Naruto AU, a timeskip side story
Because no, of course I have not forgotten about the actual AU! It's just - been complicated, you know, what with moving across a freakin' ocean and all. And getting caught up with posting other things, and - stuff. And pie. Okay, no pie was involved because I'm a heathen who doesn't like pie, shut up.
Anyway, so here is a timeskip side story that's been done for a while, but I was hoping to get another side story done first and that's - not happening, so screw it, I might as well post it. Scenes are in chronological order and all take place within the first year of the timeskip.
Contains: some silliness, some more serious bits, Sannin!
Adventures in Solitude
Sakura wrote lots of letters, at first. Short ones to her parents, because they weren't really interested in medicine and didn't understand shinobi terminology at all, and she didn't want them to worry. Long ones to Haku and Ino-chan, who did understand, and who wrote wonderful letters back, encouraging her (with insults, in Ino-chan's case) and giving her advice and all the news. Short ones to Naruto, because she wasn't sure how well he could actually read (besides stolen scrolls with high-level forbidden techniques, apparently); it took him ages to write back, but at least all his letters were long, full of bragging and terrible spelling and ridiculous stories that made Sakura either smile or wish Naruto were there so she could punch him. And long letters to Sasuke-kun, of course, even if sometimes when she started to write one she froze up, hearing him shout at her again - Go ahead and run away, coward! Spineless, weak, useless - but she would make herself remember the day she and Naruto had left, the way Sasuke's hand had clutched her dress as if he'd never let go, and then she could write again.
Sasuke-kun was as bad about writing back as Naruto - maybe one letter from him to every five or six of hers, not that she was counting - and his letters were always brief and unemotional, usually about training or particularly annoying missions or Kakashi-sensei's weirdest excuses for being late. But somewhere in each of them he'd write, Too bad you weren't here, and every time she read those words she felt an odd little aching thrill in her chest. Sasuke-kun definitely wasn't the type who would say I miss you, he was just too cool for that (Too stuck-up, you mean! shouted an angry voice inside her head), but Too bad you weren't here was pretty much the same thing, wasn't it?
So she'd read the words again, and hug the letters to her chest, and then Tsunade-sama would yell at her to concentrate on her studies.
Of course, writing letters took a lot of time, so she probably shouldn't have been surprised the day she woke up after a particularly grueling week of training to build up her chakra reserves and realized that she'd been too busy and tired to write any letters the entire week. At first she couldn't even think about it properly; she just got up and did her morning exercises with the fact sitting in the back of her mind, strange and heavy. It wasn't until they were on the road to the next town, with Shizune-san talking about the proper procedures for evaluating gut wounds, that it really hit her, and when Shizune said, "Don't forget to check the smell of the wound," Sakura stopped right in the middle of the road.
"Sakura? What's wrong?"
"I - I forgot to write everyone this week," Sakura said, her throat squeezing up. "I promised I'd write every day and I f-forgot..."
"I'm sure your friends will understand," Shizune said, patting her shoulder. "You were busy, after all - you can write them tonight and explain."
"But I forgot." She could feel tears coming to her eyes and oh, this was so embarrassing, but she couldn't help it, she felt awful. "I promised Sasuke-kun and Haku-san and I let them down!"
"It's fine, let's just keep going -"
Sakura burst into tears.
Tsunade had crossed her arms, looking impatient at the delay, but now she uncrossed them and said, "All right, looks like we'll be taking a little break - don't worry, Shizune, it's not as if we have anywhere urgent to be." She put a hand on Sakura's back and guided her to the side of the road so they could sit down on the grass, in the shade of some old trees. "Calm down, girl, and tell me why a couple of teenage boys can't live without a letter from you every day."
Sakura tried to wipe her eyes, but it was useless, just like trying to explain to Tsunade-sama would be, because of course she couldn't tell Tsunade-sama why it was so awful for her to have left Sasuke all alone with his brother. "It - it's just that I promised," she said, sniffling, "and I can't - I can't break promises to Sasuke-kun, he's my teammate, he's counting on me!" She remembered his face when they'd left and more tears came. "He's going to be so disappointed -"
"Ssh, ssh, relax," Tsunade said. She rubbed Sakura's back a bit awkwardly. "It was going to happen eventually, you know."
"Eh?"
"It isn't possible to go through life without letting someone down." Tsunade sighed, scrubbing her hands absent-mindedly on her jacket. "You can try and try your best, but there's always going to be a time when you just can't help someone, for whatever reason, and you can't wear yourself out trying. Sometimes you have to let someone deal with problems on their own... It's better that way, I think. How can you rely on people who can't rely on themselves? A team has to be able to trust each other, and that means trusting in yourself, too."
Sakura sniffled again. "But it's not - it's not the same, I want to help but I just forgot -"
"Well, it's better to forget a letter or two now," Tsunade said, "and get it out of the way, so you don't let your team down later when it really counts. Shizune's right - you can write your friends tonight, and I'll bet you that they understand."
After a minute, Sakura said, "Okay." She wiped her eyes again, and this time no fresh tears appeared. "I'm sorry, Tsunade-sama, I didn't mean to slow us down..."
"Eh, I wanted to rest my feet a bit anyway." Tsunade smiled at her. "But we'd better get moving again - and speaking of things you don't want to forget, you can start by telling me the names of all the bones in the hand."
