Title: Companion
Rating: T
Summary: For the first eight years of Naruto's life, he was completely and utterly alone. When Naruto entered his apartment, no one welcomed his arrival. No one came home to see him after a long day of work, and he didn't have a single friend. Contact with people was sporadic, and ultimately, loneliness was his only constant companion.
Then, Naruto isn't alone anymore. He's still an orphan, still hated by the village at large and without a friend, but he's not alone, even if his companion isn't even human.
Naruto was soaked. Midway through his run to the grocers, it had started to rain. The downpour made his jacket cling heavily to his wet skin, his blonde hair laying flat against his face as he ran through the streets, all the while cursing the weather and lamenting his lack of an umbrella. Naruto really should've known it would rain today–he always seemed to be aware of that sort of thing–but he'd ignored it, his mind more focused on the emptiness of his cabinets and the last of his ramen stash finished off.
Most people would have gone back home–or in Naruto's case: grabbed their child by the hand and ushered them all back home–but Naruto was not most people, and he'd move mountains if it fed his budding ramen addiction. So, despite the uncomfort of his wet clothing and the judging looks the villagers gave him, glaring harshly at him from the safety of the indoors, Naruto marched on, pelting through the streets with his arms crossed over his head. They were essentially useless, rain simply dripping down his arms, but it was instinctive, and Naruto made the attempt anyway.
He would duck into ichiraku's but… he's a bit low on ramen money at the moment, and he'd feel bad if he conned them out of more free ramen, as old-man Teuchi told him that they'd lost some of their customers recently. So, grocery shopping and store-bought ramen it was.
Naruto tore through the streets, kicking up mud and rainwater. The store he was aiming for was nearly in his sights, lying just up ahead. The boy ducked under a tree, one of the few to be able to somehow thrive between hard rock and wooden buildings, before a pitiful sound stopped him in his tracks. Naruto skidded to a stop, backpedaling until he was once again under the tree.
"Eh? Hey, anyone there?" Naruto called, stepping forward to investigate the area.
Naruto heard the sound again, though this time it seemed to have… doubled? Naruto circled the base of the tree, looking for any obvious holes in it. Finding none, Naruto creeps into the alley the tree was shielding from view, finding nothing but bits of debris and a single broken bottle.
The noise gets louder, obviously coming from the tree, and Naruto goes to stand under the tree again, scratching his head with furrowed eyebrows.
'Where's it even coming from?' Naruto thought, frustrated.
One of the branches above the boys head rustled, and Naruto finally looked up into the waxy canopy.
...Only for a droplet of rainwater to nail him in the eye. The boy lurched backward, curling inwards slightly as a hand rose up to furiously rub at the rainwater burn his eye. Naruto yelped, the flare of pain making him hiss, and Naruto was left trying to blink the water out of his eye, now tender from being rubbed at too hard.
This time, Naruto looked up slowly, hesitating out of fear of getting more water in his eyes. In the tree, looking just as drowned as Naruto was, were five kittens all nestled in different spots in the tree, sitting aloft the branches. The one closest to the ground mewls at him, tiny claws flexing as it struggles to navigate the branch it was perched on, shaking pitifully.
Naruto frowns, face scrunching. There were five kittens that Naruto could see, but no mother. Naruto did a headcount, searching for an adult cat that was hopefully hidden somewhere up in the tree. He found nothing, only five waterlogged kittens, scrambling among the branches with too-then claws and too-weak limbs.
Where could she be? Didn't she know it was raining and her kittens were getting wet? Ducking back into the alley, Naruto cupped his hands over his mouth, calling out into the shaded path.
"Hello? Your kittens are stuck in a tree! They're getting wet! Hello?"
Nothing, only the sound of the rain as it hit the ground replied.
Naruto rubbed his chin, thinking. He then crouched down, trying for a different tactic. "Here kitty kitty! C'mere kitty!" Naruto sang, repeating the phrase with slight variations.
