The First Stop Back

Mission update is live.

Get comfortable. The village is watching.

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The boatman let them off where the bank rose high enough to keep a camp above the tide. He did not ask what had happened in Wave. Naruto appreciated that for the length of time it took to lift his pack from the floorboards.

Then his forearms shook under the weight.

The boatman waited for his fare, took it from Kakashi, and pushed away. Water closed behind the hull. No one from Wave stood on this bank to tell Team Seven what came after their departure. They had the copies they carried and the wounds under their clothes. Everything else would have to travel by someone else's hands.

"We can make the road before dark," Sasuke said.

Naruto looked past the landing. The path climbed through wet pines before meeting the wider road home. They could make the first turn before dark. Whether they could make the road depended on whose legs Sasuke meant to borrow.

Kakashi set down his pack beside a stone. His visible eye remained on the path while his shoulder made a small, involuntary objection to the motion. Sakura saw it. She saw Sasuke's hand settle over his ribs, too.

"We stop here," she said.

"I didn't ask for a stop," Sasuke said.

"Your ribs did. Quietly, because they know you wouldn't listen."

"I can walk."

"That wasn't the question."

Naruto dropped his own pack before it could make the decision for him. He wanted the trees between them and the empty bank. The open water felt too much like a place where anything might be watching. He formed half a seal before he noticed what his fingers were doing.

Two clones could take the packs uphill. Two more could check the road. By the time one set dispersed, another could replace it. They might reach a better shelter while the light held. The plan had a clean shape that made his head ache before he had used a drop of chakra.

Sakura looked at his hands. "How many?"

"None," Naruto said, surprising himself.

Sasuke gave him a narrow glance. "Since when?"

"Since I tried to count the last ones after the bridge and lost track of which headache belonged to me."

"You still counted."

"Badly. That's the problem."

Kakashi lowered himself to the stone with practiced indifference. "You could use one to look ahead."

"I could. I could also use ten to carry us all home while I pretend feedback is free." Naruto opened his hands. His fingers were scraped where he'd scrubbed at blood that was no longer there. "No clones to make this leg shorter. If we need one for danger, I want enough left to make it."

The words did not make the path less exposed. Sasuke looked up it again, measuring every break in the pine line.

"Then we need eyes," he said.

"We have four," Sakura answered.

"Kakashi needs rest."

Kakashi raised one finger. "I am present for this conversation."

"And injured," Sasuke said. He made it sound like a charge brought before a court.

"We need a first watch while the rest of us eat," Sakura said. "Then another before we move. Short turns. If anybody wakes with a fever, we don't pretend the schedule outranks that."

"I'll take the first," Naruto said.

"Second," Sasuke said.

Sakura looked at the way he stood, a fraction short of straight. "You can ask me."

"I know. I'm asking you to take the pack check while I watch."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know that too."

His answer irritated her. It irritated Naruto, which was less useful because he recognized the reason. Sasuke could not spend the whole journey being carried by other people's judgment any more than Naruto could spend it behind copies of himself. Both choices had a cost. Neither boy had earned the right to make Sakura pay it silently.

"A short turn," Naruto said. "If your breathing changes, she takes it."

"If yours does?"

"Then you get to tell her I was stupid."

"That isn't a consequence."

"It's a privilege."

Sakura took the packs from them both and placed them under the bank's dry side. "I will decide who is stupid after I look at the bandages. You can submit appeals in the morning."

They made a small camp without a fire. The bank held enough warmth from the day, and smoke would have announced a location none of them needed to advertise. Sakura checked Sasuke's collar wounds, then the wrap at his ribs. He sat still through her fingers, but only because the alternative would have required admitting pain aloud.

"The left side is tighter than it was when we boarded," she said.

"Because I've been breathing."

"Keep doing that. Less bravely."

