Disclaimer: I don't own nor have I contributed to Naruto in any way! Nope! None! -
Sky-eyed Kitsune: Alot of emotional trauma going on in my life right now coupled with some bad medical news. Apparently I have a tumor that can't be removed and I lost my four year boyfriend and best friend at the same time..but life goes on. Please enjoy, and sorry for the wait.
To DarkAngel3012: Thank you for the kind words!
To Kninn: Thank you! I apologize for the wait...
To blugirlami21: Hopefully this chapter will sort out where Arashi (and perhaps Kyuubi) stand in your mind right now. In the original story, since this is a sequel, Naruto was in a gang called Kurochi that went down after the mass murder of its members, one of them being Haku, his best friend, and the title of leader was passed on to Naruto. Suigetsu doesn't make an appearance until now, so seeds from the past are there, and explained in the next chapter in length. However, the fascination for Kyuubi is new. Ah, you always seem to hit on so many key points in your reviews. Having been through blackmail myself (emotional blackmail, more quid pro quo), it hits you like a train wreck. It's the only way I can describe it. True-without Pein or Sasuke, what could Kabuto do, if anything? He has the information on the murder of Haku, a major driving force for Naruto in the original story, but would it be enough of an incentive? I know it seems confusing now, and I like to do that a little. The knots will untangle themselves slowly. Thanks as always for the stunning review!
Thank you to everyone else that reviewed! I am so honored!
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Chapter Thirteen: Blood
You were my source of strength
I've traded everything
That I love for this one thing
Stranded in the offering
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Naruto groaned as he felt his eyes pulse behind their lids. He shut them tightly for fear that his eyeballs would fall right out of his skull with the way they were thumping.
He raised a hand to his head, seeking relief.
"Wet…" he murmured aloud as he felt his cold, damp and slightly sticky fingers touch his skin.
He cracked one eye open a sliver, and released a breath. The shades had been drawn over the window, so the room was not terribly bright for morning.
Naruto blinked open both eyes, the pastel hotel room ceiling coming into view.
"Bed…I'm in bed?" he whispered to himself, trying to remember how he got there in the first place. After the meeting with Kabuto he had completely blacked out, and had no recollection of anything that may have occurred afterwards, including how he got into bed or why he saw blond hair in his face instead of red.
Naruto sighed and sat up. He frowned as his bed also felt wet. Hidan would never let him live it down if he had peed his sheets.
He flopped his hands in front of them, and gasped a little when he saw that they were soaked with a dry, red liquid, his fingertips still wet.
He shook his head. Someone played a stupid prank.
Naruto threw off the covers haphazardly, and his whole body froze in place.
Beneath him the entire bed- the sheets all the way down to the mattress, was covered in a moist, dark red paint. He followed the sheets up to himself, to see his clothing bleached the same red color, his skin splashed with it-arms, legs, chest and all. Naruto twisted his body around to see that his pillow was dotted with the stuff here and there.
He whipped his head over to the bed beside him to see Pein's sleeping form facing away from him. If they had slept in separate beds than Naruto must've come in late.
Very late.
Naruto felt his breath quicken as his eyes ghosted over himself again and again, before he finally, shakily, stood and made his way to the bathroom. He paused and swallowed thickly as he saw a red smear on the silver doorknob. He looked down and almost jumped out of his skin as he saw maroon stains on the carpet.
Naruto took a slow, calming breath before closing his eyes, opening the door and stepping in, closing it behind him.
He opened his eyes and slapped his hands over his mouth to muffle his own scream of disgust.
Blood. It was everywhere. The walls, the floor, the sink, the shower curtain, the ceiling. The air was saturated with the coppery scent.
Tears bumped and flowed into and over Naruto's filthy hands, still clasped over his gasping, hyperventilating mouth.
Naruto pulled one of his hands away to open the shower curtain, and he felt his empty pit of a stomach heave.
"Back" the shower wall read in dripping, splattered blood, like five year old had been finger-painting. Naruto heard his breath audibly shake as he tried to evenly breathe. He looked over to the mirror that the hotel maids had replaced.
It was covered in blood, as if it had been painted, and the only erased parts of the reflective surface stated: "and better".
Naruto felt like he was going to vomit, pass out, and have a seizure all at the same time. He stumbled back a little, turning to reach for the doorknob.
"than ever"
Naruto gasped loudly and collapsed to the filthy ground as the message on the back of the door slammed into him.
He was a mess; a bloody, quivering, sweating, breathing mess.
