In the Presence of Fragmented Days, a naruto fanfic

In the Presence of Fragmented Days.

Part One: Thursdays Always Die.

The Panicky Author's Note: Okay, I apologize in advance for the darky-dark-dark way this is written. School and I aren't enjoying each other's company right now. It seems to think that homework is important and I'm like 'bleeeh, why do that?' So forgive mean Sasuke. He's a bitch/bastard/ass-face. I mean it, he's like a priss-pot who's clinically insane. Please review! I'll love you with all my heart and poor, gimp calf muscles! (This is set two and a half years into Sasuke's happy life –cough- living with that sweet ol' cuddle-worthy Orochimaru.)

Psst: Ignore grammar. This is Sasuke's point of view and he obviously isn't very good at it. (Actually, I'm not. Score one for being devious.) He's more concerned with what's being written than how it's written. Yay! What a grand excuse that exempts me from grammatical errors! Oh, and the tense may change a couple of times…I'm so sorry, this is my first attempt at a first-person point of view. (And it's not-a working-a –says like le Italian-)

This story will be in two parts. I want to complete something…FINALLY.

Fragment 1: Days.

Naruto,

I don't remember what day it is. Mondays, Thursdays, Wednesdays, Sundays—I think I've forgotten them. (There existence is the liberal blue sky outside a jail cell.) They've become locked, dusty, putrid things sitting on a shelf tucked way far back into a black closet. Days are no longer days, no longer dictated by a fiery star scowling scornfully down at me—accusing me, throttling me and my pale, sickly skin. This moment's ending…What have you done? My sunset is determined by my eyelids and just how ready I am to sink right back into a black sheet of suspended nothing—a practice for an eager death. I live in fragments; pieces and remnants of smooth, slow breaths that I take; of reluctant memories that engrave themselves swiftly into my mind; of unlearned jutsus crawling excited under my finger nails. I live in fragments of a human being, Naruto, something that is hardly measurable, but is conserved in glass jars in slimy goo until it can be properly categorized.

(I am the chaos of scattered leaflets of papers and papers teeming with tattered, harebrained words.)

---But it serves me. My purpose doesn't thirst when I am here. I haven't felt parched in a long while.

I don't remember much. Not much at all. I think my brain has become a bucket and I have drilled far too many holes in it for it to be filled to the rim again. I remember glimpses, perhaps. I think they might be fictitious flashes. But why would I create something I have strived so long to mash?

I remember a blur of pink hair, one red eye, a set of bells, a red blouse, a lily, a tree with scratch marks, a mask, ice, and that is was Thursday when I left you to drown in the rain.

But these are simply ethereal beings without definition. No body. No shape. No names. No purpose. They float like suds in a bathtub.

But you. You sink. You are stuck. You're all I can remember. You, this sunny being—this cheery, sweet vat of obnoxious phrases. You—The bringer of days. I know nothing else of my life before. My life outside the black stone corridors is misty. But you are clear. By god, you're clear.

I remember— it's such a strange word that has fallen into disuse in my mouth—every conversation with you. Every time you opened your mouth, I remember your small, compliant lips that wielded such brash language. I remember the curve of your nose. I remember your teeth and even the one crooked tooth you had on the bottom of your jaw. Your eyes—I remember too clearly. They pound me in the moments before I am carried off into sleep. They pound, pound, pound, with their drops of rain in this frenzied, arid jungle. My leaves are wilting and your eyes—they're weeping sweet tender morsels unto their skin.

He confronted me today. He does sometimes, but most of the time he just leaves me to my studying. He looked at me. He regarded me with his needle sharp yellow eyes. He always regards me. He is always testing me. He is always wondering just how penetrable my pallid face is. He is always guessing how it will look stretched over his soul. He is always attempting to lurk inside my mind somewhere before his time. He wants a test spin. He can't get in—It's not his yet.

After his moment of pointed staring, he grinned. But he doesn't smile, he cannot smile. His ashen lips cannot compose anything but words and smile-less grins.

"Sasuke," He purred. I don't like it how my name dives off his lips and into my ears. I don't like the prickly texture to it when it enters my inner cavities and drills into my heart. "In six months time, we will be one."

One. I am the air inside of the balloon ready to be popped. My bright, colorful skin will be stretched and patched so another batch of air can slip inside. I am the nose, the ears, the eyes, the mouth—this man is the soul.

