Peace for Traitors

This missive is to inform all, both allies and neutral nations, that the hidden village of Glacier has been thoroughly destroyed. I have demolished everything in the region, every structure stands in ruins, and whatever territory the fallen kingdom once occupied is now the property of Suna. The cities of Glacier and its people have been wiped from the face of the Earth as punishment for the grave insult done upon me and my pack on multiple occasions. This is the result of my actions, alone, and the weight of the lives taken will be my own burden as well. My allies were not involved, nor were the people of Suna, and any retribution brought upon them shall also incur my considerable wrath. I do not apologize. To those who would take my mates or any who would dare lay hands upon the sacred body of my queen, know that I will not hesitate to commit such an atrocity again should my holdings be threatened. What was Glacier is now no more than scorched Earth and I have ensured as well that nothing shall ever dwell there again without my express permission. To those whose friends or relatives lived in Glacier, I assure you that they are no more and the slaves given with my gratitude to our allies in Wave are not the people whom they were before. Any effort organized to search out those lost will only bring you pain and incur the hostility of both my nation and that of Wave, a power which has again proven their sincerity and kindness to my house. This is not a statement of war, merely of fact, so that such confusion may be avoided in the future.

-Gaara, Kazekage of Suna, A Letter to Konohakagure

My friend, I know you will have many questions regarding my recent actions and the genocide I have committed against Glacier. Please know that I have no intentions to ever visit such a disaster upon Konoha or anyone else and that I truly regret ever raising my hand in such a way against an entire people. I know that doing so is against the principles we both share, but I had to ensure the safety of my family. What was done cannot be undone, so I hope you will accept what little resolution I have to give, which is only a statement of my affection and loyalty. I truly hope you never come to understand why I did this. I hope you will still be my friend.

-Gaara, Kazekage of Suna, A Personal Letter to Naruto Uzumaki

Gaara, I know you must have had your reasons, but jeez! How could you think that destroying an entire nation could ever be okay? You killed so many people! I don't want to even think about how many lives you've taken! You have to know that most of the people in Glacier had to be uninvolved with whatever it was that was done to you, that there were noncombatants in there, and yet you just Never mind all of that. You already know that. My village has been at war for almost the entirety or my lifetime and I know what it means to eliminate a threat, what it means to have peace with a single, decisive move. I hope that's what you've achieved and I hope it's worth the sacrifice. I'll always by your friend, you idiot, no matter what. Never do anything like this again. Seriously. Never.

-Naruto Uzumaki, Genin of Konoha, A Personal Letter to Gaara of Suna

Sasuke dove, heedless of everything, moving like a bullet. The killer launched from his feet, surging through the air like a hunting falcon in sight of a mouse, throwing himself between Hiashi and Naruto before the ringing pain could cripple him too badly to engage. The deep, quivering hurt of shattered bones was already rattling him, threatening to pull him under with the weight of Naruto's injuries and damage them both. The only option was to move faster, faster than thought, faster than the searing agony heaving through the thrall. The icy gusts and whipping ripples of what was, what should have been Rasengan, swept the air into squealing flurries, flinging his hair in stinging lashes against his cheek. Everything was slow, the moment frozen, the shattering crunch of Naruto's chest like the deepest tone of a temple bell, ringing in the air for an eternity before Sasuke could even touch him. He reached for his alpha as Naruto fell, the shocked blue of the jinchuuriki's eyes wide and incredulous above his tactical mask, blood seeping through the black Kevlar to drip into the gore already splashing beneath their feet. Sasuke reached, felt Naruto's body shift against his fingers as sudden, solid, heaviness, falling against his chest in an instant of panicked trembling before his core engaged and he was able to accommodate the other man's weight.

Even holding him, cradling Naruto close in his arms, Sasuke's spirit was buckling, madness biting at the seams in his psyche as the kitsune's eyes slid closed with an agonized wheeze. Naruto, he was hurt. He was hurt very, very badly even for a nearly-immortal fey creature who could command the elements. The shocking heat of his blood was soaking Sasuke's clothes, so much blood, more than the blond had ever bled before…too much…too much. Shit. He had to focus, find a way to shut out the pain, the suffocating ache of lungs torn to pieces and not enough air. Naruto gasped, tried to cough, spraying Sasuke with his blood and for once the ruby redness of it was not sexy, not even a little, not pretty or fascinating or anything other than just horrible.

His belly hitched, arms shaking, but he didn't let go. Seeing Naruto fall and bleed was so awful thateven the Seal was dumbstruck, the monster inside suddenly small and trembling with fright, startled by the very thought that Naruto could be dying because…because he was the only quiet place and he'd always been there before. For almost an entire heartbeat, Sasuke held him and simply stared, trying to close his mind to the pain and terror of his alpha drowning in his own lungs.

The bite of sharpened steel into the armored plates protecting his shoulder was no more a surprise than the schlinking hiss of Hiashi's chain against the icy flagstones, but it roused him, brought him back into reality. The scythe crunched through his shoulder guard, scratching sharply against his skin. Sasuke lurched a little as the weapon pulled, tugging deeper still, striking shallowly into the flesh beneath the armor, the pain so refreshingly ice-cold real and so unmistakably his own that he almost shivered. He let Naruto slide through his grip, resting him gently on the ground, brushing clothed lips over the kitsune's closed eyelids in the briefest kind of kiss.

"Sasuke Uchiha," Hiashi said, sneering, "You're in my way."

Hiashi jerked the blade still lodged in his armor, shaking him, but not enough to pull the dark haired killer off balance. Let the scythe cut him, Sasuke didn't care, the metal in his flesh was only a weapon and not the kind that could do any lasting damage to his body. Naruto protected him. He was truly invincible. He took a breath and moved, spinning, winding the chain of the scythe willingly around his own knees to pull Hiashi close.

"Come…" Sasuke hissed as he grabbed hold of the blade and tugged, putting another twist in the chain as the Hyuuga let out more slack to loosen it.

"I'll kill you both!" Hiashi roared trying to both regain his stance and his weapon as Sasuke advanced. Too little and too late.

"Come, die…" Sasuke purred, cocking his head and smiling as the chain pulled taught with a shivering jerk and the groan of ice-cold metal.

Hiashi snarled and moved to block, but Sasuke was already inside his defenses and moving to strike, falling to his knees as he jerked the Hyuuga leader off balance. Feet scrambling for purchase on the gore slickened stones, but already committed, Hiashi finally realized the danger and tried to pull away. Too late, he was already dead and Sasuke barely kept himself from laughing aloud at the sudden shock in the other nin's eyes. The chain wound about Hiashi's hands pulled him into Sasuke's clutches just as surely as the scythe's blade in his shoulder bound him to the Hyuuga in turn, the classic danger of all chained weapons. Without hesitating, Sasuke slithered forward, naked blade clutched tight against his own wrist in a defensive grip. He slashed low for the unguarded tendons in Hiashi's knees and then surged up to bury the weapon in the other man's eye, the battle rage and the adrenaline of victory singing in his veins just as surely as the pain from Naruto's wounds.

However, the sensation moving through Sasuke's blade and into his waiting hand was not the satisfying crunch of bone or the sinuous ripping of tearing tissues, but a sudden and shocking emptiness. Sasuke hissed, willing his senses to be false, clouded by pain or impaired by Naruto's struggle to breathe, but, as he pushed, the void only grew. There was no way, no way, that an opponent with enough skill to hurt Naruto was a clone! And yet, he could not ignore the feeling of his blade bit deep…into nothing.

"No…shit! No! NO!" Sasuke snarled slashing forward even as Hiashi's figure blurred and began to dissipate.

Without a sound, neither a gurgle nor a shriek, Hiashi's body evaporated into a heavy cloud of shadowy smoke and, with another breath, even that too was gone. Sasuke's jaw shook, the pain from his alpha's torn chest suddenly far closer and more pronounced than before. He was smeared with blood, only some of it his own, shivering as the adrenaline crested, but Sasuke could not rest. Hiashi was still alive. The specter had only been a kage no bunshin, a clone, another fucking deception in this arcade of treachery and horrors. He swayed, falling back into the heavy coils of the chain scythe with a metallic clink that seemed much too loud, shaking his head as the smoke of the battle-field mingled with the heavy, white plumes of his own breathing. The snowy air was still crowded with the sounds of people dying and things burning, too much noise to make any sense of, but Sasuke heard the ragged wheeze of Naruto's chest re-inflating almost as clearly as his own heartbeat. The jinchuuriki was healing and he would live for now, but they'd failed so what did it matter? Sasuke almost felt like sobbing.

"Teme…?" Naruto whispered, the hope and expectation carried in those few soft words dragging through Sasuke's bones. He bit his lip.

"A clone…" He whispered.

"What?" Naruto rasped, dragging himself closer.

"It…it was a clone. Hiashi lives." Sasuke said, his throat aching to make the words louder.

"Kami!" Naruto wheezed and then they felt it.

Like a shard of ice-cold lightning driven directly into their eyes, the pain piercing and burning its way back into the deepest part of their skulls. Sasuke screamed, the sound pure, unfettered agony, blending seamlessly with Naruto's own tormented wail. Lights of a thousand colors and each a new kind of torture erupted in front of Sasuke's eyes, flashing like a sickening carnival display. The pain was like nothing either of them had ever experienced, a new sensation, a ringing agony both sharp and profound without even the promise of death as an escape. There was no darkness at the edges, only searing light, an electric quaking that drove everything else into shocked numbness. Sasuke knew, knew somewhere outside himself where his mind wasn't locked into a grinding spasm and he could still think, that the only jutsu powerful enough to compel such terrible suffering was the Hyuuga Curse Mark. The Curse was in the thrall, but how…it could only be because Neji was in the thrall as well! Neji was claimed, claimed completely and…Kami, how had he missed it?!

"Neji!" He screamed, reaching out into the swirling vortex of dancing lights.

"Nejiiii!" Naruto wailed, echoing him.

Sasuke'd belly bucked, driven by the pounding misery, an ache almost numbed by the twisting shards of the chipping, cracking, searing pain in his head. The Curse Mark was like nothing else, a sting beyond anything the human mind could bear and even Naruto, his island in the storm, the unstoppable jinchuuriki for Kyuubi, even Naruto, was beginning to give against the onslaught.

Sasuke felt the slip, like a loss of footing on ice, and then he was suddenly alone despite the jinchuuriki's presence in his psyche. His alpha's spirit was unnaturally motionless against his mind, any intention absent. Sasuke shrieked. At his side, almost touching, Naruto was convulsing, his thoughts and feelings and memories halted, paralyzed by the seizure and inexplicably static. The warm currents of the blond's love now felt like a frozen ocean within the thrall. Sasuke screamed, reaching for him where he writhed on the ground in the bruising coils of the chain scythe, pins and needles in his fingers against the blood soaked cloth of Naruto's mask.

