A/N: Once again, written in like six hours and then slapped up without a ton of review, because my eyes are broken. My brain is broken. Everything is broken, including any reasonable plan I ever had for this story, and apparently that's just what we're going with these days. Please excuse any obvious errors, as they are all my fault.
TW for descriptions of a panic attack because, well. All of Team 7, really, but mostly Naruto in this chapter.
I'm...pretty sure? That this is the penultimate chapter? There should be one more after this, and then what's looking like a really, super, tragically long epilogue to wrap things up. Why.
I own nothing and am making zero money from this work.
Naruto
The Village was more than halfway decimated. Buildings reduced to rubble, smoking craters where restaurants and shopping stalls had been, huge chunks of the protective outer wall blackened and burned and crumbled to dust, trees ripped right out at the roots, ruined streets littered with stray kunai, a heavy stink of smoke and blood and spent chakra in the air.
The Village was more than halfway destroyed, but this, apparently, had zero impact on Granny Tsunade's ability to find useless office shit and bounce it off of Naruto's head with skull-denting force.
"What the fuck!" Naruto howled as a sparkly rock-type object—a paperweight? Or something?—wheeled over his left shoulder, clipping his earlobe as it went and embedding itself in the wall behind him with a cracking sound. The walls of Hokage Tower, which were already listing dangerously to the left and probably super uninhabitable at the moment (but here they all were, whatever) groaned alarmingly. Naruto clapped a hand to his now bleeding ear and repeated, on a bellow, "Granny, what the fuck! Quit breaking shit, it's broken enough!"
"You stupid brat!" she bellowed back. "What were you doing? What were you thinking?"
Sasuke didn't say a word from where he stood at Naruto's back, studying the various objects now implanted in the wall (the paperweight, an empty sake bottle, two ink pots, and a shoe) with folded arms and a cocked eyebrow like he approved of Granny Tsunade's super violent way of dealing with her feelings. Sasuke didn't say a word, but he made a tiny noise like 'pfft' which in Sasuke-speak, meant 'admirable of you to assume that there's thinking involved in anything this idiot does, ever'. The fucker—Naruto would totally launch him out the nearest window except that he kind of owed Sasuke big for punching the fox into submission and also was a little afraid of toppling Hokage Tower for real.
And. Well. Nothing else today deserved to be broken because of Naruto.
He straightened up out of his defensive hunch and really looked at Granny Tsunade. Her face was absolutely bloodless, pale and waxy white. The robes of her office were ripped and stained with blood and dirt—probably picked up from the hours she'd spent in the emergency triage center she'd erected after the attack, in the gutted remains of the hospital. That was where they'd found her after making it back to the Village (a painfully slow process that took way too long because Sai couldn't be jolted in any way and Naruto was exhausted down to his bones with the lingering effects of the genjutsu and the efforts of forcing down the fox and Kakashi-Sensei's steps were slow, dragging, heavy things) —standing in the middle of crumbled brick and beds warped and bent by heat and debris, holding the people on makeshift stretchers together with her bare hands and the brute force of her chakra, barking orders at both the ninja assisting her in the healing process and the ninja clearing the space even more to make room for the people still flooding in, moaning and bloodied and silent with pain.
Granny Tsunade had only left because Sakura had stayed. Stepped so smoothly into Granny Tsunade's role that she'd picked up Granny's shout mid-word, depositing Sai on the nearest bed and sliding her hand over the ruined gut of the shopkeeper Granny had been healing (old man Ran, who'd never been especially nice to Naruto but had been fair, at least—never short-changing Naruto because he was Jinchuriki) without a single falter.
Granny Tsunade had led Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi back to the ominously wobbling wreckage of her office without a word. She'd taken a seat behind her desk, listened carefully as Kakashi reported what had gone down in the clearing in a dead, dull voice. When he'd finished, she'd nodded once, inhaled deeply, and then reached for the nearest object and lobbed it straight at Naruto's head, hard enough to break the wall behind him. Because she was crazy, and crazy violent, and Naruto loved her so much it hurt.
