A/N: "NARUTO" and its characters don't belong to me, but to their amazing creator. Spoilers for "NARUTO" and "NARUTO: Shippuden".

Inspired by the "Live Spectacle NARUTO", which is an amazing stage adaptation of the "NARUTO" series.

Enjoy! xD

Info:

Chakra - It is a moulding of two different types of energy within the body: the physical energy present in the cells of the body and the spiritual energy gained from exercise and training.

Genin - The lowest shinobi rank directly above academy students. Usually assigned to teams of three accompanied by a Jounin teacher. They usually carry out the lowest ranking missions, such as D-Rank and C-Rank missions.

ANBU - An acronym that stands for "Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai" which can be translated into "Special Assassination and Tactical Squad". ANBU members are considered the elite of elite, and often wear an animal mask and a cloak to hide their identities. They perform high level missions, such as assassinations, torture and guarding the Hokage.

Hokage - The leader of Konoha Gakure also known as the Hidden Leaf Village.

The legendary Sannin - The collective name of three renowned shinobi from Konoha: Tsunade, Jiraiya and Orochimaru.

Jinchuuriki - Humans who have tailed beasts sealed within them.

Ninken - Otherwise known as "ninja dogs" are dogs with heightened senses and abilities that are summoned to work alongside shinobi.

"Sensei" - Loosely translated to teacher.

To Have, To Hold and To Never Let Go

The moment Uchiha Sasuke was released from prison, he disappeared.

Or, disappeared as much as he could with ANBU guards watching him closely.

But, it had been enough to make Haruno Sakura want to stomp her feet in annoyance like she was twelve all over again. 'I told him to stay put for his check-up, but does he listen? Does anyone ever listen? No.' Her irritation flickered in her chakra; she knew she was scaring the shinobi around her from the way they took careful steps away from her. Smiling tightly in apology at them – because she wasn't twelve anymore, she was an adult now and she knew how to act like one, unlike some people – she stepped out of the prison compound and cast her chakra out, searching for the crackling spark that was as familiar to her as the cool summer storms in Konoha.

Unlike the Sand shinobi who saw rain as a precious miracle, the shinobi of the Leaf were too used to the presence of rain, too dependent on it to see it as such. It was such an integrated part of their lives that they never thought of what it felt like to lose the rain.

Until a drought came, drying out their water supply, killing their crops, burning a hole in their comfortable lives and familiar routines.

Just like how Sakura never saw the precious miracle that was her family until the invasion that had brought Konoha to its knees shattered the very foundations of the village, and she had nearly lost them.

Just how like Sakura never saw Sasuke, never really looked at him beyond her own idealistic version of him. Despite his faults, Sasuke had never really challenged her fantasies because he was always there when it mattered most, a steady presence she could rely on.

Until he was gone.

Sakura had taken her family for granted.

She had taken Sasuke for granted.

But now, she knew. If she didn't hold on to Sasuke like the precious miracle he was, she could lose him.

And, as she basked in the familiar, comforting icy warmth of his chakra, Sakura vowed.

She would never lose him again.

Kakashi-sensei had joked that if Sasuke had decided to leave (again), she and Uzumaki Naruto would've been better than even the best ninken trackers they had. As if Kakashi-sensei was the one to talk. No matter how far he was from them – on the other side of enemy lines, on the other side of the world – Sasuke's chakra would never be a stranger to them.

All three of them.

Sasuke, himself, was a different matter, but she and Naruto had matured. They had been reforged in war as Konoha burned, just as Sasuke had been reforged when his family burned. He had reached out to them – in hurt, in anger, in hatred, in self-destruction – but they had not been able to understand what he was trying to tell them, to ask them, and they had given him all the wrong answers.

It was different now. They were different now. Now, they could see his pain, his loss, his loneliness. Now, they could recognise the deep-seated isolation that was etched into Sasuke's very being. Now, they could better understand what Sasuke needed, and they would try their utmost best to be what he needed them to be.

He would never be alone again.

They would never leave him alone again.

It didn't take Sakura long to track Sasuke down, mostly because he hadn't gone far, but also because there was someone else with him.

Someone whose voice was louder than any chakra trail Sakura was trying to pick up.

Sakura rolled her eyes fondly. Even from this distance, she could hear Naruto's yelling, muffled by the trees in the forest surrounding Konoha.

Pausing, Sakura took stock of the situation. There wasn't even a flicker in Naruto and Sasuke's chakras, which meant that they hadn't noticed her presence. It was probably because both of them were distracted. Both their chakras were loud and only slightly quieter were the chakras of their ANBU guards. In comparison, Sakura had quietened her chakra on purpose.

