Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ The Best Days ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter 3

 

Whatever Sasuke had been expecting, it hadn't been this.

 

When Naruto finally came back from whatever it was he was doing for six damn hours (eight minutes and 52 seconds), he had marched into Sasuke's room and ordered him `as your guard' to get up and follow him out of the house. Sasuke, of course, had ignored him, and would have continued to do so if the dead last hadn't pointed out that disobeying a direct order from a guard was against parole and one of the quickest ways to have the Hokage, council, and several ANBU come down on his head. Since Sasuke had slightly more respect for these people than he did for Naruto (they would at least put up a bit of a fight…), he had found it prudent to follow the now rather cocky moron to wherever he wanted Sasuke to go.

 

Which is how Sasuke found himself standing in the old Uchiha bath house. It looked newly cleaned. Sasuke suspected judicious use of kage bunshin. He also had to clamp down on the urge to give Naruto a piece of his mind for messing with something on Sasuke's property. He was, after all, still attempting to be apathetic. He stared at the steaming water and contemplated the possibility that Naruto had finally lost his mind completely.

 

“Right,” Naruto said from just to his left, and he turned his attention to his (possibly unstable) guard. “Go wash off, and then sit in there for a while.” He gestured to the bath. “If you must waste your life doing nothing, you will at least do it in different places. This different place also involves you getting clean, which I have to say is definitely the best thing about it.” Sasuke stared at him incredulously. Naruto looked back, jaw set in what Sasuke remembered was Naruto's “I'm more stubborn than a brick and changing my mind will be like hitting your head with one repeatedly” face. “You stink,” the blond shinobi informed his charge gravely, “and the smell's killing me.”

 

Sasuke scoffed. What the hell was this? Naruto, for all intents and purposes, had given every indication that he couldn't care less what Sasuke did, had in fact seemed rather put out to have to baby-sit Sasuke at all.

 

Naruto's eyes narrowed. “Look, you bastard. The way I see it, you have two choices. You can clean off and get in on your own, or I can throw you in along with some soap, shower be damned, and you can clean the water tomorrow. Either way, you're getting in.”

 

Sasuke sneered at the blond ninja in front of him. “Try it, dead last, and I'll…”

 

“You'll what?” Naruto interrupted. “You're not allowed to fight me, it's against parole. You definitely can't use chakra because the entire compound is keyed to you and Tsunade-baa-chan will come down her like Hell's fury and kick your ass. Then she'll drag you off to be interrogated and executed.” Sasuke didn't doubt she'd try, at least. He was under the impression that the Godaime Hokage was loud, annoying, full of herself, and vainer than a cat. Not someone he really wanted to bother with at the moment… “So what's it gonna be, Sasuke-chan? You getting in under your own power or mine?” He waited a few seconds, and when Sasuke didn't answer, shrugged. “Have it your own way, then.”

 

If Sasuke had been paying attention, Naruto would have never pulled off what happened next. If he'd been using sharingan, he'd have moved before it even started. As it was, the only warning Sasuke had before another Naruto pinned his arms at the elbows from behind and braced himself in such a way that Sasuke couldn't back kick him away was a flare of still-familiar chakra. The Uchiha was reduced to head-butting as his only option for dispelling the clone currently holding him fast.

 

Which he did.

 

With much enthusiasm.

 

Unfortunately for Sasuke, not only did the Naruto behind him fail to do more than `oomph' at the blow that would have dispersed a kage bunshin, he shifted his weight and flipped Sasuke over his head in one smooth motion. Flipping through mid-air, Sasuke caught a glimpse of the Naruto he'd been talking to disappearing in a poof of smoke and the Naruto that attacked him wiping blood from his nose and split lip before his training took over. Sasuke kicked his legs and twisted so that he'd at least land on his feet. The landing resulted in a rather large splash, as he hadn't used chakra so that he could land on top of the water instead of in it. He didn't particularly want to test Naruto's theory about the Hokage's reaction.

