Chapter 13

The tapping had gone on for so long that Temari had tuned it out, preferring to read deeper into the proposal for the next jonin candidates. Instead of the chunin exams, the jonin were promoted through peer review, and for good reason. The jonin were supposed to each have their own uniqueness to them that made them indispensable to the fighting force. If that individuality was on display for the world to see, then it wouldn't be quite so individual anymore. It could easily be countered. And that wasn't good. Especially not for shino-

Kurotsuchi coughed, bringing Temari out of her focus. Right, the tapping. The sound of a foot repeatedly slapping the ground out of impatience. The girl hadn't budged an inch since she sat down, expecting Temari to speak first. If that was the intention, then she failed spectacularly. She should have brought reading material if she was going to out-stubborn Temari.

Temari glanced up to look at her face. The girl's lips were pursed in a thin line, her nostrils were flared, and her brow was pressed downwards.

She was pissed.

Fu on the other hand…

Temari glanced to her next, sitting to Kurotsuchi's left. Head supported in her hands with her elbows on her thighs. She was the epitome of 'dour'. Temari had a feeling that the green haired girl had to be dragged by someone else to come to the summons, presumably Kurotsuchi.

"Okay…" Kurotsuchi ground out in a deep growl. "I'll bite. What do you want?" It was an accusatory remark. The presumption of guilt clear in her mind.

Temari set down her pen with a clink and leaned back a little bit, stretching out her spine and twisting the kinks out of her neck. "To talk," she said. "I haven't been able to talk to you all at home due to my workload, but this is a conversation that needs to happen."

Kurotsuchi's eyes squinted. "This should be good."

Temari's head tilted down slightly as she sighed out. "I understand the two of you had feelings for Naruto. And me… let's call it 'intruding' threw a bit-"

"Fucking."

Temari blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You called it intruding. I'm calling it fucking."

Temari's eyes closed. "I understand you're upset, but-"

Kurotsuchi stood up. "But what? I get that your brother died and everything, but that doesn't give you the right to screw him. I-" Her voice died in her throat as a slight growl.

"You love him too," Temari finished.

Kurotsuchi sat back down, this time with a more dejected air. "I don't love him-"

"You don't know how you feel, I know," Temari said hurriedly, "It's part of why I called you two here."

Fu looked up. "What's going on? I don't want to waste any more time here."

"I was getting to that," Temari said calmly and evenly. God, this wasn't going to plan. Then again, it wasn't like she had a plan; just a mental list of possible outcomes with most of them ending up badly. "It seems that Naruto… loves us all in one way or another and is also quite confused over it."

Kurotsuchi's eyes widened and Fu looked interested for the first time since she opened the door. "What's that mean?" She asked warily.

"I… 'approached' Naruto when-"

"Fucked," Kurotsuchi said.

Temari took a calming breath. "I fucked Naruto when I knew that you had feelings for him and when he had feelings for you. I get it. It's my bad. I'm admitting that. The end result is that even though I'm very much in love with Naruto and he seems to reciprocate that love, he's very much confused now. It's understandable, really. I called you in here to tell you that."

Kurotsuchi narrowed her eyes. "That was it? You called us here to call dibs and not to interfere even if he comes on to us? Well I have something to say in return. Fuck-"

"That's NOT what I'm saying!" Temari said, losing a bit of her patience. She took another calming breath and leaned her forehead on her hand. "Listen, he's emotionally confused and I wouldn't be a good girlfriend if I didn't let him work that out on his own. So, what I'm trying to say is… I'm willing to… let him express them if he wants to."

Fu perked up, a shit-eating grin on her face. "You're okay with sharing? Why didn't you say so in the first place? This is awesome!"

The girl proceeded to stand up, start pacing around, and began talking, mostly to herself. Kurotsuchi, meanwhile, just stared at Temari, dumbstruck. "You want to share him?"

"I don't want to share him," Temari said decisively. "But… well, this isn't a good situation for any of us. Mostly, I just want to be able to say that what I do makes him happy, more fulfilled. And if that means that the way he expresses his feelings for you is by… romantic love, then so be it. I'll love him all the same. Maybe I'll love him all the same. If he changes for the worse, I won't hesitate to scorch earth."

"Wait!" Fu nearly shouted to nothing in particular before leveling her gaze at Temari. "Where is he right now?"

