Despair
The allies from sand never
came, and so the Sasuke retrieval mission went badly. Naruto is captured.
Konoha thinks he is a traitor. Naruto gives up. NaruTayu Dark One-shot
Written in response to a
request by vietmonky.
Just a few minutes. Just a
few short minutes, and everything was lost.
Temari arrived just in time
to watch Shikamaru take his last breath, dying from his wounds.
Kankouro was too late to
save Kiba or Akamaru, both of whom were but slowly cooling bodies when he
arrived.
Gaara could not help the
mortally injured Rock Lee, who nevertheless managed to finish the diseased
Kaguya before his muscles all relaxed at once, like a string had been cut. He
was dead before he hit the ground, lifeless before Gaara could rush to his
side.
Chouji managed to return to
Konoha, and he knew only that the others had gone ahead. Then Neji came back,
with the same story. The others had gone on.
One by one, the bodies
arrived. Tsunade cringed at the sight of the lazy chuunin leader of the
mission, his broken body brought back by the silent blonde kunoichi of Suna.
Tsunade flinched upon
seeing the battered corpses of Kiba and Akamaru, when Kankouro brought them to
her.
And she wept silently when
The Kazekage returned the lifeless shell of Rock Lee, no longer filled with
anything resembling the Fires of Youth.
And Naruto never returned.
The ninja of Konoha found no trace of the loud blonde ninja, who, from all
accounts, had pursued Sasuke with particular effort, leaving all the others
behind. With no corpse, and little sign of a struggle anywhere, there could be
only one conclusion.
Naruto had followed in
Sasuke's footsteps, joining Orochimaru in the village of Sound.
They had no idea that a
red-headed ninja of the sound had found the wounded blonde, taking him back to
Oto in hopes that he might prove useful somehow. And maybe just a little
because he was cute. Not that she cared.
Two weeks after entering
the account of the failed mission, Tsunade filled out two more forms, for
Konoha's two newest missing-nin. Uchiha Sasuke, and Uzumaki Naruto.
She wished she had just
left that idiot back in the valley she had found him in.
Tayuya wasn't normally one
to complain. Heck, she put up with a lot of shit as a shinobi, harsh conditions
and limited rations. Grimy clothes and cruel wounds. But this was beyond any of
that. How could any one person make so much noise?
Naruto pounded on the bars
of his cell, screaming at the nearest sound ninja, which happened to be Tayuya.
“Let me out of here! I have to take Sasuke back to Konoha! I promised Sakura!
And then I'm gonna be Hokage, so that everyone will acknowledge me! So unlock
the door right now, or well I get out I'll pound you into the ground like a
little...”
“Shut the fuck up, you
stupid shit!”
“Make me, Red!”
Tayuya snarled, but kept
herself from responding. Anything that she said back to him only seemed to make
him even more noisy and obnoxious. For the past two days, two days,
Tayuya had been assigned to guard this idiot. Orochimaru said it was because
she had brought him back, and so she needed to take care of 'her pet' as he
referred to the constantly shouting pile of blonde shit. And because she had
refused to tell him her name the first day, he always called her 'Red' after
the color of her hair.
Which was really
aggravating. Like his voice. And his hair. And his goddamned orange outfit that
just her eyes just to look at it. What the fuck was this kid thinking, wearing
what was basically a 'Kick me' sign everywhere he went?
She tuned out his inane
blather, hoping that ignoring him would make him shut the hell up. Turning to
face the opposite direction, so that she wouldn't be distracted by his frantic
movements, she almost screamed when she turned straight into Orochimaru.
She stumbled back, spitting
out apologies. “I'm sorry, Orochimaru-sama. I didn't see you there. I...”
The snake-nin smiled, and
walked past her to the screaming child beyond, holding a scroll loosely in his
hands.
Naruto's yelling redoubled
in volume as his hated enemy approached. He threatened and used
uncharacteristically hostile language as he snarled at the traitorous sannin.
Orochimaru merely tossed
the scroll into the cell. “I thought this might interest you, Naruto-kun. It
was intercepted from a Konoha courier-nin earlier today.”
The blonde scowled, but
glanced at the scroll's contents. He flinched, the shuddered, and looked
closer, his face paling as his expression became less angry, and more...
Depressed. Horrified.
Terrified. And oh so very lonely.
Tayuya was almost scared
herself, seeing the loud, annoying blonde now as silent as the grave.
Naruto slumped the floor,
leaning all his weight against the wall. His eyes were hollow, devoid of life,
of hope, of anything. His trembling hands dropped the scroll onto the floor,
lacking either the strength or the will to hold it any longer.
His entire being seemed to
radiate with this new feeling. This dark aura of loss, of betrayal, of...
Despair.
