AN:
The story begins with the Uchiha clan massacre. A this point Naruto and company are around seven years old (I think).
Naruto knows who his original parents are and was raised by Hiruzen Sarutobi (for not entirely compassionate reasons). He will have a bloodline limit consistent with his clan heritage.
There are two kinds of writing in this story:
-This text is for narration.
-This text is for when someone is speaking, thinking or watching...
I don't own Naruto
They tell you that his titan body stank of smoke and blood
And in his eyes were the suspended reflections of the dead
They do not speak of how he danced as he dealt destruction
And that so beautiful was he
And so joyful seemed the ghosts within his eyes
That shinobi leapt into his jaws with eager hearts
Prelude: Will of Fire
Sarutobi
He wanders through abandoned hallways and lingers at the doors of forgotten cells. He smells fading blood and antiseptic and excreta. Sometimes there is the vaguest scent of sexual urgency, which is the worst of smells in a place of torture. He is the only person who can keep these doors closed, who can make such rooms irrelevant.
When I die they will be opened and once again put to their purpose. The phantoms will come spilling out and that will be the end of my Konoha.
Returning to daylight is like coming out of a tomb. Down there, amid other people's tragedies, it is impossible to breathe.
Uzumaki
He is small for his age, but his body is strong and quick. He goes bounding over toppled trees and tumbles heedlessly through briars and laughs as they throw stones at his shadow, or at the place where they think he will be. They are laughing too. He is elegant. He is bright and boorish. He is a spectacle.
One of them waits in a shadow of his own making. Bathed in it. The blonde boy passes, senses the other's rushing darkness and leaps.
Not fast enough.
The shadow holds him (but its weaver is still young and it lasts only for a moment) as another boy falls upon him, snarling and heaving as he makes contact. Grappling, grunting and giggling in innocent closeness.
Quick I've got him! Help me hold him!
Not so. The blond boy shifts and twists. He breaks free as the other boys engage. He is encircled. Pressed and lovingly confined. He cannot help laughing. They wear victorious grins and his own grin speaks playful defiance.
Uchiha
In later years they will say that the trauma had transformed him. But he is not his brother. This is not his tragedy, it is his birth.
Whatever sickness lives in me was present from the first.
He is surrounded by dead, familiar faces. He takes them into himself, catalogues every nuance of their final expression. Together they will find a certain man. They will make him see.
Sarutobi
He wanders through the quiet servant quarters and lingers in the empty banquet hall. Imagining songs and laughter. He stands on his balcony and regards the sleeping city.
Distantly he senses the Uchiha dying in methodic sequence. It is a slow measure in his heart like a parade of waves.
He goes inside. The blonde child is asleep in the gymnasium, bruised and cut and seeming content. He picks the boy up and carries him to bed. He lays him down beside his grandson.
They are growing invisibly. What they are becoming I cannot say.