Temari shrugged. "Training with Yugito, I think."

"And where's Yugito?"

Temari shook her head, closed her eyes, and reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose all in one motion. "I don't know."

Kurotsuchi turned around to Fu. "What do you want him for?"

The girl folded her arms over her chest, beamed a bright smile to the ceiling, and leaned back a little bit. "I'm taking him out for a date," she said decisively, belting out a triumphant laugh afterwards.

A few seconds of no one speaking went by until Fu cracked an eye open and glanced down at Temari, as if waiting for a reaction.

Temari startled back into the conversation, having been lost in her own thoughts for a few seconds. "O-Oh, uhm… good for you, I guess."

With the approval of his girlfriend, Fu blew out the door to ask Naruto out on a date. Kurotsuchi turned back around to Temari with a smirk tugging on her lips and said "You're in a fucked situation."

Temari groaned and swiveled around on her chair, closing her eyes. "Aren't we all?"

"But you in particular."

Temari sighed. "Well at least I'm getting into situations where I do get fucked."

"HEY!"

00000000

The room they were in was practically a glorified cave with the exception that it had weapons instead of stalactites and a very pissed off Uchiha standing in front of a kneeling one. "You've postponed this conversation long enough, Obito. Why have you given me life?"

Obito stood up and took his mask off, showing his gnarled and twisted features. "The situation called for it."

"I believe I ordered you to wait until absolutely necessary to resurrect me."

"Like I said," Obito said through grit teeth. "The situation called for it."

"For the one-tail? The tailed beast with the lowest amount of chakra? And why couldn't you have solved it yourself?"

"World peace, for one."

Madara paused for a few seconds before narrowing his eyes. "World peace? And I thought I saved you to help me, not to go mad."

Obito shrugged. "Go outside, read the papers, hear the chatter, I don't really care. There's world peace now and it took all of us, including you, to extract the beast. And we still lost two members."

"So, you admit to your incompetence."

Obito's nose turned upwards. "It was one city with all the world's greatest shinobi clustered around one point. How did you expect it to turn out? We needed you, or else everything else we lost would have been compounded by not even extracting the one-tail."

"Was patience not a virtue?"

The corner of Obito's lip curled up. "And to the bold goes victory. We can sit around and comfort ourselves with vague and contradicting aphorisms, but what's done is done. You're here now."

Madara growled. "And the one who resurrected me? How does he fare?"

"He's weaker; that's for sure."

"What was his name again? Naga… something?"

"He goes by Pain now."

One of Madara's eyebrows raised. "'Excuse me? Pain? Who the hell let him get that name through peer review?"

Obito shrugged. "It goes with his aesthetic, I guess?"

"And what's my aesthetic? Walking around, looking for brains?"

"Madara."

"What should my name be? Madead? Maundead? Goes swimmingly with my aesthetic of being back from the dead."

"Madara."

"And what should yours be? Swirly Face?"

"That doesn't even incorporate my name."

Madara belted out a sigh and turned around, deciding to walk to the entrance rather than pursue the conversation even longer. "Tell me the details of this 'World Peace'. I Can't imagine it's something that could last for very long, given what I knew of the world since departing it."

Obito closed his eyes and resigned his self to the fate of telling arguably the most powerful man in the world that the peace hinged on a six-way political marriage.

00000000

Naruto was light on his feet as he strafed to the side perpetually, trying to get a read on Yugito's stance. She was a lot of things, but sturdiness wasn't her strong suit. Yes, she had muscles enough to wrestle down most normal men, but her fighting expertise was in not getting hit in the first place, something remarkably hard to achieve, even for a shinobi.

Every time he strafed right, she would strafe left. In that way, they had been circling around each other for a few seconds already, nursing their wounds and sizing up the others'. Naruto was perfectly fine with his fighting style of not really having a fighting style. It went with his unpredictable nature, especially since he used a liberal amount of clones with him as he usually fought. However, even he knew that in a straight taijutsu fight, the only thing he had going for him was his endurance. Having a root in an actual fighting style would definitely help if worse came to worse.

He had to stop thinking and start reacting when she darted forward, one hand forward and one behind her back. She jabbed her leading hand just enough that he flinched away instinctively. She smiled a little bit as she swung her body around and aimed a kick at his head. Fighting against his instincts to block it, he knelt down instead and let it sail through air. She appeared to have been expecting this, as she completed the rotation and whipped the hand behind her back forward, aiming for his face.

