Hey. I'm leaving for Piano Camp (WOOOT!) for three weeks starting on Saturday, so this story will be on hiatus until then...but I promise I'll post when I get back, ne?

Chapter 5: The Demon Within Him

He lay there, bathed in the soft, transcendent glow of the moon, opalescent eyes glaring intensely into the ceiling. Neji exhaled irritably as he shifted on the bed, causing even more midnight locks to spill like a waterfall over his marvelously chiseled chest and the edge of the mattress. Naruto…the look on his face…when the blonde bitch spoke to him that way…it almost seemed like he was struggling with himself, to keep something dark and fatally dangerous locked up inside. It was almost as if…as if…as if he was willing himself not to give in, so much that he almost fainted with the sheer exertion.

A heavy knock resonated throughout the room, followed by an oddly hollow thud. Every nerve suddenly jangled with anticipation as Neji hastily stood from the bed, the milk-white sheets sliding like silk from his body. He crossed the room in four long strides and pressed himself against the door, listening to the heavy breathing going on the other side. After a moment's pause, Neji decided to go with his instincts and opened the door with a great deal of difficulty.

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight before his eyes. Naruto hung from the doorknob like a limp puppet, blood streaking his face and streaming from his rain-slicked body. His clothes were tattered and ripped in various places, and bruises sprouted like weeds along his arms, face, and exposed torso. It wasn't his beaten condition that struck such sheer horror into the Hyuuga; no, it was his eyes, and the expression of sheer apathy on the blonde's countenance that thrice froze Neji's soul and shattered it to splinters. His eyes were black against the paleness of his face, both spark and flint and they glittered with deadness. Blood ran from his mouth as if he were just been eating strawberries, and the half-dozen gashes that bedizened his forehead seemed to contrast with the three whiskers on each of his cheeks, making them black against the stark whiteness of his face. One corner of his mouth twitched up into what looked like a sick parody of a smile.

"Déjà vu, no?"

He coughed, spattering the carpet with splotches of red, and let go of the doorknob entirely, sinking to the ground. For the second time in his life, Neji gathered up the blonde, cradling him gently to his chest as he bore the light body to the bed. Sending a silent apology to Naruto, the Hyuuga tenderly peeled off what was left of the tattered clothing and grabbed the nearest sheet, gently sponging off the drying blood from Naruto's body. Neji set his jaw, a surge of rage shooting into his veins. The bastards…whoever had harmed Naruto would have a long, intensive, and extremely painful talk with the Hyuuga; he would make sure of that.

Memo

To: QPC

From: SRN

Subject: Loyalty

Sir,

Observations show subject has developed great attachment to target. Please advise.

Memo

To: SRN

From: QPC

Subject: Re: Loyalty

Precautions have been taken. Will release antidote within twenty-four hours.

It wasn't until a few hours later that Naruto awoke from his comatose state. Blue eyes cracked open, still hazed over with the fog of sleep. Neji watched sympathetically as Naruto tentatively explored his body, fingers running over the strips of gauze and cotton that covered his wounds. He slanted a flicker of a smile at the Hyuuga and lay back down, closing his eyes, his mouth crimped in a cynical smirk.

"Don't look so worried, Neji, they'll all heal by tomorrow."

Neji nodded and settled for shredding a piece of gauze with troubled fingers. A long moment of silence passed. Naruto's countenance was impassive; Neji worked his jaw many a moment, as if he were trying to find the right words to say. Naruto opened a sapphire orb and stared thoughtfully at the Hyuuga, a weak smile on his face.

"You look positively distressed, Hyuuga. I'll live, don't worry." He quipped lightly. Neji looked up, delicately picking his next words with the greatest care.

"I don't know how to say this politely…but…"

"You want to know why I'm always in a half-dead state? And why all the people at school—or anywhere else for that matter—look at me as if I'm a despicable creature worthy of the highest loathing?" He whispered contemptuously, laughing bitterly at Neji's startled outcry of surprise.

"I knew you were going to ask. It's not that much of a secret, anyway. Well it is, technically, but you're fairly new here, so you probably don't want to know about it. I don't want you soiling yourself with my presence." He said acrimoniously with a harsh bark of a laugh.

