Afraid of the Dark

Afraid of the Dark

Chapter 12: Eyes to See the Soul

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"It's funny. The world is so different in the daylight. But at night, your fantasies get out of hand. But in the daylight, everything falls back into place again." - Carnival of Souls (1962) (Candace Hiligoss

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A groggy haze filled Sasuke's mind as he slowly came to consciousness. Vaguely he realized that he and Naruto, snuggled as they used to when they were children, were not in their own bed at home. The all too real nightmare of the past few days came rushing back as he remembered that he and Naruto were fairies. Or he was and Naruto was some sort of special hybrid.

His mind didn't want to process the details of what had passed between them; instead he wanted to relish in the warmth of holding Naruto's comforting body close to his.

However, it was the sudden flash of cold, a chill of forewarning danger that jolted his mind suddenly awake. There was a distinctive feeling of awareness of something other and not quite right in the room. As his hold tightened on Naruto, he could feel the stiffening of Naruto's body as he tensed and awoke. Neither of them moved, both holding their breaths.

Blearily Sasuke opened his eyes a crack. The room was still pitch dark, but even in the dark, he could make out the bright flow of Naruto's aura. It flared a deep hue of rich gold, which began to ripple as his body tensed.

A piece of what felt like metal, no thicker than the width of a bent paper clip, began to trail down Sasuke's scalp, to his forehead. It would have continued moving, but Sasuke wasn't going to stand around to find out what the hell was going on. With a sharp jerk of his head, he dislodged the thing from his face.

He and Naruto moved as one, their bodies connected and in sync as Naruto gripped Sasuke's arms that were already wrapped around him, both rolling to the right of the bed and off onto the floor. Naruto took the brunt of the impact, but as they had found out recently, when their bodies had skin to skin contact, pain seemed like an almost unnecessary factor.

They jumped to their feet, their eyes darting around as Naruto sprung forward toward the opposite wall, groping for the light switch. The room flooded with light. Their eyes burned slightly, unused to the brightness, but even with their eyes forced open they saw no movement.

Nothing was there.

Their hearts raced as they looked around the room, toward the closed door, and then the closed window.

"Under the bed?" Naruto mouthed as they moved slowly toward the door. Sasuke and Naruto pressed closer to the wall, their eyes darting around to see where or what could have moved. Slowly, Sasuke knelt, noting that the covers didn't even cover underneath the bed, leaving empty space between the four legs.

If it wasn't underneath the bed...

Sasuke's eyes darted up, Naruto's head whipping up to follow his line of sight.

Sasuke recoiled in disgust, Naruto mimicking his movement.

"Holy fucking shit! Is that the bug you were talking about earlier?" Naruto asked as he pressed his back up against the door, his eyes not leaving the ceiling as his hand groped for the doorknob. It took a moment for Sasuke to remember that he had lied to Naruto about smashing a bug against the wall.

Stretched out along the entire length of the ceiling was a silvery web. Dangling from a silver thread was what looked like a cross between a thin tarantula and a centipede. It was about the size of Sasuke's closed fist. Its body was like that of a tarantula, with hundreds of thin, spindly legs waving in the air. Sasuke shuddered as he realized one of those legs had been touching his face. The thing bobbed up and down on its string, almost taunting them to come closer.

"Is it dangerous?" Naruto breathed. Sasuke shot him a glare.

"I don't care if it's dangerous. I don't know what the hell it is, and even if I did I wouldn't go near the thing," Sasuke snapped out, turning his head back toward Naruto, only to note that the freaky thing was dangling near his face again, its metal like legs outstretched and waving near his face.

Sasuke scuttled backward, bumping into Naruto before he turned the knob, both of them stumbling out of the room with a resounding slam of the door.

They breathed heavily, looking at each other in the dark. The lights in the hallway flared to life. Both Sasuke and Naruto were grateful that their eyes had been semi-adjusted to the light in the room.

"What's going on?" Itachi asked, his eyes darting at both Naruto and Sasuke.

"A centipede and a tarantula had a baby. If you want to see it, it's in there," Sasuke clipped out, rubbing his forehead where the thing had touched his face.

