A/N: Not *quite* 900 reviews from the last chapter, but we came close! I really appreciate all the feedback. It's a huge motivator for me to keep this up.

Anyway, this chapter will be dealing with Naruto and Satsuki exclusively, though not necessarily together for most of it. Some of the subject matter might be a bit much for younger readers.

Time for Chapter 20

Enjoy!


Naruto stared up at his ceiling through the pitch black of his room. He had been trying and failing to sleep for upwards of an hour, and his luck didn't appear to be getting any better. Whether he liked it or not, he was wide awake. A week and a half had passed since Kakashi's intentions to enroll Team Seven in the Chunin Exams had been made known to them, and each passing day was only becoming more difficult. The drilling was endless, and the forest exercises were grueling.

Every part of his body was sore, including muscles he had been scarcely aware of beforehand. He could adapt to the physical strain of preparing for something as steep as a promotional exam, but the mental side of things was a different story. Though he had initially not cared much whether he succeeded or not, the revelation that other genin teams from Konoha would be competing changed that sentiment entirely. He now wanted nothing more than to succeed.

People in general had always been cruel to the Jinchuuriki, but his classmates were among the few whom he held any sort of resentment for as a result of their meanness. Time and again, they had mocked his lack of academic acumen, laughed at his countless failed attempts to compete with his more gifted peers, and kicked him while he was down. The difference between their treatment of him and that of the adults was small, but it was key.

They had not lost anybody or anything to the fox.

Indeed, many had not even been born on the day of the attack. They attacked him simply because they could. It was mindless cruelty, and while Naruto could endure the hateful stares of the elder statesmen, for he understood their pain, the fact that he had gone nearly a decade without seriously hurting a single one of his peers was a miracle. Now, he had a chance to punish them in a different way. To succeed while they failed. To overcome them in competition for once.

This newfound determination to succeed benefitted him in the sense that he now wanted to train, but hurt him in most others. He now found himself angry when he failed. He had snapped at his teammates more than once in the past several days out of frustration, and while he had made a point of apologizing, he still felt guilty.

'Shikamaru gets it. He said as much. Even Satsuki blew it off, and she's just as angry as you are most of the time. Stop worrying about it.' he berated himself. Despite the knowledge that they weren't taking offense to his reactions, the blonde couldn't help but feel rotten.

'They're the coolest people you know, and you're getting prickly with them.' he mentally sighed. Growling in frustration, Naruto rolled off of his mattress and trudged out of his room, to which he had left the door open.

"I can't even sleep it off anymore." he muttered to himself tiredly. The last thing he wanted to be was conscious, and yet here he was, alert and walking about. Dragging himself across the hallway languidly, Naruto made his way into his bathroom and switched on the light. Flinching at the sudden brightness, it took the blonde's eyes a moment to adjust to the new shading. Once he was able to open them fully again, he fixed his gaze on the mirror before him. In it, he saw a disheveled reflection.

His hair was matted and messy from his time in bed, and his eyes were slightly bloodshot. He was a mess. A tired, irritated mess. He was also without a shirt, thus forcing him to look upon the tattoo on his stomach. It was far from the first time he'd taken a close look at it. He could have drawn it from memory if he needed to.

"At least it looks cool.' he joked to himself aloud. Indeed, the pattern was intricate and expertly drawn. While he knew of its purpose all too well, the single positive Naruto had managed to draw from the tattoo's presence on his body was that the optics of it certainly could have been much worse. Drawing his attention away from his abdomen, Naruto then met his own eyes in his reflection.

He rarely looked himself in the eyes. It rarely ever spelled good things. He disliked his own face. The whisker markings on his cheeks had been a point of ridicule for years, and he hardly considered himself handsome. Any other opinion of himself would have been shocking, given all that he'd been subjected to day in and day out for as far back as his memory stretched. Sensing his mood dipping even lower than it already was, the blonde fought the urge to look away.

