Chapter 4

Naruto didn't think that the world outside the BIRCH office looked noticeably different. The sun wasn't shining any brighter, though it was still the same hellish degree of hot it'd been when he went in. It was probably going to be slightly milder at dusk before suddenly dropping fifty degrees and making people close their windows and get out blankets, until the temperature rose another sixty shortly before dawn. The weather liked to screw with people like that, especially in the summer.

To his eyes, those innocently fluffy clouds on the far horizon even looked like rain, quite likely the thunderstorm that Kakashi had predicted. He'd have to check with Shikamaru if he wanted an accurate forecast, though. The Nara family seemed to gaze at the sky for at least five hours a day - and that was just when Shikamaru and his old man were doing "family training". In total, Shikamaru probably spent more hours watching the sky than Kakashi spent reading his dirty pervert books, despite the fact that it seemed like he'd need to bend the fabric of time to do so. Because of this, he could accurately predict the weather for at least two days at a time, including whether or not and how much it would rain, what kind of wind there'd be, and, on occasion, he'd even tell how likely it was that his mother allergies would start up. His father could predict the same thing for up to ten days, but could also tell you when the lowest and highest temperatures for that day were, going back over fifty years.

Naruto had once tried to cloud watch with them, safely hidden from their view behind a grove of trees but close enough to hear their occasional mumbles. He'd lasted about thirty minutes before his body absolutely wouldn't let him lay still long enough for him to think clouds looked like anything more than dango or pocky.

Food brought his mind to his stomach, and his stomach brought him back to reality again. With a jolt, he saw quickly that his feet brought him right in front of Makoto, who still sat on one of the stone benches. Haruka next to her, holding one of her mother's hands in her own. Both were watching him.

In that instant, the same painful, striking guilt that had hit him while looking at the map gutted him here as well. He'd been thinking about dinner and the clouds, and whether training tomorrow would take place in a foot of mud and in ninety degree temperatures while these two exhausted women were waiting to find out if their son, their brother, their family, was dead or alive, or if he'd never even passed through this town at all.

There was a brief, crippling silence when all that Naruto could look at was the unreadable glint in Makoto's eyes and the redness of Haruka's cheeks and the quiver of her lips. Haruka kept inhaling deeply, the sound echoing in Naruto's ears as sharply as if the fox had been focusing it's enhanced senses on it, too. Makoto moved to speak, but stopped and shook her head.

Naruto had always hated silences. Whenever his teachers asked him a question, and he didn't know the answer, they'd always hang on that moment as long as they could, pointing out his ignorance with nothing more than a shake of their head and the comment "Maybe you'll do better than Uzumaki." as they moved onto the next person. It was part of the reason he'd become the class clown. Even the derisive laughter of his peers was better than listening to the seconds inch by. From an early age, he'd found that filling the silence with something - chatter, the tap of his shoe on the floor or his fingers on the desk, a hummed song - made him feel less alone.

In the academy, they'd been taught the ways to tell a comrade of a teammate's death. They'd been told how to tell a customer about the deaths of their loved ones, and how to report the death of the customer in mission reports. Ninja were exposed to dozens of different kinds of deaths in their careers, and had to be able to personally cope with them all. Part of being a successful ninja was being able to function after disaster struck, and part of being in a team was about helping their team mates move on, too. However, Naruto hadn't been taught how to deliver news like this to two women who already looked like they had enough problems on their plate without the death of a relative. The thought of talking to them, telling them the bad news himself felt like betrayal, and he didn't quite know why.

"Well," he heard himself saying, habit moving his mouth even before his brain had time to warm up, "I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

There was a silence, but it was as different from the awkward pause just seconds before as oil was from sake.

"...The good news?" Haruka ventured, glancing upwards with eyes that no longer glistened with tears, but instead looked forward at him with confusion and surprise.

"The Yondaime was the strongest ninja in the entire village of Konohagakure. He almost single-handedly defeated an entire army of Rock-nin, and led our forces in a victorious war that had the fewest civilian casualties in history. He wrote dozens of laws protecting the rights of women and children - both civilian and ninja - and pretty much rewrote how Konoha treated their captured prisoners." He paused for breath, amazed at all the little tidbits he completely forgot learning from the paperwork in BIRCH, and Makoto watched him with knowing eyes and what could've been a smile on her face. "To this day, he is regarded as Konoha's greatest hero, and he died defending the town he loved."

"The bad news?" Makoto asked, her eyes catching the telltale shifts in Naruto's posture.

"Kazama Arashi was a good man, a good ninja, and..." he trailed off, licking his lips. Makoto stole the moment.

"And he was the Yondaime, correct?" Makoto stood, ducking her head down. Despite the angle of her head, Naruto swore he saw a twitch on her cheek. He thought she was shaking, and wondered again if he'd have to visit the hospital today on top of it all. It seemed like a second passed, and then another, and then suddenly, she was in front of him and engulfing him in her thin, yet surprisingly strong arms. She bent at her knees, and Naruto followed with her to the ground, his arms stumbling on their way to find her shoulders.

