A.N: Thanks for the reviews, I appreciate them! Tell me what you thought of this chapter - better than the last one? Worse? Don't hesitate to be honest.


What Doesn't Kill You

Chapter Two

[selfish: (Of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for other people; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure.]


Aoi woke up in the hospital. Her body hurt all over, but it wasn't the fiery pain of serious wounds, just general aching. Around her, people ran, yelled and were too busy to pay her any notice.

She remembered the alarms, and that dark silhouette. "Fuck." She looked around, but no one seemed to have heard her.

How could she have forgotten about the nine tails?

Well, at least she was still alive. She wondered if her parents or any of her relatives were, her mother in particular. Her father had been a boring office man who never gave her a second thought, and Aoi didn't really care what happened to him one way or another; but she had a soft spot in her heart for Nana, the simple, cheerful woman who'd never hurt a fly. Nana had always made sure Aoi was fed and clothed and she'd taught her to read. She'd also been a bit overenthusiastic with the cuddling, but no one was perfect.

The hospital was clearly in need of more personnel. There were too many wounded and too few nurses running around hectically between the occupied beds and the stretchers on the floor. Aoi considered offering to help, before discarding the idea with a snort. A twenty-month-old toddler wasn't supposed to even understand the situation, let alone have any medical training or any kind of education at all.

In the interests of self-preservation she'd done her best to act as a normal baby throughout her short life, drawing on the hazy memories of the module on child development. Hallucination or no, she intended to survive here, and the way to do that was to pass unnoticed, not catch the attention of anyone important, and stay the hell away from ninjas. Maybe she'd even make it to legal adulthood this time around.

Revealing the extent of her medical knowledge was not the way to go.

It turned out no one in her family had survived. The nine tails had completely crushed the area of Konoha where they were living. Nana had made it to the hospital, but died there before Aoi woke up. Her heart dropped to her stomach. Then she steeled herself and shook her head. A pity, but not like any of these people were real anyway.

The orphanage was a step up in terms of freedom. As long as she didn't cause trouble, no one really paid attention to her. Like the hospital, it was ridiculously understaffed, and that worked out just fine for her. She spent the day wandering around, looking for a dark corner where she could nap. She had a mostly nocturnal schedule, and she wasn't used to being awake during the day.

It had been a bit of effort, to trump her body's circadian rhythms in her infant days. Worth it in the end, because it meant she could blissfully be unconscious while her relatives were around, and she had the night to herself, with no one to notice how her behavior was indeed very strange for a child. It had worked well then and she intended to continue until she was old enough to be considered independent.

When the sun went down, she stirred awake and explored the corridors of the orphanage with enthusiasm, looking for books she could entertain herself with. She didn't find many, unfortunately.

It was frustrating. Books had always been available to her and without them she would probably die, of boredom this time. She knew she had to remedy the situation.

The Kyubi had torn through Konoha like successive natural disasters. Some areas were completely razed. In others, buildings were half-destroyed, trees uprooted, pipes busted, rubble everywhere. Even the ceiling of the orphanage itself was caved in on one corner of the kitchen.

Weeks passed. The roof was repaired and running water and electricity started working again. Some children were taken away from the orphanage by their relatives. Aoi's second birthday went without her or anyone else noticing. She managed to solve her entertainment problem by starting another book collection similar to the one she'd had under her bed at home, making use of the caretakers' workload and lack of attention. First with volumes she acquired from the workers themselves, then with others rescued from the rubble and destruction. Konoha was still healing, and people still trying to recover their belongings, and it wasn't hard to find things whose owners had died or forgotten just lying around on the street, waiting to be picked up by either the cleaning and reconstruction teams, or in this case, a curious toddler. She mostly collected medical and historical texts, the former because she still possessed the interest in medicine she'd had in her other life, the latter because she found the obvious censoring and propaganda funny.

Senju Hashirama and Madara Uchiha joined forces to create the greatest alliance in history. Their ideals of friendship and cooperation helped the rise above the other shinobi clans.

Friendship and cooperation? Hah. Look where that landed them, a century later.

She hardly ever spoke to the children she lived with. They were loud, annoying and she preferred sleeping. She took out her books at night and sat by the window of the common bedroom, where the streetlight shone through. She was never caught or disturbed. She suspected some of the caretakers didn't even know her name.


Aoi was not. A happy. Camper.

So far she'd been doing very well in avoiding people's attention. No one even suspected she was anything but a kid on the socially awkward side. She hadn't poked her head into anything that reeked of ninja, and she'd managed to keep unnoticed for years. She didn't want attention. She only wanted to live peacefully as a civilian without getting involved in the Plot. And then, when she was five or so, the Plot arrived one day at the orphanage, in the form of a blonde ball of compressed supernova.

