Fish Bird
By The Eternity Dragon
Chapter 11: Comforting Sounds part II
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto but sometimes it wakes me up and night and drifts in and out of my head in the middle of chemistry exams. Which is not the best thing when you're trying to remember what Sodium Benzoate is and thinking about how to write a probable ItaNaruSasu a the same time.
A/N: I found this hard to write, I have a bad case of writers block so if any of this seems forced it's because I am literally forcing it. Also this chapter bugged me because it's mostly plot and not the things I want to write. Kisses and chocolate to anyone who can spot the Alien and Doctor Who influence in this chapter, and yes, it skips, because I wanted to write it like this and I hope to god it makes sense. I also get my exam results tomorrow so if you're going to gripe about the tense swap in the last part please don't, I'm really nervous right now and I just left the tense swap because it read better like that, it's unbeta-d I'll push through the beta-d version when I get it.
"You can't take him!" Naruto was screaming at the top of his voice whilst a distressed nurse and a flustered Jiraiya tried to force him back onto the hospital bed.
"And you're fucking nuts if you think I'm just going to lie here!"
"Calm down, Naruto. Just calm down!"
The words, although spoken in a placating manner seemed only to distress the blond youth further, he cussed, cursed, spat and kicked up at the middle-aged man and young red haired nurse pinning his body to the bed. The drip went skidding across the room, the needle ripping from his arm dribbling a thin trail of blood behind it. "Naruto!" Jiraiya roared as the foundations of the bed began to squeak and groan, "Don't make me ask them to sedate you!"
The threat of narcotics stopped the stream of incoherent swear words, Naruto opened his eyes wide so the dried tears at the side of his eyes could be seen plainly,
"I won't let you…" he said his voice falling and rising like that of a sob, "I won't let you take him from me…."
As his mentor applied pressure onto both his shoulders this time Naruto allowed the intensity to make his spine bend and curve. Dully the blond wondered if everyone else could hear the own sound of his heart breaking inside his chest. Jiraiya once again took a seat by his bedside looking a little less rattled, and shooed the nurse out of the room crossing his arms over his chest. He was so distracted he had forgotten to sexually harass her, which could only represent how desperate the current situation actually was.
His own white hair falling like a shaggy dog's over his wide shoulders, he said in stern tones (conveniently) changing the subject "And that's all you can remember?"
Naruto closed his blue eyes again, his mouth turned down into an uncharacteristic snarl, "Yes, that's all I can remember. Those things came out of nowhere and attacked us, just two of them, out of the darkness. I never even saw them coming."
"And Sasuke did?"
This statement ignited a slightly irate response in Naruto, a snapping reply of: "That's what I said." and a scornful hiss on the out-breath.
"You're sure there aren't more, you didn't see-"
"God damn it! I-don't-know-okay?" Naruto all but yelled this time, seizing the jug of water on the bedside table and throwing it at Jiraiya, who was not best pleased to be drenched by cold drinking water at half past four on a particularly cold winter's afternoon.
"If you didn't look at them they'd vanish and come somewhere up behind you, one turned to stone if you looked at it and then if you looked away, or just even blinked it wouldn't be in the same place as before you'd blinked. The other one just seemed to be everywhere at once, and it would make this hissing sound and unhinge its jaw…" Naruto shuddered, "That would be just before it attacked, it would never come at you from the front, just from the side. You'd hear it coming but it would be too late, if you looked away at it the other thing would get you. They're impossible to fight alone…If I hadn't have been with Sasuke I would have been-"
"If you hadn't of been with Sasuke," Jiraiya hollered at him, bounding up from the bedside chair and spraying water all over the room in a fit of fury, "none of this madhouse would have happened. If you hadn't of broken the rules, if you had just listened!"
"Don't lecture me!" Naruto bellowed right back again unquailed by the red and purple spots on Jiraiya's cheeks, "you're the one that was always going off and doing stupid things despite what everyone else says!"
"But I don't put the whole village in danger by doing so do I?" was the stabbing reprimand that delved into the blond's conscience like a meat cleaver to raw flesh. The statement was accompanied by an almighty crash as Jiraiya slammed his closed fists into the white washed windowsill ledge.
"I knew Tsunade was too soft on you, letting him stay like that with you! It was an act of lunacy! He tells nothing but lies and lets everyone except himself take the fall for his own actions, he almost got you killed last night. He led those things right to you!"
"He did not!" Naruto screeched back at Jiraiya, his limbs shaking with anger and his heart pounding like a drum inside his throat, "They found us, it was my fault, I wouldn't listen, I didn't want to-to…" he faltered for a second, he hadn't wanted to leave Sasuke, or have Sasuke leave him. Like an old black and white movie images floated up into the forefront of his subconscious, Sasuke kissing him again, touching his hand, Naruto wondering if the slide of liquid on Sasuke's face was made from rain or tears. Desperate heart wrenching loneliness and a moment of utter madness when Sasuke had turned round and asked Naruto to go with him, and the plight and current of desire and temptation that had coursed through Naruto. Like he was slowly drowning inside of his own inner confliction, half of him had moved and the other half had not, until he had stumbled and had fallen to the ground laughing and crying.
