The Reasons Why
'Cause I go insane,
Crazy sometimes, trying to keep you from losing your mind
Open your eyes
See what's in front of your face and save me a fistful of tears
We can fight the war, we can fight our fears
The only thing I wanna throw is a fistful of tears
Naruto has a big mouth and an even bigger head. The tip about the mouth is true, no matter how you look at it. His lips, thin and silvery, quicker than two slim fish stretch from the apples of one rosy cheek to the other. Curving upward mostly at the tips as if they are a safety net, should the apples fall and bruise their tender skins.
His fruit would not be sweet. Wold not be the kind of apples grandmother would usually bake into her pie. Unless she wanted it to blacken from the inside out, darkness growing up along the tin sides of the pan and then finally spreading all over the perfectly browned crust with spindly, pointed fingers.
Naruto, with his big blue eyes, always has them narrowed vigilantly. Searching his curious surroundings, looking for the people that never fail to bump into him hard, searching themselves for relief from the bruises left behind in the places you could not see. The ones on their insides that grew up through the spaces in their ribs, stubbornly taking root like weeds. Naruto prides himself on watching all of this.
He never watches his mouth however, I'm sorry to inform you.
Concerning the circumference of his cranium, well no one really knows. Except for Naruto, but no one ever asks him. It started with the empty swings, swaying in the dusk on the playground beside him.
That flaming sunset, flattening out over all the emptiness put a desire inside him. And it started off small, but the more confidence he found in himself, the shinier it grew, and the bigger. Until he couldn't even contain it himself anymore. Until he couldn't stop himself from wanting everyone to see him, to see his face behind those stupid whiskers.
And by then his head had grown so big. But, it could hardly even fit his ego. And he was lucky to have such a crop of corn silk yellow hair. Or else everyone around him would see the jagged edges of his self centeredness sticking out, wheedling it's quite attractive head out between the loopholes in the framework of his skull.
Not that much work is required for it to be seen. Anyone could see straight through Naruto if they rubbed their eyes hard enough with their hands. Even though admittedly, its hard to focus on the fact that he owns a face beyond those stupid whiskers.
Naruto found at a young age that a heart is useless when it's just sitting there in your chest pumping blood. So he carved it out and pinned it to his sleeve, so that everybody could see that it's a beautiful thing. Except when it's ugly.
Like now, when its pulsing a bright bloody red with anger as Team 7 shuffles into the Ichiraku Ramen shop. Its' hot, the kind of blistering heat that is only legal in Fire Country. And even there begrudgingly so. And Team 7 has been training in the dry, dead grass under the red faced sun since the rooster perched on the Stone Faces started it's cackling at the sky.
Naruto's skin is sticky and shiny with sweat, the coarse cotton of his jumpsuit glueing down to the patches of skin between his shoulder blades. He's trying hard to keep his big head down and his big mouth shut as he takes a glass of cold water and gulps it thirstily down his dry-as-a-desert throat. But all during training Sakura and Sasuke practically ran a muck while Kakashi-sensei hemmed and hawed over Naruto, correcting and criticizing every flex of his fingers. Repositioning every flick of his wrist.
Naruto's frustration is not helped by the size of his mouth or the size of his head. He knows for one thing that Sasuke made almost as many mistakes as he did, because he watched him closely. As if his life depended on it, even. Mistakes that went blatantly unchecked. Sakura's performance is not even worth mentioning. Besides her sharp mind, and her Amazonian temper, and her bright green, vine-like eyes, she has nothing going for her. Between him and her, Naruto thinks there is no comparison.
As he places his order for a bowl of ramen, the largest bowl on the menu since sensei is paying, he can hear his team mates talking. Beside him, their heads are bowed together like two conspirators planning a heist. Sakura giggles, and the sound of her lighthearted laughter bounding up and down in the air rakes sharp needles down Naruto's chest. He grits his teeth and takes another gulp of water from the glass hoping to satiate his annoyance. But he can practically feel the red rake marks nailing themselves to his chest. All of his hoping to no avail.
He can feel his sensei's eyes touching lightly against the side of his face, his gaze as cool as a fogged up glass, his facebehind the mask unreadable. Naruto grits his teeth harder, so hard he fears they might chalk up into powdery clumps of rubble. When Teuchi sets the large, steaming bowl of ramen in front of him, he lifts his elbows and digs in with a feigned fervor. Even though he doesn't actually feel very hungry.
Next to him, Sasuke orders "More tomatoes, please.", and Sakura makes one of her stupid, disgusted faces and ews like she's still in diapers.