Instead of shooting out of the way, he pounced forward, letting the palm glance his jaw with enough force to nearly dislocate it, and kept going forward. He wrapped his arms around her waist and dragged her to the floor, where he slid his arms up and wrapped them around her shoulders and then her neck.

They both paused for a second, each other's muscles tensed and coiled. "Tap out," he whispered as her face started to turn red from lack of oxygen.

Spittle flew out of her mouth as she laughed.

Yugito turned her head around, coiled her entire body upward, and firmly grabbed his biceps, then fell over his head, popping her head out of his lock and flipping him over his back in an arm lock all in one fluid motion.

There wasn't just practice in her movement, but experience as well. It only took a glance at the way they moved for anyone to see that he was a weaker opponent, even if he might have won had jutsu been allowed to have been used.

And that's a big maybe.

"Stop, stop stop stop stop," an exasperated voice came from the sidelines of the little arena.

In truth, the 'arena' was a circle of sand citizens cheering, jeering, and holding impromptu betting pots as they made a general ruckus. The crowd had grown so wide that many had taken to watching from the rooftops. There were even vendors on the outskirts that had sensed a business opportunity and had started selling their wares.

It was almost like a mini festival.

And it all sprouted around Yugito instructing Naruto on the finer points of not getting hit in the middle of the village center.

Sakura, the one asking for a stopping point, walked up to them and started doing diagnostic jutsu as soon as they disengaged. She centered her attention around their necks and quickly healed any micro abrasions before they could get worse and harder to heal. "You know," she said. "Just because I'm watching you two doesn't mean you can punch each other until dead. You're still just sparring. Try to keep asphyxiation out of this."

Naruto just grinned at her and said "But I wanna give the good people a show that they deserve!" Saying the last part, he turned around and held his arms up in the air, eliciting a cheer from the crowd.

Yugito put a hand on his shoulder and quirked an eyebrow at him. "Are you trying to cause a riot or learn taijutsu?"

He lowered his hands and hung his head. "Taijutsu."

They walked to the side and passed around a bottle of water to drink. The heat and light of the sun was oppressive, but that just added more heat to the furnace through which the sharper blade would be forged.

Or they would melt. But hopefully the first.

The crowd mellowed out, but the ring was maintained more or less, even as those who won or lost picked up or discarded the money they put in the pot. "Can you tell me what you did wrong?" Yugito started out.

Naruto sighed. "I didn't dodge and tried to take you out in one go?"

She dipped her head down slightly. "Mmmm… Maybe for the other times, but not this one."

"What?" he asked. The spar had gone like the few others before it: a minute or two of Naruto trying out her fighting style before he got frustrated with it and charged forward. He had been expecting another version of a lecture he had heard before.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "You did fairly well this time. You timed your dodges, thought out your responses, and planned ahead instead of simply reacting. Your main point of fault in this is your choice of grappling. You will never put me in a hold that I cannot get out of."

He crossed his arms over his chest. "Those're fighting words," he said with a smirk, knowing well enough what was coming next.

She smiled in response as well. "So they are. What are you going to do about it?"

He walked out into the middle of the ring. "Oh, I don't know!" he said loud enough that the whole ring could hear. Everyone stopped their chatter and watched with rapt eyes. "I guess I have no choice but to challenge you to a duel!"

A swell of cheers went up as people hurried back into their viewing positions. Everyone sat, stood, or laid with anticipation in their hearts. These were the kinds of people looking for a way to assuage their fears of the current political climate by having fun with some entertainment. And by golly, if it wasn't working.

Yugito stalked proudly up to him and crossed her arms over her chest. "Oh Yeah?!" She asked overdramatically, enjoying the fact that she could put up a show. If she were being honest, she would say that she quite liked it when the crowd booed the character she put up. Being a heel was fun.

"That's right," he said, pointing a finger at her. "I challenge you to our seventh duel!"

A round of cheer.

She stepped back and got back into her fighting position. "Hopefully you'll put up a better showing than the last time!"

A round of boos.

The two of them stalked forward in their own stances, faces mellowed out and back in the world of action-reaction that they trained in. Working the crowd was all well and good, but they were training with reason in mind.