And now that they were done yelling at each other (for the moment, because yelling was how they communicated best) and the air was still and quiet, save for the shouting outside and the faint bellows of buildings still collapsing, and the motes of dust and dirt and ash dancing through the blades of pale sunshine cutting through the windowpanes, Naruto could see how badly Granny Tsunade was shaking. How her thumbnail had been worn down to a bloody, ragged ruin of skin. The black shadows under her red-rimmed eyes and the way she kept looking at the pendant around his neck, saying without words that it could have been you, it could have been again.
Naruto had built an entire reputation on being too much. On being the biggest, loudest, fullest presence in every room he entered, because fuck anyone who thought they could ignore him. But, looking at Granny Tsunade, looking at the smoldering remains of Leaf Village out the window, he felt thin. Breakably thin, like a cheap wooden door trying to hold against a tornado howling outside. His lungs rattled with the force of it. His ribs and wrists and bones ached against the strain of keeping himself together.
"He wanted me, Granny," Naruto finally said, twenty octaves softer than his default volume of 'but yelling is my inside voice'. "I was the target. Mad—Obito was here for me, and Pein was just following his orders, and I thought—"
"That you could save us by stepping in to sacrifice yourself? That the rest of us would be perfectly okay if only you were gone?"
"In his defense," Kakashi-Sensei cut in, trying for his normal, cheerful, 'absolutely making fun of everyone in the world but good luck trying to actually prove it' voice and missing by a mile. "That is what 75% of the Village has been audibly and clearly communicating to him since he was five years old. So."
Granny Tsunade only winced a little bit—probably because she was too tired for a bigger one. Naruto didn't wince at all, because hey—facts, right? It was fine, he was used to it, it wasn't like they didn't have a reason (the fox was bitching scary, as Naruto could personally attest) and most people looked at him with more annoyance than anger these days, and that was progress, no matter how many times Sakura said things like 'your ability to interpret hatred and fear and attempts on your life as improvement is impressive but honestly, actually terrifying?'
To which Naruto usually responded 'but they've never actually killed me and attempts are better than, like, pulling it off, right? So, improvement!' And then Sakura pulled on her gloves in that extra special way that meant Naruto was super fucked, and Kakashi-Sensei watched with lazy amusement as she chased Naruto around wherever they were training that day, while Sai inked careful, lovingly detailed depictions of Naruto's beat-down on his scrolls.
Granny said, "We don't have the whole picture yet. The Jounin that are uninjured enough for it are still gathering information, and reports are just starting to come in. Casualties are less than expected, because of an unknown jutsu in the aftermath of the battle that healed many of the grievously injured—and brought many assumed to be dead back from brink. Pein's jutsu," Granny corrected, nodding at Kakashi to acknowledge the report he'd given. "But, as far as we can tell right now, 58% of the Village itself is beyond immediate repair. There are still injuries that weren't healed by the jutsu—injuries that weren't related to the attack itself, and so might have been skipped over by a chakra-focused attempt to repair it. From fire, falling buildings, and the like. Nearly the entire market square was decimated, which means we'll have to rely on the imports of other Villages until we can re-establish food and goods production. And the housing situation is going to be a nightmare for a while, because entire neighborhoods were taken out."
Granny Tsunade narrowed her brown eyes, rimmed with red from the dust in the air and lack of sleep and (Naruto knew) tears that she'd probably carefully hidden from everyone, because she was Hokage, and it was her job to be an untouched pillar of strength in times of unrest and uncertainty. That was any leader's job.
"We needed you here," she said. "We need you here now. More than ever."
Once, Naruto would have moved every mountain in the five nations to hear those words, and what they represented—that Naruto was needed, which meant that Naruto belonged. That he had a purpose, and a place, among the people he'd so desperately wanted those things from since before he'd been old enough to understand wanting them.
But now, they made him shudder. Not with delight, but the realization that if he'd stayed—if he'd stayed in the Village and Madara or Pein had somehow managed to force out the fox like they had in the clearing—if he'd stayed—
Naruto had seen the clearing before they'd left. Had seen the trees with blackened bark, and the deeply gouged earth, and the total stillness of the air, because even the birds and bugs had taken flight.
