A/N: I'm aware that people are impatient to get to the time-skip However, I can't finish up the gathering of the jinchuuriki in one chapter; that would break the pace of the story. I am going to try and have the gathering of the jinchuuriki done in eight chapters, so that we can get to the latter half of the story. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the new chapter.
These walls built to stand come-what-may
Lie shattered in the ashes
His skin against this dirty floor
Eyes fixed on the ceiling
He has stretched those chains of sin
Far beyond all feelings
Still, so still...
- 'The Perfect Element' by Pain of Salvation
Naruto swallowed as Gaara's eyes drifted closed, and he knelt, grabbing the other boy by the shoulders and shaking him,
"Wake up, you bastard! Wake up, I'm not going to deal with a pissed-off drunken badger trying to kill me again!"
Katashi let an orb of water form in his hand and threw it at Gaara, smirking from a swelling face (the Hunter-nin had landed a kick on his cheekbone) when it splashed on Gaara. Gaara's eyelids flickered, lifted slowly, revealing a thin line of green. It was amazing that he could wake so quickly and stay awake, as if the ability to sleep had been permanently burned out of his brain, but Naruto supposed that it made sense when the consequences of sleeping were so… disastrous.
Sand rustled, fear making Naruto's throat as dry as the desert. It was amazing how long it had been since Naruto had felt it.
He had almost forgotten the taste of fears.
"The sand's staunched the bleeding," Yugito observed, "but we should move quickly." Her kusarigama was dripping blood, the red liquid joining the puddle beneath Gaara. She glanced disdainfully at the four bodies sprawled on the road, dust covering their black clothing and the Konoha hitai-ates gleaming in the sunlight before looking back at Gaara. "Can you walk?"
Naruto extended a hand, took Gaara's, tried to pull him upright. There was a harsh sound as Gaara tried to rise, making a low grunt of agony as he collapsed back to the road.
"I'd say that's a 'no'," Katashi said, handing Yugito back her sword. She sheathed it, jerked her head at the bushes, and knelt beside Gaara, looking up at Naruto while Katashi went to pick up Moriko.
"Can you carry him on your back?" she asked. "Katashi and I will distribute the contents of your backpack between us."
"Yeah," Naruto said, kneeling and presenting his back. Yugito helped Gaara to sit up and put his arms around Naruto's neck, then tied his ankles together to keep his legs around Naruto's belly before signaling him to stand.
He stood, tottered back and forth, and found his bearing, glancing back as a pained breath hissed through Gaara's teeth as he let his forehead rest on Naruto's shoulder. Katashi returned, holding Moriko in one hand and Naruto's pack in the other.
"You both look like complete idiots," he said helpfully.
"Yeah, thanks for that," Naruto muttered, looking back at the bodies sprawled on the road. He didn't feel sick, and somehow felt vaguely guilty for not feeling anything for them, for the four shinobi who were now dead because they were just doing their jobs.
"It'll hit later," Yugito said, removing most of the contents of his pack and putting it in her own. "We need to keep moving. We can reach it in a quarter of an hour if we hurry."
"We need to hurry," Naruto said. He could feel Gaara's blood, slick and warm, coating his fingers. Yugito nodded, coiled her kusarigama and hung it at her hip, and sprang forward, leading them at a brisk jog down the road.
They left the Hunter-nin where they fell.
They found Kerumigakure ten minutes later, passing through the gates with one of the gatekeepers following them, shouting something about needing a pass.
"We don't have time for that," Katashi snapped, folding his arms across his chest, glaring.
The gatekeeper blinked, expression bewildered. "Yeah, sure. Whatever you say." Katashi stared at him, then somehow… deflated, hunching back into himself at the reminder that he was unintelligible to everyone outside the jinchuuriki. Yugito stepped in front of him, shielding him from the gawking passerby who were fascinated by the glimpse of his teeth.
"We require urgent medical assistance. You will direct us to the nearest clinic," she said, her tone clipped and short, the voice of a commander in the field.
The gatekeeper glanced at Naruto, Gaara's blood staining the front of his shirt, and pointed down a nearby street. "Two blocks that way. You'll need to pay. You have…" he trailed off as they hurried away, leaving him standing at the gate with his mouth half-open.
"We've arrived?" Gaara slurred, half-open eyes glazed, his skin cold and clammy. 'Just our luck that he goes into shock when we need him most, considering we're in Konoha's territory,' Naruto thought sourly, following Yugito into the whitewashed clinic and standing still as Katashi untied the rope holding Gaara on his back and helped him lay Gaara flat on a stretcher.