// Don't ask me to leave everything for you Sasuke; don't ask me to destroy my life for you. Don't ask me to give you exactly what I can never give you. I tried to open my life to you; you didn't want to become a part of it. //
And in the moment where Sasuke had turned round with panic in his eyes and told Naruto to run, he hadn't moved. Not until Sasuke had grabbed him by the wrist and made him run; but by that time it was already too late. Those things had caught their scent, their essence, and their chakra, whatever method they were hunting by and had pursued. It had been the singularly most frightening thing Naruto had ever experienced, the wood had echoed with obscene inhuman laughter, that had seemed to emanate from the rocks and the ground itself, raking their ear drums and lodging in their brain. Something gulping, swallowing, and chuckling as it had moved closer and closer and all the time he had felt Sasuke next to him, "Don't blink." He'd kept saying, "Don't look away from them, blink and you're dead. Just keep looking at them!"
"Sasuke wasn't trying to kill me." Naruto said on a falling note to Jiraiya, the anger draining from his body like rainwater. "He was trying to protect me, all bloody and mangled he got…but he wouldn't let them touch me."
"Did they seem at all interested in you?"
Naruto shrugged, his back ached and sent zipping ripples of nerves down his spinal column, "Once I tried to beat the shit out of them, yeah. Then they were plenty interested, but not before. They just stood there looking at Sasuke and laughing-or swallowing all dry and scratchy…Or-or at least I think they were looking…They didn't have eyes so it was hard to tell."
"Then those things were after him." Jiraiya said derisively, putting his hands on his hips and nodding, "The council is not going to like this at all. If Kakashi hadn't found you, I'd hate to imagine what might have happened to you…"
"I want to see Sasuke," Naruto said quietly rolling the material of the bed sheet in between his fingers, "I want to know if he's all right."
Jiraiya puffed up like a swollen bullfrog, "You will be doing no such thing Naruto, I never want you to look at him again, let alone speak to him!"
"Don't tell me what to do!" the Kitsune retaliated his irises becoming less curved as his temper once again rose to a peak.
"That's exactly what I'll do!" Jiraiya roared right back at him sharing a sudden disturbing likeness to Gamabunta about to hurl out a flaming spitball.
"No one else seems to know what's good for you, and it'll be over my dead corpse before I let you ever again see that boy who ran off and betrayed you. You have never once in your life taken the sensible course of action, you never listen; you never do what I tell you! You are a much-loved nuisance and a precious thorn in my side as well as being the obnoxious brat I never had! And damnit if I am ever going to allow you to put yourself in such a dangerous situation again! Do you hear me you demented little snot? I have not wasted years of my life tutoring and looking after you just for you to run away with that Uchiha child and for him to slit your throat in the middle of the night!"
"He's not about to kill me!"
"And on whose authority is that?" Jiraiya all but spat at his protégée, the highest scorn and revulsion in his mouth and eyes, "Yours? I swear to the blue blustering heaven and the spear that pierced the world, that if my hair weren't already white you would have turned it that colour. You precarious midget of terror! Your sheer idiocy could build mountains! I am not about to let you sweet-talk me into believing you again. You're lucky you're not half dead!"
"No one is asking you to worry about me." Naruto hissed acidly up at Jiraiya, feeling stubborn, petulant and hurt all at the same time.
His mentor made a snorting noise and turned to look out of the window, still seething. Naruto looked over to the bowl of fruit on the beside table and felt his head throb from where he'd hit it stumbling backwards in the dark last night and falling head first onto rocky ground.
"But I am grateful that you do." He said finally swallowing his pride and dropping his gaze to his clenched hands resting on his knees, the pale watery light of the sun drifted in under the blinds and Naruto was familiar once again with the dilute smell of disinfectant that seems to reside in all hospitals.
"You're an insolent monkey." Jiraiya said in a slightly less aggressive tone of voice, still staring out of the window, there was a pause, and then, summoning up resolution from the tips of his toes finished with "But that's the way it's meant to be, am I right?"
He looked carefully away from the Kitsune as the blond scrunched up his face swallowing down the sudden and awkward lump that had lodged in his throat, his insides felt lucid and shaky as Naruto squashed the impulse to hold out his arms and be comforted by a father that he'd never had and always wanted.
"You need to be careful what you say old man," he replied some moments later jokingly, "or I'll think you're getting soft."
Jiraiya let out a small chuckle at this and pulled his chair back up again to the bed.
"So tell me how that cactus I gave you is doing."
On the outside of the door.
"Have they finished talking?" Shikamaru whispered urgently down to Kiba who had a glass and his ear pressed against the hospital room door.
"Stop making so much noise! I can't hear properly!" His friend hissed up at him, thoroughly uncomfortable with the fact he was being squashed against the door as Shikamaru shielded him from most of the prying eyes of the passers by.
