The Decemberist : Part II [YonShi, KushiMina, KyuuYon, KyuuOC; R]
Title: The Decemberist: Part Two ∙∙∙ Lookingglass
Author: the_lady_lamb
Genre: Naruto
Sub-genre: Angst/Romance
Summary: (Part II: Chapters XXXVI-XXXX) Namikaze Minato is nothing other than what he makes himself, but he knows that the war that makes itself affront him is not the war he sould really worry about. He just doesn't know how much until he meets Her.
Rated: R for semi-gratuitous violence and sexually suggestive themes.
Author's Notes: What started out small has blown into something I never expected. (For you guys, yukari_rin and fujiwara_san.)
CHAPTERS XXI-XXV
CHAPTERS XXVI-XXX
CHAPTERS XXXI-XXXV
The Decemberist
PART TWO ∙∙∙ LOOKINGGLASS
xxxvi.
Minato thinks that the noise in his head is foreign and fearful sounding until he realizes with dismay that it is his own heartbeat. He chews his lower lip (finds it frayed, chapped and dry) and knots his hands at his sides. He’s frightfully nervous and he can neither pin down the reason for it, nor drown out the terse skeleton ringing in his ears, like unbound ultrasound. He thinks he may be developing the headache of his life (strong enough to make his sky eyes water) but bites down instead of acknowledging it. He rolls and worries his bottom lip with his canines, can’t bring himself to take his eyes from the tree line. (It’s way too quiet. Their leaders have been vanished into the thick air above them for a long time now. Longer than he thinks its been, he’s sure. Minato has the terrible habit of losing track of time when he’s nervous, which only succeeds in making him more nervous than he already is.) They - the troops - have been walking beside makeshift leaders of their own, staring up into the sky for answers for almost an hour, and to Minato it feels like ten minutes. Four minutes. Two minutes. Thirty seconds? His throat catches.
The earth-
moves
beneath the water.
And he jolts swiftly.
”What-” He looks at Hizashi, and Hizashi looks back at him alarmingly, and the veigns of his face twist around a forming Byakugan. He looks at Hizashi, and Hizashi looks at him, and Umino looks back, and the Uzu-nin look forward, and Minato stares up, and who is looking down, down, down? Everybody is turned to look at everyone. Everyone is turning, twisting, murmuring to one another nervously, unhappily, worriedly, chewing lips and knotting hands with hands, eyes with eyes, soft lullabies unto ears so that they will not look down. Will not look down.
The soft and slowly rising chorus of What What What and no answer to their question, no answer for a long time, only the shrill skeleton ringing in Minato’s ears and it gets louder and louder, shriller and shriller, and he grits his teeth as it becomes unbearable.
As the water moves in a sure sign beneath them.
Singing-
What What What.
And the answer is Kushina screaming in the distance.
The answer is an inhuman colossus rising from the water above the tree line, so far into the sky that they all can see it, an inhuman titanic, with the face of an old man gripped by the jaws of a fish, a mandible and girth wider than the very horizon, its huge amphibian shoulders the very picture of marine, with gray blue fishskin. The answer is gigantic, terrifying, rising so far above the trees that the people below are startled into silence, into staring into huge eyes that open slowly. They stare (and now everyone is looking, staring up and there is no more what but only-)
The answer is the Sanbi opening its mouth to bellow so loud that a few soldiers scream and begin bleeding from the ears, the sound having been so deafening as to blow out the drums inside, and then everyone is screaming and Minato can only stare up, frozen, until the Uzumaki siblings are tearing out of the tree line with shrill, terrified orders to-
”RUN RUN RUN!”
xxxvii.
There is only color. There are no shapes. There are no people, no thoughts, no places, no things. There are only colors, and endless perpetually shifting whirlwind of motion and color and he is running they are running, all of them, the group ahead and he and the ANBU and the Uzumaki siblings behind, footfalls heavy, slapping the water in conscious rhythm and everything is motion, is sound, is wind, is a whirl, he cannot see, he cannot hear, he cannot feel, not anything. There is only running, running, running, running, running, running, running, screaming, screaming, screaming, everything, all around is wind, is color, is speed has to run fast but can’t, can’t because there are colors in the way, colors beside him, colors, colors, colors and Minato doesn’t even know which way they’re running, but is only conscious enough to know it for a second, and in that second he is also conscious that it is moving towards them faster than they are moving away (his stomach lurches, out of breath, out of fast and hard and vividly ice-cold fear) and that is bad.
