I Never Wanted a Second Chance

Full Summary: They were supposed to die together. That was always the plan. If Naruto couldn't bring Sasuke back alive, they would die together. But now Naruto has to live with his best friend's coffin on his conscience... Until Sasuke suddenly reappears in Konoha, with a very strange tale to tell.

-:-

Naruto Uzumaki laid in his bed, staring at the ceiling. It was all he had been doing for the past few months, really.

A knock wandered through the house from the front door and Naruto shouted in response, "Who is it?"

"It's me," Sakura's voice answered. "We've been summoned by the Hokage."

"Eh?" Naruto replied, turning his head vaguely in the direction of the front door. "What does Granny Tsunade want with us?"

"I don't know, she wouldn't tell me," Sakura shouted back. "Can you please come to the door so we can talk?"

Naruto rolled onto his side to face the wall. "Tell her I was asleep and you couldn't wake me up." Naruto thought he heard a sigh, right before a loud crash shocked him up into a sitting position. When Sakura showed up in the open doorway to his bedroom, Naruto's fears were confirmed: she broke down the front door. "Sakura-chaaaaaaan," the blond whined. "Now I'm going to have to ask Yamato to fix it again!"

"I don't care, you're coming with me to the interrogation rooms!" Sakura stomped over to the bed and pulled Naruto up by the front of his shirt.

"The interrogation rooms?" Naruto asked, allowing himself to be dragged out of his home. "Why the hell are we going to the interrogation rooms?"

"I don't know, that's just where I was told we were supposed to go. Tsunade said that she had something to talk to us about that both of us would need to see with our own eyes." Naruto's brow furrowed and he pulled himself from Sakura's grasp so he could walk properly. Now he was really curious about what Tsunade wanted with them.

When the pair reached their destination, it was immediately obvious why the Hokage had wanted them to see it with their own eyes. Sakura opened the door to the interrogation room that they were told to report to and was met with a frenzied scene: medics reading off findings to interrogators, ANBU members hypothesizing on how the village's security could have been breached, Tsunade shouting at everyone else in the room to keep their voices down. In the very center off all of this chaos sat a silent, still, Sasuke Uchiha. Both Naruto and Sakura's eyes went wide when they landed upon their former teammate. All noise in the room was silenced immediately when Naruto shouted, "What the hell is going on here?!"

Sasuke's eyes, which had been closed in annoyance, snapped open at the sound of the familiar voice. "God dammit, Naruto!" the Uchiha said angrily. "I knew you would have something to do with this!"

Sakura raised her hand to cover her mouth and tooked a step back in shock. "Close the door, Sakura," Tsunade said. Sakura did as she was told as her sensei took a few steps toward the young blond, anger clearly displayed on her face. "You tell us, Naruto," she said. "What is going on here?"

Naruto's eyes dashed back and forth between Sasuke and Tsunade. How was this possible? "Who is that?" he asked shakily, pointing to the Uchiha, who was tied to his chair with chakra bonds.

"The Daimyo of the Fire Country," Tsunade said sarcastically, pounding her fist down on the back of Naruto's head. "Who does it look like?!"

Naruto rubbed the bump that was already forming at the back of his skull, then shook his head. "That's impossible," he said. "I killed Sasuke. He's dead." Naruto desperately turned toward Sakura, who was now leaning against the door, hand still covering her mouth and eyes still locked on Sasuke. "Sakura was there. He was dead, you confirmed it!" Sakura nodded slowly, unable to speak.

"What are you talking about, Naruto?" Sasuke asked, annoyance slipping into his voice. "Obviously I'm not dead, I'm sitting right here!"

Tsunade held up a hand to indicate Sasuke. "Obviously he's not dead, Naruto," she repeated. "He's sitting right there."

Naruto shook his head again, heart still not wanting to believe what his eyes clearly showed him. "That's impossible," was all he could bring himself to say.

Sakura swallowed thickly and stepped away from the door, finally finding her voice. "If that's Sasuke-kun," she started, pointing at the boy in question, "then why aren't his eyes covered? He could have us all under genjutsu right now and we wouldn't even know it."

"His eyes were covered," Tsunade replied, turning away from Naruto to face Sakura, "until a Byakugan scan found no trace of the Sharingan whatsoever." She jerked her head toward the opposite corner of the room where Neji Hyuuga stood, and Neji confirmed the statement with a nod. "It's one of the many things that we were hoping you could explain to us, Naruto, the first of which being why this young man is still alive to begin with."