"Hurry up then!" was the exasperated response he received, "If someone catches us here we are officially dead Kiba. By the time they let Naruto out of hospital it's all going to be too late and everything will be over. And by that I mean the council will most likely have voted in favour of killing Sasuke. He's too much of a liability to them, there's no profit in redeeming him now and they're too afraid of this new threat to recognise the fact that he might actually be of some use to us."
Kiba twisted the glass around on the door as one would twist the knob of a radio trying for a better reception.
"You still think it's connected to Sakura don't you?" he said in rather demonic tones and the sound of raised voices inside the room filtered plainly through the wooden door.
"It's no good." He said pulling back and putting the glass back in his pocket, "They're arguing again. That could take hours."
Shikamaru pulled a prickly expression that looked odd on his angular face, "This is such a hassle," he moaned, "but we'll have to do it this way…" and muttering to himself he walked off down the corridor, Kiba trotting behind him.
"What are we doing now?" the auburn haired inquisitive youth asked eagerly, almost wagging an invisible tail with glee.
"We are going to climb outside his window and wait for that room to empty." Shikamaru told him in hushed undertones, "You are going to be quiet and listen to whatever I have to say and are going to make no argument about it whatsoever. Do you understand?"
Kiba made a squeaky noise on the white tiled floor with his shoe and said in a forlorn and moping voice "What haven't you told me Maru? You're keeping secrets from me again, aren't you?"
Shikamaru rubbed his temples with his fingertips, "Dear god, you give me a headache sometimes! I have not had the opportunity to tell you the full plan because I have been summoned to the Hokage's office and council meetings a grand total of sixteen times in the past two days. The elders are in an uproar and Tsunade-sama is being placed under pressure to uphold treaties with other countries for armed forces and resources. Whatever it was that hit Sound seems to be coming this way and no body knows quite what on earth it is. Countries are signing hasty treaties promising alliances with other countries they'd usually never dream of trusting."
"But-" Kiba began slowly, careful to keep his voice down, "I would have thought that was a good thing. Signing treaties and all that, it forces countries to come closer together."
"When countries are forced to come closer together," Shikamaru said in cold and surly undertones as they passed through the hospitals main entrance, "war is often the result. Especially underneath such stressful circumstances, especially when there's no clear division line of who the enemy is. People being to suspect one another of betrayal, or even worse turn on them. It's a lose-lose situation really, and I have a feeling that the leaders might be losing sight of the real situation. They're so stupidly tied up in their own internal politics you see."
Kiba gave him a blank look and Shikamaru couldn't stop the whisper of a smile from dancing across his face, "Never mind," he said lightly, "I'm not about to explain our whole political system to you."
Kiba gave him a playful smile that revealed every single one of his sharp and glistening white teeth.
"It does reassure me when you tell me things like that, you can't have possibly made that all up."
Shikamaru gave him odd look, regarding the blissful expression with some quandary.
"Why, I hesitate to ask, should that matter?"
"Because," Kiba said, "I always worry you might be sneaking out behind my back and spending your free time with other people apart from me. I was suspicious the other day you know, when you told me I couldn't stay over."
"That's because I knew if I let you stay the night you'd just end up sleeping in my bed and I'd spend a sleepless night with your feet in my face."
"I worried perhaps that you might be letting someone else sleep in your bed," Kiba continued quite ignoring Shikamaru's rational digression down the road of sanity, "But I knew nothing could get in the way of 'us', Maru. Although I don't like this idea of you keeping secrets from me."
"Pray tell, dear dimwit, what exactly you mean by 'us'?"
Kiba nudged him playfully in the ribs, "Oh Maru!" he exclaimed in dramatic tones, getting down on one knee in a manner that caused several people to stop and stare, "Nothing can stop this love!"
No one was surprised when Shikamaru kicked him.
Several minutes later they were sitting legs swinging from a tree facing the side of the hospital that showed Naruto's room window. Shikamaru was quick to point out the ANBU guard on the adjacent side guarding the outside of what seemed to be a seamless white wall of the building.
"The same room they were holding him in last time…" he said slowly more to himself than Kiba whom had strict instructions to keep his eyes glued to Naruto's window so that they would be prepared the instant that the blond was left without company.
"I suppose they'll be moving him to a holding cell as soon as he's stable enough…. We'd have no hope of breaking into that, coupled with the fact that they'll have more surveillance not to mention double the guards…Mind you if I was in charge I'd make it look like he'd been unable to pull through in the OR…or that there had been some fatal complication later in Intensive Care…shit this is bad. We have less time than I thought we did. It's going to have to be tonight or-OUCH!"
Shikamaru looked up from his musings scowling at the would be bruise on his left arm from where Kiba Inuzuka had pinched him ruthlessly hard.
"I am sorry to have interrupted the ruminations of your fantastic min Oh-Great-One, but I thought you'd like to know, the Sannin just left."
Kiba doubted if he had ever seen his lazy-assed brown haired friend more motivated.