That wasn't because of Obito. It was because of Naruto, and the awful, red-washed pulse of the fox. If he'd still been in the Village…
Naruto almost heaved the entirety of his empty stomach—so, bile and possibly an internal organ or two—onto Granny Tsunade's fancy Hokage carpet. Which probably would have him earned another knick-knack to the head, even though Granny Tsunade's carpet was already stained with ash and dirt and debris. She would have insisted it was the principle of the thing, or some shit. Naruto didn't get it, but the old bat was so persnickety about the weirdest things. Like carpet, and sake brands, and Naruto's totally righteous intentions to start a ramen revolution in the restaurant district that one time.
Something in Granny's eyes shifted a little when Naruto's only response to her words was a thin smile. Thin like that wooden door, straining against the force of a storm.
"We'll re-build," she said. "The Leaf Village won't be destroyed by this. We're not a place that puts importance in buildings or walls, but in the strength of the people who help re-build them."
"I know that already, Granny," Naruto said. He did know that, and that was exactly the problem. "Save your inspiring speeches for the people who don't, okay?"
This time, when she threw something at his face (a little jar that looked like a Hokage antique—Shizune was probably going to be pissed about it later) Naruto noticed that it arced two entire feet to the right, nowhere near to actually hitting him.
##
Kakashi-Sensei disappeared as soon as they left the tower. Didn't even try for an eye-smile or one of his shitty excuses—just murmured 'murder child, keep an eye on the sunflower child, okay?', gave Naruto a distracted pat on the shoulder and disappeared before Naruto could ask why he was a flower, while Sasuke was apparently the entire concept of death upon another person.
Naruto thought that Sasuke might leave, too. Was expecting it, really, because that was Sasuke's entire thing. The thing he did better than any of the fancy jutsus or questionable aesthetic choices he'd picked up in the years they'd been apart.
Sasuke was Sasuke, and he was still best at leaving.
But didn't move, waited calm and expressionless until Naruto took a few hesitant, wandering steps, and then he followed close behind. Continued to follow while Naruto cut a rambling, directionless path through the remains of the Village. He didn't say a word, or do that shitty sudden-disappearance thing that he'd obviously learned from Kakashi-Sensei. He just followed, silent in Naruto's shadow, and it was creeping Naruto the hell out.
But distantly. Creeping him out distantly. Because, as they walked, anything else Naruto might have been feeling was swallowed up by what he saw.
Civilians, shocky-eyed and moving forward in lurching, uneven steps. Walking toward the triage center, or the remains of their houses, with bundles of things they'd managed to save clutched in their arms and clean tracks in the dirt on their cheeks, clutching to their kids, their spouses, their siblings.
Grim-faced Jounin scouring through the wreckage for survivors who hadn't been found yet—or, for bodies. So many of them were hurt, Naruto could tell. Bearing wounds and chakra depletion from the battle with Pein. But they kept digging through piles of shattered stone, broken wooden beams, displaced dirt, faces blank as the loved ones of those they were searching for waited and watched with hands clasped, their silence swollen with the knowledge that every second that passed without being found tipped the odds of it toward an unfavorable outcome.
Naruto passed by a clustered knot of his friends, clearing debris in the town square. Choji, at his normal, non-justsued size because he'd clearly burned out the ability to do it during the battle. Kiba and Akamaru, both of them singed and soot-stained. And Lee, carrying an entire boulder on his back because he was just that much, no matter the circumstances.
"Naruto," Lee said, with a smile but none of his usual exuberance. There was an exhaustion dragging down his words, his face, that shook Naruto to the core, because he'd never thought he'd see it. Not on Lee. His eyes caught on the figure haunting Naruto's steps. "And…and…"
"Sasuke," Sasuke supplied, because he was just that much of an asshole, no matter the circumstances.
Lee cut a semi-frantic look over to Naruto, like he wasn't sure what his next move should be.
Kiba, already in possession of zero shits or social graces, and apparently even less so in the wake of an enemy invasion, just tipped his head at Sasuke and asked, "Yeah, listen, man—are you here to attack us, or something? Because, if you are, I don't really have the energy for a proper fight, so you might want to find a better target. And if you're not, I really could give a fuck less about you as, like, any kind of thing right now, okay?"
