You Had Your Chance Ch.44 (Patreon)

I blinked once.

Twice.

I couldn't believe my eyes, because accepting what I was seeing meant admitting that a transformation jutsu had fooled my Sharingan.

That thought alone snapped me back to reality faster than anything else could have. My pride stung more than I'd care to admit - the eyes that saw through everything, beaten by something so mundane.

I refused to even consider it as a possibility.

So I pushed the wounded pride aside and focused.

The girl in the hot spring moved with no worries, settling into the water as if she owned it. But my Sharingan wasn't looking at her anymore - it was watching the chakra. The hot spring's natural energy wasn't simply surrounding her, it was flowing toward her like river currents finding their course. The nature chakra in the environment was being carefully, methodically drawn in.

Naruto was training in sage arts.

But Mount Myōboku would have been the safer and more obvious choice for this kind of training - the toads' sacred ground was specifically designed for it.

So why here? Why alone, in secret, in the middle of the night?

I dug through what I knew about sage mode. Beyond the raw power boost it provided, it enhanced every physical attribute to extraordinary levels. In the original timeline, sage mode had helped Naruto go face to face with all paths of Pain and win.

It also made the user one of the best sensors...

"Who-who's there?!"

Naruto's voice cut through the steam as she reflexively covered her chest and sank until only her chin remained above the water, fox ears pressed flat against her head.

I was about to reveal myself but paused. I wanted to see what else she would do. Besides, she didn't know it was me hiding.

Then both tails snapped outward like cracking whips.

The shockwave that followed was anything but subtle. A powerful wind gale sliced clean through the nearby trees, the sound of splintering wood filling the clearing as their upper halves toppled into the darkness below.

I stared at the fresh stumps.

That was a lot more destructive than I'd expected from a lash out.

Should I retreat?

No, escaping wasn't an option now that she could sense my position. Besides, I'd followed her out here specifically to get answers, and these revelations had only added more questions to an already growing pile.

I exhaled slowly, stepped forward, and dropped from my hiding spot with both hands raised.

"S-Sasuke?!"

The transformation of her expression was almost worth the surprise I'd gone moments earlier. Her face cycled through pure disbelief, then dawning horror, before erupting into the deepest blush I'd ever seen; almost rivaling Karin's hair color. Without another word, she plunged completely beneath the surface and vanished from sight.

"Who else?" I lowered my arms.

A long moment of silence followed, only the gentle bubbling of the spring filling the clearing.

Then Naruto burst from the water, every trace of the fox girl gone; replaced by one very pissed off blonde idiot treading water with murder in his eyes.

"What the hell are you doing here, you bastard?! Were you spying on me?! Has pervy sage been teaching you his ways in secret or something?! I knew you liked guys too!"

"Naruto." I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I'm not in the mood for games. Drop the illusion. Or transformation. Whatever you're using."

"I- I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Really." I stared at him flatly. "You're going to play this game. With me. Of all people."

"Not playing any games, you bastard!"

"Your tails cut those trees in half."

"I don't have tails!"

"I watched you transform."

"You watched nothing!"

"My Sharingan watched everything."

"Your Sharingan can go to hell!"

We went back and forth like that for longer than I care to admit. Every denial met with a fact. Every deflection met with another. Naruto was surprisingly stubborn even by his own standards, which I genuinely hadn't thought possible.

Eventually I ran out of patience.

"Fine." I hissed. "I'll bring it up when we return to Konoha. I'm fairly certain Sakura would love to know about this. Kakashi too."

The silence that followed was… awkward to say the least.

But eventually Naruto's expression cracked. The bravado collapsed piece by piece until only exhaustion remained in her. A long, shuddering breath escaped as the transformation slowly unraveled like smoke dissolving in wind - leaving the fox girl standing there in the moonlight, ears drooped and pressed low, tails curled inward almost protectively around herself.

I turned away, spotting a folded towel near the spring's edge. I walked over, picked it up, and held it out behind me without looking back.

