Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ None the Wiser ❯ Hurts You More ( Chapter 11 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Faced with the lockdown of the school, Naruto is forced to crush a few of his bad memories (and perhaps even a few of Public Enemy Number One, Uchiha Sasuke) in order to rescue something precious to him.

Anime/Manga: Naruto Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Angst | Type: Yaoi | Uploaded On: 03.03.2007 | Pages: 26 | Words: 26.7K | Visits: 1.1K | Status: Work In Progress

Title: None the Wiser

Author: The Uke Reformation

Genre: Naruto

Subgenre: Romance/Angst

Summary: There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...NaruSasuNaru, yaoi.

Rated: R for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

Author's Note: Okay. In all seriousness, I am really really really really sorry. This took forever, and I think we both know it. But c'mon - that cliffhanger was impossible. And I have just officially - OFFICIALLLY - died of homework abuse. Have some sympathy. (This chapter's theme song is `Waters of Nazareth' by Justice.)

Note: You're right - it IS a bad, ultra-confusing, superangsty!attempt at a homosexual romance novel. :D

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None the Wiser

By The Uke Reformation

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Chapter 11

" Hurt you more

than it hurts me. “

To say the atmosphere was charged would not have given it due justice. Of course, it was charged - there is rarely a lockdown that has taken place that did not cause a bit of tension among a given student body. But charged was not enough of an adjective. It was taught and high-strung and it was as if strings of wire were biting into the soft skin of Naruto's stomach.

And to say that Naruto was worried didn't give the feeling due justice either. He wasn't worried - not close, even, not really. Naruto was beneath a desk with one of his oldest, dearest friends, wondering if around thirty-three children he was responsible for were alright, and listening to silence as hard as he was able.

Naruto was bordering on panic mode.

Naruto had an unearthly aversion to guns just because of all the things he'd experienced; it wasn't that he was frightened of them, that they made him shake, or that they made him so nervous he couldn't think. That was, of course, because Naruto understood that guns were only bits of machinery that were relatively useless unless the person behind them knew what they were doing.

But, in the face of someone who did, Naruto reverted into something he did not recognize as himself. He morphed into something frightened and frightening as such, more of a body than a person, and started thinking with his bones, rather than his mouth, like he usually did. In the face of someone who knew how to use a gun, Naruto was more chicken shit than anything else, and he knew it.

He clenched and unclenched his hands tightly, staring out at the door from under the desk, his skin a sickly sort of pale, and clammy. Every bit of his psyche was running around in circle, every piece of his brain screaming at him a different set of directions.

All of his self-preservation instincts were most prominent, and fighting desperately against every other fiber of him. He noticed, haphazardly, that their arguments were getting stronger. Death seemed more frightening than ever, as a prospect, and the gun-fear was also cause for alarm, and his brain ruled that against him. If he was sane at all, it reasoned, he would stay here, where it was safe. The kids would be fine. They were alright.

But every `whatif' that ran through his blood told him otherwise. It was his job to protect them; it was his duty if he was going to be all saintly about it. He was their collective guardian for one hour of the day and to not go back to them in their time of need was to let them down. It was to leave them high and dry at a time when it most certainly was not kind, nor safe to do so.

The cold wood of the desk he was pressed up under was uncomfortable to sit against and he craned his neck around it, looking out at Iruka's classroom and into the scared, worried eyes that looked back at him. Green, black, brown and blue surrounded by varied degrees of skin color, but all with the same expression, the same, communal feeling of being helpless in the face of dire circumstances.

There was pang in his gut, and Naruto recognized it as guilt. Only having sat still for a few seconds more than a minute, he felt guilty for leaving his own kids to face that alone. He was both vexed with his situation and angry at himself for not having thought about it earlier, but he was unsure of what to do about it. The door was locked and he couldn't just go back the way he had come. He didn't want to draw attention to his students. The whole idea of a lock down was that the populous of a school vanished in the eyes of an oncoming predator. To draw attention to them would be to blow everyone's cover.

A hand on his, warm and calloused, made him jump, and he promptly banged his already aching head against the desk under which he was concealed, light exploding in the back of his eyes. He swore, and grabbed at the top of his head, where it hurt the most.

Iruka looked startled at his reaction. “Naruto, are you alright…?”

Naruto grunted, not quite able to reply. His friend blinked at him, concern showing through every corner of his scarred face.

“…fine,” he said after a minute. Spots flew across his insides, and the pain against his skull felt swirled, dilated and dizzy. Everything was multi-color and tie-dye, and then monochrome, and then in and out and then back to normal. He scrubbed at his hair, hoping to distract the pain of the dealt blow via moving-in-a-distracted-fashion.

Iruka didn't look assured, but (well-versed as he was) did not make a habit of providing the same law more than once (except in extremely special occasions.)

“…are you…?” The dolphin peered at his face.

“Worried…? Yeah.”

Iruka watched him.

“…did you lock them in?”

Naruto blinked and closed his eyes then, squeezing them closed and thinking hard. Of course he had. …well, he hadn't. But he'd sent Neji back to—

He balked, feeling the weight of his keys pressed into the fabric of his back pocket.

Oh shit.

Iruka seemed to see the negative charge come off of him and stared.

“Naruto…”

Said Uzumaki strangled the notion to scream in frustration, and clocked the time it took him to breath out, holding in as long he could, trying to get his nerves to calm down. This was bad. Damn it. Damn it. This wasn't supposed to happen - how could he have forgotten something like that? How irresponsible could he—

Calm down, calm down. They're fine, they're fine.

Iruka squeezed his hands.

“Iruka, I have to go.”

His friend's voice tightened to a low, strained hiss. “You can't! You have to wait it out…”

Naruto dragged his hand out Iruka's grasp, though, self-assured, the feeling buckling down in his chest. He wasn't a person to sport false heroics; he couldn't leave them unattended like this. His door wasn't locked and they had no one to defend them; he trusted them, but this no longer counted as worry or concern. This counted as something vital.

He needed to go.

He clamored up and Iruka scrambled after him. The blonde was almost up before the brunet with which he was paired caught up with him, and took hold of his arm, holding him half-way down.

“Naruto, you can't go out there!”

“Iruka,” Naruto hissed back at him, aware of the eyes on them and only halfway up, somewhere between being off balance and upright. “Let go!”

“Naruto, I'm serious. You cannot go out there.”

“Iruka—” Naruto didn't have time to argue.

“What's going on?” Sakura's voice was terse, strung out as if over several feet. She had hurried down the aisle to stand before them, face twisted in a mix of anger and nervousness. Her hair (short and pink as always) came forward, skewed across her wide forehead (loosed from the band she kept the rest of it behind.) She looked frazzled, in a word.

“Haruno-san!” Iruka hissed, wildly. “Go sit with your classmates! We're in a—”

“I have to get out of here, Sakura. My class—”

“—lockdown! You have to follow procedures to a—”

“—is in a lot of trouble and I need to—”

“—tee! It's too dangerous!” Iruka spun on him.

”—go!”

“Stop talking, both of you!” Sakura shushed them with a quick and sharp-edged tone, coupled with a look that stung. (It was the rough equivalent to a dowse of cold water when one was sound asleep, Naruto figured. Speaking of which, he thought, rubbing at his scalp again, his head still hurt quite a bit. Wonder how much sleep I got last night.) She turned to the blonde looking as if she expected a clearer explanation. (Behind her, her classmates were starting to look less worried and more distracted by the escalating clash of opinions in the front of the room.)

Naruto opened his mouth, fully intending to speak on his defense.

He was interrupting by the loud speaker which shrieked as it came on again, and then went silent. There was a second of air and then a muffled boom, as if the microphone had been dropped.

“Naruto-niisan!”

Naruto eyes bulged, his jaw went slack, and his stomach turned to ice.

No.

“Naruto-niisan, help me! Where are you!”

Oh God.

His heart had fallen out, he was sure of it. Fallen out, made of glass, and shattered on the floor, shattered into half a bazillion pieces he could not see. His brain spun in somersaults and writhed as it groped for them fruitlessly. His hands clenched, skin chilled.

“Help me!”

This can't be happening.

Iruka's voice was trembling, as Naruto shook like he would seize at any moment.

“Inari-kun…!”

Naruto's brain was steeped in panic then, and he screamed.

“INARI!”

“Naruto-nii, the office-they—”

And then they heard the shot.

It was deafening, but short. A whipcrack, a well-aimed blast from what was probably a revolver. There was a collective scream from the student body and Naruto yelled his nephew's name, hearing Sakura slap hands over her mouth. (“No!!”)

There were a few moments of deafening silence before Naruto made out Inari's distant panicked sobs and yells; he'd obviously been moved from the PA (probably been forcibly thrown from it, scared by the blast which, by the way it echoed and the way he could still hear the rough movements on the other side, had not hit anything - “No!” Inari screamed, “No! Naruto-nii! Help me!” Another person with a rough voice he could not make out said something and his nephews yells were suddenly muffled.) Naruto yelled his name again and again, as it it would do something.

“INARI! INARI!”

