AN: Originally posted June 2015, minor edits made May 2020. Hello to both old and new readers! I know I've let this fic slide, but I definitely haven't dropped it! My planning and writing muse for it has just taken a major hit, and things are slow going. Still, thanks for still reading and supporting for all this time!
The day that the Akatsuki kidnapped Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto was the day that the fate of the world was sealed.
This particular abduction had been a bitch to pull off, if you asked Hōzuki Suigetsu. He hadn't expected to feel guilty about it for one thing. When he'd followed Sasuke back to Konoha from Oto, he hadn't thought that he would find friends in the village or feel any loyalty towards the place. But he had, on both accounts.
Naruto, who he'd only known as that Kyūbi no jinchūriki who kept following Sasuke around, had turned out to be one of the best friends he'd ever had (not that there'd been many). There was Tenten, who was the first person since Mangetsu who understood his dream of owning each of the Seven Swords. He couldn't leave out Lee, who had to be the most unintentionally hilarious person that Suigetsu had ever met. And of course, Sasuke, who was still an ice cold prick, but who was somehow less of one in the presence of his blond teammate.
Even Tsunade, who had let the Uchiha back into Konoha along with his new team: Suigetsu, Jūgo, and Karin. She was hands down the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, as well as the best kunoichi. And In Suigetsu's humble opinion, Tsunade-hime deserved his respect, firstly for giving them all a chance, and because she could totally kick their asses if they fucked up.
So yeah, Suigetsu felt guilty about conspiring with the Akatsuki to kidnap Tsunade-hime's favourite genin, who also happened to be a favourite of many Konoha shinobi. Even though he knew that the new Akatsuki meant him no harm, the Konohans didn't, and he wasn't allowed to tell them. He had to lie to his new village, and when they found out his part in it – because they would find out – Suigetsu had to hope that they would see his reasons, and know that he didn't want to hurt them. He really did like his new home in Konoha and prayed like hell that the plan Kisame-senpai told him about would work.
After all the fucking complicated planning this thing had taken, the goddamned plan better work.
Suigetsu also felt a shit-ton of guilt pile on top of him when Naruto's betrayed blue eyes met his own, just before he succumbed to unconsciousness. Seriously, the kid's eyes should be made illegal. 'It'll be alright though,' Suigetsu assured himself. 'When Pein explains everything, he'll see why I did it. I can apologise the next time I see him, and that will be that.'
This did nothing to diminish the guilty feeling.
Which only doubled when he turned away from where Kisame was holding Naruto (he felt so guilty that he didn't even try a token attempt to steal Samehada!) and instead saw Itachi holding an unconscious Sasuke. Who had predictably flown into a rage upon seeing his older brother seemingly roaming the streets of Hi no Kuni, lost his legendary cool and dragged Naruto into the resulting fight. Suigetsu had to admit, they made a great team. They'd done much better against the S-rank nukenin than he'd thought they would. But Kisame-senpai and Itachi had won, and Naruto had seen him.
Oh, who was he kidding, the whole thing was going to turn out to be a giant clusterfuck, he could feel it now. But Suigetsu would go along with the plan, and hopefully Naruto would forgive him enough to save his ass from Tsunade-hime and Sasuke (not to mention Sakura and Karin) when they learned of his role in it.
"We'll be going now, Suigetsu-kun." Itachi's monotonous voice interrupted his musing.
Kisame chuckled. "Are you sure you don't need any help to make it look like you got a beating, kōhai?"
Suigetsu scowled at the shark-nin. "I'm fine, thanks, Senpai. But you should get going. Naruto won't stay out for long." He couldn't stop his eyes from darting to the unconscious blond.
The sinister smirk that appeared on Kisame's face brought an uneasy feeling to Suigetsu's stomach. This, unfortunately, was a common occurrence when dealing with Kisame.
"Looking a little worried there, baby shark. Is there something you've been keeping from me, my little kōhai?"
Suigetsu blinked. Choked a little. Blinked again. And then he gagged as what Kisame was suggesting sank in.
Kisame, who was laughing uproariously at his disgusted expression. Kisame, who was going to die by his own sword as soon as Suigetsu could get his hands on it.
"What the hell?! Am I not allowed to be worried about my friends?!" Suigetsu paused, a lecherous look sliding onto his face. "Then again, if Naruto was a girl and looked like his Oiroke, you can bet your blade I would be all over that!"
