Ghosts

A landscape reclaimed by nature. As such one could have described the ruins of a world being swallowed by the roots of a great tree. The only sound to be heard was the wind rustling gently though the leaves and the grass, the occasional bird song and the plitter platter of the rain as it poured down heavily onto the land. Humans were nowhere to be found. And if you did find one, they were mostly blind or otherwise crippled. Everyone else was dead. Consumed by the great tree. The tree that spun the whole of the world with its roots, capturing all in its grasp.

And above it all hung a red moon, a spiral pattern with nine tomoe projected on its surface.

Those who weren't captured by the genjutsu and consequently consumed by the tree were those who didn't come out to see the moon shine its light down on the world. And those were either blind, unable to walk or had been deep enough underground to escape when the jutsu had been cast.

But they weren't safe. Far from it. The white Zetsu army was roaming the land, exterminating whoever was left. All that for a dream of eternal peace.

One of the survivors was currently trekking his way towards an island, the fact that he was walking on water a clear indication that he was a shinobi. A dark grey cloak hid him from view as it billowed in the harsh winds of the ocean that pelted him with rain. Haunted blue eyes stared ahead, fixated on the island before him. The island that was once home to the Uzumaki clan.

And even the masses of water that surrounded the land did not stop the roots of the world tree from reaching it.

The man growled bitterly as he observed the giant root stretch through the water and curl around the island as if to take hold of it. He'd burn it, incinerate it, but he knew he couldn't. He tried before. An army of white Zetsu appeared in response.

The wind picked up and blew the hood of the man's head. He was in his late thirties, once shockingly yellow hair had lost its sheen and matted into a golden blonde. A short scruffy beard hid the peculiar birthmarks on his cheeks and his once deep blue eyes so full of life now showed the despair of a broken man. Uncaring for his hood, he marched on.

It had been too long since he rested, too long since he slept. In the wake of war, a lost war, there was no time for him to rest. So many he had lost, in the war, when they lost it, and all these people he couldn't safe. Just days ago, he had lost what probably had been the last of the survivors in the land of fire.

And it was his fault.

It had been his idea to hide in the ruins of Konoha. He had thought he could protect them there. He was wrong.

Thousands over thousands they came. For every Zetsu he killed, a hundred new ones seemed to appear. For weeks he held them at bay, defending the survivors that hid away in the Hokage mountain. But he no longer had Kurama to rely on, nor was he granted the respite to gather nature chakra, so eventually, he could no longer defeat the masses of clones that came at him. Desperately he beat them off with his bare hands as he ran out of chakra. He clawed at their feet when they overran him. He screamed at them when they stormed the bunkers. And he cried when they murdered everyone inside.

Everyone was dead. They killed every single one of the survivor. Men, women. Even the few children that lived. Dead. All of them. He had wadded through their blood into the back rooms, dragging his broken body into the doorway. He heaved when he saw her. Asumi had been a woman from the Land of Winds. He had found her when he rescued a caravan of refugees from a swarm of Zetsus. Asumi had been a bright person, a few years younger than himself. She had lost her husband but was determined to continue on. She was weaving clothes for the others and sung songs for the children. Just a day before all this she had given him the cloak he now wore.

She had been pregnant. The image of the unborn baby torn from her womb and splattered against the wall over the mothers caved in head, it would never leave him. Then he began burying them all, every single body of the once 305 survivors he had managed to gather. He buried them all. And he refused to bury another.

The track towards Uzushio was a lonely one. Not that it surprised him. The white Zetsus were steering clear of him, only so that he would live in eternal torment. Attack him but never kill him. After Kaguya had been reborn, she drew him and Sasuke into one of her dimensions. They managed to get out, after an eternity of fighting her but once they were back at the base of the God Tree... everyone was dead. In the cocoons merely dead husks remained. They were helplessly watching as the tree grew and consumed everything in it's way. Everything but the two of them. Kaguya cursed their lives, cursed them to live in this haunted world forever more... and left. She left behind an army of white Zetsu clones and unimaginable despair in his heart.

Sasuke lost it then, he raged and screamed, accusing him of all this. It ended in a fight, a fight that had been long since in the making, and it ended with only one of them left alive. Sasuke was dead and he himself was missing an arm. And in the twenty some years since then, it had been hell. A hell that he was now leaving behind.

In the remains of Uzushio he would stay, away from all the others, and he would die there. Alone. As he had been from the beginning.

