Erebus on the Cusp of Dawn

by Hic Iacet Mori

Truth and lies are the same in one respect—they are not what they seem, concealed under layers of half-truths or almost-lies, though the former is harder to expose than the latter. It is not everyday that truth comes to light, because truth, with its assumed brutal hands and imagined cruel smile, can shake the foundations that make up a world's accepted truth—and truth, in its purest, is not dictated by anyone; harder to see, harder to accept, harder to understand by everyone.

It was laughable, really.

Here he was, hiding inside an abandoned warehouse that could pass for a smelly old cave—it reeked of stale water and it had certain damp air, and Sasuke wondered vaguely what this warehouse had been used for in the past. Perhaps, though, it was from the pre-dawn winter chill brought in by the silent wind, drifting past the huge cracks in the broken windows on the third floor of the warehouse. Perhaps it was from silent desperation, from the shafts of moonlight—gray, fading—trying in vain to light up the darkness inside the warehouse, a darkness that no amount of artificial light could entirely remove. Perhaps it was from these men and women, damning the light even as they stood under its fierce glare.

They were a bizarre group, these people, far from the typical underworld figure. They were clad in the strangest clothes Sasuke had ever seen, but the most perplexing was, despite the motley of colors that each person presented—through their clothes, their hair, their eyes, even their nails—they all blended into the shadows, as if no amount of light could infiltrate the darkness that had covered every inch of their being, the darkness they have become. Even as they stood in a circle, washed in the obscenity of fluorescent lamps, flickering, ominous. Even as their clothes rippled with every daring of the wind. Even as their hair caught the glint of the gray light from the moon.

They defied light with their existence. With every flicker of the lamp, the shadows in the warehouse delighted in their presence.

He eyed a scurrying rodent, gray and hairy and menacing, its aura that of one who owned the warehouse as it skittered past him. Sasuke briefly wondered what it was about abandoned warehouses that attracted the scums of the earth. Weren't villains supposed to enjoy state-of-the-art lairs to go about with their businesses? Weren't they supposed to lust after the luxuries of life, their prime reason for organizing crimes in the first place? Weren't they supposed to believe that they deserve the best of what life could offer, whether it was awarded to them or not?

And really, this was the hideout of the great organization of mercenaries wanted in different countries? Couldn't they afford a penthouse, or even just a suite, where they could commence plotting evil against the rest of humanity? From what media kept trumpeting, evil pays and it pays a lot. Possessing a more respectable lair should have been one of the top priorities of evil organizations. Unless mercenaries were cheapskates?

Didn't anyone from their group ever wonder about that?

He couldn't come out exactly and ask, of course. Not when he was hiding. He was hiding behind wooden crates and he felt four again, running around on his short chubby legs to find the best hiding place against his big brother, the coolest seeker the whole world over. Sasuke could feel someone hovering behind him and the childish echo of Nii-san found me again! vanished when a pair of mismatched eyes met his, something indefinable in its depths.

Yosh, a new seeker! I've got to find a new hiding place, quick!

Sasuke stifled an inappropriate giggle bubbling up his throat, giving himself a harsh shake. This wasn't the time for this. He was in a serious situation, inside an abandoned warehouse hiding to save his life, hers. She was there, in the center of sixteen cold-blooded individuals, each with expressions so blank, so empty, he could hardly believe they were people. Hardened criminals, was his fleeting thought, hurting without compunction, spilling blood without hesitation. A blink and they're gone. A breath and you are.

Looked stupid, though, those eight people, wearing an attire only a teenager wallowing in angst would dream into reality. They looked like porcelain dolls, carved and smooth—and Sasuke thought that was the worst metaphor he had ever made.

Strangely apt, however. Porcelain dolls. Goth dolls. They stood around her in cloaks of black with red clouds lined with white. Dresses for porcelain goth dolls, blades up their sleeves, glassy eyes behind shadows. See them and they judge you. Push them and they hurt you. Shattered but shattering, breaking in their brokenness. Beautiful white enticing red to flow into rivers of black.

Their cloaks suited them.

Sasuke wanted to laugh. They looked absurd.

"Akatsuki."

Sasuke hardly paid attention as Kakashi listed their names in a low voice. Sasori. Deidara. Hidan. Kakuzu. Zetsu. Kisame. Pain. And Madara, the bastard with the same blood as his. It was enough reason, he morbidly mused, for him to try to draw out every last drop of his blood just so that man and he had nothing else in common.

Akatsuki.

What were they? Why that name? Were they mercenaries who dabble in poetry? Was the name supposed to be symbolic? The red moon, for when the night cried and no one was about to watch? Dawn, for when the day began and no one was alive to see?

Whichever didn't matter. Red moon, dawn, both looked like the skies torn into bloody pieces.

