Title: Porcelain
Author: Your Existence
Fandom: Naruto
Date: 7/3/11 (Feb. 7, 2011)
Chapter: Sixteen
Pairings: SasuNaru (main)
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em…
Author's Note: This chapter kind of makes me sad. And then, what makes me even more so is that is kind of stuff actually happened to real people. Why must I write such sad stuff?

Nonetheless, please enjoy chapter sixteen of Porcelain!

Summer Skies

"Think fast!"

"Huh?" I turned around see what was going on just to get a horribly cold, hard mass slammed into my face. My nose and cheek stung.

"Woo-hoo! I got you good!" Tenten snickered playfully and gathered up another snowball into her pale hands. I wiped the snow from off my face, suddenly feeling competitive. I scooped up some snow off the lawn and pressed it into a firm, hard ball. "Ooo, NaruNaru. I think you can get me?" Tenten teased.

"Oh, you best believe it's on now!" I yelled as I started after her, throwing my snowball square in her back as she turned to run. She doubled-over in laughter.

We had been playing in the snow all afternoon, having had slept the morning away peacefully. Sakura had very good aim with her snowballs. And she knew how to make them sting like a bitch. I swear, I had bruises all over my arms and back from getting hit with her deadly snowballs. Shikamaru had been in the snowball fight earlier for ten seconds before he bailed on us and slouched over to his usual place: the bench on the side of the house. He had plopped himself down with his arms over his eyes and fell asleep just like that. It amazed me how much Dominik and Shikamaru continued to sleep when there was so much to do. Kiba really did bring us out of our rut.

Snowball fights were almost an everyday thing for us now. Sometimes, when we couldn't sleep, we'd go outside and have practically a snowball war in the icy streets, our only light being the dim, flickering street lamps. Every now and then, a child or two would come join us mid-fight; sometimes, even an adult would come and play with us. The Jackboots would sometimes throw snowballs at one of us as they pass by. Other times, they would sit back and watch us, laughing when one of us would slug another in the face or if we slid on an unknown patch of ice and fell. But no matter what they did concerning our snowball fights, they never got directly involved in them. I often wondered if it was against whatever rules they followed that prevented them from have snowball fights. At least one of all the Jackboots in the area had to have wanted to play in the snow.

Having shared these thoughts one day with Rock Lee on a grey afternoon, he said to me, "I'm not sure if they would want to have snowball fights. I'm sure they had them when they were younger," pausing to sip some melted snow, he continued. "Maybe we should go up to a one and ask if he would like to have a snowball fight."

I just looked at him incredulously. I was hoping he was just being silly, however, his face told me that he was very serious about this proposal.

"Maybe they are just waiting for someone to ask."

"Lee, you're impossible," I said to him, shaking my head. "The Jackboots aren't waiting for some child to ask them to a snowball fight. That's just stupid."

"It's possible…"

"No, it's not possible. It's ridiculous." I chuckled and also took a sip of some melted snow. Rock Lee shrugged and continued with his squats, having stopped when I had came to inquire to him my silly thoughts.

"Do you dream of the seasons, Shikamaru?" I asked as we sat in front of the house. He looked at me for a few seconds, then turned his always bored-looking gaze back to the sky.

"No."

It was very early in the morning. The sun wasn't even up yet. The moon was nowhere to be seen, not that we were able to see it anyway, with all the clouds blocking the sky and stars from view. Shikamaru was smoking a cigarette, something he did only in the early mornings. As he took a drag, the end of it lit up brightly, then dimmed as he blew out the silvery smoke in a steady stream.

"Have you ever dreamt of the seasons before?"

He was making smoke rings this time. The last one he blew out he blew towards me, with the ring going around my face. The smoke smelled of tobacco and sweet wine.

"Never."

He looked over at me. I looked back at him. I didn't know what to say or if he was expecting me to say something else. He'd never dreamed of the seasons before. I had never dreamed of the seasons either, though sometimes, they would resemble the seasons, colour-wise anyway.

"You're eyes are really bright, Naruto."

That caught me off my guard. I could feel my face heating up already. "That's rather random of you to say…"

"They're so blue. Probably bluer than the summer skies." He looked away from me then, to look back up to the sky and sighed. "I wonder when the sky will be blue again…" I looked up at the sky then as well, watching the dark clouds roll by at their leisurely pace. When would the sky be blue again?

