Satoru woke up standing. He inhaled a cold, sterile, metal like smell which made him look around.
White tiles. Steel tables. A hospital room.
He has never seen this place before in his life. Everything about this place felt wrong.
Blood stained the walls. Smeared across the floor. Old, dark, layered. Not fresh panic...more like routine violence. As if this room had learned what he was.
'Where the hell am I?' Satoru thought, picking up a document from one of the desks, only to see all the writings were blurred.
Across from him stood Ay.
But Ay wasn't in pain.
He stood in a dojo, polished wood beneath his feet. Training dummies lined the walls. At the far end hung a small photograph. It was his mother, smiling. Incense burned beneath it, smoke curling upward.
Ay's chest tightened as he recognized it instantly.
'…Why here?' Ay thought, a thousand memories woke up upon looking at this place.
Satoru watched him, confused.
'Why does his side look… peaceful?'
Neither of them spoke.
Then the world shattered.
—
Ay staggered.
Not physically, but from the inside.
He was suddenly watching.
He stood in a dark, cramped room. The sound from the outside indicated it was an orphanage.
Satoru looked younger, smaller. He sat on the floor, knees pulled to his chest. His shoulders shook.
There was no blood and there was no violence.
Just pure grief, the boy was mourning.
The boy clutched a crude drawing in trembling hands. Pencil lines uneven. Smudged from overuse.
An elderly woman's face. A relative maybe?
Ay felt something tighten painfully in his chest.
The boy pressed the paper to his forehead and sobbed.
"I'm sorry," Satoru whispered to no one. "I'm sorry I forgot your voice! I'm so sorry I forgot what you looked like. Please forgive me."
Ay couldn't look away.
The tears running down Satoru's face didn't look like weakness.
It looked like loss...loss of someone very precious to Satoru.
Ay stumbled back into the shared space.
Satoru was staring at him.
Ay's mouth opened to say something but nothing came out.
'That's not… what I thought you were.' Ay thought looking at the expressionless face.
He didn't ask what Ay saw.
He already knew.
Another memory flashed through Ay's mind.
A younger Satoru stood before Danzo, a village official. He was listing names. Handing out a briefcase full of evidence.
Evidence of crimes which were hidden beneath the underneath.
The clan was soon erased.
Next scene. A few years later, Satoru walking into their empty homes. Choosing a bed. He lied down and fell asleep.
There were no tears. No shaking or even a trace of regret.
Ay felt something twist in his stomach.
'You didn't even flinch…'
Another memory slammed in.
A dark alley. Rain threatened to pour out from the clouds above. A man was laughing with a woman.
A flash of motion.
A hairpin driven into the man's back, repeatedly, the stabbing didn't stop even after the man died.
There was Blood, and there was silence.
Satoru stood there, breathing hard, a sense of satisfaction could be seen on his face.
Ay recoiled.
'You enjoyed it.' Ay thought, he could not remain stoic after seeing what he did.
—
Satoru gasped.
The dojo vanished.
He was watching Ay now.
Laughter travelled across the room, Ay's laughter. He had friends who he trained with. The kids were practicing a jutsu and had nothing but genuine smiles.
"He was...happy? What happened?" Satoru muttered, watching the kids laugh when one of them said a inside joke, which he didn't understand.
The surroundings changed into an arena. The children were standing proudly in formation.
Then a command could be heard.
Ay clenched his fist before turning to his friends.
The voice ordering was cold, absolute.
Ay's hands trembled as he struck them all down one by one.
Satoru felt it all. The hesitation as he tore his own friends, limb by limb. The obedience towards someone you admire.
The self-loathing was buried so deep it rotted.
Then Soma.
Ay was standing there. His arms were crossed as he watched.
Screams. Screams was all Satoru could hear as he saw Soma, the genin he tried so hard to save.
The boy was being torn apart by Kuroi and Ay looked Soma in the eyes...and did nothing.
Satoru heard laughter that wasn't Ay's...but it was a laughter he allowed.
Satoru's chest burned.
'You let it happen.'
The visions ripped away.
They stood facing each other again.
Ay spoke first.
"You enjoy it."
Satoru blinked. "Enjoy what?"
"Killing." Ay's voice was flat. Too flat. "You don't hesitate. You don't justify. You choose it."
'He saw it.'
Satoru felt something cold settle in his gut.
"You're one to talk," Satoru shot back. "You butchered your own team."
Ay's jaw tightened. "I was ordered."
"And you obeyed."
Silence.
Ay felt it like a blade to the heart.
'Why didn't I stop?' He cursed himself.
"You slept in their houses," Ay said suddenly. "After destroying them."
"They were criminals."
"And the man in the alley?"
Satoru's mouth opened but couldn't say anything before it closed.
He could still feel the weight of the hairpin. The taste in his mouth was a sharp reminder.
'Don't pretend you're better.'
"You think that makes you better?" Satoru snapped. "You watched them torture a child."
"I didn't touch him."
"You didn't stop them either."
Ay stepped forward. "I carry that every day. Every. Single. Day!"
"Then why does it look so easy on you?"
Ay's fists clenched.
'Because if I stop moving, I'll drown.'
"You killed friends who trusted you," Satoru continued. "Because your father told you to."
Ay's voice cracked. "Because I was weak enough to listen."
Satoru felt a strange, unwanted understanding crawl up his spine.
"You chose power over people," he said.
"And you used people as excuses for your urges," Ay fired back.
They stood there, breathing hard.
Then Soma appeared again.
