I know. I know. It's been ages. But this is a great chapter, I promise. As always, read and enjoy. And don't forget to check out Angellwriter's stories.
Naruto had been hoping to put this conversation off.
Kakashi may have believed that he and the others had well and truly managed to travel through time, with a little convincing, but he was not happy that he and Sakura, and by extension Shikamaru, had kept their circumstances a secret.
The jounin understood that they were desperately fighting against a future that was undesirable in every way. He admitted forthright that he would have chosen to take the risk as well.
And just when Naruto and Sakura thought they were in the clear, Kakashi reamed them out for not being honest.
Time travel was not well documented. Mainly for the reason that people who attempted to do so often wound up dead, wrecked their chakra coils completely, or screwed up the jutsu so miserably that they sped up their biological clock, resulting in them aging centuries in the span of second and turning to dust.
It was a dangerous process, and rightly so, because even should you succeed, you are altering events that occurred.
The five of them may have had the right intentions in trying to prevent the destruction of the world, but it was also possible that they could bring about the end of the world in an entirely different way and at a completely different time. Jutsus that manipulated time were finicky like that. They were notorious for having obscenely complex sealing arrays to activate that needed to take into account several seemingly inconsequential details so as to not completely eradicate the flow of time.
In all of the history of the shinobi world, Kakashi only knew of two people with the ability to manipulate time, and it was nothing compared to the scale at which the five survivors from the future had done. The first was himself. With the Sharingan eye he had received from Obito, the silver haired man could transfer objects, people, and even jutsus to another dimension.
The other was his jounin-sensei, Minato Namikaze, who had been famous for his Flying Thunder God technique that earned him the nickname of the Yellow Flash. It had also earned him the enmity of Iwagakure, whom he had devastated with it. Although the Yondaime could only displace himself through the use of seals on kunai.
Kakashi had told them in no certain terms that they were foolish to not come forward with the situation. The Third Hokage would not have ignored them. Then, he too, would have known what signs to be looking for.
He thought them more than a little preposterous for believing they could change coming events on their own. Kakashi had a serious point, there. So far, the five of them were playing off their reputations. Suna's citizens still feared their Jinchuuriki, and since Temari now stuck as close to him as his sand did, both she and Gaara were avoided like the plague. Similarly, most of Konoha viewed Naruto as a demon and were content to ignore him. Shikamaru, typical lazy Nara that he was, and Sakura, with her civilian background, were often overlooked.
Plus, with an excessive use of clones, it was a piece of cake for them to fade from sight and do what they needed to in order to see changes happen.
The tail end of his lecture applied to his students more than it did Shikamaru, Temari, and Gaara, seeing as it dealt with Sasuke.
Kakashi was of the opinion that the two of them had taken the wrong stance on their third teammate. Showing him their strength would not be enough for the last Uchiha to understand that true strength was found not in power and the number of jutsus you knew, but in the teamwork of a well-balanced team.
In all honesty, Naruto couldn't disagree with his sensei. Beyond showing Sasuke that they were not as useless as he had thought, Naruto and Sakura had not done anything to include Sasuke. They trained with him, but as soon as training was over they vanished, heading for the Nara forests to carefully make plans about what they needed to change and the best methods to accomplish their goals.
The large group had eventually split into three. The Sand Siblings would be returning to Suna. Kakashi would bring Tsunade and Shizune back to Konoha and stall the Third Hokage with a story of small cloaked child sized people that had formed a cult to worship the Sannin's ability to drink all day and not get drunk that had helped him rescue the two women.
In Kakashi's mind, the story was so ridiculous that it couldn't possibly be made up. Except anyone who knew the Copy-Ninja would call him out on his bullshit.
But Naruto let him do what he wanted. He and Sakura raced to the north. The pinkette's face was furrowed as she tried to come up with a plausible excuse for their absence. Naruto received a heavy hit to the back of the head for suggesting that the two of them had been taken captive by the Snow ninja.
