Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Giving your life for someone you love is better than watching that person give their life for the same love.

Chapter 1: Through the Fog

"If the weakest link falls, who is to say that the rest are not better off?"

How could someone think that?

How could anyone believe that?

How could he have believed?

Believed any of it?

It was all a lie. He'd realize he'd never existed, and it would be as if nothing had ever happened.

It was even darker now. Nighttime. The clatter of sandals swiftly faded down the corridor outside. The third watch was over.

Naruto hardly gave the motions of the outside world any thought; it had become natural to ignore them. He hazily hovered further back into the cell, not daring to venture too quickly. It was probably just another genjutsu.

Genjutsu.

Why had he ever wanted Ero-Sennin to teach him that?

Taijustu. Ninjutsu. Neither of them messed with who you were, bent what you knew so out of shape that you wondered if you'd ever known it at all.

Naruto managed to find a wall. He faintly embraced the coolness of the tile besides the fact that he was already chilled to the bone.

It was too dark to see, too quiet to hear. Someone had snapped their fingers, and the entire world shut off. No sound. No light. Nothing. His staggered breathing morphed into the whispers of long forgotten friends.

"Naruto, you idiot!" Sakura would say.

"What a loser."

Maybe they'd never existed either. The thought seemed reassuring in a strange way.

Naruto shook his head. He was alive. They must have been too. Or maybe not. Maybe they'd died back then, back in the war. He hadn't been there. The realization made the world seem even darker.

He shuffled further along. Even if it was a genjutsu, he figured he might as well find out where he was. He'd been in a similar setting before. His fingers sensed another corner, and he followed the path. The room wasn't turning out to be spacious. Oh, well.

Naruto grimaced slightly. He wished that his sense of smell had been stolen instead. The cell was haunted with the stench of decay and corpses that danced in the air around him, but he forced his head down and continued his exploration. He silently prayed that he wouldn't find anything unsightly. He laughed awkwardly. Perhaps it hadn't been a bad thing that it was too dark to see.

As he walked, a disturbing thought prodded his mind. When had reality stopped? Even his dreams seemed more real than his waking hours. He sprinted through his memories, desperately searching for the place where the seams of his psyche had come undone, sheer panic ripping through his system. An image immediately burned past his blind eyes. Naruto shut himself off from the swirling heat of emotions as soon as he felt the first lick of the flame, nearly falling over as the torrent subsided.

He had turned his back.

Naruto forced himself to swallow down the feelings and carry on. He was frustrated by how lost he felt. He was his own greatest ally, and he didn't understand himself, trust himself. Where was Kurama?

The fox gave no answer from his subconscious. He was completely and totally alone.

Naruto took a moment to listen to the silence. He could hear his heart beating in his ears and the quickening of his breath, the noise deafening in the sadistic stillness.

The blonde took a deep, calming breath and dedicated himself to making it around the perimeter. Tedious goals were the only things that were keeping him together, and he did his best to find as many as possible to occupate his time.

He continued to trudge cautiously next to the wall, appreciating the winter chill that somehow seeped through the cracks and bit his skin. The timeless rhythm of his feet against the floor offered some security. It was something he could control.

Without warning, his foot bumped something. Naruto nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise, stumbling back a few steps while staring at a spot he couldn't see.

Someone else was there.

He cautiously slipped closer, reminding himself of the boisterous scent that permeated the room. His limbs froze as he forced his hand to move closer.

Even when he touched the smoothness of human skin, he couldn't help but flinch back. The person was still warm. He had expected them to be as cold as ice; it meant they were alive.

Naruto nearly choked on his own astonishment. He had no idea how long he'd been there, but never before had he been in contact with someone outside of the interrogators. It must've been fake, the whole thing. He was certain of it now.

He moved closer against his own judgment, taking a seat beside his cellmate and hugging his knees. Naruto tapped the person lightly with his foot. They're probably unconscious, he concluded after a few tries, returning his head to the front.

He felt like a joke or an icebreaker should have been bursting from his lips. After all, this was the first normal person he'd run into, genjutsu or not. His mind was still too jumbled to come up with anything, however, and in the end, he simply gave up with a sigh.

Naruto edged closer to his companion, relishing the faint warmth they spared him. He wondered what they looked like, what their name was, if they had anyone they cared about back from wherever they were from.

Naruto coughed as a lump of tears formed in his throat. He swallowed it down and pushed all of the memories back down, practicing as much self-control as he could manage. Besides, they were probably fabricated anyway, all of the loyalty, the joy, the betrayal. None of it was real. All he knew was that he was, and that would have to be good enough.

A different thought tore itself back into his consciousness: When had reality stopped? The paralyzing anxiety was almost more than he could take, breaking his strained peace into thousands of pieces. Could someone's life just stop like that, a clock whose gears were stuck while time continued unabatedly? It didn't even seem possible.

Naruto exhaled coolly, taking a moment to collect his thoughts for the upteenth time. It was clear that he couldn't start at the end; his recent memories still needed time to scab over.

Black Zetsu. Madara. Obito. Kaguya. The War. Naruto agreed. Everything else, every other memory, all led up to that same point. If he had known what would happen, he probably would have let the plant-jerk go about his business. Naturally, as Uzumaki Naruto, when he overheard some alternate plan to obtain the bijuu, an alternate plan to end him, he had been very interested. Some crazy time-travel — or whatever the heck it was — jutsu had not been what he was expecting at all. He learned his lesson. He shouldn't have tried to tackle anyone in the middle of a hand-sign sequence.

Maybe that was when, he wondered, distantly rubbing his arms to conserve heat. Naruto frowned. Kaguya hadn't been anywhere near there. He was sure of it. Unless Zetsu had taken up genjutsu without him knowing, there was no way that time had stopped there.

The blonde decided to take the imaginative leap and assume that that whole episode had been true. He breathed into his cupped hands, the humidity livening his fingers. So, if he had started to lose it afterward, then he had to journey closer to those recent, cutting recollections. Oh, kami. Where had it all started?

Author's Note:

I didn't plan on having half the story told in a flashback, but that's what happened. :/ Guess you guys'll just have to deal with the Kishimoto-ness. Minato comes up soon, don't worry.

Minatochan2