For the second time in as many days, Naruto woke up laying in dirt. He was for real starting to get pretty sick of dirt! This time was even worse, because he was face down and, somehow, he felt like he'd gotten a bunch of dirt up his nose. He snorted, hard.

Now he was laying in dirt and snot. Yaaaay.

Naruto sat up with a huff and squinted around at his surroundings. There was a dark patch of black that streaked away from him and the place he'd crashed, the only interruption to an odd, gentle green glow around him. He couldn't see it that well, but he figured the dark streak was some sort of divot leading into the crater from him landing.

That was actually pretty cool, that he'd survived falling out of the sky in his sleep.

At the edges of the crater, massive trees stretched up into the dark, black and shadowed. Shadowed, only because there was light to keep Naruto's eyes from getting used to the dark. So many lights, actually, that Naruto was totally surrounded by them.

Naruto started to wriggle his way up out of the dirt towards those lights only to crash forward onto his chin with a yelp. He'd tried to balance on his left arm. Naruto groaned and hung his head. His shoulder and chest were aching so much, he'd never realized pain could last for so long. Maybe he could just stay here and breathe for a little while…

No! Naruto threw his head back upwards and clenched his remaining fist. Yuki was waiting for him at the Kyuubi-rock or whatever! So, Naruto had to keep going. He leaned his weight to the right, ignoring how his ribs shifted painfully under his skin, and shoved upwards hard enough that he managed to get his feet under him and his right hand clenched into the soft dirt at the rim of his crater. Then, with a little hop and a painful twinge of his right collarbone, he sort of diagonally hoisted himself up out of the dirt and onto the tree roots that held the forest floor together. He even landed standing! Naruto grinned and looked down at his right arm, just visible in the mushroom-glow. Yeah, righty was looking more reliable by the minute!

Now that Naruto was free, he looked around more closely and scratched the back of his head. Some dirt fell out of his hair. Naruto grimaced and scrubbed his hand through all the hair he could reach. A lot more dirt came out. Naruto gave up and huffed. Then, Naruto's eyes widened and he leaned in towards the nearest light in front of him in spellbound awe.

The tree nearest to Naruto had a huge clump of the green-glow at about level with his head, and so also level with his breath. As soon as his air blew over the clump of lights, the green glow bloomed outwards. A scattering of green puffs of light detached from the tree and floated away to Naruto's left like dandelion seeds on a non-existent breeze.

"Eh?" he murmured. Now that he'd seen the green lights closer up, he realized in a click that, somehow, the patches of light were fox-fire, just like from the Aeorta and Yuki. They'd popped out from the mushrooms like sparks from a flame, except for how mushrooms weren't usually made of fire as far as Naruto knew.

Yet, they were mushrooms! Naruto could see, in the light of the fox-fire, every one of the little folds and ridges and caps of flesh that acted as shelter to the green light. The fox-fire was, somehow, not coming from foxes. Or, well, from fox-shaped chakra.

Did that mean these mushrooms were, like, chakra mushrooms?

He probably shouldn't eat any, just in case.

Something tapped against Naruto's back and he whipped around, fist raised. Only, as soon as he spun, whatever it was bumped into his lower back yet again, moving as fast as he was. So Naruto spun once more, ready to punch out at whatever was there, only to once again meet nothing but thin air. Naruto stilled, and after a moment nothing more happened.

Now more on edge than ever, Naruto pressed his back up against a tree, only to yelp when something large and lumpy dug into his back. He reached around and then sagged when his fingers met the backpack Yuki had given him.

Naruto snorted. His cheeks pulled up into a smile. Then, he burst into loud, raucous laughter, helpless and breathless. He'd just tried to attack his own backpack! That was so silly, and all that, but also what a freaking relief! There wasn't anything behind him but his own imagination.

While laughing, Naruto had clenched his eyes shut, so when he opened them he was surprised anew by how the clearing had changed in mere moments. All around him, the fox-fire sparks had released their holds on the flesh of their mushrooms, and all drifted away in a direction off to Naruto's left yet again.

Some of the sparks faded away in the dark, flickering out as they floated. But a few of the sparks lived to reach the ground where they immediately sprouted.