"With lots of legs, probably spinning a web over the entire ceiling?" Itachi wondered, his back straightening.

"You know what it is? What's it called?" Naruto asked.

"In Chinese it means corpse snatcher – or ghoul. It was most likely after Sasuke's eyes," Itachi said calmly. Sasuke felt a chill go through him as he remembered how close that thing had been to his eyes. Itachi took a deep breath and looked around him. Sasuke looked at his brother's strange behavior.

"It's called a daoshi."

As soon as the word left Itachi's lips, it was as though someone had set off a popping smoke bomb right next to him. A white puff of smoke poofed! out of no where. Naruto and Sasuke coughed slightly, the smoke clearing almost as quickly as it came.

"Yo."

A man clad in dark blues, greens, and black stood before them. His white hair stuck up in a wayward and rather spiky ponytail at the back of his head. At first, Sasuke thought the man looked like Kyuubi with his face hidden. Sasuke stepped protectively in front of Naruto, placing his own body between the possible threat and Naruto. His stance relaxed slightly when he realized it wasn't Kyuubi. The man smiled behind a mask that covered his mouth, his one visible eye crinkling upward happily as he lifted his hand in greeting. This strange welcome made Sasuke question the man's sanity. Someone who popped out of no where and didn’t seem to find anything odd with his own appearance must have had a few screws loose.

Besides the initial greeting, the man, who had one eye covered behind an eye patch, had turned his attention to an orange book he pulled from his front pocket.

Itachi seemed completely unfazed that this man had appeared out of no where. However, as Sasuke wasn't one hundred percent sure that his brother wasn’t crazy, not to mention the fact that he now knew that Itachi had kept so many secrets, Sasuke stayed on guard.

"This," Itachi started when he noticed the white-haired man completely and utterly uninterested into introducing himself, "is Kakashi."

"Do you always pop out of no where?" Naruto asked, slightly bewildered.

"Sometimes I use the door," Kakashi replied, not looking up from his book. "Someone mention a daoshi? As no one is screaming in horror and pain, I assume that it has yet to attack anyone and is contained? Your doing Itachi?" Kakashi asked mildly.

"My younger brother Sasuke and younger would-be-brother Naruto did it."

"I'm sure they did."

This time, Kakashi did look up. He pierced them with his one visible eye, giving Sasuke the impression that the feigned disinterest had been a way for him to observe them more clearly. In fact, Sasuke got the distinct and strange impression that he'd seen this man before. That in fact, he had felt this man's gaze before.

A memory of the day that Naruto had officially come to live with them popped into Sasuke's head, making it ache terribly. It had been the very first time he and Naruto had had their memories erased after the first troll attack on Naruto and his mom…


"Were we supposed to do something?" Sasuke asked, rubbing his head. It hurt a lot, especially right in the center of his forehead as though something sharp had poked him there. Naruto frowned.

"I don't remember. My head kinda feels fuzzy," Naruto said, scratching his head.

Sasuke shook his head, trying to remember, but the more he thought, the worse the pain in his head got. He decided not to think about it.

"I'm hungry," Naruto said suddenly. Sasuke looked around, noticing that his clock said that it was almost dinnertime. They must have slept for a while.

"Hn," Sasuke said. "I'll show you where the kitchen is." Sasuke suddenly remembered that he was supposed to give Naruto a tour of their house since he would be staying there while Naruto's mom was in a coma at the hospital.

How had he forgotten that Naruto’s mom was in a coma in the hospital? That was the reason Naruto was staying with them now.

That must have been what he had forgotten!

Convinced that he had figured out what he had forgotten, Sasuke led Naruto downstairs to eat, ignoring the dull throb in his forehead, not giving any more thought to his supposed dream about monsters.

He ignored the little voice in his head telling him that he needed to remember something very important.

Sasuke even ignored the little voice in his head telling him that he ought to be careful, careful of the feeling that something was watching him.