Yugito let her pack fall and went to the empty desk, slamming her fist onto the bell with a growl of irritation. Three harassed-looking shinobi hurried out from the back, dressed in white scrubs.
"Where is he injured?" the medic-nin asked, crouching over the stretcher and taking his pulse, her face the sort of one that brought to mind mothballs and too many cats.
"Leg and stomach," Naruto said, watching two other medics lift the stretcher and carry Gaara away to an examining room. He started to stand, but paused as Yugito held up a hand and followed the stretcher herself, leaving him to deal with the medic.
"And how was he injured?" the woman droned, checking off another question on her list.
"Uh- uh…"
"He fell into a river," Katashi said. The woman looked up from her clipboard and raised a brow, looking affronted by Katashi's slurred words.
"What did that young man say?"
"He fell into a river," Naruto repeated, giving a thumbs-up behind his back to Katashi.
"Very well, then. As for payment, you owe us one hundred for the initial examination, and more for whatever expenses we will incur for fixing him later. Do you have the first payment?"
'God, whatever happened to the 'saving lives' part of being doctors?' Naruto thought as he reached for Yugito's pack and pulled out a roll of bills, counting ten out. He felt bad giving away the money Rei had stored for Katashi- they had withdrawn it from the bank in Kiri before leaving- but he comforted himself that Rei would want them to use it to keep the journey going, to keep Katashi safe. The woman took them and went to the counter, leaving them kneeling on the tiled floor.
"We should probably go check on Gaara," Katashi said, wringing his hands and glancing over his shoulder at Moriko, who was thankfully asleep, the rocking motions of jogging having lulled her to sleep.
"Yeah, we should." Naruto pushed himself upright, hiding the money in the bottom of Yugito's pack and picking it up.
He followed Katashi down the narrow hallway, glancing around. The clinic was uncomfortably… sterile; the white walls gleamed, every room they passed empty. 'It'd be a good setting for a horror movie,' he thought.
They found Gaara in a room at the end of the hall, his shirt cut up the middle, one of his pant legs being cut off with scissors. Yugito was standing at the end of the bed watching the medics work, her fingers stroking over the blade of her kusarigama in a silent, obvious threat.
"Here." Naruto tossed her the pack and moved to Gaara's side, leaning over to look into his face. Gaara's expression was serene and full of a sort of wonder, as if the pain he was feeling was so new and novel that it didn't even register as pain.
Or, he amended, catching sight of the other medic injecting Gaara with a syringe full of clear fluid, he could just be really, really doped up.
"Naruto," Yugito said, glancing at him, "you should go out and explore the town. Having all of us hover around his bed isn't going to make Gaara functional any sooner."
"You sure?"
"Yes," she said, looking away from him and at Katashi, who stood on Gaara's other side, his face pale with fear and his hazel eyes wide, the third eyelid flickering back and forth with stress. "Katashi, I'd like you and Moriko to stay here with me."
The idea of being forced to stay while Naruto went got his attention. "What? Why can't I go? I'm just as good as Naruto is- I even got one of those-" he shut up, glancing fearfully at the medics, who had just finished up.
"He's stable. We've cleaned and bandaged the wounds; he should wake within the hour, and be able to take short walks- no longer than five minutes- when he wakes. You've paid already?"
"Yeah," Naruto said. "The lady at the front desk got it." The medics nodded and backed out of the room, closing the door softly behind them. Katashi watched them go, spitting blood into a trashcan, and whirled, barking,
"And I killed one of those guys myself! I can handle it, so why can't I go?"
Yugito pinched the bridge of her nose, blowing out a long sigh of exhaustion. "Because, while we can understand you, the people out there can't, which makes the idea of you going out alone a huge liability. And not only that-" she looked him up and down, continuing in a pitiful attempt to sound gentle, "you are much more easily identified as a jinchuuriki than he is, due to the teeth."
Katashi's mouth opened and closed like a beached fish before he collapsed into a chair, mumbling, "Fine."
"Good." Yugito turned to Naruto. "Meet back here in an hour." He nodded, lifted a hand in a goodbye, and left the building.
The sun was setting, orange and low, and the streets of Kerumigakure were lit by the colorful lights of paper lanterns hanging at every corner. Children were running down the streets, laughing as their harassed parents chased after them. Elderly couples strolled on the sidewalks arm-in-arm, peering into the windows of the closing shops.
