This is my first yaoi (boyxboy love) Naruto fanfiction. I've written it before, but this is my first ever in the Naruto category. The pairing will be SasuXNaru, but I won't get to it until later on. Yeah, the whole idea just decided to make itself known to me and demanded to be typed down on paper. I'll try to update as often as I can, which will be every weekend or so. Oh yeah, this is also a songfic, but it won't start until the official first chapter. This is only a proglogue.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for the actual fanfiction. That means I don't own Naruto, or any other characters other than my OCs, which won't even be in this fanfic.

Notes: In case that anyone happens to wonder how old the characters are in my fanfic, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura are all twelve. Other ages will be given out as more characters are introduced.

Warnings: yaoi, swearing, Naruto bashing, thanks to Sasuke, extremely morbid discriptions, and plenty of humor and randomness (at least later on, anyways) Enjoy!

"blah" talking

'blah' thoughts/dream

"blah" demon/human communication

Prologue : Naruto's Nightmare

Naruto Uzamaki spit out the last bit of toothpaste into his dirty bathroom sink and cupped his hand under the faucet to catch water. He slapped it to his mouth, swished it around for a few seconds, and then spat the liquid out again. He quickly rubbed his face with cold water before turning the spigot off with a squeak.

A yawn escaped his lips and he rubbed his eyes tiredly. He was completely exhausted, which was unusual for him, from a long day of doing nothing but boring D-Rank missions. He glanced at the scratch marks on his arm from Madam Shijimi's cat, Tora, which he had received while chasing the large black feline all over Konoha.

He was surprised to see that they were almost already healed, but at the same time, he wasn't. Naruto was already aware that he healed faster than normal people, let alone his team-mates. Even Kakashi-sensei couldn't recover so quickly after taking a hit, although he always made sure to keep his other two team-mates unaware of the unique ability he possessed. He'd learned that after many spars during Team Seven's training sessions. Naruto supposed it was because his sensei wanted him to feel accepted, like it was okay to be different.

He also knew that his stamina, and sometimes strength too, were higher than an average jonin level. His favorite shadow clone jutsu itself was a jonin level technique, and almost physically impossible for any low-ranking ninja, but he could do it. He could produce a mass of shadow clones even though he knew his chakra control was far from perfect, while Sasuke and Sakura could make only one or two, four at the most, and Sakura had perfect chakra control. And although Sasuke didn't have absolute control, his strength made up for the slight deficiency and he could still manipulate the chakra to his advantage.

Naruto was aware perhaps more than anyone that being different, being himself, was somehow a bad thing. All of the eyes in Konoha overlooking him, ignoring him, barely tolerating his presence in the Village Hidden in the Leaves, except for a select few. The rookie nine; Ino, Choji, Shikamaru, Neji, Tenten, Lee, Hinata, Akamaru, and Shino, never treated him any differently, though not all of them knew Naruto personally.

Yawning again, he slipped on his fuzzy black nightcap and climbed into bed. He wriggled around under the sheets and comforters until he found a spot that was comfortable. A small shudder traveled through his back as he remembered the bad dream he'd had previous nights. The persistant nightmares were starting to become almost unbearable; he kept waking up during the night and it took him nearly ten mintues before he was calm enough to go back to bed.

He managed to push the disconcerting memories behind him and focused on sleep. He stretched once, allowing his body to loosen up, surprised to feel that his body was so tense. Blue eyes opened and closed twice, before giving in to sleep.

Dream

Naruto stood at the gateway that led to Konoha, listening to the sounds of screaming and cries of help that issued from the village. He could feel tears burning the back of his eyelids, but for some reason, he couldn't cry. He couldn't even move his body to help the innocent civilians as they were incinerated

Konoha burned brightly in the night sky, not with hope or with happiness, but with fire. Orange, yellow, and red flames hungrily devoured timber and flesh, glass and bone.

