Title: This Place Is A Prison (1)

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Naruto

Rating: M

Characters: Naruto, Itachi, Sasori

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.

Summary: Strongly then kindly forcing a decision. (Itachi will do anything to complete his mission. Itachi/Naruto.)

"Up until yesterday, you were laughing."

Kyo, "304 Goushitsu..."

Dawn breaks lightly over the horizon, slowly and cold, a grey morning with overcast clouds that move in little strands together. It's the lining of a blanket, he thinks, the inside of my futon. He wills this to be reality, looking straight up into the cool air, ignoring the fact that there is quite pointedly a branch poking into the flak jacket (now black, because for some reason blue had seemed inappropriate after he left, much too informal and relaxed. And above all, he is not relaxed anymore. He only barely remembers the last time that he was.)

He knows he shouldn't be lying here, because somewhere in a post town near here, there is someone waiting for him to train him, to make him stronger than he was before. He has to be stronger, because what he is now isn't what he -needs- to be, and if he isn't, he can't make good on his promise. (A secret promise to himself as well as Sakura, because speaking the words out loud could not possibly contain his vow, his determination.)

Jiraiya will be angry with him if he waits any longer.

His hand twitches, as if waiting to move, to actually do something, but instead he flinches, feeling the tendons stretch, lift, and break its hold. He doesn't have the strength to get up now, he's not sure he'd even have the strength to close his eyes away from the blanket sky. He is like a young tree, all sinew and youth, with no support.

It bothers him that he could say the same of many other parts of his life.

You're vulnerable, he says to himself, commanding his body to move, anything to move. He can feel that it's all there and well, it just won't respond to his commands. This lack of control (so like him) frustrates him, and he growls, eyes squinting. He feels stupid, lying on the ground, an open target to anyone that could walk by.

He vaguely thinks of nameless and faceless opponents that Jiraiya would have him think exist, terrible devils in the night that want to suck out his soul, he thinks with a laugh. ("They don't want your soul, because really, what use would they have for it?" Jiraiya says with a rough bark of what must have once been laughter over a cup of sake, room temperature and poor quality. "They want to take the soul that you house. But that's another demon entirely," he says with amusement, and absently rubs at his stomach. He mirrors it, trying to ignore the familiar flare of chakra between rough fingertips. Surely he imagines it. )

A group named after the red moon where the crimson clouds fly across their cloaks. He's seen them, he knows names and abilities and most worrying yet being the -faces-, but they never seemed real (They're wearing masks, they must be, because how else could anyone so much like -him-?). With a fleeting fancy, he thinks of mist that rolls along the ground, but is never actually touched, just rolls along his fingers with phantom kisses. The Akatsuki are real, but they are not part of Naruto's reality. (Evil exists, just never close to him, he thinks like a child, curled up in a ball with a hand against his seal.)

Again he strains his muscles, anger giving him strength and fire to move and at last he is on his knees, clutching at the dead leaves. With another great strain, he lifts up his head and looks in the direction of the post town, trying to focus on the pathway, one tree at a time. The walk is difficult and already his breath is labored. He irritably swears an oath to himself to never train that hard without reason again.

It's a lie to himself, but he's good at that anyway.

He can't recall ever being so tired in his life (except for one time after the Valley of the End, but he pretends that never happened, things like that just -don't- happen between friends, so it must be someone else.) The path goes on for a long while, and he swears he hears the very motion of his muscles, can see the protein that contracts and releases his body. His hearing is better than what it used to be, and he is glad (frustrated) that it has. He attributes it to the Kyuubi, that thing that even now bashes against its container, prowling to and fro until he at lasts escapes.

Tsunade theorizes it will happen one day.

Jiraiya laughs it off and compliments Naruto's good strong willpower.

Naruto smiles and knows better.

Yondaime would tell him, but he is dead. And for some reason that makes Naruto feel a greater sense of loss than when he has lost anybody.

He doesn't like being indebted to the fox, doesn't even like to acknowledge that he is never really by himself. It is something that makes him special, and above all else, he wants absolutely nothing to do with that sort of thing.

The town is still when he gets there, stiller than it ought to be as if many of the people simply failed to get up and see that it was morning. He can't particularly blame them, listening to the percussion of the creak and hinge of his bones. The sun is covered by a haze of grey, and it casts pale shadows against the tree trunks and street signs. Something is inherently wrong, he can feel it in the flex of a finger and the tickle of his nose.

