A/N: Next day update like a boss. :D Second installment of Swallowed in the Sea. Enjoy my beautiful readers.~
Warnings: ANGST. ANGST. OH GOD IT'S EVERYWHERE.
Disclaimer: If the show were mine, Sasuke would be chasing Naruto, Itachi would be a pervert fangirl, and Jiraiya and Orochimaru wouldn't be able to keep their hands off each other.
(And so he was left, the breathing, living ghost of the greatest clan of all fire country.)
The rest of Kohonagakure stumbled upon the ruins of the Uzumaki festival a few hours after the incident. It was a hesitant decision amongst the town, seeing as no one enjoyed dealing with the fire tempered redheads and their residential demon, but the chakra usage was just too significant to ignore.
"We've got a live one over here!" Naruto had long since stopped crying.
"Oh look it's a baby!" The villagers swarmed the golden hair orphan, peering at him from where they were standing.
"Oh the poor thi-"
"Wait! Look! It has the seal!" Everyone collectively took a step backward.
"It's the demon wielder…"
"He did this…"
"Best if we just left him here…" The villagers slowly nodded to each other, then proceeded to casually gather their families and stride back off towards town. Their bobbing shadows retreating quickly by the light of a crescent moon.
Well, all except for one.
An old man by the name of Hiruzen Sarutobi took pity on the poor infant soul. He knew that his clan wouldn't allow such an abomination in their midst, but he couldn't just leave a child in the cruel hands of Mother Nature. Hiruzen could only think of one option that might work and that was to take the boy out into the depths of Fire County's forest. There in the clusters of oaks and grooves of fern stood a small cabin that his mother owned when she still lived.
And there was the only place the boy would survive safely.
Eventually the Momo trees produced blossoms again, and all the while foxes from all corners of the sprawling forest would wander into Naruto's unsecured cabin. The fierce mothers would feed him when he cried out into the night, and the fathers would prowl about the cabin to keep away grumpy bears. Once or twice Hiruzen stopped by in the boys developing years, giving him books of many things and teaching him basic Japanese.
Naruto learned the meaning of the word alone before anything else.
"What that?" A chubby 3 year old Naruto pointed out the window.
"That is the rest of the world; it's no place for you."
"Why?" Sarutobi gestured to the small being, reciting what he had learned of the Uzumaki's from his ancestors.
"Because you are an abomination, a demon, you have been since birth and you always will be."
He preferred to speak in short choppy sentences and had a tendency to yowl when he was upset, yip when he was happy, or growl when he was frustrated. Hiruzen grew distantly fond of him despite his inbred prejudice, but didn't hesitate to reveal what he knew of the teenager's clan's murder.
"When we can to the clearing everything was wrecked. No one was breathing but you."
"Why?"
"They sealed the curse inside of you Naruto, the curse that killed your family kept you alive…"
Shortly after that visit word came to Naruto on the eve of his 6th birthday. The forest animals had found Hiruzen Sarutobi washed up on a riverbank 2 miles from his home… in pieces.
Naruto spent a very long time grieving for the loss of his only friend.
But time continued forward, and eventually Naruto had to leave the comfort of his little log cabin to go to town for food and other basic supplies. The villagers gasped in recognition as he strolled down the dirt road in nothing but a big white shirt with the Uzumaki swirl on the back. Some began to stir in fear; a couple spitting towards him as he walked up to stands whose venders refused to look at him. He came upon a stand selling basic food items and took out his frog wallet, a late birthday present from Sarutobi.
"Ano, Naruto needs bread, milk, soap?" The vendor sneered.
"We don't serve your kind here, murder." Now the villagers had been banned from killing the Kyuubi container by their leader, but he never said anything about making the boy leave of his own accord.
Naruto felt the tears working their way forward, and he couldn't understand what he had done wrong. Perhaps the man had confused him with some else? Or maybe...
Ah! He had forgotten his manners.
"Gomen, gomen. Naruto PLEASE need bread, milk, soap?"
"I SAID GET OUT OF HERE. DEMON!" The man bellowed and Naruto scampered off in fright, his wallet clutched tightly in his tiny fist.
Iruka Umino watched the entire scene with a heavy frown. He had heard the town's wives tales about the 'Kyuubi' and the container supposedly holding it. However, the visiting city dweller didn't buy into superstitions so easily. What the brown haired man saw was a bunch of lowlife adults picking on a defenseless and seemingly starving child, and that was completely inexcusable.