The blood...all of the dark red blood that stained the ground in puddles glistening in the full moon overhead...All of the bloody, charred corpses burned beyond recognition...but he knew, somehow... whose mangled bodies were strewn before him...

Suddenly he was walking through the cobblestone streets. He could feel the searing heat press against him, feel his skin burning, but the nine-tailed fox-spirit sealed inside him continuously healed the burns as they were given.

He walked, moving lithely through the flaming wooden telephone poles that fell to the groud, their cores eaten away by fire. The gound seemed to drop from beneath him and then he was standing in a room. He recognized it as the classroom of Umino Iruka, his sensei while he attended the Academy.

What he saw chilled him to the bone. His sensei lay face-down on the floor, blood leaking slowly out from beneath him. A thin sword ran straight through his body and pinned him to the ground. Unable to stop himself as his body was acting of its own accord, he reached down and gently touched one of his sensei's arms.

The jonin let out a groan, startling Naruto. He jumped back, heart racing, but relieved that his former sensei was still alive.

"...ruto? That..you?"

Naruto wanted to speak, but his mouth remained shut. Any emotions he'd had up until that moment were gone, banished from his mind by some unknown force. It felt like someone plunged a kunai right into his own heart, but his face remained impassive as his sensei turned his head and looked at him.

Iruka's chocolate orbs were dulled by pain and a tangible sorrow lingered in them.

"Why...did you leave?"

Naruto had no idea what his sensei was talking about. The words only disturbed him even more than watching the village he had loved and called his home burn to the ground.

He turned and ran, fleeing the scene of carnag only to be greeted by another. His current sensei, Kakashi, was pinned to a wooden stake in a mocking version of a crucification. His arms were splayed out on either side of him, held by wickedly sharp kunai that preforated skin and bone. Both of his legs had been tied with a rope and fastened around the bottom of the pole. The jonin's head hung downward in eternal death, silver hair spilling over his face, no longer tied back by his forehead protector.

A sick feeling in his gut worked its way up from his stomach. Naruto gagged and threw up sour bile, the sight overwhelming all of his senses. When he finished, he stood up and wiped the cold beads of sweat from his forehead and turned his back against the body of his former sensei.

The floor dropped beneath his feet again and he was standing at the gate of Konoha once more, only this time he could hear his name being called.

"Why did you leave us, Naruto?" Sakura's voice.

Naruto's eyes widened as the pink-haired kunoichi stumbled towards him, arms outstretched in a zombie-like state. Her once-lively green eyes were now solid and filled with confusion. Her face was streaked with dirt and a large, oozing burn slashed across her face from her left temple to her right cheek, marring her perfect, pale complexion.

"Why the hell did you leave, dobe?"

Sasuke appeared beside Sakura and uncharacteristically placed one arm under Sakura's arm to support the wobbling girl. Blood stained his clothes, which reaked of smoke and had several holes where flames had burned through them.

"N-Naruto...Why..why did you..g-go and l-leave?"

A pale-eyed girl with deep raven hair walked up next to Sasuke and Sakura. Naruto breathed in a sigh of relief, realizing that he had been holding his breath ever since his team-mates first appeared before him. As his blue eyes traveled over her frame, they met a gruesome sight.

Her right arm had been burned to the point where it was unusable. Her flesh had melted and dripped from the intense heat and then solidified, creating a rough, blackened limb that began at the shoulder and ended with a twisted, deformed hand.

"Stay away from Hinata. If you had not left, then this would have been prevented."

These words came from Aburame Shino, who surprised Naruto by teleporting in out of nowhere and pushing the shy Hyuga behind him. The cold bitterness that clipped every word cut Naruto to the marrow. Shino was quiet by nature, but always took the time to think things through before making a rational judgment.

"Naruto..."

A green clad ninja arrived in a gusting whirlwind, carrying a platinum blonde girl in his arms. He lowered her slowly to the ground, making sure she could stand before releasing her completely. She still leaned against him slightly, favoring the left side of her body over her right. He saw the reason why seconds later.

