Fic Title Meme asks (that keep turning into mini fics so they're on here now too)
Summary: spiders are quiet. Spiders make their move when you least expect it. Kurama, for all his old man grumpiness, has drilled this into Naruto enough times that sometimes it's all he can think about.
Naruto stays quiet.
Naruto minds his own business.
And it works.
(Kurama is a spider instead of a fox. This changes things.)
Spiders are quiet. Spiders make their move when you least expect it. Kurama, for all his old man grumpiness, has drilled this into Naruto enough times that sometimes it's all he can think about.
Naruto stays quiet.
Naruto minds his own business.
And it works.
He's still not the smartest, he doesn't know enough about a lot of things, but Naruto is close, so, so close to getting the chakra webs right. Shuriken throwing doesn't matter when he can produce web thick enough to stop them, thick enough to stop a Katana, sharp enough to cut.
Naruto stays quiet. Naruto keeps his head down, because that's what spiders do, and that's how spiders win.
It's much of a fluke that Naruto stumbles upon a nameless boy the same age as him. This boy has no name. He does not smile. He does not laugh. He barely speaks.
But, he looks at Naruto like he's something. He looks at Naruto, at his ideas, at his chakra webs, and he's impressed.
The boy doesn't have parents to go home to, people to confide in, someone to lean on. Just like Naruto, this boy is lonely.
Their meetings become more frequent, and the boy starts to draw. He draws naruto's chakra webs, he draws the markings on Naruto's face. He draws and draws until Naruto finds himself unable to look away.
("I can't keep calling you 'kid;" Naruto says one day.
"Yes you can," the boy says.
"You deserve a name," Naruto says, leaning against him. He stiffens and ducks his head from Naruto's gaze.
"I do not."
"I will call you Sai."
"No."
"You're my only friend. You deserve a name," Naruto says. Maybe it's the wrong thing to say if Sai's tiny frown is anything to go by, but anyone willing to sit with Naruto every day at least deserves, at the very least, a name.)
The first night they spend together is the same night that Sai screams himself awake, the same night that Naruto graduates the academy and the same night that he decides that this 'Lord Danzou' that Sai can't stop talking about, the man who gives Sai those nightmares, the same man who's sucking away Sai's humanity, will have to pay for his crimes.
Naruto waits until he's skilled enough with poisons and three quarters on his way to Chuunin before he tries anything. He leaves little things, poison in places Danzou will notice, but with a clear indication that he could do more. A lot more.
Everyone forgets about Naruto, so it's okay. No one expects him. It's just enough to put Danzou on edge, just enough to make him uncomfortable, just enough to make him realise that there is someone who knows what he's doing and they don't like it.
Sakura looks at him with the fascination of someone who wants to ask a million questions. She always has, but when Naruto finally lets her look at him, she doesn't look at his strange, strange body in disgust, she looks in amazement.
("You're beautiful," she tells him as she scribbles down more notes.
"you're the first to think so," Naruto tells her.
"Everyone else is just stupid."
Naruto realises he's made another friend.)
Sakura is strong Naruto realises, but everyone forgets about her too, just like everyone forgets about him, just like everyone forgets about Sai.
"It's better that no one remembers," Sai tells them both, like the blood pouring from so many wounds is okay. "They won't hurt us then."
Naruto realises too many people have hurt Sai. And if there was an explosion in the Root compound right where Danzou was that day, well… no one expects Naruto.
No one expects Naruto except one shinobi.
He looks at Naruto like he hasn't slept in a week and there's an eye missing. But… the shinobi, Shisui, his name is, shrugs him off. "Make the bastard suffer," he says.
"Did he hurt you?" Naruto asks. Shisui points one finger at the missing eye and Naruto understands. Danzou hurt this shinobi. Danzou hurt this shinobi a lot.
Naruto leaves Shisui with one of the tiny spiders that are always on him and Shisui takes it, smiling. Shisui's smiles are pained and they often fall through halfway, but he's trying.
"You're a good kid," he says.
Naruto and Sakura make Chuunin and Sai makes more scars and more memories that he wants to forget. Naruto realises that Shisui has even more reasons to scream himself awake then all of them put together.
They're all bundled into Shisui's apartment when Naruto looks up at the ceiling and says, "what if we left. Then no one can hurt us anymore."
He's met with silence, but no outright refusal and Naruto thinks that speaks for itself.
One night, Naruto packs up everything he owns which isn't much and meets Sai, Sakura and Shisui at the gate.
They've been hurt too much and so when they turn their backs on the village that tried so hard to kill them from the inside out, Naruto regrets nothing.