Current:

Defined as belonging to a present time, being in progress now or being prevalent during a distinctive time.

Also synonymous with circulating, running or flowing, passing from one to another. A general tendency; a steady onward movement.

It was when she let her guard down, the moment she took a breather and closed her eyes to smile.

It was the moment she thought they had finally come to an understanding. A respect. A…belonging of sorts. They were supposed to get out, survive, train together and become great together. She thought they would be friends, family. He was meant to revive his clan.

She had just been laughing and he had just been smirking.

No. He was bleeding.

She knew that blood was on her as well, speckling her face and neck like a red robin's egg. She could smell it. It clawed at her nose.

"What's with that stupid face, dobe?" he asked her, scoff breathless on his tongue. She wondered what she looked like, right then. How pathetic she must appear to him, panting and weak, fallen to the ground and useless. Crying. She realized she was crying and she couldn't stop.

A wet chuckle slopped down his chin, bright red and cheery.

No, she wanted him to slurp it back up into him, for the dribbling blood to disappear and just never exist.

She couldn't breathe.

He swayed, shoulders wilting and she could see the devil sitting there atop them and sharpening his knives, ready to take him. The rusty 'skttch' of the blade transmuting to a sharp ring splitting her head, cutting clean from ear to ear like a screaming smile. He forced out a breath and another, and another, but she could see how the devil was just waiting to take him.

The blood was on his chin, the weariness was in his eyes, and the needles were in his skin.

He still stood strong.

Uchiha Sasuke was not one to kneel in front of people like Uzumaki Naruto, let alone his enemies.

Sasuke stood strong above her and she lay frozen to the ground. He moaned through his heaving chest and tumbled a little to the left before catching himself. Her hand twitched toward him, to catch him and help him because they were teammates and that's what teammates did, but her body refused to move.

All except her mouth, jaw cracking open in anger as Naruto demanded, "Why?!"

It was the only part of herself she could move, arms and legs ossified with her gaze bonded to the Uchiha crest on his back. Sasuke remained silent, a dark eye fluttering over her with… Sadness? Regret? Pity?!

Anger surged through the girl, poisonous and suffocating. She wanted to let it out, to let it burst. To scream and to charge and—!

"Why?" she whimpered.

It came out weak and quiet and nothing like she intended.

The question bounced hollowly off the ice mirrors caging them, without enough power to escape. They couldn't escape.

With an agonized grunt, Sasuke tilted his head towards her, stared her straight in the eyes, but Naruto could barely see him anymore through her—Angry? Sad? Confused? Frustrated?—tears.

"I hated you," Sasuke proclaimed with a—ah, she could see that one—pained smile. A few of his own tears fell from his eyes. They were the same color of the blood flowing from his body. They were the same color as the eyes he had just awoken, one step towards his goal and ambition. Eyes that softened while focusing on her.

She wanted to hassle him, laugh till her insides burst because the mopey, proud, arrogant, hard Uchiha was crying and maybe if she did then things could be normal and he'd be calling her dobe and she'd be screaming at his stupid smirk. But then that devil plucked the tears from Sasuke's cheeks and tasted them on his tongue.

Naruto focused on trying to breath. Her lungs felt oh so full but empty of air and it was all she could do to just try to breath.

A senbon protruded just an inch away from his left eye, trembling as he blinked. Her fingers twitched against the phantom holding them in place once more; that needle needed to be removed. She wouldn't let it damage his clan's pride.

"I hated you all, for being happy and for having what I don't," Sasuke continued hoarsely, nothing like the biting bastard she knew, "I just—"

Naruto's airless breath skimmed her tongue in a desperate screech: "I didn't ask for your help!" Accusing. Why was she accusing him? Why… But how could he…?

The devil's ringing in her ears cried louder.

Sasuke looked contemplative for a moment, head titled to the side. Naruto noticed how the hair framing his face was stuck there, glued by blood and sweat and crust. It somehow still looked ridiculously good and it that need to laugh suddenly bubbled stronger in her.

She didn't know how she could ever want to laugh. She hated that she wanted to laugh.

A few seconds between them and Saskue sighed, closing his eyes. "I don't know," the boy confessed, "My body just moved on its own…" His face scrunched as the words pried themselves from his lips as if he wanted to stop them, but couldn't; they needed to come out and he was no longer in control.

