A Step into Hell

*WARNING: The next few chapters are going to have themes of horror and torture.*

Rin knew darkness.

She walked through worlds of nightmare and shadow; each mind delving her deeper into their personal agony.

Her feet knew the blind shuffle of uncertainty. Her ears, the sound of quickened heartbeats and frantic breathing.

She'd made fear her business and oblivion, her workplace.

But the world waiting inside Haru's mind wasn't a nightmare... it was Hell.

She opened her eyes and stood, frozen in place, at the horrific presence around her.

The scent of rotting flesh and fluids filled her senses; piss, vomit, feces, blood.

She fought not to gag, but quickly lost the battle.

"I didn't know I could vomit in another mind." Her voice seemed far away, even to her own ears.

Rin's gaze twisted around the vast dark cavern, taking note of the image he chose to show her.

There were walls, just like every other mind, but these were different.

Something hung from them.

Though her hand shook and her inner voice begged not to reach out, her stubborn fingers rested against the heavy metal chains, that ran along the fleshy walls. They felt cold to her touch.

When she pulled her fingers away, her stomach lurched at the sight of blood. The circling locks held vicious spikes, meant to dive deep into whomever they ensnared and the traces of tendons lingering on their tips, let her know they already had.

She knew these chains were meant for one person alone.

"Haru."

A high, pitching wail echoed through the room she was in, vibrating the walls with its anguish.

"No more! No more! Please!" The voice sobbed.

Rin took off in the direction of the screaming, her feet clumsy against the malleable floor.

"Haru! Haru, I'm here! Where are you?!"

She rushed forward blindly, but stopped short when something twisted along her ankles, sending her spiraling down, too fast for her hands to catch her.

Rin fell hard, her chin slamming into the ground, splitting open.

She hissed with the pain and pulled her feet towards her, trying to make out what it was that tripped her in the first place and was holding her fixed to her position.

"Calm down. Just calm down, Ito. You can't help him, if you're the one panicking. You're in control of your jutsu. You've got this." Her voice didn't sound convincing.

The painful cries continued to throttle her with their agony, each more insistent than the last.

Rattling chains, the vicious crack of a whip, the manic scream of someone who discovered a new level of torment, resonated in the space around her.

She knew what they were, they couldn't be disguised as anything else, these were the sounds of torture and they were too fresh to be a memory.

It was happening now.

Her breath came out hard and heavy. "Get out of your own brain and remember where you are. It's a mind, just like anyone else you've entered. You've walked through this one before. Wait for the guide. Just calm down and wait for the guide."

She raised her hand and created the imaginary torch to set against the ropes around her ankles.

The new light revealed no binding ropes, but pink, fleshy intestines that curled around her, dripping in ichor, staining her fingers red.

"Oh god!"

She willed the torch into a knife, thanking the fates for the new darkness and set to work cutting through them.

The feeling of flesh tearing beneath her blade, sent a wave of cold sweat down her back, but with each slice, another scream sounded.

"Wait..." She stopped cutting and listened; silence.

When she went to free herself again, the pitching wails followed and she realized what it meant. Whatever she was doing to the area around her, was being echoed into Haru's mental form.

She was the one torturing him.

"What do I do? What is this?" The panic was rising in the back of her throat. "Where's the damn guide?!"

"Rrrrrin?" A raspy, guttural voice reverberated against the back of her neck, panting with the effort of making itself known.

It may have been a voice and it may have said her name, but it didn't sound human.

Her eyes slammed shut against whatever came to collect her.

It crackled in the shadows, as if its bones clamored together, the vital cushion of joint and fluid abandoned.

The scent of decay and wet, freshly-turned earth, settled into her nose.

"Rrrrin."

She didn't want to look.

If she didn't look, she wouldn't have to hold this memory.

Rin had seen her share of monsters. The human imagination could deliver wicked things, but a feeling inside of her, deep down, said this would be something altogether new and horrific.

Her eyes begged to stay closed, but she knew some burdens must be carried and some demons refused not to be faced.

With a swell of courage, pulled from the depths of her soul, Rin reimagined the torch and brought it to her face, to witness her guide.

She was right. She shouldn't have looked.

Before her stood something terrible; the kind of terrible that made her wonder what cruel mind thought up that level torture on another human being?

It was Haru, or, at least, the inside of him.

His arms were exposed, wet muscle and protruding bone; the skin ripped off in pieces that were too precise to be an accident. His naked torso was littered with burns, whip marks and gashes, where maggots and spiders crawled in and out of the peek-a-boo holes.

His eyes were gone.

Vast, empty portals of pitch-darkness regarded her; the long-dried blood stained his pale face in ribbons.

"Haru." Her voice was empty, almost as hollow as the open hole on his right cheek.

His detached jaw worked its way around the words he tried to speak, but the voice sounded dry and painful in his throat. "Rrrrin. Commme."

"I can't. I can't break free or I'll hurt you again."

He stumbled closer to her, his left knee buckling with the movement.

