper in check. "I have lived my entire life surrounded by classmates who have abilities I won't ever have, just because they happened to be born into the right clan. My family has served, fought, died, and passed unremembered into history from the founding. When I was younger and when I was still having a hard time at the Academy, it used to make me angry—angry enough to say terrible things to my parents and my grandmother," she confessed grimly. "I blamed them for being perfectly unremarkable people."

"...that changed?" Naruto questioned softly, probably wary of Sakura's temper.

"When she was dying, my grandmother told me that it was an opportunity. That whatever I made of myself, I wouldn't have to live in the shadow of my clan's name. My name would be my own, my achievements my own, and that I could pass that legacy forward, until there was some child far, far in the future wondering how she'd ever measure up to her ancestress. I didn't really believe her, but it made me realize that I didn't want to live my whole life dogged by jealousy. It was only making me miserable, because it was something no amount of wishing could change. So, yes, it's useful, like the Byakugan, the Sharingan, or any of the secret clan jutsu."

Her tone was slightly snappish, because for all her speech and best intentions, it was difficult to be generous when faced with things you couldn't have. She was trying though; sometimes it was the effort that mattered.

She was rewarded by a sheepish grin. "Yeah, I guess so," Naruto conceded. "I just wanted to prove them all wrong, that I would amount to something no matter what they said about me, and I didn't need any fancy clan name to do it with."

"Well," Sakura replied sheepishly, "it did help that I consistently ranked in the top three of our class."

Naruto snorted. "Yeah," he said again. Then, more softly, "Yeah. Um, Sakura-chan?"

"Yes?"

"You know, after this, when I'm released from the hospital, Jiraiya wants to take me out of the village. For training."

"You don't want to go?"

Naruto shrugged. "Granny Tsunade already said she's not going to send more ninja after Sasuke. And the Ero-sennin didn't sound like it was really a choice. He's mostly an idiot and a pervert, but I guess that you can't really say he doesn't deserve to be part of the Sannin. But with both me and Sasuke...away, what will happen to you?"

It was her turn to echo the gesture. "I'm chūnin, Naruto. There'll be missions. Composite teams, like the last one I was on." She bit her lip and swiped hastily at a tear that spilled down her cheek.

"Hey," Naruto said, leaning forward and catching at her hand, "we'll get him back. I promise."

Everything about his body language told her that he was in earnest, that he really believed in what he was saying. "If all it took was dragging him home, Tsunade-sama would have sent a jounin to do it," she whispered, arresting the path of more tears. "He comes back and then what, Naruto? We can bring him back to the village, but only Sasuke can decide to stay."

His grip tightened on her hand and in that moment was a silent understanding. That Naruto would try regardless.