Her outfit was entirely scorched on the right side of her body, the clothing charred and hardly covering anything in some places. The skin on that side of the body looked as if it had been steeped in blood. It was wine red and covered with blisters and oozing pus. He noticed then that the ninja standing next to her, Rock Lee, didn't look any better.

In places his lime-green spandex outfit was burnt or torn away and hung loosely from his lithe body. A large red mark was forming on his arm where the sleeve had been lost somehow. He smiled gently a at the injured kunoichi beside him and gazed at Naruto, his eyes more serious than he had ever seen before. His cheeks were flushed a deep red from the heat projected by the fire-ravaged village.

"What did you hope to do by leaving Konoha, Naruto?"

"I didn't...do anything." Naruto heard himself speak softly. The pain in his voice was evident, even more than the confusion.

The spell-like trance that had overtaken him ever since veiwing Iruka's broken body abandoned its grip on his mind. He could now feel the tears that ran down his cheeks, stinging as though he was bleeding blood instead of tears. It was so painful that he reached up with one hand, touched his cheek, and pulled back. Red, slippery liquid coated his fingertips.

"Please don't leave, Naruto."

"Stay here, dobe."

"D-don't leave, Naruto."

"Please...don't go."

"Naruto..."

Shino remained silent, but glared at Naruto coldly through his small, round sunglasses. Sakura, Sasuke, Hinata, Ino, Lee; their words made no sense to him. He couldn't have understood them any better than if they had been speaking a foreign language.

By now, the only physical thing left of Konoha, the Village Hidden in the Leaves, was ashes. The entire place was in ruins. Flames stretched their smoke-darkened fingers up towards the cold, blue heavens. Buildings crumbled and fell, sending swirls of angry orange sparks like fireflys into the atmosphere.

Then he was in a darker place. He could no longer see Konoha. Four walls surrounded him, splattered with blood and human innards. He felt something wet lapping at his feet. Blood. He gagged when the fetid stench of death reached his nose. The smell was so overpowering that he could even taste it in his mouth.

A deep, evil laughter echoed in the room, but Naruto couldn't locate the source of the sound because it seemed like it came from everywhere. Fire ignited in the room, spreading along the walls of his prison. An ominous presence made itself known to him, manifesting itself as a nine-tailed fox made up of violent red chakra.

Naruto wanted to step back, but again his movement had been stopped by the unknown force. He was unable to move, simply standing while his mind panicked and tried to think of ways to escape. Suddenly the flames lurched towards him in a jet stream of blood-red fury and he let out a scream as it burned the skin of his right shoulder and forearm.

The heat seared his skin, and the fire did something strange. It wrapped around his shoulder in a solid circle about five inches wide and turned ink black. An intense pain shot through him as the black fire tightened around his arm, imprinting the skin with glowing golden markings.

Another burst of black fire encircled his forearm, starting just below his elbow and extending downward a length of three inches. More markings formed on his skin like a tattoo. A scream tore itself loose from his throat, but it was already so raw that it came out no louder than a harsh whisper.

Everything flashed white and then the fire disappeared. So did the nine-tailed fox. The markings on his right arm stung painfully, causing him to lose his breath. A wave of dizziness crashed over him and he fell to the ground. When he tasted something funny, he opened his eyes again. His mouth was open and he had been laying in blood.

Naruto jerked upright into a sitting position and vomited, spewing whatever had been in his stomach onto the floor. Gasping, he ignored the bitter acidic taste in his mouth and concentrated (it wasn't hard) on the pain emanating from the burns on his skin.

He gripped his right arm tightly, gritting his teeth against the onslaught of pain that overwhelmed him and nearly caused him to lose consciousness. He watched as the golden markings squiggled around, forming what he recognized as kanji on his skin.

The letters looked strange to him. He had never seen the odd-looking symbols before, but he could roughly translate a few of them. The kanji wrapping around his shoulder read "prisoner of darkness" and then the name of a seal he couldn't understand. Several other small black symbols followed the seal, but the meanings remained a mystery to him.

