Everything

1

He was her everything. The first person she had recognized who shared her loneliness. Her rival. Her best friend. Her enemy and now her friend again. Somehow, she had finally gotten through to Sasuke Uchiha. He came back to the Leaf Village after the War, only to leave almost immediately afterwards on a Journey of Redemption. She remembered that day well.

"Now stay out of trouble Sasuke. Naruko and I put in a good word for you, but it wasn't easy." Kakashi said in an infuriating calming voice.

"What does he mean by stay out of trouble?! Bastard, why are you wearing a traveling cloak? Where are you going?!" Naruko demanded.

"I'm going away for awhile. The village needs time to recover and seeing me there, isn't going to help. I have to prove that I'm different now. I can't do that here, Naruko. Only Team Seven would ever give me that chance. It's better this way." Sasuke told her.

Naruko snapped. She tried to lunge at him, but she was held back. Sakura had stopped her.

"Sakura, let go of me! We spent years trying to get him back and now that he's back, he wants to leave again!" Naruko growled in a voice that sounded far more like an animal's, than a human's.

"Take us with you." Sakura pleaded as she desperately tried to hold the furious blonde back.

"You two have nothing to do with my sins. I'll be back. I promise. It's just better if everyone has a chance to grieve and rebuild, before I try to force them to accept me." Sasuke said.

Kakashi sighed. He hated to see the look of absolute hurt on Naruko's face. She looked torn between crying and tying to kill the last Uchiha. This was going to get ugly.

"He's right. Besides Naruko, Sakura…do you really want to voice him to stay, if he won't be happy here? He'll just sneak off again anyway." He said and tried to lighten the mood.

"You promise, you'll come back?" Naruko asked Sasuke and he nodded.

"Alright. I don't like it. You should stay here. You can redeem yourself here! But I want you to be happy and if you can't do that here right now…" She trailed off.

Sasuke nodded. He headed off without another word. Sasuke had never been one to drag out goodbyes.

That had been a few years ago. The village was thriving again. It would be so easy to forget that a war had ever happened. But whenever she glanced down at her arm, she was reminded that it had. She had taken the transplant. It hadn't been easy, but she talked Sasuke into it as well.

She wondered how his new arm was working. Naruko wondered how he was doing in general. The blonde truly had no idea where he was or anything. Maybe he was afraid if he did, she would have convinced him to come back sooner.

"Why did everything have to become so complicated?" She asks as she looks at an old photo of Team Seven.

It was from when they were Genin. Back then she hadn't known much about Sasuke back then. She knew he was wicked smart, strong, and a bastard. He had always been a stuck up bastard.

That was a Hell of a lot easier to understand, than why he was that way. Everything had been taken from him as a small child. She never had a family, except for the brief time when her father had been revived and she was trapped in that other world. Sasuke had. It was more painful for Sasuke to be alone, because he remembered what it was like not be alone.