Every time a spark touched soil, a patch of grasses and flowers grew up to ankle-height in moments, all of the buds blooming so that their faces tilted in the direction the sparks flew. Only, the stems and leaves to Naruto's right, they faded just as quickly, going brown and dry until they crumbled into dirt and only the left-facing plants remained.

"The way that gives life," Naruto whispered. Yuki had told him exactly which direction to go to find her! And, since it was fox-fire, Naruto was willing to bet that Takashi would get burned if he tried to follow. Naruto beamed at the thought. Maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to do this.

A maybe was plenty to be worth trying for!

Naruto walked to the edge of the blooming flowers, staring down at them between his dirty shins. They were still glowing, a little, green like sunlight in Konoha's forests. They made Naruto feel less scared, to be here in the dark. Fox-fire, every time he'd met it, always seemed to welcome him. Everything about it just seemed like it was saying "you're home!" and "you can do it!"

Ahead of Naruto stretched nothing but black and unknown. He'd be lost in an instant if it was just him. Except, Yuki was guiding him even now. She'd made sure from the start that he'd know where to go.

So, Naruto reached out to the nearest tree and drifted a hand down the green glow that was just starting to light up the longer he stood near. Under his palm sparks flew forward ahead of him, and flowers immediately began to bloom in a trail leading off forward. The trees next to where the flowers grew also began to glow, like the mushrooms were just waking up from a nap.

Naruto smiled a quick thanks to the tree next to him and started forward.

The first time Naruto ran out of water, he was furious with himself every time he cried.

Like, he was already super thirsty! So why did his stupid body keep forcing him to let out even more water for no reason? It didn't help and he hated it! He wasn't supposed to cry, shinobi weren't supposed to give in to failure and feel sad and cry over things, they were supposed to fix things. Shinobi were supposed to, to, to be strong and silent and stuff and endure like a super cool person should.

Shinobi weren't supposed to be helpless.

Naruto was, though. Because no matter how much he looked, or sniffed, or ran, or rationed, he was out of water and there wasn't any water around him. No puddles, no streams, no rain, nothing. He couldn't do anything.

This was his second day without water and he felt really, really bad. So bad that he could feel the seal on his stomach and the tingle of his regenerating-chakra doing stuff to his stomach and throat, deep inside him where he couldn't see.

The tingling had been going on all day. He'd been pleased in the morning, because, well, he figured that the Kyuubi was helping him by healing him somehow.

Now, though, while Naruto sat in the dark and tried to curl up for sleep, dark and weird thoughts kept getting stuck in his head like "what if the Kyuubi's taking water from inside my body?" and "what if the Kyuubi is using how thirsty I am to kill me and escape?" and even though he knew that was stupid and pointless he just kept thinking it until his breath got sharper and sharper.

So, when Naruto heard something coming from all around him, it made a lot of sense that he sat bolt upright, got a bit dizzy, and bared his teeth to snarl at whatever invisible thing was making the weird noise.

Then, something fell on his nose.

High above his head in the unchanging dark, a sort of crackling noise was his only warning before rain began pounding down onto him, and woke up every single mushroom in sight in the process. Every tree was emitting sunlight, now, and so Naruto was able to look up and blink water out of his eyes just long enough to see - dark and shadowed but still there! – clouds. Clouds absolutely dumping water down over him.

Naruto gaped. This couldn't be real, after all, it was just too perfect. Yet, he could feel it. And, with his mouth open, he could taste it. Nothing but a drop, but that drop of water was even more delicious than Ichiraku ramen in that moment. Jumping up, he wrenched open his bag and opened up every container-like thing he could possibly find, including his backpack, and set them out beneath the sky-wide waterfall. He could see everything clearly in the light of the mushrooms reacting to the rain, and so not only did he tilt his head back with his mouth open wide, but he also began to frantically scrub at his skin with his scraggly fingernails. When he wasn't drinking whatever water fell onto his tongue, Naruto spent the rest of the evening watching rivulets of dirt rinse down his calves and onto the flowers blooming beneath him.

The first time Naruto tried to eat one of the mushrooms, he threw up.

After that, he stuck with the little grasses that sprouted from the fox-fire. The grasses that he recognized.

Even if they tasted gross.