Even the part of his brain that usually told him to calm down knew that there was no coming down from this. There was no doubt that it was blood, there was no doubt that it wasn't his, and there was no doubt Kyuubi had everything to do with it.
Naruto reached up and gripped the edge of the sink, hauling himself up as he felt his sanity teeter on the edge of nothingness.
He winced as his hand slipped and caught on something sharp in the sink.
"…in the sink?" Naruto thought, passing around the thought of whether or not he dared to look. His mind and body, however, weren't quite connecting anymore, and he felt his neck crane down during his thinking.
Naruto bit his lip at the plugged sink full of solid red water. But his eyes weren't on the water. They were on the tip of a knife poking out of it.
Mustering all of himself that remained, Naruto reached his hand down deep into the skin, pulling the plug and allowing the water to drain. As it disappeared the switchblade revealed itself, the blade tarnished slightly.
Naruto didn't touch it, fearing that what had transpired in the night might come back to him. He didn't want to know, he couldn't handle the thought…
Naruto tiptoed out of the bathroom, skin crusty with old blood, and began to strip his bed and ball up his sheets. He grimaced at the deep stain on the mattress.
He grabbed his pillow to shake out the case, and he suddenly dropped it as it revealed a little black book hiding underneath.
Naruto stared at the book, and he swore he could almost feel it staring back, taunting him, daring him to open it.
Naruto licked his lips and looked over to Pein. He was still sleeping, from the looks of it.
The blond held out his arm, reaching, but the book seemed miles away from his touch. He took a shaking step forward, afraid his knees would buckle beneath him at any moment.
He finally felt the paperback meet his fingers, and he gripped it gently.
Naruto did his best to ignore another person's dried blood under his fingernails as he flipped through the book. Everything looked norma—
Naruto flipped back a little as red flashed.
His gasping became something close to croaking as two big, fat, red X's glared at him.
He turned the page, but they stuck together, and his used his nails to carefully pull them apart. He knew why they were glued together at his first look.
Two more x's. Fresh and wet. With blood.
The word "dangerous" in the target's description was circled, and Naruto made out the sloppy, dripping words, "ha ha". Naruto turned back a page to see a little red smiley face painted over one man's face.
Naruto breathed sharply through his nose as he suddenly found himself deprived of oxygen, just realizing that he had been holding his breath the whole time. His heart was beating so quickly that it was fluttering, fluttering like a blood-sodden bird in a locked cage. It hummed in Naruto's ears as one steady note, and he felt the book fall from his hands, now trembling uncontrollably.
The sound of the book hitting the carpet made Pein grunt a little in his sleep.
Naruto drew in a sharp gasp of air as the man shifted, but made no signs of awakening.
Naruto continued with the sheets, balling them up and stuffing them under his bed.
After pestering and near threatening the women at the hotel's reception desk for almost twenty minutes, Naruto was handed a pair of clean sheets to put on the bed himself. As he left his ears picked up the women whispering about how it was so unlike a guest to change their own bed. Naruto wished his reasons were so noble.
After soundlessly re-entering the hotel room and making back up the clean, white bed, he locked himself in the bathroom with a roll of paper towels, a bucket and cloth, and some bleach.
Needless to say he had locked the door.
It had been an hour and Naruto was almost finished. The bathroom looked almost completely normal—he had even scrubbed the minute dots of blood off the ceiling until his fingers turned pruney and pale from the bleach. The smell of it overpowered the once coppery tang of blood pouring out of every particle in the air.
He jumped as there was a knock on the door, and his eyes shot to the bottom of it where he saw the shadows of feet shifting.
"Naruto?" Pein said softly from the other side, and Naruto swallowed thickly.
"I'll be out in a minute," he said, thankful that his voice kept steady though his hands quivered.
"You alright?"
"Yes," Naruto said a little too quickly. "I…was out late drinking last night and made a mess of the bathroom, so I'm cleaning it." He prayed his lie would pass.
"I was wondering where you were last night," Pein mused aloud, no hint of disbelief in his voice, and Naruto could've cried in relief. "You shouldn't drink yourself to death, you know."
"Yea, I know," Naruto said, resuming his scrubbing of the floor with a dry paper towel, making sure no trace was left, even a miniscule one. He heard Pein sigh on the other end of the door.
"I've been thinking," he started.
"You know that's not good for you, Pein," Naruto forced out, chuckling for added measure. He was a smooth liar when he needed to be, but not when he wanted to be.
