Naruto took it back. Hiroki-nii was a lame teacher. So lame. Like-
"I can hear you grumbling. Grumbling is not the path to inner peace."
He slumped onto his back to stare at the ceiling, groaning loudly at the thick bars of light streaming through the floor to ceiling windows.
"Ugh! Sensei, this is so boring. Why can't I do something cool, like Sakura or the asshole?"
Niisan opened a single eye to look at him from across the open expanse of the hardwood floor, expression unimpressed.
"Sakura is currently reading about a dozen textbooks. Sasuke-kun is learning to differentiate toxic herbs by taste. Would you rather be doing that?"
He sighed heavily and let his head thump down again, absently tracking a floating dust mote.
"No. I guess not. But why do we have to do this? It's so-"
"Critically important to someone who wants to be Hokage someday."
"UGH! But why?"
Naruto knew his voice was getting whiny, and he knew that Hiroki-sensei wouldn't be making him do this if it was genuinely pointless, but it was still so. Very. Boring!
His brother sighed lightly and rose from his meditative pose to pad gently over to him on bare feet.
"Head up. Down."
His puff of blond hair was now resting in the Jounin's lap, normally tightly wrapped fingers looking unnaturally pale before they started to comb through his hair.
"Breathe deep. Feel your lungs move. Feel the air filling them. Imagine that it is water, heavy and thick, being sucked into a balloon before being squished out again. Push with your stomach, force the water out. Pull with your stomach, suck the water in. Leave your chest out of it, and focus on your breathing; keep it even, and steady, and deep."
Naruto shifted slightly to get more comfortable, enjoying the feeling of fingers scratching at his scalp while trying to focus on the sensation in his lungs.
"Meditation is an important skill for ninja, because it helps to build your Yin chakra nature, as well as improving control over your chakra in general."
Blue eyes flicked open for a second, but before he could voice a question the fingers on his hair tightened for a second as niisan raised an eyebrow.
"Focus on your breathing. Chakra is the energy ninja use for jutsu. It has two parts: mind and body. Yin and Yang. Yang is easy to build, you just exercise and train. Yin is harder, you need to train your mind. Later we might try studying some complicated stuff, but for now you need to get a better feel for your own body and chakra, and the best way I know to do that is with meditation, so, breathe."
He wanted to grumble, but the gentle touches in his hair were very comforting, and the light coming in through the broad window was warm, and it had been a long day…
"Don't fall asleep, we want you relaxed, not unconscious. Now, I want you to imagine that there was a fire, burning deep in your gut. It's a nice fire, the kind you'd make if you were out camping, a little fire, warm and bright and soft, can you feel it? The spot of warmth in your stomach, like a hot meal on a cold day. Everytime you breathe in, the fire gets a little bigger, a little hotter. When you breathe out, the fire contracts, it shrinks a bit, gets a little cooler. Big… and small… grow… and shrink… can you feel it?"
He nodded slowly, keeping his breath steady. It was a nice feeling.
"Good. Now imagine the fire was leaking, like a liquid, sending little golden trickles outwards from your gut, and every time it grows, the trickles go further out, all the way from your gut, to your chest, to your shoulders, to your arms, to your elbows, to your wrists, to your fingers. Your fingers are little pools of the liquid, and your breathing is the pump, slowly filling up the pools, every breath a little bit fuller, a little bit brighter, a little bit hotter, keep breathing, focus on your breathing, the pools are filling up, breathe even, good, slowly open your eyes as you keep breathing, keep pumping the bellows to keep the fire burning, to keep the liquid flowing, to keep the pools filing. Breathe, Naruto, breathe. Look at your fingers."
His eyes were tired, but he pulled them open and looked down at his fingers. They were glowing, a bright blue color which slowly pulsed in time with the motion of his chest. His face split into a huge grin as he looked up at Hiroki-nii, who was smiling proudly too.
"Very good Naruto. Well done. But we're not quite done, okay?"
He closed his eyes and resettled himself, face still grinning.
"Sure thing Sensei, what next?"
. . .
He didn't quite doze off, but listening to his brother's voice while soothing fingers trailed through his hair was very relaxing. Naruto let himself sink deeper into the warmth in his core, feeling it stretch and flex as he willed it too. It was so warm here, and he felt like he could just sink forever…
It was cold, and damp.
Naruto's eyes blinked open at the sudden shift, brows pinching a little in confusion as his bro's quiet voice filtered back into his awareness.
"-my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are grey… Naruto? Is everything okay?"
He licked his lips a little, unsure how to describe what had happened.
"I felt something. Like I was someplace else for a moment, underground somewhere."
The fingers in his hair slowed for a moment before resuming, rubbing firmly at the skin just behind his ears.
"...I see. That was probably Otsutsuki-sama's prison."
His frown got deeper.
"Who?"
Hiroki-nii's mouth pinched unhappily, though it wasn't aimed at Naruto.
"Kyuubi-sama."
"What?!"
He bolted upright in surprise, his forehead connecting painfully with the Jounin's chin.
"Ow, ow, ow, what the hell?! You didn't tell me I might get stuck in there!"
