Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However the OCs do belong to me.

"Days before, at the motel, I had asked myself, What color is the desert at night? A stupid question, yet somehow I felt it held the key to my future, or perhaps not so much my future as my capacity for suffering."

Robert Belaño, Gómez Palacio

I stared at the windows, at the ceiling, and at the door, trying to find something – anything – that could extrude my sleepiness.

This morning I was discharged after my three weeks stay at the hospital. My new parents immediately took me home into the Uchiha District. I did not pay much attention to the few people that we passed along the way, I really could not muster the will to care, opting to feign sleep. When we arrived in the house, Mother took me into what I assumed was the nursery and left me alone in my crib to catch some very needed sleep.

But I could not, or rather, I would not. Strange – terrible – things tended to happen whenever I closed my eyes. I was not quite ready to handle any more incidents from this freakish world just yet.

Sometime after my birth I had fallen asleep – or perhaps fainted, I was not sure either. One moment I was awake and the next I was unconscious. By the time I woke up, I was already inside an incubator with electrodes from a cardiopulmonary monitor connected to two either side of my chest and my lower abdomen. A probe to measure my respiratory rate and a cuff to measure my blood pressure were attached to my wrist and foot, respectively, whilst an IV was attached to my other wrist.

It was then that I began to feel it – the slow drag on my chakra as my reserve slowly depleted, disappearing bit by bit, quite similar to the sensation of donating one's blood; except for a fact that it did not stop.

I observed myself as much as I could with my newly-acquired sharingan without jostling all the wires and the cannulas, but I had absolutely no clue as to where my chakra was disappearing into. I did not know what all of my mitochondria were doing, or how their works somehow interrelated with the chakra in my body. However, with my chakra diminishing, so did the energy that powered my body. It was like a switch had been flipped and my body seemed to slow down. It knew that it was tired and I began to drift in and out of consciousness.

The process lasted for what felt like an eternity. The invisible leach kept on consuming my chakra, barely leaving enough energy for my organs to function; always teetering on the edge without outright killing me. Somewhere along the way it started to take even more chakra, so much that the muscles that were supposed to keep my airway open became too weak to do their job, which in turn caused my pharynx to collapse and obstruct the airflow on my upper airway. I had to wear CPAP ever since, at least until yesterday.

Even now I still had not figured out what had happened. For all I knew it could be a genetic disorder or a normal occurrence for infants in this world.

Once again, my eyelids dropped for the umpteenth time. The aching weight of consciousness seeped into my bones.

Though I really wanted to succumb to my urge to sleep, I could not shake the thought that if I fell asleep something bad was going to happen. I could not even say that I was being delusional, or perhaps I was just clinging to the hope that everything was only a fragment of my elaborate imagination and that I was actually sleeping; or in a coma, perhaps in a mental hospital – anything but this.

But staying awake was not something that was feasible either. I was just a human, a very young human, whose body had to operate with the barest necessities for three whole weeks. I did not know if my organs would suffer from permanent damages, or if there would be any delayed consequences due to undetected internal damages. I needed sleep, I had to in order to give my body a chance to fix itself.

Thus, I fell asleep.

For a moment I was floating, letting go of my worries and headache.

It was dark, until suddenly it was not.

Thick snow fell around me, covering buildings and trees of this unfamiliar place. The sky was dark, there were neither clouds nor stars that graced their presence. There was only lone lunar who shone brightly, casting an eerie silver light that illuminated the abandoned town. Cold winds blew, touching the back of my neck and sending the thrill of shivers down my spine. I subconsciously wrapped my arms around myself in response. Not that it would make that much of a difference anyway, not with the scrubs I was wearing.

I observed the inhabited place in uneasiness before I went to inspect myself. I was confused with what I saw.

The dark green surgical gown was marred with a dark splotch of blood, my blood, originating from a hole in my chest. Out of morbid curiosity, I poked it with my index finger. I strangely felt nothing but numbness. I then moved my free arm and blindly used it to reach a place in my back, accidentally poking a gaping hole in my back.

I stared at the blood on my gloved hand, my agitation returned tenfold.

A faint sound of shovel hitting the ground broke me out of my reverie. I looked up into the distance.

I did not know why, however, against my will, my limbs began to move into the direction of the sound like a marionette. I stared at my feet with a mixture of horror and fascination. I tried to stop my legs, but they did not obey me. In a short while, I already reached a place which seemed to be a cemetery.

