6.
At first he doesn't recognize her at all. It might be because of the hair that falls freely into her face, not just the bangs but the whole purple mass of it, long strands, tangled. To be quite honest, she looks rough, worse than he has ever seen her. But the grin is the same. Toothy, wide, predatory.
Scary.
And only for him.
"Found 'ya," Anko says and even her voice sounds different, strained and tired, yet triumphant. As if he is some kind of hidden treasure, some kind of prize.
"Naruto?" he croaks. He was on a mission. He failed. That is all he remembers.
But Anko's grin just widens and he begins to realize that he is on his back on the ground with her kneeling over him, completely at her mercy. He tenses. Where is everyone? What happened?
"He's out there, probably kicking someone's ass." Anko tugs on his arm and slips a warm hand behind his neck. "Come on, you. Can you be a man and get up, or do I have to carry you in my arms?"
There is dirt on her cheek, a smudge that looks like a thumbprint. Behind her, if he cranes his neck, he can only make out trees, dirt, a forest that feels odd to him. Dead, somehow.
He nods.
She is hoisting him up before he's even completed the motion. She drapes his arm over her shoulder and he stands on trembling legs, his side pressed against hers.
"Time to get you out of here."
With his first step across rotting leaves, he musters a grateful smile for her.
She returns it, winking at him as if they're sharing a perfect moment, and maybe they are.
"Consider yourself rescued," Anko says as she leads him out of the shadows.
5.
To his dusty eyes, the vibrant green is too bright, merciless, biting like acid. He wants to let his eyelids slide shut again, to go back to sleep because it's easier; it feels safe. The rough shaking of his shoulder doesn't.
Someone is shouting at him.
"Yamato! Yamato!" Rhythmic and insistent like taiko drumming. "YA-MA-TO! YA-MA-TO!"
That's not my name, he wants to say, I don't know anyone called that.
"OI! Yamato, wake up!" More shaking. This is what being a rattle in the hands of a cranky toddler must feel like. He is sure that he can feel his brain bump against the inside of his skull. Repeatedly. "You aren't dead, are you?"
When he does open his eyes, a painfully familiar person is frowning at him, painfully familiar eyebrows furrowed.
"Gai-san," he gasps, trying to find enough purchase on the soft ground to push himself away from the other jounin. His back hits the rough bark of a tree. No escape. How did he end up here?
"It's alright, Yamato-kun!" Gai-san says in what to him might be a soothing voice. It hurts Yamato's ears. "You're safe now! I will carry you home!"
There's no time for him to reply because Gai-san simply scoops him up into his ridiculously strong arms, and, to his mortification, he finds himself cradled against that broad, warm chest.
"B-bridal style?! Gai-san!" he yelps, scandalized.
Gai-san simply looks down at his no doubt flushed face and grins that strange, too bright grin of his. It's too disconcerting for words, so he squeezes his eyes shut, resolving to endure.
What follows is the whoosh of air rushing past as Gai-san leaps up into the trees, and all he can do is brace himself for the impending slap of branches… that never comes.
He opens his eyes then and sees Gai-san's green sleeve, the arm that is shielding him from danger, the smile that is bright enough to banish even his darkest fears.
4.
Sai appears out of nowhere, without making a sound. He lands in a crouch, just barely in Yamato's field of vision.
It's hard to trust your perception of space when you're upside down. Everything seems backwards.
Sai is moving closer to him, though, that much he can still tell; no matter how warped the inside of his head might be by now.
Defying gravity by sticking to the grassy sky, hanging above a sheer endless abyss of blue, Sai straightens.
"Taichou," he says. For once his smile doesn't look painted-on. There's movement to it, a slight tremor, relief and other emotions battling.
Yamato feels an answering flutter in his belly, somewhere beyond the dark mass that holds him captive.
"Sai, where is everyone?" His voice is frayed. Images race through his mind. Of failure he knows enough from his ANBU days. It's inexcusable."Is Naruto-?"
Sai, however, smiles a kitten and flowers kind of smile. Something straight off the glossy cover of Happy Housewife magazine.
"They're fighting, Taichou. Your rescue is considered low priority." Only Sai would say it so bluntly, cheerfully, even as, somewhere, some distant part of Yamato is cringing with hurt and indignation.
"I think everyone's forgotten about you," Sai adds, twisting the knife as he steps closer.
"But you haven't?" Yamato hears himself ask, and the words, heavy with hoarse incredulity and hope, fall straight from his lips into the sky.
It takes Sai three steps to arrive at his side. Yamato counts their hollow echoes as they bounce off the crude stone walls. Tap, tap, tap.
Then Sai's hands are on his shoulders, pulling him out of the darkness, and although the words Sai speaks when he first touches him are low and breathless from the effort, Yamato still hears them.
"No, I haven't, Taichou."
3.
