Kurama has been alive for a very long time. He's lived so much, and at the same time so little. He's watched villages fall and battles rage, land torn asunder by old primal chakra and stitched back together the same way. He's watched human lives go by from behind sealed bars for centuries now, watched his freedom bleed away to nothing and hated for it.
He'd hated his jailors most of all.
He still remembers Mito with blinding clarity, in perfect memory. She was strong and stern, loved deeply and exclusively, was a beacon of strength and hope for the humans that had locked him away.
And he remembers the way she would look down her nose at him through the bars of his cage, the empty toneless cell he had been forced into, like she would live in spite of him, like he was some colossal burden she had been left to bear, like a warden.
He remembers Kushina better though, and hated her less, but even she still thought of him as a burden, thought herself a warden, saw him as a weapon.
But this shit? This is something else entirely. And Kurama has no fucking clue what.
Never, from the moment of his creation to that very second in time, never in his incredibly long and powerful life, has someone ever asked him his name.
This kid, this child, in one question, has shown Kurama more consideration and respect than any being since the Sage himself.
Everything Kurama knows about humans, about jinchuuriki, is based on a solid faith in their petty, hateful ways. And this little brat has the gall to shake that faith to core with one fucking question.
This kid's stubborn and continued presence in the seal space had been one thing– easy enough to write off as idle curiosity except for the fact that– despite Kurama's obvious distaste at his presence and the fact that there is nothing down there of interest whatsoever– the kid kept coming back every night.
But this? This? What the hell is Kurama supposed to do with this?
There's something strange and warm forming in him, small but determined and entirely foreign. It grows, little by little, night after night, each time the little golden haired brat sits in the dark dank cold of his prison and never looks as miserable as Kurama expects him to become. Each time the kid recounts his day, speaks with such fondness about senseis and ramen vendors and Kurama knows that it's because they are the only people in the entire village that have shown him any kindness, even if the kid never says so. When Kurama had snarled about loneliness, the potency of the lie in the response he'd been given had sent Kurama reeling.
He'd told the brat about his parents, told him how he'd killed them in cold blood when they'd tried to reseal him, tried to elicit some kind of familiar fear or hatred. But it had only made him sad, aggrieved, nothing like Kurama had intended, and for a fraction of a second, Kurama had hated himself for doing it and he had no idea why. So he'd told the brat about his parents when he'd asked, in some kind of recompense, and grudgingly admitted that he remembered little of his siege against Konoha but for the strange and lingering impression of blood on his tails and broken Uchiha eyes.
And the forgiveness had been instant. Foolish. Unconditional and without thought.
Idiotic. Or maybe wise beyond years. Kurama truly cannot tell.
In the midst of this inner turmoil, in this chaos of unfamiliar feeling that Kurama is still trying to snuff, something happens.
A rending surge of hurt and sorrow sweeps deep through the seal space, calling Kurama's attention up instantly.
Impossible.
Kurama cannot feel his Jinchuuriki's emotions unless he makes a conscious effort to sense them, but this is powerful and clear, uncontrolled, and so very clearly the brat's. Even at her most distraught Kushina's emotions never reached down to touch him like this, and never with such force.
Something begins to mix with the pain and sadness. The acrid tang to the air speaks of fear.
Kurama reaches through what he can of the seal, syncs his vision with that of the brat's.
Fire country tigers come into view, prowling in a pack of three. He senses pain of the physical kind now, deep gashes along the kid's arm from shoulder to elbow. Kurama's chakra is doing it's job, bloody steam already curling from the wound, but the kid isn't fighting back, he just keeps backing up, terror rising high as the animals stalk closer.
What the hell kid? They're just cats, fight back. He thinks, as Naruto continues to retreat, terrified. And then it hits him.
He has no idea how to mould chakra, even if he can draw on my reserves, he has no clue how to use it.
And what the fuck are they teaching him at that stupid academy if not how to use fucking chakra? Arts and crafts?
One of the tigers attacks again, tearing through the fabric of Naruto's jumpsuit and sending fresh waves of agony across his chest. Kurama can heal it, of course, but now his Jinchuuriki is backed up against a tree's wide trunk, nowhere to go, as cornered as a rat.