His breathing began to slow, little by little, until his shoulders and chest barely raised. Every movement was an effort, a fight all in its own against some kind of sludge pouring and filling into him so that his body had to trudge through just to breathe. But he kept moving, breathing, fighting as well he could while Naruto was stilled on the ground in his shadow.

Move. She needed to move! She needed to reach out to him, tear that devil off his shoulders and rip the senbon from his body, but the tremors sizzling through her body held her still when all she wanted—no needed—was to move to him.

Naruto flinched when Sasuke coughed. His whole body quaked with exertion, blood bubbling from between his lips. Forcing out a few more words, his eyes turned to the sky. They were pondering, nostalgic as he said, "That man… My brother, I told myself I wouldn't die until I killed him…"

Naruto had to strain to hear him.

"And you won't!" Naruto shrieked, shaking her head against the inevitable in front of her, "You can't and you won't die, believe it!" Red flew into her sight and for a long moment she was sure more of Sasuke's blood was drenched onto her before she realized it was her own hair, sticking to her face wet with tears. She'd never hated the color of her hair more than that moment. It was crimson. It was red. Bloody.

The way Sasuke looked at her, as her gaze was wide and terrified and her mouth trembling and chest heaving… she couldn't even keep eye contact and her words soon assimilated into the mist. Gone as if they'd never existed.

"Don't die, too, Naruto," Sasuke murmured. His eyes hardened with the last vestiges of his defiance, the same defiance that hooked into his mouth and drew it into a victorious smirk.

It looked peaceful on his face, eyes filled with retribution and fire.

She supposed that was how he was, who he was: retribution and fire.

"Win."

It wasn't a request or a statement. It was a prophecy he believed—no he knew—she would fulfill.

And then he fell in Naruto's arms and she couldn't even move to catch him as his head cracked against her chest, neck twisting uncomfortably as his body slid down hers with the needles grabbing greedily at her clothes.

Naruto was more than sure the world had died there with him, in that moment, and time itself was numbed.

"Jumping without hesitation to save a precious person despite knowing it was a trap," the fake hunter nin intoned eventually, his voice layering multiple times over from his many reflections. "He is a shinobi that deserves respect," he continued, "You have my apologies."

Scrambling, Sasuke's head rolling off her knees, Naruto curled over her teammate's body and hugged the boy to her. She was shaking and trembling, finally free of the sediment holding them still only for her fingers to flutter at his neck. If she pressed down too hard at his pulse, it didn't matter. Her palms scraped by the points of senbon as they skimmed down his chest, to his arms. He was still warm and if she closed her eyes and focused, it was almost like he was still breathing with her. But the smell of iron, sticky and mocking, swallowed the illusion.

The enemy ninja melted out of the mirror, his sandals tapping solid ground before speaking again. "Is this your first death of a friend?" he asked beseechingly. He took a step forward, hesitating for a moment as he watched the two in front of him. Naruto tried to encompass her teammate, block the Uchiha from his view, but there were his legs and a dangling hand flopped on her arm.

The devil clinging to his shoulders jumped down her throat and forced itself in to her chest. He started to scratch.

"Shut up," Naruto whispered. Brushing through Sasuke's hair, Naruto commanded a careful hand to remove the senbon by his eye. It was trembling, but through sheer will she steadied it enough to pull the thing out. She could do that, at least, even if it was too late. She needed to protect his precious eyes: he was always grossly prideful of that stupid clan of his and their stupid eyes.

The eyes that could see the future, people had said, and remember everything they had seen. He had always told her, tauntingly, that when he got the sharingan she would have no chance in getting even close to his power.

Yet he was the one in her arms dead and she was the one left alive.

"This is the shinobi way; the truth."

The devil started to pound.

"Shut up!" Naruto roared, clenching her fists and eyes, tears slobbering down her cheeks. A sob fluttered past her lips without her permission. She heard her enemy take another step closer, but didn't find the heart to move. Not when Sasuke looked so peaceful in her arms.

But he's dead, she reminded herself.

Sasuke died because she was too weak.

Naruto felt it all break within her, something give way, and she embraced the poisonous surge from behind the dam as the devil started to scream.

Sasuke was dead because he killed him.

And he was going to fucking die.

It was an explosive burst of chakra, the energy curling around her body and pulled at her shirt and pants. Naruto's crimson hair whipped around her head like a bloody crown, caught in the storm. The needles puncturing her body burst from her and the holes began to stitch themselves together with a soft hiss lost to the roar of chakra.

