*Obligatory 'I don't own Naruto so please don't sue me' header*

Eyes Wide Shut

Chapter 1 - House of Cards

One moment he was awake, and then he wasn't.

The room spun, twisted, and the floor came up to meet him in a soundless rush. His world narrowed to a pinhole – shrunk down to a splotch. He tried to move, but his limbs were jelly; he tried to speak, but his tongue was dry and stiff and felt like steel.

Adrenaline was one hell of a drug, Naruto thought, as he crumpled to the floor. Although having the Nine-Tailed Fox almost break free of your body certainly couldn't have helped, either.

He pushed, strained, fought to raise his head enough to look up again. He saw, in the haze of semi-consciousness, the way Nagato's hands shook and quivered, and he watched Konan's eyes widen as she followed the Akatsuki leader's final movements.

He knew.

Somehow, Naruto knew.

Nagato would not be making it out alive.

Naruto was awake, but only just. He clung to the light, hoping from some faraway place in his mind that he would have the energy to get up and make that one final push, to right the wrongs they both had committed. He had made his case – fought Nagato with words and not fists, and he had won.

But part of him - the worrisome, paranoid part of him that tended to keep him alive in times of life-threatening danger - was rumbling in his ears, nearly louder than the dull hum that silenced everything else and left him numb. And that alone set him on edge.

Naruto was awake, and then he wasn't.

And when he faded from reality, finally dropping from the plane of the conscious and disappearing into the unknown, he heard something, thought he heard something that made his stomach churn and his heart nearly stop.

"Give him my eyes."

Konan was not an emotional woman.

She was what she was, and she left it at that. Others would describe her as calm, collected, and calculating – but Konan herself preferred the term… pragmatic. She was the emotional backbone of the Akatsuki; something that wasn't so much needed as it was missed when it was gone.

But she was more than that, beneath the surface. Konan was above all else an older sister – perhaps not by blood, but certainly by circumstance.

She and Nagato had lived through some of the most tumultuous years in the history of the Hidden Rain. Some (if not most) was their doing, of course, but as Nagato always qualified – it was for the greater good. For peace, and for an end to hostilities.

She'd never particularly liked the idea of a 'war to end all wars', if she was honest, but Nagato was determined.

She had made a promise.

And so Konan found herself utterly dumbfounded at the conversation unfolding before her - between a boy that reminded her so much of Yahiko it hurt and a Nagato she hadn't seen in over half a decade.

"We shared the same sensei, Nagato," Naruto said, conviction in his eyes. He held a worn book in his hands, clutched tightly between white-knuckled fists. "We had the same destiny in the end. And… I really think we have the same goals in mind. I'm asking you to trust me."

"Naruto Uzumaki," Nagato said, his voice ragged and raspy from his frail state. "You are something else entirely."

He paused, took a struggled breath, and groaned in pain. "I have decided… to lay my trust in you after all."

His walking pedestal hissed beneath him, and with a series of rhythmic clicking noises, Nagato's arms were freed from the confines of the chair.

"I spent my entire life living as though I was a god," Nagato breathed. "As though I was the one the great Toad Sage foresaw all those years ago." He raised his palms together, hands shaking uncontrollably, but his eyes were sharp and determined. "Perhaps… you are the one the prophecy spoke of."

Konan watched as Nagato began to press his hands together, and a bead of anxiety welled up within her.

She recognized that jutsu.

"Nagato! What are you—"

"This is for the best," Nagato said, eyes narrowed and mouth cinched into a tight line. "I cannot correct the many sins I have committed over the years, but… but at least I can fix this one."

He clapped his hands together.

"Rinne Tensei," Nagato whispered, and he began to glow.

She heard the sound of flesh hitting earth, and turned just in time to see Naruto crumple to the floor before them, eyes threatening to roll into the back of his head.

"Nagato, what are you doing," Konan breathed, and she moved toward him like a specter. "Please tell me you're not doing what I think you're doing."

