Chapter Text
Naruto shivered, curling her thin blanket tighter around herself. Burrowing deeper into her stiff mattress, she whimpered quietly into the dark.
It was a cold winter night—cold enough that water would freeze if it was set outside. Even if it was only for a moment. And God, Naruto was so cold. There was no heater in her small apartment, and there wasn’t even a fireplace she could huddle near to keep warm. She was stuck with her thin mattress and scratchy blanket.
It was times like these that Naruto wished she had a family. In her three-year-old mind, having a family meant all of her problems would be solved.
She would have a real home. One with food, preferably. Maybe even a heating system. Most importantly, though, she would be loved.
Despite herself, Naruto found herself smiling just imagining it.
She’d always fantasized about what it would be like to have a family. She loved her ji-chan, of course, but it’s not like he could ever replace a real parent. The poor old man was stuck running an entire ninja village. He didn’t have much time for some little orphan.
Naruto sighed. It’s not like she could do anything about it anyway. She would never have a real parent. No one had wanted her when she lived at the orphanage—why would it be different now?
Still shaking with cold, Naruto drifted off to sleep.
“Ne, child?” a voice growled. “Why is it that you’ve finally decided to visit me?”
Surprised, Naruto’s blue eyes snapped open, only to widen in shock at the monster before her. “Who are you?” she called to the creature, flinching slightly at the way her young voice reverberated around the large cavern.
She made a vague noise of disgust when she realized she was standing knee-deep in what looked like sewer water.
“What do you care?” the creature snarled.
Naruto blinked—and because she was just a little girl, she said, “Why wouldn’t I care?”
The strange monster stared at her for a moment, then snarled. The two didn’t speak again for the rest of the night.
(Well, Naruto spoke, but the Kyuubi ignored her.)
—
For every night after that, Naruto sank back into her mind and visited the monster inside her head. Since that first night, he still hadn’t spoken, so Naruto chattered away about anything under the sun. And while the monster didn’t respond, he didn’t say anything mean like the other people she lived near, so she kept going.
It wasn’t until four whole months later that the creature finally spoke again.
“Why do you keep coming back?” His voice wasn’t as harsh as it had been that first night, but it was far from kind.
Naruto didn’t mind, though. She was used to hatred in the voices that spoke to her.
Naruto smiled, because she considered any speech progress. “I have nothing better to do,” was her simple answer, eyes bright with honesty.
The creature grumbled, and it was such a surprisingly human sound that Naruto had to resist the urge to snicker. She doubted he would like it very much if she laughed at him.
“What’s your name?” Naruto asked to break the silence.
The beast’s eyes narrowed. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” he countered.
She thought for a moment, then said, “That would be fair, wouldn’t it? Everyone is already afraid of me for no reason, and I don’t like it. Which means I shouldn’t be like that to you.” She shrugged carelessly. “Besides, you’re not all that bad. You listen to me. Nobody else does that.”
The monster looked at her for a moment. “You may call me the Kyuubi.”
“Is that your name?”
“No. Though I might tell you that one day.”
Naruto smiled again—despite everything she’d gone through, she did that a lot. “Okay, Kyuubi-san. I have to wake up soon. Goodnight. Er—would it be good morning, then? I have no idea how this works.”
The Kyuubi huffed, refusing to acknowledge her idiocy, and she faded from view.
The next night, the Kyuubi responded to almost every one of her questions.
—
Two weeks after her fourth birthday, Naruto decided she wanted to be a ninja. The Kyuubi knew a lot about ninja, she’d discovered, and she decided it was totally cool. Ji-chan was a ninja too—the strongest in the whole village. She wanted to be just like him when she was older.
The Kyuubi, who’d taken to calling her ‘Kit’ like a baby fox, said he might be able to help her get stronger. He wasn’t a human, though, so he didn’t really know how to do any of the moves—just what they looked like.
She didn’t ask why he knew what they looked like, and she could tell he appreciated it.
And so Naruto stood in a small clearing with the three kunai she’d successfully stolen from a genin as she left the Hokage’s office. In front of her was a tree with a target shakily carved into its trunk.
Taking a deep breath, Naruto stood the way the Kyuubi described to her—the way she’d seen ninja stand a thousand times. She threw the kunai in her hand.
And missed.
She was upset, but the Kyuubi, whispering into her mind, wasn’t. He was actually impressed that she even managed to hit the stump on her first try at all.
That made her feel a little better, so she marched over, pulled the kunai out of the wood, and tried again.