"It's fine, guys," Naruto said, with the best attempt at a smile he could muster. He was relieved to see them, of course he was, but he also couldn't look at them. Because Kiba's burns looked like Sasuke's still-blistered hands and Choji had deep scratches down his side that Naruto didn't think were claw marks but made him think—made him see—. "It's—he's fine. And you guys? You're…okay?"
Kiba gave that extra special shrug, the one that all ninja learned eventually, maybe the only truly common language between them—the shrug that meant 'eh, probably not okay by any sane definition, and definitely aggressively repressing many, many negative feelings, but I'm not dead, so?'
"And you, Naruto?" Lee asked, because he probably understood better than the other two, what it felt like to be not okay in a way similar to Naruto's.
"I'm…" Naruto physically could not force the word past his lips. It withered on his tongue, decayed between his teeth. The oxygen in his lungs got thinner with the death of it. Instead, he managed, "Sure, Lee."
Lee's eyes were way too watchful, way too knowing, and Naruto went from thinning air to zero air in the time it took for Lee to blink. He had to go, he had to go, but Kiba was busy cooking up a half-hearted threat for Sasuke's listening pleasure, obviously born out of feeling like he had to instead of any real desire to do so.
"We're in a shitty spot here, man, and if you do anything to make it worse—"
Naruto's tongue was swelling. It was blocking off his throat. He reached for it, instinctive, and started walking away, also instinctive. Wasn't that an animal thing—that they isolated themselves when they were hurt, or weakened?
Wasn't Naruto just an animal, what they'd been afraid of him for after all, in spite of all his efforts to be more?
"Yeah, yeah," Sasuke shot back, his voice fading a bit as Naruto hurried away, his steps shaky and uneven as little silver spots of oxygen deprivation started to flash in his peripherals. "I'm appropriately cowed. Leave me alone now, okay?"
Naruto didn't hear his return to Naruto's side, because Naruto was too busy crouching inside the mostly-standing remains of a restaurant and breathing into his cupped hands. Failing to breathe. Whatever.
"Hey," Sasuke said, after a few minutes of Naruto hyperventilating into his hands. "I didn't save you twice just for you to keel over like this. Get it together."
With great effort, Naruto forced, "Shut…up…asshole…" out of his burning, starving lungs. He felt like he was breathing through a blade of grass. Like the capacity of his inhales had narrowed impossibly, and no matter how deeply he tried to pull the air in, it couldn't get past his rapidly closing throat. Sweat slicked his spine, his palms. His skin flashed hot, but his teeth chattered like he was freezing. For some reason that Naruto could not explain, the sound of a nearby beetle, having been apparently dislodged from his home in the dirt and buzzing about it all pissy-like, was way too loud, like a kunai being drilled into Naruto's skull.
"I could have…" Naruto heaved into his hands, wondered in a distant and foggy way if it was still struggling for oxygen that was causing his throat to seize or if he was about to throw up for real. "If I'd…been here…I could have…"
"…Ah," Sasuke said, which meant 'oh shit, these are feelings, somebody help'.
But then a hand, smallish but stronger than so many things Naruto had ever encountered, covered in calluses and the smell of disinfectant, curled around the back of Naruto's neck and shoved his head between his knees.
"Sakura," Naruto managed.
"Naruto," she said back. "Breathe for me, okay? Four in, four out. Slow."
Naruto listened, because he always listened to Sakura.
"Thought you were at the triage center," Sasuke said, as Naruto stared at the dirt beneath his feet and counted his breaths.
"Lady Tsunade showed back up and kicked me out. Something about chakra depletion and 'damn it, Haruno, do you think I need another unconscious body taking up my precious bed space? Get the hell out before you pass out and check on your idiot teammates'. And since my idiot teammate in the triage center is currently stable, I figured she meant the other ones." Her hand on Naruto's nape never wavered, or weakened, in spite of the way it had been holding people together for nearly twelve hours now. "Naruto. Any better?"
