Gen fic
Title: Apropos of the Wet Snow
Rating: PG-ish (K+)
Genre: General/Drama
Characters: Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, Sai, Pein, Kurenai, Shikamaru, mentions of various others, strong references to Sasuke, Obito, Minato, Itachi, Jiraiya, et al (no pairings, really, unless you count implicit Pein/Konan)
Spoilers: For the recent manga chapters, though at this point, the whole story could be alternate timeline-ish [as in, assumes Naruto to have come back in time to, uh, prevent any entire catastrophe].
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi. Standard fanfic disclaimers apply. See notes at the bottom of the 'fic.
Summary: Sixteen days: That's what you have. Sixteen winter days of sunlight and snow during which you must make peace with life, death, and yourself. There are many who should have died in the invasion. One is Naruto. Now it's time to cope. Ghosts of the pasts and pieces of the future. Assumes the invasion of Konoha went somewhat differently, with Naruto getting home sooner and chapter 429 not having happened.
Note: This fic is kind of speculative/alternate timeline. Konoha didn't get nuked. All/most Named Characters are alive, including Kakashi and Tsunade. Naruto was late, but not quite that late. Konoha was apocalyptic, but not quite that apocalyptic. I wrote all this before chapter 429, so I pretty much got rickrolled. [We're totally not going to go into how Naruto won, because that's not actually the point. I leave that to Kishi. The point is, uh. Well.]
Apropos of the Wet Snow
a tale of sixteen days
--
Things have changed since the end of the world.
Myobokuzan slides into the past, a great green land of mountains and giant mushrooms and purple skies, now weakening to grey in memory. Kakashi-sensei rests in the hospital. Sakura cuts apples for him, as she did for Sasuke years ago, and hums. One day when the light looks like noon, Naruto shuffles in the doorway and toes the frame until she invites him in, finger to her lips - bandaged from where the knife slipped; momentary unsteadiness of hands.
“Sleeping,” she says, and lifts the plate, apple slice proffered on the tip of a knife.
“Guess my timing's bad.”
Sakura's eyes lower. “Not in the end.”
She looks up again quickly afterwards, but the sense of heaviness and hanging does not abate - not even after Kakashi has awoken and creased his mask with the curve of a smile, not even when Naruto looks up and notices that Sai has ghosted into the room and holds up a hand like a cloud of almost human mist with one shape and one not quite solid presence.
Naruto smiles, brighter than everyone else, but his smile - their smiles - are elaborate puzzles with one missing piece each.
--
No one blames Naruto for being tardy, or if they do, they don't say so.
It's the third day after, and his hands are shoved deep in his pockets as he walks through the wasteland that was named Konoha (but it'll be rebuilt; it's been rebuilt before); many are dead, many are still alive, and the sun is beating him down so that the sweat trickles over the marks on his cheeks.
You're a hero now. This is what he is told, and this is what their eyes say.
You're a hero now. Like him. Like your father. My, how you've grown. How much you've done for us. And now: Saved us all, again.
Iruka squeezes his shoulder, then draws him into an embrace as he passes; just about hugs the life out of him. His grin is almost painful, underscored by large tears which shine in his eyes and don't fall. Naruto remembers the first time he saw his sensei cry. Now he's tall enough to stand and gaze into his eyes, at level, and things look different from up here.
Tsunade is in her office: dealing with insurgencies, dealing with Root, dealing out punishments.
Shikamaru sits on the steps of the porch of a ruined house. He looks older than Naruto thinks he remembers him looking, with his eyes focused on the wide length of paper he holds in one hand. A glass of something (sake? wine? scotch?) occupies his other hand, rather than a cigarette. He's still too young. They're still too young. But no one will mind, and maybe they're not.
“She's due in two weeks,” he says without preamble.
First baby born after the end of the world.
Naruto takes the glass when it is offered; red wine, he sees, now that he has the chance for a closer inspection. I never knew you drank, Naruto does not say, and swallows; scowls. Shikamaru Nara, surprise genius that he proved to be, reviews the schematics for a new Konoha, while Naruto looks on from over his shoulder, licking the bitter spill from his lips.
“Finish it. I shouldn't drink any more.”
Naruto nods.
Hands are being put to use, bodies congregating; mumbling, voices through the air, and Naruto stands up, wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Makes the signs, because it is time to rebuild, and he can create more hands than anyone.
--
Window open, the moonlight cuts a swath of glow over his face, like a flicker on the knife.
Naruto keeps thinking of that blade, and Sakura's hands (smaller than his) and the smell of apples, and her shampoo. Arms under his head, he shifts; kicks his feet together and stares at the bend of his knees. The day was hot and stuffy, but the night is comfortable, cool, and empty. His body still wears the glorious ache of hard work, from the joints in his fingers to the muscles in his calves - everything popping and throbbing and sore.
He is thinking of going to the refrigerator and getting something to drink, because he can't sleep. He is thinking of a floating sea of faces, unanimous congratulations, cheers, and hugs. He is thinking of the wine, and how it was hard for him to drink.
Sasuke will come, soon.
The knock on the door shakes his bones.
Sasuke is home.
--
“I can understand,” Ibiki says, “if you want to decline.”
Naruto sits at the table, scraping his fingernails down the wood.
“He said he would talk to me?”
With a distraught sigh that says he's been trying for hours, Inoichi informs them that he can't read his mind. Too many seals. Can't seem to get past the seals. Even now. Even now that he's locked in a prison, rotting powerless behind bars.
And he might be lying: a point both men emphasize.
The clock tick-tocks its way through his head, and Naruto can feel his palm indenting his cheek from where he is now slouched against it, elbow to the table. This is his thinking pose, and he knows they're looking at his scrunched up face.
“You don't owe anyone anything.” This is Inoichi. “You've already --”
Saved the village. And you need to rest, and recover. You need to. You should. It must have hurt your body and soul, what you went through with the kyuubi, and its chakra. And we're sorry. You're a hero, and we all love you, now. And their mouths are saying it -- or no, their eyes are, and he shouldn't know, because he's never been good at reading these meanings at all.
But --
“I'll do it,” he says, and snaps to life. Smiles, and when his mouth does this, the familiar energy swells, like the fox is leaking out, like everything before the end of the world. “Don't worry. I'll protect Konoha, all right? I'll do it. It's nothing!”
Five fingers on the top of a chair, Inoichi leans forward.
“Tomorrow, then.”
The clock ticks louder, or the room becomes quiet; Naruto thinks he blinks, after a blur of light and sound. The door is shutting. And then he hears the voices of men drifting through the wood, under and around; Ibiki, silhouetted by the crescent of the moon, standing by Inoichi on the porch. Starlight catches in their eyes; four points stand white against the backdrop of darkness and shine through the window.
The sky is grey and full of snow.
Sasuke is home.
--
It is the fourth day.
This is not right.
“You should be dead,” Naruto says --
-- but actually, this is wrong, too.
He doesn't say the words. He thinks them. They don't come within a mile of his mouth.
The chair's legs screech across the floor as he drags it back and sits down, crosses his legs and moves his jaw back and forth - opposite of his gaze, which doesn't move at all. His teeth screech across one another, too, but this sound is only in his head.
Hey is wrong and what the hell is this about is too blunt for this, for this person, and thanks for almost killing me, asshole is right, but it's not coming out.
So:
He walks away.
He has to come up with what he wants to say. That's what he tells them.
But, really, he doesn't know why.
--
“I'm fine! It's nothing! Jeez,” he tells people, starting with Konohamaru. “What the hell are you worrying for? C'mon.”