 

He landed facing his opponent, his body working on automatic, his quick mind already delineating a plan to get the high ground back. Naruto wasn't in an attack stance, though. He was alert, but he seemed more worried about the blood on his fingers than about the convicted missing-nin he'd just chucked into the bath. Not to say he hadn't been watching everything Sasuke had been doing. He looked up and bared his teeth in a parody of a grin.

 

“Like a cat,” he declared, wiping at his face one more time before the bleeding stopped and the split lip knit itself back up again. “You don't like water and you always land on your feet.” He let the grin drop and chucked three objects at Sasuke's head in quick succession. “Here. Wash.” Sasuke caught the first two on instinct and ducked as the last object sailed over his head. A quick glance at what his hands held identified them as a bar of soap and a scrub brush. Another quick look over his shoulder confirmed the last object as harmless as the former two (it was a rubber duck, by the way. Naruto seemed to have managed to hold onto his juvenile sense of humor). Then his eyes snapped back to what he'd been reminded was a well-trained shinobi of the village he'd betrayed: a threat.

 

Naruto seemed to sense Sasuke's change in attitude towards him, because he walked away towards a wall (not showing Sasuke his back, the black-haired missing-nin noted), and sat down against it in a non-threatening but still easily maneuverable position, watching the young Uchiha to see if he'd do as he was told.

 

Sasuke relaxed as much as twanging survival instinct would let him and weighed his options. He could fight his way out on principle, but that would likely lead to injury and most certainly lead to execution. He could also just make use of the soap, warm water and brush that had been so conveniently placed in his possession and clean some of the grime off of himself. The second option was the better one. By far.

 

He hadn't really realized how dirty he actually was, not that he felt he could be blamed for this. Hygiene wasn't exactly foremost in his mind these days. The fact of the matter was, though, apart from an impromptu shower, compliments of the ANBU, before hearing his sentence, Sasuke hadn't washed in the three weeks he'd been back in Konoha. He couldn't remember when he'd last been clean before that. He hadn't been thinking about hygiene that much while on the run, either.

 

He stripped out of his drenched, dirty clothes and tossed them over onto the side of the bath, then made good use of the soap and scrub brush. Layers of dried blood and mud that had ground into his skin peeled off of him, staining the water around him in a dirty ring. Clumps of both fell out of his hair as he scrubbed at it vigorously, along with some things he couldn't identify and didn't care to. He felt like a snake shedding a skin too small for it.

 

It felt wonderful.

 

When he was finished, he got out of the water near where he'd thrown his clothes (he really didn't want to put them back on, now. They were filthy) and looked back at the bath. The water now appeared the way he'd expected it to when he'd seen where Naruto was leading him: like it had been abandoned for nine nears. Somehow, that felt even better than being clean. Like putting something back the way it was supposed to be.

 

Naruto broke into Sasuke's thoughts by dumping yet more water on him from a bucket. Sasuke spluttered, and then glared. Naruto shrugged. “Just rinsing the dirty water off,” he said, not sounding sorry in the least (not that Sasuke was expecting him to sound sorry. He'd never been that optimistic). “Here.” He held out a few towels and some new clothing. “Figured you wouldn't want to change back into what you've been wearing.” The clothing consisted of a black tank top and training pants, along with black sandals and boxers. If the tags were any indication, they were all new. Sasuke stared at the offered items. Was Naruto trying to call a truce like Sasuke thought he was? Naruto shifted uncomfortably.

 

“No Uchiha fan of course, sorry, but they're easy to move around in and comfortable, so you can wear them while you're brooding or if you ever get off your ass to start training again. You're allowed to train in taijutsu now,” he reminded. “I got you a few changes of everything. Or, I got Sakura to get you a few changes of everything. Probably better that way. I told her not to get anything orange because I figured you wouldn't want it and she looked at me like that was really obvious.” Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. Sasuke continued to stare, dripping onto the ground. Naruto scowled. “But if you'd really rather just wear what you've been wearing, you're welcome.” He began to withdraw the offerings.

