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

"I'm searching for answers

'cause something is not right.

I follow the signs,

I'm close to the fire.

I fear that soon you'll reveal

Your dangerous mind."

Within Temptation, A Dangerous Mind

I woke up to a scratching sound,

Scratch, scratch, scritchy-scratch,

And to an aching throat and a headache. The oddly familiar sounds were quickly pushed into the back of my mind as I regained my awareness, only quietly humming an eerie melody at the edge of my consciousness.

The pain crawled from the sides of my neck. It was accompanied by phantom pressure that ghosted over my windpipe. Wheezing sounds escaped me as air filtered through my mouth. It was not until a few seconds later that I realized that the hand that constricted my airway was no longer there, that I could breathe.

I opened my eyes, slowly and gently, to the bleary sight of murky blue and gloomy white. My eyes briefly flickered to the side. My hazy mind did not register the odd position of the sun, only the uncomfortable feeling of my glasses' bridge digging into my nasal bone.

I exhaled a breath and swallowed my saliva – no breathing difficulty, no dysphagia or odynophagia, I mentally listed. I pressed my fingers against my neck, trailing them from below my chin to my suprasternal notch. My thyroid cartilage and hyoid bone seemed to be fine, they were not fractured. I felt my pulse, checking for any irregular heartbeat or palpitation. I could not feel any contusion or fingernails impression on my skin, but I could feel what seemed to be an abrasion near on my jugular, I was not sure.

I shifted my legs and moved to stand. It was then that I noticed the dull ache from my leg.

I glanced down at my knee, expecting a still bleeding wound. What I met instead was the opposite. The blood from the wound was already dried and currently sticking on my skin, forming a thin layer of red on and around the wound. The same thing could be said about the grazes in my palms. Just exactly how long was I out?

I glanced to the direction of the rest of the park's visitors. There were too many people. It would be hard to sneak around them inconspicuously. I then glanced to the row of dense forest ahead of me; with canopy of trees so thick they almost blocked the sunrays.

My choice was obvious.

I walked straight forward. To where, I did not know, I did not care either. Sometimes I would turn left, then right again, sometimes I would see the same trees again. It was when I thought about returning to the park that I stumbled upon a small crater – most likely an impact crater, what with its raised rims and its floor that was lower in elevation than the surrounding terrain – and at the center of it stood a massive tree. Its roots digging into the earth, its height towered over every other tree that I had passed.

This particular tree felt different from others. I could feel the steady flow of energy emanating from it, not unlike the current that I felt flowing beneath my skin ever since my arrival in this universe. However, there was something about the tree that simply felt peculiar – and familiar – the way its thick trunk spiraled, forming helix upon helix from end to end rather than running in straight furrows, and how it was the only plant that was able to live inside the crater. It was almost as if it was sucking the very lives of everything around it.

What–

"Hey!"

"Fuc–" I whipped my head into the direction of the voice.

Oh.

"Sasuke," I muttered, unimpressed. The boy almost gave me a heart attack.

I turned my head back only to find that the massive tree was no longer there.

"The hell…"

The space that it once occupied was replaced by an indistinct row of dense trees. There was no shred of evidence that suggested that the tree was even there.

I was about to check it with my sharingan when I heard my designated babysitter halted behind me. His cheeks were flushed red from exertion, few strands of his hair stuck into his face. On his back was a small bag that carried my food.

"Where have you been?! I've searched for you everywhere! I thought you've been kidnapped!"

"Err… park?" I offered.

I was a bit startled when Sasuke suddenly leaned forward and held my head in his palms, his gaze scrutinizing me.

I'm so busted...

"Oh my God…" Sasuke trailed off.

I braced for his next words and the panic that would surely ensue.

"You're bleeding!"

I was confused. "No, I'm–"

"Let's go to the hospital! You could be dying!"

Sasuke immediately linked his bigger hand with mine and dragged me forward.

"Nii-san!" My call fell on deaf ears.

