A/N: The penultimate chapter. A place I thought I'd never get to.
There will be an epilogue after this...super long because apparently that's just how I do things now, and detailing some (can't promise all) of their mission to find Obito.
I hope? It's ok?
I do not own anything, and am making zero money off of this work.
Sasuke
The night after they decided to go, Naruto looked at Sasuke, blue eyes deadly serious for once, and said, "I need you to help me."
"With what?" Sasuke fired back immediately, still feeling raw and strange with the idea of going after his uncle (leaving to chase down a relative again, again—different this time but still similar enough to Itachi that Sasuke was having trouble breathing around it) and that he wouldn't be going alone. "Haven't I helped your ass enough in the past few days?"
"Like I couldn't have figured it out myself if I had to," Naruto scoffed, because some things were constant and would never change. But then his face got serious again and Sasuke—itched, really. Naruto's serious face was an uncomfortable thing, wrong-looking on someone who was always smiling like an idiot but impossible to look away from. "Sasuke."
"What?"
"I don't know how."
"Narrow it down for me. There are a lot of things you don't know how to do."
"I don't know how to leave." Naruto's face was pale and his mouth was set and Sasuke hated it but he couldn't look away. "Sasuke, I need you to help me."
##
There were peculiar things about leaving with other people.
If Sasuke was the master of anything, it was the solo departure. Admittedly, his first attempt hadn't gone super well (but he dared anyone to attempt a clean and easy goodbye when Naruto 'Abandonment Issues and Totally Unashamed of It' Uzumaki was determined that they were going to stay). But Sasuke had perfected the art of leaving since his explosive departure from the Leaf Village all those years ago. He'd learned things. Have your essentials ready to go at all times, and don't collect anything you can't afford to leave behind. Be so violently unlikeable that no one actually wants to follow you (exception once again: Uzumaki fucking Naruto). Make no announcement of your plans to leave and don't bother explaining it beyond a well-timed 'you really should have seen this coming'. Still blow something up on your way out, because wrecking shit really was the most definite (and honestly…cathartic) way to say 'goodbye'.
But leaving with other people? Peculiar.
Like. Apparently? You had to ask for permission first.
Weird.
He stood in the Hokage's office, the day after being informed that his next outing would apparently be one with multiple people (including Sai, somehow, that strange-faced fucker—but Sakura had smiled politely at him when he'd tried to protest at the memorial stone in a way that implied 'your arguments are like tiny puppies—super adorable but also nothing I'm going to take seriously' and so the Sai thing would have to be something Sasuke solved later on).
The Tower was still a precariously balanced thing. And while a majority of the debris had been cleared away, the walls and carpet were still stained with ash, dirt, and the dust of structural damage.
Still, the Hokage stared them down from behind her desk the same as ever, waiting with folded hands for Kakashi and Sakura to finish explaining what they planned to do.
Once they stopped talking, the Hokage unfolded her hands and said, "Okay."
On Sasuke's left, Sakura winced a little. Sasuke took this to mean that the carefully neutral, nearly pleasant cast of the Hokage's voice was an even bigger warning sign than yelling would have been. This was confirmed when Naruto went, "Oh shit" on Sasuke's right, also worryingly quiet.
Sasuke let his arm drop carefully, casually, toward his sword. Kakashi gave him a two-blink look from across the room that basically meant 'are you fucking serious, kid—that's the leader of a Hidden Village' and Sasuke angled his chin back in a way that meant, 'so' and Kakashi scratched his nose through his mask in a way that meant, 'I probably should have put your stupid, impulsive head through a wall the second you were first assigned to me'.
"So, just to summarize," the Hokage said, still so politely neutral. "The five of you—four of my most powerful shinobi and one asshole of a teenager who is still technically classified a missing nin in all five nations and was a captured enemy of the Leaf Village until literally six days ago—the four of you want to leave the Village. Leave the Village, which has just been more than halfway razed by an enemy attack and is in a state of total chaos and disrepair. To go on a mission without a knowable end date. To hunt a ninja who we thought to be an undead ancestor of said asshole teenager over there, but is actually the supposed-to-be-dead uncle of said asshole teenager over there. And not only that, but you want to bring along the very person that he just razed our Village for, because asshole-teenager-uncle needs him for some nebulous plan that we don't know the exact details of yet, but which definitely would result in even more razing." The Hokage blinked at them, brown eyes placid. "That's your plan?"
