Chapter Text
theory
He spits out a mouthful of blood.
Biting the insides of his cheek keeps the world in sharper focus; it’s a new habit.
“Giving up already?” Her voice floats up easily from behind him.
Sweat runs down his face, sticking his unusually floppy hair to his forehead, and a sharp tang fills his mouth once more as jaw clenches. “As if,” he grits out, glaring at the limp fish lying in front of him.
This is not hard. The chakra control exercises that turn his muscles numb and weak are not hard. Hours spent here in the Hokage’s private library, pouring over medical scrolls and memorising herbs and poisons is not hard. Trying to draw out the Kyubi’s chakra while staying in control through Tsunade’s cruelly creative tactics is not hard.
Waking up every morning to find Sasuke still gone, because he is too weak - that is hard.
His palms glow green as he swallows the metallic taste once more. Again and again and again; he will master the art of healing even if it kills him.
“Naruto.”
“Baa-chan,” he snaps. His eyes and his hands and his head all pound in different beats to a larger, single concentrated pain.“I can’t concentrate if you keep talking to me.”
“I need to remind you why you’re doing this.”
The glow between his palms keeps steady. “I will save Sasuke.”
“No,” Tsunade says. A rustle, the sound of clothes shifting on a chair that gives way to the click-clicking of heels against the wooden floor. She is coming closer. “This is not just about staying alive.”
When Naruto looks up, Tsunade is standing on the other side of the long table, eyes hard and a dead fish between them. In his mind, every one of them, with their glassy eyes and shiny blue-grey scales, is named Sasuke.
“Don’t forget that Sasuke might not want to return willingly,” Tsunade says slowly. When they are training, he knows she is serious because she doesn’t drink, not a single drop; there is never a bottle of sake anywhere near, and everything she tells him slices like a scalpel, sliding into the softest parts of him with lethal accuracy. This is no different, because each word is a senbon that pierces straight through him. “You must be prepared to kill him first.”
Her palm hovers over the belly of the fish. The flash of green light comes effortlessly. She does in three seconds what he’s been trying to do for three months: the fish shudders then jerks and flops around, flush with life. Naruto can’t stop staring at Sasuke’s singular red-rimmed eye.
“And then you can save him.”
His first lesson in chakra control was with Team 7, but what he remembers most isn’t Kakashi’s lessons or the surreal delight of walking up a tree, but moonlit nights in a quiet forest and the smell of dirt and salt on Sasuke’s skin.
The Rasengan with Jiraiya is a harder lesson, not only because Sasuke isn’t there next to him, but because refining chakra into his palm for it to rotate and expand and fold in onto itself is harder than he wants to admit.
On the hospital roof, under a clear sunlit day, it spins a perfect sphere in his hand against Sasuke’s sleek Chidori. At the Valley of the End, the Rasengan dissolves from his palm as he launches himself to meet Sasuke. Defenceless, at the very last second before the white heat tears through him, light illuminates those glassy eyes aflame in panic and he tastes the fear coming off this familiar face, one dull and warped by the Curse Seal.
It begins like this: how everything gives way to nothing.
When he comes to, the first thing he sees is the panic in Kakashi’s eyes and for days after, the only thing he can feel is a layer of fear that coats his body and his sight and everything he swallows back at the hospital.
In the end, he knows the Rasengan failed him just as much as he had failed Sasuke. He’s only alive on a whim, because Sasuke was distracted and his hand went through his chest two inches too high, barely missing his heart. To save Sasuke, he needs a trump card, a jutsu that Sasuke will not expect.
In the quiet ward, between the subsiding pain in his chest but not of his heart, there is nothing to do but think. When the answer arrives, it’s startlingly simple: all he needs to be is harder to kill.
The first thing he does when he doesn’t fall flat on his face on the way to the toilet is sneak down the stark white hallway, straight out to the Hokage Mansion, and into the Fifth Hokage’s office.
“Naruto,” Tsunade says from behind a mountain of paperwork, fingers laced together under her chin as she watches him barge in. She does not look surprised.
“I need to learn medical ninjutsu,” he says.
She merely blinks at him. “Why?”
“I will save Sasuke.”
“Stop being an idiot.”
