Red Hand

Summary: A power is growing. Two forces are feared to be joining together and no one, except Kakashi, seems to understand what is happening. Will the young Hatake conquer his own demons in time to save the others he didn't realized he cared for? :.:.Naruto/HP Crossover.:.:

Genre: Drama/Angst

Rating: T

Author's Notes: Please excuse grammatically and spelling errors. This is my NaNoWriMo novel...who says it has to be great? Not me, that's for sure.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Harry Potter. They are both owned by other, much richer people, mkay?

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Sound is the first of my senses that returns to me. The sound of slow dripping water landing on stone. Then smell. The smell of mold and rotting skin. Feeling is next. The feeling of cold – freezing cold. Then touch. The touch of cold stone against my skin.

Finally I brave cracking my right eye open to find myself in a completely stone cell that is barely tall enough for me to stand in. It is, however, long enough for me to lay down in. It's actually twice my length.

There is no visible door even though I know that there must be one somewhere – it just must only be visible from the outside.

I'm not the only one in here. Though I am the only one that's in here who is still alive. A body lays on the opposite side of the wall…skin so rotten away that the face is unrecognizable. I can't even tell if it's a girl or a boy.

I don't even bother opening my Sharingan eye. I can already tell that my chakra has been sealed so severely that just opening Obito's eye would completely drain me and plunge me back into unconsciousness.

Darkness envelopes this small cell…everything I see is nothing but faint shadows, faint shade changes.

I push myself up into a sitting position. Back leaning against the cold stone and my knees hugged into my chest. The water that I hear dripping is coming from a small spout in the stone wall near me. I know it is my water supply – though no cup can be found anywhere in this place.

A pile of protein bars have been neatly stacked in the corner to my right, the opposite side of the water spout. I know that this is my food supply – though hunger is not something that I'm currently worried about.

How long have I been here? I don't know. I don't even know how long I've been awake. Time doesn't seem to have any meaning here, for how can it? Everything is just blackness.

Dark and cold. That is the only thing that I can really pick out from this place. I'm surrounded by nothing more then darkness, coldness, and death.

After some amount of time has passed – I don't know how much – my stomach growls in hunger. The cell is so small that I can reach out my hands and touch the walls on both sides without even moving.

I reach out with my right arm and grab a protein bar. I slowly unwrap it, placing the wrapper beside the pile of protein bars, and take a bite. The food sticks to my dry mouth and I immediately begin to crave water.

I turn my head to stare at the faint shadow outline of the water spout on my left. There is no cup in here to use to collect the dripping water, at least none that I can see. The water drips out so slowly that it would be pointless to try and drink straight from the water spout.

So I do the only think I can think of doing in this situation. I rip a small piece of fabric off of my shirt and stuff it in to the water spout. The fabric will soak up the water and become damp – I can then suck the water out of the fabric. It is crude and shameful but it is the only method I can think of to secure my survival. And in the end that is all I am trying to do in here…just survive.

I finish forcing the protein bar down my dry throat and I wrap my arms around my legs, burying my head in my knees. I don't know how long I stay here…time has become completely pointless. I can no longer tell if my eyes are even opened or closed. It does not even matter – it is the same darkness either way.

Eventually the faint sound of dripping water reaches my ears again. The piece of fabric I stuffed in the water spout, the piece of fabric I forgot about, has become soaked completely through. I reach out with my left hand, gripping blindly about the wall, and grab the piece of fabric. I remove it from the water spout and bring it to my mouth – not even bothering to lift my head from my knees.

I slowly suck out the water, savoring the rare wetness. I stuff the piece of fabric back into the water spout after I've sucked it dry.

It has gotten to the point where being asleep and being awake are the same thing. Nothing but darkness and my own thoughts. I am not even sure if I sleep at all.

A new sound reaches my ears…the scratching of keys in a lock and the grinding of doors against stone. Footsteps echo within the small cell.

"This place stinks," a man's voice grinds against my ears – causing me to wince at the sound.

"Well there is a body decomposing in here," another man's voice answers - a deeper, older voice.

I don't even notice the smell anymore. It's become so ingrained into my sense of smell that it seems completely normal to me now.

"Hey, you alive there kiddo?" the first man, the younger man, asks as he kicks me in the shin.

I make no response. Why should I respond to these people who have imprisoned me in this Hell-hole?

"Fine, be troublesome like that," the younger man states, "You are only make this harder on yourself."

Someone grabs my wrists, my wrists that are still tightly hugged around my legs, and yanks me forwards – forces my head to look up. My right eye opens up on pure instinct but it only makes a slight difference. The room is still shrouded in darkness and I can just barely make out the faint outline of the man's face.

He smiles at me and then twists my weak body around. I don't even care what they do…what pain can they still inflict on me? Leaving me here, to be tortured by my own thoughts and the passage of time, is worse then any physical pain they can inflict on me.

He holds my wrists against the stone wall as I kneel on the floor and my back faces the middle of the room and the older man. The younger man stands slightly off to my right so that he does not cover my back.