He set foot on the island and knew something was off. It was an instinct born from decades of being on the run. He stilled and took in the nature chakra around him. Opening his golden eyes he could feel it. There was someone here. It was a strong pulse, a shinobi perhaps, and was hiding behind an array of genjutsu and traps. None of these could even stop him, so he walked straight through them. The genjutsu just shattered when he came into contact with them and the occasional sidestep and ducking under blades and wire traps was over in under half an hour. He stood in front of one of the only remaining buildings in these ruins. Inside was the presence he could feel. And up this close, he could tell that she was asleep.

A thunderclap briefly illuminated the doorway of the house, the wires glinting in the light. He decided that this was as good as it got. Maybe he could help this one before he subjected himself to his fate.

After easily dispatching the wires, he stepped inside. The house appeared lived in, furs and other litter were strewn around, a fire smoldered in the hearth and an array of tangled wires was thrown carelessly into a corner. Smack dab in the middle of the room, on a pile of furs, was a woman. Impossibly long, and equally dirty it pooled around her sleeping form like a halo of blood. She had drawn her legs to her chest, legs that were definitely crippled. Must have healed incorrectly a long time ago. Her eyes were hidden from view behind a black strip of cloth and she was dressed in rags. Her sleep was by no means peaceful, she grimaced and moaned from time to time as her legs twitched.

Settling down in a corner of the room, he took a meditative stance. Sleep was not something that would find him anytime soon, after all. He wasn't about to try.

He was not even dozing yet when the woman woke from her nightmare filled sleep.

"Fuck...," she growled as she sat up and stretched, working the kinks out of her neck. She pulled crutches from underneath the furs she slept on and rolled off them. She was about to stand when she suddenly froze, her nose twitched frantically and even her ears seemed to move little. Without warning she spun to him and threw her crutch at him, the metal spike protruding from it's base aimed remarkably well at his skull. He caught it effortlessly.

"Who the fuck are you and what are you doing here!?" she hissed, balancing painfully on once crutch.

He didn't respond. Instead, he tossed her back her crutch. She caught it without flinching. When she snarled again, he pushed himself up.

"I'm just a wanderer, returning home after a long long time." It was true, this had been the home of his clan once.

She spat somewhere to the side. "A fucking wanderer doesn't just waltz though all of my god damn genjutsu! What the fuck do you want!"

He sighed tiredly. "Shelter from the storm, is all." He was in no mood to deal with this.

That, of course, did not appease her at all. She threw some more curses and other objects at him, none of which had any effect, until she finally slipped and put too much weight on her legs. With a hiss, she fell forward and straight into his waiting arms. The pain was too much for her to even curse as she clenched her teeth shut.

"How longs has it been like this?" he asked her, his deep gravely voice thrumming against er shoulder through his chest.

The woman just hissed at him and tried to push herself away. With a frown, he let her settle down on the ground. "I am amazed you survived like this."

"Fuck off," she hissed, carefully massaging her burning legs.

Sighing, he settled down at her side. "I can reset your bones. I would have to re-break them, though."

She sneered in his direction. "Oh, so you can get your dirty hands on me, you fuck! As if I would let you!" Painfully slowly she pulled herself along the ground towards her furs. "You wouldn't be the first asshole that tried something on the crippled girl! Just try, you fucker! You'll loose your pathetic cock faster than you can let down your grimy pants!"

The man growled in distaste. "Quiet, woman. I have no intention of forcing myself on you." He retreated into his corner. "I am not one of this bastards," he snarled. He had met many of those. And he killed every single one of them personally.

"Then fuck off and leave me alone, asshole!" she shouted, painfully pulling her legs close again. Out of the insides of her rags she pulled a old metal flute. She put it to her lips and instantly a haunting melody flooded the house. The man tensed as he felt the foreign chakra invade his system but he shrugged it off in under a second. She halted for a second, a snarl on her lips, before she began playing anew with a vengeance, the chakra rolling off her in waves. But it had no effect on him.

She wheezed as she put the flute down again. "What the fuck are you?!" she hissed between harsh gulps of air. "You should be in a fucking coma!"

"Genjutsu do not affect me. You don't have enough chakra to put one on me. No one has." He stood and walked over to her. She was shivering, her chakra as good as gone and her wounded body couldn't keep up with the sudden lack of a vital part of her system. "You are going to pass out at this rate," he told her and crouched down in front of her.

She snarled and threw her flute at him, missing by an arms length. "Get off me! Leave me alone!" she screamed, crawling backwards. "I'll bite my fucking tongue you bastard! You don't get to cop a feel you-" A swift chop to the neck put her down. She sacked into his arms like a stone. A hand on her forehead confirmed that she was running a fever. Using what he had learned from the late Fifth Hokage, he flooded her system with pure restorative energy.

"Now," he sighed, "Re-break and reset. That is not what I imagined doing here..."

