Naruto leapt up from the chair like he’d been zapped.
“This is insane! I’m not doing it!”
Kakashi didn’t flinch.
Tsunade just raised an eyebrow.
Shikamaru folded his arms.
Sakura sighed, as if she’d seen this coming from miles away.
“I mean, come on!” Naruto threw his hands in the air.
“Marriage?! That’s the best you could come up with? How does this even make sense?! You’re talking about shackling someone’s life to mine just to make the paperwork go away!”
“Technically,” Shikamaru drawled, “we’re shackling your life to hers.”
“Not helping, Shikamaru!”
Kakashi steepled his fingers.
“It’s not just paperwork, Naruto. It’s diplomacy. You’re the only person in the entire Elemental Nations who can stand between her and a death sentence and not start a war. No one would dare touch the woman married to the Hero of the Fourth Great Shinobi War. Not the Daimyō, not the Kage, not even those vultures in the Land of Iron.”
“Yeah, because I’m the cage!” Naruto barked.
“You’re basically putting a leash on her and wrapping it around my neck instead!”
“That’s the point,” Tsunade said bluntly, arms crossed.
“To them, it looks like she’s under control—safe, domesticated. A docile Uchiha housewife under the thumb of the man who saved the world. She becomes politically untouchable and you become the excuse.”
Naruto looked at all of them like they’d grown a second head.
“Domesticated?! She’s Sasuke Uchiha, not a damn puppy!”
“You’re not wrong,” Kakashi said.
“But this gives her a legitimate position in the world again. Not as a shinobi, but as someone protected by the most powerful village. She won’t be hunted. No one will be able to exploit her bloodline. And she’ll get a shot at rebuilding her life.”
Naruto’s fingers clawed through his hair.
“We’re not even lovers! We’re just—friends! Best friends! That’s all it’s ever been!”
“Do you think Sasuke is sexy?” Tsunade asked casually.
The room went dead quiet.
Naruto gawked.
“What kind of question is that?!”
“You told me you liked C-cups,” Shikamaru added with a shrug.
“There you have C-cups.”
Naruto whipped around.
“You—fucking traitor!”
“And Lord Jiraiya once told me you liked girls who weren’t too tall,” Kakashi said with a lazy smile in his eyes.
Naruto looked betrayed on a spiritual level.
Sakura piped up, surprisingly soft but cutting all the same.
“And you’ve always been… obsessed with Sasuke. That wasn’t just rivalry, Naruto. You chased her across nations. You nearly died for her. Multiple times. You never did that for me—and I proposed to you.”
Naruto winced.
That one hurt.
He rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the floor.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered.
“It’s not like that. It’s… it’s not.”
“Is it?” Tsunade asked, watching him sharply.
“Because for someone who claims they’re just friends, you’re awfully ready to risk your whole life for her. You were willing to get executed with her. You carried her broken body back from the Valley of the End like she was your whole damn world.”
Naruto didn’t say anything.
He couldn’t.
His thoughts were a wildfire.
“But what about Sasuke?” he asked, finally, voice small.
“Her freedom? Her choices?”
Tsunade looked at him, something softer in her expression.
“Do you want a dead Sasuke… or an alive one?”
Naruto clenched his fists.
His breathing was shaky.
“But… Hinata… she confessed to me…”
“And?” Kakashi asked gently.
“Do you even like her?”
Naruto opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Nothing.
Sakura nodded to herself like she’d known it all along.
“You never liked Hinata that way. You like her as a classmate. Maybe even a teammate someday. But you never looked at her the way you look at Sasuke.”
“I don’t—!” he tried, but the words caught in his throat.
Truth had a cruel way of cutting deeper than kunai.
He looked terrified.
Like some part of him had just cracked, and he didn’t even know what it was made of until it splintered.
But more than that, he looked trapped.
Between duty and friendship.
Between loyalty and something else he hadn’t dared to name.
“Sasuke…” he whispered.
“She’ll never forgive me for this.”
“No,” Tsunade admitted.
“She probably won’t. She’d rather die with dignity than be tied down like this.”
“Then how do we—?”
“We’ll convince her,” Kakashi said.
“It won’t be easy. But leave that part to us. You’ve already done enough.”
Naruto swallowed, hard.
He looked up, eyes bloodshot with the beginning of something he wouldn’t call tears.
“You’re asking me to be her jailer.”
“No,” Kakashi corrected.
“We’re asking you to be her sword and her shield. Like you’ve always been.”
Silence.
Naruto shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.
Steady this time.
No more excuses.
“I swear,” he said, voice low and resolute, “if she says no, I’ll run. I’ll take her and disappear. I’ll hide her in the mountains or across the sea. No one will ever find her. I won’t let them kill her.”
A long pause.
“Then,” Kakashi said softly, “is that a yes from you?”
Naruto nodded.
“…If—and only if—she says yes.”