October 3030, the begging of the 4th Great Ninja War
I was born with glass bones and paper skin. every morning I break my legs, and every afternoon I break my arms. at night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep.
Naruto didn't know the order things happened anymore. He didn't know ever since his father appeared, his cloak ruffling in the air, the kanji showing whom he was, his blond hair and his presence so reconforting he wished he could just hug him. But he couldn't. He was a leader now, just like his father once was. And, now, he would die for the sake of his people, just like his father did.
He wondered what crossed his father's mind the day he died. If he considered flee, all those years ago, Kurama destroying it all — if he considered just for once second. Looked at his wife (his mother) and no matter how much Kushina, his mother, his mother, might protest, clamor, struggle, yell — just look into her eyes, their huge purple eyes, he go to see it, just once and say "Run." and that's that. Run. Naruto wish he said that. He could see that Kakashi-sensei thought about it a lot when he went to visit their graves. Everytime it was like he was like he was closing his eyes and coming back in time, grabbing them by the collar, shaking some good sense onto them and saying "Run!". But Kakashi wasn't there and his parents were dead.
(Naruto wondered what Kakashi would say to his father if he could. He never could even fathom. What would you - what can you say? How do you ask your father not to kill himself? Naruto used to cry when he thought of that.
Kakashi's chakra was steady as always, not shaking in fear. He was there, leading them all, his life lying at his feet, but his chest taking the fire to protect those behind him. Naruto would never live up to come eye to eye to this man.
Maybe that what he could say to Kakashi's father, he ever got the chance.)
The air was biting and the huge whitish stone monster was there, showing them how pathetically small they were. He was scared of the fucking huge Bijudama, Menacing Ball, Tailed Beast Bomb — you choose. So many names and just one purpose: dilacered. They built all the walls they could think of, all the strategy. But they would die. The giant purple thing he used to see with Kurama, he used to train with, he used to fear, but that, that was much more menacing and the killing intent was in the hair in his body, every single capillary, dominating all his cells and all his mind could think of was "How am I going to save them? I made a promise. I never go back on my word." But never going back on his word could be forgiven if he died, right? But if they all died there, two questions rose:
Who would be left to take them home?
Who would Madara feed dreams to then?
Then, he felt his father and his heart felt relief. He could feel the prayers around him, his comrades swallowing and everything wondering how would they survive, if they would and how would they fight afterwards. A line opened in the horizont and the ball vanished and he was never so happy to see what a thunderstorm meddled with all the natural catastrophes encapsulated in purple coming in one at their direction. If you put the world into a blender and shove it thunderstorms, hurricanes making peace and love with volcanos, tsunamis, cyclones, floods, landslides, hurricanes, typhoons, forest fire, meteor falls, storms of ice, hail and lightning then you would have a Bijudama. And that his father made vanish.
But the Fourth Hokage arrived — and he never wished so badly his father (his father, not the Fourth Hokage) never died. He wished to see his mother's hair, red, vibrant, screaming just as loud as the Blast. He knew his mother would scare it all away. He never wished with all his might his parents were alive. They would brush his hair, they would hug him and thank the Heavens he was alive. His mother would scold him for not being too careful and being on the front lines, would like to meet his friends and would all but Chakra Chain everyone. His father would look at her lovely and put a hand at her waist. She would choke at the sight of Obito and probably she would be the one that would succeed to beat him down.
The Red-Hot Habanero would come in all covered in her red hair and hold his hand. The Yellow Flash of the Leaf would put his hand in his shoulder. In the middle of the scrubs they would find each others eyes and their personality would leak, there, in the battlefield, smiling, smirking, grinning to one another and he would know he belonged, he existed. He wasn't just the monster, the Number One Hyperactive, Knucklehead Ninja, Naruto, idiot, dobe, good for nothing. He belonged.
But that was for him to dream of if he survived. Maybe he could steal a smile from his father in the middle of the madness. (Maybe he could surrender to the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Save them all and let if wrap himself. Would that really be selfish when you think about it? Try to have a decent life?)
He barely began and he was already tired of fighting. Already tired of having the burden of the whole Shinobi World — the same World that despised him through his entire life.
Don't mistaken Naruto for ungrateful. He was finally being recognized. That was his dream. But he wasn't stupid, as everyone took him for. He was naïve, at the very best. He could feel he was being used and he was afraid like hell to be disposable. And, the worst part was, his father would be gone as soon as the War was over.
The only time Naruto Uzumaki saw his parents was when the World was about to end and he was about to die. He didn't had the time to memorize their features.
Things happened in a blur. Naruto didn't know the order the things happened no more. His father lost both arms, but he gave him it back. He wondered if with his new power he could see his mother again.
(He knew he couldn't)
There was fire everywhere. It was all Fire. Be the Will of it or the fucking Uchiha. Everyone was dropping dead and who was to blame? The mad man? That Kaguya fairytale the Sage told him? Mankind?
The insane pursuit for power?
Do you kill War?
Or it simply kills you and keeps on killing until there is nothing left but sand?
Gaara would live through sand.
Would he? Or that was just another escape route so Naruto would feel better for pretending that not every single person would die in his hands like Neji did? And Neji was the one that died in his arms literally. How many others were dying and were about to die?
They kept on fighting. All of them. They were still fighting Obito, Madara and the Ten Tails – that fucking thing doesn't die, for Heaven's sake. It is like the most powerful thing ever, but it really should die. Right? Nothing is immortal. Truly immortal. Nothing. Not truly immortal. The Universe needs balance and that's why the Sage of the Six Paths created the Tailed Beasts, to balance the power. That's why they were scattered around the shinobi world – to maintain the balance.
Nothing is immortal, nothing lasts forever.
And with Madara has to be the same.