Again, not a mewl, growl, meow, or a hiss from a cat responded, so Naruto pulled himself up from his crouch with a shrug. 'Guess she isn't here.' Naruto frowned, stepping back under the tree.
Naruto couldn't say he didn't sympathize with the creatures. After all, Naruto himself was in a similar situation, where he was really without the care of a parent of some sort, left to weather the world all on his own.
As Naruto stands under the canopy, water dripping onto his face as he ponders over what to do with the kittens, as he can't just leave them there-that would be cruel!- one of the kittens slips, paws scrabbling for foothold it wouldn't get.
It falls, shrieking and flailing.
Naruto's eyes widen, and the boy lurches forward, hands splayed out as he clumsily catches it in his hands. It mewls angrily at him, quivering, and Naruto sighs in relief, only to yelp as the kitten hisses at him, catching his skin tiny claws at it swats at him. Naruto very quickly sets the kitten on the ground, flinching as water gets into the scratches, causing a burning sensation.
The boy glares at the kitten as it runs off, the feline sprinting away into the nearby alley.
Naruto glances up balefully into the tree, before pushing up his sopping-wet sleeves and attempting to help the others.
Naruto grabs the kitten on one of the lowest branches first, keeping it tucked into his chest with one hand, while the other was used to cling and navigate along the branches. He refused to let go, even as the small animal bit and scratched at him, angry that he was impudent enough to even touch it.
Animals never really did like him.
Naruto carefully climbed back down, unlatching himself from the tree. The kitten, which during the climb had clung with all it's might to his jacket between fits of aggression, digging its claws into his skin, had a sudden change of heart, and instead pried itself from Naruto's grasp, trailing after its sibling into the darkened alleyway.
Naruto does the same for the next two, climbing higher and higher up each time to retrieve the frightened felines, only to be battered with tiny paws and gain an increasing number of scratches on his face, next, and along his hands. They do the same as the first two: flounce off into the alley, hissing and growling at Naruto until he lets them go.
'Sheesh, what ungrateful jerks.' Naruto thinks, huffing.
Naruto peers up into the tree a final time, crying to soothe his irritated hands down by wiping them on his pants, which had been rubbed raw from his excursions up the tree.
'Jeez…' Naruto muses, exasperated, 'how'd you even get up that high?'
There's one kitten still stuck in the tree, mewling down at him from its precarious position. Naruto grits his teeth in preparation for what will be a painful climb, coming with even more scratches, hands blistered and raw, on top of the absolute hatred he will surely receive from the animal he was merely trying to save.
The boy puts one shoe up against the trunk of the tree, scuffing against the bark, and reaches up with the hand opposite to his foot to grasp a thick lower branch. Naruto twists his body, swinging his other onto that same branch. Using his feet to push off the trunk, Naruto strains his arms in an effort to haul himself up onto the branch. With his dangling legs flailing about, Naruto uses the momentum to gain a foothold, bringing his legs up and onto the branch one at a time.
Naruto, now firmly above ground and in the tree, makes for the next branch, and clumsily climbs up the tree, spluttering as he is whacked in the face by stray twigs and leaves that snap back and hit him as he tries fruitlessly to push them aside.
The meowing gets louder and more frantic the further up Naruto goes.
The boy laughs triumphantly as he reaches the cat, happy that this was almost over and that soon he'd be able to resume his trip to the grocers, and arrive home to his apartment, where he'd be able to dry himself off and change into something warmer and crack into some newly-bought ramen.
Naruto released one of the branches he was holding onto, freeing up one of his hands. He braces himself for new sets of scratches and bite marks, then swiftly snatches the kitten from the back, its tiny frame small enough for even hands of Naruto's size to fit around it completely. He's prepared for hissing and indignation, but none of that comes. Instead, Naruto is confronted with only a small meow, eyes as round as saucers.
