"Seriously, Kiba, it wasn't a big deal. I'm fine." Naruto gestures with his half-eaten sandwich, talking with his mouth full. "Anyway we've done great, right? We got Dona right where we wanted them."
There were awkward moments, moments that hollowed out Naruto's insides, carved his worth out of him: moments of being looked at as a mass murderer. But in the end it gave him credibility, made threats out of almost everything he said, even though that wasn't how he'd meant it at all.
"Yeah," Kiba says slowly, uncertainly. He drains his water bottle, buying time before he has to speak again. Finally he shrugs. "Well, at least – he was more protective of you than I'd thought he'd be. But you… you're okay? Cause I know you didn't plan for things to go down that way with Stonehall."
"More's the pity," Gaara cuts in.
"Enough," Naruto says, because he can stand no more of this. "It's regrettable – shut up, Gaara, it is – but there's no undoing it. So."
"Well," Kiba says, still in that slow careful voice. "You probably saved our lives, letting Kyuubi out. They might've captured you – maybe. The rest of us, we'd have just been mown down."
Naruto feels gutted again. It's becoming familiar. "The army – of course I don't regret that. It was awful but, but they did it to themselves, they turned on us. But Stonehall City, that was…. That was different. War crime kind of different."
Shikamaru shrugs. "Locally and among shifters in general, it's strengthened support for us. On a global level, humans and exorcists are not best pleased."
"Hypocrites," Gaara snaps. "They've purged a hundred shifter settlements just like it."
Shikamaru shrugs again. "Nothing's fair in love and war."
There's a sensation of unease, then, of wrongness: the holy words etched into Naruto's body start crawling across his skin. Pressure builds, then bursts, and – "Demons!" Naruto snaps. "Fuck!"
They're on their way back from the Dona meeting, have stopped in a village to stretch their legs. They rush through it now, towards the blackness on the far side of it.
"Shit."
These are not a few demons. This is a fucking skyfull of them. Naruto settles the DEW gun against his shoulder and fires – at least there's no way to miss – looking around frantically for an exorcist.
"Naruto!" Ino yells. She and a blond boy Naruto doesn't recognise emerge from behind the town hall, glowing with the light of God. "Shikamaru! Where's Sasuke?"
"Not here."
Ino goes pale. "What do you mean he's not here? When is he coming?"
"Ino!" the other exorcist snaps, lashing out at the demons. "Start mending!"
The wards are breached. The demons are pouring in.
"You can't hold them off by yourself," Ino protests.
"I'll have to try." But he looks terrified. He's just a kid, and he clearly knows he's going to die.
"We've got this," Naruto says. "Fix the wards."
Beside him Gaara's releasing Shukaku, and Akamaru's rising to the surface inside Kiba. Even Shikamaru's picked up a DEW gun.
Naruto realises there's nothing to it, swinging the door to Kyuubi's cage open wide.
Kyuubi, huge now and glowing not just with his own power but with Uriel's markings, leaps into the sky. For the first time, he manages to really tear at the demons, bite and claw them apart.
But they taste like poison, he can feel the death marks of a demon injury spread over him. Uriel burns them away, but that burn too is fundamentally hostile to him, diminishes Kyuubi's own energy.
It's maybe been minutes or it's maybe been hours when the exorcist boy goes down. The demons have congregated on him, less interested in the humans or the shifters.
His light winks out.
With less to distract them, more of the demons turn on Naruto, who hits the ground hard.
He can see them now, the golden lines of protection meant to enfold the village. Ino's standing in the breach of that web, holding it together. But Ino's only a single exorcist, and not a strong one. "Shikamaru," she says. "Get behind me. Now."
Naruto gets up on his knees, reaching for another DEW gun. Needing to attack, keep the evil at bay, while Kyuubi regroups.
Ino takes a step into the air, but looks over her shoulder with sudden desperation. "Kimimarou please."
Following her gaze, Naruto spots fucking Kimimarou, crusader prodigy extraordinaire, standing off to the side, arms crossed over his chest, utterly unresponsive. Any demon that gets within a hundred metres of him is instantly obliterated.
