A/N: Please note the tags I used in the AO3 version, i.e.
Horror, Suicide, Vomiting, Tragedy, Dystopia, Post-Apocalypse, Dark, Hurt No Comfort, No Happy Ending, Angst
Mei stumbles through the cold, rustling forest, her hand pressed against the wound slashing across her abdomen. Blood pools warmly between her fingers and her jaw aches from gritting her teeth, but she can't stop and rest before she manages to find them.
She has to find them, or, or...
The darkness is smothering. It clogs her every shallow breath as she forces one foot before the other, stifling whimpers when each step jars her wound. Cold sweat stings her eyes when she blinks, trying to make out the shapes hidden in the shadows. They sway around her, warping at the edges of her vision like dripping paint. She lists alarmingly past a tree when a dizzy spell strikes, but she catches herself against it's thin trunk before she falls.
The bark is strangely smooth. Mei turns, her hackles rising even as she snatches back her hand.
She claps her hand over her mouth to muffle a shriek when she realises that the dim greys and blacks before her eyes are. It's a cocoon— one of those that the cursed Uchiha had used to consume her people. There's someone in there, trapped like a fly in the maw of a carnivorous plant, their flesh being slowly digested for their chakra.
An impossible surge of adrenaline slams into her and she's throwing herself at it like a madwoman, tearing at the white, smooth thing with her fingers and nails. "No, no, no, please no..." she sobs, each word growing louder with rising hysteria as she claws at the fibrous layers of the cocoon. Her fingers are quickly scraped raw and bloody. "Let them go!"
Her scream echoes through the silent, empty night and the cocoon splits under her hands, its shapeless contents spilling onto the floor like a miscarriage of some poor woman's dreams.
The air within her lungs punches out of her, leaving nothing but a growing vacuum within her chest. Her heart strains with every beat and she gasps, falling down weeping as she draws her hands through the bloody mess of slime. Shards of white bone glint at her, their edges pared down by the very same acid that's stinging her hands.
She gags involuntarily as she trawls through the pile, breathing shallowly through her mouth but tasting bile on her tongue anyway. There must be some identifying marker here somewhere with their remains, so Mei can finally put them to rest in her mind.
"Who are you?" Mei moans, doubling over from the weight of fear and grief that has plagued her all these weeks. She so desperately does and doesn't want to know. What if? What if?
The years have given her so many people to love.
When she opens her tear-sticky eyes again, she spots the distinctive bulk of Hiramekarei fallen behind the tree.
Mei jerks awake with a muffled cry of horror, tears pooling in her eyes. She barely manages to hoist herself up onto her hands and knees before her stomach turns over and promptly loses its contents.
Nothing comes up except the acid that burns the back of her throat. She has been starving for days on this godforsaken volcanic rock, the only place where she can hide from Zetsu. That is, until he finds her and she has to run to another island again. Water country is a sprawling archipelago, but eventually she is going to run out of places to hide. The demonic red glow of the Infinite Tsukuyomi still darkens the sky, staring down at her with its crimson eye. The earth it looks upon is trapped in a perpetual dusk, and Mei feels her will sapping away with every lightless day that passes.
She doesn't think she will manage set a foot off this rock when Zetsu eventually comes for her. She can hardly bring herself to walk out into the sea to catch a meal for herself.
Wiping her mouth, Mei crawls a small distance away before her limbs gives out and she collapses back onto the sparse carpet of grass. She stares sightlessly up at the crimson sky, the scenes of her dream playing out vividly in her mind once again. It isn't the first time that she has dreamt of finding Chojuro or Ao in one of those cocoons, but each time her imagination finds new ways of tearing her apart anew.
Oh god. She should have never left Chojuro alone to fight Zetsu. She covers her eyes with her shaking hands to hide the memory of his face, young and finally confident as he picked up his sword on her stupid, stupid orders. What had happened to him in the end, miles away from the rest of the Shinobi Alliance?
The worst thing is that her nightmares never show him with any trace of accusation on his face; only his corpse, his remains, his forgiving smile. Her boy adores her even though she doesn't deserve it.