And that little something deep in Kurama's chest, that spark he had been trying so hard to smother, suddenly flares to life all at once. Powerful and electric, it surges forward, and Kurama acts. Instant and foolish, unconditionally and without thought.
For the first time, it is Kurama who reaches.
He sends his chakra flooding through the seal, pushes as much of himself as he can with it. But there is no instinct to escape, to corrupt, to control.
Only to Protect.
Because something deep inside him knows that whatever this kid is, human or not, Uzumaki or not, he's different, and Kurama will not let that slip away before he knows what it could be. Not without a fight.
The Shade rushes through the brat's chakra and coalesces, an aura of purest wrath shielding him like a cloak, and Kurama roars.
The shockwave is so powerful it sends the tigers skidding backwards. Kurama's aura does the rest, and the overgrown cats scatter to the wind in fear.
Naruto staggers, his back hits the tree trunk and he slides to ground, the tears still streaming hard down his small face. Kurama curls his chakric form around him in some instinct he's never felt and doesn't understand. Naruto's clawed hands scrub at his eyes, now as bloody a red as his own, and it confirms something he's long suspected.
In altering the seal used to imprison Kurama into his son, Minato Namikaze inadvertently removed the chakric safeguards that had been present on every seal before it. As a result, there is no barrier between Naruto's chakra systems and Kuramas, no buffer– the chakra enters the boy's pathways in it's raw form. The healing properties of his chakra are more potent as a result, can cause physical transformation, but he knows for a fact that his raw chakra burns harsher than any acid.
Kurama stays anyway, wrapped around him even though this form is not a physical one, until the brat's sobs die down.
He steadfastly ignores the feeling in his gut that tells him something has just changed for good.
Kurama leads Naruto out of the Forest of Death. It's nothing so obvious as giving him directions or anything like that… just a sensation he gets in his chest that urges him to go a certain way. The fox feels… different within him, like something's shifted. Two steps back from what it was before. Or maybe forward. He can still feel the hate curling in the beast's chakra, but no longer is any of it directed towards him. It's an odd feeling. Alien. But he doesn't mind. Quite the opposite– the strange feeling of acceptance calms his nerves and torn heart in ways he's incredibly grateful for.
He ends up heading in the general direction of Shikamaru's clan forest, though he's never been there this way before. Naruto likes Shikamaru. He talks to Naruto just the same as he would anybody else, and he always looks at the people who treat Naruto badly like they have some sort of mental disease and he's debating whether he should try and fix it or push it as far away from himself as he can as to not get infected. His parents apparently hadn't put the same stigma on playing with Naruto that most had.
He likes Kiba for the same reason, though Naruto knows the dog-ninja only first started playing with him to make his mom mad.
The woods outside training ground forty four are still thick and sharp and matted together, so the first chance he gets he hops down onto a swiftly flowing river peppered with flat rocks. The forest is just as thick on the other side, so he moves up river instead of risking his already torn up jumpsuit on more briars.
The river is more like a creek– wide and shallow and only a few feet down at it's deepest. It winds very little, rolling over the steps of soft rapids as it curves gently southeast. After ten minutes or so of following it the banks open up into a clearing; a circular stretch of thick grass and low ferns penned in by towering redwoods. The little river cuts crosswise through the glade, curling into the basin of a cascade at its far runs in clear ribbons over a steep and rocky cliff face, framed on one side by the biggest willow tree Naruto has ever seen, so big that it's branches dip to cover the whole basin in tendrils of green. He gravitates towards it without really thinking, tired and aching, and he immediately feels safer behind the arbor curtain, like a soft shield against the outside world. He thumps down to sit between it's roots, scrubbing hard at his eyes again with the back of his sleeve.
It makes his eyes sting more, not less, and when he actually gives the sleeve a good look he finds it covered in blood and grime, the orange fabric torn to nothing but thin strips in places. He grits his teeth and pulls the jumpsuit angrily from his person, ripping at the zipper and yanking the thick orange turtleneck off his shoulders. He leaves it half off, pooled around his waist, and drops his head into his arms, crossed over his knees.
He just can't stop crying, and it's stupid and weak but the more frustrated he gets at himself the more he cries and he just can't make it stop.
