The Family Business
Tycho Kouros

"Please, someone! Help me!" she screamed between loud moans of pain. She had been home from the market, when suddenly the labor pains began. She had tried to find someone to take her to the hospital, but made it only another block before the pain had taken her to the ground.

"Anyone!" A police officer walked up to her, unsure of what to do. As he tried to help her, tried to get her to transportation, a crowd gathered around them.

Fifteen minutes later, amid a crowd of onlookers, silenced beneath her loud wails of pain, she was giving birth to a baby boy. The officer held the bloody bundle in his arms, the baby shaking in the cold of the night. He handed it to her. A weak smile graced her lips.

"My baby..."

A doctor, retrieved from a nearby market by one of the onlookers, came running – just as her eyes began to cloud. He told the officer to the take the baby and wrap it to keep it warm, checking her pulse. But it was too late. As the officer handed the baby to one of the people in the crowd to help the doctor with the quickly fading woman, the man looked down at the bundle – golden hair, brilliant blue eyes.

As the doctor rose, the policeman shaking his head, the baby boy began to cry. The policeman turned, grumbling, "Sucks to be that kid."

He swatted at the hand shaking his shoulder, pulling the pillow over his head as he shifted and attempted to find sleep. The hand snaked beneath the covers and continued shaking him.

"Naruto, wake up!" He finally let out a deep breath and sat up, easing as his aching muscles whined for being used.

" 'M up, 'Ruka. 'M up..." As he rubbed his eyes and focused his vision, he met the concerned face of Iruka, watching him.

"How do you feel?" He rubbed his stomach, cringing as a familiar pain ran through tired nerves, worn from the night before – during which they'd spent reminding him of his most recent encounter with soldiers.

"Better. Is there food?" a sad smile flashed across Iruka's face.

"We have bread. I'll bring it to you." Naruto stopped him before reached the door. He knew the bread Iruka was referring to – the single slice of bread. And he couldn't eat break he knew he was taking from Iruka. Iruka only smiled. They'd gone through this before – enough times for the verbal aspect of the exchange to be unnecessary.

"I'll share it with you." Naruto nodded his approval, and Iruka left him to dress – his clothes folded, sitting in the chair by the wall, the most recent tears patched. Naruto ran his hand over the patch gently. He was thankful Iruka had taken the time to think of him, but he felt guilty, knowing that Iruka couldn't afford the materials. He pulled on his clothes, and headed into the kitchen to share his piece of bread.

His half sat on a plate, by half a glass of water. Iruka was busy packing his graded papers into his bag, his breakfast already finished. Naruto chewed on the bread, sipping the water – anything to make it seem like more than it was. Iruka glanced at Naruto, who was watching him closely.

"What's wrong?" Naruto drew in a deep breath.

"Why don't you let me?" Iruka didn't answer at first, growing quiet, refusing to meet Naruto's gaze.

"Because, Naruto. I don't want you getting killed. We're fine as we are."

"We could be better." Iruka walked across the small apartment, pulling the blond's body against his own.

"Naruto, you're worth more to me than any loaf of bread." he whispered.

"What about cheese?" Naruto was quick to flash a toothy smile at Iruka's shocked expression, enjoying the way Iruka seemed to brighten at the joke.

"More than cheese, too. We'll be fine, Naruto. I get more food tickets in two days. And I'll find us some dinner to eat tonight. I don't want you to worry." Iruka picked up his bag and opened the door, quickly throwing over his shoulder, "And I don't want you stealing anything!"

"Iruka –"

"No!" With that final word, Iruka walked out and closed the door behind him, leaving the blond alone in the dirty apartment.

Naruto walked down the street, hands in his pockets, heading towards the kennels to meet his best friend, Kiba. Kiba's family had a long history of working with animals, so he and his family were the most highly recommended to help take care of the German attack dogs. They were lucky – unemployment was widespread in the city. Another of his friends, Shikamaru, had already secured a job at a library. Iruka was able to keep his job as a teacher, though the pay was slowly beginning to starve them both to death – though, everyone was starving. To blame it on his job wouldn't be fair.

While the food tickets kept food at affordable prices, they didn't create food out of thin air – they did nothing to rectify the food shortage that plagued the city. Food storages dwindled during the fight to repel the Nazi army; the loss and occupation proved to kick the failing food productions while they were down, throwing the city into shortage.

