AN:This project was inspired by the album of the same name by Vienna Teng, and was conceived as an 'album-fic': Each chapter was inspired by a song from the album, in order. While I was listening to it, I found that it had a distinct narrative hidden in the lyrics; I felt that it was a great fit for these characters, so I ran with the idea.

During the course of this story, narrators will change and there will be time skips, often with little notice. I do this not in an effort to be frustrating, but rather to make reading the story more natural as a whole and as a fit to the original Warm Strangers. Changes will not be abrupt or completely unmarked—they will usually occur at chapter breaks—but will not be highlighted violently, as I have seen some authors do with parentheses in the middle of paragraphs.

I have sadly not expanded my knowledge of the Naruto universe much since my last story, so while this story tries to fit into the main universe, I will not claim that it is never AU.

I got three reviews so like I promised, I'm updating early! I want to thank my reviewers so much for the time they take, even if it is only a little, to let me know what you think. I love all of you!

I plan on updating the story every time I get three reviews or five days pass, whichever comes first.

Disclaimer: I am not Kishimoto Masashi, and as such I do not own any of the characters or other ideas contained herein. I can only lay claim to this plot.

Thanks for reading everyone, I hope you enjoy it. Reviews are greatly appreciated—CF

WARM STRANGERS

CHAPTER 10: PASSAGE

I woke up here some time ago. Time is irregular; there is no sun or moon to mark one day from the next. I don't really know much, only that there are other people, whom I have never met before first waking up, here with me. No one really seems to know why we're here, but we all experience hallucinations from time to time, and everyone who talks about them says that they seem very familiar in a way they can't describe. I had one today, for the first time. During mine, another girl, who was undergoing the same thing, sang an eerie song. I didn't catch the first few words, but it went like this as I saw the images and heard the vague sounds.

There's a crowd of people in the first vision, and they're all looking to the ground. I can't see their focus at first, until the view moves to a point from the sky; it is a mangled, broken, bloody mass that might have once been a human body. Everyone around is weeping for the unfortunate individual whose life is no more as one of the mourners is talking, hardly more than a mumble, and gesturing and pointing a

"Nothing anyone could have done," I hear his nondescript voice say. "It was a hit-or-miss thing. We all warned him not to try, but…he persisted. He tried a little bit too hard to be the best and…this is where it got him."

"Nothing at all? Are you sure?"

"Yes…It called for a lot of energy, and he didn't have it in him…it was either draw from the environment, or him…"

A young woman came up behind the speaker and embraced him gently. "If it's like you say, and there was nothing you could do, then you need to remember that. I know it's hard, losing him, but there's nothing more to it. Stay strong. Your tears won't bring him back."

He turned around and held tight to the woman, shaking. "It was only supposed to be a sparring match…it shouldn't have turned out like this…"

Someone new runs up now, shouting inaudibly. I see a face that screams of familiarity, but I have no recollection of who the person is. Everyone turns as he approaches and they all hush as he draws near. They move aside for him and he flies to the body, clutching it close to his heart, sobbing, and convulsing more than any other of the mourners. He kisses the body a few times, as gently as a person should treat a newborn. The others swarm around him and offer words of sympathy and comfort, what little there is in this.

Two women appear, walking in slowly now. They are both silent. The older one is shaking violently, tears streaming down her face. She makes no noise; not a word, not a sob, not a whimper escaping from her lips. She collapses after a minute or so, and the younger one crouches down to her, holding her. A girl from the crowd, about the same age as the crouching woman, notices them and hurries over.

The younger of the new arrivals bursts forward, rising immediately from her squatting position and bolting to the crowd. They have turned back to the body now and do not notice her at first. She shouts, says that she is his cousin, his family; she says that she needs to see his body. Slowly, people realize what they are hearing and they turn to let her in. She finally reaches it and approaches the still-weeping lover with a little caution, holding her hand out to him. She puts it on his shoulder and he looks up into her eyes. He hesitates and then hands the body to its family. She too spends several minutes holding it then, slowly and gently, carries it to the distraught mother.

My view becomes one from the skies again, and I can see people in masks crouched in the trees nearby. One of them gives a signal and they all remove their masks for a moment. There is stillness in the woods, one that could make any newcomers doubt whether the people there are alive or mere statues.