"Ha ha," Pein droned sarcastically. "Anyways, I was thinking about what you said. About Arashi."
Naruto paused in his work. "…oh?"
"About how you said I might be in love with someone…someone who didn't exist."
Naruto cocked his head to the side.
"I don't remember telling you something like that."
Another sigh from behind the door.
"The night you were high on morphine...I lied. You said a lot of things. One of them being that I can't love Arashi, because he's someone that's made up."
Naruto furrowed his eyebrows down at the shiny tiled floor of the bathroom.
"I'm sorry for not telling you," Pein continued, and Naruto remained silent. Of all people, Naruto thought it was Pein who would never, could never, lie to him.
Reality smacked him in the face like a wet, dead fish.
People like that didn't exist, silly Naruto.
The blond forced himself to crack the fakest grin ever, and he was glad the Pein couldn't see him.
"It's all good," he said.
"That's a relief- I though you'd be mad." Pein sounded like a weight lifted from his voice.
"I don't have a reason to be mad," Naruto lied through grit teeth, eyes pricking and burning all the while.
"Well I've thought a lot about it, and even though Arashi is fake, you must have his qualities to even pretend to be him. So…" He sighed behind the door. "So I want to know you better, know Naruto better. I think…that it wouldn't be hard to fall for you."
Naruto stood and surveyed his handiwork. After a quick look in the mirror he noticed how filthy and red his skin was.
"You don't want to do that," Naruto said flatly, removing his clothes.
"Why not? I see so much of Arashi in you already."
"I'm just not the relationship type…my communication skills are shit, I'd rather accept a bottle of pills than a box of chocolates, I'm about as hugglable as an anorexic cactus, and my idea of romance is having a good nap on the couch."
He heard Pein chuckle weakly. "Well, I don't mind the napping part so much, but the pills and morphine need to stop." There was a pause. "I didn't even know you were on pills…"
"Surprise," Naruto said bitterly as he turned on the shower to the hottest setting.
Any conversation stopped or was drowned out by the sound of water beating the shower floor.
Naruto stepped in and hissed as his skin burn from the heat, but he stay under the scalding spray.
He leaned his head against the shower wall, watching the water swirling down the drain slowly turn red.
"You son of a bitch…what did you do?" Kyuubi still wasn't answering, seeming out of commission at the moment.
Naruto sighed heavily, feeling his bones practically rattle with his breath.
"At least I know that if I die on the job I'm taking you down with me."
Naruto jumped a little as he heard the swish of the shower curtain and Pein stepped in naked behind him.
"What are you doing?" Naruto sighed, not having the strength to be angry.
"If you were as drunk as you say then you must have a killer hangover," Pein said, casually grabbing a small bottle of the hotel's shampoo. "I don't want you passing out in the shower."
"Hm." Naruto faced forward and shrugged it off as Pein dropped the water temperature down, not saying a word. It wasn't their first shower together, and Naruto liked them hot.
Scalding hot.
Naruto hummed a little as Pein rubbed circles into his hair until the suds slid down his neck. He tipped his head back to give Pein more access, and he let a groan slip as pale fingers massaged the hair on the dip of his neck.
"…red?"
Naruto's eyes shot open.
Shit.
"Why is there red in your hair?" Pein asked clearly this time, and Naruto stole a glance back at him to see the color staining his fingertips.
"That is…" Naruto waited for Pein to fill in his sentence like always, but he just stared at his hand. "I…got in a fight. At the bar. I was so drunk, it's hard to remember."
Pein gave Naruto a look he had never seen before, a look so strong that it pegged him against the wall of the shower, immobile.
His eyes not leaving Naruto's, he held his sodden hand under the hot spray of the shower, cleaning it, before grabbing Naruto's own and holding it under the water.
His gaze shifted from Naruto's fingernails, encrusted underneath with dried blood, back to him.
"How stupid do you think I am?" he murmured, and Naruto felt his knees quiver.
"Pein, I don't—"
"How fucking stupid…do you think I am?" he whispered this time, clenching Naruto's hand tightly.
For one of the first times in his life Naruto had no where to run. Like some kind of frightened wild animal staring down the barrel of a hunter's long overdue shotgun.
He was caught.
Naruto licked his lips though the steam from the shower kept them moist, his heart pounding so hard he thought his ribcage would break.
Pein raised an eyebrow as Naruto slipped a little down the wall of the shower, still gripping his hand. His head slumped and eyes rolled away to the side like a lifeless doll.
"Naru…?"
