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Naruto didn’t always remember what happened when he lost control of Kurama, but he’d gotten pretty good at putting the pieces together. Usually, those pieces were a number of dead bodies rent into several pieces each, and it wasn’t that difficult. Today, it was different. Today, instead of a crowd of bodies, he only saw one, and it was, abnormally, mostly intact.
Naruto couldn’t do much about his confusion at first. It took him a moment to adjust whenever he got control of his body back- the feeling of having it torn from him never got easier. Usually, his teammates were at his back, calming him, helping him, and it only took a minute or so. Today, Naruto was alone, chest heaving and spine contorting unnaturally, and it took longer to force feeling back into his fingers than it ever had before. It hurt, too, in a way it never did normally, his body aching with sharp pains whenever he tried to move too much of it at once. Belatedly, he realized there were senbon sticking out of most of his tenketsu.
Gradually, his hearing returned to him, and with it came the sound of ragged breathing behind him, nervous and too fast. It took him another minute to manage to turn around, and when he did, the rest of the puzzle pieces came crashing into him with a vengeance.
One came in the form of Sakura, face pale, a wide cut from her shoulder to her collarbone soaking her in blood. (Most importantly in Naruto’s eyes, the shape was more reminiscent of a claw than the enemy's weapon.) Another was Sasuke, covered head to toe in shallower cuts and sitting in a hauntingly Rasengan-shaped crater. The third piece, huddled behind the two of them, was the guy they’d been sent on this mission to protect, some prince or something, unharmed except for a small cut on his forehead.
The last piece, horrifying in its blatancy, was the way that all of them- all three of them, his teammates too, not just the rich guy- drew back in horror at the sight of Naruto’s face. They were scared of him, and that could only mean he did this. They were terrified of the sight of him, his eyes must still be red, and he was scaring his teammates.
Naruto froze for a second, and Sasuke flinched when he drew in a breath. That was wrong, Sasuke wasn’t scared of anything. Nothing should have been able to make Sakura shake like a leaf anymore, least of all him. He had to go. He had to go, now.
Naruto bolted as fast as he could. It was faster than he thought he could manage, still not oriented enough for bipedality, careening through the forest. It was too fast, stimuli flashing past him a million times faster than he could process them, head spinning and mind reeling.
It also wasn’t fast enough. He couldn’t really blame the rich guy, any normal shinobi would be far out of hearing range by the time he spoke up, but it still stung when he did.
“Why do you even let monsters like that out of the village without a collar?”
Sakura and Sasuke didn’t say anything. Naruto might not have heard them if they had. His vision was turning black at the edges, and he had to stop running for long enough to puke. His vomit was tinged with red, but he was too busy running to worry about it.
He wasn’t sure what he was looking for until he found it: a cave, small and secluded but covered and protected, a place to hide until his teammates left and completed the mission. He could only hope, as he curled up into its darkest, coolest corner, that they didn’t stop by to kill him first. That was what shinobi did to monsters, after all, and now his precious people were just as aware as the rest of Konoha that that was all Naruto was.
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When Naruto passed out, he usually passed out hard, not to be woken without effort, and he wasn’t sure if he should count it as a blessing or a curse that this time he woke up the moment his teammates were in hearing distance. It was probably both. A blessing, because he got to hear them, to know his precious people were near, their presence always a soothing balm. A curse, because now he knew it was coming. The sword to his neck, the blade to his jugular, the knife to his gut.
A curse, because now they knew. They knew that everyone who had cast him out, every person who had distanced themselves, all those civilians they had disparaged as dickish ignoramuses, all of them- they were right. They were right to push Naruto away, to hide their sons and daughters from them. Only his teammates hadn’t, and so Naruto had only hurt them. They knew, now, that the only way to be sure they were safe was to be sure Naruto wasn’t around anymore.
That he was a thing, not a person. That he was born a monster, not a child.
(He still felt like a child. He was scared, he was shaking, he was too hot and he was too cold and he didn’t want to die. He knew he was a monster, but that didn’t stop the feelings. They should, he thought. Monsters weren’t supposed to feel; everything would be so much easier if he didn’t, but he did.)
The voices of his teammates cut off abruptly, and Naruto froze, hands twisted in his hair and pulling, trying to ground himself and failing miserably. They’d found him. It was over. He didn’t know what “it” was, but in the moment it felt like everything.
His hearing must have gone back to normal, because Sasuke appeared at the cave’s entrance far sooner than Naruto had expected him to, followed quickly by Sakura. He tried to shrink back but failed, already crammed as far into his corner as physically possible. They both smelled of blood, the scent overwhelming in the small space, an oppressing reminder of how he’d started this mess (and really, if he was the one who hurt them, Naruto deserved to die).
(He still didn’t want to. He was still scared.)
