I DO NOT OWN DREAMING OF SUNSHINE OR NARUTO

I am merely making use of their characters, settings, and themes to tell a different story.

If anyone would like to use my own work as a base/inspiration for a fic, you are more than welcome to do so, just credit me in the beginning and maybe send me the link so that I can read it too, I'm always looking for more DOS recursive.

Well, I think that covers all of my bases, so with that out of the way, on to the fic!

Chapter 14: Flight of the ANBU pt.2

Boar and Lion returned with Lizard and Squirrel just as he had finished disassembling camp. Not wanting to spend even a moment more than absolutely necessary, Gazelle quickly barked out orders.

"Boar, you'll be carrying Rabbit. If you need a break, you can hand her off to Lion once we've crossed over into Fire. Lizard, Squirrel, you hold the rear and I'll take point."

Boar had already picked up Rabbit by the time he'd finished speaking, so he immediately took off, trusting the team to fall into formation behind him. The pace Gazelle set was brutal but well one he knew to be within the abilities of the squad from training and previous missions. Honestly, he'd like to have gone even faster, but while he would have been capable of maintaining it about half of the team wouldn't be, which would inevitably lead to a break in formation. When Shikako-sama finished designing the seal to take them home Gazelle swore he was going to make every ANBU under him run speed and endurance drills until they dropped - he didn't care how much Boar hated running, he would do it and he would like it, damn it!

They ran and ran, the landscape little more than a blur as they passed it by.

More than 16 hours had passed since their departure when Lizard signaled for the squad to stop.

"Lizard, do you need a break? We should only be a few more hours from the border-"

"Sir, we've passed the same bush four times. At our current pace we should have already begun seeing more flora indigenous to fire, but it's been unnaturally sparse."

Gazelle's insides froze for a moment before he shook it off,

"Fuck, genjutsu?"

His tone was noticeably grim. Gazelle considered the facts: an unknown genjutsu that he hadn't noticed for more than 16 hours, an illusion that their genjutsu mistress still hadn't tried to disrupt-

"You think the caster is nearby?"

Lizard shook her head.

"No, I tried to break it multiple times but was unsuccessful. I-I also haven't been able to mold my chakra for anything other than body enhancement. This is a genjutsu I would think only someone with a sharingan was capable of casting."

Boar, Lion, and Squirrel had been silent since Lizard first mentioned the possibility of a genjutsu, but Gazelle felt all three also try to flex their chakra or perform a jutsu only to be unable to.

"What the hell is happening? Hokage-sama didn't mention anything like this when she warned us."

Boar said, breathing noticeably harder than the rest of them on account of having to carry their downed teammate. It was then that another voice rang out, causing them to jump in surprise.

"Aww, the little Lizard has gone and ruined my fun! Naughty, naughty - hasn't your Master taught you better by now? For shame!"

The voice sent shivers of fear down their spines, its tone cruel and mocking - Gazelle could practically hear the sneer at the end that was followed by a stomach curdling laugh.

"Oh well, it was beginning to get a bit boring anyway. What do you say we do something a bit more…exciting? "

They couldn't speak. They couldn't move . Each one of them simply stood there, frozen in fear like a prey animal who had just detected the hungry gaze of a predator. Gazelle had fought hopeless battles before; he had been one of thousands of shinobi to take part in the initial suicide charge against the reanimation of Uchiha Madara. And yet, not even when he had believed himself running to his death against Madara had he felt fear as potent as this. Hard earned instincts honed through years of combat told him this opponent was beyond anything he had ever faced before.

Within the illusion - because this had to be an illusion, even if he couldn't escape it - the world shuttered, and suddenly he and his team found themselves cast into a free falling through an unending darkness as reality…

D.

—

Lion knew this place - how could he not, when it still haunted his dreams?

From the corner a darkly dressed figure donning the same featureless white porcelain mask he too would one day wear spoke in a monotone voice.

"Only one of you can be worthy of serving among the Roots which uphold the foundation of our great village. This is your graduation exam - prove your worth."

And, just like every other time he had dreamt of this moment, no matter how much he howled and raged within his mind, willing (begging, pleading) himself to stop, to rebel, to surrender, anything - his protests would ultimately go unanswered. Just as with every other time, Lion was reduced to a prisoner within his own body, forced yet again to watch helplessly as he and his companion charged each other. And, just as with every other time, the dream would end the same: breathing heavily as he stared numbly at the slowly growing pool of red beneath the form (corpse) of his companion (friend). The sound of the bloody tanto clattering to the ground as his trembling, slick, hands lost their grip would barely register as he fell to his knees and emptied his stomach just before his chakra exhaustion claimed him.