Naruto was exactly every bit as she'd imagined. A small, skinny brat with dirty knees and a grin wider than she'd ever seen. Someone that noisy, obnoxious and loud shouldn't be allowed to exist. It breached the rights of Those Who Only Wanted A Quiet Place To Nap. He was put in the same common bedroom as her, so even the relative peacefulness of her own bed was lost.

Naruto snored like a locomotive. Now she had a soundtrack when she wanted to read. Joy.

To her surprise, he blended in nicely. The caretakers didn't treat him any differently than they did the other kids. Daichi, the self-proclaimed Bedroom God (if he hadn't been five that title would have other entertaining connotations), accepted him into his circle immediately. Naruto seemed happy. He didn't miss a chance to proclaim that he was going to become Hokage, Believe It! And he even bragged about being allowed to enter the Academy early because he was going to be such an important ninja. He was the one to initially spread the ninja fever throughout the orphanage, which evolved into a full-blown epidemic. Quiet Places To Nap were a species now extinct.

Aoi avoided him like the plague. Or tried to.

Something poked her side.

"Hey, you."

Aoi twitched. The poke came again. "Hey, you."

She cracked open a sleepy yellow eye. "What do you want?"

"Why you sleep all the time?"

"Because I'm tired. Please, go away." Yes, please, go away. Don't pay attention to me. Take yourself and your stinking story away for a long while, and, above all, don't say anything stupid like -

"Wanna be friends?"

Yeah, like that.

"No." It came out more vicious than she'd intended, and Naruto flinched. This, in turn, startled the kid next to him, who was building a block tower and collapsed it accidentally.

"But I saw you don't have friends. Why you don't wanna be friends?"

"They'll turn around and stab you in the back," she deadpanned. Literally. In fact, it was bound to happen very soon in Naruto's case. "I hate you, and if you come near me again I'm going to snap your neck in half," she continued in the same droll voice.

Naruto left her alone after that. She wasn't sorry. She had no desire to be involved in the story and likely suffer a premature death, and she knew he'd turn out fine on his own.

It was around one in the morning that night when he had his first nightmare. Aoi was reading by the window, as usual, when his earthquake snores broke off into a small whimper. She lifted her eyes momentarily before bringing them back down to her book. She was testing herself on her memories of anatomy, and comparing her knowledge to the diagrams in the book.

Okay, cranial nerves. There was that acronym, wasn't there?

"Oh, Oh, Oh, To Touch And Feel," Aoi mumbled to herself. "Olfactory, Optic, Oculomotor. Trochlear, Trigeminal, Abducens and Facial." How did it go next? "a Virgin Girl's Vagina - Vestibulocochlear, Glossopharyngeal, Vagus-"

Another, louder whimper escaped Naruto's lips. He started thrashing around, shaking the sheets off his body. Something dark and unpleasant invaded the room, and Aoi stopped reading. She recognized that feeling - it was the evil that night with the alarms, the DeathRageRedKill -

The other children were stirring. Aoi's body seemed to be frozen in place. She had the complete certainty that if she even moved one finger the evil energy in the room would know she was there, focus in on her like a magnet and destroy her.

You're more likely to die if you don't do something. She grit her teeth, pushing down on the feeling, and raced to his bed. "Naruto, wake up," she ordered, jostling his shoulders. Her hands were trembling.

Naruto opened his eyes. Aoi startled. They were red, and his pupils had contracted into vertical slits. He screamed.

That definitely woke up the other children, who started screaming as well. Black symbols appeared on Naruto's stomach and something red seeped upwards, like fire. Aoi staggered back as he convulsed more violently. A shadow and a flash of white mask and she was outside the room. The children started rushing out of the door screaming, or were shoved out if they weren't fast enough, and she caught a glimpse of a white animal mask at the door before it was slammed shut. The children ran as far away from it as possible, but Aoi didn't seem to be able to move her legs, her entire body trembling. Eventually one of the caretakers picked her up and carried her away.

The incident changed everything. The adults seemed to remember who exactly had put the children they took care of in an orphaned state in the first place. At best they acted like Naruto didn't exist, not putting a plate in front of him at mealtimes and just pretending he wasn't there at all. At worst they mocked him and yelled at him to 'get out of my sight, you monster, or I'll cut your legs off.' She'd never seen any of them actually hit him, but had spotted bruises on Naruto's face a couple of times.

The children were quick to catch on to the hostility in the air. Daichi bullied him, destroyed his blankets and took his clothes. They shunned him and made fun of him at every opportunity. Naruto coped with it as one would expect a four-year-old to cope, which was not well at all.

He cried himself to sleep every night now. Aoi patiently waited for him to finish before getting up and starting on her books.

