Chapter Text
Most people wont ever know pain. Not as intimately as Naruto does, at least. The sharp, sharp edge of knives cutting into skin, again and again, only for the burn of overtaxed chakra coils to overtake him as Kurama's seemingly infinite chakra heals him. The ache of ripped off nails, the dull, heavy pain of crushed bones pulsing to the beat of his heart, the harsh weakness and sting of poison coursing through his veins.
The agony of grief and fear and hatred and knowing that he failed.
Shinobi were warned early that pain would be the one constant in their lives, before even their loyalty to their villages, and were prepared to endure it early on. They were taught to compartmentalize traumatic memories, to dissociate from the pain and the exhaustion and fight on until death. But even the techniques from T&I that Ino taught the remaining shinobi after konohas destruction weren't enough to prepare Naruto for Madara's special brand of torture. Naruto had been pretty sure he knew pain, before. Jeers and insults, slaps, and all kind of abuse had been inflicted upon him since his early childhood, after the rumor of his identity had gotten out. He knew what it felt like to be alone and hated and aching. He thought he could survive it again after he formed his new family, after the certainty that he was loved was cemented in his brain and he would stay loved as long as they existed.
Except they didnt exist anymore.
Konoha fell after Madara's devastating strike against the anbu and root forces, burning for days and charring the surrounding woods until the land of Fire became a literal appellation. Only a dozen chuunin were left alive, most out of a fluke. Many took their own lives, and no one could really blame them. The ones left were empty shells, fighting to honour their dead and nothing more. The surviving jounin could be counted on one hand. Sasuke, a cruel and twisted copy of naruto's best friend, with a blank mask of a face and empty purple eyes, seemed to make a personal mission to kill off any and all who had had a link with him during his childhood. He started with Kiba, killing him off during one of his patrols. His still warm body was uninjured, it seemed, but for the hole in his chest through which his heart had been ripped out. The edges of it were charred, the arteries cauterized. There was no blood.
Tenten followed, then Shino, Choji, Rock Lee, Shikamaru-
Kakashi never forgave himself for passing on his chidori technique.
While the Konoha eleven were falling like flies, Sasuke seemed to leave the three remaining members of team 7 for last. Sakura, their last med-nin, was the first to go. Her body was free of scratches or cuts, as if she had gone down without a struggle. She seemed so peaceful in death, the hard and bitter twist of her lips and early wrinkles between her eyebrows smoothed out, and naruto couldnt begrudge her for giving up without fighting. He knew she had never really recovered from Sasuke's treason, her puppy crush making all of it sting harder. Naruto had never actually expected him to stay, despite how much he wanted him to. He was used to people leaving. Sakura had had a stable childhood with loving parents and healthy social bonds. She had never known loss or abandonment. Out of all the Konoha eleven, she was the one who had had the hardest time recovering from it.
Kakashi was the next.
He was found in the middle of what used to be Suna, reduced to just a darkened crater. He had fought with all he had, until his last breath. His heart was missing in Sasuke's signature move, the blood of his various injuries soaked up by the sand and ash around him. It was almost ironic, in a cruel sort of way. The student killing his teacher with his own technique, ripping his heart out twice. Betrayal was a family trait, as Kakashi had once mused aloud. Naruto only had the time to fish for the bright orange and well loved copy of Icha Icha and stroke his cheek through a ripped but mysteriously still mostly intact mask before they needed to be on the move again.
He kept on fighting with the dozen of shinobi left, gaining some, losing more, but it seemed as if Kakashi's death marked the beginning of the end. They were tired, exhausted of the constant fight with no end in sight. The Will of Fire was dead and fighting was the only thing they still knew how to do, but they were losing. Badly.
And then they lost Naruto.
He barely remembers being caught, actually. The haze of pain made it hard to remeber anything. He remembers feeling Sasuke's chakra at the edge of his sensory range, Kurama growling a warning at him, and then small flashes of fight. And then darkness.
Waking up in a damp cave. Madara's cruel smirk and smug, victorious eyes. The certainty that they had won and he had lost, as the last of the shinobi would never be able to survive without their main powerhouse. His jailers slow, purposefully loud steps on damp stone, the cold shackles clicking shut on his wrists.
The pain of the first cut, of the tenth broken bone, of the hundreth burn. Time was meaningless in that cell. It could have been hours, weeks, or simple minutes. At first, it seemed excruciatingly long. After a time, it still was. Time blindness was taking over anything, and without window or any sort of regularity between meals, he had no way of measuring the time anymore. But it didnt matter, nothing mattered, because they had lost and deep down, under all the hate and fear he couldnt help but feel that he deserved the pain. He had failed. The world was ash and bones and dust, and it was his fault.
Kurama too fell silent after a while. His chakra was constantly being used to repair the damage done to his hosts body, and after a while spent howling in anger at Madara and in raw desperation at everything, he fell unconscious and didnt wake up. Naruto had never felt so thoroughly alone and hopeless.
He just wanted to die.
--------------
Naruto wakes, immediately aware and ready as every shinobi got used to during the last years. War had a way of keeping everyone on their toes. His first reflex is to check his limbs for any noticable issue, then his surroundings. Arms, legs, stomach, shoulders hands, fingers, toes. The noise of leaves rustling, footsteps under him, wood creaking slightly. The smell of laundry detergent and dust.
Something is wrong. Something is wrong-
He's not in pain.
He jerks up in a crouch.
His limbs obey him, his muscles flowing in a fluid dance that he hadnt felt in weeks and had never appreciated before it was too late and he was immobilized, only waiting for death, knowing that hed never move again.he sinks a little bit in the soft mattress under him, softer than anything he's slept on in the past year, the sheets crinkling and dipping under his weight.
