The last chapter today, I promise. A cyber-cookie to anyone who guesses the poem she's quoting--another one if you know the author of that poem. :) Aaaaaaand... yes. Three guesses as to the story she's telling. Reason being, is that I have always felt that the books (not the movie, so much) really portrayed the suffering of the Ringbearer, and the agony of his soul--and how, sometimes, there is no happily ever after.
"Someone must give things up, so that others can keep them."
It makes me cry, every time. He has literally walked through hell, and he's still thinking of others. A willing sacrifice, and the perfect example of a guardian just short of Haku (who was the lure to bring me into Naruto, and who is the ultimate 'guardian' of his precious person.) So... kinda strange, this chappie.
Still, as always, all credit goes to my wonderful beta-reader, Ashen Rose. Rock on, girl.
Guardian
"Rain, rain, go away, come again another day," Naruto sang loudly.
Kaida sighed, her chin resting on her hands. The rain outside had been continuing monotonously for days, turning the grey skies into a monochrome palette of gloom. Shaking her head, she frowned as the lights flickered—so help her if the manager turned them off again...
"STAY AWAY FROM HERE!" a voice howled, and she winced.
Obviously, her new neighbors weren't exactly throwing a welcome party...
Too bad; since they had been here first, in any other situation she and Naruto would have been the ones with the tenure to defend themselves. As things stood now, they were lucky if they would last here to the end of the month.
"... Naruto."
"--CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS! Hai, okaa-san?" he asked, running over.
"Do you want to hear a story?"
She often told Naruto fantastic stories to calm him down, as he was fascinated with the tales; an added benefit was that it cleared her mind and chased away the melancholic despair that sometimes plagued her.
"Once, long, long ago, the world was much different from what it was today..."
"Really! No Ko'ha?" he whispered.
"Hai. It was full of terrible creatures and full of danger."
Smiling dryly, she wondered now if it was so different after all...
"There were a three major races: dwarfs, elves, and Man. The dwarfs were stout, hardy folk, miners mostly and brilliant with stone-craft. The elves were the fairest of all beings: the Firstborn of Eru, who created everything. They were the wisest in this Middle Earth," for we are between heaven and hell, "and the most skilled of all crafts, excelled only by the dwarfs in the shaping of stone."
"So, they were all like—Hokages, right?" Naruto scrunched his face up.
"Yes, dear, but immortal—never aging, never wearying."
"Definitely not like Hokage," he said firmly, thinking of the wrinkled Sandaime.
"But there was a Dark Lord, too, from beyond even the elves time; he was one of the Higher Powers that had rebelled against Eru."
"But why?"
"Because he wanted to dominate the world," she replied simply.
"But why?" poor Naruto was confused.
"He was greedy," she smiled.
"BAD MAN!" he shouted.
"Exactly. Unbeknown to most everyone, there was another race. They were small, simple people who lived close to the earth. They did not do great things, except live life; they were peaceful and homely."
"They w' ugly?"
"Er, no, darling. That just meant that they were homebodies--"
"THEY WERE GANGSTERS!"
She sighed.
"They liked to stay close to home."
"Oh. Ok. So do I," he smiled sweetly up at her.
"I know you do," she ruffled his hair. "And somehow, the Dark Lord's Ring—which was very, very powerful, because he needed it to destroy everyone else—was passed to one of the Little People, who called themselves hobbits. He set out with a group of friends and went through a difficult journey, being injured several times. But finally, in the end, the Ring was destroyed and the War ended. People went about their business again, as they had before."
"Happily ever after?" Naruto scrunched his face up, cocking his head.
She was silent for a moment.
"No, dearest."
"But—why?"
There was a note of plaintive confusion, and she knew that he was not talking about the story anymore.
"Because sometimes, no matter how brave the hero is, there are—things—that happen that can't be made all better."
"Didn't he have an okaa-san, too?" Naruto asked quietly.
"No. No, Naruto-kun, I don't guess he did."
He thought for a moment.
"Then that's why."
Hugging him close to her, she breathed in his baby-scent mingled with the salt of her tears and wondered how long until this story could be made better, too.
Later that night, after she had read him Loser to Leader (she didn't look forward to telling him one day that the Yondaime was no longer among the living, as the biography had ended with his coronation as Hokage), and tucked Naruto in, she walked to the opposite side of the room to look at the rain out of the large windows, probably the only nice thing of the apartment.
In seeming slow motion, a raven flapped up, its wings beating so slowly that she could see the rise and fall of them. She smiled at it, wondering idly how it was staying in the air in the heavy rain.