Slowly, he brought his arm up closer to his face to see the letters inscribed upon the flesh of his limb. The markings were all nonsense to him; he couldn't make heads or tails of anything. He groaned loudly as the pain from the seals started to spread out across his body.

Suddenly a shot of red chakra burst forth from his navel and crackled wildly around him. It seemed to be attracted to the new kanji on his body. The violent energy leaked out of his body, licking at the letters inked into his skin, and he felt a sharp pain come from deep within his stomach. He doubled over, using one fisted hand to support his body so it wouldn't fall into the crimson lake beneath him.

An enormous cage appeared in front of him. Twisted metal bars stuck out at all angles and in some places there were gaping holes that were wide enough for an adult person to fit through with plenty of room to spare. Naruto gasped as white-hot pain radiated through his body. The agony was unbelievable.

He struggled to remain sitting upright, and then he saw it. Blue eyes widened as he took in the towering gates which led to the opening of the cage. The doors were still intact, but dented outwards in a frightening display of power and a rectangular sheet of paper with black markings on it was pasted where the two metal edges connected.

Naruto recognized the word "seal" in enormous writing, but he couldn't read any more because the top half of the paper was bending over the bottom half. The seal wasn't fully fixed on the doors anymore, though he couldn't understand why a flash of fear ran through him at the thought. He couldn't see a reason why he should be afraid of the enormous cage or the loose seal or the possibilities of the things that it contained.

He felt himself falling...could feel the ice cold blood licking his cheek...trickling in his mouth...He spat furiously to try and get rid of the metallic taste, but each time he only received another mouthful. He couldn't breathe...he was drowning in the liquid essence of life that had suddenly multiplied its volume from a few inches to what seemed like infinity.

Struggling, he reached up a hand, but the blood closed over it and he was dragged down into the darkness. The word "traitor" came out of nowhere and echoed around him. It was the last thing he heard before everything faded to black.

End dream.

Naruto jerked awake, panting heavily. He tried to get out of the bed but thick, glossy black snakes were winding around his legs. Gasping and pumping his legs back and forth, he only succeeded in falling out of the bed, serpents still caught around his ankles. The jolt of pain that followed made him realize that he was awake, and what he'd previously thought were snakes were only his bed sheets.

Groaning in exasperation, he reached out with his left hand and yanked the cloth free from his legs. He stood up, rubbing his now sore backside and thinking about the horribly realistic nightmare. A few of the details had been changed, were new to him, but as he squeezed his eyes shut to remember them, it was like trying to hold smoke.

The dream scattered in his mind, fragments slipping away in spite of his attempt to recall them. He let out a sigh and then realized he was cold. Shivering slightly, he looked down to see that his entire outfit was drenched in icy sweat. A few strands of hair stuck to his cheek. He put his hand up to wipe them away and a sharp, needle-like pain spread through his upper right arm.

Rubbing the hurting limb with his opposite hand, he walked into the bathroom and proceeded to do his business. Once he was done, he shrugged out of his black nightshirt, having decided to take a shower. The hot water felt good on his skin and soothed his raw nerves.

He lathered his body with soap and scrubbed himself clean, feeling as though he was washing away all the traces of his nightmare. He stepped back and let the water rinse off the bubbles, avoiding the right arm as much as he possibly could because sporadic spasms of pain still traveled through it. Squeezing the nearly empty shampoo bottle didn't prove to be enough so he had to shake it several times before a tad amount of silver-grey goo slid out into his palm. It still wasn't enough to make due with. Frustration rippled through him but he stuffed it back, allowing a small, still goofy smile to take its place instead. 'Anger won't help me solve this problem, so why waste the effort?'

Naruto wiped the shampoo on his hair and stepped gingerly onto the bright orange bathmat in front of his shower stall. He grabbed a brand new bottle of shampoo that rested on the edge of his bathroom sink and returned to his shower.