He doesn't respond to Ino, who has warrior eyes now even though she's crying. "Okay then," she says. "I can do this."
Light flares around her, but the wards are torn wide open now, without Ino bridging the gap, and the demons are flooding in. Into the village.
Uriel's desire to exorcise burns just under Naruto's skin, burns so bright and so loud he can barely hear Kyuubi's howling, or Sasuke's desperation.
All is calm now, all is bright. You can't exorcise, Sasuke told him. If you could, every shifter in the world would follow you. But you can't.
He's never been in the habit of just giving Sasuke the last word.
And anyway he's going to die now, if he can't.
His voice starts out uneven, toneless, but the words come easy, and eventually the melody stabilises. "Confiteor Deo omnipotenti/Beate Marie semper virgini…"
And the light comes. He remembers what Kakashi said, when Naruto was a little runt and asked what exorcising was like: everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.
Kakashi's always been a liar.
Uriel materialises in his hands, burning blades of angelic grace. They eat through his skin and flesh, fusing with his skeleton, but that can't matter now.
He puts his foot in the air, feels ridiculous for a moment, but he can put his weight on it. Can step into the sky, into what's always been the exclusive domain of God's chosen children.
It fees like Sasuke's hand is inside his own, familiar and confident with the blade.
Just a slash, and a score of demons are obliterated.
"Ino!" he calls. "The village!"
Ino stares at him, but pulls herself quickly together, gesturing at something stuck in the ground, right by the ward breach. "Take the sword! It's sacred, we're here to retrieve it – it'll only activate for an archangel." She breathes in deep. "That's Uriel, right?"
"Protect the village," Naruto tells her, grabbing the sword. It sings to life in his hand.
Faintly, he can hear Sasuke chanting inside his head, and echoes it as best he can. Hoping the sword will mistake his voice for Sasuke's and respond accordingly.
Ino returns to mending the wards, and Naruto steps alone into the sky.
For a moment, he thinks he can really do this.
He's never gone up against a demon alone before, and now he's killed several. But they don't stop coming, and he can only use a fraction of the sword's power, a fraction of Uriel's light. When he gets injured, demon taint spreading across his skin, Uriel's healing burns his soul.
And the demons, feasting on screaming villagers and distraught shifters, are getting stronger.
He's back on the ground, knees actually scratched up because Kyuubi doesn't have any energy to heal them, and he looks up at the sky he's been slashing at, been cleansing, and it's still completely black, and – it stops so suddenly.
In the blink of an eye, the darkness is gone. The sword drops from his hand, most of his palm still attached to it, and he stares up at a powdery blue sky.
He lets himself fall, sprawls on his arse, and sees Kakashi.
One hand raised in a negligent gesture, Gabriel's wings sparkling from his back, Kakashi stops beside Ino. "You all right?"
Ino nods, shakily. "Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thank God. Thank God you're here."
Kakashi smirks, that little quirk of his mouth. "I do enjoy a good entrance."
Only the sky changes again, just a quickly as it did the first time. The scene freezes.
A devil, Naruto understands. Two devils. Three. Four. Five.
He's still on the ground when Kakashi walks past him, bending to pick up the sword.
"Get out of here right now," Kakashi tells him. He smiles, this misshapen smile at the end of all things. "Tell him – tell him whatever you think he needs to hear."
"Wait!" And Naruto grabs for him after all, clinging like a child to his sleeve. "Where are you going?" Stupid question, stupid hopeless question.
"To my grave in the sky."
He moves past Naruto, and steps into the air.
Naruto stumbling to his feet, trying to follow, when Gaara grabs his shoulder. "This way. Now. Kiba's not doing great."
Naruto lets himself be pulled back inside the wards. Ino's on her knees now, still keeping the protective web going but her shoulders slumped in resignation. Kiba's on the ground, clearly injured, but without demon taint.
"You have to go," Ino says. "You have to go very far very fast. He's not going to be able to hold them back for long, and then – "
"Come with us," Shikamaru says.