Just as my legs passed the gate, I immediately wrapped my arms around the black iron pole and hang myself there like a leech. However, much to my horror, my legs kept on dragging me inside, pulling on my bones and straining my muscles.

The invincible power tugged me harder and I started to lose my grip. I winced when my joints creaked, slowly breaking under the force of the pull. I dug my nails into the gate and held it tighter.

The match between the foreign force and I continued for some time before it suddenly released its grip on me. My knees gave up and I crumpled to the ground in a heap of limbs.

I suspiciously eyed my feet, still hugging the pole.

I experimentally moved them closer to regain my balance – wincing slightly when sharp pain traveled from my probably dislocated left ankle – thankfully they obeyed me. When my legs remained within my control, I attentively peeled my arms from the pole and sank onto the ground, its coldness seeped uncomfortably into my skin.

Black crusts of paint blended with brown grains of corroding iron clung into the edge of my now naked fingernails, my still gloved palms, my arms and my surgical gown. The sharp coppery tang from the peeled epidermis sneaked into my nostrils, alerting me of the scratches that decorated my forearms. My ankles on the other hand were red, showing the tell-tale of oncoming bruises.

I need to get out of here.

I propped my arms against the snow and leaned my weight onto my right side, trying to rise in spite of my trembling fingers and aching ankles. I rolled myself around and used my knees to push myself up. I was about to drag myself away from the place when an invincible claw gripped my ankle, again.

I screamed as I flew across the cemetery and crashed head-first into the ground.

I groaned and shifted my shaking limbs. My hands were twitching, as if going through a spasm. I barely registered the warm droplets that dripped down from my numb skull into my cheek and jaw. I blindly moved my hands and felt something solid brushed my fingertips, a gravestone. I reached it. I gritted my teeth to stifle the sharp pain from my arm, and used it as a leverage to prop myself up.

For a while I simply leaned against it, inwardly apologizing to whomever it was whose grave I was imposing. I rested my cheek on the left side of the grey-white Fleur-de-lis cross, replacing my view from the seemingly endless rows of headstone with that of the side view of the bronze Christ corpus. I traced my finger against it, absentmindedly brushing the snow from the smooth and cold metal. It must have cost a fortune.

I lowered my gaze from the sculpture onto the carved name on the hard marble, onto the only thing that was left of the person who was buried underneath me.

It was me – or at least it was supposed to be me – it had my name written on it.

For a moment I was transported back to college, hearing one of my professors' lectures. Life is precious, he said. He then said that every moment in life was immeasurably valuable because life was finite, and that because humans were mortal and each moment was a moment closer to our death, each moment was more valuable than every moment that came before it.

It made sense at the time. It seemed logical enough. But now it all seemed like a joke.

A lifetime of struggles and achievements, and all that was left of me was a name; a name that one day too would be forgotten.

I wondered what my mother was thinking right now. Was she disappointed, perhaps angry? Angry that she had to invest her time to raise a child for years and pay for his very expensive education only for said child to end up dead and leave her with a mountainous student debt? I hoped she was angry. I hoped she loathed me, detested me with every fiber of her being. At least then I would not be forgotten. At least then I wouldn't be just another insignificant being that roamed the earth–

"What are you moping about this time?" the voice behind me said, startling me.

I heard it walked closer to me, its joints creaked from disuse. The combined smell of death – pungent and sickening – and sweet scents of different kinds of flowers clung to it, creating a horrific blend.

My hands were balled into a fist, ready to defend myself when needed.

"Pretty, isn't it?" it commented offhandedly. My gaze fell to the gravestone. "It's ostentatious, of course, but anything for the only son, huh?"

It then leaned forward, hunching over my shoulder, its desiccating phalanges slowly traced the carved name.

I kept my eyes straight, not blinking nor moving, trying to conceal how my heart was thundering inside my rib cage. Cadavers were one thing, but a walking dead was way out of my comfort zone.

"You know… there used to be a lot of flowers in here." It dragged its bones to the ground, drawing two largish leaves and a cluster of bell-shaped flowers. "There were lilies for innocence," its finger moved downward, drawing a tall flower stem composed of multiple flowers with sword-shaped leaves on its side, "gladiolus for the strength of character and integrity… And of course, my personal favorite…" It drew small flowers with geometrical shaped petals and connected them all to a thin rachis, "orchids."

I unwittingly smiled at their meaning.

"I will always love you," it echoed. "And before you put on that smug smile, take a look at this first," it pointed its finger towards the tiny writings under the carved name which I did not realize were even there, "…no farewell words were spoken, no time to say goodbye. You were gone before we knew it, and only God knows why."

