Chapter Text
The first thing Naruto heard in her new life was the sound of two men arguing, one of their voices high and worried, the other rumbling and satisfied.
“Do you not think it’s rather cruel, master, to turn one so young? She’ll always be delicate, trapped in an adolescent brain forever—”
“She’ll learn, Kabuto. Mature.”
“Yes, sir, but constrained always by her physiology. The decision-making portion of her brain will be unfinished for the duration of her existence, leaving her uninhibited, prone to—”
“She’ll be trainable, Kabuto. You worry too much.”
There was a suffering sigh. “Yes, master, but you’ve also converted her while she was malnourished, underdeveloped, weak. There are reasons it’s against our code to convert children and teenagers. She’ll never come into her power. She likely won’t be much stronger than our fieldworkers. She certainly won’t develop any useful psychic abilities. You’ve…” The man paused, and when he finished his sentence, he sounded as though things were starting to make sense to him. “… crippled her.”
“She’ll make an excellent pet. An obedient bride. Precisely what I was looking for.” There was a sharp sound—an impact of some kind—and a startled, pained exhale, then a firm, “Do not question me, Kabuto. You know that I won’t tolerate it. Wake her.”
Naruto’s body felt heavy, her mind foggy and confused. She couldn’t think, had no idea where she was or why, couldn’t remember what she’d been doing before she fell asleep. Couldn’t remember falling asleep. Couldn’t remember waking up. Did she have brain damage? Was that why they were talking about her brain, and being crippled? Was she—was she going to be even dumber, now? Could she still talk? Could she—?
A hand gripped her by the bicep, hauling her upright. When her head lolled back on her shoulders, a broad palm cupped the back of her head, helping her stay upright as she blinked her eyes open. Slowly, as her vision cleared, she took in her surroundings, noting with distant but mounting panic that the room was unfamiliar and opulent, boasting heavy velvet curtains and an enormous four-poster bed she was currently fighting to stay upright on, and the dresser looked like it had been carved intricately by hand, and—
And there was a man.
He was tall, that was her first thought. Tall and almost beautiful in a way that was uncanny, his skin too smooth and perfect and pale white, his eyes too dark and dead, his teeth too sharp and his smile too artificial and cruel. He gave the overall impression of a beautiful woman who’d melted a bit and been minimally rearranged into a man, and she immediately disliked the way he made her feel, hair raising on her arms and the back of her neck as an instinctive fear ripped through her.
“Have you slept well, pet?” he asked softly. There was a cold affection in his tone that made Naruto nauseous as she fought to pull away, to create distance, but the hands holding her were impossibly strong, like fighting stone. “You’ve grown even more stunning in your weeks asleep. Your skin barely lightened; quite strange, albeit beautiful. It seems your transition was nonstandard. I’m sure you’re hungry. We’ll feed you properly later, but for now…”
Yes, food. Naruto was starving, would have killed for a bowl of hot noodles, but that—wasn’t what happened to her. Instead, the hand cradling the back of her head gripped in her hair, holding her steady, and her heart began to pound as the tall, pale man approached her, setting one knee on her bed—wow, his clothes were fine, she’d never seen anything like them—as he leaned into her space. He smelled powerfully of roses and damp earth—not in and of itself unpleasant, simply strong—and pressed his wrist between her lips when she tried to ask what was happening, who he was.
And then something… happened. Something primordial and horrifying and terrible.
Naruto bit down in reflex, in self-defense, to communicate why in the actual fuck are you putting things in my mouth right now?, but where her teeth should have exerted blunt pressure, they sank in instead, and like a babe at its mother’s breast, she instinctively began to drink.
…
Naruto’s new life was one of fear and servitude, yet—despite the fact that she remembered nothing beyond impressions, blurry flashes of faces, a kitchen with a cracked stone floor, a river—she sensed that it was an improvement on what had come before. She felt it in the way she flinched and cowered when Master Orochimaru or his familiar Kabuto made sudden moves or raised their voices despite the fact that neither of them had ever hit her, felt it in the way that guilt sat heavy in her stomach when she ate.
