A/N: I would like to thank everyone that added this story to their favourites and follows as well as everyone that reviewed the last chapter.
"Morning." The door slid opened and Naruto stepped through, a large smile plastered on her face as her blue eyes scanned the classroom. Everyone seemed to be seated in their seats and with that knowledge, Naruto took her seat behind Bakugou and waited for the day to begin.
She blinked when Todoroki stood right in front of her, mismatch eyes completely blank. Naruto tilted her head as the flood of emotions coming from her classmate washed over her. There was so much pain and sadness but also anger coming out of him, almost ready to consume everything in its path.
For a brief moment, Naruto was reminded of Sasuke but Todoroki's pain paled in comparison to her childhood friend or her pain.
Nothing could ever compare to the hell both Sasuke and her went through.
"I apologize for my behaviour in the hospital," Todoroki said. Naruto pressed her lips into a thin line as their classmates stopped their chatter and turned their attention on the two of them. Curiosity shone through their eyes and Naruto wondered what she should say to him. In all honesty, it was Sasuke that Todoroki needed to apologize to but her best friend wasn't here.
Her best friend chose to stay with the League Of Villains.
"You didn't know anything about Sasuke and to be honest I can understand why he rubbed all of you the wrong way—so we are good," Naruto declared. She tried to keep her tone light and easy as the memory of last night replayed in her mind.
I talked to you on our very first day of school because I thought you looked like those fairies that my Mum talked about in her stories.
Ever since Sasuke admitted it, Naruto replayed their very first day of school and failed to understand how she looked like a fairy. Her hair had been a mess, barely tied into two ponytails and there had been some dirt in her clothes because Naruto found it more fun to play then to keep herself tidy. There had been nothing cute about her that day.
So why did Sasuke say those words to her?
Todoroki nodded and returned back to his own seat as the door slid open. Naruto blinked, a small gasp escaping her lips as Aizawa stood before them, bandaged up nearly completely from what she could see. Their teacher's arms strapped to slings over his shoulder and more bandaged wrapped tightly around his face, except for his eyes. "Good morning."
Naruto felt her smile fade a little bit while the rest of the class shouted at their teacher in disbelief at his current state and still standing before them to teach class. It was expected for him to teach but Naruto presumed he would milk it in like Kakashi-sensei would have.
"My injuries aren't important," Aizawa informed them. He locked his eyes on Naruto. "Uzumaki, we will need to have a talk after class."
The whiskered girl nodded, forcing herself to smile widely at her teacher even though all she wanted to do was hide at the reminder. What was there for them to talk about? Her best friend was considered a criminal in this world. But like she told All Might, she hadn't t known Sasuke was here.
If she had known about his whereabouts then Naruto would have stopped him from making the biggest mistake of his life.
It was her duty as his best friend to stop him.
"Now that I have got everything out of the way, let's talk about your next battle." Aizawa declared. Everyone straightened their backs, darted their eyes at each other as if trying to make sense of what might be their next fight. Several students shivered while Naruto stared blankly at the man. "The Yuuei High Sports Festival is around the corner."
The tense atmosphere in the room changed to excitement as cheers erupted from her classmates. Naruto pressed her lips into a forced smile as the memories of the previous Sports Festivals flooded into her mind. She might have been busy with work but her boss always showed it on television. It was the one day of the year where her boss put special deals.
She frowned and stared at her phone, tuning her classmates out as they spoke in excitement for what was to happen. Was this why Sasuke contacted her? Was he hoping to get information about the school's plans for the Sports Festival? It wouldn't be something he would do but Naruto didn't know what to think of her best friend.
He admitted himself that he would do anything to go back home.
But what is home to him? Did he ever think of Team Seven as his family? Did he ever think of my apartment as his home? Naruto twirled her pencil around, blue eyes began to fade slightly as their childhood memories played in her mind.
She recalled the indignant expression he made whenever she teased him about his fangirls declaration of love to him. The pinkness in his cheeks whenever she wrapped her right arm around his left arm and dragged him to her favourite ramen stand. She remembered the failed attempts he had of cooking and the way she used to hug him so tight whenever he decided to sleep over in her apartment.
They had been so happy together. Naruto had always been her happiest whenever she was around him. Sasuke might have been an ass at times, but he was her ass. The best friend who believed she could become Hokage. The friend who promised to be her ANBU guard when she became Hokage. The friend that needed her when he lost his whole family.
She thought Sasuke considered her as his family but family didn't try to abandon each other.
"…Of course you will gain valuable experience and popularity if you are picked by a famous hero," Aizawa informed them. Naruto blinked and realized that she missed most of her teacher's speech about the Sports Festival. "But you don't have enough time to show those Heroes, your determination and your skills. All of you should try hard not to mess things up since the Sports Festival only happens once a year."