The first time Naruto considered following the dark sides of the mushrooms instead of the fox-fire side, he'd been going for nearly a month.

What did it even mean, that everything going that way died?

Would Naruto die if he went that way?

What made the direction he was going special, and the way back special in the opposite way?

Naruto had figured, at first, that the fox-fire went in the direction of "life," as Yuki put it, because fox-fire was like sunlight and chakra and good-things all rolled into one. They certainly felt like that to him, all warm and bright and happy.

Except, it was the fox-fire that made the dead-plants, too. No matter how far Naruto walked through the woods, the same sized clumps of blooming flowers would wither and die. If he was getting further away from something that caused death, then wouldn't that have stopped?

So yeah, Naruto wondered a lot about what he was walking away from. He also wondered a lot why he felt just as warm and happy to feel the fox-fire of the dead plants as he did the living ones.

They all felt like fox-fire to him.

They all felt like home.

The first time Naruto ever cried in relief, he'd just set foot on a valley of stone, and he was looking out on nine streams that all branched from a central spring. Just like the nine tails of a fox.

After over a month, after running out of water over and over until he savored every drop like it was Ichiraku ramen, after eating anything remotely safe and still feeling his ribs get more and more obvious, he'd made it.

Seeing a blue sky felt surreal, now. Like waking up in the morning after a super-duper long dream. Or like the snow melting after winter. The stone beneath the blue sky was such a light grey, almost white a the edges of the streams, that it was nearly blinding! Naruto oddly found himself wishing for some shadows, if only to make for some contrast.

Yeah, Naruto nodded to himself. See, Shikamaru would be perfect right now.

Giggling, Naruto took a few steps forward before plopping down onto the rock. He'd had waaaay too much time to think while he was walking. It was a miracle he hadn't started talking to himself like a loon! But, he hadn't thought a lot about his friends in Konoha. Mostly, he thought about missing things like food, or water, or blankets, or fresh clothes. He'd missed company a lot, but it was kind of familiar. As a kid before the academy he'd go months without speaking to another human. So, he'd missed company in a sort of, um, nonspecific way? Like, he'd have like someone to talk to, but he still felt just as gross and desperate and sad-scared at the idea of other humans that he did in Konoha, so the loneliness never really felt different than it felt any other time in Naruto's life.

Honestly, he'd thought the most about Yuki. About how he couldn't wait to get back to her. About how proud she'd be that he made it. He'd imagined arriving at some hazy, imagined spot and seeing Yuki waiting for him and her running over to him and cuddling him close in her tails.

She wasn't here, though.

She'd said she might be late! Naruto had three whole days to wait for her. He'd probably wait twice that, if she didn't show up, because obviously he was so awesome that he'd arrived early. Yeah, there was no way that she wouldn't come. Takashi was no match for her!

Right?

Naruto snarled and shook his head back and forth. He hated that word.

Yuki hadn't ever lied to him yet. And she was a fox, which just made her feel different to a human. She'd come. She had to. If Naruto could do it, then so could she!

Naruto sighed. He was never quite certain if people were going to hurt him or stay out of his way or randomly decide to be nice to him. Even with his team, the closest he had to friends, he was good at getting them to pay attention to him but that was about it. Kakashi-sensei had said that those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash, and Naruto would absolutely never be worse than trash! Sasuke though, and Sakura…and Kakashi-sensei had ditched them plenty.

Then there was Takashi.

Yuki, though, was different. Naruto didn't really get why, or what it was that just made her make sense to him, but Naruto realized that sometime over the past month he'd decided to trust her. It felt weird, and scary, and like he was standing in front of a cart in the road that was about to hit him if he didn't move, but he still felt it. Because, Yuki, she really deserved it. And Naruto, even though it made no sense, felt like a more trustworthy person because he was trusting her.

Maybe, now with Yuki, Naruto would be able to say "this person is not like Yuki, so I shouldn't trust them" and then stuff like with Mizuki and Takashi wouldn't happen.

Maybe, if Naruto tried to be like Yuki, then he could be someone that Konoha and all of his precious people trusted someday. And once they trusted him, then maybe he'd be able to understand them better and trust them back.

A maybe was plenty to be worth trying for.