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Stranger than the Wild	By : kiddattwell Category: Naruto > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 30155 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and I don't make any money off of it.

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Chapter 2

Sakura

Sakura slid open the curtain that doubled as her front door and sat down. Four stories from the ground, she let her feet dangle while she brushed her hair, staring out at the other mammoth trees where her fellow ninjas were currently living.

Yamato-sensei was averaging about a city block a day, but it would still be weeks before the temporary tree houses were made redundant. Carved in circular units within the trees trunks, the single room dwellings were pretty small and bare, leaving room only for some essentials- a sleeping bag, her tools, and basic clothes. There was also a small pouch of goods hidden in her bedroll which were not strictly rations, but there were perks to being close to the Hokage by way of quality shampoo and conditioner. But for the most part, she had gotten comfortable in her round wooden cave, despite the splinters and the lack of privacy, and she would be sad when the temporary houses went away. It would be like coming back to reality after spending a couple months at grown-up summer camp.

Two holes under her, in the second room up, she was sure Ino was having a lie in. Across the way, she saw Rock Lee begin scaling up to his door, at least six stories off the ground. She watched as he ran the first forty feet or so, then used kunai to climb the rest faster than most people could run. Below, people were coming and going under the shade of the giant trees, even a few civilians who were delivering boxes to a nearby supply shelter.

There was no money and a lot of good will going around at the moment, but Tsunade had told her that they were only weeks away from removing the ration on groceries (not that it mattered much to Sakura, who tended to cash in all of her daily rations at the food stands that had been erected by impromptu civilian chefs.)

A lot of civilians had gone to stay with relatives in towns that hadn't been destroyed, like her parents. They were staying with her grandmother in the country side where things weren't so stressful. But honestly, Sakura was glad she had a good excuse to stay behind and watch the rebuilding.

She stood and tossed her brush on her sleeping bag, then patted herself down. There was only so much primping she could do without a mirror. She only had two sets of clothes, so it’s wasn’t like she could make any adventurous outfit choices, but it was a little nerve wracking to not even be able to see her face before she went out. Lamenting the loss of the travel sized mirror she always used to use on missions, she closed the curtain to her room and walked down the tree until she reached Ino’s hollow.

When she arrived she threw Ino’s make-shift drape aside, the same way Ino did to her, except usually in the middle of the night as opposed to the early afternoon.

"Iiiino-chaaaaan," she drawled. A lump in a sleeping bag twitched.

Sakura bounded over to the lump and gave it a shake, "Good-mor-ning."

"...away... Forehead..."

"I'm going to Naruto's. Do you have plans?"

"Nnng," Ino answered, her face suddenly appearing from the bag, "Got plans with Shika. And Chouji. Gonna be depressin’ though."

Ever since their parents died, Ino had been talking with Sakura about her reservations about reuniting with the old trio as all they tended to do was make each other sad. Even Shikamaru, who was usually careful with his feelings, walked away from their meetings with an end-of-the-world expression.

"I think it's only hard for them when I'm around...” Ino mused, squinting up at the circular patterns on the wood ceiling.

"Nonsense. It's only like this because the reality is still too sad to deal with. The awkwardness is just you all’s way of avoiding the grief,” Sakura said matter-of-factly.

Sakura knew she had to be careful about how she talked about parents and how much she ran her mouth. More and more, her peers were becoming orphans while her civilian parents lived out their lives in peace. Naruto and Sasuke never seemed to notice it, but that didn't mean other people weren't sensitive to it.

Seeing no change in Ino, she said, "Well, if you're meeting them sometime today, you’d better get up. I'll see you after.” She gave the girl in the sleeping bag an affection nudge with her foot before leaving. She half walked, half slid down the tree and jogged over to Naruto's.

When she walked into Naruto's curtain-less room, he was nowhere to be found. They usually woke up at the same time, possibly due to some old, Team 7 psychic connection (although it seemed that was as far as the connection went), but for him to leave before she even woke up, it must have been important.

Naruto's circular room already looked like him and she suspected he was enjoying the summer camp atmosphere of their current situation even more than she was, surrounded as he was by playmates. All of his belongings were strewn around the room. A quick look in his mission bag showed that he was the recipient of more than a few non-ration gifts as well, but they were likely presents from grateful villagers.