 

Sasuke snatched them before Naruto could fully pull them out of reach, quickly dried off with the towels and put on the clothes. They were comfortable; he'd give the dead last that at least. “Have I filled my quotient for `out and about' yet?” he asked sardonically to cover up the motion.

 

Naruto looked at him, puzzled. “Yeah, you're done.” Without saying another word, Sasuke turned his back and began walking back to the house. It was the first time he'd done it all afternoon since Naruto got the drop on him, an opening to any opponent who knew even remotely what he was doing: an acceptance of Naruto's concession and one of his own. He wondered if the guard would notice.

 

He did, and Sasuke knew when he realized he could hear Naruto's footsteps clearly behind him all the way home. He nodded inwardly. Good. Concession acknowledged, truce accepted.

 

Maybe this would end up okay after all.

 

* * *

 

The next few days dragged into a week, and a routine of sorts developed. After discovering his apparent ability to drag Sasuke out of his room using the treat of Tsunade, Naruto took to banging on Sasuke's door at 4 in the morning and shouting at him to get out of bed. Sasuke did, but only because he wanted to take a shower and change his clothes (now that he was clean, he figured he might as well stay that way). By the time he'd done this, Sakura had stopped by with breakfast before her shift at 6:30, and she spent the next hour yelling at Naruto until he ate it. Sasuke was beginning to wonder where her apparent interest in Naruto's diet came from, if only because the story must be interesting to get Sakura so consistently worked up. Once or twice, Naruto left after breakfast for an hour, coming back at 6 am when Sakura had to leave to get to the hospital on time. The blond guard didn't tell Sasuke what he'd been doing, and Sasuke didn't ask. It was, after all, none of his business.

 

After Sakura left, promising to come back at noon with lunch (much to Naruto's dismay), Sasuke usually found himself dragged to one corner of the Uchiha compound or other and given the orders to “mope or whatever” while Naruto busied himself and a large number of kage bunshins with all manner of other fix-it jobs that had Sasuke wondering just when Naruto had traded in his hitae-ate for a job as a handy-man. He usually ended up helping eventually, for lack of anything better to do, and they'd work steadily until it was nearly noon and they had to go back to the house or risk inciting the wrath of a too-health-conscious Haruno Sakura, and after lunch Sasuke would go back to his room, or wander around the house and fix the things that caught his eye, or go out to the dock and sit there instead of inside. Naruto would sit outside the room or train out under the sun while Sasuke stared out over the pond where he'd learned his first serious technique and got lost in his thoughts. Sasuke never trained with him. It was one thing to stretch his legs a little, but quite another to work up the energy to do something productive like get himself back into top form.

 

On the eighth day of this, Sasuke opted for outside after lunch. He sat on the peer and idly skipped stones while Naruto went through a series of taijutsu moves behind him. “Oi, dead last,” he said eventually (while Naruto was in a particularly unsteady position, not-so-coincidently), and waited until Naruto had picked himself up off the ground after losing his balance at the interruption before asking “why the sudden interest in the state of the Uchiha complex?” Naruto shrugged.

 

“Not like you care,” he pointed out, but when Sasuke turned his head to look at him instead of the water, he gave a bit more of an answer. “Well, I'm stuck here same as you until your house arrest's over, and this place feels like a fucking graveyard to me. I figure I'm gonna get enough of that when I'm dead, I don't need to live in one while I'm alive.”

 

Sasuke, didn't respond, turning back to the water again, and Naruto began his next form. The Uchiha fought down the urge to tell the dead last chuunin that the Uchiha compound was a graveyard, his family's graveyard, and no amount of cleaning would ever change that. He also didn't tell Naruto that he was getting rather tired of being repeatedly banged over the head with the fact that he'd let that graveyard his family had once called home fall to ruins.

 

Instead he just stared at the water, and listened to the small ripples lap at the base of the dock.

