The morning after
This has been beta’d by Ankaa Sage! Thank-you so much!
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Kakashi hadn't been able to sleep until late that evening. Thoughts of Naruto in the next room to his own with a boy. A boy who was years older than her. He wasn't jealous. He knew what jealousy felt like and it wasn't this. However, the feeling churning inside him was a familiar feeling.
Self-loathing.
He hated himself for not being able to say no, for not being able to deny her.
He wasn't an idiot, he knew that if he allowed Naruto to carry on the pace with him that she had set, it would only be a matter of time before he fell for her. He already felt admiration for the girl, yet he would never indulge the idea to go anywhere else. He would feel no more for her than that of a sensei. He wasn't sure when he had fallen asleep but he was awoken by a wonderful sight. Female Naruto in front of him, a tray of food in hand and dressed in the outfit she usually wore in his house. He hadn't seen her pack it so he assumed she had gone to Konoha and picked it up, for what purpose, he didn't know.
As he looked at her she gave him a wide yet sheepish grin. The food on the tray smelling to be her homemade eggplant and egg. A combination he liked for breakfast yet she hadn't made it for him, stating it made her want to puke. He silently took the tray from her, not wishing to make her sick on his account and placed it on the nightstand beside his bed, sitting at the edge as he looked at her.
She was fumbling with the back of her hair as she struggled to say something, so he opened his mouth to start talking when she raised a hand and sighed, saying, "I'm sorry about last night. I wasn't blowing you off. Shisui had every right to harm you if you kept on saying no and I never did like you telling me who I could or couldn't talk to. But mostly because of Shisui. I love both of you and don't want either of you hurt."
She stopped, unsure of what she should say next so he sighed before leaning back, arms perched behind him to hold him up, "You don't have to apologize. He's your fiancé even if he has been dead for a few years did you catch up at all last night?"
She gave a small smile as she replied, "We did. Sorta. Just me telling him a vague idea of what happened in this and my timeline. He seemed understanding yet slightly upset about the fact I chose to be with you, but like I said. He understood." she looked at him and sighed, "Are you going to eat or no?" she pointed to the food she had made him and he jostled on the bed, having forgotten it was there in the first place.
Quickly he went to grab the tray and placed it in his lap as Naruto came and removed his headband, his Sharingan eye looked into her own blue ones. Slowly she moved up the hair on his forehead and placed a kiss in the center, his eye spinning as it unwillingly recorded the moment. She kissed the tip of his scar next and made her way down, over his eyelid and stopped where his mask started, moving it down so she could lay a kiss at the end which was under it.
Her breathing was soft yet her heart was like his own, erratic. She slowly backed away from him, hand in his hair as she said, "I've gotta go koi. Before Sasuke teme burns the kitchen with his foul cooking." She let out a small laugh at her own joke and gave his cheek a kiss as he smiled at her retreating back.
He didn't notice how the self-loathing he felt had stopped as soon as he saw her.
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Sasuke stood against the wall in the back of the room with Sakura as they watched Naruto prepare for a sealing. Gaara lay unconscious on a stone dais as she used ink and her blood as a conductor. When she had explained what she was going to use, Sakura and he had questioned why she would do that, yet Kakashi had replied blood was a better conductor for funinjutsu.
She went around the dais on her knees as she made the seal, it led up to Gaara's stomach which bared her seal and Lady Chiyo's seal. Said lady was standing on the opposite side of the room with the Kazekage and members of the ANBU.
Kakashi wasn't too far from Naruto, yet was far enough to allow her to draw the seal. It was a very intricate design to it, so all he could read was swirls and scribbles. He had never thought of how hard fuinjutsu truly was until he saw Naruto doing it in front of him. He would never call her an idiot and mean it ever again.
He and Sakura stood quietly, allowing his thoughts to return to his not-so-dead cousin. This morning at breakfast Naruto, Shisui and Kakashi explained how Shisui had been kept in a laboratory human tube which was why he hadn't aged, the liquid prevented it.
When he asked them how he was alive in the first place, stating that the UPF had harassed Itachi about having found the body Shisui had said he had been placed under a long period of stasis as well as a jutsu giving the illusion of death. The person who was under the jutsu stasis had a very slow heartbeat, hardly enough to be detected yet enough to keep him alive.
The timely demise of the Uchiha clan had aided the person who had concocted this plan, and when asked who it was, Shisui had merely shrugged saying the first thing he remembered was being in a wide open area on his own, far away from civilization.
He stopped his musings when he heard an ear piercing scream coming from Gaara. He had been so lost in thought he hadn't seen Naruto perform her hand signs but he had his Sharingan activated so he could always re-watch what she had done.
