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A Darker World	By : bob665 Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 2232 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Disclaimer I do not own Naruto, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 20
- 21
- 22
Authors note: yeah, it's been a while. Times have been rough.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
“She is in her 30s here, but she could look like anywhere in her 20s or 40s.”
Naruto watched as the stall owner leaned forward to get a better look at the picture Jiraiya was showing him. He opened his mouth and then shut it and shook his head. “Can't say that I have.”
Jiraiya let out a long, exhausted breath. “I'm guessing you don't do a lot of haggling because you're a terrible liar. Listen, I'm an old coworker of hers. I heard she was in town and I just want her to meet my kids.”
Naruto stiffened at the unexpected attention, but the man just glanced over at him and Konohamaru and bit his lip in thought. “Last I heard she was at the Seaside Inn. I don't know if she's still there though.” Then, unprompted, he added, “She fixed my son's hand when he cut it last week.”
“Yeah, she's good at the medical stuff,” Jiraiya said as he stepped back and gave a little bow of thanks.
Jiraiya started to walk away and Naruto started after him only to realize that Konohamaru was still standing back there. Naruto went back and grabbed him by the arm. Konohamaru had been doing that all day, seemingly zoning out while staying very quiet. Naruto knew the silent treatment and this wasn't that. This was something else. It was annoying and it was making him angry which was making him feel guilty. Jiraiya had even tried to see if he was sick by feeling his forehead, but that had been normal.
“Aren't you going too asked for directions?” Naruto asked as he pulled the smaller boy along.
Jiraiya glanced over his shoulder at the two of them. “That guy wouldn't have given it to us. I'm guessing Tsunade has been giving some medical treatment to the people around here. That was about the fifth person I had asked that I think knew her, but he was the first that I could cajole into giving information. Besides, I saw that Inn earlier.”
Naruto wondered how Jiraiya could keep track of anything in the twisting maze of streets, but the man seemed to know where he was going. Belatedly, it occurred to him that if this woman, Tsunade, could do medical stuff, maybe she could do something for Konohamaru. He glanced back at his friend who was staring down at the ground. Naruto hoped Konohamaru was faking
Jiraiya came to a stop in front of a building that Naruto guessed was the Inn. It looked rundown to Naruto’s eyes. Not like how some of the buildings looked in Wave, but just haphazard.
“Naruto, Konohamaru, don't say anything unless you're asked a question directly. She is a bit temperamental. I don't think she will be violent.”
Naruto followed Jiraiya into the building wondering why he had emphasized the word think. The inside of the building looked better than the outside with highly polished wood everywhere and a pretty woman behind the desk. He only half listened as Jiraiya talked her up and they were pointed to the attached restaurant/bar to wait. They took a seat in one of the booths and Naruto sat next to Konohamaru before squeezing his hand. The boy spirit a glanced at him, but turned his attention to the tabletop.
“Has he ever been like this before?” Jiraiya questioned, leaning over to Konohamaru's eye level.
“No,” Naruto answered. “You best not be faking, Konohamaru, you really have me worried about you.”
Surprisingly, that got Konohamaru to glance at him and he smiled weakly. “I'm fine.”
Naruto shifted in his seat, somehow more uncomfortable now than he had been before. “She can make people better, right?”
“I told you. Tsunade was a medical-nin. Probably the best.”
“Mitate, was really good. I always felt better the next morning no matter what happened.”
“Mitate?” Jiraiya questioned.
“Yeah, he was the medical-nin who looked after us. Everyone liked him... ” Naruto trailed off as a woman walked into the room.
The blonde had just recognized her when she looked over at them and said, “Oh no, what do you want?”
Jiraiya stood smiling. “Old teammates need a reason to see each other?”
“When they have to lie so the other will show up, yes, they do need a reason,” Tsunade responded. “You told the clerk there was a sick kid. That's a bit low even for you.”
“Actually, I do have a sick kid with me. They both need checkups now that I think about it.”
The woman blinked at this, and for the first time, looked at Naruto as if she had just noticed him. She took several steps to get a better view but none towards the table until she could see Konohamaru. Naruto tried to smile, not sure what he was supposed to do.
“Did some old girlfriends finally catch up to Jiraiya?”
“I'm careful, Tsunade, you know that. There are no little Jiraiya is running around without a father. I think you can figure out who they are. Now, are you satisfied or would you like to ask me how many teeth of mine you knocked out?”
The woman grunted as she eyed Konohamaru. “No, you're voice is that unique type of annoying no one can quite master. Come up to my room.”