Right, she needed to push all her thoughts on Sasuke to the back of her mind and focus on the event coming up.
Aizawa regarded his most mysterious student while Nezu kept his eyes focused on the smiling whiskered girl. The information All Might provide them hadn't made sense but with a lot more digging about the event that happened three years ago, the story checked out. It explained the lack of information that they had of the girl and why her Quirk couldn't be deactivated by him.
"Uzumaki-san, I am sure you can guess why you have been called to see us." Nezu said, standing up from his seat. He picked up the teapot and pour a cup of tea, sliding it in front of the whiskered girl.
Naruto picked up the tea, sniffed it and sip on the tea. The smile playing on his student's lips had not faded one bit instead it only seemed to get larger. The smile stretched so thin that Aizawa wondered how long the girl had been practising the smile. In all his years as working as an underground hero, he never saw a fake smile like hers.
"You want to double confirm about what I said about Sasuke," Naruto said. "Like I told All Might, I didn't know Sasuke was going to be there. I haven't talked to him since we had that stupid fight, three years ago. I haven't lied to All Might or to that detective about anything."
Nezu observed the girl and darted his eyes at him, waiting for him to say something but Aizawa just kept his eyes focused on his student. In the limited time he watched those two interact, he noticed that the relationship between them wasn't just a teammate relationship. It wasn't even a friendship. It wasn't even a relationship between two lovers.
It was a mixture of everything.
"I believe you," Nezu commented gently. "But I want to understand is why was your friend so willing to join another criminal in your world? You claimed that he isn't a criminal but his recent actions and the actions he has done in your dimension makes one think differently. We have no information about the criminals and you are the only source of information for at least Sasuke."
The whiskered girl kept quiet and the bright smile on her face faded. The fake happiness in those eyes disappeared, replaced with a sadness that a girl her age should never have. He flickered his eyes to Nezu, silently asking him if this was a bright idea. His student was dealing with a trauma from being away from her home, this was not the time to make sense of what happened.
He might be furious with the girl for not informing him but Aizawa understood her reasons for keeping quiet.
"If there is one thing Sasuke loves the most in the world, it is his family." Naruto said softly. She closed her eyes and took one shaky breath in. "He loved his parents, wanted the attention of his father and worshipped the ground that his brother walked on. I used to tell Sasuke that he had a brother complex."
Nezu nodded and took his sip of his own tea as Aizawa tried to understand where his student was going with this.
"Can you imagine coming back home one day after training to see your gentle big brother murdering your family members?" Naruto whispered; tiredness leaked into her voice. "That was Sasuke's worst nightmare. When he asked Itachi why he did it, do you know what that bastard say? He said it was to test his strength."
Aizawa slid the box of tissue towards his student, noticing the tears that was beginning to leak out of her eyes. Naruto furiously shook her head, forcing herself to smile at them and this only earned a frown from the two adults. It should be okay for his student to cry in front of them, they could understand the reason behind her tears.
It would hurt anyone to see someone close to them go through so much pain.
"Sasuke was never the same ever since that day," Naruto admitted. "He closed himself even more from everyone and acted like a rude and cold bastard to everyone, even to me. Anyone else would have stopped trying to be his friend but not me. I might have never known the love of a family but I know the pain of being alone. I didn't want him to suffer by himself, not when his presence brightened my lonely days."
Aizawa kept quiet and just stared at his smiling student. It was clear to him that Naruto loved the boy, nothing about the way she talked about him indicated she hated him. The softening in those blue eyes spoke volumes about the bond between them.
"So I tried to fill our days with laughter and joy to ease the ache in his heart but it must not have been enough for him," she whispered, smiling even wider at them. "Because Orochimaru appeared and bit him in the neck; Sakura didn't tell me until I came back with Tsunade. By then it was too late because a week later…Sasuke deflected from the village to join Orochimaru. The bastard offered him to make him strong enough to kill his brother. Because of that, he abandoned our team, our friends…and me."
Her voice broke and those bright blue eyes faded to the point that Aizawa saw just how damaged the girl was. Throughout the whole story, he began to realize what hurt his student. It was not being torn away from her home. It was not being able to see her friends or what her friend went through.
It was the knowledge that her teammate abandoned her.
It might be my only chance on being on a date because well I'm not exactly the prettiest girl.
Sasuke felt his temper rise as Naruto's words echoed in his ear. He was supposed to be focusing on Tomura's plans and on his seduction mission, but all he could think about was those words. The fact Naruto would go out with a stranger because she wanted to experience a date made him want to stab someone. It would make his mission more difficult if she went on a date with her customer.
"Someone is irritated today," Tomura commented, not looking up from his video game. "I wonder what is making Sasuke-kun so grumpy."
