HOWLING LOVE :.

Chapter One xx Punishment

The shattering darkness seemed to press in around the motionless captive, choking and clawing at him as it crept in closer. There was no light at all, to the point where if a hand were to wave madly before his face it would have gone completely unnoticed. It was an eerie sort of place, and to make matters even worse, every so often a faint scrabbling would sound out amongst the darkened silence, letting on to the presence of a passing rat or mouse. The temperature of the cell portrayed the feeling of the cramped, little place well, for it was frigid and practically icy. Though it couldn't physically be seen, the prisoner knew all too well that his haggard and strained breathing came forth in the form of little, billowing clouds of white steam.

The man's thin, pale hands were bound tightly behind his arching back with some sort of black chakra cords that suppressed what little strength he might have had left in his tired body. They cut deep into his thin wrists as well, making his fingers ache and swell with insufficient blood supply. His two booted feet were lashed together with a length of the strings as well, preventing all normal forms of movement besides just scooting blindly around in the darkness. This technique, however, was useless, for the cell had nothing of interest on any wall, and the heavily locked door was virtually impossible to open.

The prisoner's mouth was gagged as well by a thick piece of clothe, which had been cruelly tied around the back of his head and through the recess of his mouth. He was incapable of speech, and the only sort of noise he could emit were low, guttural grunts or moans. The fabric itself that the gag consisted of cut deep into his pale flesh, drawing long trails of warm, crimson blood to roll down the edges of his pallid cheeks, and then to drip down onto his battered and ripped white yakuta.

A sudden fit of shivers erupted down the man's spine, and with a very quiet, defeated moan escaped from the blockade in front of his tongue. He struggled to move his knees up closer to his torsu through the binds across his feet, and when he finally succeeded, rested his angular jaw onto it.

He was trapped. He barely had enough energy to change sitting positions, let alone gather the strength and chakra that it would take to escape. He was physically and mentally spent and there was no amount of rest that he could every get in that cramped cell that would ever equal the amount he really needed. Never before had he been put in such a hopeless situation, and now that he was in it, he saw only one true way out.

He wanted to die.

To curl up into a tight little ball, as he had so many countless times when he was not but a child, and be whisked away by the cold fingers of death. He was out of the steam that he needed to continue fighting against the entity that kept him so pitifully chained to existence. The man slowly shut the thin membranes of his eyelids and proceeded with a deep inhale, then an equally deep exhale.

A jumble of footsteps sounded from outside the blackened room, followed by a hurried combination of whispering and jeering. The prisoner didn't lift a finger, rather, he didn't even seem to notice. He merely continued to sit completely still on that hard, cement floor while his deep, charcoal-onyx eyes were closed in a fauz sort of peace, as if he was doing his best just to ignore the real world. Hell, he was probably just wondering how long it would last.

Without much warning at all, the bolted steel door swung inward, causing a broad spectrum of yellow-orange torchlight to flood about his closed eyelids. Sensing the presence of humans he knew to now be coming forth into the receding darkness, he unwillingly opened them only to shut them quickly again when the bright threatened to blind his unaccustomed hues.

The prisoner blinked rapidly in his fuddled confusion as he scrambled to catch his bearings, only to lose them again when a the back of a gloved hand came crashing into the side of his perfectly unmarred face, sending his already off-balanced body sprawling to the side. He was unable to spit the blood that had started to pool in his dry mouth for the gag covered all forms of opening in and out of it. So in order to keep from drowning in his own cells he was forced so cough and sputter into the gag in a faint hope that the thing would absorb the plentiful liquid.

His plan actually worked, and he succeeded in getting a large portion of the stuff out. He focused his thoughts now on the task at hand: who had hit him? And from where? Unable to wipe the blood that now seeped from the thin gash mark along his cheekbone, he growled lowly, almost ferally. He caught site of his attacker in a heartbeat, and he instantly felt himself subconsciously retreat.

It was his captor.The man who had snagged him away from freedom only a mere week ago. The man was no shinobi; he had stayed hidden and then slipped a sleeping powder into his drink, casting him into sleep while his body was carted off to this prison. He hated such cowardice scum, and he would love to be able to take his katana and slice this asshole to bits...

The captive watched silently as the hand began its downward descent towards his face yet again, and he did nothing as it smashed his whole body into the cement wall behind him. Blood was everywhere now, and everything was starting to spin violently around him in sickening circles. He keeled over onto his side as he fought to stay conscious, his charcoal eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling as he sucked in breath. He tried desperately to ignore the pain that pulsated from the wound on his head, his vision beginning to fail as he coughed in another breath.

What was the point of it all?! Through the endless days of his inprisonment, people, usually guards, only opened that door to either torture him or throw a stale hunk of bread at him for food, and it usually wasn't the latter. He would be mercilessly beaten and thrown against the wall time and time again. His captor had said something about needing to teach him "manners" and "respect", which honestly made no sense to him at all. Breaking someone's bones and torturing them until theybarely have the strength to breath is really a way to teach respect...God... If only there was one, than maybe his situation wouldn't have been nearly as difficult.