"Wow," Naruto said. He held up an arm, which had visibly prickled with goosebumps. "You're amazing, Granny. Like, my asshole is clenching."
Shikamaru, who had already been inside the Hokage's office when they'd arrived, maps under his arm and strategies for fast and efficient Village reconstruction in the genius-brain he hid behind eternal boredom, snorted so hard that he nearly inhaled the unlit cigarette in his mouth.
Sasuke thought briefly about objecting to his title being changed from 'missing nin' to 'asshole teenager', but Kakashi tipped his head back slowly, in a way that communicated both 'it might be years too late but you still have a head and I still have access to walls, shut up' and also 'are you really going to argue the accuracy of it'.
Sakura stepped neatly in front of Naruto, planting a discreet elbow in his gut as she went. "Lady Tsunade, we know it's a lot to ask. This is a critical time for the Leaf Village. But this is also a critical time for defeating this particular opponent—who is still the Leaf's biggest threat. He's off-balance. We know that, because otherwise he never would have left Naruto behind. It's more weakness than he's ever shown before, and failing to take advantage of that would be a grievous oversight."
The Hokage steepled her fingers under her chin. "And you think I should send you. This absolute shit show of a team. The total emotional monstrosity that is the group of you together. The team responsible for a good 28% of my paperwork, 68% of my chronic headache, and 95% of my murderous rage. That's who I should send, instead of someone logical like Shikamaru or a highly trained team of ANBU specialists, who could treat this mission like actual ninja instead of a bunch of super-powered idiots who can't do anything without having feelings about it first."
"Lady Hokage, please don't send me," Shikamaru said with immediate, pleading conviction.
"Lady Hokage, please don't send Shikamaru," Sakura agreed.
"Granny Tsunade, stop shitting all over the total baddassery of my feeling-powers," Naruto chimed in.
The esteemed Hokage of the Leaf Village looked, for a single second, like she wanted to put her head down on her desk and laugh until she cried.
"Mah, mah," Kakashi said, with his own personal brand of hair-raising nonchalance. "Of course our venerable leader would have some reservations. And isn't it a compliment, dear children, how badly she wants to keep us in the Village. How far I'm sure she'd be willing to go to make sure we stay. How much of her currently limited and tragically weakened resources she'd be willing to expend just on keeping our unworthy selves around." Kakashi smiled at the room in general. "Ah. It's so nice, isn't it, children? To be wanted so badly."
Mostly to himself, Shikamaru said, "Wow."
The Hokage made a rude snorting sound and dropped her elbows on the desk, massaging at her temples with two fingers. "Fuck's sake, Hatake. Shut up with the happy-faced threats. I hear you, okay?"
"Threats?" Naruto's head turned left, and then right. "Kakashi-Sensei threatened Granny? When? What?"
Sasuke rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling. Naruto's apparent inability to understand a threat made with any more subtlety than 'hey I want to actually hurt you, immediately, with my fists' explained so much about his dogged pursuit of Sasuke halfway around the ninja world.
Sakura's answering laugh was light, airy, and (Sasuke now knew) a total lie covering up a bellowing interior. "Of course Kakashi-Sensei didn't threaten the leader of our Village, Naruto! Kakashi-Sensei would never do something like that. He was just pointing out the understandably terrible situation the Village is currently in. The regrettable lack of available resources and manpower. How easy it would be for five 'super-powered idiots' to slip away in the night and without actual permission, if they had to."
"Oh." Naruto scratched at the back of his neck. "Uh. Good."
"Of course," Sakura continued, smile still so sweet and harmless. "If those five idiots were to slip away in the night, it would obviously be the Hokage's job to report them as missing nin. Obviously. Four of her most powerful shinobi, as she said, and a Class S hostage allowed to escape from the Village. She'd have to report to the rest of the ninja world that somehow, these people slipped between her powerful and widely respected grasp."
"A shame," Kakashi agreed. "So embarrassing. Especially when the Hokage could have reported instead that she was sending an elite team of four of her most powerful shinobi in pursuit of a worldwide threat, accompanied by a dangerous missing nin that she'd somehow managed to gain the loyalty, and therefore skill set, of."
