Konohagakure is a city built on the bones of children too clever for their own good and men who wore the color red like cloaks.
(red as flames red as the will of fire they all worshiped idolized revered)
All the other ninja villages whispered about it behind locked doors and sealed windows (not that it stopped anyone, really, but it's the principle of the matter)
- a genius every generation-
- some sort of eugenics?-
- the Senju brothers, Sarutobi Hiruzen, The Sannin, the two Hatakes, the Yellow Flash, Uchiha Itachi, it goes on, don't you see-
...
It was unnatural, too unnatural. No child is just born with the innate talent for murder. That sort of thing doesn't pass with genetics. How the bloody, ever-loving fuck does Konoha do it?
The answer was simple, so simple that no self-respecting ninja would ever believe it, because while they flung around the elements like toys and -
(wrecked whole countries for ideals and beliefs that lasted as well as the people who believed in them)
- they also ran a more covert war that ranged back centuries and -
(so long ago, so damn long that even the tailed beasts struggle to remember)
- no one knows what the war even is at this point, just that they must fight and die.
…
When Hashirama founded his village, his city of prodigies who burn out before their voices even crack, he built the forest around it first. Every tree, fern, flower that grew there had fed on chakra until they were stout and ready to shelter the lives that would be born under their boughs –
(but don't forget the lives taken because more than one foreigner found themselves with a broken neck when they tried to travel by tree on Konoha land)
- and that means that whenever a citizen of Konoha breathes, they breathe in air filled with chakra. The energy surrounding the land is what grants it its ridiculous fertility, why the forests grow back so quickly disaster after disaster -
(why the Kyuubi fails to poison it because it may be a god amongst men but it still fell down under the weight of creaking bark and whispering leaves)
The Senju brothers were born in war. Their infant bodies had already been painted with blood as the Senju clan left them alone in the forest to learn to live.
(if the child is not favored by the forest, then they will die anyway)
Out of the five children, two make it. All of them are pure Senju and brothers. Hashirama is the oldest and the most gifted. He learns how to level forests in a way that will kill the most men and how to smile while doing it. They make him join the battlefield at ten years old and he walks straight in without a glance back. This is his birthright, after all.
(he tears through the enemy like a lightning bolt, all of them falling in his wake. Every battle, Hashirama crawls out grinning and bloody until he makes an armor so red that the blood can't be really seen)
His brother, Tobirama, does not go his brother's route. No mountains shatter under his fist, and no lakes burn under his feet.
Rather, he sits alone in the dark to watch his masterpieces, to watch entire clans murder each other in a frenzy brought on by his hellish illusions or watch as even infants drown under his waves.
(so many children, so, so many and Tobirama regrets none of them because he doesn't need to care at all)
Hashirama is more powerful, but Tobirama is the more feared.
After all, people know which one cuts cleaner.
Clan Sarutobi were the first to settle in the newly fledged village, and Hiruzen was one of the first ever generation of children to be born within its walls.
When he slid out his mother's belly streaked with blood and mucus, he found his throat and lungs seared by chakra, so potent and strong it nearly choked his infant body -
- and he wailed.
The sound, piercingly loud, broke his mother out of her post-birth stupor and a smile cracked her pretty, sweaty face.
"What a strong boy," she crooned. "You will live to be old, my son."
(she didn't know that her son would be able to walk before he was even a year old, learn to speak in full sentences at two years old, and then kill his first man at the tender age of five)
The Sannin did not bear their age well. Orochimaru ran desperately after immortality, Tsunade hid herself behind a veneer of beauty, and Jiraiya threw his age around so wildly that it didn't even matter (or so he thought) because they had been geniuses too – three glorious soldiers with maws red as the flames, so damn proud to murder, kill, and slaughter for a ridiculous ideal that they loved to the point of insanity but that was normal.
(and then they fell apart like a wooden building on fire, because Konoha did everything extravagantly – Orochimaru branded traitor, Tsunade ran away for alcohol and gambling, and Jiraiya simply buried himself in killing, spying, and women)
Hatake Sakumo loved his wife.
It was incredible, that a broken man could love anything like a woman when she isn't cut wide open and cooling to room temperature. But he loved her, nonetheless.
So when his son is born and his wife is lost, Sakumo feels the bitter taste of a non-victory. He looks down at the pale mass of flesh and skin that is his child -
- and cannot muster up love.
(his father was a ninja before him, and Sakumo wonders if this is how felt at his own birth)
He raises the boy.