"You have been exceedingly good." He cooed. "And I have decided to reward your loyalty."

"Reward?" I repeated. I have never expected anything from this man but a beautiful, and very brutal, murder. I was wary. I am wary. But that is no different then any other moment. I do not believe in Thursdays. I only trust in my remaining fragments that I sit on like an elderly man desperately sits on life.

"Yes. A reward." He leaned forward, his sharp nose only a small span from my own. I was momentarily afraid it would gut me. "Do you have any regrets Sasuke-kun?"

I don't remember thinking, which is unusual Naruto, because the cogs in my mind are always churning, always processing. There's never a time they aren't mulling or brooding. I think of these moments now as white, hot flashes of something clawing its way up from my larynx and prying itself out into the open.

"Naruto." I said the name aloud for the first time since I've left you. It felt dusty and diffident. I didn't really know what my mouth was spewing—what it was leaking unto this man. I didn't really know why I said your name. I guess it's the only thing I remembered. I guess it's the only thing I could feel.

"Uzumaki Nartuo." I affirm louder, wiping the thick dust off your name. I want to say it more often now, I want the stone, stalactite walls to scream with it, moan with it. I want it consuming me.

His needles pierce me; his grin is smile-less. "Consider it done."

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Fragment 2: Narratives.

You came today, Naruto. There is suddenly a space that you are occupying. You're no longer a thought. He grins and punctures as he stands over your limp, bound body. Its sad seeing something like you all tied up in knots. Things like you need to be out in the sun, growing and lovingly shading all the small, helpless pink people of the world. Seeing you seized and captured, it makes me feel like an awful antagonist in a cheap narrative; it makes me feel horribly evil.

"Kabuto has poisoned him." He explained to me as I had been gazing at your lifeless, tethered hands for too long. "He won't be able to use his chakra for a very long time."

Time. I wondered then and wonder now. How long will it be? How many pieces will pass until you regain that formidable quality that once embraced you? That caused me to wonder how someone like you could be caught so easily. I know you are as frail as a pliable stick next to this snake, but how could you have been tied up so effortlessly?

---I guess I always hoped you could be better than me. I guess I still believed slightly in the days I had left behind. You laying here beside me now, limp, sick, soft, weak, sad…I feel a fresh grief.

"We tricked him." The man who cannot smile said. "I transformed into you and he willingly followed."

My mouth was suddenly enveloped by a flood of saliva, threatening that vomit was crawling its way up my throat. Why did I get so sick then? Why did my stomach rumble and moan? Why was my body displeased?

I'm not one for questions. I prefer answers. Smooth clean-cut answers that I can snatch and utilize. Questions have never solved anything.

Before my body could protest its misery, I scooped you, a light, crippled, blue bird, into my arms and retreated into my room.

You're laying here right now—on my bed. You. You. You. You are laying here. I had never realized how slender your fingers were—each joint is a soft, perfectly round lump in your sun-satisfied skin. I bet these hands were your mother's. I received my father's hands. I hate them.

Your hair is longer now and has fallen out of its self-proclaimed spikes to rest flaccidly in your face. I don't like it. It makes you look tamed and controlled. You're not a bucking animal right now….You're just a boy who has been hoodwinked. You're just some silly protagonist in a cheap narrative.

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Fragment 3: Sunny.

I have been thinking about what you are to me Naruto. That is, I have been thinking about what I want you to be. Obviously I desired something from you. Everybody wants something Naruto—everyone wants something. You have to understand that I am an everyone.

But now you've woken up and I'm startled by your eyes. Slowly, your pink eye lids ripple and give way to the blue luster that dreamt beneath it. This rich azure shade is deeper then the color I left you behind with; it's more defined, the slivers of bright cobalt proteins are stacked more calmly around your pupil. I'm suddenly haunted by these vivid memories of you; pouting, smiling, laughing, crying, howling—You're the real thing. A human being and Naruto. You're not a slinky little picture in my mind's eye anymore.

I allow my fingers to dance along your jaw line to measure it. It too is more pronounced, but I feel a chuckle growing somewhere in my throat; not a hearty, good-natured laugh, mind you—it's more like a dark rumbling monster with sardonic eyes.

You'll always have a boy's face, no matter how hard you try to define your jaw.