Naruto had upgraded from breathing through a blade of grass to breathing through one of those little reeds that grew along the river. Hearing that Sai was stable helped even more. "A little."
"Where's Kakashi-Sensei?" Sakura asked.
"Not here," Sasuke said. "He took off as soon as we left the tower."
"Well, we'll have to check on him, too. In a minute."
"You know where he is?"
"Don't you?"
Sasuke made a tiny sound, more exhale than sigh. "Yeah. I do."
"And you know what he's going to say? What he's going to think?"
"That, too."
"And what are you going to say back?"
Another almost-sigh. "Well, normally it'd be 'no'. Of course, it'd be 'no'. But it's not really—this time, I can't really—"
Sakura heaved a sigh of her own. "Yeah. And what are you going to say to me. And to Naruto?"
"Do we really need to do this right fucking now?"
"It's Kakashi-Sensei. He'll already have twelve arguments in his head for why we can't, and another twelve plans for making us if we refuse. Our only chance against him at all is to go in united. That's been true since we were twelve-year-olds trying to get a bell, remember?"
Sasuke said 'hn', which meant 'I know you're right, but I don't have to say it with words'.
Naruto sat back on his heels. His throat had opened enough that he could breathe somewhat regularly, and the sweat on his spine had cooled into a tacky strip. His teeth were still chattering a little, and the sound of the beetle still made him wince, but it was better.
"What are you guys talking about?" he asked. "What about Kakashi-Sensei?"
Sakura looked at Sasuke, letting her hand fall away from Naruto's neck, her eyebrow cocked in silent demand. Sasuke looked at the burnt and blackened remains of the ceiling, made a semi-mutinous face, and then said, "Fine. Whatever. Let's just…get there and get it over with all at once, okay?"
"Okay," Sakura agreed, like she'd never expected anything else, and helped Naruto to his feet.
##
They found Kakashi-Sensei at the memorial stone, because of course they did.
"It's not going to work," he said, as soon as they were within hearing distance.
"I don't know what you mean, Kakashi-Sensei," Sakura shot back immediately, serene and unruffled as she came up to their teacher's side. "What's not going to work? We're just here to check on you."
Kakashi-Sensei crinkled an eye-smile at the stone. At the name he was staring at.
Obito Uchiha.
He said, "Whatever plan the three of you cooked up—and it warms the very cockles of my heart, it really does, the idea of my tiny, beloved brats scheming together once again. But it's not going to work."
"Who's tiny?" Sasuke asked. "I'm almost as tall as you, old man."
"You might actually be taller," Sakura pointed out. "Because his floofy hair. Adds height."
It was weird, this exchange of words, and for a second, Naruto couldn't figure out why. And then he realized—Sakura and Sasuke sounded like him. They were talking like him, giving Kakashi-Sensei the shit that he would have given him, because most of Naruto's words seemed to have vanished with his air supply.
"I might be smarter, too," Sasuke continued. "Because of how I know exactly what Kakashi's going to say. And why it's bullshit."
"Mmm," Sakura hummed in agreement.
Completely deadpan, Sasuke said, "'This is something I have to do myself'. 'You wouldn't understand.' 'This is my mission to complete—I owe him that much.' And other assorted bullshit."
"How adorable, you hypocritical little shit," Kakashi-Sensei said back, all cheerful calm. "Like I haven't heard every single one of those lines out of your own mouth, and with way more drama in the delivery."
"Pfft," Sasuke said, like it wasn't absolutely true.
"You think you can stop me?" Kakashi-Sensei asked. Not like a threat, more like he was honestly curious. "You really think you can stop me from leaving?"
Naruto lost his air all over again.
But Sakura and Sasuke didn't so much as blink.
"So dumb, Kakashi-Sensei," Sakura said, in that warm and fond way she got sometimes when Sai blinked his honest confusion over someone being nice, or when Kakashi-Sensei actually ate with them, following along at a casual distance like he really hadn't meant to but here he was, or when Naruto brought her cups of tea at the Hokage's office because she'd been working forever and probably needed it. "We're not here to stop you. Of course we're not."
"You're not," Kakashi-Sensei repeated, all polite skepticism.
