A/N: Very surprised with the turnout for last chapter being so positive! Shikamaru chapters tend to bomb, so that's refreshing.
This chapter will be very NaruSatsuki centric. From here on out, the M-rating is being set in stone. Themes are about to get significantly heavier, both violence and sexual themes (not a ton for the latter, but still) are about to ramp up a bit.
None of it will be gratuitous, as I have a specific purpose in mind, for all of it, but you have been warned.
Time for Chapter 35
Enjoy!
It was the same dream again.
A dark street, a pale moon, a bleak silence. School bag over her shoulder, stuck in a child's body. The circumstances were always the same. They never changed, no matter how much time passed. She was almost used to it now. She didn't panic. She didn't question why or how. She already knew. As such, the deep breath Satsuki took upon finding herself back at the gates of the Uchiha sector once again was purely to prepare herself for the final act. The only part of the dream that still hurt.
With her eyes veiled by hair falling in front of her face, Satsuki began to walk forward. Every ten steps, she passed over a body. Some of them, she knew all too well. An aunt here, a cousin there. An uncle once in a while. Others, she hardly recognized. Just faceless corpses adding to the bloody tapestry painted on the streets. Stumbling over a lifeless arm splayed out from one of the bodies, the Uchiha girl tripped forward and caught herself on her hands before she could fully hit the ground.
Working her way back upright with blood staining her palms, Satsuki continued on silently. Her pace was painfully slow, as her stride was short. For minutes on end, she wordlessly maneuvered her way through the mass grave. She knew the route, she knew the steps to take. She knew how little it mattered if she wasted her energy running. She never made it in time. No matter how quickly she sprinted. She had long resigned herself to the sight she was numbly approaching.
It was truly incredible how efficiently they had all been killed. Well over three dozen people, and not a single one left alive. Not a single twitch amongst them. Lifeless and inert. He was as skilled as he'd always been hailed. He had silenced an entire neighborhood in less than a night. A few hours at most. In the worst way, this was his finest display. His magnum opus.
Soon enough, Satsuki found herself standing less than one hundred feet from the steps of her old home. The largest house in the sector. The home of Fugaku Uchiha and his family. Staring up at the frame of the building, the raven-haired girl tossed her bag aside and allowed autopilot to take over. Thinking too hard about any of it would only make it more painful. There was no point in suffering more than was necessary. With robotic posture and a blank expression, Satsuki made her way to the front steps.
Briefly, the dream diverged from its usual pattern. Upon climbing the first step, Satsuki's trance was broken by a separate memory. A cold night, wrapped up in the arms of a demon's container. It was a warm thought. Horribly out of place in the icy hell she was trapped within.
"J-Just hold me, okay?"
"I told you you'd get cold"
Another step.
"Don't get cute with me after tonight just because you're getting lucky right now."
"I'm probably still gonna make fun of you for it."
A third and a fourth.
"You smell good."
"...I, uh, didn't mean to say that out loud."
"This never happened."
The memory then faded to black as Satsuki climbed up onto the front deck. The main door was slightly ajar, with evidence of a break in. As always, the foreshadowing of the scene to come was ominous. Pushing the door open and stepping inside, the Uchiha girl internally braced herself. A short walk down the hallway led her to another open door. Entering through it, Satsuki was met with the greatest horror she had ever known. For what may have been the thousandth time, a rush of grief and agony crashed through her.
In a loose pile, her mother and father laid dead. Their clothes bloodied, their bodies lifeless, and their eyes soulless. Standing over them was her greatest love and most hated enemy. Itachi Uchiha. Her elder brother by six years. Dressed in a gray flak jacket, black pants, and wielding a short blade, the elder of the two siblings stared at his sister with dead eyes.
"You're home late." he said calmly. She had run through their conversation time and time again. No matter what she said, no matter how loud she screamed, she felt the same way. Helpless, betrayed, and viscerally angry. Clenching her small fists, Satsuki met his cold gaze.
"Why?" she hissed. It was her default question. The answer was always the same. It never changed. Not in tone, not in wording, not in implication.