Ino shakes her head, tears pearling down her cheeks. "They'll go after me first. I'll try to go in a different direction from you, give you more of a head start."
The part of Naruto's mind that's made up of Sasuke's awareness has gone through panic into relentless clarity: there is nothing Naruto can do against even one devil, and there is no possible way for Kakashi to survive five of them. They have to, have to go, have to go.
The shrill sound of a ringtone cuts through the screaming and the gunfire. Naruto fumbles through his pockets.
"Sasuke."
"Who's the other crusader?"
"What?"
"The Council did this!" Sasuke snaps. "They'll have sent a crusader to keep an eye on things. Who is it?"
"I – Kimimarou's here. He's not doing anything, he's just – Kakashi's up there with them, and – "
He cuts himself off, because Kakashi's not up there with them anymore.
He's on the ground.
"Kimimarou," Sasuke repeats. "Good. Give him the phone. Do it now. Make him fucking hear me."
Behind him, Kakashi's trying to get up. His wings are ripped and his face is black with demon taint. One of his eyes seems to be gone, the socket filled with blood and nothing else.
One step, two, ten, fifteen, and he's in front of Kimimarou, who looks like a corpse. Pale as one, expressionless as one, there's always been a certain deadness to him.
"It's Sasuke," Naruto says.
Kimimarou takes the phone.
Someone screams. Ino, maybe.
Sasuke's voice, tinny and too far away, "I'll take care of him, when you're gone."
These aren't the kind of words that Naruto would expect to change everything. But they do.
Kimimarou says, "Then I'll be at rest."
His face remains expressionless as a cranium as he hands Naruto the phone and steps into the air. There's no slashing now, no blades. Kimimarou walks into the middle of the sky, into the circle of devils, and goes nova.
It seems like all of heaven erupts in light.
Naruto's eyes melt down his cheeks, and when he can see again everything is ordinary. Kimimarou is gone, and the devils are gone. Erased from the fabric of the world.
What's left is Kakashi, bleeding out on the ground.
"Ino!" Naruto calls, running forward and falling to his knees next to Kakashi. "Can you help him?"
She can do something, tracing glowing hands over him while Naruto uses his jacket to stop the worst of the bleeding, but it's not enough. "He needs a real doctor."
"Let's go," Naruto decides. "Gaara, bring the car! Sasuke's on his way, Tsunade'll have come with him."
Kakashi's scarecrow thin but damn tall, it's an awkward and fumbling process to get him in the car without jolting his spine. Inside the car, finally moving away from the abject horror, Ino abruptly buries her face in Shikamaru's chest and cries.
They all seem shell shocked, unreal. Naruto lets his knees buckle, ending up on the floor next to Kakashi and trying to keep Kakashi's brain from leaking out through his empty eye socket.
It feels like it's been a thousand years when Gaara stops the car, and Sasuke throws the door open. He stands framed in the outside light for only an instant before Tsunade pushes him aside. Sasuke, rather more surprisingly, allows himself to be pushed. He stares at Kakashi without speaking as Tsunade's assistants carry him and Kiba away.
"Sono me o – " he says rather blankly. He looks like a lost child.
"Sasuke," Naruto cuts in, closing his hand around Sasuke's arm.
"You're going to learn to exorcise properly," Sasuke tells him. "I'm making some sacred swords for you. They'll work better."
"Good," Naruto says shakily. "Good."
And then finally he has Sasuke in his arms, an instant of rightness and warmth before they hurry after Tsunade.
Kiba's fine, he just needs rest before Akamaru will be able to heal him. Kakashi looks worse. Looks dead, actually, but Sasuke's obviously not worried about the demon taint. Just sneaks forward, in between the hospital machinery, and traces a glowing hand over the black marks. They were already fading, and the process speeds up after Sasuke's interference.
"How did this happen?" Naruto asks dumbly. "The predictions were for – for our HQ area. It wasn't…"
"How stupid can you be?" Sasuke sneers. "The predictions are shaky at best. The Council sent these devils."
"On me? Because of – of Stonehall? Or because of the bond?"
