Chapter 2
They walked without speaking for most of the morning.
The path was uneven, barely a path at all — more like the memory of one, carved into the ground by animals or fugitives long gone. Branches scraped their shoulders. Brambles caught the edges of Naruto’s pants. The sun filtered through the trees in fractured lines, warm and gold and too quiet.
Naruto adjusted his hitai-ate once, then didn’t touch it again. It felt heavier now. Not because of its weight, but because it didn’t mean the same thing anymore.
He glanced at Sasuke’s profile.
Still expressionless.
Still focused.
The way he always looked when he was thinking too hard and didn’t want anyone to know.
Naruto didn’t say anything. Not yet.
By midday, they reached a small stream. Sasuke knelt and filled a canteen. Naruto crouched beside him, splashing water on his face, letting the cold sink in.
“You always know where to go,” he said finally.
Sasuke capped the bottle. “I plan.”
“You always did.” Naruto straightened up, wiping his face on his sleeve. “I didn’t bring anything. Not even a toothbrush.”
Sasuke didn’t respond.
“I guess I didn’t think that far ahead.”
Sasuke glanced at him then — a quick flick of the eyes, not judgment, not pity. Just awareness.
“I didn’t expect you to come,” he said.
Naruto blinked. “Then why’d you ask?”
Sasuke turned away. “I thought you’d say no.”
Naruto gave a crooked smile. “Maybe I should’ve.”
Sasuke stood, slinging the canteen over his shoulder. “But you didn’t.”
And that was that.
They moved again, slower this time. The trees began to thin, the sun climbing higher. The world felt wider out here, farther from the Leaf than Naruto had ever been without a mission scroll or teammates at his side.
Now it was just Sasuke.
That fact kept pressing itself into his ribs.
There was no plan. Not really. He didn’t know where they were going or what they were going to do when they got there. He didn’t even know what Sasuke wanted from him beyond don’t stay there.
But he kept walking.
And Sasuke let him.
They stopped when they reached a ridgeline that overlooked a sea of forest. Hills rolled out beneath them, deep green and shadowed, nothing but wilderness in every direction.
Sasuke sat on a fallen tree, long and pale with rot. He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees. His eyes were on the horizon.
Naruto hovered behind him, then slowly lowered himself onto the trunk a few feet away.
The wind tugged at his sleeves.
For a while, they said nothing.
Then Naruto asked, “What now?”
Sasuke’s gaze didn’t shift. “We keep moving.”
“To where?”
“South.”
“Why?”
“I need time.”
Naruto frowned. “Time for what?”
Sasuke didn’t answer.
Not right away.
Then, finally: “To figure out who I am without them watching.”
Naruto let that sink in.
He didn’t push.
“I get that,” he said, after a while. “Even if I don’t know what that looks like.”
“It doesn’t have to look like anything,” Sasuke said. “Not yet.”
Naruto leaned back on his hands. The bark was soft, flaking under his palms. “You think they’ll come after us?”
Sasuke’s eyes narrowed. “Not right away.”
“And after that?”
“They’ll wait to see what you do.”
Naruto snorted. “I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
“You’re here,” Sasuke said, voice low. “That’s already a choice.”
Naruto looked over. Sasuke wasn’t looking at him. Just the horizon. But his jaw was tight. His hands were still.
“Do you regret it?” Naruto asked.
Sasuke was quiet for a long time.
Then: “No.”
Naruto nodded. “Me either.”
They sat with that.
The wind changed.
Somewhere in the distance, birds scattered from the trees — wings cutting through the quiet, sharp and sudden.
Sasuke tensed just slightly. Naruto noticed.
“You think someone’s tracking us?”
“Maybe.”
“You think you could take them?”
Sasuke didn’t answer.
Naruto grinned. “You think I could?”
Sasuke looked at him then, finally — really looked.
Naruto’s grin faltered a little under the weight of it.
“I think,” Sasuke said slowly, “you’re still trying to prove you deserve to be here.”
Naruto looked down.
The grin was gone now.
Maybe it was true.
Maybe he didn’t know who he was out here, without the Leaf under his feet. Without teammates. Without orders. Without people to protect.
But Sasuke had said I didn’t want to do this alone.
And that was enough for now.
So he nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I am.”
He stood.
“Let’s keep going.”
Sasuke stood, too.
And they walked.
No destination.
No map.
Just forward.
They found an abandoned shack just before sunset.