With Akamaru positioned far below the window to act as sentinel they both leapt lightly onto the sill making sure to make as little noise as was possible, and for a ninja it is less then the faintest stirring of a leaf in a small breeze. The act of deception of course was not to be seen by Naruto-because if Naruto saw them first he was bound to make a fuss, and a fuss and Naruto was going to draw attention, and with attention came people. But Shikamaru was damned if he was going to let people know he and Kiba had come to see Naruto this afternoon not when they had so painstakingly created Kage-bushin to wait in the lobby for an interminable length of time whilst the receptionist told the clones over and over again that "Uzumaki was not allowed visitors other than those approved of by Tsunade-sama."
'The plan' required that no one should see them at all, so as Shikamaru sent the shadow bind through the window to join with the shadow of the blind and sneak and slip across the room and onto the one bed where it held it's victim fast and deadly silent as Kiba heaved up the window and flashed across the room to press his body and ear to the door to check that no one was coming Shikamaru knew that everything was going to follow in accordance as smooth as clockwork.
"Enjoying yourself?" Kiba asked his friend cheerfully as Shikamaru slid in through the open window, he had a big grin plastered onto his rough features and all of the excitement of a small puppy, whatever Shikamaru Nara was planning, it was big, Kiba was absolutely certain of this. It gave him Goosebumps just thinking about it.
The only way Naruto Uzumaki was able to express shock underneath the full body bind was a slight contraction of his black irises and a deeper tension in the line of his mouth.
"Sorry to intrude." Shikamaru said allowing himself to sit casually in the visitor's chair with the air of someone who is about to announce afternoon tea.
"But I thought it would be prudent for us to have a little talk."
Naruto made a strained, confined noise, which sounded a lot like "Mrrfurlurh!" to which both Kiba and Shikamaru placed fingers over their mouths urging that silence was of the up most vitality. Naruto was still pulling an angry and somewhat bemused expression, frowning and wiggling his toes in violent succession until Shikamaru slowly but surely let the Jutsu slide, with frenzied (and somewhat unnecessary) hand movements from Kiba to remind him to keep his voice low.
As Naruto felt his tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth and his body given once again the delightful liberty of freedom he said in a hoarse rasping voice tired and strained from shouting at Jiraiya for two hours straight, "What in the good name of Miso Ramen are you doing?"
There was a slightly apprehensive air about him as if he believed Shikamaru was on the edge of berating him for doing something entirely stupid beyond all belief and then nearly getting himself killed afterwards.
He deserved the lecture he didn't doubt it for a second, but god damnit, couldn't they wait until they released him? Was Shikamaru and Kiba's wrath so poignant that they had had to force their way in through the hospital window, and why in heavens name was Kiba standing by the door in that odd manner? Poised as if he was about to unleash some mind bending Jutsu. What was wrong with them? What was wrong with…what was wrong?
Naruto's face went through a chain of expressions and like a line of dominoes they each fell one by one before the other until a slightly panicked look stole over the contours of his face, and his eyes became glassy and somewhat intense like peacock blue marbles in a basin of salt.
"What happened?"
"It's not so much 'What' Naruto, as to, we don't actually know."
And if that wasn't the most ambiguous answer he'd ever received in his life he'd stand on his head and swallow marshmallows for a living. He saw Kiba out of the corner of his eye give Shikamaru 'a look'.
In his anxiety he almost forgot to keep his voice lowered, "Is it Sasuke? Is he dying? Jiraiya told me he was stable but come to think of it he would tell me that to stop me from going down there and making sure myself, only I believed Jiraiya because he got so terribly mad when I doubted him. God I've killed him haven't I? He's dying isn't he? It's all my fault, I didn't run when he told me to and he ended up getting all bloody and mangled because I didn't know what those things were. I still don't know! It was so dark and I couldn't seem to move properly, but there was such an awful lot of blood, and then I slipped and hit my head on some rock and then-and then…"
"And that's when Kakashi found you." Shikamaru said simply, he had his hands folded on his lap and the serious and care worn expression of someone twice his age, Naruto would have likened it to looking into the eyes of his great grandfather…had he ever know or met his great grandfather that is.
"I was stone cold out." Was Naruto's feeble reply, but Shikamaru Nara ignored the comment and pressed on, "He was coming back that way because of the last mission he'd been sent on, except he wasn't able to complete that mission for reasons he has been explaining to the Hokage and members of the high council."
Naruto felt his fingers pluck and dig into the mattress beneath the cotton sheet he was lying on; his stomach seemed to have become icy cold whilst his heart pumped erratically in his chest.
"W-why…why couldn't he finish it?" There was nervous and dreadful trepidation in his voice, as if he didn't really want to hear the answer, he didn't want to hear words that could shake and shatter the foundations of his life he had so painstakingly hewn from nothing. They were the things that made him open his eyes and open his mouth to breathe. If he lost them, he lost himself too.
"Naruto," Shikamaru said gently, "the countries are at the brink of war due to a new terror coming in from the North, it's ravaging the land of the waterfall and moving its way across to the land of earth even as we speak. It's already decimated Sound, and the rumour is that what ever it was originated either there or within the ranks of the organisation of Akatsuki because now both or gone."