In battle, it wouldn't have made a difference; Sakura knew from experience that Sasuke's senses were so sharp that he was able to pick up individual chakras even when cloaked, and that Naruto had learned enough of chakra sensing to know when a new chakra had joined the battle. When their guards were up, nobody could get past them.

Which meant that they were relaxed.

Sakura could feel a radiant joy well up in her. Using the louder chakras around her to cloak her presence, she closed in on Naruto and Sasuke.

When she arrived at a distance where she could watch them comfortably without announcing her presence to them, she stopped and settled herself.

Her boys.

How long had it been since she had been able to bask in their presence like this?

Too long.

She used to do it all the time when they were genin because they were boys and had way too much excess energy to sit still. Sakura would sit with Kakashi-sensei, munching on lunch as Kakashi-sensei read, even as Naruto and Sasuke continued to compete in useless and completely unnecessary fights. She hadn't understood then, complaining to Kakashi-sensei about how they were using up their energy needlessly. Kakashi-sensei had chuckled. Boys would be boys, he had said.

Boys would be boys, she thought fondly now.

Naruto and Sasuke were relaxing in the way they always relaxed. In other words, they were bickering, and needlessly using up their energy to take pot shots at each other. Naruto swapped positions between the edge of the lake and the tree branch Sasuke was sitting on, yelling at Sasuke to stop being a boring bastard and join him in the lake because the water was great and Sasuke needed a bath from how he stunk. Sasuke only grunted at him, seemingly uninterested in what Naruto was yelling at him, but going to great lengths to defend his tree branch whenever Naruto wanted to land on it, and only then, yelling back at Naruto to taunt him about his lack of skill in getting on said branch.

Naruto's bright eyes – eyes that had been dimmed for too long – shone with unbridled joy, and Sasuke's usually stormy dark eyes were at peace.

Boys would be boys.

Her boys would always be her boys.

She turned her attention to focus solely on Sasuke, the medic in her examining him to ensure that his prison stay hadn't done any permanent physical damage to him. She wasn't naïve enough to believe that he would be treated well even if he had been vouched for by their next Hokage and the Hero of Konoha. She wished that Sasuke was the type to snitch, which would've given them, given her, an excuse to release her frustrations on the hapless shinobi who had dared to lay a finger on Sasuke when Sasuke was at his most defenseless because he chose to make himself defenseless.

Knowing him as well as she did, it raged in her that nobody understood the gift Sasuke was giving; the prize she, Naruto and even Kakashi-sensei had fought so hard to win, only for some stranger to use it so carelessly.

Sasuke had surrendered himself completely, and it made her seethe, made her sick, that none of them could do anything to protect him from the abuse he had suffered because of that.

In her darkest moments, Sakura had toyed with the thought that maybe they should've let Konoha burn the way they had burned the Uchiha Clan.

When she had grown to love Sasuke, really love him and not the image she had of him, the Uchiha Clan had gone from a thought to be avoided in her fantasies of Sasuke to family.

They were her family, the people she loved because Sasuke loved them.

And, Konoha had let them burn, had erased them like the unwanted thought they once were to her.

But, no, the best revenge would be to keep the flames of the Uchiha Clan alive, to stoke it until it burned so bright that Konoha would die without its warmth.

And to do that, they couldn't let Sasuke choose death.

So she, and Naruto and Kakashi-sensei, had to be the reason he would choose to go on living.

She would not lose Sasuke again.

The next time the Uchiha Clan fell, Konoha would fall with it.

Sakura would make sure of that.

A loud splash startled Sakura from her thoughts. Apparently, Sasuke had had enough of Naruto's needling, and had finally retaliated for real, kicking Naruto into the lake. It was only instinct that had saved Naruto as he landed on his feet in the middle of the lake, managing to actually stomp on the surface of the lake as he gestured wildly at Sasuke, yelling names at him. Unfazed, Sasuke countered every name with an insult of his own.

Sitting on the branch, casually swinging his legs as he bickered with the person who he considered to be his best friend, it struck Sakura how young Sasuke looked.

Adults they all were, yes, but they weren't even twenty yet. In the civilian environment Sakura had been raised in, they would still be turned away from bars, not even considered old enough to drink, their parents called in to take them home because they would still be children who were their parents' responsibility.

They had fought in a war, were considered to be some of the strongest shinobi around, disciples of the legendary Sannin, students of the next Hokage, all three with their own reputations whose names were whispered in all the Hidden Villages.

