Author's Note: Welcome to my first-ever foray into the Naruto fandom, everyone. The idea for this story was born out of my love for post-apocalyptic literature, where mankind has to rebuild society after some horrible disaster has struck. From that point the story just grew in my mind, so I started to write it down. I hope you all enjoy the fruits of my efforts.

WARNINGS: There WILL definitely be blood and violence later on in this story, hence the M rating. There will be character death later on as well. If that isn't your thing, you shouldn't be reading this story. This is also a SasuNaru story, and there will be sex between Sasuke and Naruto later on as well. However, sex is not the main purpose of this fic, so there's going to be plot and character build-up first.

TERMINOLOGY: You may notice that throughout this story, I refer to the various Lands in Naruto's world by their English names. (For example, Konoha is referred to as Fire Country, etc.) This is because "Flamethrower" takes place across various Lands, and I felt it would be easier to refer to them by their English names rather than their Japanese ones. However, the Hidden Villages are still referred to by their Japanese names (Leaf Village will be called Konohagakure, etc.)

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Naruto and I probably never will. ;-; This is a work of fanfiction, and I make no money from writing it.

This story has been cross-posted to my AFF account, LostinThought8. The link is in my profile.

Now, without further ado, the first chapter.

He'd been having the same dream for five nights in a row. It was always the same dream, and Naruto always remembered it with perfect clarity upon waking.

He would be on a small island, surrounded by a sparkling blue ocean for as far as the eye could see. It was a particularly fine day outside, and the cool sea breeze wafting through Naruto's hair caused him to sigh happily, unable to remember the last time he had been in such a gentle environment.

In the dream, Naruto would always be walking up to the gate of a small village. Although even minor settlements nowadays always had at least a few guards stationed out front, there were only two people standing before this village's entrance. A man with spiky, black hair, a piece of rope tied around his head like a headband, relaxes against the village wall, a fond smile on his face as he watches a dark-haired and –eyed child wearing a fisherman's hat draw pictures in the sand with a piece of driftwood.

As Naruto draws nearer to the village, the boy, who can't be more than seven or eight years old, drops the wood he is holding and waves to the blond, a broad smile spreading across his face from ear to ear. The man looks up and smiles too, and this is how Naruto knows he is in a dream-no traveler looking to enter a village would ever be greeted so enthusiastically in these times. Travelers were more likely to be met with guards who looked at everyone suspiciously, sullen and angry men who always kept their weapons in easy view.

Yet in this dream, Naruto doesn't worry about why there are so few guards outside this village, or why they're so friendly. A smile of his own spreads across his face and he enthusiastically waves back at both the man and the boy, picking up his pace slightly. Then he turns to grin at his traveling companion, as if to say See? See? I told you we would make it eventually. We've finally reached a place we can call home now.

Naruto can never figure out the identity of the person he travels with in his dreams. He only knows that he feels a sense of comfort and security when this person is by his side, as if nothing bad can happen now that the two of them are together. This person is perhaps an inch or so taller than Naruto is, and they match strides easily, walking side by side as if they've been doing it all their lives. But whomever it is Naruto is walking with, he cannot make out their features. It's as if this mysterious person is continually walking under the cover of a dark shadow, which shrouds their face and clothing so that the blond cannot discover their identity. This shadow shifts and moves around the person, wrapping so tightly that no matter how closely Naruto looks, he can't find out anything about his companion's appearance besides their height.

They are almost to the village entrance when the gout of flames erupts from the place where Naruto's traveling companion is standing. Upon waking, Naruto cannot remember if his companion somehow caused the flames to appear or if it was merely coincidence. The only thing Naruto knows is that the fire is frightening-it completely consumes his traveling companion and it burns, white-hot and searing against Naruto's own skin. The blond stumbles backwards in his hurry to escape the flames, trips, and falls on his ass, staring up at the crackling, swirling red inferno above him, helpless to do anything as tongues of flame stretch hungrily towards the village. The young boy in the fisherman's hat screams, a high-pitched, wailing cry that young children make when they are afraid, and he is quickly ushered inside the village by the dark-haired man. As Naruto stares at the inferno, which is quickly rising higher than the island's treetops, he knows that the villagers don't stand a chance against the fire. Already their dilapidated driftwood gate is crumbling to ash beneath swirls of orange-red, and the wall is starting to follow. This knowledge curls into something sick and horrible in Naruto's gut, and the blond opens his mouth and screams…

…And this is how he wakes from the dream, every time, jolting straight up into a sitting position from wherever he happens to be sleeping and letting loose a bloodcurdling shout.

Luckily for him, his traveling companion, Haruno Sakura, had started adjusting to the blond's strange dreams. The first few times Naruto dreamt about the island village and woke up shouting, Sakura was instantly alert and drawing her handgun, certain that bandits had come to rob them in the night. Finding out that there were no bandits and that Naruto had just had a nightmare earned the blond a hit on the head from the temperamental young woman. After all, Naruto had potentially just given away their location to any actual bandits.

By now, however, Sakura had realized that the recurring dreams were just one of the many odd quirks that made Naruto who he was. Like the three marks on each of the blond's cheeks that were reminiscent of whiskers, or the black, spiral-shaped markings on his stomach. The dreams were just more annoying, in Sakura's opinion.

