Inspired by Stormborn, written by black k kat. (I really don't know why but the periods in between won't show.)

Well. First Naruto fanfiction. "Stormborn" is way too awesome, and before I knew it, my general start and other small details were eerily similar so it only seemed right to give credit.

I'm quite aware that probably 99% of anyone that clicks on this will not trust consistency of updating, and if you did, you were right. My updates are sporadic, but they definitely never take longer than a month. I seriously mean it. Maybe two weeks, if we're lucky, but I don't trust myself.

This originates from my Archive Of Our Own work, and some of my formats only show up there. Well. Just a heads up if you prefer AO3.

Disclaimer: If I did own Naruto, the ending would not have occurred as it did. (Honestly, it was just so darn unsatisfying.) Owning Naruto means owning that ending, and it would be a cold day in hell when that happens.

{sentinels of a childhood long past}
nature's child

Part I.
I watched you / at night under the moon / when the leaves danced and the wind blew / you stared at the sky and I saw you / for the first time / mask removed / deception wiped / breathless / free / a bird of the night.

Naruto first took note of his strange link to nature at four years, when he was, in essence, a wayward and confused young child.

Truthfully, to Naruto, the sudden connection hadn't been strange at all, or even out of place—it was simply...disorienting. But it was just so right. The first tingle of the openness that the forests had offered to him and everything had just clicked in place.

He had discovered his new talent with the earth on the fourth anniversary of the Kyuubi's attack on Konoha—in other words, his birthday—and the villagers' grievings were still freshly etched upon their hearts while their hatred towards the small container was more potent than ever. The glares, the cold voices, coveted whispers—Naruto would have been lying if he had boasted that he did not see any of this. So before he could lose his control on the tight lid that he kept on his emotions, before another damn bastard could shoot him a glare, Naruto had taken to the forests where no one else would have been.

And it had been the right decision, because the second he stepped into the intricate networks of trees and grass, a sudden feeling of home overcame him. The birds harmonized together, weaving their reassuring serenades. The lazy buzz of the insects, soft rustling of bushes as the small animals and the large moved about, and the breeze curling softly among the leaves...the sounds were heavenly music upon his ears. A perfect painting illustrated itself as the sun reflected itself against the water droplets lingering on oily green leaves, gifts from a previous drizzle.

Naruto had never felt so, so— welcomed.

The surroundings had accepted his presence; likewise, the animals welcomed him too. A few squirrels and a deer, among many other creatures, milled around the small boy of sunshine as he sat down in the grass while gazing curiously at everything, listening, watching, breathing in the scene itself. Every intake of breath was a breath of nature, and the very thought of what he was experiencing left little else to be desired. The home, the family, and the love that he had always wanted, it was all right here, right now, along with nature and all her beauty.

A short bubble of juvenescent laughter arose as Naruto loped a short, stubby arm around the deer's neck and petted the rabbits and squirrels. He tried to imitate the chirps of the birds and failed miserably, but no matter—he was happy and content.

And under the supervision of the sunshine and the splendor of life around him, he fell asleep in an undisturbed nap.

After that, Naruto came to visit the forests every day.

But of course, such an ideal life couldn't possibly remain for very long, given Naruto's chaotic style.

After around a month of spending time alone with nature, Naruto began to hear voices. They were soft and hushed—caring, of course—but strangely distant and just slightly haunting. At first, the voices hadn't bothered him, despite startling him a great deal. However, gradually, the murmurs in his head grew more frequent. Half the time, Naruto didn't understand what they were talking about, but he did understand the pain. Soon enough, at his desperately young age, Naruto felt the same pain that jounins and kages felt—the acute sense of loss and a horrible grief for all that had been snatched from their grasps.

Naruto, being as young as he was, did not fully grasp these emotions and only understood the constant ache of emptiness in his chest. He wandered aimlessly, eyes cast down, pondering all these things. It was no longer the villagers that had caused him so much hurt.

Or rather, it was this new type of pain that made the civilians' taunts all the worse.

