It took them almost two weeks to make it back to Konoha, partly because the news of their fight outside the city had attracted Orochimaru's attention, and partly because Sasuke's kneecap had almost been dislocated when he hadn't been fast enough to block one of Naruto's kicks.

He had been tired. It wasn't an excuse for his loss, it was the flat-out truth. His movements had been getting more and more laggard, while Naruto was practically revitalized; and he'd been reaching for more shurikans when the blond had lashed out, and he just couldn't move fast enough.

The force of the impact had sent him crashing into a rock, jarring his spine painfully and disorienting him for two seconds, during the space of which Sasuke realized that he was going to lose.

And then that warm, hatefully pleasant sensation of the curse seal began to slither beneath his skin, waking him up and tinting the edges of his vision purple and feeding him more than enough power to continue.

For one second, Sasuke hated Naruto, Orochimaru, Itachi, and his entire fucking past, as he had to drop his defenses and put himself at Naruto's mercy long enough to force the seal back.

It was only when he was finished that he noticed Naruto hadn't attacked him.

Sasuke opened his eyes again and found the blond crouched a meter away, the bitter chakra faded but his stance still not really human, watching him carefully.

Sasuke turned his head away from the look in Naruto's eyes. "Orochimaru ripped out the seal that Kakashi-sensei did. It's harder to control."

"It's still there?" Naruto asked quietly.

"Idiot." Sasuke let his breath out in a sharp hiss. "It'll never go away."

Naruto said nothing, and when Sasuke finally looked over at him, the expression in those dark red eyes was so close to empathy that it infuriated him. Ignoring the jarring pain along his spine, Sasuke shoved himself onto his feet and threw himself at Naruto.

That was a stupid idea, he reflected later, because Naruto's reflexes had become almost too fast for the sharingan, but he had to get that look off the other teenager's face.

He lost the fight.

So they were making their way back to Konoha, slowly, while Sasuke limped along and waited for his leg to heal and Naruto kept running back and forth, alternately checking that they weren't being followed and that Sasuke hadn't run away again.

After one night of sleep, Naruto looked like Sasuke hadn't managed to lay a hand on him, which pissed him off to no end. He didn't want to come back to Konoha with a hurt leg and a deep scratch across his forehead (Sasuke suspected that Naruto was going to keep attacking that spot until he outwardly acknowledged they were equals, which meant he was going to have to learn to defend his head better), looking like he'd been completely bested in a fight. This was hard enough without that particular humiliation.

Naruto didn't bother with his illusion except when they were moving through towns, and Sasuke had found it unsettling how soon he got used to seeing this new version. He decided it had to be because whenever Naruto spoke, which was a lot, he still sounded the same and made as little sense as Sasuke remembered.

The first night after they'd started returning home, Sasuke had noticed a small necklace that had been hidden by Naruto's coat before.

"If that's the 'stupid ward thing' you were talking about, I think you broke it," he'd commented, laying out his futon on the opposite side of where the door opened, so that if someone walked in he could be up before they would get around the door to see him.

"Huh?" Naruto had said as he finished drying the water he'd splashed on his face. "I lost that a couple days ago. It's probably somewhere in Wind country."

"Then what's that?" Sasuke asked, indicating Tsunade's necklace.

Naruto grinned, for once not remembering to hide his teeth, and hooked a finger around the cord. "This is a bad luck charm!"

Sasuke stared at him. "And you're willingly wearing it."

"Hey, hey, I earned this! I'm not gonna put it away!"

"You earned a bad luck charm? How does your mind work, dead last?"

Naruto had pulled a face and flicked some of the water still on his hands at Sasuke, but he didn't explain what he was talking about--which only confirmed that Naruto still was either an idiot or existed outside of the realm of sense.

By the time they got into the forest surrounding the Hidden Leaf, his leg was working well enough that he could jump again, even though it was painful. Small favors.

It was late at night by this point, and even Naruto was starting to look tired. Sasuke was almost exhausted--they'd been moving since morning, and had only eaten once--but he was the one who'd insisted that they keep going until they reached Konoha (though he didn't state it outright, he just goaded Naruto into refusing to stop by questioning the other teenager's stamina), partly because he preferred to return when it was dark and less people would see him, and mostly because he knew that if he stopped when he was this close, he wouldn't return.

Tired as he was, three years of constantly being on his guard had ingrained a paranoid instinct into him, and Sasuke noticed the faint but unnatural rustle of branches beside them.

So did Naruto, but he had better eyes in the dark than Sasuke. "Damn anbu, all over the damn forest . . . dammit," he muttered quietly enough that Sasuke barely heard him.

He snorted. "Did you really think we were going to come back unnoticed?"

"Woulda been nice. . . ."

The anbu followed them, keeping in a loose half-circle formation that Sasuke was painfully aware cut off their path in all directions save forward, but no one stopped them.