But, Naruto still overslept and turned up to morning meetings half-dressed with uncombed hair and a growling stomach from having forgotten breakfast in his haste. Sakura still sulked when she was scolded by Tsunade-sama.

And, Sasuke still swung his legs when he sat in a place high enough that he could do so. If he had been anywhere near the lake, Sakura had a suspicion that he would've used his feet to flick water at Naruto just because he could.

When Sakura finished her duties at the hospital or with Tsunade-sama, she could go back home to her family where she was treated like the child, the teenager, that she still was. She may have railed at this because nobody liked being treated like a child, even literal children, but the part of her who knew strife, war, death, grief, knew that this was a luxury.

At home, if she behaved like a child, she was treated like one: scolded but also coddled, punished but also protected.

When she made mistakes, when she failed, like a child, she knew that everything would still be okay.

When was the last time Sasuke had known that?

After Sasuke had left and had seemingly been lost to them, Sakura had gone to the Uchiha District. As a child, the place had terrified her. As she grew, the fear was replaced with anger, which turned into sadness.

Sakura hadn't met the child Sasuke had been before the massacre.

But, Uchiha Mikoto, Sasuke's mother, had been proud of her boys and loved them deeply, and through her eyes, through the many photos that Mikoto-san had kept so carefully, she saw Sasuke.

She saw his wide grins and dimpled smiles. She saw his pouts as his hair was ruffled by Uchiha Itachi, his beloved brother. She saw the way his mouth was probably open in a snore as he slept with his legs on the bed and his head on the floor, threatening to slide all the way down entirely. She saw him posing in a kata with shining eyes and triumphantly holding up, what Sakura presumed to be, a catch from a hunt even as his hair was a mess of tangled leaves and his face was dirtied and scratched.

When she was twelve, she would've thought that this Sasuke was a stranger; the Sasuke she knew had already made anger, hate and isolation so much a part of who he was Sakura doubted that even he remembered what he had been like before that.

As she grew older, as she catalogued all the times she had been hurt by him, all the times she failed him, as she looked back on the many moments they shared together, not just the bad but also the good, she realised that she had always known what kind of child Sasuke was, what kind of person he had grown up to be.

Sasuke was always gentle.

And, Sasuke had always cared.

It was in the way he gave his lunch to Naruto during the bell test and had Naruto's back even as he mocked Naruto – but never dismissed him with the same disgust and fear that the people had shown when they knew Naruto was a Jinchuuriki. It was in the way he always protected Sakura, held her hand even when he thought it was childish, shielding her with his body even as he told her she was useless – but never in the same threatening, mocking way as her bullies who had tried to cut her down until she was shaking with fear and felt like disappearing. It was the way he would roll his eyes at Naruto and her, believing himself to be better than them, but still not too above being dragged into whatever they were doing.

It was in the way they could still catch up to him even when he had seemingly cut them off and left them behind.

It was in the way he came back for them when they needed him most even as he claimed that they were nothing to him.

Thinking back, she could reconcile the Sasuke she knew with the Sasuke she had never met. As a child, Sasuke had only been more open with what he had tried to hide from them, what life had threatened to steal from him.

Sakura's heart ached for the child that had died together with the rest of the Uchiha Clan, and she was mature enough to know that the child was gone.

Sasuke would never be that child again, not completely.

But, she had desperately missed the Sasuke she knew.

Her Sasuke.

Sakura saw the moment Sasuke relented, but of course, Sasuke had chosen to give in when Naruto had not expected him to. When both boys ended up in the water, Naruto was more surprised than Sasuke even though he was the one who had been aiming to drag Sasuke down with him. They had landed in the shallow part of the lake, but Naruto had somehow ended up landing face down in the water, which Sasuke took full advantage of as he held is flailing friend down. Finally, Naruto managed to escape Sasuke's hold, rolling down into the deeper part of the lake and dragging Sasuke along with him. Soon, they were both swimming around, splashing water at each other as Naruto attempted to get his revenge by dunking Sasuke.

But, Sakura noticed. Sasuke never swam too far out of Naruto's reach, and when Naruto's fingers touched him, the touch would linger, as if Naruto was afraid that Sasuke wasn't real, afraid that he wasn't really back here with them, before Naruto made his move and Sasuke evaded again.

Sasuke had always been gentle.

Sakura smiled.

Sasuke, their Sasuke, her Sasuke, was back.

They would not fail him again.

They would not lose him again.

They would never leave him alone again.

Sasuke had always cared.

Sasuke was here with them.

Sasuke was theirs.

And, it was now their turn to show him that they did too.

~OWARI~