"They weren't for you."
Naruto blinks. "But – it doesn't make sense – but Kakashi…"
"The Council decided to entrust me to Orochimaru. It's not like Kakashi consulted them before he gave me away to you."
"But he's been – he's been all pro-shifter since before we were even born."
"Orochimaru and Itachi wouldn't let someone be executed for that, or even my parents. But they're more proprietary when it comes to me." He sighs. "Or Orochimaru is. Itachi… he thinks Kakashi hanging around Minato was the Council's own fault. If they'd looked after him properly, he wouldn't have turned elsewhere."
"But you…"
Sasuke grins at him, a painful savage grin. "He thinks I'm like the whore of Babylon. That I corrupt people."
"Itachi's fucked in the head."
"I'll hardly argue with that."
"Ino was there too," Naruto says in a small defiant voice. "And that – that other exorcist kid. Even if they weren't bothered about the village…"
"They don't give a shit about people like Ino."
Neither does Sasuke, so that's not what he's pissed off about.
He keeps stroking Kakashi's face, slowly erasing he demon taint.
"On his chin," Naruto says. "He's had that for years."
"It's a death wound," Sasuke says. "If it opens, it's likely to kill him before it drains."
"There were fucking five devils."
"How many did he exorcise?"
"I think – two? Maybe three? The sword worked better for him."
"Obviously," Sasuke says, less bitter though not by much. "You'll do better once I customise one for you."
"But I could," Naruto starts, his sentences shattering into fragments. "I exorcised. Like an exorcist."
"What?" Tsunade interrupts.
"I exorcised," Naruto repeats. "With – Uriel."
"Keep working," Sasuke snaps at her.
She rolls her eyes. "I can't do anything about the demon taint, but you seem to have that under control. Physically, he's stable, apart from the eye." She pauses there. They all know the significance of eyes. Magic collects in them, shades them red. "I could do a transplant, but he'd have little use for a human replacement."
Sasuke reaches up without speaking and pulls out his own eye.
Naruto blinks, grinds his palm into his eye through the second-hand pain.
Sasuke swallows, face damp with pain sweat, and hands his eye to Tsunade. There's a lot more of it than Naruto imagined, long strings of nerve dangling from the eyeball.
"Drastic as always," Tsunade mutters, but she takes the eye. "I'll be taking him to surgery to attach it."
Sasuke stares after them in something like frustration.
Naruto tugs at his sleeve, and Sasuke leans on him, brittle and explosive.
"Exorcising properly," Naruto starts.
Sasuke nods, sharp and decisive.
"I could sort of," Naruto says, "feel your hand inside mine? Like you were gripping the sword too, and that made it respond better? And when we chanted together…"
Sasuke's hand sneaks under his shirt, cold fingers pushing light into the seal across his stomach. "If I walk across the bondbridge, into your mind – if I act the exorcism out in there…"
"Let's try." He cups Sasuke's face in his hands, rests their foreheads together.
Sasuke doesn't jerk away until the instrument tray beside Kakashi's vacated bed rattles. Kakashi's phone is ringing.
Naruto shouldn't be surprised that Sasuke can unlock it. He's certainly not surprised when Sasuke answers it.
"I thought I'd check in." A pause. "Are you giving me the silent treatment? That's not like you, Kakashi."
It's the first time in over a year that Sasuke's heard Itachi's voice.
"Kakashi's in surgery."
"I see," Itachi says.
Sasuke's fingers on the phone are white, but he leans back against the wall nonchalantly. "I thought you were still friends."
"He can handle two devils."
"There were five."
"Were there indeed? I shall have to speak with the Council. I suppose it's fortunate that you were there."
Sasuke's quiet for a long time before he says, "I wasn't."
"I'm surprised."
"You're never surprised."
"You don't know me very well, Sasuke."
"No, I suppose I don't."
"Well. I'll speak with the Council. They sent Kimimarou to supervise, didn't they? I suppose I might have words with Orochimaru as well."
"There's no need."
"Oh?"
"Kimimarou's gone nova."
"Why would he do that?"