Imagine his surprise when they reached the Land of Snow just in time for the final battle against DotÅ Kazahana and witnessed a clone of himself deck the bastard hard in the mouth.
Naruto couldn't think of a reason why Sasuke had covered for them, beyond not wanting Yamato to call an end to the mission. Not that that was his style. Yamato was a stickler for the rules. He would finish the mission first and then lock him and Sakura in that giant wooden cage he was always using whenever the team fought.
Either way, Naruto hoped it meant Kakashi was wrong in his prediction about the Uchiha. They may not have included him in their extracurricular training, but with good reason.
On his best days, just thinking about the once future caused his throat to tighten in a mixture of rage and grief. His blue eyes would register a dying world instead of Konoha's lush green forests. A world lit only by the forever burning black flames of Amaterasu. Flames that had been set ablaze by Sasuke.
First, he and Sakura would have had to explain the whole time travel thing, and it was a rather long explanation that had to include the beast in Naruto's belly, the truth of his family's massacre, and how it lead to war. Naruto wouldn't be able to mince any details, either. Not if he want to impress upon Sasuke the seriousness of their decision, and that meant explaining why the Uchiha was fighting against them and telling the current version, who had yet to kill anyone, that he was responsible for the blonde's death.
If they managed to get that for before Sasuke stormed off (which was the most probable reaction to hearing that Itachi had been tasked with annihilating his clan because they were planning to overthrow the Hokage), that in turn would lead to an explanation of how exactly the five of them had accomplished the impossible. If Naruto wanted to be vague and not name the rest of his coconspirators, Sasuke would never have to know his part in that venture. Which was good in his book, otherwise the explanation would end with how they couldn't trust Sasuke.
As much as he wanted to save the man he thought of as a brother, Naruto had never planned to let him in on the secret. Sasuke's stability stood on a precipice at this point, and the blonde didn't want their warning to push him into Orochimaru's and Madara's arms.
Considering that not trusting him was what had gotten them in this situation in the first place, Naruto thought it best not to remind the Uchiha that was sending him death glares that they didn't even trust his only slightly unstable twelve year old self.
Sasuke had waited patiently for an opportunity when Yamato wasn't monitoring his two teammates with intense eyes.
He didn't know the reason for it, but Team Seven's temporary captain was clearly put on the team solely to keep Naruto and Sakura under his thumb. It hadn't taken Sasuke long to learn this fact, but he still found it unusual. The man only let them out of his sight when they needed to relieve themselves, and even then, he would swear he once saw Yamato's face in a nearby tree; pointed away of course, but it was disturbing all the same.
Recalling what he had learned from Iruka-sensei, secret observers such as Yamato were only set in place to follow people the Hokage considered to be a risk to the village.
It would have made perfect sense to the boy, if not for the fact that their captain was just as interested in Naruto as he was Sakura, who should have been his priority given what he knew of the girl's arrest.
Sasuke's teammates had rejoined with him at the very end of the mission. Naruto was unusually silent. The corner of his lips turned down ever so slightly and his eyebrows were a little closer together. Sakura, on the other hand, almost radiated worried, from the chew marks on her bottom lip to the constant flickering of her eyes between the object of her thoughts, him and the knucklehead.
Since Yamato did not appear to be relenting on his creepy hovering, he created his opportunity to drag his teammates into the trees by rigging a spring loaded trap that would launch approximately one hundred kunai at whoever triggered it. It was similar to that train they had encountered after Kazahana had run off. With luck, the man who acted as if he was made of wood he wielded would think it to be one of the enemy's leftover traps.
By the time their captain's attention had turned back to his students Sasuke had replaced all three of them with clones he had prepared.
"The hell was that for, teme?" Naruto nursed the bump that rose on the back of his head where Sasuke hit him.
"Checking to see if you were a clone."
Sakura let out a giggle, and quickly stifled it with her hands when the two boys turned to glare at her. It turned to a yelp when Sasuke repeated his action on her.