I heard her moving through the water before the towel was snatched quickly from my hand.

Neither of us spoke for a while. The only sounds were the soft bubbling of the spring and the distant call of night birds in the forest.

I moved toward the nearest fallen tree trunk, courtesy of her earlier display,  broke off a suitable section, and dragged it back to a position near the spring's edge. I sat down, resting my elbows on my knees, and looked at the jinchuuriki directly, meeting those familiar blue eyes that suddenly felt like they belonged to a stranger.

"Do you want to talk?"

She bit her lower lip, fidgeting with the towel's edge before nodding slowly and settling beside me. The trunk was long enough that there was comfortable distance between us.

"...Where would I even start?"

"The beginning would be preferable."

Another pause. Longer this time. I heard her swallow before she finally decided to spek up again.

"Okay. So... you know how everyone thinks I'm just some orphan kid who got stuck with the Nine Tails?"

Yes, but I said nothing, waiting for her to expand upon that.

She took a shaky breath, one of her tails curling nervously around her ankle. "Yeah. About that..." Another pause stretched out, her fingers tightening around the towel. "My mom... her name was Kushina Uzumaki. She was from Uzushiogakure originally, but she came to Konoha when she was young." Her voice wavered slightly on the name. "She was the jinchuuriki before me. The previous host of the Nine Tails."

I kept my expression neutral; I knew what she was saying although surprised that they told her Kushina was her mother. Though now that I was thinking about it, it should have been blatantly obvious since she was the only Uzumaki in the village besides Mito so anyone would have put the two and two together. Also, I remembered that a jinchuuriki giving birth while containing the Nine Tails was considered virtually impossible; the seal would dangerously weaken during labor which was the reason why Obito attacked to free the beast.

"Jiraiya knew her," she continued, staring at the spring's surface rather than meeting my eyes. "He's been... he's been watching out for me since before I can remember. He knows everything." She exhaled sharply through her nose. "Everything that I'm about to tell you."

Her ears flattened slightly.

"When I was six years old, I woke up one morning and..." She reached up instinctively, touching one of her fox ears with a rueful expression. "These showed up. Just like that. No warning. Jiraiya said it had something to do with my mom's bloodline mixing with the Nine Tails' chakra, that it just... manifested differently in me than it did in her." Her hand dropped back to her lap. "And maybe the fox was trying to influence me more than it should. That's when the training started. He said I needed to learn to control it before anyone noticed. Before anyone started asking questions I didn't have answers to, and most importantly that I had to hide that I was a girl because it was even more dangerous for me."

The pieces were assembling themselves in my mind whether I wanted them to or not. A girl all alone was asking to be kidnapped or worse, and with such a powerful Biju in her? It made perfect sense why Jiraiya would come to protect her and raise her even, the old man was a perverted idiot but not a bad person. 

If it wasn’t for her, she could have gotten raped, forcefully impregnated and then the kyuubi would have escaped.

"And your father?" I asked, despite knowing the answer.

Something complicated crossed her face.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Jiraiya won't tell me. Says it's... complicated. That I'll understand when the time is right." The familiar flash of stubborn frustration crossed her features before fading into something quieter. "I've stopped asking since then."

The clearing settled into silence again, broken only by the soft hiss of steam rising from the spring's surface.

I let that sit for a moment before pressing forward. There was more I wanted to know, things she hadn't touched on yet.

"What else can you tell me?"

She blinked, surprised by the question. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said. What else? There is more that you can tell me, Naruto. You were a girl pretending to be a boy for years."

Naruto searched my face for a moment before realizing I would not elaborate further. She exhaled, pulling the towel tighter around herself. One of her tails curled absently around her ankle again as she gathered her thoughts.

"Living as a guy…." She started slowly, opening her mouth and closing a few times. "That was... that was its own thing entirely." A short, humorless laugh escaped her. "You try tucking fox ears under a hood every single day and see how long your patience lasts. So I learned a new jutsu to transform."