They got up and took to the road again as Sakura began reciting, and that night when Sakura sat down to write her letters, she didn't let herself feel guilty at all.
---
The worst part about training with Jiraiya, Naruto decided, was definitely that Jiraiya never let him make any friends. It wasn't like Naruto was going to give away any secrets or anything! He was super good at keeping secrets, after all; he could even keep secrets from Itachi, that was like Hokage levels of secret-keeping, and he hadn't told any to Sakura-chan or Haku or Gaara either, no matter how tempting it got. And he wasn't going to get into any real fights and attract attention, either, because that'd just be dumb. He didn't want to get caught by those Akatsuki people; he just wanted someone to talk to who wasn't a perverted old lech.
After like the tenth time Jiraiya hauled him away from someone he'd just met, Naruto dug his heels in. "What's the matter with you, huh?" he said. "I was just trying to find someone to hang out with! Why's that a crime all of a sudden?"
Jiraiya simply looked at him. "Naruto," he said, "everyone you've tried to hang out with looks like Sasuke."
"Huh? No way! There's no way that -" Uh, well, okay, that kid he'd just been talking to had maybe looked a little like Sasuke, but just because he had black hair - that didn't mean anything. Lots of people had black hair! Not hanging out with black-haired people would be, like, discrimination or something. "Maybe a couple of them, kinda," he said. "But it's not like -"
"All of them, Naruto." Jiraiya sighed. "They've all looked like Sasuke. Black hair, black eyes, faces like they've spent their whole lives with a stick up their ass... Kid, I know you miss him, but it's not healthy to get a fixation like that. Anyway, you should be concentrating on your training! C'mon, let's hit the forest and get some work done."
Naruto muttered something about how Sasuke didn't look that stuck-up, although he sort of did sometimes, and they went off to train.
It was still bugging Naruto that night, though, and he rolled around in bed restlessly. Of course he missed Sasuke; they'd hung out all the time for years, it'd be way weirder if he didn't miss Sasuke. And it wasn't like he didn't miss Sakura-chan and Haku, too, because he totally missed them just as much as he missed Sasuke! The world wasn't as pretty without Sakura-chan in it, especially since stupid Jiraiya scared off all the pretty girls or went drinking with them, and Haku was just cool and smart and always knew the right things to say, which Naruto only ever seemed to manage to do by accident.
He missed Gaara, too, sort of - it was nice not having to worry about sand all the time, but Gaara was way better at controlling it now and Sasuke had been right, Gaara wasn't so bad really, just messed up because of his stupid dad and Shukaku. And Naruto definitely missed Itachi's cooking, but he wasn't sure if he missed actual Itachi or not, because Itachi was always really nice and patient with him and stuff, but then there was that whole murdering-all-the-other-Uchiha thing, which was just weird when Itachi could be so kind.
Huh. He had more people to miss than he'd realized, and that wasn't even counting Iruka-sensei and Kakashi-sensei and that crazy Anko, and Kiba and Shikamaru and everyone... It was kind of a nice feeling, knowing that he had so many people to miss, some of whom probably missed him, too, but it didn't really help him when they were all back in Konoha (or Suna, or wherever that old bat Tsunade was dragging Sakura to), and letters just weren't the same.
All right, that settled it - he'd just go and try one more time to make a new friend tomorrow, and this time he'd pick someone who wasn't like Sasuke at all, and then the pervy sage couldn't complain!
Satisfied with his plan, Naruto bounced once on the bed, rolled over, and fell asleep.
He started off the next day by finding a ramen stall, working on the principle that Sasuke hardly ever ate ramen of his own free will and therefore Sasuke-like people wouldn't be hanging around at ramen stalls. After that, it was just a matter of being stealthy and watching everyone who stopped by to find the ones who were the least like Sasuke.
An hour passed, and maybe it was Naruto's luck, or maybe it was just something about the town, but everyone who came by that ramen stall seemed to look like Sasuke. Same eye shape, or black hair, or the same grumpy face, or the same elegant eyebrows (wait, since when did he start thinking about that jerk's eyebrows so much), or the same jawline... Naruto was about ready to give up and just get some pre-training ramen when the perfect person sat down.
Hair: a bright shiny blond, laying all flat and sleek. Eyes: wide and light green, definitely nothing like Sasuke's, with small fuzzy blond eyebrows above them. Face: round and pudgy, kinda like Chouji's, and Chouji was about as opposite to Sasuke as you could get (in a good way, though, Naruto decided, trying to be fair to them both). Expression - well, okay, the guy looked kinda grumpy, but in a totally different way from Sasuke's grumpiness, and he lightened up some when the cook took his order.
Yes! This was Naruto's chance! He waited a minute, then stole the stool next to his target - uh - soon-to-be new friend - and said, "Hey!"
"Um - hi," the other boy said.
He looked a little nervous (definitely un-Sasuke-like, score!), so Naruto gave him his biggest grin and said, "I'm new here, yanno - what's the best ramen they got?"
"Oh, well, I really like their shoyu ramen best," the boy said, starting to smile back. "They're famous for their special seafood ramen, though, but I don't like seafood all that much so I don't get it."
"Cool, I'm gonna try that - thanks!" Naruto waved at the cook. "Hey miss, three bowls of special seafood ramen, please! Say, what's your name?"