Something rips in to my back. Pain that I was not prepared for shoots though me. The bite of the whip the older man holds strike across my back again – tearing through my clothes to get to my skin. I bit my bottom lip to stifle the cries of pain that desperately try to break out. I tense up my back and the more I prepare for the lashes the less they seem to hurt.

Finally he stops and I take a deep, shuddering breath to try and calm down the fiery pain in my back.

I cry out in surprise and pain as the whip cuts deep into my back – ripping into a lash made earlier and cutting far deeper then any of the other welts. I was unprepared and as a result the pain is unbearable and sobs of agony choke my breath. The younger man laughs.

I can faintly hear the two men talking to each other but the ringing in my ears makes it impossible for me to determine what it is that they are saying. The younger man swings my body around and pushes me into the floor – chest down.

He whispers something into my ear but I can't decipher what it is – nor do I particularly care what he said. The other man kneels down beside me and I hear him twisting the cap off of a bottle.

"This is going to make you wish you were dead," the older man says, "this will teach you a lesson."

What lesson? What are they trying to teach me? Why do they care so much about making me suffer? What did I ever do to them to piss them off so much?

A liquid pores across my back, pooling into the lashes left by the whips. The liquid feels just like water and it doesn't even hurt. What is the meaning of this?

I hear the retreating footsteps of the two men.

"Have fun," the younger one tells me as I hear the door close and lock behind them.

I lay there, completely still, waiting for something that I don't even think is going to happen.

But then my back begins to feel warm. Then hot. Then the heat begins to spread throughout my body. I start to panic. This can not be a good sign. It might not hurt right now but I have a gut instinct that it is about to hurt very, very much.

The heat turns into a fiery pain that courses throughout my whole body. My limbs thrash against the stone walls in a futile attempt to find a release for the agony. My blood feels as if it has been drained from my body and replaced with acid.

Yet again time has no meaning. Eventually the fire inside me begins to recede into a dull ache. I lay still against the cold floor, unable to determine if my eyes are closed or open.

Finally – after the pain has receded enough for me to move – I push myself up into a sitting position and return to my position against the cold wall. Hands hugging my legs to my chest and head buried into my knees. The smell of blood, my blood, reaches my nose. My shirt as been so torn by the whip that it hangs in shreds on my body. I carefully rip it completely off for having the fabric rub against the lashes on my back is more painful then letting the cold air touch my skin.

My body craves for water and I reach out to my left and grab the piece of fabric – that surprisingly managed to stay inside the water spout during my torture – and place it in my mouth. I return it to the water spout after it has been sucked dry of all water.

Time makes it slow crawl. I don't know how long I stay here. Sometimes I wonder if they've forgotten me here. I wonder if I will simple stay here until I starve – until my heart is no longer strong enough to keep on beating.

My body shudders in shock and surprise as sound reaches my ears. Screams of pain an agony break the still silence that I have become so accustomed too. I remove my hands from my knees and press them against my ears to try and block out the sounds – it doesn't work.

I don't know how long it took but eventually I realize that the voice is familiar and is, in fact, my own. My captors must have recorded it when they tortured me and it has to be playing into this room through some sort of speaker.

I crawl through the whole cell – checking every section of the walls, floor, and ceiling with bleeding fingertips and torn fingernails in an attempt to find the speaker and destroy it. I never find it and end up giving up. I return to my position against the wall…arms hugging my legs to my chest and head buried in my knees.

Time crawls on, the screams continue to torture my brain. Sleep, or what has resembled sleep for my time in this cell, eludes me.

The sound finally stops and not long after I hear the door grind open and three sets of footsteps, instead of two, enter the room.

I lift my head up and crack open my right eye. I immediately I have to shut it as light penetrates my sight for the first time in a very, very long time. After a few moments I force my watering right eye to open up and stay open. I stare at two pairs of feet wearing boots and a pair of bare feet standing in the middle. I look up to see the faces of the three people. The young man from earlier is here, but the other man – who is even younger – is new, is someone I don't recognize, and is the one carrying the lantern.

The middle person, the one with the bare feet, is nothing more then a scared little girl…no older then twelve. The older man has a kunai pressed against the girl's throat.

"This girl is from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry , her name is Naomi Worn, I believe she is a Second Year student," the older man says, "What do you have to say about that?"

I stay silent. I don't have anything to say to that and I doubt I could even talk if I did have anything to say.

The older man smiles at me, "You know, we do know that you hold the codes that we need."

I stare blankly up at him, "What…what are you talking about?" I manage to force out of my dry throat.

"Don't play dumb with us, you know what we're talking about. Now tell us the codes or she dies."

"Please," the girl pleads, "Please…just tell them the codes," a few tears make their way down her dirty face."

I just stay silent. What codes? I know no codes…at least, I don't think I do. Maybe I did at one point and have just lost that memory within this cell. Or maybe I never had them to begin with. I don't know.

"Very well…suit yourself," the older man grins at me.

"Don't…" I feebly protest, "Don't…don't kill her."

