Wildflowers Burning

i. Skeleton

Splatters of blood soaked a black trail into the ash. Slow, tired footsteps followed a well-trodden path. Sunlight beat into the ground of this thin graveyard of a forest. It was a hot day, the sky overhead was unduly azure. It looked strange, out of place in this sea of muted greys. Ash covered everything. Rubble was scattered, tree carcasses peeling away into nothing. It was no longer a country, just a wasteland. There was nothing to salvage, Konoha had burned for days before all the fires had died. Metal melted, bricks crumbled, bones disintegrated until nothing remained but ash. Some trees farther from populated areas survived, but the soil was rotting and they were dying. He’d walked for a fortnight before he saw green- the water was sour, the land barren, there was no food to be found. Nothing stirred in this land. Nothing but Naruto.

He settled into his nook between what once were high roots. Now they were lifeless husks, petrified in heat. He’d created a small hollow beneath the stump of tree to curl up under to protect himself from the elements. He drank his water, filtered twice through fabric and still bitter, from a small bowl of carved wood. There was no food for him. Kyuubi bore the burden of keeping his body running, pumping chakra into it day and night to keep his heart beating. Every ounce of fat had been shorn from his body, and most of the muscle. He was a shell, same as the land.

His repose lasted until the shadows had lengthened from those of high noon, and he slowly trod his way back to where the village once stood, and ascended to the top of lmp of rock that had been the hokage monument. His blunt, rusted kunai dug deep into his arm, bringing blood welling to the surface. It was slower than it once was, his blood pressure abysmal.  He used his fingers, crude instruments to get the job done, to trace out runes and marks onto the rock quickly, fraying the skin of his calloused fingers. The marks of seals long forgotten trailed along massive swathes of rock, small characters making up infinitesimal portions of the bigger picture. It spanned nearly the entirety of the flat plateau. The swirl of seals, more intricate than imaginable and larger than life, has consumed nearly three years of work.

By the time the moon rose into a dark sky, the blood had stopped coming from the inkwell of his scarred left arm, but rather the fingers he used instead of brushes, grinding against rock. The pain was nothing, by now. It hardly even registered until he started scraping against bone. The man glanced at his wrecked, throbbing, mutilated hands. He’d usually stop now, return to his hollow and sleep. Allow the fox to rest a little, allow his hands to heal. He looked at the waning gibbous moon. He had less than a month to finish and comb over for any mistakes. There was no room for failure. Not the slightest margin of error. He kept drawing.

He didn’t really have a concept of tired anymore, he’d far surpassed tired, weary, exhausted, and now existed in a robotic stagnation of mind, body pressed forward forward forward.

He had long since stopped thinking.

He could not fail.

Would not fail.

ii. Wildflowers

Matarou Ueda was an old man. His bones creaked, his spine hunched, his eyesight had left him bleary eyed and his hearing was far from its prime. His family was gone: his first son had hustled off to some city and kept on going, and after the letters trailed off, the farmer could only hope that he was well, wherever he was; his second had went off to become a shinobi, and never came home after leaving for war. His wife had died in her sleep, peacefully, and he had buried her with perennial wildflowers over her grave. She had always loved them, had potted them and brought them home to fill their small house. Matarou was an old man, and he was lonely. After his boys stopped helping him with the farm, he had had to start selling off large chunks that he couldn’t take care of. The money from that and the plots he had remaining were enough to live off of, even a little more. Perhaps one day his sons would come home, and he would not bear the shame of being unable to feed them.

Matarou was lonely, and he was old, and if when he saw the red headed stranger limping slowly down the raised dirt path, he’d called out to Kaito, his young, old, brave Kaito, then no one would blame him for his blind, sad hope. And if he kept the man- who uttered a slow “thank you,” lip read, as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time, as if he barely remembered how, with such genuine meaning- for dinner, well, old men are allowed to be a bit selfish sometimes.

The man stays. He takes over tending the fields, doing the manual labor that had taken its toll on Matarou Its a long time before he really eats, the man is more of a mouse at first, eyeing it warily, as if it may eat him instead. But eventually he starts eating properly, eating well. It's a lot, but the younger man worked the farm much better than Matarou had been able to, bringing in larger yields and enough to feed the extra mouth, even if he ate for two. If Matarou sometimes calls him Kaito, well, his memory is going after all. No one would blame him.