"I told him to."
"You surprise me. How are you, Sasuke?"
"I'm not dead."
"That's good to hear."
"I don't believe you."
"That's up to you," Itachi tells him mildly and ends the call.
Letting the phone drop, Sasuke looks a bit like a long-distance runner finally at the end of the race. He doesn't want to be touched now, and if he walked into Naruto's mind he'd probably immolate it.
It's barely five seconds before the next call. This time it's Sasuke's phone ringing.
Sasuke answers with a sort of resigned alacrity. "Orochimaru."
There's a dragging, hissing sound that Naruto eventually understands is Orochimaru chuckling. "You sound like you except me to be disappointed in you, Shinigami-chan. On the contrary, I'm proud."
Sasuke's eyes widen. His thumb fumbles, slips, before he manages to end the call. The phone rings again immediately. Sasuke puts it on soundless and throws it away.
This time Naruto moves. Doesn't touch, but stands to close he might as well have been, soaking in Sasuke's body heat: offering his own.
Orochimaru's said that before, that he's proud of Sasuke. He's the only one who ever has.
The memory of when he's said it, in what circumstances, makes Naruto briefly see red.
Sasuke makes an odd sound, not quite choked, not quite impatient. "Why are you upset?"
Naruto looks up from his staring contest with the floor. "You were hurt! It was terrible and you were really little, and – of course I'm upset!"
Sasuke shrugs, looking at him oddly. "You're not jealous."
"No!"
Sasuke tilts his head. "You were jealous of Neji."
"You like Neji, I'm – I don't like that I am, but yeah, I'm jealous of that. But of some paedophile abusing you? No!"
Sasuke shrugs again. "I haven't been – really little – in a long time. It's not like I never got off on it."
There's no way to argue with that, when the ice under Naruto's feet is so very, very thin. "No," he repeats instead, taking Sasuke's hand. "I'm not jealous."
"Mmh." Sasuke extracts his hand when someone starts opening the door, and Naruto lets him. This isn't for other people to see.
xxxxx
When Naruto looks in on him, Kiba's sitting up in bed, eager to leave it entirely.
Shikamaru knocks on the doorframe. "Ino's asleep."
"Yeah, Sasuke too."
"That's why you're here, huh?" Kiba snarks. "I'm good enough company when lover boy's unavailable?" He frowns. "Should you really leave him though? I mean, last time…"
"We're fine," Naruto says. "He's with Kakashi."
"Ah," Kiba says, more uncertainly. "Weren't they…" He makes a circle with his thumb and index finger, pushing his other index finger suggestively inside it.
"Yeah," Naruto says, rather dully. "Yeah, they were."
"Ouch," Kiba mumbles.
"On a different note," Shikamaru says, "you'll be happy to hear I had the presence of mind to film you. There's no way this'll stay quiet, so we should go public soon if we want to frame the narrative."
"Lesse," Kiba demands, and Shikamaru hands over his phone.
On the cracked screen, Naruto watches himself glow with the white-golden grace of an exorcist, watches himself take up a sacred sword and walk straight into the sky to eradicate evil.
"Wow," he says. "Shit."
"I never thought," Kiba says. "Holy shit."
"Stonehall no longer matters," Shikamaru says. "There's no shifter who won't follow you now. You did it."
"The Council, on the other hand…"
"Yeah," Shikamaru agrees. "They won't stand for it." He lets himself fall into a chair. "But Sasuke's planning to clean house with them anyway, right? Good thing."
"Sell it as Sasuke exorcising through me," Naruto says. "We don't need an exorcist hit squad to deal with right now."
"All right," Shikamaru says. "I think Temari would've liked to use it on Rock, though."
"Yeah, sure. I mean, what we say internally is one thing. How's she doing? Last I heard she had everything under control."
"You know Temari," Shikamaru shrugs. "It's her way or the highway."
"Haha, yeah. Speaking of, I'm gonna…"
"Check in on the missus?" Kiba fills in.
Naruto snorts and gives him the finger. "Call him that to his face."
Kiba throws a pillow after him.