"Ah fuck!" She screamed when she woke. Her legs were on fire and she couldn't move them against the splints that held her legs in place. She could hear him breath, there in the corner where he had been before. "What the fuck did you do to me!"

He shifted and stood. "My name is Naruto Uzumaki. Your legs should heal in time if you keep pressure off them." Without another word he left, walking through the village until she could no longer hear him.

Naruto ended up on the central plaza, a once great staircase that had led up to the halls of the Uzukage had been reduced to naught but rubble. The great dome that had once upon a time rested over a giant mansion was everything that remained standing, creating a suitable shelter for Naruto. He shuffled inside and sat down at the back wall, tired eyes on the entrance. Here he would wait.

Wait for death to claim him.

But it wouldn't come. After a week of waiting, the only thing that did come was the woman. He had heard her for miles as she slowly trekked the village to him. Judging by her speed, she was walking without crutches but still moving slowly. Naruto wondered how long her legs had been in such a sorry state.

She stood in front of the crack in the dome when he opened his eyes, glaring at him from underneath the cloth that covered her eyes, he was sure of it. "Was there something you need?" he asked when she didn't say anything.

Her frown deepened, if such a thing was even possible. "Tayuya," she hissed and threw something at him.

He caught it, curiously looking at what appeared to be the carcass of a bird. When he looked up again, the woman was already walking down the stairs again.

"Tayuya, hmm...," he hummed. She probably hated being indebted to someone. It would explain why she brought him food. Unless of course it was poisoned and she was trying to kill him because he had touched her. Naruto wouldn't put it past her, past anyone for that matter. He had seen a lot of atrocities in the past two decades. Humans were spiteful beings after all.

He saw her again when he set out to gather some water. Tayuya was dragging a bucket across the cobblestone street, losing its contents a bit with every step. Her teeth grit in pain and frustration, she never noticed him. He watched her struggle for a while and knew not what to think of her. How she had survived all these years like that was beyond him. Her sheer will to live was something he could no longer understand. Once upon a time he might have but after decades of pain, loss and death... Naruto was no longer the cheerful and bright boy with the unbreakable will and determination he had once been. War had whittled away at him, leaving behind a wounded and broken man, too tired to go on.

Tayuya finally slipped on a wet stone but he caught her before she ever hit the ground. Naruto said nothing as he sat her down on the ground. Taking the bucket she had been dragging he walked over to the well and filled it. It had been empty anyways. Tayuya cursed the entire time but he choose to ignore her. He simply stood besides her and waited for her to stop.

It was impressive that she had cussed at him for a solid five minutes before she finally stopped to glare at him. The accuracy of her dead eyes was astounding. Maybe she was faking dead one, who knew.

"What?" she finally ground out through gritted teeth.

"Are you quite finished?" he asked her in a humorless tone. She didn't answer. "Can you stand?"

In response she pushed herself up, face a grimace of pain but she made no sound as she climbed to her feet again. Once she stood, Tayuya trust a hand out, demanding her bucket back.

He raised an unseen eyebrow. "So you can go six feet before the same happens again?"

Her hand fell away and she growled in annoyance. Finally she stalked unsteadily away towards her abode. He followed her without a word. Tayuya stumbled up the steps to the doorway and nearly fell inside. She leaned on the rail of the flight of stairs that led upwards and turned around but Naruto was already gone, the full bucket standing in the doorway.

A harsh storm blew over Uzushio that night, Naruto was glad to have chosen decent shelter in the dome. As lightning flashed outside and was immediately followed by a growl of thunder, he could not help but wonder how Tayuya was doing. It had been two days or so since he had last seen her. His thoughts tended to always wander to her lately. She was the only human to go around but that was no reason for him to think about her. After all, he had managed to not think about Hinata just as well. Her death was a deep gash in his heart. While he never did return her feelings, she was the only one to ever feel like this for him.

Sighing, Naruto extended his senses, taking in a good amount of Nature chakra. His awareness extended all over the island, even reaching the shore of Wave country. Uzu was truly deserted, save for a few animals and the birds that circled the sky above. The only human beings were him and Tayuya, said woman was unnaturally close to his current position. The house she occupied was a fair distance from where she was now. What was she doing out in this storm?

Her pulse was growing weaker by the minute. Frowning, Naruto stood. No matter how much war had broken him, he couldn't let someone die if he could help it. The urge to help and protect was too deeply engraved into his being. Maybe, just maybe, he could save this one life.

