Author's note: This fic is cross-posted on my account on AO3 (username ihopethelightwillshineupon). I've been making edits to the AO3 version of this fic, but I figured it'd be fair to leave the "original" version online as well. That's this version, the one you're looking at right now!
So if you're looking for the most recent, more polished version of this fic, then I'd invite you to hop over to AO3 and read it there - and if you were actually looking for the older version of this fic, then welcome!
You can expect updates every three-four-ish weeks, and this fic will probably be around 15 chapters long. No specific trigger warnings apply to this fic, though there will be some (non-graphic) descriptions of animal death in here, as the characters will be hunting for food. There'll also be some blood/descriptions of injuries.
I hope you enjoy this story! Please enjoy! :)
The woods around Konoha are always the loudest around sundown. It's Naruto's favorite time of the day. The birds sing at the top of their lungs, the cicadas call, the wind makes the leaves on the trees rustle. It's a peaceful kind of loudness – more peaceful than the loudness of the Academy, anyway. The loudness of the Academy consists of teachers shouting at him and classmates making fun of him.
After a whole day of that, it's nice to come out here and listen to the birds and the cicadas and the wind. At least the forest doesn't make fun of him.
The forest is probably the best place in the world, apart from maybe Ichiraku's. It's peaceful, there are no people who are mean to him, and the leaves on the trees are bright orange right now, which Naruto likes because orange is his favorite color. And, if he's lucky, he can catch something to eat out here. Which is great, because Naruto doesn't have a lot of money – and even if he did, most of the shopkeepers in the village wouldn't let him into their shops anyway. Catching rabbits or squirrels is easier than having to deal with the shopkeepers' glares, and it's definitely easier than trying to sleep with an empty stomach.
So he sets traps in the forest, and he checks them every afternoon, to see if there's anything caught in them. He'd tried hunting at first, but his aim with kunai and shuriken is terrible, and he's always too loud to get close anyway. Traps are easier and less tiring. It took him a couple of months of trial and error to get it right; his traps would sometimes fall apart at first and catch nothing, but these days, he'll often find something caught in his traps.
He's managed to catch a squirrel today; the creature was stuck in one of the snares that Naruto set yesterday. The squirrel now dangles upside-down from Naruto's hand as he walks, some wire tied around its feet so that Naruto can carry it without having to touch it – it's unhygienic to touch dead animals. That's what Iruka-sensei says, at least.
Iruka-sensei isn't always right, though. He also said that Naruto shouldn't go outside the walls of the village, because it's dangerous and there's nothing there anyway. Naruto would beg to differ: it's totally safe, and there's food out here. It's very much worth going outside the walls of the village.
His tread is triumphant as he makes his way through the forest, fallen leaves crunching underneath his sandals and the squirrel dangling from his hand. This is a good day, he decides. School was crappy today, but now he gets to look forward to dinner, which balances out the crappiness from the rest of the day. Ultimately, a good day. On top of that, there's another snare that he's set and that he hasn't checked yet; maybe he's caught even more food. Which would make this an even better day.
He sets out to find the last trap that he's set. Out of all the traps he's set, this one is the farthest away from the village; normally, Naruto stays pretty close to Konoha's walls because it feels safer to stay close to the village, but yesterday, he saw rabbit tracks leading away from the village and he felt that it'd be a shame to miss an opportunity like that. He'd just been setting traps randomly before, but setting a trap on an actual trail was much better. He followed the trail for about fifteen minutes, set a trap on the middle of the trail, patted himself on the back for his tracking skills and went back home.
He'd intended to follow the trail again today, but as it turns out, most of the rabbit tracks have been covered by leaves. No matter, Naruto figures, still filled with optimism from his successful catch earlier. He sort of remembers the path that he walked yesterday. He can find his trap again from memory.
He walks for five minutes, positive that he's walking where the rabbit tracks were yesterday. There are broken twigs here and there, and he can still see some vague tracks when he kicks away the leaves on the ground.
He walks for ten minutes, still optimistic that he's going the right way. He can't find any tracks anymore, but that's okay; he recognizes these trees. He recognizes the bush that his jacket got caught on yesterday.
He walks for fifteen minutes – and, wait, shouldn't he have found the trap by now? Maybe he's just being slower than he was yesterday. He's definitely still going the right way, so he should find it any minute now.
He walks for twenty minutes, then twenty-five. It starts to get dark, but he presses on. He'll find the trap eventually, right? There's only so many places in the forest where it could be.