"Nii-san, I'm okay!"

The boy kept on ignoring me.

"Sasuke, stop!" I roughly yanked my hand back, inducing a protest from my shoulder, and firmly stopped Sasuke before the six years old could begin to drag me again and cause a ruckus. He might not notice the bruises – are they gone already? – but the same thing could not be said about the medic at the hospital.

Sasuke scowled. "Why?"

"Father will…" I was about to launch a full tirade on why we should not go to the hospital and the ramifications that this event could cause to the already strained relationship between the clan and the village – with the coup d'état plan already in motion, it would be on everyone's, on my, best interest to keep the situation calm and controlled. As meaningless as I was, I was still an Uchiha. The Uchiha were already so angry with Konoha, they could very easily use the incident as a pretense to take action against the village – when I remembered that I was supposed to be a toddler whose linguistic and reasoning skill was supposed to be abysmal.

"Will what?" Sasuke asked impatiently. "Father always takes you to the hospital when you're sick, so what's the problem? I know that he can be really scary sometimes, but you shouldn't worry, he's not going to be mad."

Yeah, right.

I gestured to my wounded knee and calmly held out my hand. "Bag." I would deal with Fugaku later, now I needed to patch myself up first. I did not know exactly how long the time had passed, but do I know that I did not want to suffer from infection.

Sasuke frowned in displeasure, but he let the bag down.

I rummaged through it, searching for a first aid kit. One of the pros of living with a ninja family was that they were always prepared to deal with this kind of thing.

Sasuke breathed an exasperated sigh, an annoyed gesture that he seemed to only reserve for me, and beckoned his hand. "Here, let me do it."

I obediently plopped down on the ground whilst Sasuke fished out the necessary equipment from the bag.

Once the boy grabbed a bottle of water, I held my palms out and let the cool water run through them, washing away the debris. After that, Sasuke poured the water on my left knee. I used my fingertip to scrub the red crusts from the edges of the wound whilst the water washed the bloods away, thankfully there was no debris in the wound itself.

Sasuke grabbed a small cloth from the bag's front pocket and dabbed it on my palms. "How can you get hurt so much?" he lamented. "I only take my eyes off of you for a second and you're no longer there."

I shrugged. "I fell."

Sasuke lifted an eyebrow, unconvinced. "I don't know where you 'fell' but I'm sure it won't make your eyes bleed."

Wait, what?!

I suppressed myself from outwardly reacting even though my heart suddenly jolted at the information. "How red?" I inquired clinically. Is it subconjunctival hemorrhage?

Sasuke moved the cloth to my knee. "The whites of your eyes are completely red." The boy's stern gaze bored into mine. "You really should get them checked."

I pursed my lips.

I did not feel any pain or have any change of vision in my eyes, but it was worrying that it happened to both eyes at the same time. Although, thinking back about it, if I correctly estimated the force that the man exuded and took the duration of the strangulation into consideration, there should not be enough pressure to burst the blood vessels in both eyes. On the other hand, if I remembered correctly, I already lost consciousness within ten seconds flat. It was as if the man really knew the amount of forces that were necessary and which places that were needed to press to make his victim unconscious.

Was he a ninja, perhaps a civilian with prior self-defense lessons? But if he was, shouldn't I be dead by now? If by any chance he suddenly regained his senses and released me – which was unlikely – I should have regained my consciousness within ten seconds too, but all evidence suggested that I did not. If my airway continued to be blocked, even only for a few minutes after that, it would induce a cardiac arrest, which meant I should have been dead by now.

I gnawed at my bottom lip, what am I missing…?

"Nii-san?" Sasuke hummed in response, he did not take his eyes from his current task of applying an antibacterial ointment over my knee. "Red?" I pointed to my left cheek, where I have been struck.

Sasuke looked up. "No. Why?"

So there were no bruises or petechiae on my face. It appeared there was nothing out of ordinary except for my eyes.