They break through the ceiling, raining dust and dirt down onto his face. Under Sakura's fists stone crumbles, revealing Naruto, bright and blond and glowing.
Yamato has to close his eyes because it hurts too much to look at them, their vibrant colors bathed in sudden golden light, their faces, so bloody and bruised and alive.
"Yamato-taichou! There you are! We've been looking all over for you," yells Naruto, all boyish still, despite everything. "You missed all the fighting!" It's almost an accusation, a cheerful one.
"Naruto!" chastises Sakura like she always does, quick with her temper, quick with her hands, whether it's to knock some sense into her teammates or heal their wounds.
Her fingertips are tender, though, when she touches his face, brushing his skin with pressure so light he thinks for a moment there might be tears sliding down his cheeks.
So he opens his eyes, but it's just her looking down at him, a crease of concentration between her eyebrows as she makes her first assessment.
She's beautiful, he catches himself thinking.
And he knows that Naruto is there, and that Naruto, too, is beautiful, that they are young and victorious and that maybe tonight – just for one night – he can be young as well.
With them.
And free.
2.
Kakashi-senpai is there when he opens his eyes, and that startles him so much that he gasps and twitches like a fish being ripped from the ocean.
Senpai chuckles. He's standing right in front of Tenzou, hands in his pockets, casual, the way he used to look when he showed up late to a party. Just seeing him, even under the circumstances, Yamato feels the old ache. He blinks. From his angle, Kakashi is a towering giant.
"Why so surprised?" Senpai cocks his head. There is a matching crooked smile under that mask, Yamato is sure of that. "You wound me, Tenzou, did you really think I wouldn't come for you?"
Did he? Tenzou doesn't know what he's been thinking all this time. He's been waiting, blood pounding in his temples, slipping in and out of consciousness. He didn't dare hope. Not for this.
Not for Kakashi to kneel down in front of him, to reach out with both hands to support Tenzou's aching neck.
"You should know by now…" Kakashi-senpai says, cradling the back of Tenzou's head in his warm hands. "…I never leave my comrades behind."
"Especially not those close to me."
And in a whisper that caresses the blushing shell of Yamato's ear and travels down the length of his spine, Kakashi-senpai adds, "I'd never leave you, Tenzou."
The words threaten to pull him apart at the seams; they're all he ever wished for, all he ever dreamed of, and if, for a sickening second, he thinks he can see something lurking behind his senpai, something cold and slimy and wrong, he won't acknowledge it.
Because he knows that for Kakashi-senpai to save him, all he has to do is close his eyes and believe.
So he does.
1.
It's dark and there's no one. Only the sound of water dripping down from somewhere. Every drop that hits the ground is like an explosion behind his eyes.
Drip drip drip.
He counts them, and whenever one doesn't come on time, he tenses up, holds his breath, convinced for a second that his heart is going to stop. Until the sound comes, a single perfect drop shattering on the stone floor.
Drip.
And Tenzou lives on.
In the darkness, alone.
For all he knows, there is no one else left in the world.
But he mustn't believe that. He mustn't give up.
He is still a Konoha shinobi. He is still Captain of Team Seven.
And yet he is trapped, helpless.
No, not helpless.
Not as long as he's still alive.
He focuses chakra, he twists and struggles. He doesn't scream, but he fights, and silently swears to himself that he won't stop.
Never.
When he succeeds, his body finally breaks free and falls to the ground where he lies bonelessly for a few seconds, gasping.
Rolling over takes time, eons of almost-silence, punctuated only by his panting breaths and the continuous drip drip drip.
Freedom.
Freedom means crawling on his stomach, dragging himself across wet stone. It means pain and suffering of a new kind, different from before.
But he keeps moving, no matter how much it hurts. He will not give up. He will get to his friends. He will get to Naruto, Sakura and Sai. He will get to Kakashi-senpai.
He will find them.
Light is shimmering up ahead.
Too weak to even lift one arm to shield his eyes, he blinks against the brightness.
He's done it; he's saved himself.
He rests his forehead against the cold stone and laughs breathlessly into the cracks. In a few moments, he'll pull himself up; he'll walk out of his prison on his own.
And then he'll save his friends.
0.
"What are you doing to him?" Kabuto's voice is almost completely devoid of interest, but he is there, suddenly, looking over his shoulder.
"Nothing."
He withdraws his fingers from the damp, cool skin between the closed eyes of their captive and straightens. For a moment, before slipping his glove back on, he stares at his hand. The unmarred skin covering the same bones, the same muscles, tendons and the same flesh; it is still the very same hand he once held out to Rin. She'd fallen; he'd extended his arm towards her– offered this hand – and she'd refused, she'd pushed herself up on her own, her face a grimace of pain and grim determination.
What is he doing?
He is reaching out again, reaching out to the whole world, and this time he won't be refused because he will leave them no choice.
He is offering salvation in the form of oblivion.
Sweet dreams.
end.