The black haired teen was rubbing tenderly at his chin with green glowing fingers. Naruto rubbed at the spot on his own head which was throbbing uncomfortably.
"I didn't tell you because I wanted you to relax. And you couldn't have gotten stuck in there. Come here, I want to check your forehead."
Naruto scooched back across the floor, pointing a finger at the other ninja in agitation.
"You called him Kyuubi-sama, what the heck?!"
Hiroki-nii frowned sharply at him, and spoke with a firm voice.
"Naruto! Come here."
The blond froze at the sharp tone and slowly moved back towards his teacher, who eventually grew irritated enough with his sluggishness to reach out and grab the collar of his jacket, pulling Naruto into a spot in his lap. One arm went around his chest to hug him close, and the other started rubbing gently at the spot on his forehead which still stung a little.
"The Kyuubi-sama deserves your respect, Naruto. If nothing else, you two will be together until you die, so being impolite is just being a bully."
Naruto gave a squawk of protest before Sensei hugged him even tighter and drove a bit of air out of his lungs.
"Listen. The Kyuubi is old. Very, very old. Older than the Hokage, older than Konoha, older than ninja. He was made by the Sage of Six Paths centuries ago, from the corpse of a defeated monster. But he isn't bad, or evil. He simply is."
He drove an elbow into the older boys gut and wiggled about a little, though he didn't fight the hug.
"He attacked the village! He… he killed my parents…"
He could hear the unhappily pursed lips of his Sensei without even having to look.
"Your parents died because of… well. They did what they thought was right. Maybe it was the right choice; I don't know. But that's not the point."
Hiroki-nii never got angry. It was something Naruto really liked, actually; even after he had spilled a bucket of paint over some diagrams that looked really important the teen just sighed and helped him clean up. But now, now his voice was… scary.
"Imagine that one day, as you were lying in the sun taking a nap, a ninja came up and hit you over the head. While you were still confused and hurting, he put you under a mind-control jutsu, and forced you to fight someone really strong, who hurt you and tied you up. Then, the guy who beat you told everyone you were just a dumb animal, and put you in a tiny cage full of knives and broken glass, where a woman came by every once in a while to rip out your hair so she could make thread out of it and remind you that you'd never get out, and never be free, and you deserved to be caged, you filthy, stupid monster."
The arms around him were almost painfully tight, and Naruto was starting to get a bad feeling about the story.
"And then, one day, it seemed like you might be able to get away, because something happened to the woman, and the cage started getting creaky, like you might be able to break out, but- The first man came back. The one who hit you, and forced you to fight a stranger. And it was just like the first time, where you were helpless in your own body, barely even aware of what was happening around you, but you were just, so angry, because you- you were almost able to get away, from the cage, and the mean woman who pulled out your hair and said you were a mindless monster, and you were trying, so hard, to get away, to fight off the control… but before you could, just as the fog was starting to fade a little… your left arm and leg and eye were cut off and you were stuffed back in a cage, stronger than the one before, with bars thicker than your arm. And you were never going to get out."
The arms around him went slack, and a little push had Naruto hoping to his feet to turn and look at his brother. The Jounin looked so tired, and it… hurt… a little, to see that sort of expression on his face.
"To the best of my knowledge, the worst thing the Kyuubi has ever done was to be exploited as a weapon by other people. If he hates us, it is because we have done everything to deserve it. For the good of Konoha."
The blacked haired boy rubbed at the tired lines of his face before sighing heavily.
"You shouldn't judge before you know the whole story, Naruto. And you should never take the words of people who have been hurt at face value. Even if they aren't lying, they might not be telling the truth."
Naruto fiddled with his hands uncomfortably, worry gnawing at his gut.
"Could… could we let him out? Without him hurting anyone?"
The hooded head shook slowly.
"If you let him out, you would die. And he would never be free for long. He makes for too powerful a weapon. He'd be back in a cage, alone and hating, before you were even cold."
His fist balled in the sides of his jacket as he bit his lip.
"Isn't there something we could do?"
Hiroki-nii shrugged uncomfortably, pale face shadowed by the long angle of the sun shining through the windows.
"You can try to be his friend. Try to get him to let go of the hate. As I understand it, your seal is much nicer than the one he used to be in, and… maybe we could make it even better. He spends most of his time napping anyway, he might not mind giving up some of his chakra to… a friend."
The Jounin rolled his shoulders and sighed again before giving Naruto a slightly forced smile.
"Well, I wasn't really planning on having that conversation with you just yet. It's been a long day. How about we go for some ramen?"
It didn't quite restore the earlier pleasant mood, but Naruto smiled a little anyway. Ramen made everything better.
. . .
A/N:So, Hiroki might be a very tiny bit obsessed with Naruto. In other news: the sealing of the Bijuu was so f'ed up, and raises sooo many questions. Like, what were they doing for the multiple centuries before Madara found the Kyuubi? Why didn't the Shodaime just ask, if he could? None of them seem to really mind the actual state of being sealed, they just nap all the time anyway, and if they are chilld dudes, as seems to be the case, then telling them of the danger they now pose to stability would probably be enough to get them to allow themselves to be sealed, provided the seal wasn't like, I dunno, a giant ball of spikes and chains?