Because damn but Naruko was one sexy piece of ass.
"We need to be going, Kisame. Suigetsu-kun is right, Naruto-kun will not stay unconscious for long." Itachi interrupted whatever Kisame – that perverted asshole – was going to say.
Suigetsu suddenly felt panicked – what if Naruto hated him when he woke up? The blond boy had been so friendly and welcoming when they'd come back with Sasuke, Suigetsu really didn't want to lose him.
"Tell him I'm sorry, for whatever it's worth, when he wakes up, will you?" He aimed his request at Itachi, who was the one more likely to pass on his pathetic little message. God, but Konoha had made him soft.
Itachi however, just nodded and turned to leave, Sasuke slung across his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
"I hope your acting skills are up to the job, kid." Kisame told Suigetsu. "Or Tsunade is going to punch you right out of her office and into Ibiki's. And don't forget to give her the message."
Suigetsu gulped, but nodded anyway. Tsunade-hime was one scary woman. "Don't worry Senpai, I've got this!"
Tsunade looked at the ex-Kiri/Oto nin in front of her, barely able to believe what he was telling her. He'd come stumbling in the gates, alone, rambling about needing 'to see Tsunade-hime, he was so sorry, and no he was not gay, dammit!' She had no clue what the last bit was about, but she'd rushed straight to the hospital as soon as she heard.
Thankfully, he'd already been healed – with his kekkei genkai, there wasn't much to heal – and so was able to give his report as soon as she'd walked in the door.
Except he couldn't tell her where her favourite brat was, why the Akatsuki wanted him, or how they'd gotten so lucky as to nab both the last Uchiha and the Kyūbi no jinchūriki at the same time. Tsunade had her suspicions, but the fact was that Suigetsu was completely loyal to Uchiha Sasuke, and possibly to Naruto as well. So, whether he was involved or not, he wouldn't tell her anything unless he thought they would be in danger.
Of course, Tsunade couldn't think of a reason why Naruto wouldn't be in danger whilst in the Akatsuki's hands, but if Kisame had bothered to give Suigetsu a message to pass along, then it was probably important.
"Let's hear it, then," she said impatiently. "What'd the shark bastard say?"
Tsunade saw the stifled smirk on Suigetsu's face, but said nothing. At her raised eyebrow, however, Suigetsu hastily said, "Well, uh, Tsunade-hime, he told me to tell you that Sasuke and Naruto would remain unharmed as long as you didn't send anybody after them. If you did, then somebody named Leader-sama would send you both their heads in a box."
"He said what?!"
The sword maniac paled. "He said, uh, don't send anybody after them?"
"Let me get this straight. I'm supposed to believe that the Akatsuki are keeping Sasuke and Naruto alive somewhere, holding onto them for some higher purpose, and I'm supposed to just sit here and do nothing!?" Her voice had risen to a roar by the end of her tirade. "And I suppose I just have to trust that this 'Leader' isn't going to just extract the Kyūbi and send me Naruto's head back anyway!?"
"Am I supposed to answer that?" Suigetsu back-pedaled quickly when he saw her face. "Okay, rhetorical question, got it."
Tsunade sighed deeply, slowly soothing her thoughts and slumping into a chair next to the younger nin's bed. What she wouldn't do to have Naruto bounding around, annoying the shit out of everybody. Why did she have to get attached to the biggest trouble magnet in all the Elemental Nations?
Suigetsu felt his guilt increase yet again as he saw the downcast expression on Tsunade-hime's face. He really wished he could just tell her everything, but the whole plan banked on Naruto knowing the new plan and using his 'friendship no jutsu' skills to convince everybody else. Nobody else would even give the plan a chance if Naruto wasn't the one endorsing it.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, Tsunade-hime." Suigetsu apologised quietly. It was the truth. He wasn't directly saying what, exactly, he was sorry for, but the apology was sincere. Maybe being accepted into Konoha had made him soft, but he reckoned it was worth it. These people really were something. All friendship and loyalty and acceptance. Well, the shinobi anyway, and who gave a fuck about what the civvies thought.
The blonde Hokage gave him a tired smile. "It's alright, Suigetsu. I know you would never allow any true harm to come to Sasuke or Naruto if you could help it."
