Name: My Family
Author: Zidra
Category: Naruto
Genre: Humor/Drama
Summary: He drew whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He could draw the people he cared about, images from the past and even landscapes only he witnessed.
Warnings: none. :)
Author's Note: This was quite a pleasure to write, I've had the idea for it for quite a while. Hope you guys enjoy it, even thought it may not be anything special. Oh yeah, the words written in bold italic are the names for the drawings/painting.
Rain. Cold yet refreshing rain.
It fell from the sky more and more, little drops hitting the ground hard before disintegrating into the dust. The Village Hidden in the Leaves had witnessed these little terrors conquer their homes all day long. Nothing seemed to stop it from continuing. It was like the angels were crying. Crying for the ones that died and the ones that live. Crying for their deeds.
Alas, it was one of those days when nothing mattered, when people simply wanted to stay inside and enjoy the warmth and company of their family.
The cold wind blew merciless through the empty streets, against the strong walls of buildings and through trees, sending off leaves towards the horizon.
Most people enjoyed this day since they got to spend time with their loved ones or just relaxing in front of a good book while listening to the rain drops outside.
Only one person didn't seem to enjoy the day, even thought he and his team got to skip training today. That person was a normal 12 years old boy. It's odd, once you think of it how a boy his age didn't enjoy the free day or spend time with his family. Maybe it was because he didn't have one…?
Living by himself for the past eight years in a small house, fit enough for one person would drive anybody crazy. But unlike any normal person, he was different. Because he was chosen to be the burden of the village and be host towards the most powerful of the demons, the Kyuubi no Yoko.
The boy was lying in bed, his eyes closed, trying to remember the day's evens. Even thought it was raining torrential outside, he still followed his schedule and trained. Trained until he almost ran out of charka and fell in the cold mud, exhausted, the only witnesses being the rain drops.
He barely managed to get home that night.
Azure eyes opened to look at the ceiling sadly. Today he didn't see his teammates because their sensei canceled training. 'Pff, he just didn't want to get his book wet, that's all…lazy pervert…'
Getting up from his position, the blonde boy looked around his apartment for a few minutes before hastily running towards the only table in the room. Underneath it was a plain cardboard box. The boy pulled it out from under the table gently and pushed it towards his bed.
Smiling, he lifted up from the box a pair of colored crayons, a few black pencils worn out by time and an eraser. He looked at the ustensils for a few moments before getting some white paper.
Nobody knew of his talent. And neither did he care. It was something only he had; only he could do. Nobody could take that away from him. Nobody could copy it, or steal it. It was his.
His hands touched a paper on which he drew a few nights ago. His azure eyes scanned the traces on the paper thoughtfully, in case he missed some white uncolored spot or just crossed the black line of the painting. He grinned in an honest way: another prized painting.
If you took a closer look at the other pieces of paper, you could see practically a vision through his life and a look at the people he met and loved braided with some amazing views he saw during missions, colored in the most careful way possible.
Ruffling his blonde spiky hair, the boy decided to take a look through his most recently drawings. He silently lifted at least ten or twenty drawings and put them on his lap while leaning against the pillow and looked at each of them. If somebody saw these drawings, they couldonly be amazed onhow realistic and beautiful they were, the emotion and pain put into each of the drawings, the patience andthe anatomy, the colors chosen and inspiration, each line of pencil and crayonrevealing these feelings.
Naruto, as the boy was known through out the village, was described as the loudest and most hyper child to ever venture through the streets. People often believed that the demon sealed inside of him was causing this mishaps as a way of revenge through pranks but nobody could see better then this. The boy always tried to be in the center of attention because that's what he wanted.
Attention.
It might sound quite humorous but living for twelve years on your own, being hated and disliked by everybody makes you hope for something better. He never knew what it was like to have the attention of a parent or a family relative or even by a close friend.The lack of thesethings drove him to use pranks and jokes as a way to capture attention. Even now, as a genin he didn't receive any attention from his teammates or his sensei. And he reached the conclusion that the only way to receive attention was to live in another world. But of course, that was not possible. That's why he started drawing.