"Nothing," I replied nonchalantly.

This was worrying. I remembered that when I checked the condition of my neck earlier, although surprised, I was glad that the damage was not extensive. However, considering everything that I had gathered so far, the lack of bruises or noticeable wounds were starting to look like a deliberate cover-up for the incident. Who would believe me if I said that I had been attacked when all evidence of said attack had disappeared?

I frowned at the thought.

My condition by far was too fine for someone who had been strangled into unconsciousness by a grown man. It heavily contradicted the evidence that I had gathered so far, which pointed towards the fact that my assailant was possibly a trained killer who was not sound in mind, thus made it unlikely for me to survive with a minimal amount of damage.

I only had one explanation for this, and it was that there was someone that helped me. But who was it? Did he or she find any internal injuries? I did not want to be led into a false sense of security by the lack of external injuries only to end up dead a few days later due to unnoticed delayed consequences. There was only so much that I would do to prevent the massacre. Giving up my life was not one of them.

I heaved a sigh and glanced back to Sasuke. It seemed the boy was done with my knee, the Band-Aid had been put and everything else had been returned to the bag.

"Thank you." I really meant it.

"Anytime," he assured. Sasuke then wrapped his hand around mine and pulled me up. "Come on, let's go home. If you don't want to go to the hospital, at least let your eyes rest. Maybe they will heal tomorrow."

It was unlikely that the blood would be gone by tomorrow, but Sasuke had a fair proposition. It ticked me however that I had to return to the compound again when I had not even spent a quality time outside. Being a child sucks.

Oh wait, other children were not imprisoned in their own house.

Speaking of which, "Is 'Tachi-nii home?"

Today was already Saturday. Last Monday, Sasuke had officially joined the academy, and on the very same day Itachi had gone on a mission with Shisui. I did not know what their mission was, however if I was going with Itachi Shinden's timeline, they should be on a mission that was given by Danzō, a mission to assassinate a traitor as Itachi's means to prove himself before he would be admitted to ANBU.

"I don't know." Sasuke shrugged. "He said he would be home this afternoon, but he isn't. Maybe he has arrived now."

It's definitely a possibility, I thought.

Hopefully he was already home, there was something that I had been planning to do since Fugaku announced that Itachi's application into the ANBU had been accepted and will soon become official. After all, it was the start of the chain of events that would lead to the clan's massacre.

It was when Sasuke and I were about to head home that I began to hear the strange sounds again, the sounds which I had wholly ignored until now.

Scratch, scratch, scritchy-scratch.

Only this time, it was accompanied by something that made the hair at the back of my neck stand.

Is that…

"Nii-san, do you hear that?" I whispered.

Sasuke looked at me with an obvious bafflement. "Hear what?"

"Those sounds!"

His expression turned blank.

"What sounds?"

I mirrored Sasuke's expression. I did not believe that it was simply my imagination.

From time to time, I would experience strange things. They were random, mostly innocuous, but they made me restless. I could not shake the feeling that someone was watching, waiting in the shadow. I attributed those occurrences to my anxiety, which I was not ashamed to admit had been unhealthily high-strung ever since I woke up in this place. The other strange thing was the scratching sound. It was always there, a background hum that followed me every day. It was never intrusive, thus I learned to ignore it.

But this…

Sasuke's lips were set into a displeased frown as he wrapped his fingers around mine. "Let's just go."

"But–"

"There's nothing. Stop making things up."

"I'm not lying!"

Sasuke turned around sharply.

"We've been through this already, why can't you just stop?!" he shouted. "You think you hear or see something, but guess what?! There's nothing!"

"You're too loud!" I hissed. My eyes darted around the trees and the bushes for any sign of… whatever it was. "This one, it's different." I insisted. "And I'm not lying." I clenched my jaw. "I never lie." At least not about this kind of thing.

Sasuke barked out a hollow laugh. "No, you're not. You're just crazy. That's why father locks you up in the house after all."