He knew for a fact that several of his ribs, three of his toes, and several fingers were broken, and his entire body was littered with countless bruises and cuts. He couldn't take it anymore, it was breaking him. Slowly and surely the stress it was putting on his battered being was starting to tear him apart. He closed his blurring eyes as he felt something hot seep out from beneath them. Hot and wet. He faded out into unconscious just before his mind was able to grasp that it, in fact, was not blood coming forth from his eyes, but tears. Slow leaking tears of his sorrow, tears of his pain, and most of all, tears of his own damn anger...

It had been a while since the younger Uchiha sibling had had a good cry.

"He's unconscious, Katsuo-san, sir." The man was short, obedient, obviously a servant. He quickly stood after having checked the limp prisoner's pulse and stepped back, waiting patiently for orders.

"Perfect." A tall man stepped forward, his perfectly tanned face turning into a broad smirk. His sweeping blond hair was swept back into a twisting braid that he had handsomely tucked into the back of his cloak. He brushed away a few loose strands just before brandishing two large kunai in front of himself, his smirk turning into a more malicious sort of expression.

He was obviously the leader, for instead of just wearing all black, traditional shinobi garments as his servant did, he wore a slick, pale-turquoise buttoned cloak with a pair of white vertical lines running down the length of it, starting just to the left of his chin. A large collection of shuriken and kunai lay tucked into his leather belt, though they were all very different from the two unique kunai in his hands. Those two had large amounts of katakana written all about their surfaces, obviously for some sort of strange jutsu. The man grinned maniacally, tucking another lock of his thick hair behind an ear before stepping confidently towards his fallen captive.

Though he was a man by age, the prisoner before him looked to be just a boy of seventeen, eighteen. He was thin, much more so than when he'd first been placed in the facility, though that was due to the extremely low rations... Regardless of that, he was well sculpted and had a lean sort of muscle that was shockingly beautiful. They were obviously there, but it wasn't to the point where they were bursting forth from his skin; perfect for combat. He had an angular jawline, a sloping and slightly pointed nose, paper-thin lips that were presently held slightly apart, as if he were about to utter something... His raven-black hair spiked out behind his head awkwardly due to his laying position, and his wispy bangs framed the portrait of his alabaster face perfectly, bringing out his intense black eyebrows and the deep charcoal orbs that were hidden beneath closed eyelids. A thin chain necklace hung loose about his neck as well, a little metal red-and-white fan hanging from its end.

"Uchiha... What malice is wrought by that cursed name." It was the leader once more, stepping closer to the limp body with a now crazed expression painted across his face. "Normally I wouldn't lift a finger for the likes of this filth, but seeing as this is the last one... I couldn't just let him rot..."he paused, as if pondering a distant thought before continuing; "I think I will turn him into something more obedient, for he has been free for far too long. A sense of loyalty will serve this brat well. A dog I'll make him! A faithful servant to do as I bid it!" With that he flung the kunai at the young prodigy and screamed some obscure string of words.

A blinding white flash exploded out from the flying kunais, focusing all of its light and energy onto the lifeless body on the floor. It surrounded him and shielded his motionless form from view as it swirled and spun about him, almost as if it were eating him right up from the spot. The master nodded at his servant, and the two of them exited through the door, locking it tightly behind them as they continued down the hall, knowing exactly what the jutsu would do, and thus uninterested in watching the proceedings.

But they had miscalculated. For as the white light began to dissappate, no dog lay in its depths. Instead a wolf lay there; a stunning, jet-black wolf. It's sloping, narrowed eyes were closed in a pained sleep and his long snout moved up and down as he breathed through his slightly damp, kanine nostrils. His long, pointed ears lay flattened along the back of its neck. He was in a slight curl position; his front paws tucked in comfortably beneath his stomach. His long tail lay curled up about his hind legs in almost a protective fashion. The wolf whimpered slightly in his sleep, curling into a tighter ball as he clung to the edges of his forced sleep.

The once famous Uchiha Sasuke had gone from a rogue, S-class missing shinobi whose name was known to almost all holders of a shinobi bingo-book to being a helpless prisoner in an unknown land in practically no time at all. His pride and mountainous ego had tangled him into a web he could no break free of, and though he tried in vain to escape, he only succeeded in falling deeper into the catacomb of his imprisonment. Over and over again he had been stripped of his power, or his essence through cruel methods of torture and beatings, as if his captors wanted to break him. To have him as a trophy in their cells, to show off to all of the other S-class criminal lords that cared to see such a magnificent catch. He had been nothing more than a pet, chained and kept away from the light. Only then had he painfully remembered what a certain gray-haired sensei had said to him so very long ago...

"In the end, those who seek revenge...it always ends in tragedy."

For weeks the Uchiha had rotted in that cell, for weeks he had tried in vain to claw his way through the cement walls, to free his hands and feet from their bonds... And as he slept away, completely unaware of the new punishment that had been enacted upon his body, he finally began to feel a sucking feeling in the pit of his stomach. A lost, grueling sort of uncomforting feeling that seeped through his slumbering veins. Though he was unable to distinguish and name the feeling, and regular person would have been able to tell you in an instant.

It was regret. A cold, hard, unforgiving regret.

First chapter is up! :D So exciting...

I know the description was overbearing, but I PROMISE the next few chapters will have loads more dialogue

And Sakura will make her appearance soon as well, don't you worry.

Please review! Thanks!

-- xxIndigo