It was idyllic, and reminded him so much of Konoha, of all that he had lost, that it hurt his heart to stay and watch any longer. He started to run, turning from the happy scene and pelting down a side street towards where he could hear the sounds of running water.
And thinking of Konoha was even worse, because that only brought the memories of killing the Hunter-nin, of the way his palm had tapped once lightly on the man's chest, releasing electricity into his system; the way his heart had stuttered, fluttering like the wings of a moth at night; the way the whites of his eyes had bled red, blood dripping from his nose, his mouth as the clones hit him, their Raikyus destroying his circulatory system; the way he had staggered, raised bleeding hands to his face, staring in horror before falling to the earth, bleeding out, his blood mixing with the dust of the road in a brown sludge.
He ran, ran from the memory and the vision, his blood thundering in his ears and his feet slapping the pavement. He left the buildings behind, sprinted on through a meadow of short green grass and a worn path, stumbled, half-fell down a short embankment, his breath sobbing in his ears.
He stopped, tried to get his breathing to slow down as he looked around. He stood on the banks of a slow, shallow green creek, his feet sinking into the golden sand, grass on the other side, the lights of fireflies skimming over the banks and the water, reflecting the pinpricks of the stars above.
"As good a place as any," he muttered, falling down where he stood and reaching for a flat rock, sending it skipping across the creek, leaving three expanding ripples in its wake.
Ripples expanding forever, like the death of the Hunter-nin, a death that would affect everything in Konoha. His parents, losing a child; his lover, losing their precious person; his children, losing a father; his descendants, losing the chance to become real; Konoha, losing a citizen, a shinobi, a child.
He raised a hand and stared at it, dark against the twilit skies. It would have made more sense, been more fitting, to have blood crusted underneath the nails, but there wasn't any. It had been a remarkably clean kill. "I didn't just kill him," he said, weary, tears stinging in his eyes. "I killed everyone he knew."
"That is true." Yugito's hoarse voice came from farther up. He rolled his eyes up in his head, catching sight of her black boots, and sat up, resting his arm on his bent knee.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. She picked her way down the embankment, feet sinking into the sand, and sat down beside him, picking burrs out of her clothing.
"In the Kiri War, they told us to never leave a shinobi alone after their first kill. And," she shrugged, "I thought you might want some company."
"Thanks," he said, staring out across the creek at the gnarled roots of scrub trees. Yugito made a noise of acknowledgement, leaning back on one hand and staring out at the oncoming darkness.
"Hey, Yugito?" He picked up a rock as she spoke, turned it over in his hand, flung it out at the water, watching it skip twice and sink. He looked over at her, her pale blue eyes glinting in the starlight, her free hand twirling the weighted chain of her kusarigama. She looked at peace. "Who was the first person you killed?"
The humming of the chain slicing the air cut off, Yugito's expression blank. "You'll have to specify. First person I killed, period, or first person I killed consciously?"
"Uh… first person you killed, period."
Yugito let go of her kusarigama, stared out across the slow-moving creek and the water the same muddy-green as Moriko's eyes. She sighed, said in a voice filled with old, old pain,
"The first person I killed was my father, when he sealed the Nekomata in me. The Nekomata took me over and killed all seven of the people in the room." She laughed, short and sharp and mirthless. "And you know the worst thing?" She turned to face him more fully, the crows-feet around her eyes- she was only seventeen, he realized suddenly, having grown used to seeing her as older; only seventeen, but she had the stress of a fifty-year-old woman- crinkling as she smiled.
"I still don't regret it."
Naruto looked down at his hands, remembering white eyes bleeding red. "I do."
Yugito placed her hand on his shoulder, squeezed once, took her hand back as if she was afraid to get too close. "Then regret it. Keep the memory. Keep it, because when you start to feel that you've become nothing but a weapon, when you no longer feel anything for the dead, you can look back at that memory."
She looked away. The lights of the fireflies danced in her eyes, golden and remote as the stars as she inhaled, saying,
"You can look back, and know that, once upon a time when you were young, you cared."
She drifted off into silence, and so did he, the two of them sitting on the sandy bank, listening to the peeping of frogs and the liquid sounds of water rushing through the shallows. Naruto rested his head on his folded arms for a moment before turning to her.
"Thanks, Yugito." He watched her stand, brushing sand off her pants. She resettled her sword on her back and offered a hand, helping him up.
"Let's find an inn for the night."
Tomoko locked the cash box, sliding it into the secret compartment in the bottom of the desk drawer before standing, cracking her back as she crossed the room and went down the hallway, turning into the tiny kitchen the clinic staff kept for their use.
