I do not own Naruto.
Time becomes fluid, and it seems to the group that the hours of the day crawl sluggishly onward and race with a rapid swiftness at the same time.
It's strange to watch the group of women continue on with their everyday life. Lien tends to the garden after their talk, weeding, watering, and pulling down the ripe produce that neither Anbu can name before setting her sights on the house. Franky stiltedly loads a wheelbarrow of cut wood from the edge of the forest to a furnace beside the house, checking the flames inside. She then checks the henhouse at the edge of the yard, and returns from the coop with a basket full of speckled brown eggs, asking them if they require anything. The answer in the negative, and she busies herself until lunch. During the meal, Theresa emerges from her computer long enough to sweep and do laundry, muttering furiously to herself as she hangs a load of linens in the sun to dry, refusing to even look at them.
It's surreal, all of it. From the map of the planet -not country, not nation, planet- printed on the a shower curtain, with it's strange land masses and impossibly large surface, to the insects that crawl along the leaves. The phones are tiny, wireless things that operate on touch alone, and the Anbu duo spend hours trying to figure out if its applications have an end. They flick from the finger dexterity training games, to a radio of some sort, to a text-based message system with an alien alphabet, and it never seems to end. There's even a camera on there, which they make sure to point away from themselves.
The sunlight fades, and the tension in the group seems to grow. A sense of anticipation wells in the air as Tenzo and Kakashi wait on the couch, and Theresa comes stumbling down the stairs in a rush, carrying a videocamera that no civilian should have.
"Theresa...where did you even find that old thing?" Franky exclaims as her sister hastily busies herself in the corner of the room, still using the common tongue shared between them all for propriety's sake.
(Also, old? Old!? That thing is tiny in comparison to the shinobi card camera. It's sleek, and beautiful, though not as comely as the phone. The things ninja could do with surveillance equipment of that size are quite literally worth killing for.)
"Found it in the boxes we packed away last spring. I want evidence, Franky. Real evidence that this isn't a mass hallucination or a trip into insanity. The laws of the universe are going tits up, and I have to start somewhere," Theresa bites out, responding in the same language.
Kakashi is already up and off the sofa, edging out of what he assumes to be the range of the lens. Personally, Tenzo thinks that they don't know enough to judge what kind of distance that thing has.
"So you're going to videotape people sleeping? Theresa, that's creepy. You didn't even ask permission to record them," Franky scolds
Theresa interrupts her with an indelicate snort, continuing despite the warning tone. Tenzo finds it odd that she's already dressed in sleep clothes, despite the early hour.
"They haven't even given us names to call them," Theresa continues, as if they aren't in the room. "There is no politeness in this situation. I'm just trying to do what's best for us, and besides, I already uploaded picture of them on the cloud-"
"You need to get rid of them," Kakashi orders, as soon as he understands the meaning of what has been said. It's unfortunate that it comes out so demanding, but they are shinobi. No self respecting ninja of any rank should ever allow their image to be recorded while on a mission, let alone two Anbu running covert ops.
The women continue to politely disregard their existence though, and Kakashi seems to be done with simple observation. He shifts his stance, commanding their attention with the tiniest sliver of killing intent.
Tenzo regrets the necessity for the action, but they cannot have their images about. Even if this place is nothing more than a hallucination, and the women have been nothing but courteous.
Theresa freezes for a moment, her back turned to the nin. Franky goes still in her seat as well, and almost as one, the two sisters turn to face the nin, eerily in sync. It is good to see that killer intent can be read wherever they are, at least.
"Get rid of them," Kakashi orders again.
"You can't make me," Theresa tells them with a shaking voice, defiance dripping from her form.
Kakashi takes a step forward, as if to display that he is the one with the power here, the one in control. In return, Franky rises from her chair, her gaze locked on to the ninja.
"It's a matter of security," Tenzo adds, hoping they will understand. Surely even their culture has a concept of secrecy and security. "There are laws-"
"-In your world," Franky interrupts, eyes dark, but attempting to understand. "There are laws in your world, maybe, but this isn't your place. This isn't your country or culture, it's ours, and you have made a grievous error according to our etiquette by giving orders to us in our own home."
