ii.
Chapter Forty-Five: Sleep at Last
"Well, you can sink down deeply- and find the children lost at sea. Find the children who, discreetly, were killed in infancy. To stop them holding you and screaming, that you'll lose your wildest dreaming." -Lifeforms, Daughter
-Several Days Earlier-
Orochimaru folded his arms over his chest, hands slipping into the opposite sleeves in a well practiced motion. There was a bustle of activity behind him as a few men went about moving test equipment and bringing in his next subject. Orochimaru paid them no mind for now; his subjects would wait as long as he demanded they do so.
There was a low moaning sound as the man from Kumo was strapped to the table, drugged to his ears and one of Orochimaru's more valuable test subjects concerning this particular experiment.
He needed to get this right if he was going to have the opportunity to capture the child. He has spent a brief amount of time considering just killing her, a dead subject was better than none after all; but he really didn't want to risk losing any valuable information her still flowing chakra would provide.
But, therein lay the issue of course.
He wasn't stupid. He had seen the end results of what she had done to Sasuke-kun, and he had a decent hypothesis on how she had brought him to that state. Still, he couldn't risk her being able to do the same thing to him. That just wouldn't do.
With impassive features that belied his churning thoughts the Sannin unrolled a large scroll; sketchings of a variety of seals packed tightly across its surface. He placed a scalpel on the end of it to keep it from rolling back up again as he considered the markings and the different combinations he could try to achieve the result he wanted.
His first attempt accidently killed the Kumo sensor he had gone to questionable lengths to procure, and it left him feeling frustrated despite the knowledge that the first attempt was rarely successful.
(Orochimaru did not enjoy failure, as much as he recognized it was necessary to achieve success.)
Golden eyes surveyed the dead man before him, chakra still and quickly ebbing away as the soul left the body.
Orochimaru made a length of notes at the bottom of the quickly growing list of notes on his clipboard.
He had started off with a common seal array that could be found in almost any village's T&I department, stamped firmly across metal and bound tightly to prisoner's wrists.
It was a simple matter for him to adjust the array to block out the subjects awareness of outside chakra instead of internal, but somehow he had overlapped something that shouldn't have been and instead of blocking out the subjects sensor abilities it had clamped down on his internal chakra reservoir and killed the man's core from the inside.
A neat trick but not what he was looking to accomplish.
Perhaps a visit to his protege was in order? He needed more information if he was going to contrive a seal from scratch for the sole purpose of bringing that child to heel.
Shikamaru grunted at the sudden weight against his chest, and it took him a few, precious seconds to register what had just happened. A long time for a Nara, a long time for the boy who was renown for his quick mind.
This however, this was probably the last thing he had expected to happen in the moments he had squeezed his eyes shut against the inevitability of his death. He was a trained shinobi, from a prestigious clan of Konoha; and still, he couldn't find the courage to watch the weapon plunge into his chest.
Something hot and wet was pouring down his side, and for a moment Shikamaru thought that perhaps he had died too quickly to feel any pain and his blood was pooling out around him.
But no, he realized quickly. This blood wasn't his.
"Chouji?" It came out like a confused whimper.
The insane Akatsuki made an unhinged sound, rusty and cackling in a way that set his teeth on edge in an instinctive warning.
Chouji made a gurgling sound, crimson spreading across the seam of his lips before it began to spill down his best friends chin.
The two boys looked at each other with wide eyes, and Chouji, bless his heart, managed to curl bloodied lips into some semblance of a reassuring smile before his always bright eyes swirled with darkness.
Chouji's arms shook for a moment before the remainder of his weight fell forward onto Shikamaru, pinning him to the ground. The topmost blade of the red scythe pierced the back of Chouji's neck, the tip peeking out from the hollow of his best friend's throat.
For what seemed like an eternity, Shikamaru did nothing except lay on the cold hard ground and experience the sensation of hot blood rolling down his skin.
Shock. He was in shock. He knew this, just as he registered that voices were screaming. Shrieks of rage and despair crying out for his teammate to get up, stand up-
"Chouji!"
The sound of Ino's voice confused him enough to roll his head in her direction, brows furrowed. She was running towards him from the cover of the tree line. An exhausted Sakura watched from behind her, a jounin he didn't recognize with a firm hand on the medic's shoulder.
Ino tripped over nothing, pupiless eyes wild with grief and she ran full-tilt into danger, her long blond hair swishing behind her.
"Ino! No!"