Sasuke pushed into his own mind, only managing to avoid a similar fate by the barest margin as his pressed his psyche against the questionable sanctuary of his master's Seal to touch the evil caged within. The Seal was cold and raw, but it was also calm and distinctly separate from the rest of the excruciating pain. The monster snarled, but the sound was one of fear instead of rage, ragged and strange. Sasuke wondered idly if the thing had ever felt afraid before today, surprised on some level that the Seal even had the capacity for emotion beyond hatred, but he was frightened too. His flesh and spirit were no longer under anything like his own control and Naruto was no better, splashing in the bloody snow melt like a fish on a hook. He wanted to be sick, but his throat was too tight. There should be, if not an end, than at least a valley, but the sizzling torture continued unabated. Sasuke felt his body jerk and squeal, but even worse was the sensation of hands against him, lifting, dragging as the pain cut deeper gouges into his sanity.

They were moving them, taking them, taking Naruto away from his reach and something about that was nearly enough to shatter what little mental reserve Sasuke had. How dare they touch him?! How dare they lay hands upon his…his alpha! The rough grip against his shoulder, bruising him and wrenching the scythe out of his flesh felt distant, and he fought, but his limbs were so weak. Sasuke had never been weak this way before. He felt vulnerable and helpless and…and violated because Hiashi was touching them, touching his lovers and even Naruto in their minds, touching through the thrall in a way that no one ever had before and no one ever should. When the next seizure finally reached him and stopped everything, stopped thought and any kind of feeling, it was almost a relief.

OoOoOoO

Deep in the cold, he felt the pain. It reached, sharp and too bright to ignore into the quelling weight of the darkness, prickling and insistent. Someone was touching them deep and intimately, someone whose touch was not wanted or invited or permitted, sliding and slithering against things which were his alone. A ripple in the blackness, an itch against the cocoon of his dormant energy, something moved through his awareness. The sensation of it riled him. Those, the others who drifted in the warmer currents above, they belonged only to him. They were his only living place, the only warmth or true solace, and they cried out for reprieve. The love called too, the echoes of pleasure a dull, blue veil over his roiling memories, the feelings still raw and far too intense to confront.

The irritation began to build, low and gradual as thunder over desolate mountains, an instinctive anger that awoke a rumbling in his very bones. The hurt stung and his mind slowly rose, drifting away from the blessed slumber and back to awareness. There was poison in his sky, dulling the blue, and there was oil in his ocean, filthy on the emerald waves of her feelings. Broken chains rattled in the dark, but there was light too, seeping in burning rays into his own inky coldness, bright and unwanted beneath the heaving waters. The others wailed out into the void and he felt them as well, the fire and the steel both shattering with it, the echoes of pleasure silenced in favor of screaming. That was unacceptable. He would not allow it.

In dormant places within his numbed spirit, the aggression rose and bloomed, heating the lapping waves of black amnesia, boiling and agitated and no longer heavy. The chains were gone and the torment of hurts long buried was very true, very real, but…they needed him so he would have to endure it. His body felt the need as acutely as his mind felt the pain and low in the icy silence of his own solitude, the creature slowly willed his form to change as it had only once before. He pressed, slowly waking, the softness of dreams and forgetfulness slowly falling away to be replaced by the threatening din of his uncaged soul. The one in darkness stirred, shifting, the sodden weight of rain soaked soil clinging against his face even as his muzzle began to grow long and fill with sharpened teeth, body expanding to hold the weight of too many memories. He would wake in spite of the throbbing emotion, convert it all into rage, and ignite the shadowy ocean of feeling as fuel for his vengeance.

He grew, the earth pressing close, energy flaring in arching rays of electric blue light to illuminate the solemn characters of the other grave markers, the names of Uchiha clan long, long dead flickering eerily. The polished headstones, as fine as mirrors, flickered blue with the fires of his chi as the earth slowly began to rumble around his expanding flesh, chasms opening, the ancient foundations of the temple groaning as he moved. He shifted, snarling, and felt the rage build to consume all other feeling like dry wood on a bonfire. The balmy fullness Naruto had left in his body was poisoned with the unwelcome pain of the other, the love almost silenced by the sizzling agony in the thrall, so he grew to make more room.

Blue light surged, filling every space, bright as lightning in the summer skt. The emotion boiled, overwhelming, and he grew to accommodate it. No one could take Naruto from him, nor any of the others lodged inside his spirit. The creature held the love kindled in his heart and all else he fed to the unholy anger slowly morphing his flesh, letting his body reflect his soul instead of caging it, matching wave for wave the violence roiling inside. His vision was still clouded, his eye unused, but the blue flames raced over every surface and set the solemnity of the temple alight so that he could almost feel the world through the touch of chakra alone.

There was light everywhere, sapphire brilliance brighter than a star, driving back the electric invasion threatening to damage the delicate passages of his mind. He breathed and let the chakra move, let it grow, the blue spreading outside his own form like ripples in a pond with each exhalation. The azure radiance spread, glowing like coals beneath the snowy ground, branching fingers of electric power lighting the night and charging the air. He moved, turning over, the filmy funeral clothes shredding around him like so much paper. For a moment he shivered, nude, and in the next heartbeat thick fur pushed through his skin like countless knives. He screamed. The sting of it was almost blinding, but his coat was soon thick, plush and more than adequate against the cold in the quaking shrine, the hurt forgotten as his muscles bunched and gathered. His shoulders itched, cracked, shifted, making way for the vast wings, still pressed close about his body in the rapidly shrinking space of the once-comfortable grave.

The creature wrapped the thick membranes of his new wings, soaked blue with the rising energy, close around his own belly, writhing like an eel beneath the ground, digging, gasping, thrusting up to be born again through the stiff soil of his own resting place. He heard the pained wailing, felt the fear in the thrall and growled, heedless of the tumbling grave markers and crumbling walls as the noise resounded through the snowy air to shake the forest beyond. The trees were alight with blue, glowing like torches against the crimson fires reflected in the lilac sky, the veins and vessels of their life flow illuminated by the writhing azure energies.

The claws spread from his fingers, piercing the frozen earth, stretching his bones with creaking splinters of tearing pain almost lost in the roaring turmoil of too much, too much emotion! The blue light jumped and surged like water overflowing a river, filling the cracks between every tile, every grain of soil, glowing brilliantly enough to light the still falling snow in cosmic splendor. The change hurt, ached, burned, but the agony of it was inexorable, like the will to breathe, impossible to stop. His bones shifted as his energy pulsed and beat against the ground, shaking the earth. Snow fell from the quivering trees and the pines shook to their roots as he moved, thrusting a still changing hand upwards, claws shedding sparks against the granite roof of his tomb. The stone shook a moment, resisted with a straining squeal, and then shattered with a sharp crack, releasing his still morphing body, swathed in the piercing blue of his own rising chi.

Finally free of the clinging Earth, the demon took a breath and roared, the sound driving the snow back in a rocking concussion of air. The pines shook, shivered, snow blown from their branches by the force of the noise. With a hissing snarl, Sai unfurled his wings; the movement of the massive membranes stirring the snow into swirling flurries of panicked air. He stretched, vertebrae cracking into place, the pulsing lapis of his energy settling into swirling markings across the dark, softness of his new pelt. There was blood on the wind and the scent of it set his long, bladed tail lashing of its own accordout into the freedom of the open air. Far to the east, fire sparked and bloomed red as molten steel into the sky. He turned towards the explosion, drawn to the sounds of battle, belly aching with the pain of the others.

"Naruto…" He whispered, the name pressed out into the bleeding night like a psalm.

He shivered. The rush of memories, each attached to an emotion he'd forgotten thrummed within, but he could not allow it to overwhelm him, not now, not yet…not yet. The alien pain within the thrall squeezed around his heart, striking with the force of spearheads against his brain, but Sai could still hold the agony which froze the others out of his awareness. He loved the kitsune and they were one as much as two beings of their kind could be, but Sai was still master of his own mind and the curse which crippled the others only served to ignite his rage. He was thirsty for blood, fur raised over his spine in threat, long ears pressed tight to his skull and claws crushing the frozen stone of the shrine as he scented the air. The heavy odor of smoke and terror drifted to him along with the unmistakable scent of his lovers, the female close and shivering, but the scent of others too sharp with panic for him to ignore. He hissed, shaking the last pieces of tile and stone from his coat before flapping once, twice and leaping into the air. The night was cold and filled with snow, but he barely felt it. Sai was already moving, racing toward the rising glow with enough fury to singe the world.

OoOoOoO

Hiashi laughed and knew that he should stop, that the sound was beginning to come from a deeper and more frightening place than mere mirth or even the giddy rush of victory; knew that he was beginning to sound a little mad, but it was so hard to hold the sound in anymore. Too much time and too much tension and his patience had finally been rewarded! He laughed as his impudent nephew writhed in front of him, twitching and shrieking in agony, his punishment bringing a swift rush of pure vindication to the Hyuuga leader. The boy had grown far too rebellious in Naruto's bed, much too defiant to be an effective operative at any rate, and demonstrating his power over Neji soothed Hiashi's raw nerves in a way almost akin to the soft euphoria of good narcotics. Not to mention the rest of his triumph…

Watching Neji suffer was satisfying, but having the others, having Naruto thrown in a bloody heap at his feet was more than worth the lives lost, worth every life he had to command and a hundred more besides! The demon-spawn of his arch-rival and the commoner thorn in his gut was finally within his grasp! Having Naruto's pack as his helpless captives, half-mad with the pain and toothless as kittens, unable to defy him, was almost as good as having Kushina herself as his own. Yes, the barbarian brat was finally his to do away with and this time Minato was far too dead to interfere.

Hiashi grinned, still giggling. A few short days ago he'd thought the battle might be lost, thought that Minato's dirty-blooded offspring might have truly bested him. Now, with both the oni and his pet murderer within his clutches and rendered helpless by the Curse Mark, the only task left was deciding how long to keep them breathing for the sake of watching them squirm. He really should have killed them already, but a moment such as this one was made to be savored, something special that happened only once in a lifetime.

Just as Hiashi planned, as he'd hoped from the very beginning, the thrall carried the Curse Mark to every person compelled by the little monster and the demon pack was completely undone by a mere gesture of his hand. In Neji, he'd planted the seed of their destruction. True, there had been a risk. Hiashi might have lost his best warrior to Naruto by giving his nephew to him for the sake of information and he might have even been forced to repeat Madara's tired old scheme without any additional card to play other than sheer force of numbers. However, his plan was built on more than just the insinuation that the Curse Mark could incapacitate Naruto, and the intelligence provided by Neji was instrumental in their fall. One can't kill a god without taking a few risks. Like all good intrigue, the fall of House Uzumaki was a game played using many, well-oiled little pieces working in concert under his skilled fingers. He hoped Madara was laughing too in whatever blackened corner of hell the old vampire was in.

"Can you even hear me, bastard spawn?" Hiashi whispered, dragging his fingers through Naruto's thick blond hair and gripping tight to lift his head.

"Can…hear…tch…don't care…Ugh…" The jinchuuriki managed, jaw locked tight in agony, eyes glaring pure, blue hatred at him.

Hiashi found the expression so shockingly funny that he almost kept cackling, but stifled the mirth in favor of fondling the jinchuuriki instead, enjoying the blood-soaked texture of the brat's hair. Naruto's sunshine locks were almost like the thick silk of his woman's mane, but a bit coarser than Kushina's, more like an animal's pelt than real hair. He wondered idly what it would look like long, clean and spread over his pillow with those hot, furious eyes glaring helplessly up at him…he shivered at the thought.