This time, she hit the edge of the target.
—
She was five years old when she marched into the Hokage’s office, head held higher than ever before, and demanded to join the Academy. She was three years early, but she didn’t care. She was Uzumaki Naruto, dammit, and she’d worked her butt off. Besides, there’d been plenty of ninja who started the Academy early.
With the Kyuubi’s help, she’d managed to get her taijutsu up to Academy level. She’d practiced throwing kunai enough that she could probably hit the target in her sleep. And she knew how to Henge.
(The Kyuubi hadn’t taught her that one, though. She’d watched an older-looking Uchiha boy teach it to a younger clan member and managed to copy it. She was pretty proud of that one.)
The Hokage, of course, didn’t know any of that, so he said no. Still, he granted her a demonstration to prove her claims—probably because it was her birthday and he felt bad he wasn’t spending it with her.
—
One week later, Naruto was standing in front of a man with a scar across his nose and a hesitant, but visible, smile. Naruto smiled back, and his eyes warmed. She decided she liked him already.
Throughout her observation, his eyes seemed to grow increasingly wider, which Naruto took as a good sign. He seemed subtly relieved when her clone jutsu failed (like it did every time—stupid clone jutsu), but he didn’t comment on it.
Instead, when the test ended, he bent down to her level and said, “That was really impressive, Naruto. I think you’re more than ready to enter the Academy, but I’ll talk to Hokage-sama.”
“Thank you so much, Iruka-sensei!” she shouted, then flung her arms around his waist.
He jerked back violently, but Naruto refused to let go (because this man is nice, this man is happy for us, her subconscious whispered to her). After a moment of Naruto hugging someone who felt like he was made of stone, he finally relaxed into it—even patting her obnoxiously blonde head.
“Hey, Naru-chan,” he said, voice gentler, “do you want to go get food?”
The little girl looked up at him, large blue eyes wide in disbelief, and said with complete adoration, “Could we get ramen?”
—
Hiruzen Sarutobi
Hiruzen heard what Iruka was saying. He really did. But he honestly couldn’t bring himself to believe it.
He knew Naruto was going to be powerful, of course—that wasn’t the issue. After all, she was the daughter of Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki, two exceptionally powerful shinobi.
It was just that he didn’t expect her to get this powerful so soon. Besides, who taught her all this? Civilians weren’t even allowed into the shinobi section of the library.
Regardless, he still hadn’t decided what he was going to do with small, little Naruto. He knew he couldn’t let her enter the Academy early; the people of Konoha would riot, growing more wary and terrified of the girl as days passed. Hiruzen couldn’t allow that.
Still—she had so much potential, especially since she’d learned all of this by herself. He couldn’t… couldn’t just let her talent go unfostered.
So maybe… maybe a tutor?
Not a jonin. He didn’t have enough of them to spare on one little kid, even if she was the Kyuubi jinchuriki.
A chunin, then. Because he wasn’t sure a genin would be able to teach her much, considering she’d already almost passed the graduation exam. A chunin who was good with kids, preferably, because Naruto was only five. He had a limited number of those, since most of them were already working at the Academy, like Iruka.
Suddenly, an idea came to him. He’d seen that kid with his little brother, and he was more than qualified to teach someone as young as Naruto. Additionally, perhaps a government-sanctioned mission involving the two would quell some of the rumors surrounding the clan…
Before he could change his mind, Sarutobi called the boy to his office.
—
What? was the only thought running through Itachi Uchiha’s mind when he exited the Hokage’s office.
He’d entered thinking he was going to be assigned a normal mission. Instead, he’d been told he was going to be responsible for the well-being and schooling of a kid even younger than his little brother.
And he was going to meet the kid tomorrow.
He’d heard about her, of course. She was the Kyuubi jinchuriki. Even still, Itachi had never met her.
Alright then. Objective Number One: (Maybe if he planned out objectives, he could pretend that this was a real mission. Kami, what had the Hokage gotten him into?) learn everything he could about one Naruto Uzumaki.
With a plan forming in his mind, Itachi sped off to find where the blonde devil lived.
—
The first objective was found to be troublingly challenging, seeing as the little girl lived in the Red Light District. That alone was… concerning, to say the least. The Red Light District was hardly a good place for a child to grow up. He knew his own little brother probably didn’t even know what the Red Light District was.
The next thing he realized was that the girl was dirt poor, and because she was not only an orphan but also the container of the Nine-Tailed Fox, Itachi doubted she was getting many food handouts.