Before the boy could answer, the cook put a bowl of ramen in front of him and said, "Hi, Miharu! How's your big brother doing?"
Miharu scowled. "He's horrible."
Naruto's grin slipped a little bit.
As Miharu split his chopsticks and began to stir his ramen angrily, Naruto said, "Er, so - you have a big brother, huh?"
"I wish I didn't," Miharu muttered. "He's evil. He gets away with all kinds of awful stuff, and no one ever says anything! And he's always saying, 'Oh, I'm just trying to look out for you, Miharu,' but it's a load of crap, I don't think he cares at all..."
Naruto didn't bother to protest when Jiraiya showed up to drag him away. Some things, he thought gloomily, were just fate.
---
Jiraiya had made peace with his age, could call himself old without a twinge of regret, but there was something about trying to ride herd on a twelve-year-old genin that was making him feel genuinely old. Naruto was all over the place - harassing him for techniques, running around "exploring," constantly bouncing with energy. Nothing at all like Minato had been when he was - well, never mind that - and if Jiraiya felt like being honest, it wasn't even much like Naruto had been on their last trip. Sure, Naruto was an energetic kid, but this was his regular energy times ten, and in addition to making Jiraiya feel old, it was a bit - well, the kid was obviously overcompensating because he missed his friends, but it was still annoying. Reminded him of trying to train three kids at the same time.
At least Jiraiya had been younger when he'd been looking after three brats at once - oh, but he wanted to think about them even less than he wanted to remember Minato, didn't want to see Yahiko's grin or Nagato's steadfast determination in Naruto and think of the hard deaths they would have had, lost in the never-ending wars of Hidden Rain. That was what truly made Jiraiya feel old; to look at Naruto and only see his failures. Better not to think of them at all, and just concentrate on keeping Naruto out of as much trouble as possible, which was a full-time job all by itself. (Too bad the kid had none of Konan's grace - that much was safe to think.)
He had hoped that a full day of working on the super-sized rasengan would wear Naruto out, but it was an old fool's hope. Not ten minutes after Jiraiya had collapsed into the inn's rickety bed (and see if he ever stayed at this place - uh - whatever it was called - again), Naruto's voice rose out of the dark. "Hey, pervy sage -"
"What?" Please let him just want a snack, please, please, please...
"Did you ever like Orochimaru?"
Oh, this was going to be an interesting night. "Well, we were teammates," Jiraiya said. "We were too different to really get along, I suppose, but - yes, I liked him. When he wasn't being a snotty know-it-all, he could be a good friend. Until he wasn't."
"No, I meant - did you ever, um, yanno, like him? Like-like him?"
Shit. Jiraiya was definitely, definitely too old for this. "Now, Naruto, you know that boys like girls and girls like boys and sometimes other girls, and that's how it works -" And don't make me go into any details, damnit, or Tsunade'll punch me into next year for "corrupting the youth." "- so no, of course I didn't, er, you know..." He shoved down an old memory - it had been at a bar! They'd both been drunk! It had been in the noble cause of seducing a really hot woman with slightly odd tastes! - and said, "So I don't want to hear anything else about, uh, that kind of thing!"
"But girls can like other girls and that's okay, so it's okay if a guy likes another guy, right?" Naruto said. "I mean, Haku liked that Zabuza guy a whole lot, so -"
"Yes, but Haku-chan is a girl."
"No, Haku's a boy," said Naruto.
"Er - are you absolutely certain about that?"
"Yeah, sometimes he drags me to the public baths so -"
"Okay, okay, I get it." Jiraiya sighed and sadly crossed Haku off his "wait till they're eighteen" list. "Wait, that's not the point! The point is, why would you even ask if I liked Orochimaru like - like -" Don't think about that time at the bar, don't think about that time at the bar, don't think about how soft his hair felt in your hands - "Don't just ask people things like that!"
"I was just wondering, geez," Naruto said. "'Cause I was thinking, Sasuke's my best friend so of course I like him a lot, but sometimes I think that maybe I like him even more than Sakura-chan... But I also still really like Sakura-chan 'cause she's super pretty and awesome, but she's always liked Sasuke a lot, and he - well, I guess he likes her okay, it's kinda hard to tell with him, yanno? And Sakura-chan likes Haku a lot too, but I dunno if she likes him more than she likes Sasuke or not, it's totally confusing... So I was kinda wondering if your team was like that, too, like, is this normal or what?"
Absolutely not, Jiraiya wanted to say, but all his failures had sprung upon him at once and forced him into silence. His team had split apart, but not from love; death had torn from each other the children he'd trained. What did Jiraiya know about how a team should be?
"No," he finally said. "No, I guess we weren't much like that."
"Oh." Jiraiya heard the other rickety bed creak as Naruto bounced on it, and then Naruto said, "Well, it doesn't matter anyway! 'Cause Sasuke's always going to be my best friend and I'm always going to like Sakura-chan and we're all going be teammates first, yanno, so whatever else happens, we'll still look out for each other and stuff... And I'm going to get super strong so I can protect them from - um, from anything, yeah! And we'll always, always be a team, no matter what - right, pervy sage?"
"Sure, kid," Jiraiya said, his voice thick - he was tired, that was all, he was tired, he'd had a long day. "Sure you will be. Now go to sleep, all right?"
"Yeah, yeah..."