"Basically," Kiba interjected from the door, still looking excited as if Shikamaru was reciting the script from his favourite action movie, "this could be Orochimaru's pet monster out for a little game of hide and go smash to smithereens."
Shikamaru gave Inuzuka a sharp look at this and snapped, "Aren't you supposed to be watching the door?" to which Kiba looked rather sheepish.
"But what does this have to do with Sakura?" Naruto asked; he could feel dread slipping and sliding across his insides running like liquid ice down his arteries.
This time Shikamaru hesitated for second, leant forwards slightly in the chair and gripped the arm rests hard.
"Because where she's been stationed... has just been reported to have been hit."
Both Kiba and Shikamaru had been expecting the singular reaction from Naruto to yell "What?" as well as simultaneously throwing himself out of the squeaking hospital bed and onto the tiled floor.
Kiba made a fast clapping motion over the doorframe to dispel any noise from penetrating through the wood and there was a blue flash of a Jutsu filling the room with its eerie and ethereal glow.
In a flash Shikamaru had Naruto by both wrists forcing him back into the wall and trying to calm him down.
"I have to do something!" the blond was saying almost incoherently vivid images of dark things watching him from trees with eyes that reflected the silvered moonlight. Things that didn't seem to belong amongst the living, but rather demons escaped from the Land of Yomi.
"They'll kill her! They'll kill all of them! Sai went too! They could all be dying and you're all just standing here telling me this! Why isn't somebody doing something?!"
"Because they won't let us!" Shikamaru hissed back at him starting to wish he'd left the shadow Jutsu bind in tact, "The Elders won't allow a rescue mission because they fear the threat from the North will follow a rescue team back here and destroy us all. They'd rather sit behind the great walls of the towers and allow the menace to sweep on by without dirtying their noses in it."
"Are you implying I do nothing?" Naruto all but spat at his angular eyed friend, "You're going to ask me to sit pretty and twiddle my thumbs and take up needle work in the high hopes that she might come wondering back all on her own? You're all cowards and idiots if you think I'm just going to sit here, I don't care if those things are swarming all over where she is I'll-"
"Don't be ridiculous!" and to Naruto's surprise it was Kiba who stood behind Shikamaru's back glowering acidly at him, mouth curled in a dog like snarl.
"He's spent last night and all day coming up with what ever he's come up with, forgoing sleep and food and been arguing with everyone until he's blue in the face. I know you're damned twisted up into forty five and a half knots about this but don't take it out on Maru."
Naruto's enraged and scintillating cornflower blue eyes caught his, literally simmering with a fire that threatened to crack and shatter all the windows in the building.
"Please don't take it out on me either?" He added looking nervous and licking his lips.
"Naruto," Shikamaru began slowly speaking as if Kiba had said nothing at all, "in order for them to act they are going to take more leverage. Like you I think they should be doing everything possible to get Sakura and her team back, the Hokage-sama is adamant about it as I am but they're over ruling her as we speak. And tonight they'll be debating on whether or not they kill the last surviving Uchiha."
At this Naruto's eyes grew wide again and the aggression on his face was lost to blind fear as the words he was forming on his tongue whispered and melted into nothingness.
"Are you really that surprised? They were looking for an invitation to kill him anyway; you've provided the perfect excuse. Those things were following him, the second he left the protected area they found him. Naruto he knows about it, he's kept it a secret from all of us and I can't forgive him for that but if there's a chance we can use the information to rescue Sakura then I'm willing to take this chance and try and save his life."
"S-save his life?" Naruto asked breathless, the flood of information almost too much for his brain to handle, Kiba too was looking at Shikamaru perplexed, obviously he'd never heard of this part of the plan either and asked with a frown that crumpled his forehead like a blood hound's: "How are we, begging my plain speaking, but the two of us and an invalid, going to save Sasuke's life?"
Slowly Shikamaru relinquished his grip on Naruto's wrists and took a step backwards.
"Kiba, what is it in life that you've always wanted to do?"
There was a pause and then "Have a threesome with two lesbians?"
"The OTHER ONE! You idiot!" Shikamaru all but shouted at him, bringing up his fingers to massage his temples and the tick under his left eye. Lack of sleep was making him seriously short tempered.
Kiba thought for a moment, and then in a low and awed voice, "A heist? Shikamaru of the Nara Clan you better not be teasing me, my delicate heart will not take it."
"That is exactly what we are doing in exactly six hours time, timing is of the essence because that's the time at which the ANBU guard shifts and I'm trusting everything to go on schedule and for the council to still be going on. I've already worked out exactly what it is we need to do, and it's just going to be the three of us in this, we can't risk getting anyone else involved and neither can Kiba and I be suspected of being part of this plan in anyway form or manner. Naruto it has to seem as if you've come up with this plan all by yourself but it's going to require an excess of chakra and acting on your behalf as well as mine, and yours Kiba so both of you pay attention I'm going to explain exactly what I need you to do."