And he laughs. Assures them he's been through worse, because he has been through worse. He just got half the bones in his body broken, didn't he? He'd have been dead, if not for the kyuubi chakra; he was lying there, with little bone fragments threatening to poke his heart, puncture it and choke him with blood. He could've, would've been a goner. What the hell is a conversation, next to that?
Naruto dreams of his comparisons: lying broken in the water, broken on the ground. Dreams of rain that streams down his face, the sharp pain that brings bright red bubbles of blood and spittle to mouth, lips lacy with foam. Someone is walking away, and he can almost hear them, almost see them, as he lays dying.
There are black fingernails on the long, long fingers that reach into him to take away every kind of fire he has.
When he wakes up, he finds a letter from Sakura taped to the door of his apartment:
Hey, Naruto.
I heard about what happened. Are you all right? You can come talk to me anytime. You know that. I'll be at the hospital, helping out there. You need your rest, and you'd better take care of yourself! You've been through a lot, and contrary to what you sometimes seem to think, you're not invincible! I'll be checking in on you soon, so expect me to drop by!
♥
Sakura
It is the fifth day. There is no snow.
--
Sasuke is not home. This is not Sasuke. And looking at him, Naruto feels a cool vein of anger throbbing somewhere inside. Anger. Hurt. All his crashed expectations, when he sees orange-red hair instead of black - when he stares across the bars at Ibiki, who removes the blindfold. Then, clear white-silver stares back where there should be tomoe-stained red. White-silver, and vacant. Dead. It's the only thing their eyes have in common: that cold, cold disdain. That nothingness.
“Congratulations on defeating me,” he says, with that limp voice. “You were the first.”
“I'd do it again, too, you bastard.”
Sasuke would have scoffed at that. He would have snapped off some retort. Pein does not scoff, and he does not retort.
It's not the same. It's not a back and forth. There's no life in it. Your eyes are like his, Naruto thinks, absurdly, but he corrects himself; Sasuke's not like this at all. Not enough to draw any resemblances, and that's fine by him.
Naruto does not approach the cell; he stays back, keeps his distance, but not out of fear. It's just that --
It's just that this guy isn't right.
It's just that this guy's eyes don't feel anything.
“You left, last time. Why?”
And Naruto almost opens his mouth to say something without thinking (something like, why do you care or hey, you said you'd talk if I -- ), but Ibiki's hand clamps down on the prisoner's shoulder - shoves him forward, then jerks him back, and he leans in close, like he intends to whisper in his ear. At a level tone, he says, “We ask the questions, in this place. Not you.” A sneer twitches on his scarred face. “You're no god, here. Never here.”
Naruto laughs a little, under his breath. “Don't worry. I was just trying to think of what I wanted to ask, is all,” he answers Pein, regardless. “And I know now.”
The prisoner is like this: stripped of his cloak, wearing only the belted black tunic, pants, and shoes. The loss of the fabric makes him look smaller; he's not a big man, actually. About as broad as Naruto, maybe taller. His scratched hitai-ate is gone, long removed and done away with, so his hair . . . his hair, looking at it, is about the same as Naruto's hair, when his own hitai-ate is taken off, at least in terms of style. The colour is different, but. But anyway.
The bitch - the real bitch -- is that this man shouldn't be around at all. He should be dead. He is a corpse. That's just the truth of the matter. He's a corpse with eyes that Naruto doesn't like, and he likes talking to him even less. And this guy, this asshole, is directly responsible for killing Ero-sennin and bringing ruin to the village. He would've destroyed it all, would've let loose fire on the world, and would've killed Naruto . . . and everyone else, everyone else, and had things gone differently in even the slightest extent, then. Then.
No.
The chakra receivers have been taken from Pein's arms, which now dangle uselessly by his sides, unable to move or utilize jutsu. Naruto doesn't like the sight of them, either.
If Ibiki removes the piercings from the mouth and ears, then Pein will lose sight and hearing. His original body, which remains outside of Konoha's possession, will be plunged into complete sensory deprivation - Inoichi's phrasing. Sensory deprivation: sightless, painless, without hearing or smell or taste or any feeling at all. Blind and waiting for death in some dark place.
Like being buried alive, Naruto thinks, and suddenly he feels his skin crawl.
“Where's Sasuke?”
It nearly surprises him, when it finally comes out. Nearly. But not quite.
Pein closes his eyes.
“I'll tell you.”
Naruto finds himself staring, against his will, at the holes in Pein's forearms. Six of them; three for each arm. The skin around them is angry inflamed red, infection-licked and raw, but worse is the way you can look straight through and see the wall on the other side. The bone has been punched clean through, though at either end of each hole, it pokes its way into sight, like small off-white knobs.
I still don't get what kind of person you are.
He drags his upper teeth over his lower lip.
“In eleven days,” Pein begins, “I am to be executed. If you do something for me before then, I'll tell you anything you want to know.”
--
SAKURA-CHAN!
Don't worry about me! It was only a few broken bones! Maybe more than a few ... I've been closer to dying before! It's nothing! I'm going to be Hokage one day, remember? Well, drop by any time you want.
-- Naruto.
PS.
Bring food ramen.
--
From as far back as he can remember, Naruto has always hated riddles. Jutsu, he likes, and open conflict, sure, and if there's an idiot who needs a good talking to or a thump to the head, well, he can take that on. He can especially handle the thump to the head part. If someone wants to take a swing at him, he'll take a swing at them. Maybe a few swings. That's how it goes. And that'd be why Sasuke and he were -- are, he amends - best friends.
Why they will be best friends again, someday, even if Sasuke is a riddle, himself.
Right at this moment, Sasuke is literally a riddle: someone else's riddle. Some stranger's riddle. That's what pisses Naruto off the most, because riddles make him feel so damned helpless, but nothing is worse than being dependent on a mystery for the answer to a mystery.
The truth is, Naruto almost begged.
The other truth is, if he were still a few years younger, and if this were a time before the end of the world, he would have begged.
Pein did not budge, either physically or in intent.
“What? What is it?” Naruto had demanded - all while knowing how ridiculous it was that he should have to demand anything, given their respective positions. “Tell me! What do I have to do?”
The prisoner (why should he get a name?) hadn't answered; had refused to answer, in fact. He only stared - at Naruto or beyond him or at nothing, maybe.
“You can't give me what I want right now. You can't do it if I tell you to. It won't be authentic,” was all Pein would venture to say, and,
“You will give it to me, eventually. I know you will. I'm not concerned.”
Which amounted to: figure it out on your own.
Which wasn't fair.
Naruto hated riddles. And the hell was he going to let this jerk bribe him!
Pein turned around - turned away - and took his seat on the bench in his cell. Leaned against the wall: leaned, that is. He didn't slouch.
He left Naruto to feel the sum measure of all his wasted time.
--
I'll get Sasuke back in my own way.
It is the sixth day, and this is Naruto's first thought upon waking.
I shouldn't've thought that guy would be any help, anyway. Akatsuki --
Well, he's alive. That's what matters. Gaara is alive. And it sounds like Hachibi's host (what is his name?) is alive - yeah, because Tsunade (Old Hag Tsunade!) has just gotten word of this. And Sasuke's tangled up in that, but nowhere to be found. Hunted, though.
But what Naruto knows, and what he thinks Sakura knows, too, is that Sasuke is coming home; it's like this. It's in his blood, and maybe he sounds crazy if he says it, but it's like with animals that can feel the coming of an earthquake.
He eats ramen for breakfast; the steam is still rising off it, and he stirs the noodles with a wooden spoon - thinks about his training, slurps and licks his lips and fingers.
He looks outside, once, and catches sight of snow flurries.
It's here.
And when he finishes the plain ramen (from a cup; home-made, sort of), he goes out, and spends the remainder of the day helping to reconstruct the village.
