Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I got a chapter of this done as well! I have so much work to catch up on its unreal and here I am plotting ways to freak you guys out. Oh well, its fun.
The Hokage stepped into the dark of his office feeling the stench of alcohol hit his nose with the subtlety of a battering ram.
The white of a boy's eyes gleamed from the light escaping past the door.
Dark glass littered the floor and desk, bottles upon bottles, such a number even Tsunade would have been leery going near.
A chill ran down the man's back as the boy shifted and the blue eyes hit the light. Against all reason they gleamed with an intelligence that was almost alien.
"You found my stash." The Hokage stepped in the room and shut the door noticing how the boy's face twisted in pain in the light. Now the only light was the thin sliver of pale light from the moon.
"Heh." Naruto allowed sounding perfectly in control of his actions. A hiccup cast doubt on that statement. "I figured you owed me so I helped myself."
He tipped another bottle down, his throat bobbing as he drank greedily.
"What happened?" The Hokage asked quietly scraping a chair around the side of the desk. Naruto never willingly approached him so he would seize this opportunity with both hands.
Naruto laughed and clutched the bottle by the neck harder. It was bitter and the Hokage smiled because even if Naruto hated him with a passion the boy had never hidden what he felt from him.
The dark was seething in the room. Like a blister that threatened to erupt and the boy opened his mouth.
"It's so disgusting."
Naruto sounded almost awed, like he had found something out that had amazed and shook him in equal measure.
"What is?" The Hokage asked quietly letting the boy have his space and time to answer.
Blue eyes swung to meet his.
"Other people dying."
Then Naruto was talking fast and fumbling sounding far more like a normal child than he had in months.
"They're so wet you know. I didn't know what they would recover from so I kept going and it was so wet. I thought if he couldn't recognise himself his soul couldn't come back and then-" Naruto tipped the bottle down his throat, alcohol spilling over his lips as he swallowed cutting off his rambling stream.
"I didn't even see one instance he came back." The boy spoke wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The stench of alcohol was almost overpowering now. Slowly Naruto's awe corrupted into contempt.
Hiruzen reached out and pried the alcohol from Naruto. The boy's eyes flashed but his grip slackened reluctantly.
"I heard a very disturbing story from Kakashi." The man spoke evenly. "About what you did."
The glare sent at him was dizzying with the weight of the alcohol and rage.
Hiruzen understood then.
Naruto had been far more unnerved than Kakashi had.
"You don't understand." The boy whispered fury trembling every syllable in his words. "I was a fool to think you might."
"You were scared-" The Hokage tried sensing that Naruto was slipping away.
Alcohol spilled everywhere as Naruto smashed the bottle to smithereens against the desk in a smash.
"He died on me!" Naruto snarled. "What an insult!"
Insult?
"I didn't win." Naruto sneered voice ugly. "He went and mocked me by doing the one thing I couldn't!" He hurled a tray of sake bottles and they smashed on the floor with an ear wrenching crash. Alcohol seeped into the bottom of the Hokage's robes and he knelt down to taste a drop.
The drop sent sparks flying down his tongue and fuzzed in his brain.
Hiruzen reeled. How strong was the alcohol?
"I lost resoundly."
Naruto started to laugh. Hiruzen could hear the appreciation and the hatred warring in that laugh. Could hear the slightest hint of the sanity stripping away to reveal the madness and the broken parts in the boy.
"Bastard." Naruto shrugged and grinned in a fierce flash of fang. "I really am a freak huh."
….###################################################################...
Sasuke bowed slightly to a pale eyed Hyuuga. The drain on his eyes really was making him dizzy now and so he had to navigate with the barest slits of vision possible. The arrogant looking boy had passed the year before and Sasuke recognised him as one of the more skilled Hyuuga members. There was no way he was going to the main branch with this, he had no wish to owe the politically active part of the Hyuuga a favour.
"What does an Academy student want with me?" Neji Hyuuga asked, voice cracking slightly under puberty. Despite that it was confident and Sasuke could hear the bitter undertones.
The girl with her hair in buns next to him peered at Sasuke curiously over two chopsticks.