You're awake, completely now; eyes flaming with puzzlement and watery gladness. My mouth is abruptly forming sentences, verbs, adjectives—I think I'm telling a story.

"You know," my lips dribble, "I didn't call you a dobe because I thought you were dumb, even though you obviously were. I called you dead-last because you were the shortest kid in the class—the runt of the litter. It helped me to identify with you."

"Sasuke!" You exclaim hoarsely, your voice twisting like a slick corkscrew through my eardrum. I've forgotten how terribly pitched your voice is; my disjointed memories are only of sunny beams and silence. "I-Is it really you?"

I want to smile, I honestly do. I don't think you understand how loud the small muscles at the sides of my mouth are begging for me to emit something. They're unfulfilled and so thirsty that anything makes them twitch.

But I don't. My mouth is a line.

"Yes." I answer crisply.

You're a light, a stray sunbeam that has been trapped inside a dark, dank cave. And here I am—some crummy, molding fungi that has learned to adapt without you, clinging to moist, black walls and feeding off the dead.

You're so pleased and happy. How do you do it?

"Then we're in Konoha?!" You shout blithely. I can't interrupt you to voice that were not at all anywhere close to that village because you look so very happy. I don't want to make it all crumble. I detest destroying things. I can't stand the condemning ruins left behind. "Has Sakura seen you yet? Did you beat Orochimaru all by yourself? Did you—"

I hit you, across the face with the back of my palm. Slowly, you turn your florid face back to focus solely on me.

I couldn't take it…Don't you understand? I can't handle your bright rays head on—my eyes are aching and it's just blinding. It's not attractive in the least, Naruto--people need their eyes.

"We are not there." I say softly. It's strange talking to someone that is my equal. Everybody in this black spot on the earth is either higher or lower than me. Somehow, we are still on the same flat plane as before. "We are here."

Your blue forget-me-nots are watering from the biting pain on your cheek. You look so confused and misplaced. You remind me of a child, lost in a museum, surrounded by the lofty statues of history and you don't understand anything. Nothing. You just gape and stare and pray that your mother stumbles across you soon.

"Where's here?" You question hesitantly.

"The place I have lurked for a long time."

You're eyes widen—you're shocked, scared, appalled, confused. I feel an overwhelming pity. Attempting to move, you find that you're bound and laying uselessly on my bed. You glance up at me—you're frightened; your eyes are shining like an animal in a corner.

"Orochimaru tricked you." I quietly say, sitting on the very tip of my bed. Quickly, you inch your feet away from my back. I feel repulsive and evil again.

"But why? Why did you do this?" Your voice is so soft it might as well not exist at all. I kind of enjoy it this way, swollen with grief and fear, but so hesitant you're afraid it'll flutter away—you'll lose the ability to protest forever.

I don't have an answer for you. I don't like questions. So, instead, I place my pale hand against those lucrative whisker marks and kneed them with my thumb. I wish you could take a stroll through my brain at this moment, this portrait of us is tender and contrasting. My hands are strapping, but pale as any precious moon. You face is a dusty brown and as bright as any precious sunrise. Right here we're sunlight and… fungus.

Abruptly, I feel you flinch beneath my hand and I realize that my thumb nail has thinly sliced your cheek. I'm so sorry—I'll never admit it to you verbally, but understand, please understand, I'm so sorry. Your sunlight is being sucked here. It's black here. No matter how marvelous your rays are, they will not survive. I'm sorry.

I envelop you. You. You. You. You, who is no longer a thought. I have snatched you from where you lay and now squeeze you in my arms. I don't feel like a person anymore—I feel like some sweet, small blob of you and I. My hand is in your hair and I can feel your course strands itching my joints. Your face in buried forcefully into my neck, and I can feel your hot, startled breath. I feel so wrong. Always.

Vaguely, I hear your voice through my inner dilemma, through my welling chaos. It's strident pitch is slicing through my inner ear.

"Sasuke, Sasuke." You say. "What have they done to you?"

"Nothing." I answer, latching unto your sunny warmth greedily. "Nothing at all."

I don't lie.

Honestly, I have done this all to myself.

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Fragment 4: Animals and Art.

I predicted this would happen. You're a frazzled, rabid animal I have tossed carelessly into a cage. How could I not expect you to buck and howl and viciously fight me?

