Title: The demon within
Rating: PG 13
Pairing / Characters: Uzumaki Naruto
Word Count: 650 words
Warnings: Dark stuff
Summary: No one understands what it's like living with a demon
A/N: Kyuubi is a monster right? Right? It stands to reason that the monster would try to taint the innocent soul it resides in, and it also stands to reason that Naruto would be affected by it all.
No one understands what it's like living with a demon.
I don't mean demons of guilt, sin, rage, hatred, I mean an actual, live demon. A monster. A nine tailed fox, to be precise.
He lives inside my mind, inside my skin. Even when I'm not using his chakra I can still feel his essence seeping from my pores, and no matter how much I scrub myself, I can still smell it, still taste it.
I hear him laughing at me.
Sometimes I'll be walking down the street, and I can almost feel him looking out through my eyes. Whenever that happens, the whole world seems to go red. Then, I can feel his laughter in my mind, rippling through my throat, aching to burst free. I've never told Kakashi-sensei or Ero-sennin about it, they'd think I've lost my mind. Maybe I have, I don't know. I never know just what part of me the demon has taken over.
When I fight with his chakra, his laughter is the loudest. It's kind of like he's mocking me, taunting me for being so weak that I have to use a demon's chakra. When I fought against Sasuke, it was the worst it has ever been. My whole mind, my spirit, was tainted with his smell. Have you ever wondered what evil smells like?
I can tell you.
It smells dead, rotten, a corpse rising from the bowels of hell. It's anger and loathing and malevolence and hatred and menace, and it terrifies me. I'm not like that, I'm not, but no matter how much I tell myself that, I still find that a part of me believes it.
There are times when I think that this is what the Fourth meant for me to become. I've always had this image in my mind of the Fourth as a gentle, benevolent protector who did what he had to in order to save his village, but at night, when I'm all alone and I can hear the fox whispering to me, I don't believe it.
What he says to me is so…seductive. He tells me that I can have power, power enough to rescue Sasuke, power to save myself from Akatsukl, power to prove what I'm capable of, but I can see inside his mind, and I can feel his emotions. He wants to bite, to tear, to rip out the throats of every person we see. He wants us to kill, to feel blood on our hands, to taste the blood in our mouths. He wants us to destroy every living thing in every part of the world, to hunt, to live in darkness.
It's so hard to resist him sometimes. I want to prove myself, to have the power to save Sasuke, to kill everyone who hates me and never hides it. I want to tear them apart, to watch their cold eyes fill with fear at the mere sight of me. I want to take everyone who looks down on me, everyone who believes that I'll never amount to anything and crush their bones with my bare hands.
I want to kill. I want to taste blood.
I want to take my kunai and cut the nine tails out of me, even if it means my death.
My life has always been lonely, but I'm never alone. It's impossible to feel that way when your heart beats in time with a monster's.
As I said, no one really understands what it's like living with a demon.
No one will ever know of the evil that taints my blood, or the rage that fills my head. No one will ever know of the hatred that I harbour deep inside, and no one will ever know that the nine tails feeds on that hate. I know he does.
Sometimes, sometimes I wish that it was an emotion strong enough to kill me.