That is, until a brown blur impacted the area in between them and kicked up dust and sand, obscuring everyone's vision for a scant few seconds. The people heard the person's laughter before they saw its form. The voice was deep and cheesy and having way too much fun for its own good.

"A-Ha!" the form said. "Who said anyone could challenge anyone to a duel without my say-so?"

The two fighters lifted their brows in unison. "Fu?" they both asked.

"Nay!" Fu said, putting one hand to her face and one striking straight into the air. "I am the indomitable Hepta Girl, here to put an end to strife and violence!"

Instead of her regular outfit, she had decided to overgrow some exoskeleton over key areas across her body to make her look intimidating in a comic way. Her wings were out and fluttering and there was an extra pair of arms just under her main ones. To cap it all off was a purple masquerade mask 'hiding' her identity from the crowd.

"An end to strife and violence?" Naruto asked, hamming it up immediately as soon as he understood what was happening. "That's what you call this regime? You seek nothing but control through fear! I seek only a world where people are free to do as they please. Where one could challenge another without fearing the shadow of Hepta Girl!"

"Naïve!" she shouted, pointing a finger to the air in a show of strict defiance. "This was a world meant to be ruled."

Naruto tightened his fighting stance. "Then I suppose there is only one way to settle this!"

Fu's posture remained much the same. She nodded, almost ruefully, and said "Shall we pit our ideals against one another? Show each other who has the greater way of thought?"

Naruto smirked. "I didn't know you could read minds."

"Haha!" she shouted before running at him, two hands forward and two back.

Despite the performance she was putting on, she didn't pull her punches in the slightest. Every jab hit him like a full wind-up and every wind-up hit him like a cart laden with bricks. It was the first time he had sparred with her and was summarily surprised by just how strong she was. Adding the fact that she was working with six appendages (eight including the wings) instead of the standard four, it wasn't a surprise he was quickly overtaken.

He tried to dodge as quick as he could. He tried to parry every move he couldn't dodge. He tried to block every move he couldn't parry. And he got smacked around when he couldn't even block. It was brutal, but he loved every second of it.

Because it was the quintessential Fu that he had gotten to know ever since he met her. She didn't do anything she didn't want to do and she did everything that she did want to do. She was seemingly oblivious to social situations and spoke her mind at every single juncture of their relationship. She didn't pull punches. She confronted him with shit he didn't want to confront. It got annoying at times, but it was ultimately good. Even he saw that.

Yugito, however, wasn't content to leave it at that.

Just as an axe kick was about to fall down on his collarbone, Fu took a hard shin to the hip which might have floored her had she not the ability to hover over the ground. She backed up to see Yugito helping up a bleeding and battered Naruto. "Woman of the Two!" she shouted. "How dare you interrupt our fight?"

"You call that a fight?" Yugito asked. "That was uncalled for! That was about as one-sided as a battle could get. Do you have no honor?"

Fu grinned devilishly. "The weak have no place in this world. It's the rule of the strong."

"But it doesn't have to be!" Yugito shouted. "It can be good for everyone!"

The crowd had gone silent at this point. Yugito's acting was so good that it got a few of them shifting uncomfortably at the sight of it. The children were rapt with attention, mouths agape, while the adults could barely even watch. The performance had suddenly brought up emotions hiding their hearts that they didn't even know were still there. Like the helpless anger that they felt over all the fruitless attacks that happen in the world. Like not knowing what the future held. It brought up long dead aspirations for peace.

"A world of sheep can still be ruled even if only one wolf still exists," Fu said, holding her side in pain. "I will rule that world!"

"Not," Naruto said, holding a hand up and starting to stand tall and proud despite his injuries, "Unless we can defeat you, that is."

Fu smiled wickedly. "You can try."

Naruto looked up to Yugito, a defiant and bold smile on his face. "Stronger together?" he asked.

She took his hand in hers and smiled back at him. "You know it," she said.

The two turned their heads slowly to Fu and slid back into their stances. Without waiting for them to begin, Fu launched forward viciously, both sets of arms forward and enough bluster to overflow from her smaller frame. The two attacked in nearly perfect synchrony against the stronger opponent. Striking and defending and avoiding with an expert flow. Even sparring for such a short time had given them enough time to know each other's way of fighting perfectly and to complement each other's moves.