"Hey," Sasuke said, because he wasn't Naruto. He was an Uchiha. 'Politely threatening political bullshit' had practically been his second language, growing up.
But Sakura just shifted a little so that her foot stomped down on his and hummed. "Our leader could boast this incredible, daring plan. In spite of the attack on her Village. Because, of course, the Leaf Village isn't so weak that it can't immediately hunt down the enemy responsible for the blow it received. We'd never want the other nations to think that the Leaf was too soft to deliver swift and powerful justice."
"Fuck yeah!" Naruto cheered, and pumped a fist in the air.
Tsunade stared at the four of them with a mouth pursed to one side. She cast her narrowed brown eyes to Naruto. "And you? Future Hokage, and you're going to run out on your Village in its worst time of need?"
It wasn't an accusation, or even asked unkindly. The words had been soft. The Hokage's eyes were warm, but searching, like this answer, in spite of the metric ton of them that Sakura and Kakashi had just given, was the most important.
Naruto's fist wavered in the air before dropping entirely. He flinched a little, before reaching deep for that super obnoxious core of steel that Sasuke hated with a passion (especially when it was in his face, all stalwart and unshakeable and shouting things about friendship with the ringing sound of something absolutely certain).
"Granny," he said.
His serious voice—the one he used when he actually, really meant it. The one that pitched low and uneven because he couldn't always find the words but the feeling was there. Sasuke had heard it—at the Valley of the End, when Naruto had looked at him across a waterfall and said 'You're my friend'. Simple words, but the weight behind them had rung through Sasuke's being like a bell for years, no matter how much he tried to shut it up.
"Granny," Naruto said again. "This is—the Leaf is the only place I've ever wanted to be."
Simple words. But they rang.
And then Naruto, being Naruto, followed up with, "Um, long term, or whatever, because there's plenty of bitching places to visit, yeah? Like, I have to at least get to Sand every once in a while or Gaara might turn those scary-wide murder eyes back on and start muttering about blood again and nobody wants that, right? Once was enough."
"Kid," the Hokage said with great patience and audible warmth. "Shut the fuck up with your bullshit and answer my question."
"You—I'm getting there, you old bat!"
Shikamaru wheezed around his cigarette again. Sakura, hands folded neatly at her waist, just watched one of her best friends bitch at an esteemed leader of an entire government with the casual resignation of someone who had seen it more than once, and with more government leaders than this one.
Naruto struggled. Visibly struggled, face scrunched up tight and hands fisted behind his back and casting longing, sorrowful looks out the Tower window at the Village below.
Eventually, he settled on, "This is my home. Even when—even if it doesn't want me. Even if it never wants me. This is still where I want to be because this is my home, and I love it, and I want to protect it. But Granny, how can I protect it if I'm the danger?"
Ring. Like the simple and inescapable bong of a bell, rolling over a broken landscape.
The Hokage breathed deep. And then she nodded, the warmth in her eyes sharpening a bit into satisfaction. "Yeah. Yeah, that's what I wanted to hear."
Naruto froze. Blinked. "What? Granny, what?"
"You think I don't know that you want to stay. Kid, everyone knows how much you want to stay. And not just because you've squawking people's ears off about being Hokage ever since you were smaller, louder, and a lot more orange. You…this place is your blood. Your bones. I've watched you try to re-build this place by laying down your own fucking self to serve as the foundation." The Hokage's throat bobbed once, like she was swallowing down a visceral reaction to that.
"But then why did you 'want to hear'—"
"Loving a place isn't enough." The Hokage had it, too, apparently. The ability to speak with the pure and simple truth of bells. "Just loving something, just to love it, is…can be selfish. Loving a place like a leader, kid…it's got to be selfless. Always, always for the betterment of what you're leading, even when it comes at the expense of yourself."
Of course she could speak to this, Sasuke thought. Of course she could, this woman who'd lost one teammate to the Village's interests and had sent deadly force against the other because he was a threat to the very same place. This woman who, according to Naruto, had lost so many loved ones to the missions of this place that she'd kept a jewel against her heart like a barrier, like it might stop her from loving it, but had still found the strength to come back when the Village needed her most.