As Naruto's snores floated through the darkness, Jiraiya thought that in the end, there was nothing that could make a man feel old like lying to a kid who didn't know any better.
---
Tsunade had let Shizune handle Sakura's basic training in poisons and antidotes, but Sakura was as quick a study in those as she had been in everything else, and Tsunade soon took over in order to keep pace with Sakura. She wasn't particularly surprised, then, when Sakura looked up from the temporary lab set-up and said, "It looks like one of the common poisons from Sand, but it's been altered to work more swiftly, and to affect the internal organs, too, not just the nervous system."
"Good, good," Tsunade said, waiting.
"This - this is the poison that was used on the Kages, isn't it?"
"Yes. Well-done, Sakura."
Sakura looked like she'd been slapped instead of complimented, staring back down at the beakers and pipettes. "But the internal damage - Master, there's no way you could have reversed it all, for as long as they were poisoned! M-maybe for the Kazekage, he would have been more resilient because he was younger, but for the Hokage..."
"That's right," Tsunade said gently. "I did what I could, and it helped that the hospital had all my old work from the war with Suna to use till I got there, but I couldn't repair it all."
"Then - the Hokage..."
"He has a good couple of years left in him, I'd say." How easily the words came, Tsunade thought, as if she were talking about any patient, not her own teacher. "I asked him to send me a message, so Jiraiya and I can come back in time, and then - then they'll be choosing a new Hokage, I suppose. Hatake, maybe - he was a student of the Fourth, did he ever tell you that? Probably not, he's not exactly the type to open up about the past. Or maybe someone else, I don't know who the council's been keeping their eyes on lately..."
"You could be the next Hokage," Sakura said.
Tsunade laughed, but stopped when she saw Sakura's expression. Oh hell, the girl was serious. "I'm not interested in being the Hokage," she said. "Like I told Sasuke, I hate politics, and I hate paperwork even more - that's most of a Kage's job right there, paperwork and politics. I haven't even lived in the damn village for years - there's not a chance they can rope me into it."
"But you're really strong," the girl said earnestly. "And smart, and a great medic, and people really respect you, I could tell that at the hospital..."
"It's not my dream," Tsunade said, her patience growing thin. "It's a job for some fool who loves Konoha more than sense."
"Well," Sakura said, "if that's what they're looking for, maybe they'll pick Naruto to be the next Hokage."
"That brat will be Hokage over my dead body!"
Sakura looked up from the lab equipment and grinned; too late, Tsunade saw the trap she'd walked right into. "So it does matter to you! Who the Hokage will be, I mean."
"Of course it matters," Tsunade grumbled. "You think I want some idiot in charge of my home village? That doesn't mean I'm going to jump at the chance to stick my head in that particular noose." But she could see that she wasn't getting through to Sakura at all; the girl clearly thought that suggesting Tsunade for the next Hokage was the most brilliant idea in the world.
Shizune had used every trick in the book, subtle and unsubtle, to keep Tsunade's alcohol consumption down for the last few months (think of the example you're setting for Sakura! had been a frequent weapon in that war), but that night Tsunade went and got herself stinking drunk. She drank, and drank, and finally she was drunk enough that she held her necklace - her grandfather's necklace - in front of her eyes, letting it swing back and forth in a pretty, shiny blur.
Hokage Tsunade. What a joke that would be. That was a dream for little boys who didn't know the price they'd pay for dreaming (but Dan had been no little boy and still he'd paid, cursed because she'd put her faith in him and her necklace around his neck). Catch her falling for that nonsense - no, they'd never catch her. She didn't want to be Hokage, she wasn't going to be Hokage, and that was that.
But how bright Grandfather's necklace shone, even in the bar's dim light; how bright Nawaki and Dan's dreams still shone in her memory, with a will that wouldn't die...
---
Orochimaru had a tendency towards hoarding, a habit which went poorly with Kabuto's need to keep everything in perfect, organized order. It was not Kabuto's place to criticize Orochimaru, however, and in truth Kabuto rarely felt the need to complain; Orochimaru never kept anything worthless, after all, even if it might be some time before the worth of any particular item revealed itself.
Still, Kabuto felt that he had to draw the line when he was sorting through a drawer and a book of matches fell out of a scroll. He inspected the packet carefully, but the matches had all been torn out, there were no traces of any obvious secret messages or codes, and he didn't recognize the name of the bar, which meant that it wasn't from any of the locations where he or Orochimaru occasionally met their spies. It was worthless, in other words, and there was no reason for it to have been hidden away in a scroll of some value.
He held it up and said, "Orochimaru-sama, is there really a need to keep this?"
Orochimaru glanced at the matchbook for just long enough to read the bar's name. "Of course," he said, a trace of irritation in his voice. "There are times when a match is more useful than wasting chakra on a fire technique, after all - more often than not, really. And the things are free. Give it here."
"But there aren't -"
"Don't make me repeat myself, Kabuto," and when Kabuto had handed the matchbook over it disappeared into Orochimaru's sleeve; the replacement arms did not have quite the grace of those that Orochimaru had lost, but they served well enough, and Kabuto felt a flicker of pride in his handiwork. "There - one must always be prepared. Now, have you found anything of use in those Kaguya clan scrolls I acquired yet?"
Kabuto made no more protests, but he kept the name of the bar in mind for future inquiries.