Most nights, this was the point at which Lion would wake in cold sweat, heart thundering in his ears as he quickly tried to calm his erratic breathing. Occasionally the dream would feel especially vivid. On those nights he often found himself scrambling from his bed to his bathroom where he would wretch and tremble with the grief he had never been allowed to express while in Root. Both options were unpleasant, but he had learned to cope with the nightmares by using strategies recommended by the Yamanaka to ground himself in the present - to remind himself that he was safe, that he was free .

This wouldn't be like those nights though, because instead of waking to find himself in his apartment back in Konoha, he once more found himself standing in the center of an underground training room, with a darkly dressed figure donning the same featureless white porcelain mask he too would one day wear.

"Only one of you can be worthy of serving-"

—

Rabbit didn't know how long she'd been trapped in this repeating nightmare, but she's long since reached the point of desperation. She no longer cares how it's accomplished, so long as it ends -

Her thoughts are cut off by the all too familiar sound of heavy boots thundering up the stairs. She curls in on herself tighter, unable to help the hysterical bubble of hope that maybe this time will be different, maybe this time he won't find her-

She's lost count of how many times she's relived this moment, and yet, despite knowing that by allowing herself to hope she is only setting herself up for future despair when once again her hope is proven fruitless, she just can't help herself.

It's ironic, really, how little she's changed over the years. Rabbit is a grown woman, an accomplished kunoichi, a jonin of Konoha -

And yet, everytime she hears those boots, all those years of experience seem to just melt away, until all that's left is the little civilian-born girl hiding in the closet from what she knows is to come, but still can't stop herself from hoping.

—

Boar knows this scene, it features in his nightmares often enough that he's become quite familiar with it.

He's helping clear the streets of unsprung traps, discarded weapons, and other by-products of the invasion that would pose a danger to civilians if left unaddressed. As a chunin, he's needed to supervise the genin-corp squads helping with clean up, mainly ensuring that any traps encountered are within their skill level to dismantle. It's tedious work, but it's good to know that the higher-ups are still looking out for the most vulnerable members of their ranks, so he accepts the assignment without complaint.

The squad he was assigned to supervise seem to be veteran members of the corps who understand the importance of their assignment - something he's incredibly thankful for. For hours they systematically and meticulously comb through the rubble and building of their sector for anything that could pose a danger to the civilians once the area is cleared for occupation, and Boar can't help but grimace when he imagines how busy the requisition office and the smithies contracted with it will be once they receive all the stray weapons his team and others like it will have collected. He doesn't ponder the logistics of requisitions reforging the weapons being collected for long though, as he's soon far more focused on the unpleasant metallic scent that hangs heavy in the air.

Boar had been enhancing his nose for most of the day; it was a simple yet surprisingly effective way to detect any residual poison that may have been used in an area or on a weapon before anyone on his team can be exposed. It is because of this that he is the first to register the heavy scent of blood in the air, though to their credit none of his squad are that far behind.

While medical crews had already conducted a cursory sweep of the area to collect anyone still alive to receive medical attention, it was up to squads like Boars to collect any bodies they found for disposal. Konoha-nin were to be kept separately from civilian or enemy remains, which meant teams were required to determine to the best of their ability previous affiliations before they could collect anything, which could be difficult depending on the state of the corpse.

Boar and his team had been lucky, only finding roughly a dozen or so bodies littered throughout their sector so far, but it would seem that their good fortune had come to an end.

They approached the area cautiously, conscious of the fact that areas with high casualties carried an increased risk of traps or explosives planted with the intention of taking out first responders or clean up crews. Their initial investigation turned up no secondary trap, so they cautiously made their way further down the street. It was as they did this, that Boar realized that there was something familiar about this street, and when he realized why it seemed familiar his heart practically stopped.

The street was almost unrecognizable now, but Boar had been here only this morning to drop off his nephew at his nanny's house.

His body trembled as he stumbled towards the collapsed structure he had seen only this morning, heedless to the concerned calls of his squad. As he approached the scent of blood grew stronger, and so did his tremors.

It was as he was right next to the building's remains that he saw it. Had he not been searching so intently, he likely would have missed it, as the small hand had been pale to begin with but covered as it was in concrete dust from the explosion it was almost impossible to make out, if not for the reddish-brown stain of dried blood that marked the heavy piece of debris laying on top of his precious nephew's body.

In his mind, Boar knows that it wasn't a boy he found that day but a girl, and it wasn't the house he'd dropped his nephew off at that had been struck but one two streets over. Boar knows that, but the idea that it could have been his nephew, the series of events that all too easily could have been true, is enough to make his heart constrict in agony as though it was.