No wonder she and Naruto looked at each other with something like recognition. They loved the same.
The Hokage smiled, brown eyes crinkling a little at the corners. "I worried a little, that you might want to stay with everything that you told me. About the clearing, and the fox, and what almost happened. But I knew you wouldn't. I knew, kid, because you love this place like a leader does."
Naruto's throat worked. "I…"
Sasuke thought about the way he'd crouched over in the ruins of a local restaurant, failing to breathe into his cupped palms, panicking at the very idea that this place (this really, honestly actual nightmare of a place—Sasuke didn't get it) might think that he was abandoning it. The idea that he was doing the opposite of what he'd feared, that leaving was an act of love. Sasuke didn't get that, either. His leavings were never acts of love. Vengeance, usually. The righteous pursuit of truth, occasionally. Being totally fucking done with absolutely everything, in Orochimaru's case.
This leaving, it wasn't an act of love, either. Was it? It was different, it felt different. But it sure as shit wasn't an act of love to the fucking Leaf Village.
So, why…?
"I…," Naruto tried again.
"I got you something," The Hokage continued, kindly rolling over Naruto's inability to speak. "A going-away present. Shikamaru, open the door."
"Ugh," Shikamaru said, with the instinctive disdain of someone who thought that all unnecessary movement, ever, was utter bullshit. But he opened the door, regardless, and a let a man into the room, tall, smiling blandly, and dressed in the clothes and forehead protector of a Leaf shinobi.
Naruto blinked at him, and then found the words to say, "Granny, you can't get me a person as a present. That's wrong and gross and really makes me want to enact one of those 'checks of power' that Iruka-Sensei used to yell about when I said my first rule as Hokage would be making orange the official Village color."
"You are an idiot and I despair of you," Tsunade said, with audible affection in her voice. "This is Yamato. He's going to be going with you on your little road trip of emotional baggage and self-inflicted misery."
"Yamato," Kakashi repeated. There was a hitch in his voice, like a laugh, that clearly communicated, 'ha, bullshit'.
Yamato turned that smile on Kakashi. Somehow, it got even blander. "Yes. A pleasure to meet you, and to work with you."
"Okay," Kakashi said, in that same 'ha, bullshit' voice.
"Yamato has a very important skill set," the Hokage explained. "He can help. Help you learn to control the fox."
Naruto blinked at the Hokage, and then over at Yamato. "He…really?"
"The Hokage is very kind," Yamato said with an embarrassed little laugh. "But I hope I can be even a little bit use, even though I know I'm not much."
Kakashi said, "Ha. Hahahaha."
The Hokage glared at him.
But Naruto just stared at the guy with hope cresting in his eyes like sunrise. "You…listen, if you can do anything to help, I'll buy you like eighteen bowls of ramen. Twenty bowls. An entire lake of noodles that you can swim in."
"I…" Yamato glanced around the room.
Patiently, Sakura explained, "Noodles are the accepted method of expressing affection on Team 7, Yamato-San."
"Oh. Uh. Then…thank you? I'll try very hard?"
"Hahaha," Kakashi chimed in again.
"Shut the fuck up," Tsunade snapped at him. "And get out of my office, the whole sorry mess of you. You leave in 48 hours, if I sign off on Sai's condition before then."
##
After the tower, Sasuke somehow ended up going to help Sai leave the triage center. Kakashi, apparently, had the privilege of fucking off to places unknown (because the Hokage had banned him from 'hanging out at that memorial stone like some bat-omen of death—we just had a disaster here, Kakashi, and I keep getting reports from scared-shitless civilians about some big-haired spook lurking like he's looking to add more names to that rock'). But the Hokage had pinned Sasuke in place with her narrowed brown eyes and said, "I haven't forgotten anything, kid. You understand? You came back when we needed you, and I'm grateful. But you're still an unknown element and the last thing my Village needs right now is a lack of certainty. You stick with your teammates at all times. I see you frolicking somewhere by yourself, and I'm sending an ANBU team to tackle your ass."
And so, Sasuke was dragged along as Sakura and Naruto headed for the triage center. Sai had been moved to the 'less urgent' section of the open space, sectioned off by hastily strung up curtains, partially blackened by fire and smoke. Outside, medical shinobi with exhaustion ground into their faces like tiny cuts of glass, hurry from bed to bed of those deemed 'still critical'.