When the hiccups slow down and Naruto finally finally manages to halt the waterworks, he feels the burning rush of chakra again. He knows now that it's Kurama, stirring up from his seal. The hurt in the burn is familiar, like how muscles feel when worked into failure, like nerves feel when rubbed raw.
Kurama had...protected him. Naruto is used to the dark power and wrath that radiates from Kurama's chakra. He isn't used to having it rise in his defense.
He feels the same surge he'd felt then but softer, slower, as Kurama's chakra moves through him. It starts as vaguely reddish haze that rises off Naruto's skin in waves. Then in condenses, becomes more solid as more chakra floods the shape, and then materializes into the form of the Kyuubi. Compared to Kurama's true size it's tiny– little bigger than a horse.
"I thought you couldn't leave your seal." Naruto says, his voice barely above a raspy whisper.
The fox curls his body around him, tails flicking back around for Kurama to rest his paws on. He's sort of see through in the middle but more solid around the edges, like a drawing that hasn't been shaded right.
~I cannot. This is just a shade, brat. Only chakra.~
The fox says, just as quietly.
Naruto's eyes start to well up again. "I'm sorry." He says miserably, babbling, burying his face back in his elbows. "I should have been watching where I was going, I should have noticed when I crossed the fence–"
~Easy.~ Kurama cuts him off smoothly, almost gently, and isn't that a kick in the teeth– Kurama of all people comforting him. A single chakric claw tucks under his chin–not entirely solid, but not entirely ethereal either– and tips his head up.
~Did you know that man, kid?~ Kurama asks.
Naruto shakes his head.
~Was he important to you? Like your Teuchi, or your Ayame, or your Iruka-sensei?~
Naruto shakes his head again.
~Then why does what he says matter to you?~
Naruto blinks, not understanding.
~Does your Iruka-sensei think you're a monster?~
Another head shake.
~Then who are you going to believe?~
The tears stop, his eyes go wide as he looks as Kurama. The fox looks tired and sad, so different from what Naruto has become accustomed too that the shift alone makes Naruto readjust his view. Why had it mattered? The man hadn't been Jiji, or his sensei, or anyone precious, just a man whose face he can't even remember.
And it… works. If he thinks of it like that, he can shove it back and away, make it matter less up against the warm existences of those precious to him.
"You're pretty smart, Kurama." He says, wiping the last of the tears from his eyes. His head hurts and his nose is still runny, but he doesn't feel quite so much like he's drowning. "I bet you're not scared of anything."
Kurama looks at him for a long moment.
~...Untrue.~
Naruto tips his head to the side. "What could scare a bijuu?" he asks, half curiosity half concern.
Kurama cocks his head, almost in mimicry, crimson eyes pinching in what might be disbelief, might be confusion, might be pain.
~Do you remember when I told you of my siblings?~
Naruto nods. "Mhm. Matatabi and Saiken and Kouko and all of them?" Kurama dips his vulpine head in affirmation. "What about them?"
~It would seem I am losing them.~
Naruto's eyes widen to saucers. "What do you mean? What happened? What do you mean 'losing them'?"
~ As the eldest of the bijuu, I posses the ability to sense my Kin. Their locations. Their states of being. Over the last few years, one by one, they have been vanishing from my senses entirely.~
"But… but isn't that impossible? You can't be killed, right? And aren't you even stronger than Kages like Jiji?"
Kurama shakes his head, and Naruto's stomach drops into his sandals.
~Our existences depend on those of our Jinchuuriki. If they were somehow killed, our life would be snuffed out with theirs. Likewise, removing a bijuu from their Jinchuuriki pulls the soul of said Jinchuuriki from its mortal shell along with it. And if enough power is brought to bear, it is possible to subdue even us. It is how we ended up imprisoned in human beings in the first place.~
"Are they dead?"
Kurama's ears flatten.
~I'm not sure.~ He admits. ~ I can still sense their chakra, but it's weak. Constricted somehow. I cannot tell if they are merely imprisoned, or if chakra is the only thing left of them.~
Suddenly all of Naruto's problems seem very, very small. He's never had a family, but he tries to imagine what it would feel like to lose Iruka-sensei and not be able to do a thing about it.