She sat down on his bedroll, which was sprawled across the floor. He’d be back soon. The academy was seriously short of teachers, so they had plans to head over and see what they could help with. A few minutes passed though and soon she was no longer sitting, but lounging out on the soft interior of his sleeping bag. Naruto’s bag always smelled like dirt and grass- not unlike Naruto himself. The familiar scent was pleasant, soothing. Soon she was being lulled to sleep by the rhythmic sound of Rock Lee counting out his push-ups…

She woke up. Or so she was told. All she knew was that one second, she was screaming at Sasuke on the battlefield, and the next, she was falling off of a rickety cot in a medical tent. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they told her she had teleported there somehow. But instead they said that Kakashi had brought her in, and that he’d left again right after. The only thing that kept her from trying to follow him was knowing that he would definitely bring the boys back to her, and that she might miss him if she ran off and tried to find him herself.

The busy, flustered medical nins let her pace the open area in the front of the tent as long as she kept out of the way. Her imagination supplied her with plenty to think about; terrible visions of what might have happened between Naruto and Sasuke… What Sasuke could’ve done to him… all of it at least partially her fault.

Naruto would do anything for her, anything to bring Sasuke home.

The guilt was unbearable, almost worse than the fear.

She heard him coming before they brought him in. A collective mounting of gasps and upset cries announced his approach. She steeled herself to be ready when the tent flapped open.

Two jounin were carrying him, one holding his upper body stiffly in his arms, the other supporting his hips and legs from the opposite side. There was a cape wrapped tightly around his shoulders, but it was soaked with blood and dripping in the dirt. There was a moment when she thought that this person might not be him- his face was so beaten that he could barely open his eyes.

But he was awake, and when he passed by, he tried to smile at her, the blue of his eyes surrounded by broken blood vessels. Her heart lurched.

She ran beside the two jounin taking him deeper into the tent, into surgery. “Naruto... you...” she didn’t know what to say. Just looking at him hurt.

“Don’t cry, Sakura-chan. I think I got through to him this time,” he slurred, trying to grin through the pain. He was missing a premolar on the right side of his mouth. His teeth were covered in blood.

“I didn’t want this,” she said, wiping her tears before they could drip on his face, “I’d never want you to... to... I love you. I love you, Naruto! The only thing that matters is that you’re ok. I swear, I... I…”

At that point it became clear to the medics that she wasn’t there to work and she was shooed out of the room, a complete and utter mess, unable to do her most important duty. But as she stood there outside of the surgery, crying harder than she could ever remember in her life, something became whole in her heart. A feeling she had always vaguely felt for Naruto mixed together with fear and tenderness and grief. Churning inside of her as she wept, all of her emotions crystallized into a new reality. She loved Naruto. Really loved him. It just took the world nearly ending to make her see it.

"Ah! Sakura-chan!"

She bolted awake with a gasp, her whole body trembling. Lee’s voice was still shouting out his push-up count. He was on 1024. The present came back into focus; instead of a bruised and bloodied Naruto, he was now standing in front of her half-naked and hastily adjusting his towel as Sasuke stood watching them both from the door way.

A moment of silence, where he was probably waiting for her to say something, came and went before she realized it. Also, she was staring at his thighs.

Careful to fix her eyes on his face, she asked with as much dignity as she could muster, "Why are you naked?"

"Well I didn't expect you to be hiding in my blankets, for one!"

"I… I... got tired while I was waiting!" She stammered as she stumbled over to the entrance and sat down facing the forest, adding, "You're awfully immodest for someone without a door!"

"Most people aren't lying in wait to peep on me," Naruto joked.

"I wouldn't be so sure, what with your current popularity."

"Well, I don't mind as long as it's you, Sakura-chan."

"You wish.”

"Hn."

Sakura barely heard Sasuke's small input to the conversation.

"So what were the two of you doing?" Sakura asked, staring out at the trees. Her dream and the vividness of those memories were fading, happy to be replaced with images of tan abs and thighs. Sakura took a deep breath and felt her heart beat return to normal.

"Destroying the training ground, mostly. Sasuke got me up to train super early. But since we’re going to the school, I thought we should wash up."

"But why aren't you wearing your clothes?"

