Thicker Than Water

Author's note: This has been sitting on my computer for almost a year now, and I'm only one and a half scenes into chapter two... so don't expect frequent updates. I've got some vague ideas and I'll get to it eventually, but for now I'm out of inspiration.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto... *le sigh*

Chapter 1

The itch begins at the back of his skull and spreads over his head like wildfire. His fists clench by his sides; Hayate's voice fades to a dull buzz in the back of his ears. He tries to blink, but his eyelids have turned to lead weights.

He sees the ground rising up to meet him, and then the world turns to ash.

The sunlight that streamed through the open window was made harsher by the plain white walls and sterile, shining white tile floors of the hospital room. Barely visible from inside was the faintest trace of deep blue sky, peeking through the tall buildings that took up most of the view from the window. The noises of the city were almost audible– the sound of laughter and talk and the movement of hundreds drifted in on the slight breeze the ruffled the bedridden girl's pink hair.

Haruno Sakura stared at the ceiling unseeingly, unmindful of the tendrils of roseate hair that had been strewn across her face by the wind. Grass-green eyes were blank and hollow, their emerald hue dulled by the thoughts of her recent defeat that swept through her mind like the breeze that had so easily swept through her temporary room.

She had tossed aside the blankets hours previously– sometime during a restless sleep. Her hands clenched on the smooth white sheets, betraying her inner turmoil.

There was a faint noise from the window. Sakura glanced away from the ceiling, worry sparking fear–

A hand grabbed onto the windowsill. The cuff of an orange jumpsuit clung to the wrist, dwarfing the delicate hand by several orders of magnitude. The rest of the body followed the hand– the blond boy pulled himself over the ledge with difficulty and collapsed into a heap on the floor.

Despite the sweat that clung to his forehead and plastered golden bangs to tanned skin, the smile that spread across the boy's face was genuine. "What a rush," he crowed– though his tone was a great deal more subdued than usual.

"Ino said you collapsed."

The boy jumped up, blue eyes widening at the sudden speech. The eye-watering jumpsuit twisted around him, still in disarray from his climb. For a brief moment, Sakura thought he would fall– but he regained his balance just as quickly.

Naruto held a finger to his lips and made exaggerated gestures for Sakura to be quiet. The pink-haired girl sighed and rolled her eyes, but lowered her voice accordingly.

"Honestly, Naruto, what do you think you're doing? You should know better than to sneak into a hospital."

"But I wanted to see you," Naruto pouted, sticking his lower lip out ridiculously and blinking large blue eyes rapidly. He looked more feminine than recalcitrant; dark lashes flickered up and down, just barely brushing scarred cheeks. "Come on, Sakura. Give me a break!"

Sakura opened her mouth, rolled her eyes, and prepared to give a suitably cutting and sarcastic comeback. Then she blinked, closed her mouth, and narrowed her eyes.

"Did that actually work?" Naruto asked, a sudden mirthful grin illuninating his face like a sudden burst of light. "No way! I should do that more often."

"Don't be an idiot," Sakura snapped, distracted by her observations. "There's something different about you, dead last."

"Hey!" Naruto forgot his own warning from a few minutes before in favor of shouting his displeasure to the entire hospital. "Don't call me that! You're starting to sound like that bastard Sasuke."

Sakura sighed loudly and shook her head. "Well, maybe you should start trying to act like Sasuke too. After all, he's–"

The exact details of Sakura's impression of Sasuke were lost to the ages as the door was slammed open by a furious nurse. "You!" she shrieked, shoulders heaving from exertion. Sakura's eyes were drawn to the front of her uniform, where splotches of green and purple dye were clashing brilliantly. "How dare you show your face around here– after what you did– I ought to–"

"Sorry, Sakura! Gotta run!" Naruto made a mad dash for the window through which he had so recently entered, and leapt out just as the enraged nurse reached his previous position.

The nurse mumbled an apology and bowed to Sakura. Sakura returned the gesture, but her eyes remained on the window through which her mischievous teammate had disappeared. "Your hair," she muttered softly. "It's gotten lighter."

She returned her pensive gaze to the ceiling, thoughts made considerably lighter with the prospect of a new mystery to puzzle through. "Naruto... first you collapse, now this. What's happening to you?"