Shocked, Naruto pauses, simply staring at the thing with a faintly budding hope, eyes shining when the kitten makes no move to turn on him. It was a dirty thing, long tufts of fur tangled and muddy to the point where Naruto couldn't really make out the exact fur pattern. Though, he could make out that it was a black and white cat of some sort. And going by its face, which had a strip of black along the forehead, spanning along its ears, and a single spot of black across its nose.
It was… kind of cute. As long as it wasn't attempting to claw his eyes out, that was. At this point, Naruto is not sure he would take the betrayal of this cat (an animal that likes him!) all that well. It's the ones that manage to worm their way into his heart that hurt him the most, Naruto knows.
Regardless, Naruto had to focus less on the kitten's intentions, and more on rescuing it from the stupid tree. So again, Naruto tucked the kitten close, shifting his grip so it was tucked into his neck, Naruto cushioning it with his hand. Then, with the final cat secured, he started his descent down to the ground. The tree was slippery from all the rain, branches slick with rainwater and making it more difficult to retain a steady hold on anything. Knowing this from his previous climbs, Naruto made sure that he was grabbing onto the thickest branches he could on the way.
However, when Naruto was nearing the lower half of the tree, his foot slipped. His sandal slid over the surface of the branch below, and instead of steadying him and setting Naruto up for his next climb, it only destabilized him. Naruto's hand released its grip on the trunk by instinct, and Naruto found himself tipping backward.
Naruto then found himself falling straight out of the tree.
He hits the ground with a heavy thump, the impact knocking the air out of his lungs and leaving him breathless and gasping. Naruto groaned in pain, dizzy from his brain being rattled around in his skull. Caught up in his pain until a small wail of pain erupted from under him.
"Oh crap!" Naruto shouted, scrambling clumsily to his knees, swaying slightly. The kitten he had attempted to rescue had fallen with him! What if he killed it during his fall?! Naruto shakes his head, trying to clear up the last of the dizziness, and looks down at the small (fragile, thin, easily damaged) animal before him, his heart caught in his throat.
The kitten's leg is bent awkwardly, clearly broken.
...It's broken. The fall had broken its leg.
Naruto had broken its leg. He had injured it- something that liked him, that had trusted him to save it from the tree.
He'd hurt it. He really was bad, wasn't he? Couldn't even get a cat out of a tree without messing it up. Naruto knew he had to do something, he'd have to make it up to it somehow, have to heal the kitten in someway.
Naruto hesitates to take any action. He's already screwed things up enough, hasn't he? He could just… leave the kitten alone. He should just set it into the alley, where it'll at least be protected from being trampled by pedestrians. Naruto should just… get it away from him, before he could do any more damage.
The cat meows again, clearly in pain as it attempts to get to its feet, again and again, falling back down to the ground each and every time.
It's cold outside, the weather was nasty and harsh, it was why Naruto had been running to the store to the first place, why even now rain pelted both cat and child without mercy. It was raining, the streets were muddy. The kitten has a broken leg.
...If Naruto left the kitten out here, in the rain, it would probably die. He couldn't even fathom doing that, of abandoning it. So, with that realization, Naruto firmly shook his previous line of thought from his head. There was no use in letting the villagers get to him, he'd stayed strong against it up until now, and he wouldn't let it affect him to the point where he'd just let something (abandoned and alone and injured, just as Naruto was) die because Naruto doubted himself.
Dread fills Naruto, infecting his veins with emotional poison, and turning his lungs to ice. Naruto tears up for a moment, face scrunching in an attempt to hold back a panicked sob. The boy frantically shucks off his jacket, practically peeling off of his skin. Naruto, on bruised knees, goes to scoop the injured animals into his arms.
It flinches as he picks it up, letting out a small wail of pain in response to the pressure on its leg. Tiny, but sharp claws dig into the jacket, clinging for dear life to the soiled fabric as Naruto wraps the jacket securely around the kitten and picks it up.
All thoughts of ramen and shopping are erased from his mind, Naruto instead clutching the jacket-wrapped kitten close to his chest, spins on his heel, and hightails it back to his apartment, leaning his head forward to shield the kitten from the rain as much as he could. Though stray droplets of rainwater still dripped from his hair and down his face, and the rain continued to beat down on them both in thick sheets.
