Chapter 4
Sasuke and Naruto lived at the foot of the God Tree for a while.
They would speak with each other seldom.
Sasuke continued to channel the life energy of the God Tree into Naruto, and over the span of 10 years, Naruto finally became healthy enough to stand up and walk under his own power.
Sasuke still looked the same he did the day they fought Kaguya, but Naruto had changed enough for the both of them.
He grew in height and stature, but his wider and taller frame still looked slightly malnourished. His hair remained white, and his eyes never seemed to regain their luster. His eyes, which once sparkled like water in the sun, now seemed flat and dead like the eyes of a fish. The creases in his face were deep and dark, but he didn’t yet seem old. He seemed to be about as old as someone can get before they start to decline.
Naruto took a walk every day. He would choose a random direction, walk until noon, and then walk back.
He had been through a lot, and the walking seemed to help.
Sasuke on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind anything. The days were not boring, the days were not interesting. If Naruto spoke with him, it was okay, and if he didn’t it was okay.
When it rained, Sasuke was fine, and when the sun shone, he was content as fine.
Its just, that when he looked at Naruto, that tight feeling returned to his chest, and he was perturbed. He just couldn’t figure out why.
Naruto continued his daily habit. He would amble around aimlessly, always returning to the God Tree at night.
Sasuke felt no reason to change what he was doing. He just sat around the Tree. He channeled life force into himself and Naruto to stave off hunger, and that was it.
For 100 years, they did not speak.
Naruto would wander, and Sasuke would wait.
Eventually Sasuke broke the silence.
One morning, before Naruto set off on his daily walk. Sasuke addressed him.
“Naruto.”
Naruto paused mid-step and turned to face him as Sasuke continued to speak.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.
I get this feeling whenever I look at you. I don’t know how to describe it, it seems foreign, but at the same time it isn’t.
I’m starting to think my time in Kaguya’s dimension has…
… broken me in a way I don’t quite understand just yet.
But when I look at my memories, I look at the times I’ve felt something similar, I remember the night my clan died, the day I killed Itachi, and the day we fought in the Valley of the End.
I think I’m hurting when I look at you.”
Naruto didn’t react, and turned to walk away. Sasuke watched him go for a little while, but spoke again.
“I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I didn’t save you. I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry we didn’t defeat Kaguya. I’m sorry it took me so long to find you. I’m sorry…
I’m sorry this is how it ended.”
Naruto had stopped while Sasuke was speaking, but he didn’t turn back around. Once Sasuke was finished, Naruto continued walking, and didn’t look back.
Sasuke was used to waiting, so when Naruto, for the first time ever, hadn’t returned to the God Tree by sunset, Sasuke continued to wait.
For forty days and forty nights, Sasuke waited at the foot of the God Tree.
And on the Fortieth morning, as the sun rose. Naruto walked in from the east, with the sun casting a shadow across his face. Sasuke could’ve used the Rinnegan to peer past the shadows, but didn’t. Why would he?
Naruto stood in front of Sasuke, who sat on the ground with his back to the God Tree.
Naruto spoke first.
“Stand up.”
So Sasuke did. He stood face to face with Naruto and waited.
They looked each other in the eyes, and Sasuke noticed, that instead of the usual dead fish look Naruto had, this time, his eyes were sparkling.
Naruto with shocking speed, reached out and wrapped Sasuke in an embrace. Sasuke froze, stiff as a board.
Slowly, with great hesitation, Sasuke brought his hands up and returned Naruto’s hug.
The two stood there, with their arms around each other, on a lifeless, silent world.
And for the first time since Nauto woke up in this lifeless, silent world, Sasuke’s chest loosened and released.
It felt like a bird has hatched from his heart and taken to the skies. A great freedom he never knew appeared and the world had opened in front of him.
A tear rolled down his face, and Sasuke thought to himself,
“This must be joy.”
Naruto tightened his embrace and spoke softly.
“I forgive you, and I’m sorry too.”
Naruto only released Sasuke from the embrace after 5 minutes, but still unwilling to break physical contact, Naruto held his at arms length by the shoulders, and looked him in the eye before asking,
“You said you invented time-traveling jutsu, right?”
Sasuke slowly nodded his head. Naruto continued.
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“Then we’re going back, and we’re gonna win this time.”
Sasuke nodded a second time.
Naruto’s face broke into a smile, the first in a long time.
“This is just the beginning, so what do we need to do?”
Sasuke and Naruto started talking, and they did not stop. They didn’t seem to need sleep, and they didn’t get hungry.
They started to lay out a plan. The first order of business was determining the exact amount of time that had passed since their fight with Kaguya.