There was a burn settling into her eyes that dug further than tears, a cracking in her fingers as they split apart and rearranged. Her teeth, sharpening and growing longer, pierced through the lip she was biting and tore free when she shrieked leaving her mouth in tatters for barely a second before the skin sealed itself shut into a sneer.

The shinobi across from her observed the change in a still sort of silence, even as the sense of death battered his body. The girl shakily made it to her feet, arms twitching in their sockets and head raised to the mirrored sky. She took a deep, languid breath and breathed in reverence before exhaling fury. She was quiet, tranquil even, and he almost believed that she'd forgotten about him.

But he could feel her glare through the reflection, feel its penetrating stillness she forced upon him as his own body shuddered to a halt. Solemn, he waited against the urging of his instincts until Naruto's face lowered to meet him.

Her eyes were rage and spilt blood.

Senbon materialized between his fingers and were let loose as his muscles jerked to motion. Flipping back to gain distance and more weapons, the shinobi tensed when that gaze stalked him with predatory patience, the senbon flung aside by the undulating movements of Naruto's chakra and she barely twitched. He threw another barrage, hastily followed by another to cover his return to the ice mirrors when the girl's eyes narrowed.

Claws scraped the ground as Naruto grabbed him and smashed him to the pavement. The mask rattled sharply as it slammed to the ground, but it was the scream piercing through the stoic porcelain that Naruto smiled at. A primal sort of baring her teeth in dominance when she squeezed harder at his already crushed ankle. The scream gurgled off to a moan and it was a fucking symphony.

The world cloistered around them in a dissonance of light and thundering din rushing around her like a shooting star, cracking; the taste of ash on her tongue and arid winds heating her face. Air that grew denser, saturated and thick.

She could only taste his fear, hear his shuddering breath, and see his mask underneath her with absolute clarity. It was everything she had ever wanted.

His mask, his stupid mask. She wanted to smash it shatter it destroy it to witness the pain splattered red across her enemy's face and the fear scorched into his eyes at the sight of her power.

The world glared brighter, blinding as if she were swimming in a crystalline prism and dyeing her periphery blues and greens while the abomination under her was orange as he writhed. All she cared to see was his damned mask ruin as the bastard writhed.

His finger scrabbled at her grip, long since giving up on stabbing through her hands with senbon. His free foot smashed into her ribs hard enough for her to stagger and growl, so Naruto pinned it to the ground, fingers diving into his thigh's muscle before they settled like a weary traveler nuzzling into a bed, warm within his flesh.

Another moan sloughed through her being and a wave of dark pleasure rippled up her. A shiver, biting her lip in ecstasy. Yes, she'd pluck that cursed eye from its socket and crush it, squeeze it until the goo dripped down exposing its truth—the proof!—and bleeding through her claws. She'd carve into his maimed face, trace each swirl, one by one, over and over, down to the bone.

The mask was white dipped orange and she needed to purify it crimson.

The swell of detached sound around her reverberated heavily, pounding like a drum to direct her heartbeat, deafening. With each pulse the lights got brighter, the bluster louder, brighter and louder, more and more chakra pressurizing around her and as she thrashed under the surface.

She heard his scream past the cacophony now thundering in her ears, but the mask was just in the way and needed to go.

Freeing her hands, Naruto crawled up the shinobi's body marking the ground with the red staining her hands. Her prey grasped at her collar, yanking at it and pressing against her neck with weak fingers.

The thickened markings on her cheeks pulled with her sneer. She shoved her knee into his leg wound, stilling the shinobi's hands as they dropped to the ground. The dome around them followed in collapse, a blizzard of glittering shards raining down onto the bridge's ground with the tinkling of a wind chime and the wrenching of wailed fury.

"Where's all your shit about inevitability now, bastard?" Naruto howled at him. Around her the world pulsed into obscurity even as the man's glare underneath her sharpened into focus. She punched him once, then twice and then his hands were back at her neck, both wrapping heavily around her and pressing, but she couldn't feel it. Chakra began to hum in her hand, coalescing the blues and greens dancing at the edges of her vision into a sphere.

Naruto watched as his hands tightened into a vice but she laughed, a cruel parody of a thing. There was a kunai in her gut and a hand twisting it in further to the hilt, yanked out then shoved back in and again and shredding her jacket and deeper but she just laughed.