This still would have been fine. Sasuke could have hung out in some darkened corner of the space and continued wrestling with his internal struggle—what was he doing here, he didn't belong here, was he really going to leave with five people now, and only three of them he was even a little bit sure that he somewhat liked.
And why, why, why did the thought of it feel different than his other departures?
It would have been fine. That was more than enough to occupy himself with, so that he didn't actually have to speak to anyone or watch as Naruto and Sakura fussed over a Sai blank-faced with what to do about it, helping him stand and checking his wounds and making sure he could move without agitating his injuries.
Except that half of their graduating class, and a few from the year above them, had gathered in this section of the triage center as well, for some unknowable reason. And they, apparently, had gone through the 'Naruto Uzumaki School of Annoying Sasuke Uchiha' in the years that he'd been away.
"Oh, look," Kiba said, with low and vicious satisfaction. "It's this bitch. Again."
"Which bitch, Kiba?" Lee asked politely.
"Meh, you're right—I should clarify. Neji and Shino are both in the room."
Neji gave Kiba the flat-eyed look of someone who was envisioning forty-seven ways to end his existence (it was a familiar look—Sasuke had seen it in his own face multiple times). Shino had no visible reaction.
"Kiba," Hinata scolded. Out of all of them, she was the most unrecognizable. But not because of how she looked, not really. Her eyes were different than the girl Sasuke remembered, somehow. "Be nice."
"The bitch in question," Kiba said, ignoring his teammate with practiced ease. "Is the Uchiha-shaped one. Still hanging around, then? Haven't tried to murder anyone in the last few days?"
"No," Sasuke said. "But let's not limit my options."
"Ha," Kiba said. It wasn't a laugh. "Ha."
"I heard that you're headed out on some high-level mission," Ino said, and of course she'd know already. She and Shikamaru and Choji had always seemed like they shared a single brain, sometimes communicating in nothing more than sidelong looks. Ino studied her fingernails with careless ease. A single flick of sharp blue eyes in their direction revealed how little about her was actually careless at the moment. "Mah, mah, Sakura. Seems like an underhanded way to get out of the re-building work. Too afraid to ruin your manicure?"
"Shut it," Sakura said back, but not with the semi-real hostility that Sasuke remembered between the two of them. This was all genuine affection. "We should be leaving the day after tomorrow, if Lady Hokage gives Sai her stamp of approval."
Sai blinked once and said, "Oh."
"What 'oh'?" Sakura asked, as she checked the bandages swathed around his middle. "Does something hurt? Where?"
"My ribs hurt no more than they did three days ago when Sasuke's uncle body-slammed me into the dirt," Sai explained politely. "I was not responding to anything you did. Merely expressing…" Sai puckered his lips the tiniest bit, like he was tasting different words in an attempt to find the right one. "…Surprise?"
Ten-Ten smiled encouragingly. Maybe they had come to check on Sai, in addition to annoying Sasuke. "Why surprise?"
Another pursed-lip look from Sai, before he visibly made the choice not to answer and smiled politely instead. "It was very kind of all of you to come and check on my condition."
"Of course," Hinata said. "That's what people do when someone is injured, Sai."
Sai nodded gravely. "I see. Forgive me, I was not aware."
"You…weren't?" Lee asked.
Naruto said, "Oh, uh—shit, wait!" but Sai was already answering before he could stop it.
Pleasantly, he explained, "In Root, the only visit received when injured was from a commanding officer who was sent to determine if you were salvageable or not."
Silence whistled through the room like wind.
Eventually, Kiba whispered, "What the fuck," and Lee looked one sad word away from bursting into messy, emotional tears.
"Okay," Sakura decided with a visible wince, and hustled Sai out of the triage center as fast as his injuries would allow.
Outside, the others made a spectacle of saying goodbye to Naruto and Sakura, pulling them in for hugs and scoldings and well wishes. Sai was spared the majority of it, on account of his current fragility. Sasuke wasn't included at all, other than a reality-warping moment of Ino getting in his face and, instead of flushing and fluttering like she might have done once, informing him with a smile like a sharpened kunai that Shikamaru knew every damn thing in the world, and that if he informed Ino of any wrong-doing on Sasuke's part during this mission with Team 7, then not a single force in the world could stop Ino and the rest of their graduating class from coming after him.