They would have to time travel to a time before that and prepare for the fight. They wouldn’t lose this time.
The next order of business would be setting up the time travel jutsu. Sasuke told Naruto that the jutsu required an inordinate amount of seals, but it amount of seals could be reduced by several dozen orders of magnitude if Sasuke was able to draw a fuin on the ground.
In the timeless dimension, Sasuke had to perform each seal with his hands, since he couldn’t write anything in the land of nothingness.
Naruto scratched the back of his head, and muttered to Sasuke
“What are you being so melodramatic for? How many seals could it take?”
Sasuke replied.
“If we draw the fuin, I think I’ll be able to perform all the seals within 50 years.”
Naruto’s jaw dropped.
“Oy, oy, oy, oy whoa, wait a second, are you serious right now?”
Sasuke nodded. Naruto continued.
“Okay, I’m wrong, don’t know what I’m thinking, how could time-travel be easy?
Well how about, the fuin? How are we gonna draw it?"
Sasuke answered.
“You and I will need to attune the fuin to ourselves by using our blood to write the seal.
Your chakra has been completely stolen from you, while mine is still around, but even if we both had chakra, and there were a thousand of each of us, we wouldn’t have enough to power the jutsu.
Instead, we’re going to be drawing energy from the God Tree, and use the life force there to power the technique.”
Naruto quickly stopped Sasuke with a stern look.
"That energy is the lives of everyone we know and love and more, everyone we don’t know too. Every animal, every plant, every single organism that ever clung to life is in there.
You can’t be possibly be serious. We can’t burn their life force like that.
For lack of a better world, that force is something holy.”
Sasuke responded.
“Burn is much too strong of a word. Life Force is much like Chakra, it is neither created nor destroyed.
Naruto hesitated.
“Are you sure? This life force represents something much bigger than you or me.”
Sasuke replied
“I’m sure, which is also why you will need to perform the most difficult task of this entire operation.”
Naruto waited for Sasuke to continue.
“Naruto, please let me finish before you interrupt, okay?”
Naruto nodded his head with gravitas, and Sasuke continued.
“Life force is something that is very difficult to use. I have the power of the Rinnegan to help me, and even then, it is difficult.
The life force within the Tree was stolen. It is tainted with negative emotion.
You are intimately aware of that fact.”
Naruto slowly closed his eyes and nodded before Sasuke continued.
“I’m going to need you to become the God Tree’s jinchuuriki.”
Naruto’s eyes flashed wide open, and Sasuke raised his hand to stop his friend from interjecting.
“In order to use this energy to power the jutsu, we need to purify the negative emotion from it, and the only way to do that is to seal it within you, and then you have to siphon off the resentment, pain, and fear of every single soul within.
Needless to say, this will be an extremely unpleasant experience. You will need to personally experience every negative emotion attached to the life energy as you purify it.
But…”
Sasuke stopped, and Naruto finished the sentence for him.
“But I have already experienced and endured that.”
Sasuke replied.
“Yeah.”
A heavy silence fell between the two. A sigh escaped from Naruto’s lips.
“Okay, do you have an estimate on how long that will take?”
Sasuke hesitated.
“There is no point in me giving you a time estimate, it will end when it will end, but I can tell you that it takes about the same amount of time it will take me to carve the fuin.
However, are you sure about this? It will be painful beyond description.”
Naruto gave a small smile and replied.
“If I don’t enter Hell, who will?
So when do we start?”
Sasuke said.
“Now if you’re ready.”
Naruto frowned.
“Don’t we need to figure out how far to travel back first?”
Sasuke replied.
“I have already created an estimate, and I will be able to refine it while drawing the fuin.”
Naruto wanted to ask what his estimate was, but Sasuke stopped him.
“It would be meaningless if I told you. Do you remember what you told me about your dreams?”
Naruto tilted his head, he couldn’t remember exactly what he had said right after he woke up.
“You said that you stopped counting the number of cycles you went through when you no longer knew what the next number to use was, right?”
Naruto understood, and he asked his next question.
“How are you estimating?”
Sasuke pointed to the sky.
“The Rinnegan is more powerful than I ever could have anticipated, and I find my visual acuity growing every day.
Remember what the Shen, Jing, Mao, and San constellations used to look like?
They were different, the proportions are now wrong and some of the stars are missing.
The Rinnegan allows me to look at those constellations and see how fast any two stars move apart or towards each other.
By comparing their current speed and position to their position in our time, I can estimate how long its been since they were in their original position.
Once I do this with every single pair of stars that I can remember from our time period, and average that number out, I’ll have an accurate guess, and with each passing year, I get a better estimate of the speed of the stars’ divergence or convergence, and my estimates on time gets better too.