Naruto, characters, etc. © Kishimoto OH GODS WAS THAT REALLY NECESSARY KISHIMOTO DDDDDDDDD: I MEAN SERIOUSLY DUDE
Anyway, so here is a timeskip side story that's been done for a while, but I was hoping to get another side story done first and that's - not happening, so screw it, I might as well post it. Scenes are in chronological order and all take place within the first year of the timeskip.
Contains: some silliness, some more serious bits, Sannin!
Adventures in Solitude
Sakura wrote lots of letters, at first. Short ones to her parents, because they weren't really interested in medicine and didn't understand shinobi terminology at all, and she didn't want them to worry. Long ones to Haku and Ino-chan, who did understand, and who wrote wonderful letters back, encouraging her (with insults, in Ino-chan's case) and giving her advice and all the news. Short ones to Naruto, because she wasn't sure how well he could actually read (besides stolen scrolls with high-level forbidden techniques, apparently); it took him ages to write back, but at least all his letters were long, full of bragging and terrible spelling and ridiculous stories that made Sakura either smile or wish Naruto were there so she could punch him. And long letters to Sasuke-kun, of course, even if sometimes when she started to write one she froze up, hearing him shout at her again - Go ahead and run away, coward! Spineless, weak, useless - but she would make herself remember the day she and Naruto had left, the way Sasuke's hand had clutched her dress as if he'd never let go, and then she could write again.
Sasuke-kun was as bad about writing back as Naruto - maybe one letter from him to every five or six of hers, not that she was counting - and his letters were always brief and unemotional, usually about training or particularly annoying missions or Kakashi-sensei's weirdest excuses for being late. But somewhere in each of them he'd write, Too bad you weren't here, and every time she read those words she felt an odd little aching thrill in her chest. Sasuke-kun definitely wasn't the type who would say I miss you, he was just too cool for that (Too stuck-up, you mean! shouted an angry voice inside her head), but Too bad you weren't here was pretty much the same thing, wasn't it?
So she'd read the words again, and hug the letters to her chest, and then Tsunade-sama would yell at her to concentrate on her studies.
Of course, writing letters took a lot of time, so she probably shouldn't have been surprised the day she woke up after a particularly grueling week of training to build up her chakra reserves and realized that she'd been too busy and tired to write any letters the entire week. At first she couldn't even think about it properly; she just got up and did her morning exercises with the fact sitting in the back of her mind, strange and heavy. It wasn't until they were on the road to the next town, with Shizune-san talking about the proper procedures for evaluating gut wounds, that it really hit her, and when Shizune said, "Don't forget to check the smell of the wound," Sakura stopped right in the middle of the road.
"Sakura? What's wrong?"
"I - I forgot to write everyone this week," Sakura said, her throat squeezing up. "I promised I'd write every day and I f-forgot..."
"I'm sure your friends will understand," Shizune said, patting her shoulder. "You were busy, after all - you can write them tonight and explain."
"But I forgot." She could feel tears coming to her eyes and oh, this was so embarrassing, but she couldn't help it, she felt awful. "I promised Sasuke-kun and Haku-san and I let them down!"
"It's fine, let's just keep going -"
Sakura burst into tears.
Tsunade had crossed her arms, looking impatient at the delay, but now she uncrossed them and said, "All right, looks like we'll be taking a little break - don't worry, Shizune, it's not as if we have anywhere urgent to be." She put a hand on Sakura's back and guided her to the side of the road so they could sit down on the grass, in the shade of some old trees. "Calm down, girl, and tell me why a couple of teenage boys can't live without a letter from you every day."
Sakura tried to wipe her eyes, but it was useless, just like trying to explain to Tsunade-sama would be, because of course she couldn't tell Tsunade-sama why it was so awful for her to have left Sasuke all alone with his brother. "It - it's just that I promised," she said, sniffling, "and I can't - I can't break promises to Sasuke-kun, he's my teammate, he's counting on me!" She remembered his face when they'd left and more tears came. "He's going to be so disappointed -"
"Ssh, ssh, relax," Tsunade said. She rubbed Sakura's back a bit awkwardly. "It was going to happen eventually, you know."
"Eh?"
"It isn't possible to go through life without letting someone down." Tsunade sighed, scrubbing her hands absent-mindedly on her jacket. "You can try and try your best, but there's always going to be a time when you just can't help someone, for whatever reason, and you can't wear yourself out trying. Sometimes you have to let someone deal with problems on their own... It's better that way, I think. How can you rely on people who can't rely on themselves? A team has to be able to trust each other, and that means trusting in yourself, too."
Sakura sniffled again. "But it's not - it's not the same, I want to help but I just forgot -"
"Well, it's better to forget a letter or two now," Tsunade said, "and get it out of the way, so you don't let your team down later when it really counts. Shizune's right - you can write your friends tonight, and I'll bet you that they understand."
After a minute, Sakura said, "Okay." She wiped her eyes again, and this time no fresh tears appeared. "I'm sorry, Tsunade-sama, I didn't mean to slow us down..."
"Eh, I wanted to rest my feet a bit anyway." Tsunade smiled at her. "But we'd better get moving again - and speaking of things you don't want to forget, you can start by telling me the names of all the bones in the hand."
They got up and took to the road again as Sakura began reciting, and that night when Sakura sat down to write her letters, she didn't let herself feel guilty at all.