The smell of the place is all wrong, he decides, looking for a place to get his morning soba. There are no children heading to school, there are no early travelers, and most notably, nothing is cooking. ( He isn't sure what upsets him more, but his stomach would prefer he just forgot about the people.) If he had to describe the state of things, he would describe it by color, and that would be white, the presence of none and all.

("White is the color of death, everyone knows that," he hears a child say from the temple on a hillside in Konoha. They both have incense, a strangely cloying scent that reminds Naruto of tea and spices.

"Why is that?" he asks, looking over curiously at the altar, a small shrine meant for a small god, but to him it is enormous. He's seen them carry it out during the fall matsuri, the day of his birthday and another event, one that was quite catastrophic that no one speaks to him of but is more than happy to mention to friends when he passes by. He felt that there was some other attachment, some other meaning and that white and fall were meant for each other.

"Because the Yondaime was buried in white, of course."

What the child didn't know was that it was not what he wore but the wrappings around him. The Death God had not been kind to the body of the Hokage. Naruto knew and yet did not know this, but with startling clarity could remember the chrysanthemums and lotus that they had thrown to the water for him on a cold autumn day.

It was the earliest image he retained.)

"Feh, how stupid," he says to himself, looking around as he moved along a street on the way to the inn. The roads are not white he says to himself, and tries to rid the smell of funeral incense from his nose. His imagination is getting the better of him, even after all the long-winded lectures he has had from Jiraiya. Even more irritable than before, he looks over to an empty ramen stand and sighs. "There's nothing quite as depressing as a closed ramen shop," he mutters.

There is something that doesn't sit well with him as he looks into the shop, and he immediately feels his hackles rise, and look it over more closely. He feels like an animal when he is like this, on edge and liquid silver in his veins. He is more awake when using Kyuubi's supernatural senses. At last he catches the sign he is looking for. Reflected in the aluminum of the wall coverings, farther down another street is the shadows of those with black cloaks with red clouds upon them.

He doesn't run or shout, he doesn't even turn around, he just continues walking as calmly as he can. They haven't seen him yet, and if they haven't seen them, then they are not a problem.

("If I cover my head, no monsters can get me." he says resolutely, a five year old with hands clutching the edge of his futon. "If I can't see them, they can't see me.")

He knows this isn't true, but he'd like to think it might be.

Another step, another city block, and still there is no shadow of the red moon upon him, yet there is still a frightening silence, thick and heavy against his legs and arms. Thick water, like the ocean, he thinks and tries to keep up his brisk pace, the kind that pulls you under. It is then that he realizes that he's trapped in an illusion. Albeit a very clever one, but an illusion nonetheless.

He tries to cut off his chakra flow, to make it stop, this horrible whiteness.

When it doesn't work, he thinks for a moment that it might be all true.

He's not calm anymore because he's trapped without even realizing it had happened. Every feeling in his being calls to lash out, to overpower and eliminate the threat. A part of his consciousness grows indignant at the thought of being caught at all. Someone else is pulling the strings and Naruto follows just like he's supposed to. And whoever he is following was an immaculate planner. Without meaning to, he feels some begrudging respect for this person.

He looks behind himself, waiting to see something, anything would do so that he could target his frustration. At first there is nothing as he looks around and on top of the buildings, but upon a double take, he sees the silhouette of someone standing a block down the street. It doesn't move, it doesn't even seem to notice him like before, only this time, Naruto can feel eyes watching him. It itches against his neck, rolls down with the humid morning sweat.

"How long do you plan on making me go in circles, hmm?" he says with the pretense of anger, but there's no feeling in it; he just talks to be heard, a habit that Jiraiya finds increasingly annoying.

("No one will talk to me, so I will talk to myself." Naruto says, watching the other children play at the park. "If no one else, I am happy for my own company.")

As if he has provoked motion from his opponent, the shadows suddenly shift to his left and forming, make the familiar silhouette of two Akatsuki members, all fire and darkness, but with none of the warmth.

His arms are still shaking and his chakra is exhausted from the night before. He knows there's no way he can beat these two criminals, no matter what state he's in, not by himself. (Nothing can measure the bitterness that his heart churns, one painful pump at a time, at this thought.) With fickle amusement, he knows they must have gotten up pretty early to catch him off guard like this.

Reluctantly, he admits to himself that while he is likely to be overtaken, he is most certainly not defeated before it even starts.

"Good morning, Naruto-kun," says one of the figures, face still obscured by the wide rice hat and strips of white cloth that stir a little in the breeze (like wrappings that they use on the corpses, but he'll never say that out loud, at least not to their faces). The voice is deep and mellow, and all too familiar. (He would put a face to him, but it is all too much like Sasuke's, and that wound is still too fresh and too new. He'd rather be talking to a shapeless shadow.)