 

* * *

 

He didn't get up the next morning when Naruto banged on his door. The air tasted heavy, like a storm was coming, and he was in a particularly foul mood for some reason even he couldn't explain, and just wanted to lay in bed and not think anymore about anything.

 

Naruto, being Naruto, didn't take the hint. He waited until Sakura had left for her shift, then came storming into Sasuke's room and glared at the Uchiha in the bed like he was trying to set him aflame. Sasuke being Sasuke, this did absolutely nothing.

 

“Get up,” Naruto snapped. Sasuke rolled to face the wall. “Why not?” Naruto responded as though Sasuke had argued passionately.

 

“No point,” Sasuke answered. “There's nothing important out there worth looking at.”

 

“Except the place you grew up,” Naruto bit out. “Or is that `nothing important' to you nowadays? What next? You gonna wake up one morning and decide to kill the entirety of Konoha to test your strength?” Sasuke bristled, and turned again to look at the young man in his room.

 

“Nobody in Konoha is worth the effort,” he sneered. Naruto sneered back.

 

“The way you weren't worth the effort? You self-righteous asshole, you sound just like Itachi.”

 

Sasuke's fist connected with Naruto's face. It threw the blond guard through the rice paper wall, across the hall, and through the slightly more substantial rice paper door. He hit the ground with enough momentum to roll him down a small hill and into the pond. Needless to say, it took him a little bit to pick himself up and drag himself out of the water. It was just enough time for Sasuke to get close enough to flying tackle the fucking dead last asshole. They landed with Naruto on his back underneath Sasuke, who was straddling him. The familiar position was lost on Sasuke at the moment, however. He grabbed the front of the dead last's shirt and dragged him up until their faces were only a few inches apart. “Say. That. Again,” he dared his opponent with false calm.

 

“What,” Naruto bared his teeth in a cruel grin, “don't like being compared to the man who betrayed everything he claimed to care about for power? The man who went missing-nin and joined one of Konoha's greatest enemies because he didn't think the village was good enough? Seems like a sound comparison to me!” Sasuke punched him again, and felt some satisfaction when the blow propelled him backwards into the ground.

 

“Shut up!” he shouted. “I left for the power to avenge my family!” Naruto used the leverage from the ground to flip Sasuke off him, and Sasuke had barely enough time to center from the landing before the blond man was on him, fist aiming for his gut. Sasuke dodged and round-house kicked at the dead last's head.

 

Naruto deflected the kick with this arms (there was a crack as bone broke), and he used the momentum of the kick to force him back on his arms and push off into a kick aimed as Sasuke's ribcage. It connected. Sasuke heard the some ribs snap when it did. “You certainly left for power!” Naruto shouted back. “Left everything behind to get strong enough to kill your older brother. Left yourself behind! Was it worth it, bastard?”

 

It hadn't been, because somewhere along the way Sasuke had crossed the line from `vengeance' to `revenge,' from an action done out of love for someone else to an action done solely for yourself. He'd not killed his brother for his family. He'd killed him because he could, and because he wanted to, and now he had to face the fact that he had spent nine years working towards something that, far from resulting in the appeasement of his family's ghosts, had only made them wait in a ruined compound until he came back, worse off than before, to where he'd started when he was eight. Only this time, Itachi's ghost haunted him too.

 

“You don't fucking know what you're talking about,” he nearly screamed, slamming an elbow into Naruto's own ribcage and propelling him into a tree, knocking the wind out of him. “You never had a family to lose!” The words sounded familiar, like something he'd said before. He probably had. It was still true.

 

“I…did…too,” Naruto wheezed, before suddenly coming at Sasuke low and sweeping his legs out from under him. Caught temporarily off-balance, Sasuke couldn't counter the blow that hit him under the chin and forced his head up with a snap. He bit his tongue at the impact and fell backwards onto the ground, rolling and coming up in a crouch. “I had you, you asshole! It was the first time I'd ever had a family in my life! You still didn't, though, because you wouldn't let any of us be! And you're still doing it!” Sasuke dodged Naruto's next kick, but wasn't quite fast enough to miss the heel coming down on his spine. He went face first into the ground, rolled, grabbed Naruto's still extended foot and pulled. Naruto landed on top of him, taking Sasuke's elbow to his already-cracked ribs again in the process. He grimaced, then took the opportunity to punch Sasuke in the jaw again. The black-haired man was pretty sure it was broken. “What's it gonna take, Sasuke?” Naruto growled in this face. “A damn engraved invitation that says `the people who give a damn about Uchiha Sasuke cordially invite him to get over himself, grow up, and realize he isn't alone'?”

