The training room smelled like rubber mats, cold metal, and old sweat baked into concrete. Sasuke drove his fist into the practice dummy hard enough to jar his shoulder, pivoted, and sent a kick into its midsection with a crack that bounced off the walls. Pain flashed through his chest in the same instant—sharp, thin, perfectly timed to ruin his balance—and Itachi's voice cut across the room before Sasuke had fully recovered the step he lost.
"Again."
Sasuke reset.
His bare feet squeaked slightly on the mat as he settled into stance. The dummy stood where it had stood for the last forty minutes: head-height target patched at the jaw, torso wrapped in layers of scarred vinyl, one arm hanging looser than the other from repeated impact. It looked absurdly patient. Sasuke hated it for that.
He hit it again.
Left jab. Right cross. Elbow. Step out. Guard up.
"Your shoulder came up," Itachi said.
Sasuke corrected it without answering.
"Again."
The word echoed off concrete walls, stripped to bone. Again. Again. Again. Itachi stood three feet away, arms folded, hair tied back, watching with a surgeon's detachment.
Sasuke struck the dummy's face, rotated, kneed its center hard enough to rock the base. Sweat tracked down his back under his thin shirt. His muscles no longer registered individual pain—just a general burning. Fine. Burning was useful.
Itachi stepped in with a tap to Sasuke's ribs. "You're overcommitting."
"I'm not."
Itachi's fingers pressed his exposed obliques. "Open here." A knuckle tapped Sasuke's sternum. "And here." The touch was light. The ache beneath wasn't. Sasuke's jaw locked.
Itachi's eyes flicked up once, noting too much as usual. "Guard."
Sasuke raised it before the instruction finished.
By the time Itachi called halt, the lights had haloed—Sasuke's signal he'd pushed past reasonable limits. His shirt clung to his skin, sweat tracked his face, and his forearms felt leaden.
"Water," Itachi said.
Against the far wall sat a crate of water bottles, neatly folded towels, and a first aid kit substantial enough to tell its own stories. Sasuke cracked open a bottle with one hand and gulped greedily, the shock of cold water hitting his empty stomach like a fist. It didn't matter. He drained half the bottle in a single desperate tilt, then bent forward with one palm pressed to his knee, waiting for his heartbeat to settle back inside his ribcage where it belonged.
Silence stretched between them. The only sounds were the quiet aftermath of exertion: water bottles compressing with each squeeze, ragged breathing gradually steadying, fabric rustling as Sasuke wiped sweat from his hairline.
Then Itachi said, "How bad is it?"
Sasuke lowered the bottle. "What?"
"The pain in your chest." Itachi's tone was flat enough to make lying feel tedious. "You've been favoring it since the first drill."
Sasuke took another swallow to buy himself a second. "It's manageable."
"That wasn't the question."
Sasuke capped the bottle. "It hurts."
Itachi waited.
Sasuke hated that waiting. It was one of his brother's oldest weapons. Silence as pressure. Silence as scalpel. Silence until the other person either talked or exposed themselves by refusing.
He rubbed the heel of his hand once, brief and involuntary, against the center of his chest. "It gets worse when I—" He stopped.
"When you what?"
"When I think about him." The admission came out hard and annoyed, as if annoyance could make it less true. "And when I'm not thinking about him. And when I'm training. So take your pick."
Itachi studied him over the mouth of the bottle. His expression gave away very little, but not nothing. Sasuke saw the recognition there, and disliked it immediately.
Itachi was quiet for a beat, then reached into the pocket of his training jacket and produced a phone.
It was smaller than Sasuke's other one, matte black, featureless except for a narrow screen and a keypad that looked almost outdated until Itachi turned it over and a second camera lens glinted at the back.
"This is routed through our network," Itachi said, placing it in Sasuke's hand. "End-to-end encryption. No carrier triangulation. No institutional logging. If it's powered off, it does not exist. If it leaves your person, assume it's compromised."
Sasuke turned it over once. It had weight to it. Real weight, not consumer plastic pretending. "And you're just giving me this?"
"I'm lending it to you because the alternative is listening to Kiba Inuzuka harass my secure lines until someone murders him out of civic responsibility."