He went unacknowledged, and the PA continued to emit dampered sounds of a short scuffle before someone else came near it and cleared their throat. Naruto's own went dry, frightened by the fact that whoever it was came across as being completely at ease, their breath even and soft.

“Hello, Konohagakure Academy,” they said lightly. ”It is my duty to inform you that you have become the subject of a hostile takeover, courtesy of my partner and our associates. Please stay where you are and disregard anything and everything you think you have just heard.”

Wait a second.

“While I cannot inform you as to how long it is estimated this procedure will last—”

Naruto knew that voice.

“—I might warn all teachers that land lines have been severed and cell phone calls will be monitored—”

He couldn't place it, but it was right on the tip of his brain. (Why did it make his stomach churn…?)

“—and, knowledgeable as we are of your locations, it is advisable that they be turned off until it is announced we are taking our leave. Furthermore—”

He balked.

“—I would ask that everyone remain where they are—”

A voice that was unfathomably smooth, a girl's voice that fit a boy's throat, a ball gown for the Prince of the Rose, an alcoholic beverage that tasted only like fruit.

“—as my associates are rather unpredictable.”

No.

His own voice was sad and stuck against his tongue.

“Haku.”

His brain and body went into lockdown, and he bolted for the door. (Iruka's belated yells only half caught up with him.) He threw it open and was down the hallway before anything stuck, before anything registered. (Before it registered that he was running full tilt down the hallway of a school filled with men and guns, and that one of his students apparently had his nephew in the office at gunpoint.)

This shouldn't be happening.

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The tile hallways were abandoned, as well they should be, and Naruto's brain was swimming. He slammed into a turn and dashed down the hall. Of course, there was the slight dilemma that he had yet to decide where he was going.

Fucking hell.

He couldn't help it; his psyche had been completely overturned in the matter of the few moments it had taken to register Haku's voice over the loudspeaker. The sweat was soaking him, his shirt and pants bunching and sliding against him violently as he moved, and it was a sheen that was greasy and cold, so cold it gave him a headache. (His head was throbbing, as if someone were beating it with a metal rod from the inside; his blood rushed inside his skin, and he was sickly in pallor, stark white and panicked and running as fast as he could in no general direction.)

This was hell; this was panic. This is what he'd escaped almost five years ago, this constant terror, this constant blindness. This constant, white-ended vision that inspired unnecessary rushing and rash actions and false honesty and all villainous things in men was what he'd tried to escape from. This panic was the panic of something hunted, of something that valued only its life. (In Naruto's case, the panic of something that wanted only to protect what it could, what it had promised to. He could not let them down. He could not let them get hurt.)

His footsteps were foolishly placed, but he was good at staying upright. (He always had been, even if he was easily bent into strange positions. He didn't like the feel of collapsing.) He was careful, having fallen back on that mindset because he knew too well what he was doing, knew how to minimize the sound of his footfalls (heel, toe, heel, toe, scrupulous and quick) until he was almost padded in the way he ran, so that even when he skidded around corners he made almost no sound.

This is all happening too fast.

He knew he had to get somewhere, and fast. He should've taken something with him from Iruka's classroom, something with which he could defend himself, and he knew it, but he had no time to regret it, and so - instead - he decided that he would have to make up for it by finding one now, and fast. He was a fast runner, a good runner (he worked hard at it, too), but that wouldn't be half enough to help him if he got paired up with anything even half resembling an AK-47.

So, the plan was to find sanctuary. The plan was to find a place to hide, a place well stocked with something that was similar in nature to a blunt object, or a knife, or (if he was lucky) he could steal Asuma's handgun. (He knew where he kept it, under the false bottom of the second drawer of the cabinet in the backroom.)

But Naruto was not a very lucky person - he was not counting on it. (He estimated that a piece of pipe would suffice…probably. Assuming he was actually insane enough to contemplate the continuance of these antics, armed only with a metal pipe and what limbs he could consider useful. Of course, it would be a different kind of insanity to consider leaving Inari to his own devices. Naruto was not the latter type of insane. He made a conscious decision not to think about the first part.)

Rows of dark green lockers zoomed past him in a blur (rather, he sped past them, feet moving soundlessly as he bid them to) and his world was a narrow spot, panoramic, absorbed with the sound of his own breathing, and his own fear. God he hoped Inari was alright. He spun around a corner.

Inari…

There was a surge, a sick, tight one that tasted terrible, and his stomach flopped and clenched. He was cold and his skin pulsed with contorted, panicked energy (adrenaline and testosterone to fuel his unending movements and harsh breathing.) There was an unending fear in him, and he was angry and confused and assaulted by fear and nostalgia all at the same time, in a way that made him want to vomit, in a way that made him want to speed up.

Instead, he skidded to a halt, trying to gather his bearings. (He'd taken the long way around the bathrooms, trying to get to his own classroom from Iruka's without going outside, which was, to him, the Twilight Zone at this moment, foreign and frightfully dangerous.) He was breathing hard and his hair was tousled and blown; his eyes seemed wild and his whole demeanor was of one that was very thoroughly spooked.

It was a miracle that he had yet to run into anyone.

Naruto was not a lucky person; he knew that that couldn't last.

He moved his fingers, trying to figure out where he was.

“Well, I've seen you look dumb before, sensei, but I don't think I've ever seen you look crazy.”

Naruto's entire being jumped nine feet in the air and he whipped around, defense mechanisms fully employed, and slammed his company's head into the lockers they stood besides, slammed it hard, with as much force as he could gather in less than a second's time. His entire self pulsed almost gave way to animal instincts but—

Sasuke yelled as his hand whipped away and it stunned him. Not thinking, not understanding, completely overwhelmed by the fact that his brain had just taken time to register something, he grabbed him, whipped him into a turn so that he held the Uchiha's back to his chest and smacked his empty hand over the boy's mouth.

He was panicked and his head darted left and right, searching for more, searching for the metallic shine of a gun and it's Lady Bullet. The hallway was reigned with empty silence, though, Sasuke's noise smothered successfully (though he still made strangled versions of it behind Naruto's palm.) The blonde tensed at their positions then, and half-released half-shoved Sasuke out of his grip.

“What are you doing here?” The first words out of his mouth were hissed, cracked and acidic, completely sour. He could not believe this was happening.

Sasuke's expression was dull and bitter. He reached up with pale, slender fingers to touch at the side of his face. “…I'm bleeding.” He brought them down to look them over with a derisive frown.

”No you are not!” Naruto spat, angry and high-strung.

“Yes, I am.” Sasuke pinned him with a blank look and held up his hand which were smeared with a translucent red liquid that really could only be one thing.

“Do you really think that's what you should be worried about right now?!” Naruto's tone was fierce, chastising and belligerent. “What are you thinking?!” (He'd never wondered so much as then.)

He thought he heard something and his head swung quickly, again. Civic duty implored, he grabbed Sasuke's shoulders and shoved them both into the space between the rows of lockers made by the door of the counseling office. (The counseling office…? A light went off in his head - the back of it, anyway. Alright, then. He knew, relatively speaking, where he was…)

“What the hell do you think you're doing, Uchiha?!”

Sasuke stared up at him with all the indifference in the world.

“I've come to find you, sensei. I think that much would be obvious.”

Naruto gaped at him before making several attempts to speak, all which failed because he had several response cued up in his brain before hand, and they came out all at once, and smashed into one another, like freight trains. (By himself, he felt as if he were smashing into something in a similar manner.)

Finally, he gathered himself up enough to speak coherently. “…You're an idiot, Uchiha. You should not be out here.”

“Neither should you.” Sasuke made it sound as if that made them even.

“Do not compare your actions to mine. Why weren't you in class today?”

There was a sound down the hall and Naruto whipped around again. His ears strained to hear something - anything. He groped about for something to hang onto something definite, and his fear was stark, pressed deep into and against him. He was becoming his fear, and he was strung out; his fingers twitched again, and he whipped back around to stare at Sasuke with eyes that shone red for a second, caught in an odd spot against the lighting.

He grabbed his hand, feeling not dexterous but desperate, instead.

“Come with me.”

Sasuke looked as if he might say something and so Naruto struck out preemptively.

“Now, Uchiha!”

And they ran. They sprinted down the hall, Sasuke not dragging him down at all, but actually keeping quite good pace with him, despite the fact that Naruto's legs were longer and that he'd obviously caught Sasuke off guard with his demand. (A first.) Demands were demands, though, and Naruto never failed to make them in earnest - he was driven by that same energy, doubled by the fact that one of the many he'd been charged to protect had appeared, unexpectedly in front of him at the most inopportune of moments. Naruto could hear the dynamic, hear the wind rushing against his ears and through his hair, could feel Sasuke's wrist in his hand (surprisingly warm - but he wasn't thinking about that now,) and there was the heat and pressure of fear that rose in the back of his mind; fear of falling, fear of dying, fear of noise and fear of-

Around the corner at the end of the hall and past yet another row of green lockers. (One was left hanging just a little bit open, the lock left unattended and papers half skewed past the insides, and Naruto was reminded of a small wound.) He was not tired, but he was belleagured and scared and he didn't know how much he could afford to show and even how much of him Sasuke could see, being as he was, and just when the buzzing in his brain had become unbearable he found the door he knew would be open and in half a second's time had managed to swing them into the janitor's closet, closing the door behind him swiftly, silently.