It wasn't long before Fu felt herself starting to get pushed back. Her fists and feet stopped connecting, she felt knuckles on her cheek and torso more times than she would have liked. Her words may have been performative, but her fight was completely, one hundred percent, dead-on serious. And she wasn't used to her best not being enough.

Naruto and Yugito belted out one final shout as they brought her to her knees by slamming both their heels at different heights on her sternum, kicking her backwards a few feet into a crumpled slump. Nobody said anything for a few seconds until Naruto cracked a smile and looked at Yugito.

It was definitely the smile that got her to react. It wasn't a secret that he smiled a lot, but this one was different, or at the very least different to her. It held within it triumph and admiration and thankfulness and most of all, happiness.

Yes. Happiness. Naruto was the one who was happy despite all the odds stacked against him. He sought out for it like his life depended on it. When others would fail under the weight of reality, he forged ahead and made a new one, a better one, for himself and everyone around him. Yes, it was the happiness and the fact that he would pursue it to the ends of the earth that got her to gravitate to him. It was his individual pursuit of happiness that she would protect no matter what.

So, as the crowd cheered out in a roar of pent up excitement and supreme jubilation, throwing their hands, their hats, their money, their petty trinkets into the air, and nobody could hear anything over the din, Yugito slumped forward and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressing nearly all her weight against him. And, before she knew it, she was smiling too. Not because of triumph or admiration or thankfulness. She was smiling because she was happy.

Naruto wrapped his own arms around her and tried to lift her up in the air to spin her around, but his legs were too battered, and all he managed to do was to bring the both of them down to the dusty floor. He laughed at his own failure, but stopped when he realized she wasn't. She was just… smiling as she looked into his eyes. They were bright and beautiful and full of life. And then he couldn't hear anything, neither of them could. Not because of the noise, but because the noise didn't matter anymore.

He could feel her breath on his lips. He could see her eyes as they looked into his. He could feel the sweat from their fight still running down her temples as they dripped onto his cheeks. And then he stopped thinking and started feeling.

And then the feelings turned bad.

Luckily for him, he didn't have to dwell on it for too long as Fu gurgled from her position and tried to stand up, but slipped and fell back onto the floor. The crowd quieted down and looked at her in a hush, giving Naruto a reason to break eye contact and for Yugito to feel foolish and embarrassed. She got off of him quickly, her face redder than it had been even after a trying bout of physical exercise. Naruto got up too, quashing the feelings he had in his stomach down for the sake of the narrative they had going on.

He walked up to Fu and knelt down. Knowing that their kicks didn't have the power to seriously debilitate her and that this was for the sake of the crowd, Naruto wasn't too worried for her, so his face was hard as he looked down at the girl. "Do you need a hand?" he asked.

"Do not!" she started out heavily, but lost her steam quickly. "D-Do not… do not patronize me," she said, breaking eye contact for favor the ground.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Naruto said, "But everyone needs a helping hand every now and then. You're not excluded."

He held out a hand, which she looked at for a few seconds. Her face held firm, but it eventually broke, literally. The mask on her face splintered and fell off in big chunks and small pieces, showing underneath a somewhat vulnerable and scared girl. "I…" she said quietly, but just loud enough for the deathly quiet crowd to hear, "I just… I just didn't want you to get hurt," she said powerlessly.

Naruto smiled at her the way a parent would a child. "You can't stop me from getting hurt. You just have to trust that when I do get hurt, I'll learn from it and grow and be a better person at the end of it."

She looked back up at him. "But I hate seeing you hurt. Seeing you hurt makes me hurt."

Not waiting for her to grab his hand herself, he reached down and took her own with his. "Then we'll hurt together. And we'll learn together. And we'll grow together."

She got back up to her own two feet as the exoskeletal parts of her get-up fell away bit by bit, leaving her back in her regular outfit. "Do you promise that?" Fu asked.

Naruto looked confused. "Promise what?"

"That we'll be together?"

He smiled. "I promise," he said lowly.

Her hands reached up and wrapped around the back of his head, bringing him down a little bit. "Then let's start right now," she said huskily, shooting forward, and crashing her lips against his.

His eyes widened, but he did not pull away. He unsurely pulled her closer as she got on her tiptoes to go deeper.

As they pulled apart, the crowd let out a collective sigh of catharsis. It was a play that came out of nowhere full of action, thrills, out-of-nowhere comebacks, and just a smidgeon of romance at the end of it all.