And it was fine. Sasuke really, truly didn't want to be inside that bubble of friendly warmth that encased Naruto and Sakura. He didn't belong there—had made every effort even before he left to ensure that he never would.
But he also didn't want to hang around on the outskirts of it with Sai, who stood there smooth-faced like he didn't feel the tension crackling between him and Sasuke and smiling a little even though he didn't mean it.
As they watched Sakura hug everyone in turn, and Ino twice, and Naruto and Kiba engage in some kind of bro-goodbye that involved a lot of shoving and yelling directly into each other's faces, Sai said, soft and easy, "You seem agitated about the impending mission. Are you afraid that I'll try to stab you again?"
What the fuck. "You could try."
"Mmm." Sai seemed to consider it. "I could. But I don't have any orders to do so, at the moment."
Which implied that, if he did, he wouldn't be opposed. This asshole.
"You seem surprised by your attendance on this mission," Sasuke fired back.
"I'm used to not being included," Sai agreed easily. "An afterthought in the bigger picture of the team."
"Then why go? Why follow them?"
Why did you follow us then, to the cave and the clearing? Why did you volunteer to stay behind and possibly die, for people you still aren't sure you belong with? For me? Sasuke would never ask these questions out loud. Of course he wouldn't. But it was still a curiosity, burning low in his sternum.
Sai pondered for a moment, his head tipped to the side. Tasting words again to determine their flavor, find the correct ones. And maybe he'd heard Sasuke's unspoken questions, somehow, because he said, "It is the only way I know how to belong to something."
Sasuke heard his unspoken words right back: It is the only way I know how to belong to something—to die for it. To give everything of yourself for it.
And that. That.
"Please don't repeat that," Sai continued. "It would upset Naruto and Sakura to hear it."
"But you think I want to hear it?"
Sai offered up one of those wide, plastic smiles that Naruto was 100% right about—they were the most punchable things in the world. "Of course. I read about it somewhere."
"What? Read about it?"
"About building camaraderie through shared beliefs."
Sasuke turned his head sharply. Sai looked back at him, patient and serene.
"What shared belief," Sasuke demanded. "I don't—I'm not—"
"Isn't this the only way you know how to belong to something, too?"
Sasuke's skin flushed hot, and then cold.
A few hours back, he'd watched Naruto and the Hokage talk across the carpet. He'd clocked the looks on their faces and the way their words echoed with the same weight and thought 'they love the same'.
He hadn't been prepared for someone—for Sai—to look at him with a similar recognition.
"Maybe you're not agitated by my presence on this mission," Sai mused, almost to himself. "Or, not only, I should say. Maybe you're agitated because this is what belonging means to you, and that was why you were always alone. So you could give everything to vengeance. But now, there are…conflicting priorities."
We love the same.
That's what he was saying. We give everything, everything of ourselves—and that's why you could never love them, before. Because there was already something you had to give everything to.
But now.
No wonder it felt different. This time.
"Shut up," Sasuke settled on, because he'd never enjoyed having emotional revelations out loud, and he sure as shit wasn't going to have one out loud with Sai.
"Of course," Sai murmured.
"Hey!" Naruto bellowed at them, having apparently finished saying goodbye eight million times to his classmates. "I can feel the angst radiating from the two of you! Feel it, Sasuke—like a little storm cloud of ninja tragedy shitting all over my sunny day. Are you guys getting along?"
Without thinking, mostly to himself, Sasuke muttered, "You couldn't stab him?"
But Sai answered back, "I don't have any orders for that, either."
And he sounded so honestly sad about it that for a single, tiny second, Sasuke was almost tempted to laugh.
##
He found Kakashi in the Uchiha district. Because the Hokage had banned him from the memorial stone, so of course his next move would be to maintain his unhealthy obsession with Sasuke's family line by hanging out in their abandoned neighborhood of burned and blood-stained houses.
"Tsk," Kakashi said, as Sasuke appeared at his side. "Aren't good little rogue ninjas supposed to be staying with their teammates?"