If anyone were to ask Sasuke about what he thought of his little brother, he would answer that he did not know, that he was not sure.

Itachi said that older siblings were supposed to protect their younger, that they had to love them, care for them, and shield them away from pain. However, every time Sasuke looked at his little brother, the first thing that came into his mind was how odd he was, how unnatural. There was just something that was really wrong about him, but Sasuke could not explain what.

Sasuke remembered the first time he saw his baby brother. The baby came earlier than expected. He was kept inside a transparent box, his skin was red and his eyes were tightly shut, he looked tiny and helpless.

Sasuke wanted to ask various questions to his mother – he wanted to know why the baby was connected to tubes and wires. Was the baby sick? Why was he so tiny? Could he hold him? – but he restrained himself, because his mother was not smiling and his usually stern father looked worried, so there must be something wrong with the baby. He kept the information to himself though.

It took almost three weeks for his baby brother to come home, but when he finally did, Sasuke immediately went to play with him. However, the baby was asleep and his mother did not allow him to wake the baby, so he dejectedly returned to his own room.

Few hours passed and Sasuke was not sure what had happened, but one second he was watching the TV and the next thing he knew the baby was screaming for his life.

Sasuke immediately dashed into the baby's nursery to calm him down. When he arrived there the baby was violently kicking his blankets, trying to get out of them. He picked the baby up, leaving his blankets on the crib. He supported his neck like his big brother taught him to, and started to rock him gently. However, the baby kept on squirming in his arms, and he was afraid that he was going to drop him. So he sat on the ground, put a pillow in his lap, and laid the baby on top of it. When the baby started hitting himself, Sasuke reacted immediately and pried the baby's hands away. But then the baby got angry and used his sharingan, much to his horror, paralyzing him and making him unable to move or breathe. It was only once the baby broke eye contact with him that he could finally move his muscles, and by then the baby was already vomiting blood and his stomach content into the floor. His parents came into the nursery after that. They told him to stay in his room before they went to the hospital. Sasuke complied. He did not want to play with his mean baby brother anymore.

Sasuke did not know it at the time, but that incident marked the beginning of everything that went wrong with his family.

Once they returned from the hospital, his mother and father started arguing, their normally composed selves cracked. When his parents started screaming at each other, Itachi took him and their baby brother to their cousin's house. They stayed there for a few hours, until the baby woke up from his slumber with a hungry stomach. His big brother then returned to their house, he did not know what his big brother did or said to their parents, but once they all returned home his parents acted like nothing had happened. Thus Sasuke followed suit, he pretended like it was a perfectly normal day, just him with his family.

Things progressed surprisingly normal after that, although his baby brother was different from other babies, he was quiet and he never cried; when he was not sleeping he would only lie on his crib, unmoving; only staring with those creepy eyes of his. Sometimes he would hear his parents arguing in their room, but they kept their voices down and they never argued in front of their children, so Sasuke thought that their family was still fine, that they would be fine.

They would not.

Few months passed and his baby brother's behavior started to get weirder. He withdrew from everyone, he did not want to play and he had trouble with eating and sleeping. He only curled into himself in his crib and stared blankly at nothing. He felt dead, he looked dead – maybe he was dead.

Sometimes Sasuke wondered if the baby hated them, because it felt as if the baby was hoping that by ignoring them all they would disappear from his life. His big brother said that it was absurd, babies could not think like that. Sasuke followed his words, because his big brother knew best.

He does not.

His parents were greatly affected by his baby brother's condition. Sasuke remembered how his mother would always stare at the baby in worry – the dark circles under her eyes were prominent. People said that she was going mad. His father on the other hand spent most of his day in his office, sometimes he did not even come home. His big brother wanted to temporarily leave from the shinobi force to help their mother care for their baby brother, but father forbade him – he said that he was the clan heir and he had his responsibilities, he should not concern himself with his youngest brother – thus in addition of arguing with mother, his father also started to argue with his big brother. Sometimes the arguments got so bad that his big brother did not return home for days.