He practically threw Sasuke's hand from his. The janitor had left the light on and he could see as he and the Uchiha breathed in harsh unison, and the way the shadows fell across his pale, pale skin made him unreasonably pretty and sickly-looking, like some sort of porcelain being. Of course, his blatant lack of fragility made up for anything so crazy as that notion, Naruto thought, but by this point, his anger had flamed past his fear just enough for the edges of his psyche to be blackened with it.

His lungs wouldn't give him space to yell, and in the long run he knew that he didn't really have it to start with, but it felt as if he did. (As if he should.) All the same, he spoke, instead of whispered, and however quietly he did it, no matter how much his inherent outrage was butchered by his sad, cold lack of breath, he knew it was there, in his throat. He growled, lowly.

“Now,” he said, “I'm going to ask you again, what, exactly, you're doing out here.”

“Well then,” Sasuke said, breathing almost returned to normal and skin not half so flushed as Naruto's was (the blood pounded in his head, his ears,) “I would suggest you pose that as a question rather than a statement.” Naruto decided that he really must've been a football player, for his cardio to be so excellent. He was offended by the notion now even more than he had been originally.

If it hadn't been for his tenure, the sake of his job and his relative cleanliness of self, he would've admitted to feeling justified, slamming Sasuke's head into a locker. (It was too big for his shoulders. Too unevenly swollen. Naruto thought he might be justified in fixing that, potentially and hypothetically speaking.)

“Use your imagination,” Naruto snarled, trying to ignore the fact that he doubted Sasuke had ever had one before, or knew what it was to be creative at all, “and answer it as if it were one, Uchiha.” There were reason Naruto didn't like English, besides the fact that his was heavily accented.

Sasuke frowned at him and looked indignant, as if the fact that Naruto was not playing along was offensive to him in some way. That, in and of itself, was what made Naruto so angry, that ugly indignance, as if he was at some sort of fault, for being his superior in any way shape or form.

Little bastard.

“Idiot. Don't be so angry.” Sasuke scoffed at him - it felt like some sort of backhanded way to reprimand Naruto for being as he was.

Naruto was not angry.

Oh no, not at all.

No - Naruto was not angry.

Naruto was furious. And in being furious, Naruto did something he hadn't done in years.

He grabbed Sasuke by the collar (it was crisp and clean and nice - well-ironed, and Naruto could smell not-at-all-cheap cologne in the very fibres of it, washed out but still very much there, a lot like a few memories he could've pointed out to you in the museum halls of his brain,) and slammed him into the opposite wall, face twisted into a snarl. The inside of the closet rattled, the brooms and mops shook in their positions against the walls, and the boxes shuddered atop the shelves.

“If you think for even one minute, Uchiha, that this is anger, you've got another thing coming.” His breath was a hiss against both their skins and he could feel Sasuke's muscles moving beneath his hands, as if surprised, or at the very least resistant to being thrown around as such. They stared into one another.

“…I understand, sensei,” he said finally. (Quietly. Rustling breath, like old leaves, yet unfallen.)

“What were you doing out there?”

“I told you. I was looking for you.”

“Why?”

“I got to class late and your precious students wouldn't let me into the classroom.”

Naruto was torn between relief and exasperation.

“…how are they keeping the door closed?”

“It's locked.”

“Are you sure?”

Sasuke raised an eyebrow at him, as if he was crazy for even suggesting that the Uchiha would wander the halls without giving a reasonable course of action atleast a cursory trial. “Positive.”

Naruto suddenly noticed the lack of distance between them - memory coursed through him, personal memory of hot beads of water all over his body and something he should never have done, should never have ever contemplated doing. Sasuke with feathers, Sasuke underwater, Sasuke on his back saying things Naruto could not believe. Some fantasies were better left unindulged - he felt stained, he felt putrid and that black bile slithered up his throat and made him let go and back away in a way he hoped (he prayed…? Naruto couldn't pray, he didn't believe in God,) would not be obvious, or give anything away.

“We should…” Naruto stopped himself shook his head. There was no `we.' The closet was small enough that when he sat back on his heels, he sat back against the door, which was metal and heavy, and cool, and almost calming, but not quite, almost secure, but nothing ever was. (Naruto knew that better than anyone.) Who would lock his class in if he- He didn't know but he had to figure this out.

He could leave the boy here, but he had to go, and to leave Uchiha Sasuke unattended had obviously proven to be one of the worst tactics he had ever used in regards to anything. And this room didn't lock, so they were in danger simply by being here in the first place, and that left Naruto distressed, and not to a small degree, but rather a very large one.

He tried to think while not looking stricken, think while, distractedly, continuing to ask Sasuke what were meant as rhetorical questions.

This kid is trying to kill me.

“Sasuke, do you have any remote idea how much danger we're in? Are you even aware?”

“There're people with guns roaming the school. So what?”

“So you could die.”

Sasuke laughed at him then, smirking. “Oh? Would that really be a problem, sensei?” His expression was dark. Cynical. “I was under the impression that, if you were able, you'd rather like to off me yourself.”

“You don't understand, do you?!” Naruto spat, seething. (It didn't matter if Sasuke was right - it didn't matter at all. Naruto understood guns in a way Sasuke did not - could not, was not at all even halfway capable of understanding. Naruto was haunted by Ghosts with their guns.) “Whose responsibility do you think it is to take care of you around here?!”

“You're not my guardian,” Sasuke said with a scowl.

“Oh, because that makes a whole lot of difference,” Naruto said angrily, half-rolling his eyes. “Since I'm not your guardian, I must not be responsible for you at all.”

“What are you saying?”

“Sasuke, for six hours out of every week day, I am entirely responsible for you and approximately thirty-two other kids your age. If anything happens to you, the people the police get angry with is not your guardian - it's me.”

Sasuke scoffed again. “You're worried I'll get you in trouble with the police?”

“I'm worried you'll die on my watch, Sasuke,” Naruto said, grimacing. “That's what I'm worried about.”

Don't you dare talk to me like you know everything.

The boy was scowling at him, and Naruto scowled right back at him because he knew - he knew - what could happen and he knew that if that were to happen he would never be able to forgive himself. It would be the same with anyone. Sasuke was - God what was Sasuke? - not always agreeable, and Naruto obviously harbored a much greater amount of distaste in respect for him that he harbored for any other student he could name but that didn't change things. (Sasuke being a student was what made everything so fucking complicated in the first place.) Naruto was protective, he always had been, and he wasn't going to let anything like that happen, not for any reason.

Fear was nothing. Fear for his own life wasn't going to stop him from protecting the things and the people he needed to. Naruto knew that half of his illness was him and not the Ghosts (what they had done to him) and he knew that that was the part of him that Tsunade was wrong about when she said he would never get any better than he was now.

(“Naruto-kun, are you sure you're alright?” Shizune had looked at him very worriedly. “You seem troubled, and-”)

Naruto knew that he was afraid, but he had applied for a teaching job knowing everything it offered - the good and the bad and the dangerous shit that would make the members of the school board smile tightly over their thinly rimmed glasses and give you that `oh-well-that-never-happens' routine. (Naruto knew everything there was to know about the `oh-well-that-never-happens' routine, because Kakashi and the whole of the Special Victims Unit of the Konoha Police Department knew what bullshit it all was. Naruto was one of those `oh-well-it-never-really-happens'. Naruto could attest to what happened when the people who were supposed to be prepared froze up when one of those `never-happens' happened, and he knew it so well that it stung the undersides of his skin.)

Sasuke brushed him off again, curt and easy, and Naruto recognized how many qualities Sasuke shared with an aloof, bad-mannered cat. “And who said you have a right to be worried about that? I'm fine.”

And something slipped in Naruto's brain, falling out from underneath him like a chair, and he just barely restrained himself from yelling, from grabbing Sasuke and shaking him. (I could hit you so hard right now.) The nervousness wasn't there so much as the anger was and he just wanted to smack him. (I'll make you understand.) He pushed his teeth together in a fearsome snarl, and his frustration was both justified and intense.

“How is it that no matter what I say you don't get it, Sasuke?! How is it that I can try this hard to communicate this to you and you still don't get it?!”

“Maybe you're just wording it wrong,” Sasuke said, still scowling.

“Then how `bout I try to explaining to you that a girl just little younger than you was just shot and killed on school grounds?! How can you not understand this, Sasuke? That could've been you. That could still be you! This isn't- you're wandering around a school that is filled with people who have a potential to do you serious harm! Don't you dare give me that look!”

Sasuke's dark eyes were filled with a skepticism that made his rage flare, and for once things felt normal - he was just yelling at Sasuke, the same he always had, always did, always would, and there was nothing to worry about, the lockdown was maybe all his imagination, and he could afford to be as loud and as angry as he liked. He was paid to take care of him, dammit, and Sasuke damn well better let him.

“I can take care of myself.” Naruto thought that maybe the boy was a victim of selective hearing. (Or selective mind reading abilities - maybe the only thing that permeated were the things he wanted to know? To be on the safe side, Naruto channeled a little more strength behind the `I'm going to kill you if you don't listen to me' type thoughts, because he thought that if he was lucky it might do him some good.)

