Chapter Text
The heat of summer blazing in the day and sweltering in the night, accompanied by the call of cicadas and the chirping of crickets, really made it feel like everything was normal now. No more war to be fought, no more gods to defeat, no more friends turned foes turned friends. The sense of normalcy was lost to those at the forefront of the destruction. That was their new normal, now that there was nothing to do, they were all lost.
Our three heroes to be specific.
Enter Sakura, the voice of reason in the triad with dumb and dumber, approaching the resturant with renewed vigor to ensure that there would be no mess that she would have to clean up when the other two were allowed to be alone with each other. The buzz of the restaurant was loud enough to cover the sound of the footsteps. Once she reached the usual corner where they sat, she stopped and observed the two. They were having a heated discussion, it would seem. But from where she stood, she couldn’t hear them. Finally, after countless times of nagging, they had the foresight to make a privacy seal. While it usually wasn’t needed when they were just eating together, her two idiots never learned how to read the room. Place, time, and occasion were so lost on them it’d be funny if she didn’t have to do damage control everytime one of their big mouths spilled a national secret to one-up the other.
She cleared her throat to get their attention. They both turned to her, Naruto visibly brightening up while Sasuke slumped further down his seat. Sakura raised her eyebrows as Naruto’s mouth was moving miles per minute, she gestured to her ear and Naruto stopped. He tilted his head not unlike Kakashi-sensei’s dogs when they were trying to listen to something. Sasuke shifts and seems to say something. Realization filled his face and he sheepishly scratched his face. The seal becomes visible for a millisecond before it falls.
“Sakura-chan!” He calls out, waving his arms in the air as though trying to get her attention. Well, if she hadn’t noticed before, she certainly would’ve now, she thought dryly. She made way over to the table and sat down next to Sasuke. Once she was settled, Naruto looked like he was going to launch back into the argument he was having with Sasuke, but she held her palm out to stop him. “The seal,” she reminded him. He nodded and put back the seal without a second thought. She gestured for him to continue, but instead he pouted and started complaining to her. “Sasuke keeps calling me useless but he won’t tell me how to fix this,” he thrust out a small piece of paper that had a small seal on it. She furrowed her brows, “he knows how to change seals?”
“No, this part right here,” his finger points to a small blank spot at the top of the seal. “I think someone accidentally spilled water on it and the ink washed away!” Now she was even more confused, “is it really that easy to wash away ink? It’s much too clean and perfectly shaped to be an accident.”
“But it’s fuzzy on the parts where there’s still ink,” he places the seal on the table between them and twists his body into his thinking pose. “It has to be an accident because it doesn’t make sense to erase this part of the seal. I think it’s supposed to be the thing that charges the seal.”
“So what is it supposed to be used for?” Sakura finally asked, she can already feel trickles of dread forming in the back of her mind.
The answering grin only solidified the feeling. “It’s a time-space based seal, it might be a prototype of my Dad’s Hiraishin technique”
“No,” she forces out in a tight tone, “absolutely not.”
She almost feels bad when his face falls, but she’s already built up an immunity to his bullshit. She understands why he would have an interest in it, beyond that of being an incredible technique, it might also be another connection to his parents. He’s never had anything that was concrete to hold onto them, and this would change that. She shook her head to clear her thoughts.
“We don’t know what will happen if we try to solve it. There’s too many ways it can go wrong,” she tried to reason with him. She turned to Sasuke to see if he’d back her up, but his eyes were on Naruto’s bowed head. “It’s not an accident,” his voice was almost unheard. Naruto jerks his head up and leans his upper body onto the table, making the dinnerware tilt against him. Sasuke holds his sight for a moment before turning his head towards the wall and leans his hand. “I’ve seen a seal like that before, back in his base.” Naruto’s enthusiasm sufficiently curbed, Sakura sighs and rests her hand on his shoulder. Sasuke spares a moment to glance at the hand but doesn’t shake it off. “Why don’t we continue this conversation after dinner.”
Naruto’s face was shadowed in the dimly lit restaurant so she couldn’t see his expression, but his hunched shoulders and shaking arms told her all there was to know. Keeping her hand on Sasuke’s shoulder, she reached out with the other hand and placed it on top of Naruto’s clenched fist. “We’ll talk,” she urged, “I promise, just not now.” She gently unfurled his hand and rested her hand on top of his palms. “One thing at a time, we’ll eat dinner first and then we’ll go back home to talk about it, okay?” Naruto finally looks up with cautious optimism and nods his agreement. She turns to look at Sasuke. His eyes are still on Naruto but he gives his assent as well.
“Great!” She claps her hands together, jolting them back into alertness and they both turn to look at her. “I’m famished, I think I’ll get the special of the day.” Naruto and Sasuke looked at each other and followed her lead. “I’ll take the miso and tonkatsu combo,” Naruto chimes in. “Tomato for me,” came Sasuke’s input. Naruto takes down the seals again and calls for a server. He quickly gives their orders and pulls the seals back up. “It’s been so long since we’ve been able to eat together,” Naruto picked up, as though there was never a lull in their conversation. Sasuke snorts and deadpans at him. Naruto scrunches his nose at him and pouts towards Sakura.