"I offered myself as a spy, and six months of underworld work after six months of rigorous training in Ne earned me enough renown to be invited as the ninth member of Akatsuki."

It chilled him, seeing his brother with the same face, wearing the same cloak. The ninth member. Itachi.

It wasn't funny anymore.

He swallowed, tasting dust. The warehouse was ancient. Was it the dust of the ground he tasted or the ashes of those long dead?

Sasuke realized he didn't want to know.

Finally, he allowed his dark eyes to look at her once more. And he felt it, the punch in his gut. Her sight was so powerful it brought goosebumps on his skin.

It terrified him.

Naruto was bleeding, her jacket open to reveal torn black mesh shirt and the bandages around her breasts. The bandages were soaked with blood from a bullet wound in her chest, strips of black wrapped around her as extra bandages. Thin streams of blood caked her bare midriff and she stood with her head held high, surrounded by the deadliest of criminals the underworld had ever seen, not a hint of emotion on the lifelessness called her face.

She's bleeding too much. She shouldn't be standing at all.

"Seems she removed the bullet with her own hand," Kakashi muttered grimly beside him. Sasuke blanched and he breathed deeply, as quietly as he could, forcing his world to come back into focus. It shouldn't be this difficult, staying together—he had watched shows, movies featuring blood and gore, read horror and other relevant literary genre with copious amounts of bleeding and screaming to haunt him before he managed to sleep. But it was different, wrenchingly so, to be faced with its reality—to know that it was someone he knew, someone he cared for, who was bleeding in front of him while facing impending death, to know that every drop of blood oozing out of her veins was a drop of life irrevocably gone.

It wasn't ketchup. Wasn't red dye. Wasn't thick strawberry syrup, a mockery of death with its sweetness. Excess sugar to cover the bitterness. Tempt the senses.

It was different and bitter and cruel in its truth.

He took another deep breath. Sasuke could feel the viscous warmth on his cheek anew. He raised his hand. Nothing.

But she was bleeding, still. Because he had shot her. Because she had made him. Because she had decided it upon herself to remove the bullet in her chest.

Because she wanted to die.

"Run."

He remembered her eyes. White lines, cracks on blue mirrors. She was broken. The blood on her scar was another line, another crack. Naruto couldn't stop breaking.

The memory of the blood prints on the wall was making him nauseous.

The ANBU was watching him in alarm and, satisfied that Sasuke wasn't going to throw up, break down, continued. "You're really a pain, aren't you."

He blinked and, with growing ease—learned just an hour ago, and was it really just an hour ago?—focused a withering glare before settling his eyes back to the sight in front of him. He forced his eyes to lessen its focus, blurring the edges of everyone and everything he saw. It made things easier.

"What are we going to do?" he asked. Sasuke already knew what he wanted to do. Jump up and save her then punch her until she told the truth so he could kiss her senseless.

He couldn't believe he could still think of that.

"Nothing," Kakashi replied. "Backup's not yet here. Besides," his eyes were serious, "an ANBU is no match for all the Akatsuki and Jinchuuriki combined. We're strong but not that strong."

He felt frustration beginning to boil under his skin.

"But—"

"Look, kid," Kakashi cut off. Sasuke glowered at the epithet. "You threw a tantrum when I threatened to lock you in the room so you won't follow after you ordered me to let you go after I told you this is ANBU business. You promised you won't be a pest. I've yet to see you uphold your end."

His glare darkened. He did not throw a tantrum. And he wasn't a pest.

"Fu—"

"They're talking."

"—exactly pleases me," the man in the one-eyed orange mask, Madara, intoned. Just the voice of his uncle was enough to set Sasuke's blood boiling. It was this bastard who began everything. The root of all his brother's suffering. His. Theirs.

He could feel himself shaking with rage. Red was creeping on the edges of his sight once again. They looked suspiciously like Madara's blood.

A heavy hand on his arm was grabbing him. Sasuke didn't realize he was beginning to stand up until he was forced down. Forcefully and silently.

Kakashi's gaze was disapproving. "You're too impulsive."

Sasuke glared again, not disputing the statement. That was one of the reasons he often controlled his emotions. Emotions were his weakness, even back then when he only felt a limited number of them. The times he was overwhelmed by what he felt, when he couldn't ignore it anymore, he acted based on impulse alone, throwing logic and reason and caution to the wind. It had been his brother's lone source of headache as far as an adolescent Sasuke was concerned.

With a last glare, he turned his eyes back to her. He could dwell on his poor handling of his emotions later on.

Standing directly across Madara was her, shrugging carelessly as if she wasn't wounded, bleeding. Another drop of blood trailed down her torso, crimson against honey. His dark eyes followed its path until it vanished beneath the waistband of her pants, forever lost.