Since my first hallucination I met the girl who was singing the haunting song. She doesn't talk much and doesn't say what her song was about. We have to figure that out for ourselves, she says. We have to make ourselves remember, stop forcing our bad memories away. I'm not sure what she means.

I had another round of hallucinations today. The singing girl went through another song, in time to my visions again.

There are visions of the mangled body again. This time, he is being carried on a thin bed toward a pile of wood. His body is placed on as his mother, the cousin from last time, and a few others are gathered close around; some from the last group are crowded further behind them. Everyone is dressed in monochrome.

The body is gently laid on the wood and it is set on fire by a torch in the mother's hands. It burns quickly; there may have been oil on it. Soon there is only ash left.

The wind picks up and the ash starts to swirl around. As it gets stronger it blows away, spreading across the horizon. The mother hurries forward and, procuring an urn, scoops some of the ashes into the vase with the lid. She pulls out a book with the word "Journal" written on it next, she pours something on it, and lights it. When it is in cinders, she adds some of it to the urn which is then closed. She weeps a little more as she holds the vessel close to her heart and sways a little. Soon the members of the funeral party go their separate ways.

My visions follow the mother and the rest of the deceased's family. They go back to what may be the family home where there is a tiny, uprooted tree near a hole. They all circle around the hole and the mother says a few words as she opens the urn and sprinkles in the ashes. She lifts the tree and plants it then waters it a little. Each member of the family touches the new addition to the landscape as they go into the house.

I am back at the funeral; this time the visions follow the vibrant once-lover of the poor victim. He goes to a small apartment, where he pulls a full bottle of sake from a corner. He drinks most of it straight from the bottle.

The visions of him zip forward. There is much drinking and drunkenness, much loss of health, and much deterioration of life. The motion soon slows down, and I see him in full detail. He is weeping, a bottle in one hand and a knife in the other. He is saying something, is it the late lover's name? He lifts the knife up and moves it to his hand; I can see multiple thin scars here. He goes to cut himself, and moves the blade away from his wrist then back again. Ten times, twenty times, thirty times he repeats these actions, until he slumps over, sobbing loudly. He is speaking through the tears but the convulsion and the alcohol make him unintelligible.

I see the mother now; she is putting laundry on the line while a distant look plays across her face. She sighs a little and then speaks. Some words are blurred out.

"_…why didn't you get married to _? You two were together long enough, even living together…why did neither of you propose? You could have been such a wonderful couple…such pride for our family! And, you could have even come to raise a family of your own if you wanted, although I think that adopting might have been difficult for a couple like you two. I just hope that he's doing okay without you. I haven't seen him in so long." She sighs, adjusting some of the laundry; her basket is empty. She goes inside and the visions shift again.

I see the cousin now; she is crying a little, but smiling. She is reading a notebook of sorts. There are two different sets of handwriting in it; one is a man's, the other a woman's. They likely belong to the woman herself and the dead cousin. She goes through it and reads a little bit aloud here and there. It contains mostly stories of battles and happy times, though few, with the family. She giggles slightly at something; the tears in her eyes flow a little more steadily.

Now, it is the group of masked individuals from the trees in the earlier vision; they are welcoming a newcomer into their midst.

The singing girl remains as cryptic as ever, and I still have yet to remember the things that she hints at. More time has passed, although there is still as little measurement of time as ever; neither sun nor moor nor stars are visible to weigh out the days.

Another round of hallucinations today was marked by another verse of my mysterious friend's song.

I see the tree from the last vision now; it is taller than before. It is still weak, still thin, still with meager bark. There is a slight snowfall around it but grass is showing in spots. It must be warm now—as I watch some of the snow near the tree melts and seeps down to its roots.

I see a view of the town. It seems to be springtime now, as flowers and trees are in bloom and I can see a bird making its nest, as another sits nearby, unable to help. Young children and adolescents run through the streets, all going to the same place. It seems to be a school. I watch as a crowd of them go into a classroom and the teacher starts listing them off into groups of three. Some are excited, others angry, still others indifferent. They go their separate ways but soon each group meets with a different teacher separately.

There is another view of the tree: a few months have passed and, like my friend's song, there are small fruits here. The mother emerges from the house and tenderly picks a few. "My son, you are still with us, in our hearts. The fruit that you help to grow shall feed our family now. They shall keep you close to us forever, so that we can never forget all that you did in your short time on this Earth. We send you all our love, today and every day."