"You mean you could have gotten rid of whatever that snake-freak did to me, but you didn't?" Naruto is angry, yes, but underneath of that part of him takes vicious joy in the fact that 'I was right– he was trying to hold me back the whole time–'

"Just shut up and let me deal with this." Jiraiya scrutinizes the seal, then nods. "Yeah, I can undo it."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Naruto's fists clench around the shirt he is holding up. Jiraiya doesn't notice.

Then there is a shout, and Jiraiya stabs Naruto in the stomach with his fingers. Naruto stumbles, falls over, twitches. His body is flooded with warmth and he shudders.

"You all right?" Jiraiya asks.

"Yeah." Naruto climbs to his feet, brushes off his clothing. "Yeah, I'm fine." He stumbles to one side.

"Kid?"

The itch is back, spreading from his scalp to his face to his eyes and the pressure builds up until he in on the ground again, spasming, unable to even talk because his face is on fire and his eyes are melting in his face–

He wakes in the hospital the next day and does not remember.

"Hey, kid."

The man who entered through the door walked tall and unstooped, though the impression of overwhelming strength was belied by the shock of white hair that cascaded over his shoulders and over his forehead. His was a presence that filled the room immediately on arrival, commanding respect and attention as easily as he breathed the air.

The younger of the two, the one confined to the hospital bed, was completely unmindful of this; he waved the small mirror in the air furiously, blonde spiky hair swaying slightly with the movement.

"What the hell happened to my pupils?" Naruto snarled, face drawn up into a rictus of fury. "If this is one of your tricks, it sure as hell isn't funny–"

"Tricks?" Jiraiya asked, scandalized. "Who do you take me for?"

Naruto merely glared, mirror still outheld. The difference in appearance was astounding. Where the boy's eyes had once been a bright, clear blue that vaguely resembled sapphires, glinting with emotions that the blond was unable to repress, now they had lightened several degrees. The pupils, most noticeably, had vanished, leaving pools of pure icy blue that regarded Jiraiya with barely held rage.

"I know you had something to do with this, old man," Naruto's eyes narrowed into slits, he leaned forward on his bed. The mirror, still held in one of his hands, was forgotten. "And when I figure out what you've done..." He trailed off menacingly, and the barest sheen of red flickered across his eyes.

Jiraiya frowned, and ran a hand through his hair. "Listen, brat," he began, searching for any way to derail the moment. Luckily for him, Sakura chose that moment to walk through the door to the hospital room.

"You're lucky you got off so easy," she began without preamble, mindless of the situation she had blundered into. "There's something really wrong with you! Imagine, collapsing like that right in front of an enemy like Gaara–"

Naruto, clearly taken aback by his teammate's remonstrations, rocked backwards in surprise. The moment he took his eyes off of his one-time mentor, the man slipped out of the room; by the time he looked back, there was no trace of his presence left at all.

He spared a brief moment to spare to wonder at his apparently facility in slipping in and out of places unnoticed; for all of Jiraiya's massive strength and reputation, he could indeed be sly when the situation called for it.

Sakura had not noticed his distraction.

"Fine? You collapsed for no reason! If Sasuke hadn't been there–" Then she stopped, abruptly, and took a closer look at him. "Hey! What happened to your eyes!"

Naruto groaned loudly. "I don't know, okay? They were like that when I woke up." He paused, then straightened up when he realized what she'd said. "Wait a minute, what do you mean, 'if Sasuke hadn't been there?' Sasuke didn't do nothing but get in the way!"

"My Sasuke was not in the way, moron," Sakura shrieks. The window panes rattle with the volume of her voice. "He defeated Gaara–"

"Did not! I defeated the sand-freak–"

"No way! A dead last like you? Stop trying to take–"

"–Sasuke was unconscious the whole time–"

"–just jealous of him, you always were–"

"Enough!"

The two looked up guiltily. The nurse panted in the doorway, an accusing finger pointed at the duo. "How dare you! Disturbing the patients like this–"

Naruto glanced at Sakura pleadingly. "Help me get out of here! Please!" he whispered.

"You owe me sushi," she countered.

"–with all the shinobi injured after the attack, this is a refuge! A place of peace and silence– hey! Where do you two think you're going?"

"No, I'm serious. What's going on?" Sakura gave him a scrutinizing look. "First your hair, now your eyes–" Here she leaned forward over the table to peer more closely at his face. "Your bone structure, too! If it wasn't for your whiskers, you'd look like an entirely different person!"

"They're not whiskers," Naruto protested loudly. Sakura flapped her hands at him and made shushing noises.

"We're in a restaurant, you idiot! Don't be so loud!"