They moved forward slowly, drawing out their approach. Naruto knew what was coming, but he still flinched when Sakura reached towards him, hitting his head hard against the wall. He couldn’t stop himself from releasing a whine when she reached for the hands twisted into his hair, untangling them gently. Gentle. Why did it have to be gentle? Gently only made it hurt that much worse.
His eyes were screwed shut, and Naruto didn’t hear a word of what his teammates said, blood rushing in ears as he waited for the bright rush of pain, waited for one of them to put him out of his misery. Neither of them did.
Instead, he felt Sasuke settle next to him with a rustle of fabric, felt Sakura settle on her knees, talking to him in a tone that was decidedly un-murderous. When Sasuke ran a hand through his hair gently, Naruto’s whole world lurched, then fell entirely off its axis when Sakura took his face gently into her hands, pressing their foreheads together. It wasn’t right. It was completely, entirely wrong, nauseatingly so.
This was what happened when Naruto did it right- when he went from boy to monster in the direction of their enemies, when his teammates rushed to his side to help him come back to himself. It was not what was supposed to happen when he failed to return from monster to boy. It was certainly not what people who he hurt should be doing to him, doing for him. Naruto wanted to throw up again, but Sakura was in his way. He pressed the feeling down instead, letting it settle and fester in his gut.
He took a deep breath through his nose, then another, then a third, then worked up the courage to open his eyes and look Sakura in the face. She smiled when he did, and the wrongness doubled. She should be furious at him, but she never smiled when she was mad. Naruto didn’t understand what was going on, but his mind was running too fast and his throat was too constricted to ask.
He tried anyway, but only ended up whining again. Sakura's smile turned relieved (why would she be relieved? She should want him dead), and she said, “There you are.”
The tone was entirely too loving for the situation at hand, and so was Sasuke’s when he said, “We were worried about you.”
That makes the thoughts running through Naruto’s head freeze in their tracks, race suddenly cancelled. None of what was happening made sense. His teammates kept treating him like a person, when it was obvious he didn’t deserve that anymore. His skin felt like something was buzzing beneath it, trying to break out, and it felt like a dam bursting when he finally started to cry.
Despite the fact that Naruto had attacked them and then started bawling like a baby the second they laid hands on him, Sakura and Sasuke didn’t mock him, didn’t even berate him. They just held him, whispered sweet nothings to him, and apologized.
That was enough to get Naruto moving finally, pressing his hand to Sakura’s mouth and shaking his head wildly, still too out of it to arrange words in any semblance of a logical order. He had to get his point across, though. They couldn’t apologize before he did, not when he had hurt them, not when Naruto had made them bleed.
Tears were still streaming down his face, and Sakura wiped them away just as gently as she pulled his hand away from his mouth, tangling their fingers together and letting him squeeze it desperately.
“We are sorry, Naruto.” He made a distressed sound, and she returned her hand to his face, letting him lean into it like the pathetic sop he was before continuing, “You always need help after… that happens, and we were too slow to give it to you.”
Naruto just shook his head again, fingers ghosting over the cut across her collarbone, now stitched closed and mostly healed.
“Naruto, that’s not your fault.” Sakura said, and it was so, so clear, that she believed the words, but Naruto couldn’t bring himself to.
Sasuke didn’t stop running his fingers through Naruto’s hair when he interrupted, “She’s right, usuratonkachi. You were attacking the mercenary, and she dodged into your path trying to get the client to safety. It wasn’t even deep.”
Naruto stared at him out of the corner of his eye, unable to stop remembering the Rasengan crater, the tiny cuts Sasuke was covered in, or the senbon he’d been stuck with.
As if he could read his mind, Sasuke continued, “You didn’t hurt me either. The fix added a little too much chakra to your Rasengan, and it exploded. I got cut up shielding the client, that’s all.”
But that’s not all, Naruto still hurt him, Naruto made him bleed, and that’s not nothing, because it’s Sasuke, and everyone who hurts Sasuke has to die. He was pretty sure he and Sakura had agreed on that, but now he’d hurt Sasuke and she wasn’t doing anything about it except holding him gently.
He just shook his head again, breath still too fast, heart still caught in his throat.
“Naruto,” Sasuke said, “it doesn’t matter. Fine, I got a little hurt because of something you did. I don’t care. You could rip my arms off and I’d still care about you.”
Naruto turned to look at him so quickly he felt like he had whiplash, making eye contact with Sasuke for the first time, but he didn’t falter.
Sakura said, “He’s right. That guy was an asshole, and I’m sorry I let him talk, but we really don’t care what he said. You’re ours, no matter what you do.” Somehow, she shifted even closer to him, a comforting press of warmth. “But if it means anything, you’ll never be a monster to me.”
Naruto’s arms ache when he moves, but he doesn’t let that stop him from dragging Sakura into a hug, a tight one, and winding an arm around Sasuke to pull him in too, somehow even closer than they were before. He still feels more like a heap of jagged edges than a person, but his teammates hug back without a hint of hesitation and he stops caring if he’s a boy or a monster- it only matters that he has people who love him either way.