60

Chapter 60: Sixty

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SIXTY:

Naruto didn't think he'd ever felt so small as he did in that moment, looking up at the Nine-Tailed Fox in their shrine-prison. Guilt churned uncomfortably in his stomach and he had to take a deep breath and lock his knees in place so he didn't take the automatic steps backwards that every survival instinct he had was screaming for him to do. 

"Hi," he blurted out before he could think of anything better to say, and his face flushed slightly. 'Hi' really felt a bit underwhelming when faced with a living natural disaster. 

The Fox looked just as unimpressed with Naruto as Naruto felt in himself, lips pulling back from those terrible, terrifying fangs in an unmistakable sneer.

"Pathetic," the Fox growled. 

Well, that was hurtful, Naruto thought, trying not to pout. Not wrong, but still hurtful. It was good that his Aneue had prepared him for the Fox being grumpy, and Naruto was certainly familiar enough with the burning red chakra that was the Fox's hate-rage-fury.

"I'm sorry for just turning up an' invading your space," he told the Fox, because that was just good manners and Aneue had made sure he knew just how important his courtesies were. 

"Courtesies are your armour," she'd told him, "but they can also be a weapon for you to wield. You need to prove you know your courtesies first before ignoring them entirely– that way it's understood that your lack of courtesy is a snub to them, as opposed to your own ignorance." 

Naruto enjoyed that sort of sneaky, underhanded trickery, so he'd put in the effort to prove he'd been taught the sort of proper manners that couldn't be faulted, that way when he loudly slurped up his ramen when the Hokage took him out for lunch, or chewed with his mouth open at the Academy, it was a deliberate snub. He knew Teuchi, Ayame, Iruka, and a few of the Clan kids and that smart girl with pretty pink hair in his class at the Academy had all noticed his deliberate lack of manners, though he wasn't sure if the Hokage or Mizuki had picked up on it yet. 

Looking up at the Fox whose lips had peeled back even further back at his apology and their rumbling snarl feeling as if it was shaking the entire shrine, Naruto couldn't help but think he would need all the armour he had to get through this conversation. 

"Oh, you're sorry?" The Fox snarled. "You're sorry for invading the jail cell you have me imprisoned in?" They slammed their nine tails against the ground hard enough to cause the shrine to violently rattle around them, and Naruto had to fight to keep his balance.

"I really am sorry," he said honestly, even though he knew the Fox probably wouldn't take it well. "It ain't fair that you're stuck in here, and it ain't fair that I just barged in an' you can't stop me. So I am sorry. I just… I wanted to thank you."

"You wanted to thank me?" The Fox rumbled, and the almost calm voice they spoke in deceptive when compared to the terrible, burning fury in their eyes. Naruto was now very sure that the shrine shaking around them wasn't just him imagining things. 

"If you hadn't healed me all those times, then I'd be dead," Naruto said honestly. He didn't remember having his throat cut open as a newborn, not the way his Aneue remembered it, or falling out of their crib head-first, or most of the times the other kids had tried to kill him at the orphanage, but he did know that it was only the Fox healing him that had kept him breathing long enough for help to arrive. 

"I'd have let you die in a heartbeat if I wouldn't die with you, you pathetic, mud-crawling worm," the Fox snarled, their tails lashing behind them angrily. 

"I know," Naruto agreed, and he could see that he had surprised the Fox with his easy acceptance and lack of indignation or anger at what seemed to Naruto to be a very obvious fact. "But it's still good manners to say thank you, and I am grateful." 

The Fox snarled at him again, clearly agitated. 

"What are you doing here?" They demanded. "What do you want from me? Let me guess– you want more of my chakra," the Fox laughed then, the sound vicious and terrifying as they loomed over Naruto. "You humans," they spat, "you're always taking and taking and taking, just snivelling cockroaches too greedy for power to care about its cost!" 

Naruto felt his eyes widen. "It doesn't hurt you when I use your chakra, does it?" He demanded, horrified. "I didn' mean to! I swear to you, on Inari-sama's Name, I didn' ever mean to hurt you!" 

The Fox laughed again, the ugly sound tearing at Naruto's ear drums and making his teeth hurt. "You want me to believe the thief cares for his victim?" They sneered. 