Once he passes a weird gnarly-looking plant that he is now seeing for the second time in the last ten minutes, he gives in. Fine. Fine, he's totally lost. And tired. And hungry. And kind of cold.
He stands still, crossing his arms and resisting the urge to pout. This sucks. He just wanted to find something to eat, and now he's lost in the forest in the dark. It's not fair. Filled with a sudden frustration, Naruto stomps to the side of the path and kicks a bush as hard as he can.
To his surprise, the bush easily rolls aside, revealing a large hole in the ground.
It takes Naruto a second to process what just happened. He was expecting the bush to stay put, so that it'd be satisfying to kick, but it turns out that the bush's roots aren't embedded in the ground. It looks like someone dug up the bush somewhere else and hastily plopped it down on the ground here, to hide the entrance of that hole.
Naruto leans forwards and peers into the hole, his earlier frustration forgotten. The hole looks large enough to crawl into, and it slopes lazily downwards. It seems like the hole continues downwards for a while, though Naruto can't really see; the bottom of the hole is hidden in the shadows. The sides of the hole look weirdly smooth – it doesn't look like they were formed by a human, or an animal. Maybe an Earth ninjutsu did this?
He leans forwards further, squinting. As he leans closer to the hole, he notices that it smells weird in there. There's the dusty smell of dirt, but underneath that, there's the sharp stench of blood and sweat.
He's never been near a dead body before, but he imagines that it would smell like this.
"Hello?" he shouts into the hole, startled. "You still alive in there?"
No response follows, except for the dull echo of Naruto's own voice. It makes him shudder a little bit. Holy crap, there could be an actual dead person here. Should he… Should he go and get help? But if he gets help, then he'd have to admit that he was outside the village, where he's not supposed to be. He'd definitely get punished for breaking the rules. Maybe it's better if he handles this by himself.
"Hello?" he calls again. Again, no response follows. Naruto fidgets for a moment, uncertain, before crouching down and moving to crawl into the hole. "Hey, I'm coming down there-"
The next moment, something cold presses against his throat. A kunai, he realizes – the flat side of a kunai. It doesn't cut him, but it could. It's a warning. A threat.
Someone exhales behind him; there's a person attached to the hand that's holding the kunai. Naruto's blood turns cold in his veins.
"Get the Hell out of here," the person – a man – whispers. His voice is rough and raspy. "Don't come back. You never saw me here, understood?"
"Got it," Naruto stammers out, and the pressure of the kunai disappears from his throat. The man behind him shifts to the side, giving Naruto room to move.
Naruto runs.
He sprints in a straight line away from the stranger, jumping over bushes and ducking underneath branches and not caring about the thorns that scratch his skin. He doesn't stand still until minutes later, when he finally dares to look back and sees that he's not being followed.
He leans his hands on his knees to try and catch his breath. As he leans his right hand on his knee, something flops against his lower leg, and it startles him briefly before he realizes that it's just the squirrel that he caught. Despite everything, at least he still has his dinner.
He looks up, scanning his surroundings – shinobi should always be aware of their surroundings – and he realizes that he recognizes this place. He's been here before; not far from here, there's a creek where he went swimming during the summer. He knows his way home from here.
A relieved laugh bubbles up from inside him, and he plops down onto the ground, still out of breath. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, he's suddenly really tired. He should just go home and forget that this happened, like the stranger told him to.
Except… that idea leaves a really bad taste in Naruto's mouth. Someone just threatened him with a blade to his throat, and Naruto is just supposed to ignore that? He came out to the woods specifically because there's no one around to tell him to leave, or to tell him what to do, or to be mean to him. He really doesn't like the fact that he's being told to leave anyway.
Being yelled at in the village is one thing; Naruto is used to that, at this point. He never really liked the village anyway. But these woods are his favorite place in the world. He won't just let some random stranger tell him to leave, no matter how sharp his kunai is or how scary his voice is.
He has to stand up for himself.
He takes a few minutes to prepare himself; Naruto has never been good at thinking ahead, but he's smart enough to know that rushing back without preparation will probably mean death. He stuffs the squirrel into his backpack – gross, but at least both his hands are free now – and takes out the kunai that he uses for his traps and for target practice. The blade has become slightly blunt, but Naruto supposes that it's still sharp enough for a fight.
Maybe he won't need to use the kunai at all; he doesn't think that this is going to turn into a fight. If the stranger wanted him dead, he would've been dead already, he reasons. He hopes that that reasoning is right.