But Naruto didn't feel good. His stomach was flipping up and down and doing summersaults and he was smiling when he didn't want to for the crowd. That kiss didn't feel good. He needed desperately to talk, but he didn't even know if his voice existed anymore.

Yugito watched him from the sidelines, a frown marring her face. It was an ugly smile he wore. She was surprised she was the only one seeing it.

"Are you okay?" Sakura asked, putting a hand on the older woman's shoulder.

She shook her head and put her face in the palm of her hand. "No, of course not. I… was stupid for a second there. I let my feelings get the better of me and it hurt him."

Sakura blinked a couple of times. "I was talking about your injuries," she said.

Unknown to the two of them, Yugito was feeling much the same Naruto was. It was like she had swallowed liquid lead and it had hardened in her stomach. She felt heavier and yet more fragile at the same time. She knew she fucked up, but she didn't know how she did. It was one thing to be hurt; it was a whole different thing to be hurt and not fully know why.

Yugito sighed and nodded, letting Sakura do her work on her body, healing the scant few injuries she had accrued. All through it, Sakura had become slightly more somber. "He's smiling again, isn't he?"

Naruto was still waving at the crowd, returning a smile at the jubilation they projected onto him. Their performance was something no one had ever seen before and they wanted nothing more than to speak to the two stars who made it what it was.

Yugito nodded. "Yes."

Sakura sighed. "I hate it when he does that."

Yugito looked at Sakura curiously. "You can… see it?" she asked, not fully knowing how to verbalize her question.

The medic stood up and looked at him disapprovingly. "I've been his teammate for a while. I can tell when his smiles are real and when they're fake. And right now, he looks like he's in pain."

Sakura shook her head and looked up at Yugito. "I know that right now, I can't help him as much I wish I could. In fact, I don't think I ever could. But… when he's with you, all of you," she said in reference to the rest of the harem, "His smiles look real. Like when he was with Sasuke."

Yugito looked back to Naruto. Fu had grabbed his hand exuberantly and was in the process of dragging him away, probably to spend time with him, so Yugito could only see the back of his head as he vanished into the crowd. "That name… sounds familiar," she muttered.

"He was our teammate, but he defected a few years ago. We don't know where he is right now. Naruto… he promised to bring him back, but he failed, and I just know he blames himself for it. His smiles never looked right after that. And then you five came along," Sakura said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm not keyed into your group dynamic, so maybe I'm intruding where I shouldn't be, but… please look after him. He's important to me and a lot of other people too."

Yugito looked at the ground, feeling much the same as the dirt that covered it. "I… I will," she said resolutely. "I'll look after him."

Sakura smiled. "Thanks."

00000000

"Where are you taking me?" Naruto finally asked after ducking through one too many arches behind Fu.

"Away," she said without looking behind her. "It was nice being the center of attention, but I like the quiet a bit more."

"So you're just leading us around to nowhere?"

"Shush! I have a place in mind for us."

Naruto's mouth clacked shut and allowed Fu to take the lead. Not talking gave him time to think, which he wanted to do. The problem with him thinking was that his thoughts were so jumbled that he couldn't even focus on one topic before another one came crashing through that drew his attention away. Did Fu like him? Did Yugito like him? Did Kurotsuchi like him? Did he like them back if they did? Did Temari tell the truth when she said she would allow him to be with them as well? Maybe she just wanted him to feel good. Why did he feel bad? Was it guilt? And if it was guilt, what, exactly, was it about?

He hadn't traveled very far in his mental faculties by the time they stopped. It was so stupefying to him, that he was honestly confused when he realized he was on the wall that bordered the village near a small outcropping big enough for two people to be under so the sun wouldn't reach them. She tugged him over and shade enveloped them. She sat down and he followed. She was smiling, but he wasn't. Why wasn't his voice working?

Fu didn't have to look at him to realize the turmoil he was in. She felt it in the kiss. The only reason he went on with it was because of the crowd and the impromptu show they were putting on. As soon as her lips touched his, he drew back, both emotionally and physically. She'd hurt him, or, he was just sorting things out. She couldn't tell.

"Hey Naruto?" she asked.

"Yeah?" he mumbled.

"Do you want to know why I have so much control over Chomei's chakra?"

Naruto blinked in surprise, drawing him out of his own head to look down at Fu. This wasn't the topic he was expecting to be breached by her. "Uhm… yeah, I guess."

