After midnight, the dorm transformed into an abandoned metropolis. The building itself had given up pretending—fake plants wilted in corners, hallway sensors failed to detect movement, and ceiling lights sputtered like dying memories. Naruto stretched across his unmade bed in Room 327, muscles tense, staring at the thin fracture that bisected the ceiling above him. Night after night, he'd studied that crack's path, certain that eventually it would tear open the universe and drag him into its depths.
He'd tried everything: counting backwards from a thousand, clenching and unclenching his fists, even reading the Student Code of Conduct cover to cover (which, for the record, had more in common with a horror novel than any of the books he'd skimmed for literature class). Nothing worked. His brain, chemically bludgeoned by Tsunade's suppressant, still kept humming on a frequency tuned exclusively to fear and failure.
Sasuke, on the other hand, looked like a marble statue having a power nap. He slept flat on his back, arms folded over his chest, mouth barely parted. The dark fringe of his hair cast shadows over his eyelids. If it weren't for the soft, nearly inaudible snore every sixth breath, Naruto might have believed he was dead.
Naruto's eyelids fell shut. Silence clogged his ears like cotton batting. Two heartbeats filled the darkness: Sasuke's—a metronome, efficient and controlled; his own—a rabbit's pulse, skittish and uneven. He didn't move a muscle, corpse-still, courting unconsciousness the way someone caught in a riptide eventually stops fighting the current.
Sleep finally claimed him.
-
The world detonated—not in pieces but in violent, jagged shards that sliced through reality. One second he was nine, slouched in the back seat, headphones leaking static while Kurama's fingers punched radio buttons. The next—impact. A high beam speared the darkness, blinding him. Metal didn't just screech; it shrieked, howled, tore itself apart. His bones vibrated with the sound as Kurama's mouth formed a word that vanished in the chaos.
The airbag didn't just explode—it erupted against his face like a bomb, chemical powder searing his lungs, choking him. The windshield didn't merely break; it disintegrated, a constellation of glass daggers embedding in his flesh. Time convulsed. He wrenched his neck around to see the steering column impale his mother's chest, blood bubbling from her lips as she gasped his name. His father's fingers spasmed, clawed at nothing, then froze forever in a grotesque curl. A siren wailed closer, its sound morphing into something almost human—hysterical laughter that crawled up his spine and nested in his skull.
Naruto tried to speak but could only cough up copper—hot, metallic liquid that burned his throat and bubbled between his cracked lips. His hand scrabbled blindly for Kurama, fingers trembling and slipping in something warm and viscous, but the seat was empty, just a dark crimson pool soaking into the torn upholstery and the hollow body-shaped depression where his brother had been before the paramedics with their latex gloves and grim, practiced expressions had extracted him.
The nightmare buckled, colors leaching away like watercolor in rain. Now he was on the crumbling concrete front step of foster home number three—or was it four?—clutching a black garbage bag that crinkled with each shuddering breath, filled with everything he owned in the world: two faded t-shirts with stretched-out collars, a scratched-up Game Boy with a permanently dim screen, a dog-eared photo of Kurama with devil-horns drawn in red sharpie that had bled through the glossy paper. A Beta woman with crow's feet around her eyes and a smile that didn't quite reach them bent down, her breath like wintergreen mouthwash masking something sour underneath. "You'll be safe here," she said, but her hand gripped his shoulder with fingers like talons, and her manicured nails left five perfect crescent moons indented in his skin, tiny red half-circles that would fade but never quite disappear.
He looked back, desperate, and saw Kurama at the end of the walk, a strange woman's hand clamped on his shoulder, steering him toward a blue sedan with a Jesus fish on the bumper. They reached for each other, arms outstretched, fingertips never quite touching. "I'll find you!" Kurama's voice cracked, tears streaming down his face. "You're not alone, Naruto! I swear I'll—" The car door slammed. The sound ricocheted through Naruto's skull, turned into a gunshot, turned into thunder, turned into—
—a clinic room, cold and gray, the kind where bad news is measured in milligrams and clipped syllables. He sat on butcher paper, feet not touching the floor. A Beta doctor with wire-rimmed glasses ticked off boxes on a clipboard, pausing every so often to glance at Naruto like a puzzle missing too many pieces.
The doctor's pen scratched across the paper. "Congratulations," he said, voice flat as the linoleum floor. "You are a beta." Naruto's chest tightened with desperate relief, a sob threatening to escape his throat as the doctor scrawled 'BETA' in angry block letters. Through the half-open door, he caught his foster parents' faces crumpling with disappointment—their eyes suddenly cold, calculating the decreased value of their investment.
The dream staggered forward, fast-forwarding through years in a stutter-stop blur. Naruto's heart clenched as each new adult's face loomed over him, their mouths forming the same questions that scraped against his raw nerves: "Do you feel safe?" "Any trouble making friends?" "Do you ever wish things had turned out differently?" (Every goddamn second of every goddamn day.) His throat burned with unspoken truths as he forced his lips into the same practiced lies, swallowing down the scream building in his chest, because the truth was a luxury that would get him tagged, tracked, and traded like livestock.
Then finally he was fifteen, standing in front of Iruka and Kakashi, his knees buckling beneath him. Iruka's face crumpled, tears streaming freely down his scarred cheeks as he pulled Naruto into his arms with such desperate force that it knocked the breath from both their lungs. "I'm so sorry," Iruka choked out, voice breaking on every syllable, his fingers trembling as they clutched the back of Naruto's shirt. "God, we looked everywhere for you." Naruto's throat closed around a sob as he buried his face against Iruka's shoulder, inhaling the scent of home he'd forgotten existed, his heart cracking open like an overripe fruit.