Skeletal hands latched onto the rope of intestines holding her and he ripped them away in one quick motion.

"Haru no!" Rin screamed, but it was too late.

The guide gripped onto his stomach and wailed, falling to his knees.

Rin leapt up from the floor, rushing over to him, but he held up a hand to keep her at bay.

When he stood from his hunched form, fresh intestinal wounds showed where he'd freed her, cascading down his legs like red, dangling vines.

She couldn't understand why this was happening. Never in all her years of practice, had she found a guide who punished himself through her.

This was more than psychological torture; this was a very specific jutsu and it was brought about to hurt her in the worst way.

"Haru...I..."

His eye sockets regarded her.

Rin swallowed her bile and breathed. "Okay. I'm here. Show me who did this to you and why you were sent to kill me. Show me who needs to pay for this."

The mockery of the human condition, rose to his feet, and shuffled down the black hallway. "Folloooow."

~

Gaara held Rin close to himself.

By the way her body relaxed and her head lolled against his shoulder, he knew she reached into Haru's mind and the jutsu was a success.

Now, all he could do was wait.

Temari set to pacing back and forth, her fists opening and closing with her anxious steps.

Tense mumblings escaped her lips, but Gaara couldn't make sense of them. "Temari, what's on your mind?"

She looked at the limp body in her brother's arms. "I don't like this. I don't like it one bit."

"Why?"

"Because she's in that crazed man's mind all alone! Who knows what's waiting in there and here we are, sitting on our hands, waiting for her to come out of it. We don't even know if she will get any information. This all feels like a big gamble and I don't think we should be playing."

Gaara's eyes trailed down to Rin's sleeping face. "She knows what she's doing. I trust Rin and you should as well."

"It's not that I don't trust her intentions, I'm just..."

"You're just worried about her."

Temari stopped pacing and crossed her arms, her eyebrows drawn in.

Gaara gave her a soft smile.

She sat down in front of him, glancing between Haru and Rin, the feeling of helplessness an awful, unfamiliar sensation. "From what I've seen of this Ms. Ito, she's disorganized, doesn't show proper respect to authority, hasn't the slightest regard for protocol and feels as if she can do whatever she damn well pleases."

"And?"

Temari sighed, reaching out an uneasy hand and resting it on Rin's. "And, she's the first woman I've ever seen my brother show affection. She needs to be safe. You need her to be safe. I want to protect what the two of you are building and I just don't know how."

Gaara patted her shoulder. "Thank you, sister."

She gave him a shy smile, but it quickly disappeared. "Gaara! Look!"

His eyes shot down to Rin's face and the fresh gash that appeared on her chin.

"It's split."

~

Rin's hands came to her arms, holding herself tight against the desire to run.

She wanted to pull out of his mind, save herself from the horrors that waited around each corner, but she couldn't.

She owed it to Haru to find out what happened.

How he was able to work through all of this pain and trauma and find moments of clarity, was beyond her. This was a nightmare and he lived it every moment.

Haru was even stronger than she thought.

She studied the back of her guide, knowing that it was only a fraction of his consciousness and trying to figure out why this being was sent to her?

Gaara came to her as a child and later on as his own monster, but this even that made sense.

The level of his psyche she'd reached was what he'd feared he'd become and cause her pain.

Whatever form of Haru this was, it was alive within him and was actively being hurt by her.

The ground beneath her feet shifted from flesh, to an open field of over-turned dirt, sinking her steps down into its hold.

She stopped, gathering information on what he'd shown her. "Haru, what is this place?"

He didn't respond.

Rin skipped a few steps to catch up to him, trying her best to stay within sight, while still piecing together the pieces of this wicked puzzle.

What did this field mean? It was cold, dark and smelt like musk and earth.

The air felt stifled in her lungs, suffocating.

Suddenly, her guide came to a halt in front of her and she had to stop herself from bumping into him.

"Why did we stop?"

The disjointed way his body moved, made her stomach sick, when he raised an arm and pointed to the side.

Rin took a step out, lifting her torch above her head.

Its light saved her at the last second, when her feet started to give out from under her.

The turned-ground crumpled into a vast hole, so large and consuming, she couldn't find the end of it.

Her breath caught in her throat, when she swallowed her fear and peeked inside the abyss.

"Oh my..."

Piled up in haphazard rows, were the endless bodies of past experiments. Strewn about like dead fish from the Reaper's net, disgraced and discarded, as if they were yesterday's catch.

Their pale, white forms were a stark contrast against the orange firelight of her torch, casting wicked shadows, that made them seem like they were still moving in the pit.

"What is this?" Rin whispered.

Her guide rattled. "Graaaaaveyaaard."

"Is this where they found you?"

He didn't respond with words.

Instead, his skeletal hand found the back of her shirt and pushed her forward, head first, arms flailing for a hold that didn't exist.

She spiraled down into the pit of bodies and discovered, to her horror, that the shadows of movement, were not shadows at all.