---
The worst part about training with Jiraiya, Naruto decided, was definitely that Jiraiya never let him make any friends. It wasn't like Naruto was going to give away any secrets or anything! He was super good at keeping secrets, after all; he could even keep secrets from Itachi, that was like Hokage levels of secret-keeping, and he hadn't told any to Sakura-chan or Haku or Gaara either, no matter how tempting it got. And he wasn't going to get into any real fights and attract attention, either, because that'd just be dumb. He didn't want to get caught by those Akatsuki people; he just wanted someone to talk to who wasn't a perverted old lech.
After like the tenth time Jiraiya hauled him away from someone he'd just met, Naruto dug his heels in. "What's the matter with you, huh?" he said. "I was just trying to find someone to hang out with! Why's that a crime all of a sudden?"
Jiraiya simply looked at him. "Naruto," he said, "everyone you've tried to hang out with looks like Sasuke."
"Huh? No way! There's no way that -" Uh, well, okay, that kid he'd just been talking to had maybe looked a little like Sasuke, but just because he had black hair - that didn't mean anything. Lots of people had black hair! Not hanging out with black-haired people would be, like, discrimination or something. "Maybe a couple of them, kinda," he said. "But it's not like -"
"All of them, Naruto." Jiraiya sighed. "They've all looked like Sasuke. Black hair, black eyes, faces like they've spent their whole lives with a stick up their ass... Kid, I know you miss him, but it's not healthy to get a fixation like that. Anyway, you should be concentrating on your training! C'mon, let's hit the forest and get some work done."
Naruto muttered something about how Sasuke didn't look that stuck-up, although he sort of did sometimes, and they went off to train.
It was still bugging Naruto that night, though, and he rolled around in bed restlessly. Of course he missed Sasuke; they'd hung out all the time for years, it'd be way weirder if he didn't miss Sasuke. And it wasn't like he didn't miss Sakura-chan and Haku, too, because he totally missed them just as much as he missed Sasuke! The world wasn't as pretty without Sakura-chan in it, especially since stupid Jiraiya scared off all the pretty girls or went drinking with them, and Haku was just cool and smart and always knew the right things to say, which Naruto only ever seemed to manage to do by accident.
He missed Gaara, too, sort of - it was nice not having to worry about sand all the time, but Gaara was way better at controlling it now and Sasuke had been right, Gaara wasn't so bad really, just messed up because of his stupid dad and Shukaku. And Naruto definitely missed Itachi's cooking, but he wasn't sure if he missed actual Itachi or not, because Itachi was always really nice and patient with him and stuff, but then there was that whole murdering-all-the-other-Uchiha thing, which was just weird when Itachi could be so kind.
Huh. He had more people to miss than he'd realized, and that wasn't even counting Iruka-sensei and Kakashi-sensei and that crazy Anko, and Kiba and Shikamaru and everyone... It was kind of a nice feeling, knowing that he had so many people to miss, some of whom probably missed him, too, but it didn't really help him when they were all back in Konoha (or Suna, or wherever that old bat Tsunade was dragging Sakura to), and letters just weren't the same.
All right, that settled it - he'd just go and try one more time to make a new friend tomorrow, and this time he'd pick someone who wasn't like Sasuke at all, and then the pervy sage couldn't complain!
Satisfied with his plan, Naruto bounced once on the bed, rolled over, and fell asleep.
He started off the next day by finding a ramen stall, working on the principle that Sasuke hardly ever ate ramen of his own free will and therefore Sasuke-like people wouldn't be hanging around at ramen stalls. After that, it was just a matter of being stealthy and watching everyone who stopped by to find the ones who were the least like Sasuke.
An hour passed, and maybe it was Naruto's luck, or maybe it was just something about the town, but everyone who came by that ramen stall seemed to look like Sasuke. Same eye shape, or black hair, or the same grumpy face, or the same elegant eyebrows (wait, since when did he start thinking about that jerk's eyebrows so much), or the same jawline... Naruto was about ready to give up and just get some pre-training ramen when the perfect person sat down.
Hair: a bright shiny blond, laying all flat and sleek. Eyes: wide and light green, definitely nothing like Sasuke's, with small fuzzy blond eyebrows above them. Face: round and pudgy, kinda like Chouji's, and Chouji was about as opposite to Sasuke as you could get (in a good way, though, Naruto decided, trying to be fair to them both). Expression - well, okay, the guy looked kinda grumpy, but in a totally different way from Sasuke's grumpiness, and he lightened up some when the cook took his order.
Yes! This was Naruto's chance! He waited a minute, then stole the stool next to his target - uh - soon-to-be new friend - and said, "Hey!"
"Um - hi," the other boy said.
He looked a little nervous (definitely un-Sasuke-like, score!), so Naruto gave him his biggest grin and said, "I'm new here, yanno - what's the best ramen they got?"
"Oh, well, I really like their shoyu ramen best," the boy said, starting to smile back. "They're famous for their special seafood ramen, though, but I don't like seafood all that much so I don't get it."
"Cool, I'm gonna try that - thanks!" Naruto waved at the cook. "Hey miss, three bowls of special seafood ramen, please! Say, what's your name?"
Before the boy could answer, the cook put a bowl of ramen in front of him and said, "Hi, Miharu! How's your big brother doing?"
Miharu scowled. "He's horrible."