"If I put those clothes back on there wasn't much of a reason for me to take a shower in the first place!"

Sakura heard a zipper and turned around. Naruto was in black pants and fishnet under-armor. It was definitely odd to see him wearing so many dark colors, but clothes were on the bottom of the list of concerns in Konoha at the moment and they were all getting by with plain, ill-fitting donation clothes. However, there was something different about Naruto when he was in black...

Naruto beamed his cat like grin when he looked down at her, "You're blushing still, Sakura-chan."

"Please," she flipped her hair and willed the blood down from her face, "I'm a medic. I've seen far more than that.”

Naruto's eyes narrowed a bit more as he leaned closer to her on the pretense of helping her up, "Oh? So what are you blushing about then? Hm? Hm? Hm?"

"Naruto!" As usual, Naruto was too caught up in his teasing to dodge, but she only shoved him. He flew all the way back into the wall and caught himself with a yelp. Sakura thought she saw Sasuke begin to say something, but by the time Naruto had started whining, he had already closed his mouth.

She quickly chided herself for watching Sasuke so much. It seemed like nothing had changed in that regard. Sometimes, she tried to tell herself it was because he had spent so much time as her enemy, but she wasn’t fooling anyone with that lie, including herself.

Even with Sasuke seeming to shadow Naruto everywhere for the last two weeks, things weren't getting any less strange between them. Sakura never quite knew what to feel around him. Everyone had seemed to blow off her battlefield confession. Not that she blamed them. Even she was beginning to lose track of the times she lost her cool over Sasuke and blurted out everything she felt.

The funny thing was that, in the heat of the moment, everything she said was entirely true. But of course, now that the moment was gone, she knew that, while the core of her feelings might have been that simple, under normal circumstances, things were a little more complicated.

Naruto had earned her loyalty and trust and if she was asked, in a rational moment, to choose between them, well... There wasn't a choice.

There might be a part of her deep down, along with whatever was left of her inner-self, that would always want Sasuke.

But she was more honest now. She didn't have to vent to her impulsive Inner-Sakura because Outer-Sakura was running her own life. She knew she loved Naruto, really loved him, from the moment she saw him bloodied and beaten after the last battle. And as deserving as Naruto was of her affection, she knew she also deserved to be loved. Preferably by someone who actually had emotions.

She walked over to Naruto where he was dusting himself off in an over dramatic fashion. She picked up a crumpled black shirt from the floor and shoved it roughly over his head.

"Hey!" he yelped.

"Hurry up, dummy, and let's get out of here. You're coming too, Sasuke?"

After a moment, Sasuke nodded, and glanced behind her to Naruto. She turned, but whatever look he and Sasuke were sharing was gone. Naruto grinned, putting his arm casually over her shoulder and reaching out for Sasuke with his other hand.

"Let's go show those brats what it takes to be Konoha shinobi!"

**** **** **** ****

"I'm beat!" Naruto cried, hanging himself over the table, then glancing around with a frown, "When is the ramen stand gonna open up again?"

"No idea," Sakura said. She was only slightly disheveled as they had broken into a rotation with Naruto on taijutsu, Sasuke on genjutsu, and Sakura on medical jutsu and survival skills. While Sasuke had been frightening effective, she was worried that he might have been scaring some of the students out of being their best. He did seem fond of one little boy though, who, with a serious expression of his own, ignored Sasuke's aura of authority and managed to accomplish genjutsu on his partner several times.

But the real star was Naruto, who decided in the end that each child should have one on one training with the help of his Kagebushin jutsu.

"They were pretty focused today," Sakura said idly, "Much more than we were as academy students."

"Well, a lot of them are from ninja families. They're probably extra motivated after everyone came back with war stories."

"Or didn't come back," Sasuke said.

"Did you have any favorites, Naruto?" Sakura asked quickly, before Naruto's expression fell.

"Yeah! That one boy who was encouraging all the others!"

"Habuna!"

"He needs to focus more on himself if he wants to succeed," Sasuke said.

"Nah. He just needs a rival. He's got too many friends,” Naruto said.

"Isn't that why the three of us almost failed Kakashi-sensei's test? You were too focused on yourself and you were too busy trying to compete with Sasuke?" Sakura snickered.