It was utterly silent before your presence infested this room. This small corner on the black stone corridor was my diminutive, dark place where I could sit and listen to the giddy, bubbly ring of silence. You're breaking my normalcy apart, Naruto. Little by little, you're ransacking my burrow of standards and organization and sneaking them into your bag of chaos and wastefulness.

You have talked and you have wailed. You have bayed that we should leave together. You have made many propositions and I have remained a great, alabaster sculpture that has not so much as glanced your way with my marble eyes. But you are incessantly talking and talking and talking. Your voice shaves my patience into swirling little carvings on the floor. And not just that…

You're an animal—some captured, undomesticated creature that cannot understand why it's all bound up with wires or can scarcely understand anything at all. When your mouth wasn't moving, your body was. You kept wiggling pointlessly against the thick bindings and it composed shrill squeaks direct from my bedsprings. It was like a dissonant symphony, strummed by un-tuned violins and off-key singers.

Squeak.

"What the hell do you want with me teme?"

It is building. The drums in this animalistic, cacophony are collecting into a brilliant crescendo.

Squeak.

"If you want me dead, hurry up and do it or let me go!"

The violin's strings are breaking and feathering out, branching into the air like wiry blades of grass. The singers are withering and dying; they've been poisoned by the disharmony of their conflicting voices.

Squeak.

"Let me GO!"

The world falters beneath the climax and the symphony goes quiet with all its pale, disfigured players slumping forward in their chair.

I stood up from the floor from where I had been diligently studying and I scowled at your wiggling form on the bed. You're an orange slug I could salt with the twist of my hand. You paused in your ministrations to scowl at me.

You wanted to fight me. You egged me on. You.You.You. You, who is only full of feathery threats and illiterate promises. Like a blind, dumb animal, Naruto, you spat and yowled at my taller stance, my broader shoulders. You needed the chance to kill me, massacre me so you would finally find that domestication was your only shot at survival.

"You don't have strength enough to fight me."

"Let's see about that, ass-hole."

"You've been poisoned." I reminded you. I did remind you. It didn't have to ascend to that peculiar, though satisfying, height. But you're all wild and idiotic twaddle, Naruto; you're just a vat of obnoxious, determined phrases.

"I don't care."

Defiant…Untamed. Someone like me needs to whip you into a mold, because just as you are now, you're a shapeless blob. You're not an art of any kind. But you do have potential, so I released your bindings and you stumbled unto the floor.

I have tried almost every un-fatal poison in Kabuto's control and I know that the one that races through your veins even as I speak is one of his most debilitating concoctions. It converts mighty warriors into a mass of ineffective limbs and appendages. You could hardly stand straight, your backbone probably felt like a drooping flower and your arms like meaty gloves devoid of bones. And yet, you lifted your shoulders defiantly and glared at me with feral, livid eyes. I was momentarily impressed.

(But you're just for show; a little, sweet, sunny icon that everyone wants to see achieve shining status. Everybody wants something.)

The fight was over just as it had begun. You lunged forward, fist balled and enraged, but you staggered and I had to catch you before your nose cracked against the stone floor. And there you lay limp in my sturdy arms, conquered--you the pitiful rag-doll pleading for a rematch.

I laid you gently back unto the bed where you promptly shouted and cried and hollered and squirmed against the ghostly bindings of the poison. You reminded me of me…struggling futilely…It sickened me. I became repulsed by your animalistic tendencies.

Instantly, I was on top of you, my legs curved on either side of your torso. I bent my face forward perilously close to your own, so close I could see your nostril's flaring with the sudden defilement in your space. I know how to make an animal quail and submit. I know how to shape senseless blobs like you into glorious statues.

Fear.

I stared you directly in the eye and a solid tendril formed between us. You were silent. Organized and composed. A transient, sculpted beauty.

And then you spit into my face.

An animal. An untamed creature. I let rabbis swirl hazardously through the air and bite me. You infected me with your disease, Naruto…What else could I do?

Slowly, very slowly, I wiped the sopping liquid off of my face. Slowly, very slowly, I swooped downwards, like a bird of prey, and I maneuvered my mouth unto the shell of your ear.

"You know, I could sabotage you."

