Author's note: Again some parts will be similar to The Long Run, but well, nothing that can be done about that. The past has remained the same for the most part after all.

Thanks to the following reviewers: 666snoopy; leighd1314; Richon

Warnings: Mentions of past character deaths; some vague references to gore in the past

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Kishimoto owns it.

I hope you'll like it!

Chapter 10

"What the fuck?" Sasuke voiced his shock aloud.

He knew people could be incredibly fucked up – he had unfortunately first hand experience with that – but to be so fucked up as to shoot the person who had been saving your arse while you were escaping from zombies? What the hell? Even after all the shit he had witnessed, the betrayal which had taken place in their own compound, it made Sasuke feel sick to his stomach to realise that someone had been so callous as to condemn someone to their death that easily. A person who had returned to help them, who had risked his own life in order to save them. It shouldn't shock him, not really anymore, shouldn't disturb him this much when he knew very well just how fucked up people could be, but …

It shook him to his core nonetheless.

"Say what you want, but she clearly had great self-preservation skills when it came to that," Gaara said almost idly. He returned to looking at the pond; his face cast in shadows. "She shot me in the leg so that the zombies would grab me. She nearly succeeded in it as well. Should have fucking shot that bitch in the head," he said darkly.

"How did you survive?" Sasuke asked in disbelief.

Being shot in the leg would have left Gaara utterly defenceless, especially against a herd as big as they had described it. How the hell had he managed to survive a shot that should have been fatal? Running away from a hoard of zombies was already difficult with two functioning legs depending on the circumstances – so how he managed to live through that?

"An unnatural amount of luck and a best friend who didn't know when to quit," Gaara replied, unexpectedly dryly. He shook his head. "Honestly, I still can't tell you exactly how I survived that. I thought I was a goner for sure after that bitch shot me."

"Like I was going to let you die," Naruto said and scowled. "I kept shooting at the zombies closest to him so that they couldn't try to snatch him. As soon as I was in reach I just grabbed him and hauled his arse out of there. Not going to lie, I'm pretty sure it's mainly because of adrenaline that I even managed to drag him all the way outside."

"I don't remember anything of it," Gaara admitted, pursing his lips.

"Not surprising. I actually thought you had gone and straight up died on me when I couldn't get you to wake up at first," Naruto said grimly. "Didn't really help that they had taken both bikes so I ended up having to drag Gaara all the way back. Had to set some shit on fire just to distract those dead fuckers long enough for us to make our escape."

"Wait, they had taken both bikes?" Sasuke asked aghast.

Even if they had thought Gaara was a dead man for sure, they knew Naruto at least had still been alive when the girl made it out. Yet they had simply left him there?

"You just heard how that bitch shot Gaara to save her sorry arse and you're surprised they took both bikes?" Naruto asked critically. "Clearly she wasn't really that bothered about killing one or two people at the same time."

Sasuke was even more speechless; a fact he didn't think was still possible. "How the hell did you manage to leave there?"

"Honestly, man, I don't believe in any sort of god, but that whole escape was nothing short of a damn miracle," Naruto sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "We got extremely lucky that those dead bastards are so fascinated by fire of all things, because if they hadn't been, we wouldn't have made it out alive, that's for sure. By the time I had managed to drag Gaara back to their hideout, they had all fucked off, of course. Took the cars and the supplies, so at least they left Gaara's bike behind, but that's about all the good luck we had back then. We stayed there long enough for me to take the bullet out of Gaara's leg, which just so we're all clear on this, I'm never doing again - "

Gaara snorted quietly and rubbed his leg.

Sasuke remembered Naruto saying before that he had no real medical experience. It seemed he had conveniently left out that he had managed to get a bullet out of somebody's leg. Then again, considering what had happened before that, Sasuke supposed Naruto hadn't been keen on informing strangers about it. Neither of them would have wanted strangers to know about a weakness of them, which made them telling Sasuke about it now quite significant, he realised.