--
Sasuke stands in the snow, bright-eyed and ear-muffed. Sakura is with him, wearing a yellow ribbon in her hair, and the sun is . . . ceaseless, like the sunshine could swallow everything down, forever.
Naruto finds himself looking on, unsure of where he is looking on from, and he feels it.
It swells up in his chest and throbs; a second heart, you might say. The tidal wave surges through him, at the sight of them, at the melting snows, at the orange and red leaves that overtake the scene, and suddenly, it's the worst thing ever, and the best.
Because he's looking at his friend's wild black hair and the way his face is all scrunched up and pug-nosed (this is a different Sasuke, isn't it? Not the Sasuke he knows later), and he sees the gleam of loneliness in his eyes.
You're alone, too. You're alone, too.
You're alone, too, and someone hurt you, didn't they?
The clarity of it, the purity, strikes him, but it is the purity of a teenager - maybe an adult, now - the understanding of an adult, and in this scene from another world, he can't be more than five, processing things like a five-year-old, all fuzzy and vague: Sasuke doesn't like anyone. Sasuke isn't happy. Everyone likes Sasuke. I wish everyone liked me.
I wish.
Back when --
But then the years are passing. Sasuke's face is changing, growing lean and hollow. The pug nose lengthens to something aquiline; and as all the pieces are cut from Sasuke - carved, you could say - Naruto feels himself carved, too; his emotions are carved apart, so he feels things differently from the blurred half-recalled sensations of childhood: scenes sway and multiply, plumpen with understanding.
You were alone. And you were hurting.
And I.
And I could have saved you.
Itachi killed every member of the Uchiha clan, except one. He left one alive.
Maybe the last part is untrue.
Naruto lies on the ground, looking up, up, up, into the dull, crow-black desolation of Sasuke's eyes, and he understands who else died.
--
Naruto wakes from the nightmare and says, around a mouth full of ghosts and ravens, “I'll be alive enough for both of us.”
Though, actually, he thinks he is still dreaming.
--
The door to the chamber is on the room's left side; the cell is on its right, behind a series of bars. It's about the size of an average bedroom -- this cell -- and sparsely furnished.
It contains a table littered with newspapers in which the subject concerns the activity of the inmate himself (for all his disinterest) and magazines spilling open gloss and glamour; silver screen ingenues with hair like Ino's, advertisements for new styles of kunai, full colour shine on a cluttered surface in a square grey room.
Two piercings have been returned to their slots, one for each arm. Reward for the prisoner's good behaviour.
Pein holds one forearm up, twisting it in arthritic semi-circles; long, slow motions like a lever with four absent screws. Two fingers are curled inwards, two standing and bent slightly at the joints, and his thumb trembles, faintly.
It reminds Naruto of when Old Hag Tsunade re-wired Kabuto's body, when he had to understand it in a new light and re-figure the nerves.
The prison is clean and humane, but in it, everything is a machine, and so is Naruto's mouth. It just droops, wants to hang open on rusted hinges.
It is the seventh day.
Naruto looks on, at the blankness that drinks him down until he's under the water, deep in the ocean, in shadows and distorted sound, and the quietness . . .
Pein looks over his shoulder - suddenly, sharply.
Around the six black bumps, the skin furrows. At the lips, the snakebites become anchors, tugging the face from impassive to severe.
Crinkles appear beneath the unfocused eyes.
This is familiar.
Naruto knows that face, that petulance, what it means to be looked at but looked through; dismissed with a cool, contemptuous gaze, while he's staring on and those eyes ask, why are you here?
And accuse: you don't belong here. I'm the king of this space. I'm the king of every space I touch. You're just a child. Go away. Grow up.
Grow up.
“I -- “ Naruto says, and almost, stupidly, apologizes. Almost, I'm sorry.
Instead, his head drops. At least three years' worth of regret and rage hits him, inexplicably, like a comet to the chest, like a full-on fucking rasengan to pulverize the second heart he's been growing - that's been hemorrhaging three years' worth of blood through his system, filling him with all this extra - and before he knows what he's doing, his hands are strangling the bars.
He kicks one so hard that the clang resonates through the room, reverberates off the other poles like a xylophone dirge.
He hears people calling his name, somewhere, concerned, but they're all the way up on the shore, and he's sixty feet under water.
“How?”
Breathes out, shakily.
“How -- ” Whiteness blooms around his knuckles, red on his palms and over the flesh of forefinger and thumb. “--can you not care?”
The silence looks back at him, and he bows his head, rests it against iron.
“Your friend is dead,” he rasps in a broken voice, “Your friend. She's dead. You know she's dead. You haven't said anything! You haven't . . . you haven't done anything. How can you not care? How! Tell me! Tell me how you can walk away from your friends, from the people who care about you!”
He wilts.
This is drowning, when he sucks in and sucks in, deep breaths through his nose, tears stinging his eyes but stubbornly not falling; his eyes are still too stuck to let them go, like even his body can't accept it, and he's just caught in this place that he doesn't like, where there's no going back and yet he can't quite move forward; this limbo, this hell, is this supposed to be coping?
“I wish someone would tell me, 'cause I don't understand how anyone could leave their friends behind,” he whispers. “I can't.”
Once he's picked the pieces of himself off the floor, the throb has passed.
Florescent bulbs glare down on the room's inhabitants, flickering.
It's funny how tears can go right back down, like they were never there.
“I shouldn't have come,” he tells someone (someone who is reaching at him, worried, asking him if he's all right, he thinks). “No, it's okay. I just... I shouldn't have come.”
Naruto never means to look up, but when he does, the face he never means to see is turned to him still; still regarding. Statue unmoving, shadowed, but smooth now.
Ringed eyes glimmer.
When Naruto turns to leave, he hears, behind him (in a voice speaking to itself):
“You remind me of someone.”
He doesn't say:
You remind me of someone, too.
--
Naruto wakes on the eighth day to find that his foot screams with silent pain, and this is when he realizes he kicked those bars harder than he'd thought.
Screams is a way of putting it; it complains enough that he wonders if he knocked a fracture into the damned thing, but wouldn't he have noticed that?
Regardless, the foot is swollen near the middle, so he tapes white strips over gauze and ties them around it, until it's looking like a present meant to be unwrapped.
Once the foot is tucked away in a boot and a partial attempt is made at cleaning the bedroom, Naruto leaves to see Sakura and Kakashi-sensei.
He wonders, fleetingly, when Sakura-chan has become simply Sakura.
This is the day their sensei is released from the hospital. The ground is covered in a thin layer of fine white snow, and flakes are still swirling down.
The three of them meet together, like old times, at Ichiraku's.
Sakura drags in Sai, who for once is wearing an entire shirt - and a coat, too - and she herself has on this big dark green thing (Naruto will be damned if he can put much identity to clothes) with fluff around the neck, but what Naruto really notices is the strength it gives to her eyes.
There's a kick to the way she takes her seat - an emphasis. Like, she takes it, and looks at her friends, and smiles comfortably: a soft, daydreamy smile, as she hums and reads an order off the menu.
Not the same “Sakura-chan” who cut apple slices for “Sasuke-kun” in another time and place.
Today, they tease Kakashi because he's not late.
(But he's already eaten, he says; how typical.)
Naruto orders a full steaming bowl of miso ramen, grips it with both hands, and tips it as soon as it's barely cooled, so he has a mouthful of hot fish slice and egg, with broth already dripping into his stomach, when he notices --
He doesn't know what he notices.