'It's only gonna hurt to keep looking.' he reasoned, his eyes drifting down to the counter. For whatever reason, against his better judgment, he forced himself to face his reflection again. Some small part of him refused to back down to his self loathing, no matter how loudly his logical side screamed for him to stop. For a brief few moments, his reflection remained inoffensive. Comparatively, at least. A beat later, however, things shifted.

As Naruto blinked to avoid drying his eyes out by staring for too long, his reflection was replaced by a disturbing imposter. Red eyes. Pronounced canines. Clawed hands resting on the counter, just barely in view. The demon he had been feared to be his entire life. Whether a figment of his imagination or not, the Jinchuuriki flinched and tore his eyes away.

'It never changes. Every single time.' he lamented. Mirrors had never been his friend, but he always looked. Hoping against hope. Daring to be optimistic. But the result never differed. All he ever saw was a monster. A disgusting caricature of all that he did not want to be. All that he feared he truly was. Slowly melting down to a sitting position against the wall of his bathroom, Naruto drew his knees up to his face.

"I hate you…" he hissed, gripping the top of his head as he buried his eyes in his knees. He himself hardly knew who he was speaking to. He had promised both himself and his village that he would not hate his abusers. Most of them had a good reason to fear what he represented in their minds. While he certainly wished he could truly hate the fox, he knew deep down that his knowledge of the beast's true nature was too limited for the feeling to be personal. As such, only one option remained.

Himself.

"If you were worth loving, you could have made peace with them…" he whispered to no ears but his own. He had never struck out at them. He had never become the monstrous force they had all lauded him to be. He had done everything possible to be a normal child. He had written and hand-delivered a thousand apologies well before his tenth birthday. He had genuinely tried. Despite his best efforts, he was still shunned. A walking calamity.

As his emotions hit a fever pitch, a burning feeling welled up within him. Within the same minute, a sharp pain in his scalp caused him to cry out. Removing his hands like his hair was a raging fire, Naruto frantically inspected his hands. His nails had lengthened into claws. His logical mind was well aware that the emotional stress had been the culprit, but that part of him was muffled and weak.

As two streams of blood ran down onto his face from his hairline, the blonde slowly rose to his feet. Staying contained in his apartment was no longer an option. As pained as he was, and as much as he struggled to find any love for himself, he did not want to die. He needed to clear his mind. Stiffly walking out of the bathroom, the Jinchuuriki spotted his jacket on the couch in his living room and retrieved it.

Throwing it on over his bare skin, Naruto took a deep breath and walked over to his door, opening it. The trek out of his apartment complex was long and awkward, as it was somehow even darker outside of his dwelling. Once out in the open air of the night, Naruto took a deep breath.

'Take me somewhere nicer, wind.'


The dock had always been a place of peace and quiet. A refuge where few ever ventured. A happy place. Such sentiments were a rarity for Satsuki Uchiha. She was, self-admittedly, a bleak person. She rarely laughed for any reason other than antagonism, and her ambitions were morbid. She was volatile, dark, and depressing. It wasn't as though she hadn't earned the right to be. More than most, at the very least. Loss was never easy, especially for the young, but to lose nearly everything in such brutal fashion was a misfortune unfit for any age.

She desperately wished to forget it all. To move on. To make a life of her own not bound by her bloody past. And yet, her greatest conviction, the lone exception to that desire, stood in stark contrast. Suppress it though she did, Satsuki wanted one more bloodbath. Itachi Uchiha would pay. Either with his life, or his ability to live it with any comfort. These morbid thoughts were what circulated throughout the Uchiha girl's mind as she carved a deeper and deeper rut into the wood of the dock with a kunai.

She had planned on going to bed several hours previously, but she had completely lost track of time once the sun set. She had no clue what time it was, but she knew for certain that it was no longer a decent hour.

'I really should head back.' she thought to herself as her kunai dug into the wood for the thousandth time. Despite the thought, she made no move to act on it. The water was at the perfect level to dangle her legs over the edge of the platform without getting wet, and it was pleasantly cool. In most ways, it was a nice night. For reasons she couldn't quite pin down, Satsuki couldn't bring herself to enjoy it.

