Chapter Text
Naruto blinks.
He doesn’t think much of the darkness at first-- last he remembered, the moon was rising.
Then, he remembers that very same moon gleaming a disturbing red, a line seaming across the skyline, and eyelids part to reveal blood red with nine tomoes.
He shrinks into a gasp, stepping back almost instinctively, juttingly stepping away from light as he’s confused for a horrifyingly long moment.
What was he doing in a town?
It’s dim. Evening, the town’s a soft gray and filtered with lights-- Naruto steps out of the alley he realizes he’s in-- and his breath holds.
He finds life .
Chatter rings between people, laughter honks boisterously among the drunkards. The fluorescent lighting would’ve been preposterous to indulge in, being times of war and all-- but somehow, the amount of people Naruto was seeing-- it rendered him speechless.
And in that moment, everything comes back to him.
The war. The red moon. The white goddess.
The lifeless bodies. The crying faces. The desperate pleas. The searing agony and the ruined village.
A flood of nausea plagues over him, and he doubles over the side, retching out. His stomach was empty, not even a weak flow of stomach acid and saliva could be thrown out of him.
But it hurts all the same, magma strangling his windpipe as he whimpers.
They’re all gone .
“Woah! Sorry, sir!”
He whirls around at the voice, at the little figure that stumbles over his foot but catches himself easily.
The younger blond boy is nimble and restless on his feet (maybe the noise of someone yelling for a prankster punk behind them had something to do with it), but he takes a moment to swirl around and drop a short apology at the man he trips over.
And Naruto all but freezes.
He freezes, at the little boy that couldn’t be any older than four now. Splashed in a motley of colours (what was he up to this time? Naruto probably doesn’t remember) yet none of it dulled the disgusted raised eyebrows and symmetrical whiskers on his cheeks.
He wasn’t wearing the obnoxious orange (not yet, that jacket was from Iruka after all) but Naruto couldn’t, well, shouldn’t be seeing it wrong.
This was a young Uzumaki Naruto standing before him.
He knows he should be giving the customary polite assurance and send the child on his way. But Naruto doesn’t, can’t do it.
All emotion that takes him is a crushing feeling of conflicted despair. A mixture of happiness, worry, relief, horror and utter dismay fills him so thickly he was choking.
He doesn’t think much of himself at the moment. He curls into the corner, fingers (nails cracked, skin scraped, doesn’t care) whiteknuckled over the wall as he just sobs .