Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Sector Five	By : FlairForTheVeil Category: Naruto AU/AR > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 2292 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor its characters. Rightful ownership belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. I make no profit of this fanfiction.

Chapter List
- 12
- 13
- 14
Chapter 12: Bones Exposed
Naruto sat there on the log with his boots dug two inches into the ground. Lee had long since stamped out the fire, giving a solemn nod and salute to the blond and patting him on the shoulder. Naruto numbly stared at the still glowing coals of the fire.
The only thing that had impacted him so far was the abrupt loss of his parents. Naruto remembered that night in perfect clarity, could recall the long red hair stuck under the dining room chair’s leg. He especially remembered how cold it had been. Though these days, it seemed to be colder.
Naruto could only remember the snippets of what Sakura was able to tell him; nothing outside of them. Naruto couldn’t remember any details of his friends other than Gaara’s mental issues and the cause of Hinata’s stutter.
He sighed heavily and slunk down to the ground, letting his boots create a path of mud as he stretched his legs out and lay his head on the dead log. The stars were out. Naruto wished some of them would stop twinkling so brightly and shift to a different hemisphere.
Sasuke. He hadn’t seen the boy all day, aside from breakfast. Sasuke should have made an appearance for lunch and dinner. Naruto should have at least heard Sasuke and Itachi arguing somewhere in the background. All he heard today was Suigetsu’s airy whistling and the occasional grunt from Juugo. The girls had certainly asked Naruto where Sasuke was, but he hadn’t seen Sasuke in over twelve hours.
Naruto stood and rubbed the back of his aching head. Maybe Sasuke had overslept? Naruto had watched him get those thick stitches out this morning.
Naruto put his hands in his pockets and trudged over pieces of ice to their tent. He kicked the flap open, peeking inside but not spotting a lump of blankets and black spikes of hair. Naruto turned and glanced around, the neighboring tents gray in the moonlight and shivering with a cold gust of wind that traveled by.
He quietly walked through the small path in the forest that led to their car circle. No Sasuke. Naruto approached their SUV and typed in the unlock code on its side. The inside of the car lit up in bright blue, but still no signs of Sasuke. He sighed and locked the SUV.
The walk back, he glanced at the little amount of pavement the trees allowed a view of. Was Sasuke with Itachi in his tent? Naruto furrowed his brows and checked their tent again. Nothing. The boy wasn’t in the top three areas he would be.
Metal glinted in the moonlight and Naruto’s eyes widened. The gun barrel. Had Sasuke-?
Naruto bound to the barrel and glanced at it, a few mental numbers flying by in his mind as he recounted the guns he had observed. Ten of eleven handguns, although one missing was a given. Five of five rifles, three of three machine guns, two of three pump shotguns and four of four automatic shotguns.
Sasuke snorted and nodded towards his left arm, just a lump under his thick sweater. “I don’t need two arms to shoot a pump,” the boy gloated. “I can use momentum with one.”
A handgun and a shotgun. Where was Sasuke? Fuck. Itachi had told him to keep an eye on his brother. Shit. Did Sasuke go hunting alone? What if he got attacked by an animal? What would happen if Itachi-
Naruto cringed and jogged into the thin beginning of the woods, met with an inkling of thick roots and pitch black. “Sasuke,” he whispered loudly, then glanced back to Itachi’s tent, which had the outline of the man’s body shown by his lantern.
“Sasuke, are you in there?” Naruto leaned into the woods and blinked when he thought he closed his eyes. It was darker than usual tonight. “Sasuke, please come back.”
Silence. An animal made a weird noise somewhere behind the trees, its small footsteps pattering away from Naruto and deeper into the woods. Naruto winced and leaned further into the woods.
“Sas’, come on. Itachi’s going to kill me if I don’t find you,” he called out to the trees. “Damn it.”
Naruto turned and jogged to the artillery barrel, rummaging through the butts of the guns and cringing when they locked and clanged together. He fished out a fluorescent yellow flashlight and clicked it on, punching it a few times when it flickered and finally shone brightly.
