Chance Relationships

Naruto walked the streets of Konoha like he was in a daze. He knew that it was impossible. Pain had left only a crater behind in his attack but there was no sign of that here. Every building was as he remembered it, the streets the same, the colours the same, the feeling the same. It all had to be a dream, but what a sweet one it was.

Civilians were walking around him without a care, children running ahead of their parents, impatient to finally reach their destination, and friends chatting with each other about this or that insignificant piece of news. It was like any other day in the village, pleasant, peaceful, and entirely normal.

Maybe this all should have made him happy or at least relieved, seeing everyone alive and well, and the village back to normal, but it served only to make him uneasy.

In the distance, Naruto could see four figures jumping over the rooftops. Four familiar figures. Wild brown hair with two red marks on the cheeks, white and brown fur, the high-collared robe with the black glasses, long dark blue hair, and pale lilac nearly white eyes.

Before Naruto knew what he was doing he was already moving, scrambling up the side of the building on his right as quick as his muscles allowed, desperate to get up to the roof before they had passed him by.

Flipping onto the shingles, he stood up to his full height and froze. They had not changed, not a single bit, looking just like he remembered them from about six months ago now.

"Oi, Naruto!" Kiba's happy voice broke him from his thoughts, the Inuzuka always the first of his team to open his mouth. All four stopped in front of him and he drank in the sight like a man dying of thirst. Shino's stony silence, Hinata blushing and avoiding his eyes, and Kiba grinning so wide that his sharp canines were on full display. "Where have you been man?" Kiba asked, and Akamaru echoed the question with a bellowing bark.

Naruto wanted to go up to them and hug them until they forced him to let go. He was taller than all three now, towering over them with the growing he had done since seeing them last.

Kiba's face twitched, revealing a split-open skull, pale rotten skin, and the red fang on one of his cheeks covered by burnt and blistered skin. The life left his eyes in the same moment, leaving only unseeing, blank orbs. One leg was missing as were half his fingers, only bloody stumps remaining.

What Naruto had thought sweet turned out to be a nightmare.

No

Shino had been cut nearly in half, only small pieces of skin still connecting the two parts, his left arm completely crushed. The customary buzzing that always surrounded him had disappeared, dead bugs falling from every orifice in time with his breathing.

No

Akamaru had lost half of his fur, the skin beneath blackened by fire and his lower jaw was missing one side. What teeth were still visible were cracked or missing entirely and one eye was pale and blinded, the ear on that side half ripped off and bloody.

No!

Hinata's eyes had been plucked from her skull, the cuts and scars around the area weeping thin trails of blood. One arm and the other hand had been ripped off and her left leg was clearly poorly healed after being shattered, the angle of the limb not quite right and her stance uneven.

NO!

Naruto turned and ran, jumping from the roof to the street below. Where peace and normality had reigned before only destruction remained. Bodies had been burned, pierced, crushed, or ripped apart. Buildings had collapsed under superior forces, burying the inhabitants inside. All the bodies, whether laying on the ground or still standing against all reason, were looking at him in judgement. Hate, disappointment, accusation. Wherever he looked Naruto saw the same thing. Civilian or Shinobi, they all blamed him.

He could not stand the looks. As a child he had mostly been ignored by the citizens, which hurt in its own way, but this was worse. Naruto ran. Every house, every street, every stall. All destroyed, everyone dead, and all looking at him with those dead, accusing eyes.

"No, no, please, please. I didn't mean to run. I wanted to fight. I don't know what happened," Naruto tried to apologize, but they did not hear him and did not care.

He ran and ran and ran, trying and failing to escape those eyes.

Ichiraku Ramen had been levelled, Ayame and Teuchi crushed under a giant piece of rubble from the house next to it. The Academy was a burnt-out husk, all the students charred black, Konohamaru and his friends among them. Iruka was with the other teachers, sheltering a group of younger students, a hole where his torso had been and the small bodies he had shielded crushed under a slab of stone.

Tenten, Neji, Lee, Guy, Shizune. All dead. Ino had scratched out her own eyes, her visage still frozen in terror. Choji and Shikamaru had died next to each other, the first with his chest split open and the other decapitated, Asuma's lighter in hand. Kurenai, Yamato, Ebisu, all dead.