"Is this the power of a God?" Gaara said. Yes, but Georg Hengel also said the great pain of knowing that God is dead. "Nature is such that it marks everywhere, both in and outside of man, a lost God, purely as a phase, but also as no more than just a phase, of the highest idea." Max Stirner writes about the death of God and about the killing of God by humans.
So, yes, Gaara. It is the power of a God.
And he is going down — eventually
Yet, there it was: Madara yelling and yelling about dancing, and the Infinity Deceit, the Red Moon made of an enormous Sharingan, dancing, fucking dancing (like to watch me dance, go to my ballet performance) and God, please, couldn't it just stop? What does it bring to Madara? Why he wants that? To have the peaceful shinobi world he wanted from the beginning? This wasn't peace! Nobody told him that?
"Oi! You!" Madara didn't hear. Jesus. "Creep, annoying, don't know when to shut it, you!" He was yelling some annoying shit the other direction.
Naruto had to scream from the top of his lungs. The battlefield was so loud he couldn't barely make his own words.
"You, old coconut!" He heard this time. "Didn't anyone tell you that casting a genjutsu over the entire world isn't the same thing as peace?" "It is just decisiveness. You're being stupid!"
It isn't Naruto's regular approach. He convinced bad guys talking about ramen and stuff, sad pass and swings, but he was told Madara wasn't that kind of guy, but trying wouldn't hurt. Right?
"You're just fucking dumb, kid." Was his polite and thoughtful answer followed by the biggest fire dragon Naruto ever saw. He decided approaching Madara wasn't a good idea.
"I told you, you can't win him with talk no jutsu." Kakashi said, smirking, his chest was open, but wasn't profusely bleeding anymore.
"Fuck off, would ya?"
His sensei just smiled more, his eye creasing further and Naruto wondered if the man had fallen into madness or if facing death so close was enough to loosen him and rip a true smile from what seemed like a painful motion.
He looked around and Sakura was scolding Kakashi at the same time she was healing what seemed to be an open fracture in his leg and he was still smiling. Maybe he was high. But seeing everything from where he was brought the world from a new perspective.
Naruto was standing in a pile of rocks that gave him a better access to the battlefield, he could see almost everyone. He didn't have the time to dwell or admire how beautiful the scattered innocence, untidy faces, traces of tears, spatter of blood can make the bat of eyelids sound magnificent and how alive you can feel with the gush of wind; live is only precious because it ends — you realise one day. If often does when you're about to lose it.
He truly didn't know how they managed to stay alive for that long, because the man was a God and he was immortal. Naruto had his amount of immortals as well, but Madara was a level up. And Obito was fucking crazy, fucking delusional and everytime it seemed they finally got him they didn't. He tried as hard as he could not to look who else was dying. If he saw, if he acknowledged he would break and he couldn't break there, not now, not ever – not in front of them, not when they entire shinobi world was counting on him.
Now he understood Kakashi, but sideways. He always said he was too old for that shit, but Naruto felt too young.
"Hey!" His closest clone yelled. "Kakashi-sensei!" His teacher spared him a glance and he was so covered in blood and he looked like a veteran, like an expertise, like power and fury — like a legend. Like a broken mas that needs to kill his best friend. He looked like his father, the ghost of the White Fang pouring over them, even if Naruto never saw the man, he knew that, he just knew. So he decided to tell him nothing. "Thank you." Was his only statement and also covered in blood he smiled to his mentor whose eyes crinkled with a real smile and no words were needed no more.
Naruto didn't say anything because when Kakashi was his age he had already lost everything he had and he had so many ANBU mission over his belt than Naruto had been punched by Sakura and said "believe it!".
And, then, Neji died.
In the middle of his disconsolateness, something happening and Kurama's chakra died. He wasn't glowing orange anymore. No one was. (He wanted to be worried, worried sick, but he couldn't)
In a moment, it was Neji's body over his, telling him he sacrificed himself from being called a genius. He saved him saved Hinata – that had had sacrificed herself ("I love you" he remembered her saying in the day Pain almost killed her – but he hugged Sakura instead). The next moment he convinced Obito, all white, gray and green, after Black Zetsu tried to eat him, to come to their side, that Rin wouldn't ever love that version of him. It wasn't Obito, that was Tobi and Tobi was no one – neither Obito nor Madara. Tob was Tobi. (Tobi wasn't real, Obito) The next moment the Sage of the Six Paths shared Indra and Ashura story – how Madara and Hashirama were born to fight, how him and Sasuke were meant were born, were made, were meant to fight. From the moment of their birth to the moment of their death, their faith was to fight and put an end to it, either for the Good or for the Bad. He started glowing, the six black balls around him, fluing, Sasuke had the Rinnegan, Kakashi-sensei almost lost an eye (again) and when Sakura put her hands to try to help him, fix him, something, he came and gave him a new eye. Just like that. Because now he could, he can.
He was now some sort of God.
The fight was no longer for the mortals.
Yet, it didn't stop Madara.
All his generation knew about war was what they read in books, learnt in the Academy or heard by the fire eating canned food. And reading about something and living it is two completely different dimensions.
Everywhere he looked at there were screams, there was blood. Water, fire, wind, lightening, earth. It was all collapsing and all in fusion. It was all part of one another, it was impossible to distinguish.
It was Madara against the World, but that was enough. It was scary how much one man alone could hold so much power.
The former wars were between shinobi. It was man against man. Eye for eye. It was fair, almost. There were some freakishly strong against standard man, but it was fair. This, this thing, right now, was anything but fair.
The fight went on and on and on. It lasted for days. Days and days and days.
At one point, the flower blossom. Some were caught the second it opened. Yamato was one of those. He just got released from White Zetsu and he barely blinked. C followed him, among with Suigetsu — for what they could tell. They kept fighting to find ways to stay in the shadows, small caves, bury themselves in ground, mud walls, everything.
