The Uzumaki Prodigy [Original]

Chapter 18 - Relief

Red. All that flooded his sight was a single, terrifying colour. A colour of pain. Colour of hate. Colour of blood. It was something that he had once liked, for it was the same colour as his hair. It was the colour that gave him his only remaining link to his parents, the people he wished he knew. But now.

He hated it.

Glancing down towards his stomach, he re-acknowledged the piercing wound inflicted upon it. Blood slowly creeping from his body towards the ground filled his mind with confusion. The sensation one would expect from such an injury was left forgotten, his hand a testament to its severity. His palm, flowing like a river, held his blood. Though, strangely to him, this wasn't the utmost concern.

Sporadically, he searched his surroundings. A battlefield, uncaringly littered with craters and scorch marks for at least a yard around. He wasn't alone. He never was in this forest.

Within an arms-length away, a bed of black hair plummeted to the ground. Black eyes half-closed as blood flowed freely through the many slashes engulfing the body. However, despite this, the woman held a kind smile. Loving. Regretful. Pained smile.

As soon as he had registered this movement, he had bolted over to her. Fortunately, he had caught her softly before she had impacted the ground.

She lay unmoving in his lone arm as her eyes weakly trudged to lock with his, her arm sluggishly ascending, attempting to reach for his face. As she did, she carefully planted her hand on his cheek, caressing it slightly before the light in her crimson eye faded.

Her hand plummeted to the ground as he helplessly looked on, unable to stop it as he felt her weight shift towards the barren dirt.

Quickly, he lifted his arm as she then fell into his arm's solitary embrace. Thick dampness falling from his eyes made him look on with slightly dilated pupils.

Though, after a few moments, his embrace tightened as his throat became grated in a scream.

Darkness. It was all that enveloped his vision. The situation veiled from his sight as his eyes, starved of light, saw nothing but abyssal darkness.

Pain. It was all that embraced his body. An uncaring blanket of agony wrapped an unending number of spiky layers to his nerves.

Weight. Something lay upon the boy's chest, with his attempt at sitting up flaunted by both this weight and his chronic weakness.

Amidst these constant, alerted, ocean blue eyes shocked into life as the boys' pupils lay dilute and hazy. The boy's breathing was heavy and raspy as a shield of cold sweat embraced him.

Though, after a moment, his breathing stabilised as it now merged into a rhythmic calm. The boy's eyes seemed to return to reality, focusing upon the dark, barren stone slab that constituted the roof of this room.

At the cost of his sight came a sudden wave of exhaustion with an additional layer of discomfort making itself known to the boy through the rock-hard mattress he currently laid upon. Finding little comfort in staring at the barren, stone ceiling and amidst the gnawing curiosity of what was laying on him, he strained his head and eyes to slug themselves towards his chest.

What filled his vision was a bed of unkept, messy black hair laying on the right side of his chest. The quiet, drawn-out breathing of the woman brought a small, grateful smile to the boy's exhausted face. Though as much as he wanted to lay there in the peaceful, content silence that prevailed currently, his sudden movement caused her breathing to break its melody as her body began to awaken. Her hands gripped the bedsheets, her head shaking side-to-side slightly in an attempt to shake off the fatigue of sleep, only to slowly rise to reveal her drowsy black eyes still focusing on the bedsheet she'd been sleeping on.