Like that, he heads back towards where he came from, his kunai clenched tightly in his fist. It's not difficult to follow his own trail; the broken branches and footsteps make it pretty obvious where he ran. It doesn't take him much effort to find the hole again.
He's not afraid, he notices. He's actually pretty excited. He isn't usually allowed to stand up for himself.
When he returns to the hole, the entrance is hidden behind the bush again, and the stranger is nowhere within sight. Naruto pulls the bush aside again, trying his best to be quiet. He hesitates briefly at the sight of the hole in the ground – it's really dark, he should've brought a flashlight – before he gets on his hands and knees and crawls in.
The hole isn't as much a hole as it is a tunnel, Naruto realizes as he crawls downwards; a tunnel that leads to some sort of underground room. The tunnel widens after a couple of meters, ending in a round-ish little room that's probably tall enough for Naruto to stand upright in, if it weren't for the tree roots that poke in through the ceiling.
The room is lit by a flashlight that's hanging from one of the roots in the ceiling – Naruto stays crouched in the tunnel, out of the light's reach. The harsh shadows allow him to stay hidden while he looks into the room.
The stranger is sitting on the other side of the room, across from where Naruto is. He's facing the end of the tunnel; if Naruto weren't hidden in the darkness, the stranger would be staring him directly in the face. It's nerve-wracking. It makes Naruto want to hold his breath, as to not make any more movement than necessary.
The whole situation makes Naruto want to hold his breath anyway, because that smell that he noticed before – the blood and sweat – is much stronger down here. He thinks he's found the source of the smell: the stranger's silvery-white hair is pasted to his forehead with sweat, and there's a large stain of blood on the side of his flak jacket. If that blood is his own, then he's pretty badly injured.
Despite the fact that the stranger is possibly hurt, Naruto has a nagging suspicion that he shouldn't underestimate him. There's some sort of aura around this guy, an aura that screams stay away, that screams dangerous. Naruto vaguely remembers Iruka-sensei saying that some shinobi can give off that kind of aura on purpose – killing intent, or something like that? At any rate, it sounds like bad news.
Naruto stills as he comes to a much more chilling realization: why would this guy put effort into giving off a dangerous aura on purpose, if he thinks that he's alone?
He knows that Naruto is here. He must know. The only reason why he hasn't done anything yet, is because he's sparing Naruto. He's probably hoping that Naruto will get scared and run off. He's giving him another chance to leave, and Naruto really should take that offer.
Unfortunately, Naruto didn't come here to observe this random guy and then quietly leave again. He came here to confront him, and so confront him he will.
Quickly, before he loses his nerve, Naruto steps into the light, putting on the most dangerous expression he can muster.
The stranger looks up at him from underneath his sweaty hair. Most of his face is hidden behind his hair and behind a mask, but his right eye is visible – judging from the small part of his face that Naruto can see, he doesn't look the slightest bit surprised, or intimidated. "What do you want?" he asks. That rough voice of his is still scary.
Naruto clenches his fist around his kunai, trying to think while simultaneously keeping up that intimidating look on his face. What is he supposed to say? He didn't think ahead this far.
He was planning on saying something cool, like "Who the Hell are you?" or "Get away from my village!", but what comes out of his mouth instead is: "You smell like a corpse."
The stranger huffs a laugh that sounds weirdly like a cough. "Not quite there yet," he replies. There's a sharp, threatening undertone to his words. "I'm in plenty good shape to kill you if you don't leave me the Hell alone."
Those words make anger rise in Naruto's chest again, and he scowls. "No," he replies, maybe a bit too loudly. "You don't own these woods. You don't get to tell me to leave." He points his kunai at the stranger. "Who are you, anyway? Are you here to attack my village?"
"What are you going to do with that information once you have it?" the stranger asks. "You're, like, five. You don't have any use for that information."
"I'm ten," Naruto starts, but he falters immediately. The stranger is right; it doesn't matter whether he knows his intentions or not. If he goes back to Konoha and tells the Hokage that there's some guy outside the village walls who's planning to attack the village, then the Hokage will know that Naruto was outside of the village walls. The Hokage is one of the only people in Konoha who treat Naruto well. He doesn't want the Hokage to be mad at him, so he can't know that Naruto broke the rules. Which means that Naruto can't tell him about the stranger.