"If you wanted Gai sensei he's running with Lee." She offered.
"No." Sasuke opened his eyes fully, fighting his heavy eyelids. "I wanted to ask you a favour actually."
A spark of interest was hidden in those pale pools the Hyuuga called eyes.
"This is the first time I am seeing the legendary Sharingan." He murmured. "I wonder if the tales about its wielder's prowess is true."
Sasuke copied Naruto's blank smile. "That won't be an issue. I want you to block all the chakra to my eyes."
The Hyuuga nearly knocked his bowl of food to the ground in pure shock.
"What!" He snapped. "You want me to commit that atrocity?!"
The Hyuugas had a very advanced dojutsu Sasuke reasoned grimly. To them cutting chakra to the eye effectively cut off one of their senses and was the same as crippling them until the wielder's chakra overcame the block. But if he could imitate what the Hyuuga's did to block the pathways internally then he could forcibly turn his Sharingan on and off instead of having it stuck always active.
"You heard me." Sasuke replied mildly. "You get a chance to trump your rival dojutsu, what's the problem?"
"I am not crippling a child." Neji hissed venomously knuckles tight on the rim of his bowl. "How dare you to judge me to be that kind of person."
Sasuke tapped his temple feeling the first signs of chakra exhaustion weighing down his limbs.
"If you do not I will die in a day." He snapped and the girl's mouth snapped shut.
Neji's eyes narrowed. "Explain." He ordered imperially.
"There was a problem with the activation." Sasuke's fingers curled in front of his nearly shut eyes. "I can't switch it off. You know exactly what that means."
"Neji." The girl's voice was sharp.
Neji stared at him for a few long seconds the weight of his gaze dragging across the Academy Student's face. Sasuke breathed out a sigh of relief when he nodded once sharply.
"That sounds like an interesting story." The Hyuuga murmured as he pulled out a seat next to him and motioned for Sasuke to sit.
Cool long fingers pressed against the side of his face and Neji's Byakugan bulged into life. Sasuke admired the rainbow like sheen and privately commented that the Byakugan was more beautiful to look at then his own Sharingan.
Privately.
There was excess saliva in Sasuke's mouth. Neji was going to mess with his internal chakra system. Kami that was a terrifying thought.
"Stay still." Neji muttered removing one hand slowly and hovering over Sasuke's flickering eye. The boy was incredibly close and Sasuke knew he was looking straight through him.
"Your optical chakra paths have been burned open." Neji murmured almost resting the tip of his finger against Sasuke's eyeball. "I've never seen anything like it before, it's decaying and healing at an incredible rate."
Naruto.
Sasuke sighed minutely. "Can you temporarily block it?"
"Of course." A finger rested against his eyeball and there was a weird shock through his eyeball and back of his eye like a ferocious itch. His eye felt cool and dry and he blinked rapidly the stress of the chakra drain fading. Neji repeated the process to the other eye and pulled back satisfied.
Sasuke took in the world with non Sharingan eyes with relief. All he had to do now was replicate that trick. But first…
"A long time ago." He started. "I heard a rumour about the Hyuuga branch house."
Neji quirked an eyebrow at him. "Indeed?"
"Caged birds are pitiful." Sasuke swivelled his head this way and that to get used to the vision and before Neji turned caustic he continued. "I know a person who maybe can unlock that cage."
He slid out of his seat and bowed to a frozen Neji. "As thanks. Come find me if you decide to take me up."
…..##################################################################...
Sakura traced the beautiful patterns in the icy heart. It cast a cold light on her face and palms as she turned in this way and that admiring its sheen.
"Forehead! Is that a diamond!?" Came a very loud and shocked voice.
"No." Sakura smiled thinly and held it up. "Seems like I win Ino. I managed to get my hands on a boy's heart first."
The blonde Yamanaka gaped unattractively at the frozen heart before going pale.
"You mean…"
Shikamaru and Choji came up after their energetic team mate (Oh yes Sakura remembered, they had passed their test hadn't they?) along with a dark haired and bearded man.
"Where did you get a frozen heart!?" Ino shrieked leaning in closer. All the males raised an eyebrow.