He drew whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He could draw the people he cared about, images from the past and even landscapes only he witnessed.
That was exactly what he was looking at right now. It was an old drawing, one of his first,featuring the Hokage Mountain. The four heroes of the villages, the pride of Fire Country. Each of the faces seemed to be a little personified in a way like the owners of those faces were still alive. He looked at each of them slowly, his gaze mostly on the Third Hokage, the only person who showed his friendship before skipping towards the Fourth.
The wind blew harder as a faint thunder echoed in the background. The Fourth Hokage. Because of him…he had to carry this burden called Kyuubi. Because of him, he was hated. Because of him he didn't have…a family.
Pushing back the tears, Naruto looked at another drawing and smiles slightly. This was one of the hardest drawings he ever did. It took him almost three month with all the details on the clothes andexpressions. Even thought he hated one of the three people in this image, he couldn't help but feel proud of how it turned out.
The picture, named 'The Terrible Trio' always made the boy laugh. On the left side of the picture he drew one person who took him under his wing and taught him, Jiraiya, wearing a white kimono with red swirls on it. He was grinning widely and winking, holding in his right hand a certain orange book while his other hand was around the second person's shoulders, the current Godaime and old team member Tsunade, who was wearing a green kimono and holding in her left hand a bottle which looked suspiciously like sake while the other hand was around the third member of the team's neck.
Naruto smirked slightly at the look on his face. Orochimaru looked slightly embarrassed to be in the same picture with them, yet if the snake sannin saw the picture, he couldn't complain his clothes were ugly. Naruto had drawn him in a light blue kimono with dark blue swirls around the hands and made him and Jiraiya quite handsome while Tsunade was drop-dead gorgeous as he stated to nobody in special.
Yes, that was how he pictures the three sannins in their times, probably around twenty years or so. In the background, three chibi summonses, Gamabunta, Manda and Katsuyu were rolling their eyes at their owners' antics.
Moving to the next picture, this one featured a few people he didn't quite know, more exactly Kakashi's old genin team. He, Sakura and Sasuke once visited his house since he didn't come for training and found him sleeping ('his mask still on, gah is he crazy or somethin!').
The three of them silently looked around his house and found a few old pictures, one of them featuring his team. Neither of them could believe that his sensei was none other then the Fourth and that one of his team mates was an Uchiha. The look on Sasuke's face was priceless while he had problems trying not to burst into laughter. Sakura was mildly surprised to see that the third member was a girl who was a medic-nin.
That night, Naruto imagined how Kakashi's old team mates were and drew a picture of them. He grinned like a Cheshire cat as he looked at Yondaime's brilliant blue eyes while hugging Kakashi, the Uchiha boy and the medic-nin and giving thumbs up. As a background, he used a dark red color and tried to make the drawing look exactly like an old photo. He succeeded in it too. "Team Yondaime" wasn't something easily forgotten.
Moving on to the next picture, he snickered slightly. Even thought it was quiet simple, anybody would laugh at the drawing 'Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dumb': Kakashi-sensei was leaning bored against the left side of the paper, reading his book while his old rival and spandex freak, Maito Gai was walking on his hands and giving the 'Good Guy' pose. Naruto drew the two of them two speaking bubbles as he saw in mangas: Gai was trying to convince his rival to do a 500 laps around Konoha race on his hands but Kakashi was his regular self and answered with 'Huh, you said something?'
"Some things never chance…" he muttered to himself before passing to the next drawing. Recently he found out that Gaara's story was just like his from his brother Kankuro, therefore giving birth to the next image: 'The Good, the Bad and the Poker Game.'
The irony of this one really made him laugh: Although it was simple looking without any special background, in the middle was a small table where the Yondaime was sitting in the Indian position holding a deck of cards and pointing and laughing at the person opposite him, Kyuubi who looked quite furious and threw his cards on the floor. In the middle was Shukaku who was laughing at his friend's bad luck while the Yondaime Kazekage was holding his head in his right hand in a defeated manner and sweat dropping, the word 'Idiots' written in a thought bubble.