"Almost a pity to kill you. Now, that I can subjugate you so easily, there are so many other options to explore…" He murmured, almost to himself, stroking an idle thumb down Naruto's cheek.

"I'll…kill you…believe it!" Naruto snarled.

"Oh? What's keeping you then?" Hiashi chuckled.

By Kami! There was something very appealing about an enemy still alive and yet so completely powerless, especially when the man in question should have been his all along, his son, his weapon… The situation was far more intoxicating than he thought it would be. Naruto's blue eye glowed for a bare moment with vehemence and demon chakra before the jinchuuriki cried out like wind whistling over the cliffs and began to seize again, body flopping jerkily on the floor. Neji screamed and the sound was filled with both pain and sorrow, holding his head with one hand and reaching towards the blond with the other.

Hiashi sighed; best to enjoy the moment while he could. Even with the strongest minds and the best training, no one ever lasted long against the Mark and the demon and his whores were nearly finished as it was. He supposed he could always release the jutsu and then activate it again, there was no real limit for how frequently the Mark could be used…He smiled and reached for Naruto again as the jinchuuriki lay panting and spent from the attack, pushing his fingers back into that uncanny, foreign hair.

"Get your…hands…off him…fucking pervert!" Sasuke hissed, looking every bit the black devil of his fearsome reputation, smeared in gore and ashes with those red, sharingan eyes burning.

"What would you do about it, little viper? If I touch him?" Hiashi purred, relishing in the impotent rage in Sasuke's savage face.

"More…than you…can imagine…!" Sasuke gasped, fingers frozen into spasming claws against the ruined wood of the floor, trying to resist a seizure of his own.

"Whatever purpose you served was exhausted long ago and I have no interest in keeping you alive as anything more than a hostage against your Master's good behavior. That role, however, can be filled by another…or I can just kill you all." Hiashi mused, driving a kunai through the hand Sasuke still managed to keep pressed against Naruto's shoulder.

The delicate bones crunched against the blade, blood gushing from the wound in generous, red spurts into the chilly air. The black haired killer screamed, teeth chattering, clinging to Naruto's armor stubbornly despite the injury. He had enough will that Hiashi was passingly impressed. If there was a person, he supposed, who understood pain well enough to resist the Mark to any degree, that man would surely be Sasuke Uchiha. His ancestors would be impressed, but determination alone was useless against the Curse Mark, though watching them all try was almost worth the annoyance of keeping the Uchiha alive. Almost. Hiashi sneered and jerked the knife from Sasuke's hand to slice off Naruto's mask instead, baring the jinchuuriki's shuddering face, the insult of it enough to make Sasuke scream again.

"Stop…" Neji pleaded, barely audible between screams of his own.

"You can still speak?" Hiashi quipped, nudging Neji roughly with his foot, "Too bad you don't have anything useful to say, nephew. The time for that is long passed."

Poor Neji. The boy was tough, the finest his clan had produced in a long time, but all the talent in the world wasn't worth a weapon gone rogue. Neji's usefulness now resided in his ability to control Naruto, to carry the Mark into his chakra, and that was something even a drooling idiot could do. A pity, perhaps, but life was full of little tragedies.

"I…I said too…too much…" Neji whimpered, shuddering as he tried to resist the urge to kill himself.

"Leave him…Fucking coward." Sasuke spat, looking a tad too fierce for Hiashi's peace of mind.

The Hyuuga leader strode forward to seize Sasuke by the hair, jerking his neck and forcing the boy's sneering face up to meet his own. The Hyuuga leader looked at him, studying the focus in his eyes and the tension in his muscles. In the long minutes since the Uzumaki invaders were laid at his feet, he hadn't seen Sasuke suffer a seizure, not once, and that was too peculiar, even for an oddity of probability. The vile, black haired snake was resisting, or maybe not quite that, but evading part of the Mark's influence and that was not something he should be able to do.

"Oh, to be sure. My own little traitor will be the very last to die," Hiashi promised, ignoring the looks his few remaining soldiers traded, "But I think I'll keep your alpha a while longer. He might even make a lovely toy."

"Please…no…" Neji pleaded, but Hiashi barely heard him.

"You…bastard!" Sasuke snarled, voice dry and pained, but too strong for anyone suffering the Curse Mark.

"Yes, maybe I'll keep him, but you're just a nuisance and one that's cost me far too many men. The Uchiha clan ends tonight, for good, and the same for your wretched woman!" Hiashi promised darkly, drawing the kunai tight against Sasuke's trembling throat.

"No…!" Naruto shrieked, weakly thrusting himself between Hiashi and Sasuke.

There was a low, rumbling growl and the building shook like a wicker shack in an earthquake, throwing everyone from their feet and against the jagged wood of the floor as the deafening sound of splintering support beams filled the air. Hiashi lost his balance, flailing briefly before riding the bucking ground smoothly in a low crouch, watching as Naruto used the motion to pull Neji and Sasuke against his own body. Outside, something roared into the night, the sound too loud to be jutsu and too close to be an explosion, the noise more like the vicious, territorial bellow of some kind of animal. Either Naruto had more monsters under his command than he'd originally thought, or Kiba had managed to create some new combined perversion with his dog. Hiashi narrowed his eyes. Either way, his revenge would, apparently, have to wait a while longer.

OoOoOoO

Neji had long ago abandoned sight as a source for any kind of useful information, his vision alternating between blurred, dim and excruciatingly bright, completely overtaken by the rocking pain of the Mark. His ears were singing too, bells and whistles and the screech of random neurons firing without organization, but he could still heard through it. Hear enough to know his uncle was planning to kill them starting with Sasuke…that he might even be considering doing something truly sick to Naruto. Neji would not allow it. That anyone should touch Naruto; that anyone should touch his lovers, was unacceptable to something elemental in his spirit. He had to do something.

Neji groaned around a fresh surge of pain as the floor roiled sickeningly under his belly, bucking like an angry horse as the main supports of the building buckled and snapped. The roof was falling, torn asunder by something big and seriously pissed off up above them. He could feel Naruto's arm around his torso, holding him close even as the building lurched and groaned. The jinchuuriki held him, screaming like a fox caught in a snare as the Mark hurt him, the sound like shattering glass in Neji's aching ears. Kami, Neji wanted to do more than just cling to him. Neji grit his teeth trying to at least think through the agony. His brain was struggling, his cognition slowed and his awareness fractured, but the one fact that he managed to cling to was that if Naruto and Sasuke were affected then it meant he was compelled by the thrall. He was under the thrall…which meant that everything about him should be under Naruto's command.

"Sasuke!" He whimpered, searching blindly for the other man, hand falling against the raven's tear streaked face mostly by chance.

"Neji…ah…! Hang…on!" Sasuke shouted, voice rough with pain, but far clearer than Neji could have hoped.

"The…ah…the thrall…use…" He choked, the words caught in his closed throat.

The sharp tang of metal filled his mouth and Neji's very heart quivered with the knowledge that he was about to have another seizure, another consuming episode of perfect blankness. He gripped Sasuke, hand cupped weirdly around the raven's face, trying to will him to understand what he was trying to convey. If he just managed enough room around the torture in his own mind to think about it, Sasuke would surely come to the same conclusion he had, but they were running out of time. Neji was certain that, by now, the damage was at least permanent for him and Hiashi could kill any of them any moment he chose. The idea of death and an end to the electrifying pain of the Curse Mark was almost promising enough to make him weep, but Neji couldn't escape yet. He had to save them. He had to save his family.

OoOoOoO

A few moments before.

"What the fuck is that thing!" Yumi cried, eyes wide and skin taut with the strain of the Byukugan.

"It's not a Hyuuga…erm…uh…creation?" Kiba asked, trying to make his voice calm and authoritative above booming din of the monster's wings.

"No! Not ours!" Aki replied, gripping the tree for dear life as the wind from the creature's passage rocked them.

The air from its wings moved through the forest like one of Naruto's cyclones, bending the trees and stirring the snow into blinding waves with each gargantuan beat, turning the forest into a swirling mess of pine needles and shrieking air. Akamaru pressed his belly to the ground on the forest floor below them, whining low under his breath as the surging gale crested and passed, replaced by a sucking vortex as the monster launched itself forward. Aki and Yumi yelped as their hair was blown straight upward away from their faces, eyes wide in the grim light of Sasuke's fires. Kiba gripped the tree trunk hard, but kept his eyes open stubbornly. There was something about the massive creature in the sky, something that he couldn't quite describe, but that felt…familiar.

"Demon!" Someone shouted and Kiba grit his teeth.

"Don't jumpt to conclusions! Just keep lookin' dammit! I wanna know what it is, not just what you think it is!" He snapped, gratified despite himself as the boys jumped to his command.

"Hai!" They shouted in unison, moving smoothly to change positions, moving higher in the tree so that more soldiers could activate the Byukugan.

"What does its energy look like?" The Dog-Lord asked, watching as the dark beast dove towards the roaring fires in the Hyuuga compound.

"Not like anything I've ever seen, the chakra seems…weird…" Yumi said, shaking his head.

"Weird how?"

"I don't know how to describe it, the energy looks…flexible somehow, like the form isn't quite made of matter…" The boy cried.

"That's not possible though." Aki hissed.

Kiba pressed his lips together anxiously. He was not about to insist that something like matter or energy cleaved to the rules of anything commonly thought of as possible, but he did want to know whose side the winged predator was on. Kiba had no idea where the gigantic beast came from or, perhaps more importantly, what it even was, but the sinuous animal clearly had an agenda. Shaped like a shockingly harmonious cross between a fox and a stoat, the creature flew on vast bat-like wings and used a long, silky-looking tail armed with several keen blades to cut through anything in its path. The monster moved towards the Hyuuga clan house as if drawn by a magnet, as if it were being called somehow. Kiba wanted to know how and by whom and why because if anything could turn the tides of battle, a mysterious, airborne, semi-matter monstrosity certainly counted for something.

"Track it!" He barked to Aki, who still clung to the branch a few feet above his own perch.

"Hai!" the boy shouted, eyes fixed to the rapidly diminishing point in the sky.

Kiba knew what Naruto's activated form looked like and despite the fact that it was huge, flamey and scary as hell, the kitsune in his fully awakened body did not fly. No, that thing was something else, something he'd never seen or even read about. The creature's coat was mostly black, but decorated with eerie, bright blue markings, which flared and thrummed to some unseen rhythm almost as if lit from within. He watched the blue glow as it wheeled and dove against the murky sky.

"It's diving!" Aki reported, "I think it's headed for the main house!"

"Can you tell who's in there?"

"I...I can't be sure." The boy wavered.

"Then guess dammit!" Kiba barked.

"Looks like Naruto and probably Sasuke, Neji too, but it's like they're all lying on top of each other or something. I see another signature, but…whatever it is looks almost like a…hole…" Aki said, voice uncertain.

"It's Hiashi." A soft, feminine voice said from beneath them and Kiba felt his heart nearly skip a beat.

"Hinata?" He asked softly, barely hoping, peering down through the inky darkness of the nighttime forest.

Kami! Kiba had never wanted to use the Byukugan as much as he did now! Even though he knew his awareness of time was skewed, even though what felt like hours was probably only a few, sparse minutes, he'd been so afraid. Only by throwing all his focus towards the task at hand had Kiba managed to avoid giving into true panic. He wanted to see her, hold her, to smell her skin and assure himself that his beloved wife was really there.