Colors splitting from colors splitting from shapes and for a second (only a second) he is aware that their small army (so small and ironically cute in its way) is splitting into fractions, everyone running a way that is different, an away that is farther from anyone else’s, no destination, only survival, only adrenaline and Minato sees only colors only blurs of what once was there and they are tearing, tearing, tearing, just running as hard and as fast and scared as they can and his whole body is cold, and he is suddenly aware that the whole of their army is screaming and he is only gaspingly silent, breathing air faster than humans can breathe air and just running running running, seeing only colors, no shapes, no thoughts, no people, just colors, just running, running, running, and scared. So scared. There is no reason for his madness and he cannot think that their might be. He is high on his own fight-or-flight response and their legs are pistons pounding, pounding, pounding, hearts pounding, pounding, pounding, lungs gasping, gasping, gasping, the Sanbi gaining, gaining, gaining.
”UZUME!”
And the color beside him (the color with breasts and red hair and sea-storm eyes and a screaming loud and echoingly clear) whips the boomerang blade from her back and hurls it directionlessly, and only then does he realize that the fish colors he has been weaving around are tentacles rising around them and he panics and drives a blade through the nearest one and just keeps running running running. The creature behind them shrieks its displeasure and in a second-
His name. On the wind.
”MINATO!”
(Shisui?)
Collide.
He yells, flies several yards, smashes into a tree back first, the suction fish skin of the Sanbi’s sixth tentacle still slick across the front of his body. He has no breath, he is not breathing, he swears, swears, swears, (are my lungs collapsing?) and he cringes, crumples down-
Water.
Cold, plunging-
WAKE UP.
Colors.
Blinking.
Spluttering.
”MINATO!” Kushina is shrill, is screaming, is a siren and then Kaigyo is-
Minato is rocketing, tumbling, somersaulting over himself and her, red, blond, red, blond, water, water, water, water everywhere there is water and it takes every ounce of charka control he has to keep them from going in- (a constant mental stream of APPLY PRESSURE HERE! HERE! HERE!)
”GET OUT OF THE WAY.”
A tentacle around the youngest brother’s body.
And that is the last time they see him, and his hand is automatically as the back of her head and they are left to stare at the empty void of where Kaigyo was until a second ago and then Kushina is screaming, screaming, fighting him and he is yelling at her, yelling orders not befitting of a peon to his commander, yelling-
”RUN.”
xxxviii.
They see it too.
Over the hill.
And Shisui is the first
to scream
his name.
(Jiraiya and Rin and Kakashi-
and Kushina.)
The second.
xxxix.
They are running as a pair, nothing making sense, everything tainted the red of peril, the bright crimson blood of my life is in jeopardy and they are just going as fast they can, Minato isn’t even sure where. Kushina is screaming nonsense (he thinks they are words) and then they are in the trees and the monster is fast behind them and then Minato loses her to air and he’s screaming after, screaming “KUSHINA!” and she rips her Uzume from the Sanbi’s side and it clips her, and he is down, tries to defend but it smashes down on her left leg and her scream is broken, terrified. He shoots forward, is above her with a Rasengan and the monster shrieks again, roaring in pain.
And in that gap he sees the man: no older than himself, not up to his hair, with enough metal in his face to be a machine and eyes like the rings on the inside of a tree, large and golden-amber and the coldest he has ever seen. A young man, who is standing on the Sanbi’s shoulder, staring down at him palely, blankly, as if he is a ghost and not really there.
Minato tries to help Kushina up but she is far ahead of him, leg twisting unnaturally in the wake of her shattered pelvis, quaking with the effort to stay upright, and they run.
xxxx.
The village is on fire, and he tastes the acridity of the smoke long before it comes into view, and it tears his stomach from his torso and makes him run faster, faster, faster, a few strides ahead of Kushina (pelvis. Shattered. Hard-won blade back over her shoulders, charka coursing so hard as she is breathing, keeping the pain at bay, the terror at bay, the screaming-) They hit the water, they run, they run, they run, the smoke making Minato’s eyes water, the shrill skeleton singing coursing through his veins, the smell so terrible that it makes his head pound, and then-
They stop.
The world is painted orange and yellow.
And he and Kushina just sit there and stare.
As if it is only slowly dawning on them, as if the buildings ablaze are simply an afternoon sunrise that no one told them was coming. There is no noise. It as if a God has come through and swallowed it all, as if the Sanbi has swallowed their noise and Kaigyo both, and they simply stand there, shocked silent, and stare at the picture that paints itself before their eyes, at the mass of people silhouetted against the fire. At the words that come to mind and say,
The village is burning.