"How long did it take to adjust?"

She tilted her head, considering the question. "Longer than I'd like to admit. When you're little you don't really understand what any of it means, you just know something feels off. Boys do things differently. Talk differently. Even the way they sit is different." She gestured vaguely. "Jiraiya drilled it into me. How to walk. How to talk. How to act in public bathhouses without dying of embarrassment." Her ears twitched at the memory. "That last one took the longest."

"But you adjusted."

"Eventually." She shrugged, though it lacked her usual bravado. "You get used to most things if enough years pass. Doesn't mean it was never weird. It was definitely weird. Still is sometimes." Her fingers absently traced the edge of the towel. "But it became... normal, I guess. My kind of normal."

I nodded slowly, filing that away. Then another memory surfaced, where Naruto was being punched for his bad attitude with Sakura.

"Sakura." I said.

Naruto went very still.

"You asked her on dates. Repeatedly." I watched her carefully. "Jiraiya was supposedly teaching you during those years, which raises the obvious question of how that particular habit developed. Or was this some sort of plan to further solidify your cover as a guy?"

The blush spread immediately from her cheeks to the very tips of her ears, which pressed flat against her hair.

"That…" she trailed off, looking away, "was a misunderstanding."

"Enlighten me."

"I just..." She pressed both hands against her face, groaning into her palms. "I didn't know how to ask someone to spend time with you as friends, okay? Nobody taught me the right way to do that!" She dropped her hands, gesturing helplessly. "Jiraiya explained how boys ask girls they like out on dates, so I thought that's just what you did when you wanted to hang out with someone you cared about!"

I stared at her.

"He taught you the wrong things."

"He taught me incredibly wrong things!" she exploded, then caught herself and lowered her voice sharply. "Look, I love Sakura. I genuinely do. She's one of the most important people to me." She crossed her arms with visible embarrassment. "As a friend. That's what I meant. That's what I've always meant. I just didn't have the right words for it, and Jiraiya's version of emotional education was..." She trailed off, searching for the word.

"Lacking."

"Catastrophically lacking," she agreed miserably. "We've since clarified things between us, so it isn't weird anymore." A pause. "For me anyway. She still doesn't know I'm a girl, so from her perspective I'm sure it's still weird."

A beat of silence passed before she added quietly, almost to herself. "I feel bad about that sometimes."

"She doesn't know," I said.

"Nobody knows." Her tails curled tighter around her. "Just Jiraiya and Tsunade-baachan. And now you." 

I turned it all over in my mind, connecting threads I hadn't been able to connect before. Certain reactions suddenly made far more sense with the missing context filled in. The hot springs. Suigetsu's comments. The way she'd sometimes looked at me when she thought I wasn't paying attention.

Then I remembered Kumo.

Her reaction when she'd learned about Tayuya. That expression I hadn't been able to properly categorize at the time, partly because I'd been too distracted by everything else unraveling around me. But now with this context? It gives way too much.

My thoughts stopped moving entirely.

I took a slow breath.

"Naruto…." I kept my voice measured. "Did we have something between us when we were children?" I pause to let the question take root. "Did I make you a promise?"

A painful silence is what followed.

Naruto didn't move. Didn't speak. Didn't even seem to breathe. Her ears pressed flat against her head, both tails curling inward until they wrapped around her like a shield. The confidence she'd slowly rebuilt over the past few minutes dissolved completely.

Then she nodded. Weakly at that.

I exhaled slowly through my nose.

"I'm sorry." The words came out quieter than I intended. "I can't remember it. I can't remember any of it."

She looked up sharply, something flashing behind her eyes.

"And that isn't an excuse," I continued before she could speak. "Itachi destroyed my mind. Twice. Whatever existed in those early years..." I paused, choosing the words carefully. "I know there are memories missing. I can feel those gaps. The happier years - the ones from when we were very small, most of those are simply gone." I looked down at my hands. "I've accepted that. But I want you to know I'm not pretending."