Kakashi seems to realize that he has stepped over some sort of boundary here, though he doesn't relent, only switching tactics. The killing intent disappears, but the tension still lingers. It's a volatile environment, and Tenzo suddenly wishes he hadn't spent the day watching them simply go about their routine. It occurs to him these civilians aren't like the ones back home, giving into a shinobi due to their reputation. They don't seemed trained to fight in the ways he's familiar with, but Franky brought up an excellent point. This isn't their culture, their civilisation, and he has no idea how things work in this place.
What if there is a different sort of fighting here? What makes a civilian, afraid and seemingly unarmed, have enough courage to face a superior force? What is 'the cloud', and how can somebody store information on it?
They don't know enough. They acted with a miniscule amount of intelligence, and it's brought them here.
"We do not feel secure with unauthorized surveillance," Kakashi tries, attempting for an emotional appeal, and giving the appearance of control back to the women. It would be a good play, back home.
"And we don't feel secure with strangers in our home," Theresa returns caustically. "Especially when they have given us no reason to trust them."
Kakashi pins her with a look she unhesitantly returns, her jaw clenched, a muscle standing out on her cheek. She seems jumpy, as if she's in a rush to complete some duty.
"We have done you no harm," His senpai reminds them. Again, Tenzo thinks they are going about it wrong. It would work back home, yes, but here….here the absence of violence could mean nothing. In fact, it could be an implied threat. That they haven't harmed them, but they could at any time. It's all alien, and he doesn't know what to say or do. How does Lien-?
"Last night my sister was poisoned, and my cousin died," Franky reminds him coldly.
"That wasn't us. Those were opposing ninja," Tenzo tries to tell them, but he realizes it's in vain, because he realizes they have no way to tell that. These women are just as ignorant of their culture as the ninja are of theirs. Everybody is acting blind, going about thing the way they think is best while the opposite side tells them they are wrong. He racks his mind for some way to prove that to them, any way at all.
"Ask Lien," he attempts, because she would know, right?
The room somehow stills further, because that is the terrible reality of the situation they all find themselves in. No one trusts anybody, nothing makes sense, and the only one who seems to have a clue seems to think that the answer is that there is no answer. If he were a lesser ninja, he would choke on his frustration.
"Lien isn't available right now," Theresa tells them, and there is something underneath her words. It isn't the tone of her voice, or her body language, but Tenzo can almost taste an omission of facts.
"Is she ever?" Kakashi asks them, definitely not helping.
"She's not available," Theresa repeats, gritting her teeth. There is a flash of the malcontent she has been hiding, the frustration and fear that has lingered in her all through the day.
"Theresa," Franky calls sternly.
"Just make it a yes or no question," Tenzo suggests, but the woman's eyes are flinty, and she glances away. Something crawls up Tenzo's spine, a flash of concern he is fairly sure he shouldn't feel for somebody who invaded his mind and body.
"Theresa," Frank says again, sounding angry. The tone sets off even more alarms in Tenzo's head.
"She consensented. I told her what I was going to do, and she agreed to drink the tea," Theresa defends quickly.
"You can't drug someone because you feel uncomfortable," Franky bites out, her eyes tearing away from the ninja to glare at her sibling. There is palpable fury in her gaze, her lips pulled tight against her teeth.
"I'm trying to re-establish everything here Franky, and she was willing!" Theresa exclaims, abandoning the equipment she had been setting up, whirling on her sister. Frank stares back, disappointment and concern warring in her gaze. "It was just to hurry along the whole process!"
"She's not in the right mind, Theresa! You took advantage of her to satisfy your own goals, to complete and experiment, and that's messed up on so many levels."
Theresa visibly winces at her sibling's words, but remains adamant. There is guilt hidden in her features though, as if she knew the actions had been questionable.
"It's just what we drank last time, maybe a little stronger," She says in a smaller voice, less sure than before.