Your breath hitched and I am trained to notice the acceleration of your heart beat. I achieved a reaction and I felt a creeping satisfaction. It was lovely…so very lovely to feel that I had accomplished something finally. I've been training my entire life for a fight I'll never even see. How do I even know if anything has managed to stick to these pallid hands? It's a bright elation to know that some splice of me will be imprinted on you forever. Maybe, one morning, as your stirring in between your sheets, you will think of that moment—you'll feel your breath catch in the rings of your throat and see my shiny black pupils massacring you. And you will know that once, Sasuke existed.

"I have learned all sorts of new jutsus that could muddle the mind." I trailed my hand lightly across your forehead and you trembled. I shivered too and felt a twitch, an ephemeral pulse in my lower regions.

I can barely begin to develop the accurate words for the thrilled sensations that roared through me then as I had you thin and powerless just between my thighs. Finally, something was mine to wield. Finally, after so long, I was finally allowed to sculpt and compose a symphony of my own.

"I have learned techniques that can turn your thoughts into black-faced corpses and your voice into quiet gasping. I can turn the neurons in your tiny brain off and on at will and with a flick of my wrist—obliterate all the sweet, sugar-coated memories you have stacked inside your pretty little head."

Soggy, blue lagoons widened as you ogled me with uncertainty. I don't think you could decide whether I would betray you like that, which is funny because, I already have once before…Who says I won't again? My obligations are chained to myself and only to myself. I may rattle when I walk, but at least I do walk freely.

"You bastard." You whisper, your lower lip quivering apprehensively. I thought you were near tears and waited serenely for them to swallow your cheeks. But you simply stared at me, as if noticing for the first time, I had changed. I am always changing. "You…I can't believe you."

I should've seen it coming. You're a sly, little fox, Naruto. Your bag is teeming with tricks and hoaxes. I knew never to trust a caged animal, but I fell right into your scheming paw, you damn frenzied creature.

Suddenly, you pushed me with all the strength left in the weakened strips of your muscles and I plummeted backwards off the bed and onto my back, hard. For a startling moment there, my vision went black, and when my mind finally revived fully, the door to my only spot in the world, my room, was ajar. I remember my lips clawing into a smirk as I slowly got up and calmly strolled outside.

You're an animal who has been shot, wounded and maimed. You were limping and dragging your body on withered muscles and erroneous determination. You were clinging to the frigid stone walls, you're palms spread out over the smooth rocks like pink spiders. You were panting and heaving heavily and for a moment, I simply watched your exertion. It was stunning.

"I'm right here, Naruto." I said very softly and you flinched and your head quickly snapped around. But somewhere in this pretty typical process, you managed to loose your grip on the wall and toppled to the cold, damp floor that was just waiting for your feet to fumble so you would press your tepid face against its flat, sad surface. It has to deal with feet all the time, Naruto, and I suspect it desired, for once, to bring somebody down to its level.

And I didn't catch you. I can't always catch you. I let your face crack this time.

You groaned as I lifted you up and slung you over my shoulder. You're not light, but definitely not heavy. It was a nice, assured weight and it rested perfectly on my shoulder blade. After I lugged you through the threshold of my world, I tossed you unceremoniously back unto the bed, where you bounced twice with a strangled moan, and then laid eerily still. I understand completely; Kabuto is a genius who can bottle unadulterated sadism. You were endlessly tired. I could see your drooping eyelids flickering with the effort to continue the eye's perception.

"That wasn't very kind of you." I stated, clearly miffed. "I expected a little more from you."

"You're insane." You concluded all too hastily and then suddenly, I was molded into a different person. I guess your words contaminated me, chucked my typically calm demeanor into a black void where it could not be retrieved. Insanity is the art of shedding off all ties to reality and to organization and to the very nature of control itself. I am always in command of my reality

It was possibly the angriest I've been in a long while. I remember the edges of my brain becoming foggy and my vision becoming hazy. I was so angry, you have to understand. I was sincerely encompassed in a fiery red fury. I was burning, burning, burning.

"Insane?" I asked you quietly. You're wits are acute; they had perceived my rapid metamorphosis. I was bubbling and evolving. Shifting, changing, budding spastic flames.

"I will show you how in control I truly am."