They don't say anymore, and Naruto knows its his turn to speak, as if this were some game, but his mouth doesn't move as it ought to and instead his legs do, away from the two Akatsuki with a desperation that Naruto has never felt so keenly and strongly, more powerful than the swelling of his heart that now beats a taboo and the rush of air from between his lungs.

He doesn't look behind, doesn't give any thought to the fact that someone might be chasing him, that he is in real danger, and that Jiraiya's ghost stories might not be so silly. Three years time, he had been told, three years before the shadows return. It had only been two.

He's frantic and sprinting, feeling claw tips that normally hide behind his (human) skin that move to strike something that he can't see. It's all peripheral and Naruto is not known for being observant.

He looks behind and yes, someone is chasing him, the taller of the two Akatsuki, going at the inhuman rate of a chakra user, sweeping up dust and leaves with each step. (He's the typhoon, a whirlwind that smells of blood, and he will -swallow- Naruto up.) There were two, he thinks to himself, two of them were there only a moment before.

You're foolish, says something that rises up into his mind and throat, forcibly making him choke on the last breath of air he had taken.

Sliding into an alleyway, he quickly opens up the wooden doors of a broken up old style house, the shoji groaning in their track and shuddering as the lithe body moved through and on up the stairs. No one lives here, no one would bother to. The house is rank with decay and death. For some reason he thinks that perhaps no one has died here yet. (This house is a beginning, and even now he is trying to divine what that might be.)

You're not running fast enough.

Again Naruto feels choked and pressured, like some great weight is now upon his feet, making his steps much too slow. The weakness in his limbs makes him throb with the tickle of adrenaline, and it -hurts-. Another room passes, another staircase, and soon he is hiding in an old tatami room, where the floor has rotted and grown black with age. That is a place where something is meant to die, he says to himself, hoping that it isn't him. Vaguely, he wonders if he has any salt.

With shaking hands, he pulls an exploding tag out of his pouch, attaching it to a kunai with a lick and a promise, and he prepares himself for a last stand. The marked sheet is treacherous, on a timer that will go off just as soon as it is thrown through the air. The air molecules will separate, everything will burn and he will not be able to see anything. The world will end by fire, he quotes, and can imagine Iruka hovering over his back as he flies through the pages of a history book.

There is a shadow on the shoji next to him, slow moving and painfully close as it moves to the door he had entered but not closed. HE doesn't move, doesn't breath, doesn't even listen to the sizzle of the tag, preparing at that very moment to burn. There are two shadows, and one is taller, but the other moves with such grace that Naruto just stares mesmerized as they come to the opening, more part of the house than Naruto who sits, holding pants of tiredness in with panic. Ghosts, ghosts and spectres, he thinks, and childish terror takes him for a moment, blue eyes very -aware-.

"You run quickly for someone who is so keen to fight," says the smaller of the two, ambiguous and elegant in form. The dark words roll over him and make him shudder with memory, because quite simply, that tone belongs to someone else.

("There is someone I have to kill," says the boy who shares the same face as another.)

The taller one moves toward him and he lets out a breath, feeling the air rush in and out to help his burning lungs. And with all the speed he can muster, he tells his arm to move, screams out at it from behind his eyelids. When it finally does, sliding from between his fingers with a song, the exploding tag ignites against his skin, where he can already feel the blisters forming.

You're not helping us.

When the tag explodes in its entirety, the floor moves out from beneath him, in that very same black spot and he falls, swiftly as the embers catch the woodwork and glow steadily, setting everything aflame.

You're weak, helpless, HELPLESS.

He swallows a gasp as he hits the floor, rubble falling on him and pinning him to the mildewing tatami and foundation where its fire begins to spread onto his clothes. Naruto tenatively tries to lift himself, but quickly falls back down, trying not to look at the wreckage of his legs, where very white bone glares at him from beneath black skin. He's trapped and he feels every nerve in his body with acute awareness, how the hardwood is smooth and dusty, how the fire snaps and crackles, and breaks

up

his

body.

Looking down from the ceiling above, the two figures look down at him, and he can almost see the horror in his face, his own reflection looking scared and frantic from emotionless eyes. They both move to jump down, but Naruto doesn't see it, because the smoke is in his eyes and his legs are bleeding into the slats between the straw mats and he can't breath, can'tbreathcan'tbreathcan'tbreath...

I don't want to die, he thinks. This isn't me. This isn't me.

You and I are going to die, and there nothing we can do about it.

Continued...

A/N: Edited 7/28/06