He hadn't heard either of them talk this much or this personal before tonight and he privately thought this was long overdue. How long had they been walking with this, this hate and hurt and distrust festering within them? Far too long. Even after having spent more than a month at the compound already, both still kept their guard up around the others. Yet for some reason around Sasuke they were willing to at least lower their walls a bit, allowing the dark haired man a peek inside the heavily guarded castle they had locked themselves in.

He made the quiet promise to never betray that small, but significant show of trust.

"And once that was done, we got on the bike and left as well." Naruto paused and amended, "Well, I somehow managed to balance Gaara on the bike while driving it. Again, don't ask me how I managed that because I sure as fuck still don't know. We spent the next three weeks travelling from one place to the other; we either got overrun by those dead fuckers or other people and I wasn't about to take any chance with strangers anymore while Gaara was out for the count."

He waved haphazardly at Gaara. "Somehow he survived in spite of my shoddy patch up work. A shit ton of luck, that's all we can say for sure."

"Not that shoddy," Gaara murmured. "I still have both legs in working order."

"That's one way of looking at it," Naruto scoffed, shaking his head.

As Sasuke sat there, processing all that he had just been told, Gaara rose up, slightly grimacing as he lightly kicked the air with his injured leg.

"I'm going up. My leg's being a bitch," he announced.

"You good, man?" Naruto looked up at him concerned.

"Yeah, yeah, just the cold worsening it a bit," Gaara replied. "I'll be fine with some rest."

"I'll be right behind you," Naruto told him, but the other man just shrugged, offered Sasuke a vague wave and walked to the apartment building, disappearing into the shadows.

"Did you ever come across that group again?" Sasuke asked, but he already knew the answer before Naruto threw him a flat look.

"No, we haven't. Once we get our hands on that bitch, though, she'll be sorry she ever pulled that fucking stunt," he said darkly; his fingers briefly tightening their grip around the neck of his bottle. "She'll wish she had stayed behind to make sure we both actually died."

"Revenge won't reverse the situation," Sasuke pointed out quietly.

He could understand why they wanted to take revenge, of course. If someone had shot him in an attempt to save their own arse, he couldn't say he would be able to claim the higher ground and leave them be. He himself had taken revenge in the past after finding out just who had been responsible for his mother's death. It hadn't undone her death, of course, but …

"Yeah well, I'm not one of those suckers claiming the high moral ground," Naruto sneered and stood up, stretching his arms towards the sky. His smile was blood chilling cold when he added, "But it sure as fuck is going to make us feel a hell of a lot better. She almost signed Gaara's death sentence by shooting him in his leg and clearly didn't give one single fuck about what would happen to me. She will get what is coming to her and if you don't think that's fair, well, that's a you problem then."

He saluted Sasuke mockingly and then walked leisurely to his apartment building as if they had merely been chatting pleasantly. He blended in with the shadows just as easily as Gaara had done, proving how much they had adapted to life on the road.

Sasuke was left behind in front of the pond, attempting to digest everything they had just told him.

Well, he had wanted to know what made those two thick. He guessed he had received his answer. Now the question was: what was he going to do with all this?

Lost in thought, Sasuke didn't pay Suigetsu any mind when the other man called out to him with an offer to join them for another beer. He went straight home, no longer in the mood to be around others.

The house was empty when he arrived; neither Itachi nor father were home but he hadn't expected them to be. Itachi had been hanging out with Kisame last time Sasuke had seen him and father had been talking with Tsunade and a couple of Board members. It would be at least another hour if not longer before one of them would return home. That was fine with Sasuke; he wanted to be alone right now.

His bedroom was chilly when he entered it, courtesy of the window he had left ajar before leaving, allowing the cold wind to occasionally whistle alongside it. He went over to close it and stared out of the glass in the direction of apartment building A. In the depth of the night, however, he couldn't see much aside from a shapeless mass outlined against the star speckled sky. Some people down in the street were chatting as they made their way over to the gates, ready to switch shifts with the ones guarding the walls. Just another night in the compound.