 

“I'd…rather be,” Sasuke forced out from his now rather swollen jaw.

 

“Tough shit, we won't let you be. I won't let you be,” Naruto responded, scowling at his friend with eyes that blazed red. Sasuke was honestly not sure if the Kyuubi had surfaced because Naruto was so angry or because of the injuries. Probably a little of both. Sasuke sighed, the fight going out of him.

 

“I know,” he muttered, wincing at the pain that shot up his jaw at the effort. He wondered if he sounded as depressed at that as he felt. Naruto's scowl lightened.

 

“Hey, it's not the end of the world. There are worse fates than having help when you need it.” He jumped to his feet then, wincing a little as his ribs protested (he'd taken two solid hits to them, Sasuke remembered. He wondered if any were broken), wiped some blood off his mouth (wherever it came from seemed to be healed) then offered Sasuke a hand. “Come on, let's go wait for Sakura to come and fix you up a bit. Then we'll fix the hole in your door.” Sasuke, who did not have the Kyuubi holder's healing ability and thus would not be doing any bouncing anytime soon, got to his feet much more slowly. He didn't take the hand. Naruto withdrew it without seeming the least bit offended. Then the two trudged back up to the house to wait the next few hours until a very irate medic-nin would come and look them over.

 

* * *

 

“I can't believe you two,” Sakura said for about the hundredth time as she gently put her fingers on Sasuke's jaw to heal it. Considering it was now twice it's normal size and rather painful, Sasuke didn't respond. Naruto did, though.

 

“It was just taijutsu, Sakura-chan! It's not like we were going to kill each other or something!”

 

“Remind me to have Lee come over and tell you about how many people he's killed,” Sakura snapped, pressing a little too firmly on Sasuke's jaw. Sasuke didn't wince, mainly because Uchihas weren't allowed to.

 

Naruto shrugged, lying back on the floor, hands behind his head and watching them. Sakura had already checked him out, bitching about inexcusable risks and blatant male stupidity the whole time. Sasuke had been vaguely afraid her head was going to explode when she'd seen what he'd done to Naruto's ribs (a few had been broken it seemed, and even Kyuubi couldn't heal broken bones in three hours). “Still, could have been worse. Sasuke-bastard could have used chakra, and then we'd have had the whole of ANBU raining down on our heads.”

 

“I almost wish he had,” Sakura muttered, finishing with Sasuke's jaw and moving onto his sprained ankle (she'd dealt with his ribs first, as the injury with the most potential to cause serious further injury). Now free to talk, as his jaw was little more than a bit bruised, he joined the conversation.

 

“I didn't need chakra to beat that idiot into the ground,” he sneered at the blond man spread out in his hallway. In truth, he'd been so angry and had gotten so used to not relying on chakra in the past few weeks he hadn't even thought about it. Not that these two needed to know that.

 

“Oi!” Naruto snapped, sitting up quickly and then wincing a little at his still-sore ribs. “Say that again when you're allowed to, bastard, and we'll see who'll be beating who.”

 

“Whom,” Sakura corrected absently, now finished taping Sasuke's ankle and looking at his knee. “You're lucky you didn't rip your ACL,” she told her patient, taping as she spoke. “Keep this iced and don't put weight on it for a few days. I'd say a few weeks and prescribe some pain killers, but I'm not that optimistic.” Naruto snickered. Sasuke ignored them both.