—

Usually when something reminds her of her first infiltration mission - first and last - she starts to dissociate, just like she had when it happened.

Lizard is a genjutsu mistress, so she knows illusions and can usually separate them from reality with ease.

Lizard knows illusions, but this isn't an illusion - it's a memory, one that the caster of the genjutsu must have pulled from the recesses of her mind where she keeps the things she doesn't ever wish to think of.

Lizard had always thought that she didn't remember most of the time she spent as a captive of Kumo because their interrogation methods had enabled her to pass out relatively quickly.

She should have known better - no, she did know better, she just didn't want to face the truth.

The awful ugly truth of how she got the deep whip lashes that now permanently decorate her back, or the burns that cover the soles of her feet.

Lizard had indeed passed out under the tender loving care of Kumo's T&I, but not nearly as often as she wished.

The reason Lizard didn't remember most of her time there is because she didn't want to remember it - she had suppressed, to protect herself from the horrors she endured while there.

In another life she might have been fine, might have retired from active duty without ever realizing the truth…

But this wasn't that life, because in this life when a sadistic force she was helpless to resist invades her mind and discovers what she's been hiding from herself, she is forced to watch and relive something so horrible that her mind had deemed it simply safer to forget. —

Having lived as long as he has, having fought in two different wars, it was inevitable that Squirrel had accrued some regrets over his lifetime.

His biggest regret is that he didn't ask her to stay that night, or at least follow her until he knew she'd made it there safe, because maybe - maybe then she'd still be alive.

But Squirrel was a bitter and broken man, just like she'd said, so when she said she couldn't do this anymore - was tired of him ending up in the hospital every other mission, tired of watching him drink himself into a stupor once a week when the memories got to be to much - when she left for her mother's, Squirrel didn't follow. Instead, he'd brought out the cheap bottles of shochu and drank until he passed out into a blessedly dreamless sleep.

He woke up the next morning with a pounding headache and an impatient KMP officer pounding on his door to inform him that she'd been beaten, robbed, and killed on the way to her mothers, while he'd sat at home drinking his memory away.

He'd stopped drinking after that, but by then it was too little too late.

Squirrel may have mourned the deaths of his comrades, but he never blamed himself for them. They were shinobi, dying was an unavoidable hazard of their trade. He didn't blame himself for the deaths of his comrades, but her death - it haunted him.

He'd read the autopsy reports, and from them a new nightmare joined his usual rotation. Most other things that haunted his sleep were memories of missions gone wrong, of things he was ashamed to have done, of comrades dying - all terrible, but their content unchanging. With her though, well, the autopsy can only tell you so much, which left his imagination (the imagination of a man who had killed enough people in various ways to have plenty of reference material) to fill in the blanks, cycling through possibilities.

And so, Squirrel watched -as he always did in these dreams-, as the woman he loved was beaten, robbed, and left to die in the street. Again and again, over and over he watched, and wondered.

—

Gazelle was an ANBU. He had taken up his mask in service to his village, and he was determined to die under that mask in the service of his village. No one would mourn him save perhaps the comrades he left behind, his name would be lost to the sands of time as just another person who led an altogether unremarkable life - exactly as he wanted. When he had been a younger and less seasoned shinobi he had still occasionally entertained the possibility of settling down one day, maybe even starting a family of his own, but it had been many years since he had deemed such possibilities forever lost to him.

This being had been in Gazelle's mind - it knew his life, and most importantly it knew his greatest fear.

To his horror, Gazelle began living through 'memories' he knew had never happened, forced to silently observe as he lived a life never meant for him, and as he proved exactly why that was the case.

A beautiful woman - his wife - lay in a hospital bed holding a wrinkly red newborn

The baby - a son - was perfect, and as Gazelle watched the child grow, as he identified all the little pieces of the boy that were his and which came from the woman (wife, his wife!) a longing he had been sure he had rid himself of years ago resurfaced, one which wished to make the scenes in front of him a reality, one which wanted what this version of himself had.

But of course, such a happy family wasn't meant to last - not for him, at least.

Each time the cycle restarted. But, no matter what changed, whether it be different ages, different genders, even different spouses, the end result - if not the stressors which set it into motion - remained the same.

Sometimes he snapped from not decompressing properly after a difficult mission.

Sometimes the baby cried in the middle of the night startling him awake but not before he reflexively threw a kunai at the source of the noise, silencing it and the child forever.

Sometimes his identity was leaked and he comes home to find his house wrecked and his family dead from an enemy seeking revenge for his actions.