Demon wielder or not.
Iruka huffed angrily at the nerve of these people, because he knew what it was like to be a starving orphan in search of life outside of what they had been exposed to. He could sympathize with Naruto's plight and therefore couldn't leave the child to suffer. So he decided that the little blonde would just have to come with him back to the city, for his own wellbeing.
Iruka hurried off in the direction he had saw Naruto take, and was swallowed up in the treeline.
Cerulean eyes overflowed tears until the whites surrounding were blood red. Naruto had ran to the steam that had carried Sarutobi's broken body.
'Sarutobi-sensei, what I do now?' Naruto battered his petite hands against the ground in attempt to stop the pain in his chest. Finally he grabbed at the thin layer of cloth covering his heart and cried out.
"Why I a monster? Tousan, Kaasan, why you create monster?"
The forest was still around him, not a sound to be heard but a wailing wind that swallowed up his cries.
Iruka felt the approaching storm as the hairs on the back of his neck stood.
He would have to hurry and get the kid to get out of there before the dirt road leading to the city became nothing but a trench of mud. He stopped and listened, trying to hear past the screams of wind that were picking up strands of his ponytail and shaking the treetops. Finally he heard it.
"Woo… woo…" Soft sobs echoed hauntingly through the forest, an eerie grey sky providing the perfect backdrop for the broken moans.
It had to be Naruto; no animal would be caught dead in the open with the kind of storm that was building. He sped forward, pushing aside foliage and swatting at bugs until he came across the boy curled in on himself. His golden spikes dragged in the current of the rapidly swelling river and he had his eyes squeezed shut, as if in great pain.
"Hey, kid." Naruto's eyes flew open. "Hey, c'mon we have to get out of this storm." Iruka put out his hand encouragingly. Naruto backed away, unsure about the intentions of this human. He seemed nonthreatening, but they all did until they knew who he really was. Naruto shook his head from side to side very slowly then proceeded to back up towards the stream; it was deep enough that if he were to jump in the current would take him down.
He might not get out alive, but it wasn't as if anyone was going to miss him anyway.
"No! Wait! Please don't jump!" Naruto cocked an eyebrow, as he had seen Sarutobi-sensei do when he was waiting for an explanation.
"Look, I know this seems strange and you don't even know me and all of the people here hate you but I don't. But please come back with me to Tokyo, I can give you a better life than this! I can love you!"
Naruto laughed.
It was a deep wounded choking sound, laced through with the malice of one who had been shunned their whole life. Iruka cringed.
"Naruto is demon, can't love demon, can't love Naruto." He took another step backward, one toe dipping precariously into the rushing water. Iruka hardened his resolve against the attempts at pushing him away.
"Well then, at least let me try. It's gotta be better than that." Iruka swept a hand behind himself, gesturing toward the village.
And Naruto (an animal of great instinct) knew the man spoke the truth.
So he nodded, and let Iruka guide him out of the forest, out of the village and to the city.
From there Iruka poured all of his affection into raising Naruto. He home schooled him in his tiny 2 bedroom flat on the outskirts of the city, taught him to speak properly, and gave him what the boy had been in need of all along –
a little love.
Or a lot of love, in Iruka's case, who was just as much of a mother hen as physically possible without being the actual animal itself. They lived next to an American transfer student named Jule and her adoptive Japanese son Konohamaru. The boys bonded as they were both homeschooled, and bounced between apartments when Iruka had work or Jule had class. Konohamaru even divulged his secret collection of princess stories he had kept from his orphanage, and how he often wished to be a princess too.
"In a non-girly way!" He would shout.
"Yeah right." Then Naruto would laugh then quietly agree.
Naruto never forgot what he went through as a child, but he did put it behind him, and now on the eve of his 16th birthday he had a home, a family, and an annoying little brother of a neighbor. It seemed as if things were finally looking up. So when Naruto blew out the candles on his cake and Iruka called for him to make a wish, he could only think of one.
'I wish for a happily ever after with my very own prince.'
Unfortunately, it wasn't quite that easy.
A/N: If you catch any mistakes, please review and tell me, I am without beta at the moment. On another side note the village Naruto stayed in would be in modern day Shuzenji, Japan. Hence why I had Iruka live in Tokyo (closest major city). Until next installment, Mata ne!