Sasuke forced his eyes back to her face. He was a sick bastard.

All faint thoughts of how she remained gorgeous despite the situation abruptly vanished in the wake of her cold smile.

And suddenly, everything that Hatake Kakashi had said about her, those words that he had consciously chosen to make light of, pretended not to hear—

"He's an Uchiha, he's going to fight back," she said, her tone almost breezy, matching her smile. "He got a hit in and ran before I could catch him. I can get him another time, I know where he lives."

Suddenly, they were real.

Her smile turned into a chillingly predatory grin. "Besides, the bastard's a masochist. Couldn't stop coming back for more."

Kyuubi. This was Kyuubi no Youko, the ruler of the Konoha underworld. This was someone who lived in the shadows, who breathed in the dark, who came alive at night. This was the person rumored to make entire villages disappear overnight, who made an audacious challenger vanish into thin air. This was someone capable of hurting, even killing. This was Kyuubi.

"Only Kyuubi can match me."

This was his brother's murderer.

He stumbled forward, catching himself on a rusty rail at the last moment. Shit, shit! What the fuck was he doing here? Why was he hiding inside an abandoned warehouse with a person he didn't even know, watching and worrying and wanting to save this... this? This wasn't his Naruto. This was Kyuubi, a cold-blooded murderer! This was someone who took advantage of Itac—

"Sasuke. It's his choice."

He shook his head. No. It wasn't enough. She still killed hi—

"He made me promise not to."

No. It's not enough, not enough, not enough—It's not enough but help him, he still loved her.

Damn—

He still loved her.

Damn.

This was Kyuubi and he couldn't see his Naruto but Sasuke still loved her, still believed she was in there beneath the cold veneer of her smile. He had seen it, a glimpse of her. In that thin line of white in the mirror of her eyes, he saw her.

She's still there.

Sasuke almost jerked in shock when a hand pulled him back. He threw an accusing stare at the ANBU, who was giving him a narrow-eyed gaze. He was ready to glower when a slight tilt on the man's head showed him what he had failed to see—the rusty rail beginning to crumble under his harsh grip.

"Control yourself."

He took a deep breath, deciding to ignore the masked ANBU. Sasuke couldn't afford to antagonize him more than he had, both for their safety and hers. Besides, Kakashi did bring him here even if he didn't have to, though Sasuke would have found a way to follow anyway. Being allowed to follow the ANBU made it easier for him to bypass the security in the hideout, though, which was very disappointing, in his opinion. They hadn't even met anyone, and there was none of those high-tech security systems that would alert anyone of intruders in the perimeter. It was very uneventful, anticlimactic. They had managed to sneak in, past the labyrinthine ground floor, and reach the center of the warehouse without getting lost and being detected by any of these supposed elite criminals.

Sasuke wondered who were the greater morons—the ANBU, or the members of the Akatsuki and Jinchuuriki. Something told him, though, that something was—

"Look underneath the underneath, Sasuke."

Off.

He didn't realize they were silent until that man's voice, dark and amused, impinged the cold silence.

"Interesting," Madara commented. Sasuke couldn't see the bastard's expression on account of that ridiculous orange mask. The man on his despicable uncle's left, wearing the same goth-doll dress Madara was wearing, face oddly painted in equal halves of complete black and spotless white, was chuckling as if there was a joke buried somewhere within his soul that he was itching to share to the rest of his expressionless comrades. The strange man's chuckles turned into low laughter and a thin line of red appeared on his cheek. It didn't seem to bother him that the white side of his face was beginning to bleed.

Judging from another set of low laughter, it seemed Madara had heard the silent joke. "Now the truth, Kyuubi-chan?" he asked. The lone hole in the orange mask seemed to glitter from where Sasuke stood. He unconsciously braced himself, breath bated. All that glitters hurt the eye.

Her expression remained the same, blue eyes steady and blank. There was no trace of emotion against the subtle accusation. "I just said it."

The two-colored man was now laughing outright. His grin showed his sharp teeth, stark white. It distorted the careful balance of the colors on his face. Blood dripped down his chin, distorting it further. They clashed against his hair, dyed green, highlighting the amber glow of his empty eyes.

Cat's eyes. They bulged from the squashed body of a white kitten with black stripes, steeped in its own blood and the chipped paint of a green car. Gaping mouth, flat pink tongue, sharp teeth. A dead creature's grin.

"Zetsu seems to think differently," Madara said smoothly. Like fine wine, sliding down the throat to choke. Sasuke felt like coughing, so constricted was his throat. Something was terribly off and he didn't understand.

Naruto threw the man called Zetsu a lazy look, dismissing the other with a casual glance before turning to Madara once again. "I'm not exactly thrilled with voyeurs," she replied with a sneer. Sasuke felt a sudden wash of shame, his ears heating up at the last word. "I hate people watching me work. I'm not anyone's entertainment."

