A/N: Hey Everyone. Sorry this has taken so long to get out. I'm going to be honest, this part has been written for probably half a year, but I kept wanting to make it longer and kept putting it off for other things. Working weekends while trying to get into med school does not leave one with a lot of time to write, no matter how much they'd like to. So I decided what the hell I'd post this as a peek I suppose? Final holidays are coming up when I should have around 3 months to work on this, so might as well give myself a kick in the ass with motivation right.

Hope you enjoy the brief dip into Hari's mind.

Chapter 2- Cracks.

It's 2 o'clock in the morning and Hari knows he needs to get up soon. It's cold outside; raining. Not hard enough to rattle the panes in the window, but just hard enough to send the glass wavering, like a hummingbird's heartbeat.

Hari traces the cracks in his ceiling with his eyes, focusing on his breathing. He can feel alertness slowly seep back into his limbs; a sticky, cold sheen of sweat chilling him to his bones. His body tries to shiver as a breeze from the open windows plays across his chest, but his limbs are still stiff, bones locked tight, and the shiver can't quite work its way through his body.

Beneath his eyelids his dreams still lurk, rearing to the forefront of his mind each time he blinks. Flashes of colour. Flames, roaring across a blackened, rubble strewn street. Hooded people moving and surging around him. Hands grasping and tearing at his clothes, voices raised in a fervid cry. Revenant. Terrified. They mingle in a rattling chorus that still echoes in his ears. His fingers twitch and he curls them tighter, to grasp something important he remembers being there. His hand is empty however and the small movement sends his side into spasms. Pain rises from somewhere behind his navel forcing him to curl into a ball to stop from vomiting. His breathing is shaky, pained and vaguely in the back of his mind he swears loudly in irritation. If Tekka or Ryouta or any one of his mentors decides now is a great time for a early morning training session, he's screwed. His fingers are numb, and he knows from the weeks of experience his dreams have given him, that they'll be numb for at least another two hours after. And training with numb hands can only lead to more pain and suffering in the long term.

His side twinges with the memory of a phantom wound, and instinctively his hand moves to apply pressure to the sizzling, burnt flesh that his body seems to think is there. He welcomes the ability to move again with a quiet huff of pain. Everywhere his muscles are aching, a dull throb reminiscent of fatigue and muscle exhaustion instead of the calm relaxation that should come with sleep. He's finding that happening a lot lately. Waking up feeling more exhausted than when he went to bed.

He moves slowly as he uncurls and swings his legs off the bed, pressing his feet firmly into the wooden floor below him. He was dreaming about some type of raid again, he thinks. A violent, bloody, burning mess that could almost have been called a war if it wasn't for how small and secretive it had been. He had some vague recollections of sneaking through hallways at the beginning of the dream, of rough stone scraping against his hand and the burning feeling of excitement, of waiting for something that is he knows is inevitable. His little secret.

His dreams had contained the usual crowd again, as always. Their shadows slinking behind and around him. The pale three that looked like they're carved from stone, with their high arching brows and tight lips. The brothers, redhead and wild, cruel in their cynicism and attention, eyes glinting with anger. The hissing man. Tonight, unlike most nights he dreamed, they were accompanied by the woman that reminded Hari of Anko in the way she carried herself. As if she could see some giant joke in the world around her, one that only she could understand. Only this one was crazier. Much, much crazier than Anko.

There were others, vague familiar faces that he's seen here and there. He thinks a lot of them are related, notices it in the cuts of their jaws and the slant of their noses as they pull elaborate masks on. As always he's never sure though. Even though he's aware of the dreams being just dreams when he's in them, he can never seem to manipulate anything around him. He's simply dragged along for the ride.

Hari's movements are still sluggish as he pulls his clothes on. Brain itching, like a spark has settled between his eyes and is slowly going off. Eyes still sticky with sleep. He can't even risk attempting to catch a few more minutes. Not when there's a chance he could get pulled under again and not be able to wake up till the dreams run its course.