I squinted my eyes to read the words, feeling a bit strange. I read it again, over and over, trying to brush away the awful feeling that had only gotten stronger.

"I don't know why they even bother with subtlety. They might as well wrote, 'congratulation for dying in a convenient store robbery, dumbass, God knows that you're the only one who can be stupid enough to pull it off'."

"Don't rush into conclusion," I said. "Different inflections produce different meanings," I did not want to entertain the idea that I died as a disappointment, "they must've meant well."

The skeleton shrugged, well… as much as it could with decomposing muscles, and plopped down to the ground – perfectly comfortable sitting on its bare bones. "Knowing Dad, we should have specified it in our will. What can we do about it anyway, what's done is done. Just be grateful we're buried."

"Does anyone visit you?"

"People visit us – well, mostly just Dad," it informed. "Then their visits became rarer and rarer until one day they just..." the thing's shoulders sagged, at a loss for words.

"Stopped," I whispered.

"Correct…" It nodded its head. "Perfectly understandable though. It's pointless anyway, it won't ever bring us back," the voice mused. "But still… it would have been nice to have some visitors," it professed. "It's dark in there… very quiet and suffocating…"

I looked at it in concern, but I could not decipher what it was thinking, not when there were no twitch of muscles or eyeballs for me to read.

"Oh… that's– that sucks."

"It's nothing," it dismissed. "That's just how people are – undependable. In the end, the only one that you can count on is yourself, regardless of where you are in life or who is in it for the time being."

While that might be true, in a sense, I believed that such thoughts were simply impractical in the long run. Human beings were social creatures. They were not only social in the trivial sense that they liked company, and not simply in the obvious sense that they each depended on others. Simply to exist as a normal human being required interaction with other people.

"Don't let this world make you bitter," I parroted. "Don't let the action of other people turn you cold on the inside. Certain things will hurt us, sure, but don't let those things make you unkind. We are human. We break and we make mistakes. But don't let pain and sadness ruin your life. It's about taking whatever life throws at you and learning from it."

It stared at me. Its jaw twitched, forming an almost pitying smile. "And what then, what would you do when everything becomes too much? When the invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level – when you can no longer deal with the deaths, the sleep deprivation, people who keep on blaming you no matter what? There will be no dangerous neighborhoods to visit, no colleagues you can beg to remove your life support. There's only you and your suffering. What then?"

I stared at my red stained gloves. "Does it really matter?"

"Does anything ever?" came an even more familiar voice.

I looked up.

The skeleton had morphed. Its visage contorted into the face of my killer.

The gun's muzzle dug uncomfortably into my chest.

I closed my eyes. "No."

My mother pulled the trigger.

I woke up with a jolt.

I pressed my hand against my chest. There was something… something inside me…

My hands clawed my sternum, forming crescent shaped dents on my reddish skin.

I rolled, I squirmed, I kicked my blankets.

I screamed in frustration when my legs became tangled in them.

I barely cared when a mass of black hair picked me up and sat on the floor, trying to calm me down, making my blankets fall down in the process.

I moved my hands and pushed them against my abdomen, trying to push it out.

The person that was holding me held me tighter and tried to pry my hands away, hindering the procedure.

That would not do.

I let the foreign energy flow into my eyes and I glared at my captor. The boy, Sasuke, gasped – either in horror or amazement – and his hold momentarily loosen up.

I took advantage of his surprise and rolled myself away from his grip into the floor. I ignored the cold tiles and shove my fingers down my throat, trying to make myself puke.

I started coughing.

I coughed out blood before I disgorged the breast-milk that I had drunk earlier. I felt the warm putrid sensation in my throat and the bitter taste in my mouth again. My throat was tingling, slightly burning. I felt the bile rose from my throat, there was something solid in there.

I heaved the content of my stomach for one last time before I slumped near my vomit.

Finally, it came out.

I opened my eyes and observed my vomit. It was white, with specks of red from my bleeding esophagus, and there it was, in the middle of it,

A bullet that had pierced through my chest and killed me.

I gritted my teeth and quickly pushed the bullet under the dresser for safekeeping, just as Mikoto and Fugaku burst through the door to deal with the commotion.

In the middle of the ruckus, Sasuke caught my eyes. His gaze was unreadable.

I brought my index finger to my lips, my red eyes glowed in warning.

Sasuke gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

We had a deal.

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