He found her collapsed in a puddle in the middle of the street. Shrugging off his coat, he wrapped her tightly in it and evaporated the cold water that clung to her body. Nature manipulation was something ever so useful. Her face was a grimace of pain, she was probably running a fever again. Trekking his way to where her house was, Naruto frowned upon the intensity of the storm. The wind was strong, so strong in fact that he had to use chakra to walk normally. Bits of shattered trees and even stones were whirled through the air, some trees having fallen and lightning violently tore apart the night sky.

A fallen tree had collapsed most of the house Tayuya had stayed in. It would explain why she had been outside in the first place. She was probably trying to get to where he was staying or find some other sort of shelter. With the rain and the wind so violently loud, her hearing must have been completely useless. Sighing, Naruto returned to the dome with her. Quickly curing her fever, he sat himself down against the wall and waited.

Tayuya awoke to the sound of a fire crackling. Her limbs ached as she pushed her tired body up into a sitting position. There it was again. His breathing. Steady and deep. It never seemed to fall of this slow rhythm. Apparently, he had found her.

"You're awake," he said. His deep, toneless voice startling her.

She swallowed. Had he done something to her? There was no discomfort of any kind that would indicate it, at least. "Why did you take me here?" Tayuya asked. She needed to know. Why he would help her was beyond her in the first place but he didn't have to take her with him. He could just have dumped her in one of the other houses that still had a roof to them. She imagined he had shrugged or something, he didn't answer.

"You are free to leave," he said, standing up.

Tayuya tried to stand as well but her legs were lacking strength to do so. She felt terrible, even more so than usually. "How... how long was I out?" she asked.

Naruto shrugged. "A week, I suppose. Maybe two."

What the hell? How does one even miss so many days passing? That said... "Why are you even here?" she asked him, choosing to stay seated for the moment. "No one but he has been here since... since forever!" There was a pause in which she could practically hear him think.

"I came here to die, girl."

Tayuya blinked. "You fucking what? Are you stupid?" She sneered in his direction. "You have two perfectly functioning legs and can see for fucks sake! What right do you have to just come here and die!?" Her anger boiled beneath her skin. "Who are you to think you are allowed to just die!? I have been clinging to this shit for kami knows how many decades! I have hungered, I have been sick for weeks and couldn't even drink! I did everything I fucking could to survive and you waltz in here like "Oh, my life is so baaaaaad,"" she mocked him in her rage, ""I can't fucking take this loneliness! Uuuh I need to kill myself!" Well fuck you you fucking arsewipe! You won't get to kill yourself because I'll cave your pathetic head in!"

She was breathing hard by the end of it, her throat soar and dry. Naruto hadn't even flinched, just listened to her rant. "Are you finished?" he asked tonelessly.

Tayuya made a disgusted noise, pushed herself up and dragged herself out of his abode. "Pathetic worm!" she snarled back once before he lost sight of her.

Her legs were healing nicely, he noted. He could feel her move faster everyday. He also noted that she was setting up traps again. It was a fruitless past time, no one was left to come here aside from him and Naruto could simply walk through her traps as if they were made from paper. Though Naruto wondered how she had survived or even made it here in her condition, it didn't matter to him so he spared it no second thought.

But he noticed that she came by to see him ever so often, not talking or anything, She just stood in the entrance way of his abode and listened. Maybe all this time alone had her carve human interaction. He wouldn't blame her, Naruto wouldn't lie and say that he wasn't happy to see her when she stood there, sun setting behind her and setting her hair ablaze with colors. How he, after all this time and pain, could even maintain such thought eluded him.

"Who even are you?" she had asked for what had to be the tenth time. Growing tired of the question, he answered, "I am Naruto Uzumaki, ninja of Konoha, hero of the fourth shinobi war and now nothing more than a ghost of the past that can't die even if he so desperately wants to."

She didn't say anything, just left right away. After what had to be a week of solitude, Naruto found himself wondering where she was. It was unnatural, he thought, that he would worry anymore. He had lost countless people, grieved for them all, and yet he couldn't remember most of their faces. ALl that was left were the pictures of their dead bodies. He didn't remember Asumi's smile or her voice. He remembered the color her entrails had stained the sheets in, remembered the sound of her muffled scream. And she was dead because of him. They all were.

Had he defeated Kaguya, had he stopped Madara, none of this would have happened. It was his fault. His fault alone. The pain left behind a ghost, a pained lich that would forever roam this accursed world, probably even outlast the realm itself.

Oh how he wished for Kagyua to return. To return and finally kill him.

She came by again, the next day. Her legs had healed nicely, he noted. There was a pack slung over her shoulder, held there her crutches. She didn't say anything, just tossed the furs into a corner and sat down on them. He wondered why she was here, but didn't react. She would leave eventually. They all did.