Everyone besides Sakura and Sasuke seemed calm as if this were a day to day occurrence. Gaara had been strapped down to the dais before-hand and was writhing, clearly wanting to hold onto his head but couldn't. He held back a cringe as he screamed, his voice echoing around the room slash dungeon they were in. Within the screams, he could hear a deep voice let out screams as well.
The combination of the ear-piercing and deep throaty yet crackly screams was an odd one, and he couldn't stop from holding his head between his hands as he ground his teeth together from pain. He couldn't even imagine how much pain one would
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Naruto stood calmly on the outside yet restless and antsy on the outside. She hadn't thought the proper sealing of Shukaku would hurt so much. In her own time, Shukaku had requested to be returned to Gaara and vice versa, and when she had sealed him in, he hadn't been in as much pain as he was now.
Looking discreetly at her seal she noticed no flaws in her design, it was as good as what her parents could do combined. She was their daughter and had taken a keen interest in the sealing arts since a young age.
She snuck a glance at the people in the room before activating her Sharingan. Therein she saw the flaw. Gaara and Shukaku were denying each other. She mentally cursed before doing an array of hand signs and hit the ground, allowing another seal to go on top of the new one, forcing them to merge into one.
She saw the Kazekage and Lady Chiyo move forward a step each, yet stopped as Gaara's cries ceased at once. Happy she had stopped her old friend from suffering she checked the final seal on Gaara's stomach and was happy to see her original design there as well as the last minute tweak. Slowly, everyone approached the two jinchuriki, Rasa speaking up first, "You did something halfway that wasn't in the designs. What was that?" he gave her a small glare, clearly not wanting to accuse her and not sure how to word it so.
She found it rather ironic that the man who had called for the assassination of his youngest child so many times could actually care about him. But she assumed he cared more about her having done something bad that would lead to a crazy Shukaku and thereby destroy Suna.
Like she would ever.
"It was a bit of incentive, you could say." She started as the whole of team 7 stood behind her, "Gaara and Shukaku weren't allowing themselves to fully merge so I coerced slash forced them to do so. I hadn't thought they would put up as much of a fight as they did. Hence all the screaming he and Shukaku did." She was slightly out of breath and gave thanks to the ANBU that gave her a cup of water and a seat. Sealing a demon was tiring. Even if he was already sealed.
Lady Chiyo was the next to speak up, "You are quite young for a fuinjutsu master. Tell me, what is your name?"
Naruto raised a brow and shrugged a shoulder before replying, "I'm Naruto Uzumaki. My Uzumaki blood is probably what makes funinjutsu easier to learn, but it could be because of many things." Lady Chiyo gazed at her in a cool and decisive manner. Trying to understand something that was far above the human realm of understanding. Naruto was and always will be, an enigma to this world.
She suddenly started to heavily cough. Hunching forwards she placed a hand in front of her mouth, not wishing to spread germs. She could feel a person press the front of her chest and another pressing the opposite side on the back. After a few moments, she stopped and saw her hand covered in blood, requesting someone get her another cup of water and cloth. Everyone stared at her wishing to ask her their own questions, yet Sakura beat them to the punch, "Naruto are you okay? You just coughed out a lot of blood."
She gave her a smile as she leaned back in her chair, "I'm fine Sakura. Heavy sealing like this one takes a toll on a person, especially since I placed an extra one on his old one. Cancelling it out whilst keeping it in place. Also, I used a lot of blood for the sealing." she once again shrugged and gave a smile and small thanks to the ANBU who gave her some more water and a wet cloth to wipe away the blood.
She looked the Kazekage in the eye as she spoke, "Gaara will be asleep for a few hours. I can't be sure but it should be over five or maybe even six hours. He'll be disoriented but will also be able to easily draw onto Shukaku's powers with very little trouble or consequence. There should be no other side effects so if you notice anything, don't attack and just call for me. Better yet." she reached into her back pocket and handed a pronged kunai that looked almost the same as her father's own version of it. "Throw this onto the floor with a minimal amount of chakra and I'll come via hiraishin. Now, any questions?"
When she received shaken heads she internally sighed in relief and after a few moments, team 7 made their way back to their temporary home. As soon as they arrived, Naruto was the first to sit unceremoniously on the sofa just as Shisui popped his head through her bedroom door. Raising a brow he spoke, "Everything alright?" he made his way into the living area, paying no mind to the stiffening shoulders of Naruto's team.
She gave him a small smile and nodded affirmative, which he doubted slightly and activated his Sharingan only to see she had used more chakra than she clearly expected during whatever she had been doing today. Other than that, he saw no abnormalities and deactivated his eyes, giving everyone a smile as he asked how they too were doing.