Not that she’d had the blood more than once so far. She’d been relieved to find that vampires—a word that evoked a primal, childlike fear in her chest—still required human food in limited amounts. She’d been accepting her small daily meal as was expected of her, but after the sip of blood she’d been forced to take ahead of that first awful, awful conversation (“You’re a beast, now, a child rejected by light, a creature of darkness—”, “My bride, Naruto, eternally mine in body, mind, and soul, do you understand that?”, “Eternity. Here, with me. You’ll come to enjoy it.”) when she was still too weak and confused and overwhelmed to fight it, she’d refused more.
No matter how much they screamed at her to do it, threatened her with creative punishments, Naruto knew there was nothing they could do to make her willing to take the blood of the terrified slave they’d started leading into the house and forcing to lie on the kitchen table every other evening. One glance at the whites of his bugging eyes, the terror as his chest rose and fell in sharp, panicked inhales and exhales, and it didn’t matter how that strange hunger that couldn’t be filled with food gnawed at her; her appetite fled, and she would refuse, would curl into a ball with her back against the wall and cross her arms protectively over her head to wait for a beating that never came, even as she was threatened with being belted, being hung from the ceiling by her toes, being forced at knifepoint to go through with feeding.
It was harrowing, and she was growing weak, but she knew it was the only option she could stomach.
Besides, it wasn’t the worst part of her day. No, it was the third worst. The second was the boredom—she spent the bulk of each day locked in the bathroom attached to the room she’d woken up in, with nothing to do except pile towels in the claw-foot tub to take a nap, all as punishment for refusing to ‘eat.’ When she was allowed out, it was to cook or clean alongside the two quiet, skittish women who worked in the house.
The first worst part was going to bed.
This night was like any other. Naruto had learned to stifle her emotional reaction outwardly, but the burn of shame never left her as Master Orochimaru—her owner and, apparently, her groom—once again stripped her nude and ordered her into the bed they shared. It was late, nearly midnight—vampires only slept a few hours, making her days even longer and more insufferable—and the beautiful, stately manor she’d been imprisoned in was dead quiet, the slaves that worked in the house long since sent out to sleep in the barn. She obeyed, trembling like a leaf in the wind but with dry eyes, and stared at the ceiling as the man who had turned her attempted again to consummate their ‘marriage,’ which seemed to mean something different to him than it did to her.
He started sweet and gentle. He always started sweet and gentle. The first time, when she’d fought and cried and he’d tied her to his headboard, he’d been reassuring, telling her there was no rush, that she was doing well, that he would be patient, but it had been nearly a month and the duration of his sweetness and patience got shorter every night. That night, he started by rubbing her feet, speaking softly to her about her skin, how it was unusual for a vampire, how gorgeous he found it. Then he licked her between the legs again, something she hated for how violating it felt, how terrifying it was to have those sharp teeth so close to her most delicate place, how it forced her to feel pleasure she didn’t want. Like always, he did that until she was panting and writhing, her body screaming for something she didn’t understand, and then he sat up, touched his fingertips between her folds, and demanded in a sultry, rumbling whisper, “Let me in, pet. May I?”
From there, things always got worse. It appeared that he was physiologically incapable of entering her body against her will, just as she was unable to enter most rooms in the house without being invited to do so. So—knowing she was in for another long night—Naruto braced herself, shut her eyes, clenched her fists in the sheets, and shook her head no.
He got progressively rougher as he held her head in place by her hair, demanding her obedience in ugly snarls in between threats—I’m going to whip you raw, little girl, I’m going to nail your hands to my bed frame and not let you up until you’ve let me fuck every hole you have, do you hear me? I’m going to make you regret being a brat, whore; I’m going to make you regret being born—and sloppy, wet kisses that often felt more like he was licking her lips, unable to force his tongue between them like he wanted to as he rutted his heavy erection between her legs. Sometimes that felt good—once, had made her body seize with profound, burning pleasure that had turned to a desperate pain and emptiness that made her buck and writhe and cry when he’d snapped his hips back with a hiss of don’t you dare—but that night, it just felt gross and wet, nasty. Worse when he lost his temper, flipped her up into that humiliating pose he liked, on her knees with her face shoved into the sheets, and thrust it between her thighs until he finished, pulling back to spurt it onto her sex, let it drip and smear across her most private body parts. He never let her clean it up or wipe it away before he would forced her into his arms to sleep for two or three hours; that night, as he tucked her unwilling, sullied body against his bare chest, he whispered in her ear, the same thing he’d said every night for the last few days. “You’re going to get hungry enough to eat, pet. You’ll get desperate enough to let me in. There’s no point to your hysteria and refusal.”
