Sasuke doesn't talk to his team for three days. He ignores Sakura. Doesn't look at Naruto. He speaks to their hosts when it's necessary, and he asks Kakashi for training every day, but the other two genin? They might as well not exist.

He can sense his teacher's disapproval every time he says no, but Sasuke doesn't care. They shouldn't have pried. Shouldn't have poked and prodded at all his weak spots until he feels like he'll break.

Teams don't make you strong. Teams make you fragile.

He finds this out, truly, on the third day, when he demands training and Kakashi does his passive aggressive 'I'm so disappointed in you' eye smile and Kakashi finally says yes.

"But you're still recovering, Sasuke, so I'll just take Sakura and Naruto!"

Sasuke's glass of water almost – almost – shatters in his hands. He breathes in. Breathes out. And then shoves himself up from the table, pushing away and stalking out and ignoring the way that Sakura calls after him. He walks and walks and then runs and runs until he's through the town, down the path, up the hill – and he stops at their graves.

Zabuza's grave, and the boy named Haku.

He stares at them for a moment, stares at the sword of the deadly man who almost ended them, and the wooden figure marking the grave of the boy who could have killed him but showed mercy, and then he sits.

That's where Sakura finds him, almost a half hour later. She stops, hesitant, not wanting to go any close and disturb him, and that's when Sasuke speaks. "Sakura," he says, the first time he's talked to her in three days. "How did they die?"

She starts. "What?"

Sasuke glances at her, frowning. "How did Zabuza and Haku die? What happened after I-" He stops. After he died. After he passed out, after he-

No, he doesn't want to talk about that.

Sakura hesitates for a moment. She chews her lip – bad habit, you might bite through your lip while fighting or startled – and then she steps forward and sits next to him, carefully arranging her dress around herself as she folds her legs. "Well, I don't know what happened right afterwards, but after Naruto broke through the ice…"

She talks. She tells him how Naruto had managed to beat Haku, had almost killed him, but how Haku had sacrificed himself for Zabuza. She talks about how Gato had shown up and kicked Haku's corpse, how Inari and the villagers came, how Zabuza cut them all down and how Kakashi had carried Zabuza so he could die next to Haku and-

She's crying by the end of it, tearing up and emotional, and he doesn't flinch away when she leans into him. He allows it. Sakura needing comfort, Sakura seeking him – that's not new. That's normal. But Naruto managing to overpower and beat an opponent who could have killed Sasuke if he wanted to?

That's the farthest from normal.

They sit there together, quiet aside from Sakura's quiet tears as she tries to wrestle herself back under control, and Sasuke doesn't look at her. He gives her her privacy, because she's sensitive and brought to tears by others, and even if it's a weakness that will get stamped out he won't shame her for it.

Instead, after a few moments, he reaches down and curls a hand around her wrist. He says nothing. Does nothing more – but it seems to help, and she slowly relaxes.

After enough time has passed that it seems safe, he looks at her again. Her cheeks are blotchy and so are her eyes, but she's not crying anymore. "Sakura," he says, relieved. "Could you tell Naruto I want to talk to him?"

She seems disappointed, but nods, carefully getting to her feet and brushing herself off as he releases her. "I… okay, sure."

He hesitates. "…Thanks." She deserves that much, at least.

Sakura smiles, one of her genuine ones and not her fake 'cutesy' ones, and he thinks he made the right choice. "Any time, Sasuke!"

Sasuke can't accurately judge time out here yet – he knows approximate time, but he doesn't know the exacts – but it feels like ages until Naruto stalks up the road and plops next to him. Interestingly enough, on the opposite side, different from where Sakura had sat. He's ungainly, legs sprawled out in front of him and leaning back on his arms, and he scowls at Sasuke. "What d'you want, bastard? I was training, I was training!"

He's so relieved by the utter normalcy that it takes him a moment to respond. "How did you defeat him?" he asks, gesturing to the mist nin's grave.