“All I need to do is convince Sasuke to come back. I know I can do it. I just need to stay alive long enough to do it.”
“The Kyubi chakra heals you automatically. Why would you need to master medical ninjutsu to do something you already can?”
“It’s not enough. I cannot die until I save Sasuke and bring him back. You are the world's greatest medical-nin! You have secrets to teach me.”
Tsunade is shaking her head. “Jiraiya will be back soon. He will want to continue overseeing your training.”
Naruto’s fingers curl into a tight fist. “The Rasengan didn’t work. Instead of fighting him...I can save him. I just need to be alive to talk to him first.”
Something swirls in Tsunade’s eyes. “That’s not enough. You need to know how to defend yourself, brat!”
“Fine,” he replies. “Teach me medical ninjutsu first and I will learn whatever you want me to. As the future Hokage, you’re the only one who should train me! Baa-chan, I want to be your apprentice.”
“Come here,” she says, lifting a finger and curling it in his direction. He makes his way towards her desk, heart soaring, and when he’s close enough, she flicks her finger against his thick, bandaged forehead. The world bursts into a wave of colours as he flies across the office, tumbling to a stop with a thump against the closed door. “No.”
“If you think that’s enough to change my mind, you’re wrong,” Naruto says as he picks himself up from the ground, albeit a little gingerly, and flashes her a grin. “I will become your apprentice, and I never go back on my word.”
“The jutsu you are looking for is the Creation Rebirth. As long as the jutsu remains active, you cannot die. In return, your lifespan is shortened. Do you think I can allow Konoha’s Jinchuriki to learn, let alone use such a dangerous power?”
“When I go after Sasuke and he kills me, what difference does that make?”
“You’re a fool,” she says, chin resting on her intertwined fingers. A sigh escapes her lips. “A fool like my brother.”
“When can we start training?”
“No.”
“We can start right now,” he says, unwinding the thick bandages around his head and letting it fall next to his sandals. They are still caked with mud from the Valley of the End.
When she answers, just long enough to make Naruto think he’s failed, there’s a shadow of a smile in her voice even though those eyes betray nothing. “Tomorrow. Now leave my office, and take those bandages with you!”
Whenever Jiraiya visits, Naruto gets the day off - he thinks it’s Tsunade’s guilt from taking him from Jiraiya acting up. There’s always an ice cream waiting for him, one he slides back into the wrapper and holds in his stinging palms before unceremoniously half-eating, half-drinking the melted thing. The cold makes him think it will soothe his hands when it won’t, not when the burning is not on skin but deep deep down, running along his chakra pathways.
“How’s Tsunade?”
Naruto makes a face. “Aren’t you going to ask me how my training is going?”
“If you were making progress, I wouldn’t even need to ask. You’d be telling me all about it,” Jiraiya replies and Naruto deflates miserably as he dribbles the cold grape juice into his mouth from its wrapper.
Jiraiya laughs, and the loud comforting boom is enough to make Naruto smile.
“Have you found out anything about Sasuke? About Orochimaru?”
“No news is good news,” Jiraiya says through a mouthful of ice cream.
Staring out over the small valley, the entire village so small below their feet, he feels himself nod. “Baa-chan is really strict. She makes me wake up and report to her office at 6 every morning. Half the time she’s not even awake! Sometimes Ton Ton is hanging around in the dark and when she’s in a good mood, she lets me practice healing her rough hooves.”
Before Jiraiya can respond, a figure appears at the corner of his eyes.
“Sakura-chan!”
A head emerges from behind a book, and Sakura’s clear green eyes find his as she comes to a stop in front of their bench. “Ah, Naruto. Jiraiya-sama,” she says, lowering her book and giving him a small bow. Turning to Naruto, she sizes him up. “Did you escape again?”
“Baa-chan cut me some slack because she knew he’d be visiting for a bit,” he answers brightly.
“Lucky you! I’m on my way to class.” The book she hugs into her chest is completely covered so he can’t see its cover, but he knows exactly what she is studying for.
“Ramen date soon?”
“Ramen, yes. Date, no.” With a little wave and a bow to Jiraiya, she picks up her pace and disappears down the winding pathway down the hill. It makes his heart quicken, but not in anything other than fear. This is how easily Sasuke had left, too.