He held the bottle with his right hand and let the cleanser drop into his open palm slowly. He realized that his hand was shaking badly, but before he could put the bottle down, which had somehow aquired a tremendously heavy weight, it slipped out of his grip and landed fully on his foot. He gasped, hopping on one foot to try and massage the injured toes.

Then something happened. He lost his balance and, arms wind-milling circles wildly, he started to fall sideway. Before he landed, he managed to twist his body around and pushed the sliding glass door open so he wouldn't hit it. His head thudded painfully against the wooden floor while his ribs and lower stomach landed on the metal rail that kept the shower door on the track.

Naruto let out a whoosh as the air in his lungs burst out from the collision and he saw stars. He laid there for some time until he could regain his breath. 'At least my lower parts didn't end up hitting the metal rail. That...really would have hurt.' he grimaced as he thought this over. He was immensely grateful that his thoughts hadn't been realized because he was positive that if they had, he would have been screaming in something that was more than sheer pain alone. As it was, he could already see a bruise starting to form across the lower half of his torso.

He stood up and looked across the room at his window. It was still very dark outside. He swung his gaze over to the digital clock sitting on his nightstand. It read 3:10 A.M. Naruto tied a towel gingerly around his thin waist, taking care to avoid the tender area. He hobbled over to his drawers and began searching for a pair of clothes to wear. He was disappointed when he could find none. Apparently, all of his usual outfits needed to be laundered, as he figured out when he stared at the towering stack of dirty clothes beside his bed.

The blond genin sighed loudly and started tossing things out of his drawers. He found a pair of boxer shorts, which he slid on carefully after removing the towel. Rivulets of water ran down his back, coming from his damp hair. He rubbed himself dry and let the towel sit on his shoulders while he looked for something suitable to wear.

After several long minutes of searching, he pulled out a pair of baggy, navy-blue, polyester pants. 'Not my first choice. They make a lot of noise and they tear easily too, but I don't want to walk around stark naked so I guess they'll have to do.' Naruto searched some more and found a plain black sleeveless mesh shirt. 'Where the heck did I get this from? I don't remember seeing this shirt before.'

He shrugged to himself and tugged it on. The shirt proved to be skintight, which he found uncomfortable compared to his normal black t-shirt with the red Konoha spiral on the front. However, as he twisted and turned slightly in the shirt to adjust, he found it to allow more freedom without moving around as much.

He winced as a sudden spurt of pain crawled slowly up his right arm, generating from his shoulder and traveling down to his forearm. He looked down and his eyes widened. A ring of black kanji about three inches wide circled around his forearm, just below his elbow, while another complete ring, this one five inches wide, winded about his shoulder.

"What the hell?!" Naruto shouted.

He gripped his arm in another spasm of pain, but quickly let out a yell and pulled away. The contact only caused the pain to intensify. Gritting his teeth, he observed the kanji again. Most of the large black symbols made no sense to Naruto. He was able to interpret a few words, but the rest of the letters remained a mystery to him; an undecipherable context.

"prisoner of darkness." he read slowly, allowing himself to absorb the information.

He reread the words and then noticed that beside them, there was a seal. He couldn't make heads or tails of the symbols as most of them were small and looked unfamiliar to him. The words and symbols on his arm formed a seal as well. height one on his shoulder looked like five black circles arranged in a pattern similar to a fingerprint, with the height corresponding to the lengths of each finger.

"I think it's a seal...but it doesn't look like a seal...but then again, I don't exactly know what a seal is supposed to look like...Wait...in my dream..."

Naruto broke off as the pieces of his dream zoomed back together in his mind like a puzzle being solved in fast motion. He remembered standing at the gates of Konoha and watching the village burn to the ground. With his eyes closed, he could picture his injured friends, could hear their words, could see their pain and grief. He remembered the way Kakashi's silver hair glowed in the moonlight and swept down across his face in a look of perpetual defeat. He remembered the room of blood, and the fire, and the pain, and the giant translucent fox standing before him with a sadistic-looking smile on its face.

