A/N: I...am so deeply sorry for the lateness of this. To anyone still reading, I'm grateful for any time and attention you've given this story, in spite of my many delays and dumb apologies.
As always, I own nothing and am making zero money.
Naruto
Four hours and two whole bundles of yarn in, and Naruto finally snapped.
"What the fuck!" He thought about throwing his hands in the air to really emphasize the 'fuck', but Kushina made a short growling sound above her clacking needles, and it made even Naruto second-guess the wisdom of disrupting the teal-colored bundle he was holding. "What is this! What are we doing! Why are we doing it!"
Minato lifted a lazy hand from his spot on the couch and checked the watch on his wrist. "Total meltdown at four hours and fifteen minutes. Kushina, my dearest love, you owe me twenty bucks."
"What the hell," Kushina complained back, eyes fixed on the blueish-green yarn she was purling between her needles, head ducked low over her work. "Kid, you had to pick today to demonstrate previously unseen depths of patience? You couldn't have had your total meltdown twenty minutes in, like I predicted?"
"Like I want you to win a bet! Dad buys me ice cream every time he wins money off of you! Whenever you win, you just get more of those porn-books that you and Kakashi-Sensei love so much, and then you read them to me. Out loud. Using character voices."
"Yeah, I really think my High Lord of Questionable Morals and Suspect Intentions voice is going places."
"Works on me," Minato agreed.
Kushina made a 'hmm' sound over her knitting, in Minato's direction. "More importantly: are you trying to buy my child with foodstuffs?"
Minato grinned back at her, smug. "I'm one bowl of ramen away from getting a better nursing home than you when the time comes."
"What a totally underhanded and despicable way to earn our only son's affections. This High Lord is gonna take your clothes off with her teeth, later, okay?"
Naruto howled with real anguish, rending at his own hair with yarn-wrapped fingers, squirming on the footstool he'd been planted on since the early afternoon.
"We've been sitting here for hours! The sun is going down! My ass is totally numb and squished and if I lose the ass, then I lose my best chance at Sakura choosing to be the loving but firm marriage partner that I so obviously need!"
Minato made a politely curious sound. "Your best chance with Sakura is your ass?"
"Eventually, I'll win her over with ramen and my winning personality," Naruto explained. "But for now, her real appreciation is for the ass. I've noticed this."
"Atta girl," Kushina said, as she looped another inch of yarn. "Keep those priorities straight."
But again, she didn't look up from her knitting.
It was weird. His mom was acting weird.
And not her normal, 'what the fuck, why would it even occur to you to wake Naruto up on Christmas morning with a carol played on a rusty trumpet—where did you even get a trumpet' kind of weird.
She'd let Naruto sleep way late after his bad dream the night before, not even bothering to wake him up with a bellow for breakfast that rattled the floorboards, as was her usual weekend way. Left undisturbed, Naruto hadn't stumbled out of bed until just past one in the afternoon, and then his mom had made him her 'extra-special, only when you're sick or when the scrapbook of school infraction letters hits a new group of ten, I think there might be illegal substances in here they taste so good' waffles. And after that, she'd herded him and Minato into the living room using a terrifying mix of maniacal good humor and a smile that promised murder if they refused, and enacted 'family knitting time'.
Knitting. Like, Naruto was aware that his mom knew how to knit. She'd always said, 'Why wouldn't I love a hobby that involves sharp objects and your Dad's visible despair when I make him something ugly on purpose' and then smiled with all her teeth when Minato made a sad, tiny 'I did something wrong in a past life to deserve loving you so much in this one' sound. But she'd always done her knitting alone, because Naruto was 'worse than a baby kitten when I bring my yarn out, look at all these shredded threads, Minato let's get a laser pointer and aim it at the wall I bet it'll be hilarious'.
And she wasn't…making anything that Naruto recognized. And he recognized a lot, because his baby pictures were like a super weird and upsetting modern art collection probably titled something like 'how many stupidly ugly hats and mittens can I make and force my child to wear before he knows any better'. But this knitting project didn't have any ears or googly eyes or deeply upsetting smiling mouths that looked like they ate souls for dinner and made Naruto's pre-school teacher cry. This was just a long strand of knitted yarn, like a scarf but not, bleeding from the forest green they'd started with into the teal they were almost done with now.