"Tell us the codes," the younger one speaks up, "And her life will be spared."

"I don't know the codes," I mutter, "I don't know what you're all about."

"Well then…that's to bad, neh?" the older man tells me, a hint of glee and amusement in his eyes.

The girl's eyes widen in shock and a split second of pain as the older one cuts his kunai through her neck. He pushes the lifeless body towards me and she collapse on me – her warm bloods pours against my body.

"We'll leave her here for you to ponder," the same, older man says.

They both leave, closing the door behind them and surrounding me in darkness again.

I stay still, letting the blood fall against my body. Eventually I push the body off of me and drag it towards the other side of the cell. I place her besides the decomposing body from before I even came in here. I cross her arms over her chest and arrange her hair in an attempt to make her look somewhat decent in death.

I crawl back to the other wall and return to my normal position of legs hugged to my chest and head buried in my knees.

Time continues on its slow crawl. Silence envelopes the room again, along with the smell of rotting flesh.

It feels like years have passed but I doubt it has been that long. Though it could be - I have no real idea how long it has been.

The door grinds open and one set of footsteps enters. The person kneels down in front of me and lifts me head up.

The person is the younger man from the time they killed that girl.

"Be quiet, don't say a word, do exactly as I say," he whispers, "and you might just be able to get out of here."

I nod and he stands up. He holds out his hand, I grab it, and he pulls me up. He turns around, still holding tightly on to my hand, and leads me out of the dark cell that has been my home for a very, very long time.

He closes the door behind us and then leads me down the dark hallways. As we walk the darkness gets lighter and lighter.

"The guards are all off getting drunk right now," he explains to me, "Since you are the only prisoner still alive right now they figured that you would not be able to escape on your own and that they wouldn't have to worry about you."

He ducks into a side hallway and pulls me with him. We walk on in silence for a long time until we reach a door.

"I'm sorry that I don't have anything for you to take with you," he tells me as he opens the door to reveal a snow covered outside world.

"Go North-West to get back to Hogwarts. There is a town about a days walk away from here."

I nod, "Thanks," my hoarse voice whispers, "But why risk your life for me?"

He smiles at me, "You fight for what I can only dream of fighting for."

I nod and turn around to attempt to make my way back to the safety of Hogwarts.

"Please," he says, "Please don't try to fight anyone from the Red Hand again without support. They have been training for years to simply fight you and only you."

The door closes behind me and I look around.

What the fuck am I suppose to do now? I'm cold, tired, worn out, half-starved to death, and my chakra is still fucking sealed. How am I suppose to get back to Hogwarts in this condition? How am I suppose to stay alive when I 'm outside in the middle of winter with barely any clothes on except pants and shoes? I have no weapons to protect myself and no chakra to use any sort of Jutsu at all.

I know that they are going to kill that kid who just saved my life and I know that they are probably going to be able to find me. Snow leaves footprints that are easy to track and easy to follow. It will not be long until they get back, realize I'm missing, and then find my footsteps and track me down.

It will not be long until I'm back in that cell again.

I take a few steps forward in, what I hope to be, a North-West direction. My slow, steady steps slowly turn into a slow jog and then a full blown run. I need to get as far away from here as I can and as fast as I can. There is no lagging around now, I can't afford to be slow.

My chakra is so severely sealed that I barely have enough to just stay alive yet I'm running as fast as I can in a futile attempt to escape a fate that I'm chained too.

I run into the safety shadows of the forest. The cold is freezing my body, cutting deep into my skin. The running is breaking the healing skin of the lashes left from the whips from a time that seems so long ago. I wonder what month it is now? I wonder how long I have really been trapped in that Hell-hole?

My running turns into slow, uneven steps as I trudge my way through the snow. The sun begins to set and night overtakes the world. How long did I run for? I look back to see the very faint outline of the building that I think was the building I was trapped in.

It starts to snow and I hug my arms around my chest in a futile attempt to keep myself warm. I stumble constantly but manage to keep on walking. I can't go to sleep now because if I do I know I will never wake up. I need to keep walking. If I keep walking I'll get closer to Hogwarts and I'll keep my body warm – at least warm enough to stay alive.

I stumble, taking a few shaking steps before falling to my knees. My body shivers violently as my breath hitches in my throat. The little bit of extra chakra I had is now gone. To keep going would almost guarantee my death but to stay here will guarantee my death.

I force myself to stand up and keeping walking. I don't even know if I am going in the direction I'm suppose to be going in anymore. I push through a thick wall of underbrush to find myself in a large clearing with a small house. I don't how late it is but I do know that that is a house that is before me.

I stumble forwards and, after what seems like hours, I finally make it to the door. I knock.

No one answers.

I knock again. Still nothing. I knock again and finally I hear sounds from within.

"I'm coming!" an old, angry man yells from within, "Do you know how late it is!"

The door squeaks open and I just stare at the old man standing there.

"What do you want?" he asks angrily.

My vision spins and then turns to black. Unconsciousness creeps up on me and I don't try to fight it.

I'm far too tired to fight it anymore.