There's Sakura, and Sai, and Kakashi-sensei. Same as always: Sai prodding noodles with chopsticks, Sakura speaking of the activities of her past few days with this kind of merry exhaustion; Sai is like one cord of wire and rope, bleached in places, silent with thoughts only he understands, and Sakura is different; alive, maybe, is accurate. Alive and just. Lit up. She always had the best chakra control. Now it's like she has her own aura, her own glow. Or . . . it's just the lamps reflecting off the snow and into her eyes. She smells nice. She always smells nice.
Here is what else Naruto notices: Kakashi is looking at him.
And it's not that same bored, sly, sideways kind of a look; it's not mischief or disengaged Icha Icha reading.
But then he smiles, easy and painless. “Well, let's see how long I can stay out of the hospital this time, shall we?”
Naruto splutters and nearly chokes on his noodles.
--
Ichiraku's survived the end of the world. Many things did, actually.
The snow falls continuously, into the night, and by the ninth day, it covers every surface. Come noon, it's not a clean white snow anymore. It's slushy and wet, white in the tree branches like Ero-sennin's hair and sleet grey on the sidewalks like Kakashi's.
Naruto looks down, bleary-eyed; his nose runs from a cold brought on by the weather, and his cheek is smushed against the cool glass, making a foggy print.
Sakura told this story about a woman with a piece of shrapnel lodged under a rib, and how she'd taken it out and isolated the problem; she'd - with her own two hands - pumped chakra in, re-wired the body to respond, adjusted the flow to accommodate the injury. Her bloody hands, holding pieces from people, knowing them in this way, saving them, and their words, she says - their smiles - are the greatest encouragement.
Sakura would make a great Hokage.
The thought surprises him.
Sakura would make a great Hokage.
Below his bedroom window, Naruto sees Konohamaru and his friends building a snowman. They wave an invitation up to him.
Sakura would make a great Hokage.
Against the window, his lip curves up.
He should be training, he thinks, or on a mission, but on the ninth day, Naruto builds snowmen, nurses his cold with hot cocoa, and lets the world dream itself away beneath the ice.
--
The tenth day is the opposite of the ninth.
The cold is worse. Naruto sniffles and unlatches the window, yanks it up so the slide of glass and wood groans at him and frozen air blasts him straight on -- chills the slippery snot that's trying to leak out (before he wipes it away with his forearm) and his wet, runny, red-streaked eyes.
Sasuke should have been here by now, by all reports.
Sasuke is not coming.
Maybe Naruto has known that for a while now, too.
It's not a good day, but it's not a bad one, either. His foot has healed completely, but he's sick and that heaviness is back in his lungs, making him ball his fists and bite his lips and wish for one good release -- one good, long sob. It's not coming. The past ten days have felt apart from time; ten days in some other universe where events and motions move through molasses and get stuck, caught in clocks that never tell the right hour - too many ticks fast or slow, and you're a day ahead or a day behind, but when you look up, the hands are never right. And it's when you realize that you aren't sure when everyone else is, when you are --
But you know you're not really moving at all.
Today, though, it's all right, because Naruto has somehow gotten what he needs to go back to that cell. The truth is there, as well as the lie he's been hiding from.
The lie is: Naruto won.
“Why didn't you kill me?” he asks, quietly, when he returns to visit the person he cannot leave: the question he cannot seem to bury under ramen, snowfall, or a thousand cheers and smiles and hugs.
Twice he should have died. Twice he was spared. The second time, he has as few answers as the first.
Now, for better or worse, he's ready to confront the truth. The last three times, he wasn't, and he handled the situation badly. Presently, he stands with his hands on his hips, and his words clear his head and ground him in reality even as they leave his mouth. This is right.
“Is it . . . ”
Pein is sitting on the bench again, with an arm resting against his knee, and he gives this unimpressed look that might be described as long suffering (impressively long suffering, to be so blank), but predictably, what he doesn't give is any indication that he intends to acknowledge anyone with a response.
“ . . . because I remind you of someone?” Naruto stumbles on, anyway.
“I can't make you understand what you won't see for yourself.” He doesn't even blink. Just turns to look at the wall. “What your village has done.”
“Well, you're right about that. I don't understand. But even if I did, I wouldn't understand why you're so. So -- ?”
Calm?
“Yeah, well, why aren't you resisting? That's what I wanna know.”
Because this guy . . . this guy . . . sure, he looks dead and empty sometimes; sits or stands in repose and barely talks, but this guy led Akatsuki, and this guy was ready to bring the fucking apocalypse down on the world in full-out fire and brimstone rain of terror. He did bring the mini-apocalypse to Konoha, fought with such violence that the whole village was terrorized; buildings leveled, people killed, a full hospital: pummeled Kakashi-sensei, threatened the Hokage.
And beat the hell out of Naruto.
They beat the hell out of each other, specifically.
“What do you think -- “ Pein's voice remains dead as a rag, but deep like it could be rich if the right words and mood ever found him. “ -- of a village, of countries, and people who train children to kill? And what do you think of graduating from an academy at five or six, knowing all these ways and manners of killing?”
He looks over. “Like Uchiha Itachi, who massacred. Because he was told to. Maybe you think sealing demons in babies is appropriate.”
“Of course I don't! I'm a victim of that, too!”
“Then keep thinking that way.”
“But that's not all there is to Konoha, or the world.”
“For you.”
He takes a step forward, peers in, but Pein has already looked away again.
This is the last body. The others were destroyed in the battle.
The ground around the conflict was reduced, akin to a crater, and when the participants were pulled forth from the smouldering debris, both were caked in their own blood, and each other's. Naruto remembers the crunch of his bones, still in his body - remembers, also, the sight of dirt and gore plastering his opponent's hair to his forehead, and the look of shock in those alien eyes.
Remembers the odd, dark feeling of satisfaction as he surveyed his work - silvery piercings slicked with glistening red - and thought: Served you right. Served you right, for taking him from me.
It was brief but frightening.
Such thoughts don't seem as if they could exist in this real, actual universe.
But the thing is, he knows it wasn't all the kyuubi talking to him.
“I hate riddles,” he says, then:
“Look, I don't know what you want. Whatever it is, I can't give it to you.”
He slaps his palms together.
Okay, so it's not perfect, but it's better than the last three times. Better than just walking out, or losing his temper, even though he's tempted. Denial, bargaining, anger; what is this, then?
“Maybe I could, but I don't know what you want! Why don't you just tell me?”
Doesn't have the foggiest idea, actually.
But maybe the price is too high. It's worth a shot, but maybe the price is just too damned high. Isn't this what he's known all along? Isn't this why he's not pursued this harder? Isn't this why he keeps putting this off? And now he's running out of time.
Six days. It's not going to happen.
“You'll figure it out,” Pein says, sounding unconcerned.
And Naruto frowns, and thinks, What? Is that what those eyes tell you, or something? Because I sure as hell don't know what you're on about.
“Yeah? Why aren't you fighting? You just sit there! I don't get it. Before . . . “
The response comes in a tone that allows no argument.
“I lost.”
I'm sorry, Sasuke, Naruto thinks. I'm sorry. I can't. I'll bring you back my way.
“Twenty-two years ago . . . “
Pein's rickety fingers comb through his hair; his head is lowered, so all the sharp shadows wash over his expressionless face. Two bright eyes - the shadows seem unable to mask those.
“ . . . in a civil war in Amegakure, when the war was dragging on, the warring factions began hiring shinobi from prominent villages in the hopes of resolving the conflict quickly. Konoha shinobi were among those hired. This increased the level of violence. When the war dragged on, both sides lost morale. One day, a group of foreign shinobi who had run out of food and supplies decided to lay waste to a local village to get these things. This village was small. It still farmed with water buffalo.”
He doesn't continue, but Naruto thinks he knows how the story ends.
“You asked me why I didn't kill you.”
The hand stills.
In the same monotone as ever, he says,
“I wonder: Why didn't you kill me?”