"It's alright, my husband, I'm here." The Hyuuga princess said, leaping up to rest beside him in the wide crotch of the ancient tree.

Oh, she was so beautiful! She was more beautiful than his memory, so lovely that just seeing her almost made him ache, stunning enough to still the breath in his lungs even with her face streaked with ashes and her eyes deep and full with sadness. He reached for her, running a shaking finger down the side of her perfect, heart shaped face. She caught his hand in her own, pressing his palm to her cheek, the silken caress of her black hair sliding over his forearm, and for a moment Kiba could only stare. They breathed, the roaring destruction of the world silenced for the briefest moment as he gazed into the shifting silver of her eyes. To think that the color might have been lost, that he might have never been able to see her again, to look into her eyes and wonder what she saw in their world…he shuddered.

"I…I knew you would be alright. I knew you'd make it, I didn't doubt it…" He whispered, stroking her face fondly.

"Then…why are you crying?" Hinata asked gently, reaching forward to dip her delicate fingers into the moisture on his face.

"Oh Kami, woman! I don't know!" He laughed, tears streaming down his face, hot in the icy air.

With a yelp of pure joy, Kiba darted forward to embrace her, burying his nose in the sleek warmth of her hair, clinging helplessly to her hands. The heat of her body was like soothing balm to his soul, the familiar press of every soft curve even sweeter than before, more delicious than even the most charming memory. Her breasts were bigger, the soft weight of the flesh succulently heavy against his chest and, ah, what he wouldn't give to simply have her right now! His hand crept lower, resting against the subtle swell of her belly, almost afraid to ask.

"Are…are we all okay?" He whispered.

Hinata smiled, resting her own hand over his, a bit of moisture creeping into the limpid pools of her silver eyes as well. Kiba knew that the timing wasn't right, that it was far too early, but he almost felt as though the little pups inside were reaching to him, pressing through her belly against their father's palm. The relief almost made him light-headed, almost made him too giddy, even though the future was still uncertain and whether or not any of them would even survive the night was up to powers far beyond his control.

"We are all fine, for now." Hinata replied, her soft voice all the same firm. Kiba smiled and kissed her.

"Kiiiibbbbaaaa! Are you and Sissy done yet!" Hanabi's voice whined from the branches beneath them.

"Uh, well no, but is there something you need?" Kiba fumbled, blushing as he tried to regain an ounce of dignity after practically ravishing his wife in front of her kid sister and his under-age soldiers.

"No, but maybe you need the information we have." Hanabi huffed, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, um yes…" Kiba said, blushing.

"That hole in the Byukugan you see, the place where there is no chakra at all, it's a technique called 'Ultimate Shadow Mask Veil' and it's something only Hyuuga main house members groomed for rule ever learn. It can hide a person so that even the Byukugan can't see them, basically utilizing a pocket dimension so that the person physically ceases to exist on this plain." Hinata muttered, sounding stressed.

"I've never even heard of such a thing! Nothing can be hidden from the Byukugan!" Aki exclaimed.

"That's because it's such a closely kept secret. Even now, only I know it, Hanabi wasn't taught yet. The technique is reserved only for grave emergencies and is very difficult to perform even under the best of circumstances. Hiashi is probably using it to try to maneuver Naruto into a trap, likely distracting him with a very carefully made kage no bunshin." Hinata explained, not bothering to release the fur of Kiba's vestments from her grasp.

"Do you think it will work?" Kiba asked softly, looking out towards the sullen, crimson glow of too many fires burning into the muffled darkness of the snowy night.

"Probably not." Hanabi said, crossing her arms.

"Why not?" Yumi asked from above, ignoring the shocked look on the younger Hyuuga princesses face as he spoke out of turn.

"Because Naruto has Sasuke and the Sharingan isn't bound by the same special limitations as the Byukugan. No matter what he does, Sasuke will see him or rather the rift in space he leaves behind and as soon as whatever clones he's made are vanquished, they'll keep looking for him." Hinata whispered.

"Then what's the purpose of it?" Kiba asked, feeling confused.

"I'm not sure, but Father is very good at plotting." Hanabi said, a bit sadly.

"Either way, we must be prepared to either parlay with Naruto or leave at a moment's notice. Regardless of whether or not Hiashi can win against him, none of us will be safe for long." Hinata said urgently, tugging on Kiba's coat.

"Understood. Granny is already prepared for a siege." Kiba said proudly, gesturing to his soldiers.

"Pray it doesn't come to that." Hinata whispered fiercely, mouth a tense line as she gazed towards the smoldering heap of what had once been their home.

OoOoOoO

Sakura shivered, hands clasped tight with Tsunade, forcing herself deeper into the meditation and away from the noxious, singing pain of the Curse Mark. The young matriarch could hold it off this way, escape the foreign torture paralyzing her men with the Sannin's guidance, but that did not mean doing so was easy. Every moment taxed her and even if she could hold out against the onslaught, the panicked screaming of her loved ones was a constant pull on Sakura's focus. The Hokage took a deep breath, shoulders rising gently with the air, and Sakura felt another ounce of solidarity, more weight to anchor her own frantic mind. Kami! She was so glad that Tsunade was there! That the woman even had a theory about how to escape the tooth-shattering pain reverberating through the thrall was a miracle, and that the maneuver actually seemed to be working for now even more of one.

"How long can we last?" Sakura asked, voice full and resonant deep within her mind, impossible to know if the sentiment actually crossed through her lips.

"I don't know. Our endurance won't matter if Hiashi kills them, but the old bastard likes to gloat so we may have a little time." Tsunade responded, voice as toneless as a sleep-walker.

Sakura grit her teeth and tried to relax, tried to ignore the way her belly wanted to clench and press and push with every breath she took. She certainly wasn't an expert, but the gripping, rolling, throbbing constriction in her womb sure as hell didn't feel like practice contractions any-more and the tightening was coming too consistently besides. The baby, her daughter, was moving more as well and not in a way Sakura liked. The movements were jerky, almost fearful, kicking too much. Perhaps the little creature was wise enough to know when her home was being threatened and wanted to escape, wanted to be born before her mother's body collapsed and died around her. Sakura couldn't really blame her.

"Can I, um…Can I give birth this way?" Sakura asked timidly.

"Probably not. Let's do our best to try and avoid it." Tsunade said, as though that were the most reasonable thing in the entire world.

"Yeah, sure…" Sakura muttered, shivering again.

Dammit Naruto, she thought, you total moron! He should have known there was something weird about Neji's energy, or the jinchuuriki should have at least thought that maybe something random and strange with one of his subordinates might be reason enough to delay an all-out war! The fact that Sasuke hadn't known either and that no one had thought to bring the issue up was hardly an excuse. At least the pain of the Curse Mark meant they were all still alive, she hoped, or at least Naruto and Neji. The young woman grit her teeth. She didn't need this! Her sensei's jutsu only worked so long as she could ride overtop the waves of engulfing agony, so long as she could maintain separation from the others and that required both focus and control. If they all died except for one poor, helpless, orphan baby, Sakura resolved that she would drag her husband's sorry ass back into the world of the living just so she could kill him again.

"Please…" She whispered, "Please just let them come home!"

OoOoOoO

Naruto panted, every nerve screaming, body quaking, but there was no promise of release. Even when everything ground to a sudden, jarring halt, he only awoke to more pain, screaming even before he managed to return to full consciousness. How? How could it just go on this way? He felt desperate, like his head was exploding, like maybe if he just…just smashed his own skull then perhaps the torment might finally end. The jinchuuriki gripped Sauske and Neji tighter to avoid the impulse, their own screams almost muffled in his ears by the ringing, chiming suffering shredding through his brain, unstopped by anything, unabated, endless. He couldn't give in, not when doing so meant their lives too, but his sanity was slipping. The Fox cried out as well, trying to find an escape, clawing desperately at the bars of his cage, whining piteously. Naruto shuddered. Sakura had been right all along and now everyone was going to die, maybe he was just being cruel letting it go on.

"Fuck! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" Naruto howled to the Kyuubi.

"We need a way out! We have to get out, kit! OUT!" The Fox wailed.

He couldn't respond. The cresting pain was rising again, sizzling over his flayed nerves, white-washing him mind in agony so deep he could almost taste it, like the scent left in the air after a lightning storm. He screamed, or tried to, his throat was closed too tightly to release the noise. The dull sensation of Hiashi's hand in his hair was almost meaningless, too distant to be scary or disgusting, and for a single maddened, hopeless instant Naruto would have been willing to do anything just as long as the racing torment stopped. He squeezed his eyes shut. Kami, no wonder Neji was a fatalistic bastard! Sasuke was shouting something at him and it almost sounded like words, like real language with form and meaning, not just more desperate shrieking. He tried to focus, to pay attention, to force his shattering brain to work. Sasuke was talking, talking to him specifically, and he had to at least try.

"The…thrall! Ah…! Compel him! Compel Neji!" Sasuke shouted, mouth pressed close against his ear.

"…Thrall…?" Naruto managed.

"Yes…Baka! He's…He's under the thrall, shit! Compel him! Do...ah...do it now!" Sasuke said, teeth chattering with the aftershocks of the Mark.

He should compel Neji, because...Neji was under the thrall? Naruto struggled for a moment, trying to think, trying to understand what his subordinate wanted of him without the wailing inferno rampaging in his skull stealing the concept entirely. He supposed that Neji would have to be under the thrall, that there was no other way the Hyuuga Curse Mark would work against them otherwise, but...compel him? Compel him to do what, exactly? All three of them were merely struggling to remain conscious and forcing Neji to focus on anything else might make it even worse, so what could Sasuke possibly want Neji to try to do? Naruto frowned, gritting his teeth, wishing that his brain didn't feel so rumpled and hurt so that he could think about everything rationally and figure out what Sasuke wanted of him. Then again, maybe the command didn't need to be something specific, maybe it was enough just to use the thrall itself...A fierce surge of hope lit itself in his breast and Naruto swallowed hard, trying to make his mouth and jaw and larynx relax just enough to issue the words with the right inflection and tone.

"Neji, stop..." The jinchuuriki gasped at last and he felt the words take on another layer of power.

As swiftly as the terrible invasion into their heads had come, the pain was just as abruptly gone leaving only the ringing of injured nerve cells in Naruto's ears and the wavering afterimages of flashing lights in his eyes. The relief rocked through him like a palpable wave of soothing ointment against a burn and, even though his body was still wracked with pain and his chest was still a mangled mass of aching muscles and splintered bones, he felt like he could sleep for days. He sighed, vision suddenly blurry with tears. He'd never known suffering of the sort caused by the curse mark before and even the barest suggestion of going through it again was enough to make his heart shake against his ribs. Sasuke was crying softly too, the relief washing off his mind from the thrall almost enough to pull Naruto fully into unconsciousness, but the one he felt most strongly was Neji.