“Sakura-chan,” he whines, “ see what I told you, he’s bullying me.” Now it was Sakura’s turn to snort. “Yes, yes, poor Naruto being bullied by the meanest of Team 7.” Sasuke eyes her, seeming to want to refute her claim but thought again. Sakura in return gives her biggest bullshitting grin, with eye smiles she learned from the best. “You wouldn’t have anything to add to that or something?” She says with saccharine sweetness. Sasuke wisely shakes his head and looks back at Naruto.
Guess what they say about old dogs and new tricks wasn’t so accurate after all, Sakura thought. The conversation topic flowed seamlessly from one topic to another. Their food arrives without fanfare and they devour it within the hour. The conversation starts to stall as the people dwindle down to small groups of stragglers. The moon was high in the sky, peeking out between the occasional clouds, letting the trio know just how late it was by the time they stepped out of the restaurant.
“I have the week off,” Sakura says as she starts walking towards their joint apartment.
“Really?” Naruto exclaimed, his eyes shined brightly as he bounded towards her. “I was told to take the week off, something about an envoy coming to visit Sensei. It seems like a diplomatic thing and I wasn’t needed.”
Sakura arches an eyebrow at that, “you know you have to know how to act in those situations when you become Hokage right?” He shrugs a shoulder. “It was never really about becoming Hokage or being a leader, more about the admiration and respect. I just wanted people to acknowledge me and treat me better than a demon.” Sakura’s jaw drops, frozen in place in front of their door. Her hand midway to reaching for her keys. Sasuke takes over, reaching for his own keys and opens the door. Herding them inside, he pulls the door shut and locks it behind him. He removes his sandals and picks up Sakura, then drops her like a sack of potatoes on their garish orange couch. He removes her sandals, tossing them over his shoulders towards their entryway, too lazy to walk over. He flops over his own blue armchair and hikes his legs over the other arm. Naruto follows close behind, toeing off his sandals and removing his jacket, he hangs it on their coat rack behind the door. He sits on the other side of the orange couch and waits, he can see her mind racing.
“You never wanted to be Hokage?” she asks in a small voice. Naruto eyes Sasuke, where he’s still reclined on his armchair. Sasuke shakes his head and Naruto winces.
“Well, maybe never’s the wrong word,” he explains. “ It’s more like, as a child, “Hokage” meant all of that and more. It meant being the strongest, the smartest, and the wisest.” He pauses. “I really looked up to Jiijii,” he says subduedly. “He was the only one to show me kindness and warmth in the times before going to the Academy.” His hand runs along the seams of the couch, distractedly tracing the worn fabric formed from habit. He stops again, unsure of how to explain the conversation he previously had with Sasuke. The last time they’d spoken with all three of them was when Sakura had decided that she would continue working with Tsunade-sama on the hospital and defense line. Sasuke had wanted out, he’d chosen to become a bounty hunter for the Village. Everyone thought that Naruto still wanted to become Hokage, yet now that it was within reach, Naruto was conflicted.
Sasuke speaks into the subdued air and breaks the silence. “Naruto was almost going to come with me.” Sakura whips her head to look at Sasuke. Then slowly turns to look at Naruto, whose head was turned away from her, looking intently at the chair Sasuke was sitting in. Sasuke shifts to sit upright against the chair, leaning towards Naruto and gently bonks his head with his knuckles. Naruto jerks and instinctively covers the top of his head with his hand and looks at him in disbelief. Sasuke shrugs, but his eyes had a smug glint, he successfully distracted him from the helpless look from before.
“It wouldn’t’ve made a difference,” he mumbles, as he had smushed his face into the cushions. Sasuke gives him a sharp look, but doesn’t contradict him. Sakura hadn’t moved from her position on the couch, still reeling from the previous statement, she opted to just wait until he continued. The silence dragged on for a moment before Naruto finally sighs, “it’s not like I intentionally didn’t tell you. I tried to, but the timing was always bad. Eventually, it just didn’t matter.” That spurred both of his teammates onto moving.
“Of course it matters,” Sakura says in a choked off sob. She had slid down the couch to kneel at his feet, her hands tightly clenched against his open palms. Sasuke had aborted the hand reaching out to him, instead choosing to crowd in from the other side. Gingerly he sat upon the arm of their couch, where Naruto turned to bury his face in between his chest and stomach. “It’s not that big of a deal, I don’t know why you guys are acting like this,” muffled in Sasuke’s shirt. Sasuke feels wet spots forming along his abdomen, jerkily he rests his hand against Naruto’s neck. Sasuke had held himself tensely against the couch, but with only Naruto and Sakura around him, he slowly relaxed into the embrace he found himself in. Naruto’s arm had immediately sought out his waist and he didn’t try to remove it like usual.
Sakura’s eyes, brimming with tears, gently turning his chin with her hand to face her. “What do you want,” She murmurs into the space between them, “anything you want.” Naruto’s eyes were red rimmed, from rubbing his face into the fabric of Sasuke’s top. “Right now, I just want to know if I could use the same technique my dad did,” his lips wobbled but his eyes were no longer wet. Instead they were bright with the hope that she’d honor her promise.
She smiled. She wiped her tears away and pulled him up, into her arms. “Yeah, let's do that first. Then we can talk about what to do after.” Sasuke was also pulled into it and had a long suffering expression on his face, but didn't fight the hug.