Chapter Text
A rare grin creeps up his face, his chest heaving. He crouches, fingers beating out a rhythmic pulse against the handle of a kunai.
Across the field is Haruno, a scowl of concentration hidden behind sweat-drenched bangs, positioned in her customary opening form.
A heartbeat passes and he launches himself forward, Haruno matching his every stride with her own. Kunai clashes against kunai before he jumps back, adrenaline rushing.
Sparing with Haruno is an exercise in dodging. One open shot from her and he is done for. But stamina is her weakness. Her delicate civilian childhood body could only sustain so much strain, her meager chakra could only last for so many strikes before exhaustion.
But that isn’t to say that dodging her is easy, with her chakra-enhanced speed.
A fist clips his shoulder and, despite holding back, the impact jolts him backwards several steps. A hiss escapes his lips as he rolls his shoulder back experimentally. He activates his eyes.
It is a common misconception that the Sharingan can replicate every technique it observes. If that were the case, why would he need a healer on his team? No, the Sharingan allows him to see Haruno’s every movement, the exact molding of her chakra. But just as the speed of his eyes doesn’t correspond to the speed of his body, he simply doesn’t have the chakra control necessary to copy her techniques, nor the knowledge of how she coaxes it into the manipulations she uses.
Haruno, however, understands these intricacies of the Sharingan, due to her close relations with Hatake.
“Your eyes can’t save you now!” she taunts, correctly.
While most of her techniques transferred nicely to their new reality, he did not. His ocular techniques are near useless, with his Sharingan-use heavily constrained by lack of chakra, nevermind the Mangekyo. And his other techniques require far too much chakra to even attempt. Even his genjutsu relies on the brute force of his chakra and the Sharingan. It is only now, bereft of his overwhelming chakra and physical strength, that he realizes how weak he really was.
One strike turns into another and he yields before they return to their starting positions. Through the weight of his injuries, he feels the lightness of satisfaction; finally, the overwhelming feeling of powerlessness begins to dissipate.
Despite the spar being taijutsu-only, they are lucky to have the Uchiha training fields at their disposal. Much like the rest of the compound, they are surrounded by a multitude of privacy seals. (The Uchiha were so paranoid that they sealed off the entire compound to any non-Uchiha without special permission. Their own downfall, in a way.) Sasuke and Haruno’s skills, however, are far beyond what a genin’s should be, nevermind an academy student’s—they didn’t dare use training field three.
The sky turns dark when they part, skin flushed and clothes damp over their heaving chests. A silent look passes between them, an acknowledgement of the success of Haruno’s proposal.
As he walks away, he feels her eyes on his back, once, twice, but no words leave her mouth and she eventually leaves. (No offers of healing—for the best; he already owes her far too much.)
“Hey Sasuke! Hey!”
The orange annoyance runs towards him before class starts, dragging the pink annoyance in turn.
When he reaches him, he doubles down, panting dramatically.
“Sasuke,” he gasps, “look at who I brought!”
Sasuke keeps his eyes forwards and resists turning. He can feel Haruno’s steady gaze against his head.
“Oh, common, Sasuke! Sa-su-ke!” A hand is waved in front of his face.
He can hear Haruno’s sigh and the swish of her hair as she turns, beginning to pull Uzumaki away with her.
“Lets go, Naruto, it seems someone here is being a bit of a–“
“What is it?” Sasuke cuts in, “I had a hard time understanding between the yelling and all that pink .”
He finally turns towards them. Haruno’s glare is expected. Despite their recent accord, as well as their first spar the other day, Haruno doesn’t approve of Uzumaki’s attachment to him. He smirks.
Uzumaki, on the other hand, beams at him. (Sasuke can barely suppress his guilt at his own standoffish behavior. (Naruto deserves better.))
“You’re looking a lot better, Sasuke!”
Uzumaki then steps back and squints, looking back and forth between him and Haruno. He then whispers, “Did Sakura help you with her glow-y green jutsu?”
Sasuke and Haruno make eye contact in a brief moment of mutual understanding. An eight year old Naruto does not understand the meaning of subtlety, nevermind secrecy. He’s going to get them caught.
At the lack of denial from either party, Uzumaki makes a wordless noise of joy.
“This is so great! If you are my friend, Sakura-sensei, and you are my friend too, Sasuke, and now you both know each other… Dattebayo! You two can be friends too and now we’re all just friends! All three of us!”
And with that proclamation, Uzumaki plants himself down on the chair beside him and pulls down Haruno too.
“...tch. Why is she Sakura-sensei?”
A hiss escapes his mouth as Sakura holds a healing hand against his previously dislocated shoulder.