"As… I said," Nagato said, shaking. "I… must do this, Konan."

She felt tears welling up in the corners of her eyes, blurring and distorting her vision like a kaleidoscope of emotion and confusion and fear.

"No, Nagato," she said, moving in front of him, her voice unsteady but resolute. She clenched her hands into fists at her sides from underneath the long sleeves of her cloak, and took a few deep breaths to try and calm herself. "I can't… I can't lose you too."

The ground began to rumble and shake, like a great force was erupting from out of the dirt around them. Nagato wheezed in pain, his eyes wide and his breathing heavy, but he kept his fists firmly locked together.

"Nagato, please," Konan said, nearly begging. "What about the Hidden Rain?" She paused, biting her lip. "What about your dream? What about Yahiko's dream?"

"Don't you see?" Nagato said, voice a weak whisper, eyes boring into Naruto. His smile was faraway and reminiscent; happy. "He is that dream."

He lurched in his chair, and blood came spewing up from his throat. He coughed, hacked until his lungs were free enough again for him to speak further, then turned his shaky head towards Konan.

"I'm going to die," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Konan's breath hitched when she realized it was.

"Nagato—"

"When I die," he said, "I want you to give him my eyes."

Time froze.

"What?" Konan breathed.

"Give him my eyes," Nagato said.

Naruto grunted on the floor, trying to force himself conscious, before he fell forward, bent and contorted over himself.

"Nagato, those are your legacy," Konan said. "They're you. Why… why would you give this boy something so powerful?" She took another hesitant step forward. "Do you really believe in him that much?"

"Because he is the Child of Prophecy, I can see it now," Nagato breathed out, the green sheen surrounding his skin starting to pale. "He is the rightful owner of the eyes. They were never mine to start."

"But Madara—"

"Madara already needs…" Nagato paused, and wheezed as he spat more blood up across the front of his pedestal. His eyes had begun to bleed, thin strips of black-as-night blood trailing down his face and over the curves of his lips. "Madara already needs the Nine-Tails."

"Are you really so hasty to put all your eggs in one basket?"

"It's the right thing," Nagato said, words slurring together, "to do."

The light around him flickered out like someone had flipped a switch, and he fell forward, lifeless.

Konan moved forward and grasped Nagato's shoulders as he collapsed – God, he was so light – and she blinked once, twice to fight off the tears. Damn her sensibilities, she thought, gritting her teeth. Nagato was a walking corpse – and had been for many months ever since Madara had begun to wage his war. She wasn't fooling herself by thinking otherwise.

She fought back the bubble of anger, of rage, as she held onto the cooling body of her childhood friend.

Her brother.

A ripple of chakra, like a bubble bursting in a faraway place, washed over the horizon and Konan was thrown from her reverie.

Nagato's final jutsu had worked. She could feel it under her skin – that overwhelming feeling of life stretching over the forest. It was warm, and comforting, and oh so bittersweet.

She turned, looking down at the boy splayed out on the earth before her. He was battered, and bruised, and slightly charred in a few places (the Nine-Tails, no doubt) – but he was in once piece.

He had beaten the Six Paths of Pein.

She reached out and picked up the book that was cast aside in the dirt, Naruto's outstretched hand seeming to reach for it even in his unconscious state. She dusted off the cover, reading the fine kanji carved into the leather binding, and sighed.

She was going to have to do it. She knew that. It was Nagato's last rite – his last request.

Konan crouched onto her knees, her Akatsuki garb protesting as she stretched the fabric. She took a pair of manicured fingernails and pulled open one of the blond boy's eyelids, frowning.

Sharp blue, almost shining in the darkness of her paper tree, stared back up at her, glazed and unfocused.

She stood, walked back to Nagato, did the same with his eyes.

Konan wasn't a medic nin. She had enough field experience to suture a wound or perhaps sew up a lengthy gash, but that was the extent of it. To make matters worse, the most precise tool she had on her was a single kunai – tucked underneath her robes and rarely used outside of training, if ever at all.