Two months later, Naruto at last understood that this constant agony was the pain of all those that the animals had previously encountered in their aimless wanderings throughout the forests of Konoha. Except, even holding that knowledge had eased his pain no better. The weight of tens upon hundreds of anguished ninjas was pushing down his heart, and every day, it got heavier.

The upside was that it did get better eventually. Though the haunted look never left his clear blue eyes, he learned to deal with the pain through a new interesting something, someone— Sasuke.

The boy was always wandering around from place to place, a smile on his face, but an air of seriousness was there too. Once, Naruto had come upon the boy while he was training and Naruto had all but watched in fascination while the shuriken whizzed through the air and the kunai pierced all the accurate positions. Surely, Naruto had thought to himself, this boy was a genius. And the aura around him was so warm and soothing. (After being around the callings of nature for so long, he could feel certain auras around people, though Naruto didn't understand why.)

But then his nii-san would come along and the whole illusion would be broken because his aura was so suffocating and repressed and Naruto would choke up like he couldn't breathe and it overwhelmed him and, and—

Nothing. And nothing. The feeling of helplessness would swamp his every sense as he watched the boy and his nii-san walk away together, and Naruto would be alone again before he rejoined the animals. A few days later, the smiling boy would always be back along with the promise of his brother being there too in a few hours.

Yet as he sat in the trees and watched the two leave together, Naruto would always see the older one look back in Naruto's direction with a light smile and a kind heart, so unlike the waves of bitterness around him. Naruto had a fleeting suspicion that the older boy was smiling at Naruto, but he couldn't be sure because those eyes, dull, pained, and broken, carried the same anguish as Naruto's heart did and always pitched his own heart into his throat.

After a few more weeks of this, Naruto finally made a point to the animals that he wanted training too, and thus began instruction on how to manipulate different things. On the first day, after being guided in lighting a small fire by a brook and a few mounds of damp soil, he sat down and closed his eyes before concentrating on everything around him.

Naruto didn't feel anything.

The only small tugs that he had felt in his gut were the way that the water in the stream pushed along in a single direction, how the small flames licked the air and leaned towards one side as if trying to escape its small boundaries, and how particles of the soil would suddenly shake loose and gust off into a separate area. The day had ended with no coherent result and the next few days were always the same. It was always the way those things acted, never the actual elements themselves.

Luckily for Naruto, heavy and grey clouds rolled across the horizon, nearer and nearer to the village, until a thunderstorm was sure to happen.

Wearing his usual attire, orange pants and an oversized, paint-splattered white shirt emblazoned with a swirl and a flame insignia, he stepped out into the wind and lightning and focused.

But once again, there was no attraction. The electric charges in the air made his hairs stand on end, but it frightened him. Other than that, nothing really happened.

Except then, the wind came. It whipped around the small boy wildly, rushing through his blonde hair and flapping at the loose clothing relentlessly, yet strangely, to Naruto, they were like warm, soft caresses instead of cold slaps to his skin. And then he felt that connection again, the feeling of home. Just when the animals' voices in his head were just beginning to die away disappointingly, they came back in soft interested murmurs, attention captured again.

In all honesty, the animals never even gave a thought to the possibility of a wind affinity, so this surprised them. It made sense, however, because the boy had felt the movements of the water, fire, and earth—all of them moving because of the soft wind. And the boy himself had felt a certain calling towards the thunderstorm—the animals would never have thought to bring him out into such cold. After all, it seemed that the wind soothed him.

Except then, Naruto sneezed and all enchantments were broken. The animals quickly ushered him back to his home with an order to rest and a promise of wind training in three days time. Knowing Naruto, however, the gaki would most likely stick his head out the window and breathe in the wind as soon as he got home.

Not that the animals really minded, of course.

So then, by the time the third day was up, Naruto was up and ready to take on any training that the birds threw at him.

He soon realized his mistake after stumbling around trying to get the tumultuous jumble of birdsong out of his head. After hours and hours of near-deafness, when Naruto finally emerged from torture with a bird perched on his shoulder and another resting in his nest of blonde hair, he could transmit his voice miles and miles to other humans or creatures by simply dispatching a bird with his thoughts contained. Of course, other creatures were his only current choice, given his social ineptitude.