Sasuke was ignoring everything so well that he missed the pair of eyes that stared at him and Naruto through his bedroom window…


…Sasuke was eleven. He kept feeling like someone was watching him. It kept feeling like there were eyes on him. It wasn’t the first time he’d has this feeling, but this time it felt like a truly bad feeling

When he and Naruto went to bed that night, he couldn’t help shake the feeling. While he lay awake in bed, he realized that Naruto hadn’t gone to sleep either.

"I feel like someone’s watching us," Sasuke whispered.

"I – I thought that too," Naruto said, his voice sounding scared. "What do we do?"

"Take the flashlight. Let’s go to Itachi’s room. It’s closest," Sasuke said. Naruto nodded, grabbing the flashlight before they dashed to Itachi’s room.

"What’re you doing?" Itachi asked, frowning as the two of them entered his room. He sat at his computer desk, typing up something on his computer. The only light in the room came from the glow off of Itachi’s computer screen, and from the faint glow of the flashlight in Naruto’s hand.

"There are eyes watching us," Naruto said. Sasuke glared at Naruto. He shouldn’t say something like that to Itachi. Itachi would think they were being stupid.

But instead of brushing them off as acting up, Itachi frowned at them. He turned toward his window, and his eyes widened slightly when he looked out it. Sasuke tilted his head to the side to see what had made Itachi look like that.

"Stay in here with me tonight," Itachi said, doing something with his computer before turning it off. He flipped on a light before the computer finished booting down. "Get into bed you two," Itachi said, nodding to the bed. Like Sasuke and Naruto, he too had a large bed, but it would be a little squished with the three of them in there.

For a moment, Sasuke thought that Itachi was going to get into bed with them at the same time, but instead he headed for the door, grabbing the flashlight from Naruto.

"Hey! Where are you –" But Naruto’s words died on his lips as he suddenly slumped back asleep, and Sasuke felt himself suddenly very, very tired –


"You! You've been watching us!" Sasuke said, his eyes narrowed. He remembered at least once that being watched hadn’t been a good thing. He eyed Kakashi with a distrustful glower.

Kakashi merely crinkled his eyes and smiled in response to Sasuke’s threatening glare.

"Since Naruto came to stay with you, I have been checking in a lot more frequently. As you and Itachi are more likely to attract daoshi, it's only natural for me to come and check on you and pick them off before they harm either of you. And yes, I have watched you for some time. Sadly I was unable to come to your aid the other night when you had your run in with the trolls. Other times I’ve had more success at helping. I fear the other night I wasn’t much use to you." He shared a meaningful glance with Itachi.

"Even so, your aid is always appreciated. One time he happened to stop by when there was a troll outside," Itachi said. Naruto's face lit up in remembrance, his eyes locking onto Itachi’s.

"I remember. You made us stay in your room that night. You took my flashlight and knocked us out," Naruto said. Itachi shrugged. Sasuke looked at Kakashi. Apparently he’d helped with one troll. While Itachi seemed to trust him, and while usually Sasuke trusted Itachi’s judgment, he found himself on edge after hearing that Kakashi had been watching Naruto. Something both possessive and protective made him want to make sure Kakashi’s intentions for Naruto were honorable.

"It was necessary at the time," Itachi explained, jarring Sasuke from his thoughts.

"We having a party?" Jiraiya asked, emerging from behind Sasuke and Naruto, his night cap tossed to one side, nodding at Kakashi in greeting.

"Daoshi," Kakashi said in way of greeting. His voice took a more serious tone, making Sasuke feel somewhat more at ease.

"Midnight snack meeting?" Yamato asked, Ibiki appearing behind him.

"Er, what are we all doing in the hallway?" Naruto asked, looking back and forth between everyone.

"Didn't you say there was a daoshi?" Kakashi asked mildly.

"A daoshi? Really?" Yamato asked, not looking too thrilled.

"I hate those things," Ibiki added.

"Morino," Kakashi said, addressing Ibiki.

"Hatake," Ibiki responded.

"Aren't you going to kill it, or something?" Naruto asked, his question aimed at Kakashi.

As the discussion began, Sasuke felt himself getting lightheaded. He began to hear a buzzing in his head as the others began discussing who should kill it. Via the conversation, it sounded like Kakashi was a trained daoshi killer. In fact, whenever the name was mentioned in a particular way, it would summon him to that spot.