She bit her lip, looked down at her hand.

Shards of paper, thin as razors and layered thick, peeled off from her skin at her command. An idea sparked in her mind.

No sooner had Konan began to morph a sheet of paper into a narrow blade did she sense a pulse – a flicker of chakra not too far from where she was.

Someone was approaching.

"Shit," she breathed to herself, furrowing her brow. She was going to have to make this quick.

She watched as two sheets of paper slid their way across the room, and began to work their magic across Nagato's face. The iron-sweet smell of fresh blood washed over the small cavern, and Konan took a deep breath, focusing on her chakra control, twitching her fingers as the tools did their job. She felt a bead of sweat work its way down her cheek, dripping down her face, but she paid it no mind.

Another flicker of chakra – this time far closer. They were triangulating her position.

Konan huffed in irritation, biting her lip. "Come on," she muttered. The tools finished and Konan let out a sigh of relief, before she turned her attention to Naruto.

She watched the way his chest rose and fell, and the way his chin drooped over an arm that had landed beneath him when he collapsed.

He was alive. Tired, for certain, but alive.

"I truly hope you remain unconscious," Konan said, molding another pair of fresh blades from a few sheets of paper on her shoulder.

She made quick work of Naruto's eyes, watching the way the tools moved and swayed and sawed. The blood came as freely as it had with Nagato, but she paid it no mind, only resting when the job was done.

She sighed, pulling open the boy's lids with her bloodied fingers and gently prying his severed eyes out as quickly as she could. They sat in her palm, bloody but intact, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Konan walked back to Nagato, and did the same with his. She marveled at the way the purple stripes completely wrapped themselves around his eyes, making them look more like marbles than anything else.

She heard voices coming from outside, and she frowned, brushing her Akatsuki cloak aside as she moved back to Naruto.

"I hope you knew what you're doing, Nagato," Konan whispered, as she slid his Rinnegan eyes into Naruto's face.

It would have to do – she knew no medical jutsu, but she remembered seeing something about one of the boy's teammates being the apprentice of Tsunade. Certainly she would be able to reconnect his optical nerve and heal the damage from her rough "surgery".

She looked down at her hands again, looked down at the pair of white-rimmed blue eyes that still sat between her fingertips. She was unsure of what to do with them at that point – they were simply eyes, after all.

"Over here!" a voice called from outside.

Konan growled under her breath in frustration, and rose to her feet. "Good luck, Naruto Uzumaki," she said, steeling herself.

It wasn't until many hours later, after she had reclaimed the body of Yahiko from among the dead Peins and returned to the Hidden Rain with both of her deceased teammates in tow, that Konan finally let herself cry.

He found him lying in the dirt, propped up by one hand and bleeding from his face.

Kakashi leaned over Naruto as he cradled an arm that didn't hurt anymore technically, but the phantom pain was strange and confusing and he couldn't get over the fact it had been completely crushed under a mountain of rubble less than fifteen minutes earlier.

He stretched his fingers, shook his hand, and then leaned down to prod at the boy's shoulder. "Hey. Naruto."

Naruto didn't budge.

Kakashi frowned underneath his mask, lowering himself onto one knee and carefully inspecting the boy's body for anything strange or alarming. He checked Naruto's pulse, and found it thumping along at a pleasant and lazy pace underneath his finger.

"Just unconscious, hmm?" Kakashi said, smiling a little. "Well, I'd say a little rest is more than well deserved."

He shifted Naruto on the ground in an effort to free his other hand. An old leather-bound book, covered in dirt and blood and soot, was tucked underneath his arm, as if it had been put there long after Naruto had passed out. Kakashi frowned, and pulled it away with a gentle tug.

"'Tales of an Utterly Gutsy Shinobi'," Kakashi read aloud with a murmur, turning the novel over in his hands. "I haven't seen a copy of this around in years."

He smiled again, and tucked the book into his kunai pouch with a gentleness he reserved for very few things in the world.