"Health and physical strength is not always the answer. When it comes to food, taste should also be taken into consideration, Sasuke." nudges their sensei. "This coming from the puny old man." Sasuke mumbles down into his food, his eyes flashing with something silver and dangerous.
"Sasuke-kun! Kakashi-sensei's hardly puny!" Sakura exclaims slapping the dark boy only pseudo playfully on the elbow. "Or old." interjects Kakashi, his standard drawl slipping into a wounded whine, but they all see his eyes crinkling into long lashed, good natured crescents.
And Naruto might as well have been outside the little shop all alone, looking in on them through the windows. He feels as if they are all a thousand miles away, too foreign to attempt out reached communication.
Naruto raises his finger rudely and asks for another bowl of ramen. He feels like a vulture, an animal hungry for carcasses of flesh when he tears angrily into it.
"Slow down, Naruto." chides Kakashi.
"Get off my balls." snaps Naruto.
"Watch your language." snaps Kakashi back.
Which proves all too much for Naruto to take. In a split second and without warning, he grabs his bowl of ramen, and chucks it, piping hot noodles, ceramic bowl and all at his sensei's head. Kakashi simply tilts his head, his face expressionless, and the bowl goes whizzing past his ear. It crashes against the walls of the ramen tent where it cracks into big, hefty chunks, miso soup and egg white noodles sliding down the walls. Stains that the old man and his daughter will have to stay after hours to clean, scrubbing with soapy wads of cloth and toothbrushes to preserve the shop's good image.
Naruto stands there facing down the entire shop and breathing heavily, his hands balled into fists. He glares with a burning flame in his eyes at his sensei who stares calmly, blandly back. No one says anything and the silence is like the eerie quiet after a devastating bomb has been dropped, and the smoke is just beginning to uncurl from around the piles of debris.
"Naruto." says Sakura, her voice so tight and strained she doesn't even sound like herself. And Naruto has to flick his eyes over to her to make sure she's still there and has not been replaced by some thin, fragile broad when he wasn't looking.
"What are you doing?" she asks, and her voice breaks into a whisper. And her eyes are so wide and full of fear they look like glass, ready to break. Ready to split and crack into rivulets of water. Sasuke sits next to her, his hands folded under his chin, looking right at Naruto, his lips pursed in calculation.
Naruto can feel Kakashi waiting for him to make a move. But he can't bring himself to turn around and look at the man again just yet. He can't take the look in his eyes. The nothing there. Naruto wishes he wasn't such a freaking robot. Wishes he could blame it all on his big head and his big mouth. But the truth of the matter is really they are both attached to him, are parts of him. Really this is who he is.
He can't hear anything over his own ragged breathing. Over the blood swirling in firey torrents between his ears. He points his shaking fist at Kakashi and screams "You think you're so bad, but you're not! I'll take you one on one, I challenge you to a fight! I'll kick your pathetic butt from here to Costa Rica!" A tide of murmurs swells up amongst the people in the ramen shop.
Previously, Kakashi had ordered a cup of coffee. Now he turns in his seat and proceeds to drink it. Savoring the pale, black taste of it with his eyes closed. "Will you, now?" he asks without looking at Naruto. He knows he's not supposed to drink caffeine, and usually he doesn't. But he thought he was done with thinking for the night. He knows it makes him less of a sensei and more of a person. He knows that it makes him impulsive with erratic energy. That it makes him do crazy things and make violent, patience-less decisions.
"Naruto, stop it! You don't know what you're saying!" pleads Sakura. But Sasuke sees the blinders hanging in the blonde boy's eyes and puts his hand on her shoulder. "Shut-up ,girl. And let him do it. Personally, I've been waiting far too long to see somebody put Naruto in his place."
Naruto spins angrily on his heel to glare at Sasuke, realizing that he's surrounded on all sides. "And you think he can?!"
"Yes." says Sasuke fastening his hands beneath his chin again. "I do." And he stares at Naruto. The silver floating in his eyes now, chilling the fairer boy to the bone.
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Kakashi takes Naruto out back of the ramen shop between the trashcans and wedged between the edges of the sky and the Earth. Sakura's eyes are cracking in the corners. Are too wide and full with wetness now not to. And she keeps biting down on her lip, hard enough to draw blood. Little bubbles of ruby popping along her chin.
Sasuke stands beside her, his arms folded. The silver had not left his eyes since he'd spoken those last words to Naruto. And anyone that could look into eyes that looked like that would know that something was about to happen. Something out of the ordinary.
Naruto balls his hands into fists and warns his sensei "Don't hold back! Because I won't!" Kakashi unsnaps his flak vest and shrugs out of it. He unties the band around his head and lets the hitai-ate fall into the dust. With the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, bunching in the creases of his elbows Naruto can see the scars carved into his pale skin, as well as the sinew.