At least now it was daylight, Naruto saw, as he rubbed the last of the sleep from his eyes and saw the sun shining in through the crevasses in the roof of the tiny cave they'd taken shelter in for the night. He sat looking at the way the thin, bright yellow beams bounced off of the rocks in the cave for a few moments, turning the dream over inside his head…

"Naruto!" The blond turned his head to see Sakura shouting at him from outside the cave. From the soft crackling and popping sounds Naruto could hear outside, she already had a fire going. He shivered, remembering the dream. "You scared me! I nearly spilled our food in the dirt!"

The pink-haired woman stuck her head into the entryway of the cave, fully prepared to yell at Naruto some more for shouting so loudly in the early hours of the morning. However, her bright green eyes softened when she saw the haunted look in her friend's face. "The same dream?" She asked, and Naruto nodded, his jaw tight and his mouth a harsh line.

"How many times have you had it now?" She asked again, but Naruto just shrugged, obviously unwilling to talk about it. Sakura sighed, wishing she could do something to help the blond with his nightmares. She'd been hoping that the two of them would be all right once they'd escaped the Research Facility in Sound Country. They would settle down somewhere in a town far away from that horrible place, find jobs, and live lives relatively free of conflict. However, Naruto didn't seem to be finding any normality even outside of the facility, if these nightmares were any indication.

"You should come outside," Sakura said after a few moments of tense silence. "I'm making breakfast."

Naruto nodded again and crawled out of the cave after Sakura, grabbing his orange jacket off the ground as he went. It felt good to get out of that cramped little space, to stretch his muscles and work out the little kinks in his back. Damn, but did sleeping on the ground with nothing but a jacket between you and the dirt and rocks night after night suck.

The air felt warm, bordering on hot, against the blond's face, even at this early hour of the morning. It would be another swelteringly hot day today, and Naruto grimaced at the thought of trudging through the arid, rocky landscape in the heat. He hoped they'd come across some traders today so that they could stock up on supplies, and most importantly on water. The blond certainly wasn't intending to die of thirst in a place like this.

"Sit down and eat," Sakura said, scraping something out of a small clay pot into two bowls. Naruto couldn't help but grin at the smell of hot food. There was nothing like a good breakfast to warm your stomach and chase away gloomy thoughts, he'd learned ever since he was a small boy. However, Naruto's face fell when he caught sight of what was in his bowl.

"Canned beans again?" He complained, wrinkling his nose at what seemed to be the same meal he and Sakura had been eating every day for the past two weeks. "I was kinda hoping we still had some instant ramen left…"

"We ate all the instant ramen when we were going through Lightning Country." Sakura's voice had a warning edge to it, which Naruto had long since learned meant one should start running for cover. "Even if we did have any left, I wouldn't cook it anyway, because might I remind you, Naruto, instant ramen requires water. And water's not really something we can afford to waste on cooking food right now, OK?"

Muttering to himself under his breath (so that Sakura couldn't hear, because she was scary when she was mad) about why girls shouldn't be allowed to control the cooking for weeks on end, especially if said girls had pink hair, Naruto settled down to eat his beans. As he ate, however, his mind was occupied by a single, stubborn thought. At first the blond tried to ignore it, to push it away-it was a stupid idea, and there was no way Sakura would ever go for it. But there was no way he could ignore these dreams. Not when they kept coming to him this regularly, so clear and vivid inside Naruto's head. He needed to figure out the reason behind them. With this thought firmly in his head, the blond laid aside his half-eaten bowl of beans and looked up at Sakura.

"What's the matter?" Sakura asked. "You haven't finished your food…you aren't feeling sick, are you?" Naruto not finishing his food was an unprecedented event. Even if the meals were nothing but beans for days on end, the blond would practically inhale them with the speed and gusto of a man who hadn't eaten for weeks. Any nearby animals that might have been hoping for scraps were always sorely disappointed.

"Sakura-chan, I want to go to Wave Country," Naruto said, voice more serious than his traveling companion had ever heard it before.

The pink-haired girl wasn't sure what she'd been expecting Naruto to say, but it certainly hadn't been that. For a few seconds she was silent, not quite understanding why Naruto would say such a thing. "Are…are you crazy?" She finally said. "Naruto, we need to go someplace safe."

"Who says Wave Country isn't-"

Sakura held up her hand, not letting Naruto finish. "Wave Country is made up of a series of islands. Small islands. It has the smallest population out of any of the current Countries. The people there are more likely to ask questions about two new travelers who come looking for work. It would take time for us to find jobs and homes there, and even more time for us to become a part of the community."

"We could do it though," Naruto broke in. "I bet there's plenty of fishing jobs; we could make money doing that-"

"And what if the research facility comes for us before then, Naruto?" Sakura interrupted. "Since Wave Country is small, it won't have the resources for a large military force. If Sound Country decides to send their military after us, in order to take us back to the Research Facility, what do you think Wave Country will do? Fight to protect us, risking the lives of their civilians in the process? Or would they choose to give us up instead?"