"To test the limits…of my abilities." Itachi replied, not a shred of empathy or emotion in his voice. Satsuki bared her teeth and dug her nails into her palms as burning tears streamed down her cheeks. She hated herself for bothering to ask yet again. It was the definition of insanity. To make the same mistake repeatedly, expecting a different result each time. Gripping a kunai she had pulled from a corpse, Satsuki stepped forward.
"It's already done. You came too late. You're too weak, anyway." Itachi said as his sister approached him shakily. Satsuki ignored his discouragement. Time seemed to slow down as she charged forward in a desperate attempt to reclaim the family she had lost in blood. Each step took an eternity. In between it all, a muffled voice pierced the veil.
"Satsuki, what's wrong?"
Her eyes widened slightly as the distance between her and Itachi closed in slow-motion. She couldn't quite put a face to the voice, but it was familiar. Her mind was too clouded by rage to process coherently.
"What the hell is going on? What are you..."
The world around Satsuki then began to crumble away. The house, the bodies, Itachi, it all melted into darkness. Said darkness then shattered as well. What she found at the end of the breaking of her lucid dreaming was confusing, to say the least. Staring up at her with wide, fearful eyes was Naruto. She was pinning him to the floor by his throat, with a kunai in her free hand. She was holding the knife by the blade itself, and her palm was sliced open as a result.
The only thing keeping her from stabbing the Jinchuuriki, it seemed, was the tight hold Naruto was keeping on her wrist. She was mounted on his stomach. Slowly releasing her vice grip on his neck, Satsuki retracted her hand and dropped the kunai.
"Where am I?" she asked in confusion, struggling to process the situation she had awoken to. Naruto, who was breathing heavily, took several moments to answer her.
"We're in your room. Today was supposed to be your first day this week to train with Kakashi-sensei. You didn't show up, so he sent me to get you." he explained shakily. The Uchiha girl slowly turned her head, glancing at her clock. It was nearly noon. Well past her time to report to their teacher. Returning her attention to Naruto, she saw that there were specks of blood dripping down onto his face from somewhere. After a moment of puzzlement, she felt a pulse of pain run through her skull. Reaching up and touching her forehead, she found that it was bleeding.
"When I walked in, you were…hitting your head against the wall. Cutting it with a kunai, too. I tried to pull you away from it. You attacked me." Naruto said, breaking her from her shock. It explained their current position, but it did little to assign a reason to it. Despite the lack of clarity, Satsuki's confusion was rapidly replaced by a fearful guilt.
"I'm sorry…" she muttered, lowering her head and hiding her eyes behind her bangs. Naruto squirmed under her weight and rubbed his throat.
"It's fine. I'm just glad I made it before you seriously hurt yourself." he said. The blonde then struggled a bit more. Satsuki quickly realized that she was still sitting on him. Standing up and freeing him, the Uchiha girl stepped back and allowed him to stand under his own power. Once he was vertical again, Naruto averted his eyes away from her.
"You might wanna put some clothes on." he said awkwardly. Looking down, Satsuki was horrified to learn that she was wearing nothing but her underwear. It was what she'd fallen asleep in the previous night, but it was no less embarrassing for that fact. Shoving her teammate out of her room, Satsuki slammed the door shut.
Alone once more, the Uchiha girl took a long look around the room. Her leftmost wall, as Naruto had informed her, was covered in crude cutting marks and dents from her kunai and skull. She had never been a sleepwalker, and she remembered absolutely none of what she had been told despite the evidence. As she turned toward her dresser to retrieve an outfit, Satsuki was sent down to her knees by a sharp pain on the left side of her neck. Gripping the site of the ache, the Uchiha girl took little time to realize that the sealed tattoo was the source of the agony.
"Fuck you…" she growled to the Sannin that had bestowed the accursed marking to her, rising stubbornly to her feet again. Perhaps in response to her refusal to be crippled by the pain, the tattoo's sting waned quickly. Able to move freely, Satsuki found herself a copy of her usual outfit. A blue shirt with her family's emblem on the back, and a skirt of the same color and shade.
Once she was fully clothed, Satsuki took a deep breath and made the short walk to her door, opening it slowly. Naruto was leaning against the opposite wall, seeming to have been waiting for her. A fairly strong part of Satsuki was surprised that he hadn't just up and left. After all, he had been rather viciously attacked by her only minutes prior.