Despite everything, something in Sasuke's mouth twitched.
Itachi noticed and looked faintly displeased by having enabled it. "That dog has been calling every hour and giving me a headache," he said.
That almost got a real smile out of Sasuke. Almost. It felt strange on his face, like reaching for a tool he had not used in years.
He slid his thumb across the screen. Several numbers were already loaded, identified only by initials. Efficient. Paranoid. Very Itachi.
"I'll thank him later," Sasuke said.
"Don't encourage him."
Sasuke looked up. "Too late."
Sasuke crossed to the far corner of the training room where the concrete met a rack of practice staffs and old target shields, more privacy than solitude. The secure phone felt unfamiliar in his hand, too light for how much rested on it. He barely heard the first ring. Kiba picked up in the middle of it, voice already halfway to a shout.
"Finally—holy shit, Sasuke, where the hell are you?"
Sasuke pulled the phone a fraction from his ear. "Alive."
"That is not enough information." Kiba sounded like he was moving while talking; there was wind in the background, the slam of a door, Akamaru's bark muffled and frantic somewhere farther off. "Do you have any idea what kind of morning I've had? We were this close to coming up that mountain and kicking every scary cult bastard in black cloaks we saw until somebody produced you."
Sasuke's gaze slid toward Itachi on instinct.
His brother was at the equipment wall, aligning practice pads into a neat stack with the careful attention of a man absolutely not listening to every word.
"We lost contact with you," Kiba barreled on. "No messages, no calls, nothing. Gaara said to wait because maybe the signal was blocked and Temari said if we charged an underground resistance base blind we'd probably die in an embarrassing way, but I was willing to risk it."
"That would have been stupid."
"Yeah, well, I'm in a stupid mood." Kiba exhaled sharply. "We went to your dorm."
Sasuke's grip tightened on the phone.
Kiba kept going before he could ask. "Room's wiped. Completely. Like some institutional ghost came through and decided neither of you had ever existed. Bed stripped, desks cleared, all of it. The RA recognized me from yesterday and gave me this whole twitchy speech about how if we didn't hear from you within a week, he was supposed to consider the room officially abandoned on your end too."
Sasuke closed his eyes.
He could picture it with miserable clarity: the room emptied the rest of the way, his name taken off records, the lock recoded, another student dragging in laundry and extension cords and acting like the space had always belonged to them. Naruto erased first. Sasuke next. Efficient. Administrative violence in neat little forms.
"What exactly did he say?" Sasuke asked.
"That if you didn't check in through housing or classes or whatever bureaucratic nightmare they use to prove students are still real, they'd process you as vacated." Kiba made a disgusted noise. "Apparently disappearing into thin air is fine as long as the paperwork is in order."
A low, involuntary groan escaped Sasuke before he could stop it. The ache in his chest answered immediately, flaring beneath his sternum as if his body wanted to underline every problem personally. His free hand went there without permission, fingers pressing through sweat-damp fabric.
"You okay?" Kiba asked at once, suspicion sharpening his voice.
"Fine."
"Liar."
Sasuke ignored that. He looked up to find Itachi no longer pretending not to listen. His brother had turned slightly, one shoulder against the wall, arms folded now, attention direct and impossible to misunderstand.
"I need to go back," Sasuke said.
"To campus?" Kiba made it sound obvious. "Well Duh, you have classes and a midterm coming up."
"I need to withdraw officially."
The words landed with more bitterness than volume. Once he said them, they solidified. Annoying. Necessary. Real.
Kiba went silent for a beat. "You're serious."
"Yes."
Sasuke laughed once. It had no humor in it. "What about them?"
Across the room, Itachi pushed off the wall. "Do you think it is wise to drop out?" he said.
He did not raise his voice, but Kiba heard him through the phone and made a startled noise. "Is that your brother? Why does he sound like a hitman in a documentary?"
Sasuke pinched the bridge of his nose. "Because he is listening."
"Good," Kiba snapped. "Then he can hear me say this is insane. You can't just drop out of College."
Sasuke lowered his hand. The ache in his chest had settled into a throb. He spoke through it. "I'm not staying tied to Konoha while Naruto is missing."