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Sakura would admit to many things, pointedly her flaws, especially since her blonde teammate had taken to pointing them out every so often in a 'none spiteful' manner. She admitted to being weak. To being quite useless at first but she liked to believe she was making progress in being useful. She admitted to being a very active fangirl over Sasuke, yet she had dimmed it down considerably. In fact, one could compare her to Rin from Team Minato if they ever knew her. She was also dense in some areas but not many.
It was the very last one that was her current focus. She may have been the only one of team 7 to not have some sort of doujutsu, (A/N Naruto's being Kurama's eyes) but even she could see the tension between the males and blonde female.
She also knew why or presumed to know why. Having a presumed dead man of five years, who was one person fiancé and another's cousin as well as one of the latter's only living relatives made things very awkward. She had tried her best to ease the tension by starting a conversation here and there or even commenting on other conversations and everything would seem okay.
That was to say until Kakashi sensei spoke up. For whatever reason the man really, really hated him. No, hate was too strong a word. Disliked was more of an accurate description of Kakashi sensei's feelings for the elder Uchiha.
Sakura may be slightly dense but was considerably less so than Sasuke. However, she could not understand where their sensei was coming from with this dislike. After hearing his story even Sasuke had forgiven him. Sasuke. Who, on their first team meet up on the roof, had declared it a goal in life to kill a certain someone who Naruto had later identified to be his brother. Although she had already known that, having found out during her quest to know more about the boy. Yet that was not her focus.
She didn't understand whenever Shisui stood close to Naruto, touched her, spoke fondly to her, smiled at her and so on, he would glare with his single revealed eye. It wasn't as if Shisui was some sort of stalker or pedophile trying to coerce her into gracing his bed- no he was her fiancé and had every right to act how he did.
Naruto also seemed to pick up on this odd behavior of their sensei and had taken to be a bit friendlier to him and it seemed a bit of the tension that had been coiling in his shoulders eased out of him, but not all the tension left.
She sighed at the same time Sasuke had. She looked at him and asked why he had sighed and his reply had been, "Kakashi and Shisui are acting like kids, It's not befitting an Uchiha."
Sakura did very little to stifle her giggle as Sasuke had done little to say the sentence quietly. Granted, he was talking to her in a quiet manner, yet that did nothing to stop Shisui from hearing it and tensing as well as Naruto who merely scoffed and said, "Anata likes to act and believe he's the perfect little Uchiha but really he just-" he never got a chance to finish off his sentence as Shisui clamped a hand over her mouth before whispering something into her ear which lead him to remove his hand and for her to pout with a feint shade of pink dusting her cheeks and cross her arms.
Had it been any other situation, Sakura may have laughed, yet she was currently being suffocated by the annoyance and irritation as well as other emotions leaking off their jonin sensei. Their jonin sensei who had been in the ANBU black ops for years as well as the student of the yondaime Hokage. She wasn't sure what to feel. As far as she was aware jonin held back their emotions to a certain degree yet here he was, showing it to the world. Metaphorically of course.
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The sandaime was an old man who had lived through three wars, having lead two of them. He had buried his sensei and wife, became Hokage and thereby made several bad and inauspicious orders.
One of his more noteworthy ones was when he ordered the destruction of Kannabi Bridge, leading to the mental breakdown of one of his finest shinobi. Another was not being there when Kushina gave birth, he believed he could have been of some assistance had he been there despite how old he was then.
Yet the one that would truly haunt him for the rest of his days and in the afterlife was ordering a 13-year-old boy to murder all of his clan. Itachi had and always will be a gentle and genius soul. Kind and caring. He placed the safety of the village he loved over the clan he loved.
Having grown up during the third war and seeing what it had caused, he strived to be a better shinobi in order to bring peace. Yet he had never anticipated his clan planning a coup. He often entertained the idea of allowing Fugaku and the elders to kill him. At least the clan would be alive and Itachi could be happy as could be within the village he loved.
As he read the latest update from the boy he had named an S rank criminal, he felt his age truly reach him. Itachi had found Orochimaru and detained him. The sannin and suddenly vanished from Akatsuki some time ago yet was still a member as far as he recalled. So, Itachi was currently awaiting orders on what he should do.
He took out a small scroll and brush to start a reply yet found he was unable to do so. Despite everything he had done, Orochimaru was still his student and a close friend of Jiraiya's. Yet at the same time, he was an S rank criminal in Akatsuki who could kill and or extract the nine tails from Naruto, subsequently killing her.
He believed he had no other choice than to order Itachi to get any and all possible information he could from the snake sannin and then kill him. It was only after he had written his reply and sent the crow with it that Homura, Koharu, and Danzo entered looking less than pleased.
He sighed knowing he would not be returning home anytime soon.