From here on out, Naruto, my initial motives blurred with my natural yearnings into a fabrication of pure primal instincts. I was abruptly on top of you again; you were thin and powerless between my thighs, again. I began to unzip your jacket and you struggled and I hit you across the face. There was a livid, red blotch staining your cheekbone and when I gazed at it, a shuddering jolt awoke my manhood. I hadn't felt anything in that arena in ages, it seems. It was all very shocking.

You're an animal and I had to introduce you to the fineries of life for your mandatory domestication. Along with punishment, I too had to teach and throw scraps of knowledge into your ears, into your eyes.

Into your everything.

"I've been thinking what you are to me, lately." I said as I leaned forward and battered your neck with my teeth. I languidly smoothed my tongue over the flesh I tenderized and reddened. The smaller of your back arched and rose into a lovely, elegant curve. I yearned to see the knobs of your spinal chord executing the bend while my hands ran across the bridge to examine the small, soft dips.

I ripped off your jacket. You howled something inconsequential, but it did not pass through my ears. It fell to the floor and died next to your tattered, orange jacket. I ripped of your shirt. Then, as my motives blurred with my instincts, I tore off your pants and slid your shorts down to your knees.

I was suddenly irate because you had been hiding from me the entire time. You had this beautiful, precisely-carved sculpture beneath those worn veils and you simply stalked around like any nonsensical animal. Your chest slanted and curved right into two tenderly jutting hip bones. Your legs soared out from this masterpiece, calf-muscles supple and firm, ankles thin and wary, feet diminutive and pointed. I did not glance at the place I had never seen. I was sitting on it, biding my time to utilize it.

Your eyes became the headdress, glinting intensely with collected tears. (It's funny how you can snarl valiantly through pain, but tear up at the slightest bit of humiliation.) You squirmed, clearly uncomfortable and unhinged. This wasn't a situation where you could bandy your fist and escape with just a blue wallop. You knew it. You knew without really knowing just what was proceeding. You knew it was beyond you, so you struggled and struggled and struggled. And I held you firmly down.

(But somewhere covered in your pride, Naruto, you comprehended your need for this. On some level, you found yourself submitting. Your body became limp and pliable…but eager all the same.)

I shifted and moved downwards and Naruto, I licked at the forbidden region, the shiny, plump apple that tempted me so strongly, I may as well have been the red devil himself. I allowed my tongue to venture liberally, and you moaned and groaned and the symphony sat up in their chairs, adjusting their instruments and warming up on dulcet, mixed notes that bobbed assertively in the air. Your hands twisted in the linen, cream sheets. Your eyes were shut, but small transparent gems were beginning to lace in your eyelashes.

"Sasuke…Please…" You panted. "You're like…a…Brother to me…"

I growled with your precious spot in my mouth and you sang out the starting pitch for the orchestra to follow. Charming, honeyed chords began to ring triumphantly through the room.

"I don't need another brother." I grunted. "They are deceitful."

"You're my…Friend…Why…"

"I don't need another friend either." I drew up completely, glowering at your obvious illogicalness. "I did everything I could to try and forget them, and I have thus far succeeded."

You were panting; your ribcage dancing rapidly to the soft melody interlacing in our sweat. My shirt peeled off easily and I pressed my bare, milky chest to your balmy, lean ripples. We both hissed with the glittering discovery that this was possibly the Eden that had hidden from us in the most blatant of places.

"Then…What do you…want me for?"

Your questions were jumbled in an oblong order. They were all similarly threaded and it's simply a matter of looking at the overall patchwork knotted in between us to discern it.

"I want you to be nothing." I explained and your blue, calm proteins peeked out hesitantly from beneath an eyelid. "I want you to be everything. I want you to be my brilliantly crafted paradox, my sweet, little destroyer, my greatest enemy and my greatest lover. I want to defy life itself."

The symphony's strings were accumulating tension, the singers were reaching for notes from beyond the atmospheres, the brass's metal glowed gold. I rubbed and kneaded us both into the crescendo, where all the elegant instruments tilted upwards and sang for the celestial beings in the clouds.

I will never forget the twist of your head into the sheets, the small wrinkles collected on your nose as your entire face scrunched up with the extreme sensation. I will never forget that your lips opened, momentarily, and a gasp dribbled from those lost, swollen beings.

"Sasuke…"

….

