4/18/2010

EDIT! After a lot of thinking and re-reading, I got fed up of the first few chapters because they seemed – to me – incomplete… in the end I decided to look over them again and fill them up, eliminating some holes and other things. ^^

I definitely like this updated first chapter much better :)

Hello, people! :D

Uhm… I believe I should ask for your mercy about this fiction: I had already posted this thing awhile back, but then I completely abandoned it… ù_ù AND I'M SOOO SORRYYY! *bows profusely* I got stuck with a sort of writer's block over it and couldn't bring myself out… :P

So now I've decided to re-post the story, with a few differences (adding some things, basically), hoping on a good response from you readers –meaning positive feedback :D but also constructive criticism.

I wanted to thank all the good souls that reviewed this story the first time, and I hope they'll appreciate this version as well… don't worry, I've kept all your reviews! :D

SUMMARY

Gaara Sabaku and Naruto Uzumaki: they both have lost their family, or part of it. They find themselves forced to live together for a while with Iruka Umino. Fairly normal boys, they seem, but what if I tell you they have a secret in common? How will they react to one another when they feel something's familiar in the other…? What will happen when they separate? Will they ever meet again…?

PARING(S)

Main: NarutoGaara/GaaraNaruto (possible future lemon, but we'll see how it'll go)

Side: KakashiIruka (very, VERY hinted because, as much as I don't mind them as a couple, my main interest stays with the before-mentioned ones); other future pairings, I don't really know at the moment…

Characters' ages (of the ones I already know will appear in the near future)

Gaara/Naruto: 7
Kakashi/Itachi: 24
Iruka/Matsuri: 22
Neji: 20
Yashamaru: 28
Minato Namikaze: 32
Kushina Uzumaki: 28
Saya Uzumaki: 5
Somi Morishima: 63

SETTING: Modern Japan, let's say somewhere near Kyoto…

WARNINGS: Violence, murder, strange voices, possible yaoi (lemon), cursing

"Blah" talking
"Blah" thinking
"Blah" demons talking
"Blah" demons thinking

I can't seem to understand it,
how you turned out to be so cold
You tried but were caught red handed,
are you happy with your role?
It's funny to me how you've turned into such a joke...

- False Pretence
by The Red Jumpsuits Apparatus -

"Your Kaa-san loves you, my dear angel, remember that. No matter what will happen in the future, I'll always support you and believe in you…"

"I love you too, Ha-ha… an' I promise nothin' will hurt you with me 'round."

"Haha, why that's good to know!"

"Ha-ha… ? What 'bout Yasha-ji…? Does he love me too?"

"… Ah, I'm sure he cares, dear… I'm sure he does…"

(CHAPTER 1)

The day had not brought something new to look forward to; if anything, it was even worse than all the others throughout the whole year. There was not a single happy memory he could bury himself in, least he tried to go back to when the days were actually happy and he had nothing to worry about… but it was difficult to bring to the surface snippets of a time when his life was good: they were few and he was too small to recall most of them… he could not connect images with voices; most of the times he simply rejoiced on the soothing hum of a female voice quietly singing a lullaby somewhere inside his mind.

He had spent the most of the day hidden away in his room. The morning and the afternoon had gone smoothly – or as smoothly as they could when the small square on the calendar was on that particular blue number – for him: being alone left a heavy burden on his small heart, but it was better than the alternative… Oji-sama always tended to be quite on edge on that specific day and it never meant good news for him…

—Yes, it was nothing but routine on the 15th of December.

It was the day everything had changed. It seemed impossible – such a drastic change in less than three years… but maybe, maybe it had started well before then…

-x-

It was past dinner time – the meal had been on the cold side, but it was nothing too bad (and he was used to the treatment anyway) so he had just eaten calmly, as though everything was normal, his small and somewhat pointed face showing no emotion on the outside… his Oji-sama had not taken kindly to that 'blatant' show of (what he called) disrespect and had glared at him spitefully, thinking the boy hadn't noticed. The child, then, had moved to the living room where the fireplace had been lightened an hour before; the heat permeating the silent room kept him warm where he was, nestled in the armchair nearest to the fire with a book in hand – soaking in the peaceful calm while his Oji-sama was hidden in his studio.