On automatic pilot Sasuke changed into his pyjamas, finished his business in the bathroom and walked quietly back to his room, because even within the confines of his own home he was forever silent, forever on guard and awaiting the hair rising gurgling noise of a zombie. It didn't matter that no zombie had ever stepped foot inside this house aside from that breach back then. He remained wary, cautious at all times, and he wondered how Naruto and Gaara had done it, all those months on the road. How had they been able to rest after so many losses, after such a betrayal? How had they remained this sane, this in control, even after witnessing so much bloodshed? Yes, they had each other, but two against the whole world could not have been easy.

Sasuke imagined losing father or Itachi, having only one of them still left, and he wasn't so sure if he could get past that loss. Obito's death had cut even though he and his cousin had never been that close; mother's death had been so horrifying it had left him in a daze of rage for days to come after she had been killed. Even with those losses, though, he still had father and Itachi; he still had other people looking out for him like Kisame and even Deidara. There was a whole community willing to look out for him.

Naruto and Gaara had gone from having family and friends to just having each other left. They had been on their own for so long, forced to only rely on and trust only each other. They were both incredibly strong, to be able to handle all that without growing insane. Even with having each other still, that couldn't have been easy at all.

Sasuke sat down on the bed and rubbed his hands briskly over his face. He was all too aware of what this conversation between him and them meant. Ever since arriving here, they had kept themselves carefully to the side for weeks, barely talking to anyone unless they spoke to them first. Even then their answers were polite, but clipped, never personal, never giving anything away. Some of the Board members thought that made them suspicious, but father had been quick to point out that if the two had been planning on doing something to harm the compound or its inhabitants, they would have had plenty of opportunities for it so far.

The latest one being the supply run with Sasuke.

It had been risky, taking them with him. If they had wanted, they could have easily killed Sasuke and could have stolen the van with the supplies for themselves, fucking off to the gods know where. They would have been long gone before anyone in the compound would have grown suspicious enough to send backup. It had been a situation Danzo had clearly been gunning for to happen, no matter the costs, as long as his suspicions would have been proven correct. It hadn't. Naruto and Gaara had stuck to Sasuke's side the entire time when possible, had killed zombies with and for him and never once had they set off Sasuke's alarm bells. At least not in the sense that it had made him think they were a danger to him.

Tonight had him seeing the two friends in a whole different light, however. To be the only one to have been taken into confidence by them, the only one aware of what made them thick, what made them what they were today … That knowledge was heavy and he rubbed his stomach absently, as if the knowledge was a heavy stone in his gut taking up all the space. He could try to figure out why they had chosen him of all people to tell their story to, but he wasn't going to bother. No point in trying to figure out something that might not have a real answer in the end.

He did need to decide what he was going to do next. What they had confided into him tonight wasn't something that could be easily forgotten or brushed aside. It wasn't something as inane as them confessing what their favourite food was or what their hobbies had been before the apocalypse had happened.

It was wanting to take revenge, wanting to harm someone, maybe, possibly even wanting someone else to die. An eye for an eye. Something premediated, something entirely else than simply stabbing zombies to their final death.

It was Naruto hinting that he and Gaara might not stay here forever after all.

He laid down in his bed and dragged the blanket over him until it brushed his shoulders. He flicked his eyes towards the window, trying to imagine what Naruto and Gaara could be doing at this moment. What they might be thinking after having confessed something so momentously.

It was strange how even after such an intimate talk, Sasuke still felt like he had barely scratched the surface of those two.

"You're up early," Itachi remarked surprised when Sasuke quickly finished his cup of coffee. The older man glanced at the clock. "I don't think you've been scheduled for something this morning, no?"

"Got a guard shift this afternoon," Sasuke muttered and washed his cup, putting it upside down on the sink. "I'm going over to Naruto, ask him to teach me how to use a crossbow today. We'll be leaving the walls for that, because he apparently doesn't trust me not to shoot someone's eye out," he added with a scoff.

"He offered to do so?" Itachi raised an eyebrow.

