25. Gone

"Sasuke?"

Naruto watched with a rising sense of terror as the person he had always considered a brother slowly walked towards him. His eyes were practically bleeding the crimson within them. The marks that were on his skin looked like a permanent tattoo, but they were moving like a hundred snakes going over each other in the grass. There was such a strong killing intent radiating off of him that Naruto unconsciously believed he could actually see it, like an aura of sorts. His best friend's eyes were cold, and showed no mercy, as if Naruto had done him wrong a thousand times over. A sinister smirk came to h is lips.

"Look at you . . . like a deer caught in headlights," he said. "You're scared to death." Naruto didn't miss how his voice sounded so full of darkness and evil—like a real vampire from when they were kids in the old stories they would tell each other.

'He . . . He's completely lost his mind!'

"Oh, Sasuke? I'm sorry, dear boy, but we don't have the time for this right now." Sasuke scowled at Orochimaru, who in turn smiled again. "But I promise you, you'll get the chance to kill him some other time."

Sasuke's head tilted back to face Naruto, everything seeming to be in a slow, slightly blurry motion. Naruto began to shake violently when Sasuke gave him a sadistic, blood-thirsty grin. A chill ran up Naruto's spine as he found it harder and harder to breathe.

Before anything else could happen, Sasuke, Orochimaru, and Kabuto jumped into the air and turned, running through the trees, leaving Naruto to himself in the dark, cold and misty forest. The lake and everything around it didn't seem all that peaceful anymore.

'What the hell just happened?!' his mind screamed.

After that it seemed like a struggle just to form a coherent thought. His vision began to spin in and out of clarity, giving Naruto a possible migraine. His head felt heavy, like there was a brick or two tied to it. He wanted to get up and get out of there, but his body only sagged against the thick tree. Naruto felt as if he had no control over his body. His vision blurred again, but this time it went black. And all he could see were the marks that had been slipping across Sasuke's skin going around in circles around him. And all he could hear was the cackling of Orochimaru, surrounding him and filling all of his senses.

Naruto slammed his hands over his ears, trying to block out the horrifying sound echoing in his mind. He wanted to claw his eyes out just to stop seeing everything replaying from the past whatever time it was ago.

In the distance, Naruto could faintly hear a pair of footsteps. The sound was coming from the cavern hole, and Itachi and mike came outside a moment later. The latter spoke first.

"We heard noise—what was going on?" he demanded. After looking around for a moment, Itachi turned his gaze back onto Naruto.

"Where's Sasuke?"

" . . . " When the blonde didn't answer, Itachi began to panic.

"Where is he? Where's my brother?"

He's gone. He left."

"He WHAT?!?!?" Sakura shrieked. Mike winced at the sudden volume.

"Left—with Orochimaru, based on what Naruto told us," he said, ignoring the ringing in his ears.

Sakura, Jiryiah, Sai, and Kiba had arrived at the underground caves four and a half hours after the others. Sakura was still weak from the fight and the torture she received prior to that. But of course that didn't stop her from her next move—she was suddenly stronger.

She grabbed mike by the collar of his button-down shirt and yanked him down to her eye level. Her eyes turned into slits while she glared at him.

"Where's Naruto?" she asked quietly through clenched teeth. With a shaking hand, the man pointed to one of the tunnels leading to some of the other rooms. Sakura uncaringly shoved the man to the side, not even watching as he hit the ground with a grunt.

Sakura stormed down the narrow tunnel, a mix of anger and determination radiating off of her. When she passed some people, they actually pressed themselves against the wall to get as far from the raging woman as possible. Though she didn't care the least bit about what they thought. She was going to get to the bottom of whatever was going on.

Sakura ended up in one of the spare rooms, one of the larger ones. She saw two cots—one with Naruto, and the other, Hinata. While the latter was practically dead to the rest of the world going on around her, the other was quite the opposite.

Naruto was sitting in a slouched position, his hands lying limply in his lap. There was a gauze wrap around his head, along with one on one of his hands and she could guess that he probably had one around his midsection by the way he was slouched. There was dirt and blood matted into his hair and face. His cloths had some minor tears in it.

As Sakura approached him, she noticed how pale he was. His eyes were wide, staring blindly at his lap. His face seemed to be frozen in the look it possessed. Sakura suddenly pitied him.

"Naruto." The boy/man jumped and his eyes focused onto Sakura. "I need to know what all happened. Can you tell me?" she asked softly. She couldn't help but be calm and patient with him. He seemed so fragile. Whatever happened must have been pretty bad to put him through this much of a shock. Sakura noticed how a pained look came into his eyes, though his face didn't change the look it held.

". . ." He took a few deep breaths in an effort to calm himself and grab a sense of composer for himself.

"If you can't tell me at the moment, I could probably wait until—"

"No," he interrupted. Though his voice was just under a whisper, he was heard as clearly as if he had screamed it. His voice was low, and sounded mentally and physically exhausted.

"Naruto, I can wait . . ." Sakura said, trying to make sure he didn't feel forced to say anything yet. Whatever happened was still fresh to him, and she could tell he was his breaking point.

"No," he repeated, though this time a little more firmly. "Sakura I am not too sure what exactly happened out there. But . . . I do know that it wasn't totally . . . normal. And it was a bad thing, also."

Sakura swallowed, preparing herself for the worst.

"Tell me."

Author's Comments

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!! I haven't been too active lately--I'm soooooo sorry! Thing is, with the recent manga being all screwed up lately, I've had a sasusaku-depression (with Sai and his whole "explanation"-if you don't know, you don't really want to. I hate the guy now--he can go die.)

ANYWAY! I am on Twitter! my username's fdty94, just like my Youtube name. I'll be posting up things about story and video updates.

Does anyone have any ideas for later on in the story? I need some ideas for the third story to this triligy to get me going again. I'm still writing the second part, but I need some deep inspiration. Anything on FF I should read?

Next Chapter!: Let me Tell You a Story