“Shit,” Naruto grumbled and stuffed the flashlight into his stomach, still glowing around the edges. He inched into the woods, stumbling a few times when his feet caught in wild roots. When Naruto was deep enough into the woods for his flashlight to be unseen, he pointed it at a tree in front of him and sighed. Damn. Where the hell could Sasuke be? Best case scenario, the boy had fallen asleep in the branches of a tree… or something like that. Naruto waved the flashlight above him, seeing a few scuffs where they had climbed this exact tree and Naruto may or may not have fallen out of more than a few times. Worst case scenario, Sasuke tried to run away. But he didn’t have a reason to, did he?
“S’keeee,” he called out, slowly moving the flashlight around himself and walking around. This was the worst time to get lost. How would Naruto look for Sasuke with just a flashlight?
But Naruto would find Sasuke.
Naruto waved the flashlight around and only moved a total of about three feet within the next fifteen minutes. He slumped his shoulders when he realized that straying from the camp was most definitely not a good idea at this hour. Katons and scouts-
Sticks crunched to his right and Naruto tensed. Shit. He had attracted a bunch of fucking Katons, hadn’t he? Oh, man. Neji and Tenten were on guard at this hour, but never this area since it was so commonly used. Naruto groaned and sprinted back into the tent area, shutting the flashlight off and diving to the ground. Steady rustles of leaves could now be heard, heading in a beeline towards their camp and becoming louder.
Should Naruto shoot it? That would make a bigger deal out of the situation than it actually was. Then questions would arise of Sasuke’s whereabouts, and then he was screwed. He saw Itachi’s silhouette shift in his tent. What would the man do if he didn’t find Sasuke? Naruto was sure as hell that he’d be matching with those slabs of meat Kabuto had left by the fire.
Kami, he should be taking this more seriously. Sasuke had left, injured, with a major limb in a sling and two guns. The guy could have at least taken Kusanagi. What if… Sasuke was dead? No, Naruto shouldn’t assume the absolute worse. He shook his head from its side position on its ground and sighed as Itachi shut off his lantern and hit the hay. Sasuke’s not dead, he told himself. Sasuke’s perfectly capable of handling himself, even though he only had one to use, and was two times smaller than the average buck. He was fine, right?
Naruto winced when the rolling sound hit the grass of their tent circle, steady and smooth. He shifted his head into his arms slowly, knowing that Katons would ID his face and ignore his body to assume it was a dead one. Oh shit, it was just a few feet in front of him, and now right in front of the crown of his head-
Two feet planted themselves on Naruto’s back and the gun barrel rummaged quietly. His back cracked loudly under the weight of them and he moaned in pain. “Chouji, you’re stepping on me!” He choked.
“Chouji?” A deeper voice demanded, the feet quickly removing themselves.
“Sasuke?” Naruto called and reached out for the boy’s leg. He wheezed and batted at the limb, grabbing the back of Sasuke’s knee and trying to trip him.
“Naruto, what the hell are you going on the ground? Let go of my leg,” Sasuke mumbled back and kicked his calve free from Naruto’s grip. “Stop exaggerating about my weight.”
“I was looking for you since you’ve been gone all day. When you came in through the woods, I thought you were a scout or something,” Naruto said, rubbing his aching back and stumbling to his feet. “And I’m not,” he added.
“You probably weigh more than I do, idiot,” Sasuke said and yanked Naruto to his feet.
Naruto shrugged and only hoped that Sasuke could see the shift of his shoulders. The raven ignored him and turned to slug a gun in the metal barrel, producing a handgun from his waist and dropping it in as well.
“How many shots did you use?” Naruto mumbled, eyeing his friend’s tired face.
“Zero.”
“Where did you go?”
“Out,” Sasuke deadpanned and stalked towards their tent, toed his boots off and opened the flap.
“Out where?” Naruto followed the raven into their tent, stiffly lowering himself on top of his blankets and turning to Sasuke.