Tsunade was kneeling between the debris from the destroyed Hokage monument. Her skin was wrinkled and darkened by age all over, even worse than her state while she had been in a coma after Pain. Naruto could feel what she had done, how she had burned through all of her chakra until her body had nothing left to give, using her own vitality as fuel in the hopes that she would save one more person.

Naruto knew, somehow, where he would find his own team.

On top of the monument cracks and craters littered the ground as far as he could see. He found Sakura leaning against a tree, a hole where her heart used to be, and one arm charred black by fire. Most likely she had not even felt the killing blow. He knew how it numbed everything around it. Her green eyes were as dead and yet accusing as all the others he had seen.

Naruto continued running.

Kakashi was punctured all over by the black chakra rods Pain and Obito had used, one in every single of the eight inner gates with a ninth piercing his Sharingan eye. His right arm was scarred and burned, but from lightning and not fire, and blood crusted his mask.

He could not bear to look more than a few seconds, turning his head and continuing on. He already knew what he wound find at the end of the dried blood stain that led away from Kakashi's corpse. He knew, and that only made all of the eyes worse. They accused him, of not being there, of leaving, of not keeping his promises, of failing. And all of them were right.

Sasuke was as dead as everyone else, his blind eyes staring at the impossible moon hanging in the bright sky. His left leg had been cut off; the bloody trail Naruto had followed leading right to the stump that remained. Small cuts and abrasions littered his body, and one side of his chest was sunken in, crushed beneath a single powerful blow.

Naruto could only close his eyes, to try and avoid the sight. He had never wanted this. For things to end like this. For his friends to end up dead, and his home to end up destroyed.

Gritting his teeth, he turned his back on his old teammate. This was not real; this had not happened. Even if it had, he could not know. Could never know. He opened his eyes to leave but stopped short. All of them were there, behind him. Staring at him with their dead eyes. Accusing him of his failure. He wanted to leave, to run again, but his feet felt stuck to the ground.

Not real, impossible, just a dream. Yet it did not feel like one.

"I'm sorry. Please, I never meant for this to happen. It was supposed to be different." Naruto dropped to his knees and bowed his head, defeated. He clenched his hands, nails digging into the skin of his palms until blood started to flow. 'Wake up. Come on, wake up dammit,' he repeated to himself again and again. Desperate for all this to end.

Even without looking, he felt their eyes on him. Getting closer and closer. Accusing him, hating him.

It was just a dream. Break free. Just like an illusion. Just get a grip and break free. But he couldn't.

Naruto woke up, the breath stuck in his throat. His eyes snapped open, and reality reasserted itself in his mind. The bed under him, the warm body cuddled into his side. It was still dark out, but even the nights were warm in Volantis. Just a nightmare, just another fucking nightmare. Different but the same, every one of them.

He drew on a moment of meditation, a deep calming breath in and out settling his frayed attention. Still, calm, one with nature. Naruto had learned how to meditate to master Sage Mode but it had other benefits as well. He could choose not to draw in the natural energy that surrounded him, lethal as that would be in his weakened condition, and simply focus his mind. Raising his free hand, he massaged his eyes for a moment.

Shiera continued to sleep, face still light and unburdened in her slumber, which Naruto was grateful for. Bad enough that these nightmares tormented him, there was no need for them to have the same effect on her as well.

Already adjusted to the fact that sleep would elude him for a while yet, Naruto carefully extracted himself from Shiera's embrace and left the bed. She made a small noise of complaint at the loss of her personal pillow before shifting slightly and mercifully continuing to sleep.

After pulling on a pair of pants Naruto walked to the window on silent feet. Muffling his footsteps was nearly effortless after Jiraiya had blindfolded him one week and told him to walk, only to throw a rock at his head every time his steps could be heard. Just remembering that training exercise threatened to give him a headache.

Judging by the moon it was still a few hours until sunrise, leaving him with time to spare. He had gotten some rest at least, definitely enough to function on for a few days if needs be, but ideally, he would catch some shut-eye after distracting himself a bit. Nothing like some light training to get you back in the mood for sleep.

Not bothering with any other clothing, Naruto grabbed onto the top of the window frame, swung himself outside, and started climbing to the roof.

Most of Volantis slept during this time but he could still see lanterns and torches brightening the night on the Great Bridge connecting the two sides of the city.