After some time, the boy felt a tiny shiver run down his spine as he realized he was being watched and though knowing who it was, he raised his eyes from the page he was reading, seeing the man with light brown hair resting against the doorframe looking down at him intensely. The man's eyes were a dark brown, but in that moment they shone almost black – the fire's light flickering and creating shadows dancing across his unreadable face.

"… Oji-sama…?" said the kid, feeling a strange clench in his stomach: the look the man threw his way was unnerving him even if the stance was apparently relaxed. It wasn't until he opened his mouth, that it became clear that was not the case…

"… You…! You are a monster… I can't stand this any longer…" whispered the man, so low it was almost impossible to catch. Suddenly, with a movement too fast to see, he raised a hand and released an object from his grasp, making it fly across the room – the aim a bit off due to his anger, he barely missed the boy's head, instead scratching a pale cheek. Looking down, light green eyes took in stainless steel and a dark brown wooden handle—

—a knife.

The brunette cursed roughly under his breath at his poor aiming and quickly reduced the distance that separated him from the child, who was both too frightened to move away and far too deep into the bottomless hatred swimming in those eyes – they seemed to be burning from the inside out; burning from a spite so fierce that his dark soul was shining through and reflecting on the irises.

A hand descended toward the kid's pale face, hitting the delicate cheek with so much force that his small body could not stand the impact, making him fall out of the once comfortable armchair. The boy felt himself lose consciousness rapidly… he looked up just as the man he used to call 'Yasha-ji' only a few years earlier pulled out a gun, pointing it at him, and speaking in the coldest tone he had ever used so far.

"… No one will care if you die. You're a shame; you'll pay for the crime your bastard father committed…!"

The child could not take his eyes off the finger pressing on the trigger, he could see the muscles pulling on the metal… he had to get away… but he was blacking out fast… and before darkness claimed him, he heard a growling yet reassuring voice echo in his head.

"Leave him to me, kiddo."

At 10 pm the winter air was frosty, the pavement slippery with a thin sheen of ice – tricky and dangerous if one wasn't paying attention. Outside of the shelter houses offered, the night was definitely one of the coldest of the passed two months and a half; in that weather, warm breathing formed white clouds of condensed water that rose up towards the sky.

It was starting to snow: the first time that winter for Konoha, despite it being already mid December. The stars were shining down from their safe place, intent on watching over the world below, enchased in contrasting shades of blacks and whites and reds and yellows. Few lonely souls, despite the harsh weather, were walking silently almost like under a spell, limping through the streets - they seemed corpses with a will of their own.

The pale moon was showering her light upon a small figure strolling unsteadily and alone along the side of the pavement. The little boy, with his hair ruffled and sticking out in all directions and fair skin smeared with a substance hard to identify in the poor light and his blank green eyes (unsettling and brought out sharply by the thick black lines around them), was slowly walking away from the place he had called home until an hour before…

As the child passed under a streetlamp, the artificial glow illuminated his tiny frame - he was dressed in blue jeans, a long-sleeved cream coloured shirt and some trainers; the clothes were not clean, though: stains of dark red marred them. The boy's left hand was holding on a worn out teddy bear (its brown fur darkened with the same dried substance as its owner), clutching it as if his life depended on it.

The red-haired suddenly stumbled, almost falling flat on the ground but managing to catch himself on a bus bench; he lifted his face to look ahead, his eyes void: he was reaching the far end of the city center, the houses were a little farther from one another and their gardens bigger. The only sounds reaching his ears were the whispering of some TV, a bout of laughing and a bark every now and then.

The boy was swaying more and more: the harsh weather and the events of merely an hour before were taking their heavy tool on his fragile state, both in mind and body. His vision became unfocused as he started to hyperventilate and stopped in front of the small metal gate of a house, the free hand supporting his light weight on the railing to his right. A wave of nausea hit him violently as the images and the sounds of what happened came back to his mind…

The stare.