By the day, they fought back, with all they had. Everyday more fellows fell. The caves where being blasted, exploded, the rocks they had at their back were shattered so they were losing the shadows it would cast during the night, the holes they entered and closed with wood and vices were bombed.
So, those who managed to survive the day, died at night. Madara was especially cruel to destroy their shells and havens preferentially at night, when they were hiding.
Sasuke would appear here and there. He wasn't the savior when things got really ugly and it seemed there was no escape — when those moments came, they themselves managed. Sasuke was there like a visitor, like he was there just because he had nothing better to do — like his fucking rinnegan had nothing better to do, like it wouldn't basically save them. He would show up out of the blue, help, because he was as much as a God as Naruto and puff, vanish in the air. Trying to hold onto him was like trying to catch smoke with your hands.
After a particularly nasty night where Sakura lost her wits on her anger because of him, as soon as the moon began to sat, she left the cave they were in and sent a rock bigger than a tree in the direction of Madara that was caught in surprise — and, for the first time, in a long, long time, he spat blood and lost his breath. Sakura didn't waste time celebrating. She sent what was supposed to be a tree and it didn't hit him fully, but he still got hit. He planted his feet in a rock, crouching, trying to access where it was all coming from, once they barely took the offensive anymore and she punched the ground in uttermost strength, the ground exploded, just like it did at the bells test, a nature force
(She would never know, but Kakashi was smiling)
and sent a good 5 km range open. It all trembled as if an earthquake hit them straight in the gut. Madara had his eyes wild, staring at the disheveled pink girl, her eyes, even at the distanced, glowed and, for a moment, he calculated that a punch from her would be worst then from The Beast. It crashed all the soil all the way to where he was seated and further. The place looked like a desert, all the vegetation gone and now it looked like the sertão.
Madara fought back, but something was odd, was beginning to feel odd. Or all they were too used to his fighting style or they were going freakishly strong out of nowhere or Madara was having a bad day or Sakura hit him too hard, but he wasn't that overpowerful.
See, the man was a monster. He was a fucking God and just being is his presence ma de the air cold, and people were dropping day after day after day. The tree was huge. Bigger than anything they ever saw. And everyone was there.
It was just them.
They had the former Hokages by their side, (but all the living Kages fell, leaving only Tsunade), Naruto and Sasuke overpowered, Kakashi-sensei, overpowered Obito, Sakura and her Strength of a Hundred Seal, but they were facing the wrath of a God. An immortal God.
Everyone else has fallen already.
It was just them against Madara. It might seem easy. Ten against one, but the bastard refused to die. If was fucking annoying. Every time they managed to hit him, he raised to his feet.
"Something is wrong with this fucker." Tsunade said in between her breaths. Her pigtails wew a long lost fantasy and she still had her stomach uncovered.
The Hokage looked older. Not just as older as she was, not like the henge fell, but older as in tired, as in almost scared. Tsunade was never scared (She was, Naruto, she was). She was though. She was scary, not scared. Naruto wondered what actually happened to them when he had to leave the five of them to fight Madara.
(Later on he found out she was strong enough to make a Susanoo'o crack, but he put five of those to each of them. He found out too that she used all her med-nin power to heal them all while she was pretty much cut in half. Looking like that, the woman seemed immortal. She wasn't.)
"I know." Was all Tobirama said, his Hitai-ate nowhere to be seen, his shoulders absent of anything but a flak jacket that was ready to fall. His deep voice was deeper and his eyes were harder and angrier than Naruto thought it was possible. He was reincarnated, so he looked scary enough anyway. But, black orbs apart, it seemed that his gaze alone would be enough to tear all pieces off Madara apart.
"What do you mean?" Sakura yelled from where she was. Her face was so dirt her eyes seemed to jump off — she wasn't scared, though. Naruto didn't know if that was good or no. Kakashi used to have that expression.
Madara chose a new fight instance. He divided between two limbo and four kinds Susanoo'o that wasn't all that tall and imponent. The crazy bastard was yelling crazy shit they all were tired to listen to — that shit he kept saying about dance and shit. Dance in hell, you fucker. But he only divided in two limbo clones and the small versions of blue annoying thing.
Which was odd enough in itself. His Susanoo'o, the shit he was so proud about was smaller. It was almost half of its normal size and it wasn't so fast – but it was fast enough, though.
It was odd indeed.
For a man that released twenty five Susanoo'o and was playing with six limbo clones using just this was weird as fuck.
Even his voice seemed odd. Naruto shrugged it off, at first, thinking that maybe it was because he spent an entire month yelling, but his lungs didn't seem to be giving him all the oxygen he needed.
"He is weak." Minato said, his cape didn't have neither sleeves and was ripped in diverse places. "Before, he was fighting like a madman, using everything, throwing things with his infinite chakra. Now, it almost seems like he is holding up."
"Why would he do tha—"
Naruto's phrase was cut when the Susanoo (smaller, but annoying) almost crushed him with his still big ass sword.
They divided themselves in teams that kept in rotation so the man couldn't read and interpreted their pattern of fight. It was risk, but it was their best shot. You need to get familiar with each others fight style, that's what teams are for, but they were good, they were fucking tremendous – and even though Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke weren't elite shinobi (yet) they were doing a fucking great job, thank you very much.
The real Madara was using a distance fighting style, using fire style jutsu more than approaching. He had a huge arsenal, but they had a copy nin — every time the man decided to throw a new jutsu at them, Kakashi assessed his mental arsenal and counterattacked. He hadn't the same strength, but it was fun enough to see Madara burn with rage to see someone a thousand years younger using his own jutsus back at him.
Their fighting style was settled as a defensive one, jumping from here to there and attacking once in a while, more in the goal to distract than cause damage.
The limbo clones were the real issue. But Minato managed to mark them with seals and share it with every single one of them, so every strike of the clones in their direction was a millisecond dodgeable — they almost lost their arms, heads, stomach, lives, but they were doing fine.