Naruto slid out of the booth a little warily. He wasn't sure where they were going and he didn't like that. Women could be just as dangerous as any man in his experience. Still, Jiraiya trusted this woman and he trusted Jiraiya.
They filed upstairs and into a room. Tsunade took a seat on a question and gestured for Konohamaru to sit in front of her. He didn't move until Naruto gave him a little nudge.
“What's wrong?” For a second no one answered and then she snapped. “Well someone talk!”
“He's weird.” Naruto said.
Tsunade looked towards him. “Weird how?”
“He's not focused. It's like he's not all there.” Jiraiya said.
The woman leaned forward and touched her hand to his forehead. “No temperature. Suppose he hasn't been hit on the head or anything?”
“No, he was pretty normal then this happened. Kind of overnight.”
“We were fighting,” Naruto ventured.
Tsunade's head snapped towards him, scowling. “Did you hit him on his head? Drop him on his head?”
“I wouldn't hurt him. I love him. He just wasn't happy that I was going to train without him. We argued about it and this happened.” He gestured to Konohamaru, not knowing how to describe it.
The woman stared at him for a minute and turned her gaze on Jiraiya. “I want to talk to you in the hallway. You two, stay here.”
Naruto watched as the two adults went out of the room and sighed. For the first time in a while he had no idea what was going on.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Jiraiya had seen Tsunade only two times since she had left the village. Both had been chance encounters when he heard about a woman in town with a particularly bad losing streak. When the takeover happened, he had worried what she would do and briefly hoped she would seek out the rebels. He knew she had been labeled a Missing-nin like the rest of them, but she seemed to have just drifted further away.
Not three steps in the hallway, though, she rounded on him a fire in her eyes he had not seen in decades. “What the hell were you thinking bring kids into your situation?”
“Mine?” Jiraiya questioned. “I wasn't the one who brought them into this.”
“You expect me to believe that the grandson of our sensei and the child of your prize student just walked up to you and said 'hey, I want to run away with you?' Jiraiya, you've done a lot of things in your life but this is by far the lowest.”
Jiraiya stared at his old teammate for a moment, and for the first time in his life he wanted to hit her, but the cold, analytical part of his mind bypassed his emotions. For a second, he saw Konoha as an outsider would see it. It was a strong, prosperous village, that was the public image. The discontent of the other hidden villages about its growing strength was not something widely spoken of. They were, after all, ninjas and preferred to keep things quiet. “What do you know of home?”
If Tsunade's glare could kill he would be dead several times over. “Danzo should not have done what he did, but vengeance serves no purpose.”
Jiraiya stared at his old teammate for several heartbeats. It only slowly dawned on him how in the loop he was and how out of it she was. Ninjas were used to keeping secrets, but he had lived with some of these for so long he had forgotten how well they were hidden. It was peculiar to watch Tsunade's reaction. Her hard as granite expression slowly crumbling away as he informed her of everything he knew. She said nothing. She just pushed past him and headed down the stairs.
Jiraiya ran his fingers through his hair. He wasn't sure what to expect, but that wasn't it. Tsunade had always run to the extreme when it came to emotions. Silence was uncharted territory. Popping his head into the room, he told the boy he would be back in a few minutes and headed downstairs.
Tsunade was at the bar, unsurprisingly. She was drinking right from the bottle.
Taking the stool next to her, he said, “You must've heard some rumors?”
She smacked the empty bottle down on the bar. “A rumor spread by the opposition, standard tactic.”
“A disinformation campaign,” Jiraiya commented. “We didn't even consider that. It is still our village, after all.”
“What do you want from me? I turned my back on the village a long time ago.” Tsunade said, reaching over the counter and grabbing another bottle.
Jiraiya placed a hand on it before she could open it. “Konohamaru is acting strange. He needs your help.” Tsunade's hand left the bottle and Jiraiya pulled it out of her reach.
“You want me to join your cause, don't you?”
“Sharp as always,” Jiraiya teased. “From what I heard around town, you got over your fear of blood.”
“Yeah, well, I only have two marketable skills, killing and healing. In this country, the Mist has a pretty firm monopoly on the former.”
“And you can't outrun your debts when you have to stay in one country,” Jiraiya observed.
“Shut up.”
For the first time, Jiraiya smiled. That sounded like the old Tsunade. “I don't care if you come back to the village, but we could really use your help. Think of the children.”
“That's low.”
“And true,” Jiraiya came back immediately. “Naruto and Konohamaru were lucky, but there's still a lot back there.”
“You could rescue the rest of them.”
“That's the plan, or at least part of it.” That was partly true, he had sent messages out before leaving Kirigakure, but it could take a while before all of the totes found their targets. “Truth be told, I'm not sure what I would've done if I had known they were there. They escaped on their own and I just caught up to them.”