"I mean, not usually," Naruto freely admitted, deciding that honesty would probably serve him better in this case. "But I'm usually stealin' from the villagers in Konoha, and they're shitty to me, so I don't care about them." He paused for a moment, not sure if what he said next would piss off the Fox more or not. "I guess that's why even though it makes me sad that it happened, I do understand why you don't care that you killed my kaa-san, 'cause she was shitty to you, and why you kept destroying Konoha, even when you broke free of the Sharingan's control, 'cause Konoha was always shitty to you too."

There was a moment of dead silence.

"And how," the Fox said, in a voice of terrible, terrible calm that Naruto didn't trust for a moment, not as the temperature around him was rapidly rising to an unbearable heat, "would you know anything about that?" 

Naruto was pretty sure that if this was the real world and not his mindscape his skin would be melting from his bones at this point, the heat was so unbearable. He forged on though, regardless of the pain. He was used to pain, after all; this was just another breed of it, in the end.

"Because you told my sister," he answered the Fox honestly. "Or, the Yin part of you did."

"I would never!" the Fox hissed, all poison and hate. 

Naruto swallowed. "You did," he said. "And I can prove it."

"Oh, you can prove it, can you?" Mocked the Fox as they started to pace in their cage, and the sight of the desecrated shrine made Naruto feel slightly ill. "And just how do you think you will go about proving it to me?" 

Naruto took a deep breath to brace himself, instinctively knowing just how badly the Fox was going to react to what he was about to say next. "Hi," he repeated his earlier greeting, lame as it was. "It's nice to meet you… Kurama."

Kurama's chakra burned, and Naruto found himself choking on a gasping wheeze at the sudden shock of burning alive, his eyes flying open as he was pushed violently from the shrine-cage in his mind, to Inari's shrine, where he was still kneeling across from Fuyuko.

"Naruto?" his sister demanded, reaching out to grasp his hands in her own, concern shining in her deep ocean-blue eyes. Not that he'd ever seen the ocean, but he had seen paintings of it. "Are you okay?" Fuyuko asked, and Naruto had to take several deep breaths and pat down the skin on his arms and face, checking that it was still there and not burnt or charred or melted away before he could answer.

"Kurama was really, really angry," he admitted, and watched his sister's expression crease with her concern. "I'm gonna win them over, though," he said determinedly. "Just watch me!" 

Fuyuko's face relaxed slightly and Naruto felt her chakra reach for his, the deep, deep love she felt blanketing him, cooling away the last embers of Kurama's burning rage that lingered on his skin.

"Oh little prince," she murmured, "I don't doubt it for a moment." She paused slightly, then added, "it's 'I'm going to win them over', not 'gonna'." And Naruto couldn't help but laugh. 

He wondered how long it would take her to realise he mostly used the slang spoken commonly in the streets of the Yūkaku on purpose– she probably already did realise, but the faces she made when he did were just too funny, and it made the people around him underestimate him. Which was almost unforgivably stupid of them– the Yūkaku's street kids were bred vicious and hungry, hardened by the choices they were forced into, prepared to dig their nails and teeth into anything precious to them and every scrap that they called their own, willing to tear apart the shinigami itself with their bare hands to defend what was theirs. 

Naruto knew he would win Kurama over, because Kurama was one of his, whether the Fox knew it or not. Kurama had been with him as long as his sister; even in the womb they had been cradled by the Fox's chakra, and the Fox had protected him all Naruto's life– he owed Kurama a debt, and Naruto was determined to pay it back, to be more than just another in a long line of the Fox's jailers. And more than that, just like Naruto yearned to be free of the prison of hate that was Konoha, he was determined that Kurama would be freed from their prison too. 

Naruto thought he would have probably loved his parents, but that didn't mean he had to love the choices they'd made– and Naruto wasn't sure he could ever really forgive that they'd made him an unwilling warden to a wild being of chaos and free-will. Kurama was a being meant only for freedom and wilderness, and instead they had been trapped so they could be used and abused by humans, with their one, desperate attempt to break free thwarted by Naruto's parents. 

Even good people could make bad choices, Naruto knew, like Mito-baachan, who had helped Hashirama seal all the Bijuu and then distribute them amongst the Hidden Villages, and like his parents, who had kept Kurama a hostage to Konoha and condemned their twin newborns with the terrible burden of being unwilling jailers weighing on their hearts. 