Naruto just couldn't wrap his mind on why that was happening. On how it was all happening. For a whole month all he did was survive. He barely fought back. Kakashi-sensei was in a limbo between using some of his Mangekyou power's without the eye itself (the man adapts), but he didn't have the Sharingan anymore. Sakura was monstrous and he didn't have to say anything about the Hokages. And Sasuke.
Fucking Sasuke Uchiha.
All his brother was, he could tell Sasuke would never be. He barely knew Itachi Uchiha, but he could tell the man would never flee even less when he had power enough to help them to win. Yet, his foolish little brother wasn't consumed only on vengeance. He was fucking selfless. People were dying, because no, they weren't just getting caught in the genjutsu. Every now and then, Madara would kill someone just for the sake of it.
The battles in daylight were always the worse. They didn't have to hide and to fight with eyes closed, but Madara could see them and seeing them he could do as he pleased. They were running out everything. The summons were having a hard time on bringing supplies. It wasn't like they had soldiers to send home and bring them supplies. No. They had to deal with what they had. And that meant losing several pounds.
They moved the battlefield the best they could. They began retrieting, trying not to show. It was a silent agreed, but they decided to retreat to the Leaf. Of fucking course Madara noticed, but he didn't care. You could run and run and no matter how far, the moon would catch you. Yet, he wouldn't let anyone rest.
He kept attacking, they kept defending, they kept trying to survive. All and any kind of summon was to be sent to the Leaf, do its best to seal food and medical supplies and drop them. The amount of soldier pills they had to consume would probably leave permanent damage to their gastrointestinal system, but who giver a ratsass. The amount of pills they had to consume would probably leave permanent damage — just asso many other things they had to use.
Naruto anger grew everyday, just as hunger grew in everyone's bellies and just as much the tree seemed to grow with any new person it held captive.
Every new comrade taken was another drop of hatred in the Uzumaki cup of hatred — and it was about to spill.
Everyone was using their abilities, but they wouldn't last that long.
As if reading everyone's mind, Kakashi said. "We can handle this just for a while longer." He was panting. Him, Obito and Sasuke were the ones that fell on the celebration of Madara's hit the bull's-eye. "There is indeed something wrong with him. He is fighting from distance and his clones aren't powerful enough —" His trail of thought was brutally interrupted when the Susanoo'o foot hit Tsunade straight in her gut and sent her flying for 70 meters at least, hitting a big rock that almost fell all over her.
Kakashi's soul made a double twist and bile rose to his mouth, but he thought fast (a genius) and sent a big ass shuriken embed with a purple fire and lightning in the direction of the rock making it explode. His mind was spiralling in the fact that if Tsunade was crushed that would be no Madara with Hashirama cells to save her. He wished, once again, it was him.
Despite blowing the rock small pieces hit her and an annoyingly still big one hit her in her head and she fell to the ground like a heavy potato sack, completely still. Her black adornment vanished from her skin and that, that meant one thing.
(Why, oh fuck, oh why things only mean one thing, one fucking bad thing when it happens? Why it couldn't just mean something like hitting rocks offend the ink so it leaves? Why the absence of chakra means that the people is dead? Why things ever mean one thing? Why is ever the worst thing? Why is always
death)
The Strength of a Hundred Seal only vanished when the owner decides to or when it is forced out of them. Naruto's stomach tightened.
Sakura's scream filled the air and it was they could hear for what seemed miles and miles away and the time seemed to froze.
Until she ignore the limbo clone to run in the direction of her shishou, she received a hit straight in her face, that probably broke her chin and she fell to the floor as well, like a heavy potato sack, but she was still conscious. She spit blood and her face glowed green within seconds and she was again in her feet. When she reached again to run, Kakashi held her by her waist and threw both of them to the ground, building an earth wall moving his hands so fast it wasn't possible to follow with the eyes just in time to hide them from a fireball the size of the rock Tsunade hitted.
In one heartbeat Naruto tucked Tsunade over his shoulder and formed, again, what seemed to be a thousand shadow clones. The real Naruto took Tsunade out of the frontline. His Kurama chakra returned to him and all his clones formed different shaped and colored Rasengan and sent them in the direction of all the threats — the real Madara included.
The moment his strongest clone touched the real man, the moon glowed a pale red and he was gone in a puff of smoke.
"Nice dreams, kid. I am sorry about your Hokage. Quite waspish, she was. Pretty, but death comes to you all."
With that, Madara kicked the bucket and Naruto was torn into rage and grief — he couldn't tell which was screaming louder and it was deafening.
It was the end, he thought. It was the end because Tsunade died and he didn't know how they would escape the genjutsu again. It was night, they couldn't hide like they did for the past two days. All their hiding spots, all their plans were gone already. That was it.
The end.
Naruto braced himself, not knowing what to do, grief and anger eating him — but, for once, Sasuke wasn't so selfish and his Susasoo'o appeared out of nowhere and took them all under its wing, shielding them. Sasuke wasn't nowhere to be seen during the whole fight, over all this last days, but now he showed up. And Naruto wanted to punch him just as much as he wanted to thank him — but mostly punch him.
"You fucker!" Tobirama was pointing a finger at him, a blue envergy raising from his fingers and Sasuke faltered. It Tobirama and it wasn't surprising that he was scolding an Uchiha, but the boy was two thousand years younger and Naruto couldn't care the slightest.
"Tobirama…" Hashirama put a hand in his brother's shoulder, that was glowing blue, his chakra so strong that filled the space of the Susanoo'o wing. The elder brother seemed to be walking in the direction of the Uchiha, but was forced to halt, in shock. "Don't yell at a kid."
"A kid? A kid, Hashirama? By his age everyone here had seen wars and fought them already. He is just an –"
"Inconsequent brat." Kakashi voiced.