"Naota," she called, "I need his food." The cook glanced up from his cutting board, shifting the cigarette in his mouth as he jerked his head at the plate on the counter. "Thanks," Tomoko said, picking up the plate, gazing down at the unpalatable sludge of overcooked noodles and semi-rotten vegetables. 'No more than he deserves,' she thought viciously, juggling the plate on one hand as she opened the door and continued down the hallway.
She glanced into the room where the patient was staying. His red hair was just peeking out from underneath the white blanket, the two green orbs of his eyes gleaming from the shadows underneath the cloth. His younger friend was sprawled loose-limbed in a chair, his head lolling back and mouth open, drooling. The infant on his lap was asleep as well, tiny fist knotted in his shirt. The other two travelers were in the room, seemingly making preparations to check out; the woman was redistributing the contents of their packs, while the boy was seemingly doing inventory of their food.
'Strange that the patient hasn't slept; the painkillers we gave him should have been enough to knock a horse out.' She shrugged mentally and continued on, turning at the end of the hallway and focusing her chakra, deactivating the high-level genjutsu the staff kept running. The wall shimmered, became transparent as she stepped through, before snapping back to solidity.
This part of the clinic was nothing like the white sterility of the public portion; cinderblock walls sucked every bit of warmth from the air, dirty gray rubber covering the walls, ceiling and floors. Candles spaced apart on the walls lit the long hallway, the rubber squeaking beneath her as she hurried down the hall.
She paused, catching sight of two men standing at the end of the hallway, their faces illuminated by the candlelight shining from within the cell at the end.
"Isamu-sama? Kaito-sama? What are you doing here?" She bowed as she came closer. The mayor and his deputy turned to see her, smiling. The flickering light from the cell made their faces resemble grinning deaths-heads.
"Checking on our prisoner," Isamu said, glancing down at the plate of food she held in her hands. "He's been eating well?"
"Yes, Isamu-sama. Varg-" the foreign name was thick and coarse on her tongue, "-has always eaten everything we give him."
"And he still has yet to speak?" Kaito asked.
She shook her head. "No, Kaito-sama. He hasn't spoken since the day he killed his family." Isamu ran his tongue over his lips meditatively, beady eyes glittering like black anthracite.
"And that was… when, Kaito?"
The deputy mayor startled at being addressed, bowing jerkily as he answered, "Nineteen years ago next month, Isamu-sama."
"Hm." Isamu turned to gaze into the cell, cocking his head. "Go on in, Tomoko. I'd like to see how he reacts."
"You won't see much, I'm afraid, Isamu-sama-" she stammered to a stop as the black eyes flicked in her direction, as cold and pitiless as a snake's.
"When I wish for your opinion, Tomoko, I will ask for it." She bowed again, turned, fished the keys out of her pocket, and unlocked the cell door. The thick plastic slab swung open with a creak, and she went in, closing the door behind her and peering into the dimness of the cell.
Varg sat in the far corner, clothed only in filthy pants. The tall foreigner from the Hidden Countries raised hazel eyes that gleamed red in the candlelight to her, red like a weasel's at night, the red-gleaming eyes following her every movement. His long blond hair, the dark gold of brass, lay in dirty ropes around his shoulders, the scruff of his beard matted and badly in need of a trim. His manacled wrists lay on the rubber floor, the skin thick with scarring where the too-tight cuffs cut into him.
He watched her with complete disinterest, his eyes empty of everything, his mind having shrunken to nothing from spending nineteen long years in a hell of light and silence. Tomoko knelt and shoved the plate at him, the soupy liquid slopping out and spattering the floor.
The signs were all there, plain as day: the white shock of hair by his temple, threaded with blue strands; the black seal of lightning bolts spanning his chest. 'Fucking imbecile,' she hissed in her mind, infuriated by the blank calm in his eyes, and stood, working up saliva and spitting at him. It hit him on the cheek and trickled down. He didn't react.
She turned on her heel and stomped from the tiny room, slamming the cell door behind her, and folded her arms across her chest, staring at the wall across the way, ashamed of having lost her control in front of her superiors.
"Well, Tomoko," Kaito said timidly, glancing at Isamu out of the corner of his eyes, "you can take comfort in the fact that this is the last time you'll ever have to feed him."
Her breath froze in her lungs as she turned around, meeting Kaito's eyes. "It's soon, then?" She glanced into the cell despite herself, at the red eyes that met her from the darkness, the blood-red eyes that made her remember the Rokubi, the weasel of lightning, the way it had turned the entire village into a cauldron of fire, killing over a thousand people.
