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Generic Title: Catch-22 (a)

Title: Hostage

Set: WAR

Pair: SasuNaruSasu hints.

Author: darkenedmoonlightflame

Summary: 8th theme: Absolute. (Actions will suffice when Sasuke asks whether or not the boy will come with him.)

Rating: T+ (borderline M) for theme, language, light blood.

Word Count: 550.

Disclaimer: I do not own either Naruto or the 1000 Themes, and do not claim to. However, everything else, AKA: the writing, (some if not all of) the (theme-guided) plot, any poetic interpretation, et cetera, IS MINE.

(A/N: I kinda like this one… Which sure doesn't say much about my personality. (snorts)

(So, presenting, Catch-22, Part Eight.)


Catch-22 (a)

March 30th, 2007


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Eight, Absolute—Hostage—

The ropes dig into his hands mercilessly, but he grits his teeth and continues to rotate his shoulders. Fifty times forward… Thirty times backward… Left… Right… It works, but barely. When he collapses back against the frigid stone wall, blinding moonlight striking his dirtied face, the bindings are looser. He rests.

In the morning, that boy will be back. The one who feeds him, when he shouldn't. The one who is kind to him, when it isn't right. The one that doesn't care if he does not fit the perfect image, the one who doesn't mind if his 'best friend' is older and ever-so-cruel despite the incessant kindness. This boy… He's blond, congenial, and almost always smiling.

They've known each other for about a month. It's a difficult game to play. Sasuke knows that it's only a matter of time until the two of them are discovered, together. When the time comes—maybe even tonight; the era during which his constraints are slipping—the hostage will ask the gregarious boy something. He won't explain. He won't push or prod for an answer. Actions will suffice when Sasuke asks whether or not the boy will come with him.

He can't imagine the situation outside. He's been locked up in here for what seems like centuries. His brain logically supplies that it has only been a little over a year. The crime is his appearance: he is not what was envisioned…

Who would want to stay here, in this country, during such a dangerous genocide, anyway?

Sasuke hopes that the boy will agree to tag along. A person with such a wide, well-meaning smile can only be a loudmouth—but at least the moments of silence and weariness will pass more quickly. Then again, all of that jabber will probably be annoying, to his anti-social side. He sighs in the darkness. He'll learn to get over it. There has been far too much silence without the boy, lately.

Speaking of which, he hears footsteps outside the cell. Taking a deep breath, he mentally prepares himself. Since when did he get so emotional over things like this? ('Since a wrong word has the power to kill you,' His mind answers.) Contused behind his back, his hands curl into tight fists, and little by little, their rigid tension settles into his arms.

Okay. So he really, really hopes that the boy will agree to tag along.

But life isn't so plain and clean. Nothing is precisely absolute.

That night, as the boy—Sasuke now knows that his name is Naruto—enters, right away it's obvious that something is wrong. "Hey…" His boyish voice is hoarse, too loud, and it cracks a few times, although the word is only one syllable long. "Hey." He ends, trailing off quietly.

Suddenly, Sasuke's unbound hands—he has already forgotten about his plans of asking—are grabbed. Being hoisted to his feet fully awakens him. "What the fuck do you think you are doing?" He blurts out, all at once, because his voice is disjointed and strained from disuse. Everything at once—it's better like that.

And then he notices.

Naruto's hands are covered with blood, and the red liquid gleams in the moonlight as the shaken boy fights desperately to turn the key in the prison cell's door.

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Note:

In addition, credit for the Nazi-Jew!Naruto-Sasuke theme (if interpreted as so, here) goes to VanityWantsYou ('Salvation'), darkhunter709 ('Blood Brothers'), and any others. I was going for more of a general genocide, but I guess my mind had not-too-drastically-different agenda. (sighs) Sorry if it bothers anyone. And no, Sasuke is not in a concentration camp or ghetto.

Let's just say he's a prominent figure because of his last name (Uchiha), and his captors keep him in Isolation. Ask away.