Naruto couldn't imagine a life without the scraps of freedom he had fought for, even mostly restricted to the Yūkaku as it was considering the general attitudes and behaviour towards him in Konoha proper. And as he knelt in Inari-sama's shrine, opposite his sister, Naruto vowed then and there that just like Fuyuko, he would do everything in his power to free Kurama from the prison of the seal. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Naruto caught a glimpse of flickering sleek white tails and a gleaming fox's grin as something shifted within him, almost like that clicking of the tumblers in a keyhole when Naruto had manoeuvred the lock picks just right to undo the lock. Naruto knew then that Inari-sama had heard his oath, and the god had both blessed him and bound him to his word, locking the promise into his blood, chakra, and soul. 

Naruto found that he wasn't upset or disturbed; even without the binding, he prided himself on never going back on the promises he made– not the lies he fed the Hokage, Academy teachers and most of the asshole kids at the Academy, of course, but the real promises, the important ones. Kanna and Fuyuko had taught him to respect the gods though, unpredictable and unfathomable as Fuyuko had warned him that they could be, and Naruto mumbled his thanks to Inari-sama for his blessing, bowing in place as he prayed for success in his endeavours to win over Kurama. 

"Ready to go?" Fuyuko murmured when he finally straightened back up. 

"Almost," Naruto sighed, shifting from the seiza so he could flop down across the floor of the shrine they had lovingly restored, resting his head on her lap. "Can we just stay a bit longer?" He asked plaintively.

Fuyuko smiled down at him, her gentle hands reaching to run through his hair, over and over, as she blanketed him in her chakra, like he was sinking into the calm, still waters of the deepest oceans. 

"We can stay here as long as you'd like,  little prince," she murmured, and Naruto closed his eyes, letting himself sink into the ocean that was his sister's presence, basking in their peaceful sanctuary together before he'd have to don his mask of incompetence and immaturity once more as they ventured back out into Konoha. 

~

Now that he knew how to access his mindscape, Naruto made sure to visit it at least once a day in an attempt to speak with Kurama. Each time, without fail, the Fox would snarl at him, maybe spit out a few insults, and then use chakra that burned with hate-resentment-fury to force Naruto out of the shrine-cage and back to the external world. 

Naruto didn't give up though. Even as days turned to weeks that turned to months, he continued visiting Kurama each day, never letting his determination to befriend, or to at least wear the Fox down enough to talk properly to him instead of just growling insults, wane. Naruto thought that Kurama might have softened slightly since the appearance of the foxfire that danced across the walls of the shrine ever since Inari-sama had blessed him, all white and glowing like fire and mist and magic. Naruto had caught Kurama gazing wistfully on more than one occasion before the Fox caught sight of him and abruptly snarled a few insults before kicking him out. 

It was almost eight months after his first (somewhat disastrous) attempt to communicate with Kurama that the Fox finally deigned to have a proper conversation with him instead of insulting him and then immediately forcing him out of the mindscape. 

"Why," the Fox snarled at him, those terrifying fangs bared as nine, powerful tails of burning chakra thrashed agitatedly against the walls of the shrine-cage, "are you so persistent?" 

Persistent, Naruto realised, was easily the nicest thing Kurama had ever called him. 

Was he finally managing to wear the Fox down?

"And why," Kurama continued, their nine tails thrashing about even more violently now, as if they had a mind of their own, "would I tell you my Name?" 

"It's a really long story," Naruto told him honestly. 

Kurama laughed, the grating sound of it as it echoed off the shrine walls anything but humorous. 

"Oh little meat-sack," they hissed, teeth bared, "haven't you realised by now? In this prison I have nothing but time." 

Now "meat-sack" was definitely more familiar for Naruto to hear directed his way by Kurama. Honestly, it felt almost like a nickname at this point, like the Fox couldn't even summon the energy to pour the same amount of hatred into it that they had in the earlier months of his ongoing campaign to wear the Fox down into accepting his presence in the shrine-cage so they could have a proper conversation. 