"It was a present." Sakura replied pleasantly waving to her ex classmates.
"Ah you're Kakashi's student aren't you?" The man asked puffing on a cigarette. His eyes were full of humour and they gleamed with a sharp intelligence. "I'm Asuma."
Sakura shook her head letting Ino have a closer look. "You're mistaken sir. We failed our test, we Academy Students."
Something danced in Asuma's eyes like he was laughing at her but he gravely inclined his head.
"I hate to bring this up." Shikamaru perked a finger up. "But if they've started to give away frozen hearts at the Academy can I go back? I can make some very nice shogi pieces out of those."
Sakura thought about everything they went through to obtain that heart and laughed out loud.
"Sorry Shikamaru. But there won't be any more ice hearts."
Haku had been the last of his line. She traced the ridge of the frozen flesh fondly.
"And trust me." Her voice grew slightly darker. "You don't want this one."
…..#########################################################################...
Kakashi got cornered by three Jonin and a Hokage.
The scene would have provoked alarms in all the shinobi present except it was those shinobi in particular.
Kakashi snapped his book shut. "Yes? Can I help you?"
"Exactly what is going on with your team?" Asuma asked pleasantly leaning against the wall. He took a drag of his cigarette. "Your kunoichi doesn't even know she's a genin and somehow got her hands on a frozen human heart."
"Your youthful genin asked Neji to cripple his kekkei genkei." Gai frowned, eyebrows drawing together into one thick line. "The damage to them was something he had never seen before."
The Hokage cleared his throat. "I found Naruto emptying my sake stash."
All the Jonin choked. Kakashi came to his senses far quicker, he had been right. He had a headache from dealing with this team.
Kurenai tossed her hair behind her shoulder. Several chunin's eyes followed that movement.
"Heads up Kakashi." She warned. "One of mine has a crush on yours."
"I don't keep a track of how many people have a crush on Sasuke." Kakashi answered flatly.
"The other boy." Kurenai's eyes were dark and flat.
Kakashi stared darkly amused. "She's braver than all of her class and most of the chunin combined. Bring her over sometime. If it is a girl."
Kurenai hissed at him and stalked off. Asuma cleared his throat.
"They don't know about them being genin because I want to see if they can become chunin without realising." Kakashi grinned under his mask. "I get bored gentlemen. As for the rest…the C rank went a little wrong. Good day and thanks for telling me."
The Hokage kneaded the bridge of his nose. "He's as mad as the rest of them." He stated wearily. "I warn you two now, if you intend to enter your teams in the Chunin exams keep in mind that Team 7 will be in them and think it is their only chance to be genin. I have no doubt Kakashi will make them fail on purpose, he's that kind of man. Team 7 is dangerous in a way your teams are not."
Gai stared after Kakashi's retreating back. "How so?"
"The will to murder." Hiruzen answered and the words sank like a stone into the atmosphere. "Each of them have killed and tortured. If you do not prepare your teams Team 7 will eat them alive."
…##########################################################...
"I want answers."
Sasuke heard Sakura demand from where he was experimenting with his eyes. Tilting his head he cracked an eye open in time to see Naruto raise an eyebrow.
"Ask away." The boy murmured. "Whether I answer is an entirely different thing."
After the disastrous events on the bridge a shaky truce had been called by both sides and Sasuke was hoping Naruto wouldn't feel the need to apologise like last time. He hadn't set one foot inside his compound since that moment and dreaded to think of the condition his home was going to be in.
Sakura took a breath.
"Were the Uzumakis wiped out because of your kekkei genkeis?"
Sasuke paused.
Naruto's eyes actually opened wide.
"Imagine a civilisation with blood in their hair." He spoke softly. "Imagine an island where the people reached up instead of out. Where they learnt to seal gods into slips of paper and shells. They were conquerors in their own way and can you imagine the terror the mainland must have felt when they turned their eyes beyond their whirlpools?" Naruto smiled thinly. "Death and the Uzumakis have forever been entwined."
"How did they die?" Sasuke asked reeling that he and Naruto had something in common.
"Hell if I know." Naruto inspected his nails. "But the Uzumaki's didn't die."