Shikamaru had never heard Asuma-sensei raise his voice before, and it was enough to jolt Shikamaru into realizing that his remaining teammate was headed right for him- right for the missing-nin that was tugging his bladed weapon from his friends body with an arc of blood.
The Akatsuki watched Ino coming with a crooked grin and bright, violet eyes.
The youngest Nara's unpinned arm shot out across the dirt, smoothing across the rough surface in search of the wire he knew hadn't fallen too far from where he was. With some effort, he crawled out from underneath the body of- Shikamaru choked down a sob.
He heaved for breath, his own eyes probably a mirror of Ino's wild look.
Hot skin found cold metal and Shikamaru shoved himself upwards, chest tight and throat constricting in grief and desperation.
Ino. He couldn't lose Ino too.
The Akatsuki's back was to him as his female teammate got closer by the second, and Shikamaru didn't hesitate to take advantage of it even as the man's red scythe rose into the air, ready to rend flesh in half.
Ino didn't even seem to notice, her eyes locked solely on Chouji.
Shikamaru refused to look down.
Kakuzu scoffed with no small amount of derision as he watched the Nara boy get to his feet behind Hidan from the corner of his eye.
His partner really was an idiot.
Not as stupid as the Konoha girl though, she was clearly trying to get herself killed.
Kakuzu unfolded his arms as he swung his body to the left on reflex to dodge another carelessly thrown barrage of kunai from the blond Jinchuriki.
Is this all Konoha had to offer these days?
Pathetic.
"Now!" The boy screamed, gaining all of Kakuzu's attention. Acid green eyes narrowed on the boy as he made a nonsensical hand seal that he recognized heralded the mass of shadow clones the boy seemed to favor.
As he expected a mass of twenty clones poofed into existence and the Taki-nin scowled. Was this kid going to continue to do the same thing over and over? Was he stupid?
The crack-snap-snap of his Kinjutsu creatures sounded across the field as another blazing hot ball of fire scorched its way across the dry earth towards the charging blond clones.
Only for something to smash into his side. His mask tore from his face and his clothing whipped to the side as his feet left the ground. Kakuzu's eyes widened in surprise and he sucked in an involuntary breath- except that there was no air, only water.
He growled without sound as his Air Kinjutsu blasted a hole through the stream of water that had managed to swallow him.
He landed hard on his feet onto soaked earth with a squelch. He knew without looking that the mass of stitches across his body began to ripple with irritation. Kakuzu spat water onto the ground with a harsh glare at the copy-nin who stood farther off, hands held together in the final seal of whatever jutsu he had used.
This was really starting to piss him off.
Hidan's hysterical laughter distracted him once again and Kakuzu's fury smoldered even hotter at the sound of his teammate. A quick glance revealed the young Nara had managed to tear one of his arms off with nothing but a roll of wire.
But not before Hidan had impaled the idiot blond girl and flung her like a rag doll clear past were the pink haired one stood with wide, horrified eyes. Kakuzu didn't spare her a thought outside of the fact that she had practically run herself onto the end of Hidan's scythe herself.
The jounin that had shown up with the three children made a distressed choking sound next to the Copy-Nin. Kakuzu noted that the man's hands were shaking. He had probably been their Jounin-sensei.
Well, if the man made it out of this alive perhaps he'd teach the next batch of bratlings better. Nanami was a clear example that children could live up to something worth Kakuzu's time. These Konoha children were just a waste of the air they breathed.
"Ino…" The jounin murmured just within Kakuzu's range of hearing, right before angry eyes turned on him. This didn't surprise Kakuzu as he was the obstacle standing between the adults and the weaker members of their entourage.
It did serve however to make a small, practically miniscule trickle of trepidation enter his thoughts. Up until this point, the second jounin had solely focused on getting past him, and hadn't yet engaged.
Kakuzu was an S-class shinobi, over a hundred years old and experienced from more battles than he could count. All this served to bring him an intimate understanding of his limits; and facing sharingan Kakashi, a quickly devolving Kyuubi Jinchuuriki and the jounin-sensei to now two dead kids was pushing it.
(People could get stupid over their kids, Kakuzu knew this first hand.)
He needed Hidan to quit dicking around and get with the program. Fat chance of that happening though. His partner was much to preoccupied with the little Nara kid.
He grunted lowly in irritation. This would be a good time for a tactical retreat; but he had something at stake. Something worth risking his much too long life over. A small glance towards where the deserter Akatsuki chakra signute still raged in the distance told him Nanami wasn't ready yet. Smoke plumed into the sky, dark and cloying.