Things continued like that for the next two months. His baby brother looked sicker and sicker for each passing day and no one had any idea how to cure him – they did not even know what was wrong with him – his parents argued and blamed each other, and his big brother was also dragged into the quarrel every time he tried to defuse the tension.

Everything was a mess, and one day Sasuke just had had enough. He hated seeing his mother drinking those foul-smell liquids, he hated that his father was rarely home, he hated that every time the two of them meet they would always argue, he hated that his big brother was being sent to do missions in Kami only knew where instead of helping him to deal with his baby brother. He wished that his baby brother did not exist, because if he did not then all of these horrible things would never happen. If he did not exist, his family would not be like this. He wanted him gone, to disappear, so he could return to his perfect life, just him with his big brother, mother, and father.

Thus Sasuke acted on impulse, on the sudden burst of epiphany that coursed through his being, like he was given a mission by the gods themselves.

It was a perfect day. Itachi was training for his chūnin exam, father was working, and mother was going to the grocery, thus he was alone with the baby. He crept into his baby brother's nursery. The baby was lying in his crib with a little smile on his face. He looked very peaceful and unburdened, so unlike the other times when he woke up. The sight itself only spurred Sasuke even further. He knew that he was doing the right thing, his baby brother would be better off sleeping. Sasuke pressed a long kiss on the baby's cold forehead, told him that he loved him, before he placed the pillow on top of the baby's head, smothering him, ridding him of his suffering. Now the baby could sleep forever, he would be cured and everyone would be happy.

It was less than thirty minutes later that Sasuke heard his mother's scream tore through the house. When he finally managed to force himself to return his composure, he walked into his baby brother's nursery. In there, he found his mother kneeling on the ground, her slim frame trembling. Her tears were running down her face whilst she clung to the baby in her arms. Her eyes were blown wide, her sharingan spinning erratically in a mad frenzy.

Sasuke on the other hand only felt indignation. Why was she crying? His mother should have been happy. She did not have to worry about the baby anymore. It was not like she actually cared about the baby – it was not like anyone barring him actually cared about his sick baby brother. They did not have the right to feel sorry when they all but abandoned him alone. They did not have any right.

His mother ordered him to go to his room and not to tell his father and brother about what had happened, not that they even came home to interrogate him anyway. Sasuke did as he was told and locked himself inside his room.

He could not sleep though, because every time he closed his eyes all he could see was his baby brother's dead eyes staring at him.

And because something just kept on scratching on his door, trying to get into his room.

When he woke up the next morning – feeling sluggish, irritated, and terrified – he was greeted with the sight of his smiling mother, holding a very much alive baby in her mother's arms. It was the first time that he had seen her smile in months, thus Sasuke ignored how his mother's smile was stretched too wide, ignored how there was something that just seemed off with her, ignored how his instinct told him to run away from her. Though confused – thinking back about it, Sasuke still could not comprehend what his mother had done. Dead person did not just suddenly come back to life, the dead should have stayed dead – he also felt happiness for his baby brother. He was finally cured.

His mother handed his baby brother to him, saying that she was going to take a shower. She indeed smelt horrible. There were dried red crusts in her fingernails and neck. Sasuke only rocked his sleeping – but breathing – baby brother back and forward, his mother's odd appearance quickly pushed aside in favor of playing with his baby brother.

It never occurred to Sasuke that his mother was so drenched in blood that the smell of deaths practically clung to her because of the atrocities that she had committed in exchange for her baby's life.

Slowly, but surely, everything returned to normal after what Sasuke dubbed as the second incident. With his baby brother no longer being the source of worries in everyone's head – he's still as quiet as before, but now he actually felt alive, he has a presence, he's no longer just a dead husk that their parents stored at the corner of the house – his parents were still giving each other cold shoulder, but they were no longer hostile. His big brother on the other hand had become more distant, only watching them from afar. Sasuke was not even sure what went through his head anymore. Maybe he was the one that had gone insane.