The Hyuuga's brain wasn't working right and Naruto could tell already that even with the jutsu released, his other subordinate still couldn't see more than the foggy suggestion of shapes and light. The silver eyed genius's right arm was stiffened and much too still at his side, curled at an awkward angle. Nothing about the feeling of him through the thrall was normal and Naruto knew that Neji was injured, injured very badly in the one place that Sakura said never ever healed: his brain. Teeth chattering, the jinchuuriki reached out to squeeze Neji's fingers, horrified by the heavy limpness of the limb and the way that the brunette barely even stirred as he half crushed it in his own shaking palm. Neji, he realized with a start, couldn't feel his right hand anymore. On another day, in another place, the fact that his lover's arm was completely non-functional would have taken the entirety of Naruto's focus, but something large and vicious was clawing it's way through the roof and Hiashi was kneeling only a few feet away.

Shakily, the vessel forced himself to his feet, glaring with all his might at the Hyuuga clanhead. He was weak, badly injured and still suffering the after-effects of the Hyuuga family's very particular brand of torture, but the monstrous beast snapping it's jaws through the widening hole in the main chamber's roof had all of Hiashi's attention and Naruto knew he wouldn't be presented with a better chance. Taking a breath, he firmed his stance and began the gestures for Rasengan, trying not the think about how the technique had failed him before, trusting that the firm strength in the bottom of his chest was more than just instinct. Even before he began, Naruto could feel the technique, feel the subtle pull in his center of stillness, his fulcrum, where it had always been before. He could do it, hey at least had to try. His form and focus was too badly disrupted to try a more unfamiliar technique like Kaze no Buredo and his chakra was too low to generate another army to tear Hiashi apart by force, Rasengan was the only technique in his arsenal that he felt both competent to weild and also had enough energy to support.

With a breath and a whispered word, the air gathered obediently around the jinchuuriki's hands, moving readily to his command, and began to accumulate density enough to spin. The feeling of it, of the slowly gathering cyclone within his fingers, was as familiar to Naruto as his own heartbeat, easy in a way few other techniques could ever be. He breathed and the air roared, leashed by his will and already bucking to be freed. He pulled from his chakra and the energy came bubbling forth as though it had never been blocked, an endless fountain to chi to fuel the killing winds in his hands. Finally released from the shackles of the Mark, Naruto's chest was already healing, his bones and tissues popping back into place with unnerving lurches and shifting snaps that he felt in every part of his body. The process felt weirdly united with the slowly concentrating gale of his wind jutsu, both the healing and the technique gathering force and momentum as he bent another ounce of will to the task.

Above him, the monster hissed, the sound more like the angry noise of a cat than any serpent he'd ever heard, snapping it's slender jaws viciously a few feet above Hiashi's head. The Hyuuga retaliated, trying to block the beast's chakra with a series of perfectly aimed flying kicks, but the creature's body merely shifted around the strikes, as insubstantial as smoke in one instant and solid, murderous fury the next. Naruto had never seen anything do that before, but he was more than occupied with his own attack and as long as the animal was focused on Hiashi it seemed imprudent to spend the energy trying to figure it out. Neji groaned weakly on the ground near his left foot, eyes open and face screwed up in concentration even though the jinchuuriki was certain he still couldn't see.

"What is it?" Neji rasped, fingers roving blindly over Sasuke's shoulder.

"Rasengan," The raven whispered tiredly, "If it actually works this time."

"Not that, I mean the gigantic fucking thing above us!" Neji hissed, haughty tone barely dimmed by his injuries.

"Oh," Sasuke replied almost casually, "Not sure, but it definitely wants to eat your Uncle."

The wind roared, gathering enough force to raise Naruto's hair even from within the clever cage of his jutsu, heavy with power and momentum even as he pressed another inch to drive further density into the shrieking ball of air. The jutsu was strong, firm and utterly perfect, but something about the whirling jetstream felt weird to him. Naruto grit his teeth, matching his own force to the maelstrum, letting his will align with the direction of the temperature differential to create even greater velocity. Above him, the darksome creature was humming, the sound strangely in sync with the gradually building roar of Rasengan, rising and falling with the same tempo. Naruto felt odd, his intention falling away, growing strangely distant and disconnected with every increase in speed and force he added to the shredding might of the attack. The humming was louder, so loud he could hear it in his bones, filling his mind with a heady presence wrapped tightly around his heart.

Naruto gasped, his mental grasp on the jutsu falling away, replaced with pulsing pleasure more profound than anything else he'd every experienced. He moaned, every fiber calling for even greater surrender, his body moving without his will. He almost felt as if Rasengan was taking on a life of it's own or...or if the technique was being controlled by someone else. Gasping, Naruto tried not to panic as his hands began performing the final gestures all on their own, like puppets attached to his arms. His body settled into a lower stance and prepared to throw, moving without any conscious will to place the rending ball of deadly air into his left hand. The movement as smooth and natural as always but Naruto felt like nothing more than a passenger in his own flesh, the rhythmic humming of the beast filling every limb with tingling force. Eyes wide with shock and no small amount of fear, Naruto braced himself.

"Sasuke!" Naruto shouted above the heaving hurricane still moving like a thing possessed in his left palm, "Look after Neji!"

"What?!" His subordinate shouted, looking confused.

"It's not mine! I...I can't control Rasengan!" Naruto shouted, grimacing in fear as his body moved without his consent.

"Oh...shit." Sasuke hissed.

"Protect him, Teme! I don't know what's going to happen!"

"Hai!" His subordinate shouted, face perplexed as he tried to summon enough strength to activate his Sharingan, pulling Neji beneath his chest as the building shook.

"Rasengan."

"R…Rasengan?" Naruto squeaked as his rebellious hands released the swirling cyclone directly into Hiashi's face.

The ultimate wind technique howled like a banshee as it tore through everything left of the main Hyuuga audience chamber, slamming into Hiashi with enough force to rip the armored plates from his body and toss him like a doll against the splintering timbers. Naruto's eyes were streaming tears as the massed air filled the monster's wings where it crouched on the collapsing roof, puffing it aloft and out of sight for a few moments. Hiashi was battered, thrown to the ground only to be swept up again and hurled against the wavering support beams. With a crack, a shudder and a groan, the building crumbled entirely, nothing more than smoldering matchwood on the ground. The alien compulsion left Naruto's body in a quaking rush and he swayed a little, feeling odd, like his heart was still beating out of sync with the movements of his blood vessels. He was lightheaded and a bit out of breath, the ground still tilting sickeningly under his unsteady feet, but the jinchuuriki as surprised to find that he was not really in pain. In fact, his body was almost completely healed.

At Naruto's feet, Neji and Sasuke were still curled around eachother in a tight ball of armor, limbs and long brown hair, unharmed. Sasuke poked his head up from the rubble, expression pensive and a bit suspicious as well, the darker patterns in his red, Sharingan-activated eyes moving rapidly. Frowning, but not quite scowling, the raven directed his gaze upward. Naruto shivered as the icy sweat over his body cooled another fraction, closing his eyes for a single moment as he sat with a soft thump, belly still trembling from whatever had momentarily possessed him.

"What the hell just happened?" Sasuke wheezed, coughing a little as the swirling dust began to settle.

"I dunno, I was doing it just like normal one second and the next..." Naruto shrugged in helpless befuddlement, "Can you tell who or I guess what our unexpected ally is?"

"No," Sasuke muttered, "But he's still up there, riding the currents, waiting for the air to clear so he can dive back down here."

"He?" Naruto asked, raising an eyebrow, but Sasuke did not elaborate.

Neji groaned softly, but did not rise. The last gusting billows of air whistled away and when the wind finally died back down, Naruto took it as an unspoken sign from whatever beign governed such things that his momentary respite was over. Whimpering softly, the jinchuuriki rose and began picking his way through the still burning disaster. The fight wasn't over, not until their target was eliminated, and he wanted to find Hiashi before the sleek, black stoat-on-wings returned. For a few moments, Naruto hunted in the wreckage for Hiashi without finding anything that looked familiar, disoriented both by his inner imbalance and the shocking destruction left behind by Rasengan. After a few moments of dizzied searching, Naruto found the clanleader half-impaled on the wickedly sharp shards of wood left over from what had probably once been a kind of dais, a throne for the Hyuuga king. Naruto sneered; how fucking appropriate.

"Hiashi Hyuuga, it's time you were punished for your crimes." Naruto whispered, moving closer as the sick heaviness of the hate began to tug on his guts again.

The clanhead stirred and smiled, lips smeared with blood, his eyes weary, but still mad. With one hand, Hiashi beckoned Naruto closer, the gesture slow and grand as if this were a formal audience instead of merely another act of indispensable butchery. The arrogance of that one, small thing alone made his blood boil. The jinchuuriki bared his teeth and stalked closer, readying a kunai in his left hand, the weapon already damp with enough Hyuuga blood to stain the steel forever. Coughing a bit, Hiashi faced him, his composure perfect despite the gruesome injuries throughout his body. How could he be so calm, Naruto wondered, with pieces of dirty, jagged wood poking through his chest and belly, pinning one foot gruesomely against the floor? The strangeness of it turned his already sour stomach.

"Come kill me, brat. Come do what you can. My death proves nothing." He wheezed.

"That's not the point. I have to protect my family." Naruto whispered, crouching low to face him eye to eye. Hiashi laughed wetly.

"Family is…keh…only another tool and one you don't know how to use at all! Your mother…your mother…she had the same weakness, she chose someone who could never protect her…someone common and…and weak." Hiashi muttered, looking through Naruto's face to some memory far beyond both of them. The jinchuuriki shuddered despite himself, feeling ill.

"You killed my subordinate. I'll make you pay!" Naruto growled, trying to hold onto the seeping poison of his anger when everything about the situation just made him feel tired. Sasuke was right, hatred was exhausting.

"You can't. You never could do…do…" Hiashi muttered, eyes unfocused, hand reaching for him.

Naruto stood transfixed, held like a rabbit in the sway of a snake, his emotions a boiling mess of hurt, anger, hatred and confusion. He'd killed people. In some ways, killing people was his job, but he'd never followed a personal vendetta so far before or made so many sacrifices to achieve a goal and now that the objective was within reach…Tears gathered in his eyes. Up close, Hiashi was still a man, a miserable, old man without a single ally left at his side and only the memory of someone who never loved him to attend his death. Naruto had thought Hiashi would be killed in battle, blow to blow, in the heat of the fray and that he wouldn't have the time to even think about it, much less hesitate. His half-numb fingers shook on the kunai, blunted claws slipping on the slick coating of gore. Wasn't this supposed to be easy? Naruto grit his teeth together tightly against whatever noise wanted to emerge, muscles taught and aching with trying to keep his jaw from shaking.

"You've done terrible things," Naruto forced the words out with too much air, like a sob, "You've hurt so many people."

"Hmm…Up close you really do look more like her, the shape of your face is the same…Kami…but the hair is wrong, why is it always wrong…?" Hiashi muttered, bloody fingers drifting out to touch the sweeping waves of a long mane that Naruto didn't have.

"You…Fuck you! You're the one who made this happen! Why are you being so pathetic!?" Naruto shouted, the tears finally spilling down his cheeks, "Why can't you even die right!?"

"I should have…killed you, but…you remind me so much of her." Hiashi wheezed.

"Kill him dobe!" Sasuke snapped, eyes locked to the sky, and Naruto flinched.

