All author notes will be found at the bottom.
Disclaimer: I don'town Naruto, its characters, or any references I make to real life pop culture, products, art, or anything else someone can sue me over.
Warnings: Violence, gore, sexual situations, profanity, homosexual and heterosexual relationships, recreational drug and alcohol usage (not the main character, though), mentions of rape
Chapter 1: My Friend the Murderer
_l+l_
Heart Failure
The words hovered like an anvil atop the head of a young man. The scrawling, spidery text followed each step of the man faithfully. A motorcycle helmet is tucked under one of his arms and sack of groceries in the other.
Aortic Dissection
This time, the script was neat as it flittered through the air above another person's head. It is accompanying a woman with an athletic build and almost unnaturally tall, lanky physique.*
Liver Failure
Another man; he was ducking into a car obviously packed full of camping equipment and supplies for a long trip.
Gavriil ignored the text trailing the occasional pedestrian as he jogged his typical circuit around his neighborhood. The morbid words chained to his neighbors were a familiar sight; unremarkable and steady to his brown eyes. Each day, he'd see the same people with the same death sentence hanging so reliably above them. It would have been more alarming if the text wasn't there one day.
In varying fonts and sizes, people's causes of death had been a story written on air, read only by Gavriil. The color of the text typically ran black, but there were the occasional deviants. Red- bright, blaring red happened to be the only other color.
Red C.O.D's were usually violent and unpleasant.
Cranial Hemorrhaging
One such C.O.D passed by him just now- a small, pretty woman. Gavriil knew from years of living in this neighborhood that the woman, her husband, and three kids were rather isolated. Her entire family had red texts, each death similar in how gruesome they were except her eldest son. That child's death was black and simply read 'asphyxiation'.
Later that day, Gavriil met with a childhood friend that was family in all but blood.
Multiple lacerations, multiple contusions, fractured tibia, cranial hemorrhaging, 23:47, 5842 Gre-
He shifted his gaze from the sprawling words rapidly revealing themselves from above his friend's head.
Matvey, his friend, had the most detailed C.O.D. of them all.
Punctured Lung
The red sits atop his pseudo brother's beau-a plain woman with brown eyes, brown hair and a sweet smile. Anna was her name. A couple-more than Gavriil liked- of his friend's lovers had red tied to them in his friend's distinctive scrawl. If not a lover, then another friend, an amiable coworker, the grocer boy at a shop he frequented. Each were innocuous interactions and relationships, but with a sinister connection to one person.
Eventually, these people would disappear. The law enforcement was lax in this town, so no one had come to investigate at any point. The political climate was too unstable and there were too many missing person cases around the country to focus on ordinary citizens. Gavriil wished he lived in a less dubious society- else he wouldn't be contemplating playing God's hand like he used to try in his early childhood. He stopped after he noticed with every death he prevented, it would be repaid with someone he personally knew. If he did anything to help save Matvey's targets, he'd lose more than just a close friend. With how many deaths (murders) Matvey was tangled in, Gavriil would probably lose the rest of his family in freak accidents within the next year.
That night, the ability to choose was ripped away after hearing some suspicious noises from a tiny, abandoned building. The late-night groceries he bought spilled over concrete as he ran.
His pocket knife was open and ready when he stormed into the dilapidated structure. His heart constricted upon catching Matvey in the act of killing his latest victim.
Anna crumpled to the ground without Matvey's supporting arms constricting her to his form. The knife jutted from her breast, but she was still alive. Gavriil would have preferred her dying instantly instead of having to watch her flail piteously as she sputtered and drowned in her own blood.
Narrow glare locked on his stunned friend-turned-foe, Matvey ripped the knife from her chest and cautiously edged around the debris littering the floor. Gavriil copied his tense pacing, his own small knife shaking as his opponent's form flitted between the shadows of the room and sparse strips of moonlight.
There was no tragic dialogue or even a villainous monologue. One moment they were prowling the darkness, and the next they were a flurry of limbs and flashing metal. Quick swipes of the knives left both men bleeding heavily within the first thirty seconds of the lethal exchange.
A large chunk of piping tripped Gavriil, aiding him in narrowly missing a jab to his abdomen. He grabbed the piping in the same moment he rolled away from a vicious kick that still managed to catch his ribs.
The weight of the pipe added force to the swing that clocked Matvey on his calf. The taller man fell atop Gavriil with a sick crack and a scream, knife slicing Matvey's hand as he stubbornly held on to it in his descent. Grunts punched out of Gavriil as he frantically grappled to get out from under his attacker, one hand holding the knife away as another scrambled to find the pipe and ward off Matvey's free arm.