She was calm, but that stability was brittle. It always was. The shattering points of her glass walls were well-hidden, but incredibly potent. Generally, it was Satsuki herself who allowed those barriers to crack and break. She had yet to let it happen publicly, and had no plans to do so. But, left to herself, it was always a looming possibility. Finally having grown bored of carving into the wood, Satsuki leaned forward to glimpse the water below.

What she saw brought a smile to her face. A fish, dancing just below the surface. It was fairly small, likely a salmon of some kind. Though she had never taken up fishing as a hobby, the raven-haired girl had always enjoyed watching aquatic life. There was a serenity to them that she found pace in.

'If the fish can still swim, then the world isn't totally broken.' Satsuki thought to herself humorously. Unserious as the notion was at its surface, the message was one she clung to. No matter how painful life could become, there were always reasons to see it through to the next day. Surprisingly, the fish remained in view for several more moments.

"Wanna be my friend?" she quietly asked the small creature. In a mean twist of timing, her question coincided with the fish's decision to retreat. Suddenly shifting in place, the salmon flicked its tail above the surface and launched itself deeper into the water. Within seconds, it was invisible.

"That was mean, you know." the Uchiha girl pouted to the long-gone fish. In its wake, the salmon had left a cascade of ripples, diluting the mirror-esque quality of the surface. Staring into the outward-branching patterns, Satsuki squinted a tad at the flickering light of the moon's reflection. Slowly but surely, the ripples died down, returning the surface of water to its calm self.

Once it had settled completely, the Uchiha girl found herself staring at a face other than her own. Mikoto Uchiha had taken the place of the girl's reflection. Though she had noticed weeks earlier that she was resembling her mother more and more by the day, the fact that it took her several moments to tell the difference unsettled her greatly.

"Why…" Satsuki whispered as she stared the ghost from her past in the eyes. Though the reflection's expression matched her own, and moved as she did, the genin found herself fearful that she would be grabbed and pulled into the water at any moment. Then, the reflection altered.

Within moments, Mikoto's face morphed into that of Satsuki's late father, Fugaku Uchiha. The man whom she had both respected and resented throughout her childhood. His expression, unlike Mikoto's, was not a mirror of his daughter's. It was as stern and standoffish as it always had been.

"Say something." Satsuki hissed at the image of her father. Though she knew no words would come, that didn't stop her from desperately wishing. Gradually, tears welled up in her eyes.

"Why didn't you stop him? You were always stronger than him. He knew it too." she choked out. All too familiar scenes played in her mind between her mounting sobs. Then, for the final time, the image in the water changed. When it concluded its metamorphosis, the reflection held the last face Satsuki wanted to see. Her brother, his face speckled with the blood of his kin. Unlike with both of her parents' reflections, the young Uchiha had no words for the image she now saw.

Instead, she instantly reached back and seized the kunai she had used to cut into the dock. Taking a tight hold of the blade, Satsuki swung down at the water to dissipate the reflection completely. Though she succeeded in erasing the portrait of her past, she lost her balance and tumbled over the edge of the dock, sending her plunging into the water. As she sank under the icy water, Satsuki let out a pained scream.

The water suppressed any noise she made. Her cries of anguish went unheard, as they always did. Forcing her way back up to the surface, Satsuki burst from the water and gripped the edge of the wooden platform. Painstakingly pulling herself up onto it, the raven-haired girl coughed up water. Remaining still for a time, Satsuki shivered in the cold of the night. Angry, sad, and confused, she shakily rose to her feet.

Then, with no thought for where she planned on going, Satsuki took off running.


Naruto opened and closed his hands gingerly. His nails had retracted to their normal length several minutes ago, but a dull ache remained in the tips of his fingers. Thankfully, it did not appear that his toenails had ever changed in length, as his feet felt perfectly normal. He had been walking aimlessly through the streets of Konoha for nearly an hour. He had not seen or heard from another soul in that time. It was a welcome change of pace in comparison to several of his more ill-fated late night walks.