So by the time the fuin is completed, I’ll have an accurate guess.
Naruto chuckled and scratched the back of his head.
“You were always smarter than me…
Ok let’s get started. Nagato once said that I would have to take on the pain of the world to ensure peace. Time to put my money where my mouth is.”
Sasuke walked over to the God Tree and drew a complex seal on the bark.
Naruto looked at it and laughed.
“That’s a nostalgic sight for sure.”
Sasuke had drawn the Eight Trigrams Seal that had once held Kurama.
Sasuke started making hand seals, and Naruto sat down on the ground in a lotus position. Naruto closed his eyes and placed his two fists together, with his thumbs facing up and connecting in an arch above his fists.
Sasuke walked up to Naruto and completed the jutsu, but before he could slam his palm onto Naruto, he heard a quiet remark from his friend.
“Be there when I wake up, teme.”
The corner of Sasuke’s lips twitched.
“Sure thing, dobe”
And Sasuke brought his palm down.
The Eight Trigrams Seal worked, and the God Tree disappeared within Naruto, and Naruto gained a baleful aura as he purified the negative emotion from the Tree.
Sasuke drew blood from himself and Naruto, and started to draw the time travel fuin.
Sasuke worked day and night. When he and Naruto had begun drawing up plans to go back in time, Sasuke drew an excess of life energy into himself in anticipation of sealing the Tree within Naruto.
As a result, Sasuke did not feel hunger, and did not tire. He simply worked on the fuin. When he needed more blood from him and Naruto, he would draw it. When he had enough, he would get back to drawing the fuin. All the while, he kept taking glances at the night sky and refining his time estimate.
Sasuke was usually averse to drawing excess life energy into himself. It left him with a feeling eerily reminiscent to his stay in the timeless dimension. The lack of hunger and sleep was part of it, but the other part was that the world was lifeless and still. It was too similar the timeless dimension.
Sasuke thought to himself. I seem to be averse to experiencing anything reminiscent of my long stay in the timeless dimension. It feels like my stomach has dropped out. This might be unpleasant.
However, he took a look at Naruto, who was still purifying the negative emotion from the God Tree, and Sasuke found himself at peace, and he didn’t think about the timeless dimension for a little while.
Whenever memories of the timeless dimension popped unbidden to the forefront of his mind, Sasuke would go back to Naruto to draw some more blood. It seemed that being near his friend helped keep away the thoughts and memories of his stay in Kaguya’s dimension.
Sasuke eventually finished the fuin, and walked back to Naruto.
Sasuke sat down, and patiently waited for Naruto to finish while refining his time estimate.
Naruto’s baleful aura slowly subsided, and when it was completely gone, Naruto ended his meditation.
Naruto opened his eyes, and they were still sparkling, nothing like his eyes when Sasuke first woke him.
Naruto muttered to himself.
“Kurama is still the worst by far.”
Naruto stood up and stretched and looked around him. The fuin was carved into the rocks and dust around him and painted with his and Sasuke’s blood. The fuin stretched farther than the eye could see in every direction.
Naruto let out a low whistle.
“Did I keep you waiting, Sasuke?”
Sasuke shook his head.
“Not for too long.”
Naruto stared at the fuin that stretched in every direction.
“How big is this thing anyway?”
Sasuke thought for a moment.
“If this planet was 5 percent smaller, there wouldn’t have been enough room.”
Naruto’s jaw dropped.
“You…”
Sasuke shrugged.
Naruto continued
“Well, I guess we’re pretty lucky then.
Is your time estimate good?”
Sasuke nodded.
“My target was the day that we formed team 7, but I figured would should be conservative so I moved the target to before then.”
Naruto nodded in agreement.
“Best to be prudent. Is all that’s left the hand seals?”
Sasuke nodded. Naruton continued.
“Okay, sounds good. This life energy is pretty similar to chakra, which explains why they were so intertwined with each other. I’ve got a few new jutsu ideas I can flesh out while you make the hand seals.
However before you start.”
Naruto looked at Sasuke and asked him in a concerned voice.
“Purging the emotion from the energy was pretty rough, but how about you?
Were you lonely?”
Sasuke thought to himself and answered.
“Maybe, but it wasn’t bad like my stay in the timeless dimension.”
Naruto nodded his head and agreed.
“Experiencing all those deaths again was pretty bad, but not unbearable like it used to be.
I’m actually pretty excited now that its over, I’m ready to move on in our plan.”
Naruto scratched the back of his head and chuckled.
He looked Sasuke in the eye and held out his fist.
Sasuke bumped his fist against Naruto’s, and they shared their thoughts.
Sometimes the difference between Heaven and Hell is a friend.