Naruto grunted beneath him, and Kakashi jumped at the sound. His eyelids were pressed together like vices – like he was having a particularly bad dream.

"Naruto?"

He grimaced when he traced the trails of bloodied tears (at least, that was what he thought they looked like) back up into the boy's eyes. That was strange. Naruto never had an issue with bleeding eyes; that was more a symptom of the Sharingan than anything else.

Perhaps they were injured?

Kakashi furrowed his brow, leaning forward with two hesitant fingers and prying open one of Naruto's eyes.

His heart stopped.

Quicker than he could even think, Kakashi moved his other hand to his forehead protector and yanked it up, over his covered eye. He squinted, focusing his chakra through his Sharingan and staring, hoping to some faraway god that what he was seeing wasn't true.

No. His eyes weren't deceiving him.

Kakashi bundled Naruto up in his arms and leapt to his feet, panic fueling his movement. He could feel the blood from his student's eyes start to seep through his flak jacket, but he paid it no mind, taking to the trees as soon as he saw the fading daylight from between the crumbling faux trunk of Pein's structure.

Kakashi hoped, in some distant place at the back of his mind, that Lady Tsunade would be awake by the time they arrived back at the village.

But the cynical part of him – the realistic part already knew the truth.

And Kakashi could only pray that everything would turn out okay in the end.

The sun had long since set when Sakura finally finished her shift with the Evacuation Corps. She stumbled through the dusty haze, sidestepping mountains of rubble and debris, before she slid her way down the wall of the massive crater that used to be the Hidden Leaf.

Much to her own surprise, there had been no casualties - not even so much as a broken bone.

Sakura froze, bit her lip, and frowned.

Well, no casualties but one.

Still, she couldn't help but think to herself just how many lives Lady Tsunade's sacrifice saved - or, at the very least, how many she had protected from catastrophic injury.

But there was still the matter of the dead coming back to life, and Sakura chewed on that thought as she made her way down the cliffside. Flickering lights beckoned her forward with each step she took, and it wasn't much longer until she found herself stepping foot into the sea of tents that she now had to call home.

Her mind turned to Naruto, and she felt a little sick to her stomach.

Everything had happened so fast. The world was shaking, the earth was moving and twisting and buckling under the intense pressure of Pein's ultimate technique... and then it was quiet.

Too quiet.

She had seen bodies - civilians and ninja alike, scattered about like some sort of twisted game of freeze tag. They burned holes in her eyes, left permanent imprints as she walked.

But now she could see those same bodies, those same soulless husks smiling and laughing and living. They walked along side her as she made her way through the shantytown, moving large tent bags and stacking firewood in piles or cooking fantastic-smelling meals that made Sakura's subconscious skip a beat and question if any of what just happened was real?

But it was. All she had to do was look around her.

"Ahh!" A voice called out from behind her, and Sakura twisted on her heel. "There you are!"

"Shizune?" Sakura asked, voice breathless and battered. She cleared her throat, straightened her back. "Yes?"

The woman ran up to her with eyes wide and worried, and she stopped a few feet from Sakura's body to give it a once-over.

"I'm fine, Shizune," Sakura said. "Just a little tired."

Shizune appeared to have come to the same conclusion herself, and nodded. "I'm glad you're alright."

"And Lady Tsunade?" Sakura asked, biting at the bit and asking the question that had been niggling at the back of her mind since all had gone quiet.

"Stable," Shizune said, shrugging. "There's not much we can do. It was extreme chakra exhaustion - she had to use all of her reserves." She grew quiet. "Most people would have died doing what she did."

"Well, Lady Tsunade isn't just 'most people'," Sakura said with a tired smile, running a hand through her sweat-caked hair.

"Speaking of extra-ordinary," Shizune said with a quirk of her eyebrow, "where's Naruto?"

Sakura shrugged. "I have no idea. I'm starting to get a bit worried - he's been gone for a long while. Kakashi went after him about half an hour ago... but I don't know."