He scans the around himself with quick, sharp look, flaring his chakra as much as he dares without being obvious to any possible enemy nearby. A darkened, slightly messy room, discolored wallpaper, wooden floors, a desk covered with heavy books and scrolls and different knickknacks, a cheap and rickety looking chair. A simple wardrobe, with clothes strewn carelessly around it and a clean laundry basket at its side just waiting to be pu away. An open section of the wall leading to another room he couldnt see from his position on the small one-person bed, covered in worn and soft blue sheets. An open window.
Naruto stays frozen, his eyes darting at every part of the room and cataloguing it. Where ?-
He stands up on unsteady legs. His knees shake and almost give out under him, but he manages to make it to the open window on the right of the beds headboard. Adrenaline courses through his veins, makes him shaky and sharp, ready to run at any moment, and his hands clutch the window seal in a white knuckled grip as he glances outside. His breathing stutters in his chest, and his mouth falls open.
Konoha.
The yellow, soft lights of lanterns greet him. As if they had never dissapeared. The carved faces of the hokages looking over sinuous roads and flat roofs, where shinobi dart quickly from one building to the other, the background noise of crowds and wind and leaves. The moon, shining big and bright and full in the sky.
Naruto shakes his head weakly, his eyes still hungrily taking in the impossible sight.
"This is impossible" he whispers.
Konoha is dead. Konoha doesnt exist anymore. He was there, he saw Obito slaughtering civilians and shinobi alike and saw the fire eating the wooden buildings up like they were made out of paper, smelled the smoke and the metallic sweet scent blood and acid tang of fear, the gruesome smell of burning flesh. He felt the hundreds of chakra signatures being snuffed out like mere candles, heard the screams of terror and pain, the shroud of horror and death that fell on the lands and never quite left.
And yet here it stands. Whole, with hundreds of content and living chakra signatures, smelling of food and trees and people and life. It cant be real.
It can't be.
Naruto hears a crack, and he jumps, startled out of his thoughts for a second. Long enough to fall to his knees. He presses his forehead to the smooth white wallpaper, his hands still hanging on to the window in a death grip. He barely feels it. This is all an illusion, some cruel new jutsu of Madara's invention after he got bored of the physical maiming and wanted to try something new, isn't it ? It has to be, the moon had fallen out of the sky a long time ago, the real moon. It can't be real, it didnt even feel real, it felt as if he was outside his body and looking at it from above and from his own eyes at the same time, looking as his trembling hands were getting whiter and whiter and his shoulders started to shake. As if he was in a dream, except this isnt a dream, this is a fucking nightmare-
This isn't real. It isn't real. It doesn't exist. It can't exist, it doesn't even feel real, it isn't real.
Naruto is distantly aware of some noise, something deep and hurried with a growling edge, but he can't seem to focus on it, because nothing is real, it can't be real, and maybe he's dead and this is his personal hell and why isn't he waking up-
"-id ! Naruto ! Answer me ! You need to breathe ! Breathe !"
Coming back to his body, Naruto is suddenly aware of the burning in his lungs, his constricted throat, his shaky limbs. His hand and feet are tingling, pins and ice needles covering them as if they were asleep. He opens his mouth, tries to breathe in, and the air floods his lungs in a shaky rasp, before leaving them just as quickly. He tries again, and this time he breathes, but too little too fast again, as if his lungs were too tight to fill up correctly. Tears start to fall from his eyes, his chest heaving with his quick breaths, his heart pounding away in his chest. Distantly, in a detached sort of way, he remembers sakura telling him about hyperventilation, after helping a dark haired shinobi through a panic attack. What he should do if he were to help someone through one himself, which had gotten likelier the longer the war dragged on.
He tries to calm his breathing, following the pattern Sakura showed him, pushing away the grief he felt at the memory of her the best he could, but she's dead, how could konoha be real if she died, if Kakashi-
"-reat kid, that's amazing. You're doing amazing, keep breathing, in, and out, slowly. There you go, just keep on breathing, focus on my voice. You're okay, we're okay, we're safe, you're doing gr-"
"K-kurama ?" Naruto stutters out.
"Yeah, it's me, brat. I'm here, I'm fine, just keep on breathing for me, okay ?" His voice is uncharacteristically soft and gentle, the steady stream of words soothing in a way that nothing else could ever really be.
Naruto breathes, relief making him feel lightheaded and tired. Kurama was back. He wasnt dead. Madara hadnt taken him away like he had everything else, and he thinks that even if this is all an illusion maybe he can do it just to talk to his friend just a little more.
But what if he was just part of the illusion ? What if madara had found a way of recreating his voice as he had recreated Konoha, what if he dissapeared if he woke up-
"Brat ! Stay with me ! Keep on breathing, kid, stop thinking, just breathe, godammit-"
Naruto let's out a weak huff of laughter, but tries to obey. In, and out. In, and out. Again and again, shoving thoughts out of his mind the best he could, concentrating on counting the seconds between his breaths.
He doesnt know how long it takes him to calm down, Kurama wrapping him in warm, golden chakra and steadily talking to him all the time, with his head pushed against the wall and hands clenched to the window sill, but after a while his tears seemed to run out and his breathing to stabilize, leaving behind a comfortable cottony sensation. As if he was swimming through clouds, his body immobile and face comfortably warm. Exhausted. Feeling nothing, thinking about nothing in particular.
"Go to bed, kid. We'll talk when you wake up, alright ? I'll watch over you for tonight."
Naruto nods numbly, his forehead rubbing against the soft wallpaper. Sleep sounds nice. His eyelids seem to fall by themselves.
Somehow, he stands up, unclenches his hand from the windowsill, and walks to his bed dazedly, where he curls up in a fetal position and sinks into a light but exhausted sleep, basking in the combination of Kurama's chakra and the absolute blankness of his thought.