As Shikamaru had Kiba check the door and outside corridor again in order to stem the flow of neurotic belief that they were being listened in upon he began to very carefully lay out the plan before Naruto as one would lay out a pack of playing cards one by one.
"Wait." said Kiba coming and squatting by where they were all sitting on the floor, it was the nightshift now and movements in the hospital had quietened down somewhat the heavy distraction Jutsu Kiba had placed on the door was doing a good job of perturbing people away from it.
"Wait!" Kiba said again as if he had just missed where Shikamaru had placed the joker.
"What part am I playing in all of this?"
Shikamaru gave Kiba a long look from underneath his short brown lashes, "You already promised to do anything I asked you to already remember?"
A highly distrustful expression rose like a wave across Kiba Inuzuka's open face, "You're kidding…you don't want me to…again?!"
They all knew the answer before Shikamaru even spoke.
"I need you to be our decoy."
The sinking feeling in his stomach was only going to get worse.
Sasuke Uchiha was having a strange dream, stranger than the dreams that had come before which had been cruel and unpleasant, hot and vivid images dancing across his subconscious as the drugs he'd been given kept his brain in a constant state of delirium. His hands were bound and so where his feet, that much he knew, and the part of his mind that was barely conscious told him that there was also someone in the room with him at all times. It was an awful kind of half wakening, every half an hour or so someone would wrench his head up and shine a light into his eye. He was so tired, he could hardly move his brain seemed unable to command his body no matter how much he willed it. It was like swimming through black treacle, his lungs were too small, his head lying sloping down onto his chest at an awkward position squashing his windpipe and starving him slowly of oxygen, and despite the fact that he often thought of moving his head to relieve the pain, despite the fact that he was panicking because he was slowly suffocating he just could not move.
Once or twice he made noises, and the persons in the room became tense, and he sensed them all looking at him. That was another strange thing, his left arm was tingling acutely from where that…demon had bit him, the part where the black orb had bee embedded in his skin.
He wished he could force his eyes open to look at it properly, had the 'demon' ripped it out of his body entirely? Or just dislodged it's effect a bit? If so, did that mean he could use chakra in that arm now? Once or twice he managed to flex his fingers, but that was about all he could manage and it cost him awful effort to do so. On more than a few occasions he'd said Naruto's name out loud, half driven crazy by not knowing where he was, not knowing what had happened to him. After 'they'd' come everything had gone blank in a red shock of blood, he remembered running, he remembered eyes, he remembered yelling, he remembered Naruto standing against his back saying something about not dying, because he wasn't read yet. He remembered doing something foolish and stupid, he remembered asking Naruto to come with him even though it was an absolute impossibility, and he remembered that this was all his fault in the first place.
Slowly his mind was slipping from the conscious surroundings, it slipped through the walls, up pipes, through brick, mortar and concrete, through air and then back down again. He could hear the rustling of paper and the musty sweaty smell of a room holding too many people. They were arguing, arguing over him…
"He should be killed!" an old man with his eyes gunked up age was yelling, his jowls quivered as he shook his head, "If we kill him there will be nothing to lead those monsters to us!"
"We can't make a public execution of it!" Another old woman cried out, her hair a shocking white, milky eyes that swept across the floor of the council room, "Kill him quietly, poison him. No one knows he's here. Let the crows eat his corpse and burn the skeleton. The Uchiha clan became extinct a long time ago, who knows he could be more powerful than his brother!"
"I will not allow you to murder him!" a blonde woman said, she was sitting in the Hokage's chair, fingertips pressed hard together, "I don't care if he's barmy, murder is murder on a defenceless victim. He hasn't harmed anyone!"
So the line of talk continued in this manner round and round in circles it went until there was a commotion outside the door, yelling in the corridor and the sound of someone being slammed into a wall.
"Kiba stop!" Someone was yelling, the dull crunch of bone, a dog howling and the splintering of plaster.
"Damnit Neji let me through you idiot! This is important!"
"No ones allowed to go in, they're 'in council'. You know the rules!"
Kiba obviously wasn't paying attention to the rules because something big hurtled itself against the door and the hinges creaked and moaned.
"Kiba Inuzuka?" The blonde woman called, standing up whilst members of the council muttered and whispered around her, eyes narrowed.
"He's gone Hokage-sama!" Kiba was yelling, there was a funny lucid pitch to his voice, "Naruto's gone to the South Gate! He's going to rescue Sakura himself!"
The door was flung open as the blonde woman's attendant; a pretty thing with short dark hair ran towards it. Kiba stood there looking frantic, Akamaru behind him barking and snarling at the ANBU members behind them, Neji at the forefront long dark hair spooling down his back.
"How do you know?" the Hokage was shouting over the commotion.
"They let us in to see him, he was panicking. Jiraiya told him something he didn't believe it. Made me eat something…knocked me…us out…went. Kept talking about the South Gate…borders, Land of the Waterfall."
Kiba stood in the middle of the commotion, blinking oddly, pupils strangely black, wide and dilated.
