Chapter 4
They left at sunrise.
No words, no fire. Just the quiet rhythm of gear being packed, cloaks shaken out, straps pulled tight. The forest around them was gray and blue, still holding the cold of night. Dew clung to their sleeves. Their breath fogged as they walked.
They didn’t talk about Sakura.
They didn’t talk about the deal she’d made or the time she’d bought them or what came next. It was all understood now. The kind of knowing that didn’t need saying.
Naruto walked beside Sasuke.
Not behind. Not in front.
Just beside.
The trees thickened as they moved south, older and taller here, the kind with roots that twisted out of the ground like bones. The light filtered through in thin columns. Birds called in soft, curious tones — not alarmed, not yet.
It felt like moving through a different world.
A world no one was watching.
Naruto caught himself glancing back once.
Just once.
He shook it off and kept walking.
They passed through a ravine near midday, the walls carved from ancient rock, smooth and layered like old parchment. A stream trickled down the center, barely enough to drink from, but they knelt beside it anyway. Sasuke filled their canteens. Naruto splashed water on his face, then sat with his back against the stone, letting the chill sink in.
“We’re farther than I’ve ever been,” he said.
Sasuke didn’t look up. “We’re not far enough yet.”
Naruto stared up at the sky — a narrow band of pale blue between cliff edges.
“You think there is a far enough?”
Sasuke didn’t answer right away. Then, quietly: “No.”
Naruto nodded like he’d expected it.
Still, he smiled. “Then I guess we just keep going.”
Sasuke finally looked at him. And whatever that look was — tired, almost soft — it stayed with Naruto long after they started moving again.
By nightfall, they found a high ridge with a view that stretched farther than anything Naruto had ever seen. Mountains in the distance, jagged and snow-brushed. A sea of trees below, so dense it looked like waves.
He stood at the edge for a long time, cloak tugged by the wind, hair messier than usual from the climb. Sasuke dropped their packs behind him and crouched to check the map he kept tucked into the lining of his bag — a half-burnt thing, more memory than ink.
“Borders are thin out here,” he said. “No villages for miles.”
Naruto nodded. “Good.”
They set up camp in the shallow dip behind the ridge. No fire tonight. Too exposed. Just the sound of the wind and the occasional snap of branches below.
Naruto lay back on his bedroll, arms folded under his head, eyes on the stars. They looked different out here. Bigger. Colder. The kind that didn’t care what you left behind.
“You ever think about what we’ll do after this?” he asked.
Sasuke didn’t answer immediately.
Naruto glanced over.
Sasuke sat with his back to a boulder, sword resting across his knees.
“After what?” he asked.
Naruto shrugged. “After running.”
Another pause.
Then: “I’m not running.”
Naruto blinked.
Sasuke looked up at the sky. “I’m walking away.”
Naruto rolled onto his side, elbow propped against the bedroll.
“You think there’s a difference?”
Sasuke’s voice was calm. “Running means you want to go back.”
Naruto didn’t say anything for a while.
Then, softly: “You don’t?”
Sasuke’s fingers tightened slightly on the sheath of his sword.
“No.”
Naruto nodded.
“Then I guess I’m walking too.”
They sat with that.
Let it settle.
Somewhere below, an owl called. The trees creaked.
Naruto reached into his pack and pulled out the last plum. It was soft now, bruised at the edges, but still good. He took a bite, then tossed the other half toward Sasuke.
Sasuke caught it without looking.
“You always do that,” Naruto said.
“Do what?”
“Catch things. Like you knew they were coming.”
“I do.”
Naruto grinned. “Show off.”
For a moment, something like peace.
Not the clean kind. Not the easy kind.
But the kind you find after surviving the first burn.
After knowing they’ll keep coming.
The days blurred.