Cool metal met his searching fingers and he cracked the pipe over the back of Matvey's head with a resounding clang. Burning pain sliced through his neck just as the larger man slumped to the side.
Multiple lacerations-so many. Like Swiss cheese, thought Gavriil. Multiple contusions. Oh God, his friend. His friend. Fractured tibia. Gavriil was faint as he took in his friend, friend, friend's broken visage. Cranial Hemorrhaging.
Matvey looked peaceful as the words gradually dissolved into faint wisps-just like they did with any dying human.
Gavriil heaved as he stumbled from the building, his phone almost tumbling from his hand as he brought it out.
23:44 it read.
Not enough time, but he'd try regardless. "Hello? My friend. He's dying, and I'm injured as well. There's a dead boy… We need an ambulance… Please. The-the a-ddress…is," Gavriil struggled to read the discolored numbers on the building, "5842 G-re-reybridge Stre-"
The world was slowly turning black, his voice was slurring, and he finally became aware of the warmth and dampness covering his left side. He collapsed into the grass, his hand coming to his throbbing neck. Hot blood pumped through the spaces between his fingers in alarming volume. Gavriil was too sluggish to truly let the panic set in, his hand slumping to his side as he gradually faded in and out to the sound of crickets chirping and a distraught voice shouting from his phone.
Years ago, a small boy gazed into the mirror in consternation as his once milky white eyes slowly darkened to a deep blue. Glowing a vivid red, the words 'Arterial Bleeding' formed above his head in the messy scribbles of a child's handwriting.
Long eyelashes fluttered against sunken cheeks as a woman hovered over her infant's cradle. Early stress lines creased her once lovely face and the dark smudges of insomnia were smeared beneath her leaking eyes.
A thin, trembling hand lowered to caress her child's tuft of white hair. Oh, her child. Her poor baby boy was so weak and fragile, sick from the day he left the womb. Chiasa wanted to name her child Hisao* in the hopes that the namesake would pass onto him.
'Wanted', is the key word, but Chiasa never had the choice. This baby wasn't her own despite the little boy having been nurtured in her own womb, been born from her own body, and loved by Chiasa in a way only a mother can love. No, this bastard child was to be the head of the family one day if the Lady of the manor didn't bare her own heir in the next couple of years.
The whole situation left a bitter taste on her tongue. A simple servant warming the sheets of a clan heir for years, hoping to raise her status even a little and devoting herself to the bullshit the man having sex with her driveled. Of course he would do anything to keep an easy stress reliever between the sheets; of course they would become careless enough not to use protection; of course he wouldn't fight his clan for a low-class fuck. Katsuo, the spineless aristocrat, had never been an assertive man in all the years she's known him. Expecting him to have enough hardiness to fight against his clan for a relationship that had been lukewarm at best was foolish on her part.
The noble family currently sought to punish Chiasa and her lover for their indiscretion.
Katsuo, now the clan head (in name only, Chiasa thought acidly), was barred from attending the birthing or even seeing his child. The mother's once flowing, black locks were shorn closely to her scalp. She was banished to a far corner of the estate with minimal contact beyond accepting supplies the family brought to her and the essentials, like eating with the other servants or bathing. Each day, Chiasa suffered through the suffocating atmosphere that being branded a harlot wrought. Her entire state of being was besmirched by a simple matter of passion.
Furthermore, Chiasa and Katsuo's right to name their child was ripped away, and then further desecrated by the Lady not giving their lovely boy a proper name.
Haji. Disgrace. No surname granted, just that simple word, immortalized on a piece of paper as her child's identity in this world. Chiasa was tormented by the horrid namesake being posted on the wall next to her child's room, on the cradle, and even on some of her baby's clothing.
Chiasa never called her son such a terrible thing. She settled for calling him Hisao in the privacy of their room, not wanting her child to answer to Haji.
It was only to be changed if the Lady continued to be infertile and Haji was designated as the heir. Even then, it would always be Hisao to Chiasa. If she had to watch her son grow from afar as Hisao learned the duties of being head of the family, and Hisao came to hate or forget her, her son would always be loved.
These were the options presented to her, but Chiasa found another route hidden in the bramble.
"If you live, never make the mistakes I did. Grow to be something better than a servant in some fu-messed up clan. But first, you have to live. Please." Chiasa's voice was strained as she bundled her son into her shaking arms.
The baby whined in his quiet way, snuggling closer to Chiasa's bosom. Hisao was so emaciated, his frail bones peaking out where baby fat should be plump and round.