"When my dad sealed you," Naruto began carefully, unsure what would actually set Kurama off considering this whole conversation would be like tiptoeing around a field booby-trapped with exploding tags, "he, um, separated Yin and Yang you."

"Oh believe me," Kurama hissed malevolently, "even if I tried, I will never be able to forget the agony of having my very being torn apart again!" Which, fair. Naruto would find someone ripping bits of him off pretty hard to forget too, especially if it had happened more than once.

"Well, my dad sealed you into me," he told the Fox, "but the other half of you was sealed into my twin sister. She figured out how to talk to you ages before I did– she's a lot cleverer than I am, and she's amazing at diplomacy and politics and all that complicated stuff."

Naruto wouldn't say he was bad at playing what Fuyuko sometimes referred to as 'the game of thrones' in a bitter, bitter voice, her chakra sharp and lashing out like the violent spray of waves against jagged rocks in a storm, but he knew his skill was nothing compared to the elegant dance of wits and wordplay that his sister, a Queen who with a sharp mind and silver tongue had bloodlessly conquered Seven Kingdoms, was capable of when unleashed upon Konoha's Council and the Hokage. There was a reason everyone in their little Pack deferred to Fuyuko, even if Naruto wondered if Kakashi and Tenzō and Sasuke realised it.

Kakashi might. He looked at Naruto's sister like she was the moon, and he was the willing tides of the ocean, following wherever she guided.

Their Anija looked at Fuyuko like if anything ever happened to her, he would bleed the whole world dry before pulling his own beating heart out of his chest.

Their Anija was kind of intense. That was probably why he seemed to get along so well with Sasuke, and seemed pretty bewildered by Naruto a lot of the time.

The Fox seemed pretty intense too, Naruto thought, as he watched them loom over him, as best they could in the shrine-cage. 

"You truly expect me to believe that part of me was foolish enough to tell their jailer anything at all?" Kurama demanded. "Let alone my Name?" 

"My sister is very special," Naruto explained, because 'special' was really the only word he knew that could fully sum up the woman that was Uzumaki Fuyuko, Alpha of the Spirit Wolves, Last Princess of the Whirlpools and current Regent of the Uzumaki Clan, and Queen Sansa of House Stark, First of her name and First of her kind, Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.

"Fuyuko swore an oath to you," Naruto explained to the Fox, "she promised that she would see you and your siblings free from your prisons, and she's been studying sealing ever since."

Naruto wasn't sure how he expected Kurama to react to this admission, though he probably shouldn't have been surprised by the angered snarl. 

"More of your lies!" Kurama roared, and Naruto wanted to groan in exasperation as he found himself kicked out of the mindscape once more, opening his eyes and slumping his shoulders from where he was kneeling on the nice, thick rug coloured a deep shade of red that Sasuke had brought from his old house to their little shared apartment.

"I really thought I was getting through to them this time," he complained to Fuyuko, who was looking over at him from their shabby couch with a raised eyebrow, her embroidery resting on her lap and Pakkun pretending to snooze at her feet. Beside her, Sasuke was completing his Academy homework– Naruto rarely bothered to even try as it fit his careless persona to not hand in the assigned work, plus his Anija, Tenzo-nii and Gai-ojisan all taught him so much more and so much better than the Academy ever did, especially with Mizuki always attempting to sabotage him. 

Naruto really thought Mizuki would have figured out by now that his acid reflux always got so much worse when he purposefully marked Naruto down on tests or tried teaching him the wrong movements during katas– for an actual graduated ninja, Mizuki was terrible at recognising he was being poisoned. Sasuke just said that nobody could cure stupidity.

"I tried to tell Kurama about how you work with them, but I don't think they believed me," Naruto told Fuyuko with a groan as he flopped back from the kneeling position so he was laying back on the rug, looking up at the ceiling. One of the cracks in the roof almost resembled a fox, he thought crossly, which really didn't help to distract him from his failure, not when he'd been so sure that he was getting somewhere with Kurama at last. 

Naruto wanted to rant more about how close he felt he'd been to having an actual, real conversation with Kurama which didn't end with the Fox kicking him out, but he couldn't actually say anything out loud about the promise his sister had made to Kurama to free them from the seal– as much as he and Fuyuko both trusted Kakashi, neither were sure how their Anija would react to their plan to free the Fox and Naruto wasn't stupid enough to think that Pakkun was actually asleep at Fuyuko's feet. He knew that the pug would go to Kakashi immediately if he felt Naruto and Fuyuko were putting themselves in danger by messing with the seal that kept Kurama trapped.