" 'Quoth the raven, nevermore,' ?" she asked, remembering the poem fondly.
In a sudden feeling of dread, terror wrapped around her like a boa constrictor, suffocating her with panic. Not understanding her instincts, just acting, she grabbed the pack that held everything she and Naruto needed (and his few toys, his books... her life) and yanked him out of the door just before the bird exploded, completely destroying the apartment. Running, the fires of hell literally licking at her feet, she shifted Naruto from where he clung onto her back to the front of her, where she gripped him tightly into her arms.
"OKAA-SAN!" he cried, terrified. Her eyes set like steel, she sprinted out of the door, narrowly missing the kunai that would have killed if she hadn't dodged.
Mind racing even faster than her legs, she thought desperately of where to go; Sandaime was out of Konoha, attending negotiations with Mist, and she was about to cry. She had nowhere to go, no one to help them, and they were going to die.
'No.'
Furiously rounding the corner, she continued running blindly; these weren't chuunin, they were ANBU.
God help her, or they were dead already.
Wincing as a senbon embedded itself into her shoulder, nearly hitting a vital point, she wished she could go back to the wistful make-believe of safety with the Yakushi family.
Wait.
Her mind stopping its bullet-train flow of thoughts, and speeding up all at once, she made a sharp left at the next intersection, heading towards a plain, nondescript and rather boring building.
Breath coming out in little wheezing gasps, Naruto sobbing into her chest, arms aching from holding him and legs in so much pain that she knew she'd probably snapped a ligament, she didn't bother taking the time to open the glass doors, turning around just before the impact so that she slammed through back-first, crouched over Naruto to protect him from the glass. Ignoring the startled looks of most of the ninja working there (because, though no one would ever guess it, this was the headquarters of ANBU) she forced her feet to keep moving until she came to the jounin lounge.
Rare kindness and unbearable hate.
And somewhere, in between the two, there was trust.
A boy with freakishly large eyebrows and bowl-cut hair, wearing a strange green bodysuit, caught her as she fell, a boy with bandages on his face taking Naruto from her and placing him on the couch. A boy (Naruto recognized him before, with the hair-stick in his mouth, a harbinger of bad news) pulled out a lollipop from his pocket, and stuck it in his mouth to stop his crying.
"Raidou, go see what's going on. Gai, go tell Alpha there's a situation down here," he ordered quietly, voice taut and humming with tension.
Disappearing, he turned to her.
"You're ok now. You're a friend of Hatake's, and he'd kill me if anything happened to you two," he gave them a weak smile around his (as she recognized through her haze of fury and relief) senbon.
"Who' you?" Naruto demanded, sucking his lollipop warily.
"Shiranui Genma, at your service," he glanced at him from the corner of his eye, pulling out the senbon in a hard jerk. Screaming despite herself, she fought back the tears and hiccuped as her body nearly went into shock.
"Sorry about that, I had to make sure you didn't fight me," Genma apologized, tearing off the sleeve of her shirt and quickly wrapping a tight bandage around the wound.
"You're lucky, Kaida-san. It's not too deep, which is surprising if the ANBU after you is who I think it is, and it doesn't appear to be poisoned," he scrutinized the weapon closely.
He was relieved; senbon (ANBU-regulation, anyways) were usually hollow and filled with toxin. He was a fair medic (all ANBU had to be), but not enough to handle that.
"Okaa-san?" Naruto whimpered, taking in her pale, sweaty face that had drained of all color and her shivering body.
Wrapping a blanket around her with startling gentleness, Genma smiled at her.
"Go ahead and get some sleep, Kaida-san. You're safe enough here."
Cracking the muscles in her back as she stretched, she sighed as she surveyed their new home. It was slightly better than the old one, and it was nice to finally move out of Maito-san's rooms at ANBU H.Q., even though he couldn't have been nicer about it.
Shaking her head, she sighed as she looked out the windows to see, once again, rain. They only had one box of stuff, what the ANBU had been kind enough to buy them (especially the women, who had taken her under their wing, along with quite a few of the males), and she nudged it slightly with her toe.
She realized that she sighed a lot.
Snorting, she rolled her eyes, and looked at a napping Naruto, curled up like a baby fox in his blue blankie, Gama-chan held close to his chest.
Walking over and looking out the window, a black bird appeared. Everything seemed to slow again, her eyes cold as frosted blade.
Without hesitation, she pulled out a gun and shot it, watching its bleeding body fall to the ground. Two ghostly figures appeared, one in an ANBU Bird Mask, the other the Cat, and they picked up the body of the raven, disappearing into the fog.
" 'Quoth the raven, nevermore.' "
----owari----