"I don't know," Naruto said, clearly dumbfounded. "I know I killed him. I killed him, and Sakura and Sai and Kakashi-sensei all saw it, and Sakura confirmed that he was dead, and we brought his body back to the village, and Shizune did the autopsy, and we cremated him and buried his ashes with the rest of his clan." Naruto rambled on, unwilling to accept what was happening.

Tsunade patted him on the shoulder. "Okay, I believe you," she said gently. "We'll just have to get someone in here to check his memories and see what the heck is going on."

"Excuse me," Sasuke's voice interrupted, and everyone in the room turned toward him. "Can someone please tell me what the hell you all are talking about?"

The Hokage ignored the Uchiha, instead turning back to Sakura. "Inoichi is out of the village on a mission. Go find Ino and bring her here." The pink-haired girl finally managed to pull her eyes away from her captive ex-friend, locking eyes with Tsunade and giving a respectful nod before excusing herself from the room.

Naruto approached the chair in the center of the large interrogation room, where his best friend and former teammate sat. He couldn't help but stare openly at the boy, who only glared back at him. After a few moments of inspecting the Uchiha, Naruto turned toward Neji and asked, "It's not a transformation jutsu?"

Neji shook his head. "No, it's definitely Sasuke's chakra, although it's barely there. There are children in the academy with higher chakra levels than this Sasuke." Naruto turned his eyes back to Sasuke, fascinated as to what had happened to his friend.

"Okay Naruto, I give up," Sasuke said when the blond got closer. "I expect things like this from you, and even Sakura I can see getting involved, but how did a moron like you get everyone else to play along?"

Naruto's brow furrowed in confusion. "What do you think is going on, Sasuke?" he asked.

"It's all a prank, right?" Sasuke asked. Tsunade, interested in hearing her captive's side of the story, approached the pair and stood just behind Naruto. Sasuke hadn't actually talked to anyone before Naruto and Sakura got there, he just kept asking where he was and where Itachi had gone. Sasuke's eyes flicked over to Tsunade for a moment, then his concentration went back to Naruto. "You and your idiotic friends must have found out that Itachi and I were trying to have a seance, followed us into the woods, and put on that whole light show to freak us out. Somehow you got everyone else to play along with it and now you're just waiting for me to fall for it so you can make fun of me for it, right?"

Naruto turned toward Tsunade, who shrugged. Neither of them had any idea what the Uchiha was talking about. "Where did you guys find him?" Naruto asked.

"Guards found him unconscious in the middle of the Forest of Death," Tsunade replied. "Everyone was alert and at their posts, but nobody noticed him enter. We have no idea how he got there." Naruto nodded, then turned back toward Sasuke. None of this was making any sense. Sasuke and Itachi had been together? Did he mean in the afterlife? But how could that be possible, when Sasuke didn't seem to remember that Naruto had killed him almost six months ago? And what was this talk about a 'seance'? Naruto closed his eyes and started to rub his temples, feeling a strong headache coming on.

"Where did you guys take Itachi? This isn't funny. We have to get home, I have school tomorrow." Naruto looked to Tsunade, who shook her head.

"We searched the entire forest when he first mentioned Itachi, but there was no sign of him. ANBU is combing the rest of the village as descretely as possible as we speak, but so far we haven't found a trace of another reincarnated Uchiha."

"Why do you guys keep talking about death and reincarnation?" Sasuke asked, sounding frustrated. He looked down at the floor and said bitterly, "Our parents are the ones who died, not us."

"No," Naruto replied. "You're all dead. Itachi killed the rest of your clan, you killed Itachi, and I..." he trailed off, barely bringing himself to say the words directly to his friend. "...And I killed you."

"What do you mean Itachi killed them?" Saskue shouted angrily, startling Naruto into taking a step backward. "Our parents died in a car crash! Itachi had nothing to do with it!"

Before Naruto had time to question what a car crash was, a loud gasp alerted the room that Sakura and Ino had arrived.

"I told you that you'd be surprised," Sakura said meekly as she supported Ino, who had jumped in surprise at the sight of her childhood crush and wound up tripping backwards.