Something shifted in her expression. The defensiveness softened into something more painful and considerably harder to look at directly.

She reached up slowly and lifted the necklace from around her neck - the same crude thing that had sent a splitting headache through my skull back in Kumo. She held it out toward me with a hand that wasn't entirely steady.

I took it carefully.

No headache this time. I turned it over in my hands, studying the rough craftsmanship - the uneven edges, the marks left by a blade, the clumsy but deliberate attempt at carving a leaf from a piece of plain wood.

"What is this?" I asked, though part of me had already begun to suspect.

Naruto took a deep breath. "You made it." Her voice was low. "When we were kids. You made it with a kunai and gave it to me. You said..." She stopped herself, reconsidering. "You said you wanted me to have something from you."

I stared at the necklace in my palm.

I had made this. This clumsy attempt at carving something meaningful out of nothing, this was my handiwork. From a version of myself I could no longer reach, performing an act of sentiment I could no longer remember choosing.

I held it back out to her. She took it, clasping it back around her neck, like something she'd done a thousand times.

"Look, I have erratic flashes," I said after a moment, narrowing my eyes at nothing in particular. "Broken images. Like long fox ears. A pond. A tree. Orange and yellow colors."

Naruto went very still beside me.

"Does that mean something to you?" I asked. Even tho at least it clarified in my head after discovering she is a fox girl.

She was quiet long enough that I thought she might not answer.

"When Jiraiya found out about the ears," she began slowly, "he immediately started making rules. A lot of rules." Her expression flickered with something between exasperation and affection. "I didn't like rules very much back then. So I used to sneak out when it got to be too much." A ghost of her usual grin crossed her face before fading back into something quieter. "There was a pond not far from where we were staying. A big tree in the middle. I used to go there when I needed to breathe and think without somebody telling me what I was and wasn't allowed to do." She paused, choosing her next words carefully. "That's where I met you. You were practicing your fireball jutsu against a tree near the water. You kept doing it over and over until you got it exactly right. It was kind of impressive, actually." Her ears twitched at the memory. "You noticed me staring and almost hit me with one by accident."

I frowned slightly. "I wouldn't have missed."

"You almost did," she said, with a hint of her usual stubbornness.

"I didn't."

"Almost."

I let it go. "Continue."

She settled slightly. "You were curious about the ears. You kept looking at them like you were trying to figure out what they were. You didn't ask right away;you just kept glancing at them while pretending you weren't." A small smile pulled at her mouth. "Eventually I asked if you wanted to touch them because the staring was bothering me."

"And?"

"And you said no quickly and went back to your practice." She laughed softly at the memory. "You looked embarrassed about it. Which I didn't expect."

The fragment surfaced again without warning - heat, the smell of burning bark, rippling water catching orange light, something warm and curious pressing against the edges of a memory I couldn't fully open.

I frowned deeply.

It matched. Imperfectly but it matched.

"What happened after that?" I asked.

Something warm entered her expression despite everything. She settled back slightly, tails loosening as the memories seemed to pull her naturally forward.

"We kept meeting there," she said. "A lot of times. You'd practice your jutsu, and I'd watch and make comments that annoyed you, and then eventually you started teaching me things instead of just ignoring my comments." A small smile tugged at her mouth. "You were very serious about it. Very particular about form. You'd correct my stance and make this face when I got it wrong." She mimicked a look of pained patience. "I got it wrong a lot at first."

"That tracks." I said.

She laughed again. "We'd eat together sometimes. Sit by the water after training. You'd talk about your brother a lot, but well...." She said it carefully, like she understood it was delicate ground. "And I'd talk about Jiraiya and his rules and how annoying they were. Normal things." She paused. "It felt normal. That's what I remember most. It just felt like it was supposed to be that way."

"And during that time," I said slowly, "you never mentioned any of this when we were assigned to the same team."