Naturally, it takes Naruto a moment to catch up with the topic, but then he- pales, surprisingly, and looks away. "Why do you wanna know?"

Sasuke frowns. "I couldn't beat him. How could you?"

Naruto whips his hair around to scowl at him. "Hey! I'm plenty strong, you know!"

"I beat you when we sparred, and that boy beat me."

Naruto's scowl deepens. "His name was Haku. And we…" He hesitates for a moment, torn, and forges on. He always forges on. "We met, before the battle. I met him in the forest when I was training. He… told me something, you know. Made me think."

The blonde looks up to meet Sasuke's eyes, intent and dead serious. Sasuke's breath catches in the back of his throat. "He said you get stronger when you protect your precious people."

There's so many holes in that explanation, Sasuke thinks. So many things that don't make sense – Naruto had to pull the power from SOMEWHERE, after all – but all he can think of is does that make me one of your precious people, Naruto?

It makes sense. Naruto likes him. But there's- there's a big difference between 'I'm like one of your fangirls, and I have a crush on you like so many others in the class' and… and precious people.

He needs to re-evaluate. He needs to reassess. But right now Sasuke just needs to breathe, and he inhales and exhales and tries to speak. "Oh," is all he can say. "Oh."

There always has been more of an unspoken understanding with Naruto than there has been with Sakura, and the other boy smiles as if he had said something profound, breaking through the clouds like a ray. "Yeah. He was really smart."

Mm. Sasuke doesn't want to think about that, about the boy who had shown him mercy and then had died, so he cracks his neck and then stands up, stretching slightly. "Hn. Spar with me?"

Naruto lights up, bouncing up on his feet. "Yeah, yeah! Let's go!"

Sasuke beats him six times.

He doesn't seek out Kakashi until it's dark. Naruto and Sakura are asleep, sprawled out on the floor, when Sasuke clambers up onto the roof. His teacher is there, and Sasuke sits next to him, silent.

Kakashi, unfortunately, isn't the kind to break the silence. So after a few moments, Sasuke breaks the silence. "How did you get a Sharingan?"

He looks straight ahead and resolutely doesn't try to turn and see his teacher's face. There's a few moments of silence, and then Kakashi places a hand gently on Sasuke's head. "Maa. It's a long story."

Sasuke doesn't pull away. "I have time."

"Hm. So you do."

For the second time that day, Sasuke is told a story. He can tell there's plenty that Kakashi is leaving out, but it's really rather simple. Obito Uchiha was a failure of an Uchiha who was on Kakashi's genin team. While they were trying to rescue their third team member, he shoved Kakashi out of the way and died for him. Before he did, Kakashi's third teammate, Rin, transplanted his Sharingan into Kakashi's eye socket.

There's… it's a lot to take in. Sasuke doesn't reply for a little bit, after hearing that. How do you respond to such a story? He remembers how Kakashi had said all of his friends were on the memorial stone, and he swallows sharply. "Why… why didn't you tell me you had the Sharingan?"

Now, Sasuke finally looks at his teacher, and Kakashi looks down at him, one visible eye wider than normal. "I thought you knew. I thought your family would have told you."

It's painful, to think of them, when his pieces are only now sealing back together after the way his teammates prodded, but he shakes his head. "No, they never mentioned you to me."

Kakashi moves his hand to wrap around Sasuke's shoulder, pulling him into his side. Sasuke allows it. "Maa, I'm very sorry, then. I didn't mean to keep it a secret."

That was a relief. He got the Sharingan through normal circumstances (no corpse robbing), and he hadn't meant to hide it. That was… that was good. "Will you teach me how to use it tomorrow?"

Kakashi hums, and then nods. "Not too much, though, you are still healing."

"Hn."

He stays there, letting his teacher keep his hand and his arm on him, and doesn't shrug it off. He's too tired. Too tired to even get up and move away, no matter how embarrassed he'll be in the morning. He's sure that Kakashi won't let him forget it

Quietly, he vows to visit Obito Uchiha at the memorial stone as soon as they get back.