Sasuke looked a bit scornful at the reminder, but Naruto leered at her, "And why did you fail, Sakura-chan?"

Sakura kicked him under the table and he whined, before adding, "Oh, but I liked that baby Sakura, too!"

Sakura knew who he meant. A girl with long pink hair and red eyes. She hadn't really stood out skill wise; she had been pretty reserved for a kid, actually. But she was the only one with pink hair.

"Usako. She's the one who needs a rival."

"Or a love interest," Naruto said, waggling his eyebrows, "Maybe we could set her up with Sasuke's favorite, that kid that with good aim and the genjutsu skills-

"Tohru," Sasuke said.

"Don't you dare lead her down that road. It's better if she finds her own strength," Sakura declared, then realized her voice was a little too loud.

There was a long silence between the three of them. She could kick herself for projecting so much on a kid and kick Naruto for stirring things up. Why was it so hard to avoid the past?

"Love's not the worst reason to do something, Sakura," Naruto said in an over-casual voice.

Love is the only reason I'm not throttling you right now, Naruto, she thought, but instead she saw an opening to change the subject.

"I guess it's better than perversion, which was the core of all your early techniques!" Sakura jabbed.

"Hey! Sexy-no-jutsu has worked time and time again!"

"I hope that's not what you've been teaching my students!" Iruka said as he appeared at their booth.

"You should be glad if that's the worst thing they were taught with Sasuke over here pulling them into who knows what kind of genjutsu!"

"I will not be glad!" Iruka said, bopping Naruto once on the head before sitting down next to Sakura, "Between you and Konohamaru, I'm not sure where I can leave the kids without worrying what they’ll pick up."

They had their meal and by the end, Iruka forced them to promise that they would return to the academy in two days’ time with even Sasuke conceding to do so.

When they left the restaurant, Naruto had decided to visit Konohamaru to congratulate him on his new chuunin status and Iruka followed, probably thinking it was a good opportunity to go over appropriate lesson plans while they were both in one place, Sakura guessed. But it left her and Sasuke alone for the first time since they were genin themselves.

It was only a half mile until they split ways, but Sasuke had set a leisurely pace and by the halfway point, Sakura thought she might explode if she didn't say something.

"Naruto says you’re almost done building the new complex," she offered, thinking it was inoffensive enough small talk.

"It's not a complex. It's only a single building. But it's almost done. The structure is complete."

"It's just the stuff to make it pretty that's left, huh?"

"Finishing touches, yes. Or the pretty stuff, to you," he said with a wavery half smirk. Was Sasuke actually... joking with her? Or was he about to stab her or something? Play it cool and assess, she told herself.

"Haha," she said, "But it's hard to believe that you built something like that in just a few weeks. And you've been hanging around with Naruto all this time."

"Where have you been?" He asked, which again, was completely unexpected. She found herself stringing together her words like she had only just learned to talk.

"Overseeing, um, stuff. Lots of stuff at the hospital. Making sure the new building will suit Tsunade-sama, keeping tabs on the new civilian staff, checking in on a lot of out-patients who won't sit still, which is most of them," she added, grinning.

He nodded while looking straight ahead. The sun was behind them, low on the horizon. It made a kind of glow around him, shining in his dark hair, leaving his face shadowed and pale...

No, no, no! she thought.

"I spend a lot of time with Ino, too. Both of her parents died in the attack on HQ, so she needs a lot of support. I'm going there now. She was supposed to go see Shikamaru and Chouji today and she was kind of worried about it. They tend to make each other feel worse for some reason…”

Sasuke was quiet for a moment, then he said, "She's lucky. There's nothing she can do but get over it."

Sakura wanted to say that she wasn't lucky at all, but by present company's standards, she supposed she was.

"I'm just not sure what makes her feel better,” Sakura sighed, “Some days she acts like she did before and I feel like everything's going to be ok. The next she gets mad at me for acting like nothing has happened and lies in bed all day. I just don't know how to act, which way helps."

"You can't anticipate where this will take her. You’ll just have to go with whatever she throws at you and try not take it personally. Sticking around and tolerating her is all you can do to support her right now."

"Yeah. You're right. That's really good advice, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke nodded and Sakura thought she could manage to walk in peaceful silence for the rest of the way, but then Sasuke said, "It still might not be enough, though. She might be a different person by the time she's over it."