 

“Alright, that's done,” Sakura said finally, sitting up and dusting off her hands before looking at their shadows to gauge the time. “And now I'm late. Wonderful. Thank you both so much. I'll be back after my shift with dinner, and lunch is in the kitchen. Take it easy today. Both of you.”

 

Naruto rolled his eyes and got carefully to his feet to walk her to the door. “You know us, Sakura. Safety above all else.”

 

“Smart-aleck,” the young woman responded, cuffing him in the back of the head. Her tone was fond, though, and Sasuke left to lie down in his room instead of dealing with the weird feelings that tone raised in his stomach.

 

He brought the ice pack, though.

 

* * *

 

Sakura did come back after her shift, at about seven o'clock like she always did. She came in the back-way (Naruto had repaired the door and the wall between visits), and brought with her a series of energy-enriched health foods that made Naruto groan in fake agony and Sasuke wonder what the hell she thought they had done all day. She made them both eat the food, though, claiming that they needed the energy to boost their body's healing abilities. By which Sasuke assumed she meant his healing abilities. Naruto was almost entirely healed now; just a little labored breathing sometimes and a few winces when he moved too fast. So he dutifully ate the food and stoically endured the long check-up after dinner. At least she checked Naruto first again. The blond shinobi spent the entire time squirming away from her hand on his rib cage, complaining that it tickled. Sakura eventually gave up after about half-an-hour, grumbling about idiots who don't take care of themselves and are eventually going to get killed in some insanely stupid way.

 

They did the check-up in Sasuke's room, since he'd moved back there after dinner and Sakura had insisted he stay put for at least the rest of her stay. Since staying put was his plan anyway, he'd humored her. Like before, she started with his ribs.

 

“These should be fine in about a week,” she informed him, rebinding his chest as she did so. “They weren't too badly broken to begin with. You're pretty lucky, actually, Naruto hits hard these days.” She moved onto his jaw, which she pronounced perfectly fine if bruised, and then to his ankle and knee.

 

“Like I said before, your knee is badly sprained with hairline rips in some of the surrounding muscles. It should be fine if you stay off of it and keep it iced. I can speed up the healing process if you want, but with muscle and ligament tears it's better not to do too much at once.”

 

“That's fine,” Sasuke told her dismissively. It wasn't as though he planned to be doing anything that he'd need his knee for, after all. Sakura nodded, and stood, but didn't leave the room.

 

“I talked to Shishou earlier, and she told me to inform you that you are now allowed to use chakra in emergency situations. I'm going to ask you to use it if something happens to an injury during the night.”

 

Sasuke raised an eyebrow, honestly confused. She had, after all, just told him everything was fine and should heal cleanly. “Do you expect there to be a problem?” he asked logically. She bit her lip.

 

“Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but… well, just for my peace of mind, Sasuke. Promise me. Please.” Sasuke looked at her carefully. She looked rather tense, as though she wasn't being entirely truthful about the situation. He frowned. He knew his own body rather well, being a considerably powerful shinobi, and was pretty sure there wasn't anything particularly inhibiting or dangerous wrong with it. Finally, he shrugged. If she really was just being overly thorough, it was hardly as though it would matter either way, after all.

 

“Whatever,” he said. “I'm going to sleep.”

 

Some of the tension left the pink-haired healer's frame. “Good idea,” she agreed. “I'll just tell Naruto about the chakra, then I'll leave and go to bed myself. I'll see you tomorrow, alright?” Sasuke didn't respond, opting instead to lie down on his bed and close his eyes. “Alright. Goodnight, Sasuke-kun.” As she walked out the door, the dark-haired shinobi wondered at the return of the honorific, and whether or not it meant anything. He fell asleep that night without reaching any conclusions.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't until the next morning, when the dead last didn't pound on his door to get up at the ridiculously early hour of four that Sasuke began to wonder if perhaps the warning about using his chakra in case of emergency hadn't been for him.

 

When he limped out into the hall and saw Naruto still in his sleeping bag, covered in cold sweat, breathing shallowly and unconscious, he knew so.