And then Umino turns to him, eyes black in the light, the whole eyes black as if he has no pupils (as if there are just holes in his head where the eyes used to be, and Minato wonders if he is going crazy. Maybe he is going crazy and this is all just a hallucination. Maybe this is all a genjutsu somehow. Maybe, maybe, maybe,) and says, “Restrain Uzumaki-sama.”
He does automatically, his arms swiftly locking beneath her elbows and behind her head at the very second the starts fighting, starts screaming. She writhes and twists and battles for freedom, screams for it like a bird for the sky, like the birds that are billowing out of the forest and into the sky over the huge bonfire of people and buildings and homes that Kushina and her friends have lived in forever and ever. My home. Our home. My village. She screams at him, screams and writhes to get away from him, to escape her restraints, just screaming, screaming, screaming at the very top of her lungs. “LET ME GO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO, GODFUCKING DAMMIT, GODFUCK GODFUCK PAPA! PAPA! GODFUCK LET ME GO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING- PAPA! PAPA!” And Minato can see the ANBU running in and out, dragging incapacitated people from buildings and he can see that the Uzumaki estate at the head of the village is fully engulfed in red-black-flicker-orange flames and he knows, in the back of his mind, that the man who was so sick as to be bedridden has probably suffocated by now, the fire having stolen the oxygen from his lungs. He knows that the father Kushina is screaming for is probably already dead. Notices that most of the people on the ground are already dead. Notices that Kushina is crying, crying hard, turns into him, pounds his chests with her fists before they both sink down to the ground, and his face is completely blank.
Completely.
Blank.
Genjutsu.
When you are in a genjustu, you either must wait for one of your teammates to help you out of it by channeling their own charka into your body, or by using your own charka to get out of it.
Kushina cries, screams in pain and he looks down.
One of the pieces of her shattered pelvis has breached the skin.
Looks up.
Shisui and Rin and Kakashi and Jiraiya are staring back at him.
And he starts screaming, screaming, bent low and protective inexplicably over Kushina’s body, her arms around his neck, fingers burrowing into the fabric clothing his back. He bends and screams and screams and screams, wildly, frantically, doing the seals where no one but Shisui can see.
(Kai!)
”MEDIC!”
(Kai!)
”Oh God- MEDIC!”
(Kai!)
”MEDIC!”
Author: the_lady_lamb
Genre: Naruto
Sub-genre: Angst/Romance
Summary: (Part II: Chapters XXXVI-XXXX) Namikaze Minato is nothing other than what he makes himself, but he knows that the war that makes itself affront him is not the war he sould really worry about. He just doesn't know how much until he meets Her.
Rated: R for semi-gratuitous violence and sexually suggestive themes.
Author's Notes: What started out small has blown into something I never expected. (For you guys, yukari_rin and fujiwara_san.)
CHAPTERS XXI-XXV
CHAPTERS XXVI-XXX
CHAPTERS XXXI-XXXV
The Decemberist
PART TWO ∙∙∙ LOOKINGGLASS
xxxvi.
Minato thinks that the noise in his head is foreign and fearful sounding until he realizes with dismay that it is his own heartbeat. He chews his lower lip (finds it frayed, chapped and dry) and knots his hands at his sides. He’s frightfully nervous and he can neither pin down the reason for it, nor drown out the terse skeleton ringing in his ears, like unbound ultrasound. He thinks he may be developing the headache of his life (strong enough to make his sky eyes water) but bites down instead of acknowledging it. He rolls and worries his bottom lip with his canines, can’t bring himself to take his eyes from the tree line. (It’s way too quiet. Their leaders have been vanished into the thick air above them for a long time now. Longer than he thinks its been, he’s sure. Minato has the terrible habit of losing track of time when he’s nervous, which only succeeds in making him more nervous than he already is.) They - the troops - have been walking beside makeshift leaders of their own, staring up into the sky for answers for almost an hour, and to Minato it feels like ten minutes. Four minutes. Two minutes. Thirty seconds? His throat catches.
The earth-
moves
beneath the water.
And he jolts swiftly.
”What-” He looks at Hizashi, and Hizashi looks back at him alarmingly, and the veigns of his face twist around a forming Byakugan. He looks at Hizashi, and Hizashi looks at him, and Umino looks back, and the Uzu-nin look forward, and Minato stares up, and who is looking down, down, down? Everybody is turned to look at everyone. Everyone is turning, twisting, murmuring to one another nervously, unhappily, worriedly, chewing lips and knotting hands with hands, eyes with eyes, soft lullabies unto ears so that they will not look down. Will not look down.
