Author: katseng

Title: Cooling

Rating: T

Warnings: Mature themes

Pairing: None

Summary: Naruto sold his soul earlier than you might think

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Cooling

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Fool's gold, They call it and

He laughs.

This is what I sold my soul for?

Twenty coins jostle against each other in his palm, clinking.

Too big to fit in his fist.

It is not even gold.

The silvery coins wink in the moonlight,

Glinting like his gleaming teeth do in an ironic grimace of a smile.

White, sharp, bright.

Dead.

This is what I sold my soul for?

The body has already begun cooling.

Soon, it will be cold and gnarled and stiff and hard.

Soon, it will be cold and gnarled and rigid and the blood leaking from its head can it even be called that, anymore? will dry in a flaky maroon pool.

Nobody will ever find the body until much too late and

He laughs.

He laughs at how They think him too stupid, too obvious, too flagrantly conspicuous to ever be subtle.

They would piss themselves if They knew, and

He laughs.

This is what I sold my soul for?

The debilitating pangs hammering through his stomach aren't going to go away on their own any time soon so

He leaves

and goes to the nearest street vendor still open.

It is filthy and grimy and foul and a squalid hole-in-the-wall, but he is used to that.

It has food that may or may not kill him some time soon, but that is okay.

He has been living with that chance for nearly a decade now.

He gulps down what he can without tasting and forces down what he can't and

He parts from the filthy dilapidated lean-to with one shiny coin less.

His belly will not growl too much for two more days but he will be able to manage till next week.

He always does.

He is six (soon-to-be-seven, he sharply reminds anyone who might ask) and

He has already sold his soul.