But Tayuya seemed determined to remain at his side. Or at least near him. She would occasionally leave and return with something to eat or do whatever she felt necessary to do. She listened intently to him, he knew. As if she was searching for something. Dimly, Naruto remembered her. Back then, before everything became so... dead.

"I remember you," he said one evening when Tayuya sat down by the fire.

She turned to face him, some kind of snarl on her lips before it just left her. "You were the kid in orange, back then in the forest when we were supposed to get that emo prick out of the village."

Naruto nodded. The sound four, huh? It has been a long, long time. "You didn't change much, did you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" she growled.

He allowed a smile. It felt foreign there, his facial muscles almost brittle from disuse. "It means that you are as unbreakable as you act."

She deflated, he could see her sack down. "I'm... not," she said quietly. "I am just... just a broken remnant. A cripple from another time. Just-"

"A ghost," Naruto finished.

She chucked a small pebble at him. He caught it, and in the spur of the moment, threw it she was surprised, he couldn't tell. Tayuya let the pebble glide trough her fingers before she threw it back. Naruto returned it and for about a minute they went on silently.

Tayuya halted and the next throw was accompanied by a question. "What happened to you?"

He failed t catch it. The stone hit the wall just besides his head, dropped to his shoulder and fell into his lap. He stared at her, long and hard. Finally, he sighed. "After I passed you, I continued to pursue Sasuke. I ran into Kimimaru, a scary guy, really. We fought and I barely lived through it. After some time and just short of me dying, Rock Lee showed up..."

"... and then he stabbed her. I think my heart just stopped then. He said something about his parents dying like this, at the hands of Konoha shinobi, but I didn't hear. I gave into the rage..."

"...so I met my mother. We talked while her chains held down the Kyuubi. I was glad to finally know who she was. Her hair was beautiful, just like yours. With her help, I subdued the fox..."

"...Obito absorbed it. He became its jinchuriki and everything went downhill from there..."

"... and Kaguya activated this jutsu, the Eternal Tsukuyomi, while me and Sasuke were trapped in this weird gravity dimension. No one escaped, no one but those underground and blind, like you, didn't get trapped in it. She spat us back out after what felt like an eternity. She left us there, with the shriveled corpses of everyone I knew. All that remained was the mass of white zetsu soliders and Sasuke."

"He had done a lot wrong in his life and had seen a lot of bad things. But when he held the corpse of the one girl that had held onto him in his arms... he snapped."

"...and it all blew up. My arm was tron apart and the full force of the explosion backfired on Sasuke. I didn't even find a body..."

"Konoha was already under attack when I made it back. We were on the run for a long time, our numbers dwindling steadily. I think we lost the only other ninja with us in the land of Snow."

"We found shelter under Sunagakure, there were tunnels you know? And until the Zetsu found us, we actually thought we had a chance... But it shouldn't be. They came in the dead of the night."

"At long last I returned the group of the last survivors to Konoha. I thought I could protect them there... But I couldn't. They all died... and I was powerless. The zetsu didn't even look at me as they left me there on misery."

"...walked in here and found you, Tayuya."

"And promptly proceeded to watch me sleep you damn perv," Tayuya spoke up, for the first time since he had begun talking and it stopped Naruto short.

He gaped for a second. "Now hold on a second. I did no such thing."

She raised her eyebrow high enough to be visible over her blindfold. "Sure. I could feel your eyes on my tits."

Naruto grimaced. "I did not!" he insisted.

She flicker her hair sideways. "You keep telling yourself that, pervert."

She never told him how she survived and he didn't ask. There wasn't a need to, he imagined it had been hard, all on her own. But, he reminded himself, she wasn't alone now. He was with her. It was strange, watching as she fell asleep within arms reach from him. Tayuya didn't seem to have nightmares that night and Naruto found that he had nearly fallen asleep, watching her breath, how her hair glistened in the firelight. Naruto just then realized, as the sun began to rise, that she hadn't felt him responsible for all the dead, for all the pain. For this mess the world was in. He realized that she had changed him. His outlook in life. A strange one, she was.

As he sat there, watching her wake up, he found that here, at the end of the road, the place he had come to to die, that he found life there. And not just hers. Ghosts of a past long gone they may be but it seemed that even those still had a future. And Naruto found the prospect of spending the rest of his eternity with her... not that bad.

She sat up and yawned, arching her back before she turned to him. She grinned suddenly. "Oh you were watching me, perv."

He smiled. "I may have."

"Smug about it, huh?" she commented dryly as she stood. "We're gonna change that."

Naruto didn't doubt that she would change that too. He'd welcome it with open arms.