A sound, the vulpine snarl of a fox combined with the whistling chirp of a stoat on the hunt and then the air was churning again, stirred by the massive beating of a very large pair of wings. Naruto felt it then, the same profound pull as before, the thumping of the creature's wings echoing through his spirit to squeeze his heart and force it to beat in lurching synchrony. He felt the urge to perform Rasengan, the desire like the need for air or water, inarguable. Yelping, Naruto rose to his feet as if pulled by a magnet, his feet moving into a rooted fighting stance without his control as his left hand began performing the gestures for the jutsu. This time, he was almost ready for the pounding pleasure thundering through his body, deeper than feeling and sharper than thought, a sensation beyond his flesh and yet very much within him. He gasped, feeling drugged as his body proceeded to perform the jutsu one-handed in a way he'd never managed before, he gestures so rapid the joints of his hand cracked. The air gathered obediently, heavy and lazily turning against his palm, but immediately Naruto knew that something was very wrong.

He struggled, feet sliding against the ground as whatever vast consciousness possessing him pressed him inexorably to move and turn, change his footing and complete the technique. The eerie blue glow of the creature's markings illuminated Hiashi's ugly, crazy face as it hovered closer, close enough that Naruto could smell it. The beast smelled like ink, old, good ink like the kind Tsunade reserved for the letters she used to write to Jiraiya, and fine, soft paper. The scent lulled him, comfortable and weirdly familiar, but Naruto refused to be dragged down into complacency. He couldn't do this, not this way, or Hiashi wouldn't be the only thing destroyed.

"No!" Naruto shouted, grabbing his left hand futilely with his right, fighting.

"Naruto! Naruto stop!" Sasuke shrieked in sudden panic, rising only to fall again, trying to move towards him.

"No! It's wrong! Wait! WAIT!" Naruto stammered, fear slowly morphing into panic.

"Rasengan." The svelte monster thrummed, landing with the delicacy of a cat just behind him, its electric blue eyes narrow and fierce.

"No! No! We can't!" Naruto wailed, shaking his head even as the compulsion filled him and set his teeth chattering with wanton longing.

The creature stalked closer, it's sinuous body lithe and oddly beautiful, eyes locked like two, burning blue coals on Hiashi's bemused face. It's paws were long, elegant, and decorated with twisting, sweeping markings. The whirling marks pulsed blue as the graceful monster moved, walking on top of the rubble like a rabbit on snow, tail lashing malevolently. For a moment Naruto thought the azure patterns almost looked like language, but older than anything he'd ever tried to read. The beast's silky body coiled around him, protective and almost possessive as well, the soft fur of its tail warm and almost sensual against his throat. Naruto shivered, but refused the unspoken command. He couldn't do Rasengan this way, not with the way the air was moving, or the technique would be a self-feeding force no one would be able to stop.

The error was a small one, but one the jinchuuriki had made before, a slight inconsistency in the tempo of the winds that came from trying to do too much too quickly, but as small mistakes went this was not the one he wanted to make. Whoever was controlling Rasengan didn't understand the subtleties of the jutsu, or maybe they just didn't have the experience with wind that he did, but this was one little amateur fuck-up that would level everything in a three mile radius if released at full magnitude. On accident, Naruto had almost performed Rasengan that way once before, drawn in by the captivating density of the air and the misleading ease of the hand gestures needed to initiate the technique. One forest and half a lake later, Naruto had finally managed to calm the cyclone, but this one would be much, much worse.

This maelstrum had ten, no maybe even a hundred times as much energy and was being done way faster too. Rasengan now, moving so quickly and without the inherent awkwardness he'd had as a student, not to mention the endless fuel the peculiarly familiar monster was pushing into the jutsu, would be enough to destroy Konoha completely if he allowed the chakra to be released.

OoOoOoO

Sakura gasped, face drenched with sweat as another contraction rocked her with the urge to push, her body held in check by only the barest margin and inching closer to the edge every moment. The electric, invasive agony of the Hyuuga Curse Mark was gone, but so too was any mental reserve she might have hoped to maintain. Worse yet, even though her uterus was nearly rigid with the urge to deliver her baby, her cervix was not open, not even a little. Sakura knew very little about gynecology, it was never a field of medicine she liked, but she knew enough to know that a fully cosed cervix against steadily more frantic contractions was bad. Her body was cut off from the chakra in her pelvis, unable to react enough to accommodate her daughter's birth. Panting she squeezed Tsunade's hand.

"Getting…getting tired sensei…" She panted.

"I know girl, hang on! I can't figure out what in the hell Neji and Sasuke did to your chakra, but we have to reverse it or this baby is only coming out one way!" Tsunade snapped.

"How? How can we cut…when I just…just heal?" Sakura asked, eyes wide with terror.

"Oh…" Tsunade said, the thought clearly not having occurred to her.

Sakura rolled her eyes. Seriously, it wasn't like Tsunade was any stranger to the unconquerable healing ability Naruto had passed to her through the thrall and Sakura hadn't needed stitches in a long, long, long time! Trying to open her body through all five layers it would take to deliver via cesarean section would be near impossible with one layer closing just as another was opened. Gaara and his subordinates had managed it with Matsuri, a fact very few people knew, but the procedure had been so ugly that the woman nearly died and was rendered barren for years. Sakura wished that she'd been intelligent enough to ask how they'd done it just in case.

"Shit!" She cursed, shutting her eyes against the stinging salt of her own sweat.

"Don't worry, I have all of Master Jiraiya's notes!" Tsunade said, her tone firm and confident even though her fingers were shaking.

"Can you…read them all…now?" Sakura asked dubiously.

"Quiet! If you have energy enough to talk then you have energy enough to focus! Hold it together, Haruno!" Tsunade snapped.

OoOoOoO

Sasuke knew it even before the winged creature fully reached the ground, knew it both by the swirling patterns of chakra he saw through the lens of the Sharingan and the graceful way that the beast moved. It flew towards them, supple and fine like a beautiful sword. The elegance of its body was familiar, something he knew well, something he loved very much that he'd been made to part with too soon. For too many moments, the dark haired killer just stared up at the flashing patterns of life-energy in the sky, unwilling to believe what his own eyes seemed to imply. The fact that the gigantic, ferocious, fox-weasel-cat-paintbrush-thing was actually his own, darling, little sociopath was only just secondary to the fact that Sai was dead. Sasuke had never been more sure someone was dead too, since he'd buried artist with his own hands, personally; he'd cast soil into his grave himself. Yet, inexplicably, the fearsome demon rending the night to rain vengeance down onto Hiashi Hyuuga and the pretty, damaged, affectionate ninja were one and the same thing. Chakra never lied. Even so, even after several precious minutes of blinking, Sasuke still couldn't quite believe it.

Naruto was shouting his head off and thrashing before them, holding his left hand in his right as though the limb had somehow sprouted a mind of its own and was fighting him like an ornery dog with a stick. There was something totally odd about his alpha's energy, but Sasuke had never seen anything like the disruption before and without something to compare the pattern against he had no way to know what it meant. The chakra of Naruto's body was still flowing into all of this limbs well and without impingement, but the life-current around his heart and through the cardiac meridian to his left arm was just flowing differently. The chi moved languidly, more like the way thick ink smears onto paper than the normal easy, airy movement habitual to Naruto's energy. If he hadn't known better, Sasuke would never have recognized the resonance pattern as belonging to the blond kitsune at all, in fact it sort of looked like...

His mouth fell open. Oh, that just could not be possible, not for a jinchuuriki…and yet, yet when all other possible explanations failed, he supposed only impossible phenomena remained. Apparently Orochimaru had been right and if his old, thankfully dead, sensei knew anything it was how to push the physical boundaries of bodily possession. Naruto had been so changed after his mating with Sai; his skin marked and his abilities unbalanced in ways Sasuke had never seen before. Naruto was unconscious until Sai died. Naruto could not do Rasengan and then the jutsu was out of his control. Naruto was...he was...Sasuke's eye widened even in the building hurricane as all the pieces finally clicked into place.

"Naruto!" Sasuke shouted, "Naruto, stop!"

The kitsune wasn't listening to him, far too absorbed in the task of trying to hold his ninjutsu back. Sasuke grit his teeth and tried to rise. His limbs still felt heavy and stiff, the muscles hopelessly fatigued by the constant tension held in them while he tried to resist Hiashi's mark. Cursing, Sasuke fell, staggering a little. He had to reach Naruto before his alpha lost the fight against Sai and released that technique, mostly because Naruto wouldn't be resisting that much unless something was profoundly wrong with the jutsu. Even to Sasuke, Rasengan didn't look quite right. The streams of chakra driven air were thick and tempestuous, like heavy chains instead of the usual silk ribbons, and while he didn't necessarily know what that meant, he knew enough about jutsu in general to know it was going to have consequences.

"Use the thrall!" Neji whimpered, gripping his ankle weakly with his left hand.

"I can't use the thrall, I'm not the alpha! Shut-up and rest, moron!" Sasuke snarled.

"No! Not a command, use your emotion, use it to communicate!" Neji rasped.

"My...emotion?" Sasuke whispered, "Ugh."

"Do it!" Neji hissed, fierce even half-paralyzed.

Sasuke felt his guts tremble. His feelings were a mess, they usually were, and he barely even knew what the character of his inner landscape implied half the time, much less what it should be called and how he should respond. Sasuke let out a frustrated breath. He'd always just tried to ignore whatever emotion he was feeling, with the exclusion of anger, because life seemed simpler and easier to navigate that way. Of course nothing about jinchuuriki was ever fucking simple. Rolling his eyes in defeat, he projected a wave of frustration at Naruto and within the feeling he pushed the idea that Naruto needed to use thrall on the beast behind him. Sasuke tried to make each word resound with his anger, pushing the emotion into the thoughts as he once had into his own doubts, hoping it would be enough. For a long moment there was nothing and then Naruto was shouting at him, half turned away and pulled back so far from his own left hand that he was probably giving himself a second degree shoulder sprain, shrieking like a maniac.

"The THRALL! What?! HOW?! WHY!? Ahhh!" Naruto howled in Sasuke's general direction, eyes squeezed shut with the effort of resisting what Sasuke was more and more convinced had to be Sai's thrall.

"It's SAI!" Sasuke shouted, hands cupped around his mouth.

"WHAT?!"

"SAI! SAI! It's him! The...the THING! It's HIM!" Sasuke replied. Naruto opened his eyes.

Sasuke's breath caught in his chest at the expression on his alpha's face as the words reached him through the wind. The jinchuuriki stopped for a moment, stopped in a way that only one of his kind can, only the motion of his left hand continuing, like a puppet dancing on a string, as his stock-still blue eyes burning holes into Sasuke's own. Naruto's face looked frozen, the shock more than just the visceral kick of hope heaving through their connection. Sai was alive. Naruto was in thrall to him. Sasuke felt his lungs quake as the tears gathered in the perfect, blue mirrors of his alpha's eyes and spilled over, streaming down his whisker-marked cheeks in a torrent to drip unheeded to the rent ground below.

"Sai..." Naruto whispered, only the movement of his lips giving Sasuke any indication as to what he was saying.