Kakashi is a good son, but he knows that his father does not love him like other fathers do. Sakumo praises him, trains him, prides in him... but he does not love him. He would give his life for his son, but he cannot give his love.
Kakashi knows this and it festers like an infected nail. The boy, the poor boy, trains harder and rises like a shooting star -
(so special, so smart, so strong)
- Kakashi glows like a nova in the eyes of others -
(so fast, so quick, so talented)
- but his father turns away like the light of his son's brilliance hurts him.
And then
Hatake Sakumo
fails in his duty
and starts
a bloody war
(and killed himself – but that's not too important)
Kakashi still glowed like a sun -
(he wasn't special or strong)
- walked out of battles covered in a red not his own -
(he wasn't quick or talented)
- found a man that was almost father but not quite, close enough that Kakashi could close his eyes and pretend hard enough that Minato's hand almost felt like Sakumo's and he knew that sensei cared, noticed, loved-
(because if he truly was, then Sakumo would have loved him enough to not die)
- too bad Kakashi was too broken to be loved -
(and that's why father slipped a sword inside his belly for Kakashi to find)
Namikaze Minato is a nobody. He's got nothing but a pretty face and prettier words but somehow that's enough because his balls have barely dropped before they slammed the hat on his head and push him out to the frontlines with nothing but -
Don't fucking fail
-and yet, he doesn't. Minato leaps into battle like he's born for it-
(god, maybe he is because fucking Konoha, man, they're so messed up and all that genius can't be natural)
-and he smiles like the sun as he rips apart the enemy-
(that what they are; the enemy. Faceless and nameless)
- words that glitter like hard candy fall out his pretty mouth and into the gaping jaws of the soldiers grasping at his light because they're so cold and Minato seems so warm.
The man decimates his enemies, wipes out generations, and cripples a village into in-breeding -
(they call him the kindest Hokage yet)
-and when the Kyuubi rears its head once again, Minato flies into the fray with eyes crackling and chakra snapping-
(he loves the love they give him, the way they turn to him)
-the Kyuubi is red but not red like blood and the energy that pours off him doesn't feel too bad because there's only so low you can go before you snap into sanity. The sun of Konoha already crossed that line.
Minato draws seals in his own blood and meets the Kyuubi blow for blow.
(it felt good, so good, to meet someone -something - that didn't fall under his power, to fight nature itself and delude himself into thinking that he could win)
The Kyuubi howls as the god of death reaches into him, and Minato howls with him because even death's hands don't seem so slick with blood as his -
(after all, the Shinigami was only the ferryman for the armies he's killed)
Itachi was born at night, under the watchful gaze of the full moon. He came out silent, for the doctors saw no need to make him cry. He breathed like he'd been always doing that and stared around the room with a clear awareness that made his father almost beam.
(Fugaku also felt a queer pride well up in his chest when his son padded across the room swinging a blade coated in the blood of their family – Itachi was a powerful young man and this only proved it further)
Itachi killed his family and broke his brother and crippled his village and ruined his name and killed, killed, killed -
(the list goes on)
- but the pain and hatred follows him like his shadow. His eyes burn red all the time, and records and remembers the deaths of every person he has killed. Each night, before he sleeps, he plays back each death like a beloved film, tattooing the image of their fear and agony into his heart -
(its not healthy)
- he can tell you how many throats he's cut -
(but really)
- how many families he's ripped apart -
(nobody cares anymore because Itachi can still kill and that's what's important)
- and how much he fucking hates himself.
Naruto loves Konoha. He would do anything for his home, his village, his people. So many precious people loved within its walls, under the cool leaves of the majestic trees. And when he loved, it was with all his heart -
(sometimes they would laugh. Sometimes they would not say anything at all)
-and if anyone, anyone at all threatened his home, he smiled prettily at them and called up a small storm in his hand -
(no one liked him. Everyone liked him. Warden, nuisance, soldier, hero)
- no one could stop him, anyway. After all, this was a boy who defeated Shukaku when his voice had yet to crack. This was a boy who broke in demons before he was old enough to drink.
(goddamn Konoha)
Naruto smiled winningly while blood dripped down his hand. The air around him was thin – he had emitted so much chakra it had simply burned. The ground he stepped on was seared black and nothing would ever grow there again-
His grin, childish and blithe, glows like a beacon -
I love Konoha. (I love forever and for always, that is my nindo)
- forget armies. This boy could bring heaven to heel if he wanted to.
(you made your own tamed god, haven't you?)