When Matarou dies in his sleep, it happens peacefully, quietly, on a silvery morning in early spring when the grass is still covered in frost. All assets are willed to an Uzumaki Kaito, who makes a journey to the next farm over to sell the land to a woman with soft green eyes and a melodious voice. Two young ones dash around, squealing and laughing beneath their feet. She offers a small sum, says its not the value of the land but its what she can give for it, and he takes it with a quiet thank you. She tells him he will always be welcome there, that she'd seen him helping old Mister Ueda and she was very glad he had, and that he could come back any time and to ask for Ai.

Kaito, a man with long crimson hair and eyes tired, kind, and blue, left with a knapsack of things, most sealed into the fabric itself, rather than held. Money, a few week's provisions, ink, a small sack of seeds, and a book of maps filled with pressed wildflowers. He hums a vague tune that tickles his memory, and he walks.

He measured East by the sun and started walking. He could run it, but he had time.

Time was something he had a lot of.

iii. Home

Naruto, Kaito now, walked forward, onwards, into trees and forests and rugged terrain. It was no burden. The green, the fresh air, the living, breathing forest made something in his heart click just right. He trained by moonlight, past katas slowly reconstructed, rebuilding his muscles' memory, regaining strength lost under starvation and not fully returned by the plow. He did push-ups until he fell asleep, channeled incrementally increasing quantities of chakra through his hands to swing from branch to branch like a monkey before leaping between them like in the days of his ANBU squad. He created perfect spheres of spiraling chakra with enough force in them to crumble a building before dissipating them into the air.

He didn't sleep though. Sleep was not for veterans, sleep was not for survivors. The woods made him feel alive. Sleep, dreams, made him feel more than dead. Made him feel so utterly destroyed that he felt as if he would collapse in upon himself. Made him screech forward and pound his fists into trees until his hands bled and the trees toppled. Made him fall to his knees on the forest floor and wail, howl, fucking caterwaul at the loss he felt.

He would make it right though.

Wouldn't he?

When he reached Konoha, he cried. He looked over the city, his home, the land he would happily die to protect, complete and whole and colorful and there, and something in his heart, a wall around it perhaps, just shattered. He wept, tears falling from his eyes as he dropped to his knees.

He had been so alone, for so long.

He was home.

He rehearsed what he would say, at the gates. Despite his time at the farm, he had yet to really recall fluent speech.

"I am Uzumaki Kaito. I'm a bit of a jack of all trades. I coming from the northern reaches of fire country," he said. Then he said it again. And again. It was odd, to hear his own voice. He hadn't spoken to Matarou much at all, and the old man seemed to be of the same predisposition as well. Matarou was a third deaf and half blind; he better appreciated the work he had given, the mutuality the two shared, the embodiment of the son he wasn't, to words. He didn't ask any questions or expect any answers, and it was comfortable. The two were content, and Naruto- Kaito- had found a place to heal, just a little.

He pondered the passing of his friend as he made his way to the Konoha gate.

The chunin guards on shift squinted at him warily. One of them seemed familiar, and when he placed a name to the face- and distinctive purple hair- a wash of memories flooded over him. Anko.

She had died early, before the fourth war or the burning. She had shown up to proctor the chunin exam in fishnets and little else. She had spent a long weekend drinking with him, once, dragging him to bars all over town as they talked and talked and talked. She had been lonely, like him, as a kid. She had been brave.

Currently, the teen- her body slimmer, her curves not quite as pronounced, maybe nineteen tops- was pouting like a petulant child. She's told him, once, that before it had been relegated off to Kotetsu and Izumo most of the time, gate guard duty was essentially the Tora mission of chunin. Unavoidable and, while rarely actually disastrous, it was time consuming and exceedingly frustrating.

"Who are you?" She asked, and he found himself scrambling. He'd gotten distracted and now words seemed out of reach. "State your business here."

He struggle to grip the words as he said them, but they came out of his mouth nonetheless. "I am Uzumaki Kaito. I'm from the northern reaches of Fire Country." She frowned slightly, at his stilted words. She had asked another question, he had to answer it.

"I'm a bit of a jack of all trades. My father's dead, and I need work. I came to the city to find some." This talking business is not for him. Anko was glaring suspiciously because that happened when people didn't talk like human beings, she'd tensed up, her right hand was itching the side of her pants leg, above her kunai pouch. He had to consciously not react, to stay calm. He needed- he needed to appeal to her, specifically.

"I... am sorry. I've... been alone. For years. Talking is... hard." He had to take lengthy pauses to properly arrange the words in his head. Something in Anko's eyes softened. She relaxed almost imperceptibly, tilted her head ever so slightly, nodded.

She motioned for him to be let in.

He walked through the gates, and he was home.