Inspiration for this chapter goes to Ravenclaw Slytherin.

Sasuke found Inari up on the roof, looking out over the sleeping forest and broken town.

The younger boy looked up at him, then turned back out to the depressing sight in front of him thoughtfully. He sat down next to the child and remained silent. One thing he had learned over the years was how people hated silence, and not speaking had gotten him more answers in his life than asking questions ever had.

True to form, the child couldn't tolerate the quiet for long and spoke into his knees. "How does she do it? What pain does she know?"

Sasuke snorted in amusement, because so much of the pain the blonde went through was an exact reflection of his own. It was part of the reason they'd ever bonded, that and the inexplicable parts of her personality that were just Naruto. He looked up towards the cloudy night sky, not bothering to hide his smirk. "I used to wonder the same thing."

He couldn't have said how it started. It had happened so fast. One moment he had been walking through town toward the docks to get away from his family for a while, and the next he'd heard an achingly familiar voice crying out in pain. But he couldn't pinpoint the exact sequence of events from that point that had landed him where he was: standing in front of a hurt and bleeding Naruto Yamanaka with a kunai in his hand and a glare of absolute death aimed at the group of adults that had been hurting her moments before.

Naruto was his- well, he wasn't certain exactly what she was to him, but whatever she was was important, and these assholes had been hurting her! At least one of them had to be drunk to not recognize Sasuke's Uchiha features, taking an aggressive step forward. The fool froze in place when Sasuke met his gaze with a look that shouted 'I will kill anyone that touches her!'

Sasuke couldn't have pinpointed exactly how it had happened, but there were only so many ways the situation could play out from here. Mob mentality: if that fool actually stuck for him, he was going to have to put his fledgling shinobi skills to practice and fight a way out for both of them. On the other side of the same process, there was the chance one of the others would realize that one of their fellows was about to attack an Uchiha, and one didn't touch an Uchiha without their permission if they wanted to see the light of day again out from behind prison bars, they might subdue him and drag him away in the hopes the issue would be forgotten. Sasuke wasn't going to inform them that he would never forgive grown fucking adults for attacking a child, him being a child himself completely aside.

Multiple possibilities raced through his mind as he tensed for whatever was about to happen. He'd anticipated a lot of reactions from Naruto herself: crying, indignation at them daring to touch a Yamanaka daughter of the main house, gratitude at his protection. He had not anticipated exasperation at his rescue. He didn't anticipate the warm hand on his shoulder that made him relax on instinct and turn his head to see her while keeping the drunk in his periphery.

When she had his attention, Naruto put her hands on her hips, completely ignoring the rill of blood trailing down her temple, and glared at him. "I can stab them myself, Sasuke, move your butt."

Sasuke's incredulity dragged him right out of the rising fury he'd been working towards ever since he first heard Naruto's cry of pain. He blinked disbelievingly at her, and only then noticed her own kunai clutched in one of her hands. Naruto's words broke the tension and, in the face of not one but two fledgling shinobi-in-training from prominent clans, the group fled, the drunk not so brave without backup standing with him.

Naruto's voice followed them as they fled, "Yeah! You better run!" She turned to him, crossed her arms, and pouted. "I totally had them."

Sasuke didn't bother to point out her bruises or the cut still sluggishly leaking blood, his expression immediately falling into the familiar scowl. "What are you even doing out here alone, you idiot?" Because Sasuke was physically incapable of normal social interactions. He wanted to flick his own forehead but held his expression firmly.

The blonde gave way instantly, digging the toe of her shinobi-grade sandal into the dirt. "I just... I had to get away." She glanced up at him through her bangs before dropping her eyes back to the ground, and Sasuke couldn't say anything against her, because wasn't that the exact same reason he himself was out so late? He could hardly scold her for something he was guilty of as well, but he didn't have to be happy about it.

Sasuke grabbed her hand, expression black at the hiss of pain she let out even though he didn't hold hard, and dragged her along with him to his contemplation spot. Naruto was quiet the rest of the way and when they arrived, even after he let go to sit at the end of the dock and dangle his feet out over the water. The river was so still here that it had a glassy-clear surface and, as consequence, looked like a field of stars reflected from the night sky above.

It was Sasuke's retreat, the place he always went to when being around his family became too much. It helped remind him that even when the Uchiha clan seemed like the only thing in the whole world, there were bigger things out there. Sasuke didn't bother to look at his blonde companion, keeping track of her by the sounds of her rustling through the bushes by the shore. Eventually, she sat down next to him with a stack of various plant parts and set about tearing them up and applying them to her multitude of injuries. Seeing her apply the sap of one to a scrape, Sasuke plucked up one that looked exactly the same and dabbed it on the still-seeping cut on her temple until the blood flow slowed and finally stopped.

When he pulled away, he found himself staring directly into storm blue eyes, glassy themselves, and Naruto's voice came out like a whisper through the trees, "I don't know why they hate me so much..."

Sasuke didn't know, either. When Naruto was out with her friends -their friends?- or family, he'd noticed how she stayed close to the group, and when her parents weren't present or the group was small enough, angry glares and frigid stares followed her every step.

She finished with her first aid and pulled her knees up. "Just picked a bad day to be born, I guess." As if the Kyuubi attacking on Naruto's birthday was somehow her fault. The village was full of morons.

Without thinking about it, Sasuke ran a hand through the blonde's bangs, double-checking the cut for lack of anything to say. He didn't know how to comfort people, and telling her that the village was full of morons wasn't liable to make her feel any better. The small wound had stopped bleeding, but it had been pretty deep, it was probably going to scar, but it'd be all but unnoticeable hidden almost in her hairline as it was. "People are idiots."

She sniffled and tried to smile for him. "But you call me an idiot, too."

"Different kind of idiot," he didn't hesitate to say.

Naruto's smile looked immediately less forced and she even giggled wetly before wiping her face with her sleeve. Sasuke sat back beside her and stared out at the starfield without seeing it, focusing on the blonde from the corner of his eye.

"I'll show them." He turned to look at her, and Naruto continued, sitting up straighter, "The village idiots. I'll show them all. And- and the clan, too. I'll show them that I'm not useless, I'll show them that I can be just as good as Ino-nee." Sasuke didn't say anything, but inside, he cheered for her, for their shared struggle of being seen as worthy by their families, at the burning need to be just as good as an older sibling. "I'll show them all: I'm going to be the Hokage some day." She turned to him, storm blue eyes reflecting the starry night around them. "Believe it!"

Sasuke did.

The curve of his lips softened until his expression could almost be called a smile- almost. And Sasuke snorted again and chose to answer Inari's question: "Naruto's strength doesn't come from her physical abilities." She could still rarely ever beat him in a taijutsu match. "And it doesn't come from her 'fancy Jutsu'." No, it certainly didn't come from that. Countless times over their lives he'd watched her struggling with techniques while everyone around her seemed to catch onto them simply enough. It wasn't borne of patience, either, because Naruto had next to none to begin with. No patience for book learning or lessons -for example, her pestering of their Jounin sensei- or the stillness being a shinobi required. Sasuke shook his head fondly. "Naruto's strength comes from one thing only." Inari was hanging on his every word: "Her sheer, unwavering determination to never give up. Naruto is the class dead-last, she constantly failed at tasks we were given, exercises we were made to do. But she never -never- let herself give up. That is the source of her strength, not that she doesn't ever fall, but that she never stays down."

Sasuke had once come across a saying that described his blonde teammate perfectly: 'Always stand up one more time than you're knocked down.' Naruto always did.

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