However, the discussion turned into a bit of a pissing match when Morino and Jiraiya boasted about the daoshi they had killed, and Kakashi seemed to be lazy but not enough so to be one upped, which launched another discussion about it being Kakashi’s job to handle.

Meanwhile, Sasuke's body began to feel heavy as he began to sweat.

"Sasuke," Itachi said, his voice full of concern as he gripped Sasuke's arm. "Did it touch you?"

All discussion ceased. He felt the gaze of everyone’s eyes turning to him. Sasuke lightly touched the spot where the thing had touched him.

"It touched my head with its wire-like leg before we - "

Sasuke didn't have time to react as Itachi whipped a knife out of seemingly no where and slashed a shallow gash across his forehead.

Naruto screamed in surprised horror.

Itachi forced Sasuke to kneel to the floor, his body hunched forward as his own blood began to drip from his forehead upside down. The blood ran into his scalp from the way his head was bent over.

"What the fuck?! What's going on?!"

Sasuke could blearily hear Naruto yelling and screaming in terror, but the firm grip and gentle words Itachi began to say in Sasuke’s ear made him feel somehow peaceful.

"Take deep breaths. The tips of their pincer legs are tinged with the same poison as the trolls have on their finger tips. They will make it so you do not feel the wound or the way the poison acts until too late. Their venom makes you become weak, so it is easier to pluck your eyes from your socket. You and Naruto must have touched. The wound from where the leg touched you has healed over the poison. Normally their wounds are difficult to heal, but I wager that Naruto’s touch healed the wound and diluted some of the poison. With your body’s reactions it clearly was not diluted enough. We need to let it bleed some from the source – and I believe Jiraiya has gone to fetch his wife. She's a healer and will most likely whip up an antidote for you quickly."

Apparently Naruto couldn't hear the explanation Itachi was giving Sasuke.

Sasuke gasped as he felt Itachi's body go tumbling from behind him, knocking his own body to the side as he heard Naruto raging and yelling. Sasuke turned to look, seeing Naruto get in a good, solid punch to Itachi's face before Jiraiya and Ibiki gripped Naruto's arms and pulled him off of Itachi. Itachi spat blood out of his mouth before reaching up and touching Naruto's head. Naruto's eyes glared heady defiance before he slumped still between his two restrainers. Where Morino and Jiraiya had been holding Naruto back before, his now limp body needed their mutual support as they walked him over to the wall and set him down gently.

Sasuke heard the sound of a door opening and some strange sounds as he thought Yamato and Kakashi had entered the room where the daoshi was still cooped up.

"I thought you were getting Tsunade," Itachi said, rubbing his jaw.

"Kid's got a nice punch," Jiraiya grinned before disappearing down the hallway. Or so Sasuke assumed. Things were still a bit fuzzy, and the awkward position of having his blood drip from his head wasn't entirely helping his head clear. Even as Sasuke went to adjust his position, Itachi put his hand on his lower back, stopping him from doing so.

"The flow has already started downward. If you switch positions, the blood flow will switch, causing the poison to spread."

Somehow Sasuke wasn't quite convinced. Head wounds should not be dealt with like this, and something of Itachi's "blood flow" explanation wasn't measuring up to what Sasuke had learned in health class.

However, as fairies, trolls, and creepy hybrid eye snatchers weren't part of his regular schooling, he decided that for now he would trust Itachi's judgment. That and things were getting fuzzy again…


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"How're you feeling?" Naruto's soft whisper awoke Sasuke. His head throbbed like crazy. He reached out to grasp Naruto's hand, but Naruto pulled back. "Uh, apparently we can't touch yet. The stuff needs to be in your system for a while. The antidote that is. I mean, I guess we can heal each other's wounds and things, but certain poisons take a bit more and by touching I could interfere with it."

"I hate this," Sasuke said, the words sticking in his dry throat. He swallowed, feeling like there was a large lump there. "I hate being so helpless. We can't do anything. I always end up so fucked up," Sasuke groaned. He opened his eyes, noting that the light of dawn had begun to slip into the room.

