After the Bells

Mission update is live.

Get comfortable. The village is watching.

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Sasuke had already started toward the road when Sakura saw Naruto reach for the post.

He missed it the first time. His fingers brushed the wood, found it on the second try, and closed around the rough edge. The rope Kakashi had cut lay at his feet. A red band crossed one wrist where it had rubbed him raw.

"You can walk?" she asked.

"Of course." Naruto straightened too quickly. His grin arrived before his balance did. "I have feet. Two of them. Very advanced equipment."

Sasuke stopped without turning around.

Kakashi was gone. The bells were gone with him. The clearing still held two lunch boxes, a little rice stuck to their corners, and the smell of fish that had made Sakura's stomach betray her in front of both boys. They had passed. No one had told her what to do with the rest of the afternoon.

"Sit for a minute," she said.

"We just finished sitting. I was tied to it."

"Then stand still."

He did, mostly. Sakura picked up her box. Less than a third remained. Sasuke had taken his own, lid balanced under one arm, as if walking away would settle every question the test had raised.

"Naruto only had what we handed him," she said.

"I was present," Naruto said. "I remember the highlight reel."

Sasuke glanced back. "There are no more orders against feeding him."

"That isn't what I asked."

"You didn't ask anything."

Fair. She hated that it was fair. She had spent the morning waiting for someone else to say what kind of teammate she ought to be, then broken the order only when the answer became impossible to avoid. An hour ago she had been certain the rule mattered. Now the rice in her hand looked like a much smaller rule she could actually choose.

She held the box out to Naruto.

He looked at it, then at her. "You haven't eaten enough either."

"I know."

"That's a terrible sales pitch."

"Take half."

"Half of what's left or half of what you started with?"

"The part I can hand you before you fall over."

Sasuke gave a short breath through his nose. It might have been amusement. Naruto took a few bites, slower than he had when Sasuke first fed him. Sakura ate the rest before she could decide that giving it all away would make her look kinder. The rice was already cold. Her stomach asked for the missing half and received no answer.

Naruto leaned against the post again, less obviously this time.

"Tomorrow," Sakura said, "we bring our own food. Enough to get through training, even if Kakashi-sensei decides lunch is another trap."

"If he can fail us for eating," Sasuke said, "he can fail us for carrying a box."

"He can also fail us for breathing too loudly. We still have to breathe."

Naruto nodded as though that were a profound tactical discovery. Sakura ignored him.

"If one of us runs short," she continued, "the others say what they have. We divide what can be spared before somebody gets weak enough to make a mistake."

Sasuke faced her fully. "No."

The word was clean and immediate. Sakura felt her face heat.

"You let him eat today."

"I chose to. You don't get a standing claim on my pack because I made one choice."

"I'm not asking to search your pack."

"You just said the others say what they have."

Naruto shifted between them, not quite stepping forward. "For the record, I did not ask to inventory anyone's lunch."

"I know," Sakura said. "This isn't a reward for you."

"Comforting."

She wanted to tell Sasuke he was being selfish. The word was ready, almost easy. It would erase the fish he had offered when she was still deciding whether to disobey Kakashi. It would also let her pretend she had not looked at Sasuke first, waiting for permission she had later claimed not to need.

"I made it sound like a demand," she said. "I mean we ask before a mission starts. How much food and water each of us can carry, whether someone has none. If there isn't enough, we decide then. Nobody reaches into your bag."

"And if I say no?"

"Then you say it before we're stuck somewhere with one person unable to move. I can plan around a no. I can't plan around a surprise."

Sasuke studied her. He still held his box. His fingers were dusty where he had dug himself out of the ground. He could have left. The road was only a few steps away.

"I'll carry my own," he said.

"Good."

"And if someone forgets theirs, that doesn't automatically make it mine to fix."

"I didn't say automatically."

"You were close."

Sakura had been. She could feel the difference between offering her rice and writing a rule that made his rice available. She had confused them because the first choice had felt right.

"Fine," she said. "No automatic share. We say what we can spare when it matters. We don't wait until somebody is tied to a post to find out."

"I can live with saying it," Sasuke said. "I didn't promise to give it."

Naruto raised a hand weakly. "I promise to bring food. Possibly the kind that isn't instant noodles."

"Possibly?" Sakura said.

"Growth takes time."

Sasuke looked at him as if he had just discovered a third bell hidden in the grass. "You ate fish and rice an hour ago and you still look hungry."

"That was a sample. The full review is pending."

Naruto's voice was bright, but his hand stayed near the post. Sakura did not point it out again. He would deny it more loudly, and she had no way to make him less tired by winning that argument.

They started toward the path. Sasuke walked ahead at a pace that would force Naruto either to hurry or to ask for a slower one. Sakura let him go three strides, then said, "Wait."

Sasuke stopped. Naruto nearly walked into her back.

"There is another thing," she said.

"Of course there is," Sasuke muttered.