The soft and slowly rising chorus of What What What and no answer to their question, no answer for a long time, only the shrill skeleton ringing in Minato’s ears and it gets louder and louder, shriller and shriller, and he grits his teeth as it becomes unbearable.
As the water moves in a sure sign beneath them.
Singing-
What What What.
And the answer is Kushina screaming in the distance.
The answer is an inhuman colossus rising from the water above the tree line, so far into the sky that they all can see it, an inhuman titanic, with the face of an old man gripped by the jaws of a fish, a mandible and girth wider than the very horizon, its huge amphibian shoulders the very picture of marine, with gray blue fishskin. The answer is gigantic, terrifying, rising so far above the trees that the people below are startled into silence, into staring into huge eyes that open slowly. They stare (and now everyone is looking, staring up and there is no more what but only-)
The answer is the Sanbi opening its mouth to bellow so loud that a few soldiers scream and begin bleeding from the ears, the sound having been so deafening as to blow out the drums inside, and then everyone is screaming and Minato can only stare up, frozen, until the Uzumaki siblings are tearing out of the tree line with shrill, terrified orders to-
”RUN RUN RUN!”
xxxvii.
There is only color. There are no shapes. There are no people, no thoughts, no places, no things. There are only colors, and endless perpetually shifting whirlwind of motion and color and he is running they are running, all of them, the group ahead and he and the ANBU and the Uzumaki siblings behind, footfalls heavy, slapping the water in conscious rhythm and everything is motion, is sound, is wind, is a whirl, he cannot see, he cannot hear, he cannot feel, not anything. There is only running, running, running, running, running, running, running, screaming, screaming, screaming, everything, all around is wind, is color, is speed has to run fast but can’t, can’t because there are colors in the way, colors beside him, colors, colors, colors and Minato doesn’t even know which way they’re running, but is only conscious enough to know it for a second, and in that second he is also conscious that it is moving towards them faster than they are moving away (his stomach lurches, out of breath, out of fast and hard and vividly ice-cold fear) and that is bad.
Colors splitting from colors splitting from shapes and for a second (only a second) he is aware that their small army (so small and ironically cute in its way) is splitting into fractions, everyone running a way that is different, an away that is farther from anyone else’s, no destination, only survival, only adrenaline and Minato sees only colors only blurs of what once was there and they are tearing, tearing, tearing, just running as hard and as fast and scared as they can and his whole body is cold, and he is suddenly aware that the whole of their army is screaming and he is only gaspingly silent, breathing air faster than humans can breathe air and just running running running, seeing only colors, no shapes, no thoughts, no people, just colors, just running, running, running, and scared. So scared. There is no reason for his madness and he cannot think that their might be. He is high on his own fight-or-flight response and their legs are pistons pounding, pounding, pounding, hearts pounding, pounding, pounding, lungs gasping, gasping, gasping, the Sanbi gaining, gaining, gaining.
”UZUME!”
And the color beside him (the color with breasts and red hair and sea-storm eyes and a screaming loud and echoingly clear) whips the boomerang blade from her back and hurls it directionlessly, and only then does he realize that the fish colors he has been weaving around are tentacles rising around them and he panics and drives a blade through the nearest one and just keeps running running running. The creature behind them shrieks its displeasure and in a second-
His name. On the wind.
”MINATO!”
(Shisui?)
Collide.
He yells, flies several yards, smashes into a tree back first, the suction fish skin of the Sanbi’s sixth tentacle still slick across the front of his body. He has no breath, he is not breathing, he swears, swears, swears, (are my lungs collapsing?) and he cringes, crumples down-
Water.
Cold, plunging-
WAKE UP.
Colors.
Blinking.
Spluttering.
”MINATO!” Kushina is shrill, is screaming, is a siren and then Kaigyo is-
Minato is rocketing, tumbling, somersaulting over himself and her, red, blond, red, blond, water, water, water, water everywhere there is water and it takes every ounce of charka control he has to keep them from going in- (a constant mental stream of APPLY PRESSURE HERE! HERE! HERE!)
”GET OUT OF THE WAY.”
A tentacle around the youngest brother’s body.
And that is the last time they see him, and his hand is automatically as the back of her head and they are left to stare at the empty void of where Kaigyo was until a second ago and then Kushina is screaming, screaming, fighting him and he is yelling at her, yelling orders not befitting of a peon to his commander, yelling-
”RUN.”
xxxviii.