There was something ominous rising in Sasuke's chest. What did Naruto mean by that? Everything he said just contradicted each other.
"Vengeance." Naruto hissed and the sunlight through the red leaves tinted his hair the faintest shade of scarlet. "Vindication. Their will lives on. The will of the whirlpool."
His hand lifted but Naruto didn't seem aware of it and traced a very light spiral on his stomach.
Dread slammed into Sasuke's stomach. His imagination drew a very chilling picture of Naruto's ancestors for him.
Blood haired conquerors with blood on their hands, mouths with death dogging their footsteps. Those mad people had turned around and led death itself on a merry spiral, soared in their glory, shone with a brilliance so blinding that when death caught upand at the eye of the storm they, their island, their whole civilisation had sunk back into the whirlpools they had honoured and mocked the god with.
He remembered what Naruto had said on the bridge. The God of death had drawn a seal on the boy. As of the minute he had been born, his life was the eye of the storm. The last storm the Uzumakis would ever make. Maybe it was the same storm that had doomed them winding tighter and tighter until it coalesced around one boy.
He shivered and thought that he would not ever want to meet the blood haired woman or man that sired his team mate.
….##########################################################...
So when Sasuke came face to face with a boy with blood in his hair and the same heavy presence as Naruto inside an alarm shattered with the force it went off.
"Oh look at you." Naruto breathed genuine awe tainting his voice as he stepped forward. "You are magnificent little brother."
Sakura went so pale Sasuke thought she was going to faint. Dear Kami no. One Naruto Uzumaki was enough.
"Do I know you?" The answer was sharp and the unease simmering in their stomachs turned to confusion.
The girl with the sandy hair and the boy with the face paint glared at Naruto but didn't resist their brother's commands in a single way.
"In another life perhaps." Naruto muttered. "In the next one maybe. But we are brothers in this one."
The foreign boy's eyes narrowed then he smiled. A thin dagger of a smile that complimented his eyes perfectly.
"My maternal brother." The words themselves sounded dangerous. "You reek of death. It's filthy."
Naruto's smile didn't change but something sharpened in his posture. "Maybe your blood can wash away the filth."
Sasuke did not like the green fire erupting in the red haired's eyes. A gritty texture rasped against his cheek and the taste in his mouth confirmed it as sand.
The two monsters stepped forward and the red haired boy hissed.
"You may be ready to die, that doesn't mean I can't make you afraid."
And for the first time in a while Sasuke saw someone else's death play out in his own eyes. For it wasn't Naruto who died this time. The strange feral red head was the one clutching and screaming at his face and eyes as vicious lacerations opened up all over him spilling blood, guts, slippery flesh hacked into pieces; so much blood until it matched his hair, turned the pavements into a red mirror, it was almost unreal with the crack of white bone and the wet snap of tendons under pressure.
Sasuke forced himself to see.
This is what Naruto dealt with on a daily basis. If they were to ever get stronger, they had to play on the same stage.
"What was that?" The red head breathed perfectly unharmed. His team meanwhile stared at the monsters in horror, disbelief and disgust warring in the lines of their mouth.
"Terror." Naruto bared his teeth, a vicious excitement turning his eyes wild and fierce. They weren't wolf teeth quite yet but Sasuke saw them all the same. He extended his hand.
Sand crushed it.
Such was the power of Naruto's illusions that it Sasuke a second to realise that this was real.
The hand was a mangled mess like twisted, mangled metal with bone and flesh sickeningly straightening out with sick cracks and sliding of wet flesh over wet flesh. Naruto wiggled his fingers at the red head who was staring in absolute fascination.
"I will take pleasure in tearing you apart brother." The strange foreign monster said at last and Sasuke, surprising himself, felt his protective instinct rise. Naruto was theirs, they would be the ones to eradicate him. Or stop him, which Sasuke was beginning to think meant the same thing.
The two of them had been exposed to Naruto so much that this was their normality now. He could rip a limb off and all Sakura would do was blink, Naruto could shatter his skull and carry on laughing high, wild and free and all Sasuke would do was to check if his clothes had got dirty. The duo with the red head had no such advantage.