The clearing was behind them. For a moment she could still see where Kakashi had stood on the branch, book gone, that cold pressure spreading through the leaves. She had been afraid then. She was less afraid now and found that the memory did not become simpler.

"When I said he was watching us, I knew it before I said it. I heard something above us while we were eating. I waited because I wasn't sure."

Naruto's grin faded.

"How long?" Sasuke asked.

"Not long. Long enough that I could have warned you sooner."

"Why didn't you?"

She could have said she was afraid of looking foolish. She could have said Kakashi's order had already been broken and she did not want to make another mistake. Both were true. Neither excused the silence.

"I wanted to know I was right before I made you look," she said.

Sasuke looked away toward the trees. "That is useful after the attack."

"I know."

Naruto rubbed his rope-burned wrist. "I guessed the food was a test before either of you opened the boxes."

"You told us a lot less than that," Sakura said.

"I was tied up. And I wasn't sure whether telling you would make the choice mine instead of yours."

"You could have said you had a guess."

"Then you'd ask what the guess was."

"Yes. That is what teammates do."

"You didn't ask me if I wanted the answer," Sasuke said.

Sakura turned on him. "You asked him to explain the plan faster."

"A plan he had. Not every thought that crossed his head."

"How am I supposed to know the difference if no one says anything?"

He held her gaze. She had spent years knowing exactly where Sasuke sat in class and almost nothing about how he thought. She had wanted him to look at her. Now he was, and it was not comfortable.

"Ask for what you need," he said. "Don't make a rule that lets you ask for everything."

Naruto made a small noise. "That is surprisingly reasonable and deeply annoying."

Sasuke ignored him.

Sakura folded the empty lunch box closed. The lid had warped in the heat. She pressed it flat and it sprang up again.

"Then this is what I need," she said. "If you see something that changes what the rest of us are about to do, say it while we can still use it. Say whether you saw it or guessed. You don't have to tell us every thought in your head. Neither do I."

"What if saying it gives away where we are?" Sasuke asked.

"Then signal. Point. Stop moving. I don't know. We can work out a better way after we try one."

"That's not much of a rule."

"It's more than we had this morning."

Naruto stared at the path. "What if I think I know what happens next and I'm wrong?"

Sakura heard the fear under the question before she understood its shape. She knew nothing of the private reasons he had for making it. All she could answer was the part in front of her.

"Say that too," she said. "Wrong guesses are easier to survive when the rest of us know they might be wrong."

He did not meet her eyes. "I can try."

"You said that after Kakashi-sensei left."

"It was true then."

"Trying isn't the same as telling us."

"I know."

Sasuke shifted his box under his arm. "And what do you give up? You make the rules, we report to you?"

Sakura's first answer was to deny it. She had made the food proposal because someone had to speak, not because she wanted command. But she had liked the sound of her own certainty for a moment. Sasuke had heard it.

"I tell you when I am guessing," she said. "Even if I think I'm right. And I don't turn your no into proof that you don't care about the team."

"You already did that in your head," Sasuke said.

"Yes."

The admission stung more than she expected. He looked startled by it and then annoyed that he had shown anything at all.

"This doesn't make us friends," he said.

"I know."

"It doesn't give either of you a vote in every decision I make."

"I know that too."

Naruto glanced between them. "Does it give me a vote in the pace we walk?"

"No," Sasuke said.

"Yes," Sakura said at the same time.

They looked at each other. Sasuke's mouth tightened. Naruto let the disagreement sit rather than making a joke of it.

"We're going to the gate," Sakura said. "We can get there together or meet after one of us drops. I vote together."

Sasuke looked at Naruto's wrist, then at the post behind them. "Fine. Until the gate."

"That is more generous than you sound," Naruto said.

"Don't tell anyone."

They walked slower. Sakura's stomach kept up a quiet argument with her. Naruto spoke less with each turn of the path. Sasuke gave him room on the narrow stretch without saying why. Sakura could not tell whether Sasuke would give him that space again. It felt like three people making choices with too little food and no idea which ones would hold under real danger.

At the gate, the road divided. Sakura needed the eastern street; Naruto's apartment lay toward the market, and Sasuke took neither route. They stopped without anyone calling for it.

"Tomorrow," Sakura said, "food and water before we start. Warnings before they become explanations."

"If they matter," Sasuke said.

"If they matter," she agreed.

Naruto touched his wrist. "And if I say I need to sit down, you don't make a speech about it."

"Deal," Sakura said.

Sasuke gave a single nod, which was not the same as a promise. Then he turned away.

Naruto stayed a moment longer. He looked as if he might say something about the rice. Sakura would have hated being thanked for a choice that had left both of them hungry. He seemed to understand that and only raised two fingers in farewell.

She watched him take the market road. His steps were steady enough now. She still could not tell how much of that steadiness was stubbornness. Her own box was empty, and there was no rule that would fill it tonight. Tomorrow they would see whether three people who could barely agree on a walk to the gate could tell each other what mattered before it was too late.

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