"I do not consider myself soiled for being around you. Besides, I have been in your presence for a fairly long time now." Neji said in light argument. Naruto looked at him for a long time, his expression mildly thoughtful. After a long moment he sighed, resentful.

"Very well, I shall tell you…but there are some things that must be kept a secret, so you won't hear the whole truth." At Neji's murmur of agreement, Naruto swept his gaze to the ceiling, wincing a bit as his wounds protested.

"Well, it was a long time ago…"

He was dead. He was lying in a pool of his own blood, writhing feebly in pain as they stood triumphantly over him, knives in their hands, baleful snarls that contorted their faces into sick smirks that dripped with evil. They bent over him again and raked their knives into his skin; he screamed long and loud in agony as the gaping wounds once again appeared.

"Hey look, it's doing it again."

"No matter how much we cut into him, his wounds always heal."

"All the better to keep on doing it, yes? Damn demon-bastard…you get what you deserve!"

The blades rose and fell, rose and fell. The small boy screamed again, a harsh, inhuman shriek that cut through the night, and suddenly a great, awesome power engulfed his whole body, throwing back the assaulters. They staggered backwards, eyes widened in horror as the boy convulsed, his body wracked with spasmodic jerks. The power grew and grew, the color of pure, fresh blood, then reared and plunged itself into the attackers as if it had a mind of its own. As one they were disintegrated, nothing left of them save for sprays of blood on the walls and the ground.

Naruto looked on in sympathy as the shock, confusion, and emotion played over Neji's face. The blonde looked down at his own hands resting gently on the blankets, smiling bitterly.

"That's all I can tell you; the rest is a secret. All I will say now is that I have something different about me. You can't see it from the outside, but it's there. It's in me. And because of that difference, the people of the city hate me for it." He murmured softly.

Naruto looked as if his eyes had been painted onto his face, merely images with no life as he told his tale. Neji looked on, his heart constricting painfully as the blonde came to a close. After staring thoughtfully at his hands, the blonde looked up with a wan smile.

"I learned to get used to it after a while." He said softly, his voice fragile as glass. Neji exhaled in shock.

"Why did it hurt you so much if your wounds kept on healing?" He inquired. The gossamer-fine tension in the air shifted tentatively.

"Just because my wounds heal doesn't mean I can't feel the pain." Naruto responded in a silk-thin pain-encrusted voice. A corner of his mouth curved up in a wry, bitter smile.

"I don't even have the scars to show for it." A harsh, soft laugh emanated from the blonde.

"I think I'll sleep now…wounds heal much faster if one gets rest." He lay back down among the sheets and lowered his eyes to half-mast, then feebly gestured to the Hyuuga.

"Sorry if I'm taking…up your…bed…." And with that, he slipped off the edge of the world.

"How goes the procedure, sir?"

"Immaculately well. We still need to balance and correlate the chemical makeup though. The antidote must be precisely compatible with the subject."

"Yes sir."

At the pull of a lever, the machine began to whir. A fine white mist rose from the top of the giant test tube and seemed to writhe with spastic convulsions, finally expelling a large lump of flesh-colored object. Again the green fluid was drained, and again the object came to rest at the bottom of the tank. At another sequence of buttons pressed, the glass of the tube retracted, showing a comatose object raised on a platform adorned with several wires. Another push of buttons sent currencies whirling down the wires, and slowly the figure on the rostrum opened its eyes. It rose, stood unsteadily on two slender feet, then drew itself up to its full height.

"I am alive."

Hiashi's mouth curved into a deep smile filled with sardonic mirth. The figure before him looked him dead in the eye, then bowed deeply to show its loyalty.

"I am to do as you command, Hiashi-sama." The older Hyuuga's smile deepened even more, but it did naught to lessen the ice in his pale eyes.

"Go. Seek out your target and work your charms. I shall be monitoring closely."

The girl sank yet again into a bow and exited the room.