They went white, then green then red then to a gray so sickly they looked like corpses.
That was probably the normal thing to do in this situation. Run away screaming because they stood with monsters. Sasuke had been poisoned from the inside out, his mind had warped until this was his reality and he stood in the spreading puddle of his team mate's blood without a flinch.
"Pathetic." He said softly.
And it would be a miracle if people figured out what or who he was talking about.
….##############################################################...
Sakura hit the door until it was yanked open with an irritated jerk. Naruto upon seeing her smiled lazily, a stretch of his lip so languid and pleased that she could have replaced him with a grinning cat and there would have been no difference.
"Sakura." He said and stepped away so that she could come in. She felt like she was prodding a sleeping hornet's nest with a smoking stick.
The line of the threshold that was Naruto's territory was the thin line of the doorway. Behind that was fear, terror and death lurking in the human form of their team mate. Sakura stepped over boldly, feeling rash courage lick at her insides with something like acid.
"Are you human?" She asked, throwing caution to the skies. She had killed him once, he had sunk his teeth into her throat and that was enough. They had probably been more intimate with each other than she would ever be with anyone else.
Naruto smiled at her.
"Human? What a boring idea. Are you human Sakura? Have you held on to your humanity?"
The calm, eloquent answer shocked her to the bone. She had been expecting a threat, or malicious hisses or anything that would send a chill down her back and unnerve her.
"Yes." She replied immediately.
"Well then." Naruto replied, setting two dusty cups on the kitchen table. "I'll drink to your innocence."
What was going on? Naruto was not this calm individual. Where was the intensity? Where was the fire? The malicious comments?
"Humanity is not another word for innocence." Sakura said sharply. "Innocence is childlike, humanity is something that stops us from becoming monsters."
There was a hand in her hair as Naruto idly patted her on the head. She stiffened, not having seen him move. And when had he poured the tea? Her neck crawled when she noticed the steaming cup in her hand.
"Humans. Monsters." Naruto said slowly, taking a sip of his tea. "Where does the line blur really? What happens to the human in the monster or the monster in the human? You're going to end up a murderer, you know that Sakura? You'll be a monster to a wife, son, and a grieving family. But you'll be human to you because it's your opinion that matters right?"
Sakura's jaw moved but nothing came out. He covered his mouth for a cough and motioned for her to drink the tea and reluctantly she raised it to her lips. It was sweet and she grimaced. Then she saw the gleam in the blue eyes and realised: Naruto was doing this on purpose. He knew she thought of him as an instinct driven terror and so he was making an effort to be the opposite.
"Monster is such a subjective term." Naruto said delicately, each word being formed with the perfect combination of malice and kindness. "And if you grow past such foolish labels like humanity and monsters, you'll see that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you call yourself because people will hate you. Some will love you and one day you will be dead. What a waste to spend this time thinking about monsters and morality when in the end, everyone will be dead and then really…who cares if you were good or innocent or monstrous when you were living? You all leave the same grave behind."
He stopped to cough wetly into his cup. Her lips were dry despite the tea. That was wrong. This was Naruto's world view? It didn't matter to him if he left daisies or roses growing when he was buried so it didn't matter what people thought of him now? What a depressing view; it made her feel cold and empty inside because on some level he was correct but on others he was so wrong but she couldn't find which ones.
"So come on human." Naruto spoke 'human' like one would say 'girl' or 'Sakura' or 'child'. "Judge me." His blue eyes danced in mirth and a weariness so vast it stumped Sakura. His lips seemed unusually red and stark.
"I don't want to." She said truthfully.
Naruto viewed her thoughtfully, silence stretching out between them. She had had no idea he could be this eloquent or this frightening. This fear was an entirely different kind, this wasn't the primal disgust of the unknown but the creeping terror that if given enough time Naruto would enter her mind, reshape it to his standards then exit as silently as he had come.
"Give them something to talk about Haruno Sakura." He said softly in the end. And this time he said her name as if he meant to say her name and not any other word. "Give me something to remember little mayfly."
She was having tea with a quasi-immortal. She giggled at the absurdity and drunk more of her tea.