Given Naruto's almost reticent behaviour around most people, his light scepticism was expected.

"Well, it's more like I asked him last night and he agreed to it," Sasuke replied.

"Right, Deidara-kun mentioned you had left the party to go see him and Gaara-kun."

Sasuke eyed the glint in his brother's eyes with some healthy suspicion. "What else did he say?" he demanded.

"Nothing in particular," Itachi reassured him, though Sasuke was disinclined to believe him. "Why? Should he have?"

"No, because he's an idiot," Sasuke retorted, making Itachi chuckle. "I'll see you tonight."

"Hm, be careful out there."

The sky was a light grey when Sasuke set foot outside. There was barely any wind but the air was chilly and he stuffed his hands deep into his pockets, curling them up to retain some warmth. He set a brisk pace to apartment building A, nodding in greeting to the people he passed; some looking more awake than others.

Inside the apartment building it was just as cold as outside and he ran up the stairs in a slight job, using the exercise to get some warmth back in his limbs. His nose still felt numb from the cold by the time he arrived at Naruto's and Gaara's apartment where he knocked on the door.

The second the door opened he was greeted with the tip of a machete aimed at his face. Stupidly he could only blink at the sight, watching Gaara's scowl slowly transform until he looked mildly befuddled. His green eyes danced from one side of Sasuke's to the other and after a couple of seconds Sasuke realised Gaara was checking whether he was alone. He was also half naked, for some reason; his bare chest appearing quite contradictorily in this cold weather.

"I didn't bring anyone else here if that's what you think," he said slowly, not really sure what to think of this particular welcome.

"Clearly," Gaara said dryly, but lowered his machete. "What are you doing here? It's - " he craned his neck, checking something out of sight, "nearly eight o'clock."

"Naruto offered to teach me how to fight with a crossbow," Sasuke replied. "I've got a guard shift this afternoon, so I figured I might as well get some training in now if that's okay with him."

Gaara pinched the bridge of his nose and stepped back, gesturing for Sasuke to enter. "Naruto's not a morning person," he said, vaguely amused.

"I'd gathered," Sasuke muttered, given that Naruto hadn't shown up yet. "What's up with the machete greeting? You greet everyone like that who shows up at your apartment?"

It would explain why some people still were wary around him.

"Naruto told me what else was said after I went back last night," Gaara said in a measured voice. "Thought it might have been the Board showing up to drag us away or so."

"Why would the Board take you away?" Sasuke asked mystified. He raised an eyebrow. "And why did you think one machete would be enough to hold them off?"

Gaara shrugged and placed the machete on the table. "I've been up against worst odds than that."

Sasuke supposed that was true.

"Anyways, I figured that wanting to take revenge on the bitch who shot me and left me and Naruto for dead isn't exactly the type of mindset that's welcome in this lovely compound," Gaara drawled. He might have put the machete down but his eyes were as sharp as a knife now, even though his stance was relaxed.

Sasuke had no doubt he would be quick to snatch up that machete if the need arose.

"Thought you might have gone yapping to them by now and they had shown up to throw us out. Hence the machete," Gaara went on, gesturing at the weapon in question. "I wouldn't have made it easy for them if they had shown up."

No, Sasuke didn't have trouble believing that for a second. "If you assumed I would go to the Board for that, why did Naruto tell me about it then?"

"Guess I was testing you." Naruto's sleepy, gravelly voice drifted over towards them.

When Sasuke turned his head, Naruto stood in the door opening of the bedroom; a humourless smile painting his thinned lips. "Don't always have to be you guys doing the testing, you know?"

It rankled Sasuke's nerves somewhat to hear the verbal distance Naruto still insisted on putting between them, but he took a deep breath, all too aware of Gaara's sharp gaze resting on his face. "I'm not planning on telling anyone unless you give me explicit permission to do so."