The wind whistles through the air, things are almost peaceful. It would be, if not for the mantra in his head, one that never quietens down: I will save Sasuke.
“Genjutsu, huh?”
A nod. “Sakura-chan is training with Kurenai-sensei.” Her days are almost as long as his own and just as brutal, from the way Sakura describes her headaches and blurry vision when they meet up, finding pockets of time to themselves in between the changing seasons. It’s been months and months since Sasuke left, and he wonders if every day will continue feeling like a lifetime without him here.
Jiraiya says, almost wistfully. “You guys are really growing up.”
He feels it, just as he sees it in Sakura: they are getting older and wiser and tougher but it means nothing if Sasuke is still gone. When he is not training, when he is asleep, he is still twelve years old, stuck at the Valley, hearing the falling water drown out the sound of his sobs as tears roll down his face, as he watches Sasuke slip away.
We have to, he lets himself think, and the only answer he can offer is a single nod.
The Naka riverside is quiet, the ramen is still hot, and Sakura is eating quietly next to him, nibbling at her noodles. On the rare days when they are both free and Sakura isn’t sleeping away the strain of her trainings, they meet like this, takeaway ramen bowls eaten on top of the red picnic mat Sakura has laid over the grass is smooth under his bare feet, smelling faintly of soap and flowers. Flowery soap.
He’s waited long enough.
“Sakura-chan,” he says, and she drops her wooden chopsticks.
She sighs loudly, tiredly. “We shouldn’t.”
But they will.
All he has to do is keep his gaze on her, and she sighs again but it’s one of surrender. He thinks deep down, she wants an excuse to do it as well, and he’s happy to give her any excuse, every time. “Lie down,” she says, patting the space next to her.
He’s already on his back before she finishes her sentence, inching over towards her like a worm as the cloudless day burns blue up above them. She bows over him, eclipsing the sky with her steady eyes, and the only sign of tension is in the way her eyebrows are knitted together.
“I’m ready,” Naruto breathes and her face, the red picnic mat, and the world as they know it, peels away. They are on the hospital rooftop and the two water towers framing them from behind are sturdy and intact. It’s a warm day, the breeze is light, and it’s a proper picnic, complete with a woven picnic basket set upon a familiar red blanket. Sasuke is staring into the distance. Sakura is cutting apples, sharp knife sinking into firm flesh, the air smelling sweet and light and fresh. Naruto just watches them, stomach churning with thrill and wonder.
Like every other time, he stays like this for what feels like hours, just watching them. Watching Sasuke. Sometimes, Sasuke’s gaze catches his when he turns around to pick a slice of apple off the plate. Sometimes, he smiles, that gentle curve of his lips, that lightness in his eyes.
Every single time, his heart leaps into his throat in exactly the same way, sending a wave of emotions that crash into the foundations of his rational mind. Exhilarating pleasure that Sasuke is here, close enough for him to stretch out his fingertips and touch his shoulder, his cheek, and how nothing has changed; sheer pain, because there’s a chasm in him, some unconscious part that knows something is not right.
When the world swims back into view, when reality bears heavily back down onto his chest, Naruto always wipes the wetness off his cheeks before Sakura notices. Today, after he scrubs the tears from his face with the back of his sleeve, he turns his head to the left to watch Sakura. She is splayed out like a starfish next to him, eyes closed, breaths short and sharp and shallow.
The thick vapour of their action spills from his pores. The way they are lying to themselves, the way things should be but it’s not, the way it hurts so much he can barely stand it. It feels a lot like loathing. The way their heads will soon pound with a pain sharp enough to keep him in bed for the next ten hours, leaving his heart and mind tender for even longer, should be enough for them to learn their lesson.
It’s not.
Sakura’s unsettling talent for genjutsu is both a gift and their curse.
When he brings Sasuke back to life for the first time, his hands are steady and the glow in his palm is warm. A faint flicker of foreign chakra licks up his arms as he sends tiny pulses of chakra around the heart, each beat reverberating to the rhythm of his own chakra.
Not too much, because that will overload a weakened chakra network. Not too little, because then he could do this forever, Sasuke’s body suspended in a constant state of hope.