Things are much calmer in Kakashi's room. There aren't even any beeping machines, which is a good sign.
Sasuke's curled up in a stuffed chair, frowning even in his sleep. Naruto strokes his fringe, smoothing out his forehead.
When he turns around, Kakashi's eye blinks groggily open. It's a sharp reminder that Kakashi doesn't heal like a shifter, that his left eye – Sasuke's eye – is still covered by gauze.
Naruto hurries to lean over him. "Hey. You need anything?"
Kakashi shakes his head minutely.
Naruto smiles. "It's good to see you awake. How're you feeling?"
"Been better," Kakashi says, trying to scoot up into more of a sitting position. "Been worse, too."
"Ah, yeah."
Kakashi blinks. "Kimimarou went nova?"
"Yeah. Yeah, Sasuke talked to him, and – yeah, he did." They both glance towards Sasuke, still asleep in the chair. "He said, um. He said the Council sent those devils on you. But – but according to Itachi it was only supposed to be two."
Kakashi snorts. "How considerate."
"You don't sound surprised."
"That'd be because I'm not." He makes a weak gesture, fingers scratching against the sheet. "I figured I had it coming."
"But you're – are you staying with us now? You can hardly go back to them…"
"It'll be fine," Kakashi says, briefly closing his eye. He sounds perfectly convinced of this. "I acted up, they disciplined me, we're moving on."
"But why would you want to!"
Kakashi shrugs. "It's home."
"They sold him."
"So did Jiraiya," Kakashi points out. "So did I."
"It's not the same," Naruto says rebelliously, pulling his knees up close to his chest.
"It's a difference in degree, not a difference in kind."
"I – that's not how I want to think about it."
"Obviously."
"When I – what you saw, that morning. When Kyuubi had been out." He breathes in deep. "Sasuke did let him out. I know you don't believe me or whatever, but he did. I wouldn't have let him slaughter Stonehall like that, and – and anyway. I still shouldn't have done it. I should've been better."
"Yes, you should have." He shifts, adopting an expression Naruto can't read. "He'll get over it."
"He shouldn't have to. But yeah. He – I don't think he even felt there was anything to get over."
"It's not surprising," Kakashi points out. "You know what Orochimaru was like with him."
Naruto nods, knees still pressed tight to his chest. "He doesn't really talk about it." It's mostly an observation, but it's a little bit a question.
"No," Kakashi agrees, "he doesn't."
Naruto offers a wet little snort. "He's not above using it, though."
Kakashi hums non-committaly. "I think usually when he lets something slip, it's because he doesn't realise that he's describing something abnormal."
"Yeah," Naruto says, his voice growing thicker. But he can't stop, he's never known how to stop. "You know, I told him I'd kill him if he tried to leave me." His face breaks into an expression that has to be a smile, because the alternative is untenable. "He was happy."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I don't know. I guess so you have all the facts when you – when you think about it, when you decide. If you did the right thing. If you're gonna try and get him back."
Kakashi's voice remains colourless and vaguely amused in that cutting way. "You seem to be misunderstanding something."
"You told him you're in love with him, right?"
"It doesn't matter," Kakashi says finally.
"Of course it matters."
"He'll never forgive me." He shrugs. "Nor should he."
"He gave you his eye."
Kakashi's fingers press briefly against the gauze, hard enough to draw blood.
"Anyway," Naruto continues, "he's not – he doesn't really do forgiveness. But that doesn't mean it's the end of everything? He's never going to forgive me either, and he still – he's still here, he still…"
"If I'd just assaulted him, I don't doubt he'd get over it."
"That's stupid – "
"No," Kakashi says, slumping back down to lie supine. "Some things are forgivable, others are not." He speaks over Naruto with a strange smile spreading like a cut across his face. "You won't forgive me either."
"For giving me Sasuke? I'm –"
"Not everything is about Sasuke." He sighs, still smiling like it hurts him and he might be enjoying it. "I'm saying it now so you can decide if you'll forgiveme or not." His voice comes almost pitying, "Naruto. I killed your mother."