A wide grin spread over Naruto's face. "Hey, hey, Sakura."

"What?" Sakura asked irritably.

"We're in a restaurant... together... without Sasuke..."

"What's your point, idiot?"

"Does this mean we're on a date?"

Sakura reached over the table and hit him so hard he was knocked over backwards. Naruto moaned and rubbed at the lump forming on his head and she stood up and loomed over him. "Ha!" she spat. "You just had to go and ruin it, didn't you?"

He watched with resignation as she left the restaurant in a huff. "And she left me with the bill, too!" As he pulled himself to his feet and sat back down to finish the meal, he smirked slightly. "Hey, at least she didn't notice that I took her wallet."

It starts with a sword through the stomach.

Naruto spits his defiance at the snake-faced bastard. His stomach is one great roiling mass of fiery pain, but he can ignore that.

Or, at least, he could.

But then the pain spreads from the wound to his skin. He sees his veins light up with a tracery of silver light.

There's shouting, and Naruto is still aware enough to hope that it is not him. It would be horrible to ruin a perfectly heroic moment with girly screams–

It ends in darkness.

"Hey, Granny!" Naruto chirped cheerfully has he strode into the office. Then, when he saw the Hokage's solemn face: "Is something wrong?"

He spared a moment to look at the other people assembled in the office: Ero-sennin. A tall, blond, middle-aged couple. The girl Sakura-chan calls Ino-pig.

Tsunade, looking unaccustomedly grave, opened her mouth to speak. Before she could, the tall, blond woman cut her off.

"Please, Lady Hokage. There is still a chance. Let this rest... don't destroy our lives. Please."

If Tsunade was moved by the plea she didn't show it; the stoniness of her face defied all emotion. She opened the folder in her hands, withdrew a two photographs, and pushed them across her desk towards the younger blond.

Naruto eyed the first photograph: it was a reddish, squalling excuse for an infant, still somewhat bloody, face screwed up in protest. The caption at the bottom read, Yamanaka Yori.

He glanced from the picture to the couple; the woman had grabbed onto her husband's arm and was watching him with some unnamed emotion in her eyes.

"Yamanaka Yori," he read out loud, then looked at the second photograph. "Namikaze Michiko," this one a girl-child wrapped in a pink blanket, a slight fuzz of sunlight-yellow hair decorating her head.

He looked up. "What's going on here?"

Tsunade seemed to wilt slightly. Naruto was struck by the thought that she had hoped he would be able to put the pieces together without explanation; one look at the slump of her shoulders confirmed her worry and weariness.

"Perhaps it is not the wisest decision to reveal this to you," she said, voice hesitant. Then she looked up, straightened almost imperceptibly as a mask of strength descended over her features. "But you deserve to know."

Here Jiraiya stepped forward, in response to his erstwhile teammate's unvoiced plea. "Ino, what do you know of the Kyuubi no Kitsune?"

Naruto lost both his voice and her response in the sudden grey noise that filled his skull; his tongue was leaden and useless in his mouth, his throat clogged with surprise and something approaching betrayal.

"That's an S-class secret," he rasped out between heartbeats, unwilling to let this go on any longer. "You can't–"

"I can and I will, brat," Jiraiya said, favoring with a disappointed look. "She needs to know."

Bereft suddenly of certainty and support, Naruto looked to Tsunade– only to see her looking conspicuously elsewhere. He subsided then with a barely-heard grumble, folding his arms in a perfect picture show of childish resentment.

Ino's shrill voice broke through his thoughts, interrupting him from a spiral that seemed to grow darker and darker with each moment. "You mean there's a demon in him? You mean, that's how he managed to win all of those battles? Because he's got a demon?"

"That is how he won his skirmishes in the exam," Jiraiya acknowledged. "But it's nothing more than a resource, as much as any bloodline limit is–"

"But why are you telling me this?"

"Because, well, the Kyuubi could only be sealed into a newborn child, you remember? And there was only one child born at that moment, only one child that could be used–"

A glance at the Yamanaka couple showed them to be perfectly rigid and emotionless; if they noticed Naruto's wandering eyes, they did not mention it.

"And the couple to whom that child belonged would not give it up to such a fate without an equal trade."

Ino's face was three shades paler now as she put together the pieces of a puzzle that had been staring her in the face since she had first seen the photographs now clenched in Naruto's hand. She turned to her parents, a thread of raw anguish audible in her voice. "Please, please say it's not true!"