They all were killers, assassins. There was no reason to deny it. Maybe, for the first time since Sasuke decided to go rebel angst avenger he felt the weight of his true actions. He didn't have any escape route here. There was no Madara, no Zetsu, Orochimaru, distractions. He was caged. He was caged and Kakashi barked at him, a hungry wolf, drool at his chin and no one wanted to stop him.
Naruto's head was spinning and no matter how much he seemed to enjoy people finally telling Sasuke that he was a spoiled little petty sucker, he broke.
He broke in a way no one ever predicted.
"Why the fuck Madara is even so fucking obsessed with this Infinite Tsukuyomi?"
Even after controlling Kurama's chakra, now Naruto wasn't burning that ugly orange that made him look like a toy that shines neon light in the dark. The neon light made him look more like a candle, a spinning toy, an amusement park. No. Naruto was Pain, right now. Skeleton bones and red noise. He was pure what he was when he didn't have control — he seemed like a beast, an animal, a treat.
It was pure red rage in the air, so strong it hit them as if they stuck their heads in an oven and let it burn them. The ground shook with the impact and the first thing that came to mind was to treat him in a way to take him out of this anger and put him anywhere else. (It didn't fucking work, I spoiler it to you.)
"Hey, boy, watch your language around your father." Tobirama said, that dark tone of his, his arms forever crossed in front of him, but he was now only in a black shirt with shreds of his armour still clung to him, all his uniform was half disintegrated.
"Yes, Naruto, please," Minato began, his voice soft, but strong. "This isn't how – this isn't – isn't how –" his voiced dropped and in the screams it was barely audible.
"How you raised him?" a snarled mocked laugh left Sasuke's lips, the closest thing of a smile playing in the corners. "That you wanted to say, Namikaze, uh?" contemptuous, insolent. "You didn't fucking raised him at all. You died before you could clean the drool from his chin."
"Fuck you." Kakashi's voice was low, so low it sounded pure bass, fuck the baritone, he could touch the ground (only 5% has bass voice) and could raise dust and gold and sand and swallow Sasuke. He turned to him and in that moment the killer all of them never actually truly saw — they were beside him in the battlefield, not standing there and appreciating, the murderer in his eyes, the metalic taste of blood danced on the tongue of them all — shined in his direction and it appeared as everyone hold their breath and took a minimal step back. This wasn't a sensei and his student. This was the legend and the traitor.
(He wouldn't ever know, but there were two pair of eyes sat on Sasuke with the same intensity, but Kakashi had his burden in that moment. He couldn't spare glances, his eyes were daggers filling the floor with Sasuke blood. He wasn't alone though. Blue and green were with him. Sasuke lost them longer than he thought.)
"And yeah, Kakashi, you would know that. Wasn't like your father was there to raise you either." Sasuke said again, but the mockery wasn't so loud. Kakashi might not have his sharingan, but his eyes turned red.
"Hey, you don't have to throw him into this. It isn't him that make it happen to you." was it Obito? Obito defended Kakashi – to save Sasuke's skin (no) or to spare Kakashi's pain?
("Throw it at me, it seemed that Obito was saying. Throw it all at me. I helped to slaughter your clan, kid. I might've not killed your parents, but I did helped to give the street a nice red wash.")
Either way, it just made Naruto turn to him, anger boiling.
"Obito, oh, yeah, I should throw this at you. You were the one that killed my father. You were the reason he died."
"Naruto, you should control your anger. Throwing it at everyone –" Kakashi tried. Kakashi, the pacifist — at heart, because in action he kills more than breathes. Why Kakashi still tries? Why doesn't he rips Sasuke's throat?
"I am not throwing it at everyone, I am throwing it at you! You" did he point to Sasuke or to Kakashi? Why is he mad at Kakashi? "and this fucking psycho." he pointed to Obito, almost closing the space between them and shoving a finger in his chest that would break his rib cage. "Why the fuck is he still here?"
"Why the fuck are you still upset with this?" Sasuke, bitter. Sasuke never understands.
"Why the fuck are you still here?" Naruto bit back at Sasuke, red, orange and blue, the air cutting deep like a kunai.
"Naruto, calm down. This is not the time to be freaking about whomever is — this is exactly what he wants, what Madara —" this time, it was Hashirama, pacifist. No wood, just a fireplace in the summer. Useless.
"This is not what he wants!" Red is scary, Naruto. "What he wants is to control the fucking world! And we don't even know why he is so obsessed with this. I can even understand Obito, ya' know." he turned to the man, mocking him. No one knew Naruto could be cruel, but he could and a lot. He just never, ever showed. He knew how much it hurted, but he wanted to hurt now. Really, really badly. "He couldn't even stand the girl he loved didn't love him back. She loved someone better than him and Obito was a parasite." his gaze fixed in Obito again, his eyes red. "You needed Madara to tell you what to do 'cause you couldn't even think, uh?"
"That's the brightest conclusion that brain of yours managed, Naruto?" Obito was falling apart, white, green, black, no heart, no future. Just a fine Rin-line and Kakashi's pardon. Minato would hug him too and that made Naruto skeleton grow even further and his red vibrating form just broiled them.
"Is that what you think, kiddo? That's what I wanted? You think that I was so self-centered, so stupid? That's what you're telling me?"
"Yes! That's what I want — that I am telling you! I want to fucking spit in your face, fucking Uchiha. You killed my mother, you killed my father, you fucking destroyed all for me, for Kakashi, you made a monster out of me, people hated me, I had to live with this." tears, so hot, streaming down, but evaporating in the anger rolling out of his skin. "Now I have to kill people, I have to kill because of you, I have to kill a bastard that came out alive, came back from the dead just to fucking absorb mortal people and get — get a fucking entire tree? Just to put everyone to dream so he can — what the fuck does he even want with this?"
