Chapter 9, chapter 9, how wonderful is that? So many reviews! Ooh! I made a SasuNaru AMV, to the song of Bumble Bee. I'd give y'all the link, but this probably won't let me, so just look up SasuNaru Bumble Bee on youtube. My name on there is HiddenInTheDark15. It wouldn't let me put '-ness'. Stupid. Any~who, I didn't want to type out the reason why I haven't posted in a while three times, so if you want to know, go to my profile. And vote, while you're there. It doesn't matter if you aren't reading Protecting From The Shadows, I just need more votes. Choose your favorite couple or whatever. Anyway, on to the story.
Title: Proving Them Right
Pairing: KakaNaru, because hot+hot=smokin' freaking hot
Warning: If you don't know by now, why should I even bother putting it? You obviously didn't read it the other eight times
Disclaimer: I am a pasty white American. Kishimoto is a copper skinned Japanese citizen. That is about the only polite way I could put it.
Chapter 9
Recap:
Finally the teenager's eyes snapped to the present, and he realized he had just told the story that no one else knew, that not even Gaara had heard, to this almost absolute stranger.
What was it that compelled him to reveal his deepest secret to this man?
~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~
The silence between them was loaded, but Eien decided to leave it that way for only a moment. He rose gracefully from the damp and dirty ground, then he hesitated, and his eyes, warmed slightly from the telling of his closest kept secret, widened, then froze until they were ice cold. "He did that, huh?" He murmured to himself. Kakashi didn't know that Eien sent a henged clone into Konoha to find out more about him, and the clone had just returned its information to it's master.
"Hatake-san, evidence has been brought to light that, on the night of the Kyuubi attack, my father, the Yondaime Hokage, entrusted you with one task, and one task only, and that was to watch over me. Obviously, you failed miserably, and, to my reports, often got drunk at a bar instead, using my inheritance to fund that disgusting habit." The trusting atmosphere was gone as the blond hissed his findings. The silver haired man winced, knowing it was all true, and that there was nothing he could say to make it seem otherwise. Eien saw the man's obvious distress, and decided to hammer the last nail into the man's coffin. "You father would be ashamed of you. My father would be ashamed of you. With that money that you carelessly wasted, I could have gotten a decent apartment at least. I could have restored the Clan House I didn't know about at the time. I wouldn't have killed those monsters, Hatake-san, because they wouldn't have been able to get to me. I wouldn't have run away. How does it feel to indirectly be your own village's worst enemy?" Eien took joy in Kakashi's freely falling tears.
"And to top it all off, on the third anniversary of the Kyuubi's sealing, and the Yondaime's death, you beat Naruto Uzumaki, the child I once was, until I was at death's door... or... more accurately, at the bars of the Kyuubi's cage."
Flashback: 12 Years Ago, October 10th
Naruto huddled in his bed, quivering slightly. Today had been the worst day of his short life. People jeered at him worse than ever, tripping him purposely, and trampling him carelessly. Jiji had warned him about something like this, but the boy, in normal three-year old fashion, paid no heed, wandering the streets of Konoha like it was any other day.
How wrong he was. The shopkeepers, usually tolerant o him if he came in to buy something, locked him out of their stores. The adults whispered threats loud enough for him to hear, glaring at him angrily. Their children, picking up on their paren't obvious anger, glared too, angry at him for no better reason than he made the adults angry.
So Naruto took refuge in the small apartment the Hokage had gotten for him after he had been ruthlessly expelled from the orphanage where he had spent the first years of his miserable existence.
At first the apartment had been relatively nice, the pain unchipped, the windows clean, and no bugs skulking in the kitchen. Then the villagers had found out about his new residence, and now, whenever Naruto came home from wandering, or visiting Jiji, he found something else broken, or more graffiti, or that his refrigerator stood open and empty, though he had restocked it fully the day before.
At one point he even found out that the people had paid an Aburame to come convince a clutch of cockroaches to infest his kitchen.
So Naruto shook on his slashed futon, under ripped sheets, waiting for tomorrow to dawn.
"H-happy birthday t-t-to me..." He sobbed lightly, then froze as his sharp ears picked up the sounds of someone fiddling with the locks on his window. "No!" He gasped, and slid from the futon onto the floor, then into a corner, hidden by the darkness that had invaded hours before. The person who was outside finally managed to succeed, and slipped almost noiselessly into the black room, though the blond heard the soft sounds of cloth against the window frame.
"I know where you are, demon-brat. I can smell you. If you come out now, I promise this will be painless." The deep voice rang through the relative silence, slightly slurred, revealing the man to be drunk, if the scent of alcohol that wafted from him to the boy's sensitive nose hadn't convinced him of such.
Kakashi felt powerful, invulnerable, unbeatable, and knew it was the right time to take his sensei's revenge against the demon. A small, childish voice responded form the corner he knew the monster crouched in. "They all say it will be painless, quick, and humane. It never is, Ninja-san. I don't really know why I'm still alive." The sadness in the child's voice didn't stir anything in the ANBU except disgust. Just like a fox to use the guise of a young one to fool everybody into a false sense of security.
"You're right, monster. This won't be painless. For you, anyway, but for me, I will find it quite enjoyable. I will take the revenge of everyone you've ever killed." He shouted, withdrawing a lethally sharp shurukin, and tossing it lazily at the figure he couldn't see. A cry of pain was his reward.
Naruto cried out as the star dug into the flesh of his stomach, almost deep enough to rupture the organ, and cause the acid to begin to poison his own blood stream. He tugged the weapon out with a hiss, knowing there was more to come from this man.