Sasuke shrugged with one shoulder and threw his jacket to the other side of the tent, making its plastic indent and produce a woosh when the material slid against each other. “City.”
“City?” Naruto repeated and raised his eyebrows. “Like, miles away city? With scouts and Katons and-“
“I’d say it’s about six miles away from here,” Sasuke interrupted and kneeled on his blankets.
The blond pulled back his own sheets as well. “What were you doing in the city?”
“Why are you asking so many questions?”
“Just curious…” Naruto pursed his lips and scratched his hand. At least Sasuke had made it back safely.
Sasuke apparently took pity on Naruto, turned to him, and said, “I read.”
Naruto was caught off guard for a few moments. Sasuke had traveled into town - alone - to read? “Wow. Must have been important, ‘Sas. What did you read about?” The blond bundled himself into his blankets and turned to the figure of Sasuke.
Sasuke snorted and turned away from Naruto. “I’m not telling you any fucking bedtime stories.”
Naruto sniffed. He guessed Sasuke didn’t want to talk his damn head off for once. Naruto opened his mouth to blurt what Sakura had told him earlier, but snapped it shut. He didn’t know if he was ready to tell the raven; after all, he had just discovered mere hours ago. The burns of the loss of his parents were newly fresh, and Naruto wasn’t sure about the terms he, Gaara and Sai laid on now. It was all too confusing to take in at once.
So they lay in silence for some long moments. Naruto’s head hadn’t stopped hurting since Sakura’s speech. No new memories were resurfacing, just a throb every few moments and images of what Sakura had told him. The images were blurry, though, and if they were material, then they would be flimsy. It was weird, though; Naruto was sure that by now, he’d have recovered the holes Sakura didn’t fill in, but nothing came up save for a few images of Gaara.
Sasuke sighed. “Of course you have something to say,” he whispered. “Don’t we talk enough?”
“Not really,” the blond replied and played with a few loose threads on one of his blankets. “It’s just that you’re speaking more words in a day than you have in your life.”
“Be quiet.”
Naruto did stay quiet for a long while. Their whole camp had gone down a few hours ago. They let the gentle rustle of the wind moving through the woods and owl callings fill in their silence, accompanied by their calm breathing and occasional shifts.
Everything was moving too fast for Naruto. He had so longingly mourned for the whole day. Sleeping now would be like blinking, and moving onto another day that felt like a whole blur. The only thing that hadn’t gone a hundred miles per hour over his head was Sasuke’s words, wise and nobly pronounced. How leisurely the raven walked out of his tent, into the woods, towards his brother. Sasuke took his time waking up, but when the time came, he could match a deer in speed. Sasuke was patient most of the time, with him but not with others. Maybe Sasuke didn’t notice that he talked so much; that he absentmindedly blurted his thoughts as soon as they came sometimes and didn’t reprimand himself for his judgmental opinions. Maybe Sasuke was the only person Naruto caught up with at all.
“What is it?” Sasuke murmured, barely audible but just enough so for the blond to hear.
Naruto sighed. He guessed it would all come out here; in this tent, on the land they had been abandoned on. Inside an excuse for a camp on terrain patrolled by robots whose job was to kill them. Out here, it was every man for himself and every morsel of food for your own stomach. You couldn’t trust anybody in this world.
But Naruto chose to trust Sasuke at this moment, and unknowingly even before it. He turned his back to Sasuke and took a few deep breaths.
They ended up facing each other, anyway. Sasuke had kept the visible part of his face neutral through Naruto’s retelling.
“Something’s not right there,” Sasuke said and shifted his legs. “It was too abrupt.”
Naruto nodded. He didn’t have any words; right now, Naruto felt like he had just unwrapped and laid out his insides for Sasuke to inspect. He didn’t regret telling the raven, but the unease in his stomach was the inevitable grief that came along with it.
“Why didn’t you ask me-“
“Why do I always have to ask for permission around here?” Naruto tensed and interrupted. “I lost my memory, not my dignity. Stop leading me around when I know how to walk!”