“Yeah, why do you think they chose to run then?”
Jiraiya perked up, he had glossed over the explanation for that. “Well, you see, they have this deal at the House where the more money you bring in the more point you could get. You could trade the points in four different things like time off. Naruto worked very hard and gave his points to Konohamaru so he didn't have to do the same things he had to do. Then, one day, they broke that rule. Naruto grabbed Konohamaru and ran.”
Tsunade snorted. “Brave kid.”
“Brave, determined and better than us,” Jiraiya said sitting up straight. “We, possibly the two greatest ninjas of our generation, sit at a bar stealing drinks while a tyrant rules over our home village.”
Tsunade rubbed her forehead. “Yeah, I'm in. Shizune will probably want to join too when she gets back tomorrow. I sent her to collect some herbs.” She let out a long sigh as if the weight of the world had just settled on her shoulders. “You really didn't tell Konohamaru to fake his condition?”
Jiraiya was unprepared for the sudden change in subject. “No, Naruto and Konohamaru had a fight because Naruto was going to do some training by himself instead of together like they usually do. Konohamaru got really upset over it.” Jiraiya waited as Tsunade seemed to work through the problem.
“Do you know if he saw anything during the takeover? What does he remember?”
Jiraiya shrugged. “He says he doesn't remember anything. I never really pried. He was five at the time.”
“He should remember something. It's very odd that he doesn't remember anything.”
“You're onto something?” Jiraiya observed.
“Maybe. About 20 years ago I read about a technique for blocking memories. Originally, it was a way to conceal information. A ninja could receive a message and then have someone block it from there memory. When they arrived at their destination, the block would be removed. It worked for a while, but as it turns out, removing the block wasn't anything too complicated. It was phased out. I thought we could use it to treat mental trauma. It didn't work. One message is one thing but a traumatic event is a lot more complicated. For example, if you block a fight from someone's mind, the next time they are in a similar situation to the blocked fight it would trigger something. They would start picking at the hole in their memory. Difficulty concentrating was the chief symptom.”
“You think someone blocked his memory?” Jiraiya suggested.
She shrugged. “Maybe they thought they were being kind. Not sure why that fight would start him picking at it. It's easy enough to check, and if I'm not wrong, no downside.” She started to stand.
“And if you're right?”
Tsunade paused. “When the block is removed, it's like it just happened a few minutes ago. Doesn't matter if the block is been there for days, weeks or months.”
“Years?” Jiraiya questioned.
“To the best of my knowledge, it has never been tried before.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Konohamaru could feel Naruto sitting behind him. As always, he was a source of comfort although he seemed a bit upset today. He would deal with that as soon as he remembered what he was forgetting. It was important. It was just out of reach though, and if he just thought about it hard enough he could remember.
Then that woman was in front of him again, he couldn't remember her name. Can't people just leave him alone for a few minutes? All this talking was distracting. Damn, she was asking him a question. “I'm fine.” That should tide them over. Was her hand coming towards him?
Then, Konohamaru was in a different place. He was in his bedroom, sitting on the floor. It was dark outside, but he knew it was early morning and not late night because he always got up early in the morning. His mom said it was okay as long as he played quietly. In front of him was a tower of multicolored blocks. He wanted to build the tower really big. So high it would touch the ceiling. Now, it was only waist high, but soon he would have to stand on the tip of his toes to place the next block. Carefully, he placed the next block on the tower and it started to sway. Konohamaru clenched his fist and held his breath as the tower swayed, and for a second, it looked like it would hold, but then it toppled over sending colorful blocks across the room.
Standing, he kicked the blocks into a pile and he started building again. The door to his room slid open and his mama came into his room looking not angry and not sad. It worried him. “I'm quiet.” Konohamaru spoke in a high voice.
His mama smiled, “Yes, you're a good boy. Come with me.”
She leaned down and scooped him up. “I'm too big. I can walk.”
“Just this once okay. Just this once.” His mother spoke quietly and there was something in her tone that made him not want to protest.
They ran down a darkened hallway and made a turn. He was put down and he realized they were standing in front of the closet where the extra blankets and stuff were kept. His mommy pulled out a box and then pulled something up. He couldn't really see what she was doing and her nervousness was starting to wear on him.
“Mama?”
“It will be okay, Konohamaru. We're going to play hide and seek for a very long time. Don't make a noise, no matter what you hear. This is a really good hiding spot. No one will find you here. I'll come back and tell you when it's okay. I'll be back for you. I'm going to go away for a little, but I'm going to come back for you.”
