Disclaimer: Don't own.
So I was going around the NarutoxYu-Gi-Oh category, and found none about what I wanted to read. :( So, I had to write it myself.
Naruto stares up at the odd man who rescued him from a fall of certain death. He is the most strangest man he's ever met, he thinks, and stares some more. Even for a ninja who dresses in orange, this man is weird, this man who dresses in leather and gold, with tri-coloured hair, and narrow, crimson eyes.
The man brings him to where he's sleeping for the night, a place that is nothing more a small fire burning and a cloak spread on the ground. He cooks fish for the both of them, and in the firelight, the golden triangle around his neck glitters.
Naruto asks what his name is, before proudly announcing his own name, his own raspy preteen voice ringing out into the silent night air. The man smirks, and answers that he's gone by many names, but Naruto can call him Yami. Yami… Naruto wonders if it's his real name.
It probably isn't.
Finally realising that the man looks foreign, Naruto tells 'Yami', that he's from Konoha, and waits for him to tell him where he's from. Suna, maybe? The golden earrings flash in the dying embers of the fire's light, and tanned hands finger with the triangle around his neck.
His reply is Egypt, and Naruto stares at him again, wondering where (what) Egypt was. He blindly says this out loud, and the man, 'Yami', laughs, a dark, awful laugh that sets Naruto on edge. Through a golden door, he answers vaguely, smile as mysterious as the clouded sky above them.
They spend a few more minutes in silence, while 'Yami' stokes up the fire. It crackles sharply an out of nowhere, the man asks a very direct question. It is about souls. Naruto uncertainly replies that the only one he knew, that did anything relating to souls was Orochimaru… Naruto isn't even sure if this man knows who Orochimaru is. The man nods, and softly repeats the name.
Unnerved, Naruto tries to steer the conversation - if that's what it can be called - away from evil missing-nin, and questions what the man is looking for. It isn't a very safe subject, proved by the man's answer.
His answer is the afterlife.
Naruto doesn't know why anyone would want death, and quite frankly, doesn't want to know. He wraps his orange-clad arms around his knees, and shakily wonders out loud if the man knows a story or two. It's a pathetic attempt at small talk, and Naruto doesn't care.
It turns out 'Yami' does know a story or two, and Naruto begins to calm down as he tells him elegant stories of distant pharaohs, blood-racing ones of gamblers who bet their life on a game, of two arrogant brothers with blue eyes, and many, many more.
It's the one about the vengeful thief king, survivor of a massacred village, that sticks out in his mind when he remembers it later, through.
He drifts off to sleep somewhere in the middle of a story about some tomb keepers who spent their lives underground, and in the morning, when he wakes up, the man is gone. Long gone, he thinks, as he looks around at the few remaining ashes that are all that proves the man existed.
….