Days later, he found that he could befriend every animal he came upon within moments.

Weeks after that, it was discovered that any creature would willingly cooperate with him.

Life and training went on like this for months and months as he learned more new things and collaboration techniques.

—but he still couldn't throw a kunai.

The very second that Naruto stepped into the Academy, he knew that he had found his second home. People still glared and ignored him, but the Academy was still great because there were children, people, his age and after an entire two years of being surrounded by only animals and four years of absolute solitude before that, people were the one thing that he needed. And Sasuke was there, prodigious skill, smile, cheerful eyes and everything. That made it even better.

But then he would always be clueless as to what the sensei was talking about, and when he'd ask for a more careful elaboration, the sensei would sneer and ignore him, and then the whole class would laugh. Except for Sasuke. Sasuke would look at Naruto with innocent eyes and that was the end of that.

The glares and snide remarks never came to an end, though. Every day, when the parents came to pick up their children, they'd give him a menacing glance that conveyed all the hatred they felt and more, then look at their child and say in a purposefully loud whisper, "Stay away from him, he's dangerous" and that was more than enough to hurt Naruto more than was possibly imaginable. It hurt even more than the already hollow emptiness from his "shinobi experience" lessons.

It wasn't too long before the only things that kept Naruto at the Academy were Sasuke and the calls of nature coming through the open window he sat next to.

Time went on and he finally learned to throw kunai and shuriken, though not as well as most others in the class but his doom truly fell upon him when it came time to learn the bunshin. He was utterly hopeless. When Naruto had not failed to create something, the something that he did create was a colorless, crumpled heap of uselessness that bore zero resemblance to the original caster. And then there was Sasuke with his perfect and identical clone and perfectly aimed shuriken and it was just too perfect.

But the Uchiha would give him a nice smile every time he tried—not condescending, not pitying, but nice. That alone could brighten Naruto's day up a lot more and made it more difficult for him to hate Sasuke. (Not that he wanted to, but it would be nice to have a more negative friendly relationship.)

Then one day, he came to class and found the window closed.

Not just closed, but rather bolted, locked, and covered with a sickeningly green piece of cloth that in all honesty, looked like the color of puke to Naruto. (Of course, he was still a biased young child but that didn't eliminate his incensed hatred for the blinds.) In a sudden swell of indignation, Naruto piped up about the window and begged for it to be opened, but then he was accused of wanting the window open so he could escape and ruin the village again and that—

—that made him snap.

The whole class felt disheveled after the sudden large wave of ominous energy rolled off the blonde and also absolutely confused, because even if the Uzumaki was a demon, surely the teacher had crossed the line? No one was sure, but they sure as hell forgot about the incident barely ten minutes after the Uzumaki boy was tossed ungraciously out of the Academy doors into the dirt.

Except all of them remembered him insisting on something along the lines of "But the wind is my friend," and no one thought to affirm his mental stability after that. The people threw annoying jibes at Naruto and teased him even more, calling him "bird boy" and "breezy freak". Except for Sasuke. Because Sasuke was just that nice.

But then the Uchiha hit the age of seven and the clan's demise was met soon after.

Naruto had spent his days in the forest, dazzled and soothed by the warmth of the Uchiha's aura, but at last, the day came when the kunai hit the trees too hard and the shuriken followed suit seconds later as the bark splintered and flew off the trees, and Naruto shivered.

In the forest, where all was calm and familial, Naruto never shivered. Yet, here was the very same Uchiha, the very same Sasuke. In form perhaps, but as Naruto came to realize in the next few days, not entirely in essence. Around Sasuke, he felt shivery cold and rejected, in the presence of an absolute stranger to what the boy was barely a week ago.

And then they had to spar with each other at the Academy. Needless to say, it had gone down horribly. Pinned down within seconds and faced with those eyes, those haunted eyes, the eyes that no seven-year-old should have, and so near that cold and bitter aura. In the hot weather when all should have been sweaty and warm, Naruto was cold. And the cold stayed there.

