A/N: Thanks for reading chapter 2. It's a teensy bit shorter than the first chapter but it's because I've been sick today and yesterday. I'll try to update regularly since classes start again on Jan 2 for me and I have work on the side as well :( Anyways please read and review!

On the Run

Naruto–

He is waiting for me outside the inn. I'm not sure for how long but he was standing a few feet outside and staring, no, squinting, at a window.

It's getting light now. The clock says the same things as it did when I went to bed last night, but it's the other hemisphere of the day.

We talk a lot, as a species, about the night sky. It's one of those subjects that come up more often than, say, the social structure of bees. That's just an example. Which is interesting, because the social structure of bees is something. It is an active object that can be looked at. And so much of the night sky is nothing at all. Mostly void, partially stars.

Or don't listen to me. I'm only saying it because…well…if you could see what I'm seeing you'd understand. The night sky is something striking against the dark silhouettes of the trees. It's beautiful.

So much that I've seen is beautiful. More than you would think. Even the worse things.

And isn't it funny that the trees blot out the sky? Physical objects as shadows against the void.

We are nothing if not absurd.

We are nothing.

In his hand, he was gripping a bundle, his knuckles turning white.

The grip was almost tender, but there was nothing tender about the man with the purple cloak.

I don't know what he wanted, so I snuck out round the back of the inn and sprinted as fast as I can out of the village. This was supposed to be a one night stop. How did it end up like this?

Behind me, I could still see the man in the purple cloak. I could see the distant shadow of him behind me

I couldn't see details anymore. Those were in my memory.

Flat and grassy, I think. It's dark now, and the darkness is vast here. It really has a depth to it; keeps going.

I didn't think that dark could have a bottom until I saw a dark that didn't.

You know how they always say if you're trying to meet someone, you may never find them, but it's when you're not looking, that's when they find you. Well, I've seen the man again. I've seen him again and again in the shadow of the trees in the distance where I camp for the night, in alleyways of villages, sitting alone at the biggest booths of the smallest roadside restaurants, places where S-rank missing-nins hole up with a bottle of sake and bingo books in hand.

There's something brutal and clumsy in his movements, like he doesn't understand how any of him works. But he moves with such unusual grace and litheness that surprises me every time I see it.

And the sharp teeth. Not sharp enough to be fangs, but not human either.

And the yellow fingernails. Translucent yellow, just below the surface.

He hasn't talked to me again, but I've been seeing him, and he knows it. He wants me to know he's following me.

I don't know who this…I won't say "man." He isn't a man. I don't know what he is. Do you know, Naruto?

And now, here, the road between two places I've never heard of. closer to the night sky than I am to any other human. A night sky that seems gorgeous and heartbreaking, even though it's not. It's not anything. It just isn't.

Who is he, Naruto? What does he want from me? What is the meaning behind that slip of paper he gave me?

I'll keep running. I'll keep wandering the world. I'm going to find the answers. I will.

Hopefully I'll do it before the man finds me.

Every time I look behind, I worry that I see him, and his strange dirty hands pointing them at me, going faster and faster. What would you do, Naruto?

You would say that we lead frantic lives. Filled with needs and responsibilities, but completely devoid of any actual purpose. You would say let's try to enjoy the simple things. Life should be like a bowl of tonkotsu ramen: salty, full of fat and oil, and surrounded by sweet corn and menma you'll never actually eat, even when you're greedily slurping up the last viscous streaks of tonkotsu soup from bowl with your spit-stained index finger. Yes, you're right, that is as life should be, Naruto.

I should try meditation. I am currently planted on old, thinning futon, but in my mind I am anywhere but. I am above, in the sky above, looking down at Konoha. I see the lights, in grids and curves, and the places where there are no lights, because they are off…or missing…or invisible.

I see roads with carts and the people bustling around them. And the people are traveling through the dark in the comfort and light of the street lamps, and I see all of this from above. I see where the town gives way gradually to the forest; the last few lights from the last few homesteads, like stray sparks from a campfire, tossed out into the absolute black of the surrounding forests and eventually the deserts.

I see the orbit of citizen around citizen. All these ordinary people, about their ordinary lives, in this singular, extraordinary place we call home.

Moving higher into the cold, thin air of the upper atmosphere, I see below me the criss-crossed lines of condensation, the signature of wind jutsu that have long since moved on; the footprint of our civilization upon the night sky.

And looking up I see only the stars, and the void, all a little closer than they were before. All still so un-reachably distant.

I have something of urgent importance to tell you, but I will tell it to you later. Or I will tell it to you not at all. Certainly I will not tell it to you now. Now I merely look, from the vantage point of my own imagination, down at a town busy with its own existence.

And, for now, existence is enough. Our possible,but not very likely, existence, is enough for now.

–Sasuke