Settling down in a comfortable position, Naruto focused on his chakra. Splitting, grinding, sharpening, changing. A twist of his right hand made a small circular breeze appear, lightly brushing his exposed skin. When he did the same with his left the motion of his hand was unchanged, but the wind did not flow as easily. It was no longer as it bad as it had been, but the scar still hampered him slightly in that regard, though outwardly it looked as furiously raw and red as it had the day after getting it.

The change in appearance did not bother him, even if the phantom heat hidden in the skin was weird, but the change in performance did. Still, it was nothing training could not fix, and he continued.

Twisting and twisting, again and again. Left and right, right and left, using as little chakra as he could. Without the need for great force or cutting power the exercise was not particularly exhausting but paying close attention to how much he used was another form of training by itself.

Soon he became lost in the motions, the repetitive exercise soothing his mind and allowing him some time to think.

Naruto felt lost in a way that had nothing to do with being in this foreign world for more than half a year already.

He had never given romance a lot of serious thought in the past. His crush on Sakura had been childish and abandoned during his training trip at some point even Naruto did not know, though that part only really set in after he had come back. He vaguely remembered Hinata's confession during Pain's attack on the village but…what the hell did he know about love? Or her? He had never really spent much time with her, even back in the Academy not to mention that she was beyond his reach now anyway.

Training, missions, then Akatsuki and the war. There had always been more important things to focus on. Now there was none of that to distract him. Naruto had always imagined having a family eventually, with a wife and children to treasure, but those dreams had also included him being Hokage so they would need some adjusting in any case.

Interrupting his exercises for a moment he couldn't help but groan. Fuck, he was seventeen and seriously thinking about his imaginary future children. He should have just gone back to sleep.

Leaning back, he faced the night sky, eyes flicking to the different star signs he had memorised. It was a beautiful view though unfortunately it did nothing to distract him, only making him think of Shiera again. Could she not have had some other name?

Was it wrong to feel the way he did about a woman that was more than five times his age, even if she didn't look the part? Did he care if it was?

His sharp ears could make out the drunken laughter and slurred conversation of a group of young men a few streets over and the yawning of a bored guard doing his best to stay awake.

No. No, he didn't. Maybe that made him a fool, but he didn't care about that either.

Naruto could not help but chuckle lightly to himself and shake his head at the absurdity of it all. How had it come to this? Naruto Uzumaki overthinking things? He really needed to get a grip.

Getting up he started climbing back down, until he swung himself through the window again. He had not been gone long, barely twenty minutes at most, and everything was just like when he had left, though Shiera had locked her arms around one of the many pillows.

Gently raising the thin blanket, Naruto settled in behind Shiera, one arm lightly wrapped around her midsection. He had found out pretty quickly that he enjoyed cuddling a lot. Fortunately, she was much the same.

He had barely even closed his eyes when Shiera moved against him and pulled on his arm until their bodies were pressed together, only her thin sleeping gown separating them, but also making it more than clear that she was awake as well.

"Did I wake you?"

Shiera hummed her disagreement and shifted slightly until she was fully content with their positions. The movement brought his attention more clearly to all the parts of their bodies that were currently touching. Shiera was very beautiful and very easy to desire, and the thin gown she wore to bed did nothing to hide that fact. Even if he could not see it in the dark, he could certainly feel it.

But thinking about that would only make sleeping even more difficult.

Soon Shiera's breathing slowed down noticeably, and Naruto was not far behind her.

Naruto spent most of the time he was not training, learning, or teaching, near the docks. Not only did that allow him to learn about any interesting developments in the world but it was also a good way to make what remained of his coin last longer. Sailors that had just been paid for their work on deck almost seemed desperate to get rid of it and he had no qualms about exploiting that fact.

He had to change locations every few days, even sailors eventually figured out that he seemed to be winning a lot of the games they proposed, but there were hundreds of winesinks, taverns, and pubs near the giant harbour area of the city. If he needed to, he could always use an illusion to go back at a later time, but there had been no reason to do so yet.

"Your turn," Naruto reminded his opposite at the table. The tavern was still rather calm at this time of day, most patrons simply enjoying a drink while they talked or played one of many different games. Card games, cyvasse, arm wrestling, dicing. There were many options to choose from.