Part II
Rating: PG-ish (K+)
Genre: General/Drama
Characters: Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, Sai, Pein, Kurenai, Shikamaru, mentions of various others, strong references to Sasuke, Obito, Minato, Itachi, Jiraiya, et al (no pairings, really, unless you count implicit Pein/Konan)
Spoilers: For the recent manga chapters, though at this point, the whole story could be alternate timeline-ish [as in, assumes Naruto to have come back in time to, uh, prevent any entire catastrophe].
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi. Standard fanfic disclaimers apply. See notes at the bottom of the 'fic.
Summary: Sixteen days: That's what you have. Sixteen winter days of sunlight and snow during which you must make peace with life, death, and yourself. There are many who should have died in the invasion. One is Naruto. Now it's time to cope. Ghosts of the pasts and pieces of the future. Assumes the invasion of Konoha went somewhat differently, with Naruto getting home sooner and chapter 429 not having happened.
Note: This fic is kind of speculative/alternate timeline. Konoha didn't get nuked. All/most Named Characters are alive, including Kakashi and Tsunade. Naruto was late, but not quite that late. Konoha was apocalyptic, but not quite that apocalyptic. I wrote all this before chapter 429, so I pretty much got rickrolled. [We're totally not going to go into how Naruto won, because that's not actually the point. I leave that to Kishi. The point is, uh. Well.]
Apropos of the Wet Snow
a tale of sixteen days
--
Things have changed since the end of the world.
Myobokuzan slides into the past, a great green land of mountains and giant mushrooms and purple skies, now weakening to grey in memory. Kakashi-sensei rests in the hospital. Sakura cuts apples for him, as she did for Sasuke years ago, and hums. One day when the light looks like noon, Naruto shuffles in the doorway and toes the frame until she invites him in, finger to her lips - bandaged from where the knife slipped; momentary unsteadiness of hands.
“Sleeping,” she says, and lifts the plate, apple slice proffered on the tip of a knife.
“Guess my timing's bad.”
Sakura's eyes lower. “Not in the end.”
She looks up again quickly afterwards, but the sense of heaviness and hanging does not abate - not even after Kakashi has awoken and creased his mask with the curve of a smile, not even when Naruto looks up and notices that Sai has ghosted into the room and holds up a hand like a cloud of almost human mist with one shape and one not quite solid presence.
Naruto smiles, brighter than everyone else, but his smile - their smiles - are elaborate puzzles with one missing piece each.
--
No one blames Naruto for being tardy, or if they do, they don't say so.
It's the third day after, and his hands are shoved deep in his pockets as he walks through the wasteland that was named Konoha (but it'll be rebuilt; it's been rebuilt before); many are dead, many are still alive, and the sun is beating him down so that the sweat trickles over the marks on his cheeks.
You're a hero now. This is what he is told, and this is what their eyes say.
You're a hero now. Like him. Like your father. My, how you've grown. How much you've done for us. And now: Saved us all, again.
Iruka squeezes his shoulder, then draws him into an embrace as he passes; just about hugs the life out of him. His grin is almost painful, underscored by large tears which shine in his eyes and don't fall. Naruto remembers the first time he saw his sensei cry. Now he's tall enough to stand and gaze into his eyes, at level, and things look different from up here.
Tsunade is in her office: dealing with insurgencies, dealing with Root, dealing out punishments.
Shikamaru sits on the steps of the porch of a ruined house. He looks older than Naruto thinks he remembers him looking, with his eyes focused on the wide length of paper he holds in one hand. A glass of something (sake? wine? scotch?) occupies his other hand, rather than a cigarette. He's still too young. They're still too young. But no one will mind, and maybe they're not.
“She's due in two weeks,” he says without preamble.
First baby born after the end of the world.
Naruto takes the glass when it is offered; red wine, he sees, now that he has the chance for a closer inspection. I never knew you drank, Naruto does not say, and swallows; scowls. Shikamaru Nara, surprise genius that he proved to be, reviews the schematics for a new Konoha, while Naruto looks on from over his shoulder, licking the bitter spill from his lips.
“Finish it. I shouldn't drink any more.”
Naruto nods.
Hands are being put to use, bodies congregating; mumbling, voices through the air, and Naruto stands up, wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Makes the signs, because it is time to rebuild, and he can create more hands than anyone.
--
Window open, the moonlight cuts a swath of glow over his face, like a flicker on the knife.
Naruto keeps thinking of that blade, and Sakura's hands (smaller than his) and the smell of apples, and her shampoo. Arms under his head, he shifts; kicks his feet together and stares at the bend of his knees. The day was hot and stuffy, but the night is comfortable, cool, and empty. His body still wears the glorious ache of hard work, from the joints in his fingers to the muscles in his calves - everything popping and throbbing and sore.
He is thinking of going to the refrigerator and getting something to drink, because he can't sleep. He is thinking of a floating sea of faces, unanimous congratulations, cheers, and hugs. He is thinking of the wine, and how it was hard for him to drink.
Sasuke will come, soon.
The knock on the door shakes his bones.
Sasuke is home.
--
“I can understand,” Ibiki says, “if you want to decline.”
Naruto sits at the table, scraping his fingernails down the wood.
“He said he would talk to me?”
With a distraught sigh that says he's been trying for hours, Inoichi informs them that he can't read his mind. Too many seals. Can't seem to get past the seals. Even now. Even now that he's locked in a prison, rotting powerless behind bars.
And he might be lying: a point both men emphasize.
The clock tick-tocks its way through his head, and Naruto can feel his palm indenting his cheek from where he is now slouched against it, elbow to the table. This is his thinking pose, and he knows they're looking at his scrunched up face.
“You don't owe anyone anything.” This is Inoichi. “You've already --”
Saved the village. And you need to rest, and recover. You need to. You should. It must have hurt your body and soul, what you went through with the kyuubi, and its chakra. And we're sorry. You're a hero, and we all love you, now. And their mouths are saying it -- or no, their eyes are, and he shouldn't know, because he's never been good at reading these meanings at all.
But --
“I'll do it,” he says, and snaps to life. Smiles, and when his mouth does this, the familiar energy swells, like the fox is leaking out, like everything before the end of the world. “Don't worry. I'll protect Konoha, all right? I'll do it. It's nothing!”
Five fingers on the top of a chair, Inoichi leans forward.
“Tomorrow, then.”
The clock ticks louder, or the room becomes quiet; Naruto thinks he blinks, after a blur of light and sound. The door is shutting. And then he hears the voices of men drifting through the wood, under and around; Ibiki, silhouetted by the crescent of the moon, standing by Inoichi on the porch. Starlight catches in their eyes; four points stand white against the backdrop of darkness and shine through the window.
The sky is grey and full of snow.
Sasuke is home.
--
It is the fourth day.
This is not right.
“You should be dead,” Naruto says --
-- but actually, this is wrong, too.
He doesn't say the words. He thinks them. They don't come within a mile of his mouth.
The chair's legs screech across the floor as he drags it back and sits down, crosses his legs and moves his jaw back and forth - opposite of his gaze, which doesn't move at all. His teeth screech across one another, too, but this sound is only in his head.
Hey is wrong and what the hell is this about is too blunt for this, for this person, and thanks for almost killing me, asshole is right, but it's not coming out.
So:
He walks away.
He has to come up with what he wants to say. That's what he tells them.
But, really, he doesn't know why.
--
“I'm fine! It's nothing! Jeez,” he tells people, starting with Konohamaru. “What the hell are you worrying for? C'mon.”
And he laughs. Assures them he's been through worse, because he has been through worse. He just got half the bones in his body broken, didn't he? He'd have been dead, if not for the kyuubi chakra; he was lying there, with little bone fragments threatening to poke his heart, puncture it and choke him with blood. He could've, would've been a goner. What the hell is a conversation, next to that?