"Why did you choose me for-" She waved at her neck, feeling semi comfortable with the idea of talking normally to Naruto. Kami knew why as he was only highlighting the differences between them but the more he talked, the more she was comfortable with him. He had a brain, he had opinions even if they were warped as hell. It was just his body that was fucked up and she supposed she knew the pains of having a body that wasn't like what she wanted it to be.
"Hold on." She frowned having noticed something. "You drink tea?"
Naruto laughed and it reminded her of when they had met.
"This isn't tea." He said simply and politely covered his cough with his fist. Something red splashed onto his fist and he wiped it away still smiling faintly.
"Oh." Sakura said. "Do I need to worry about razors in your biscuits?"
Naruto's smile was partly genuine.
But Sakura did notice that he didn't answer and just sipped whatever he was drinking that turned his mouth into a bloody mess.
…..#################################################################...
It didn't last.
The light of terrifying, eloquent intelligence was gone from Naruto's eyes the next time Sakura saw him. It was replaced by something far more sinister; pity.
"Stop." She grabbed at Sasuke's sleeve who indulged her and slowed down. "Look."
There was the faintest crack of light from a rundown house. Rain flooded the streets and obstructed the view of the area, it was cold and wet and dark water pooled on the grounds and seeped away into the sewers like terrible warped mirrors.
There were potatoes and onions in the bag in her hand, Sasuke held the bread and tomatoes and neither of them could mistake their team mate's voice crooning above the high shrieking of the wind and the drumming of the rain on concrete.
They edged closer, the door was covered in thorns and the withered remains of roses. It might have been pretty once, the doorknob was missing and walls were patched up with pieces of thin fabric. She pushed it open and hissed as she discovered that the rose thorns weren't as dead as the rest of the plant.
The rain fell on her fingers but the blood didn't seem to dilute and wash away. Instead the blood seemed to be corrupting the rain instead so that dark crimson water rushed off her palm and turned the earth a muddy red shade. She shivered and put her hand in her pocket so that she didn't have to look at it.
Sasuke sucked in a breath.
Naruto sat in the centre of the room crooning a nursery rhyme under his breath. A corpse of a woman lay in the corner, skin pulled taut over her bones and filling the room with the stench of the wet dead. He pushed a cradle with his hand and to their horror there was a small lump in there too, still and not moving as they rocked from side to side.
Flowers were tucked into the room and spilled from the corners until all the fragrances mixed with the smell of the corpses and the rain and produced a foul scent.
"I can use as many flowers as I want." Naruto said out loud, almost wondrously, eyes meeting theirs like blue electric spears. "But dying is dying and rot is rot."
Sakura couldn't breathe. What had done this? Had Naruto done this?
"Come closer." Naruto's fingers stabbed the air. There was a ghost of a frown on his face.
"I don't want to." She said and he smiled.
"I don't care."
Her feet moved against her will and she knelt beside him. She had thought she had gotten used to all the horrifying things Naruto had a tendency for doing. This was new. And she had been wrong. Sasuke tried to stop her but Naruto sent him a look and he dropped his hand halfway.
The corpse in the cradle was awful to look at. It was puckered and brown and little more than a bag of bones. Bile rose in her throat as she noticed the apple flowers Naruto had put in its mouth and fists. Thunder boomed above them and she was scared.
"Sakura." Sasuke's voice was terribly even, "Get away from that."
Naruto laughed like he had made a great joke. "Get away? She should see this. Does miscarriage really make you that unhappy as to commit suicide?" he asked her, his tone made it clear he was aware of the cruelty of that question.
"Sakura."
She was frozen to her spot, mute with horror. Sasuke yanked her away and she was sure that something was moving under the dead baby's papery eyelids. His grip on her elbow was massively comforting and she hadn't been aware of how distant her mind had been with the macabre sight of Naruto cooing over a rotting child.
"We shouldn't be here." Sasuke breathed in her ear. "People have died here, there's no telling what he can do."
He turned around and startled so badly he let out the foulest word Sakura had ever heard him use. She shakenly turned her head and the mother's corpse had moved across the floor, hand outstretched, face upturned towards them in a horrified scream. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might burst, she let out a squeak and scuttled backwards. That wasn't possible.