It’s been months. Months into this new reality, and yet he is no closer to apoaching his goals than he was on his first day here. He can feel his power evade him by the fingertips, his former abilities just an arms length away.
“It’s because your body isn’t fully developed yet,” Sakura says, suddenly. “You expect yourself to reach your previous physical potential, yet your muscles are not and will not develop fully, not until you reach puberty. The same goes for your chakra, especially considering the way you bludgeoned it around to fuel your ninjutsu and Sharingan. But you know this.”
He glares.
“You’re being impatient, it takes time. Just consider how strong you are now compared to what you were actually at this age. Both of us are upper chunin strength at least.”
“Who are you trying to convince?”
Now it’s her turn to glare, and he feels a quick searing pain as her chakra flares up in annoyance before it is soothed away by the healing chakra. (He asked her once why she bothered healing him fully after each spar. She replied that it was good practice.)
“I know you feel it too,” he continues, “this place is suffocating. All those expectations, all the limitations , they are grating on your nerves. You’re beginning to hate this place as much as I do.”
Her chakra cuts out.
“You’re wrong.” The edge in her voice could shatter steel.
“Am I?” He raises both arms and gestures around him. “We have been sitting ducks. Nothing has changed since we’ve gotten here. Danzo sits on his throne still, my brother is out there on his own doing who knows what , and Naruto is looked scorned and belittled by the majority of the village so much that he can barely buy food at the market! How is what we’re doing helping him in any way?”
“We are not strong enough to make a move yet, alright! You know this, it’s always the same fucking argument with you. Unless you want to try your hand again with Orochimaru, we are stuck here. If we try to leave, or make any move against any major players whatsoever, we will be caught and interrogated. And then what? Naruto will have nobody and you will never be able to find your brother.” She pauses and catches her breath before continuing, “Only once you have enough chakra to fuel the mangekyo for more than a measly second will we be able to make a move.”
He wants her to be wrong.
She usually isn’t.
“Come guys, come! We’re gonna get some RAMEN!”
A streak of orange rushes through the crowds of the street, his two companions making their way through behind him as well, albeit at a slower pace.
“Nothing like some ramen to motivate that kid,” Haruno says under her breath. He finds himself agreeing.
Ever since that brat got them lumped together in his warped ideal of friendship , the two of them have been lugged along with him everywhere. Together .
But neither of them are willing to cede any room to the other and thus they end up together far more often than not. (It is bad enough that she is sensei . Who exactly taught him how to throw a kunai properly?)
When the sound of a crash and then the yelling reached them, they both sped up their lazy jog to a run.
A man holds Naruto up by the collar of his shirt, shaking him. An array of items lay scattered on the floor.
“Look at what you did, demon!” The man shakes him with one arm and gestures with the other, “Look!”
The blond attempts a placating expression, arms raised up and eyes wide.
“It wasn’t me! It wasn’t! You tripped on the–“
“That’s it, brat!” The man's face flushes red. A crowd begins to gather.
He starts pushing through the unsympathetic faces, his heartbeat thrumming in his ears louder by the second. Who do these villagers think they are? Worthless scum, like the rest of this village.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing!” Haruno’s voice calls out through the crowd.
“None of your business, little girl.” The crowd starts jeering at the spectacle. Sasuke can feel the approaching ANBU. Far too slow. Useless.
“That’s my friend you’re hurting!” Her statement isn’t met with scoffs.
“This demon no friend of yours. I’d be doin’ ya a favor if I–”
He hears the crack of a broken nose and a shriek of pain. Sasuke cuts through the final barrier of people.
Haruno stands in front of Naruto, shielding him from the angry villager and the gazes of the bystanders. He walks up to them.
“I’d leave if I were you,” there is a cord of tension running through his voice, both a warning and a promise.
The villagers disperse.
(If they find themselves jumping at odd shadows for the weeks to come, unable to sleep, well, it isn’t as if he knew any genjutsu.)
(It is the least they deserve.)
“Come, Naruto,” Haruno tugs on Naruto’s hand. “Let's go eat some ramen.”
“Y-yeah?” The painful look in his eyes makes Sasuke look away. Naruto saw them as his saviors, as someone he can depend on and trust . (He isn’t that person.)
“Yes,” her voice is steady, and then she meets her eye with his own. He knows that his eyes reflect the same determined as his own, the same desire to protect. “And I think Sasuke said he’d be paying, right?”
He clenches his jaw at Sakura's grin and Naruto’s excited cheers.
But he pulls his wallet out after the warm meal with no complaints, feeling almost at peace if only for that one single moment.