Nothing would settle in Hisao's stomach. Each day, Chiasa would breast feed him, and each day the baby would vomit some glowing concoction that had no business being in a child's body. Thinking it was her own breast milk that was making Hisao ill, she turned to supplements. Still, her baby would sick–up the iridescent, white liquid.
Hisao had not urinated or had a single bowel movement since the day he was born.
Chiasa wanted to go to a hospital, but she knew her baby would 'mysteriously disappear' if the main family caught wind of Hisao's abnormalities. Even hospitals were a gamble. Word spreads rapidly, and some intrigued intellects may flock to research her child more than treat him.
The aberrance of Hisao's ailment was taxing on its own, but Chiasa couldn't bother with the idea normality much in the wake of his deteriorating condition. Hisao had Death waiting to snatch his last breath away.
Chiasa wouldn't be able to take him further than to a provincial alternative practitioner a day's horse-ride away if she went at full speed the entire trip. Hospitals weren't common in rural areas, and the manor was sequestered from any major cities or towns. Any longer than a day and the occupants of the manor would notice Chiasa was missing. They would realize the child was gone the moment Chiasa returned, but at least her child would be safe.
The mother would simply pretend that she was unhinged and had committed infanticide in order to make Katsuo love her again- or something ludicrous like that. She already had the worn visage of a woman drowning under a sea's worth of pressure; acting like she broke from it wouldn't be too difficult.
The night air was liberating as she tore through the forest. Chiasa wished she and her son could be spirited away by the gods of fortune to live happily in some other universe where everything wasn't wrong. All the wisdom of the world would be passed to Hisao, and Chiasa would be there to guide him through his transformative years. Hisao would grow into a strong, wonderful man, something better than his foolish mother and cowardly father.
But the spirits weren't guiding her horse's hooves- Chiasa was holding the reigns to her son's fate. She couldn't afford to be inactive.
Finally, the wooden structure of the sanitarium came into sight. Chiasa slowed the horse into a trot, exhausted from such an intense trip.
Hisao huffed against her chest, most likely just as relieved to settle after being jostled in the harness for the last day. The sun's rays caught on his white hair, lighting up the strands in a captivating, golden hue. Hisao opened his eyes, drowsy and blinking slowly, but aware.
Chiasa almost began weeping right then. She hadn't seen her son's eyes in weeks.
Blank, white eyes stared widely up at Chiasa's brown orbs. Grey pupils sat in the center of colorless irises, fluctuating as they tried to focus in the new lighting.
This must be a good omen, Chiasa mused as she rubbed her son's pale cheek with her thumb. Once off the horse, the mother lifted her child and nuzzled him with a joyful laugh. It might be her hopeful imagination, but even now, Hisao was already looking healthier than he ever had since birth.
The field surrounding the herbal clinic was absolutely enchanting. The vibrant flowers and grass glistened with morning dew in a shimmering light show orchestrated by the sun. The scent drifting along the breeze was subtle and sweet.
A distance away, Chiasa could spot a couple of buildings that were located on the outskirts of the town center.
Yes, this would be the perfect place for her son to recover. If fortune decided to grace Chiasa for once in her life, one of the workers would wish to take Hisao in as his or her own once he or she realized Chiasa wouldn't be coming back. If not, there was a somewhat reputable orphanage only a thirty minute walk away from the clinic.
Wind chimes tinkled as she trudged up the steps to the porch. The shoji slid almost silently in spite of Chiasa's graceless stumble into the clinic. A young woman with brown hair jumped to her feet and guided Chiasa to a chair.
"Miss-"
"My son, he's sick. Here, take this paper. This is all of his symptoms; I can't do anything more for him. His name is Hisao. No surname." Chiasa kissed her son on the forehead and pulled out a bag of her rather impressive life's savings. She wouldn't need it. Once Chiasa 'confessed', the main family would have her executed for killing a potential heir. "Here's the payment for anything and everything you need to do. Do not deny him any treatment. If he needs to go to another hospital, take him there." She fixed a lethal glower on the woman, clutching Hisao tightly. "He will not die. If he does, I will find a way to destroy this place and you, woman. He will live."
Chiasa lowered her head as the sorrow she'd been stifling for the last couple of weeks burst from its tightly coiled confines deep within her chest. Tears dripped onto Hisao's forehead as Chiasa shuddered with silent sobs and pressed kisses to the infant's face.
A small hand patted the mother's cheek. Chiasa gasped in shock at seeing her son's extended hand waving in the air, as if searching. A wobbly smile overtook Chiasa's usually weary image as she let her son's hand play with her larger fingers.
With a final kiss to that tiny fist, Chiasa untangled their hands and gently placed her son into the woman's arms.