I return to my view of the depressed lover, whom I see in the same state that I left him from last time. He falls asleep weeping, then lapses into fast motion again. There are more drinking binges, more close calls with the knife, and then a spell where he hauls in a lot of food and sake and locks himself in. He then stays in the room for what I can assume are months at a stretch, drinking, eating, and crying. Soon enough he has the knife again, and I can almost feel myself rooting for it to win this time. He starts to dig the blade into his flesh, and he passes out on the floor.

Not one minute later, there is a knock at the door. When there is no reply, the door is broken in, and a young woman from an earlier hallucination bursts in, shouts, and begins bandaging the poor lover's arm. Time zooms forward again and, sure enough, he is alive and well. I see him talking to a doctor, and slowly recovering from his reliance on the bottle and depression. He becomes a new man, and can soon walk the streets of the town with his head held high again.

This is strangely upsetting.

The mother comes into view again; she has a photo album in her hands. She is turning the pages slowly; every time a photo of a certain face comes up, she stops and her gaze lingers. I feel the image of this particular face burning in my mind; I should know this young man.

The mother sighs a few times, and gets teary-eyed at some of the photos. It burns inside when I watch her turn her head a little and gaze quizzically at a photo of him. Could she have possibly forgotten her child so quickly? It may have been years, but he was important; how could she do him the injustice?

The cousin is alone now, inside a house. She is pacing back and forth, talking to herself. Her hands move about in wild gestures; she seems to have a weighty issue on her mind. She stops pacing near a wall and leans on it a little; a younger girl walks in. She looks at the cousin, shakes her head, and swiftly walks out of the room. The cousin looks up for an instant, but immediately goes back to her debate. She looks out a window, smiling softly now. "You would know exactly what to do, wouldn't you…"

I see two of the masked people now; they are conversing in an empty wooden room. The words are rough, but I understand that they are talking about the dead man. Memorial services, a tribute? They discuss the possibilities, but in the end one of them simply carves four symbols above the door; they could be the man's name.

I know now. It has taken a very long time but I remember everything as it was before. I feel my insides writhing in pain; it is torture to know that such things have happened to me.

My final round of hallucinations was accompanied by a short verse of the song.

I hear the entire first line this time; I understand that where I am is truly no longer life; I am in some sort of afterlife.

The charred, broken, bleeding, mangled body was my own.

I know this for sure; I began hallucinating by reliving everything from before, with clarity; there were no missing words. I could recognize all of the faces and voices; my former teammates, my lover, my mother, my two cousins, my whole clan, and the village…

Since my death all those years ago, my old job, that of a shinobi, has since been nearly eliminated. There are only five or so full-time in my village now, with one or two in training. They only take those with the highest potential, and train them to capacity, teaching safety standards and techniques for evaluating your own limits that were beyond the reach of anyone in my lifetime. A person can now understand what the effects of a jutsu on his or her body will be simply by meditating for a minute or two.

Shinobi are now trying new things that would have killed the average person in my day; they have truly taken their exclusive work to new, extreme heights. Near the end of this part of the hallucination, I watch a young man flawlessly execute the jutsu that was the death of me. His control is perfect; his methods are impeccable.

I can feel a part of me screaming in pain.

I watch my lover, the bright-eyed, vibrant Naruto, standing face-to-face with a deserter from our village. They are dressed in the utmost of formal clothes; Gaara from Sunagakure is standing just behind them. He says a few words that I am all too well familiar with; there is applause, and I watch as Naruto kisses Sasuke the traitor.

The pain is overpowering; I fall to my knees. How could this happen?

I see them at their home now; they are just returning, and they walk in with a boy of about eleven years. Naruto pulls both Sasuke and the boy close in a huge hug; he refers to his husband and his son. The boy rolls his eyes, but smiles, and then runs off; he has friends waiting for him.

Why couldn't that have been me!

"Do you understand now, Hyuuga? Do you know why I couldn't tell you anything?"

"Yes, I understand. It would have hurt too much; I couldn't have believed it…is that why the others have left? Because they all remembered?"

"Yes, Hyuuga. They all passed along, and it will be your turn soon, too. Every person hears a different song when here with me; it is all part of the vision. The songs allow you to ease into your memories. You will soon be relieved of your pain; you need no longer remember the living. Go; it is time to leave."

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