I couldn't just leave you completely nude, even as enthralling as it was to view the intricate details I have composed, what if a stray lab experiment found the ordinary door into my world and glimpsed at the unfinished art that I had created? I would have to slaughter him and you would've been previewed far beyond your time. I would have to start all over again and rebuild your delicate moans and expressions a new.

Instead, I retrieved you a flimsy pair of black scrubs from the lab. Casually, I pulled your legs apart to put on these grisly pants, but you instantly clenched them together tightly and glared at me with those crystals dangling in your eyes again. I was taken back by your silliness to cover yourself; actually, I was taken back by your idiocy to veil my own unfinished masterwork. Quickly, I leaned down with all my potency and separated those wayward legs apart. You stifled a cry behind your teeth and I easily slipped the pants on.

You were a painting beneath a black sheet, a sculpture hiding behind gaudy linen. You simply laid there in my bed, collecting the senses and stray mind fragments that slithered off your body in salty streams. Soon, you closed your pink eyelids. Soon, you complied and permitted your steady, hinged dreams to drink your worries away.

And I watched you breathe for quite some time. In fact, I sit here now and gaze lovingly at the fixed tempo of your slow, quiet breaths. Maybe you'll be my feathery rebellion; my logical paradox.

I brush a wild, blonde tendril from your forehead.

My animalistic art.

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Fragment 5: Water.

My face is blazing. It's surely burning my fragile cheek cells into charred, blackened dots. Every limb, every minute appendage is flaming with an uncomfortable fever. It's diluting my brain with lumpy brown sewage and hazardous poison. I don't want to open my eyes—I'm afraid they'll burst a flame and then how will I ever see you again?

Should I even be allowed to see you again?

You must understand…I change. Every day, I am a jagged, clear slate with no lingering smudges to remind myself of the person that breathed here before. Fragments are uneven and serrated—they are not a child's puzzle. They do not fit together. I mold with every flittering blink.

I am ashamed. And it's burning me alive. I'm like a vulnerable twig trapped in the red and gold coils of a forest fire. And what is left of trees after an inferno devours them? Shifting, gray ashes that circle in the breeze like vulgar Sakura petals.

Ashes don't have eyes. You have eyes…but maybe mine are overcooked slops of goo now. I'm scared for these black moons to rise from beneath their meaty coverlet. What happens?

What is this? I am not easily wavered by terror and yet here I am so desperately frightened to open my eyes. Why? Why? Why?

Suddenly, I feel a squashy, warm object plop gently unto my chest. My eyes are abruptly released from their smoldering habitat. There, on my bare, white abs is your sun-contented, deceiving hand that has unknowingly dropped over on your enemy's turf like a magnificent bomb. I quickly check your eyes and they are blessedly shut. Rather reluctantly, I peel your hand off my chest and rise up, a dash of sudden dizziness and overall unsteadiness overtaking me briefly.

I am ashamed. And I feel sticky and sick. My stomach is clenching and groaning while my thighs feel like they are fused together with a thin film of gum. I am assaulted by abrupt memories of the moments before I fell asleep. I am ashamed.

Vaguely, I wonder whether or not your thighs are as sticky and as uncomfortable as my own are. After checking to validate you are sleeping, I slide my hand gradually under the waistband of your black scrubs, passing hesitantly over your sensitive spot, and stroke the inside of your legs. You flinch slightly.

You're dirty too…But I am burning, while you're fire has been snuffed out. You simply have charred, black mementos leaking pus and blood. Though, water sweeps everything away.

Once, when I was seven, I was chucking small, metal kunais at a tree when I accidentally struck a blue bird. It plunged from its cozy nest in the tree and plunked brusquely into the grass with a sickening crack. I tenderly picked up the little, soft thing and it spewed bright, red blood from its gash unto my hands. Thinking that I could clean it, I traveled to the creek on the other end of the forest and dipped the limp creature beneath the scuttling stream's depths. I held it there for a good 30 minutes, my hands going numb but with the animal securely between my thumb and forefinger. When I finally lifted the blue-bird out of the water, the red splotches of blood had disappeared on both of us and it looked as perfect as it did fluttering through the air only an hour ago. I decided that the river that cleaned it could forever embrace it and I slipped it right back under the clear, rippling coat.

We need water to cure us. We need water to stabilize our quaking heads. We need the flow to wash our dazzling blood away. I pick you up out of the bed and you groan quietly. Wordlessly, we trail towards the bathroom.