Shizune frowned, clutching the pig in her arms closer to her chest. "I hope he's okay," she muttered.

Sakura let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, and nodded. "Yeah. Me too. He pretty much single-handedly defeated Pein - he deserves a lossless victory for once."

Shizune opened her mouth to respond, but it pursed into a frown and she looked over Sakura's shoulder towards the northern border of the village. "What's going on?"

"What do you mean?" Sakura twisted around, watching the way the crowds of civilians and shinobi all froze, heads turning one direction.

A lone figure, hunched over and carrying something on its back, was creeping its way towards her.

"Make way!" a villager shouted. "Make way for Naruto Uzumaki!"

Sakura's heart lurched in her chest, and a feeling of dread began to seep its way into her bones. The air was far from celebratory, nor was it the uproarious fanfare she was expecting the moment Naruto set foot in the village again.

It was anxious. Fearful.

Sakura didn't like it.

"Move, please," she said gently, prying her way through the crowd, as she made her way towards Naruto. "Excuse me, I'm a medic, please make way..."

"Sakura," she heard, and it was only then she realized it was Kakashi that was walking towards her, an unconscious Naruto slung over his back like a sling. "Sakura, he needs help."

A hush ran over the crowd, and the entire village seemed to stop. Time froze - only the travelling gaze of dozens of eyes shifting between the three of them that marked the seconds as they ticked, ticked, ticked by.

Sakura ran forward, eyes wide. "Kakashi-sensei-"

"I don't know what happened," Kakashi said, and it was only then that Sakura realized just how tense her teacher looked. He twisted his neck around, looking at the sea of villagers that had swamped around them, and met Sakura's eye with his own.

She understood. "Alright, let's get him into a tent."

She pressed her way through the crowd as a dull murmur rushed through it, Kakashi following her like a shadow. When they broke free, Sakura rushed forward, searching out the medical tent from afar. Kakashi kept right on her tail, and it wasn't until she had pushed aside a tent flap and pulled a pair of latex gloves from her vest pocket that Kakashi let out a sigh.

Sakura guided her teammate down onto a cot near the rear, making certain she was gentle. "What's wrong with him, exactly?" she asked, when she was certain they were alone after a cursory sweep of the tent around them.

Kakashi shook his head. "I... think it's best for you to see for yourself."

He pointed at his eyes.

Sakura frowned, flicked the lantern on above Naruto's bed, and leaned forward. She saw the way the blood was caked down his cheeks, the way it seemed to seep into his orange jacket and burn the top half of it a dark, unpleasant black.

Her fingers shook as she reached forward, fearing the worst.

She pried open Naruto's eyelids, and surprise met fear in a cold, dark embrace.

Author's Note(s): Alright. So I did it. I started another fic. (Long-ass author's note incoming for the first chapter)

Well, this has been a long time coming, let's be honest here. If you follow me elsewhere (Tumblr, Spacebattles, Reddit, etc), you probably already know how much I really fucking hate Rinnegan fics. Rather than complaining about it anymore, I just decided to bite the bullet and practice what I preach. So here we go!

I am only going to say this once.

If you are here for a harem, or a lemon, or any sort of romance whatsoever, then turn around now.
If you are here for Godlike!Naruto, turn around now.
If you are here for a canon rewrite, turn around now.
If you are here expecting characters to not make mistakes that bite them in the ass later, turn around now.

This is a character development fic. There will be some Rinnegan-y moments, but as with all things of this nature, the Rinnegan is a tool, not a crutch. It's not the focal point of this story. It's a part of it.

Characters will make mistakes. They will be put on the spot and be forced out of their comfort zones.

If your first instinct is to claim that something in this fic is a plot hole, consider that there's a likely chance I've considered it and we just haven't gotten to the point in the story where that's developed yet. (One of the pitfalls of updating serially like this, but oh well.)

Thank you for reading, and for following.

See you next chapter!
- Endo

Uploaded on: 27 Jan 2017
Official betas for this chapter: N/a
Final word count: 4117 words