Synchronicity

Down The Rabbit Hole part - 1

he sleeps alone

 he needs no army where he's headed because he knows, 

that they're just ghosts.

The moon rises behind him, an alarming, unnatural presence looming in the stratosphere. Darkness maunders over the horizon, bearing nothing but diamond lancets that drift in its wake. 

He wants to tear it apart. He wants to tear the whole sky apart, and find the parts of himself that he's lost in their remains.

Movement behind him diverts his attention: a figure wavers in the distance, bathed in wintry moonlight, his lemon-colored hair the only determinable color in the grayscale world spread before him. He looks vaguely familiar, like a memory. He shifts closer, and Naruto sees that the boy is himself. A soundless wind howls around them. The boy's gaze swallows everything: distance, time, even Naruto himself. 

His mouth opens, but the silence drowns the words. Naruto would not have heard him anyway, all his attention is snared inside his eyes. He feels he could rest inside them forever, loitering there in the narrow rings, swimming slowly with the nine swirling tomoe, existing in a diminutive plane that rested in solace; and infinite and eternal sleep. 

The boy smiles at him, dispossessed of any legitimate vivacity, and he leans closer, as if to whisper a secret. 

"Wake up.".

"What in the hell...?" He breathed aloud, something like hysteria rising in his throat. 

Naruto's gaze lowered, fixated upon the black lines covering his stomach. The once unimaginable power of the seal now resembled vague organic shapes, faded into his skin and nothing but a husk of its former glory. He eyed it warily in the dim, wan lighting of his bathroom: whatever had happened to it last night... it couldn't have been good.

He threw his shirt back down, panting heavily and bracing himself against the counter.

Was he hyperventilating? When he couldn't swallow down enough air he decided—yeah. Yeah, he fucking was. The blonde leaned down to splash his face with cold water, rubbing vigorously. When he chanced a glance in the mirror he found a not-version of him staring back, hair a riot, face rapidly losing pallor. 

He... he had to calm down. Freaking the fuck out about it wasn't going to solve anything, not when the seal was obliterated and clearly not coming back—and what the hell was going to happen to him now: what could have possibly shattered it to pieces? 

His alarm violently ripped him out of his musings, the blaring ring startling him upright, where he banged the back of his head on the corner of a shelf.

Naruto hissed in pain, hobbling over to slam a fist down on top of the machine, mercifully returning the room to silence.

 He took a few deep breaths, counting to ten.

 Alright. He could do this. First things first he had to uh, put on a shirt, and possibly the ensemble of clothes that went with it, and then find a way to make it to the bridge in—god damn, was it already that late?—well, to make it to the bridge at least before Kakashi-sensei, and try not to rouse the suspicion of Sakura or Sasuke, and then—  He felt his stomach curl into heavy knots, and he leaned over the table.

 Naruto winced, holding a hand to the broken seal on his stomach.

 Definitely not good. It hurt like something was gripping his stomach and pulling it around—