Orochimaru, apparently
having achieved his objective, left the room silently, ignoring Tayuya.
The red-head stared at
Naruto. What on earth had come over him? He had spent two entire days
proclaiming how he was going to fix everything, and return to Konoha, and
become Hokage, and now he was sulking silently?
Not that she was
ungrateful, but she was confused. Seeing that he was distracted, she
decided to breach prison protocol and reach into the cell to get the scroll. There
were plenty of reasons not to do so. He could be faking, and the moment she
reached in, he could grab her, and then kill her or worse. She didn't have the
key to his cell, but without a guard it wouldn't take any competent ninja to
devise a way out.
But as she had suspected,
Naruto did nothing. She couldn't even be sure that he had noticed her move at
all.
She picked up the scroll,
looking over the contents quickly. Just an update on missing-nin. But then the
photos grabbed her.
Sasuke and Naruto.
Sasuke she understood, but
Naruto? He'd fought Sasuke to the bitter end, trying to bring him back. Then it
dawned on her. Sasuke and Naruto had fought mainly on the water, leaving little
to mark their battle there. So there were no signs of a struggle. And since
Tayuya had kidnapped him, the Leaf knew nothing about what had happened. Using
what little they had, they deduced that Naruto had gone renegade.
Naruto, who wanted to
return triumphantly, and become Hokage. Who could now do neither, because he
was a missing-nin. An outcast. A criminal to be killed on sight. Now his
friends back in Konoha would be obligated to attack him on sight. If he was
caught, he was to be executed.
Now she understood. With
this little scroll, the young boy in front of her had lost his will to fight. Because
now there was no reason to fight. No friends to rescue. No enemies to conquer.
No home to return to.
Tayuya frowned a little,
trying to stamp out her feelings of pity. This was an enemy. He should suffer
like this, and more.
But she couldn't help but
feel just a little sorry for the rather good-looking prisoner, who now sat
silent and unmoving in the back corner of his cell, staring at nothing.
For days.
Tayuya couldn't believe it.
This stupid idiot wouldn't eat. Wouldn't drink. Was his village really this
important to him? When he lost it, had he lost his reason to live?
Tayuya felt like a horrible
person. How could she have done such a thing? With a whim, she had crushed this
boy's hopes and dreams, the moment she had taken him back to Sound. On the
merest flight of fancy, she had brought upon this innocent kid untold
suffering.
She knew she shouldn't
care, but... this was worse than torture. This was worse than any physical pain
that she couldn't have inflicted upon him. She wouldn't wish this upon anyone.
It hurt her just to look at
him, to see the pain and betrayal shining out of his eyes, which looked larger
now, on his increasingly gaunt face. His whisker-markings stood out against his
pale, pale skin. His arms shook continuously, as if shivering from the cold.
It was his last day in
prison, although she didn't know it.
Veins stood out on his
face, and on his hands, which stuck out from his overly-large orange jacket. The
jacket hung about his shrunken frame more like a cloak that a coat, more like a
shroud...
Tayuya couldn't stand it
anymore. Looking into his dark eyes, from which no light was reflected, she
couldn't wait a moment longer. Using a spare kunai and some hair pins, she
unlocked the door and knelt down next to him.
God damn it all, if she
wasn't crying. Why was she crying? She couldn't like this guy. She didn't even
know this guy. She'd never talked to him, or done anything with him.
But that didn't keep the
water from running down her cheeks, dripping onto Naruto's sleeves as she
leaned over to look right in his face.
He didn't see her. His eyes
looked past her, as if seeing something in the distance. His breathing, so slow
and shallow that it was hardly detectable, did not move his frame visibly.
Gently, with a care that
she had known she possessed, Tayuya slowly and delicately placed her hands
against his cheeks. They were cold. So cold that she almost thought he was
dead.
But as she tenderly stroked
his face, he seemed to revive. His eyes blinked, and blinked again. His pupils
moved, looking her straight in the eye.
Tayuya wished that she had
spoken then, that she had voiced this silent, nervous feeling for him that had
grown in the past few days.
But she didn't, and now she
never could.
As she looked into his
eyes, unable to speak, she watched him fold in upon himself. His head became
heavier in her hands as his muscles relaxed one last time.
Now she knew how he felt,
when his goal was snatched away from him, never to return. When his one chance
at happiness vanished like a candle in the wind.
She could never tell him. And
so she sank into the embrace of her dark feelings, blacker and more melancholy
than the curse seal could ever hope to be.
Tayuya fell into the depths
of despair, never to rise again.
This was originally
supposed to be completely different. But... I was
writing and suddenly I had no idea what I was doing. This was supposed to be a
happy fic. What the heck happened?
I know it's not amazing,
but it's better than nothing. Or at least, I hope so. Anyway, let me
know what you think.
-demonicnargles