As always, he shouted at his assailant, "But I've never ever killed anybody! Why do people like you always say that?!" Tears coursed down his whiskered cheeks, and the darkness blurred. Suddenly, cutting through his dispair, he came face to face with the man, and looked right into a glowing red eye. When he was able to look away, they were no longer in his pitiful rooms, but a field bathed in scarlet light. It was then that he noticed he was tied securely to a post.
He finally saw his attacker for the first time. It was a young man, in his early twenties, his most dominating feature was a tower of silver hair that stood on end, defying every law of gravity. One of his eyes was obsidian, while the other was a glowing, angry red with commas spinning madly in its depths. The Sharingan. Naruto could not see the rest of his face due to the tight blue mask the man wore.
"W-where are we?" The blond asked fearfully, even though he knew. He had been to a place like this before, when he was attacked by an angry Uchiha after he had accidentally tripped into the man's path.
"You don't need to know that, monster, all you need to know is that I will take this kunai," the man held up one of the few weapons the boy could recognize, before continuing, "And in the next three days, I will stab you repeatedly, doubling the number each time, until you break and admit that you are truly the demon." And with that, the silver haired man began, slowly cutting away at the small body, taking joy in each whimper and sob. For him the three day passed quickly, though the Kyuubi hadn't admitted that he was truly the one in control.
For Naruto, the seventy-two hours passed excruciatingly slowly, and though he was exhausted, his small form broken, the only sounds he let passed his chapped and bleeding lips were sounds indicating his pain. He would have given the man anything so he would stop, but he didn't have a clue what it was!
Finally the red landscape faded around him, and he was back in his dilapidated room. Collapsing onto the floor, Naruto collapsed into blissful darkness, not feeling the blows the silver-haired man rained down on his body.
The new scene was nothing like the place in the Sharingan. Naruto looked around warily, aware that he was unhindered, but still, didn't trust the situation. After making sure no one was going to jump from the shadows and end his life, the blond began to make his way forward, passing hallways and doors, intent on reaching there. Where, he had no idea, but he had the feeling that something was calling him.
Finally he arrived at a large antechamber, and stilled as the sounds of a large pair of lungs drawing air echoed around the room.
"H-hello?" He called, not knowing why he didn't just back out of the room and hightail his ass to the exit.
"Uzumaki Naruto." The voice was deep and ominous, booming from the other end of the room. Though the voice was scary, the tone was anything but, and the boy found himself slowly approaching the direction the voice came from.
"W-who are you?" Naruto asked, as large steel bars finally loomed out of the darkness.
"I am the King of Demons, human. I am the monster that every person secretly fears. I am the being that brought this 'powerful' nation to its knees." The voice retorted, and it didn't need to say more.
"K-kyuubi." The three-year-old said on a breath, and, behind the bars, where only vague shapes were before, and red snout pressed against the bars.
"Child, for too long have I been sealed within your body, doomed to watch you suffer at the hands of these foolish villagers. Times of pain that span before your mind could comprehend what your body was feeling. Let me out of this cage, child, and out of your body, for it is time for revenge!" Kyuubi roared, but the blond head slowly shook.
"I'm sorry, Kyuubi-sama, but I can't let you do that. Some people may hate me, for a reason I now understand. They think that you and I are one and the same. If I am here, I suppose that means the man who was beating me did not succeed in killing me. I will do whatever it takes to prove these people wrong, to get them to accept me. Please understand. I will do research on seals that will allow you to roam my mind freely, but that's all I am willing to do." He murmured, and the yokai felt grudging respect.
"Fine, kit, have it your way. I will settle for that... for now." That was the last thing Kyuubi said before Naruto began to feel consciousness drag at his body, pulling him from his mind scape and into the real world.
He awoke in the hospital, and was told by the Hokage that he was found, alone, near death, in his apartment the day after his birthday. Naruto never told Jiji about the man who had tried to kill him, prefering to keep this a secret between him, and his new friend, Kyuubi.
Flashback End
"I-i don't remember any of it!" Kakashi exclaimed fervently, appalled with himself.
"I don't doubt that, Hatake-san. After all, you spent the first four years after my birth in a permanent state of inebriation. I bet you could hardly remember your own name the next morning. I don't know why I didn't see it before, the silver hair, the mask, the Sharingan. It was all so obvious. Perhaps it was the distinct lack of the scent of sake." Eien said, looking down at the crying man disdainfully.
"H-haven't touched a drop since you left. I-i failed him. I failed you. I failed Konoha. I couldn't stand to look myself in the face!" The Konoha nin proclaimed. Eien turned away.
"Unfortunately, that won't turn back time." Eien smooth voice followed him out of the light. Kakashi truly let himself go with the clang of the metal door he had yet to see.
There we go, a nice, cheery chapter to lighten everyone's day, no? No? Damn, and that's what I was going for, too. Ah, well, better luck next time, I suppose. What did y'all think? A bit of angst to spice up this nice fluffy fic? Note the sarcasm in the last six sentences. Yep, this was going to turn out totally different. I had planned for Kakashi and Eien ti have another heart-to-heart, but my mood flipped, and this is what happened instead. I'd get more into detail about the evolution of Naruto's and Kyuubi's relationship, but I'm ehausted. I just thought y'all deserved two updates for being such patient people. My next update will be chapter one of my NCIS fic, but that won't happen tonight. Hasta la past, peeps (Giant yawn, sleepy wave)