“I'm not going to let you die,” and Naruto kept the `you fucking ignorant bastard' of off the sentence's end, realizing belatedly that they were talking now, in full voices. (The fear jumped a little in his stomach, but he quashed it. Focus on Sasuke, focus on- It wasn't hard of course. The little cuss was hard to ignore.)

“What make you think I'm going to die? Maybe I'll be fine.” Sasuke's face was slowly twisting into an angry creature bourn of frustration, and Naruto was relatively sure that it mirrored his own. (He thought it had taken damn long enough, but he didn't like it, all the same, because he wanted Sasuke to just fucking listen to him for once. He hadn't expected him to - Naruto was a hopeful person but he wasn't naÃ¯ve - but it was still extremely aggravating that the boy could not even seem to comprehend the possibility.)

“What makes you think I would lie about something like this?!” His voice was strangled, a bad attempt at masking his anger, and he didn't bother to restrain himself much further, because he knew the weight of the situation as it was. (He really wanted to smack him.) He was almost afraid that if he restrained himself he wouldn't make any headway - but he hadn't made any headway in the past…God, how minutes had they been at this…? “You're in danger - and a big shitload of it too - and the least you can do is listen to me!”

Sasuke snarled at him, lips gone terse, and his expression was twice as fierce in the faulty lighting. The way the lightbulb swung so ominously back and forth above them from the wind their movement created made Naruto think of a ticking clock inside a letterbomb, and it made him vaguely uncomfortable. The light that shone down was gray and strained. “I don't need you! I'll be fine on my own!”

“You came looking for me! Don't make it sound like it was the other way around!”

“You slammed me into a row of lockers!”

“How can you be hung up on that?!”

“I'm bleeding, you idiot!”

“You snuck up on me! What kind of idiot isn't jumpy about something like that when-”

“Knock knock.”

The voice that came through the door was sneering and vile and it made all of Naruto's inside turn to ice before dropping into some unknown oblivion, and the strings were suddenly back and stretched taut against every inch of his toned skin. The terror was back with all justified suddenness and he stared over his shoulder at the slab of thin metal that was now between him and something that sounded absolutely, positively evil.

There was a click of metal against thickness and whoever it was actually did proceed to knock on the door and each thunk was a six-foot piece of lead driven through Naruto's subconscious.

“C'mon out,” a second voice said in a mocking tone. “We wanna talk to you.”

Naruto cursed all Heaven and Hell and everything between and stomach acid and fear pressed tightly to the back of his eyes was all he could focus on. Sasuke was stock still and Naruto was driven - everything in his brain was scattered scribbles and a tornado of rubbish, a whirlwind of dark, screaming sirens and color, and he had no plan but drove forward and grabbed, remembering that the janitor's closet opened outward and had no lock to speak of.

(There was no way to keep them out.)

“Move!”

It was all he had time to say - whoever it was (both of them, maybe, he moved to fast to tell) and be the time they had, he had found what he was looking for, pushed Sasuke to the corner furthest from them and jabbed very strategically at the closest's jaw.

The desk connecter was of a cheap metal - the desks in the school were constructed so that they had a restraining bar on the side students were not to enter or exit from. They didn't really make seating more or less comfortable, but they were tin-looking and shiny, and most students liked them and used them as arm or head rests, depending on how their days had been and how late they'd stayed up the night before. Of course, the desks were not the most expensive, and whenever one came apart (much to their respective student's chagrin) it was usually the flimsy metal connecter that was to blame. They were not reattachable, having been welded to the wood of the desk and the plastic chair, and as such the ends were jaggedly edged, and the sound that emanated did not sound comfortable, as the first one stumbled backwards.

They were an odd looking pair, Naruto thought. They were gaunt and appeared to be siblings, both with dark beady eyes and shaggy brown mops of hair that looked like charcoal rubbed in snow. They both wore the same, mint-green surgeon's masks, camouflage uniforms, and long gloves - one on each hand - that looked cheap, like something Naruto would expect out of his oh-so-loveable class of underachievers in fourth period.

(All information that zoomed past his mind - he wondered in the back of his brain if he would ever see that class again, but it was not part of the present and so there was nothing associated with them that went on in the front of him, in the midst of his real exterior.)

The larger one, the one he had struck stumbled back with a surprised cry, and it was obvious that Naruto had caught him completely off his guard, and he followed it up, swing back and moving to strike him again, this time in the throat.

He wasn't lucky for the smaller one to be so dazed as his brother, though, having missed him, and he had to change his line of attack and bat at him as he lunged out with his gun - a semi-automatic pistol that Naruto guessed was what he'd heard earlier in Iruka's class (and he missed his friend, missed him dearly) - and the sound was a metallic cracking as Naruto knocked him back.

Okay. No worries. You've just started a fight that has a lot of potential to turn fatal and you're fighting too guns with…a stick of light-weight metal that will, fundamentally, not serve to protect you at all if you want to say, deflect anything. Oh, and, by the way, you're not just defending yourself, but you ignorant blockhead of a student who has no weapon at all.

Naruto was not feeling optimistic about his makeshift swordplay, and would've jumped back into defense mode if he'd thought for even a second that he could defend himself if he wanted to. If the best defense was a good offense, and all he had to protect himself was offense, did that mean he was safer, or that his chances were in any way heightened? Because if the answer was no, it wouldn't surprise him. (As it was, Naruto had gone into `fight-like-a-caged-animal' mode, and he thought that that, in and of itself might give him some sort of upper hand.) But, if the other one got up, he was royally screwed. And if he turned his back to deal with him, the younger one was going to shoot him.

…alright. Maybe a few worries.

He slammed the connector against the smaller one's wrist while he was off balance and elicited yet another surprised cry, but then his luck ran out, and the butt of another pistol was slammed roughly against the side of his head, and the force of it threw him to the floor, and he skidded along it, into the not-so-far opposite wall. He hit it cheek-first and yelled loudly.

More than a few.

The smaller one rose and hurried in after his brother, and they encircled him, blocking out the overhead light with their bodies. Naruto's neck was sore from where he was trapped, on the floor and at a very awkward angle, both half up and more than half down.

“Nice one, Gozu,” he said in a tone that was almost appreciative, but still condescending and sardonic.

“No trouble at all, Meizu,” the elder replied, watching Naruto breathe with some sort of keen interest.

“That wasn't very nice, you know,” Meizu said, then, crooning down at him through the mask. Naruto gritted his teeth and the glare his directed at them was fire and ice, even if it was hazed from the previous blow. (His head was rolling tumultuously, and he felt as if he'd been unceremoniously lurched from his own throat. His fingers ached - the connecter had been thrown from his grasp.) The words `fuck you' wouldn't come out of his mouth, so he conveyed everything through his face, knowing he was good at it.

Meizu laughed. (His brother did not, but it was really all the same to the blonde, whose world had taken to swimming back and forth. He was too much himself to groan, but he felt like he should. The pain in the side of his head was hot and intense and it ached in a way that was hearty and very irritating. His focus drifted and then came back and it was all a very painful business and it made him want to hurl.) “You're snippy, aren't you? Wouldn't expect it from a teacher.”

“Meizu,” Gozu said sternly. “Don't fool around.”

“What, yuh wanna finish him…? He is kind of annoying isn't he?”

Naruto growled, a deep guttural sound that bore such a remarkable resemblance to some sort of wounded wild beast that it made them both start a bit. But, at the same time they had managed to forget about Sasuke for the moment, so maybe if he could just keep them distracted a little longer, he could come up with a plan.

“Damn snippy,” Meizu whistled, sounding moderately impressed.

“That's nothing,” Gozu said, bringing his gun up from his side. “I can teach you how to do that.”

“Really?” Meizu, too, raised his gun (identical to his brother's) and grinned sadistically from behind his surgeon's mask. “It's wicked cool.” The barrel was a cool silver and gleamed in the lighting and Naruto felt the desperate fear jump through his veins but he knew that if he moved now, they would definitely shoot him and he had no way to get away in time, or to avoid it.

He did not want to contemplate in depth that the last conversation he was ever going to hear was going to be about a sound he had just made - didn't want to contemplate the fact that he was about to die, and eh thought that it was ironic that this should be the end, because he had so many things left to defend, and he couldn't let it happen like this, not after he had survived the Ghosts. It was too cruel, it was too ironic, and his brain didn't even have the energy to send his life speeding past him in the buzzing of his ears, because he had seen it too many times having just lived it, and he didn't want to think about it, the grim realization that this was going to be his last breath, and he just really hoped…something. He really hoped that this wasn't about to happen, and he really hoped that this was all just a very bad dream. Of course, he knew better, and that was the end of that, but it just all seemed very ironic and cruel and satirical.

And he was about to shut his eyes when there was a fierce clanging and Meizu flew sideways.

Sasuke lunged forward with Naruto's abandoned piece of metal, and Gozu cursed, swinging to hit him with the gun. Sasuke deflected it, spinning and clipping him on the side of the head - Gozu stumbled and hit the side of the doorframe to the closet.