The twins didn't have to hide anything from Sasuke, at least, which Naruto was glad about. Even though he knew that the main reason Sasuke didn't care was because he'd be happy to watch Kurama burn Konoha to ashes now he knew the truth about his brother and Danzo and the Third Hokage's role in the massacre of his clan. 

Sasuke forgave about as easily as Naruto's sister did– in other words, no matter how patient he needed to be or how much planning it required, Sasuke would seek justice for the terrible wrong that had been committed against his kin. His idea of 'justice' was about as proportionate as Fuyuko's idea of it too– Sasuke was, in Naruto's opinion, maybe a little bit too invested in Fuyuko's stories of the Faceless Girl and House Frey and The Bastard and His Hounds, but that was something to worry about another day.

Over on the couch, Fuyuko had started looking thoughtful, which usually meant she'd come up with an idea that would probably cause the Hokage a lot of trouble. "I've been thinking" she said. 

"Dangerous words coming from you," Sasuke mumbled from where he was still hunched over his homework, and the 'sleeping' Pakkun gave a snore that sounded much more like a snort. 

Fuyuko's mouth twitched up at the corners, though she continued on as if she hadn't heard Sasuke's interruption. 

"Kurama– Yin-Kurama, that is," she clarified, "suggested that it could be possible for us to assist them to communicate with Yang-Kurama."

"How is that possible?" Sasuke asked, apparently interested enough in their discussion now to look away from the Academy homework. Honestly, Naruto wasn't sure how Sasuke found any of it interesting in the first place but apparently he was in some sort of silent, one-sided competition with that clever pink-haired girl at the Academy, Haruno Sakura– she was Fuyuko's friend Ayaka's niece, Naruto was pretty sure– over kept scoring higher then him in the non-practical tests. The constant losses in the one-sided competition had Sasuke even more driven to study and learn then he usually was.

Honestly, with how much Sakura blushed every time Sasuke glared at her, Naruto was pretty sure she'd sabotage herself intentionally to let Sasuke win if she knew about Sasuke's one-sided competition. That was probably why Sasuke hadn't actually said anything to her about it. Fan girls were weird. At least Sakura wasn't one of the overly obsessed ones– Fuyuko had been very unimpressed when a frustrated, upset and at the end of his rope Sasuke had told her about how some of the girls in his class were invading his personal space to cling onto him, and how they used to break into his home at the Uchiha district to steal his things, including his underwear, and how none of the Academy teachers seemed to care when they violated his space, his privacy, his belongings, and his body. 

Fuyuko's expression had gone icy, icy cold and dangerous as Sasuke vented to the twins after a particularly frustrating day at the Academy where one of the girls had tried to hug Sasuke from behind and when Saskue had reacted instinctively by punching her in the throat, he had been given detention.

The oceans of Fuyuko's chakra had settled to something dangerously still as she listened to this before she disappeared off to have a short conversation with Anija and Gai-ojisan. She'd then told him and Sasuke not to attend the Academy the next day and Naruto certainly hadn't taken any convincing to skive off. When he and Sasuke returned the following day, it was to find a very cowed class hunched quietly in their seats and all of the fanatic fangirls keeping a wide berth between Sasuke and themselves. 

During the lunch break, Naruto and Sasuke had learned from Shikamaru and Chōji that a terrifying kunoichi named Anko had barged into the middle of Iruka's lecture and announced that she was going to be their guest speaker for the rest of the day. Anko had then proceeded to threaten all the students in class with charges for sexual assault if they ever touched a classmate without either their explicit consent or during an approved sparring match before describing in great detail exactly the sort of torture she enjoyed subjecting sexual predators to. Apparently there had been photos involved, plus a couple of dismembered fingers, hands, and even a penis that she'd brought in as props– about half the class had vomited, and Chōji admitted that even he had been put off his food for the rest of the day. 