He felt her head fall on his shoulder, her arms clutching at his back as she shook, just slightly. He heard a sound muffled in the thick fabric of his jacket, and his tongue fumbled.

"Aw, hell. Dammit, I knew I shoulda done it some other way. Look, what I meant to say was that ... W-wait! Stop sha-... oh, dammit, I made you cry." He sighed, and started to unlock himself from the embrace.

She laughed.

It wasn't anything he expected. She wasn't crying, she hadn't gone insane, and it wasn't a bitter, sarcastic bark. It started as giggles, and she noticed his wide, staring eyes, and tried to cover her laughter with one hand. It worked for full on two seconds before she began snorting, and she fell against his chest again, one hand grasping his shoulder as the other one scrambled at the ground. She was panting for air in between guffaws, squeaks and snorts punctuating individual bouts of laughter while Haruka came from her seat and sat next to them, one hand pulling on her mother's shoulder until the much older woman sat back, cheeks still red and tears glistening at her eyes. She wiped at them, examining her fingers almost solomnly before she burst into giggles again.

He revised his opinion about her going insane.

"I-I'm sorry, Naruto-san." She screwed up her face, seeming to bite her knuckle and try to suck on it at the same time. "It's just..." She glanced up. "I'm happy."

W-what? That had definitely not been the reaction that Naruto had been expecting. Haruka glanced over her mother's head, and shared his exact expression.

"Arashi," she breathed fondly, "was a beautiful baby. He was all leg when he was born, and more than a week overdue." She curled her legs into the yoga-style, and whether it was the shine of the sunlight on her pink-tinted face or the smile that stretched over her as she fell into memory, she looked at least ten years younger, filled with a robust health that didn't seem to match with the frail woman he ran into this morning. "He was always a clumsy boy, trying to adjust to his long arms and his chubby fingers, always getting everywhere he wasn't supposed to, and then getting stuck there." Her hand rubbed her chin, but couldn't hide the smile on her face as it switched from a smile to a grin, then to a smirk, and then through dozens of different phases of happiness. "He was such a crybaby when he was a boy, always running to me and clutching my skirts." She smiled at her daughter, "Much the same way you used to cling to your father's leg whenever he came home. He used to carry you around the entire house like that, and you used to squeal." She sighed, fondly. "You both carried on, so."

"Mother, I don't understand why you were laughing so. Arashi is...Arashi is dead, mother!" Haruka exclaimed, tears left idle on her cheeks.

Makoto turned her smile on her daughter, rubbing one hand on ruddy cheeks and smoothing away tear trails. "You were so young - you hadn't even been born when he left, and you were just a baby when he and his friends would visit with that odd old man." She twisted her head towards Naruto. "He was recruited by one of your ninja when he was just a boy, perhaps seven or so." Her gaze turned inward. "He might've been younger. Or older. It just seems like such a long time." She paused. "But, you see Naruto-san, Arashi was such a happy baby, then such a happy child, and finally such a happy man." She closed her eyes, gazing at angels on high. "I know now that he is happy in death." She snickered. "He's probably showing up his father at this instant. A Hokage.", she muttered, a fox grin stolen from Naruto sneaking it's way onto her.

"Naruto-kun," she started again, taking one of his hands into both of hers, clasping around it as if in prayer, "thank you."

"Hey, I didn't do anything!" he protested, not knowing whether or not to inch away as she leaned closer to him. He was thankful that the afternoon's smoldering heat dissuaded most people from trekking down this merchant's street. Most vendors had already closed their stands, and the dusk seemed to be creeping over the alley, casting everything in shade.

"You probably wondered why I was laughing," she started, and Naruto nodded cautiously, attention split between her and Haruka, who seemed to nod with him. "My husband, bless him, said that Arashi would be back home the day after he was recruited. Then, that day, he said Arashi would come home in a week. Then a month. Then a year." She looked up at Naruto. "And so on. After that long, Toppu - my husband, that is - said that Arashi had tripped on a sword and stabbed himself, or did "one of those damn ninja tricks" and vaporized himself."

She almost pleaded with Haruka to see the humor. "Don't you think your father, if he were alive, would just DIE knowing that Arashi became the town hero? The town's LEADER, no less!" She threw her head back, and instead of laughing, gazed upwards. "Oh, Arashi. You could've told me."

Naruto's eyebrows scrunched together in confusion, and Haruka glanced at him. In the same moment that he pulled his hand away from Makoto's loosened grip, Haruka took it up in hers. "You see, when I was a child - oh, this had to be about fifteen years ago, and probably more - he would come to the house for brief visits. Sometimes they'd only be for a half hour, and other times he stayed for days on end. He would come as quickly as he left, and always unseen. This wouldn't really be important except that we lived on the small area where the Lands of Earth, Grass, and Rain collide." Naruto's eyes widened.

"But, that has to be at least a week from here! He was a ninja - how did he get time off enough to travel so far?", Naruto protested, trying to remember the map Kakashi had shown him. Grass was a fairly small country really only noticeable for the small amount of ninja who'd remained neutral in the Rock-Leaf conflict only through the fact that they were exceptionally good at hiding from both sides. He knew nothing about the Land of the Rain except it's name and the hazy idea that it was located somewhere to the west and north of the Land of Fire. The Land of Earth housed the Rock Nin, who the Yondaime had been at war with more than a decade ago.