So, after school, he took off to the woods again and once he was there, a croaky and frog-like voice immediately inserted itself into Naruto consciousness and said: "My lords, you are a mess, gaki." Then it proposed some new training and told him to sit down and stay still. It was tingly at first but after a while, all the calls of the forest were more enhanced and clearer than ever, and the auras of every being were sharper than it usually was. A new strength and clarity coursed through him—but it was gone in a flash because the remnants of the intense frostiness still lingered in his blood and clarity made the chill all the worse.

After a few more tries at doing this, the toady voice in his brain sighed with a "Maybe next time, gaki" and popped out. Naruto sprawled himself out on the grass and echoed the sigh. Curled up into a ball with only a hare to keep him company, he fell asleep in the warm grass under the glowing sun, shivering to his very core.

—Sasuke came to train even more frequently than ever and haunted the area with cold. His nii-san never came to pick him up anymore, and Naruto tried not to think about it.

That was, in the span of the longest week ever, how Naruto came to be what he was before—alone, in pain, and cold.

—the cold was taking over every bit of his body but no one cared anymore.
—Maybe no one ever did.

Something as great as the forest was something that Naruto clearly knew was not permanent. When arriving at his usual rendezvous point in the woods, he found the place blocked off by a ring of ANBU and a few jounin, and while he was thoroughly confused and about to demand entry to the area, one ANBU shifted and he caught sight of so much red, and then the red morphed into the coat of the old man Hokage, and it came to a stop in front of Naruto.

Having been fully aware of the skills required to become a kage, Naruto had not eliminated the factor of the Hokage possibly knowing his constant visits to the forest. Surely, jiji must have came by his apartment one day and found the small boy not there. (Dear lord, Naruto prayed silently, that the jiji would absolutely not take the only comfort away from him.)
—(As far as he was concerned, the woods were his only friend.)

Surprisingly, the jiji had only smiled and waved Naruto off with a "don't come here for the rest of the day" and after seeing so much red, Naruto did not need further convincing. So Naruto rushed off without a second word and spent the next few hours in absolute solitude with only the wind blowing softly through his window, deep in thought about Sasuke, those eyes, the villagers' glares…
—No—he told himself—I cannot think about that.

So Naruto focused on the warm breeze instead.

Half an hour after that, the jiji drifted into Naruto's open door and sat next to him on the bed.

Hiruzen was surprised to see Naruto so calm and quiet—the Naruto he remembered was loud and rambunctious, never still and silent. Upon closer inspection, the boy was mentally drowning in melancholy, and honestly, that frightened Hiruzen a bit. Over half a century of service as a shinobi, and a little boy's emotions managed to frighten him.

A sudden and high-pitched trill rang out, and he finally spotted (how did he not notice it before?) the small canary resting on the child's forehead. Surprisingly, the bird was pointing its gaze down at Naruto before flicking it up at the Hokage and looking back again. Even more surprisingly, Naruto responded, like actually responded, with a smile and a trusting wink of his blue eyes. At his response, the bird relaxed (birds could tense?) and resumed its pecking at the boy's hair.

Some creepy collaboration was going on between him and the bird, and Naruto was aware of it.

Dear god.

Naruto sat up and the bird flew onto his shoulder (why didn't the animal fly away? Why did it trust a human so much?) and then he looked at Hiruzen with those eyes. Dear lord, his eyes. A hitch of air caught in his throat as he stared at the boy. Hiruzen was completely accustomed to this gaze, but the problem was that that type of eyes was not supposed to belong to a nine-year-old. Except right now, staring into the endless blue pools of a child, Hiruzen saw the very same anguish he saw in almost every full-fledged shinobi he'd ever encountered.

It was haunting.

Ghosts of pain, and a lost sense of direction. This was not good.

"Perhaps the wind is too cold," he had said as he rose to shut the windows, and Naruto, without his normal impulse of action, had replied with a sincere "the wind keeps me warm". What? the jiji had thought, because the drafts floating in were very cold—even for him—and then he closed the windows anyway which immediately elicited a tremble in the boy, whose eyes widened, and the horrors reflected in the blue grew all the worse and all the more visible.