Naruto slams open the door to his apartment, making the flimsy walls shake with the force of his entrance. There are tears running down his face, mixing with the rainwater and falling in big fat globs down onto the worn wooden floor of his apartment. Naruto's a mess, nose stuffy from being in the rain too long in soiled clothing, combined with accumulated snot from crying. Naruto hiccups, breath shuddering as Naruto struggles to breathe through his sobs, teary eyes leaking from all the guilt he was experience-maybe they were right about him-only crying harder when the kitten sporadically wails in pain, shying away from Naruto's attempts to console it. The crying boy quickly plods over to his bed, leaving a trail of wet, muddy footprints behind him.
Naruto sets the wet bundle onto his bed, unwrapping the kitten from his jacket. The boy tosses the clothing off of the bed, sending it skidding across the floor with a slap.
The kitten is shivering fiercely, every inch of its tiny form quaking from the cold. It's taken to attempting to hide its injured leg under itself, looking uncomfortable and miserable.
"Ya must be cold." Naruto blurts, startling the kitten as Naruto roves his eyes around the room, searching for a warm blanket, or a dry towel of some sort. There's a couple in the bathroom, Naruto knows, tucked sloppily into a rack above the toilet. So, with clunky footsteps, Naruto opens the door to the cramped space, forcefully pulling the towels off the rack, tucking them under his arm, and returning to his bed where the kitten rests.
Naruto carefully picks the injured animal up, using both hands to grab the kitten. He winces when the kitten whimpers in agony due to Naruto's hands pushing up against the injury as he cradles it in clammy hands, but powers through the urge to drop the kitten, instead placing it gently onto one of the towels, using the extra towel to clumsily dry its fur. It smells awful, of wet fur, mud, and outdoor stink, but Naruto can't find it in himself to really care. It's not like Naruto has any room to talk, anyway. He hated showering.
The boy ignores his own plight, pointedly overlooking the onset of sickness as teeth-chattering shivers break out, cold water dripping from his hair, collecting in beads at the tips of clumpy strands. Previously spiked hair now limp and weighed down.
And why was it that Naruto's head felt hot, but his fingers felt so cold?
Naruto shakes his head, even as the movement makes him feel a tad dizzy, choosing instead to focus on the matter at hand: what to do about the leg. Naruto was no doctor, he knew no first aid, or how to even properly deal with animals. He'd never really been confronted with having to worry about anyone else's injuries other than his own. After all, even when he skinned his knee and started to cry, no one came to help him, so Naruto simply learned to suck it up and deal with it on his own, carefully applying moderate amounts of bandages where Naruto felt it was needed.
Naruto plops down onto the floor beside the bed, rubbing his chin as he pondered what he could do until he could get the old man's help. Naruto could put ice on the leg, but that only works for scratches, fevers, and headaches… and he has no ice in his apartment at the moment. There was also the option of wrapping it… but Naruto thought something was missing from that. Wasn't there something else you were supposed to do when wrapped a broken leg? Like… giving it a support of some kind?
"That's it!" Naruto shouted, "The leg needs somethin' to hold it in place! I'm awesome, all I gotta do is wrap the leg in some sticks and wait for Jiji!" Naruto pushes himself to his feet, rushing into the kitchen and pulling open the cabinet under the sink, revealing some sponges (unused), soap, and a first aid kit. Naruto pulls out the kit, setting it on the counter and unhooking the clasp, peering inside at its contents. Inside is the standard set, a roll of bandages and band-aids, scissors, and masks to cover his face when he got sick, the boy ignored the rest of the items inside, as he had no idea what they did and were therefore useless to him. He plucked the rolls of bandages and the scissors out of the box, closing the lid and tossing it back under the sink before turning to step out of the kitchen and back into the bedroom.