"A week? Perhaps at ninja speeds. For normal people, it takes MONTHS. There are twisted valleys of impassible rock that ninja can simply bound through, but that need to be detoured for miles and miles on end when traveling by caravan." At Naruto's dropped jaw, she continued. "I was just a little girl when he started appearing like that - before, we would get bundles of letters dated back months due to the lag, and it was like peering into someone else's diary. He'd been training, he'd been in the Fire Kingdom months and months away from us since before I was born. Then, he just appeared out of thin air one day and scooted his way back into the house. He never gave us a good explanation for how or why he would come like that - he said it was a secret ninja technique, but he never could tell a lie without bursting into laughter afterwards - and whenever we asked, he'd avoid the subject. He avoid talking about anything in this village, actually. It was like trying to cut water in half getting him to tell us anything about his training, his life, or his town. Of course," and she snorted, "he couldn't keep a secret for long, and most of that slipped out eventually, one way or another."

She shook her head. "I'm telling this wrong. Then again, I'm not sure any story with Arashi in it could ever be simple." Slowly, Haruka stood up, and tugged Naruto upwards. Both turned to help Makoto, who'd been far ahead of them and was already brushing herself off with the same dazed smile. Haruka moved to the bench again, and Naruto noted the odd way she sat with her back arched, as if her weight was badly distributed.

"Arashi had to be one of the strangest people to have as a brother." Haruka started again, her hands free and suddenly in a flurry of movement as she rolled them to emphasis her point, and used them for punctuation in almost every statement, "Well, I had to learn first off that I had a brother. I knew about it in much the same way that I knew that the sea was blue - through stories. He was ten years older than I was - about eighteen when he first showed up like that and well, when there's an age difference like that between siblings one of them is just bound by natural law to hate the other one." She snorted. "I managed to hate him for about half a day before he took me aside and showed me "damn ninja tricks"."

Makoto's eyebrow rose. "I remember those quite clearly. You were convinced that you replaced yourself with your stuffed panda for three days, and made us serve it dinner first because "you" were hungry." Makoto glanced around, noting for the first time the way the shadows stretched completely over the alley like a veil, while the sky burned above. "Speaking of dinner, Naruto-san, would you still like to go? It's the least I can do for you after you've given me my son's fate."

"W-what? You wanna pay? No way!" He started, jumping to his feet easily and coming to point at Makoto with a finger outstretched without even realizing it. "Er, damn. I meant to say that, well, you have no idea how much I can eat, and Ramen was my idea in the first place..."

"No, really. It's only polite for me to give you what I can. Think of it as an apology for bumping into you this morning, or a reward for doing such a good deed, if you please." Makoto began walking, her head held high and her pose as regal as any queen's. It wasn't a shinobi's grace, instead some sort of inner dignity that seemed to creep onto the stones and cause anything around her to just fade around her, framing her in sight. Some shinobi could read the tiniest, slightest twitches in a person's frame. Apparently, it took natural talent and years of practice to use against other shinobi, but when it came to Makoto, you'd have to be blind not to see that there was no arguing with her, not with the way she held herself in that moment.

Despite himself, he followed, and as Haruka gathered up their things, he took Makoto's pack instead of handing it forward, and surprised Haruka by taking her pack and piling it on top. In total, it was still three times lighter than his Wave Country supplies, and didn't even phase him.

He jogged ahead backwards, keeping his eyes fastened on the older woman as she walked forward with some new, unrecognizable new energy inside of her. Naruto couldn't pin it down as either hope, because he'd seen that in her eyes when he'd gone into BIRCH, or happiness, because he'd certainly seen more than he ever thought he would when she'd had her laughing fit. Instead, it was as if something inside of her had clicked, and then that something had struck something else, and all the different hidden, idle parts of her were shocked into motion, much like an engine. Whatever it was, it had to be contagious because he couldn't help but match her fox grin with one of his own. Her smile still twisted in him, and he was bent on finding out why. "Well, okay. I'll let you buy the first round only, alright? After that, there's gonna be no complaints!"

Haruka shook her head. "No complaints, then. Just stories."

He tried to glare at the two girls sternly, but Makoto only raised an inquisitive eyebrow and Haruka only shook her head with a smile. He gave it up and laughed. "Right! Ichiraku's, here we come!".

"Toppu" apparently means something like "Gust", according to my dictionary, while "Arashi" means "Storm". I originally had Arashi hailing from the border of Grass and Wind, and then realized that the map I'd been looking at was mislabeled, and that'd be a geographic impossibility. So, I took another gander at it and saw that small, intersecting region and saw a hotbed of activity. Hope you don't mind.

Questions and comments aren't just welcome, they're needed. I had to dig this chapter out of my head with a rusty fork, so lines might be scrambled in places, and you guys will probably be the ones to see when lines make no sense.

Does anyone have a preference about chapter size or update frequency? Just asking.

(Credit to Norry again, for being my proto-beta despite not being in this fandom).