Meizu jumped up, moving to defend his brother, but Sasuke was on him much faster, wielding the connecter like he was some sort of samurai, and clubbing him in the stomach. Naruto blinked and it was done, Meizu tripping over his own momentum onto the floor, halfway into the lockers which squealed uncomfortably as he fell into them. And as Gozu was up, he knocked the gun from his hand and whipped - metal swooshing through the air - his legs out from under him, so that he half-flew, half-somersaulted into his brother.

And then there were two very sharp bangs and it was over. Both brothers lay very still and Sasuke stood over them, silent as water and twice as regal and Naruto simply stared because he could not contemplate what had just transpired.

His head spun - his vision whirling - and he felt sick to his stomach. (He had been prepared to die, just then.) He couldn't take his eyes from Sasuke couldn't stop watching his back, couldn't bring himself to part with the sight and the way it collected itself and overwhelmed him. The contrast of the school uniform and the Uchiha's ivory skin and ebony hair was so distracting, especially when one felt as if they were on the inside of a kaleidoscope, and Naruto did, and the hall twisted and spun. His heart was pounding and ringing in his ears, throbbing in his chest, and he hadn't noticed it until that moment.

He was still propped awkwardly against the lockers, and he could feel the kink in his neck as it developed and he paid it a dazed sort of attention that was dizzy. He himself was feeling nauseous with barely-assuaged fear, barely avoided disaster, and he was almost overtaken by his own criticism - how could you have gotten so weak? How dare you be so powerless? - and by his awe. (By his consternation.) Maybe Sasuke really could handle himself, not that Naruto felt like testing it any further by letting him wander off on his own again. His shoulders and fingers ached painfully and he wondered, with some idleness, whether or not this was a dream, and whether death really was like sleeping only a bit different.

He shuddered, blinked, and finally sagged into a position where he was not half upright, and instead was lying almost completely on his back. (He could not remember how he'd fallen into this position, but he shuddered again and his blood coursed with ice - cold terror that was not really feeling.) His eyes rolled a little and as he felt them do so he felt swollen, a not-far belated urge to spit up the contents of his stomach.

An all-too-familiar voice rolled to him from across the linoleum.

“Don't faint, you scaredy cat.”

Naruto choked on something and was gone.

-----

He coughed loudly as Sasuke hit him in the side and he was back again. His world rolled back into focus and the first thing he really noticed was-

“Oh fuck, my head…”

He grabbed at it, and clenched his fingers over the spots that stung the most, because heat indicated that that was where he was bleeding from. It was tender, bruised, and he could feel it swelling, blackening, under his fingers, and it aggravated him. His ears still rung loudly, a fearsome buzzing, and his heart was thudding against them, as well as his stomach, his fingers, and his neck. (Blood was rushing everywhere, driven everywhere by the heart that had been stopped for too long by the irrational fear.)

“I told you.”

“Shut up.” He shouldn't really have said such a thing to a student but at the moment he didn't really care. It was Sasuke and Sasuke had made it clear that he expected to be treated differently and if he wanted it so badly then dammit all- “How long was I-”

“Less than fifteen seconds. But we should move. One of the weapons discharged right after you-”

“What did you do to make it discharge?!”

“One of them was still awake.”

Naruto swore rather loudly, drawing a thumb across his lips in a frustrated movement, and he watched the brothers, noticing that one of them (Gozu) was now lying several feet from the other, and seemed to be wheezing, his eyes glassy and wide open. “You hit him in the windpipe?”

“Nowhere else to hit him.” Sasuke said it simply, watching him. Naruto swore again, picking himself up with difficulty. His legs were shaking and so as soon as he was half upright he lifted his wrist to his mouth and bit it rather hard, pinching the skin between his sharp teeth and trying to get a better hold on his body and whatever the hell had just happened.

He let himself fall against the lockers after a second, taking the time to breath, and laying his focus on calming his breaths so that they did not make his chest heave, and letting his arms lay against the cool metal so that they would know that something in the world was still solid. He shuddered again, and tried to choke on it. He listened to the thud of his heart and tried to pick up a pattern. In…out…in…out. You're a person, not a fish.

“Weren't you listening?” Sasuke's daintiness was slowly being replaced by irritation. “We need to move.”

“Give me another fifteen seconds, you fucking bastard.”

Sasuke looked long at him before sighing and turning to look over the damage he'd done, seeming as if - rather than being proud of it - he had absolutely no opinion over what had just transpired. Naruto took time to get his breath back, counting the seconds and inhaling and exhaling to a very slow calming rhythm and the room finally stopped spinning. He shuddered one last time, resisted the urge to vomit just for the hell of it, and stood up, away from the lockers. Sasuke turned to him and raised an eyebrow. Naruto was torn between hitting him and asking him how he could stand to look so cold, but figured that his mother had been right when she said that if you make faces, your face would get stuck that way.

He exhaled in what was almost a sigh, looked up and down the corridor and turned back to him. “Are you understanding me now?”

“About what?” Sasuke smirked at him easily. “About how I don't need your protection?”

Naruto scowled. “They caught me off guard.”

Sasuke scoffed. “As if that should be a problem.”

“You had the upper hand in attacking them. Don't give me that bullshit.”

“That bullshit's what just saved your hide, you dumbass.”

Naruto's face bunched uncomfortably. Knowing that that much was true was going to make him rip his own insides out. He had been caught completely off guard - and maybe yelling wasn't the best tactic to staying hidden for a long period of time - but being as experienced as he was it shouldn't have gotten to him. But then, with Yohko, he had at least been insured that (were anything to happen, and it always did) she would be able to defend herself, so that neither of them sustained major injury, or got the other shot. There was no way he could've known that Sasuke had that same potential.

There was something about that that struck up weird chords in his stomach, like some ringing piece of mercury across a slab of thin plastic, and made him wonder how Sasuke had learned that, and where he had developed into this silent, emotionless fighter.

Naruto sighed again. “I need to-”

“If you're going to say anything about going back to our classroom,” Sasuke said blandly, “I told you: it's already locked.”

Naruto moved his head and swore, hissing through his teeth at the unfrozen and sloshy ache at his temples. “I can't have you wandering around, you idiot.”

“You're one to be calling names.”

“I'm not going to have you-”

“And while I'm sitting in class - assuming you get me there as you'd like - what, exactly, would you be doing? Because, if you're just going to keep wandering around the halls, I'm tempted to call you ill-equipped from a mental standpoint.”

“Goddammit, Sasuke!”

“Don't yell at me.” The boy scowled. “You'll get more of them after us.”

Naruto reached up, pinching his temples, and gritting his teeth. He couldn't think how they would've locked the door, and supposed he was glad about it, but it put him in a very difficult position. It meant that there was no way he could dump Sasuke and then run off to the office to save Inari from who knew how many heavily armed captors, and he was deeply frustrated.

“Look,” he said finally, squaring himself. “I'm not taking you with me.”

“And where are you headed, anyway, with your unnecessarily oversized package of misguided justice?” Sasuke watched him skeptically, the metal rod thrown haphazardly back across his shoulders. He looked as if he would rather be filing his nails than inquiring as to Naruto's endeavor, and the boredom that laced it made the blonde want to hit him quite badly, but his headache reminded him that he was not in much of a position to do so, and so he grit his teeth bitterly behind his lips, which were thin with tension.

“That doesn't concern you.”

“Ah, yes.” Sasuke rolled his eyes. “I forgot. Silly me. I'll rephrase that. Where are you headed that I am not allowed to go because I am utterly defenseless and unable to protect myself, so unlike you, sensei?”

Naruto grimaced and spat venom from his eyes. (The blue in them bit in a super-heated fashion, and smoldered white hot, like offended coals.) “I'm not taking you with me, Uchiha - not if you paid me - and you aren't going to bug me into doing it.”

“If I irritate you,” the raven said, straight-faced, “that's your business, not mine. I asked where you were going, not what you think of me in this particular moment, and I believe that - having just saved the both of us - I'm entitled to an answer.”

“I don't care if you think you're entitled to the bloody crown of England. I'm not obligated to tell you anything.”

Sasuke smirked at him. “Afraid I'll show you up if I tag along?”

And Naruto couldn't help it.

He laughed at him. He let his head drop back, and he laughed at him.

It was a horrible laugh, more a cough of bitterness than anything else - it was sad and empty and dry as Sahara desert sands. It was like broken glass in a bed of flowers, and it was terrible in the way you knew it had been pretty once. It made the mocking expression drop from Sasuke's face quicker than anything, and his eyes went smoky and choked with it. It was a mouth-opened-wide laugh, a laugh that should've been based on something that was amusing, rather than operating as a substitute for misery.

Naruto didn't cover it up and he didn't put it behind his hands and he didn't stifle it. It was open and it was sore and it was horrible, and he laughed at the way Sasuke was so confident, having seen nothing of life, really knowing nothing of the world. You don't know me. You don't know anything about me.

He stemmed it easily and spoke. “I'm afraid of a lot of things. That?” He half-scoffed, half-something-like-chuckled. “I'm not afraid of that. It's not like I'm fourteen, you know. It's not like impressing me is going to make me like you, make me trust you, or somehow change or alter the way I deal with you.”