Naruto and Sasuke came to the wall, jumped over--Konoha's gates were mostly for the non-shinobi villagers' peace of mind, since they didn't actually stop the determined--and landed a few meters away from the bridge into the village proper.

The anbu dispersed around them, vague blurs in the edge of Sasuke's vision, probably on their way to wake up the Hokage. He didn't bother to watch them, the way Naruto did. He just stood still and let the knowledge that he was in Konoha again close over him.

It wasn't a comfortable realization, but it didn't smother him either, as he'd expected it to.

"The hag's gonna be pissed when they wake her up," Naruto commented, sounding cheerfully resigned. He started walking slowly, and Sasuke followed a moment later.

He looked in the opposite direction of where he and Sakura had stood the last time he'd crossed the bridge, staring out at the dark water and its glimmers of starlight.

The buildings seemed the same--he could see patches here and there, hasty repair jobs and a few serious damages from the fighting that had occurred, but nothing had really changed.

Of course not, it had only been three years . . . but Sasuke felt like he was walking into a dream, or an illusion; things were just slightly off from how he remembered. Or he was off. Something didn't belong, and he doubted it was the village.

He'd followed Naruto into the hallway of his apartment complex before he even realized it.

Naruto rattled the door several times before the lock got unstuck. Giving the frame a kick for good measure, the other teenager pushed it halfway open before stopping in place. Sasuke was staring out past the balcony, still looking at the town, and had just followed Naruto's movement, so he wound up running into his back.

Before Sasuke could turn his head and demand "Now what?" Naruto snapped, "Hey, Kakashi-sensei! You've got your own apartment!"

Sasuke froze. When Naruto pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside, he moved out of Sasuke's view so that the other teenager could see Kakashi sitting up from where he'd been sleeping on the couch.

The man wasn't wearing his vest, and his hair looked like he'd come straight from his bed to Naruto's apartment, but he still had the mask and his forehead protector situated over one eye. Sasuke looked away and stepped inside as well. Naruto shoved the door shut behind him.

Kakashi rubbed the back of his head lazily. "It was requested that I be here," he said with a yawn. "But you took so long to get back from the gate, I thought it couldn't hurt to get some more sleep. Honestly, you guys, couldn't you have returned at a decent hour?"

Sasuke had forgotten the way Kakashi's voice was always slightly muffed by the mask. Of all the things he'd forgotten or made himself forget, that was an odd one--the mask was always there. It should have been obvious.

"At least you got sleep!" Naruto sulked. "Do we really have to go talk to Tsunade now?"

"Oh, no," Kakashi said. "Tsunade-sama refused to interrupt her beauty rest for you two. She'll see you tomorrow morning, at nine o'clock." He paused, then added with what was probably a smile, though the mask obscured it: "She suggested that you get some sleep, something to eat, and prepare yourselves to be yelled at a lot."

Naruto didn't speak for a moment, considering the information. Then he shrugged, and said, "Could be worse. First dibs on the bathroom!"

He jogged out of the room then, leaving Sasuke behind with Kakashi.

The teenager refused to look at the floor, so he stared over the man's shoulder at the doorway Naruto had gone through. On the couch, Kakashi yawned once more, this time stretching his arms, before pushing himself onto his feet and walking towards the door.

It wasn't until Kakashi set a hand on his shoulder that Sasuke realized he was shaking faintly.

"He took your seal off," Sasuke said, and the words came out too sharp, too abrupt, and wrong.

"Okay," Kakashi replied. "I can put it back on tomorrow if you're up to it."

Sasuke thought about the way he'd been knocked out completely after the first seal, and shook his head slightly. It was awkward, because he'd tensed up in order to stop himself from trembling. "Too soon. If. . . ."

"You're safe here, Sasuke," Kakashi said, his head tilted enough that he could watch him from his eye. "You can afford to let your guard drop."

Sasuke's gaze shifted even further away at that, but after a few silent seconds, he swallowed and nodded.

"Okay. I'll see you after Tsunade-sama's done venting her anger," Kakashi said with a grin. He paused for a moment, but Sasuke remained silent and looking away.

Had it been visible through the mask, and had Sasuke been able to make himself look at the man, he would have seen Kakashi's grin shift to a faint but not unwarm smile. He patted the teenager's shoulder.

"Welcome home, Sasuke," he said.

Then Kakashi's hand fell away, and he left the apartment, closing the door behind him with another yawn.

The teenager let himself relax with a harsh exhalation. He was still shaking, but at least now there was no one to see it; and it soon went away.

Sasuke listened to the splashing noises that went through the thin walls of Naruto's apartment for half a minute. Then he walked over to the couch and sank down heavily on it, burying his face in the cushion.

Despite the way it irritated his instincts, for the first time in almost three years Sasuke didn't think about the strategic position of his bed or about setting up traps to wake him in case someone entered the room. He let himself just fall asleep.
-

Why were you still afraid of being forsaken?

Back to team seven
Back to the main page