That… was about as direct as his apology had been. Tsunade suspected something. She suspected him already! But, she wasn't interrogating him. Or punching his lights out.
That meant that she at least trusted him to always have the safety of the two boys in mind. Or something like that anyway, shit, his mind wasn't used to all this stress and thinking. That bitch Karin could say what she wanted about his intelligence, but Suigetsu understood one thing at least; Tsunade was trusting him here. And he couldn't let her down.
"Damn right, Tsunade-hime! I'm sure wherever they are now, Naruto is giving his captors hell! We'll get them both back, you'll see."
The first thing Naruto saw when he woke up, was a weirdo freak with – admittedly cool - spiky orange hair and a shit ton of facial piercings.
The first thing he realized, was that he was sitting tied to an – admittedly comfortable – interrogation-type chair.
The first thing he remembered, was that he'd been fighting alongside Sasuke and Suigetsu, against the – admittedly too strong – infamous nukenin Uchiha Itachi and Hoshigaki Kisame.
The last thing he remembered, before he finally passed out, was Suigetsu's guilty face.
"That bastard! Imma kill him! Oh man, I'm gonna kick his ass all over Hi no Kuni if he doesn't have a fucking good explanation for this!"
Naruto's outburst seemed to have no effect on his weirdo watch guard. And that reminded him.
"Oi! Who the hell are you anyway? Why am I here?"
No answer. But then Naruto noticed something else. A familiar black and red – and not Sharingan related – something else.
"Ah! You're Akatsuki! Where am I? Why am I not dead and Kyūbi-free? Answer me, dammit!"
A cool, analytical gaze (and holy SHIT, what was up with those eyes? Seriously, another dōjutsu?) swept him from head to toe. He didn't know how useful that was, as he was sitting down, but it wasn't like Naruto could stop him.
"I am Pein, leader of Akatsuki. You are in one of our mountain bases." Well that explained why the freakin' walls looked like they were made of rock. "You are not dead and Kyūbi-free because I wished to speak with you."
Well. Even the weirdo's voice was creepy sounding. Man, he was all serious and dead-faced, and then he talked and it was like holy shit dude, you even sound dead. And speaking of dead…
"WHERE'S SASUKE?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM?!"
"Uchiha Sasuke is alive. He, like yourself, is being kept restrained in a separate room."
Okay, at least the bastard was alive, if what piercing-guy said was true. But why? Why keep them both alive, why capture them both in the first place, and why the hell would the leader of Akatsuki want to speak with him?!
Naturally, he voiced these questions at the top of his lungs. "WHAT THE HELL MAN, COULDN'T YOU JUST ASK TO TALK TO ME?! WAS THE KIDNAPPING REALLY NECESSARY?! ANY WHY THE FUCK WAS SUIGETSU HELPING YOU?!"
Pein – and what the hell kinda name was that anyway – looked as though he was debating answering him or not. That wouldn't do; Naruto needed answers right now, even if it took a while to ask the right questions. So, more quietly now, he asked, "Could you please tell me what on earth is going on right now?"
Nagato would never tell anybody, but the befuddled and slightly pleading look that the Kyūbi no jinchūriki had on his face right then touched his heart more than anything else had for years. He sighed.
"Your friend Suigetsu passed along a message for you to Itachi. He would like you to know that he is sorry, for whatever it's worth. Itachi informs me that he was completely sincere."
Naruto scrunched his face up in thought. For some reason, his gut was telling him that everything this guy was saying, was the truth. And he always trusted his gut – it hadn't led him wrong yet. So
Suigetsu was sorry, was he? He would be even sorrier when Naruto got his hands on him, dattebayo! That sharky-bastard better get ready for an asskicking like he'd never felt before!
"Did he help you? Was Suigetsu involved in me and Sasuke getting kidnapped?"
"Yes."
Bah. What an asshole. "Did he know that you apparently aren't about to kill me?"
"Yes."
Well, there was that, at least. Maybe he wouldn't kick Suigetsu all over Hi no Kuni. Just most of it.
"So what'd you want to talk to me about?" Naruto felt like he should be leaning back, hands linked behind his head. Unfortunately, he was tied to a goddamn chair. "And could you maybe untie me?"