So, yeah. This was…a new thing. A special strangeness. A hitherto untold kind of fuckery that Naruto was absolutely going to get the drop on, or die trying.
"I'm just letting you know," Naruto informed all and sundry, eyes narrowed. "Like, fair warning. I am on to your bullshit. There is bullshit here, and I am on to it."
Minato blinked up at him over the newspaper he was reading. And that was another strangeness. Naruto's dad was reading the newspaper. They didn't even get the newspaper anymore—the delivery boy had been flat-out refusing to get anywhere near their house after that one time, with the potato gun and the paper hats. But there his dad was, deeply buried in the Arts and Entertainment section, idly crinkling a picture of two smiling people on the back page.
Naruto blinked down at his own hands. Because they were covered with yarn, but for a split second, it had looked like his arms were, too, all the way up to his elbows.
"We've been sitting here for hours," he repeated. He squirmed again on his footstool, struck by a sudden uptick in his urge to move. The yarn was itching at his skin now, like ants. "I…let's do something else, okay?"
"Like what?" Minato asked. "And I only ask because our list of allowable activities has been limited by Fire Chief Takashi and his gentle explanation that if he has to visit our house for a third time this month to confront untold flammable horrors, he will have a nervous breakdown."
Kushina made a sound like 'pffft'. "Weak."
Naruto snorted out a laugh, but then stopped when a shadow cut across the living room.
"The sun's going down," he repeated, and furrowed his brow. The words tasted like a revelation, like a surprise, and Naruto couldn't figure out why. Didn't the sun go down every day?
"I wish we could," Kushina said. "Do something else. But, I—I have to finish this."
There was something in her voice. A catch? The beginnings of an angry growl?
"Mrrrgh," Naruto whined, because he wanted to move.
He…needed to move. It felt like an urgency coming from outside himself. Which…what the fuck?
"Kid, I don't want to pull the 'mom guilt-trips teen who probably just wants to see his friends into having unwanted family time instead' card. Except that I'm totally gonna pull the 'mom guilt-trips teen who probably just wants to see his friends into having unwanted family time instead' card." Kushina's mouth tugged a little to the side. "I…I'm sorry. I don't…I wish I didn't. Have to do it. Fuck."
Guilt burned through Naruto's stomach like acid. Which was weird, too. Because, normally, he would have bellowed something like 'I've got a best friend to snuggle and a girl to gaze at with respectful love and devotion, go play High Lord with Dad if you're feeling so needy!' and his mom would have bellowed something back like 'maybe I will! Minato, go clutch a bed sheet to your chest like a blushing ingénue and swoon with maidenly desire for me!' and his dad would have rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling and visibly prayed for deliverance.
But, for some reason, the words clicked together in Naruto's throat, dry and uncertain, and what came out instead was a quiet, "I…Mom. It's…okay."
Something itched across his biceps now, tight and constricting. More yarn? But the teal was nearly gone. Naruto was barely even holding it. But then, his mom produced a fresh bundle of blood-red, and the process began all over again.
Except that Naruto couldn't banish the urge to move. It almost felt like a voice, or voices, were shouting inside his head.
Get up. Move. Naruto, move.
"Should I be alarmed?" he wondered out loud. Because he always told his parents everything. Didn't he? "If there are voices, like, yelling inside my head?"
"Normally?" Minato asked back. "I'd say yes. In this family? It's whatever. It's probably the Ghost of Kushina's Bellowing Past."
His hands crinkled the back page of the newspaper again. For the tiniest fraction of a second, the two smiling people in the picture looked like they were screaming instead. Mouths wide, eyes bulging, staring directly at Naruto instead of at whoever was holding the camera. It only lasted for a heartbeat, and then they were smiling again. Must have been a trick of the light, but Naruto's blood still ran cold, for some reason.
Move. Move. You fucking dumbass, we couldn't get you to sit still for years, and this is when you finally decide to develop the capacity for it?