Naruto clears his throat. "Just tell me. I just want to know." He stares the stranger right in the eye. "I promise I won't tell anyone what you tell me, and I promise I won't tell anyone that I saw you here. That's what you want, right? I promise, and I never go back on my word."
The stranger narrows his visible eye at Naruto, and Naruto tries not to flinch underneath his gaze. Then, the stranger nods his chin towards him. "I saw that you were carrying a squirrel earlier," he says. "How about you give me that, and then I'll answer your questions?"
Naruto frowns at him. "I can give you half," he replies. "I caught it myself. I'm not giving you all of it."
"Fine," the stranger replies. "But I won't answer all of your questions, then. I'll answer two, and no more than that."
Naruto gives it some thought, then nods. "Deal."
He takes out the squirrel from his backpack, and the stranger takes it from him and starts to prepare the squirrel. Apparently he's planning on eating right here and now. He's probably hungry, which Naruto understands.
Naruto tries to talk to the man again, but he doesn't really reply much. It seems that he's not answering any questions until after he's eaten. Naruto watches him quietly as he skins the squirrel and uses a small Fire ninjutsu to cook it. Naruto notices that he mostly uses his left hand, and that he seems to have trouble forming the signs for the Fire ninjutsu with both hands. There are sticks tied around his right hand and forearm with scraps of fabric; Naruto had thought that it was a fashion statement at first, but he now recognizes it as a splint.
Not much later, the stranger has laid out a piece of fabric on the ground in lieu of a plate, and he's laid the cooked squirrel on top of it, divided into two equal parts. It smells good. Naruto tries his best to squash down his hunger, and fails.
The stranger gestures at the ground. "Sit down," he says. "Let's eat."
Naruto narrows his eyes at him, but he slowly sits down regardless. He lays his kunai on the ground next to him – within reach – and tears off a piece of the squirrel with his hands. He takes his time to inspect the food, even though there isn't really any possibility of it being poisoned; he watched the stranger's every move.
Carefully, he takes a bite. It tastes normal.
When he looks up, the stranger has already finished about half of his share, chewing on the mouthful of food underneath his mask. He's watching Naruto intently, probably to make sure that he's not going to attack him, but he doesn't seem as tense anymore. The threatening aura has ebbed away a bit.
The stranger gestures at Naruto with a squirrel bone. "Ask your questions," he says. "Let's get it over with."
Ah. Right. Questions. Naruto could've spent his time thinking about that, but he didn't. He scrambles to put the stuff that he wants to know into words.
"Why are you here?" he asks eventually.
He could swear that the stranger flinches. He takes a long time to reply. When he finally replies, his voice is low and cautious. "To visit. I was traveling to Konoha to visit some old friends of mine. I'm not here to attack your village, if that's what you want to know."
Naruto stares at him for a moment, trying to figure out whether he's telling the truth. He decides to believe the stranger. If he were lying, surely he wouldn't react to the question as though it personally slapped him in the face, right?
"I have another question," Naruto says after a beat.
"Of course you do," the stranger replies around a new mouthful of food – he's somehow managed to stuff the rest of his food into his mouth as well without Naruto noticing.
"Are you a missing-nin?" Naruto asks him. He feels like it might be a stupid question, but the thing is that he just can't tell whether this guy is a missing-nin. Missing-nin often wear their old forehead protector with the symbol of their village crossed out – that's how you can tell that they're missing-nin, if Naruto understands right. This stranger doesn't wear a forehead protector at all.
But then again, he also doesn't seem like a civilian. He has a kunai, he can give off killing intent, he used a Fire ninjutsu just now. All things that are super unusual for civilians. So either he's a shinobi, or he used to be one, or he's a really weird civilian, and Naruto can't tell which of those options is true.
The point is, he figures it might be easier to ask than to try and figure it out himself.
The stranger chews thoughtfully, his jaw moving underneath his mask. "Officially, I am a missing-nin," he replies. He clicks his tongue. "I'm not overly fond of that title, though."
"What do you mean by that?" Naruto asks, cocking his head to the side.
The stranger grins, his one visible eye curving up, and shakes his head. "I said I'd answer two questions, remember?"
"Hey, that's not fair-"
"I did what I promised to do," he says, leaning his back against the wall. He seems tired, his shoulders hunched and his voice even rougher than before. He clears his throat. "You got your answers. Now get out."
"I'm not done eating," Naruto protests. He'd been so focused on the conversation that he's barely had the time to eat at all.