But Jiraiya was still talking, unmoved by the spectacle; he stared at the wall, hands clasped tightly in front of him. "So the Hokage agreed to, in effect, trade children: the couple would have his daughter to raise as their own, in exchange for the use of their own son as the container of the Kyuubi."

Naruto shook his head to clear it of the thoughts that had gathered like cobwebs. "No," he said in denial.

"I was responsible for placing seals on the children to give them the appearance of their respective adoptive parents. Unfortunately," he turned to Naruto here, "your seal first started to break during the Chuunin exams, and it shattered completely while you were away from Konoha. I fixed what I could, but the seal is beyond repair. It will fail completely in a matter of months. Worse, people have noticed. To reapply the seal now... would be pointless. And most likely extremely painful. So I'm here to unseal the both of you."

"No," Naruto said again. His face was pale and bloodless, eyes feverishly bright. "It's not true. It can't be."

He looked to Tsunade for support, but the Hokage merely turned her head away.

"Fine. Unseal me."

Ino stepped forward, her eyes hard, head held high. "It doesn't matter whose daughter I am on paper– I know who raised me, and those people are my true parents! I know they'll support me no matter what. You're right– the seal needs to be taken off now, before it fails publicly or in a delicate situation. So do it. Unseal me."

"Good girl," Jiraiya said approvingly. He turned to where Naruto was standing. "Well, brat?"

His eyebrows rose in shock when he realized that the whisker-faced blond was no longer in the room. Jiraiya sighed and started for the door, but stopped when Tsunade shook her head silently. He turned to Ino with a forced smile.

"Now, Ino... take off your shirt."

"Fight me, bastard."

Sasuke looked up in surprise. The dead-last was standing before him... had somehow managed to sneak into his presence without Sasuke noticing. "No."

"Dammit!" the blond screamed, punching a nearby tree. "Fight me! I dare you!"

Sasuke watched in shock as the tree fell over. "No," he said again, mentally re-evaluating what he knew of his blond teammate.

"Why..." Naruto's shoulders heaved. "Why won't you fight me?"

The thousand cutting comments Sasuke could make die on his tongue at the same time the first tear fell down Naruto's cheeks. The blond was not a graceful crier– his eyes got red and swollen, his nose ran, and his face scrunched up hideously. But he was not the type to cry on a whim, or for physical pain, and that meant that something was really, really wrong.

"Dead-last?" Sasuke dropped the kunai he'd been spinning around his finger while he daydreamt of Itachi's bloody death. He took a step closer. "What happened?"

"I have parents," Naruto gasped out. "And they hate me!"

Sasuke considered this. "Your parents are dead, idiot."

"No," the blond shook his head. "They're alive. You know Ino? Yamanaka Ino? It turns out she's not a Yamanaka after all– I am. But they didn't want me, so–"

But Sasuke had already turned away. "I don't see what you're getting all worked up about," he snarled, and jumped to a higher tree-branch.

Naruto watched his best friend leap away from him, quickly disappearing into the sparse wooded training ground.

Pale blue eyes regarded him warily. One hand drifted upward to gingerly touch the white-blond hair that fell neatly over his forehead. The only thing that remained– and here the reflection's lips twisted upwards grimly– were the six whisker marks on his cheeks.

He looked... different.

Part of him was amused, and intrigued at the possibilities– how would people react to this new person? How long before they realized that this elegant-looking stranger was in fact Uzumaki Naruto? Would Sakura-chan and Sasuke-bastard even recognize him?

The rest of him was resigned.

His fondest dream as a child was that a mysterious and strong figure would appear and claim him as family. Would come and take him away. Would share with him happiness and warmth.

Naruto dropped the hand-mirror and slumped into a chair at his kitchen table, head pillowed on his arms, staring unseeingly out of the small window.

Somewhere out there he had a mother, a father, cousins, aunts and uncles– everything he ever wanted.

He wished he had never known. He wished that he had gone through his entire life thinking that his parents had died. At least then he wouldn't have to live with the knowledge that they hadn't cared enough to rescue him or care for him– that they'd raised a stranger's child in his place.

One look at Yamanaka Inoichi's stony face had been enough to convince him that there would be no rescue from that quarter. They probably wouldn't want to acknowledge him at all.

He didn't even notice when he fell into a restless sleep.

End note: So that skipped around a bit, and it's choppy in parts... but any feedback is, as always, greatly appreciated.