The gale was blowing, unbalanced and out of control, their own little patch of ground rapidly becoming the focus for a tornado the likes of which Sasuke had never known before and really did not want to see completed. The roaring air was slowly swallowing every noise except the sound of the raven's own frantic heartbeat and the fucking oxygen too, leaving him even more lightheaded than before, gasping shallowly like a fish out of water. He had a vague recollection that Naruto's tornadoes during the Hyuuga invasion of the western woods had been big, but those at least were under control and whatever Rasengan was turning into was definitely not. Naruto turned, his expression stubborn, scrubbing at his eyes with his right hand as his left just carried on, completely independent of the rest of his body. Sasuke knew the blond was fatigued and overwhelmed, they all were, but they were also quickly running out of time. The darksome murderer snarled, shaking his fist urgently, hoping the gesture would convey the meaning simple shouting would not.

"Come on dobe!" He snapped, knowing the words would be lost in the wind and too stressed to care.

"Sai, stop." Naruto said and even without the sound of the words, Sasuke knew immediately what had been said.

The monster shrieked and sighed, the long coils of his glistening, furred body tensing in unexpected delight as the compulsion moved through him. Sasuke brought his arms up to shield his face, the ties on his arm covers snapping madly, trying to see through the tearing wind to the figures moving within the unnatural storm's embrace. Like dark waves lapping at the murky edges of moonlit cliffs, one shadow against another, Sai's body simply lost substance, shifting in a weird amalgam of matter and energy to settle on the ground in a much smaller, much weaker shape. A deep pang of terrible sadness lanced through Sasuke's heart and stabbed deep, drawing sudden light into the part of his soul where Sai's frozen love still slept in heavy darkness. Sasuke's breath hitched. Sai was alive, trembling in human form once again, and wracked with emotion he could no longer cope with, paralyzed by age old hurts even Sasuke could barely understand. The artist was frightened, disoriented, anguished and transfixed by his own inner pain, but he was alive...He was alive, alive. Despite the danger, the wind, his injuries and all common sense, Sasuke was up and moving, reaching for the small figure crouched on the ground behind Naruto.

OoOoOoO

Naruto's spirit-taken farm fell to his side with a limp thump as Sai's thrall left his body in a heart-stopping rush. The kitsune only just managed to toss Rasengan, or whatever the hell it was now, into his right before the jutsu blew a crater all the way to Gaara's palace. Even though he already knew something as simple as withdrawing his influence wouldn't work, Naruto tried to snuff the howling cyclone out like a candle's flame through sheer reflex, belly clenching in fear as the wind roared on anyway. The jutsu had already acquired far too much force and, even without his chakra fueling it, the technique's destructive potential was more than enough to resist simple squashing. Naruto hated the way the weight of the wind was moving, like a pendulum swinging on a chain, totally wrong. He could hold it back for now, but the writhing ball of air was nowhere near controlled and only growing bigger, whistling like a living thing as it roiled against Naruto's clawed fingers. The vessel grunted as he fought its momentum, teeth long and sharp with Kyuubi's chakra as his muscles bunched and strained against the bucking force of the currents, barely holding it back, feet sliding ominiously in the sooty mud.

He'd never tried to release Rasengan up into the air before and for all he knew the technique could generate some kind of horrible storm system that would be even more problematic than a simple, kingdom-swallowing explosion. The thought was not an especially comforting one. Naruto tightened his jaw and tried to think about what alternatives might exist, his mind supplying precious few equally bad options to choose from. He could just hold onto the jutsu until he became fatigued and hope the gnashing air managed to further destabilize, on its own and in just the right way, which was practically impossible, or he could try pulling the energy apart manually. Neither of those approaches had ever actually worked before.

Naruto swallowed hard, sweat dripping into his eyes. Master Jiraiya always said that choosing an option you already knew was wrong never solved anything and a perfectly good uncertainty just might. He could gamble on the chance that, given enough space, the whirling air might just spin out naturally into harmless eddies too high in the atmosphere to harm anyone. Even the under the best conditions Naruto knew so much destructive force couldn't be dismantled without some collateral damage, but simply letting the element do what it did best and spread could work. Praying that his old master would be right just once more, Naruto squatted low and launched what was very nearly a fist-sized typhoon up into the thick, mauve snow clouds above.

There was a sound, the sonic rumble of air ripping into itself, and then the clouds opened like water scattering around the impact of a stone. A rush of cold, a hint of sucking emptiness and then the snow-clouds rolled back to reveal the most perfectly clear view of the stars Naruto had ever seen. The stars against the blackness of the night sky were so bright that the glitter of them nearly hurt his eyes, something he'd only see once before, long ago, outside the hidden village of Summit. The air in the mountains of Summit was almost too thin to breathe and for a moment the atmosphere around him was almost the same, forcing Naruto to pant desperately just to fill his lungs.

Behind him, Sasuke was also working hard to breathe, his whispered words punctuated by gasping as he pulled himself to the prone mass of Sai's body. The wind shrieked high above them, stirring the clouds like whipped sugar, and then there was only the shocking quiet of Hiashi's house crumbling and the jinchuuriki's own tremulous breathing. With a sound halfway between a whimper and a sob, Naruto collapsed onto his knees, mouth dry and eyes freshly filled with tears.

Sakura said crying was good for the body, something about stress. He shook his head. If she was right, Naruto would be never get sick again after this, he'd done more crying in the last few days than in the whole rest of his life combined! He snuffled, the sound almost a giggle, trying to catch his breath in the painfully thin air as the clouds began creeping back over the sky in fat plumes of disgruntled water vapor, the soft mounds of them illuminated by the cool light of the stars. Hiashi sat slumped before him, face turned to the heavens and obviously alive, but Naruto couldn't conjure the will to care. Still pinned with wood and bleeding heavily, Hiashi was too incapacitated to stir up trouble and the Hyuuga would probably just die on his own in a few more hours anyway. Naruto didn't need the burden and he already felt the weight of too many lives.

He was tired. He was done. Sakura was weirdly quiet in his thoughts and Sai...he gasped. Sai, the one as precious to him as his own terminally possessed left hand, was alive too and that meant far more than any vendetta. Sai was with him again, risen from the dead, alive, alive. With another breath to steady himself, Naruto turned to look at the shaking, nude form Sasuke had pulled into his lap. He could hear the soft sobbing and the voice sounded like his, like Sai's, but different too. There was a fullness, a depth to the words passed in breathy whispers between his black-haired subordinates at was new and Naruto realized he should be focusing on what the two of them were saying, but his own heartbeat was much too loud.

"Sai?" Naruto asked, very quietly, wondering if he'd even be heard.

"Hai." Sasuke said, hugging the quivering figure closer, "It's really him."

"Another little...monster..." Hiashi rasped venemously. Naruto ignored him.

"Naruto?" Sai asked into Sasuke's shoulder, voice small and filled with suffering.

"I'm here! Sai...Sai, what's wrong baby?" Naruto asked, feeling both stupid and helpless.

"When will you stop with that? No one likes it." Sasuke muttered, expression sour.

"I…I do!" Sai gasped, barely loud enough to hear.

Sai said nothing else, but kept crying like his heart was broken, like everything good in the world was gone. The sound wrenched his heart and not just because the energy supporting the organ was in thrall to the hanyou's will. Sai looked uninjured, but he was still hurt. He was incapacitated. Naruto reached for him just as the artist turned to face him, the lines and planes and shadows of his face so perfect and familiar that Naruto couldn't manage the effort to keep breathing while looking at him and the jinchuuriki was crying too hard to try.

The soft oval of his face, the paper-white skin, the heavy mass of silky, ebony hair was all just as he remembered, just as it had been the day they buried him, but there were differences too. The outer edge of Sai's irises were ringed with a shimmering band of filmy electric blue, like a hoop of softly burning coals bleeding into the slate black of his eyes. Bright blue markings, like the stylized rendering of tears tracking down a dance mask, rimmed his eyes in delicate tendrils and then ran down his cheeks, farther on the left than the right, to terminate in a drop shaped point just above his jaw. Two small, spiral horns swept back from his hairline, above the crest of his ears, the right a bare nubby suggestion and the left arching back to lie almost like a coronet over the shaggy sweep of his hair. Above the right horn was a little shock of bright blue hair, almost lost in the black. A small marking in the center of his forehead almost looked like Naruto's own whirlpool sigil, written in startling blue for anyone to see above Sai's eyes. His fingers were tipped in delicate blue claws, the shape of them slender and very sharp, and there was another teardrop of blue secreted in the central dip of Sai's lower lip, like a target zone for kisses.

He was different from before, more complete somehow, realized. Naruto inhaled and again caught his scent, the fragrance of fine-milled paper and expensive ink blending with the smell of old books and quiet libraries, but most shocking of all was that he even had one. Sai had a smell, he was a whole person for the first time since the jinchuuriki had known him and he could feel the change in the thrall too, the completeness. He felt the weight of so many feelings, caged for so long and rampaging through the artist's body like a prairie fire. There was pain and violence in the power of the emotion, along with the terrible fragility that came from being in Sai's own, true form.

For a while Naruto just stared, trying to coax his aching, exhausted mind to come up with something to say other than how shocking and beautiful his subordinate was. Sai was crying hysterically, eyes filled with tears, chest heaving, each of the small sounds escaping him filled with such complete misery that Naruto could hardly do more than shake his head and brush the tears from his cheeks.

"I'm messed up, there's just too...too much." Sai mumbled against his hand, weeping.

"Too much?" He echoed, stroking Sai's newly decorated face.

"He is an adult. His mind is complete and there is too much emotion that remains unacknowledged." Kyuubi whispered in Naruto's mind, sounding equally awed.

"He's amazing, that he managed to hide, hide everything, for so long..." Naruto replied into his thoughts, shaking his head again.

"If you had asked me, I would have said such a thing was impossible. I understand now why I always felt him to be a juvenile, though." Kyuubi said.

"Oh, I just thought you couldn't figure out human development." Naruto quipped to the demon within.

"I am well aware of the biology of your species. No, my confusion stemmed from the fact that Sai's body, his mind, felt distinctly unfinished." The Fox sighed, clearly disturbed.

Naruto sighed as well, overcome, the deaths of an entire house pressing heavy against his spirit now that the adrenaline was gone. He traced the blue, an echo of an entire lifetime of tears unshed, a mark of grief permanently etched onto Sai's pale face. The artist's eyes followed him, the pupils slitted now, fixed onto his own through the tears even as Sai wept and trembled and tried to find some foothold. Naruto reached for him, threading his fingers through the damp weight of Sai's hair.

"Naruto...is it...is it very horrible?" Sai cried, bringing a hand to cover his own face, the small, sharp teeth in his mouth visible beneath quivering lips.

"NO!" Naruto replied, too loudly, "You...You're just...just BEAUTIFUL!"

"I...I'm messed up." Sai whispered again, holding his head in both hands and crying even harder.

"Dobe! Don't be so loud and go get Neji!" Sasuke snarled, pragmatic as always.