She winced visibly. "I wanted to. I almost did a dozen times. But you..." She gestured vaguely at me. "You didn't remember me at all. You looked straight through me on the first day like I was just another face, an annoyance. And I thought maybe if I said something it would make everything weird and complicated and I'd lose whatever chance there was at being around you again." Her ears flattened. "So I just... didn't. And then things got complicated, anyway."

"They usually do," I said.

A moment of silence passed between us, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable.

"What was I like?" I asked. "Back then. Before everything."

She looked at me with a complicated expression, like she was deciding how honest to be.

"Softer, happier?" she said finally. "Still serious. Still kind of impossible sometimes. But there was less..." She searched for the word. "Less anger. Like you hadn't started carrying everything yet." She looked at her hands. "You smiled more. And laughed a lot."

I said nothing to that.

"You really can't remember any of it?" she asked quietly. "Not even a little bit?"

"No."

"Oh...." She looked away. "Okay."

"Naruto."

"It's fine, really…"

"Don't hide things from me," I said quietly. "Not now. Not after everything you've just told me."

She closed her mouth. Her jaw clenched.

Then her expression changed entirely; a deep flush crawling up her neck as she stared fixedly at the ground between her feet. One hand came up to the back of her neck.

"You used to..." She stopped. Started again. "When we were sitting by the water, sometimes you'd..." The blush intensified to something almost painful. "You'd reach over and touch my ears. And my tails." She said it very fast, like ripping off a bandage. "You were curious about them, I think. And I didn't mind because it was you and I was used to you by then, and it was..." She trailed off completely, ears burning red at the tips.

"And?" I prompted.

"And nothing," she muttered, which was clearly not nothing at all.

I let her have that one.

She eventually looked up and met my eyes directly, something resolute replacing the embarrassment entirely, the way she always looked right before she said something she'd been building up to.

"Sasuke." Her voice had changed more seriously than I was used to hearing from her. "Honestly. Truly. Is there nothing? Not even a little bit?"

"No," I shook my head. "I'm sorry."

She held my gaze for another long moment, searching for something I couldn't give her, before finally looking away toward the steaming surface of the spring. Her lip disappeared briefly between her teeth.

"Then I need to ask you something," she paused for a moment. "About Karin. And Tayuya."

I felt my expression cool slightly. "Why?"

She met my eyes again. "Because I need to know before I say anything else. If you want me to keep talking, I must know first."

I considered that for a moment.

"Ask away."

Her hands folded carefully in her lap. "Do you love them?"

The question landed without drama, without accusation. Just the question itself, clean and direct.

But even then it still caught me by surprise, making me flinch.

I thought about Karin first; the way she'd chosen to stay when she had no real obligation to. What had begun as something shallow had quietly grown roots without my permission or intention, all those moments we shared. But love was a different word from care, and I wasn't prepared to be careless with it.

Then Tayuya. The memory of her opening up surfaced without invitation; the vulnerability she'd allowed herself to show she cried, the weight of someone genuinely broken choosing to trust you with the broken parts. Two damaged people finding something in each other that resembled understanding without either of them having the right vocabulary for it. 

We were both fucked up in the head.

"No," I said finally. "I won't lie to you. I was with them. I still am. That isn't changing." I kept my voice level and honest. "But I can't tell you I love them. I can't tell you I don't care for them either. Both would be dishonest. Even if Tayuya is a recent thing."

Naruto absorbed that answer quietly, with more composure than I expected from her. Her hands curled slowly into fists against her knees, knuckles whitening for a brief moment before she released the tension all at once in a long sigh.

She sat with it for a moment, working through something internal I could read in the set of her jaw and the movement of her tails.

Then she straightened her spine, took the deepest breath I'd ever heard another person take, and looked me dead in the eye with an expression I'd only seen from her at the absolute limit of her resolve.

"You promised me…." she started and paused and her shoulder trembled, struggling to continue, "that we were going to get married."

The words hit the air between us like a stone dropping into still water.

I only stared at her.

"...What?"

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AN: There was a reason why Naruto would have that strong reaction after all.