"How are you feeling?" he asked as the raven-haired girl closed the door to her room. Satsuki pursed her lips and held up her cut palm. The blood had dried, and it was no longer bleeding, but it was uncomfortable nonetheless. She still had a headache as well.
"Better than I could be, I guess." she said. Naruto pursed his lips and gave her a look of concern. His neck was marked by bruises in the shape of the hand that had strangled him. Her hand.
"We need to get you cleaned up." he said firmly. Before she could give her own opinion, Satsuki was taken by the wrist and pulled down the hall. She was still in a daze. Still shocked by what she had apparently done without being even slightly aware of her actions. Even more than that, she was perplexed by Naruto's utter lack of caring for what had been done to him.
"Where are we going?" Satsuki mumbled. Her question was answered soon after she had posed it, as they emerged into her kitchen. Naruto led her over to her dining table and sat her down.
"Do you have any bandages or gauze?" he asked. The Uchiha girl took a moment to clear her head and gather herself. Her mind was still a muddled mess. She couldn't think straight. Eventually, she sorted herself out enough to answer.
"In the bathroom. Second door on the left. Top shelf of the cupboard behind the mirror." she replied numbly, her eyes glued to the wood of her table. The blonde nodded and jogged off to retrieve the supplies. He wasn't gone for long, only a minute or two, but in that time, Satsuki found herself shaking again. She struggled to pin down why exactly it was, but even without a concrete reason, his return with bandages in hand calmed her.
Setting it all down on the dining table, Naruto made another short trip, this time to the kitchen sink. He quickly wet a few paper towels from the roll Satsuki kept to the left of her oven. Moments later, he was sitting next to her again.
"Can you look at me real quick?" he requested gently. Hesitantly, Satsuki raised her eyes up from the table to meet his eyes. They held the same concern they had before. If anything, it had intensified.
"Try to hold still. This might hurt a little bit." he said, reaching forward and grazing his fingers over the gash on her bruised forehead. He then pulled what Satsuki could only assume to be a splinter from her skin. Then another. Both times, she flinched at the sharp pain. The wound then began to bleed again.
"Good going, dead-last." Satsuki muttered as the plasma dripped down between her eyes. Naruto ignored her jab at him and used one of the wet paper towels he had brought with him to clean the blood from her face. He then brushed back her hair and slowly cleaned out the gash itself.
"You're just loving this aren't you?" Satsuki said sarcastically. She hardly meant the retort. It didn't come close to matching the true emotions brewing below the surface, but harshness was what she knew, and what she fell back on. Naruto shook his head.
"Hating every second, actually." he replied softly. Once the wound was clean, Naruto removed his hand from her face. Satsuki kicked herself mentally for the disappointment she felt. Moments later, she was granted another few seconds of contact as Naruto applied the cause to her forehead, and covered it with a bandage.
"That should work for now. Change it every few days." the Jinchuuriki said. Satsuki lightly touched the gauze with her fingers.
"Since when are you good with first aid?" she asked skeptically. Naruto shrugged his shoulders and gestured for her to give him her bloody palm.
"I figured it'd be good to learn at least some medical stuff. I can't do any of the jutsu, but I know how to dress up cuts and things like that." he said matter-of-factly, cleaning out the cut on Satsuki's hand as he spoke. Within a minute, her palm was wrapped and bandaged as well. Flexing the hand, the Uchiha girl exhaled through her nose.
"Thanks for this, Naruto." she said quietly. Naruto gave her a smile and stood up from his chair. The bruises on his neck had seemingly worsened, having turned from red and yellow to black and blue.
"No problem. You're okay, and that's what matters." he said in response. Satsuki, despite making every effort to harden herself to his words, felt a small piece of herself break off and melt.
"I know you don't like visitors much, so I'll leave you be. I'll tell Sensei you're on your way. Try to take it easy if you can." the blonde said, turning to leave. Before he could even exit the kitchen, Satsuki shot up to her feet. Wrapping him up from behind, the Uchiha girl pulled him back and held him in place.
"Could you stay awhile, please?" she asked meekly. Naruto remained motionless and silent for a time. No doubt, the request was unexpected.
"He's gonna get mad if you skip a day." he pointed out. Satsuki shook her head, her face pressed into the back of his shoulder.
