Chapter SIX

"Let's discuss what's happened so far," Sakura suggested.

"So far, nothing's changed," Sasuke said, then paused. "Well, apart from what came as a result of our actions. Everything else is just as I remember it."

"So in the past, you really did squeal like a fangirl and run up and hug your brother whenever you saw him?" Sakura asked.

Sasuke felt the tips of his ears go red and he scowled. "And I guess your enormous forehead's followed you back."

Sakura froze, then turned slowly towards him, eyes blazing. "What did you say?" Her fingers twitched and her hands went rigid. Sasuke could imagine them curling into his collar and hurling him across the village.

Maybe in a few years, he could fight her without getting in trouble, but at this age, a girl tossing him around would be amusing, but a guy doing the hitting would instantly make a frown appear on everyone's faces. He inwardly cursed his age. But he held himself back.

Maybe in a few years.

Instead, he glanced down. "Nothing," he muttered.

Sakura grinned and ruffled his hair. "Yes, exactly, you said nothing. Good boy, Sasuke-chan."

Naruto, who had been quiet up until this point, finally broke down and started to laugh. "You hug Itachi?" He asked.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "In his defense, he is utterly adorable when he does that."

They two of them laughed again, and Sasuke could feel his Sharingan, still lying dormant, just there. Then he's proved that annoyance was indeed strong enough an emotion to activate his dojutsu, and he could kill his teammates.

Apparently, it still wasn't enough, though, so he took a deep breath and amused himself by imaging his revenge.

One day.

Maybe in a few years.

He sighed.

Once he had calmed down, Naruto ran a hand through his hair. "So," he began hesitantly, "where should we start?"

"The knowledge we have of the future is a huge advantage for us," Sakura said. "We should be careful we don't tamper with things too much, or else who knows what will happen?"

"But we have no proof that this timeline is the same as our previous one," Naruto pointed out. "Maybe we're really back time in the exact same world we were in before, or maybe it's an alternate timeline or an entirely different world altogether." There was no real way of making sure, anyway.

"Everything brings us back to how much we're planning to change things," Sasuke said. "We have so many choices. We could stop the war, we could get rid of all threats before they actually become dangerous, we could change Konoha, we could change everything."

"Do we have the right to do that?" Naruto asked. "We've lived our own lives. Do we have the right to them go around tampering with things?" However, even as he said that he could feel himself disagreeing with it.

"No one asked for this," Sakura said, and she sounded just a little bitter. "If I'm being honest, I was tired. I was done. I've done everything I could. I fought for my friends, my family, my village, and I've even fought for the entirety of the shinobi community. I've fought plenty. I fought for the childhood shinobi lose without knowing it, and the future they could have had. I fought so that no one else has to experience a war. I don't know if that really will be the case, but I was so tired I was happy to die pretending that I had managed to help in making a change."

Naruto reached out towards his teammate and placed a hand on her shoulder. Sakura took a deep breath, then looked up again. "But," she said, "but we're here. We're back here, where we started. We're no longer children. We can never take back what we've given during the war. We know things the people here still do not know, and we have the power to use this knowledge to do whatever we want."

"We have the choice," Sasuke added. "We can choose to do whatever we want. We-" he hesitated but seemed to push through. "We can leave this all. We fought for it once. We know how corrupt Konoha is, and how deep this corruption has taken root. We've fought our entire lives. We can just leave it all. "

There was no opinion behind Sasuke's voice. He was merely pointing out a fact. They had dedicated a lifetime to Konoha. Did they have to do so for again?

Naruto clenched his fists. He knew that. He knew that all. He had had years in this timeline to think it through, after all.

"War is never the answer," he said quietly. "Knowing what we know, can you really leave it all behind? Let our friends and our family die knowing you could have stopped it?"

"These people," Sasuke gestured around them, "are not our friends. They may look like them, but they aren't. Our friends are in our past lives. We fought together, and then we left them to rebuild themselves."

"They can be our friends," Naruto insisted. "We can make everything better. We can prevent the wars. We can-"

"Does Konoha deserve it?" Sasuke snapped. "You know how deep its corruption-"

"We can change it all!" Naruto snapped back. "We can fix everything. We can make a world with no wars, no conflict-"

Sakura slammed her hands down onto the table in front of them, and both boys turned to look at her. "We came back from a war-torn future through unknown means, Naruto," she said quietly. "We are not gods. We cannot think for a second that we are, because we aren't. Removing corruption and conflict is not something we can simply do once we put our minds to it. People wage wars in the name of removing conflict, after all."

No one said anything for a moment before Naruto quietly tried again. "We can't leave everyone to die. Not if we know how we can stop it," he said.

Sasuke sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I know," he said. "I just-"

"We just didn't think it all through, and now that we have, we realized that there is so much more to this than we'd first thought," Naruto said.

Sakura nodded in agreement. "We need to decide," she said. "Before we do anything else. We need to decide, and then we need to stick to it."

"We..." Naruto trailed off, unable to look at either of his teammates in the eye.

"Yes, we," Sakura said firmly. "We're in this together."

Sasuke smirked. "Well then, future Hokage-sama," he said. "What are your plans?"

So...hi...it's been a while.

Darque: Sorry about that.

Raven: Yeah, sorry.

Darque: We'll work on this sometimes, though.

Raven: Yeah, we will.

Darque: So bear with us.

Read and Review~