He brought his attention to the matter at hand and mentally readied every skill he knew to buy her more time.
Hatake's eye began to spin faster and Kakuzu flared his chakra into jagged patterns to ward off any genjutsu the man might be trying to trap him in.
Behind him Hidan made a low humming sort of noise that he had only heard the man make when overly distressed about the smallest of their members.
It grabbed his attention faster than anything the man could have said and acid green eyes swept across the tree line in search of her, only to realize that Kakashi wasn't actually looking at him- but behind him.
His shoulders sagged slightly before he even realized he had become tense.
Of course. Hidan had no defense against genjutsu.
The man really was an idiot.
"Nanami?" Hidan whimpered, his scythe rolling from his remaining hand to clatter uselessly against the ground.
Tobi watched the young Nara's shadow creep towards Hidan with amusement.
His unusual purple eyes were glazed, and Tobi's sharingan could clearly see the cloud of strong chakra that held the man underneath a basic Hell Viewing genjutsu.
What would they do now?
His silent question was answered when Kakuzu leapt backwards and snatched at the cuff of Hidan's cloak as if he were picking up a petulant puppy by the scruff. Smooth cut bone was protruding from the man's severed arm, but he hadn't seemed to pay it any actual thought outside of his regular complaints about the pain.
Tobi didn't think he'd ever really understand Hidan.
(He wondered if Hidan even understood Hidan.)
The Nara boy dropped his shadow, the two Akatsuki now too far out of his range to reach as Kakuzu gave a sharp jab of chakra to snap Hidan out of whatever Kakashi had chosen to show the man. The flash of despair through purple eyes as the chakra cloak faded from around him suggested to Tobi that whatever it had been- it was clearly unpleasant.
Kakuzu looked pissed off with what Tobi would have assumed was a permanent scowl if he hadn't caught the man quirking miniscule smiles at the brat before.
Tobi hummed a mildly interested sound.
Two young ones dead, another two retreating with weak chakra signatures, and four left.
If the Konoha-nin knew what was good for them they'd retreat.
But Tobi knew that look in Kakashi's eyes, and as red began to bubble over the hunched form of the blond Jinchuriki he knew this wouldn't be ending just yet.
She dropped her weapon.
She dropped her fucking weapon.
Irrationally she spared a second to hope that Swirly Face, wherever he might be, hadn't seen that. She'd never live it down.
Nanami's thoughts quickly centered back to reality as she ducked beneath the swipe of a water clone and make a quick roll across the ash blanketed ground in an attempt to reach said dropped weapon.
Her fingers brushed against the chains, the metal made hot from the fire around them, only to snatch the appendage back as a kunai thunked into the soil between her and her destination.
In the next millisecond Sasuke was swooping her up again without even a grunt of effort despite the fact that she knew he had at least one broken rib. Maybe two.
His skin was burning.
She glanced up, the wind from his speed sweeping her ashy locks away from her face and caught his eye- sort of. His one good eye had a very vacant look, the pupil blown wide inside the spinning tomoe. His chest rose and fell against her back in even, purposeful motions that told her even his subconscious was aware of the pain. His other eye had stopped bleeding but still remained closed, useless and a mystery to her as to how he had come to receive the injury.
Sasuke dropped her unceremoniously in the next instant, his short sword coming up to deflect a barrage of senbon gleaming with some sort of purple substance from thunking into the flesh of her leg.
Nanami glanced back behind them as Sasuke inched between her and the form of Orochimaru's water clone, her eyes sweeping for the real man and her fallen weapon.
She caught the glint of snake scales to their left, but her weapon was probably buried in soot by now.
Kakuzu would be so disappointed in her if he found out what a shit show this confrontation had turned into.
"Always know the facts before you make a decision." His gruff voice floated through her mind, making her lips twitch into a soft smile involuntarily. Well, she'd failed that tidbit of advice the second she'd left home to chase after her little lost Uchiha. Sometimes her obsessive character trait didn't leave a lot of room for forethought.
Nanami reached out on reflex with a tendril of chakra for said Uchiha on the thought of him, only for the world to stutter to a sudden halt around her.
Even the dust and ash motes hung suspended in the air as Nanami bit down on her breath, holding it tight in her lungs under the force of her shock.
Where was all the chakra.
Any of it- all of it- Sasuke's, Orochimaru's- the trees, the ground, the air, anything! Nothing. There was no chakra anywhere.
Nanami made a strangled choking noise. The images around her faded and black ink began to circle across her neck in a sensation that was not unlike having Hidan carve pictures into her flesh with his scythe.