Naruto didn’t think she’d known very much about sex, before. She tended to know what things were and how to do things even though she couldn’t remember learning, but that all felt unfamiliar in a way that slicing vegetables or using a can opener or bathing herself just didn’t.
The only good part of her life was that nothing hurt. She couldn’t quite pin down what had hurt before—seemingly everything—but she had a vague yet strong impression that she used to be quite sickly. There was always a vague feeling of surprise and pride when she walked up the stairs or lifted a heavy stew pot without issue.
Orochimaru refused to tell her anything about who she’d been before, so she supposed she’d never know. Never know anything other than what he told her, since she wasn’t allowed to leave and had nowhere to go even if she was. But she still yearned. Still missed a home she couldn’t remember. Craved the vague skin-memory of sunshine warming her.
…
Naruto was still naked and dirty when he showed up around two in the morning.
Unable to sleep for how her hunger hurt her, made her ache as her brain spiraled into confusion and fog, she’d seen him coming; the doorknob turning slowly—instantly causing her heart to pound in her chest so hard it hurt—a dark figure appearing in the doorway, a single red eye glowing in the darkness. He was tall, although not quite as tall as Orochimaru, and lean, silent as he moved across the floor. The objects in his hands glinted in the moonlight—a revolver with a long muzzle and what she thought must be a silver dagger—and she believed him to be looking at her, coming for her. Believed he would kill her and put her out of her misery. Truthfully, she was almost grateful. Terrified that Orochimaru was right, that there would be a day soon that Kabuto held that slave down on the table and she would be unable to stop herself from taking his blood from him by force. It was good that he was going to kill her, she thought even as the idea made her body quake with terror.
But that wasn’t what happened. The intruder stood at the foot of her marital bed, slowly raising the arm holding the gun, and she heard a near-silent metallic click that meant nothing to her but instantly woke the man holding her. He jerked awake with a snarl, shoving her down and covering her as he leapt up into a crouch, and she caught a glimpse of his own eyes going red and luminous in a way she’d never seen before—wait, do my eyes do that, too?—in the seconds before her face was shoved into the sheets.
Naruto heard the ensuing conflict more than she saw it. She was just so weak, so tired, so hungry; she lacked the energy to do anything other than curl into a ball and wait for whatever was coming to her, as she heard Orochimaru curse and spit, heard thumping and crashing, heard the gun go off to a howl of rage and pain as the scent of blood filled the air. “I’m going to kill you,” she heard her master snarl. “I’m going to suck your filthy blood and spit it out until you’re nearly drained. Maybe I’ll even turn you, just to shove silver through your heart as you wake back up. I’m going to—”
Bang. Naruto flinched badly as the vampire’s words were abruptly cut off, letting out a pitiful whimper she simply couldn’t hold back. Bang. Her breathing was fast and panicky, her heart going so hard it made her feel like she was suffocating, and when she managed to open her eyes, the man was already standing over her, looking down at her with his single red eye, his hair shining silver in the low light and his face indecipherable. The only thing properly illuminated was his hand, his thumb caressing a little piece of metal that stuck up on the back of his beautifully carved and engraved revolver. Deciding if she was worth a bullet, most likely. She hoped she was.
“It’s okay,” Naruto heard herself whisper, even as her body shook violently. She scrunched her eyes shut, curling her naked body tighter into a ball under the sheets as she tried to get ready, wondering if it was true that vampires can’t go to heaven. “It’s—it’s okay. I don’t want—I don’t want to be like this. I’m tired of being hungry. It’s… okay.”
There was a pregnant pause, then a long sigh, and, confused, she cracked her eyes open just enough to watch through her eyelashes as the stranger tucked his gun away in a worn but finely crafted leather holster strapped to his hip. “Fuck,” he mumbled in a baritone voice, the expletive said like he really meant it. “Fuck me, Christ, fuck. What are you, twelve?” Naruto didn’t correct him that she was pretty sure she was fourteen. “I don’t off kids, I told Tsunade that I don’t— How long you been turned, girl?”