They moved when they needed to, stopped when the wind got sharp or the ground turned too steep to cross by sunset. They didn’t count time in missions anymore — no objectives, no briefings. Just moments: the way Sasuke would tap twice on a stone to signal danger, or the way Naruto started waking before dawn without meaning to, just to make sure the space beside him was still filled.
Trust had built itself in silence. Not through promises. Just pattern. Movement. Memory.
On the fifth day after Sakura, they found a lake.
It was tucked between ridges, hidden by overgrowth and sharp descent. The water was dark, still, the kind that reflected everything back too clearly.
Naruto stood at the edge for a long time.
“You’ve been quiet,” Sasuke said behind him.
Naruto glanced over his shoulder. “We’re living in a world where being loud gets us killed.”
Sasuke didn’t smile, but his head tilted like he might have, if he were someone else.
Naruto turned back to the lake. “That’s not what you meant.”
“No.”
Naruto crouched and picked up a flat stone. He turned it in his hand. “I think I’m trying not to hope too much.”
Sasuke approached, slowly. “Hope what?”
Naruto straightened. “That this isn’t just running. That there’s something after it.”
Sasuke didn’t speak.
Naruto skipped the stone. It bounced once. Sank fast.
“I’m not good at sitting still,” he said. “I can keep moving forever. But I think I need a reason.”
“You chose this.”
“I chose you.”
Sasuke’s eyes flickered, subtle.
Naruto turned toward him fully. “So tell me if this ends.”
Sasuke didn’t move. But his voice, when it came, was low. Uncertain.
“I don’t want it to.”
It hit like a breath drawn too deep.
Naruto exhaled slowly. “Okay.”
The wind shifted the trees.
Sasuke’s gaze didn’t waver.
“I used to think I needed to destroy everything that tied me to the past,” he said. “The clan. The village. You.”
Naruto’s heart beat hard once.
Sasuke continued. “But the further we’ve gone… the more I realize the past isn’t what held me back.”
Naruto swallowed.
“It was the fear that I couldn’t have anything after it.”
Sasuke stepped closer.
“I’m not afraid of that anymore.”
Naruto looked at him — really looked — and for the first time, he saw not a rival, not a ghost, not even the boy he used to chase.
Just Sasuke.
Standing still.
Not running. Not retreating.
Present.
“I think,” Naruto said, quiet now, “you’re the only thing that ever felt real to me.”
Sasuke didn’t answer with words.
He stepped close enough for their shoulders to brush.
Naruto didn’t pull away.
They stood like that for a long time — not quite touching, not quite separate — with the lake stretched out before them and the forest at their backs.
There was no kiss.
No declarations.
Just the kind of closeness that had been carved slowly, carefully, out of pain and silence and everything they’d lost.
And everything they’d chosen, instead.
They hadn’t spoken all morning.
Not out of tension — not the kind that used to stretch between them like tripwire — but something quieter. Mutual. Reflective. They walked side by side through a high pine grove, the path soft underfoot, muffled by moss and old needles. The air was thin. The sun filtered through slowly.
Naruto moved like someone lost in thought.
Sasuke walked like someone waiting for him to speak.
It had been three days since the lake.
Three days since anything between them had shifted, held, settled.
And now it felt like the silence had grown heavier. Not painful. Just full.
Naruto finally stopped beside a wide, sloping tree. He leaned against it, arms crossed over his chest, mouth pulled tight.
“I had a dream last night,” he said.
Sasuke paused a few paces ahead, turned halfway.
Naruto didn’t look at him. “I was back home. On the rooftop near Ichiraku. You were there. And so was she.”
He didn’t say Sakura’s name. He didn’t need to.
“I was trying to talk,” Naruto went on. “Trying to say why I left. But my voice kept breaking. Like no sound would come out.”
Sasuke said nothing.
Naruto glanced at him. “You were quiet too. But I could hear what you were thinking.”
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. “And what was I thinking?”
Naruto smiled faintly. “That I was still lying. That even here, even now, I didn’t know what I wanted.”