Everyone had lost somebody.
And so the mayor had taken a child from an immigrant family from across the sea and used him as a vessel.
No one could have predicted the horror that would follow.
Tomoko squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the three charred corpses, black charcoal skin and red blisters and ivory bone. Even the little sister, her mouth frozen forever in a silent, tranquil smile.
"Yes," Isamu said, smiling, baring teeth like a spider.
Tomoko took a breath, steadying herself as she heard the rattle of Varg eating from within the cell. "And will it be a… public execution?"
"It will," Isamu confirmed. Tomoko fought the urge to smile.
"Good," she said simply, and turned and walked away.
Naruto let his pack fall as he looked around the room of the inn. There were four futons of questionable hygiene, peeling wallpaper with brown stains on the walls, and the thin carpet beneath his feet was scratchy and painful. They'd passed through the bar, a smoky room serving cheap sake and filled with even cheaper women and gotten their room key from a man who looked like he had no teeth left in his mouth.
"Home, sweet home," he said, turning around and helping Yugito carry Gaara to a futon. The Shukaku jinchuuriki's head lolled, green eyes rolling slowly back and forth, as if lost in some strange delirium. Naruto pulled the covers up to his chin and tucked him in, turning back to the others.
"It's better than some of the places I've been," Katashi said, handing Moriko off to Yugito and taking a flying leap onto the couch, which collapsed underneath him with a groan of dying springs, a cloud of dust swirling in the dim light.
"I'll go feed the brat," Yugito said reluctantly, glancing down at Moriko. "I don't suppose we have a fresh pair of earplugs?"
Katashi's head popped up from the couch cushions, and with another burst of inexhaustible energy, he was across the room and rooting through the bags, pitching a pair of earplugs at Yugito, who put them in with a fatalistic air before disappearing out the door.
Moriko began to howl as soon as Yugito finished feeding her, a piercing wail of rage that broke the twilight stillness.
"Think Moriko's going to wake up the rest of the village?" Katashi asked, tangled in his shirt as he struggled out of his clothing.
"Probably," Naruto said, watching with amusement as Katashi tripped over Gaara and fell into a table, "but you'd think she'd realize after two months of traveling with us that we're not going to let her starve."
"It doesn't work like that," Katashi said, pulling his sleeping shirt on. He spat blood into the sink and looked down, blinking away tears as he said softly, the child of the streets resurfacing, "It doesn't work like that."
He shrugged, pushing the darkness away, and bounced over to a futon, yanking the blankets up and sliding under them. "Good night!" he called, and fell asleep with enviable speed.
'I guess spending nine years in Kiri teaches you to sleep when you can,' Naruto thought, pulling his ratty sleeping pants on and choosing the futon between Gaara and Katashi. He stared up at the ceiling and the fan revolving in the dark for long minutes, blinking exhausted eyes, fighting back the vision of the dead man etched into his eyelids.
The lock clicked open and Yugito slid inside, holding Moriko in one arm, removing the earplugs with her free hand. Naruto rolled over enough to see both of them, checked on Gaara, glanced over his shoulder at Katashi, and allowed himself to sink into sleep.
Tsunade stared down at the photos strewn across the top of her desk with something that was rapidly approaching fury.
Four Hunter-nin, all killed by the jinchuurikis' hands.
One had been beheaded, his head still frozen in a rictus of agony; one had been shocked to death, electricity overloading his circulatory system, turning his veins into cooked noodles; the third had been immolated by lightning, nothing left of her but her ashes inside the melted piles of her clothing and her hitai-ate; the last's head had been pulverized, pulp by the glass shards that had torn apart his flesh.
It was Uzumaki and his companions' work.
She took a long breath, exhaled on a muttered curse. 'The boy is truly unredeemable, then,' she thought, sorrow and hatred mixing into one. 'This will break his teammate's hearts.' A snort. 'If they can be broken anymore than they already have.'
"Shizune?" she called. "Bring me file number 1405." Her assistant hurried over, slid the unassuming manila folder across the desk to her.
Tsunade flipped it open, gazed at the photograph. A pale boy with black hair and eyes, gazing with enviable solemnity out of the paper. The typed name was three letters long.
'So… Sai.' She looked at his profile, then smiled wryly. 'Congratulations; you're the newest member of Team Seven.'
Annotations
'He had almost forgotten the taste of fears.' – An allusion to the line 'I have almost forgotten the taste of fears' from William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act Five, Scene Five.
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