Naruto dreams of his comparisons: lying broken in the water, broken on the ground. Dreams of rain that streams down his face, the sharp pain that brings bright red bubbles of blood and spittle to mouth, lips lacy with foam. Someone is walking away, and he can almost hear them, almost see them, as he lays dying.
There are black fingernails on the long, long fingers that reach into him to take away every kind of fire he has.
When he wakes up, he finds a letter from Sakura taped to the door of his apartment:
Hey, Naruto.
I heard about what happened. Are you all right? You can come talk to me anytime. You know that. I'll be at the hospital, helping out there. You need your rest, and you'd better take care of yourself! You've been through a lot, and contrary to what you sometimes seem to think, you're not invincible! I'll be checking in on you soon, so expect me to drop by!
♥
Sakura
It is the fifth day. There is no snow.
--
Sasuke is not home. This is not Sasuke. And looking at him, Naruto feels a cool vein of anger throbbing somewhere inside. Anger. Hurt. All his crashed expectations, when he sees orange-red hair instead of black - when he stares across the bars at Ibiki, who removes the blindfold. Then, clear white-silver stares back where there should be tomoe-stained red. White-silver, and vacant. Dead. It's the only thing their eyes have in common: that cold, cold disdain. That nothingness.
“Congratulations on defeating me,” he says, with that limp voice. “You were the first.”
“I'd do it again, too, you bastard.”
Sasuke would have scoffed at that. He would have snapped off some retort. Pein does not scoff, and he does not retort.
It's not the same. It's not a back and forth. There's no life in it. Your eyes are like his, Naruto thinks, absurdly, but he corrects himself; Sasuke's not like this at all. Not enough to draw any resemblances, and that's fine by him.
Naruto does not approach the cell; he stays back, keeps his distance, but not out of fear. It's just that --
It's just that this guy isn't right.
It's just that this guy's eyes don't feel anything.
“You left, last time. Why?”
And Naruto almost opens his mouth to say something without thinking (something like, why do you care or hey, you said you'd talk if I -- ), but Ibiki's hand clamps down on the prisoner's shoulder - shoves him forward, then jerks him back, and he leans in close, like he intends to whisper in his ear. At a level tone, he says, “We ask the questions, in this place. Not you.” A sneer twitches on his scarred face. “You're no god, here. Never here.”
Naruto laughs a little, under his breath. “Don't worry. I was just trying to think of what I wanted to ask, is all,” he answers Pein, regardless. “And I know now.”
The prisoner is like this: stripped of his cloak, wearing only the belted black tunic, pants, and shoes. The loss of the fabric makes him look smaller; he's not a big man, actually. About as broad as Naruto, maybe taller. His scratched hitai-ate is gone, long removed and done away with, so his hair . . . his hair, looking at it, is about the same as Naruto's hair, when his own hitai-ate is taken off, at least in terms of style. The colour is different, but. But anyway.
The bitch - the real bitch -- is that this man shouldn't be around at all. He should be dead. He is a corpse. That's just the truth of the matter. He's a corpse with eyes that Naruto doesn't like, and he likes talking to him even less. And this guy, this asshole, is directly responsible for killing Ero-sennin and bringing ruin to the village. He would've destroyed it all, would've let loose fire on the world, and would've killed Naruto . . . and everyone else, everyone else, and had things gone differently in even the slightest extent, then. Then.
No.
The chakra receivers have been taken from Pein's arms, which now dangle uselessly by his sides, unable to move or utilize jutsu. Naruto doesn't like the sight of them, either.
If Ibiki removes the piercings from the mouth and ears, then Pein will lose sight and hearing. His original body, which remains outside of Konoha's possession, will be plunged into complete sensory deprivation - Inoichi's phrasing. Sensory deprivation: sightless, painless, without hearing or smell or taste or any feeling at all. Blind and waiting for death in some dark place.
Like being buried alive, Naruto thinks, and suddenly he feels his skin crawl.
“Where's Sasuke?”
It nearly surprises him, when it finally comes out. Nearly. But not quite.
Pein closes his eyes.
“I'll tell you.”
Naruto finds himself staring, against his will, at the holes in Pein's forearms. Six of them; three for each arm. The skin around them is angry inflamed red, infection-licked and raw, but worse is the way you can look straight through and see the wall on the other side. The bone has been punched clean through, though at either end of each hole, it pokes its way into sight, like small off-white knobs.
I still don't get what kind of person you are.
He drags his upper teeth over his lower lip.
“In eleven days,” Pein begins, “I am to be executed. If you do something for me before then, I'll tell you anything you want to know.”
--
SAKURA-CHAN!
Don't worry about me! It was only a few broken bones! Maybe more than a few ... I've been closer to dying before! It's nothing! I'm going to be Hokage one day, remember? Well, drop by any time you want.
-- Naruto.
PS.
Bring food ramen.
--
From as far back as he can remember, Naruto has always hated riddles. Jutsu, he likes, and open conflict, sure, and if there's an idiot who needs a good talking to or a thump to the head, well, he can take that on. He can especially handle the thump to the head part. If someone wants to take a swing at him, he'll take a swing at them. Maybe a few swings. That's how it goes. And that'd be why Sasuke and he were -- are, he amends - best friends.
Why they will be best friends again, someday, even if Sasuke is a riddle, himself.
Right at this moment, Sasuke is literally a riddle: someone else's riddle. Some stranger's riddle. That's what pisses Naruto off the most, because riddles make him feel so damned helpless, but nothing is worse than being dependent on a mystery for the answer to a mystery.
The truth is, Naruto almost begged.
The other truth is, if he were still a few years younger, and if this were a time before the end of the world, he would have begged.
Pein did not budge, either physically or in intent.
“What? What is it?” Naruto had demanded - all while knowing how ridiculous it was that he should have to demand anything, given their respective positions. “Tell me! What do I have to do?”
The prisoner (why should he get a name?) hadn't answered; had refused to answer, in fact. He only stared - at Naruto or beyond him or at nothing, maybe.
“You can't give me what I want right now. You can't do it if I tell you to. It won't be authentic,” was all Pein would venture to say, and,
“You will give it to me, eventually. I know you will. I'm not concerned.”
Which amounted to: figure it out on your own.
Which wasn't fair.
Naruto hated riddles. And the hell was he going to let this jerk bribe him!
Pein turned around - turned away - and took his seat on the bench in his cell. Leaned against the wall: leaned, that is. He didn't slouch.
He left Naruto to feel the sum measure of all his wasted time.
--
I'll get Sasuke back in my own way.
It is the sixth day, and this is Naruto's first thought upon waking.
I shouldn't've thought that guy would be any help, anyway. Akatsuki --
Well, he's alive. That's what matters. Gaara is alive. And it sounds like Hachibi's host (what is his name?) is alive - yeah, because Tsunade (Old Hag Tsunade!) has just gotten word of this. And Sasuke's tangled up in that, but nowhere to be found. Hunted, though.
But what Naruto knows, and what he thinks Sakura knows, too, is that Sasuke is coming home; it's like this. It's in his blood, and maybe he sounds crazy if he says it, but it's like with animals that can feel the coming of an earthquake.
He eats ramen for breakfast; the steam is still rising off it, and he stirs the noodles with a wooden spoon - thinks about his training, slurps and licks his lips and fingers.
He looks outside, once, and catches sight of snow flurries.
It's here.
And when he finishes the plain ramen (from a cup; home-made, sort of), he goes out, and spends the remainder of the day helping to reconstruct the village.