He keeps up this cascade of healing chakra that comes pouring out of him and into the animal, until he feels the blood pulse and start to flow within its solid body, until its eyes lose that glassy tint, until it shudders and grunts so much that Naruto cannot maintain the link between his palm and its smooth, pink body. It breaks, the piglet squeals, and it’s alive.
“Yes!”
Bringing back a life is messy and noisy and exhilarating.
“Finally,” Tsunade says. It’s only when she smiles and continues speaking that he feels the fatigue, draining into him as though the link between Sasuke-the-piglet and him is still holding steady, death dripping into his blood. “You’re almost ready for human patients. Your chakra control is improving.”
“Almost? I’m ready now. I can join Shizune-san at the hospital right now to heal real people.”
She laughs. “Sit down, I have something to tell you. This is the only rest you’re going to get.”
Naruto doesn’t need to be told twice.
“The Hundred Healings Mark is a seal which stores chakra. With it Creation Rebirth can be activated, and a powerful seal will spread around the user’s entire body, releasing stored chakra into the body and healing its caster.”
“That’s the mark on your forehead?”
“Yes,” Tsunade says, brushing a finger over the purple diamond. “Storing this amount of chakra in a concentrated spot on the body is impossible for most medical ninjas. It took me two and a half years to unlock it. It’s a prerequisite for Creation Rebirth. As far as I know, no other living shinobi can do this.”
“Until I master it.”
“You have an advantage because you already have an untapped source of power sealed within you. If and when we figure out how to tap into the Kyubi’s chakra reserves, the only thing you need to focus on is concentrating it into your third eye chakra point. In theory, you would be able to unlock it instantly.”
“What are we waiting for, baa-chan? Teach me how to focus all my chakra to my forehead!”
“Walk before you run, Naruto,” Tsunade says. “I’ll teach you how to do it, and then Jiraiya is going to oversee the next part of your training in a safe place. It’s time you learn some offensive tactics.”
“...I need more Rasengan training?”
“Do not forget what I told you: to save Sasuke, you have to be prepared to kill him first. You need to be powerful enough to take him down. You also need to be powerful enough to defend yourself against enemies like the Akatsuki.”
The frustration roils deep inside him and to stop it from bubbling over into words he cannot take back, he bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood and shakes his head. “I will bring him back without killing him.”
“You promised you will do whatever I ask of you if I took you in as an apprentice.”
“I need to learn how to heal actual patients at the hospital. Give me two more weeks here, pleaaaase.”
“This is an order , not a request, Uzumaki Naruto.”
“One week! And then I’ll go wherever it is you will send me, where I won’t be able to eat Ichiraku for a long, long time. Right?”
She glares at him. “You get one week to help Shizune with sprains or civilian injuries at the hospital. Then pack up and be ready to leave with Jiraiya in exactly seven days.” Her eyes are narrowed and the gulf between her eyebrows is hard and angry, purple diamond almost hidden.
The smile he shoots her is dazzling. “What am I going to do? Where am I going?”
“You’ll understand when you arrive at Mount Myoboku.”
A good medic saves lives.
This is Tsunade’s first lesson.
You have a patient on the battlefield, she said, during their first class together. You have to choose between stopping the blood from leaking into his lungs or healing his crushed eyes. There’s only enough time for you to focus on one part of the body.
Lungs mean air. Eyes mean sight. He picked the lungs.
If you stop the internal bleeding, you save the life of a person. If you are able to salvage his eyesight, you save this shinobi’s future. By saving his life, he will never go on another mission outside the village.
A beat of silence stretches out the air around them.
His question is asked in a small, small voice. Was that the wrong choice?
Your job is to save lives above all else. In life or death situations, you cannot consider every possibility. Your duty is to save your patient’s life. Find out what the most vital problem is, and do everything you can to make sure they keep breathing. In our line of work, you need tunnel vision. I don’t think you have a problem with that.
I...don’t understand, he answered finally, throwing her a sheepish grin.
I’m going to beat this into you, she said. Focus on what is most important. Everything else is secondary.
And then she physically beat it into him by sending him flying across the room with another casual flick of the finger.
It works, because a year on, this is the second thing on the forefront of his mind, from the moment he is roused to consciousness until he’s in bed waiting for sleep to come, eyes fixed outside his window on the dark sky and its lonely moon.