The knife.

The gun.

The voice.

The scene he had found before his eyes as he regained consciousness—

He doubled over, his right hand leaving the gate and gripping at the shirt just above his heart. The small red-haired whimpered brokenly and, just before blacking out for the second time in an hour, he whispered a name collapsing against the railing…

"Yasha… ji…"

Iruka was trying to watch some TV that evening (some documentary on Discovery Channel). The day had been pretty hard on him and he needed a bit of relax…

He worked for 'Konoha Child Care Office' and due to the rather delicate field the center worked on, there was a lot of files to go through on a daily basis, but he was used to the load of work he had to put up with; still, that afternoon had been even more stressful. The thing was: the man was naturally the protective type of person, someone who was ready to help out everyone in need of something – it was a most-needed characteristic for those who worked as social assistants, especially when dealing with children… sometimes, though, being too involved in his cases was a downside of Iruka's personality: it caused his body to suffer of sore muscles from all the stress he accumulated.

Currently, he was worried sick for a child in particular: it was a case of level-three abuse (meaning 'strongly suspected violent/cruel treatment dangerously close to actual physical injuring') over a young boy around seven, on which Iruka had been working for quite some time. His office had been trying to contact the boy's guardian who, from the measly information they had, should have been the child's uncle… unfortunately, all the attempts the man had made throughout more than four months had been unfruitful—as a consequence they hadn't had a chance of seeing the boy yet to verify the suspicious behaviour.

The brown-haired man, that day, had tried once again to call the house in question to convince the guardian to let him go over, talk to the seven year-old and assess what the real situation was. To Iruka's surprise – as it had never happened before - the phone had been picked up and someone had spoken from the other side (supposedly the boy's uncle) – the call had lasted scarcely more than just a few seconds but the words, spoken in a low harsh voice, had been enough to unsettle Iruka.

["… I know who you are. Well, this is the last time you call here. Soon, everything will be over and that monster will be dead… I'll have my vengeance!"]

Those words had sounded like an extremely negative foreboding announcement to the social assistant; they had made a shiver of cold fear make its way down his back: he had a very bad feeling about all that, he just knew it (and he had learned to listen to his instincts of 'mother hen', as someone would call them); unluckily, he couldn't do much more than hope he was wrong, because his boss had taken away from him all the files concerning that case, saying that the phone ordeal was just an 'empty threat'.

"… That old jerk… what if something really happens? He hasn't heard that voice… it wasn't an empty threat, it was deadly serious…"

Normally Iruka would never badmouth his boss: he was a polite man, after all, even if his patience wasn't the best out there. This time, though, he found the elder's attitude absolutely dumb… if not downright stupid and plain wrong – the old man should know better, yet he acted like a rookie… an extremely oblivious one at that. If he was worried for Iruka's well-being, it would have been enough to have a cop or someone else going to the mad man's house with him to keep him safe… or not?

Tired of sitting on the couch Iruka got up, huffing a bit, and went into the kitchen to grab a can of beer from the fridge - to down in a few gulps in hopes of easing his growing annoyance at his boss' decision - and carry the bag with the garbage out of the front door, leaving it beside the gate to be picked up in the morning.

He placed the beer on the living-room table and then headed for the door. The man went out in the cold weather without bothering with a jacket and reached his small garden gate but, as he extended a hand to open it, he saw a little boy face down on the pavement in front of it, laying there unconscious.

Iruka let go immediately of the bag and flung the gate open, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste. He knelt down beside the red-haired child and turned him over. The tiny figure was covered in blood and he had several wounds all over the body (nothing too serious but definitely enough for the boy to collapse); a pale hand was holding to a teddy bear tightly, while the other one was clutching his shirt.

The brown-haired man picked up the child and made his way back indoors quickly: he had to tend to the wounds and try to turn down the high fever the small red-haired had running.

He didn't know who he was, but he resolved he could worry about the boy's identity after he woke up.