So many different scenarios, yet each one ultimately ended the same, reinforcing what Gazelle had known for years now to be true: he is not meant to be happy, his purpose in life is to serve the village in whatever capacity it demands.

Gazelle has known - and accepted - this for years, so why…

Why does it still hurt so much, each time they die?

He knows the end result before the visions even start, but he is still helpless to stop the

AttachmentFondness Love

From blooming anew inside his heart, unhindered by any attempt of his to resist their formation.

For the first time in years, Gazelle wants to cry. He wants to cry and scream and sob and weep at the unfairness of giving him a taste of the happiness he had never truly known enough to miss, to show that he is capable of loving someone and being loved back, while in the same breath showing him that the only way for him to obtain that happiness - even if only for a time - was to damn the one who gave it to him in the first place to any number of gruesome and horrific deaths.

Gazelle wants it, he wants it desperately, but Gazelle was never meant to lead a happy life, and he is not so selfish as to damn another to share his fate just to taste the love that he now so desperately craves for a time.

So instead he mourns. He mourns what was and what yet wasn't and what will never be.

—

A burning world

Fractured dreams

Evil laughter

Childrens screams

Broken bodies

Bloodied swords

Salted fields

Endless war

The pleas of the helpless, unheard and unseen

The agony of an existence, governed by pain

—

"It's unfortunate, but I suppose we'll have to end our encounter here - a shame really, your anguish is simply delectable. Oh well, I'm sure we'll have more time to revisit such things once I've consumed your Master, but for now you'd best wake up and get going - your Master is bound to miss her menagerie, and I for one can't wait to see how she likes the gift I've so graciously bestowed upon some of her stars. HAHAHA!"

—

They awoke all at once, each in various states of disarray. No one spoke for a long while, instead taking the time to adjust to the abrupt cessation to their eternal hells. And if a few of them took their masks off to cry in relief that it was finally over, that they were finally free - well, Gazelle was hardly going to judge.

Their peace didn't last long though, as the voice of the being (Jashin, his mind supplied) rang out in their heads. As a group they tensed with anxiety and fear at the possibility that they weren't free of the illusion, that this was just some cruel reprieve that let them think they were free only to pull them back in once they'd finally accepted their freedom.

"Hurry, hurry, little stars. It's poor form to keep your Master waiting, and you'll already miss your deadline as it is. Unless…you'd like to stay?... HAHAHAH! Run, Run, little stars!"

And oh , did they ever. Now that Rabbit was awake and Boar was no longer weighed down by deadweight they ran considerably quicker than they had in their initial attempt to flee, and managed to reach the border in only a few hours, leading Gazelle to believe that they hadn't been as mislead by the first genjutsu as he had thought, and that it was more intended to put them close to the border without letting them cross it. They could almost feel the physical weight of the evil gods' attention lift from them when they crossed the border, but still their pace did not slow, wishing to put as much space between them and that accursed country as possible.

—

Jashin may have left them once they crossed the border into Fire, but even days later his cruel laughter and the horrific visions of a broken world kept replaying over and over again in his mind - like they hadn't escaped him, like they hadn't made it out of the land of Hot Water.

Gazelle was an ANBU, he knew how to compartmentalize his emotions so that they wouldn't affect his mission and had been doing so for years. But Jashin would identify your most secret, fears, thoughts, and desires - the ones you kept locked in the deepest parts of your mind, sometimes ones you didn't even realize you had - and exploit them mercilessly. He made you feel like there was nowhere you could run that would be far enough to escape him, but as Gazelle stood in front of his Hokage - no, his God - he's not ashamed to admit that a tear escaped his eye.

Because Jashin was wrong.

There was somewhere he could run where the evil god could not follow, somewhere hope was real and joy was abundant.

For the first time in 14 days, Gazelle felt like he could breathe again.

And even as he felt the awe inspiring power of his Lady's aura unfurl from the confines of her mortal vessel, even as he felt the fury and possessiveness radiate from his Lady's Shadow, even as that Shadow swallowed him and his team whole, he felt not fear, but relief.

Somehow, he knew that so long as they were in his Lady's Shadow they would be safe. Here they could rest and recover until they were ready to face the world once more. With this last thought, he closed his eyes and surrendered himself into her Shadow's embrace.

—

A day later, Gazelle and the rest of the temporary team blue would emerge from Shikako's shadow, fully healed if not slightly dazed.

When asked by Hatake-sama what had happened to them while in the Shadows, the ANBU agents - unmasked for a more thorough health assessment - with distant gazes, would only utter three words:

"We were stars."