"Why?" Sleepiness quickly made way for suspicion in those bright blue eyes and Naruto took a step closer. Unlike Gaara, he was dressed in both a shirt and trousers to sleep. "Might be because I just woke up, but I can't tell if you're busting my balls now, Sasuke. Are you seriously telling me you're okay with us wanting to take revenge and shit? You expect me to believe that you're not going to run off and yap about it to the first person you see?" He shook his head in disbelief.

"Yes, I'm expecting you to believe that, because I would be a damn hypocrite otherwise if I turned you in for wanting revenge," Sasuke said annoyed. "And I've never been a hypocrite."

"A hypocrite for what?" Gaara asked, narrowing his eyes.

Sasuke tsk'd and closed the door behind him, relatively certain that they wouldn't try to punch him in the face or otherwise attack him in spite of the way they both watched him like a hawk.

A quick glance around showed just how dreadfully impersonal the apartment still was despite two people inhabiting it. Even after two months only the weapons resting against the wall made it obvious that people were actually living here and it made Sasuke frown. Sure, it wasn't like they could go leisurely shopping for some decorations, but everyone managed to find a way to make their space their own.

Expect for these two apparently.

"I don't think any different of you for wanting revenge," Sasuke said.

When Naruto scoffed and Gaara raised an eyebrow sceptically, Sasuke shook his head and explained vehemently, "I'm not because I've done the exact same thing you want to do, so I got no right to judge you for it."

Naruto narrowed his eyes and shifted his weight from his left to his right leg, crossing his arms and hunching his shoulders in such a way that it made Sasuke's own shoulders ache in sympathy. "Who?" he demanded.

Gaara stilted, tilting his head to the side.

"Those questions Itachi asked you?" Sasuke said abruptly. "About how many people you've killed and why?"

Naruto looked bemused at the seemingly non-sequitur question, but he nodded slowly.

"We didn't always ask those questions," Sasuke sighed and rolled his shoulders, placing his hands on his hips. His katana dug into his back in a familiar way. "At the beginning we took people in if we thought they looked trustworthy. If they vouched for other people, fine, the more the better, gave us more chances to survive."

Even after so many months, that vile taste of betrayal was hard to shake off and he marched over to the window in a burst of restless energy. He watched Shikamaru and a couple of others walk towards the pond to continue their project.

"At some point we accepted a guy called Kabuto. He'd been close to getting his doctor's degree before the zombies showed up and we decided that more medical help was always welcome," he muttered and rested his fingers on the windowsill, feeling the cold smooth stone underneath his fingertips. "Some time later we ran across an older man during one of our supply runs. Kabuto vouched for him, said he'd been one of his professors and was one of the best experts in the country."

His breath started fogging up the window. The apartment was colder than his bedroom, making Gaara's lack of full dress even more surprising. He absently made a note to look into the heating system of this building. It might have something wrong with it.

"We were fucking naïve," he snorted harshly and his fingers curled like claws around the edge of the windowsill. "Not even a week later the whole compound got overrun by both humans and fucking zombies. That man that piece of shit had vouched for? His name was Orochimaru and that arsehole was certifiably insane. He'd been experimenting on zombies, trying to find a way to get control over them. He decided that this compound was the perfect place to test out his theory."

He paused. On the floor above them someone got up; their footsteps audible all the way up to what was most likely the kitchen in that apartment. He listened to himself breathe, listened to Naruto's and Gaara's measured breaths behind him.

"It was complete chaos," he murmured, gazing unseeingly out of the window. "Everywhere you looked, there was a goddamn zombie trying to rip you apart or some fucker trying to kill you. Orochimaru must not have been that great, though, because he got caught early on by his own little experiments," he sneered.

He turned around; his gaze sliding from Gaara to Naruto, who stared back calmly. "At one point I was running to the infirmary because a herd was starting to surround it. On the way there I found three undead gnawing on my mother's corpse."

He quietened down, recalling all too vividly the sight of mother's blank face, her black eyes staring dead at the sky; her beautiful, long, black hair sprawled across the pavement as two undead bastards were feasting on her insides, a third one ripping apart her trachea. She had still been holding her dagger; a fourth undead corpse motionless right next to her.