"There are," he began, then swayed on the spot, "pretty blinking light…like firefly, making everything all shiny and…" he made a sweeping motion with his hand as if swatting an invisible fly, the blond Hokage got up abruptly from her chair.
"Bendy and…so light. Pretty, pretty lights…" Kiba was saying, his eyes now entirely unfocused and fell backwards, unconscious.
Akamaru howled.
Neji actually pulled off his ANBU mask, squatting forwards and nudging Kiba with his foot, disbelieving expression on his face.
"Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?" he asked in a vaguely confused voice.
The blonde Hokage's attendant fell upon the auburn haired youth's limp body, putting her fingers to his pulse and pulling an eye open, "Narcotics," she said softly, "he's been doped."
The room was in an uproar, "Neji!" the Hokage yelled, her face suddenly all business, warm brown eyes hard and commanding.
"Take your squad and block off the South Gate, Naruto can't be allowed to leave the Village under any circumstances. Have more reinforcements, even in his current state there's the possibility he could still break through your ranks."
She turned about blonde in pig tails flying over her shoulders, "Where is Kakashi?"
"At home resting."
"For God sakes, GET HIM UP THEN! Have him take a team to the hospital, if I know Naruto he's going to break Sasuke out too, he might have already done, or he's planning to. He must be stopped!"
In his odd ethereal like form Sasuke can feel himself being sucked down into his own body again, his senses whirling he can feel people running around him, ANBU guard he thinks dimly, the drip is no longer in his arm, it hasn't been for sometime. He can think clearer now, murky little bits of thought and movement coming back to him in snatches.
Someone's yelling and it rings and hurts the inside of his head.
Then the whole world seems to go insane, the door explodes, bits of wood shower down in a rain of splinters, at the same time the opposite wall caves in, brick and plaster crumbling, a choking cloud of dust rising angrily into the room.
The guards are yelling, as a stream of persons move in, there's the pop and smoke of a henge being initiated from the centre of the room and someone yelling that they all look the same.
Sasuke tries to raise his head but the drugs still keep his limbs numb so he can't even struggle as someone forces a hand over his mouth in a suffocating grip and wrenches his body out of the restraints.
"He's got the Uchiha!" Someone is shouting, and Sasuke can feel warm chakra all over him, can feel himself being pulled up against a wall, fingers still pushing into his mouth fingers spanning across his neck, rough hard grip. He's going to be sick from the motion and the noise but the Jutsu keeps him immobile and silent.
"I've been substituted." He thinks dimly and hears people running after what they think is him, they're not aware he's right here; he must look like something else. They must look like something else, because someone is yelling instructions over to where they are, he knows that voice he's heard that voice in Naruto's house before. The brown haired one with the slanting eyes and lazy voice.
"He's gone that way!" he's shouting giving commands, "Take the route around the river, cut them off, he's not going to get very far!"
The sound of more running, then silence.
The person with their hand over Sasuke's mouth is breathing hard, like he has precious seconds to do this in, his voice is hoarse, exhausted and quaking with a nervous energy.
Sasuke tries to open his eyes and speak as he feels his body slide down the wall, some metal needle stuck into his skin. All the holes he has from that, he feels like a human pincushion.
There's a slight pause and then his heart begins to beat faster and faster inside his chest, his veins dilate and blood rushes frantically about his body in all directions.
"I don't!" he manages to say not that it means anything but it's the first thing to come out, his eyes opening to a bleary world too bright and sees sunshine bright hair and cornflower blue eyes.
Naruto is making comforting sounds, shushing noises, pulling him up, ripping the restraints from his arms and legs, tugging him gently in one direction and Sasuke, still incoherent follows.
"We have to go fast." Naruto is saying, and Sasuke realises they're already in a line of trees, wind whistling past his face, he's on Naruto's back, wind whipping in his face, they're heading from the look of the sun North. Towards the North Gate, he thinks dimly, towards the Land of Y-
"NO!" he yells, and the last of the drugs dispel from his system, and he pushes himself off Naruto, falling to his knees and throws up violently.
"No I'm not, you can't go there, they'll kill you!"
Naruto watches as Sasuke pale and shaking, barely standing, hands against the trunk of a tree glowers at him, eyes like coal and twice as hard as diamond.
"It's too late!" Naruto snarls back at him, all orange and black, teeth white and glinting in the morning sunlight.
"I've made the decision, you're coming with me. You know what these things are so I have a better chance of survival if you come too, besides they'll have just killed you anyway if you'd stayed there."
Sasuke was incensed.
//Dare he, how dare he?! How dare he make a decision like this on his own like this? Just take off and expect me to follow him like some pet dog!//
"Don't tell me what to do, Idiot!"
"I am telling you what to do Asshole so get used to it, you don't get a choice in this. We're going now."
"You broke the rules, you let me out. I'm not leading them to you Naruto, they'll kill you. They'll kill everyone!"
Naruto's reply comes back dripping like acid rain, he seems very tall right now, right here, like someone Sasuke doesn't know, and it's hard to imagine that just over twenty four hours Naruto was holding onto Sasuke like he thought his life might crumble and fall apart without him. Now Naruto is issuing orders and demanding that they be followed. He's holding Sasuke hostage whilst Sasuke's got back what he wanted to freedom to escape, but then again he's not even sure if that's what he wanted to do in the first place.