"It doesn't matter how she acts. I'll always love Ino."

"That sounds like you," he said simply.

And the peace was ruined. Why was everyone trying to tie her to the past? To nip at the almost healed, Sasuke shaped wound in her heart? It seemed even Sasuke was in on it!

"Well, I've changed too, at my own pace," Some evidence to the contrary, she thought wryly, "It is subtle though. I'm not surprised you can't tell."

"I noticed change," he said, then added, "Between you and Naruto."

She froze mid-step, but then quickly continued to walk, just in case he stopped and used the full force of his attention on her.

"Yeah, I guess," she said, filling the silence and wondering what the hell he had meant by that. Was he fishing for her relationship status? “Between you and Naruto” could only really mean one thing, right?

With all her internal floundering, she didn't notice that they were suddenly at the split way. Sasuke followed the road automatically. She thought he wasn't going to say goodbye, but then he turned to her.

"You should train more. You'll get weak again if all you do is babysit the hospital and the Hokage."

Sakura wasn't sure how long she stood there with her mouth open while her feelings caught up with that statement. Weak again? Again? She'd been an elite level shinobi since the end of her training with Tsunade. There was no way she could fall back to her genin level. Of course there was no denying that she had been weak for a time, especially compared to the rest of Team 7, but that was years ago.

She took a step forward, "Ex-"

"Naruto and I train in the morning. Maybe if you think up some strategies while you’re at work, you could take the bell from one of us someday."

He was wearing a full blow smirk as he turned and walked down the road. Just like that, her anger had been killed, instant death, by his invitation. She turned and walked to her tree in a daze, her emotions reeling.

Sasuke was acting like a human being almost- a pessimistic, mostly silent weirdo, but still, that was crazy enough by itself. But now he was offering to spend more time with her?

By the time she was climbing up Ino's tree, she realized the compliment Sasuke had just given her. Not to her womanhood, but to her skills. He was interested in training with her, and while it wasn’t the type of interest she had fantasized about when she was younger, it was still recognition. He had realized she could be useful, that it wasn’t a waste of time to have her around.

The whole thing gave her mixed feelings. She reminded herself that this was her goal, to be seen as an equal by her team mates. She wouldn't let herself go crazy and fixate on the fact that Sasuke had voluntarily offered to spend time with her.

She opened the curtain, "Ino," she called.

Ino was exactly how she left her, but dressed in day clothes and without her blanket mummied around her.

Sakura sighed and sat down next to her.

"Did you go out?"

Ino said nothing, so Sakura assumed she had.

"Ino? ...You can't tell anyone, but I think I'm going to ask Naruto to be my boyfriend. Officially. And soon."

Ino slowly rolled over in bed. Her face was blotchy from recent crying, but she looked interested. She sniffed a few times and said, "What?"

"I'm going to make a move on Naruto," Sakura said again.

Tentatively, Ino sat up. She rubbed her face and leaned forward, "Why all the sudden?"

"A lot of reasons. I love him, for one. And with the whole town on hiatus from real life, I think we’re in danger of falling into our old Team 7 habits, so mushy stuff won’t come up. And then, when life goes back to normal, we'll be busy and it still won't happen. So I'm just trying to speed things up."

The reason she did not say, which she knew Ino would disapprove of and misunderstand, was that she had to save herself from Sasuke. One tiny, relatively kind conversation and she was already overreacting. She did not want to open that door again. It was unhealthy. And disloyal, because she was already in love with Naruto.

Ino wasn't buying her easy excuse though, "What happened today?"

"No-thing!"

"Then why out of nowhere?"

"I just told you why."

"You're hiding something from me. I can see it written all over that giant forehead of yours. It's not fair to not tell me, especially since I'm so sad..."

"I can't believe you'd guilt trip me with that!"

"Is it working?" Ino said, her congested voice managing to sound sly.

"Yes!" Sakura shouted, then dissolved into anxious giggles, "But I really don't think you want to know. I'm a mess!"

Ino have her a knowing look, "You can't be worse than me. Let’s hear it."

Sakura shifted to one side of the sleeping bag and settled in for a long night.
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Stranger than the Wild