Silent All These Years

I: A Ceiling of Stars

Having two field-active parents had its bad side, as he was wont to discover. Generally jounin handled tougher missions than chuunin, the only ones exempted from time to time being the jounin who led four-man groups composed of lower-ranking ninja. His mother handled solo missions from time to time, while his father had his team to work with.

Because of this, he was often alone in the house. Besides good, common sense telling him that his parents were out because they were on a mission, because they were serving the village and the country, he still could not suppress a shudder of sadness upon coming home to an empty house.

This used to be a major problem, especially since the food his mother would leave him sometimes did not last him for as long as it took for her to come back. Chakra practices in particular drained him, and more often than not Iruka ended up eating more than a day's worth of food.

It wasn't as if he was terribly outgoing either. Granted, he'd interact with others, but generally liked to keep to himself. As they lived relatively near the family compound of the Uchiha, once or twice some faces he knew from class would invite him to play-train with them. At first he went, but declined frequently, because he knew that these instances of companionship only lasted until they all went home. To Iruka, seeing his dark-eyed friends return to homes alight with the bustle of people made his seem more empty.

"Do you really have to go?" he'd asked his mother quietly on one occasion. He was standing at the doorway of their room, the afternoon sun casting long shadows against his small form. She had looked up from where she was packing scrolls and weaponry, strode to where he stood, and embraced him.

"Be good," she whispered tightly, casting one last worried look over her shoulder before she turned away.

He therefore acquired the habit of talking to himself. In his eyes his parents moved in and out of the rooms in the house, and he would interact with the vision-wraiths in his mind, bowing to thin air and smiling in welcome at nobody in particular.

"Good evening, father. Would you like to see my marks from kunai handling?" he would greet an empty bedroom after class, dutifully handing out his report card.

"Would you like me to help you with dinner, mother? I've got a lot of spare time," when he went to heat the food his mother left him.

To a lonely boy of seven, it was comforting to hear his own voice in an empty house.

---

That night he was sitting atop the house, staring up at a bright half moon. He did this when he was alone; climbing the thick water pipe that ran parallel to the house post, he would make his way up the tiled roof, content in the feeling of lightness that accompanied the view from above.

Their house wasn't the biggest in Konoha; the tallest spires belonged to the Hyuuga, a little off to the western side of the city. It didn't give him a sweeping view of the village either; at most he could see across a couple of Uchiha backyards, and several streets down before apartment complexes blocked off his view.

The very act of coming up to a ceiling of stars gave him a sense of liberation; in the house he felt lonely, constrained, even with the visions he made up for himself. Up here he liked to pretend that they were inside a bigger house, and that his parents were merely rooms away from the one he lay in now.

Here he talked to nothing in particular; sometimes he would simply close his eyes and babble away random thoughts to the night wind. He didn't care if anyone heard him. He doubted anyone would, anyway, save perhaps for the discreetly patrolling jounin and chuunin who never bothered with trivial matters like talking to oneself.

"I wish they didn't stay out so long," he said aloud, twirling the head of a mountain iris between his thumb and forefinger. He lay on his back, head pillowed by an arm. "I wish mother could have had a little brother or sister that I could take care of. If it were a brother, I'd like for him to be called Kiyo. If it were a girl, I'd like for her to be called Ayame. Or Ran. Umino Kiyo. Umino Ayame. Umino Ran." He giggled at the sight of his normally trim mother 'fat' with baby. Then he laughed outright at the image of little ninja sisters and brothers crawling up their harried father's form.

He sighed as a cool breeze wafted by, and he gently released the flower from his grasp, following its flight lazily with glazed chocolate eyes.

They landed on a figure sitting atop the roof next to theirs. The presence startled Iruka so much that he let out a soft cry and sat up. Under the dim light of the moon he could make out the figure of the boy he had met a few weeks ago in Catfish Bend, face obscured by a white fox mask. Platinum blonde hair peeked from beneath a black hood.

"Anou, gomen," he started to apologize laughingly, scratching the back of his head. "You must have heard me talking to myself. I did not notice you were there. Forgive me if I bothered you. It's just that it's such a nice night, I couldn't help but speak aloud, you know…"

He got no reply, only dead silence. The other continued to stare forward, not even tilting a head in Iruka's direction.

"Well," he continued, still blushing and grinning sheepishly, "I would have stopped myself had I known you were there in the first place, but it seemed as if you just appeared out of nowhere and—" Realizing he was prattling on again, Iruka fell silent, and blushed a deeper shade of red. It was not that Umino Iruka was shy with others (he knew how to crack the best jokes among his peers), but that he had spoken his thoughts aloud, aware that such things deserved a private audience only (he had tried telling Nara-sensei about it, but the other only shook his bushy head and muttered a "hmmph" before telling him to stop seeing things).

So quickly that he would have missed it, his rooftop companion turned his head slightly in Iruka's direction. He was listening?

"So," Iruka continued boldly, in a way grateful for the silence that served as a response, "do you come up here often?" He didn't expect a reply, of course, so he continued, "Well, I do, especially when they're not home. They're not at home now, obviously. Mother's away on a delivery mission to some other village. Father's in the war borders, as usual. With his three wards."