He pushed himself up from the floor, standing up to his full height and being glad for the extra seven-and-a-half-or-so inches he had over Sasuke. It was nice to be able to physically reinstate his seniority, as such, even if it had thus far proven hard for him to compensate for Sasuke's intricate knowledge of things. Sometimes, it was enough just for Naruto to know he was the taller of the two of them, that there were some ways that Sasuke had yet to surpass him.

“I'm taking you back to the classroom,” he said, having suddenly regained himself, “and you're going to stay there, and it's not a choice and I don't want to know about any opinions you have on it.”

(It would've been strange to see him then, with his stern voice and bent spine.)

-----

They walked together in almost utter silence, staying close to one another out of necessity. Naruto's incessant jumpiness had faded into a constant suspicion of everything and his eyes darted about, finding evil where there was none. After he had shot out of the way of the seventh locker in a row, and torn his gaze away from yet another dark corner, Sasuke elbowed him sharply.

“Will you cut it out? You're pissing me off.”

“Big deal,” Naruto snapped, glaring at him irritably.

“Idiot.” Sasuke frowned at him deeply. “If we're quiet, we'll hear them before they were us. Otherwise-”

“Sasuke? I'm going to tell you this once and I will praise all Heaven if it's the only order I give you that you ever obey - shut the hell up.”

He turned away from him then, grabbing Sasuke's sleeve with one hand and putting another against the white outcropping of the next turn they were to make, checking the halls for movement. He stopped for a good six seconds, making sure they were alone before noticing that Sasuke hadn't prevented himself from running up against his back this time, and the warmth was severely disconcerting. A bit startled, he leapt away from it swiftly, whipping around to glare at him.

Sasuke folded his arms and raised an eyebrow.

Naruto hissed at him, yelling in a whisper. “What the hell is your problem?!”

“You're the one who yanked me over.”

“God, you are such a-”

“What are those, anyway?”

“What?” Naruto's face flexed, morphing away from anger.

“Those.”

Naruto wrinkled his nose, cocking the eyebrow opposite the one Sasuke had. He folded his arms, looking straight at him, a `what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about' expression worn plainly on his cheeks. The boy in front of him released an exasperated sigh that seemed very long pent up, and came forward, which made him take a few (very guilty) steps backwards.

“What are you doing?!”

“Hold still, you idiot!”

He hit the wall with his back and Sasuke reached for him and he prepared for the worst, fists bunching-

Sasuke pressed his thumbs into his cheeks. “Those.”

Naruto froze, blinking.

Oh.

He pushed Sasuke off of him (a little more gently than he'd meant to - he practically eased the boy away) and then reached up with both hands, touching at his face, and finding that his left side was peeling away. He swore to himself, scraping his nails against it accidentally. He looked over what had collected beneath them before irritatedly scrubbing the gunk away with his other hand. He glanced around, and found a telltale silver glint leaning out of another unclosed locker. (They were everywhere - the open lockers, signs of messily collected students who had been late to class. Ibiki certainly knew how to do his job, which was mildly comforting. He had no idea how Sasuke could've evaded him.)

He opened it a bit wider, peering into the mirror of a girl with a few obvious vanity issue and an interesting obsession with British actress Keira Knightley. He swore again, seeing that it wasn't just a faded likeness that showed through - the blow he'd been delivered had been enough to take off a significant amount of his make up, and two hard outlines showed through what was left on his left cheek. The third was soft, subdued, but he could still see it. He sighed, looking at himself and feeling lobsided, as if his head were tipping due to some substantial weight that had fixated itself behind his left ear. After a moment's hesitation he finally figured he'd get it over with, and reached up, taking advantage of the itch (which distracted him from the fact that this was a really, really stupid thing to be doing right now) and scratching the rest of it off, doing the same on his other side, and suddenly the air was on them in a way it hadn't been in years.

He rubbed the excess foundation away and his `whiskers' stared back at him. He faced them blankly, thinking that they gave his eyes that haunted sort of look (and knowing why), and he reached up pushing his bangs out of the way. (They were stiff, as if they had dried to his forehead while he was sweating.)

“So what are they?” Sasuke had come over to peer into the mirror with him, and he now watched interestedly from over his shoulder.

“Nothing.” Naruto said it a bit too hurriedly for it to be taken truthfully even if you had absolute faith in all human kind.

Sasuke, obviously having no faith in human kind whatsoever, scoffed immediately. “Right.”

“They're nothing.”

“Okay. I mean, that's fine - lots of men wear that much makeup for no reason.”

“Sasuke, shut up.” Naruto closed the locker, turning away from it (as his fingertips left it, they left whispered trails of empathetic worry - `I hope you're alright,' to the student with the mirror.) Sasuke tailed him doggedly.

“What are they?”

“Sasuke, do you purposely choose to distract yourself like this whenever you're stressed?”

The question seemed to catch the boy a little off his guard, which was good, because it gave Naruto time to the think of better questions to ask him if he digressed from this one and came back to the subject of Naruto's cheeks.

“No.”

“Oh, okay, because why I wear makeup seems to be a very weird thing to ask at this point in time.”

“Because the fact that you wear makeup-”

“It shouldn't be your primary concern right now.”

They came to the next corner and Naruto threw his arm out, stopping Sasuke so he wouldn't pass him up. Sasuke stopped and they checked for the corridor's security, heads moving back and forth in opposite sync so that one moment they faced apart and the other they looked straight at one another. Naruto's eyebrows creased with some emotion that he could not identify and he moved away, around the corner, feeling disconcerted by the closeness between their bodies.

He didn't get far though - Sasuke grabbed his right arm.

“When did you get them?”

He whipped around, then, throwing his hand off to the side.

(He'd had enough.)

“Sasuke, do you ever consider that maybe I don't feel like bearing every secret I've ever had to you? Do you understand that I don't even like you knowing I have secrets? Do you understand how fucking difficult you make it for me to just live my fucking life in peace?!”

“Isn't it your job to answer questions?” Sasuke had a newly-sour expression on his face, like he'd just swallowed a live frog. “You employ yourself as a teacher and you preach,” he gesticulated, pointedly stabbing his finger into Naruto's chest, “and preach,” another forceful prod to his pectorals, “and preach,” punctuating Sasuke's speech, “but I haven't learned anything worth learning yet.”

“Well then maybe you aren't taking your education seriously.”

“I'm fifteen,” Sasuke spat, “and there is no one on this earth who would be able to convince me to take my education seriously.”

“I don't doubt that,” the blonde snapped, anger making his voice crack, “seeing as I can't even convince you to take me seriously.”

Naruto's own venom hung unwavering in the air between them, and Sasuke stared through it at him.

“How can I take you seriously? All you've done so far is avoid me.”

“That surprises you?!”

Sasuke's expression deepened into one of enormous distaste, but Naruto cut him off before he could respond.

“I'm fucking tired of you, Sasuke! I'm fucking tired of having you harass me all the time! Don't you have anything better to do with your life?!”

“No.”

The bland answer made him blink.

“What?”

“No,” the Uchiha said flatly, staring straight at him. “I don't.”

Naruto only hesitated twelve seconds before smacking him across the face, the impact of hand against cheek echoing sharply down and across the hall. (That was the second time he'd felt the need to do that. Twice was too often. Twice was-)

“Then get a fucking hobby.” The words were bitter and biting, and stung at both them like cold salt water. (But Naruto hadn't visited the ocean in a long time.) He glared at him heatedly, eyes blazingly their bright, untamable cerulean, jaw tight with anger. He watched as Sasuke once again put his hand to his cheek as if to test that it was still solid, seeming critical but not overly upset about it. He almost seemed like he'd become accustomed to the sensation.

The boy finally shrugged in a way that irked Naruto greatly.

“Whatever.”

Naruto opened his mouth to say something but froze, instead.

There it was again - that mind numbingly-cold sensation that shot down his spine. He spun around, ears straining, eyes flicking from side to side nervously.

“What is it?” Sasuke's words behind him were careful.

Naruto reached back and instinctively took hold of his student's arm again. (He was not surprised to find that the boy had actually held it out for him this time, knowing that he would take hold of it. That, in fact, didn't really register until quite a long time afterwards.) He shook his head silently, pulling him back into the wall stealthily, hiding again in the provided space between a door and the rows of lockers.

Within seconds two men had rounded the corner, speaking snidely to one another and walking side-by-side, and Naruto's hold on Sasuke's forearm tightened to a vicegrip.

“—believe he'd do `im like that!” The first man was burly with a bare, toned chest, dark unruly tufts of hair and a patch slung across his right eye. His voice was deep and gravelly and it made Naruto's hair stand on end. The man who accompanied him looked to be in his twenties - he wore a beany low over his platinum blonde hair and pale face, which was streaked with black war paint - and walked with his gun at his hip, side-by-side with his partner, his own voice thin and reedy.

“Meh. The dead `re dead - no use working yourself up about it.”

“Who's worked up? `m just sayin'. That Zabuza guy? We can't trust 'im.”

Naruto listened, ears almost visibly twitching at the mention of his friend's name.

“Yeah, Doll Face either - I hear yuh.”