"Surprised is when your crush gets you a bouquet for Valentine's Day when you think he doesn't know you exist, not your crush coming back from the dead!" Ino shouted, finding her balance again and pulling away from Sakura.

"We're not so sure he is back from the dead," Tsunade said thoughtfully, eyes focused on a speechless Naruto.

"Impure World Resurrection?" Ino asked, eyes going wide.

Tsunade waved her hand in Ino's direction, dismissing the thought. "No, if he were brought back through Edo Tensei he would have all of his original powers. This Sasuke has no Sharingan and nearly no chakra. Besides, the user needs a part of the resurrection's body to summon them, and as Naruto pointed out before you arrived, we cremated Sasuke."

"So you want me to go into his mind and find out where he's from?" Ino guessed. Tsunade nodded her confirmation, then placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder and guided the boy back a few steps as Ino approached. "J-just try to keep calm, Sasuke-kun," Ino started, holding her hands up in front of the boy in question. "Keep calm and let me in, and it'll all go smoothly." Ino closed her eyes and reached out, placing both of her palms atop Sasuke's head. Sasuke's eyes went wide as Ino infiltrated his mind. Immediately Ino gasped, and pulled her hands away in shock after no more than five seconds.

"What happened?" Tsunade demanded. Sasuke's head dropped when Ino's hands left it, his chin hitting his chest as he panted. Ino held her hands close to her chest, eyes wide and staring at Sasuke in a mixture of confusion and fear.

"His mind..." Ino mumbled, still trying to sort through everything she had seen. She swallowed thickly before continuing. "It must be his lack of chakra... He has no means of keeping me out, so his mind... His memories... They just poured into me." She turned toward Tsunade. "I don't know where you found him or how he got here, but this is definitely not our Sasuke. He's not part of our world." All eyes in the room were locked on Ino as she rambled, no one quite sure of what she was saying until she got out the words, "Not part of our world."

"What do you mean by that?" Tsunade asked. Sakura hurried to Ino's side to try and comfort her friend.

"He... I..." Ino didn't know where to start. "The world he has in his memories is nothing like anything I've ever seen. We're all there, but we're so different." She paused and looked down at Sasuke, who was just starting to get his bearings back. "He needs an explanation more than any of us do."

The room went eerily silent as everyone's eyes fixated on Sasuke. No one was quite sure of what to do or say. The silence was broken by Sasuke lifting his head to glare at Ino and yelling, "What the fuck did you do to me?!" Ino shook her head, unable to give him the explanation he needed.

"How can we tell him what's going on when we don't even know ourselves?" Sakura asked, looking to her sensei for guidance.

Tsunade shook her head. "Even if we tried to tell him, he wouldn't believe a word of it."

"We could always show him," Naruto chimed in, taking a few steps toward his friend.

"What, you mean let him outside?" Tsunade asked thoughtfully.

"Idiot!" Sakura exclaimed, knocking a fist into the back of Naruto's head and creating another lump right next to where Tsunade had hit the boy earlier. "If we let him outside he'll be overwhelmed and run away!"

"No," Tsunade replied, waving a hand to calm Sakura down. "He was blindfolded on the way here. Letting him see where he is might be the only way to convince him that he's not in his home town anymore. Besides, it's not like he can get away from us."

"Can you guys stop talking about me like I'm not here?!"

Sakura looked back at Sasuke, unsure. Even if this was a different boy than the one she knew, she didn't want him to get away. She didn't want to lose him again. None of them could go through all that again. "We would keep guards with him, right?"

"Of course not!" Tsunade said. "Guards would attract too much attention. We want as few people to know about this Sasuke as possible. And like I said, he can't get away from us. He's basically a civilian." Sakura still looked unconvinced.

"We can take him," Naruto said, looking at Sakura. "It only makes sense, right? And I'm sure we can handle anything that this guy might try to pull."

"Sounds like a good idea to me," the Hokage approved. "We'll have to get him back to his own world somehow, but he'll need a place to stay while he's here. Since you live pretty out of the way, would you mind sharing your house, Naruto?"

"Not at all!" Naruto smiled brightly at Sasuke. He wasn't nearly as concerned as he should be that this boy came from another world, he was only relieved that his former teammate hadn't somehow found a way back from the dead. This was a whole new Sasuke, not the crazy, murderous, beyond repair Sasuke that had forced Naruto to take his life. Therefore, there was nothing to worry about other than finding this Sasuke a way back to his own home.

