Exhaustion pinned me flat against the woven straw of the tatami mat.
My muscles felt decoupled from my nervous system, completely refusing the command to roll over and slide the shōji screen shut. On the other side of the half-open partition, Naruto snored—a loud, ragged, rhythmic saw cutting through the quiet of the inn room.
I couldn't even muster the energy to throw a pillow at him. I simply turned my head, my cheek dragging against the stiff fabric of my pillowcase, and stared out the open window.
A waxing crescent moon hung low in the November sky, glowing faintly through the freezing fog. It drooped in the dark, heavy and bruised, resembling a tired, half-closed eye.
Me too, moon, I thought, my heavy eyelids fluttering as they fought a losing battle against gravity. Me too.
The pale light flared.
The moon flickered.
Kzzzzrt.
A high-pitched auditory whine hit my eardrums like a dentist's drill.
My consciousness slammed into a physical wall of white noise, then pierced right through it with sickening momentum. Above and below the interference, an endless, airless void usually waited. But tonight, the anchor slipped.
Kzzzzrt.
My bare feet hit hardwood flooring. The smell of stale cigarette smoke and cheap laundry detergent filled my nose. My childhood home. I clamped my eyes shut. I refused to look. My pulse spiked, a sudden, frantic hammer against my ribs. I channeled chakra to the seal on my wrist, forcing the lucid dreaming failsafes to activate.
No, I forced the thought out, burying the rising panic under sheer stubbornness. Not tonight. Change it.
Kzzzzrt.
My teeth vibrated violently in my jaw, a deep, buzzing hum rattling my skull.
The hardwood dissolved into damp pine needles. The freezing mist of the Land of Waves rolled over my ankles. Haku sat across from me in the quiet grove. But this memory twisted. Zabuza knelt behind him, his heavy, bandaged arms holding Haku softly, protectively, his brutal sword nowhere in sight.
I shook my head, my throat tightening as a desperate, hollow ache bloomed in my chest. No. Lie. Making it up. Not safe.
Kzzzzrt.
A jagged tear ripped through my visual field, splitting the mist into harsh, pixelated lines.
My boots sank deep into the foul, chemical-laced mud of the Katabami Gold Mine. Heavy rain lashed against my face. Raiga knelt in the muck, sobbing violently, his face buried in Ranmaru's small shoulder. He begged for forgiveness, crying out that he had gone too far, that he only wanted to carve out a safe world for the boy.
I bit my tongue hard enough to taste copper. My stomach churned. Liar. Monster. Hurt us. Exactly like—
Kzzzzrt.
My motor control completely misfired. My knees buckled, sending me crashing hard onto a floor covered in smashed glass and peeling paint.
Stifling, dust-choked air filled my lungs. The temperature plummeted, a sudden, freezing draft raising the hair on my arms.
My childhood bedroom. Not the apartment in Konoha. Not the orphanage. Before.
The ceiling loomed impossibly high. I felt small. My hands, pressed flat against the floorboards, looked tiny and pale. A jagged shard of a broken beer bottle bit sharply into the fleshy base of my thumb. The door slammed shut behind me with a concussive, deafening bang that rattled my teeth. Heavy, uneven footsteps approached from the hallway. A belt buckle jingled—a sharp, metallic clink, clink, clink.
The art hanging on the walls hung in shredded, violently torn ribbons. Brown stains ruined the peeling paint.
The chakra seal on my wrist burned, sparking uselessly as the control completely collapsed. A suffocating, crushing pressure clamped around my ribs, squeezing the air from my lungs. The smell of cheap beer and copper flooded the room.
No. Nononono.
I grabbed the sides of my head, digging my nails into my scalp, and screamed.
Kzzzzrt.
The heavy, uneven footsteps suddenly warped, stretching into a slow, grinding mechanical hum. The oppressive smell of cheap beer abruptly vanished, replaced by the sterile, freezing scent of ozone. A terrifying, unnatural pressure began to build rapidly directly behind my left eye.
The room inverted. Gravity ceased to exist. The air rushed violently from my lungs in a single, agonizing pull.
"Welcome back, Sylvie-chan."
I jerked wildly, my scream dying instantly in the absolute, airless vacuum.
A pale, human-shaped absence materialized in the dark. The freezing void slowly resolved into the silhouette of a man floating inches above nothingness.
We floated in absolute, freezing blackness, surrounded by the distant, cold light of a million stars. The panicked heat in my blood vanished, immediately suppressed by the sheer, crushing scale of the space around us.
I opened my mouth to speak. My lungs pushed, but no air existed to carry the sound. I choked on the silence, my vocal cords straining uselessly against the vacuum.
Toneri smiled. A serene, unnerving curve of pale lips beneath hollow, eyeless sockets.
He gestured vaguely at the starfield around us. "We are in space, Sylvie-chan. Even your dreamspace seems to conform to your reality."
His lips moved, but the sound bypassed my ears entirely. The syllables vibrated directly inside my skull, anchoring heavily and specifically in the left side. The sheer invasive pressure of the telepathy made my left eye throb violently, as if a needle were being slowly pushed behind the pupil.
I forced my mind to push back against the intrusion. I abandoned words, abandoning syntax, hurling pure, desperate panic and furious rejection outward.
Why?
Toneri tilted his head. The empty, hollow indentations of his eye sockets seemed to bore directly through my skull.
"Madara."
The syllables split apart, echoing and bouncing inside the left side of my skull like ricocheting bullets. The name misfired, tangling directly with the metallic clink of the belt buckle from my bedroom, amplifying the pressure behind my eye until it felt like my skull would crack.
A blinding spike of agony detonated behind my temple.
I gasped, my eyes snapping open as I shot upright on the tatami mat.
I heaved for breath, my chest rising and falling frantically in the dark inn room, my throat sandpaper-dry from choking on the vacuum. Cold sweat soaked my pink yukata, plastering the fabric to my spine. My hands shook uncontrollably, my fingers rigid and cramped. A residual, phantom pressure throbbed dully behind my left eye, throwing my depth perception entirely out of alignment. I clamped my jaw shut so hard my teeth ached, trying to suppress the violent tremor in my chin.
The faint, rhythmic sound of Naruto's snoring drifted through the open partition, anchoring me violently back to the waking world.
I rubbed my throbbing temple, glaring out the window at the distant, uncaring moon.
...thanks for nothing, moon man.