Naruto's grin slipped a little bit.
As Miharu split his chopsticks and began to stir his ramen angrily, Naruto said, "Er, so - you have a big brother, huh?"
"I wish I didn't," Miharu muttered. "He's evil. He gets away with all kinds of awful stuff, and no one ever says anything! And he's always saying, 'Oh, I'm just trying to look out for you, Miharu,' but it's a load of crap, I don't think he cares at all..."
Naruto didn't bother to protest when Jiraiya showed up to drag him away. Some things, he thought gloomily, were just fate.
---
Jiraiya had made peace with his age, could call himself old without a twinge of regret, but there was something about trying to ride herd on a twelve-year-old genin that was making him feel genuinely old. Naruto was all over the place - harassing him for techniques, running around "exploring," constantly bouncing with energy. Nothing at all like Minato had been when he was - well, never mind that - and if Jiraiya felt like being honest, it wasn't even much like Naruto had been on their last trip. Sure, Naruto was an energetic kid, but this was his regular energy times ten, and in addition to making Jiraiya feel old, it was a bit - well, the kid was obviously overcompensating because he missed his friends, but it was still annoying. Reminded him of trying to train three kids at the same time.
At least Jiraiya had been younger when he'd been looking after three brats at once - oh, but he wanted to think about them even less than he wanted to remember Minato, didn't want to see Yahiko's grin or Nagato's steadfast determination in Naruto and think of the hard deaths they would have had, lost in the never-ending wars of Hidden Rain. That was what truly made Jiraiya feel old; to look at Naruto and only see his failures. Better not to think of them at all, and just concentrate on keeping Naruto out of as much trouble as possible, which was a full-time job all by itself. (Too bad the kid had none of Konan's grace - that much was safe to think.)
He had hoped that a full day of working on the super-sized rasengan would wear Naruto out, but it was an old fool's hope. Not ten minutes after Jiraiya had collapsed into the inn's rickety bed (and see if he ever stayed at this place - uh - whatever it was called - again), Naruto's voice rose out of the dark. "Hey, pervy sage -"
"What?" Please let him just want a snack, please, please, please...
"Did you ever like Orochimaru?"
Oh, this was going to be an interesting night. "Well, we were teammates," Jiraiya said. "We were too different to really get along, I suppose, but - yes, I liked him. When he wasn't being a snotty know-it-all, he could be a good friend. Until he wasn't."
"No, I meant - did you ever, um, yanno, like him? Like-like him?"
Shit. Jiraiya was definitely, definitely too old for this. "Now, Naruto, you know that boys like girls and girls like boys and sometimes other girls, and that's how it works -" And don't make me go into any details, damnit, or Tsunade'll punch me into next year for "corrupting the youth." "- so no, of course I didn't, er, you know..." He shoved down an old memory - it had been at a bar! They'd both been drunk! It had been in the noble cause of seducing a really hot woman with slightly odd tastes! - and said, "So I don't want to hear anything else about, uh, that kind of thing!"
"But girls can like other girls and that's okay, so it's okay if a guy likes another guy, right?" Naruto said. "I mean, Haku liked that Zabuza guy a whole lot, so -"
"Yes, but Haku-chan is a girl."
"No, Haku's a boy," said Naruto.
"Er - are you absolutely certain about that?"
"Yeah, sometimes he drags me to the public baths so -"
"Okay, okay, I get it." Jiraiya sighed and sadly crossed Haku off his "wait till they're eighteen" list. "Wait, that's not the point! The point is, why would you even ask if I liked Orochimaru like - like -" Don't think about that time at the bar, don't think about that time at the bar, don't think about how soft his hair felt in your hands - "Don't just ask people things like that!"
"I was just wondering, geez," Naruto said. "'Cause I was thinking, Sasuke's my best friend so of course I like him a lot, but sometimes I think that maybe I like him even more than Sakura-chan... But I also still really like Sakura-chan 'cause she's super pretty and awesome, but she's always liked Sasuke a lot, and he - well, I guess he likes her okay, it's kinda hard to tell with him, yanno? And Sakura-chan likes Haku a lot too, but I dunno if she likes him more than she likes Sasuke or not, it's totally confusing... So I was kinda wondering if your team was like that, too, like, is this normal or what?"
Absolutely not, Jiraiya wanted to say, but all his failures had sprung upon him at once and forced him into silence. His team had split apart, but not from love; death had torn from each other the children he'd trained. What did Jiraiya know about how a team should be?
"No," he finally said. "No, I guess we weren't much like that."
"Oh." Jiraiya heard the other rickety bed creak as Naruto bounced on it, and then Naruto said, "Well, it doesn't matter anyway! 'Cause Sasuke's always going to be my best friend and I'm always going to like Sakura-chan and we're all going be teammates first, yanno, so whatever else happens, we'll still look out for each other and stuff... And I'm going to get super strong so I can protect them from - um, from anything, yeah! And we'll always, always be a team, no matter what - right, pervy sage?"
"Sure, kid," Jiraiya said, his voice thick - he was tired, that was all, he was tired, he'd had a long day. "Sure you will be. Now go to sleep, all right?"
"Yeah, yeah..."
As Naruto's snores floated through the darkness, Jiraiya thought that in the end, there was nothing that could make a man feel old like lying to a kid who didn't know any better.