When he looked up at Naruto and Gaara, he found nothing but soft sympathy, an acknowledgment of his grief.

"I lost it," he said simply and stuck his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "By then we'd all realised who was behind the breached and I was seeing red. I wanted to make Kabuto pay for what he had done, get him back for everything. Because if he hadn't let Orochimaru in, mother would still be alive. If he hadn't orchestrated this breach with Orochimaru, we wouldn't have lost so many good people."

He breathed out slowly. "So I tracked him down, gutted him from his groin to his collarbone and threw him right into a group of zombies, letting them eat him and finish him. I stayed to listen to his screams."

The silence which fell between them was long, but not heavy. It felt uplifting in a sense. Father and Itachi had known what he had done; it had been hard to deny when Itachi had been the one to find him still on the roof of the shed where he had caught Kabuto, watching the man be torn limb from limb by the bastards he had let inside while Sasuke himself had looked like he had bathed in his blood.

Neither father nor Itachi had ever condemned him for taking revenge. All the same he had never talked about it with anyone else either. It wasn't because he was ashamed of what he had done, but because he knew other people might not understand and he had zero patience to deal with them.

Gaara and Naruto would understand, though.

Sasuke stirred, breathing out slowly through his mouth. "Like I said last night, revenge won't reverse the situation, but you're right, it did feel fucking good," he said ruefully.

Naruto let out something that could have been a chuckle or a grunt or both.

"So I know how you two feel and I'm not judging you for it. I meant it when I said I was here for you. I'm not going to run off to the Board."

"Not that easily scared off, huh?" Naruto smiled wryly and loosened his crossed arms.

Sasuke gave him a thin lipped smile. "If I was, I wouldn't be standing here anymore. Now, are you ready to teach me how to fight with a crossbow?"

Naruto squinted at him and turned his head to check the clock. "It's not even a quarter past eight," he commented baffled.

"Told you he isn't a morning person," Gaara mumbled and crossed his arms.

"I know it's early, but I was hoping to get some practice in before I have to guard the walls this afternoon," Sasuke replied. "So, you're still up for teaching me?"

Naruto blinked; his eyes slowly travelling from Sasuke's shoes up his legs to his stomach up to his chest and finally landing back on his face.

"You still want me to teach you?" he asked and lifted an eyebrow.

"Yes, that's why I'm here obviously. You agreed last night, remember," Sasuke reminded him just in case he actually had had more beer than that one bottle. He didn't appear particularly hangover, though, just confused for some reason.

"You're serious about this," Naruto mumbled and cocked his head to the right.

"Why so surprised about that?" Sasuke questioned, resting a hand on his hip. "I never make jokes when it comes to learning how to handle new weapons."

"Apparently not," Naruto muttered and scratched the back of his head. He shrugged and turned towards the kitchen. "Fine, just let me eat something first before you try to take out someone's eye. I don't deal well with that kind of shit on an empty stomach."

"Your confidence in my skills is truly overwhelming," Sasuke droned unimpressed.

Naruto paused in the doorway of the kitchen and winked at him. "I know, don't let it get to your head too much."

He disappeared into the kitchen then, humming slightly off tune.

Sasuke shook his head and eyed Gaara. "You're not cold like that?" he asked sceptically.

"Now I'm starting to get cold, yeah," Gaara said and stretched his back. "But Naruto is like a goddamn furnace in bed. No sense in dressing up warmly with him clinging onto you."

"I do not fucking cling, you dick!" Naruto instantly shot back from the kitchen.

"You kind of do, though," Sasuke retorted, making Gaara smirk.

"Like a goddamn octopus," Gaara agreed.

"Fuck off, both of you!"

AN2: Nothing quite like starting the day than with a coffee and a near meeting with a machete, eh?

Please leave your thoughts behind in a review; should you spot any mistakes, please point them out to me.

I hope to see you all back in the next chapter! Please stay safe and take care of yourselves!

Cuddles

Melissa

P.S. For more information about my upcoming and posted stories, please visit my profile.