"You're not helpless!"

"Yeah, I am. You or Itachi or someone else always has to make sure I'm alive. That stupid dao-" Sasuke paused, wondering if just saying the word would cause Kakashi to appear and decided not to chance it, "freak eye snatcher. The trolls. The car accident."

"Wait a minute! You totally saved us from the trolls! You flew! And all those years ago, I would be dead if you hadn't helped me. Ibiki was telling me that even though our aura connection helps us heal each other, poisons need to get out of our bodies' systems differently. But for the most part, you have healed me a ton. Stop being so emo and get your happy-little-fairy-self back together!"

"Happy-little-fairy-self?" Sasuke snorted, turning his head to look at Naruto in mock disbelief. "I think I vaguely remember you saying that to Itachi a few hours ago."

Sasuke was fairly sure he hadn't passed out, but the details of what had happened after Naruto had punched Itachi were extremely hazy. He wondered if that’s what a hangover was like.

"I did. I told Itachi if he only acted like a happy-little-fairy I would know better than to hit him than when acts like a psycho-emo-scary-dude. For some reason, he glared at me," Naruto said, obviously knowing full well why Itachi had glared at him.

Naruto stood by the window, looking out at the dim light coming through it. Sasuke squinted, looking at it for a moment. Despite his aching head, he felt strangely rested.

"It's not morning, is it?" Sasuke asked, realizing he was not seeing the light of dawn but rather the dying light at twilight.

"Nope. You slept all day. Me too. I guess everything just kinda hit me, and I was zoned out. Not to mention I spoke with Tsunade for a while. She's the doctor – and Jiraiya's wife..."

"And the one who spared the life of your father," Sasuke said, reminiscing. Naruto turned his head to the side.

"Yeah. She’s the xiangu whose other name is Gangshou. She goes by Tsunade now. She remembers a lot. She had a lot of stories to tell me," Naruto said, his eyes set in a far away place. A small part of Sasuke wished that he could have been with Naruto to hear it. A larger part knew that Naruto, with his extremely talkative nature, would relay it to him in due time.

"What are we doing now?" Sasuke asked, his eyes set to stare at the ceiling.

"We're talking," Naruto grinned.

"Dumb ass. What are our plans? Where do we go from here? My father is missing. Your parents...I know you want to look for them both. And I have a feeling Kyuubi is going to come looking for you as well. I don’t want to sit around on my ass waiting for things to keep coming after us."

"Yeah, especially since the trolls are still out there after me too," Naruto added.

"There's so much to do," Sasuke murmured. "I-" He sat up, his head spinning as he did so. Naruto was at his side in an instant. His hands were outstretched and ready to touch him, but he hesitated.

Sasuke looked at Naruto, seeing the strange longing in his eyes, wondering if it was because Naruto wanted to touch him only because he wasn't allowed, or if Naruto, like him, desired for them to be more.

For a moment Naruto's aura seemed to shiver as though it wanted to reach out to him. Sasuke's eyes locked onto Naruto's. Naruto's breath hitched. Sasuke felt strangely exposed, as though by merely looking into his eyes, Naruto could see the conflicting emotions inside him. The desire and the care – the love he had for his best friend – just sitting there. And the strange and stinging feeling of hate that Naruto was practically controlling and over-ruling the rational thoughts that Sasuke should be having.

"Whoops! Almost forgot," Naruto said, putting his hands in his pockets to prevent him from reaching out. "So much we don't know about what we can do."

"No kidding," Sasuke agreed. He propped himself up on his own.

"Those daoshi really took a lot out of you."

A slight pop followed by a puff of smoke filled the room.

"Yo!" Kakashi greeted again, still holding the book he'd been reading earlier. Sasuke raised an eyebrow at him.

"Do you always pop up when daoshi is mentioned?" Sasuke asked, annoyed. Kakashi merely grinned cryptically in response.

"You're like, a genie," Naruto said, looking at Kakashi. Kakashi turned to look at Naruto and smiled.

"I like you," Kakashi said to Naruto's genie reference before turning his one eyed gaze onto Sasuke. "Not so sure about you."