Suddenly, a pain slashed through his stomach so badly that he fell to the ground with the force of it. Sparks of red chakra issued from a black spiral that stood out vividly against the tan skin of his stomach. The energy swirled upwards and licked the seal on his upper shoulder, sending waves of agony through his system so powerful that he nearly blacked out. He cried out, but his words were lost in the early morning silence.

A strange feeling of numbness overcame him, mixed in with the electric-like jolts that emitted from the double-tetragram seal on his stomach. White-hot rage flooded through him, blocking out his other senses. It wasn't his anger, but some unkown force's similar to the one in his dream. He saw red and gritted his teeth tightly before becoming aware that he had actually bitten down hard on his lower lip. Blood dripped onto the floor, but he ignored it. He couldn't feel the pain anymore, only outright hatred.

His canines grew longer, extending themselves down a centimeter and ending in needle-sharp points. The faint whisker marks on his cheeks deepened into small furrows. Anger raged through him, pouring off his body in waves of violent blood-red chakra. Naruto felt like he had lost all control over his body. He beat frantically against the walls of his mental prison, trying desperately to find some way to return his body.

In his mind, he was greeted with a familar, though highly unpleasant sight. An enormous cage stood before him, twisted metal bars bent outwards while others were completely missing. Only sharp, jagged metal edges remained from where the poles had been blown or torn away. A pair of enormous dark red eyes stared at him from within the page, but it was all Naruto could see in the darkness. They seemed to bore right through his solid body, stripping away his pathetic mental defenses and leaving him feeling more alone and vulnerable than he had ever felt before.

"Soon I will be free, human, and then you will be useless to me. You can suffer in hell for eternity while I finally get the freedom that I have waited so long for." a deep, obviously male voice issued forth from the cage. Cold venom dripped from the words, sending a shiver down Naruto's spine.

Naruto was stricken by fear. The dead weight rose in his chest, and all thoughts scattered from his mind. He realized he was shaking badly. Then he did the only thing left that he could do. He let out an angry yell, shattering the kyuubi's control over his mind. His anger felt purer than the evil one that had just engulfed him.

He was back on soild ground rather than floating in mental captivity. He sprawled out on the hardwood floor, completely drained to the point of near-exhaustion. The coolness felt good against his sweaty cheek and he lay there for half an hour, unable to find the energy necessary to move.

He finally struggled to his feet and managed to stumble over to his bed, where he very nearly passed out. The pain in his shoulder had died down to a mere tingling sensation, which, with a little effort, was easily ignorable. Naruto sat up at last when the first soft waves of predawn light were visible outside the window next to his bed.

Dressing himself completely proved to be an easier task than he first thought. He pulled on a thin black shirt over the sleeveless mesh shirt he had already been wearing and then zipped up a high collar jacket similar to his usual orange one, only it was the same shade of navy as his pants. Before he walked into the kitchen, he pulled up his right sleeve just high enough to see the black kanji tattooed into his skin.

'Just like in my dream. I hope that doesn't happen again. It was really scary.'

Naruto's stomach grumbled, snapping the blond genin out of his thoughts. Grinning ruefully despite the event that had transpired only moments before, he ran to his small kitchen and began to boil water for his ramen.

'There isn't anything else I can do, so might as well eat breakfast. I can wait the morning out until its time for training.'

Ah!! It took me forever to type this because I had to get it just right. I tried to make it so that Naruto has a lot of optimism like he does in the anime. And another thing: I know absolutely nothing about kanji or any other form of japanese writing, so I had to use my imagination and come up with stuff. I only assume that it is the same as writing in english, but in a different form and pronounciation. I'm sorry if this bothers anyone, but my lack of knowledge in this department and my fondness for inaction are too much. However, I believe my creativity makes up for that. Thanks for reading the prologue of my fanfic and I hope you all will continue to read more as I update. I promise it'll be longer and much more interesting.