Ao would be angry, though, but only at himself. "What use is a bodyguard if you send him away?" he'd grouched when she ordered him to serve at the Headquarters. As good a fighter he had been, she'd been secretly relieved that he wouldn't be facing Madara. She'd been naive. He'd faced worse in the end.
What a mess she has become. The new overlords of their broken land had let the five Kage escape in order to humiliate them, and here she is, doing a fine job of humiliating herself.
But what's left? The five villages have fallen. Every single person in her village is slowly having their life sucked out of them and being turned into mindless Zetsu. Even if she went back to Kiri and cut open every cocoon, would any one of them still be even a shadow of what they once were?
She's no Kage anymore, only a woman who had lost her hope long ago.
There are no cocoons to haunt her here, at least, since Zetsu's roots can't find purchase through the seabed to reach a far flung rock like hers. He'll have to swim to get here, like how he had gotten to Water Country's mainland. Still, she stays away from the densest portions of the sparse forest, preferring to keep to the edges where she can see the open sea and smell the salt in the air.
She can't imagine living a life like this, wasting away with only the ghosts of her dead to keep her company, but she cannot see any other path. The only thing she can call to her mind are names and faces, names and faces, until she's crying and raging helplessly again.
Mei turns her head and sees the blurred line of the tide, churning and erratic. If even gravity is out of whack, Mei thinks in exhaustion, perhaps she can be forgiven for some tears. A woman responds to the moon, after all.
Exhaling, Mei closes her eyes again.
When she stirs again, groggy and head pounding as if she'd slammed it against a wall, she's not alone.
"You should take better care of yourself, Mei," Ao says from where he's seated beside a small campfire, his back to her as he turns a fish over the flames.
Mei's lip cracks as she smiles. If she can have dreams like this, she'd be content to sleep forever. "Yeah?" she whispers, her words rasping against her parched throat. "Thank goodness you're here then."
Ao is silent for a few painful moments. Finally, he makes a small, exasperated sound and turns around, fixing her with an unreadable gaze as he snatches up the wooden cup beside him. Sitting down beside her, he helps her up with a gentle hand at the back of her neck and lets her lean against him. The cup is tipped against her lips and she sips the cool, sweet water thirstily, suddenly hyperaware of the acute distress her body is in.
The water runs dry and her stomach protests against the unexpected influx, but she has never felt so happy before. Leaning against her beloved hallucination, she soaks up his warmth and inhales deeply, her nose pressed against his neck. How wonderfully her mind has conjured up his familiar, comforting scent.
When his calloused hand runs across her cheek and his lips brush her forehead, she would have wept if she had any tears left. "Eat something?" he murmurs.
It'll be no use. She'll be hungry again when she wakes, but she doesn't want to miss a second of this. "No," she says stubbornly, as if she's still the ANBU junior he had mentored all those years ago. She wraps her arm around his waist and embraces him as tightly as she can. "Stay here."
"Alright," he whispers, holding her back just as tightly as he buries his face in her hair. "Anything you want, Mei."
Mei hums, burrowing further against his chest even though his ANBU armour presses uncomfortably against her cheek. She loses track of time like this, adrift on the labile mercies of her imagination. The fire glow warmly as the fish slowly burns to a crisp.
It's only when Ao's breathing stutters in a strange way, his arm tightening uncomfortably around her ribs, that Mei surfaces from her haze of contentment. "Ao?" she murmurs, mildly alarmed by the bruising grip that he uses to hold her against him. She squirms.
"No, please," he groans, his voice strained as it hisses between his clenched teeth. Mei stills and clutches at him, glancing upwards and glimpsing only upturned angle of his jaw. "A day, just one last day. I've already... "
"Ao...?" Mei whispers against his armour, growing frightened as he continues to mutter to himself. Something's wrong.
No.
Everything's wrong. Ao is dead. He shouldn't be here, holding her.
Why isn't she waking up?
She grabs his arm and twists, using his distraction to tear herself from him. He lunges wildly at her with a kunai, a sharp cry quickly stifled in his throat. Scrambling onto her hands and knees, she stumbles into a graceless run, her hands forming the strongest jutsu she can muster what with her chakra near gone.