Satisfied, for now, that he wasn't being duped again, the Uchiha straightened to his full height and crossed his arms. One of the few things he had learnt from his father was that an imposing stance was a great trick for making other people feel small, and therefore below you. If you could show you held the power, you would get what you wanted. Fugaku always said, "Act as though your spine is tempered from the same steel as your kunai; then your back will never bend. You are an Uchicha and Uchihas do not bow to the whims of any man."
"Explain." His tone was as rigid as his body.
Naruto and Sakura instinctively shot a glance at the other from the corner of their eye. His ire flared at her hesitant nod and the way Naruto's shoulders relaxed infinitesimally afterwards.
He had come to his own conclusions as to why the pair of them had disappeared. Given what he knew of Naruto, he figured it was one of the blonde's harebrained schemes that he had somehow managed to drag her into. Despite how much he had matured and started taking his training seriously, instead of trying to outdo Sasuke, since the mission to Wave, the whiskered boy was prone to acting without fully considering the consequences.
To Sasuke, the only reasonable explanation was that Naruto had been about to do something monumentally stupid and Sakura had been trying to talk him out of it. But with that one look, he knew she was in on the secret too.
Whatever had happened, they were both aware and consciously chose to abandon the mission. He resolutely ignored the whisper at the back of his mind that said they had abandoned him. They had grown closer as a team, but that was all they were.
Sasuke couldn't allow them to become anything more than teammates. If he let them get closer, if he pried open the locks on his heart and let someone in again, that man would sweep in and destroy him. He had already killed his family. Sasuke could not afford to indulge in bonds and friendships that could be used against him at the whims of a madman. His pain and suffering nearly destroyed him the first time. He would not survive a second.
Despite his best efforts, Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi had wormed their way into the corner of his dead heart. So it hurt more than it should have when he realized he had spent over a week in the presence of shadow clones while they were off Kami knows where without him.
That was the real cause of his feeling like a kunai had been ruthlessly shoved into his chest and twisted violently. Sasuke had thought they had been getting closer. His teammates were nothing like they were in the Academy. He had finally reached a level where he started to respect their drive and efforts, and they pulled this stunt, pulling the tatami mat out from underneath his feet.
Naruto and Sakura were closer to each other than they were to him. They shared a stronger connection. It shouldn't have bothered him, considering he did everything under the sun to prevent forming close attachments to anyone, but it did.
"Enough!" he snapped, heartily sick of looking on as they stared into each other's eyes. If not for the seriousness drawn in the lines of their faces, Sasuke would have thought them to be gazing lovingly at the other. "Where did you two run off to?"
"It's a long, story, Sasuke. Are you sure you want to know?" Naruto finally said.
He clenched his jaw to keep a biting retort from escaping his lips. Of course he wanted to know. He wouldn't have asked otherwise.
He told the blonde as much. To which he replied, "You're going to have to suspend your disbelief. What I'm about to tell you may seem impossible, but I swear to you, every word of it is true."
Sasuke cocked an eyebrow, but nodded his assent nevertheless. He would hold his tongue as long as he got the answers he was looking for.
He listened with an increasing sense of incredulousness as Naruto spun a grandiose story with uncharacteristic clarity of a world in which all five shinobi nations would go to war against the founder of his clan, Madara Uchiha, who was not as dead as the world was lead to believe.
Sasuke had promised to remain silent as he explained, with several interjections from Sakura, but when Naruto started explaining about a scroll that would allow them to travel backwards through time, he could listen no longer. "You cannot expect me to believe this nonsense! Time travel doesn't exist. No one can manipulate time."
"You're wrong," Sakura said at once. "Kakashi-sensei can with his Sharingan eye. He can move things from this world into another dimension. In theory, he could make his body intangible by transferring the matter to that other dimension."
Sasuke felt blood rushing to his head as his anger mounted. "That's not even close to what you're trying to tell me you have done."
"We can prove it. We have. To Kakashi-sensei."
Oddly enough, that had a relaxing effect on the Uchiha. Kakashi Hatake was a notorious liar, but only about inconsequential matters. If they had told him the same story and he had not found it wanting, it had to be real. The last thing Kakashi would do was put his team in danger.