Sasuke resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Speaking of eyes...he looked at the eye patch over Kakashi, wondering if he'd lost it to the daoshi. They were eye snatchers. And they were after his eyes and Itachi's – but why?

"We share the same sentiments. Why are the daoshi after my eyes? Why not Naruto's? And why Itachi's? Does it have to do with our heritage?" Sasuke asked.

"They enjoy fire fairies with special eye abilities. You happen to have them. Itachi's fairly apt at them, and he assures me you have the potential when trained. Training will help keep the daoshi at bay. They can sense your inability to protect yourself from them as your aura does not resonate the proper defenses."

"Because I'm weak," Sasuke murmured.

"Untrained. There's a difference. But you do seem a bit flimsy at the moment," Kakashi noted, tilting the corner of his book at Sasuke for emphasis.

"Can Itachi or Aunt Mikoto train us on how to use whatever it is? Our magic or power?" Naruto asked.

"Hmm. No on both accounts. Itachi has other business to attend. While your father did his best to blend into the normal human scene, Itachi, by contrast, got involved in going after the source of the trolls and destroy the threat. He had prior duties to attend to. Mikoto, while normally an apt woman, is going to be detained for some time due to how badly the trolls hurt her. Jiraiya and I, on the other hand, are going to be taking a special interest in helping to develop your abilities. That way you can figure out where you want to go from here."

"Will we miss a lot of school?" Naruto asked, curious. Sasuke turned to look at his friend in disbelief.

"How can you think we're going back to school after all this?" Sasuke demanded.

"Won't it seem odd if we just disappear?" Naruto said, crossing his arms.

"Did you forget the house was destroyed?" Sasuke asked, his eye twitching. Leave it to Naruto to forget their agonizing hours trapped in their house with their flashlights trained on the trolls and then flying to freedom barely in the nick of time.

"Oh, yeah. I did kinda forget," Naruto said, looking stricken.

"So, you're going to be teaching us?" Sasuke asked. "Why you?"

"All in good time, my wee apprentice," Kakashi said, grinning at him through his strange mask.

"I haven't got anything better to do, and Tsunade said that Sasuke should try and start getting on his feet as much as possible to burn away the poison - "

"She did?" Sasuke asked.

" - so why don't you start training us now, sensei?"

Fleetingly Sasuke remembered that Kyuubi had offered to train Naruto. There was something in the way that Naruto requested the training that seemed more resigned rather than excited. His gut feeling told him that Naruto hadn’t forgotten Kyuubi’s offer, and it made Sasuke wary of Naruto’s desire to train. This Kakashi guy had better be good; Sasuke feared Naruto would go elsewhere if it didn’t suit his needs.

Naruto shot him a concerned look and then rolled his eyes as though he could read Sasuke’s mind.

"I’m not going anywhere," Naruto assured him.

"We will start tomorrow night. We’re going to switch your sleeping habits. You will sleep during the day and train during the night," Kakashi explained, though he raised an eyebrow at the strange exchange going on between his two would-be students.

"At night?" Sasuke asked.

"It will give you another 24 hours to heal. Besides, what you will need to be trained most against comes out only after dark."

A slight welling of fear and anticipation built up inside Sasuke. He quickly squashed it. He was tired of being afraid of the dark. He was going to do his best to set things right.

His eyes darted over to Naruto who looked beyond excited. They would learn how to use their magical powers (Sasuke snorted even as he thought that term), but more importantly re-establish control over their lives.

And then, when that was all settled, he would make sure Naruto realized they were better together than apart.

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"Only by facing that which goes bump in the night can we get over our fear and get rid of it once and for all." ~ Jelp

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Next Chapter: To the Trained Eye


Gaaaah. This seemed to take forever to write. In all honesty, it was all written in about a day, but the concept of this chapter took forever to form cohesively. Once it did, then it basically wrote itself, which is always nice. Now if it would just edit and post itself too that would be wonderful!

Anyway, time jump next chapter! It will be after Sasuke and Naruto have already had a fair amount of training in order to focus on more juicy stuff. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! ~ Jelp