Naruto avoided cyvasse for the most part, not only because the game reminded him far too much of his unsuccessful attempt at playing shogi but also because most of the people that played for money were a lot better than beginners. Listening in on the different conversations going on around the room also tended to be a lot harder while you tried to think four steps ahead.

The other man glanced under his cup before carefully inspecting the two other cups on the table, as if that would somehow allow him to glimpse the dice hidden underneath.

"One two."

The third player, an older broader man with a long beard he had coloured red, declined looking under his own cup and simply upped the bet. "Three fives."

"Five fives," Naruto said just as quickly. Confidence made people more likely to trust you and speed implied confidence. Five identical faces among eighteen dice were not particularly unlikely. He wanted them to think that he had at least two, even if he had none in truth. Upping the bet on a die face you did not have yourself was not something you usually anticipated. He liked to stay unpredictable like that.

The next bet took much longer again. The man was a sailor out of Pentos and was prone to overthink situations. Naruto was confident that he would convince himself that there were even more fives hidden under the two cups, even if the man did not have a single one himself.

"Six fives."

"Liar."

Cups were raised and the fives counted, coming up well short of the proposed six. Naruto also noted the single two revealed under the Pentoshi's cup. He had half expected as much but confirmation of an honest first bet was valuable, nonetheless. They continued their game, the rounds moving more and more quickly as the loser of each one surrendered one dice.

Naruto carefully switched between favouring bluffs and favouring honesty in an attempt to stay unpredictable. The young Pentoshi may not be attentive enough to keep good track of his patterns but the older sailor out of Qohor certainly was.

His Valyrian was still nowhere close to good, his relative trouble with the language only heightened by the fact that sailors taking port in Volantis spoke a confusing mix of the dialect of their home ports and the sailor's jargon that had established itself on the different trading vessels, which was not quite like any single one of the many different versions of the language.

Ideally, he would be capable of passing as a born speaker, even if High Valyrian was rarely used in conversation, but that was still a few months of work away. If he could do that, then injecting the slightest hints of different dialects and origins into his speech would be possible, a useful tool to better sell a cover story to an attentive guard or customs inspector.

Speaking the common tongue of Westeros came easier to him, and the teaching conversations Shiera insisted on flowed more and more easily with every day. Even if the nature of their relationship had changed considerably, she was no less demanding a tutor.

Five games in and he had already made quite a bit of coin off both players. The Qohorik seemed ready to cut his losses, though the man had won one of the games as well, but the Pentoshi looked convinced that this next one would mean a change of fate.

Patrons had been coming and going, though the number of newcomers was far larger, and the room was growing louder and more packed the closer it got to evening. A new group of patrons entered the building and joked animatedly as the next round of the game started, the Qohorik replaced by an overly motivated and slightly drunken Volantene.

Naruto had been carefully listening for many different keywords. Even he could not completely follow so many conversations in a large room at the same time.

Talk of Targaryens was the quickest and easiest way of getting him to pay particular attention to the conversation.

It was a result of finally having learned Shiera's identity, which had also included the knowledge that some part of her family still lived. A part she had never met or interacted with, that she did not actually know except for their names, but a part of her family, nonetheless.

"You were at the royal wedding?" one of the sailors asked in clear disbelief. "At the wedding. Not just in Flea Bottom while the Prince was getting hitched in the Sept. At the wedding." Following the whole conversation while paying enough attention to his game took a lot of concentration but he had practised for this. Eavesdropping was best done while you looked to be busy with something else, at least if you had to be in close proximity and visible to do it.

"I mean, I wasn't in the Sept. But I saw them both with me own eyes. The Prince and the Princess, with the dress and the jewels and all."

"Pfft, as if. Were you even in King's Landing that day? I know you were on a ship out of Braavos before this one," a third man said.

"Before that. Before, I'm telling you. I went to Braavos after."

The royal wedding was not new information to Naruto. Prince Rhaegar, heir to the Iron Throne, had been married to Princess Elia Martell near the beginning of the year. The earliest news of the event had taken near a month to reach Volantis by ship and gossip. As far as tales from Westeros went, it was already old news.

When he had shared it with Shiera, he had expected anything but complete disinterest, though perhaps he shouldn't have. There was only so much significance you could give people that did not even know of your existence.