Sasuke-kun, you really like her don't you? Nothing I say or do will ever compare to Naruto.
Sasuke-kun, if you leave Konoha then you are going to hurt Naruto! I know the last person you want to hurt is Naruto! I know you can't leave her alone!
Sakura's words echoed in his ears as it always did whenever Tomura used that annoying nickname. His female teammate might have been a fangirl in the beginning, but she had been preceptive about his feelings towards Naruto. She knew about the depths of his feelings to their blond-haired teammate, saying words that almost convinced him to stay in Konoha.
It almost convinced him to go to Naruto's tiny apartment and ask her to come with him. Konoha stopped being his home when his whole can had been murdered, when the Hokage did nothing against his brother. In his eyes, home had been Naruto and her bright smile. It brought him so much warmth, reminded him of the joy he had with his family and that was why he couldn't corrupt her.
He didn't want to be the reason Naruto never became Hokage.
"Is the mission giving you trouble?" Kurogiri asked, snapping him from his train of thought. He handed him a glass of sake like he always did whenever the male thought that he needed it. "It is a bit too early for you to have problems with the mission assigned to you by All For One. Does the girl suspect anything?"
The whole mission had been a problem from the moment All For One asked him to seduce and gather information from Naruto. The one person who could read him well was Naruto. It would be a matter of time before she realized that he had an ulterior motive for coming into contact with her. He hadn't lied to her about missing her but it would never be enough reason for him to contact her.
It was never enough reason for him to remember all those good, joyous times that they had together.
C'mon give me a smile, Sasuke! I know you found that prank to be funny!
Her cheeky smile appeared right in front of his eyes, reminding him of the days when Naruto acted like an even bigger attention seeker to get him to smile. He hated it. He hated how the girl seemed more focus on trying to make him forget about his goals instead of focusing on her goals. If she wanted to become Hokage then she needed everyone to acknowledge her.
She didn't need to try and make him laugh.
"Naruto doesn't suspect a thing," informed Sasuke, shaking his head at them. "But she hasn't informed me anything interesting."
Tomura snorted. "And Sensei thought you would be able to get her to spill everything but it seemed like you are already failing to do your job properly."
Sasuke felt his eyebrows twitched at the hidden insult given by the male. There were times when this guy reminded him of Naruto with his childish behaviour and the tantrums, which brought a sense of nostiglia. But in times like these, he really wanted to stab him and remind him that he was the stronger one and that he needed him more than Sasuke needed Tomura.
"Naruto may be fond of me but she won't spill everything in one shot," Sasuke explained calmly. Behind those blue eyes and cheerful smile was an observant young woman. Despite what everyone thought of Naruto, his teammate spent days planning her prank to make sure that it didn't go off without a hitch. Days of observing people's habits and putting it to good use. "It will be a while before she tells me anything useful."
Tomura pressed his lips into a thin line. "Then speed it up! Use a cheat to get her to spill information."
"Naruto doesn't even know when someone shows that they love her," he said calmly. Kurogiri straightened his back while Shigaraki stared at him with a sense of curiosity. Memories of the various boys that liked her flooded through his mind and Sasuke tightened his grip on the glass. "She never had any parents to give her any love, which means the idiot only recognise the love of friends. So any tricks that you guys use on girls to sleep with you, won't work on Naruto. She doesn't have any parents to base her knowledge on relationships."
He didn't miss the way Tomura scratched his neck even harder at the mention of parents or the way those eyes unconsciously glinted with even more hatred. If he was like Naruto then he would be concern about the boy, asking him if everything was okay and acting like he had a care for everyone in this world. But he wasn't Naruto. He hated these people, despised them for putting him in this situation.
"So she is like you," Kurogiri commented.
Naruto is nothing like me. I knew what it was like to be loved by my parents and not to be treated like shit by the village, but she never had that. I never got insulted in the streets. His hands trembled in anger like it always did whenever he recalled how Naruto had been treated. Despite every bad thing that village did to her, his friend still adored the village. She loved it to the point that Sasuke doubted that they could find anyone who can love the village more than her.
"I had a family," Sasuke reminded them. "I loved them and lost them to my bastard of a brother. Naruto had never even known their names until she found a picture of them. The only thing we have in common is that the village had hurt us in different ways."
Naruto might say differently but the village had given them more grief then joy. Their happiness had never been because of the village. It had always been the fact that they had someone to share their pain together, someone that they knew would always be there for them.
He hated that he disappointed Naruto with his decision, but it was for the best.
Sasuke couldn't afford to let that light inside of Naruto to fade away, not when it had been his only source of comfort in his darkest days.
A/N: Please review and tell me what you think of this chapter. Constructive criticism is encouraged.