Sasuke kept his eyes a steady two feet above looking at any of the houses, didn't allow himself to remember any of their former occupants. He refused, refused, to flinch in front of Kakashi. "Technically, you are a member of my team. And if I spent any more time with Sai, I was going to put him right back into the triage center."
"And then Sakura would have fed you a fist," Kakashi agreed. "It was wisdom and restraint, then, that drove you to my side. Both things I honestly didn't think you possessed. I'm so proud."
"Shut up," Sasuke suggested for a second time in less than forty minutes. "Why are you here?"
Kakashi flicked airy fingers. "Just testing something."
"Testing what?"
"You."
Sasuke slid him a sideways look. Kakashi smiled back at him, and in it, Sasuke read 'once upon a time, the very sight of this place would have sent you into just the cutest murderous rage' and 'it always made you want to leave, before' and 'I want to see what you'll do'.
Out loud, Kakashi added, "Your priorities. This is another relative of yours that we'll be chasing after. One that allowed you to fight Itachi, and then used your grief in the aftermath of it to sic you on the Village."
Sasuke pondered that. The way that once, it might have made that apparently super cute murderous rage manifest in real time. The way it still kind of did, burning in his blood, an old and familiar heat that prickled his skin, scorched his throat, made his eyes itch to bleed red.
But he had more, now, than anger, didn't he? He had Itachi's words, telling him he didn't want rage on his behalf. Telling Sasuke to choose what was important.
So, Sasuke breathed, like he had back inside the genjutsu, when confronted with Danzo. It didn't get rid of the rage completely, because Sasuke had spent years letting it wash over him freely, and one instance of forcing it back didn't unlearn years of muscle memory. He wanted to let himself burn with it so fiercely that he went cold. He wanted the easy familiarity of hunting someone down, the clarity of a single-minded purpose. The simplicity of demanding blood for blood.
But Itachi hadn't wanted that. He'd said it himself. So. Sasuke breathed.
Sasuke didn't say any of this out loud. But Kakashi was watching him carefully while pretending that he wasn't, so Sasuke figured he'd pick it up anyway.
"And you?" he finally asked. "He was your teammate. Your friend. Where are your priorities?"
"How could you even ask me that, my dearest murder child! How could my priority be anything other than my darling students?"
"That's not an answer."
"I don't have a better one, at the moment." Kakashi subsided, letting his cheerful persona slip a little, into something more real. "Maybe this was a test for me, too."
Sasuke nodded. "It's fine. Whatever answer you come up with."
"Is it?"
Sasuke shrugged, because Kakashi could read it. The way that the movement said, 'I'm here now, too' and 'I think this is what Itachi wanted me to choose' and 'I only know how to give everything, so'.
"Mah, mah," Kakashi said, with another smile. "How fortunate for us that we found you again, Sasuke. What a good child, so willing to help out your poor, old Sensei!"
It was fortunate. It was, in spite of anything. But Sasuke wasn't going to say that out loud.
"Like Naruto and Sakura haven't already been carrying your ass for years," he said instead, only a little stilted, and that felt right, too, when Kakashi laughed, loud and bright in a place that had stayed frozen and festering with old blood and remembered hate for years.
##
They stopped at (what remained of) the Village gates because Naruto froze on the threshold.
Around them, the morning light rose warm and clear, illuminating the forest ahead and the Village behind. A gentle breeze rolled back and forth and Naruto rolled with it, his legs swaying in place—toward the forest, back toward the Village, toward the forest again.
They paused, the little clustered knot of them, five more people than Sasuke had ever thought he'd be traveling with.
Naruto looked at Sasuke, blue eyes huge and pleading.
I don't know how, he'd said. I need you to help me.
Sasuke knew how to leave. Sasuke was good at leaving.
Sasuke only knew how to give everything. It had just never been to people, before. To these people.
He grabbed Naruto by the arm. "Come on, idiot. Haven't you been screaming for years about how there's always a 'come back' at the end of every 'go'?"
And he shoved Naruto out in front of him, his feet dragging and stuttering across the forest floor, until he found his rhythm again and shoved back at Sasuke, laughing loud enough to startle the birds overhead.
A/N: Next up, the Epilogue-Sai's POV: Talking shit, dodging hits, and figuring out just where I fit. Happy Reading!