Time passed again. Sasuke watched as his baby brother grew, watched him as he forced himself to crawl and then walk at an abnormally young age. Watched him as he listened attentively to what others were saying, trying to understand the world around him. The boy had come far from being a half-dead mannequin into an actual living being. He still had not ceased his staring habit though, not even when father gave him glasses to help his eyesight. Mother said that it was normal. She said that the boy was learning their faces, recognizing them. That might be true if the boy was indeed looking at their face. However, when one spent as much time with the boy as Sasuke did, one would eventually realize that the boy was not staring at people's faces, rather, at the spaces on top of their heads.

When the boy turned one, he started to question Sasuke about strange noises and phenomena. At first, Sasuke had thought that the boy was only imagining things, but he quickly realized that oddities had indeed started to happen at random intervals. They were always subtle, almost unnoticeable if one did not know where to look. The occurrences always varied, sometimes strange sounds would resonate, sometimes the air would get colder, wind would blow out of nowhere, sometimes the lights would flicker and shadows would dance and twist at the door and the windowsill. Sometimes animals would behave weirdly, they would huddle in the corner, hiding. Even the fishes on the koi pond would not appear to the surface. Sasuke might not really understand just what exactly made his little brother different, but he was certain that the boy was the one who was causing those things.

Sasuke, of course, always denied it whenever the boy asked whether he had seen or heard anything peculiar, even if he was only able to notice the insignificant things. He was unwilling to admit that the boy's oddities had started to affect him as well.

Sasuke was the only sane person left in his house, and he would like to remain that way.

So far, things had been going fine. Sasuke had been successfully juggling between school, training, and looking after his baby brother without any significant difficulty. When father asked him to take his little brother to the park, Sasuke was sure that it would be an easy task.

He was wrong.

The boy just had to wander around – Sasuke chose to ignore the part where he urges his little brother to befriend someone – make Sasuke search him for over two hours, and then get himself hurt whilst under his watch. Sasuke could easily sprout a made up story about his knee wound, but the same thing could not be said about the boy's eyes. Father would probably kill him if the boy was unable to use his sharingan again, and mother would kill him if he abandoned the boy here… wherever this place was. Sasuke himself was not sure, he only followed his baby brother's trail. However, just as he was about to return home and had his big brother deal with the boy – hopefully he was already home – that sound just had to appear. Sasuke still remembered it as clearly as one year ago.

Locked in his own room, alone in the darkness, unable to run or escape, with undependable father and brother that never come no matter how long he cried, all he could hear was it scratching his bedroom door, whispering for him to come out, saying that they should play, with his life as its stake.

Sasuke was not embarrassed to admit that he was ready to bolt out of here – because bad things always follow it – but his baby brother just had to be a brat and refused to go home. And before he knew it, their conversation spiraled into this, where the boy freaked out about the thing and Sasuke denied everything.

On any other day Sasuke would indulge him, but not today. He was scared on top of being tired and irritated. He was only six, he should not have been the one who had to deal with this.

"No, you're just insane. That's why father locks you up in the house after all."

Actually, it was because a Hyūga girl had been successfully kidnapped by foreign ninja. His little brother could not defend himself, so it was better for him to stay in the house, where he would be safe, but the boy did not need to know that.

Sasuke knew he was being needlessly cruel, but it was not like the boy actually understood everything he said. And Sasuke had so much pent-up anger and frustration towards everything that he did not even care just what came out of his mouth anymore.

"You have no idea just what kind of trouble you cause for me, there's never a day without something weird happening to you. Why can't you just be normal?! Other children are free to do what they want while I am stuck here watching over you." Sasuke pressed his palm against his forehead and muttered, "Sometimes I wish you would just stay dead…"

Registering what he had just said, Sasuke immediately searched his brother's face for any kind of reaction, but there was nothing. The boy was only staring eerily blank at him.

