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A/N: Normally I don't feel the need to state this because I put in the summary that this is FemNaruto but I would like to state that Naruto is a girl in this fic.
"Y'know I'm surprised you are back to being a Konoha shinobi, Sasuke. I thought you believed bonds were nothing short of a weakness."
They weren't the words one should say when confronted with their past, but they were the first words Naruto found herself saying as her eyes focused on Sasuke and the other members of her former team. She said them to him, of course, because he was the seed of the vines that freed her from the chains of imprisonment, of the ever suffocating cold eyes of the villager. He had given her the best excuse to never come back to Konoha. If people believed she was dead, why wouldn't she stay away?
Sasuke didn't flinch at her words, only focusing on the orange streaks of the blue sky while Sakura and Kakashi-sensei darted their eyes at the large doors that separated her husband's family from the rest of the world. The winds had came to a halt while her former teammate just stared at her with blank eyes. "And I didn't believe you would allow everyone to believe you were dead and have them accuse me of killing you," his words were as cold and sharp as kunai while Sakura and Kakashi gazed at her with disappointed eyes. "You allowed me to believe I killed you, made me think—"
"—I didn't make you think anything," she corrected ideally, drawing circles in the air. "You assumed I died even though we both know you managed to avoid the vital organ that would have caused me to die." Her lips twitched into a smile. "Though I doubt Kurama would allow me to die, he doesn't like the idea of reforming again and after what we've been through…I think he finds me the most tolerable container he ever had. He hated my mother and the First Hokage's wife but with me, he knows I'm not some puppet bound to a village because of love like my mother was." Kakashi's lone eye widened but she didn't call him out of it. Instead, she smiled. "I stayed in Konoha because I saw no place out but the mission to rescue Sasuke? Being sent here by the collision of our attack? It was nothing short of a blessing for me because for once, I could live freely, without being known as Konoha's weapon."
The leaves rustled while Kakashi gazed at her, his expression unreadable. "Did you really have no plans of letting anyone know that you were alive?"
"I thought of returning and letting everyone know I lived," she admitted with a smile. "I thought of even returning at one point, you know not everyone can make ramen as good as Old Man Teuchi but I would be a real sadist to go back to a village that never appreciated me or underestimated my skills." Her smile widened, just a little hint of nostalgia before it faded. "Besides, it has always been my dream to see the world outside of our continent. To experience things like that Hunter had told me about, though it turns out that he was far from being an ideal Dad but that is a whole different story. Still he was right about one thing: being a hunter is more fun than being a shinobi." She grinned. "I made much more money from being a Blacklist Hunter than being a simple shinobi, the resources I got and the protection I get from trouble? Well, why wouldn't I decide to stay here instead of being subjected to so many boring regulations and rules."
Sakura trembled, her jaw wobbling as her green eyes looked at her with so much betrayal. "Naruto, how could you just stay away just like that?" Her fist clenched as her whole body began to quiver but Naruto felt no inkling of guilt. Just pure indifference. Her former teammate raised her voice. "I thought we were family, after what we went through together, how could you just…leave? How could you just let everyone believe that you died? That Sasuke murdered you?"
Birds chirped while the dogs barked in the far distance, a reminder of what her life was now. Of the family members she didn't have a choice in but tolerated for the sake of her husband. "Because I wanted to be able to walk through the streets and not feel like I'm acting in a role not meant for me," her voice became sharper and colder as her fingers fiddled with her wedding ring. "Because I wanted to live the life that I deserved. Do you know how exhausting it is to pretend to be something you're not just so you can prove to people that you weren't going to kill them?" She scoffed. "What did Konoha ever do to earn my loyalty? When I've to hear from members of my mother's scattered family of what happened to my grandfather? To my great-grandfather?"
There was only silence as Kakashi gazed at her.
"And how did you find those members?"
She smiled. "Why don't I start from the very beginning and tell you how I ended up living the life of my dreams? After that, you can ask yourself this: do you have any right to guilt me for what happened… or maybe consider paying the fees you owe for hunting me down because that was why you came, didn't you? You wanted a blacklist hunter to hunt down the missing jinchuuriki and bring her back home to her prison.''
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