He finds the mere thought makes him sick with grief.
"Who…" Naruto starts, but can't bring himself to finish the thought.
~Who did I lose?~ Kurama asks, because he's smart like that.
Naruto nods.
~Son Goku, Isobu, and Matatabi.~
So the monkey, the turtle, and the cat, if Naruto remembers right. He settles his cheek against his elbow. "Tell me about them?"
Kurama's eyes go wide for a moment, but then they soften in resignation.
And he does.
Later Naruto learns that the civilian man was a drunk, had accosted Naruto for some imagined slight against his person as he walked along the street towards Ichiraku. Ayame had heard the shouting and come to his defense, small and slight and impossibly ferocious, shouting the man down right back.
What he never learns, is that before the man can even turn his hate on Ayame for defending a monster, a tall ninja with bone white hair and a crooked hitai-ate –so obviously a Jounin he practically wears the rank like a cloak– wraps a single hand painfully tight around the man's shoulder, powerful fingers digging into muscle and nerve with pinpoint precision.
The man drops to his knees with a cry, curling inward like a dying insect against the pain, but the pressure remains perfectly steady, unrelenting and unremorseful. He crouches down next to the man, the move deceptively easy, enough so that passersby could easily misread it as someone comforting a nauseous stranger. But up close the tension in the the man's body is painfully clear, and he uses the motion as cover to dig down to the bone. He leans close, his voice low and nonchalant except for the deadly undercurrent of dark fury that sobers the man so quickly he sees stars.
"That was poorly done of you." He breathes, his tone smooth and toxic. "Consider this your first, and final, warning. If you ever so much as come near that kid again...well." The man's single steel-sharp eye curves in false amusement. "I'm sure you can use your imagination."
~~
Later that night, Kurama's brat sits, legs crossed before his prison bars. He's thinking so hard Kurama could swear there's steam coming out of his ears. It would be funny, if Kurama's mood weren't already so sour.
"Who would be able to do it though? Hunt bijuu?" They're still on this topic hours after they should have been off it, and it's starting to grate on the Kyuubi's nerves. If there's nothing he can do, it's the last thing in the universe he wants to talk about.
~Shinobi, I would imagine.~ He growls shortly, but Naruto doesn't seem to notice his temper. Not surprising, since it's usually far worse.
The brat is uncharacteristically quiet after that. Kurama might be relieved, except that he can sense that something's up. He sits, wrists on his calves, staring into empty space. Deeper in thought than any eight-year-old has a right to be. He's so tiny, so fragile, but suddenly he looks up at Kurama and his eyes are iron.
He tells Kurama, on no uncertain terms; "I don't care who they are. I'm going to stop them."
Kurama barks out a harsh and humourless laugh. But despite the close proximity Naruto doesn't start, doesn't relax the steel in his small face.
~And what could you do, little brat? The shinobi hunting my kind would be like gods to you.~
'I'll get stronger then." The kid says the words calmly, like he's stating a fact; like the sky is blue or the grass is green or blood is red. "I'll get stronger than everyone."
Kurama stops laughing.
He presses his nose against the bars of the gate, washed gold in the new light flooding through the chamber. The kid doesn't flinch, doesn't move away, even when Kurama's enormous snout moves between the columns to rest practically in the kid's lap. He meets Kurama's eyes unwaveringly, will adamant. Something dangerously close to confidence flickers in those cerulean eyes.
He means it.
~You would make that kind of promise, kid?~ Kurama rumbles softly.
Naruto shrugs like the question is obvious. "I need to get strong enough to be a Kage anyway, in order to protect the people I love." He grins. "I just need to be strong enough for this too."
He means every damn word out of his mouth, with every bright corner of his being. Kurama can practically see it gleaming in his eyes.
Kurama asks, already knowing the answer; ~Whatever that takes?~
Naruto just smiles wider and, to the great fox's complete disbelief, places a hand on the fur of his snout, small fingers curling in the short strands. "Believe it."
Kurama does.
The bijuu huffs a soft breath, enough to ruffle golden hair. ~Then I might be able to help with that.~ He says, because this little boy may be weak, may be naive; but with his bright soul, unwavering will, and powerful spirit, that is something Kurama can easily fix.