"I don't —" Obito, confuse, defeat.
"Oh, no. No, no, excuse me, I'm sorry. No, no, no! You don't know it, you don't know anything about this. He never told you! He kept like — like training you, for what, Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto waved his arms to catch Kakashi attention "how long it was that Obito died?" he didn't wait for an answer "Oh, yeah, something like eighteen years, with this twisted fantasy, fucking around and messing with people's heads and he didn't ever tell you why he wanna come up with —"
"Naruto, calm down!" Kakashi ordered, didn't plead.
"I won't cal— "
"Stop!" Sakura, all pink, all red, all black, fused in blood and tiredness, her sensei at her feet, a thousand strengths worth in her skin.
"You weren't there!" Naruto yelled at Kakashi, accusing him, finally, not knowing whom was who, whom to blame, who abandoned him and his parents, his life.
"It was not his fault." Minato tried again, his own anger there. Kakashi never saw him angry before.
"Oh, oh-ho!" Naruto half shouted, half laughed it off with no humour at all. He was fucking losing it.
"Shut up!" Sasuke, all black and purple, in the deity of his red and black spirals, interrupted the discussion not about him because he couldn't stand being in the shadows.
"You shut the fuck up!" Sakura, all pink and anger.
"Show some respect." Sa-su-ke, slippery, thinking he still owned her, tried. Show me some respect, Sakura.
Kakashi threw a kunai with explosive tags at him, one he barely dodged, oh so arrogant he was. His eyes, purple and red, widened, like he was betrayed even if he was the traitor to them all. His black hair framed his face like a framework of a medieval painting lost in time: beautiful, trying too hard to be terrifying, but the time ate it out. His sword was in his hand and Kakashi's tanto shined white in the air — White Fang, Chio yelled while he tried to explain himself, his chest probably aching as much as Naruto's did all the times he thought about his father. He didn't know Kakashi used his tanto again. Obito moved too, wounded nevertheless his spinning wheels eye was alive and angry. If a fight took place there it wouldn't be friendly.
"Stop this!" a thunderstorm yelled.
Tobirama Senju was a quiet man, but right there, only two words, only a finger raised and Sasuke remembered his grandeur back when he brought the four back.
His figure was surrounded by blue and power. The Third Hokage shrunk — the man was his sensei once. Not even Hashirama moved this time. Now they weren't the Hokage's disputing. No. It was the older and wiser of them. Tobirama was the older brother, the sensei, the Second Hokage. He was someone worth bowing to.
Through his blind hatred for the Uchiha many took him for just obsessed and forgot his raw power — but in that moment only two words was all it took for all to shut. Still, he looked at Naruto less than a minute later giving him his blessing — clean your soul, kid it said. Naruto deserved it, after all.
"Drop this, Naruto. Please." Sakura turned her eyes, that no longer looked all that green and naïve — she didn't look like the girl he once loved. Green tea looked too much like honey bums now. She looked too much like Tsunade like that, bearing too much in her shoulders, him himself included, trying to save him, stop him.
"Stop it, Sakura." Naruto couldn't bear being saved by them.
"Naruto —" neither being pitied by Kakashi.
"Shut the fuck —" he turned to his sensei, hot tears in eyes again and they were as red as the sharingan that drowned them to this mess.
"Naruto! Enough! Show him some fucking respect! He was your sensei and —"
"And? Why should I show some respect, dad? He wasn't there." his voice was hoarse, but the fight wouldn't die soon.
(there
\ ˈt͟her \ is an adverb. learn to pronounce: in the UK is /ðeər/ in the US is /ðer/ and who the fuck cares.
"there" to Naruto meant the day his parents died. Where, maybe, someone could've done something. Not just them; not just his mom and dad. There is no way to know if that would've changed something. It would forever be a butterfly flapping its wings. But Naruto couldn't stand the idea that no one was there, because, if someone was indeed there, the only thing they did was watch his parents die. And that was unforgivable.)
"He was there." this time it was Hiruzen who spoke, his voice so raucous as if he forgot how to speak even before his death.
"Who the fuck are you to tell this, God of Shinobi? You weren't there."
"He was there." Kakashi insisted on that, but there was venom in his voice. The way charcoal looked down the whole gray man made Naruto shiver — Kakashi was a man of strict following rules and that included the respect, but his eyes showed he despised the former Hokage. For some reason if comforted Naruto.
"He wasn't there." Naruto denied, talking about Hiruzen. His voice was shaky.
Being confronted with the fact that people just watched his parents die was as painful as looking at Obito in the eye.
"He was there." his father confirmed.
Naruto mouthed "no", perplexed and angry. How many times can one person fail you and stand in front of you as if nothing happened, without apologizing? He didn't know whom he should ask first, but his eyes flew to Sasuke.
"He was there, then. Good. And did precisely what he did through my whole life: nothing." sometimes the silence is deafening.
Hiruzen lowered his head and prayed for losing his tongue, biting it out and bleeding his entire past. He was to blame for so much of that. He knew from the beginning and never did anything. He could feel his sensei's eyes all over him, but he couldn't face him. Tobirama's disappointment tears your worse than a thousand daggers and suffocates you to a point of no return until you can no longer separate what once was your dignity from the reproach you turned into.
Danzo once suffered from it.
He didn't do nothing then either.
Naruto didn't have to know that.
He mouthed again, "no". A person can't disappoint you that much and not blast into dust.
(Sasuke was still standing, wasn't he? But the Third Hokage would disappear into dust as soon as the jutsu broke so technically he built a roster of delusion in Naruto's chest herein so many others. People sometimes turn to clay, powder and you just don't see. [Sometimes, too, what the eyes don't see, the heart doesn't feel. At least, that's what his heart hold onto despairingly)
"He wasn't there." Naruto accused again.