"No, Theresa. You did something incredibly fucked up," Franky asserts, her hands trembling with the force of her admonishment.
"I did it to gain some sort of control!"
"It was dangerous, and arrogant. We don't know how any of this works-"
"-That's the point, I'm trying to figure-"
"-Accumulated trauma-"
"-Strangers with swords, who shoot-"
"Tenzo," Kakashi breathes, barely loud enough for him to hear over the shouting match that has sprung up.
The younger man focuses himself, squashing his concern down, and shoving the distraction the sisters present into the back of his head. He flicks his eyes over to his captain, finding the man has gone still as he stares at the corner where the surveillance equipment stands. Tenzo glances that way, and finds himself freezing as well.
The video camera is sprouting.
His mouth goes dry as grass begins to emerge from behind the lens, reaching upward for sunlight that is nowhere to be found. Quicker than nature ever intended, a slim vine crawls down the side of the tripod, and green leafs begin to emerge.
"It's not me," he says earnestly.
Tenzo hears the creak of a fingerless glove as his captain's fingers flex towards his weapons pouch, and the shouting becomes nothing more than background noise as the growth begins to spread, each stalk of grass, and each leaf bursting into existence, taking over the area where the camera rests. His logical mind tells him he needs to run, but something freezes him in place.
Like the extension of fingers, colors slip into the room increasingly fast. They drop to the floor and begin slithering across it, bright snakes of jade that grow on and on. Seeds fall down from the grasses to clack against the hardwood floors before bursting open with fresh, healthy blades. Ferns unravel with a sound almost like a sigh, rustling in a breeze that doesn't exist, advancing on their hosts.
Tenzo draws a breath, and turns to warn the bickering sisters, but when he tries to look at them directly they are gone, already replaced with brambles. A forest that didn't exist a heartbeat ago stretches out beyond what he can see, wild and old beyond measure, shifting and flickering. There's no possible way it could have appeared without his notice, but it's there, morphing before his eyes.
He whirls, senpai's name on his lips, but the other man is looking at him from behind his mask with bewildered horror as he dissolves into dried leaves, ashen and white in color.
He sucks in a breath, attempting to stumble toward the pile that is already dispersing on the wind, but a shock of pain shoots through his legs when he tries. Roots have tangled themselves around his feet, and he shudders as they climb his ankles. He yanks as hard as he can, tearing himself out of their grasp and staggering back from force of it.
His eyes dart up, and he is suddenly in high alert. He tries to find some semblance of the room he was in, but It's completely gone, replaced by a tangled wood that seems untouched by man, somehow shivering and moving. The sky above is a painting in motion, the stars blurring as they race across the moonless night, no hint of the ceiling left. The furniture has disappeared, alongside the walls, and everything that was.
His mind skitters in his skull, trying to come to terms with it all, and his breath shakes in his lungs as he scans his surroundings, looking for some sort of reason. There is nothing he can think of, not a single reason for this to be happening.
As if to answer him, a tree breaks through the soil in front of him. He notices the dirt is crimson, soaked red with a too-familiar substance. It grows rapidly, like everything else, stretching beyond the amorphous world around it, reaching toward the churning night sky. It's trunk thickens into something colossal, bulging and warping. Branches emerge, lengthening into boughs that could support the weight of a town, growing leaves that block out the starry night
From its cavernous roots, a figure grows. It seems to flicker and change from old to young, male to female, human to animal. The person has dark skin, then pale; long hair, then short. They become shorter and taller in a fraction of a second, growing limbs only to lose them. It is a bird, a dog, a horse, a human, and back again. It keeps changing the way that the world around them keeps growing, until a cacophonous cracking sound stops it all.
A heart beat of silence follows, and then creaking fills the air like a wail. The groaning of wood fills his ears, accented by ominous splintering as the mountainous tree collapses in on itself. The branches disappear, and the spinning stars return to view. The full moon shines down on the world below, existing now where it did not before, perfectly still in the hectic sky. It illuminates everything below it, its silvery light shining down on the shifting figure that has finally settled on one familiar body.