"What about your power to end all the misery in the world? What can you do now?" she snarled, leaning in close enough to smell his tainted stink, "Who can you kill now?!"

Naruto licked at her bared teeth, cutting her tongue on her canine and blood dribbling down her chin, and he squeezed tighter, dug deeper.

The swirling globe of chakra hummed between them, slowly descending onto the pristine clay of the mask. It carved into the surface, engraving a spiral that slowly impressed deeper and deeper until it cracked in half under the power. Soon his face would split under it, too.

The chakra dissipating in her hand was Naruto's only warning.

It was too hot and too loud. The air was high-pitched and screeching, each scream lashing out and compressing the colors closer closer closer until it was all shoved inside her body and she couldn't hold it all and Naruto had to shut her eyes to the light but it still burned and she shrieked against the sound but was muzzled.

Everything was torn apart around her and she was choking, fumbling at her head, trying to rip open a hole to release it all as it slammed into her and was sliding through her and into her coils, blasting her tenketsu. She thrashed and tried to beat it all back but she was nothing but a flutter of wings to gale that tore through mountains so she screamed and screamed until all that came out was scarlet and viscous.

She fluttered and the wind shredded her feathers. She plummeted and was torn apart.

And just as suddenly everything was silenced.

_C_U_R_R_E_N_T_

Naruto awoke to a groan. It took her more than a few minutes to realize that the groan had come from her own mouth and that opening her eyes was, simply put, a bad idea unless she wanted to vomit all over herself. Shifting on her side to a more comfortable position, another groan lit the air.

It took another couple minutes to realize that, this time, the groan wasn't her.

Naruto's eyes shot open and she popped up, tripping over her own feet as the world vacillated against her eyes. Her stomach lurched at the movement and, unable to stop herself, she wretched. The bile burned at her throat as she heaved for so long that her vision become spattered with dark spots and white wisps of light. Even when she was left empty and coughing, the light-headedness stayed. The acid searing her throat lingered.

Sinking to her knees, Naruto attempted to steady herself by curling down with her forward on the ground. Bits of glass cut into her flesh, cold cold and oh so cold against her hot blood and suddenly she was heaving again, nothing but acrid breath and yellow bile splashing back up on her. She couldn't stand the smell that coiled around her, rancid and metallic.

She moaned again and the other moan answered back.

It was a struggle against herself to identify the sound's source, but she managed to stop the spinning enough to see green, brown, black. And red. So much red encircling the body just a few inches away.

The hunter nin.

Dragging a hand to her hair, Naruto found it wet; the glass digging to her palm was liquefying and making her hands a watery pink, the blush oozing down her arms. Blood and… ice. It was ice scattered across the ground and in her knees and arms and fingers and it was blood slick against her fingers. The frostiness felt amazing against her fevered skin but it melted all too soon.

Did she do that or was it—?

Sasuke. Sasuke was gone.

Naruto crawled over, chucking her jacket aside when the broken zipper couldn't hold it on her shoulders. Her palms scraped the ground and were drawn through the ice until they reached the hunter nin next to her. The rise and fall of his chest were barely perceptible but they were there, tauntingly there, while Sasuke's had stilled.

"I should kill you. He'd want me to kill you," Naruto growled, her voice crumbling as it left her lips. Everything was raw and bitter within her. Her eyes narrowed as her opponent froze, soft moans stopping.

He didn't raise a hand or turn to look at her under his broken mask. The white surface was marred by an engraved spiral and a crack nearly splitting it in half, but it held just by the chin.

"Then do it," the ninja replied. His words croaked out in a whisper, but Naruto's face was so close to his, snarling, that she could hear it with clarity. "I'm a useless tool, there is no reason for me to live," he said slowly.

Naruto reached to her thigh holster, thumb and forefinger rubbing at the flap. Slipping underneath it to the cool edge of metal.

"I want to kill you," Naruto breathed out, almost in disbelief but knowing it was true. The frayed cloth at her fingers was familiar and oh so thin but her head pulsed and hurt. Her neck muscles spasmed as a dull and pounding hum. She hissed in pain and punched the ground, staring at her bloody knuckles and the melting ice turning pink.

Sakura. Sakura was going to be devastated and it would be Naruto's fault for being weak. The girl who smiled prettily and studied hard so Sasuke would acknowledge her, with long hair and a soft mind unused to the death waiting to greet her.