Naruto nodded, swallowing hard and wiping at his eyes, trying to convince his hands to stop touching Sai's face, arms, everything. The artist smiled a little through the tears, the effort obviously costing him as a fresh crest of sadness, loss, anger, terror, grief and every other emotion imaginable gushed through the thrall. Pressing a brief kiss to the little whirl on Sai's magically-not-dead-and-maybe-a-demon forehead, Naruto rose and limped to where Neji was still lying half propped up onto his left elbow in the rubble. Falling to his knees, the jinchuuriki pulled the Hyuuga fully into his lap, brushing the long strands of mahogany hair from his bruised and soot-stained face. Neji wasn't looking at him and it was for no other reason than because he couldn't see to focus on his face. The fact that the genius was blind rocked him, but the grip of Neji's strong left hand on the edge of Naruto's armored vest was firm. Neji clung to him, face twisted in shame, but unwilling to let go. Naruto kissed him and then again as the subtle weakness in the right side of Neji's mouth made itself known against the sensitive skin of his own lips.

"I'm sorry." Neji said, voice barely more than a whisper and so rough that Naruto might not have even recognized it was him.

"It's okay, it's okay...Oh! I'm so sorry! I'm so fucking stupid, please, please forgive me!" Naruto wailed, holding him.

"I made a mistake. I tried to play both sides, satisfy everyone, and instead everyone is hurt..."

"Neji, Kami, don't say that! All of this is my fault! All of it, you hear!?" Naruto cried.

"Please, Naruto, do you still want me?" Neji said, his voice catching a little, lips quivering against the skin of the jinchuuriki's neck.

"Yes! Yes! Kami! What would I do without you? You're mine you know, you've been this whole time!" He cried, holding Neji too tight, weeping into the fragrant curtain of his hair.

"Hiashi, is he dead?" Neji whispered.

"No, no, I didn't kill him. Sai's alive so, so I just want it to stop..." Naruto said, kissing him again.

"Good." Neji sighed, "Bring me to him."

Naruto didn't bother asking what any of it meant, Neji was being cryptic as usual, but he was too tired and too sad and he just wanted to go home with all of them so he obeyed without question. Hefting Neji fully into his arms, just as he had on the first night the Hyuuga came into his home, Naruto stood shakily. He adjusted Neji's weight, gripping his right arm and tucking it against his chest so the limb wouldn't flop around so much. Neji sighed against his shoulder, nuzzling close.

"I love you. I love being held by you." He whispered. Naruto blushed.

"You pick strange times to speak so bluntly. It's a little weird, believe it." Naruto replied, his voice trying to be light and only managing to crack instead.

"It's honesty. I'm trying it." Neji quipped, smiling a little. Naruto squeezed him a bit tighter.

"You're funny."

"I'm broken. I'll never be worth anything now. Naruto, you...you have to know that. You have to know that I'll never be a ninja again." Neji whispered.

"You'll be okay. You'll heal." Naruto argued, pressing his nose against Neji's own affectionately.

"I won't. My brain is injured. I'm crippled, Naruto." Neji whispered.

OoOoOoO

The world felt too bright, too cold, too hot and far, far too loud. Sai's teeth rang with the noise of it, the cacaphony of too much feeling, the grief of his mother's death thrashing against his mind like a wild animal driven mad in a cage. He still felt her dying breaths and the fluttering wind of her wings, the aching memory of so much cold and hunger, years of pain and desperation suddenly clear and awful in his memory where before there'd only been merciful darkness. Sasuke was there, Sai could feel him, even talk to him when he managed to shut out the rest of his inner screaming. Sasuke smelled like blood and smoke and winter, the timber of steel and lightning still resonant in his voice after so much unbridled violence. Sai sobbed against his chest, both frightened and reassured. Sasuke smelled like he'd just killed many, many people, but Sai thought maybe he'd always smelled that way and the only difference was that the scent wasn't covered up by Sakura's perfume.

Sakura was keeping her distance, her presence in the thrall quiet and very far away, like she was hiding something or totally focused on something closer and more internal. Sai wished he could reach her. He missed her, maybe the most, or maybe her presence was just the way he thought of all of them together. Naruto dwelt in his body now, the way he'd wanted, but even the jinchuuriki's comfortable presence in his spirit was not enough to offer respite from the dragging pain, the emotional cost of an entire life lived numb. He'd managed to wake up, he'd needed to be awake and moving so that he could save them, but the shock was almost paralyzing. Even though his body was unhurt, Sai couldn't will himself to stand or walk or stop weeping.

"It's okay, it's okay idiot. We're going to get over this, we're going home." Sasuke was saying, his voice low and soft. Sai nodded.

"Are we dead?" He asked, teeth chattering.

"Not yet."

"Is this then...the feeling of being alive?" Sai asked, voice so low he was surprised Sasuke could hear him.

"Yes." Sasuke sighed and Sai knew he was looking over to where Naruto crouched around Neji's limp form.

"It hurts." Sai muttered, watching through the wet lens of his still streaming eyes as Naruto lifted Neji into his arms only to crumple back onto his knees.

"Yes, but our enemies hurt more." Sasuke snarled, and Sai felt the emotion in his voice like a physical weight against him.

He shuddered. He wanted to fall asleep again, but the others were too warm and close and present in his mind and the soft escape of his dreamless ocean was no longer an option. Neji was hurt. He was deeply and severely hurt and the others trembled with him in the lapping currents of the thrall. Sai couldn't remember whether he liked Neji or hated him, the emotion lost in the storm of every other feeling, but the artist didn't want the Hyuuga genius to be injured. Sasuke sighed against him, the sound just a little weak, dry and empty with fatigue. Sai nuzzled closer, knowing he could, knowing the raven would allow it. Sasuke loved him and Naruto too. He could feel how much now, and even though the love felt eerily similar to pain, he never wanted to go without it again.

Sasuke understood the sadness, he could hear the echoes of old grief in his tone, and Sai wondered how the other man managed to move when the emotion weighed so much, how he managed to breath around it. Sasuke knew, his mother was dead too, and yet he still had enough resilience left for the both of them. The artist smiled, pressing his lips to the sooty skin over Sasuke's pulse, breath pulling too hard with his tears to properly tell him how much that strength meant. Life hurt, raw like eyes closed too long in the dark, but Sai was still happy to be alive.

OoOoOoO

Neji felt his heart twist as Naruto started sobbing again, sinking back down onto his knees as if drawn by a weight he could not longer carry, the warmth of his alpha's tears falling onto his face in shocking rivulets. The Hyuuga tried to force his numbed mouth into something almost like a smile, hoped the place where he couldn't quite move it looked jaunty instead of just pathetic. He didn't want to make Naruto of all people cry. He just wanted to tell the truth, make it obvious that he wouldn't be the same, lay all the cards of the table. Naruto wouldn't be keeping him as a powerful warrior who could provide protection for their family, but a shattered invalid who might, someday, be able to walk by himself. The future was bleak, there wasn't much he could hope for and Neji had seen enough injuries like his own to know it. Naruto needed to know it too. Nothing was gained with false comforts.

"Please, you'll heal, you have to!" Naruto cried.

"People don't really heal from this. I'll try, but if you want that from me, it's better that you just...just..." Neji sighed, not sure how to ask someone who obviously loved him to leave him to die.

Neji didn't want to be a burden. Naruto married him with the expectation that he would be, well, functional at least and he wouldn't be, not now. Sai was alive, he could hear him crying, and just the relief alone of having the artist back absolved him of so much, more than enough to give him the peace he needed to let go. With Sai alive, he could be forgiven and maybe forgotten too, he could at least be spared the guilt of one mistake and that was more than he'd ever hoped for. Neji was happy. Despite everything, despite the unbelievable toll, he was just happy it was over. He'd rather die than live every day feeling like a disappointment. He wasn't afraid and in some ways, leaving the world would be easier, easier than coming to grips with the shattered state of his body, but he wouldn't abandon them again.

"Naruto, I'm just trying to be clear..."

"No! NO!" Naruto shouted and Neji had the distinct impression that if he hadn't been so badly injured, the jinchuuriki might have slapped him.

"You don't owe me anything." Neji whispered.

"I don't care! You will! You'll heal! You'll be better, stronger than before! Believe it!" Naruto wailed. Neji closed his eyes.

"And if I don't...If it just, never happens...do you, do you still want me even then?" He asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Even if there were nothing at all left of you, I would find a shred to keep." The jinchuuriki replied, pressing the cool, paralyzed fingers of Neji's right hand to his lips.

He'd already known what the answer would be, but the words rocked Neji to his core anyway. They loved him, Naruto loved him, and maybe the vessel had never really stopped after all. The Hyuuga had no delusions about his own worthiness, not that anyone could ever really be worthy of this kind of love, but it was still sort of a miracle. Finding people who legitimately loved him for nothing more than the person he was, who loved him entirely, just as his wise, wise sensei had warned. Neji nuzzled shamelessly into Naruto's arms, burrowing deep into the jinchuuriki's warmth, suddenly very, very tired.

"Then take me to Hiashi, and then...and then take me home." Neji said, voice steady despite the tears streaming from his eyes.

Naruto nodded and stood again, moving into a purposeful stride even as he did, the air from his movement cool against Neji's cheeks. Taking a breath, the Hyuuga activated Byuukugan, pleased beyond words and more grateful than he wanted to admit when the technique rose to his command as easily as it always had, the world finally revealed to his eyes. He could see Hiashi, the broken wood spearing through his body, and the injuries looked gruesome even within the pulsing glare of his jutsu, but Neji wasn't satisfied. Narrowing his eyes, he motioned for Naruto to set him down close enough to his Uncle to speak with him, close enough to touch if he wanted. Neji licked his lips, the thought making his fingers quake for violence.

"He's there." Naruto whispered.

"Nephew...ugh...you look a bit worse for wear." Hiashi said, voice pleasant despite both the pain and what had to be a very odd expression on his face, "Your Master is too weak to kill me...the fool."

"You've lost!" Naruto snarled.

Neji said nothing. Instead, he braced his body against Naruto's thigh and dug deep into the last reserve of his strength, imbuing his fingers with sizzling chi for a technique he'd never intended to use. The basic idea was 64 Palms, but on a much smaller and more tightly controlled scale, a way to sever flesh and energy at the same time with surgical precision. He thrust forward, hand like a sword, the technique much less elegant than what he usually preferred, but effective and he needed more than anything to be sure. To be sure that Hiashi was really dead. He tore the chakra channels from his Uncle's startled chest, ignoring the squealing shriek of a scream as he opened the skin and moved deeper, stopping the chi in Hiashi's heart. Neji could feel the organ stutter and fail, but it wasn't enough. He dug into the flesh itself, gouging the ribs apart with the stength of his hand alone, heedless of the blood.

"Neji...?" Naruto asked, voice stark with disgust, hands shaking against his hips.

"One more moment, please." Neji replied coldly, continuing his butchery with the same icy stillness he'd once worn with Hinata's throat clasped in his fingers.

"He's got to kill him completely." Sai elaborated and Neji smiled, a savage little twist of his paralyzed mouth.

"Fuck!" Sasuke breathed, his tone both surprised and a bit incredulous.

The feeling was the same, the killer instinct, the predator rage almost identical to the day when he'd almost killed his cousin, only this time he wasn't a confused teenager and the body under his claws was not Hinata. Neji twisted his hand, reaching blindly now, too weak to use Byukuugan. He didn't need the Hyuuga sight anyway and the only work left to be done was by touch alone. He tore his Uncle's heart out of the man's still jerking chest like a seed from the center of a melon and crushed it in his left hand, squeezing until his shaking fingers touched eachother. Naruto was saying something, but Neji could only nod to him silently as he fell into unconsciousness.