Then, out of nowhere, he was older, taller, stumbling through their front door with skin on fire. Iruka stood in the hallway, horror flooding his face as Naruto collapsed against the wall, sweat-slick and panting. "You're burning up," Iruka whispered, pressing a cool palm to his forehead. The touch detonated through Naruto's body like a live wire dropped in water, ripping a guttural whimper from his throat. Iruka's pupils dilated with sudden, terrible recognition. "This is—" he started, voice cracking open. "Naruto, I think you're experiencing a heat. You're an Omega."
The words hit like a baseball bat to the sternum. Naruto violently shoved himself away, legs buckling beneath him. "NO!" The scream erupted from somewhere primal and desperate, shredding his vocal cords. "I CAN'T BE! THE DOCTOR SAID—" Another wave of cramping heat knifed through his abdomen, doubling him over with such force his forehead nearly smashed into his knees. His fist crashed against the wall with a sickening crunch of bone against plaster, leaving a crater. Blood smeared the edges. "I'm a Beta," he gasped, saliva stringing between his teeth, tears burning tracks down his feverish face. "I HAVE TO BE A BETA."
Iruka reached for him, but Naruto recoiled violently, skull cracking against the wall as he collapsed to the floor. His body convulsed with each savage wave of heat, spine arching so severely he thought it might snap. Through the blur of tears and agony, the faces of his old foster parents flashed before him—their cold, calculating eyes measuring his worth, their disgust barely concealed—and terror shot through him like ice water in his veins, freezing him even as his skin burned.
The next moment he was sitting on a leather examination table in Tsunade's office, his knees trembling so hard they drummed against the metal frame. Kakashi's hand gripped his shoulder—the pressure both comforting and terrifying, like an anchor that might save him or drag him under. "This is the only way," Tsunade was saying, her voice catching as she extended a small silver packet of pills, her manicured fingers shaking almost imperceptibly. Naruto's throat closed up as he stared at them—tiny capsules that held his entire future. "If you want to stay hidden as an Omega—and out of the system." Her amber eyes met his, swimming with a cocktail of pity, fear, and fierce determination that made his chest ache. "They'll have side effects. Nasty ones." She swallowed hard. "But they'll keep you safe."
The dream shifted. Copper and bleach filled Naruto's nostrils as Kurama stepped from the darkness, each movement leaving afterimages like a glitching video. This wasn't his brother as he remembered—this was something wearing Kurama's face, with blue-tinged lips and hands dripping red all the way to the elbows. Light passed through his skin in places, revealing a network of veins like cracks in porcelain. When he knelt beside Naruto, his knees bent wrong, too far backward, bones clicking like ice in a glass. "I don't have much longer," he said, his voice a dry leaf skittering across concrete. His outstretched fingers left trails of frost in their wake. "Find me, Naruto. Please."
Naruto's body pitched forward, a strangled sound escaping his lips as his fingers grasped at nothing. Kurama's form wavered, transparent as smoke. "Stay—please stay!" The words scraped his throat raw. "DON'T LEAVE ME!" His brother's silhouette bled into the darkness, edges dissolving like sugar in hot water. When Naruto reached out, his hand sliced through where Kurama's heart should be, sending arctic pain shooting up his arm. "I can't—" he gasped, salt burning trails down his cheeks. Kurama's gaze—amber-flecked, just like their mother's—locked with his one final time. "I'M COMING FOR YOU!" The promise erupted from Naruto's core like magma breaking through earth, and then-
—
Naruto shot awake with a violent jerk that nearly launched him from the bed. Sweat-soaked sheets clung to his trembling legs as his eyes struggled to pierce the absolute darkness surrounding him. Reality and nightmare blurred at the edges—was he truly awake or still trapped in the dream? The air felt impossibly dense, like breathing underwater. He gulped desperately, choking on the effort as his arms wrapped around his torso, fingers digging into his own skin to anchor himself.
In the hush that followed, a new sound bled through: the slow, steady rhythm of another person's breathing, only slightly off-tempo from his own. He risked a glance across the room. In the dim light, Sasuke was sitting upright in bed, staring straight at him.
"You okay?" Sasuke's voice was softer than Naruto expected. No sarcasm, no bite. Just a low, even question that made him flinch harder than any insult.
Naruto grinned reflexively, all teeth. "Dreamed I was back in bio class," he said, trying for nonchalance. "Pretty sure the frogs were dissecting me this time."
Sasuke snorted, the corners of his mouth twitching. "You were screaming," he said.
"Oh." Naruto massaged his wrist, pulse still racing. "Sorry. Guess I'm not used to having an audience."
Sasuke watched him for a long moment, eyes dark and unreadable. Then, in a move that surprised both of them, he tossed a packet of tissues across the gap between their beds. "Don't get your nightmares all over the furniture," he said, but the words were gentle, almost a joke.
Naruto caught the packet one-handed. He wiped his face, noticing the stinging residue of sweat and tears. Sasuke lay back down, rolling so his back faced the room. "If you're going to have a meltdown," he said, voice muffled by the pillow, "do it after seven a.m."
Naruto let himself laugh, breathless and shaky. "I'll set an alarm next time."
The darkness between them softened. The worst of the panic faded, replaced by a strange, prickly warmth. Naruto thought of Kurama's warning, the echo of his brother's ghost voice: Find me. But for the first time since he arrived at the Academy, he didn't feel entirely alone in the struggle.
He watched the pale blue numbers on the clock blink forward, one minute, then another. He thought about the way Sasuke had looked at him—not with pity, not with suspicion, but with something like understanding. Maybe even concern.
Naruto lay back, eyes wide open, and waited for sleep to return. This time, he wasn't afraid of what it might bring.