Konohamaru was scared. He didn't want to play hide and seek, but then his mommy was hugging him tightly and saying that she loved him. Then he was being lowered and she gave him a quick kiss on the forehead. The last thing he saw was her face smiling down at him before the cover was replaced and he could hear something being moved on top. Then he heard nothing. It was quite and dark. The dark didn't bother him. There was nothing in the dark that wasn't there when there was light. That was what daddy said.
He leaned back against the wall and stretched out his legs trying to figure out how big this place was. After a little experimenting, he found if he kept his hands on one wall and stretched out this toes could just touch the other end. He twisted around and found the space was a square, but he couldn't stand up.
After a while, he closed his eyes, but it was so dark he wasn't sure he actually closed them. The world looked the same. After some time he heard explosions. Explosions weren't uncommon to hear but they sounded a lot closer than they usually did. The sun must be up if people were training. How long was this going to last for? Time seem to crawl by and he was getting bored and hungry. Konohamaru tried not to think about it. He just got hungrier, though, and wished he had something to eat. He started to think about bananas and his favorite dessert, chocolate covered bananas.
The hunger didn't go away, but after a while another problem started to come up. He had to pee. At first, he could hold it, but as time passed it began to hurt. Konohamaru never knew not peeing could hurt so much. He started to think about calling out not caring if he lost the game. This wasn't any fun. Still, mommy told him to be quiet. Hugging his stomach, he pushed his knees to his chest. That helped, until it didn't. It got worse and worse until he started thinking about doing something he shouldn't.
It just hurt so much!
Feeling his way to a corner, he quietly relieved himself, knowing mommy would be angry at him when she got back. Retreating to the furthest corner from where he had peed, he began to think. Maybe he shouldn’t care if mommy was angry at him. He was angry at her. She was bad. The anger felt good for little, but then he thought maybe mommy wasn't coming back for him. Maybe she put him in here because she didn't love him anymore. He didn't like that thought so he started to think about daddy. Then he started to wonder if mommy said they had to get rid of him, would daddy say no or did he love mommy more?
Konohamaru started to cry. Snot started to run onto his pajama bottoms. He couldn't blow his nose and he really didn't care. He just buried his head in his knees. Then he felt something on his neck, something with eight legs. He jumped, forgetting the low ceiling and cracked his head against the wood. Stunned, he stumbled and fell, hitting against a wall. His hand landed in a damp spot. The pain made everything hurt, but he realized what his hand was resting in. That was it.
He let out a scream. Konohamaru screamed and screamed until his throat hurt. He pounded his fist against the ceiling wildly trying to find the loose part. He could feel the splinters and he didn't care. He had to get out of here.
One of his fists got lucky. Part of the ceiling gave and he pushed against it. It was heavy, but when he pushed up far enough something slipped off the side and it wasn't heavy anymore. He wanted out. He wanted to see the light. Wanted to see mommy and daddy and never come back here again.
The closet door slid to the side. It should have been easy to move. Konohamaru wasn't thinking clearly. He just pushed his weight against it until it popped off the track and it and he landed on the floor. It took him a second to stand. First, he got on his hands and knees before standing, leaving bloody hand prints behind. Standing, he started to stumble down the hallway, heading to the kitchen because there was always bananas there.
Part of him was expecting to see his mother there in the kitchen, having forgotten he was hiding. That idea made a lot of sense, but the only thing he found in the kitchen was an overturned table. He barely noticed it. The bananas were on the counter like always, but halfway there something did catch his eye. There were two entrances to the kitchen and something made him move to the other doorway.
He paused a few steps away and looked at the dark stain that he didn't remember being there. It was big. Konohamaru's mind worked slowly and he looked down at his hands. His knuckles were bloody and there were several cuts. Some of the blood was dark. Slowly he made the connection that the stain was blood. Some instinctual part of his brain told him to run.
He was running and not thinking. He was out of the house and pushing past his family's gate into the streets. Konohamaru almost immediately ran into someone and hit the ground again. This time it was compacted dirt which hurt just as much. He started to cry again, but he didn't have any tears this time.
People started to gather around him. He didn't understand what was going on. Everything was wrong. The whole day was wrong. Konohamaru could feel someone stepping close to him, but he couldn't focus his eyes to see who it was and then there was nothing.
Konohamaru came back to the himself of today. He remembered what he had forgotten and wished he hadn't. He didn't remember starting to cry, but the arms wrapped around him were familiar and he buried his face into Naruto’s chest as he cried. Mommy and daddy were dead. He had known that, but now he felt it.
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A Darker World