She hardly noticed this, to consumed with the sudden loss of a sense she had lived with her entire life. It was for her as if she had lost the ability to see, so ingrained was her ability to sense chakra. (Even in her sleep.)
Her own internal chakra core flickered wearily; the only signature she could find. Nanami was alone, and that scared her more than anything in that moment.
"Please let this be a dream." She murmured in the quiet, her little hand seeking Sasuke's in the sudden dark. Her hand met warm flesh despite the fact that there was nothing to see.
Sasuke felt her skin slide across his and the contact made him twitch with discomfort. Still, he let her fingers curl loosely around his wrist.
She wasn't particularly heavy, even without the aid of chakra, but Sasuke was tired and his injuries did him no favors either. Sweat made his clothing cling to him and he could feel the grit of dirt and ash slide between layers. It put his teeth on edge.
His next step faltered slightly and he had to adjust the child in his arms to keep from dropping her. He blinked and shook his head lightly before bracing his right shoulder against the rough bark of a tree. He slid down its length, doing his utmost to ignore the bend to his broken ribs. He grunted with the effort of bring himself down.
Nanami lay pliant across his legs in her unconscious state, but Sasuke knew her mind was working through something with feverish abandon. Her wild emotions curled around him flying from one extreme to the next. Luckily for him, they felt dull and distant in her unconscious state, but there all the same.
He wondered if he would ever be free of her.
(He wondered if he wanted to be.)
Idly, as his good eye and what little amount of sensor skill he had searched the area for any of her companions (and he fervently ignored who that meant he might have a run in with because he still couldn't put his finger on how he felt about that subject.) His fingers brushed curls of Nanami's dirty hair away from her face.
It was quiet here, far enough away from the remnants of their battle that the air was clean of smoke. A few morning birds warbled softly to each other in the distance, and Sasuke's tired mind wondered how far off dawn would be.
His eye slipped closed in an exaggerated blink. (because he would never admit he was falling asleep in a situation like this.)
And between one blink and the next; a form was crouched in front of him. The light was marginally brighter and Nanami had managed to curl both arms around his upright waist and lay her head on his thigh.
Sasuke's back tensed, fingers itching towards the hilt of his chokuto while the other came up around Nanami's back.
"Maa, maa. Is that any way to greet your sensei Sasuke-kun?"
-Omake-
This wasn't her house.
Although there was an odd, distant sort of familiarity that made panic flash through the back of her mind. She didn't want to think about this place, she didn't want to dream about this place. She wanted nothing to do with this-
Thick blue carpet swallowed the sides of her bare feet, dirty and scuffed from running across tree tops. Her skin still smelled like smoke and she took comfort in the fact that at least her body was still Nanami.
She resisted the urge to chew at her lip and her hand came up to gasp her upper arm in an attempt to stave of the mild self harm. Her gaze swept across the hallway; it was clean, with off-white plaster walls and the plush blue carpet that stretched towards a bend and out of sight.
She took a silent step; achingly slow and careful.
Her head was pounding.
Her skin was hot.
She very carefully did not look at the picture frames on the walls. She knew what she would see. She didn't want to remember, she had tried very hard not to think about any of this for two entire lifetimes and she didn't want to look-
She took another step, and another, the front door was… somewhere. Maybe she could just leave- her throat was too tight, she couldn't be here her brothers needed her-
A bright pink door on her right cracked open with a squeaking sound that made her flinch with its familiarity.
A tall head of brown hair poked out and his eyes caught hers. (A ghost, a specter, a thing long past)
He didn't seem to notice, or care that she was a stranger to him in this child's body.
He held a finger up to his lips in a 'shush' gesture and stepped out into the hall. The man held the knob until the door was sealed before letting it turn into place to avoid the clicking sound. (She knew, she'd done that very thing a million times before. A million times she didn't want to remember.)
"I thought he'd never get to sleep." His voice rumbled lowly like thunder and he flashed her a lopsided grin slathered with self-satisfaction that he had managed to escape the room without waking the-
(Don't.)
AN: Uh, hey guys. Been a hot minute hasn't it? Things have been a bit… uh, well much this year. Honestly I won't lie to you guys and say I'm totally back into the swing of writing this fic, but I am still writing. Quite a few things actually so I'm not totally AWOL. I've decided to take another turn with this arc which is really what's brought about the interest again.
Thank you to all my wonderful reviewers who keep coming back even though it's been damn near a year since my last post.
You're all the reason I'm still here. Thank you, really.