Still, he wanted proof of his own.
"And how would you do that?" Sasuke challenged.
"Why do you think we were so prepared for the invasion during the final of the chuunin exams? Why do you think Sakura was suddenly strong enough to hold off the Akatsuki member impersonating the Kazekage?" Naruto shot back. "This has already happened for us. We knew Orochimaru was gunning for you in the forest. We were devastated when that bastard Kabuto bit you."
He hung his head, pain and regret lacing his words. "We thought we had spared you from having to struggle with that foreign chakra. It's dangerous, Sasuke. Addictive. Every time you even think about using it the seal causes you pain."
"Stop. Please."
Sasuke had never shared how the curse mark on his neck felt, like evil given shape trying to slither its way into his coils. Even contained by a second seal, he could feel the mark burning, begging to be released. And if that knowledge wasn't enough, the grief in Naruto's expression was.
The blonde's head was bowed and his shoulders hunched. His knuckles were a stark white compared to his normally tan complexion from the force which with he was clenching them. Sakura stood behind him, small hands resting lightly on his shoulders. The faintest green glow of medical chakra was the only evidence of her trying to ease the tension that held his body taught as a spring.
But his eyes said the most.
Naruto was harder to read than most people thought. No one gave him the credit he deserved for hiding how he truly felt. Shortly after his family had been massacred Sasuke had caught the blonde staring. He had instinctively started to sneer, for he didn't want the monster's pity, but he saw the emotions swimming in his eyes.
It was the same pain he felt. The same loneliness, the same confusion, the same betrayal.
Naruto hid his pain amazingly well under his mask of a prankster that couldn't care less about what people thought about him, but with one look at his cerulean eyes, Sasuke knew that was not the truth. Every sneer, every derogatory remark, and all the derision he faced day in and day out cut deeply.
He was seeing the same eyes now. Blue orbs that screamed apology for not being able to save him this time. Eyes full of regret and the promise to do beter.
"I believe you," he said quietly. His words bore an immediate effect on Naruto, who straightened as if his words had released a two ton weight from his shoulders.
"Thank you."
"You left a great many details out of your explanation."
Naruto did not react to her blunt statement. He eased himself toward the ground, putting his weight on his forearms so that he was not laid flush against the earth, and sent his gaze skyward. She thought it sad, the ease which with they could escape from under Yamato's vigilant surveillance. "Yes, I did," he said simply.
"Why?" Sakura sank to the ground next to him. "I thought we had agreed to tell him the truth if he asked."
"I did tell Sasuke the truth."
"What about Itachi's predicament? His actions during the war? Or how about the little matter of him killing you?" she asked pointedly.
"He didn't ask about that," was her answer.
"Because he didn't know to!"
Sakura had more she had wished to say, but stopped at the sharp look Naruto gave her. Right now, he was the Rokudaime Hokage.
"He was not ready to hear those answers. When he is, when he comes to me and asks the truth, I will give it to him. Until then, Sasuke knows what he needs to."
The pinkette wanted to argue that this would blow up in their faces spectacularly. They had barely upheld the trust Sasuke had in them with their explanation of why they had to abandon their mission to rescue Temari. They needed to show him trust in return, and continuing to hide secrets was not the way to do it.
When Sasuke learned that they had shed light on Konoha's illegal actions, he would lose any trust he had with them and throw the bonds they shared in the dirt once more. Then, all their efforts to save him would be for naught.
"Trust me, Sakura. That's all I'm asking." Naruto sounded as old as the Sandaime.
"Of course I trust you."
That said, Sakura couldn't help thinking that he had made the wrong choice. As she snuck into her bed that night she did not sleep. Instead she prayed. Prayed that by the time Konoha's dirty secrets were revealed, Sasuke was strong enough to see past his pain and respect the choice his brother made and that he would not go down the familiar path of causing Konoha's and the rest of the world's destruction.