Oh, no. He hadn’t meant to blow up like that. It was like his mouth had run on autopilot.
“We’re not ‘leading you around’,” Sasuke mocked. “If you want advice, then you ask for it. If you want to be treated your age, then act like it-“
“Shut up!” Naruto sat up and threw his blankets aside. “I can remember the shit I learned in military school, Sasuke. Time! I need time! You don’t understand-“
“I don’t understand?” Sasuke raised his voice and sat on his legs to match Naruto. “I’m the one with a single fucking clue about how things around here work. You’re not careful enough-“
“I’m careful enough for myself and you! You’re the one that went to the city alone, Sasuke, not me! You don’t know what it’s like-“
“Stop fucking victimizing yourself,” Sasuke hissed and squared his shoulders. “I lost my parents, too, damn it!”
Naruto froze in his movements to get up. “You did?”
“Suck it up, Naruto,” the raven sneered at him.
Naruto lowered himself back onto his blankets and crossed his legs. They sat in an awkward silence for a few moments, reveling over the things they – Sasuke – had blurted. The blond immediately felt guilty for the things he had said, about Sasuke not understanding the loss of parents when the raven had, also. And, like Sasuke had said, Naruto was victimizing himself. How could he be so selfish?
“I’m sorry.”
“Go have a pity party somewhere else,” Sasuke grumbled and settled on his back, throwing his blankets on top of himself again.
“I mean it, Sasuke. I’m sorry. It was just too soon-“
“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to snap your neck.”
“Say you forgive me.”
“Naruto, just shut up. You’re like a little kid.”
“But I’m really sorry,” Naruto bit out and shuffled closer to Sasuke. “Please, will you forgive me? I didn’t know-“
“If I say yes, will you let me sleep?”
“You have to mean it. Please?”
Sasuke paused and sighed explosively, turning as far away from Naruto as possible. “I know you didn’t mean it. You’re just confused, aren’t you?” he deadpanned.
“Yes,” Naruto said. “Forgive me?”
“Fine,” Sasuke replied, visibly loosening his tensed shoulders and glancing at the blond. “It’s not even that big of a deal.”
“Really?” The blond asked and hung his face over Sasuke’s.
“Yes, really.”
Naruto set his lips in a line and shuffled back over to his sleeping bag, gathering his scattered blankets and bundling with them. He guessed that was as close as he would get. “G’night?”
“Hn.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Itachi leaned away from the tent and tucked a piece of his hair behind his ear, silently moving over new snow and into the woods.
So Sasuke had gone to the city alone? His little brother would certainly get reprimanded for that in the future; Itachi couldn’t reveal that he had listened in. It was frankly hypocritical that Sasuke would accuse Naruto of not being careful enough.
“…said that he has plenty of men.”
Itachi tensed his lips and focused on the barely visible fire through the veil of trees. Kabuto had apparently begun roasting his meets; the smell was prominent from even over ten feet away. The man was sitting on the ground to the west, parallel to Neji and the mentally ill boy. Gaara was seated to the left of Kabuto, gazing just a few inches off Itachi’s shoulder and flicking his pointer nail against his thumb. Kabuto’s voice could roughly be heard, carried by the wind. Itachi leaned against a thick tree and crossed his arms.
“It’s west from here, on the outskirts of two. I’d say it’s a week drive and two months by foot, if we’re diligent.”
“What if they look for us?” Neji more demanded than questioned. “What if we get caught?”
Itachi’s brow furrowed, crouching and shuffling a bit closer so that his back was pressed against a strange bush. Was he hearing something he wasn’t supposed to?
“They’re coming with us,” Kabuto snapped and the fire loudly swayed. “Just for a bit.”
“Why in the hell,” Neji hissed, “should they come with us? We’re the ones that deserve shelter.”
I’m the only one.
“We’ll break it to them in a few days,” Kabuto overrode and leant back on his hands. “Itachi will help us. Won’t you, Uchiha?”