--
Sasuke stands in the snow, bright-eyed and ear-muffed. Sakura is with him, wearing a yellow ribbon in her hair, and the sun is . . . ceaseless, like the sunshine could swallow everything down, forever.
Naruto finds himself looking on, unsure of where he is looking on from, and he feels it.
It swells up in his chest and throbs; a second heart, you might say. The tidal wave surges through him, at the sight of them, at the melting snows, at the orange and red leaves that overtake the scene, and suddenly, it's the worst thing ever, and the best.
Because he's looking at his friend's wild black hair and the way his face is all scrunched up and pug-nosed (this is a different Sasuke, isn't it? Not the Sasuke he knows later), and he sees the gleam of loneliness in his eyes.
You're alone, too. You're alone, too.
You're alone, too, and someone hurt you, didn't they?
The clarity of it, the purity, strikes him, but it is the purity of a teenager - maybe an adult, now - the understanding of an adult, and in this scene from another world, he can't be more than five, processing things like a five-year-old, all fuzzy and vague: Sasuke doesn't like anyone. Sasuke isn't happy. Everyone likes Sasuke. I wish everyone liked me.
I wish.
Back when --
But then the years are passing. Sasuke's face is changing, growing lean and hollow. The pug nose lengthens to something aquiline; and as all the pieces are cut from Sasuke - carved, you could say - Naruto feels himself carved, too; his emotions are carved apart, so he feels things differently from the blurred half-recalled sensations of childhood: scenes sway and multiply, plumpen with understanding.
You were alone. And you were hurting.
And I.
And I could have saved you.
Itachi killed every member of the Uchiha clan, except one. He left one alive.
Maybe the last part is untrue.
Naruto lies on the ground, looking up, up, up, into the dull, crow-black desolation of Sasuke's eyes, and he understands who else died.
--
Naruto wakes from the nightmare and says, around a mouth full of ghosts and ravens, “I'll be alive enough for both of us.”
Though, actually, he thinks he is still dreaming.
--
The door to the chamber is on the room's left side; the cell is on its right, behind a series of bars. It's about the size of an average bedroom -- this cell -- and sparsely furnished.
It contains a table littered with newspapers in which the subject concerns the activity of the inmate himself (for all his disinterest) and magazines spilling open gloss and glamour; silver screen ingenues with hair like Ino's, advertisements for new styles of kunai, full colour shine on a cluttered surface in a square grey room.
Two piercings have been returned to their slots, one for each arm. Reward for the prisoner's good behaviour.
Pein holds one forearm up, twisting it in arthritic semi-circles; long, slow motions like a lever with four absent screws. Two fingers are curled inwards, two standing and bent slightly at the joints, and his thumb trembles, faintly.
It reminds Naruto of when Old Hag Tsunade re-wired Kabuto's body, when he had to understand it in a new light and re-figure the nerves.
The prison is clean and humane, but in it, everything is a machine, and so is Naruto's mouth. It just droops, wants to hang open on rusted hinges.
It is the seventh day.
Naruto looks on, at the blankness that drinks him down until he's under the water, deep in the ocean, in shadows and distorted sound, and the quietness . . .
Pein looks over his shoulder - suddenly, sharply.
Around the six black bumps, the skin furrows. At the lips, the snakebites become anchors, tugging the face from impassive to severe.
Crinkles appear beneath the unfocused eyes.
This is familiar.
Naruto knows that face, that petulance, what it means to be looked at but looked through; dismissed with a cool, contemptuous gaze, while he's staring on and those eyes ask, why are you here?
And accuse: you don't belong here. I'm the king of this space. I'm the king of every space I touch. You're just a child. Go away. Grow up.
Grow up.
“I -- “ Naruto says, and almost, stupidly, apologizes. Almost, I'm sorry.
Instead, his head drops. At least three years' worth of regret and rage hits him, inexplicably, like a comet to the chest, like a full-on fucking rasengan to pulverize the second heart he's been growing - that's been hemorrhaging three years' worth of blood through his system, filling him with all this extra - and before he knows what he's doing, his hands are strangling the bars.
He kicks one so hard that the clang resonates through the room, reverberates off the other poles like a xylophone dirge.
He hears people calling his name, somewhere, concerned, but they're all the way up on the shore, and he's sixty feet under water.
“How?”
Breathes out, shakily.
“How -- ” Whiteness blooms around his knuckles, red on his palms and over the flesh of forefinger and thumb. “--can you not care?”
The silence looks back at him, and he bows his head, rests it against iron.
“Your friend is dead,” he rasps in a broken voice, “Your friend. She's dead. You know she's dead. You haven't said anything! You haven't . . . you haven't done anything. How can you not care? How! Tell me! Tell me how you can walk away from your friends, from the people who care about you!”
He wilts.
This is drowning, when he sucks in and sucks in, deep breaths through his nose, tears stinging his eyes but stubbornly not falling; his eyes are still too stuck to let them go, like even his body can't accept it, and he's just caught in this place that he doesn't like, where there's no going back and yet he can't quite move forward; this limbo, this hell, is this supposed to be coping?
“I wish someone would tell me, 'cause I don't understand how anyone could leave their friends behind,” he whispers. “I can't.”
Once he's picked the pieces of himself off the floor, the throb has passed.
Florescent bulbs glare down on the room's inhabitants, flickering.
It's funny how tears can go right back down, like they were never there.
“I shouldn't have come,” he tells someone (someone who is reaching at him, worried, asking him if he's all right, he thinks). “No, it's okay. I just... I shouldn't have come.”
Naruto never means to look up, but when he does, the face he never means to see is turned to him still; still regarding. Statue unmoving, shadowed, but smooth now.
Ringed eyes glimmer.
When Naruto turns to leave, he hears, behind him (in a voice speaking to itself):
“You remind me of someone.”
He doesn't say:
You remind me of someone, too.
--
Naruto wakes on the eighth day to find that his foot screams with silent pain, and this is when he realizes he kicked those bars harder than he'd thought.
Screams is a way of putting it; it complains enough that he wonders if he knocked a fracture into the damned thing, but wouldn't he have noticed that?
Regardless, the foot is swollen near the middle, so he tapes white strips over gauze and ties them around it, until it's looking like a present meant to be unwrapped.
Once the foot is tucked away in a boot and a partial attempt is made at cleaning the bedroom, Naruto leaves to see Sakura and Kakashi-sensei.
He wonders, fleetingly, when Sakura-chan has become simply Sakura.
This is the day their sensei is released from the hospital. The ground is covered in a thin layer of fine white snow, and flakes are still swirling down.
The three of them meet together, like old times, at Ichiraku's.
Sakura drags in Sai, who for once is wearing an entire shirt - and a coat, too - and she herself has on this big dark green thing (Naruto will be damned if he can put much identity to clothes) with fluff around the neck, but what Naruto really notices is the strength it gives to her eyes.
There's a kick to the way she takes her seat - an emphasis. Like, she takes it, and looks at her friends, and smiles comfortably: a soft, daydreamy smile, as she hums and reads an order off the menu.
Not the same “Sakura-chan” who cut apple slices for “Sasuke-kun” in another time and place.
Today, they tease Kakashi because he's not late.
(But he's already eaten, he says; how typical.)
Naruto orders a full steaming bowl of miso ramen, grips it with both hands, and tips it as soon as it's barely cooled, so he has a mouthful of hot fish slice and egg, with broth already dripping into his stomach, when he notices --
He doesn't know what he notices.
There's Sakura, and Sai, and Kakashi-sensei. Same as always: Sai prodding noodles with chopsticks, Sakura speaking of the activities of her past few days with this kind of merry exhaustion; Sai is like one cord of wire and rope, bleached in places, silent with thoughts only he understands, and Sakura is different; alive, maybe, is accurate. Alive and just. Lit up. She always had the best chakra control. Now it's like she has her own aura, her own glow. Or . . . it's just the lamps reflecting off the snow and into her eyes. She smells nice. She always smells nice.