Fu leaned on his shoulder as she began to speak. "I'm an orphan, which you could probably guess already. Didn't know my parents, got a bug sealed in by back, was hated by the village; you know, pretty normal story as far as Jinchuuriki go, as far as I'm aware. And I was… so angry. All the time. I would get into fights constantly. I remembered crying myself to sleep when everything got too much to handle, but I would always steel my face whenever I went back to school. I was belligerent and rude because that's how everyone was to me. At any point in time back then, I was bruised and cut up in some way or another.

"It got so bad that at one point, I accidentally accessed Chomei's chakra. I almost hurt people. Well, I did, but no one got hurt really bad. Anyway, there was almost a riot about me staying the village with everyone. It was pretty obvious I wasn't stable. I could go off again and there might not be anyone there to stop me next time. And the thing is, I was there, next to the village head, as people, one after another, would come up and demand I get sent away, some were completely fine, others with fresh bandages.

"And… as they came, yelled, and went, I realized something of vital importance. I realized that I couldn't care less about any one of them. They weren't my people. They weren't my friends or family. They were just the people I was born near. I didn't feel anything for them. I didn't care that I hurt them. And I didn't care that they had hurt me. Because… because they didn't mean anything to me. And then I felt so light. Like I could fly into the air if I flapped my arms hard enough. And then I wasn't angry anymore. I didn't let what other people thought about me stop me from doing what I wanted to do. And they got angry. And they got annoyed and pissed, but I was fine. I was happy because I could finally do what I wanted to do.

"You know, people always say that only the love from another person can heal a broken heart, but the thing that healed me was the idea that I didn't need people to love me. I just needed me. And I was okay with that. I didn't lose control again. In fact, I gained control. That chakra, it feeds on malice and grows out of control. I could make it do whatever I wanted it to do because it wasn't it anymore. It was me. And I liked me. I still do. Now, I do whatever I want to do and say whatever I want to say because I absolutely refuse to regret anything. Even if something ends up bad, I can at least look back on it and say 'At the time, I thought it was the right thing to say or do'."

Fu stopped to look at him in the eyes. "I think I'm selfish. But I think that's an okay thing to be. I think it's okay to put yourself ahead of others," she shrugged and looked back to the endless sandy sea. "I don't know. In actuality, I might be a terrible person. But I'm happy. There aren't many people that can say that."

Naruto looked down to her, his deep thought only producing one question. "Why did you kiss me?" he asked.

"Because I wanted to," she said. "And the reason I'm around you is because I like being around you. And I want to do it. I like being around everyone, in fact."

"But… why did you kiss me? Why do you like being around me?"

"Because I like you."

A heavy silence hung over them for a few seconds as they both digested those words.

"It's uhmm…" she fumbled with her words. "I… I think love's a strong word that should only be used in the right situations. So, I'm not going to use it here. But… I think about you a lot. And I worry about you when you get hurt or when you're sad. And I liked kissing you. So, yeah. There."

"I'm," Naruto started out before closing his eyes and lowering his head. "I don't know how I feel."

"You don't?" she asked.

He looked back to her with one of his eyebrows cocked. "Well, yeah, of course I don't."

"How can you not know how you feel?"

Naruto blinked and looked away, shaking his head a little bit. "Because… You can't… Look, a lot things are happening right now."

"That's…" she paused to shake her head and lightly smile at him, like he was trying to say something commonly held to be untrue. "That doesn't excuse anything. Like, don't you have the ability to self-reflect?"

"Of course I do!" he said, crossing his arms over his stomach. "If I fail, I try something else until I succeed. I don't just keep repeating my errors."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I mean… Okay, for example: how do you feel about me?"

He paused a few seconds before shaking his head. "Erm… You're generally nice."

"Okay," she nodded. "What else?"

He sighed and looked away. "You're short. But you're… you're pretty. And you're loud and boisterous. You speak your mind and you're not afraid to get yelled at or insulted in the process. You're super strong too. I didn't know that. And you're full of energy and always willing to try new things. You always give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even if they give a bad first impression. But you also don't know when to stop. You get on peoples' nerves because you keep on digging up stuff they want to stay buried."

She smiled. "So you do know how you feel."