Healing hands were shaking. Chakra was burning away. Satoru refusing to stop even as his vision blurred.
Ay saw it all.
'You almost died for him.'
Another memory surfaced...Ay kneeling on the ground. He Apologized to Hinoka. His brother died as compensation for Soma's debt.
Satoru looked away.
'You didn't do it to feel clean.'
"You tried to save him, risked your life to prolong his." Ay said quietly.
"It doesn't erase anything."
"No." Ay swallowed. "It doesn't."
They stood in silence.
"So what are you?" Ay asked.
Satoru didn't hesitate.
"A piece of shit that hasn't learn anything."
Ay exhaled.
"Then don't pretend you're worse than me."
Satoru met his eyes.
"Don't pretend you're better."
They didn't forgive.
They didn't absolve either.
But the lies were gone.
And somehow...that hurt more than hatred ever could.
The silence between them had changed.
It wasn't confusion anymore. It was pressure.
Satoru stood in the blood-splattered imitation of a hospital room, the smell of iron thick enough to feel. Ay stood opposite him, framed by the wooden dojo floor that never quite stopped creaking, incense smoke curling lazily behind him.
Two spaces, stitched together by something neither of them understood.
The memories had stopped coming.
That was worse than anything right now.
Satoru lowered his gaze first. Not out of submission, but out of discomfort.
'If it was learned…I could unlearn it.'
The thought came uninvited. It didn't last.
What followed was colder.
'But if it wasn't...' His fingers curled slightly, nails biting into his palm.
He had seen himself too clearly. Not the justifications. Not the necessity. The want.
The ease with which violence had answered something inside him. The way it quieted him.
Monster wasn't a word he liked.
It was a word that fit too well.
Across from him, Ay stood rigid, jaw clenched so tightly it trembled. His eyes weren't on Satoru anymore...they were fixed on the floor of the dojo, on a place where blood had soaked into wood long ago.
'If I had refused…' The thought never finished.
He had obeyed. Again and again. Not because he believed. Not because he hated.
Because he could.
And that truth disgusted him more than the killings ever had.
Was a monster someone who enjoyed it?
Or someone who could do it without enjoyment at all?
Ay exhaled slowly, like he was afraid the wrong breath would make the room collapse.
They looked up at the same time.
Their eyes met...and something unspoken locked into place between them.
Recognition. Not sympathy. Not forgiveness.
Understanding.
Satoru felt it first: the shape of a question forming, heavy and dangerous.
'If I was born this way… then what excuse do I have?'
No.
That wasn't it.
'Or did I become this… because I kept choosing it?'
His throat tightened. For the first time since this place had begun, he felt the urge to speak...not to explain, not to provoke, but to know.
Ay felt the same pull, sharp and unwelcome. 'If I am capable of this… was it waiting all along?'
'Or did following orders carve it into me?'
They both took a step forward.
The spaces didn't merge...but the distance shrank enough to feel intimate, dangerous.
Satoru opened his mouth. Ay did the same.
The question sat on both their tongues, identical in weight if not in shape.
Are you a monster because of what you are...
...or are you what you are because you're a monster?
The world cracked before a sound could leave either of them. The dojo splintered like glass.
The hospital room drowned in white.
Satoru felt himself falling...not down, but away. The connection tearing loose with a sharp, almost physical pain in his chest.
Ay reached out instinctively. His hand passed through nothing.
Ay woke with a sharp inhale, body jolting against the medical bed.
The ceiling was unfamiliar. Sterile. Quiet.
Pain flared—but it was distant, manageable. He turned his head, already knowing what he would ask.
"Satoru..."
The medic stiffened. "He's still unconscious. He fell into coma a few days back. It's touch-and-go as we speak."
Ay stared at the curtain separating the beds.
The question burned, but he didn't ask anyone else to carry it.
Some things were not meant to be translated.
When he left the Land of Fire, he didn't look back.
Satoru woke days later to the sound of breathing machines and the dull ache of survival.
He remembered the almost-question immediately.
It sat in him like a lodged blade, yet, he didn't ask where Ay was.
He already knew. And he told no one.
Some answers, he understood now, could only be earned...not given.
"I saw Ay," he said finally. "In a dream."
Mitsuki didn't respond immediately.
She was standing by the window, arms folded, watching the curtains shift slightly from the breeze. When she spoke, her voice was calm...but not surprised.
"That wasn't a dream," she said. Satoru immediately turned his head toward her.
"…What?"
Mitsuki looked at him then. Really looked at him. At the IV in his arm. At the bandages. At the way his eyes hadn't settled since he woke up.
"You and Ay crossed chakra," she said. "Not just exchanged it. You forced it into each other. Deep enough that it reached the core."
Satoru frowned. "So?"
"So when two shinobi do that," Mitsuki continued, "especially in critical condition…sometimes the boundary thins."
"The mind looks for somewhere to stand." She paused. "And it finds another mind doing the same thing."
Satoru was quiet.
"That place you saw," Mitsuki said, softer now, "wasn't real. But it wasn't imaginary either. It was built from what you carry. And what he does."
Satoru's fingers twitched against the bedsheet. "…How do you know this?"
Mitsuki didn't answer right away. Her eyes flicked to the door.
It slid open.
The Hokage stepped inside, his presence filling the room instantly, like the air itself had grown heavier.
"I told her," he said.
Satoru's gaze snapped to him.
The Hokage didn't elaborate. Didn't soften it.
"I've seen it before," he continued "With Lord first and Madara Uchiha."
"And I was afraid you would too."