The stranger gives him a long and weary look. "Just eat your damn food and then leave me alone," he just says. He leans the back of his head against the wall as well. He seems a bit out of breath, though the flak jacket makes it difficult to see.
Naruto watches him, chewing thoughtfully. It's becoming increasingly clear to him that this missing-nin really isn't in the best shape. His hand – or his wrist, or whatever – is definitely broken, and his flak jacket is covered in blood that may or may not be his own, and he looks like someone who is very adamantly trying to hide that he's sick.
This missing-nin didn't make this hole for himself just for the Hell of it – he's here because something happened, and because he can't go anywhere else. Maybe that's why he was so hungry, Naruto realizes. Maybe he hasn't been able to get food for himself. For how long has he been stuck in this hole without food?
"Hey." The stranger gives him a sharp look through his eyelashes. "What're you looking at?"
"Sorry. Just wondering," Naruto replies, looking away. "Are you so prickly because you're stuck here?"
The stranger huffs a laugh that ends with a muffled cough. "I'm not going to answer that, and you know it."
Naruto makes a grumbling noise. "I was just curious."
He finishes his share of the squirrel in silence and gets up, almost hitting his head against the roots that poke from the ceiling. He bends down to pick up his kunai from the ground; he notices the way the stranger tenses up, so he makes sure to move slowly as he puts the kunai into his backpack.
"Well," he says, hesitantly. "I'll be going, then."
The stranger is quiet, just watches Naruto as he makes his way out of the room. So this is it, then? Naruto is just supposed to quietly go home with the knowledge that there's some guy stuck in a hole outside the village, and he can't tell anyone about it? Worse than that, he's just supposed to live with the knowledge that he might've left the stranger to starve to death because he can't get food for himself?
Starving to death is one of Naruto's worst fears – he can't just inflict that on someone. Not even if that someone is a missing-nin.
Especially not if that missing-nin has been treating Naruto less awfully than most people in the village do.
As Naruto crouches down to crawl out through the tunnel again, he makes up his mind. He turns around to the stranger. "Wait," he begins, and the stranger sighs.
"What do you want?"
"I'd like to propose a deal," Naruto says, turning to face the stranger; he's serious about this. "I come back tomorrow with more food, and you answer more of my questions."
The stranger stares at Naruto for a long, long time. "You're not serious," he says eventually.
"I am," Naruto replies.
"You realize how risky this is, right?" the stranger says, his voice rising into an incredulous cough-laugh. "I'm a missing-nin. Konoha's law forbids helping missing-nin. If your village finds out that you're helping me, they'll lock you up for life. They might even execute you. You're just a kid. It's screwed up."
Naruto hadn't considered all of those things, but that won't stop him. He's never been very good at following rules and laws and stuff, anyway. "I'm sure it'll be fine," he says. If he's caught, he's sure that Hokage-jiji will have mercy on him. He hopes he will, anyway.
The stranger shakes his head. "You need better impulse control, kid." He hesitates, and then heaves a sigh again. "Fine. I accept your deal."
Naruto grins triumphantly. "All right," he says. "I'll be back tomorrow, then!" He moves to crawl out of the hole, but then pauses again. "Ah, one more thing. I forgot to ask your name."
The stranger studies Naruto thoughtfully, chewing on the inside of his cheek underneath his mask. "Dog," he then says.
"Dog?" Naruto asks, wrinkling his nose.
"Dog," Dog-san confirms.
Naruto studies him, his eyes narrowed. "That's not your real name."
"Maybe not. You didn't ask for my real name. And also, I said I'd answer two questions honestly, and this is already, like, your fiftieth question." He gestures broadly at Naruto with his not-injured hand. "Now go home," he stresses, "before it gets so dark that you can't find your way back. If you get lost, we're both screwed."
"Fine, fine," Naruto grumbles, but he can barely hide the excitement in his voice. "I'll see you tomorrow."
He practically sprints home after that, and when he gets back to his apartment, he's too restless to fall asleep. There's an excitement bubbling in his chest, a feeling that he's doing something important.
The people of Konoha have been telling him that he's worthless for years and years – for so long that Naruto started believing it himself. But he's not worthless, and now he gets to prove it to himself. If he can help Dog-san survive, then he can finally prove to himself that he's worth something, at least.
And, also: it's honestly really cool to talk to someone who doesn't despise Naruto by default. Naruto is excited to talk to him more.
He lies in bed like that, wide awake, grinning to himself.
This is a good day.