And by the look of how the three of them acted, anybody who saw the image would agree with the Kazekage.
Shaking his head, he moved to the next image which featured everybody's favorite human ice cube, Sasuke and his older brother Itachi, wearing the Akatsuki cloak of course, both of them up on a telephone pole holding for their lives. At the bottom of the pole was a sea of girls, out of which two of them caught his attention because they were sitting in the middle. Judging by the pink hair and blonde long hair up in a pony tail, it was none other then Sakura and Ino, with hearts in their eyes.
Naruto quickly grabbed a pencil, a blue crayon and added a small anime sweat drop at Sasuke and Itachi's head before bursting into laughter. With a pink crayon he wrote above the sea of girls different sentences such as 'Marry me Itachi-kun!', 'I'll carry your children Sasuke-kun!', 'OMGZ, I lurv U!11!' followed by a few hearts. Naruto finally decided on a title for the picture: 'How the Uchiha Clan really died.'
If either Sasuke or Itachi saw the picture, not even Kyuubi could heal him.
The next picture wasn't as funny as the others, but was quite sad now that he thought of it. It was a grey corner of a room where a small body was sitting in the fetal position against the wall, hiding from the watcher. Judging by the spiky hair, anybody could guess who this was.
Naruto swallowed at the title: "Acceptance" before fastly moving to another picture and sweat dropped at this one. What was he thinking when he drew this. The action was taking place somewhere in the village at night and the drawing featured Gamabunta, accidentally stepping on one of Kyuubi's tails. The toad boss grinned stupidly while Kyuubi seemed to yelp in pain and shock. On the top of Gamabunta's head was an unknown stick man slapping his forehead. Naruto could swore he heard an unknown voice in his mind muttering something about toads and hokages but ignored the voice and thought of a name for his drawing. In the end, he settled with 'How the Kyuubi was defeated' while a growl echoed through his mind, making Naruto grin.
Naruto put down the drawings on the bed and started searching through the cardboard box, dust flying all around. He grinned when he found what he was looking for. The paper was huge; it was at least five times as big as a normal one. Why?
His eyes scanned the huge paper, looking over his work. The drawing featured all the people he knew and met during his life so far, even bad guys. It wasn't yet done, since only a quarter of the paper was drawn on. In the back of the crowd were two huge demons, Kyuubi and Shukaku grinning widely, on top of their heads were the Yondaime Hokage and Kazekage waving at the viewer. Down at the bottom were many people Naruto met through his childhood, the most important in front of the row.
He laughed seeing the expressions on their faces.
In the middle he drew himself, grinning widely in the same orange costume he always wore, behind him, with a hand on his shoulder was Jiraiya, the Toad Sannin doing the Victory sign while on his head was Gamakichi. On both his side were Sasuke and Sakura, behind them was Orochimaru and Tsunade, the Snake Sannin with his arms crossed while Sasuke pretended to be uninterested. Sakura on the other hand was smiling widely while Tsunade was holding a bottle of sake.
The front line was joined by many other people aswell, featuring Iruka, Kakashi, Shizune, the Rookie 9 and of course Gai's team. Behind them were the senseis, Gaara, Temari and Kankuro, Kabuto, Itachi who was sighting and Kisame who was waving like a madman and even to his surprise, he drew people who died in the past such as that mysterious Uchiha and the girl who was a medic-nin on Kakashi's genin team, Zabuza and Haku but also the past Hokages who were waving. In the background, besides the two demons were Gamabunta who was smoking, Manda was winking devilishly and Katsuyu was smiling softly. But the drawing wasn't finished yet. Oh no, it was barely started and the boy would continue it as long as he lived, drawing more and more people as his life advances.
Because he had precious persons to protect and remember even thought some of them left him in the real world, they would always be with him.
Naruto smiled as he finished looking over it again, thanking all of them for being there for him.
He already had decided on a name for it:
"My Family."