... Watching me work?

"Think of it this way, Tobi-kun," she continued, her eyes gleaming. Ice. "He could've lost an eye like that idiot over there. You could've lost another member. You didn't. I could've aimed at his throat."

"Like you could have aimed at your heart, Kyuubi?"

A blond snickered, a lone visible eye gleaming with amused anticipation. The others in the same Akatsuki cloak were expressing their amusement in more subtle ways, their dead eyes mocking their fellow dead. The ones who stood beside them—their Jinchuuriki partners—were silent, their faces retaining its mask of nothingness. Did they ever feel anything at all?

And his uncle's last words echoed in his mind, damning her actions. It confused him more.

Madara was right. If she really wanted to die, why didn't she aim the gun in his hand to her heart?

"I'm not anyone's entertainment."

He shook at a chill climbing up his spine, so certain, so cold. It knocked the breath off his lungs.

She knew. She knew that someone was watching them. This Zetsu was sent by his uncle to make sure that she finished her job when she wasn't planning to all along. And she... she knew, that if he killed her—

His breath hitched.

"Run."

She knew this Zetsu would kill him.

I don't—don't know what to think anymore. Nothing's making any sense. Are you an enemy or a friend? Did you even really kill Nii-san, tortured him like you said? Because if you did, why can't you kill me?

Knew that if she went through her plan to kill herself through him—

But then again, why would you make me kill you? Guilt? Pain? Because—because you just don't want to live anymore? Because you regret what you did? Because you really did kill him and you really did love him and you can't live without him?

Sasuke would die.

What's happening? What are you up to, Naruto?

"Itachi was a genius," Madara declared, his stance relaxed, his voice warm. As if he was sitting beside a drowsy child, ready to tell a good night story. "He was precision incarnate, excellence in human form. He never minced his words and he never hesitated, and I'm proud to be related to such an exemplary man." Sasuke could hear the sinister smile growing underneath the mask, see the sickening stretch of a mouth to reveal a grin. A snarl. "Quite unfortunate he turned out to be a traitor. He was a true Uchiha."

Madara began pacing—it reminded Sasuke of a panther stalking its prey. "Genius aside, I feel he isn't working alone. He turned out to be a spy, Danzou's spy, as he claimed, but something told me there is something more. Danzou and I are, after all, acquaintances," he emphasized the last word with the secret pride of a child who had bested his alleged friend. Sasuke wanted to laugh. He knew something that bastard didn't.

Idiot.

"Moreover," Madara went on, stopping in front of Naruto,"Itachi didn't have the necessary grasp of the underworld to be intimately familiar with its workings—he would have to work with someone with that understanding. I immediately thought of ANBU but it couldn't be them. They may know but they're spineless bastards, too afraid to deal with the underworld face to face. Hypocrites, upholding the law while giving the lawless free rein. It couldn't be them. It couldn't be outside elements either, because the five Greats, six once, are a tight bunch and they don't trust easily.

"So—it would have to be someone from the underworld itself."

Sasuke's eyes slowly widened in shock. Was the bastard implying—

He turned to Kakashi, stunned. There was no surprise in the man's mismatched eyes. Only the tightness on his shoulders indicated that Kakashi understood what Madara meant. That he knew, the freak.

He returned to the tableau before him, his thoughts racing. It was—It was—

"We met at work."

"He and I are partners at work, teme."

"As such, I leave you in the hands of my partner."

"If something happens to me, please watch over him. He is sometimes so involved in his dreams he forgets to live."

"And I promised I will."

It was staggering.

What the hell—

He didn't know what to think anymore.

What the fucking hell—

The leader of the Akatsuki stopped in front of the silent blonde, cloak sweeping in a fluid dance. The orange mask was suddenly menacing. Circles of hell. Burning.

Naruto—is a spy?

"Zetsu reported something interesting," Madara said with a dangerous edge on his toneless voice. He turned around, addressing the fifteen individuals standing around them in a circle. Sasuke instinctively ducked when the crimson eye passed through their hiding place behind the rotten wooden crates and its railing rusted with years. "It appears Kyuubi no Youko had let her mark escape on purpose."

Fuck!

There was a deadly rush of air and the two in the center moved. As abruptly as they began, they stopped.

Sasuke couldn't blink. He couldn't afford to miss anything. He might kill her if he closed his eyes.

All fifteen criminals had trained their guns on the blonde in the center. Madara's gun was aimed at Naruto's forehead. Naruto's gun was digging at Madara's heart.

Dobe!

And her blank blue eyes looked directly into his.

Not everything you see or hear is true, just as not everything you know is right. Look underneath the underneath past the shadow of lies—behind every shadow is a source of light.