"It…might be," Naruto agreed, but the words felt sticky in his mouth. Thick and sludgy and wrong. "The voice seems…wow, really fucking rude, what the hell."
But Kushina didn't laugh or swat at Naruto with her foot or declare her victory in an everlasting legacy as the super rude voice in Naruto's head. Her mouth just tugged a little more, visibly unhappy.
Another shadow slid across the living room as the sun sank a little lower in the sky. It was reddening now, changing colors with the impending sunset. But…wait. The sky around it wasn't red. The sky was black. Only the sun was red. Red like fire. Like blood.
Like the yarn in Naruto's hands. Around his arms? His shoulders? His throat?
Move. Fuck, Naruto. You have to move!
"Something's wrong." If his words before were sludge, these were concrete. The effort of getting them up, forcing them out, left him sweating, shaking, flushing hot and then cold. "Something…something is…"
Move. Move. Move.
Naruto knew that voice. He couldn't put a name to it—it was like there was a wall in his head, with enough cracks to let a trickle of familiarity through, but absolutely blocking anything else. But he did know that voice. He did.
"Something…Mom."
Slowly, finally, his mom looked up from the yarn.
Her face was twisted and strained, like she was…fighting something? Her eyes were wet. The yarn was wet. She was…crying? Crying on the threads? Why hadn't Naruto noticed before now? Why hadn't he…?
"Something's wrong," she agreed. "I'm sorry. Sweetheart, I'm so sorry."
Naruto couldn't breathe. Because…the thread. It was around his throat. His arms. His legs. Creeping across his midsection like ropes, tight and constricting, sinking into the carpet in a way that shouldn't have been possible. Naruto could see it now, the way the threads hooked into the floor, became a part of the floor, became something binding and unbreakable.
His mom had been knitting him a cocoon. A coffin.
"I'm sorry," his dad echoed on a quiet murmur. He folded his paper in half and now it was full of screaming faces, contorted expressions and horrifically wide eyes, the words around the pictures running like blood. "This isn't us. We wouldn't…you have to understand that we never would have…not for real."
"We love you," his mom countered. "That's for real. In here, out there. Okay? Just…hold on to that."
But she didn't stop knitting. Her face was contorted like one of the newspaper pictures, and Naruto wondered if she was able to stop knitting.
"Out there," Naruto repeated. "Out there. Where your love is, but you're…not?"
"Don't know what the fuck your kindergarten teacher was on about. You're plenty smart."
Minato hummed a little. "Might have been the way he refused to say the letter 'W' when they were learning the alphabet."
"Whatever. I thought his argument for 'W' being a 'scary letter with too many sharp points' was totally valid."
The words hit Naruto's already burning chest like a punch. Because the memory was there—in his parent's words, in his own head. But it felt hollow. Empty. Drenched in red like the sun, like the thread tightening around his throat and locking him in place.
"How many times?" he rasped. The ache in his throat had nothing to do with the thread around it. His eyes were wet and burning, but not because of his dwindling air supply. "How many times have I lost you guys?"
Fresh tears tracked down his mom's face, staining the grimace as she tried to force her hands to stop. "More times than is fair to you. And, trust me, Kid, I'm gonna find a way to exact painful vengeance for that, figment of some bullshit or not."
Naruto. Get up. You have to get up!
Naruto wheezed. "But someone…they're here for me. Someone."
His mom smiled. It was sad and desperate and maybe a little bit guilty too—because Naruto was here, and any version of herself, imagined or otherwise, wanted that. "They are. Bless them, they are."
Naruto. Please.
"I'm not—," it was a dizzying thing, a wondrous burst of light inside his head, something that made his voice small and shaky and soft, "I'm not alone."
"You're not," his dad said, his own wet eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled.
"You're not alone," his mom said, fierce and final, like a promise. Like a guarantee. But her eyes were wide in her paling face, and desperate. "You're not. But they need to hurry. Sweetheart, the sun is going down."
A/N: Next up-Sasuke's POV: Fuck you, it's only the power of friendship if I admit to having any friends. Happy Reading!