'Wait. I need sticks. I don't have any of those and it's raining outside! What do I do?!' Naruto shrieks mentally, having frozen in his tracks. Slowly, Naruto turns back into the kitchen, opening up random (mostly empty) cabinets to see if there was anything of use inside.
Naruto pulls open a drawer containing silverware and other (rarely used) utensils and hits the jackpot. In the drawer are chopsticks, all bundled together. It's the perfect makeshift splint.
Naruto grabs one package of wooden chopsticks, taking his prize back to the bedroom and placing the materials on the nightstand next to his bed. The kitten looks curious, tilting its head and flicking its ears, but making no attempt to move from its spot, wrapped snugly in a warm towel. Then, Naruto seats himself on the bed as well, acting as if he doesn't notice his still-wet clothing soaking into the bedding.
He picks up the pair of chopsticks from the nightstand, unwrapping it and breaking them apart. Then, after noticing that the sticks are too long, Naruto breaks one of them in half, bending the wood until it splinters. He transfers the kitten onto his lap, its injured leg hanging limply down. Naruto readjusts the towel so that it sits over his lap, kitten on top of it rather than cocooned in it. It flails a bit, squirming and attempting to crawl its way off of his lap, but each time Naruto simply blocks its path, pushing it back onto his lap with light admonishments. His hands are shaking as he cuts a strip off the bandages, keeping the fidgeting kitten in his lap with one hand while using the other to try to cut it at just right length.
After he's done with cutting it, Naruto sets the scissors and remaining bandages on the roll back on the nightstand, remorsefully holding the kitten down and pulling it's leg out straight. Naruto tries to ignore its pained cries, but his face still goes a little green, even as he retains a firm grip on the limb. The boy tears up in sympathy as he adjusts the kitten's leg for the sticks, using feather-light touches to determine where the break most likely is so he can place the supports properly. Then, to finish it up, Naruto uses the bandages he cut and wraps the leg, keeping the splint firmly in place, and applying just enough pressure to the leg that the broken bones likely won't be able to mess themselves up further.
All said and done, Naruto releases a relieved breath. He sets the kitten back down on one of the towels still splayed flat over his mattress, using the other to wrap it up in something warm and dry once again.
Naruto's glad the hard part is done, and rises from his seat on the bed to get the kitten a bowl of water from the kitchen, pulling a chipped bowl down from one of the cabinets and filling it with tap water, before setting it onto the set in a way that will prevent it from spilling.
Then, Naruto gets the heater going, forcefully. It's an old, decrepit thing, barely spluttering to life each time Naruto musters up the energy to bang on it with his fists or some other object, but Naruto is just glad that he can get it to work, this time.
Naruto sneezes, finally stepping out of his muddy, soaked shoes and jerkily peeling soiled socks off his feet. Then, Naruto clumsily slips off his undershirt, before changing out of his ruined pants and into some warm pajamas. Naruto sneezes again, reverberating off the walls as Naruto jerks with the force of it. He really was tired, and just looking at the sleeping kitten on his bed was making him sleepy, as well.
Ah, what the heck. He could deal with everything else tomorrow, Naruto was exhausted.
"Goodnight," Naruto whispers as he gets into bed and slides under the covers, moving the bowl to the nightstand and making sure not to disturb the resting animal too much. His fingers twitch, and Naruto hesitates for a moment before reluctantly giving the kitten a pat on the head.
It's soft. Naruto can't say he's ever had the opportunity to pet an animal before, usually finding himself distracted by biting teeth and claws. On an impulse, he starts to pet the kitten, running his fingers through soft, fluffy fur, enjoying every moment of it. Then, it starts to rumble. It's tiny body purring ferociously as Naruto continues to stroke it's back and rub its ears.
Naruto is elated. The success of the action then giving him the courage to continue his ministrations for some time after, until his hands grow tired and heavy with sleep, and his eyes fall shut.
The kitten continues to purr, and despite Naruto's budding fever and the waves of chills he was starting to experience, he gives into asleep with a smile.