"I'm not gonna skip. I just need a minute, and I don't want you to leave yet." she said honestly, her voice slightly muffled. The Jinchuuriki carefully turned around in her arms.
"Why's that? You're usually rushing me to leave you alone." he asked skeptically. Satsuki separated from him, but kept a grip on the front of his jacket with her uninjured hand.
"You're…making me feel safe." she admitted, not daring to hold eye contact as her face burned crimson. Satsuki saw him blink twice from her peripheral vision.
"Oh, I…thank you?" he replied, tripping over his own words clumsily. Opting not to torture them both with further attempts at conversation, Satsuki tugged him along by his jacket and led along. It soon became clear that, despite her desire to keep him close by, the Uchiha girl had not planned beyond the request itself. Aimlessly walking forward, the pair eventually halted in the hallway that contained both the bathroom and the girl's bedroom.
Pressing her back against the wall, Satsuki sank down to her rear end against it with Naruto in tow. For a brief time, the genin sat silently just outside of the kitchen. Deciding that attempting to think her way through her actions was no longer worth the effort, Satsuki leaned into Naruto and wiggled under his arm.
"Huh?" the blonde asked awkwardly. The Uchiha girl finally looked him in the eyes again as she reached across him and pulled him closer.
"Hold me like you did on the stairs." she said. Though it took him several seconds, and his actions seemed less than confident, Naruto did as he was told and gently drew her into him with an arm slung across her shoulders and back. Once they were settled, Satsuki squeezed him and pressed her ear to his chest.
"I can't read you at all anymore." Naruto said, his voice hushed. His words barely registered with Satsuki. She was lost in her own confusion.
"I can't read myself either." she mumbled back. She felt utterly content, yet at the same time, she hated every second of it. She was stronger than needing to be held. Or so she had convinced herself. She simultaneously wished for Naruto to remain glued to her for as long as possible, and for him to disappear for good. She was adrift in a sea of contradictions.
Pain then erupted forth from the mark on Satsuki's neck once more. It was less severe, but still impossible to ignore. Along with the pain came a wave of negative emotion. Almost unconsciously, she reached up and covered Naruto's throat with her hand. It fit perfectly over the bruise. The Jinchuuriki flinched. It was clearly still sensitive to touch. Feeling herself losing control, Satsuki dragged her hand down from his neck and let it rest over his sternum, right between the flaps of his open jacket on his shirt.
"Something's wrong with me." she whispered hoarsely, accidentally digging her nails into his skin through his shirt as her body tensed. Naruto, much to her surprise and dismay, did not let go of her or move. Instead, he tightened his grip on her and held her head down.
"Fight him." he said with an admirable amount of calm. Satsuki needed no clarification to know who he was referring to. Another tremor of disturbing emotion flowed into her. Raw and primal. From misplaced anger at Naruto's gall to hold her in his arms, to a contrasting feeling of hungry lust at his touch, Satsuki battled her own psyche silently as the clock ticked away.
"I hate you." she choked out. The words had escaped her by pure accident. The phrase had been ricocheting around in her brain tirelessly since the second wave of pain had begun. She couldn't even hold her own tongue any longer.
"No, you don't." Naruto shot back firmly. Satsuki's breathing then destabilized, with choppy intakes and releases of oxygen racking her frame.
"It'll pass. Just breathe. Breath with me, Satsuki." the Jinchuuriki urged her gently. With every ounce of her will, the Uchiha girl forced herself to match his breathing pattern.
"That's it. Keep it up just a little longer. You're gonna be okay." Naruto whispered, ignoring the fact that her nails had drawn blood from his chest through his shirt. Satsuki slowly felt her senses return to her. It was a long process, but gradually, her breathing returned to normal, and her mind cleared.
"See? You're just fine. You're okay." Naruto said, having sensed that his teammate had come back down to earth. Satsuki shifted in his arms and pulled her hand from his chest. Her fingertips were thinly coated with his blood.
"You're not." she whimpered, tears finally breaking through to the surface and falling down her face. Naruto shook his head and took hold of the hand she was studying.
"It's just a scratch. Nothing to worry about." he assured her. The shaken girl moved again, this time fully separating herself from him. Even with her bout of psychosis temporarily overcome, she was completely scrambled. Shakily standing up, Satsuki backed away from Naruto.