It had only been maybe half an hour since my conversation with Shikamaru. Everything happened so fast. Too fast. One moment, Shikamaru and I were looking up at the sky, enjoying what the moment had to offer. The next moment, I'm being thrown into the snow face first with a man standing over me yelling at me in angry German. I tried getting up to my feet just to be pushed down to the ground again. I could feel tears of frustration and fear come to my eyes. I didn't know what was happening or what for. A large hand wrapped around the back of my neck and hoisted me into the air and started walking, taking me away from the house. I yelled and kicked, but it did nothing but make the hand squeeze around my neck tighter. Lights suddenly turned on in front of me and I had to shut my eyes. They were much too bright. As the man brought me closer to the lights, my ears picked up on the rustling and murmuring of other people. They sounded just as confused and frightened as I felt. Among the noise, I was trying to pick up on Shikamaru's voice, but I did so in vain.

I was dropped on the ground. People were all around me, pushing and talking much too loud. I wanted to open my eyes so I could see where I was, but the lights were in my face. I was abruptly pulled up to standing and was held in my spot among the people by hands on either side of me. I tried prying them off me, but after a moment of that, I was slapped by the very hands keeping me there, and I stopped struggling against the hands. The tears I tried to keep back started to fall. Why was this happening? Would I ever see the others again? Was I going to die?

The angry German yelling kept going; the bright lights never turned off; the people around me never stopped their murmurs, but they did stop moving. Maybe they had hands keeping them to their spots as well. My pair of hands never let go of me, never loosened its tight grip on my sides. At first, it had hurt where the hands were grabbing me, but after a while, it went slightly numb. I don't know how long the yelling went on for. I don't know how long we all were made to stand there in the cold. Even when I had to go to the bathroom, I wasn't allowed to leave. I ended up wetting myself.

I never opened my eyes to see what was going on. Even when the lights dimmed, I didn't open them. Somewhere inside myself, I believed that if kept my eyes closed, then whatever that was happening wouldn't be real. On the back of my eyelids, the sky was bluer than my eyes; not a cloud was to be seen. The trees were greener than green and all fruits and vegetables were rich with flavour and satisfying. Everyone was happy and smiling and waving to me as I walked by. They greeted me a good day and complimented me on how my eyes were just like the sky, blue and full of hope of a great summer.

The hands did finally let me go, the yelling stopped, the shuffling of the people walking away grew faint and finally disappeared and I opened my eyes to find that the sky was more grey than it had been yesterday. The sun had finally come up and had been up for sometime. The snow around my feet had been stained yellow. Shikamaru was no where to be seen. My legs were numb, and I fell into the snow when I had tried to walk, face first, just like before. My sides were sore from where the hands had been. I found my voice to be weak and hoarse but I forced a scream to come forth.

I screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

And even when the others finally came for me and helped me back to the house, I screamed.

Maybe I thought that if I screamed enough, and wore my voice and throat down and out, that the grey winter skies would be scared and run away, to bring to us the blue summer skies we so desperately need.

"Those are some nasty bruises, man," Kiba said to me as we all stared at my sides in the cracked mirror Chouji and Rock Lee brought out from one of the closets. The bruises were in the shape of the slender hands and were a deep purple in colour. Shikamaru, who had come back some time after the boys had brought me back to the house, had bruises on his arms and a deep gash on his forehead. Only Shikamaru and I had to go through that experience. The rest of them had hid in the attic when the Jackboots stormed into the house. I still hadn't had an understanding on what had passed yesterday morning.

"We were out past 'curfew'," Shikamaru said when Shino asked what had happened. "Or, at least, that's what the Jackboot told me when I asked him what the hell was going on."

"But," Rock Lee interjected. "We have been outside at odd times of the morning and this had never happened before."

"And since when was there ever a curfew here?" Kiba asked, skeptical of the Jackboot's response to the situation.

"I'm not sure," Shikamaru replied. "Naruto and I were forced to stand in the snow and cold for nearly seven hours."

"Just standing there?" Chouji questioned, scooting himself closer to the boy. Shikamaru answered him with a nod. The girls had been quiet the entire time, both of them in tears over what had passed.

"Well," Shino started, standing up and facing us all. "we now know to not be outside when the sun goes down. I don't want this to happen to any of us again, not if I can help it."

'As the days go by, as days turn into weeks, and weeks into months, I await the day, the time, when I will finally dream of the seasons, the times of the year where the greatest natural changes of the Earth occur. This snow on the ground will melt back into the ground soon to nourish it, and the green of the grass and the blue of the sky will be here with us again.'