That wasn't possible.
She was dead. She was dead.
Her grip on Sasuke was white knuckled and his grip on her was so tight she could feel her circulation being cut off.
"Don't worry." Naruto drawled from behind them. "That's the infamous maternal instinct." He was smirking, cold and cruel. "Even in death all she wants is her child."
The blond boy scooped up the child and Sakura fought the urge to vomit as he kissed it on the forehead in the dreadful parody of affection.
"A part of her died when her child was born on the table." Naruto said in the tune of the rhyme he had been singing. "Then she died in this miserable hut, heart broken and in despair. Too bad mother, you followed your child to Death and he's not the sort to let loved ones reunite."
He laughed and sang a verse of the nursery rhyme.
She was shaking all over. Sasuke's lips were white.
There was a child crying in the hut. They couldn't tell where it came from and they looked around wildly, Naruto just rocked the babe in his arms.
"What a sweetheart." Naruto whispered turning to them. "Do you think she should live?"
"What?" Sasuke croaked.
Naruto made an impatient gesture. "The child. She's never even been on the wrong side of death before."
"Wrong side of death?" Sakura's voice was even fainter.
"Life, you fool." Naruto rolled his eyes. He smoothed what hair was left of the child's over her forehead. The crying intensified until the walls shook with the force of the broken sobs.
They looked down and nearly had a heart attack. The mother was even further forward now, her hand hanging limp at Naruto's feet looking like she had dragged herself forward by the strength in her fingers. He idly surveyed her like a king passing judgement on a peasant and stepped over her, still rocking the child.
"Naruto." Sakura managed, desperate to get out of there. "This is cruel, return the child to her and stop desecrating the dead."
"She does seem quite desperate to get her away from me no?" Naruto agreed, looking at the pitiful state of the sprawled mother. Something hot and cold at the same time crawled under Sakura's skin and slid down her spine.
He looked up. "One day you'll be rotting in the ground as well, hopefully you'll have better manners than this woman. She keeps screaming about demons and devils."
She felt sick. She did not want Naruto messing with her corpse, her soul, when she was dead and from the lock jawed expression Sasuke was wearing, he felt the same.
"No I don't think she should live." Sasuke said. "Giving life to what should be dead, if you hadn't noticed, tends to be very unnatural."
"Stranger things have happened." Naruto's eyes were on fire, blue and icy, blazing through the thin skin of his face.
"You are the stranger thing." Sasuke countered. "You should stop happening."
"You want me to ignore the reason why a mother died?" Naruto mocked him, the curl of his grin nasty. "I'm in quite a bad mood tonight." The crying rose to deafening levels.
He looked at the child with a mildly irritated expression and calmly snapped its neck. The crying stopped and the implications horrified Sakura to the core.
"Look at you lot." Naruto muttered. "Dying everywhere. Leaving a mess of ripped apart souls behind. Pick a place and die there."
Sasuke's mouth moved without sound. He looked at her. She looked at him. They had no other option.
"Naruto." She choked out. "As your…second disciple."
"As your first." Sasuke said very, very grudgingly.
"Please stop this. Please."
He looked at them, surprise turning his face young and boyish until they could barely believe such an innocent looking boy was one of the most warped creatures they had ever met.
"You used my name." Naruto breathed.
Sakura was starting to think that this had been a very bad idea with the growing intensity in the boy's eyes. For a long minute, no one moved, afraid that they would shatter the weird sort of fragile understanding that had developed between them.
Very, very slowly Naruto inclined his head and without breaking eye contact he knelt and placed the child on the woman's chest and crossed her arms over the corpse.
The line of the woman's mouth could have been called a smile and she and Sasuke rushed out of there, welcoming the rain as an opposite to the unnatural dryness in the hut. It shouldn't have been that dry with the hut in such a bad condition but their lips had dried and chapped and bled when they were talking and they hadn't noticed.
Sakura tasted blood in her mouth and realised that this was it.
They had confirmed something, they didn't know what, but they were tied to Naruto now.
The taste of blood seemed strangely appropriate.
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