Anger course through him momentarily, and Naruto almost caught himself being defensive on their part.

“Gatou better let us ditch `em soon.”

“Maybe just one. I kin'a like Doll Face.”

A hearty laugh from the bigger one and they came directly into their line of vision. Naruto's eyes flashed with a protective valor, and he bit deep into the flesh of his lower lip, smashing one in the back of the neck with his elbow, and knocking the other over with a punch delivered to his jaw, feeling the bone fracture beneath his fist.

Don't you dare talk about them like that.

“Holy-”

The ground seemed to move beneath the four of them as the smaller one half-sat up looking startled. Naruto grabbed him up and kneed him in the face. The other picked himself up, only to be slammed by his oncoming partner as Naruto hurled him away. The two collided with the wall and Naruto stood over, folding his arms across his chest.

Sasuke came forward slowly and stopped by his hip. “…where'd you learn that?”

“I'd ask the same of your mad Kendo skills, yuh lousy sonovabitch.” Naruto glared at him but it was more bored than anything else - his exterior seemed to almost be coated with a thin layer of ice that glinted calmly in the lighting. (It was something he was used to - Naruto was mean when he fought, because the fire that coated his insides wouldn't stand for anything else. Shizune had told Tsunade, after the Falling Out, that Naruto and Yohko both had severe anger management problems that they might want to get examined. But Naruto hated examinations with a fucking passion.)

Sasuke shrugged. “Gotta have a hobby.”

“You're such an asshole.”

“B-bastards…” The two felled men scowled at them through their newly earned bruises, and bloody mouths. The little one looked to be suffering a minor concussion, his head having connected and left an angry red mark along the wall.

Naruto tutted softly, kicking the one nearest him in the stomach with vigor. “Nope. I'm pretty sure you've got that wrong.” He stuck out his tongue at length. “We're the good guys, remember? You're getting what's coming to yuh. `S bad karma, yuh know? Shootin' up high schools.”

They both shuddered and groaned at the blow, and Naruto's expression contorted, turning into a makeshift, toothy grin.

“Now, I'm gunna ask you a few very simple questions, and you're going to answer me and hope that my friends on the Konoha Police Squad are nice to you when they get here.”

“Shit.” The smaller one's expression twisted venomously, bruises blooming across his neck and exposed collarbone. “You're the Uzumaki kid…?”

“Aw.” Naruto pressed his hand to his chest in mock compassion. “Did he tell you to shoot me on sight?” He put a foot out, stepping down sharply on the larger one's gun just before his fingers touched it, and kicking it behind him. “Too bad it's been years since Gatou saw me - bastard never was too good at math. Puts the two of you in a pretty precarious situation, huh?”

“We're not telling you anything.”

“Cute.”

Sasuke stooped for a second, grabbing at the floor - Naruto paid him no real mind.

“You'll have to beat it out of us.”

Naruto put his hands to his hips, shrugging his shoulders haplessly. “Unfortunately, torture's not really my thing.” Been on the receiving end a little too often. He shook his head making a sympathetic expression at them. “I'm just gunna needja to tell me.”

“What makes you think we'd tell you?”

Sasuke stepped forward then, gun in hand.

“The fact that you'll otherwise be on the receiving end of my own sad lack of conscience should suffice.”

Naruto looked to his student skeptically, and then back at the villains and nodding blankly.

So bloody cocksure. Little fucker.

Not that it wasn't somewhat beneficial at the moment.

“Yeah. That, and the fact that I have three lawyers on my speed dial that would eat that `self defense' thing right up.”

The two floor-bound gunman looked up at them, seeming reluctantly subdued, and the smaller of the two chewed his lower lip in frustration, a soft string of uttered curses flowing unsteadily from his mouth.

Step One: Defeat opponent.

Naruto smiled at them brightly, seeming sadistic in the way he did so.

“Got it?”

They glared at him sourly. His grin widened.

“So,” he said, tone completely unbusiness-like. “Got names, perchance?”

Step Two: Assess compliance.

They said nothing. He tutted again, tongue thrumming lightly against the backs of his teeth.

“I could just call yuh Thing 1 and Thing 2.”

“Waraji,” the larger one said at last. “And Zori.”

Naruto raised an eyebrow, thinking that he had probably heard more creative names for bar whores. Thing 1 and Thing 2 suited them a lot better - not that they were half as funny. (Naruto had always had that secretly passionate love for Dr. Seuss, even if the man would've been racially opposed to his ethnic background. Naruto couldn't really help it. They were good books, whether or not the author liked his kind of people.)

“We're just here on orders,” the reedy one bit out.

“No way anyone would ever train you to say anything other that that.” Naruto stared him down. The bigger one snarled irritably. Naruto overlooked him with a quite, unsubtle ease that was uncanny.

Step Three: Interrogate `em for all they're worth and more.

“Waraji-san,” he said, words measured calmly as he watched the man's snarl twitch a little at the use of his name, “I assume the two of you are taking orders directly from Gatou? Bodyguards. Makes you pretty special.” He smiled widely. “Close enough to tell me what I want to know and dumb enough for Gatou to think of both of you as disposable. I see he hasn't dealt with change too well.”

“Shut your mouth!”

The smaller one who had spoken, Zori by default, seemed to cower behind his partner, shrinking back when Naruto's eyes turned on him, burning cold and savagely.

“Not until you make me. You know that's the rule with things like this.” Naruto tilted his head in a way that was almost mechanically shrewd. Sasuke stood at his shoulder, holding the gun levelly in the thugs' faces. “Now - I believe you were the two most likely in charge of the kidnapping of my nephew.” His face darkened, but he kept it from delving into itself, feeling like he was steeling himself, as if he were made of sheet metal. “Anything you have to say to the contrary?”

The two stared back at him, but once again, Zori's gaze faltered revealingly.

“Nothing? Really? Well,” Naruto said, frown twisting down almost cruelly, “that's a pity. Yuh see, I understand your loyalty to your boss, your respect for him - believe me, I do - but I've got to say the chances of him returning it is pretty low, especially once I've put holes in those pretty faces of yours.”

Waraji saved Zori the humiliation of speaking. “What do you want to know?”

“Who's in the office with him?”

“Zabuza and…” Waraji's lip twitched. “…that one kid.”

“Doll Face,” Zori said simply.

“Haku.” Naruto's voice was a deadly, cutting soft.

Waraji swallowed, then nodded gruffly. “Right.”

“What weapons do they have?”

“I don't know.” Waraji gave him a flighty look.

“What weapons do they have?”

“The normal kind. I don't know.”

“What weapons?” Naruto stepped forward loudly.

“I don't know! Ones like ours!”

“Ones like yours?” Naruto's question lay flat, like some sort of python.

“Yeah.”

“What are your time constraints?”

“Gatou told us to take as much time as we needed.”

“To flush me out?”

“To flush outcher friends.”

“The guardian police agents?”

“Right.”

“Who's the primary target?”

“Ain't none.”

“Who is the primary target?”

“Hatake Kakashi.”

Naruto watched them then, arms folded tightly, and made to consider the information at length. It all measured up which was sort of what he'd been afraid it would do, and he drummed his fingers against his elbow thinking that nothing today was unfolding very normally. But isn't that the way…? He sighed, eyes closing for a second before he reached across his own body and snatched the gun from Sasuke's grasp. The boy let out a disgruntled sound, but Naruto was quick and stepped forward, clocking both men in the temple with the butt of it.

“Sorry. I left him at home today.”

They thudded to the floor with pained groans.

“Just your good luck, I guess.” He looked them over, and gave the fallen Waraji a quick kick to the side. “I've got other friends around this place who'll lock you up just as fast, but Kakashi probably would've killed yuh.”

He thought, briefly, that if he were one to judge, it might be better luck than they deserved. But he wasn't one to judge, and it wasn't really his place to do anything about it, so he sighed, shoved the gun unceremoniously into his back pocket, and glanced at Sasuke who stood up, having taken Zori's gun from the floor.

He sighed, feeling as though the adrenaline were rushing from the pores of his face, feeling drained, as if he were coming back from a different dimensional plane.

“You're not coming with me.”

Sasuke glared back at him. “I think we established the invalidation of that argument a while ago.”

“No, Sasuke. We didn't.” The blonde made a point of barring his student's path, putting his hands on his hips.

“What do you want me to do? Walk back to the classroom? That was the entire point of this side-venture of yours. But you still don't have any real idea what you're going to do with me when we get there. The doors are locked and your oh-so-doggedly-loyal students have locked both of us out and aren't letting anyone in on pain of death, in perfect accordance to your instruction.” Sasuke's jaw was tight and he looked angry, his obsidian eyes glinting darkly. “I don't know if you've thought about it, but there's no way you're going to be able to take down two heads of an operation on your own.”

Naruto's lips tightened and thinned.

Sasuke's glare intensified. “Don't give me bullshit. That kind of thing only happens in video games where getting shot doesn't actually kill you. Don't give me that bullshit.”

“Sasuke.” Naruto's voice had morphed again into a low, ominous growl. “If you'd ever shot another person in your life, you'd know that there are plenty of ways to get shot and not die.”