Fragments of the dream dance across his eyes, disjointed and unfitting. What happens after the initial meeting is a blur. Pieces that should fit together but don't quite. There's more hallways, some intact, some destroyed. Moonlight and cloaked figures, moving like an ocean that he's not part of, but moving against. Streets and shady corners, where their knives are sharper and the screams are quieter. A wall with bricks that shift and twist and turn in on themselves like water down a drain, moving and shifting with no common pattern. Hari has to wonder just what that says about his mind. For a brief moment he contemplates stopping in at the hospital on his way out, to get a proper check up, to make sure everything's alright. Just as quickly he dismisses the idea however. It wouldn't do to let anybody know there's anything wrong with him, even if there's only a small chance. It's probably just residual stress from preparing for the Jounin exams. Nothing more.

He finishes tying the ties on his kunai holster, rolling his neck to work out the kinks knotted beneath the skin. His fingers are cold now, and he knows from experience that they're likely to remain numb for at least another two hours. He'll have to keep the kids running through kicks then, he concedes silently to himself, refusing to live through the embarrassment of barely being able to hold onto the kunai and senbon after the last time he tried training with numb fingers. The little brats still hadn't let him live it down.

The only other part of the dream that he can remember in great clarity is when they'd turned a corner and found two boys and two girls standing their ground on the end of the street. The world is burning around them. From somewhere above him he hears wood groaning and the clamour of birds screeching, the scent of burnt feathers and flesh drenching the alley like a rich woman's perfume. The whizzing colours have stopped for the most part but there's no sense of relief. There's a danger in the air, an uneasy waiting that comes before any fight that after all these years, Hari still hasn't learnt to love. His dream self is not concerned however. It's nothing serious. So he moves on.

"Well aren't you all brave" A voice mocks, or at least he thinks it does, the words are foreign, but the feeling behind it is the same. The voice is strange, lilting, and so far from his own that it takes Hari a moment to realise it's him talking. Before he can spend too long pondering this one of the teenagers fires a beam of light at him, fear making his face ashen. Hari barely moves, just flicks his fingers, and the beam of light smashes into the building next to him, disintegrating mortar and propelling bricks into the air. Large chunks slam into hastily thrown up shields.

When the dust clears, the children are gone, and the world is oddly muted. He tilts his head for a moment. Amused. There's something in the air, left behind, and bitter. The scent is hot, the only way he can think to describe it, and it heats his skin and makes him feel warm, contented. His ears feel as if they've been stuffed with cotton wool.

As if the battle cry has gone up, the cloaked figures from behind him surge out, supernaturally quiet as they take up the hunt through the destroyed street. He basks in the silence for a few more moments, all senses muted. The excitement all but bursting out of his skin, consuming him as he searches for something. Chakra signatures- or what Hari presumes is chakra signatures- race back to meet him, the pulse of their energies vibrating against his skin in time to his heartbeat. He feels a smile curl across his lips. And then as if something has indeed exploded from him, the taste disappears and like whiplash, something breaks, and the sound of the alley way rushes back to him. Overwhelming, it surrounds him. Loud and pounding, chaos brought to life. And it is in this chaos, with the children up ahead, screaming for one another as the figures corral them-seperate them from one another and run them down- that the most confusing part of his dream occurs.

One moments he's laughing, basking in the chaos and power surrounding him. In the next, pain wrecks up his side, sticky and cold. There's a gasp, a murderous shriek, he turns and lunges forward. Dark eyes, wild hair. Terror made ugly on childish features. One of the previous girls, looped back around. Stick raised. Amusement burns hotly in this stomach. Whether it's Hari's own amusement at the stick or his dream selves amusement at something else, he's not sure.

Here is where his dream melts again into disjointed fragments and pieces. Next he's facing the girl again, her eyes glossy and horrified as he raises a glass as if toasting her. She swallows, starts choking. Heaving, horrible, gasping sounds that never quite finish. He says something that makes a scream ring out, wailing and shrill, like a mourning mother. After that there's nothing but colours and the screaming, eclipsing his vision and sending his mind swirling like water down the drain. There's no visual from here, at least not any he remembers, only a noise, loud and victorious and triumphant. Though it means nothing to him, it sends his heart racing and fills him with a heady sense of excitement. Head throbbing Harry lets his eyes slide back to his bed, puzzling over the strangeness of his own brain. On an impulse he forms the noise echoing in his head, as if forming them will purge them from his brain. To his muffled ears, they almost sound like words. Almost.

Shaking his head at his silliness, Harri ties his hitai tightly around his waist and slides quietly down the hallway to the rain soaked world outside. The strange sounds the chosen one is dead still echoing morosely in his head.