III Chapter 2
UZUMAKI NARUTO
Uzumaki Naruto, the Yondaime's only son, believe in faith. Like love that would last forever and ever.
Hmmn. . . Well perhaps not quite forever, but at nineteen, eight years was nearly half of his life. His heart is not his anymore. It belongs to Uchiha Sasuke, his neighbor, the Earl of Downe and a man on top of that.
Sasuke's enviable title had nothing to do with his devotion. The earldom should not have been his. In fact he'd heard he held nothing but scorn for his father and the title. Sasuke was the second son and grossly out of favor I their family if rumor had been true.
But two years ago all had been change with two shots from a highway's man pistol. His brother and older brother had been killed. Sasuke was suddenly an Earl.
No, to him the Earldom meant nothing but the man meant everything
But Naruto had hope and has a solid belief that God never closed one door without opening another. The strength of those beliefs and his tenaciousness were what carried him through the times when heaven slammed that door in his face.
His mother died when he was seven. Although his father loved his, there is no substitute for a mother's love and attention.
He always wonders if he could have been different if his mother is still alive- maybe better, more refined, less inept and perhaps less lonely. Since his father, the Yondaime Arashi, spent most of his time with antiques – anything ancient, buried and Roman. Naruto mostly grew alone, with the company of his Persian tiger. Kyuubi.
The first disaster he could remember happened when he was eight. It had been difficult and lonely year for a suddenly orphaned boy. His father's attention had become so terribly important to him.
He had practiced talking for hours, until he could cover numerous subjects and thoughts in one breath. Intending to make his father proud of him with that he considered his oratory skills, Naruto plotted a reenactment of a discourse by the famous Roman orator Cicero.
He had donned a toga – one of the crisp white bed sheets from the linen closet – then painstakingly cut Roman sandals from one of his father's saddle flaps and ingeniously fashioned the straps just like Romans. He topped this with an olive leaf crown that was in truth a wreath of elm leaves.
Confident he looked exactly like a Roman orator. He took one last look at his Roman costume and proudly marched into the great room where his father was playing host to England's major antiquity society. And their honored guest, a renowned archeologist.
When he was not more than ten steps into the room, his toga caught on the leg of a candle stanchion, knocking it over into the next one, and it into the next, which tilted toward a line of flammable potted palms. The palms rapidly set flame to the wall.
There was so much smoke, and when it finally cleared, the only reenactment his father and his guest received was the burning Rome.
Then at nine years old he had attempted to build a miniature model of the Roman aqueduct. As it turned out, he was quite an engineer. He brought life to an entire lake.
Unfortunately he drained it into the stables.
Next came the Hadrian's Wall incident, too long and too disastrous too tell, but one should imagine the worst.
This was his quest for his father's attention which continued until his attention shifted from his father to their neighbor's son, Uchiha Sasuke.
Most young Englishmen and women meet their heart's desire across a crowded ballroom, on a casual drive in the park or an arrange marriage. But not him. He even discovered his sexual orientation in a different way.
Naruto was eleven when he first saw Uchiha Sasuke. It was bright day on Devon. He and his neighboring friends Yuri and Riko, had challenge him to ride a cow. The delighted gleam I their eyes should have been a warning to him that there was hidden plan ahead. But pride can make one blind.
Confident that he could easily accomplish so simple challenge, Naruto marched into the midst of the grazing herd, rope in hand and proceed to examine each cow, looking for the one with the kindest eye.
A plump jersey with eyes like Christmas appeared just perfect. Now, one would think by looking at them that cows were placid, calm, most biddable animals, content to gaze in the fields, and chew their cud, their tails whipping up occasionally to swat a few pesky flies.
They are actually, usually.
His friends strolled near him as he spoke to the cow and slid a noose around its neck, not realizing that it would be his own neck he'd be noosed later.
A quick deep breath and he leapt swiftly onto the cows bone-head back. But dear Yuri slapped it's rump with a hand that had a nail hidden in it.
Naruto didn't know cows could scream. The animal bawled and pitched and twisted, landing so hard that Naruto's teeth rang together.
At the sound of his friends cruel laughter he gripped the rope even tighter in his sweaty hands and managed to stay on, his pride being at stake along with his life. The former, however, was more important to him at that time.
One blurred glance at his friend's surprised faces and Naruto knew he could ride that beast as long as physically possible. He won. So with his teeth ringing, they throttled down the hill at the fast clip through a small brook, then a dirt road that led to a split rail bridge river.
It was there; on that hollow wooden bridge that Uzumaki Naruto first meets Uchiha Sasuke, who was returning home from the university.
Maybe faith is cliché sometimes for the raven was in a white horse. Uchiha "Teme" Sasuke, a raven with a look of a god as the goosy girls describe him, an unsuspecting soul whose curses echoed loudly as he was thrown over the side at the bridge and into the chilly waters of the river.
Meanwhile, Naruto cling tightly to a beam of the bridge and watched as the cow trailed on after the spooked horse. Two vivid curses caught his attention, so he turned back and peered over the side to the river below.
Till the day he died he'd always be able to remember the raven's face as he surfaced to scowl at him. High cheekbones, firm arrogant jaw that shows authority and an ivory like skin that's so smooth.
Sasuke's obsian orbs glittered up at him with a face that said he'd love to get his etching hands on the blond's neck.
The incident set the pattern for their future encounters. Some were worse disastrous than the others but, through the years; though with cold treatments and embarrassments, Naruto's faith never wavered.
With a faith as strong as the great wall china, he clung to his belief that someday the teme would be his. Sasuke was the center of his world.
Dreaming, something often people disregard in this world. But dreaming was one of the few things he does well because in dreams there is always happiness. In dreams he could imagine anything, he could be someone he could never be in real life. In dreams he had a glimpse of perfection that never existed in the real world.
He even dreamed that someday Uchiha Sasuke would awaken with the realization that he couldn't live without the blond on his side.
But after the debacle of the London season and the humiliation of his banishment, he tried to make his father understand. He the Yondaime, like everyone else, had known how he felt about Sasuke. It was no secret – seriously, it doesn't matter-. But his father also knew the fact of hi disastrous history with the young man, every idiotic plan he had done just to win the raven's attention who is bent in foolishly – Naruto's opinion – on destroying himself without the blond's help.
Love has always been his downfall. His father tried to argue with him. Can't they understand? It's really simple fact. His gay and is solely inlove with Uchiha Sasuke for the half of his life time.
His father said that if he still brings disastrous things on Sasuke, the teme would only get half of his Life span. (Even the strongest and the most stubborn horse has no match to his disastrous hands.)