DISCLARMER: This is a blanket disclaimer, I will NOT be repeating it! So please pay attention! I don't own anything of 'Naruto.' Not the names, places, characters, concept, nothing! They belong to the creators/writer/authors/ect which does not include me, sadly.

Note! The main character, Yori, is specifically gender neutral. This was done to make the character easier to relate to (girl to girl or boy to boy).


Life and Death


The newborn baby was a small and sickly thing, as was expected of an infant born several weeks too early, but that was not why the medics were so worried. Rather, it was because of the babe's drastic and unexplainably high spiritual chakra. The parents were informed that the child would have to stay for observation, and that survival was. . .not likely. The parents left, heartbroken and devastated, and the screaming infant was rushed to research and intensive care. Despite the doctors' initial prognosis the child lived through the night and many following. After several weeks spent trying to find a cause and coming up short, one of the younger doctors had the idea to copy Tsunade's yin seal and place it on the child as a means of filtering and storing the excess spiritual chakra.

It worked. Well enough.

The child was still sickly, and the general opinion of the medical staff was that (the over abundant spiritual chakra combined with being several weeks premature would mean) the child would never be completely healthy.

Kazehana Seiji and his wife Hoshi didn't care. Their baby was alive and that was all that mattered. The fact that they were able to sleep through the night from day one was a huge bonus, and the small family of three settled into a comfortable and happy pattern of normalcy. As normal as a family with a shinobi for a father, a nurse for a mother, and a premature, sickly infant could be. To the rest of the village they were (yet) another oddity, but the trio lived in relatively happy denial of the fact for nearly four years.

Hoshi went first. A badly injured shinobi lashed out instinctively at the feel of foreign chakra in the middle of a healing and she reacted just a second too slow. It was a quick, clean death and, while not common, also not unheard of, but it cast a shadow over the now much smaller family.

Seiji wallowed in the pain of loss until a small hand poked him in the knee, the highest point it could reach.

"If Mommy was here, she'd smack you."

After gaping at the much too small and still sickly looking four year old, Seiji squared his shoulders and made a request. The next day the two were at the hospital, Seiji helping the staff by restraining the injured and his child being cooed at by various personnel. The hospital quickly became a second home for both father and child. The new routine lasted three months before Seiji was called out for a mission. He returned covered in blood and carried into the hospital by his teammates where they were greeted by nurses screaming for help and one small, sickly looking child.

"I'm. . . sorry, Yori." Seiji raised shaky, blood encrusted hand and gently traced the lines of his child's face. "I cou. . .couldn't. . .keep my. . .promise."

Despite his teammates rushed efforts they arrived too late. Seiji died in the lobby waiting for help.

*death hurts the living most*

Death has a way of ending many more things than just life, and that day it ended Yori's innocence; innocence that had kept at bay so many more brutal and ugly truths. Truths that should never have been remembered or even have existed.

Yori screamed. Screamed from the loss of a loving father. Screamed at the knowledge of being completely and utterly alone. Screamed at the pain of remembering losses of so long ago but just as great and painful. Screamed because, despite suddenly being so much older mentally, Yori was still only four and screaming was all such a young child could do.