His first thought was a thought of great disgust towards himself for having fallen off the bed in the middle of the night. He most certainly had a great deal of control over his body when he was unconscious, thank you very much…and then it suddenly came back to him. The memories of last night…and who was currently sleeping in his bed. Neji arose from the mattress on the floor and sat up, flicking a brief, sweeping gaze over the sleeping form of Naruto. Pearl eyes softened considerably as he looked upon the smooth, creamy skin of the blonde…

A spark tore across his mind and Neji reeled backwards with the sheer realization of what he'd just witnessed. Each and every single wound on Naruto's body was completely gone. There wasn't a mar on the blonde's body; quite the contrary, Naruto looked even healthier than normal, his pale skin unblemished. The sunlight streamed down from the window beside him and entangled itself in his wheat-bronze hair, highlighting every single heaven-spun strand of silken gold and making other locks seem blazing white. It frosted his long, fair lashes and gilded his slender eyebrows, making him look almost transcendent as he lay sleeping on the bed. Neji felt his stomach braid itself around his heart, constricting with an almost pleasurable pain.

"Hey."

Neji slanted a glance over at Naruto's form. The blonde had both eyes open and was cutting a brazen grin at the Hyuuga, the side of his mouth crooked up in a demoralizing smirk.

"You awake?" He murmured. Neji flashed him an evanescent smile and sat up from the mattress, running a hand through his disheveled hair.

"I do believe so—ouch."

He winced as his head was pulled backwards by an unknown force. Upon further observation, Neji discovered, to his dismay, that his hair was impossibly snarled around the legs of the night-table behind him, and that even more hair had spilled across the carpet, hopelessly tangled in webs of black silk. The Hyuuga let out an exasperated exhale, elegant brows knotted in frustration as he began to reel in his hair. Why Hiashi had decided to give him such ridiculously long hair was beyond any valid reason.

A funny sort of gurgling noise that sounded like a cross between a choke and a retch came from above him; Neji looked up to identify the source, only to find Naruto with both fists stuffed in his mouth, his body shaking hysterically. The blonde shot him one watery-eyed glance before he dissolved into paroxysms of giggles on the bed, his body wracked through with hopeless mirth. Resigning himself to the fact that he wouldn't stop laughing for a very long time, Naruto lay hooting hysterically on the bed, tears of mirth running like rivers down his eyes.

"Oh…oh my….oh my gawd, you should have SEEN your own FACE!"

He lay down again, his laughs coming in short bursts, a long period of laughter coming every once in a while. Neji shot him a steel-cut glare, but eventually thawed and laughed along with him, inwardly smiting himself for melting so easily. In due course, the duo lapsed into companionable silence, secret smiles on each of their faces. Eventually Naruto slid off the bed and extracted himself from the sheets, kneeling fluidly next to the Hyuuga.

"Here, let me help with that…"

He immediately set out on the task of unsnarling the strands caught around the legs of the night-table; Neji worked on the hair that was splayed on the carpet, slender fingers combing through the knots. He felt other strands of his tresses being gently manipulated and turned around to find Naruto patiently picking at his hair with deft nails. To his surprise, the blonde had already extracted his locks from the prison of the table legs, and was now calmly smoothing out the knots from the ebony silk. Neji exhaled slowly, a breath of utter awe. He hadn't even felt Naruto working at his hair, the blonde was so tender. His touch was gossamer, his fingers like glass…it was almost with a maternal touch that Naruto unknotted his hair. It produced a rather soporific effect on the Hyuuga; he lowered his eyes to half-mast and leaned into the blonde's caress, his own portion of hair momentarily forgotten.

So engrossed were the two in Neji's long tresses that they failed to notice the soft rapping upon the apartment door. The handle turned, and Hizashi fluidly slid his sturdy frame through the door, closing it was a sharp snap. Naruto's head snapped up and he recoiled slightly from Neji's hair; Neji sent a look of mild surprise at Hizashi's shocked countenance. The older man's pale gaze swept over the scene in the middle of the room, rapidly absorbing the information.

"Do forgive me. I seem to have…interrupted something, yes?" He said calmly.