So soon, Itachi thought. There was no point in hiding any longer; should he stay hidden, then he would be considered a coward. Itachi rose to his full height and stared at the four occupants of a pact and waited.
Gaara stared at Itachi as if he were a slab of the meat a few feet away from him. The man slowly walked towards the group, making confident eye contact with Neji and Sai. He lowered himself next to Kabuto, who smirked and spat to the side.
“Trying to be slick?” Kabuto sneered and tore a piece of rib from its carcass, then tossed it onto a sizzling pan supported by a tripod over the bonfire. “You’ll have to be silent now, won’t you?”
Itachi said nothing in favor of staring at the oils and blood of the beef sizzling on the metal saucer. He was sure that his face was flushed from the heat of the fire. “Why?”
Neji snorted in front of him and shut his pale eyes. “Blind.”
Kabuto smacked his lips and threw a clump of leftover hide to his right. “I’m sure that you understand that we are weak,” he said. “They are weak.”
Itachi’s eyes glided over to Kabuto and said nothing. If this group was weak, what did that make his group alone? Scum?
“Don’t faux ignorance,” the silver-haired man chuckled and his glasses glinted orange. “You seem to be doing that a lot these days. But I can tell, Itachi. Don’t even bother trying.”
“I’ve… cofounded an abandoned military base with a reliable immigrant. I’m sure that you’ve already heard that it’s near Sector Two.”
Itachi tensed his jaw. Kabuto found an abandoned military base? “I don’t believe you.”
“Of course you don’t,” Kabuto replied. “That’s why I kept the summary short. You’ll have to see for yourself, won’t you, Uchiha?”
“I don’t believe you at all,” Itachi barked and stood. “I-“
“You’ll believe me, all right,” Kabuto murmured. “You’ll have to. You have that precious little brother of yours, don’t you? Baby Sasuke?”
Itachi froze in his movements to stalk away. “What are you trying to get at?”
“I’m getting at,” Kabuto mocked and leant forward to dump a torso of a buck on the saucer. “That if you don’t help me move these people to the base, baby brother might not even have his right arm.”
The brunet contemplated that in his mind. He smirked gently. “I’m sure that you’re not threatening to kill my brother.”
“But all I am,” Kabuto breathed and rose to his feet. “Listen, Itachi. Those friends you had… oh, what are their names? Fish man and blond boy?”
For a few moments, Itachi was confused. He thought Kabuto was referring to Naruto as blond boy; Naruto had no benefit to Itachi whatsoever and he wouldn’t be affected if Naruto were included in this. Now, fish man. Fish man? The only person he could think of was-
“Ah, Kisame and Deidara. Those two.”
Itachi felt his face slack. Kisame and Deidara? They were dead. They hadn’t returned the last time they left their small camp; Sasuke had blubbered something about them trying to kill him. Anemia wasn’t uncommon, and he had dismissed Sasuke as overdramatizing his own incompetence. Sasuke had come up with very unreasonable points as his proof and had even faltered.
“They died weeks ago,” Itachi deadpanned and shifted his weight. “Is there anything else you’d like to attempt to threaten me about?”
“My,” Kabuto smirked. “my. Someone’s left you out of the circle, haven’t they? Why do you suppose that Kisame and Deidara are dead?”
“They never returned,” Itachi said, “and I found traces of their blood.”
“Such an intermediate guess,” Kabuto scrunched his nose and shook his head. “It must be horrible to learn that the reason they never returned was because they found proper shelter at my base.”
Itachi snickered, “I haven’t believed a single fucking word that’s come out of your mouth since you got here. Kabuto, it’s in your best interest to stay away from my whole group, or there will be gruesome consequences. Let’s not forget that you were below me in military school.”
“So you admit it now,” Kabuto rolled his eyes behind his illuminated glasses. “Stop beating around the bush, Itachi. It’s in your best interest-“
Itachi spat in Kabuto’s face. “You will not tell me what to do-“
Strong hands held his forearms tight to his lower back and yanked him away from Kabuto. Itachi distantly noted that Neji had stood up from his seat, matching himself in height and build. Capable.