Silence. So the anger boiled, like soup to the sniffing nose in the winter.
"He came in with troops to watch your death and that's it?" once again, Tobirama was blue and Hiruzen was nothing but a hole in space — a hole Naruto went to punch. He turned to Kakashi instead.
"You were there."
It was a charge.
The silence meant guilty.
This time, Naruto punched him.
"Naruto, don't!" Minato began to run to his side, but Kakashi already hit the wall/Susanoo'o and taking deep breaths, cleaning the blood from his mouth, only lifted his hand laying on his side trying to get up. He didn't refuse Obito's hand when he offered nor Sakura's glowing hand.
"I didn't do anything neither." Kakashi said, resigned. As always; as always, carrying the blame for all that happens in the world.
"Stop it." it was Sakura to hiss.
It is incredible how easily a woman can be forgotten, even when she was healing a comrade just seconds ago.
All eyes turned to her.
She was no longer a liability.
"Drop it, Kashi. Just fucking stop it. Stop this pity party."
The world slowed its pace around them, her eyes hard, mad and his eyes between defiance and assuming it. It didn't have to be spoken to be understandable.
It was like the bottom of a giant puzzle finally trying to fit, finally trying to show an image and that small, tiny shit seemed to bright. For Minato, Obito and Naruto seeing someone that was always held so fragile to be so hard and settled, with enough resolve to put Kakashi to at least think to stop would be lifting a burden.
But Tsunade was still at their feet and Tsunade was the one that healed Kakashi from Itachi's Tsukuyomi and Kakashi and Sakura understood that, no words needed, when they looked at his eyes. One burden half one, a huge one new.
And then
"What the fuck is going on here?" for once, Sasuke asked something worth listening.
(What the fuck is going on here? Here was too much happening all at once. All the conflicts were meeting tere. Naruto with his father, Naruto with Obito, with Kakashi, with the Hokages, with his whole life. Sakura with Sasuke, Sasuke with Naruto, Kakashi and Sakura. Sakura and Naruto. Hiruzen and Tobirama. Tobirama over everyone. Kakashi and Obito. Fights for power, over fairness, friendship, arrogance, loss, everything was meeting here and here was a fucking terrible place to have this discussion.)
"Shut the fuck up, Sasuke!" Sakura pointed a finger at him, her eyes so wild he recoiled but stepped in front again.
"I ain't even talking to you –"
"Drop dead." was all Kakashi said and turned his back to him. Honestly, even if the line sounded like teenager-esque, it wasn't the time to bicker with him like a twelve year old. Sasuke looked so much like Madara when Hashirama arrived at the field and didn't have time to play warfare with him.
Sasuke is a fucking crybaby and everyone is sick of it.
Sasuke would never see Sakura as an person, leave it alone as an opponent, so she took it in her favour and feasted in her favourite genjutsu — a particularly nasty one. See it as a payment for all the times he tried to end her life and then just turned her back as if she was dust.
In six quick hand signs, Sakura turned to him in one swift motion he didn't notice because he never notice her and never would think of her as a menace. He dropped at the floor – caught in a genjutsu. If it was the proper time, Kakashi would have smiled.
Tsunade was pale, Kakashi was broken, his father dead.
"You!" Naruto pointed again at Obito, hissing like the snake Orochimaru is.
"Enough, Naruto." Kakashi sensei's voice dripped all around and truth was that Naruto looked just like in his first day: yellow, orange, loud and dying to prove his worth, wanting nothing more than help, save, but he was lost. That Naruto long ago was lost and so was this one.
"No! Not enough. No fucking enough. You were there, Kakashi-sensei. You were there and you did nothing!"
Caught in surprise, this time Obito was the one to take a blow. He flit some meters and came to a halt, sand in his eyes, his knees scraped, the punches Kakashi threw at his stomach still hurt. The punches he threw because he didn't want to kill him.
That boy with the red eyes and tails trying to find someone to blame sounded too much like himself. He sounded too much like sunken in blood as he was the night he found Rin. When everything went off.
(Naruto wasn't one to lose his nerve. Tobirama wasn't one to intervene in fights, Hiruzen wasn't one to shrink, Minato wasn't to get angry, Kakashi wasn't to threaten, Sasuke wasn't to let be put on menace over a kunai, Sakura wasn't to impose herself – not against Sasuke, Hashirama wasn't to let Tobirama's temper win. The only think in place was Obito now. When Naruto offended him, he defended himself. When he was yelled at, he yelled back. When Naruto hurt him, he
bled.
Naruto was already losing his shit over his responsibility for the dead ones. If he kept like that, he wouldn't survive. Obito always wondered how Kakashi made it that far. He wondered, more than often than he liked to admit, how he could make survival of a raw, awful thing be so
beautiful.)
"It wasn't that simple —" Hopeless swam in Minato's eyes.
"Fuck it. He was there and he did jack shit —"
That seemed to be the eternal motif: the hangman.
Not one, but all that caused his parents death. Therefore, the ones that, even with his new powers, still stole him the chance to see his mother and his sensei. Thus, the ones that stole him all he always envied. Yet, he did not see what was right in front of his eyes: one of the headsman was one of the hanged and he was poking him with sticks made of flame. (And Kakashi was letting him, as he always does. Stop this pity party, was what she said. Maybe, someday he will be able to.)
The first Hokage cut the air like a blade cutting through crunched leaf: easily but too loud.
"Madara's still here?"
There was an urge in his words that was lost to only Naruto and his father. The air went full with static and small, teeny rays ran from the ground to the skin (which should be impossible, once the earth doesn't convey lightening. This was no ordinary shit.) making uncomfortable goosebumps raise.
"Did you, First God of Shinobi?" what the fuck is he even talking about, Hashirama thought.
"Stop talking to people like that, Naruto!" Minato hissed, but that didn't matter anymore.