"KYUUBI!" Naruto screamed as he ran through the murky shallows of his mind, sending water flying.
"Fucking answer me, Kyuubi!" he shouted. He was crying hysterically and shaking uncontrollably, utterly and completely lost in his torrent of fear.
He sprinted to the bars that gaped open to find Kyuubi in a hunched sitting position, sleeping.
"Kyuubi!" Naruto cried, practically flinging himself at the man.
"Ngh, Suigetsu?" Kyuubi mumbled as Naruto gripped him tightly. He blinked his eyes open and looked down, shocked to see the blond embracing him, shoulders quivering as he his hid his face in his shirt.
"…definitely not," Kyuubi murmured to himself. "Must be somethin' big for you to come an' get me."
Naruto looked up at him with wet sapphire eyes swirling in a tornado of anger, frustration, need, and raw fear. Fear that Kyuubi hadn't seen in Naruto in a long, long time.
"I d-don't know what the he…hell you did last night…" The words tumbled from Naruto's mouth like a river. "But he…Pein knows."
"What?" Kyuubi's eyes narrowed. "How? What happened?"
Naruto shook his head and gripped Kyuubi's red tanktop fiercely.
"Showerhairbloodfingernails," Naruto rushed out like he was in a hurry to stop speaking, and that's just what he did. His jaw shut and he hid himself against Kyuubi once more, not another word escaping him.
"Ah," Kyuubi mused. He placed an arm around Naruto a smiled a little, secretly happy that the blond had come to him in his most desperate moment, not anyone else.
Not the stupid Uchiha.
"He didn't hurt you, did he?" Kyuubi asked, dropping his tone to something softer.
After a moment Naruto shook his head against the redhead.
"Hey," he said, pulling Naruto away from him. He tipped the blond's chin up to look at him. "Remember how all those years back you used to call me your 'older brother'?"
Naruto took in a shaking breath, nodding. Kyuubi smirked and bumped their foreheads together.
"Big brother's gonna take care of it now."
Pein was panicking a little.
Naruto was just slumped there against the shower wall, eyes dead to the world—not even a bright blue anymore, but a sickly cobalt grey.
"Naruto?" Pein said, shaking him for the second time. He really didn't want to have to do anymore than that, but he wasn't responding.
Pein brought down his hand to slap Naruto on the cheek when it was caught in a vice like grip, and dark violet eyes were burning a hole through him.
Pein just stared, slack-jawed as the violet swirled and settled to a crimson red.
Naruto shifted his eyes looking around at them and their position.
"When he said shower I didn't think he meant he was in one now," he mumbled.
"Naruto?" Pein said carefully, and the dark glare was on him again, dripping with anger.
"Leave a message after the beep," Naruto said, before a fist reeled out and Pein hit the opposite end of the shower wall.
Naruto smirked as he sagged down, clutching a bloody nose.
"Beep."
"Na-Naruto! What the fuck!" Pein garbled out amidst the blood.
"Yea, I think I can remember to tell him that." Naruto leaned back on the shower wall and moved his hand to set the temperature all the way back up.
He smirked as Pein yelped in surprise at the heat and stood, struggling to move out of the spray, before Naruto flung him back over.
"You better stay the fuck over there and listen up," he hissed, grinning a little inside as he saw the man's skin turn bright pink and his teeth grit. "I am not Naruto. We are not Naruto. He is Naruto. I am Kyuubi. We are two people, two, in the same body. Follow me?"
Pein wasn't even trying to escape the scalding water now as he stared at Kyuubi with wide, confused eyes.
Kyuubi sighed in exasperation. "Split personality, you moron." He suddenly chuckled a little. "Actually, this must be kind of a mind-fuck for you, huh? First it was Arashi, who doesn't exist at all. Then there was Naruto/Kyuubi, both of which exist separately. Man, this is a shitty month for you."
Pein's eyes followed Kyuubi's hand as he held his fingers under the spray of water, cleaning his fingernails.
"B-blood…" Pein managed, and Kyuubi smiled at him.
"Yea, its blood. Don't worry though, it's not Naruto's. Speaking of whom, I want you to stay away from him. He's got enough on his plate with resuming gang work."
"Wh-what!"
"Hablo ingles?"
"A gang? Why? How?" Pein sputtered, a hand still to his nose.
"Blackmail. What else?" Kyuubi shrugged. "Personally I couldn't be happier. I was made for this stuff. But Naru isn't so happy." He pointed a finger to Pein. "And there is no way that I'm letting you near him."