She blinked the water from her eyes, not wanting the last images of her son to be blurred. "I'll always protect you. Even in death."
The startled shouts of the woman were ignored as Chiasa mounted her horse with a grim set to her lips.
Nagisa was flabbergasted and mildly offended, to say the least.
Some woman barges into the front office, pale as a sheet and cradling an infant. When Nagisa rushes to assist her, he's pushed aside, threatened, and mistaken for a woman again. Suddenly the woman is crying and an infant is in his arms, while he's left in the dust as the woman rides into the rising sun.
The man clucked his tongue and shifted his gaze down to the baby, eyes widening in astonishment. "What an odd little creature you are."
The baby was naturally tan, though illness had made its complexion wan. It was a cute child if one got past the unhealthy pallor and weight, but the hair and eyes were completely bizarre. Nagisa had seen white hair and eyes on the elderly and young, but this wasn't a regular, natural white. Instead, it seemed as if a deep blankness resided where color should be, as if an artist left a sketch unfinished and never bothered to fill in the color.
A further scan of its appearance put aside the peculiarities in wake of its clearly lacking health. No child should be so thin.
Nagisa strode to a nearby room and set the infant down on a tatami bed usually reserved for overnight clients. The bag of clinking money was tossed onto a nightstand as he opened the crinkled note the woman had all but thrown at him earlier.
One minute later, Nagisa set the paper down and clucked his tongue again.
The clinic couldn't take care of this. They were a natural remedy apothecary and massage parlor, in simple terms. They gave simple concoctions to help with aches, fatigue, and mild injuries or ailments. Chakra infused massages and mineral baths were their only other specialty. This infant's problems were too extensive and completely out of their realm of medicine or understanding. Nagisa wasn't certain if even the most advanced hospital had encountered symptoms like these.
Additionally, the woman insinuated she would not be returning for her baby. The clinic did not have the proper equipment to cater to a child for an extended period of time. They did not have any cradles or general supplies for children beyond little remedies for common issues. There were no bottles, or formula, diapers…A larger hospital would have those items for the child's recovery period until it would be placed in the orphanage.
A small whine snapped his attention to the infant-Hisao, Nagisa corrected himself.
Astonishment obliterated any thoughts from his mind as he witnessed the metamorphosis of the feeble infant.
The sun, slipping through an open window, had laid a golden stripe upon the infant's body. Hisao's once white hair had seemed to absorb the ray's color and brilliance, the once white hair now gleaming like polished gold. The infant lost his ghastly complexion, his tan skin gaining a healthy flush and his cheeks plumping with a sudden gain of baby fat.
The floor creaked as Nagisa took tentative steps toward the metamorphosed child.
The once vacant eyes were now a sunflower yellow and staring with an awareness that had not been there previously. Nagisa lifted the child from the bed and clucked his tongue when he felt heat radiating off of Hisao. A touch to Hisao's forehead with the back of Nagisa's hand revealed the skin temperature of the child was healthy, but the warmth still affected the atmosphere surrounding him.
He set the boy down again and stepped away, noting the warmth disappeared about a meter away from him. Two more repetitions of this test proved that Nagisa was in fact still sane, and that the infant was the most peculiar baby he'd ever encountered in his life.
What a mess.
*There's a genetic disorder called Marfan Syndrome that affects the body's connective tissues such as cartilage, bone tissue, fatty tissue ect. A mutation in a protein which forms elastic fibers and contributes to cell signaling activity causes abnormal structure and function of connective tissues. People affected by Marfan Syndrome are typically very tall with thin, uneven limbs and protrusion of the sternum. A lot of the times people with this disorder die early due to heart problems-enlargement of heart, degradation of heart valves, aortic aneurism or dissection. So I swear I'm not calling tall, lanky girls unnatural. If you're interested in learning more about this disorder, visit the Wikipedia page.
*Hisao = long lived or life story
A/N: This is going to be the only chapter describing Hisao's infant/toddler years. I'm going to do a time skip for next chapter. Regarding pairings: There will be hints to slash, though I'm not sure if I want to commit fully to an actual pairing. I'm not big on romance, so don't expect much in that department. But there will be a mixture of heterosexual and homosexual couples even if they aren't the central focus, so if this bothers you, don't read my story. Once again: there will be gay couples. That's four warnings on the first chapter, so I don't want any flames.
P.S. My other fics 'Nihilism is for Quitters' and 'Don't Trust Television (this one has yet to be published, though)' are interconnected with this story and each other. They're not essential to read, but if anyone does bother with them, there are similarities you will notice, and a crossover will happen in at least one chapter at some point in each story.