Here is what else Naruto notices: Kakashi is looking at him.
And it's not that same bored, sly, sideways kind of a look; it's not mischief or disengaged Icha Icha reading.
But then he smiles, easy and painless. “Well, let's see how long I can stay out of the hospital this time, shall we?”
Naruto splutters and nearly chokes on his noodles.
--
Ichiraku's survived the end of the world. Many things did, actually.
The snow falls continuously, into the night, and by the ninth day, it covers every surface. Come noon, it's not a clean white snow anymore. It's slushy and wet, white in the tree branches like Ero-sennin's hair and sleet grey on the sidewalks like Kakashi's.
Naruto looks down, bleary-eyed; his nose runs from a cold brought on by the weather, and his cheek is smushed against the cool glass, making a foggy print.
Sakura told this story about a woman with a piece of shrapnel lodged under a rib, and how she'd taken it out and isolated the problem; she'd - with her own two hands - pumped chakra in, re-wired the body to respond, adjusted the flow to accommodate the injury. Her bloody hands, holding pieces from people, knowing them in this way, saving them, and their words, she says - their smiles - are the greatest encouragement.
Sakura would make a great Hokage.
The thought surprises him.
Sakura would make a great Hokage.
Below his bedroom window, Naruto sees Konohamaru and his friends building a snowman. They wave an invitation up to him.
Sakura would make a great Hokage.
Against the window, his lip curves up.
He should be training, he thinks, or on a mission, but on the ninth day, Naruto builds snowmen, nurses his cold with hot cocoa, and lets the world dream itself away beneath the ice.
--
The tenth day is the opposite of the ninth.
The cold is worse. Naruto sniffles and unlatches the window, yanks it up so the slide of glass and wood groans at him and frozen air blasts him straight on -- chills the slippery snot that's trying to leak out (before he wipes it away with his forearm) and his wet, runny, red-streaked eyes.
Sasuke should have been here by now, by all reports.
Sasuke is not coming.
Maybe Naruto has known that for a while now, too.
It's not a good day, but it's not a bad one, either. His foot has healed completely, but he's sick and that heaviness is back in his lungs, making him ball his fists and bite his lips and wish for one good release -- one good, long sob. It's not coming. The past ten days have felt apart from time; ten days in some other universe where events and motions move through molasses and get stuck, caught in clocks that never tell the right hour - too many ticks fast or slow, and you're a day ahead or a day behind, but when you look up, the hands are never right. And it's when you realize that you aren't sure when everyone else is, when you are --
But you know you're not really moving at all.
Today, though, it's all right, because Naruto has somehow gotten what he needs to go back to that cell. The truth is there, as well as the lie he's been hiding from.
The lie is: Naruto won.
“Why didn't you kill me?” he asks, quietly, when he returns to visit the person he cannot leave: the question he cannot seem to bury under ramen, snowfall, or a thousand cheers and smiles and hugs.
Twice he should have died. Twice he was spared. The second time, he has as few answers as the first.
Now, for better or worse, he's ready to confront the truth. The last three times, he wasn't, and he handled the situation badly. Presently, he stands with his hands on his hips, and his words clear his head and ground him in reality even as they leave his mouth. This is right.
“Is it . . . ”
Pein is sitting on the bench again, with an arm resting against his knee, and he gives this unimpressed look that might be described as long suffering (impressively long suffering, to be so blank), but predictably, what he doesn't give is any indication that he intends to acknowledge anyone with a response.
“ . . . because I remind you of someone?” Naruto stumbles on, anyway.
“I can't make you understand what you won't see for yourself.” He doesn't even blink. Just turns to look at the wall. “What your village has done.”
“Well, you're right about that. I don't understand. But even if I did, I wouldn't understand why you're so. So -- ?”
Calm?
“Yeah, well, why aren't you resisting? That's what I wanna know.”
Because this guy . . . this guy . . . sure, he looks dead and empty sometimes; sits or stands in repose and barely talks, but this guy led Akatsuki, and this guy was ready to bring the fucking apocalypse down on the world in full-out fire and brimstone rain of terror. He did bring the mini-apocalypse to Konoha, fought with such violence that the whole village was terrorized; buildings leveled, people killed, a full hospital: pummeled Kakashi-sensei, threatened the Hokage.
And beat the hell out of Naruto.
They beat the hell out of each other, specifically.
“What do you think -- “ Pein's voice remains dead as a rag, but deep like it could be rich if the right words and mood ever found him. “ -- of a village, of countries, and people who train children to kill? And what do you think of graduating from an academy at five or six, knowing all these ways and manners of killing?”
He looks over. “Like Uchiha Itachi, who massacred. Because he was told to. Maybe you think sealing demons in babies is appropriate.”
“Of course I don't! I'm a victim of that, too!”
“Then keep thinking that way.”
“But that's not all there is to Konoha, or the world.”
“For you.”
He takes a step forward, peers in, but Pein has already looked away again.
This is the last body. The others were destroyed in the battle.
The ground around the conflict was reduced, akin to a crater, and when the participants were pulled forth from the smouldering debris, both were caked in their own blood, and each other's. Naruto remembers the crunch of his bones, still in his body - remembers, also, the sight of dirt and gore plastering his opponent's hair to his forehead, and the look of shock in those alien eyes.
Remembers the odd, dark feeling of satisfaction as he surveyed his work - silvery piercings slicked with glistening red - and thought: Served you right. Served you right, for taking him from me.
It was brief but frightening.
Such thoughts don't seem as if they could exist in this real, actual universe.
But the thing is, he knows it wasn't all the kyuubi talking to him.
“I hate riddles,” he says, then:
“Look, I don't know what you want. Whatever it is, I can't give it to you.”
He slaps his palms together.
Okay, so it's not perfect, but it's better than the last three times. Better than just walking out, or losing his temper, even though he's tempted. Denial, bargaining, anger; what is this, then?
“Maybe I could, but I don't know what you want! Why don't you just tell me?”
Doesn't have the foggiest idea, actually.
But maybe the price is too high. It's worth a shot, but maybe the price is just too damned high. Isn't this what he's known all along? Isn't this why he's not pursued this harder? Isn't this why he keeps putting this off? And now he's running out of time.
Six days. It's not going to happen.
“You'll figure it out,” Pein says, sounding unconcerned.
And Naruto frowns, and thinks, What? Is that what those eyes tell you, or something? Because I sure as hell don't know what you're on about.
“Yeah? Why aren't you fighting? You just sit there! I don't get it. Before . . . “
The response comes in a tone that allows no argument.
“I lost.”
I'm sorry, Sasuke, Naruto thinks. I'm sorry. I can't. I'll bring you back my way.
“Twenty-two years ago . . . “
Pein's rickety fingers comb through his hair; his head is lowered, so all the sharp shadows wash over his expressionless face. Two bright eyes - the shadows seem unable to mask those.
“ . . . in a civil war in Amegakure, when the war was dragging on, the warring factions began hiring shinobi from prominent villages in the hopes of resolving the conflict quickly. Konoha shinobi were among those hired. This increased the level of violence. When the war dragged on, both sides lost morale. One day, a group of foreign shinobi who had run out of food and supplies decided to lay waste to a local village to get these things. This village was small. It still farmed with water buffalo.”
He doesn't continue, but Naruto thinks he knows how the story ends.
“You asked me why I didn't kill you.”
The hand stills.
In the same monotone as ever, he says,
“I wonder: Why didn't you kill me?”
Part II