Pein looked about himself quickly before standing up straighter and almost shouting the words that Kyuubi would never have imagined him saying.
"Let me join!"
"'Scuse me?"
"The gang. If you won't let me see Naruto regularly…" Pein took a deep breath, face flushed from the immense heat and steam. "Then let me see him on the job."
Kyuubi's eyebrows scrunched as he shook his head. "You are one sick fuck. Willing to risk that much to get close to him? What's he got that's so special, huh? If it were me I'd tell you to get lost, but it ain't my call."
Pein took a step forward and Kyuubi glared in warning.
"Who's is it?"
Naruto sighed as he pressed his thumb in the door handle and the locked clicked, letting him in. He nodded to Suigetsu, receiving one back, and scrunched his eyes at Sakura.
"Sakura?" he said, but she didn't look at him, hugging her arms.
The back door opened and Kabuto walked through, taking a seat in his chair.
"My sources confirmed that the quota was filled," he said, folding his arms on his desk. He shifted his eyes to Sakura. "…but only two people filled it."
Suigetsu shot his head over to Sakura almost as quickly as Naruto.
"Sakura…you didn't—"
"I COULDN'T!" was the scream that finally tore apart her lips as she broke down to her knees in a sobbing mess. "I couldn't…I just couldn't!"
Kabuto clicked his tongue. "Well my dear 'couldn't' doesn't cut it." Naruto's gaze snapped over to the desk as he heard an eerily familiar click.
"Hey! The hell are you doing!" Suigetsu growled as Kabuto aimed a black handgun down at the girl on the floor.
"It's a precaution. This way people don't run their mouths about our little underground business."
"Stop! Please, stop!" Sakura wailed, tears forming a river down her flushed face. "I-I'll do anything else! Anything! Please don—" Sakura screamed and Suigetsu shouted something at the sharp pop that echoed in the room.
Seeing Naruto standing in front of her, Kabuto's shocked face, and the hand over the gun, Sakura broke down in a new set of tears, this time of relief.
Naruto stared Kabuto down as he held the gun away, his palm covering the barrel's exit.
Suigetsu hardly managed to blink before it had happened. Naruto was fast, if not faster than he had remembered. He just barely saw the body move and the hand reach out before the gun shot rang out. Now he saw Naruto bent over Kabuto's desk, the gun pointing away from Sakura and into Naruto's left hand. A hand with a hole right through it.
"You're shitless scum, you know that?" Naruto hissed, the only other sound in the room the soft patter of his blood hitting the floor.
"I try," Kabuto said with a straight face.
Naruto used his free hand to pull out the bingo book from his pocket.
"I killed four, enough to cover Sakura's quota." He opened the book with two fingers where the pages stuck together from blood. He slammed the book down on the desk, daring Kabuto to challenge him.
There was a moment of silence where they simply regarded each other before Kabuto smirked.
"You inherited your father's reflexes…" He hummed with quiet laughter. "Fine. Just this once, I will take two of your kills for her quota. But there will be no next time."
Naruto released his hand from the gun, and instantly felt his veins throb as a sudden vast quantity of blood poured from the exit wound.
He stumbled back, hearing Sakura cry out his name, but the one to catch him was Suigetsu.
Sakura was still crying when Suigetsu led him out the back entrance of the building with one arm over his shoulder.
"Just put him there, I need to see it," she babbled. And Suigetsu grunted as he helped a dazed Naruto slide down the wall to a poor sitting position.
Sakura managed to get a hold of her mind somewhat as she gently took Naruto's hand and examined the wound.
He hissed as she turned it over, examining the entrance and exit wounds.
"There may be some torn ligament or veins but I don't think a bone was broken," she said. "Suigestu, give me a piece of your shirt."
"Why the fu—"
"NOW!" Suigetsu jumped a little at the order before flipping out a switchblade from his pocket and tearing a clean line around the rim of his shirt.
"You're lucky I don't like this shirt that much," he mumbled as Sakura stole the rag from his hand and knotted the cloth to make a tourniquet.
Naruto grit his teeth and Sakura shushed him. She tore some of the remaining unneeded cloth and pressed it harshly against the gunshot wound.
"Agh!" Naruto cried out, panting as he attempted to numb out the pain. The rag was instantly soaked red but Sakura kept on pressing nonetheless.
"Don't ever scare me like that again!" she reprimanded sharply, before leaning in and whispering, "Thank you….so much."
Naruto smiled a little at her words before passing out.
Review a line if you have the time.
Sky-eyed Kitsune