He sighed softly and hugged his knees to his chest, a comforting habit he had come to acquire in the days when he badly needed a parent's comfort and found none. Beside him, the masked stranger did not move an inch.

"That is why I wait for them, I suppose. They are my precious people, and waiting is all that I can do—for now—for them." When he had turned to regard the other boy, Iruka found nothing but an empty rooftop.

It was funny, really how he felt more comfortable in companionable silence. He began to wonder if silence really was the perfect audience for one's thoughts. The very idea that there was someone there, listening, without saying a word, seemed to Iruka a very profound thing.

The next night, he had climbed up the roof a little later in the evening to find his masked companion already waiting, obscured face still fixed straight towards some far-off point in the perimeter.

Three more nights after that, Iruka spent his dinner with his silent listener, daring to leave half a bento before he climbed down to sleep. In the morning an empty lunch box sat on the sill by his window, leaving him with a fluttering in the stomach and a smile on his face.

Even if his fox-masked roofmate did not show up for a night, Iruka didn't mind; already in his head, his silent friend had acquired form and shape. It came to a point that he would rush up to the roof right after school, anticipating the dusk that usually brought with it his newfound albeit quiet, masked friend.

"I must give you a name," he said one night, out of the blue. "Well, it won't exactly be your name because you have your own name, I'm sure, but you're not telling me, which is okay. So I'll make up a name for you." He had thought long and hard, before announcing, "Kitsune-kun," after staring at the other's mask. "Kitsune-kun" only very subtly turned his masked face in Iruka's direction (the second time in all their meetings), before turning away wordlessly.

Iruka grinned, and took it as an assent.

When his mother arrived, two weeks after Iruka had met Kitsune-kun, he didn't climb up the roof, but he left his dinner out on his sill before he went to bed, a quiet apology for his absence, and a promise to return soon.

His mother had picked up the empty bento the next day, wondering why her son had snuck dinner to his room, and debating whether or not to give the irises a trim, as a branch had somehow found its way into the box.

---

"Nagi."

Umino Unagi looked up from where he was studying the written reports. "What is it."

His wife was seated on the low table, a worried, thoughtful look on her face. He sighed and carefully put the documents away. When she had that look, she wanted your full attention. This was probably serious.

"Don't you think it's strange how Iruka keeps on climbing the roof when he thinks we're not looking? I have nothing against climbing roofs, for heaven's sake, we are ninja in the first place. But.." She shifted and propped her chin on her hand. "Have you heard him talk? On his own?"

Iruka's father scratched the bridge of his nose, a habit that his son, many years later, would unconsciously acquire. "Well, I see no reason why he should not be allowed to think aloud," he said finally. "It's probably a habit he managed to pick up when the boy's lonely here at home."

A look of guilt flashed across his wife's face. "But he sounds like he's talking to something, or someone other than himself. The pauses seem like he's actually listening for a response. It's worrying me, Nagi."

"Do you feel foreign chakra?"

"None other than Iruka's, and I've put warding seals all over his room too."

A long pause. Slowly, a grin cracked Unagi's sun-darkened features. "Oh my dear. Don't you see? He's got for himself an imaginary friend!" A low, rumbling laugh escaped his throat. "Hahaha, and you had me thinking it was some prank genjutsu on our boy or something. Or a would-be abductor!" He shook his head in amusement.

"Well, how do we know it's not?" She asked, indignant at his seeming lack of concern.

"Because," Unagi said, eyes twinkling as he sifted through his documents once more, "It's perfectly normal, at his age. Iruka is no fool, Aki. He may be young, but that boy is sharp. He's only probably lonely, although as to why he can manage to be, with all the Uchiha kids next door, I have no idea. And," he added, winking, "You worry too much."

Notes: I took a lot of liberty here, but it's primarily because the Kakashi Gaiden has not been concluded yet, so I filled up all the possible empty spaces and let good old extrapolation do the rest.

- The Uchiha seem to live in a pretty close-knit family compound, judging by the symbols down the street a younger Sasuke ran through. Like an "Uchiha Alley" or somethig. The Uminos in my head live one, two blocks away. The Uchiha kids Iruka's dad would be talking about ought to be clansmen (the ones Itachi beats up? XD) of Sasuke's family.

- I figured Iruka would have a very active imagination. My source (a friend's sister) is a preschool/ elementary teacher herself, and creativity is the best weapon to use to get the kids' attention. These are ninja kids, so we up the ante a bit. ;)

- He is also the type who talks aloud to himself. He frequently talks to himself in the manga and in the anime (like when he blurts out how everyone must be an adorable graduate to a teacher's eyes). I just felt like giving root to all these (lovable) idiosyncrasies of Iruka.

- Umm, I figured his mother was an active nin too. If they both died fighting the kyuubi (I, along with the rest of the world, don't know how the fight went exactly), that would mean they belonged to active field units, as the retired nins/ inactive nins and the kids are rushed to the emergency hatches in the village, according to the Konoha emergency plan (episode 60 something I think in the anime).

- don't you love rooftops? 3 Thanks to my poor volunteers: Rach, dakara, and Goukii for putting up with my incessant fickle tastes and keeping a lookout for evil hidden typos. Lady Guena: I'm considering your suggestion, and it actually helped pull me out of a rut. :D Thanks. For that, you get Kakashi's long, muscular shank. ;p

Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Sensei.