She carefully hid her face, exhausted and aching, her stomach clenching painfully every time she inhaled her master’s blood. “Maybe a month,” she rasped. “Only had his blood. Only once. Maybe—maybe if you do it now, my soul won’t—”
“No such thing as a soul,” the man cut her off gruffly. “You’re no more damned than you were this time last year. Get up.” He said ‘you’re’ like ‘yer,’ she noted distantly, feeling separated from the situation, distant. When she didn’t move, he sighed impatiently. “You don’t want to be here when the church arrives, y’understand? You ever seen an exorcism ‘round these parts? It ain’t pretty. Get up.” He grabbed her, then, yanked her up by her arm, and she went willingly, shame burning in her stomach as the sheets fell and left her standing nude and soiled in front of him. Her nudity seemed to surprise him; he cursed again, turning away to give her privacy as he released her, and demanded roughly, “Why’re you unshucked? Dress yourself. We need to get gone.”
He wasn’t from around here, she thought vaguely. From out west, maybe. Maybe from down south. It didn’t matter, she supposed as she walked towards the ornate maple wardrobe that was ‘hers’ on wobbly legs, her weakness compounded by her trembling as she kept her eyes on the body on the floor, grateful for the darkness as she gave it a wide berth. She hesitated when she reached it, trailing her fingers over the wooden door as she remembered being shown the contents, over a dozen mesmerizing gowns and even more everyday dresses, each of them beautifully crafted from fine materials to her exact measurements. All yours, as soon as you learn to be a good girl. She didn’t open it, instead reaching for the dress worn that day hung on the knob, a roughly-woven grey cotton garment that reached nearly to her ankles, only differentiated from what the slaves wore by its lack of age and wear. She tugged it on over her head, asking tremulously as her mind stuck on the subject, “The slaves…?”
“How many?”
“Four, I think.”
The man hummed. “I know somebody that can hide four. Nearby enough. I’ll give ‘em directions, don’t worry. Put on your shoes.”
Naruto flushed, crossing her thin arms over the slight swell of her chest. “I… don’t own—”
There was more low cursing, and then a harsh, “It’s cold out. A few pairs of socks and anything you can find with long sleeves and a hood to protect you from the sun.” Orochimaru had a traveling cloak that would suit, she thought as she turned to quickly raid his dresser for warm socks, leaning heavily against it as she pulled on three pairs one foot at a time. She was so exhausted that standing was a bit of a challenge, and doing it on one foot even moreso. Her vision swam as she straightened back up with some difficulty, unable to do anything except focus on staying on her feet as she was snatched again with a low, “Quickly, I’m not sure if there are other nests in the area,” and led away from her master’s body, through the quiet, beautiful mansion that had been made her prison.
He left her on the porch when she directed him to the barn where the slaves slept. She was glad they were getting the chance to leave; the two women were quietly kind to her, though they refused to touch her, offering her little commiserating looks that had made her feel infinitely less alone. She thought maybe they were grateful that she’d rather starve than feed from the older man who’d been dragged inside for her consumption over and over, an idea that made her feel sick down to her bones. Nobody should feel grateful that they aren’t being hurt. People should expect to not be hurt. God, she was cold.
“—anything you think you can sell discretely, or anything small enough to smuggle all the way down the line. If they never catch you with it, they’ll assume I took it,” his voice floated to her where she sat shivering on the porch steps as he exited the barn, delivering these last instructions over his shoulder. “Both of ‘em are dead, it’s safe to go into the house, but don’t hang around. Good luck with your lucky.”
She could see the man a little better out under direct moonlight as he approached her. He dressed like a ranch hand, with worn chaps over old cotton and a leather vest that hung with bits and bobs that looked useful but were unidentifiable to her, his ornately embroidered boots well-loved and maintained but clearly old. He wore a grey silk kerchief over the lower half of his face, and kept one eye closed—the one she’d seen growing red. She wasn’t sure what to make of that, or of the fact that she shouldn’t identify his age—his pale skin looked young and healthy, but his hair and eyebrows were silver-grey. “What are you?” she heard herself blurt out, suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps he was also a vampire or some other creature—would certainly explain the eye—only to receive a confused look in return.