---
Tsunade had let Shizune handle Sakura's basic training in poisons and antidotes, but Sakura was as quick a study in those as she had been in everything else, and Tsunade soon took over in order to keep pace with Sakura. She wasn't particularly surprised, then, when Sakura looked up from the temporary lab set-up and said, "It looks like one of the common poisons from Sand, but it's been altered to work more swiftly, and to affect the internal organs, too, not just the nervous system."
"Good, good," Tsunade said, waiting.
"This - this is the poison that was used on the Kages, isn't it?"
"Yes. Well-done, Sakura."
Sakura looked like she'd been slapped instead of complimented, staring back down at the beakers and pipettes. "But the internal damage - Master, there's no way you could have reversed it all, for as long as they were poisoned! M-maybe for the Kazekage, he would have been more resilient because he was younger, but for the Hokage..."
"That's right," Tsunade said gently. "I did what I could, and it helped that the hospital had all my old work from the war with Suna to use till I got there, but I couldn't repair it all."
"Then - the Hokage..."
"He has a good couple of years left in him, I'd say." How easily the words came, Tsunade thought, as if she were talking about any patient, not her own teacher. "I asked him to send me a message, so Jiraiya and I can come back in time, and then - then they'll be choosing a new Hokage, I suppose. Hatake, maybe - he was a student of the Fourth, did he ever tell you that? Probably not, he's not exactly the type to open up about the past. Or maybe someone else, I don't know who the council's been keeping their eyes on lately..."
"You could be the next Hokage," Sakura said.
Tsunade laughed, but stopped when she saw Sakura's expression. Oh hell, the girl was serious. "I'm not interested in being the Hokage," she said. "Like I told Sasuke, I hate politics, and I hate paperwork even more - that's most of a Kage's job right there, paperwork and politics. I haven't even lived in the damn village for years - there's not a chance they can rope me into it."
"But you're really strong," the girl said earnestly. "And smart, and a great medic, and people really respect you, I could tell that at the hospital..."
"It's not my dream," Tsunade said, her patience growing thin. "It's a job for some fool who loves Konoha more than sense."
"Well," Sakura said, "if that's what they're looking for, maybe they'll pick Naruto to be the next Hokage."
"That brat will be Hokage over my dead body!"
Sakura looked up from the lab equipment and grinned; too late, Tsunade saw the trap she'd walked right into. "So it does matter to you! Who the Hokage will be, I mean."
"Of course it matters," Tsunade grumbled. "You think I want some idiot in charge of my home village? That doesn't mean I'm going to jump at the chance to stick my head in that particular noose." But she could see that she wasn't getting through to Sakura at all; the girl clearly thought that suggesting Tsunade for the next Hokage was the most brilliant idea in the world.
Shizune had used every trick in the book, subtle and unsubtle, to keep Tsunade's alcohol consumption down for the last few months (think of the example you're setting for Sakura! had been a frequent weapon in that war), but that night Tsunade went and got herself stinking drunk. She drank, and drank, and finally she was drunk enough that she held her necklace - her grandfather's necklace - in front of her eyes, letting it swing back and forth in a pretty, shiny blur.
Hokage Tsunade. What a joke that would be. That was a dream for little boys who didn't know the price they'd pay for dreaming (but Dan had been no little boy and still he'd paid, cursed because she'd put her faith in him and her necklace around his neck). Catch her falling for that nonsense - no, they'd never catch her. She didn't want to be Hokage, she wasn't going to be Hokage, and that was that.
But how bright Grandfather's necklace shone, even in the bar's dim light; how bright Nawaki and Dan's dreams still shone in her memory, with a will that wouldn't die...
---
Orochimaru had a tendency towards hoarding, a habit which went poorly with Kabuto's need to keep everything in perfect, organized order. It was not Kabuto's place to criticize Orochimaru, however, and in truth Kabuto rarely felt the need to complain; Orochimaru never kept anything worthless, after all, even if it might be some time before the worth of any particular item revealed itself.
Still, Kabuto felt that he had to draw the line when he was sorting through a drawer and a book of matches fell out of a scroll. He inspected the packet carefully, but the matches had all been torn out, there were no traces of any obvious secret messages or codes, and he didn't recognize the name of the bar, which meant that it wasn't from any of the locations where he or Orochimaru occasionally met their spies. It was worthless, in other words, and there was no reason for it to have been hidden away in a scroll of some value.
He held it up and said, "Orochimaru-sama, is there really a need to keep this?"
Orochimaru glanced at the matchbook for just long enough to read the bar's name. "Of course," he said, a trace of irritation in his voice. "There are times when a match is more useful than wasting chakra on a fire technique, after all - more often than not, really. And the things are free. Give it here."
"But there aren't -"
"Don't make me repeat myself, Kabuto," and when Kabuto had handed the matchbook over it disappeared into Orochimaru's sleeve; the replacement arms did not have quite the grace of those that Orochimaru had lost, but they served well enough, and Kabuto felt a flicker of pride in his handiwork. "There - one must always be prepared. Now, have you found anything of use in those Kaguya clan scrolls I acquired yet?"
Kabuto made no more protests, but he kept the name of the bar in mind for future inquiries.
Naruto, characters, etc. © Kishimoto OH GODS WAS THAT REALLY NECESSARY KISHIMOTO DDDDDDDDD: I MEAN SERIOUSLY DUDE