Warning: This story contains some specific spoilers and some vague spoilers for manga chapters 290 and up.

Shibboleth

Prologue

shibboleth: A story in the Bible tells how the pronunciation of the word shibboleth was used by the Gileadites to distinguish between the soldiers of their own army and those of their enemy, the Ephraimites, who were attempting to escape after being routed in battle. Shibboleth in the realm of grammar and usage denotes a word or a use of language that is supposed to distinguish the members of one group—usually the anointed, the educated, the elite—from another group—usually the illiterate, the uneducated, the rabble…

-Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage

If someone were to ask me what it is about Naruto that makes him Naruto, I don't know what I'd say.

Maybe it's how he never gives up, or how obnoxious he can be, or how everyone seems to come to like him in the end, regardless of all his faults. I know that's how it was with me, because I wouldn't have picked Naruto to be my teammate, wouldn't have imagined becoming his friend, and wouldn't have thought I could care about him the way I do.

Maybe it's the way he changes people without even knowing it. Neji, Gaara, Hinata, Tsunade, Chiyo, even Sasuke, though I don't think Sasuke will ever admit that. Naruto even got Jiraiya to train him somehow. I'm still not sure how he managed that, or what he did that makes Konohamaru worship him.

Maybe, when it all comes down to it, it's all about what he says, because Naruto never says anything unless he really means it, like when he promised me he would bring Sasuke back. I know he will, and not just for me, but for him. I trust him.

It was a place she saw she was going to go now, even if she would never have believed it when she was twelve and all she saw were black eyes and black hair and tragic past and budding genius. She wasn't sure what it all meant, except that things had changed, that they would keep changing.

(Please, just Sakura. I don't need the –chan.

If I call you that, then I'll think I can have you like that, because I want you like that, but it would be a lie. Because I can't have you like that.)

Even Yamato could see what Naruto was doing. It was his way of keeping a wall there, of separating them into something he understood, something that was safe.

And it was hurting them both.