His first thought is, of course, the reason why he’s doing all this. One name, a single person.
This tunnel vision is strangely useful for many other things in life.
At Mount Myoboku, Jiraiya introduces him to his new teacher. Despite the cool mountain air and nutritious bug stews he can barely choke down, it’s easy to focus only on what is needed: meditation and complete stillness and the delicate strands of nature energy. Instead of beating it into him, like Tsunade and her formulas, Fukasaku beats it out of him with a magical staff.
The months melt away like dew under sunlight; time moves differently here. During the days, he trains with the sage frog. At night, he pours over the scrolls Tsunade has packed for him, her messy calligraphy outlining theories and experiments and the Creation Rebirth’s secrets.
One day, Fukasaku wakes him with several sharp prods of his staff.
“You’re going to learn how to control the Kyubi the same way we train for sage mode,” he says.
“You’re going to beat it into me?” Naruto asks. He’s not awake enough for this.
“Something like that, until you master control over it. First you need to unlock the seal that keeps the Kyubi dormant inside you.”
The years blur away, almost like a dream. He continues growing taller and older and more impatient. Hard work, sheer focus, tunnel vision helps him with senjutsu and the taming of the Kyubi. Training is straightforward because it relies heavily on chakra control, the very thing he’s been living and breathing for the past year with Tsunade, and the stone frogs are a great target practice for his unstable Tailed Beast Bombs.
Five days a week; training is clockwork. The sun rises, the sun sets, and this is life. There are many bruises involved - his bruises have bruises.
A year into his training, he brings up the idea that he’s been toying with to Shima, who claps her small hands together and gives him her blessing. Over the weekends he sets up a clinic under the shade of the largest tree he can find, where the curious amphibious residents of Mount Myoboku come to visit, where Naruto removes warts and smoothens over century-old scars.
There is no time to worry about the village or miss Sakura and Tsunade.
There is only all this, and Sasuke.
Two years into training, the news of Jiraiya’s death reaches him. Mount Myoboku’s familiar surroundings, more home than a mere training ground now, is replaced with the sight of Konoha, crumbling behind a curtain of dust, her dead littering the land.
The first person he sees is Sakura, tears on her cheeks and dust dulling her bright hair. She looks older and her eyes hold a familiar look, one that looks almost haunted. He wonders if it is a side effect of all her genjutsu training.
“Naruto! Tsunade-shishou and I will take care of the injured. Can you help us take care of Pain.”
“Baa-chan took on another apprentice?”
“You’re not the only one who can heal now.” She reaches up to grab his shoulders, and drags him into a hug. The strength of it wipes the wind from his lungs. “I’m glad you’re back,” she says into his shoulder, voice muffled by the thick fabric, fingers digging into his flesh. “Go, and come back safely. We haven’t brought Sasuke back home for our picnic yet.”
And then he realises why that look in her eyes is so familiar - it’s the same one he saw mirrored in the still waters of Mount Myoboku’s ponds. It’s the weight of the difficult truths that all medical ninjas must bear. To save a life, sometimes you must first destroy it.
Sakura touches a finger to the purple mark on his forehead, and then the vivid orange outlining his eyes.
The first thing Uzumaki Naruto does on his return to Konoha is fight, not heal.
Naruto barely notices how he defeats Pain; he’s just beginning to process the hollow crater that Jiraiya’s death has opened up within him when war is declared across the Shinobi world. The world spins, faster and faster, but his vision is still narrow and focused. There are whispers of a name, Madara. There is a haunting plan, something called the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
Still, everything is secondary.
And then a familiar stranger arrives on the battlefield, landing right next to where Naruto is kneeling over a fallen comrade, pushing chakra back into a broken body, and only then does the world widen and flicker and sharpen back into focus. The wind blows colder, the air tastes sweeter, every edge is brighter.
Everything he has ever trained for begins here and now.
He bites down, filling his mouth with the acrid tang of metal. Focus. The figure doesn’t waver.
“Naruto,” Sasuke says.
For the first time in over four years, on the brink of his seventeenth birthday, like a dying patient dragged back to the world of the living: Naruto breathes again.