Naruto looked away before Sasuke could accuse him of enjoying it. He untied the food bundle with hands that still wanted to form the seal. His stomach wanted two portions. He ate one slowly and put the other within Sakura's reach. She pushed half of it back without asking whether he was hungry.

"You can't guard us on pride either," she said.

"I'm guarding on rice."

"Weak foundation."

"Still better than the bridge."

That made them all quiet. The joke had reached back farther than Naruto meant it to. Kakashi unrolled Tazuna's signed statement just enough to check the cord around it and rolled it closed again. The separate copy from the boatman stayed sealed beneath his pack. He did not offer the papers as proof that anything in Wave had finished.

Naruto took first watch above the landing. The pines moved in the late wind. A branch struck another branch at intervals irregular enough to keep sounding like footsteps. He could have sent a clone to each side of the path and given himself a neat map of the dark. Instead he walked the short line between two rocks, turned, and walked back. He counted breaths until counting no longer made them shallower.

His chakra felt present but thin, like a purse with coins he could hear and could not afford to scatter. The seal behind his ribs was quiet. Quiet was not a promise. He left it alone.

Sasuke came up before Naruto called him. He wore his pack strap across the shoulder that hurt less and kept one hand free. Naruto noticed the care and decided not to name it.

"You can wait," Naruto said.

"I did."

"Not long enough for Sakura."

"She said short turns. Yours was short."

"You were listening?"

"Hard to avoid."

Naruto pointed out the branch that kept imitating a footstep and the hollow beside the path where water reflected sky. Sasuke listened without pretending he had seen either first. Then he took the line between the rocks and walked it once, slowly. The turn pulled at his ribs. His face closed around it.

"I can take another few minutes," Naruto said.

"You can sleep."

"Those are different offers."

"I didn't make two."

Naruto wanted to turn the exchange into a fight that would keep them both awake. Sasuke knew that, apparently, because he looked away toward the trail instead of providing a better insult.

"If it gets worse, wake Sakura," Naruto said.

"If I see anything, I wake everyone. If it hurts more, I wake her."

It was not agreement on everything. It was enough information to leave a post. Naruto went down the bank, lay beside his pack, and found that he could not sleep just because Sasuke had told him to. His body still expected the bridge to demand another choice.

He woke later to Sakura's voice, low and displeased. Sasuke was sitting with his back against the stone, breathing through the pain while she checked the wrap. He had woken her before it became an emergency. Naruto could tell from the fact that Sakura was scolding him in complete sentences instead of shouting orders.

"It pulled when I turned," Sasuke said.

"And you told me. Remarkable."

"Don't make a festival of it."

"I wasn't planning one."

She took the next watch while he lay down. Kakashi was awake beneath the brim of his headband. He said nothing. Naruto suspected silence was the only praise Sasuke would accept.

They started again when the path gave them enough light to see the roots. There was no dramatic pursuit behind them and no shortcut under their feet. Rest had spent usable travel time; Sasuke's ribs still hurt, and Naruto had fewer hours of sleep than his head wanted. They had kept chakra in reserve, which was a choice with a price rather than a victory over fatigue.

At a dry patch above the road, Sakura opened the travel sheet that would accompany Kakashi's report. She noted the transfer from the boat, the first stop, the shorter watch shifts, and the delay in plain words. She left the arrival line blank.

"No cause?" Kakashi asked.

"Two causes," Naruto said. "I chose not to use clones to push the pace. Sasuke took a watch with injured ribs and needed relief. Neither of those is the boatman's fault."

Sasuke looked at the sheet. "Write that I took the watch. Not that I finished it."

Sakura did. She did not put a time beside a gate they had not reached. The page would travel with them; its blanks were more honest than a fast story told ahead of the road.

Naruto took his pack. Sasuke reached for his own before anyone could offer, then adjusted the strap until he could breathe without arguing with it. They walked at a pace all four could keep. It did not make them friends in a new way, and it did not make anyone well. The first stop remained behind them, along with the stretch of road they could have claimed by spending more than they had.

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