The Red Maelstrom

[50] Haze

A/N: We're starting with something nasty, folks. You may skip the very first paragraph up until "Thud." And you may also skip from the asterisk (*) that shows up after that until the next asterisk (*). The second skippable part is for the blood and vomiting. There will be a few more mentions of blood after that, so please be careful if you're squeamish. For the rest of the warnings, you can scroll to the A/N at the end of the chapter. I didn't put the warning up here since it already reveals quite a bit before the chapter even starts.

Kohana's heart twisted with excruciating pain at the way Kakashi was looking at her. She resisted the urge to let out any sounds of distress. What was she going to do about this? Should she tell Naruto the first chance they found themselves alone together? Should she follow Akano's advice and ask Kakashi now? How much would he even tell her? Could she even trust him to tell her the truth in the first place?

The weight in her chest tripled.

What if all her fears were proven?

"And where does that leave you?"

Kohana froze. Not again. Not now.

A woman began to beg. "Kait—where... Don't leave... Please." A heavy pressure was starting to form at the pit of Kohana's hollow stomach. She wanted to vomit. She needed somewhere to hide first.

"Don't... take...er...pl—"

The lights around Kohana were burning brighter, redder. They were coalescing into something infinitely hotter, burning like hellfire against the darkening sky. Her lungs filled with smoke. She felt a presence behind her. Long black hair cascaded down the side of her head. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Whose hair was that?

Something cold and slick slid up the side of her cheek. Something icy and unyielding wrapped around the back of her neck and shook her violently. And then they squeezed. They forced her to her knees until she ate dirt.

Something— no. Someone was going to come for her. They were gonna come for her now that she was alone. Finally.

"Finally."

A blade sank into her abdomen, right where he had stabbed her, right where they were once again surrounded by a terrifying forest of shadows (nowhere to run, nowhere to hide). Kohana could do nothing but watch in horror as each centimeter of cold, unyielding steel pierced her skin, splitting, forcing its way past muscle.

She screamed.

Thud.

A force threw itself against Kohana's door, splintering wood. Thud, thud... THUD! And finally, after a split second—SLAM! The door to Kohana's house flew open, nearly bouncing back into the threshold from how hard it glanced off the wall. Kohana pulled the kunai stored underneath her pillow, eyes unseeing, tongue dumb and useless.

"Hana-chan..."

The figure at the door raised their hands. A chilly breeze jolted Kohana's already frozen legs awake. But she couldn't get her legs underneath her to stand, no matter how she tried. With her free hand, she shakily and angrily brushed away the tears blurring her vision. Who was that at the door—

"Sis... It's me!"

"Sis"? Who—

Kohana was saying something. Well, her mouth was moving, but her brain— her senses were blocked, eyes too hazy to make out anything but the figure in front of her. She saw blond hair and large eyes, but she struggled to put those features together, as though she were trying to fit a puzzle together with all the pieces within her reach, but Kohana was suddenly incapable of figuring out where which piece ought to go. As if she didn't know the mechanics of a simple picture puzzle in the first place.