One day, she entered the common bedroom with the intention of catching some sleep before dinner. Daichi and his friends had been there, tossing Naruto's goggles around while he stood in the middle and tried to catch them. "Give them back! I dain't do nothing to you!"

"Why do you want stupid goggles anyway, huh? They're so ugly it's disgusting." He held them out in front of himself by two fingers. Naruto reached for them, but he giggled and chucked them to someone else.

"Give them back!" Naruto looked close to tears.

"Shut up. A monster like you doesn't deserve to have goggles even if they're ugly ass goggles."

"I'm not a monster!"

Aoi turned on her heel and walked right out. Everything would sort itself out eventually - she had no desire to be involved in any of it. And if Naruto's goggles were cracked the next morning, and he had a black eye, well, it was none of her business.

At least she'd warned him.

It didn't last for very long. Naruto was moved out of the orphanage and taken to his own apartment, for his own safety or the children's safety, Aoi didn't know. Daichi organized a special goodbye which consisted in throwing wet paper balls at him from their bedroom's window while he stood outside, waiting for whoever was meant to pick him up. Naruto snarled at them and gave them the finger, but Daichi just snickered and aimed a ball at his head. He didn't miss.

After Naruto left, everything more or less returned to normal. The children still wanted to become ninja. Daichi was still the leader of the bedroom. He'd stopped trying to include her long ago, when it became clear that all Aoi was interested in was napping and reading.

No one spoke of Naruto again.

Crisis successfully averted.


ANBU Hound was waiting, muscles coiled and ready to spring. His Hokage had explicitly ordered him not to be here - but he couldn't just stand by when something of this magnitude was unfolding before his eyes. Being forced to sit there watching helplessly that time with the Nine Tails had been bad enough. He wasn't going to go through that again.

He smelled it first. The rancid, unpleasant smell of blood, and metal and something else that made him recoil almost instantly. He tried not to think of the implications of this - then steeled himself. Relax. Wait. His mind slipped into the perfect clarity he was used to, the calm state of mind that allowed him to make split-second, life-or-death decisions no matter the stakes.

A man emerged from the cave entrance he was watching, deathly pale skin and eyes that radiated so much intent he had to remind himself to breathe again. Orochimaru turned, head tilting in his direction. Hound stepped out from the shadows with the lithe fluidity of a dancer, every step silent and deliberate. His hand was fisted in lightning, crackling and sharper than a sword's edge. There was no use in hiding if the target already knew he was there. Besides, Chidori wasn't for hiding. It was feared because even those who saw it coming could do nothing to evade their inevitable fate.

Orochimaru smiled. Hound charged without a word.

He moved fast, faster than Hound had ever seen anyone move, with the sole exception of Minato-sensei. His neck twisted unnaturally to avoid the lightning. It barely grazed his shoulder, and then Hound was the one who had to dodge, a kunai threatening to split his head open. The kunai still scraped along the middle of his mask as the momentum from Chidori prevented him from dodging completely.

The lightning impacted into the ground and Hound's white ceramic mask fell away in two neat halves. He took a deep breath. Turned around. His red eye spun threateningly.

A snake slithered down from a tree and wrapped around Orochimaru's arm. The Sannin stroked its scales almost tenderly. "I like that look in your eye."

Wait. Stay still. Don't give it away yet.

"But I don't need a fake." The smile was thin and predatory.

And get the hell away now or that explosion will blast you into next week! The tag was in the snake's mouth and it caught the target at point-blank range.

Roll, get up. "Don't move," he snarled, as the smoke cleared and Orochimaru glared back, arm covered in dark blood to the shoulder and pressed into his side. The smell hit Hound like a ton of bricks and he cut off chakra circulation to his nose, crouching further and holding a kunai up defensively.

"I see. Not bad." Orochimaru's eyes narrowed and his tongue flicked out, catching a drop of blood on his cheek. Bits of snake were strewn about on the ground. The forest was silent, so silent it was oppressive. The tongue flicked out again.

A shiver ran down Hound's spine at the sudden wave of killing intent that emanated from the Sannin, evil, dark, thick, suffocating the air out of his lungs. It wasn't even directed at him in particular, it was just a wave of raw power and bloodthirst, but suddenly he was incapable of moving. Even the air was still, as if the whole world was afraid to breathe. A drop of sweat rolled down his nose. Even wounded, even with his chakra depleted as it no doubt was, Orochimaru was so far above him Hound didn't stand a chance. He was going to get skewered.

"Give the old monkey a message, would you? Thank him for letting me go. And... Tell him to take care of my little package."

Another droplet of sweat rolled down his skin as the target walked away into the forest, and Hound did absolutely nothing but stand frozen and watch him go.