He had calmed somewhat, though his emotions remained a jumbled mess. He routinely held back the urge to let a few tears fall. He was not happy, though he was quite a bit less unstable than he had been earlier in the night. Rounding a corner, Naruto found himself at the intersection of several roads, leaving a large empty space of asphalt. Breathing deep to take in the nighttime air, the blonde allowed himself to relax a bit. He was still himself, and that was worth some joy.

In the distance, just beyond his field of clear view, a figure was approaching. As Naruto caught sight of the oncoming form, he stopped in his tracks, opting to wait for it to get closer before reacting. What he found as the person grew closer drew a wide-eyed stare from the Jinchuuriki.

"What is she…" he began, trailing off as Satsuki, who looked rather distressed, stumbled her way into the town square. Soon enough, they were standing opposite one another on the empty asphalt. The Uchiha girl appeared to be wet, as her dark hair stuck to the sides of her face, and her clothes seemed to hug her body more than usual. As he made this observation, she noticed his presence.

"Hey, uh…funny meeting you out here." Naruto greeted her awkwardly from a fair distance away. Satsuki simply nodded in response. Finding her lack of a characteristic quip or jab concerning, Naruto furrowed his brow and slowly made his way across the town square. Once he was within a few feet of her, he stopped. It was then that he saw that her frame was shaking.

"You're drenched. What happened to you?" the blonde asked. It took her a moment, but eventually, the raven-haired genin shrugged.

"I fell into a pond." she said blankly. Naruto patiently awaited further explanation, but it soon became clear that he wouldn't receive any more information than he already had. Before he could come up with another question to ask, Satsuki sniffled audibly. Her eyes were cast to the ground, and shivers aside, she appeared on the verge of tears. With hesitant hands, Naruto gripped her by the shoulders.

"Tell me what's up. Something's wrong. You can't fool me." he pressed gently. Satsuki shook her head and remained quiet, but surprised the Jinchuuriki greatly by stepping forward and leaning her head onto his shoulder. Awkward as he was, even Naruto knew what the gesture meant. Wrapping her up in both arms, he pulled his teammate into a hug. Though she made no move to return the embrace, the Uchiha girl did not struggle.

"Please talk to me at least a little." Naruto requested. Satsuki's body shook slightly as she audibly fought back a sob.

"I have a good memory. And it sucks." she murmured into his shoulder, which she had to bend over slightly to hide herself in, since she was a tad taller than he was. Naruto nodded and squeezed her, which finally prompted the girl to wrap her own arms around him. For a time, the pair simply stood in a quiet embrace neither quite understood the meaning of.

Once a few moments had passed, Satsuki gently made space between them and met his eyes for the first time since their odd encounter had begun. Her gaze then shifted his forehead.

"You're bleeding." she pointed out, gingerly tracing one of her fingers along the trails of blood that had dried on his face. Naruto looked away from her.

"I…had a moment. It's nothing you need to worry about." he said quietly. Satsuki shook her head and turned his face back towards her with her hands.

"I'm still gonna worry, but you didn't hear that from me." she said, the barest trace of her usual brand of humor sneaking into her hoarse voice. She followed up the response by pulling his head down and forward ever so slightly. She then closed her eyes and pressed her lips against his forehead, holding them there for several moments. When she released him, she spoke.

"No more moments. Not tonight, at least." she said softly. To call the display of genuine care a surprise would have been a gross understatement, and Naruto's expression showed it.

Red in the face and rather confused, Naruto said nothing, to which Satsuki followed suit. The raven-haired girl then gave him a ghost of a smile and stepped away, turning back toward the direction from whence she had come with her next step. As she walked away, Naruto found that his mood had been lifted. As much as he wished to know where her pain had come from, he respected her right to silence. A minute later, he turned his own back, and headed in the opposite direction.

'Goodnight, Satsuki.'


A/N: I know that some of you are going to argue that Satsuki kissing him on the forehead is a bit much, but I disagree. It was a show of concern and care, not so much romantic love. They aren't there yet, and won't be for a little while.

Either way, I really hope you guys enjoyed this chapter :)

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