“Saddle stiff,” he answered shortly, taking her by the arm. When she stared up at him, confused, he tacked on impatiently, “A waddie. A vaquero. A damned cowhand. What aren’t you getting? Gee up, we need to skedaddle.”
“Where are we—?”
“Does it matter?” He fixed her with a hard look, studying her, and she got the bizarre impression that if she said that yes, it did, and that she didn’t want to go with him, he’d let her do as she pleased. It was a bizarre concept, made her stomach flutter with something like excitement, and she felt her lips curve up for the first time in a long while as she shook her head, realizing that she really did want to go with him, that she felt safe with him. “Good. Then let’s saddle up.” He turned and whistled, the sound sharp and cutting in the quiet of that windless winter night, and to her surprise, a beautiful dappled grey horse emerged from the darkness near the tree line by the dirt path that led out. He tugged at her to get her to approach it, but it suddenly struck her that she had no memories of being outside before, and she hesitated. He turned, looking irritated, but something about the look on her face seemed to soften him, because he assured her gently, “Hey, don’t worry. I’m never on the shoot when I’m molled up. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Naruto hadn’t a clue what it meant to be on the shoot or molled up, but she allowed herself to be led to the man’s horse, allowed him to lift her up to sit sideways on the saddle. She spent a moment stroking its neck, grateful that it didn’t seem to be scared of her—maybe she wasn’t so inhuman as she’d been led to believe?—as the man who’d rescued her offered it something to eat from a small pouch that hung under his revolver with a low word of praise. He swung easily up into the saddle behind her, gathered her into his arms in an over-familiar way that made her blush (he practically cradled her, really, one of his muscular thighs under her own and the other pressed to her behind, his dominant arm bracketing her back and his non-dominant hooked over the side of the saddle near her knees, like he was afraid she’d slip), and then they were off.
…
They’d ridden maybe an hour before they stopped, having veered off the main path to follow a stream for a few miles before they came across a rocky outcropping that boasted a waterfall and would, in the words of the quiet savior who’d allowed Naruto to rest her head against his collarbone for the duration of the ride, “Serve as wicket enough to keep you from burnin’, I reckon.” She hoped he was right. She was under the impression that sunlight would leave her with an awful, painful rash, and that her skin would blister if exposed for too long.
She was getting the impression that she hadn’t spent much time outside, before. Nothing about sitting in the grass and moss or listening to the rush of water felt familiar, although it was rather pleasant, and she certainly hadn’t known that what her companion was doing would create fire until it began to spark under his hands. She was rather impressed when he got a decent-sized blaze going in just a few minutes, though she didn’t say anything; she felt glazed and tired and was so hungry she couldn’t think straight, same as she’d been all day, so she just kept her arms wrapped tight around her shin, pinning her legs to her chest, and set her chin on her knee, staring longingly into the flames as he set a skillet upon the wood he’d stacked up and began cutting open a can that, upon being upended onto the heat, turned out to contain beans. She paid him little mind as he added dried meat and threw a pair of hard biscuits on top, nor as he laid out a bedroll near the fire under the outcropping or draped a blanket over his horse. She couldn’t stop thinking about her stomach, truthfully, about how hungry she was, and—
“Here.”
Naruto blinked at the offering being extended to her, suddenly realizing more time had passed than she’d been aware of. Slowly, she shifted into a cross-legged position, accepting the bowl of beans and meat that he’d broken up a biscuit to stir into. She’d been denied her daily meal that day in the hopes that it would worsen her other hunger, and, absurdly grateful as her eyes stung, she choked out a shy, “Thank you, sir.”
The man snorted, offering her a roughly made, bent metal spoon. “Eat your fill, girl.”
She tried. Really, she did; she ate several bites, but each one made her stomach clench nauseatingly, and on the fourth or fifth, she gagged and coughed, her eyes watering, and set the bowl down in front of her, vaguely aware of the man making a small, distressed noise as he got up and settled down next to her, almost knee to knee, then offered her the canteen of water he’d filled in the stream. It was cool and fresh, soothed her stomach just a little, but she knew she wasn’t going to be able to eat anymore. Could vampires starve to death, she wondered, or did they just remain trapped in the fog and agony of starvation until something else took them out? She didn’t know, but she supposed that she’d be finding out before too long.