It was half-collapsed, slumped against a hill and nearly swallowed by ivy. The roof was bowed in the middle and the front wall leaned forward like it might fall with the next heavy wind, but it was dry inside, and that was enough.
Naruto nudged the door open with his foot. It groaned and stuck halfway through the motion. He gave it a harder push, and the wood splintered at the hinges. The noise made a crow startle from a tree nearby.
Sasuke stepped past him into the dark.
The space was musty, hollow, filled with the smell of wet leaves and ash from a long-dead fire. A few broken crates lined one wall. Some blankets were piled in a corner, covered in mildew. Sasuke didn’t touch them.
He moved to the hearth, crouched, and ran his fingers through the cold ashes. Naruto stood by the threshold for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, before crossing to the back and opening what used to be a window. The shutters had rotted, but it gave the room enough light to see the dust in the air.
They didn’t speak as they settled in.
Sasuke sat on the floor with his back to the wall, knees up, one arm slung loosely across them. Naruto dropped his weight near the doorway, stretching his legs out and exhaling long through his nose.
His body ached. Not from battle, but from the kind of tired that followed too much silence.
After a while, he said, “We could’ve gone farther today.”
Sasuke didn’t look at him. “We could’ve.”
“You stopping for me?”
“No.”
Naruto gave a tired smirk. “Sure.”
He leaned his head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. Through a crack in the roof, he could see a thin slice of sky. Gray-blue. Fading.
The quiet settled between them again, heavy but not sharp.
Naruto closed his eyes.
“You used to sleep like this a lot, didn’t you?” he asked after a moment.
Sasuke didn’t answer right away. The pause was long enough Naruto almost thought he wouldn’t.
Then: “Sometimes.”
Naruto opened one eye. Sasuke’s face was angled down, unreadable.
“It wasn’t always bad,” he added. “Just quiet.”
Naruto nodded once, slow.
“Better than an empty apartment,” he said.
That earned him a glance.
Sasuke didn’t say anything. But the look lingered.
Naruto shifted, suddenly restless.
“Do you regret leaving?”
“Which time?”
Naruto blinked. “There was more than one?”
Sasuke leaned his head back against the wall. “Every time I didn’t say what I meant.”
The air pulled taut.
Naruto stared at him. His heart beat too hard for the stillness in the room.
“You think this is going to work?” he asked, quieter now.
“What?”
“Us. Out here. Whatever this is.”
Sasuke didn’t blink.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I wanted you here.”
It wasn’t romantic.
It wasn’t soft.
But it landed.
Naruto looked away, swallowing thickly. He picked at the hem of his sleeve, pulling a loose thread.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he muttered.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
Naruto let out a breath. “You didn’t ask me anything.”
Sasuke’s gaze dropped. “Would you have come if I had?”
Naruto shrugged. “Guess we’ll never know.”
They fell quiet again.
The breeze outside shifted. Something creaked in the wall.
Sasuke’s voice, when it came next, was low and even. “You’re not a prisoner.”
Naruto looked up.
“I’m not keeping you here,” Sasuke said.
Naruto didn’t respond right away.
Then he got to his feet.
Crossed the short space between them.
And sat beside him.
Not across the room. Not near the door.
Right there. Close.
“I know,” Naruto said.
He rested his forearms on his knees, their postures nearly mirrored. “But I’m still here.”
They didn’t look at each other.
They didn’t need to.
Somewhere outside, a fox barked once in the dark. The wind picked up. The trees shifted against each other.
Sasuke leaned his head back against the wall. “You snore.”
Naruto scoffed. “You’re imagining things.”
“I’m not.”
“I sleep like a professional.”
Sasuke let out a sound — soft and sharp, not quite a laugh but close.
Naruto smiled into the space between them.
They didn’t talk again for the rest of the night.
But when they lay down — back to back, not touching, not too far apart — the silence between them wasn’t the kind that pushed.
It was the kind that held.
The ground was soft from old water, the kind that didn’t rise to the surface anymore, but clung below — making the grass bend wet and slow under their steps. They’d been walking most of the morning, barely speaking, though the silence wasn’t tense. Just practical. They had distance to cover. They didn’t waste energy.
Sasuke led without saying he was leading. Naruto followed without asking where they were going.
Eventually they reached a stretch of low cliffs where the trees broke open. A river cut through the valley below, shallow but fast-moving. It glittered in the sun.