"WHY SHOULD I?" As his voice sounded like a thunderstorm it couldn't be comparable to his brother's – Naruto's was made of nature's energy, like the Earth itself was giving him some piece of its power to roar, to make the ground tremble.
At the same time there was another thunderstorm, just as potent. Only Naruto didn't notice, but his covered the whole sound outside his bubble. His eyes appeared to never have been blue at all and would never be again. His hair was wild and couldn't be tamed, like Kakashi's, but he didn't cary that safe sensation like that. No. He just looked like the dangerous whisper he was as a kid.
(As a second thought, for a fly of second, it occurred to Sakura that Kakashi also was once a dangerous whisper. When she looked at his profile her chest was filled with peace and safety, like a harbor. Being with him was like being in security of home, of a port and yet she knew that ships weren't made to that. And even with that being recognized she knew very well he could be a powder keg or barrel beer and sail with hair. Just as a dangerous whisper.)
The air outside, the impending danger went quiet.
That was a mistake.
"This is not you at all…" Sakura was pleading. She hated to plead.
"Shut up, you – you – all. Shut up, shut up!"
"Naruto, stop! You are not this kind of person."
"Why not?" a twelve year old boy. "Why not, why not, why not?" lost, tied, without lunch, his eternal rival and his crush by his side. "I've been Naruto,"the kunai tucked in his hand, a promise made in blood. "the good," calling Sasuke a scary cat, holding a giant snake at his back, smiling not for revenge but for relief. "smiling boy all the time." mastering the Rasengan, at the cost of almost killing Sakura. "Why do I have to keep like that when people are dying?" saving Sakura from Sasuke's hands. "When they are continuing to die?" being saved by Sakura's hands.
"Naruto, stop! This isn't you."
To Kakashi, every word of Naruto's was splintered with imagery — pure torture inside his own head.
"This isn't a fairytale, Sakura, this isn't like fighting in the Academy to train."
His mother, a face he didn't really remembered. But the howls of his father over her bed were as loud as the screams of birth and death.
"This is real life."
The first time he killed. It was a man. He was three. He didn't mean to, it was an accident. His father told him they should bury the body, but there was no time. Another enemy appeared and Kakashi gained his first scar. But the true terror was his father's blood covering his eyes and fogging his sight.
"This is fucking more."
How cold and stiff his father's body felt at his feet. He had just come back from Academy, after a short mission. It was supposed to take three days, but with him it only took half. Kakashi made dinner and called for his father. The soup was completely cold when Minato found him.
"People will die."
He was pretty sure he lost his eyesight, but when he saw Obito's eyes in a red turmoil he felt no pain and just relief. He finally came in therms with the boy he known for all this years. They didn't need to speak to know they recognized themselves as what they were denying all along – best friends. They've been in so many situations already and camaraderie grows you like it or not. So when the rock remove the light of his body and the eye of his life, he felt like a blade through his torso, cutting him in two.
"They will and will and will continue to die — and, and their — all — theirs — there is their blood in my hands"
Rin. Rin, Rin, Rin. She haunted him for so long. He lost the count of the nightmares. He decided that going into a work that dealt with no feelings at all was the best and only thing left for him. He would not only never forgive himself, but never forget. The feeling, the sickening feeling. He was way too young to know that feeling way too well. Her body, her blood, her bones, her eyes, her last word, his name never let sleep. The pills and the alcohol helped, but time never heals, it just replaces memories – but some never leave.
"and even worse this is your hands and you're continue not to talk about this."
Minato. Kushina. Small Naruto in the middle. He couldn't see, but he knew Minato summoned the Shinigami. His sensei was sacrificing himself for the better good. For his child, his wife, his village. Kakashi never hated the land he was born so much as that day. He saw the long claw of the fox through the chest of the only family he came to know, to see the life leaving their eyes, see them talking to their son for the first and last time in their lives. He could never talk to the boy. There were days he sat in a tree near to the kid's apartment and would repeat what they said, as if he could hear it. Everytime that yellow hair walked around the streets his heart clenched and his sensei was all he saw. His death. The splash of yellow, red and orange. For once, the Yellow Flash of the Leaf was not fast enough to save the love of his life and his son. He jumped in front of the claw, but they both died together.
(Kakashi wished that if he ever come to love anyone that he had to die with them or it would kill him slowly. Be it a fang in his heart, but to find what he love and let it kill him slowly — but never before him.)
"All of this is bullshit and I am tired to talk and to talk and to talk just to see if I can put some fucking sense in their minds."
Itachi and the massacre. Itachi and his thirteen years, his ANBU mask over his head and a smile in his face. Itachi and the smile he wished he could touch under the white porcelain that day in the treetops after they tricked Shisui's crow. Itachi and the hair ruffle he gave the boy to soothe him from the world he so pretended to not be afraid of Itachi.
Looking at Sasuke the only resemblance he could see was the hair and the pointy, elegant, womanly pale face. But not only a cell held any similarity. Itachi was the man Sasuke wouldn't even be able to dream of reaching.
"I am tired to be the one that has to do everything." Naruto finished.
As he stopped speaking the whole electricity came back in a jolt, throwing them out of their feet.
"Fuck." Kakashi inveighed as Tsunade's unconscious body fly to a open space and was about to hit a massive rock that would finish killing her, if she wasn't already dead. Tobirama was faster (because he truly was) and caught her midair.
He turned to them smiling. Sakura was on fire, ready to burn him for smiling over her dead shishou but then she smiled on her own and none of them ever saw such a big smile on her face.
"She is alive." she nothing but whispered, turning her face to look at Naruto and Kakashi, tears in her eyes and that huge smile. They were smiling back, relief washing their faces, their hearts back on their usual rhythm.
And then Madara simply fucking vanished.
(Three seconds later, so did Sasuke.)