Except—
Except as she sat there trying to recover, slowly screwing the cap back on with shaking hands, it was plucked from her grasp and set aside; numbly, she watched as her companion sighed heavily, rolled up his sleeve with an air of a man doing what he must, and extended the pale, smooth expanse of his forearm to her, so close to her face that it made her mouth water and her stomach lurch. She could see the blue shadows of his veins along his wrist in the firelight, and in a panic, she forcibly tore her gaze away to instead hit him with a desperate look, only to find his head turned resolutely away, his face hidden from her.
“Go ahead,” he rasped, his voice emotionless.
“I—” Shock rendered Naruto briefly speechless. “I—I can’t,” she whispered back, bracing her hands on the ground in preparation to scoot back, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Her eyes locked back on the vulnerable flesh of his arm as she pointed out shakily, “I’ve never done it before. What if I take too much? I might—”
“Your stomach can’t be much bigger’n my fist,” the man interrupted her smoothly, expressionlessly. “I’m a strapper. I reckon you can’t do me too much harm.” When she didn’t move, he sighed long-sufferingly, as though she was massively inconveniencing him by refusing to bite him and take his blood, and insisted as he thrust his wrist closer to her lips, “Do it, or I’ll slice ‘er open myself and it won’t heal near as nice.”
On instinct, Naruto touched him, cupped her hands around the back of his arm and pulled it closer, shooting the man an uncertain look. Hesitantly, she pressed her lips to his smooth skin, basking in how warm he was, almost hot, the way that she could sense his blood flowing underneath, healthy and clean. Her lips parted; the man shivered, whispering a low do it, girl, before I lose my nerve, and then her canines were sinking in, easy as if he’d been a slice of bread, and an involuntary moan of pleasure and gratitude escaped her throat the moment his blood touched her tongue. Eyes shut as she finally slaked her evil thirst, she drank deeply of him, unaware of the passage of time as her worries and thoughts drained away.
By the time she’d satiated herself, she felt like a different person. Drunk, maybe, though something told her that she’d never been so before, so she wasn’t sure if she’d know; she felt warm and relaxed and hazy but in a pleasant way, sleepy like if she just laid down, she’d have the best night’s sleep of her life. She forgot altogether how her meal had been sourced until she heard an amused whisper of, “You’re supposed to seal ‘er off, now, so I don’t bleed out like a stuck pig.” Somehow, she instinctively knew what he was talking about; she didn’t bother opening her eyes as she pulled him closer once more, laving her tongue over the twin punctures leisurely, like a cat grooming itself. This earned her an oddly affectionate, “Yes, like that, with your tongue. You look like you feel better. Had you really not eaten in over a month? … That’s some impressive self-control. Most baby bloodsuckers I’ve crossed paths with break real quick-like.”
“I didn’t want…” Her words came out slurred as she rested her forehead next to where his puncture wounds had coagulated upon contact with her still-drying saliva. “To take any without… Permission. Thank you, sir.”
“I’m nobody to call ‘sir,’” he corrected her, gently extricating his arm from her hold. She opened her eyes just in time to watch him roll his sleeve up, tugging down his kerchief with his other hand to reveal a terribly handsome jaw and a crooked smile that made her heart skip. He plucked up the canteen, taking several hard swallows, and murmured, “You’re lookin’ right white-eyed. Lay out on my bedroll, girl, get rest. I’ll take first watch, and when the sun comes up, you can make sure nobody offs me while I’m out.”
Naruto didn’t take much convincing. She did as told, crawling the scant few feet to the bundle of fabric laid out on the ground and curling up into a ball on her side, tugging Orochimaru’s cloak around herself only to be immediately scolded for not using any of the rough-woven blankets piled there for her. She pulled one up around her shoulders, warmed by her proximity to the fire, and asked sluggishly as her eyes drifted shut, “You trust me not to take more of your blood while you sleep?”
The man laughed, the sound quiet and deep but charming. “It would take three or four of you to drink enough of my blood to kill me. Reckon I’ll wake up before you manage much more’n a sip, anyway.”