Sakura began to busy herself with cleaning up their camp, packing away the dishes and putting the fire out with dirt. "I don't know about you, Naruto, but I'm not going back to that place. We need to continue on to Grass Country, like we originally planned."

Naruto was silent for several long minutes as Sakura packed their things away into the two large knapsacks that now held all of their worldly possessions. The fire had died down to only a few smoldering embers, and soon it would be time for the two of them to get back on the road again. "Sakura-chan, I understand why you don't want to go to Wave Country. You're right, it is taking a risk to go there. So I won't ask you to go with me."

Sakura's eyes widened in shock as Naruto got to his feet and slung his knapsack over his back. "I need to go to Wave Country, Sakura-chan," he continued. "These weird dreams I've been having come every night now. It's getting to the point that I can't get them out of my head even during the day. They take place on an island, so if I go to a Country where there're lots of islands, then maybe I'll find something out. I feel like I won't have peace until I do."

The blond shifted his knapsack on his shoulders and looked back at Sakura, smiling slightly. "It was good traveling with you, Sakura-chan. Take care, and-"

"You idiot," Sakura growled out, going up to Naruto and thumping him on the head.

"Owww! What was that for!" Naruto cried out, rubbing at the painful spot on the back of his skull. He even had the nerve to look affronted, Sakura noted, and smacked him again just for that.

"You complete and utter moron!" She cried. "You really think you'd survive a day on your own? When there's bandits and wild animals, and who-knows-what-else on the roads these days? You wouldn't even wake up if they were robbing you blind! Not to mention, your cooking's atrocious and your water would be gone within two hours."

Sakura put on her own knapsack and went to stand next to her blond traveling companion. "It's taking a risk, sure, but I'm going with you. After what happened at the research facility, we're sticking together. No matter what happens."

Naruto looked at her, and the smile on his face at that moment lit up his vivid blue eyes even brighter than the morning sun lit the sky. Sakura couldn't help smiling back.

"Oh, Sakura-chan," Naruto said, and it almost sounded sweet if you weren't listening closely, "it's like we're married."

That statement earned him a third hit on the head from his pink-haired companion. "You asshole."

The cheerful mood of the morning had all but dissipated by that afternoon. The sun was high in the sky and pounding down on Naruto and Sakura in full force, and every step in that arid, soul-sucking heat was harder to take than the last. The two had been traveling at a slower pace the farther away they got from Sound Country, and the horrible Research Facility it had housed and funded. However, Naruto and Sakura both didn't feel it was safe to stop traveling until they'd gotten as far away as humanly possible from that nightmarish place. This was why they were currently going through Fire Country at the hottest time of the day, instead of trying to find some shade and resting until evening.

Fire Country was known for having some of the hottest temperatures in the world, and with a dry, rocky environment to boot. It was no wonder Naruto felt like he was dying with every step he took. He could feel the heat from the dry, cracked earth below him even through the soles of his boots, and his normally messy, spiky blond hair was plastered to the back of his neck with sweat. He had to keep stopping every few steps to wipe it out of his eyes. Sakura didn't look much better. Her normally vibrant pink hair hung limply around her neck, and Naruto could see the sweat dripping from the ends of it, to run down her arms in salty tracks.

Even worse than the heat, for Naruto at least, was the water, or rather, the lack of water. Even though they'd put a fair bit of distance between themselves and Sound Country, Naruto and Sakura had been trying to avoid the towns as much as they could. News could travel quickly between the larger settlements by telephone, in the places where the lines were still maintained. Two people who had escaped from a supposedly secure research facility would be something town guards definitely would be on the lookout for. Up until now, Naruto and Sakura had been replenishing their supplies with traders when they ran into them, and by stopping in smaller towns where it was less likely that people would have heard about them.

Unfortunately, Fire Country made avoiding towns difficult, since all the natural sources of water in the area had at least small settlements built around them. Naruto and Sakura had passed through two towns in Fire Country so far. The two of them had refilled their water canteens and left, not talking to anybody much, and no one had bothered them. They'd also been lucky enough to run into a trader at one point between towns. The man had taken an entire medical kit of Sakura's in exchange for a canteen full of water, but the two of them still counted it as a good trade.

Now, however, Naruto was starting to think that he and Sakura would be in trouble if they didn't come across a town soon. There was a limit to how much water a trader was willing to give you, after all, since it was such a precious resource in Fire Country. A town's pump or well, at least, would let travelers refill their canteens entirely. You had to pay, of course, but the price usually wasn't too bad. The two of them had been drinking as sparingly as they could, considering the heat, but Naruto didn't think that they had enough to last for more than two more days at the most. As it was, the blond's mouth felt as if someone had stuffed a sock into it. His lips were cracked and his throat ached. His mind had struck up a constant mantra of water at some point in the last hour, so that now it was all Naruto thought of with each step he took. Water…water…water…I need water…

It was then, at the hottest time of the afternoon, when Naruto and Sakura found the man with the dark hair.

Author's Note: Reviews are lovely, as always. They make me smile.

I have started work on Chapter Two of this fic, but it isn't finished yet. The next update should be in a few days, once I get that done.