Sometimes Naruto wondered if he understood anything about families at all.

"Pah! Stop telling stories already. The closest you have been to a Targaryen is looking at one of their dragon banners," said the first sailor in derision. Three-headed and red on black, it was a striking image to represent your House, like many of the banners and sigils of Westeros.

"I saw them, in the capital. With the silver hair and them purple eyes, I did."

"Then I saw the royal family too. While we were docked in Lys," said the third sailor.

"Oh, leave off. What's it matter if he really saw some wedding. Drink instead of arguing," said a fourth man and the conversation lulled for a few moments. "I heard something more interesting in Lys anyway."

"Sounds like you got something good. Spit it out then."

"I heard that the new First Magister got the job because he has a dragon." Naruto very much doubted that claim. His own experience in Oros aside, he was confident in Shiera's confidence that all the dragons were dead.

"A dragon? You sure that you didn't hear this from our esteemed wedding guest over here?" The question was met with an indignant "Oh, piss off!" from aforementioned guest and laughter from all the others.

"Well, not quite a dragon yet. He has an egg though. I'm sure about that part." If Naruto had not been paying so much attention already that part would have managed to attract it in any case. Their expedition into Oros had been fruitful in many ways but a dragon egg was not among the items they had found. Most likely, there were some hidden behind the black walls of the inner city but the flow of information was sparse at best and searching the whole area would take months without a lead.

The First Magister of Lys was a more direct target.

"And? Whys he gonna hatch it. Haven't the Targaryens been trying that too? I heard they have a load of them in the throne room."

"I thought those were dragon skulls."

"Yeah, I'm sure those are skulls too, not eggs."

After that their conversation turned to bickering about the half-remembered information of every one of them which Naruto tuned out quickly. He would need to find a way to confirm the information before finding a ship to Lys, but he already had an idea in mind.

Glass candles were such useful tools.

Turning his full attention back to his games, Naruto resolved himself to earn a few more coins before calling it a day.

I hope you enjoyed Chapter 16. Chapter 17 is done as well.

I don't have a lot to say about this one. The second half is inspired in part by the Liar's Dice scene in one of the Pirates of the Carribean movies. It's very good. Lys is mostly Valyrian and people there look like the Targaryens, silver hair and purple eyes. Ship travel by sail takes a ton of time. George isn't very precise about time measurement in the books, and putting very clear numbers on that sort of thing only takes away from the story in this case. The trip from Qarth to Volantis took around two months. I can't imagine you could get there a lot faster than that. Lys is closer so the trip won't take as long.

Naruto has nightmares but not visions just to be clear. Shiera has dragon dreams, which are prophetic visions, while dreaming. In part at least Naruto still tortures himself with thoughts of Konoha and the Fourth Shinobi War. He has no conclusion to those events, no resolution to latch onto, so the worst case remains in the darkest pit of his mind. Naruto has not seen Sasuke since the Kage Summit, where he tried to kill Sakura in front of him after the fight with Danzo.

Naruto is about at his Boruto/The Last height, so about 5'11/6', I do not watch Boruto, nor do I intend to, so any canon changes from there won't be relevant.

I was trying to portray that Naruto himself isn't quite sure what he is feeling about Shiera at the moment. They have a physical relationship and he trusts her, but someone that grows up like Naruto: orphaned, mostly alone, avoided or despised, should have a really hard time with positive feelings towards other people, not to mention romantic ones. Of course he has some people that treat him properly even early on: the Sandaime, the Ichirakus, Shikamaru, Choji, Iruka, and then later Jiraiya, Kakashi, Sasuke, Sakura etc., but there is still some difficulty involved, not to mention the other factors that come into play with Shiera being who she is.

The idea that Naruto is insanely lucky when it comes to games of chance is mostly filler/fanon and a bit too heavy-handed when it is actually a part of solving a plot-significant problem, so here he wins because he is trained, not because he is necessarily more lucky.

Chapter 20 will most likely be a kind of epilogue for this part of the story. With 21 picking back up later with the first of the new PoVs.

My comment last chapter in regards to reviews in spanish was not meant as an attack of any kind. I appreciate them even if I have to translate them first. No matter what language they are, they keep me going.

As always thanks for reading, reviewing, and everything else. Until next week.