Neji shook his head; Hizashi's gaze flickered briefly over Naruto, and Neji could have sworn something akin to recognition and resentment had flashed in the older Hyuuga's eyes. He brushed it from his thoughts, reassured by the assumption that Hizashi had never met Naruto and was only looking at him that way due to the fact that the blonde was half-naked and sprawled across the sheets of the bed. It was a somewhat suggestive position that Naruto was in, and Neji was more than happy to explain the true nature of the extra occupant in the room, wisely omitting the story of Naruto's wounds and the late-night talk the two had together. Hizashi only nodded, his expression unreadable.

"Well, you'd best hurry up. School starts quite soon." He let himself out, quietly closing the door behind him.

Was it his imagination, or was Naruto suddenly looking a bit tense? The blonde's jaw was rigid and his eyes glittered with a mystifying emotion that, despite being a great anomaly, was undoubtedly negative.

"Are you all right?" The look abruptly drained from Naruto's eyes, a little too quickly, and the blonde swallowed, gracing Neji with a faintly ersatz smile.

"I'm fine. Really." He stood and padded softly over to the adjoining kitchen.

"I'll fix breakfast. You'd better get dressed, Neji." With a wink, Naruto disappeared into the adjacent room, and sounds of bustling filled the silence. Neji let his gaze linger in the blonde's general direction a while longer before he crossed to the bathroom.

He came out a while later to find a most tantalizing smell assailing his nostrils. Neji inhaled the heady scent and followed it to the kitchen where, to his great surprise, he found Naruto stirring several pans, occasionally flipping food onto two set plates. That being done, the blonde wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow and expertly flung an overflowing plate at the Hyuuga with a flick of his wrist, who caught it and barely managed not to slop the food upon it down the whole front of his shirt. Neji shot Naruto a highly chagrined look for daring to attempt such a dangerous thing; Naruto only bared his teeth at him in a devastating grin, then started to eat his own helping.

The tang of spice that flavored Neji's meal exploded on his tongue in little bursts of hot; Naruto had artfully arranged everything in a pleasantly tasty display. Having finished his own portion, Naruto swept his chopsticks across Neji's plate, snagging a bit of takoyaki. Neji smiled briefly as the blonde licked at his chopsticks, cleaning every last bit of flavor; Naruto really was adorable at some moments in his life, and Neji was more than happy to witness most of said moments.

"You're too slow, Neji…we have to go." Naruto leaned over and swiped nearly half of the Hyuuga's portion in one clean sweep, deftly shoving the contents down his throat.

Then again…the Hyuuga sighed and handed over the rest of the food with a resigned breath. Naruto squealed happily and devoured the contents, giggling playfully.

"Come, I'll take us to school." Blue eyes widened at Neji's comment.

"Really? Do you have a car?" He asked innocently. The Hyuuga closed alabaster fingers around Naruto's wrist in response and gently dragged him down to the garage.

"You do have a car!" Naruto squealed in ecstasy. Neji subtlety rolled his eyes.

"Yes, I do have a car. Now if we don't hurry, Iruka-sensei will have your head." He said in an overly patient voice. Naruto poked out his chin.

"Why only ME?"

"Because I, unlike you, am not a loud, obnoxious, overly mischievous, obscene little troublemaker, and I, unlike you, also have the highest grade in the class, which means I, unlike you, will be getting off scot-free while you, unlike me, will take the blame for making yourself—and myself as well—late to class." Neji casually explained. Naruto blinked.

"Whuh?"

Neji repeated his sentence.

"Yeah, but you'll vouch for me, right?" Naruto displayed a highly destructive look of pure sugar at the Hyuuga, who wavered slightly.

"Well…"

"Puh-leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzeeee?" Naruto stuck out a lower lip and pouted. Naruto pouting would be enough to move all the water out of the world…except Neji had no intention of moving water anywhere.

"No."

"WAAAAAAAAAIIIIII?"

"Because it is so much more amusing to see you getting the full effect of Iruka-sensei's wrath." He was rewarded with a ribful of elbow. Naruto looked scandalized.

"Some friend you are." He muttered. Neji laughed, then opened the door, shoved Naruto in the passenger seat, and got in himself.

"We're late as it is already." With that, the black sedan drove out into the world, leaving naught but dust behind it.


Until next time, nya? 3 Silver