Itachi's gaze didn't leave him. "That's not what I asked."
Sasuke felt his temper edge upward, clean and cold. "Then ask better."
A muscle moved once in Itachi's jaw.
Sasuke kept going before either of them could stop him. "I'm not going to sit in classes doing credit-hour math while Naruto is in a cell somewhere. I can't focus on school. I'm not pretending I can. And when I do go back to studying, it won't be at a snake of a school like Konoha."
Then Itachi sighed. Softly. The kind of sigh that acknowledged reality without forgiving it.
"I didn't say you couldn't drop out," he said. "I said it may not be wise." He tilted his head a fraction. "There's a difference. If you're set on doing it, I'll drive you into town when you're ready."
Sasuke looked away before the corner of his mouth could betray him again. "I'll handle the withdrawal. Housing too, if I can."
"And Sakura," Kiba said.
Sasuke blinked. "What?"
There was a rustle on the other end, as if Kiba had shifted the phone from one ear to the other. "People have been asking around. Hinata asked me last night if I'd heard anything. Neji too."
Sasuke's jaw tightened, nostrils flaring briefly as heat crawled up his neck. The reaction came and went in a heartbeat—that same territorial surge he'd always felt when other Alphas looked too long at Naruto. Only now it seemed worse, sharper around the edges from lack of sleep, and somehow Neji had found a way to provoke it without even being in the room.
"Why does Neji care?" he asked.
Kiba paused. When he spoke again, his voice had acquired that infuriatingly innocent tone people used when they were absolutely aware they were stepping on a bruise. "Probably because Naruto is missing."
Sasuke said nothing.
Kiba took the silence as permission to be worse. "You know, some people have friends outside their boyfriends."
Boyfriend. The word caught in Sasuke's throat, inadequate and small. It made Naruto sound temporary, like something that could be replaced. The ache in his chest flared again, a physical rejection of such a flimsy label for what they were—what they had become to each other without his noticing until it was already done. "I know that." He said defensively.
Across the room, Itachi's expression did not change. Which was somehow more insulting than if he had smiled.
Kiba snorted. "Right. Anyway, Hinata looked worried. Neji looked like he wanted names and blood samples."
That did not help.
Sasuke pressed his thumb harder into the phone's casing. "And Sakura?"
Kiba's voice dropped its playful edge. "Something's up with her." He made a sharp sound with his tongue. "She's been prowling around asking questions about Naruto since yesterday. Not openly. More like... sidling up to people to find out his whereabouts, his company, if he'd been ill. I figured it was the fire alarm drama and all the gossip flying around, but then she circled back this morning."
The hairs on Sasuke's neck stood up. "And?"
"Here's where it gets strange." Kiba's voice fell to nearly a whisper, and Sasuke could tell from the new gravity in his tone that the joking was finished. "She insists she'll speak only with you or Naruto directly."
"About?"
"Wouldn't breathe a word."
Sasuke's lip curled. "How predictable."
Kiba forged ahead with the recklessness of a man who had long ago decided self-preservation was for other people. "She seemed pissed. And scared, maybe. Hard to tell with her, because she always looks a little like she wants to stab somebody, but this felt different."
Sasuke looked at the concrete floor, the dark scuffs left by years of drills. Sakura inquiring after Naruto made no immediate sense. She wasn't part of their circle. She barely tolerated Naruto when she thought him unimportant, and her interest in Sasuke had always seemed too entangled with status to be anything he respected. But people were moving strangely around Naruto's disappearance. Hidden connections kept surfacing where they shouldn't.
"If there's time," Sasuke said at last, each word reluctant, "I'll meet her."
Sasuke glanced up again. Itachi was still watching him, still listening, and now clearly recalculating the logistics of a town trip that had grown extra variables while he stood there.
"I'll call when we're leaving," Sasuke said.
"We?" Kiba seized on the word instantly. "Okay, hate that less. Do not go alone. I'm serious, Sasuke."
"I know."
There was a brief pause on the line, and when Kiba spoke again his voice had shed the frantic edge for something steadier. "We're all looking."
Sasuke stared at nothing for a second.
"I know," he said again, quieter.
He ended the call before the silence could become anything else.