After she had threatened the class into a sufficiently terrified, traumatised silence, Anko had apparently then gone on to explain what "bad touches" and "sexually harassing behaviours" could look like, referring back to the corresponding punishments they could look forward to as she did so. She had also added that breaking into someone's home was considered a serious crime in a ninja village, and that the perpetrators could expect to face very real consequences, including a visit to T&I to have a Yamanaka scour their minds to ensure they weren't enemy agents, as per Konoha's official protocols. 

Sasuke had been very grateful for the lack of outright harassment he'd received that day, and so far every day going forward. There were still some minor problems, such as all the staring and blushing, but Sasuke was able to deal with that much more easily, determined to ignore it and focus on the Academy lessons, and he'd thanked Kakashi-nii and Gai-ojisan for their part in arranging the 'intervention', with Kakashi giving him a quick hair ruffle while Gai beamed with the strength of a hundred suns during the springtime of Youth. 

Personally, Naruto found his time at the Academy was better used planning pranks or trying to talk with Kurama than listening to the lessons, so he tried to focus back on his sister, even as his thoughts bounced frustratingly around in his head. 

"Kurama– Yin-Kurama, that is, told me that they are able to communicate with their siblings in a shared, liminal space– a non-physical space," Fuyuko clarified for Naruto, seeing his confused expression, before continuing her explanation. "I want to see if we can both access that liminal space at the same time with Yin-Kurama's help."

"How would we do that?" Naruto asked curiously. 

"I'm not entirely certain if this will work," Fuyuko said, "but Yin-Kurama has suggested that if we use ninshū while channelling their chakra and attempting to access our own mindscapes, it could allow them to pull us both into the liminal space that connects all their siblings. Yin-Kurama also said that even if that doesn't work, there's a chance it will allow them to share their memories with their Yang-self." 

"Let's try it," Naruto said determinedly. 

"Let me put up some barrier seals first," Fuyuko said, looking around the apartment with a slight grimace. "In case something goes wrong, or we end up turning into a giant beacon of Kurama's chakra, I don't want us ending up with a mob at our door or ANBU trying to break through the windows. Sasuke, Pakkun, if you want to avoid what is likely to be quite a bit of exposure to Kurama's chakra, I would recommend you leave the apartment for an hour or two." 

"I'll stay and observe," Sasuke said firmly, setting his homework down beside him, now paying them his full attention. "That way if something goes wrong, either Pakkun or I can run and get help." 

"Yeah, yeah, sure," grumbled Pakkun, opening his eyes and letting out an annoyed sigh that did little to hide the tension in his small body. "You really think this is a good idea, pups?" The pug asked uneasily. 

"Kurama can't hurt us when they're trapped by the seal," Fuyuko told Pakkun as she stood and moved about their apartment, pressing her palms against the walls to burn seals into the wood. "And, more importantly, Kurama won't hurt us. I trust them." 

Pakkun still didn't look very confident, but he didn't try to stop the twins as Fuyuko joined Naruto on the rug, kneeling in seiza and reaching out to physically grasp both his hands in her own before reaching out to him with her chakra too. 

Naruto closed his eyes, letting the familiar sensation of his twin's chakra settle over him, like he was sinking into a deep, deep ocean, her love and protectiveness and determination cradling him in the dangerous depths he knew would never harm him. It was second nature now to let his chakra reach back, letting the tempest inside him merge with his twin's oceans, the wild winds whipping the still ocean waters into a whirlpool, a maelstrom, that was all them.

When they were this connected to each other, as tightly bound and as close to one person they could be without sinking into the others' cells, Naruto didn't need Fuyuko-Sansa-Aneue to speak to tell him to reach for the Fox's chakra, he could just feel her intentions, their communication more honest and pure then any spoken word could ever be. 

Naruto could see the visible flicker and flare of the familiar burning red-red-red chakra where their hands were connected as they each reached into themselves, to the prison in their soul; behind his sister, Naruto could see a single column of burning red-red-red chakra– a Tail, he realised. He didn't have time to think if the chakra burning around him looked similar before the world around him abruptly went white and then he was–

–falling. 

Notes:

I was channelling unmedicated ADHD when writing Naruto's POV, I'd love to hear some feedback on how it read!

Naruto's POV will get more mature as he gets older, but he's still young right now and probably has unmedicated ADHD (see above) considering his antics.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the update!