Hiruzen walked back to Naruto and set himself down next to the boy very gently. Then Naruto looked at him with that pain and that effectively ran another shudder down the jiji's spine. "Don't take my forest away from me" he had whispered, frightened, so without thinking much, Hiruzen agreed to let him go back under the condition that he would retreat were there to be any suspicious movement, and in that moment, Naruto looked so happy, that the jiji could not help but smile back.

Later, when he was back in his office, Hiruzen realized that he didn't really worry at all that he couldn't be sure exactly how Naruto would be able to detect any intruders, or that he didn't question the eerily close bond Naruto had with the bird or the cold that had seized Naruto immediately in the absence of wind. Because underneath the layers of agony and loss, he found something else.

Another young one has inherited the Will of Fire.

—and really, that was a sufficient answer to all his worries about the blonde. Plus, now that he thought about it, those eyes couldn't have been him. The more he thought about, the more it became clear that it really wasn't him. Perhaps it was simply the effects of being around animals. Creatures of the forest did survive on the killing of one another to survive, after all.

—After that day, he'd get an occasional bird flying into his window and thoughts were transmitted into his consciousness about some intruder or troublesome thing by the borders. He suspected this was Naruto's work but did not question it. Hiruzen figured that it would be better for his own mental health.

Fuuton came to him easier than Suiton, and Suiton came easier than Doton. Raiton was effectively impossible and Katon...well. Naruto didn't even want to think about it. Marks from several bad burns (almost healed) still traveled along the entire length of his left side and stung every time he stretched too much.

The first time he tried lightning, all that had happened was a painful and jolting shock running up his arm.

Earth, on the other hand, moved to his will and Naruto found that he was pretty good at manipulating the stuff into hardened rods that could pierce even a tree.

Water got even better, because he could add the wet stuff into the earth and make gigantic landslides that could crush entire armies. (Of course, for right now he could only manage small ones as wide as him and shorter.)

Then came wind. Oh, wind. It bent to his every will and it could gust against things in torrents, knocking down everything, or he could use them as blades, making the most precise incisions or even slicing through a tree with the neatest cut ever. Then he added the wind to water, and then the tempest to the mud and the ten-year-old had effectively created a new attack that could trample any chuunin.

To say that the effects were cool just did not do the move justice.

After six months of perfecting that and developing other new ones, Naruto realized that he had to give the technique name, because now he could correlate the elements in seconds after performing the moves successively.

In the end, Naruto settled with a category name—Nature Release. (A made up name for three natures used in quick succession, Naruto realized—not exactly a kekkei touta, but misleading the adversary is always a great benefit.)

By the time he had almost reached eleven years, Naruto had seven wind techniques, six water, and four earth, along with at least one technique for each combination. In essence, he had one lightning also— if sending a small jolt into a person counted. A second's paralysis could be useful, so he counted that too.

Then there was fire and—

—Naruto still preferred not to think about it.

Autumn was always his favorite season. Winter was too cold, summer was too hot, spring was too groggy, and then there was autumn. The animals would be busying themselves in preparation for winter and that motivated Naruto to get busy too. In all essence, it was a time to work hard and strive to be better, and that made Naruto all the more determined.

It was lonely during the winter, when the snows settled and only freezing gales and an occasional deer would accompany him. (The shika were more prone to staying in their designated fields on Nara grounds, anyway.) The spring came with all the animals waking up and everything was lazy around then, and as much as Naruto loved the scents of nature, over-abundance of flower pollen never helped. Summer was just too lax, and Naruto didn't like that either.

So, autumn it was. Plus, there were chrysanthemums in the autumn and they were simply beautiful. Chrysanthemums were better than cherry or plum blossoms, in his opinion, because they were yellow, and yellow was such a sunny and optimistic color that no one could just not like chrysanthemums. The petals were numerous too, and that added a certain feel that Naruto could not really explain. And then there was an old dream that he had years ago.