"Don't worry, I promise I won't."
And then he punches Naruto so hard, the boy forgets where he is. He thinks he's at home in his bed, lying with all the lights down low, the covers pulled up over his bird-like chest. When the darkness clears from his eyes he can see the shadow of his sensei looming over him. Kakashi extends his arm offering Naruto his hand, but Naruto fills up with a rage stronger than he ever could have imagined and swings wildly at Kakashi's head.
He misses. Then he bounds to his feet swinging, swinging, swinging. Missing, missing, missing. Its hard to wrap his head around how fast Kakashi is moving. Like a silver tipped bullet dodging out between Naruto's fists. Naruto keeps swinging and missing, Kakashi's head dodging cleanly through the air at lightning speed, bobbing from side to side. "Boring." he taunts.
Naruto can hear an animal roaring from somewhere nearby. With full breasted passion. With an anger so loud it must be pulling the beast apart inside, cell by cell, organ by twisted organ. The animal is him, the noise is coming from here. He swings now with his all his might, his fist aimed with saber tooth sharpness at Kakashi's throat.
But the older man strikes faster, catching Naruto in the gut sinking his fist deep into his belly, then kicking his legs out from under him. Naruto feels his knee splinter as his chin kisses the ground, blossoms of pain spreading through it. He tries to get up anyway, but Kakashi's foot presses down on his head from above.
Naruto hisses and spits and claws, kicking his feet and scrabbling desperately with his arms for purchase, as if he really had been just recently found in the jungle, rooting around for food in the nooks of tree trunks and swinging from tree branch to tree branch.
He kicks and struggles, the gravel rubbing his cheeks raw. He can feel a cut open up in the tender meat along his brow bone, red juices leaking down into his eyes. Finally he stops. When he sees the blood he stops.
He just lies there, arms limp, shoulders tired, a numbness crawling down his legs except for the dull thumping behind his knee. He tastes rocks in his mouth and dust on his lips. In his eyes and streaking his nose and chin. He feels bruises forming in big, chunky clumps on his body, the prettiest plum color.
He just lies there, listening to his heart. Listening to Kakashi's voice floating clearly down to him like the tuft of a dandelion petal. "Do me a favor and try not to get yourself killed so easily."
Naruto wants to spit on him. To lift his chin and spit sourly right into his eyes. But Kakashi has already lifted his foot, gathered his things and is walking away to nowhere. Because Naruto has no clue where he lives. Sakura and Sasuke fall on him then. And nobody says a word as they lift Naruto, looping his arms around their shoulders and carry him home in the night. But they can all hear Sakura weeping.
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That night Naruto lies in his bed, his body wrapped tightly in clean white ace bandages, his knee carefully fitted for a brace. He had to run his fingers along his gums, searching for pieces of gravel between his teeth. He took all of the pieces he found and spat them into a plastic jar. He screwed a top on it and set it on his bedside table. He's going to make someone else eat them someday.
He had to wrap and rewrap his bandages to momentarily alleviate the itch sticking to the circles on his body where his skin had changed colors. Yellow, and brown, and ruby blue like bad fruit. He lies in his bed listening to the wind.
He's not surprised to see the shadow suddenly slinking towards his bed. Nor is he surprised to suddenly notice that the window is open, even though he made sure to close it before getting into bed. He can see Kakashi through the slits of his swollen eyes. He can feel the weight of the man, when he sits down on the edge of Naruto's bed.
"Naruto, it doesn't matter what happens to you. Even if you're kicking and screaming under somebody's foot like an idiot, you never stop fighting and just lay there and take it. You never give up."
"You broke your promise." says Naruto. His voice sounds watery and he looks away into the deep blue shadows. "You promised you wouldn't hold back." and then before he can stop himself, the tears come and he throws himself against his sensei. Kakashi wraps his arms around the sobbing boy, noting how much smaller he seems here. And he doesn't have to question the reason why.
He remembers sneaking bottles of rum into his room as a boy, hiding them under his mattress. He drunk them up under full moons, because he thought it made him high enough to forget how low he truly was. When his own sensei found him out he said "You think you're tough just because you drink that stuff?".
They fought and afterwards Yamato-san tried to pull the boy's busted head into his lap. Tried to get his arms around him and hold all the pain away and stop all the blood from flowing loose. But Kakashi had pushed him away, and punished him by putting him out of the room. Sitting in the darkness, now with Naruto's head on his lap, he wishes he'd had the courage to cry.