"Kill me," he demanded again. The shinobi's trembling hand plucked the kunai from underneath Naruto's own and pressed it to the her palm insistently. Naruto curled her fingers around it in agreement.

The boy from behind the mask continued feverishly, "I'm broken, useless to him." His neck was bared beneath her, body prostrate and yielding to Naruto's anger. She glanced to his singed sleeve and felt sick, remembering how happy she and Sasuke were when he'd landed that hit.

"I do not wish to go through the pain of being useless once again."

Naruto felt weightless but her limbs dragged her down, heavy, and the blackness in her vision returned with company. Pain flashed in her head and charred her synapses with a staccato pattern Naruto couldn't decipher—it wanted her to know, to read it and know it and what did it want?—no matter how hard she tried. It slipped from her, floating away like fallen leaves in wind and as she tried to grasp it, anchor it to her, and let it tell her what to do because she didn't know what to do but it snapped in her hands leaving bright red and agony.

Naruto gasped.

"I can't."

It went against all she was taught: her enemy beneath her, begging to be killed, and Naruto couldn't do it.

"I killed your friend," the voice broke from behind the mask. A firm tug, pulling Naruto's hand and weapon to his bared neck.

Naruto stared down at him, her enemy, as he pushed the blade close enough to draw blood. She found herself shaking her head in disbelief, in some sort of denial she couldn't fathom with her gut churning and screaming at her: no no no NO! Something was wrong and while her body, her training, predatory instinct, told her to do it and end it all, a voice soothed her and held her back.

She didn't want to kill the shinobi beneath her and Naruto couldn't understand why.

"I can't."

She was weak. She couldn't save Sasuke and she couldn't do this.

"I can't, Haku!" Naruto screamed, punching the mask to shatters. White tinkled to the ground around her fist.

Naruto blinked, eyes wide enough to be moons and her pupils dilating to consume the violet irises black. Hyperventilation. Her head hurt and her pulse ached and vision swung and tears pricked her eyes like righteous thorns. She felt like she was going to explode in a confetti of messy ninja bits.

It was Haku. Underneath the mask his face was slashed and bleeding from shards of porcelain. it was Haku.

His eyes were intent upon her, beseeching and resigned as he tried to move into the kunai at his throat. Even then he was smiling up at her. Naruto's hand slammed into his shoulder and pinned him to the ground without her command, the crack of skull and concrete blaring in her ears.

Because everything was abruptly silent.

There were no more sounds of kunai clashing to kunai or swords singing through the air. Haku turned in the direction of their sensei's battle with confused eyes. Naruto chanced a look that way as well, but knew she wouldn't see anything but endless mist.

It was silent.

Then suddenly, the sound of chirping pierced the quiet and grew louder and louder until it was a roar, a symphony of birds all singing their own high-pitched lament to the world. The sound was curiously familiar, as if a cloudy memory.

Entranced, Naruto's gaze was drawn to the source and her heartbeat trilled against her chest in warning and the nausea muddled her mind. Her chakra reared within her, lurching, and oh kami she was puking again as the birds jolted in her ears. It called danger, screamed for her quiet that sound at all costs.

It was just instinct, but shinobi learned to rely on such things.

Naruto found her fingers moving deftly, aching at the unfamiliar hand sign they rested in. Her head thrummed with pain as the chakra built. Without hesitation, Naruto released her built up chakra and pushed it through her coils.

She flew within a gale of wind.

She closed her eyes.

Re-write and my return. All other stories are on hiatus or up for adoption, but will not be taken down. Looking for a beta-reader who will deal with my ego and crankiness without dealing with my shit and will be willing to help me stabilize pacing and plot.

I'm trying a little more Poetic writing, can you tell? It won't always be like this, but I'm really trying to immerse the writing style in the emotion of the character. Tell me if you think it worked? ^^

Do not let me quit this. Thank you all and I apologize for such a cruddy chapter ending (may be revised). I'm hoping for monthly updates.

Dedicated to starlineshine

Fic rec: Asphodel by starlineshine – Ino-centric time!travel, worst case scenario; After a lifetime of war, of loss of madness of death, Ino is back in time to when she had everything. But that everything isn't hers; she only has her future and it's all she can do to prevent it all from happening. Only Ino is no hero, but now she has to be.

Koby Out!