The wind stirred through the trees, gentle and low.
Naruto looked down at his feet. “I think that’s what’s bothering me.”
Sasuke stepped closer, slow. “That you don’t know?”
“That I do.”
The silence shifted again — not broken, but sharpened.
Naruto met his eyes. “I want to stay with you.”
There was no hesitation in the words. No weight behind them either — not forced, not dramatic.
Just true.
Sasuke didn’t blink.
Naruto swallowed. “But that can’t be the whole reason I’m out here.”
He pushed off the tree and began walking again, slow and steady. Sasuke followed without needing to be asked.
“I think I need more than this,” Naruto said. “Not because you’re not enough, but because I can’t live without doing something. Without… being something.”
Sasuke’s voice was quiet. “You were always trying to become someone.”
“I still am.”
Sasuke walked in silence for a few beats.
Then: “What if that someone doesn’t fit into the world we left behind?”
Naruto turned his head. “Then maybe we make a new one.”
They reached a bluff by early evening — high and wind-swept, overlooking lowlands that shimmered with distant light. Smoke curled from a village far below. Not Konoha. Somewhere smaller. Out of reach. Out of concern.
They didn’t go down.
They sat instead, backs to the slope, watching the sun lower.
“You ever think about going back?” Naruto asked.
Sasuke tilted his head. “To fight?”
“To be heard.”
“I don’t think they want to hear us.”
“Does that mean we stop trying?”
Sasuke didn’t answer right away.
Then: “It means we stop begging.”
Naruto looked down at his hands. “That’s not what I want to do.”
“Then what?”
Naruto leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I want them to know I chose this. Not because I hate them. Not because I gave up on them. But because they made me believe there was only one way to be whole. And they were wrong.”
Sasuke stared out at the trees.
The wind picked up.
“You said once I didn’t have to stay in the dark alone,” Naruto said. “So don’t stay quiet now.”
Sasuke looked at him. “You want a reason to be here?”
“I want a purpose.”
Sasuke stood slowly, brushing dirt from his cloak. “Then we stop running.”
Naruto’s brow furrowed.
Sasuke didn’t smile, but his voice came steadier than it had in days.
“We find something worth building. Even if it’s small. Even if it’s just ours.”
Naruto stood, too.
He looked out at the horizon.
Then nodded.
“Then let’s build.”
Not a declaration.
Not a rally cry.
Just a beginning.
They saw the smoke first.
Thin and gray, barely there — rising through the trees like a thread coming undone. It drifted against the light breeze, bending west, curling up from the valley they’d avoided just two days before.
Naruto stared at it, shoulders tense.
Sasuke didn’t stop walking.
“They saw us,” Naruto said quietly.
“No,” Sasuke replied. “They let us see them.”
That changed everything.
They didn’t go toward it — not yet — but their path bent sharper now, angled away from the smoke, deeper into thicker brush and uneven terrain. It slowed them down. Made their silence heavier.
By midday, they reached a dense grove, trees packed close like ribs in a cage. The air was colder here. Still.
Sasuke paused beside a boulder, hand raised slightly, fingers open.
Naruto stopped without asking.
Then he heard it too — a whisper in the distance. Not words. Movement.
Boots.
Twelve steps. A pause. Then again.
Naruto’s pulse picked up.
He stepped closer to Sasuke. Quiet. Controlled.
“We’re being funneled.”
“Yes.”
“And it’s not ANBU.”
“No.”
Naruto exhaled, slow. “Then who?”
Before Sasuke could answer, they heard it.
Not footsteps.
Not birds.
A voice.
Familiar.
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”
They turned together.
Two figures stepped into view from between the trees — not hiding, not masked.
One was tall, built like someone who trained more than they slept. The other moved with a shinobi’s restraint, but wore no headband.
Neither smiled.
Yamato stood at the front, arms crossed, mouth drawn in a line. Behind him, a jōnin Naruto didn’t know — but recognized by the way he stood. The kind of man they didn’t send unless something needed to end cleanly.