"It's not-"

Fu pressed a finger to his lips. "Don't say it's not that simple. I hate it when people think feelings are the most complex things in the world. They're not. In most cases, they work on a binary tract. So, with everything that I am that you've seen so far. With everything that I've shown and done and said, do you… like me? And not, in like, the friendly way," she quickly added. "Are you… interested in me?"

Though his body pressed him to look away from her eyes to anything else available, he didn't. Those orange eyes of her kept his in place, like they were physically grabbing his. They were so commanding of attention, that to look away was unthinkable. "I… I do," he said.

She smiled in an almost relieved way. She had always been in charge of their interactions such to the point that the realization that she didn't know the outcome of their conversation made him feel better. It had always seemed to him that everybody oversaw everything around him except for him. To know that he was the one who had full leverage over his emotional state… well, it was uplifting.

He blinked. Once, twice, three times. "I, I do like you. I am interested in you. But I'm scared because of that fact," he said loudly, like he was just realizing it. "Well, I knew that before, but I didn't like it. It's… it's okay that I'm scared, right? Because that's the normal thing to be, right?"

Fu chuckled a little bit. "In your situation, I'd say so."

"I'm…" he smiled. "I'm a fucking nervous wreck about this. I feel," he clutched his chest. "Sooo guilty about this. Like I'm fucking scum. Because, you know, only scum do that sort of thing. Only scum love multiple people at the same time. I feel like I'm doing bad by Temari because I think I love her. And I think I'm doing bad by you because I'm with someone else romantically."

"Okay," she said, a big smile coming across her features. "What else?"

He grabbed his head. "I feel like I fail at everything I do. I failed to bring Sasuke, my teammate, back from Orochimaru. I failed to save Gaara. I failed to protect the ones I hold dearest. And… And… and why?"

"Why what?"

He looked back to her, eyes squinted. "Why do you like me?" he asked. "It's something I still don't get. You and Temari… I'm not- I'm not anything good."

"Narut-"

"No! It's true. I'm not good at reading social cues. I'm stupid. I'm not strong, or at least not strong enough to stand toe to toe with the Akatsuki. And everyone else around me is. I'm useless-"

"Shut up!"

Naruto blinked a few times. He hadn't realized that her eyes were set ablaze with fury and that her jaw was screwed tight, the muscles along her face clenching and unclenching rapidly. "If I wanted an invitation to a pity party, I would have… I would have… argh, I can't think of a punchline right now. Point is, there are things I like about you and you saying that they don't exist or that they're overshadowed by your bad points is like… it's like saying I've got bad judgement."

"Wait, what? I'm not following you."

Fu sighed and collected her thoughts. "Do you think I've got good judgement?"

He nodded slowly, starting to get an idea of where this was going.

"So, if I have good judgement and I judge you to be a person worthy of my respect and interest, doesn't that lead credence to the idea that you are?"

"Then… then what are they? What are my good points?"

"Can you not even think of any?"

He crossed his arms over his chest defiantly. "I want to hear them from you."

Fu closed her eyes and leaned back against the coarse sandstone. "You're funny, for one. You like to have fun. You play pranks and you aren't sour when they're turned back on you. You have more determination than anyone I've ever met. You're not bad to look at either," Fu said with a nearly lecherous smirk, causing Naruto to blush. "You're always trying your hardest. And you care. You honestly, without a doubt care."

"Care about what?"

"Everything!" Fu almost shouted. "Things are… they're important to you in ways that they aren't to me. You care about my feelings, something which most people haven't in my life. You care about the people you're around. You care about your dreams. You care about even the people who wronged you. You care so, so much that… that it was impossible for me not to come around to you almost immediately."

Fu let that hang there in the air. For a few minutes, neither said anything and just let silence its turn to speak. They gazed out into the distant nothing, where blue met yellow and not a cloud was in the sky. They let their emotions a break for the moment and let tranquility reign over their life for the minutes that it could.

"Thanks," Naruto finally said. He took a breath of air in like he was going to talk some more, but couldn't find the words to express his gratitude. Instead, he reached out his arm and pulled her over to him.

"You're welcome," she said contently, leaning on his chest and closing her eyes. It was a nice chest. She liked putting her head against it. Even past his clothes, she could hear the muffled thump of his heart.

Even when the silence was done with, they talked some more. Some topics were heavy and some were light. Some provoked a laugh and others a tear or two. But they were all real.

They just enjoyed each other's company for the next couple of hours.