"We're not?" Naruto squeaked.
Sakura hummed again. "Of course Kakashi-Sensei has to go after Obito. Obito was his teammate. And members of Team 7 go after their teammates, right?"
Sasuke gave the entire world a deeply put-upon look.
"But we're your teammates, too, Kakashi-Sensei," Sakura continued. "So, we'll go after you. Right?"
"There are many people who would say that Team 7's devotion to chasing each other down is unhealthy and damaging," Kakashi-Sensei tried.
Sweetly, Sakura parried back with, "There are many people who can kiss my whole entire ass."
Naruto snorted in a laugh that got stuck in his heaving lungs and ended up coughing wildly.
"Wait," he managed, once he was done flailing his way through hacking up half his ribcage. "Wait. So…Kakashi-Sensei's leaving? And we're…going with him?"
Quietly now, Sakura said, "Don't we all have a reason? To go?"
"He's my family member," Sasuke agreed immediately. "And I almost let him trick me into…well. So it should be me who stops him."
Kakashi-Sensei gave Sasuke a very, very even look that looked it meant 'ha, you think'.
Naruto's face creased. Because Kakashi-Sensei's reason…okay, he got it. Going after teammates, that made sense. And Sasuke's reason made sense, too, even though Naruto would never say it out loud. But…?
"Sakura?" he asked.
She smiled at him a little. "Wasn't I too weak to stop him the clearing? To really stop him, instead of just manipulating him away. Manipulation is something, it's a strength, but I could have done something then, something that really ended all of this instead of dragging it out. That makes it my responsibility, too."
"How noble and self-blaming we've all decided to be!" Kakashi-Sensei declared. "Haven't I just made you all into cute, super unfortunate copies of myself. But, alas, how are we going to convince our sunflower child to leave his beloved Village? Surely he won't, would never, and tragically I just can't allow you two to leave a teammate behind. Team 7 and our unhealthy attachments, like you said!"
But Sakura and Sasuke were already looking at Naruto like they were waiting for an answer he already had. And weirdly, wildly, in that moment, Naruto realized that he did have it.
"I can't stay either," he said, the words a realization even as he uttered them, even as Sakura and Sasuke failed to look surprised. "I can't. Because…because…"
Fucking shit, there went his lungs again.
"Because I don't have control," he forced out. "Of the fox. I don't. Obito's plan would have worked, it would have worked. And if I'd been in the Village…if he tries it again, and I'm in the Village now, when it's trying to re-build…" Naruto couldn't breathe. Again, and he realized it was the horror of it that had been choking him all along. The reality of what could have been, what so easily could have been.
"They need you here," Kakashi-Sensei murmured. "You're a leader to them, whether they acknowledge it or not. They need you here, Naruto."
Naruto thought of Granny Tsunade, and her red-rimmed eyes that she'd attribute to the ash in the air and nothing else, to the way she barked orders because people needed them right now, to the way she'd kept herself visible in a triage center of her own making, where people could see her and find comfort in the unwavering strength she projected.
Naruto smiled a little. "The strength of the Leaf Village isn't in the buildings, but in the people who re-build them. And I can't…if I can't be that for them right now, Kakashi-Sensei, if I can't trust that I won't knock it all down again, then I need to go."
Kakashi-Sensei had actually turned away from the memorial stone. His eye was very wide as he stared at Naruto.
"You…" he said. "I…Naruto."
"So, that's why we're all going," Sakura said. Neatly. Firmly. "Okay, Sensei?"
Kakashi-Sensei looked at the three of them, a little wild around the edges. The three of them, who'd teamed up so neatly to win this fight. It wasn't a bell, but damn if it didn't feel just as good, somehow. It almost made Naruto grin.
"Well," Sakura added musingly, a thoughtful finger tapping against her chin. "That's why we're all going to go in a few days. After Sai is healed up, so he can come, too."
Naruto nodded, because obviously.
"Wait," Sasuke said. "Wait, what?"
A/N: Next up, Sasuke's POV: I'm already carrying the three people on this team and the baggage of my emotional trauma-extra people need not apply. Happy Reading!