Nagato considered silently. He could see that the young jinchūriki's eyes were burning, a sure sign that he would soon attempt to escape the chakra ropes holding him in the chair. He would likely be in a fighting mood if he had to rip his way out of the restraints, and Nagato needed him to be calm and able to listen. He flicked his wrist and the ropes fell to the ground.
Naruto immediately stretched his arms above his head, sighing in satisfaction as his shoulders popped. Then he slumped back in the chair, hands linked at the back of his skull. "Start talkin' buddy."
He watched as the supposed leader of Akatsuki moved closer to where he was sitting. It was uncomfortable, being so close to somebody wearing one of those stupid cloaks, and not fighting them or running away, but he would hear what Pein – seriously, that name! – had to say.
The orange-haired man paused abruptly. "Would you like to take this discussion outside?"
"Huh? Well alright." Naruto stood and followed Pein, confused but kinda relieved to get out of that creepy dark rock room at the same time. Hey, if he had been inside a mountain this whole time, did that mean he was technically already outside? Did being in a mountain count as being inside?
He mused on this as the leader-guy led him (hah, the leader was leading him) through a bunch of twists and turns in a pretty cool tunnel system. Naruto was fairly certain they were taking the long way, coz there were no more rock rooms in the tunnels, and he assumed a secret base would have more than one room, and the tunnels wouldn't go nowhere. Either way, he had no clue where he was or how to get back to where he'd started from (not that he wanted to go back to his little rock room that he'd just realized was probably an interrogation cell).
Just as Naruto was starting to get impatient with the repetitive walls of rough, dark rock (barely ten minutes had passed), he saw a light shining up ahead. He took a deep breath in through his nose, finding the air to be fresher, cleaner. They'd been moving upwards, so either they had reached the not-underground-anymore point, or Pein was going to push him out of a freakin' hole in the wall. Did mountains have walls? Like outside, not the tunnel walls.
Well whatever, whether they did or not, Naruto would rather not be thrown off (or out of) a mountain. Using chakra to stick was a bitch when you were falling at such a high speed ('thanks a lot for teaching me that lesson, Ero-Sennin,' Naruto thought grumpily) and summoning Gamabunta was always risky.
Luckily for him, Naruto found himself following Pein out of the tunnel and into a huge cavern that looked as though it had a short exit tunnel to the outside. The proper outside, where there weren't massive pointy rock spikes hanging off the ceiling. Or y'know, a ceiling at all.
The walls in the cavern weren't rough like those in the tunnels; instead, they looked as though they'd been sanded down until they were perfectly smooth. Naruto was pretty sure rocks weren't made like that naturally, and he had no idea why somebody would choose to spend all that time sanding down a mountain, but to each their own, he guessed.
When the two shinobi finally emerged into the sunlight, Naruto whooped and dashed past his escort, falling on his back in the center of the small clearing that the mountain tunnel lead out to. The sun was shining through the trees, so either he'd only been out for a couple of hours, or at least one whole night. Naruto smiled happily at the feel of warm dappled sunlight on his face and fresh air in his lungs.
He sat back up when he heard footfalls moving closer to him. Pein, looking stoic and somehow not ridiculous at all, sank down to the ground and sat cross-legged facing him.
"Uzumaki Naruto," the orange-haired man began. "You have proved to be a force to be reckoned with in this shinobi world of ours. We of the Akatsuki have been keeping an eye on you for years, watching you gain the respect and friendship of many, including the youngest Uchiha. You are an anomaly, and that is why I desire your aid."
Naruto listened intently, oddly focused in a way that he rarely was. He startled when Pein admitted to needing his help, sure that he'd misheard. The Akatsuki needed his help because he was good at making friends? Because he'd made friends with the bastard? Pein seemed to sense his confusion, because his stoic face shifted, amusement shining for a brief instant in his freaky purple eyes.
"I will tell you my story, Uzumaki Naruto, and you will know my pain. Maybe when you hear my dream, you will know why I need you."
AN: I was around 16/17 when I came up with this fic, omg. Honestly, my writing wasn't even that bad, I only removed/changed a few little things that made me cringe. Um, my original AN for chapter one was something about pairings, but I'm currently unsure where I'm going with those. This story was originally going to be gen (shipless) and there's a huge chance of that still being true, but if I decide otherwise, I'll let y'all know right away. I know how it feels to read a fic and be blindsided by a ship you don't particularly like.
Anyways, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!
- Kelly