On a night when he was five, Naruto remembered crashing into his uncomfortable bed, bruised and battered and cold from the annual Festival of the Tenth, and then drifting off uneasily into sleep. Naruto woke up to a warm and oddly distant feeling, accompanied with nostalgia and a blurred image of a blonde man patting his head and saying "the chrysanthemums bloom when the leaves turn red" before smiling and dissipating into a soft breeze. Naruto hadn't thought much of the man, or anything else in the dream—his phrase was all that mattered to him.

Of course, he had reasons to hate autumn also.

His birthday was the very bane of his existence and his birthday was made even worse by the Festival of the Tenth. It wasn't a festival, exactly, but more of a funeral procession throughout all of Konoha to honor the shinobi and civilians that had died on that day. Not only was his birthday cursed for the bringing about of a bakemono, it was cursed because apparently, he was the very bakemono to have caused all of these deaths. And that hurt.

It really fucking hurt.

But Naruto didn't go and despise autumn because of the stupid treatment. He didn't crumble at all the hate—

—he let it make him stronger.

Hard work was great, chrysanthemums were great, motivating dreams were better, and the villagers maybe were not so great but their hate spurred him forward so it was still great. Autumn was great.

(The ninth moon's flower festivals were so grand back in the Shodai's reign, child.)
(I'm sure they were.)

Naruto had never thought that orange rings around his eyes could make him so happy. In his sleep, he wandered in a paradise of waterfalls and insects strumming their glorious music complete with high plateaus and a strange elegance. There were frogs everywhere and they looked up to him, which was odd, because Naruto had never thought he'd be king of frogs.

These murmurs were present in his mindscape since he was eight, but he'd never really paid attention to them until now. So he got out of bed, and with a sudden spur of inspiration, Naruto was headed straight for his normal spot.

Red.

That was the very first thing to meet his eyes, and then he froze.

How could I freeze? Why? Why? And so he stood rooted to the spot, eyes wide, immobile, paralyzed by the simple sight of blood. Why?! he had screamed at himself, and with a sudden burst of need to help, to just help these crazy people that were bleeding to their deaths and to hurt the rogues that were about to kill them.

Wait, he stopped. Hurt? And then he moved forward with the wind helping him and somehow, somehow, he knew that inflicting injury was not the right thing. The two rogues were laughing by now, laughing at the ridiculous gaki dressed in pajamas and looking as petite as a girl. So in just a few seconds, he had brought forth a considerable sized wind current that slammed the two missing-nin into tree trunks, effectively knocking the light out of their eyes, rendering them momentarily unconscious.

Naruto then stood there and wondered what the hell had gotten into him before remembering the two bleeding chuunin on the mud floor. Then he didn't really know quite what to do with them before three jounin quickly came into view. They gave the gaki blank looks before one of them slung the two injured over each of his shoulders. And the other two each took one of the missing-nin into chakra bindings.

One glance at the swirling tornado around Naruto and the leader didn't question himself twice before motioning for the boy to follow after also.

That's how Naruto came to stand in the Hokage's office after all business with the missing-nin had been cleared.

"You caught them, but you didn't hurt them."

"Yes."

"And it was sudden impulse to jump in and fight despite being lower than genin."

"Yes."

"You have good techniques and a unique skill, boy." Hiruzen had slowly dipped his quill into the ink bottle and then had begun to write something on the crinkled sheet of paper. "Practice them more."

"Yes."

"Keep them secret." The jiji then bent his head over the paper once more, signaling an end to the conversation.

Naruto had dipped his head and ran back out, all the way from the Hokage's doors to the entrance to his tower and through the village back to the woods. Plopping down next to the small stream where he frequently presided, Naruto got into position and closed his eyes. Senses successfully heightened and staying heightened, Naruto took one look at the river to see a new empowered self.

He'd attacked some missing-nin, refused to hurt them, gotten strangely used to blood, and basically helped out in a B-rank mission, then was given permission to continue secret training without much prying, and then he'd mastered some strange orange eyeshadow thing that apparently gave him a bunch of power.

All in all, it was a pretty good day.

There was a boy that was four when his callings had first began to sing.