They see it too.
Over the hill.
And Shisui is the first
to scream
his name.
(Jiraiya and Rin and Kakashi-
and Kushina.)
The second.
xxxix.
They are running as a pair, nothing making sense, everything tainted the red of peril, the bright crimson blood of my life is in jeopardy and they are just going as fast they can, Minato isn’t even sure where. Kushina is screaming nonsense (he thinks they are words) and then they are in the trees and the monster is fast behind them and then Minato loses her to air and he’s screaming after, screaming “KUSHINA!” and she rips her Uzume from the Sanbi’s side and it clips her, and he is down, tries to defend but it smashes down on her left leg and her scream is broken, terrified. He shoots forward, is above her with a Rasengan and the monster shrieks again, roaring in pain.
And in that gap he sees the man: no older than himself, not up to his hair, with enough metal in his face to be a machine and eyes like the rings on the inside of a tree, large and golden-amber and the coldest he has ever seen. A young man, who is standing on the Sanbi’s shoulder, staring down at him palely, blankly, as if he is a ghost and not really there.
Minato tries to help Kushina up but she is far ahead of him, leg twisting unnaturally in the wake of her shattered pelvis, quaking with the effort to stay upright, and they run.
xxxx.
The village is on fire, and he tastes the acridity of the smoke long before it comes into view, and it tears his stomach from his torso and makes him run faster, faster, faster, a few strides ahead of Kushina (pelvis. Shattered. Hard-won blade back over her shoulders, charka coursing so hard as she is breathing, keeping the pain at bay, the terror at bay, the screaming-) They hit the water, they run, they run, they run, the smoke making Minato’s eyes water, the shrill skeleton singing coursing through his veins, the smell so terrible that it makes his head pound, and then-
They stop.
The world is painted orange and yellow.
And he and Kushina just sit there and stare.
As if it is only slowly dawning on them, as if the buildings ablaze are simply an afternoon sunrise that no one told them was coming. There is no noise. It as if a God has come through and swallowed it all, as if the Sanbi has swallowed their noise and Kaigyo both, and they simply stand there, shocked silent, and stare at the picture that paints itself before their eyes, at the mass of people silhouetted against the fire. At the words that come to mind and say,
The village is burning.
And then Umino turns to him, eyes black in the light, the whole eyes black as if he has no pupils (as if there are just holes in his head where the eyes used to be, and Minato wonders if he is going crazy. Maybe he is going crazy and this is all just a hallucination. Maybe this is all a genjutsu somehow. Maybe, maybe, maybe,) and says, “Restrain Uzumaki-sama.”
He does automatically, his arms swiftly locking beneath her elbows and behind her head at the very second the starts fighting, starts screaming. She writhes and twists and battles for freedom, screams for it like a bird for the sky, like the birds that are billowing out of the forest and into the sky over the huge bonfire of people and buildings and homes that Kushina and her friends have lived in forever and ever. My home. Our home. My village. She screams at him, screams and writhes to get away from him, to escape her restraints, just screaming, screaming, screaming at the very top of her lungs. “LET ME GO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO, GODFUCKING DAMMIT, GODFUCK GODFUCK PAPA! PAPA! GODFUCK LET ME GO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING- PAPA! PAPA!” And Minato can see the ANBU running in and out, dragging incapacitated people from buildings and he can see that the Uzumaki estate at the head of the village is fully engulfed in red-black-flicker-orange flames and he knows, in the back of his mind, that the man who was so sick as to be bedridden has probably suffocated by now, the fire having stolen the oxygen from his lungs. He knows that the father Kushina is screaming for is probably already dead. Notices that most of the people on the ground are already dead. Notices that Kushina is crying, crying hard, turns into him, pounds his chests with her fists before they both sink down to the ground, and his face is completely blank.
Completely.
Blank.
Genjutsu.
When you are in a genjustu, you either must wait for one of your teammates to help you out of it by channeling their own charka into your body, or by using your own charka to get out of it.
Kushina cries, screams in pain and he looks down.
One of the pieces of her shattered pelvis has breached the skin.
Looks up.
Shisui and Rin and Kakashi and Jiraiya are staring back at him.
And he starts screaming, screaming, bent low and protective inexplicably over Kushina’s body, her arms around his neck, fingers burrowing into the fabric clothing his back. He bends and screams and screams and screams, wildly, frantically, doing the seals where no one but Shisui can see.
(Kai!)
”MEDIC!”
(Kai!)
”Oh God- MEDIC!”
(Kai!)
”MEDIC!”