"You," he calls, breathless from what he has witnessed. "What is-?"
Lien's lips try and turn upward, but they falter and drop, her eyes staring through him. She looks hollow, devoid of something integral. A puppet carved out to look like a human, but ultimately nothing more than a shell.
"Was all of this a dream?" he asks, because he can think of nothing else. What does one say in this instance? What does one do? When, exactly, does it become okay to start attacking because he doesn't understand, and his captain just turned into leaves.
He just wants to go home. He wants to see senpai, to forget this all happened. He wants it all to stop.
"I was trying to make it all real. I don't know if it worked," she answers honestly, still staring forward, sightless. The flora around them trembles in time with her breathing, and he feels fear creeping into his bones. The way the moonlight caresses her is foreboding, and he shivers as the shadows around them distort.
"You have to know," He tells her, struggling with the growing trepidation and panic inside of him.
Like a switch being hit, her gaze focuses on him, and he almost wants her to go back to watching nothing again. There is a weight to her eyes that feels tangible.
"I don't decide what's real," she tells him. "I can try and convince you, but ultimately you have to choose what to believe."
The proclamation startles out a laugh, because he isn't deciding anything. He lost control of the situation the moment she showed up, and it's all been steadily going downhill from there. It's terrifying, if he's honest, because his whole life has been about control. In the labs, it was about controlling his mind so he didn't lose it, and in Root, it was about exerting control over his body to serve Danzo. Anbu is about exerting control for the sake of his village.
He has none of that now. Not even a hint of it.
"You're insane," he tells her, but it feels like he's admitting his own madness as well.
She doesn't deny it, doesn't speak at all as she glides forward, slipping through the greenery towards him. He doesn't run from her, though he wants to. He's just so tired, resigned to whatever comes next in this insanity.
She comes close, far enough away that someone could stand between them if they chose, yet near enough to lift her hand to his own. Her fingers feel like leaves against his, and she smiles her half smile at him, though it seems less serene, and somehow sad. Like she knows his choice, can read it in his eyes.
He closes his eyes, suddenly exhausted. She said she doesn't get to decide for him, that he has to choose.
"This is just a dream then," he decides, as if his words can make it come true. "A nightmare."
He feels a thumb brush against the back of his hand, somehow comforting even though it should be anything but.
"I will wake up, and still be on the mission. Senpai will have let me doze off before we make the final push into Fire Country out of Grass, and you'll still be some person of interest I have to gather information on," he dictates. "None of this will be real, just a side effect of a bad ration bar."
He hears a hum, and for a long moment, everything is calm. His mind feels like it's shaking, like something is gently pulling him free, the same way it never happened in the glade after Lien died. For a moment he is weightless, moving through the universe as nothing more than energy, and he brushes closer than ever to the ineffable, indescribable thing he saw before.
Then he is aching all over, worn out from a long mission. The smell of wet earth and pollen greets him, a scent distinct to Grass Country.
Tenzo wakes up, and it is as he said it would be.
He blinks his eyes, and his captain is standing watch in the field where it all began. There are no wolves to be seen, no women waiting in the glade below. Only the night sky and his partner, and he send the journey home erasing everything from his mind. Kakashi is strangely quiet on the way back, but he doesn't comment on it, too wrapped up in trying to put the whole experience from his mind.
It didn't happen. It never occurred. It was just a dream.
He tells himself this again and again, for weeks, then months. Life goes on much the same as it did before, with no hint of instability. He picks up rumors of something called the One-and-Three, turns it over to the Hokage, and never breathes a word of what he has convinced himself was a horribly vivid nightmare.
It's not until the day Ino Yamanaka is brought into T&I, surrounded by a cloak of chakra, that the delusion comes crashing down.
AN:IDK man. Also, still operating under my own power. All mistakes are my own, no beta, so please point of errors. But, like, be gentle and shit. My ego is eggshell thin.
Edit: Shout out to Vasher in the reviews for pointing out some errors.