Sasuke tensed.
Naruto stepped forward.
“Captain.”
Yamato looked at him, long and slow. “I vouched for you.”
Naruto’s throat tightened. “I know.”
“I told them it was grief. That you needed time. That you’d come back.”
Naruto didn’t speak.
Yamato’s eyes flicked to Sasuke. “They stopped listening three days ago.”
The man behind him shifted slightly. His chakra was heavy. Trained. Not experimental like ANBU — deliberate. Focused.
Sasuke’s fingers hovered near his blade.
Naruto took half a step forward. “You don’t have to do this.”
Yamato looked at him like he didn’t want to be here.
Then, like he had to be.
“They think you’ve turned,” he said. “That if they don’t act now, they’ll lose the chance to contain it.”
“Contain?”
“Your power. Your influence. Your absence.” He looked tired. “You don’t get to disappear. Not you.”
Naruto clenched his fists.
“I didn’t disappear. I left.”
Yamato nodded. “They don’t see the difference.”
Sasuke’s voice came low, steady. “Then say what you came to say.”
Yamato looked at him.
“You’re both to return with us. Now. Alive if possible.”
The silence that followed was not empty.
It rang.
Sasuke’s voice was quieter now. “And if we refuse?”
The man behind Yamato stepped forward. His chakra flickered high and sharp — just once, just enough to warn.
Yamato didn’t move.
“Then we bring your bodies back instead.”
Naruto inhaled, slow.
This was it.
No room for talk.
No loophole.
Just a choice.
He looked at Sasuke. No words passed between them.
But everything did.
They moved together.
No charge. No wild fury.
Just defense.
Naruto stepped in front — not because he needed to protect Sasuke, but because he wanted to shield the one thing he hadn’t let them take.
Sasuke’s chakra burned behind him. Cold. Focused. Controlled.
Yamato didn’t call for the attack.
He didn’t need to.
The other man was already moving — vanishing in a blur, appearing at Naruto’s right with a blade low and aimed for the gut. Naruto dodged instinctively, chakra flaring, kunai drawn, blocking the next strike.
The clash rang out like thunder between the trees.
From behind, Sasuke’s energy pulsed — a sharp, electric charge, followed by the flash of light off steel.
Naruto didn’t have time to look.
The man in front of him moved like water — not flashy, not wild, just efficient. His strikes weren’t meant to kill. They were meant to control. To wear him down.
To bring him back.
Naruto blocked another blow, spun, kicked off a tree trunk and sent a shadow clone spiraling toward the target’s back. It dispersed before it reached him.
He didn’t miss a beat.
Naruto gritted his teeth. “You don’t even know me.”
The man’s face didn’t change.
“I don’t have to.”
Sasuke let out a sharp breath behind him — not pain, not defeat. Focus.
Naruto ducked another hit, slammed his fist into the earth. A burst of chakra cracked the ground, sent roots tearing upward. The man leapt back, just barely — quick, but not untouched.
Dust clouded the air.
Naruto stood fast.
Breathing hard.
Yamato hadn’t moved.
Just watched.
And Naruto realized then — he wasn’t here to fight.
He was here to see.
To confirm.
That Naruto would resist.
That Sasuke would fight beside him.
That this bond wasn’t a phase or a mistake or something that could be talked down.
It was real.
And that meant they were enemies now.
The forest had stopped pretending to be quiet.
Birds scattered in all directions. The trees rang with the sharp sounds of chakra splitting air — stone cracking under pressure, metal clashing hard against hardened jutsu. The kind of noise that echoed even after it was over.
Naruto could feel the rhythm of the fight shifting — not a battle anymore, but a statement. Every move he made, every blow he blocked, it wasn’t about survival. It was proof.
That he would fight them.
That he would protect this — whatever he and Sasuke had become.