Sasuke crouched at the edge of the drop, scanning the terrain. Naruto flopped down on a wide, flat rock nearby, breath catching at the brightness of it all. The green. The warmth. For the first time since they’d left, it didn’t feel like the world was closing in.
Sasuke’s shadow moved across the stone.
“We’ll camp near the bend,” he said. “Off the ridge.”
Naruto nodded, eyes still on the river. “You ever think about going west?”
Sasuke glanced over.
“Like… way west,” Naruto said. “Where no one knows your name. No one gives a damn about what you did.”
Sasuke didn’t answer right away.
“I don’t want to be forgotten,” he said eventually.
Naruto sat up. “Yeah?”
“I want to be remembered correctly.”
That landed heavier than it should’ve. Naruto’s chest pulled a little too tight.
“You think people will do that?”
Sasuke didn’t look at him. “No.”
Naruto lay back on the rock, arm folded under his head. “Then why run?”
“Because staying doesn’t change it either.”
They let the wind speak for a while.
A hawk cut a wide arc overhead.
“Do you think they hate me?” Naruto asked suddenly.
Sasuke glanced down at him. “No.”
“Liar.”
“I think they don’t know what to do with you now.”
Naruto closed his eyes. “That’s worse.”
Neither of them spoke for a long time after that.
They set up camp a short walk from the river, where the tree roots grew thick and curved into natural divots in the ground. Sasuke cleared a space for a fire. Naruto gathered wood.
It felt strangely familiar — like a mission without a scroll. They moved in sync without needing to coordinate. They didn’t step on each other’s rhythm.
By late afternoon, the sky began to shift. Not the color of storm, but something cooler. Thicker air. A warning breeze.
They’d just finished eating when the sound came.
Subtle. A snap of brush, too clean to be animal.
Sasuke stood instantly.
Naruto was already reaching for his kunai.
Out of the trees came a man — not old, not young, tall, unbothered. Missing-nin, by the look of the half-scratched headband and the wide, dispassionate eyes. He carried a curved blade at his hip and moved like someone who didn’t need it yet.
Sasuke’s stance shifted. “Alone?”
The man stopped five paces from the fire. “Didn’t come for a fight.”
Sasuke said nothing.
Naruto straightened slowly, stepping beside him.
“Just heard there were two rogue Leaf shinobi moving this way. Thought I’d see if the rumors were true.”
“Congratulations,” Naruto said dryly. “You found us.”
The man’s eyes rested on Sasuke. “Uchiha.”
Sasuke didn’t react.
Then the man’s gaze moved to Naruto.
“The Nine-Tails,” he said.
Naruto’s shoulders went tight.
“Interesting pair,” the man said. “Didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to come with him.”
Naruto didn’t blink. “Didn’t ask for your opinion.”
The man smiled. “You won’t last. Not without the village. Not with him.”
The words were flat. Not cruel. Just certain.
And that — that certainty — was what made something in Naruto snap.
He didn’t move, not visibly, but his chakra spiked sharp and sudden. The fire snapped with it, flames licking higher for a breath before dropping back down.
The man took a step back. Not afraid. But wary.
“You can go now,” Naruto said.
The man looked between them again.
“You don’t belong out here,” he said. “Neither of you.”
Then he turned and walked into the trees, silent as he came.
Sasuke didn’t move until the man was gone.
Naruto’s jaw was locked. His fists had curled without him noticing.
“You good?” Sasuke asked quietly.
“I’m fine.”
But his voice was hoarse.
They didn’t eat the rest of their food. The fire burned lower. The air felt wrong.
Later, when the light dimmed, Naruto sat with his back to a tree and stared into the woods.
Sasuke crouched beside him, checking the edges of his blade. He didn’t speak.
Then, out of nowhere:
“Why did that bother you?”
Naruto didn’t answer.
Sasuke waited.
Finally, Naruto exhaled. “Because he said it like it was already true.”
Sasuke’s hand stilled.
Naruto didn’t look at him. “That I wouldn’t last. That I don’t belong. Like the second I walked away, it was already over.”
His fingers dug into his knees. “I don’t regret it. But sometimes… I don’t know what I’m supposed to be anymore.”
Sasuke didn’t speak right away.
Then, softly: “You’re still Naruto.”
Naruto laughed, bitter. “Yeah? What’s that worth without the headband?”
Sasuke didn’t say anything.
But when he sat beside him — not just near, but close — Naruto didn’t pull away.
They stayed that way until the trees went dark.
No promises.
No plans.
Just the weight of knowing someone was still there when everything else had fallen apart.