“I’ll repeat myself once,” Kabuto barked, “and only once. It’s in your best interest that you assist me in packing up this group to go to my base. If you don’t, Sasuke loses his only useful limb. You’ll be my lackey – my right hand man and yes boy. You will listen to what I say, or else Sasuke dies and I turn you in to One.”
Itachi curled his lip. Everything flowing out of Kabuto’s mouth was bullshit, he believed.
Kabuto rummaged around in his cargo pant pockets and produced a small bag. “If you don’t think I’m capable at all,” he whispered, “then how am I capable of this?”
Kabuto slowly opened the plastic bag and held a bottle up to Itachi’s face. Brunet hair falling in his face barely allowed a view of the letters, but Itachi could clearly read words that he had ever so diligently memorized.
Iron Supplements.
“Every day you listen to me, you get one pill for the baby brother,” Kabuto murmured and snapped the cap open. He overturned the bottle in his palm, letting the pills hit the plastic sides and each other. “Each day you don’t, it’s a week without them.”
Now, the brunet’s shoulders tensed. He counted twelve – their whole supply – of pill bottles. Sasuke’s supplements were carefully stored in their SUV. Kabuto had to have cracked their security code within the last few hours… had he predicted this?
“So, is it yes or no?” Kabuto let three red pills slip into his palm and tossed them into the fire, clanging against the pan with burning meat on it.
Negative iron outcome, three. Sasuke had three days less of supplements. Kabuto shook his head in mock sadness.
“You’re letting these go to waste?” Kabuto questioned and poured five more pills into his hand. “Don’t you care about Sasuke?”
“Don’t you care about me?” An angry, fourteen-year-old Sasuke appeared in his mind with a gaping slash in his shin deep enough to see fat, sprawled on the dirty ground. “Are you gonna fucking leave me? You’re supposed to be my brother!” He cried.
You’re supposed to be my brother.
Itachi remembered strangling their father in front of his little brother. Sasuke had been petrified for weeks, months, years.
He didn’t notice Kabuto wincing at the heightening amount of pills in his hand. They melted rusty on the pan, shining and popping.
“Don’t you care about him?” Kabuto asked, nearly hesitating when he poured seven pills into his palm.
Why didn’t you ever comfort me?
Eight.
It’s your fault that I’m the way I am! I want to be brave like Suigetsu, and big like Juugo, and smart like Karin! But I can’t, because of you! You did this to me!
A recent image of Sasuke with his arm tucked inside his tops appeared. What if there wasn’t an L-shaped lump under his sweaters, and instead an infected stub on his right shoulder?
I wish I could be normal.
Nine.
“Stop,” Itachi croaked, barely audible over the decreasing volume of pills against plastic. Kabuto mouthed numbers, counting the pile of red tablets falling into his hand and shaking his head.
“I said stop,” he said, louder and more confident this time. Kabuto ran his thumb to separate four pills from five on his palm.
“Stop, I’ll do it!”
Kabuto didn’t look at Itachi. The orange glare of his lenses did.
“You will follow my orders?”
Itachi nodded.
“You will follow my orders as long as you yourself are alive?”
Itachi ground his molars against each other but nodded nonetheless.
Kabuto cupped his palm and poured the nine pills back into their bottle. “Let him go, Neji.”
Said man slowly let his arms loose. Itachi squared his shoulders and stared Kabuto down.
“I won’t harm Sasuke as long as you keep your promise to me,” Kabuto said and took a few steps away. “At dawn, we leave to check on the base. Just you and I, Itachi. Get a few hours of sleep and tell no one, not even the souls of your dead parents.”
Neji shoved his palms into the small of his back so that Itachi stumbled forward a few steps. Neji was a man with delicate and feminine features, identical to his cousin. A shame Hinata had a cousin with a path like this.
But then again, Itachi was on the same path, wasn’t he?
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Sector Five