[FIC] Greener Grasses -2- [NaruSasu]
The next bit of Greener Grasses. A continued re-telling of the Chuunin exams, the forest of death and so on, still with Naruto in Sasuke's shoes and vice versa. This time the chapter is from Naruto's POV.
Warnings: Cussing.
Fic beneath the cut for considerate reasons. [-waves madly at all the people who friended back-]
It's too bright to open his eyes wherever he is. The hospital most likely, after that long tongued freak wiped the floor with him and the rest of his team. Except it's too hot to be the hospital. It's always slightly cold there, air tinged with the scent of antiseptics that make his nose itch. No.. this too bright place smells like fire, like one too many close calls with Sasuke's Fireball when he's in a bad mood. Even if it burns, he's got to open his eyes. Maybe he never made it out of the forest. Maybe he's dead. Damnit. Before he could show Konoha who they'd been bullying all this time, before he got his face carved on the mountain. He had to open his eyes, because if he was dead he had to have a word with God, he needed a one way ticket back to Konoha.
Shuddering, wracked with pain, he sits up. At least he thinks he's sitting. Wherever he is, his grasp on what's ground and what's sky is shaky at best. There's nothing around him. Nothing beneath or above him, leaving him suspended in heavy air without explanation until slowly blurred shadows begin trying to take shape before him.
He's almost sure he's dead now. Staring at himself, four years younger and at least a foot shorter. He looks into his own past, reliving it from a new vantage point and cursing under his breath. If he can find the person in charge of this stupid place where he floats above the frustrating burn of his own childhood memories he's going to punch their teeth down their throat before shoving himself back into the world of the living. The cinema of life thing is overkill. It wasn't decades ago that he was crying behind stupid green goggles while the world around him did their best to ignore him right out of existence, it was weeks. He doesn't need the replay, it's all too fresh in his memory still.
And not for the first time some tiny part of him wonders why he bothers with a dream that makes him responsible for these people.
He can't focus on that for long though. The burn is spreading, from behind his eyes to the juncture of his shoulder all the way down the line of his arm straight into his fingertips, making him clench them in a fist despite the pain.
"Fuck this shit! Do you hear me?! I don't have time to be dead you bastards! "
It hurts, but he doesn't care. Hurt is normal. He's familiar with it, he's a ninja, even if he's still a new one. He's put a kunai through his own hand and made a promise to the pain there. Pain isn't anything but something else to scream through, like his frustration when Kakashi can't see him beyond Sasuke or his hunger when his rations run out and he doesn't have his pittance of an allowance coming to him for another two weeks. So he screams, and hopes someone somewhere is listening because he's not staying in some never ending loop of his own greatest hits.
And he doesn't.
He can still feel the vibrations of his echo whipping against him when the scene before him warps and changes, but this time he can feel something else. There's ground underneath his feet, real and solid. There's something else too. Blood in the air. A familiar scent that makes him want to scream all over again, because someone is going to be meeting their own afterlife very soon if he's got to put Sakura in the ground before any of them have made it more than a month out of the academy.
" Sakura-chan... Who? Who did this to you. "
He wants to be Hokage someday. He wants to teach the people of the Hidden Leaf a new way of thinking. He wants to lead them to a future where no one hurts like he hurt. But if he has to put some of his own leaf comrades down before that, he will.
There's too many people just standing around the place where he's just woken up. Leaf ninja, Sound ninja. A rookie team like his, and another one. One of them is responsible for the swelling of Sakura's eye and the pretty pink strands scattered across the clearing and as soon as he finds out who, he's going to break every bone in their body, Leaf headband or not.
Warnings: Cussing.
Fic beneath the cut for considerate reasons. [-waves madly at all the people who friended back-]
It's too bright to open his eyes wherever he is. The hospital most likely, after that long tongued freak wiped the floor with him and the rest of his team. Except it's too hot to be the hospital. It's always slightly cold there, air tinged with the scent of antiseptics that make his nose itch. No.. this too bright place smells like fire, like one too many close calls with Sasuke's Fireball when he's in a bad mood. Even if it burns, he's got to open his eyes. Maybe he never made it out of the forest. Maybe he's dead. Damnit. Before he could show Konoha who they'd been bullying all this time, before he got his face carved on the mountain. He had to open his eyes, because if he was dead he had to have a word with God, he needed a one way ticket back to Konoha.
Shuddering, wracked with pain, he sits up. At least he thinks he's sitting. Wherever he is, his grasp on what's ground and what's sky is shaky at best. There's nothing around him. Nothing beneath or above him, leaving him suspended in heavy air without explanation until slowly blurred shadows begin trying to take shape before him.
He's almost sure he's dead now. Staring at himself, four years younger and at least a foot shorter. He looks into his own past, reliving it from a new vantage point and cursing under his breath. If he can find the person in charge of this stupid place where he floats above the frustrating burn of his own childhood memories he's going to punch their teeth down their throat before shoving himself back into the world of the living. The cinema of life thing is overkill. It wasn't decades ago that he was crying behind stupid green goggles while the world around him did their best to ignore him right out of existence, it was weeks. He doesn't need the replay, it's all too fresh in his memory still.
And not for the first time some tiny part of him wonders why he bothers with a dream that makes him responsible for these people.
He can't focus on that for long though. The burn is spreading, from behind his eyes to the juncture of his shoulder all the way down the line of his arm straight into his fingertips, making him clench them in a fist despite the pain.
"Fuck this shit! Do you hear me?! I don't have time to be dead you bastards! "
It hurts, but he doesn't care. Hurt is normal. He's familiar with it, he's a ninja, even if he's still a new one. He's put a kunai through his own hand and made a promise to the pain there. Pain isn't anything but something else to scream through, like his frustration when Kakashi can't see him beyond Sasuke or his hunger when his rations run out and he doesn't have his pittance of an allowance coming to him for another two weeks. So he screams, and hopes someone somewhere is listening because he's not staying in some never ending loop of his own greatest hits.
And he doesn't.
He can still feel the vibrations of his echo whipping against him when the scene before him warps and changes, but this time he can feel something else. There's ground underneath his feet, real and solid. There's something else too. Blood in the air. A familiar scent that makes him want to scream all over again, because someone is going to be meeting their own afterlife very soon if he's got to put Sakura in the ground before any of them have made it more than a month out of the academy.
" Sakura-chan... Who? Who did this to you. "
He wants to be Hokage someday. He wants to teach the people of the Hidden Leaf a new way of thinking. He wants to lead them to a future where no one hurts like he hurt. But if he has to put some of his own leaf comrades down before that, he will.
There's too many people just standing around the place where he's just woken up. Leaf ninja, Sound ninja. A rookie team like his, and another one. One of them is responsible for the swelling of Sakura's eye and the pretty pink strands scattered across the clearing and as soon as he finds out who, he's going to break every bone in their body, Leaf headband or not.