"You'll do it, because you owe me. Because you lied, because you knew that this was going to happen."
Sasuke sneers, that ugly mocking expression, face very hard, blue black shadows under his ivory pale skin, thin veins running like indigo ink under a thin layer of milk. The shadows of the trees cast sinister shadows over his skin.
"I won't," he hisses, "they're going to come after you, they'll drag you back. They'll lock you up, go back now and pretend I forced you to free me, I put a Jutsu on you, possessed you, put you in a trance. Make something up now and you'll be fine. If you leave with me Naruto they'll make you an outlaw, a missing Nin, this isn't what you want to do. This threat, those things, they'll go. I'll make sure they'll go and you can go right back to your happy families all over again."
Naruto's face was as hard and as expressionless as slate when he answered, "It's not about what I want, I have to save Sakura."
Something inside of Sasuke snapped at that moment, it felt like indescribable pain but not of the physical sort that he could deal with. The pain that swept over him now made him want to scream, want to yell, want to hurt. The shock vibrated through him like the foaming waves before a storm, churning against the sharp edges of rocks before withdrawing completely and surging forwards in an unstoppable force.
Sasuke really wanted to hurt Naruto, he wanted to gauge his eyes out and rip out his tongue, he wanted to break his nose and yank out his teeth, to bite, scratch and maim. A flicker of anger like black flame licked across his face and then he turned and ran it didn't matter in what direction, just as long as Naruto couldn't find him. He never wanted to look at Naruto again, never mind go with him. He'd find the devil and end this, and it wouldn't be for Naruto, it would be because he had to, because it was all his fault really, and not because Naruto felt like he was the most important thing in the whole world to him not because he felt things about Naruto he knew he shouldn't…not because….
There was a yell behind him; Naruto was shouting "Sasuke!" and "Stop!" closely pursing but the dense undergrowth was making it hard.
Creepers latched onto and drags out great slabs of Sasuke's skin, driving into the places where his clothes were the thinnest, there was blood and his wrists and a scrape across the side of his face when Naruto threw himself and Sasuke's back and they fell together and rolled down a bank and fell together into the mud.
Sasuke fought viciously, trying to push Naruto off him and terrified that if Naruto kissed him he'd fall into a whimpering puddle of mush and let Naruto do or say anything to him. It was crazy, he was cussing and cursing, bucking his hips, writhing like someone had shoved an electric wire down his spine and the Kitsune was pinning his hands over his head making hand signs with one hand, he'd never seen Naruto do that before. He was saying something too, eyes glassy with concentration and then it happened, in a brief second where he slammed both his hands over Sasuke's heart unpinning him whilst a small wave of what felt like pins and needles ran and shivered throughout all of Sasuke's body.
Then Naruto fell to the side with his eyes closed breathing shallowly.
Sasuke didn't wait to find out what had happened, he just sprang up and ran through the small stream and jumped into the branches of the overhead trees leaving Naruto behind him. He must have got about two hundred meters away until he suddenly stopped, and collapsed to his knees because he was in such indescribable pain he couldn't even move.
It was like the time he'd opened the living room door to find his parents dead bodies lying on the bare floor boards, a drying pool of carmine blood slowly flowing out and across the room. It was like the time Itachi had rammed him up against the wall and told him how weak and pathetic he was, it was like the time when he had been so weak he hadn't even been able to make Itachi look at him without seeing right through him.
Sasuke moaned, he put his hands on the hard rocky earth feeling gravel and grit beneath his fingertips and attempted to push himself up. If anything the feeling just got worse, his stomach wretched, trying to vomit, but all that came up was bile, lime green bile, which curdled with the earth and stank of acid and rancid meat.
"See," said Naruto coming up behind him, his face was pale and ashen grey, he looked like he might be sick too, "now you have to. This thing is not going to go away until we get there, once we get over the border of the Land of the Waterfall this thing will dispel. Not before, even I can't get rid of it."
He sank to the ground looking at Sasuke who was breathing like a rabbit, face screwed up refusing to look at Naruto, seething with rage and anger.
"You made me do this Sasuke," the blond said, hating himself even more with each passing second, "I didn't want to, I have a bad feeling about it."
They were famous last words, the sort of words that always turn out to be right.
A/N UGH, just UGH. There's angsty sex in the next chapter and I really rather hate this one, coupled with the fact I am sure I failed all my exams. I just had to get this posted, and if it was confusing I'm sorry, Naruto and Shikamaru are going to explain the details next chapter, but nobody guessed this was going to happen and I think you guys still don't have any idea of where I'm going with it. And thank you for all your reviews last chapter, I even got a few emails telling me how you read and didn't review, they made me laugh and really cheered me up thanks guys. I just wish I wasn't so down right now...
Till next time ED
Yes, I know the tense changed in the last bit...I didn't realise until it was too late.