I think if your blue irises were gathering sights right now, you'd be highly impressed that this dark, blemish on the earth has a magnificently wide bath, 4 feet deep with glistening, translucent water. It's as clear as your eyes can be, sometimes. It's the clearest thing here.

…And it's now more than ever that I yearn to see your eyes.

But, I was the one that forcefully shut those lids in the first place. Because of that venomous mixture that has enveloped your capillaries, you woke up in sporadic spurts all through the night. As I rather violently conveyed to you before, I do possess the ability to control neurons present in the brain. I had to put you to sleep—you were in a feverish delirium, trapped somewhere in a sweltering wood box with no one to liberate you but me. I press the back of my palm to your forehead and find it a mild temperature. I am truly glad I could finally accomplish something.

I do not attempt to rid you of your clothes as I lower you into the cool, placid water and follow closely behind. I do not want to see your beauty anymore; no…I do not need to see. I should never be allowed to see. I am on fire and I'll just create glossy, turgid scars all over your chest.

Finally, your eye-lids tremble than open completely. I am struck by their soft coolness, their silky, water-like depth. I feel a rush of delight in knowing that they are not rotted, dark sores. My flames have not infected you. You blink than focus. On me. I'm the sole, black object you focus on. I can't stand it, my face is burning and I am ashamed. Instantly, I am looking down at my refracted feet below the water's surface. They look like swollen, pale eels—misshapen and misguided. I watch them wallow in their own self-loathing at the very bottom of the small pool.

"Sasuke?" Your voice is cool and cold and it swaddles my kindling scars with pretty white bandages. I do not answer but instead focus on hating the white eels squirming uncomfortably down beneath me.

"Sasuke?" Your voice calls again. I do not look up again. You step forward and suddenly my slimy, wan eels have two bright, confident counterparts in front of them. My hungry mouth muscles almost discharge a smile: they could be friends.

…They shouldn't have any. They're disgusting. They're revolting. And unnatural.

I look up and your azure proteins overtake me. I am suddenly gushing pus, blood, juices—everything is spilling out of my flaming lesions and charred gashes. I am ripping my chest open so you can see the bloody me and run…you won't be engulfed in the fire than.

"I-I'm so ashamed."

Abruptly, your bronzed arms have encircled my waist. Abruptly, your head is resting between my shoulder blades. It's a comfortable, assured weight.

"Sasuke, Sasuke…" You mummer with that cool, slick voice that drenches my insides with sugary liquid. I am cooling, cooling down.

"Sasuke," You're cooing desperately. "What have they done to you?"

My arms tangle around you as the water alleviates our black, putrid scars. We are something like children here, standing dumbly in a snake-infested lake, clutching each other like two frantically knotted threads. All we can do is fist each other's dripping shirts and stand stationary like this against the surge of water, against the embers of a livid fire.

"I don't know."

…And I don't lie.

I honestly don't know anymore. Everything's a Thursday.

Author's freaking oh-my-god-I-finally-did-something-yay note: Okay, so maybe Sasuke came out sounding a tad more insane than initially planned. Oh, screw it. The second part will come out…possibly…Soon. Sureeeeee. Maybe?

Forgive Sasuke for he is a little ice-bitch and Naruto? Well, he's just dumb. (but cute.) ((undeniably cute.)) (((squeal))) I'm sorry if this is crap. I'm taking out my frustrations with biology II on the cute little Sasunaru couple. Really! I haven't made one B on one test this semester ( two lovely 'c's and a glorious 'f'. Yay failure! Yay rejection! Tis the best!) Gah, somebody explain the god-forsaking circulatory system in simple, 5th grade terms so that I can finally make a grade my mother doesn't scowl and send me to my room for. (Although, sasunaru smut soars from my fingers more vigorously when I am peeved.)

I just wrote 18 pages of complete weirdness. Whoops. Please review! (but don't bring up the grammar…I know…it's terrible…it's choppy…But it's Sasuke! And that piece of ass is never wrong. Ever. I'm serious. Never. Seriously. Oo don't question him.)

-sing song- I turn 18 in a day! That meannnnsssss! Smoking a cigarette as I watch porn that I bought with the money I won with my lottery ticket. Bwhaha. Oh. And I can vote. Oh joy.