"You can go now. My minute is up." she said, breathing heavily. The Jinchuuriki stood to join her.
"No way in hell. You're not okay. I'm not leaving you alone." he said stubbornly. Satsuki took another step backward as her teammate attempted to reach out for her.
"Trying to help me got you cut open and choked. I'm done hurting you." she replied tearfully. She then pushed past him and ran back to her room, threw the door open, and shut herself inside. She quickly locked the door at the sound of Naruto's approaching steps. Predictably, he knocked on the door, attempting to convince her to let him in again. Pressing her back to the door, Satsuki drew her knees in and buried her face in them.
Among the anguish and grief, yet another petal fell from the black rose.
Kakashi sighed sadly as he rounded the corner from the kitchen into the hallway. He had tasked Naruto with retrieving Satsuki well over two hours, and he had heard back from neither in that time. His suspicions had been mixed. His primary assumption had been that the pair had gotten up to something incredibly 'teenaged'. It was only natural. They were young and stupid. His second, and far more depressing guess, appeared to be the correct one.
Something had gone wrong.
Naruto was sitting with his back to Satsuki's bedroom door, with an absolutely defeated look on his face. He looked miserable and frustrated. The blonde was certainly an emotional person, but it took a fair bit to truly sober him to such an extent. Walking down the hall fully, Kakashi knelt down in front of his distraught student.
"What happened, kid? Be detailed." he asked. The blonde glanced back at the door he was leaning against.
"Satsuki went nuts. She was hurting herself in her sleep when I got here. She attacked me when I tried to stop her. I calmed her down, patched her up, and then she lost it again. She ran away and locked herself in her room." he summarized tiredly. The Jonin internally winced.
'That means one of two things. Either she's suffering from something she needs to be medicated for, or the mark is getting to her. Probably a bit of both.' he thought to himself grimly. It was an unfortunate development, but not entirely unexpected. A closer look at Naruto revealed a number of minor injuries. A hand-shaped bruise on his throat, and several bloody spots on his shirt.
"Are you alright?" he asked. Naruto nodded and rose to his feet. He looked mentally exhausted more than physically damaged. Whatever had truly occurred in the Copy Ninja's absence had been deeply unpleasant. With just over two weeks till the final round, such complications were detrimental.
"I'm fine. We need to be worrying about her." he said, jamming his thumb toward the door. Kakashi put his hand on the surface and listened for a moment.
"Has she been responsive at all?" he asked. The Jinchuuriki adjusted his jacket and made a 'so-so' motion with his hand.
"She talked back to me a little at first, but she went quiet half an hour ago." he said. Kakashi then stepped back away from the door and drew a kunai.
"I understand that you probably wanted to let her come out on her own, but…" he began, swinging the butt of the kunai down and breaking the door handle in the pause.
"...sometimes you've gotta be forceful." he concluded, pushing open the busted door as he spoke. Naruto opened his mouth to protest, but shut it. The pair then stepped into Satsuki's room. Thankfully, she was still inside. She was curled up on her bed, completely out cold. Her forehead was bandaged with gauze, along with her left hand.
"Thank god." Naruto breathed quietly. Walking over to the bed, Kakashi picked up his unconscious student, handing her off to the blonde in short order.
"Carry her. She needs to see a doctor. She probably has at least a concussion." the Jonin ordered Naruto, who did not argue. At this, Kakashi began a brisk walk down the hallway with the Jinchuuriki in pursuit. Within minutes, they were at the gate of the Uchiha sector. As they stepped out into the general populous once more, Kakashi took a short look back at Naruto. He was holding Satsuki in a fashion that could only be described as loving. The older man turned his eyes back toward the road ahead.
'You picked the wrong time to get close. Right now, you'll do nothing but hurt each other.'
A/N: Alright, so, this chapter was very heavy, once again. Satsuki's mental illness is being exacerbated by the curse mark, as was made obvious.
And yeah, you read that correctly. Satsuki felt lust. She's a hormonal teenager, and she finds him attractive anyway. It's only natural.
I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. I liked writing it :)
Leave me a review if you're able
I love you all
Read and review!