Sasuke sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Just what did he expect anyway?

"Let's just go," he muttered.

His baby brother was curiously obedient.

"Sometimes I wish you would just stay dead."

Me too, Sasuke. Me too.

But I knew for a fact that he was not talking about the death that I experienced before I was born into this godforsaken world and family. So which death was he talking about? Because I honestly did not remember any other one.

And I wholeheartedly agreed with his insults, the boy had every right to do that since he was the one who was burdened the most by my existence.

But what could I do? I did not ask to be put here. I never wanted to constantly look over my shoulder, waiting for something bad to happen. I never wanted to have these urges to constantly run at every little thing. I did not want to have nightmares. I did not want to keep on looking at the doors and the windows, always wondering if they were securely locked even though deep down I knew that they could not stop whoever it was that would come through them if they wished so.

I wanted…

What? What do you want? To live? What's there to live when the only things you feel are powerlessness, uncertainty, and fear? What's there to live when there's only pain? Is that what you call living?

I didn't know what I wanted.

"Let's just go," Sasuke muttered, his tone conveying just how tired he was with this. Whatever this was.

You and me, buddy.

I linked our hands, focusing on Sasuke's warm grip and ignored everything else.

I ignored the cold wind that slither down my spine and coiled around my neck like a poisonous snake. I ignored the ghostly cold breath besides my ears, caressing, hugging, whispering.

I ignored the tingle on the tips of my fingers, as if they were touching something that was not there. Ignored how I could feel warm liquid seeping under my fingernails. I ignored how I could feel twitching – soft, pliable, tasty – meat beneath my fingerprints.

I ignored how the scratching sounds only grew louder the more I ignored them. I ignored how they were followed by the sounds of skin being peeled, slowly, bit by bit, like how one would peel scabs from dried wounds. I ignored the whimpers that came every time the nails accidentally scratched the naked flesh.

I ignored the staccato of agonized screams that bellowed in sync with the wrenching sounds of bones – cold and hard, the nails could not pierce them – easily ripped from their joints, one by one, puncturing fleshes and rupturing vessels.

I ignored the sounds of rope being tightened, digging into skin, ripping it, layer by layer; followed by gasps and choked pleas of please, please, please, have mercy…

And...

Silence.

There was no scratching or choking sounds anymore, just an eerie and uncomfortable silence.

I took a shuddering breath and loosen my grip on Sasuke's hand. It's over, it's over, it's o–

I felt something else settling within my fist instead, a rope, with heavy weight hanging beneath it.

Then it suddenly slipped, sliding over my palm.

No, no, no, no, no.

I instinctually tightened my grip on the invincible cord, it's too heavy… The rope slid again, its rough edges scrapped against my skin, tearing the outermost layer.

I held on tighter. Bloods began to ooze from my skin, slipping between my fingers, slicking my grip.

It slipped, down, down, down, down, until–

Snap.

The singular sound echoed like a clang of sword against metal inside my mind, a finality that I could never change. It was over...

No…

Your fault, it whispered.

No…

Your fault.

Oh God… I sucked in a breath. Oh God…

Your fault.

I pressed my fist against my mouth to muffle my panicked scream.

Your fault.

I stared down at my shaking hand and saw blood decorating it, dripping from the abrasions that were scattered on my palm. This was not just ink and stains. It's real, it whispered. This was life, and I was holding it in my hand.

I drew my eyes back up and met Sasuke's horrified face. Behind him, beneath the rustling leaves and hanging on the strange tree, I saw nothing else but the dead man.

"Still think I'm lying?"

…

Somebody out there had taken his life, his life, and here I was with his warm, sticky bloods,

Feeling the most alive I'd felt in years.

Thank you for reading this chapter. Thank you for favoriting and following my story. Your reviews, especially, really make my day.

I sincerely want to improve my writing, so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which part you like best and which part you hate, and why.

Check out my other story, "Iridescent".