The Dragon Queen // (Under Revision)

Outrun The Moon

"When Master Kakashi was asking me questions, I had a thought, and you seemed to react to it. Did anything weird happen? A thought that didn't really seem like yours?"

Tsuyoi sat cross-legged on Naruto's bed, bandages wrapped around her neck and stomach, and a huge padded eye patch over her swollen left eye. Tsuyoi was putting her hair up in a ponytail. She could feel a bump swelling where she had gotten thrown into the shelf on her head.

Naruto froze, then let out a chuckle.

"What's funny?" Tsuyoi asked, her brow furrowing.

"You called him Master Kakashi."

"So?"

"He wasn't your teacher. He was mine. But you called him Master Kakashi. That's what I call him."

Tsuyoi blinked. She hadn't even thought about it like that.

"But anyway...yeah, there was a thought, actually," he answered, sliding a hand up to rub the back of his neck. He leaned his body against the door.

"What was it?"

"Just one word. Dead. And then it felt cut off like it was being shut down intentionally." Naruto looked back down at her, his eyes taking a strange gleam beneath the lantern. "It was your thought, wasn't it?"

Tsuyoi bit her lip. "I think I created a yuimaru between us when I healed you."

"A yuimaru? What's that?"

"It means connecting circle," she rattled off absentmindedly. "This is bad. I've never healed anyone else before, and I didn't know...and I don't know how to fix it. Naruto, this is really bad." If I die, you do too. And I have been sentenced to be death since I was ten.

That thought he didn't hear, apparently.

"I saw a memory of yours, I think." Naruto's words brought her out of her inner fervent prayers for how to fix the mess she'd put herself in. "When I was asleep."

"Tell me what happened." She said, pinning him with her eyes.

"I saw a little girl—she was yo—and then that lady, Chizu—" he spat out her name, a hint of anger flaring in his eyes, "—grabbed your wrist and pulled you away into a wooded place. Then she looked at you and said, "Ten years from now you will—"

"—be sacrificed to the Dragon King. You are going to die." Tsuyoi finished, leaning against the wall. Those pivotal words in her upbringing, when things went from bad to worse, were forever ingrained in her mind. He now he knew it, too. "What did I do, Naruto?" A headache throbbed at the back of her head, like it did when she used her dairokkan for too long.

"We're going to be here for a week, right? We have time to figure it out." Naruto crossed his arms behind his head, looking pretty relaxed for someone whose brain had just been linked to another human beings.

Tsuyoi, on the other hand, was losing it. "No, no, you don't understand. I'm not even supposed to talk to you, much less figure anything out. Noroi!" She seethed, running her hand through her hair. "I don't know what to do!"

"How about eat something? The fight took a lot out of you," Naruto encouraged. The good-natured gleam in his eyes never left.

"How can you be so calm about this? How can you know about...my curse and still act like I'm a regular person?" Tsuyoi fretted, digging her hand further in her hair.

Naruto's hand flashed; Tsuyoi instinctively ducked, but she was too late. He had grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand out of her hair, gently yet firmly. "Stop worrying. You're making my head hurt with all of your emotions flying everywhere. You forgot that we're connected, or whatever, so I feel what you feel. Chill," he ordered. He didn't release his grip on her wrist. "You've seemed to forget that I harbor a Nine-Tailed Fox inside me. Kurama told me what happened earlier. I'm pretty sure I fall outside the standard for normal, too, so calm down."