In her weakened state, he catches her in a moment, a broad hand clapping over her mouth as he drags her down. She bites down through his fingers in her desperation, but nothing but the taste of sealing paper and bitter ink fills her mouth. They fall, jarring her elbow and rattling her skull, and he pins her with his legs astride hers. The grip of a single hand wraps around her throat completely and she claws at his arm, bucking against his weight as she chokes.
"Forgive me," he grits out, his eyes wide and anguished. Tears spill down his cheeks as he unsheathes the knife at his thigh holster. "Mei, I can't..."
The genjutsu is falling from his face now, revealing blackened sclera and golden irises. His skin fractures with fine black lines, as if the turmoil inside him is cracking him apart physically. The knife hangs above her, its meticulously filed tip sharp and glinting, as Ao groans and curses, struggling against the inexorable weight of the commands that his reanimated body is being subjected to. Ao has always had a steady hand, but he is shaking violently now.
Mei suddenly understands. This is really Ao, her Ao. Those Uchiha have made him into their puppet to torture them.
She won't let them succeed.
Reaching up, she takes his hand and wrenches it down, hard.
The pain is immediate and overwhelming. Ao stares at her, his eyes flicking between her blanched face and their joined grip on the knife, before his disbelieving expression crumples. Falling over her, he lets out a wretched, animal howl. "No, no, no... Why, Mei...!" He holds her face in both his cold, trembling hands, his own face pale with anguish.
Her lips twitch into a small, reassuring smile. Perhaps this is selfish, but this is the last thing she can do for him. With the last of her strength, she holds onto his hand, which has already reformed. "Shhh... I won't let them use our bond against us like this... I won't let them force you."
He presses his forehead to her and lets out a soft keen. She has never seen him so overcome; it's her fault, again.
"I hope... they will release you after this."
"They will," he assures her through stifled sobs. She knows that he's lying. "They promised," he insists nonetheless.
She squeezes his hand and gives him a final smile. "See you on the other side," she mouths, too weak to speak anymore. A chill has suffused her veins.
"I'll never stop looking for you," he promises fervently, eyes bright. "I'll follow you wherever you go."
It is with his voice in her ear that she slips away. It's selfish, she muses, that she is leaving him behind like this. But with him here by her side, there's finally a warmth in her chest again.
Her body reforms: eyes, ears, and a mouth that opens and screams.
The pain extinguishes itself as quickly as it had struck, leaving her gasping. Someone in the background is crying out her name over and over again, every broken plea causing a deep ache to lance through her. She cracks open her eyes only to find herself in the middle of a bright room, laying prone within an array of seals. Ao kneels just outside the circle, frozen and trembling in an aborted lunge for her, his face twisted with guilt.
"Well, well, well," Uchiha Obito drawls, looming over her with a gleeful hatred in his eyes. "Look what the tide washed in."
Ah, Mei realises. How foolish she'd been.
Ao collapses into the circle, released from whatever command Obito had given him, and grasps her hand in a desperate grip. Their eyes meet once more above their clasped hands, and for a moment, Obito's maniacal laughter fades away.
"Mei."
A/N: I'm sorry for our poor Ao, Mei, and Chojuro, who were harmed in the making of this fic D': I don't know why I always end up writing these sort of themes.
Some more pain for this rather upsetting AU: (1) Ao got Edo Tensei-Ed after being found at the site of the blast. Whether he was still alive or in pieces by then is undecided. (2) Chojuro survived the Zetsu attack like in canon, and kept fighting them off until they sent Ao after him. That is also why Ao caught up with Mei so late.
Some possibilities to make things better: (1) they get put into the Infinite Tsukuyomi eventually, or (2) they get released from Edo Tensei eventually, or (3) they escape by figuring out how to do it Itachi-style.
I prefer (3), really. Ao can do it with some genjutsu, I'm sure. I'm a sucker for happy endings even though basically nothing about this verse is happy :'( sorry.
Oh, and why is Obito so intent on torturing them? Because he holds a huge (indiscriminate) grudge against all Kiri-nin for killing Rin. He has been torturing Kiri-nin through Yagura for years already, so this is just a continuation.
Thank you for reading. Now go read something fluffy and healing!