The occupation didn't help at all – everywhere he looked, soldiers strutted around, assault rifles slung over their shoulders with pride. Those rifles were the ultimate food tickets – they were tickets to cut in line, steal from those who had managed to find food, and silence anyone who dared to protest.

Naruto would know – he'd been on the receiving end of a rifle butt enough times to know, intimately, just how much retribution came with speaking too loud or mumbling the wrong words. He was at least grateful to have been on the safer side of the rifle – it seemed every day, the list of victims by the hands of bored Nazi soldiers grew. He, again, knew that fact all too well – being an orphan, a poor orphan, dressed in tattered clothes, seemed to just beg soldiers to beat him up for their own amusement. After the second attack had left him with a deep gash in his arm and a busted lip, he made it a point to try and make it to Iruka's apartment before dark. Sometimes, however, he pushed his luck in order to catch a piece of local gossip at a neighborhood cafe. And it would be on the walk home that his luck would remind him not to be pushed too far – delivery via a rifle butt to the stomach and a knee to the face.

He rubbed his jaw, still sore from the previous night's encounter with a kraut. It had been raining, and he'd decided to stay underneath an overhang until the worst of the storm passed. The soldiers, however, weren't so lucky, and it seemed that their wet uniforms made them irritable; anger which they decided to take out on him. Cuts and bruises decorated his torso from the abuse – punches when he tried to stand, kicks when he was knocked back down. It was a particularly brutal beating, if his limp was anything to go by.

"Damn, man, you got wailed on!" Naruto looked up to see a chuckling Kiba, his dog Akamaru in tow.

"Yeah, ran into some pissy krauts on the way home..."

"Well, your head does bounce off of concrete real nice. And your cheeks are squishy, too." Kiba emphasized his point by poking the cheeks, at which Naruto swatted furiously. Kiba laughed at the reaction.

"Oh, did you hear about the new officers that got transferred last night?" Naruto shook his head. He always counted on Kiba to keep him informed on the going-ons of the Nazi occupation. "Man, we got some badasses! One's a real psychopath! I hear he does some messed up shit to people that get captured. And the other's a real hardass! Some of the soldiers were calling him 'the raven', because he's always in black even when he's not in uniform, and that whenever he shows up somewhere, it only means bad luck for any of the soldiers that seem him – like a raven!"

"I'm sure they're exaggerating –"

"No! Like, apparently when he arrived at midnight last night, and an hour later, they say he was stalking the streets looking for people to kill! And that when he has people killed, he has their body taken to his house and he prepares the body and eats them, just like how a raven eats dead animals! That's why he doesn't order many people killed – he picks them for taste. And when he does kill them, he has them killed in ways that preserve the taste."

"Yeah, yeah, and I'm sure he flies off into the night making a God-awful sound, just like a raven does, too, right?"

"Naruto, don't be stupid." The blond only chuckled at his friend's imagination. "You have to admit though, with stuff they say about what the Nazis do, it might be possible." he whispered, careful not to let anyone around him hear – for fear of them being a Gestapo informant. Naruto only shrugged, walking with Kiba to the cafe they hung out in, where they served free pie to anyone who looked pitiful enough – and between Naruto's clothes and Akamaru's sad eyes, they always managed free pie.

It was late by the time he left the cafe – he'd meant to leave earlier, but he simply lost track of time. It wasn't until the sun had set that he realized his mistake. He ran hard, knowing Iruka would worry about him if he were late again. Feet pounded the stone streets. Their apartment was only a few blocks away, and he'd managed to avoid any patrols. He felt home-free, until –

"Well look who it is! The little street rat's back to give us another good time!" Naruto froze, staring terrified into the faces of the men from the night before. He'd made a horrible mistake – he should have remembered to avoid that particular street at the same time as the night before. It was only a moment of regret, though, before soldiers start forward towards him, and all that left his mind as his survival instincts kicked in. He turned the corner and made a dash for an alley – his only chance of escape would be to make it into the alley and hopefully find a fence he could climb; soldiers were surprisingly finicky about tearing ripping their uniforms trying to climb fences. The alley, however, proved instead to be only a dead end, as he collided with the stone of the wall – hard – while his head was turned to watch for his pursuers.