The boy scoffed. “And of course you'd know from experience.”

“It's rare I speak from anything else.”

Sasuke stared at him and Naruto raised his eyebrows for emphasis.

“There's a lot that you don't know about me, Uchiha. Don't give yourself too much credit.”

“I only give myself credit I earn.” The boy had gone somber again, but his arms were still folded.

“That makes two of us.”

“I'm going with you.”

“You're not.”

“You need somebody in there with you.”

“No I d-”

“Somebody who's going to think about having our backs rather than retrieving your nephew.”

Naruto stopped where he had been cut off. The Uchiha took the opportunity to continue.

“Look. You're in all this for the sole reason of getting him back. Noble a cause as that is it's going to make you far more vulnerable than you would be even if you were going in without a gun. They've got better firepower, they've one-upped you as far as manpower, and they've got a shield. If you go in there alone you're doing exactly what they expect you to do. If you go in there with one of your friends…” He paused to glance back down the corridor, and Naruto had a feeling he would be hearing countless questions on the subject later “…they'll have similar objectives to yours and everything will get tangled and weighed down further. Either way, the likelihood that your precious nephew gets shot just gets higher and higher.

“Whereas,” Sasuke said seriously, “you won't have any of those problems bringing me along.”

Naruto exploded.

“Of course not! I'll have even bigger ones! You'll be a liability, Sasuke! It'll be like bringing them another hostage! If they aim a gun at you, what do you expect me to do? Ignore it and let them blow your head off? If I was going alone, it wouldn't be a problem - I don't care if I get shot, because it won't stop me doing what I need to. I know that my friends can defend themselves to a degree where they can take care of themselves. I am responsible for you, Sasuke. Responsible! And there is no way in Heaven or Hell that I'm letting you come along with me! That's called reckless endangerment, and there's a reason it's illegal!”

“I'm perfectly capable of defending myself!”

“That doesn't mean you're not equally capable of getting killed!”

There was a long silence between the two of them where they stood still and stared one another down.

Sasuke spoke then, softly.

“I swore an oath to my mother…that I wouldn't die before I killed the person who murdered her.”

Naruto stared at him, blinking, but Sasuke spoke again before he could think of something intelligent to reply with.

“That's the best I can give you.”

“I- Sasuke.” Naruto finally climbed back into his own mouth and shook his head firmly. “The world doesn't…no. I'm- I'm sorry about your mother. I am. But…that doesn't-”

Sasuke stepped forward.

“It's better than going in alone.”

Naruto stood still and watched him.

Anxiety bunched rebelliously underneath his skin but he made no move to quash it.

“Sasuke. No.”

“Sensei.”

Naruto blinked, taken offguard again.

“Please.”

------

Naruto cocked his gun low, by his thigh, and a loud metallic click resonated through the hallway, bouncing off of metal doors and flat linoleum tile. He watched the space of floor leading to the office carefully and found it empty, much to his relief. (He was in no mood to deal with any other obstacles.) He took one hand and pressed it to the wall, thinking for a second. Sasuke hovered over his right shoulder.

“If there's nothing there, we should go in.”

“They'll know it's us.”

“The chance that they'll already know it's us is pretty high.”

Naruto raised an eyebrow at him.

“I'm serious. They'll atleast know that something's up. Their other associates would probably phone in before coming back, seeing that they're supposedly staking out the classrooms.”

Naruto sighed and turned back to their target. “Yeah. I guess you're right.”

Sasuke snorted. “You say that so reluctantly.”

“You're lucky I say it at all.”

Sasuke cocked his gun behind him and the sound sent a shiver up Naruto's spine.

“You have to go in sometime.”

“…yeah. I know.” Naruto looked at him seriously over his shoulder, studying the boy behind him more scrupulously than he had in previous minutes, taking in what needed to be taken in and taking it in studiously, just incase.

“Don't-” Naruto stopped himself saying something pessimistic, knowing that that wasn't the best thing to be falling back on just now. (The “don't die” sentiment was something he had used too often a long time ago, and it wasn't good luck to use it now, in his mind.) “Be careful.”

Sasuke nodded curtly. “Let's just go, scaredycat.”

Naruto bristled slightly at the nickname but didn't comment on it. Instead he took his hand back from the wall, pushing off the balls of his feet, and walking swiftly to the thick oak doors of the office and throwing them open with a bang, Sasuke at his side.

The air was both still and heavy where it hung around them, and Naruto's stomach twisted painfully.

The headmaster lay unconscious on the lush carpet, and various paper folders and documents were strewn about in a chaotic flurry. The room was darkened by the deep red curtains around his large, pale windows, which were dusty and crusted with age; a thin slice of gray fog-ridden sky showed between them. The office was dimly lit and crowded with expensive looking furniture which look jostled and thrown-about, and in the center of the reckage-

“Your nephew, I presume.”

Inari was bound, his arms and legs roped together with a thick, greasy looking section of rag, his mouth duct-taped shut. Naruto's teeth gripped his lower lip immediately and he wanted nothing more than to surge forward and wrap him up in his arms and take him home. But, as Sasuke moved to do so, he threw his arm out to stop him. The boy opened his mouth to protest, and Inari let out a muffled cry as if he were trying to talk to them through the tape, but Naruto shook his head, glaring into the corner of the room.

“You never leave a hostage unattended.”

The glinting gun he had noticed from the beginning emerged then from behind one of the thick red curtains that hung around the high windows, attached to a lithe hand and a pale body.

“Very good, Naruto-sensei.”

Haku stood affront them, clothed in a simple combination of a dark cloak and white pants, hair up in a high bun and face covered with stylized NÅ mask that showed only his deep brown eyes. Naruto recognized his voice, though - it was impossible to miss - and recognized his nails, painted a deep chocolate that was lovely and matched with his thin, crÃ¨me-colored skin.

Naruto kept his own weapon down and Sasuke looked sour.

“Missed you in class today, Haku.” His voice sounded tired, even to him.

“I wish you had stayed there, sensei.”

Naruto nodded and brought his arm up, gun held at the wall and fired.

BANG!

The bullet struck the solid plaster and clattered with a muffled metallic clicking to the carpet. He saw Sasuke flinch slightly out of the corner of his eye, and sighed again.

“Get outta the shadows, Zabuza.”

His friend laughed, emerging from them in a way that made him seem like he was some sort of creature spun from spider webs and smoke. His hands were covered in thick gloves and on emergence, he took a bulky-looking assault rifle down and across his arms from where it had been slung across his back. He cocked it once, and Naruto retorted by cocking his own once more.

“Missed yuh and yer pistol fetish, Uzumaki.”

“They've stayed faithful tuh me thus far,” Naruto said, tone light but all-business.

“Pity not to see yuh with two.”

“Missin' the glory days, Momoichi?”

“Not a bit.” Zabuza smirked and peered and Sasuke, who drew his weapon too. “And this must be the pretty little student of yours I've heard so much about.”

Sasuke smirked back at him fearlessly. “And you'll be lucky to hear anything more.”

Zabuza chuckled. “Always did like `em cocky, huh Uzumaki?”

Naruto remained expressionless. “Sasuke, stay trained on Haku.” His student scoffed again but reaimed more appropriately. “What's the point of this, Zabuza?”

“Don't know if there is one. I'd be damned if I thought yuh had it in yuh to stomach holdin' a gun again.”

Naruto smirked bitterly. “You should feel honored.”

Zabuza smirked back. “And I do. And twice as honored tuh get to see the famous Uchiha Sasuke yer so enamored with. Knew he had tuh be somethin' else to catch yer interest. `S a pity yer so adamant about not fuckin' `im cuz-”

BANG!

Naruto's second shot whizzed past Zabuza's ear and clipped the wall again.

“F'you don't stop talking I'm going to stop missing on purpose.”

Zabuza smiled wickedly, raising his gun.

“Bring it on, Uzumaki.”

-----

End Chapter 11

IT'S DONE IT'S DONE IT'S DONE IT'S DONE IT'S DONE. CELEBRATION. CELEBRATIONNNNN. *DEADXâˆž* THAT WAS SO INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

I AM SO SORRY FOR BEING LAME.

*FAINTS*

I am so exhausted now. That took forever and I know it took forever and I just…I've really wanted to make the wait worth it. So, twenty-five pages and at least six months later, here it is. Chapter 1.. That “LET'S PUT LAMB THROUGH HELL” chapter of doom, and it's finally finished. (THERE IS A GOD.) I have no idea what made this all so incredibly difficult to write and I can't guarantee that the next one will come any easier, but I promise that the chapters will never ever ever ever ever take this long ever again.

I just really REALLY want to thank everyone who's stuck with me for sticking with me. *cries* (FAN BASE. WHAT FAN BASE.) The steadily incoming comments were just…gah. They were just so helpful and wonderful and…really really kept me going. All those times (and there were a lot of them) when I hadn't opened the Word document for weeks and thought to myself “Jeez, what's the use?”, they just helped me power through in a way that nothing else could've possibly done. Thankyou so so much for your support.

I really hope that this was worth it.

(TIME TO START ON CHAPTER 12. *WHIPS SELF*)

--Lady Lamb