Tsunade stepped forward and released the chakra bonds holding Sasuke to his chair. He immediately tried to throw a punch at her, which she easily caught. She wrapped her hand around his wrist and picked him up by it, holding his arm above her head and letting him dangle with his feet just off the ground. "It'd be wise of you to not try and mess with anyone around here," she said to him, smiling although her tone was threatening. "You’ll get your ass handed to you on a silver platter." She set him back down and shoved him lightly in the direction of Naruto. “You better keep him away from me,” she threatened. “I didn’t like ours and so far I don’t like him either." Naruto chuckled nervously, then grabbed Sasuke by the arm and dragged him out of the inerrogation room, Sakura following behind.

Before they got to the exit the trio was stopped by an ANBU member and handed a black hooded cloak for Sasuke to wear while they were out in public. 'Oh yeah, that won't attract any attention,' thought Sakura bitterly, but Naruto thanked the man politely and Sasuke donned the cloak with an annoyed huff, so Sakura merely put on a smile as they left. The three of them started through the town on the way to Naruto's house, Naruto chattering the whole time about how they'd have to find a way to sneak Sasuke into Ichiraku Ramen so he could taste the "life-changing sensation" for himself. Although she couldn't see his expression beneath the hooded cloak, Sakura worried about the young man between her and her teammate. She wondered how big of a culture shock it was for him; how different their world was from his. She wondered what was going through his mind as she and Naruto walked the streets as if nothing were out of the ordinary. She got somewhat of an answer when they got to the secluded back street that led the last of the way to Naruto's house. As soon as the three of them were completely alone, Sasuke stopped walking and stared down at the ground.

"Eh?" Naruto asked when he realized Sasuke was no longer at his side. He turned toward the boy and continued, "What's the matter?"

"I..." Sasuke trailed off, eyes still fixed on the dirt road beneath his feet. "I really am in a different world, aren't I?"

Sakura took a few steps toward the cloaked young man and set a comforting hand on his shoulder. "It seems you're not," she said softly.

Sasuke's shoulders rose as Naruto and Sakura heard him take a deep, shaky breath. "Hey, it's alright," Naruto said, joining the others. "We'll find a way to get you back. Granny Tsunade is super smart, that's why she's the Hokage - the leader of the village - and with something as big as you showing up, probably the whole of ANBU black ops will be working on figuring out where you came from and how we can get you back." Sasuke didn't say anything, merely nodded his head beneath his hood, and Naruto threw a wide grin at him. He grabbed Sasuke's forearm and tugged the boy forward, saying, "Come on, my house is right up here! You'll love it there!" Naruto let go of Sasuke's arm and took off running up the street, Sakura smiling after him. Sasuke stayed put, and Sakura uneasily approached him once more.

"I think you really will enjoy living with Naruto," she said as the pair of them stood together and watched the blond run. "Just, one thing..." she trailed off, and waited for Sasuke to make eye contact with her. "Don't talk about yourself with him. Your self from this world, I mean." She turned her eyes back to her friend, who had turned around and started yelling for them to hurry up. "He's hiding it well now, but he has a sore spot for you, I mean, our Sasuke. Naruto took his death harder than anyone in the village. Probably harder than anyone in our world."

Sasuke's eyes watched the pain play across Sakura's face as she spoke of her friends and he nodded silently, then started walking toward the blond.

-:-

A/N: OKAY OKAY OKAY. I know I shouldn't be starting new stories but OMG I JUST COULDN'T HELP MYSELF. This idea came to me and it was just like asfsdjfskdalf MUST WRITE. I'm going to be writing a lot more soon, because I'm going to be starting a 40 theme writing meme thing which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be like a forty day challenge but yeah FUCK THAT. I cannot write a whole oneshot in a day, nonetheless one a day every day for forty days. HAH, no. So I'll just be working on them in between story chapters.

HOPEFULLY the next thing I'll have up is installment #2 of Affairs in Tutelage. It's been sitting in my Documents folder like 75% done for like... a month? Two? I don't know really. Either that or the Over-Under will be next on the update list (not counting the meme challenges). So make sure you all keep an eye out for more stories from me!

Please review and tell me what you think. Thanks for reading guys, I love you all. ^__^