His breath knocked out of his lungs, his head dazed from the collision – he wasn't much to catch up to, and it was only a minute later when boots were making solid connections with his already bruised ribs. Kick after kick landed on him, until finally a scream tore from his throat as a crack in his chest echoed in his body, the pain from the broken rib blinding his vision in a white light. Blood roared in his ears as his senses left him from the pain. When the white faded and his hearing returned, he heard silence – it took him a moment to realize that he was still conscious – and alive. He rolled his head on the ground, blood pouring from the wound, to see the soldiers standing at attention, a dark figure silhouetted by the street lights at the end of the alley. He stayed quiet, listening to the conversation.

"... may I ask what's going on?"

"N-nothing, sir! Just punishing a thief, is all." Naruto reflexively attempted to deny the accusation, but his voice was replaced with a gurgle and a cough as he choked on blood pouring from his freshly opened lip, sending him into shivers of pain as his ribs, especially the broken one, were roughed by the force of his coughing. Silence followed his whimpering – during which time he curled into as much of a ball as he could, another survival instinct from his time on the streets. The thud of feet walking in heavy boots grew louder, coming towards him. He watched as the man stood by by the soldiers, still firm in attention. The man seemed to have a kind of relaxed posture. Naruto was confused by the actions of his attackers – the man seemed to be studying his broken body, but he couldn't find the energy to care as he was assessed.

"Who is this thief?" Silence followed the question.

"S-sir?" Fear and confusion laced the soldier's voice.

"Who is he? He must be pretty notorious, since you found it necessary to abandon your patrol and chase him down. Any thief who is important enough to catch or kill at the cost of potentially finding resistant or subversive activity surely must be legendary?"

"Our orders are to –" Naruto watched as, with a swift shift of the hand, the soldier's response was silenced. It wasn't until the body began to slowly keel forward, wrapping around the fist still planted in his gut, that Naruto understood what had happened. As the fist was pulled back, the man, grabbing his stomach, feel to his knees, before falling sideways and curling into a ball.

"Your orders are to patrol this shit-hole of a city! Never once has the definition of 'patrol' involved straying from your route in order to beat up some kid just because you think that justice is to be administered on the spot!"

"Sir, we've always –" The other soldier caught himself mid-sentence, silencing himself. The dark man's head turned slowly.

"You don't anymore. Dismissed." The standing soldier was quick to collect his friend and was practically dragging him away, turning the corner as the man attempted to find strength in his legs to walk away, to escape the man as fast as possible. The thud of the footsteps came closer once again, and Naruto found his breathing becoming shallow in fear as the man, obviously strong enough to beat up Nazi soldiers on the streets and have them running away in terror, approaching him. The man knelt down beside him, a gentle hand running through his hair.

"Are you alright?" Afraid to talk for fear of a coughing fit, he nodded his head – discovering a new pain in the back of his neck. An ache, dulled by the fire in his chest, spread through his head as the fingers pressed a certain spot. "Your head is bleeding."

"It's fine." he managed to grind out, careful to make sure the blood was cleared from his mouth before he spoke. The man knelt in silence, watching him. Finally, the hand removed itself from his hair, and snaked underneath his neck, cradling his shoulders. The other arm tucked itself behind his knees, and the world seemed to spin as he suddenly found himself being lifted. A painful cry ripped from the back of his throat as his rib was jostled. The man didn't set him down, but instead continued to lift him, whispering soft hushes in his ear.

"Where do you live?" Naruto was too tired to care anymore, telling him the way to Iruka's apartment. The man walked, careful not to cause any unnecessary movements in the injured body. Sometime during the walk, Naruto's vision faded, and his head pressed into the man's hard chest – into his black shirt.

The pain his ribs woke him as the man kicked the door to Iruka's apartment, the heavy boots shaking the door in its hinges. Quick footsteps were head, and the door was jerked open.

"Oh, God..." The man walked forward, bringing them into the apartment. The man remained silent as Iruka ushered him towards the bed. The world spun again as he was lowered this time, set into the soft bed. The arms untangled themselves from his body. The man began to stand, but Naruto called out for him.

"Wait! … who are you?" The man's dark eyes stared into his own. He could see his vision begin to swim, and his consciousness faded once again. But he was sure of what he heard before he passed out. The man looked at him, and said only a single word in response to his question:

"Hn."

And his senses left him.