The jōnin came at him again, fast, precise. Naruto ducked left, slid under a punch, brought his elbow up into the man’s ribs. A solid hit, but not enough. The man moved like someone who had studied Naruto’s patterns. Someone sent for him.
From the edge of the fight, Yamato’s voice cut through the noise. Not shouting. Not calm either.
“Don’t make this worse.”
Naruto gritted his teeth. “You already did.”
He spun and drove his fist into the ground. Chakra flared, bursting up through the earth in a wave that knocked the jōnin off his feet and split a tree trunk in half behind them.
Naruto stood, panting, eyes burning.
Sasuke was behind him again — a breath away, silent as ever, his blade drawn, the edge of his cloak dark with dirt and blood. He’d already downed one attacker — pinned to a tree by a burst of raw force, not fatal, but final.
Another shadow moved in the trees.
“Two more incoming,” Sasuke said, low.
Naruto didn’t ask how he knew. He just nodded.
“I’ll take left.”
Sasuke vanished before the words had finished leaving Naruto’s mouth.
Naruto turned to intercept the second.
This one was smaller — faster. A woman, face half-covered, movements sharp and close-range. She didn’t speak. Her strikes came fast and low, two short blades flashing in each hand. Naruto blocked one, barely dodged the other, chakra surging to his palms as he twisted and shoved her back with a burst of force.
She flipped midair and landed light.
No wasted motion.
She came again.
The fight wasn’t even anymore.
Not like before — not like when they fought as a team, measured, balanced, knowing the rules.
This was survival.
It had been survival the second Yamato showed his face.
Naruto’s breath hitched. He was fast, but his body was tired — weeks of running, of building something fragile, something unspoken. He hadn’t trained for this moment. Not physically.
But he wasn’t fighting alone.
Sasuke returned in a streak of black and white, cloak billowing as he launched an arc of lightning straight through the trees. It didn’t hit anyone — not directly. But it cut a wide path between Naruto and the woman, forcing her to leap back, off-balance.
Naruto used the space. Flickered forward, slammed his palm to the ground — and this time, when the shadow clones surged from the earth, they came like a wave.
The woman tried to retreat.
Sasuke was already behind her.
His blade didn’t touch her skin.
But it stopped just under her throat.
She froze.
Then dropped her weapons.
Dust settled.
The trees were scarred.
The roots smoked.
The forest, once again, was still.
Naruto stood in the center, chest rising and falling, hands twitching at his sides.
Yamato hadn’t moved.
The jōnin was down.
The woman was disarmed.
Only Yamato remained.
Naruto turned to face him. “Still think I need saving?”
Yamato didn’t answer right away.
He looked not at Naruto — but at Sasuke.
And his expression shifted.
Not in fear. Not in anger.
But in something that looked too much like grief.
“I believed in you,” Yamato said. “Even after everything.”
Naruto swallowed hard.
“Then believe this,” he said. “I’m not coming back. Not as a weapon. Not as a symbol. Not as anything but me.”
He felt Sasuke step beside him.
Not close enough to touch.
But close enough to stand with.
Yamato nodded once.
Slow.
“I’ll report what happened.”
Naruto tensed.
“I’ll say we were outnumbered,” Yamato continued. “Unprepared.”
Sasuke’s voice was low. “Why?”
Yamato looked between them. “Because whatever happens next… this wasn’t supposed to be the end.”
He turned.
Walked into the trees.
Didn’t look back.
The forest stayed quiet.
Sasuke sheathed his blade.
Naruto’s knees nearly buckled. He sank to the ground, fists pressed to the dirt, breathing through the storm in his chest.
Sasuke stood over him, silent.
Then knelt beside him.
“Still want to build something?” he asked.
Naruto looked at him. “Yeah.”
Sasuke nodded.
Then they both looked out past the trees — toward the direction Yamato had gone.
Because next time… they wouldn’t send someone who hesitated.
And they both knew it.