When he broke into her apartment (not once did the thought cross his mind that it was technically breaking and entering; he was doing reconnaissance, thank you very much), he found about as well as he expected—which meant not well at all.
The pantry was stocked with only eggs and an alarming number of ramen cups.
There was another surprising thing too. There were a few books—scrolls, more accurately—sprawled across the floor, which was not something Itachi expected. Especially since this practically civilian girl shouldn’t have had access to any ninja scrolls at all.
Thankfully (or not thankfully; Itachi wasn’t really sure what to think anymore), Naruto seemed to have a hard time understanding what was written in the texts, if the pages of notes were anything to go by. They were written in barely legible kanji and made absolutely no sense concerning the material. At least now he knew not to assign her written work.
There were more concerning things, too.
Itachi found a jacket of hers splattered with blood, nonchalantly draped over one of her few chairs. It paired well with the singular—nearly shredded—pair of black leggings he found in her closet.
Itachi finally stopped his search and made a quick escape out the window when he started to feel Naruto’s large mass of chakra rounding the corner and moving toward her apartment.
—
She was gonna be a ninja!
Well, not really. She actually wasn’t even allowed to go to the Academy. She didn’t really understand why (she knew she should be allowed to), but she was getting a super cool and amazing sensei all to herself, which was just as good in Naruto’s eyes.
The Kyuubi seemed a little put off by the idea of having a private teacher rather than going to the Academy. He kept grumbling about stupid, stuck-up Uchiha, but Naruto didn’t really care. She was finally going to learn something.
There was something off about her apartment when she got home, like someone had been there, but the Kyuubi told her not to worry, and she trusted him enough to take his word for it.
Before bed, she splurged on her small collection of food supplies, intent on ensuring she ate a (relatively) healthy dinner of ramen (because of course), two eggs, edamame, and milk. She really wanted to make sure she was completely prepared for her first meeting with her new sensei.
—
Naruto woke up in a hurry to get to training ground twelve and almost forgot to eat breakfast before the Kyuubi reminded her. She pulled on her yellow tank top and black cargo pants (yellow was the best color because it was the color of her hair and she liked her hair a lot, thank you very much) and flung herself out her second-story window—a trick she’d learned after obsessively watching other ninjas do it.
When she arrived at the clearing, there was already a boy dressed in black standing there, looking… kind of uncomfortable. Or maybe that was just his emotionless face. He turned toward her like he could sense her coming, and Naruto could see that his dark color scheme reached his eyes and hair, but definitely not his shockingly white skin.
Then they were standing in front of each other.
He blinked down at her. And she blinked up at him.
Naruto finally decided that if this strange boy wasn’t going to say anything, she might as well. A wide, cheerful grin broke across her face and she stuck her hand out (upward, in this instance) and said, “Hi, I’m Naruto Uzumaki and I’m gonna be the strongest ninja ever!”
Thankfully, he didn’t sneer at her—that's what usually happened whenever Naruto announced her dream.
“My name is Itachi Uchiha,” he said. “That is a very noble goal, Naruto-san.”
“Um, thank you, Itachi-sensei.” His face had yet to change, and Naruto was starting to feel unnerved. Still, she was nothing if not cheerful. “But don’t call me Naruto-san, it makes me sound old like an old lady…” She made a face, sticking out her tongue. “Oh, I know! You should call me Naru-chan!”
He stared down at her and nodded stiffly. “Very well, Naru-chan. Then you shouldn’t call me Itachi-sensei. I’m only a few years older than you. How about…” He suddenly looked very lost, like he was severely out of his comfort zone. “…Itachi-senpai?”
“All right, Itachi-senpai it is.” Then she stood on her tippy toes and squinted up at him like she was inspecting him. “You know, you’re right. You are really young. How old are you, anyway?”
“Ten,” he said, looking proud despite himself.
“Really?” she asked, delighted. “You’re really a chunin at ten? That’s so cool!”
He allowed himself a small smile—more of a twitch of his lip than a proper grin—but Naruto considered it an accomplishment. She got the feeling he didn’t smile very often.
“Can you teach me something now?” she asked when Itachi didn’t say anything to fill the silence.
“Sure. I mean—yes, I can.” He cleared his throat, preparing to begin.
—
Itachi Uchiha
“Hokage-sama mentioned you were having trouble with the clone jutsu?” If Itachi was going to be a sensei, he was going to be a good sensei. No one could ever claim he wasn’t a dedicated shinobi.
“Yeah. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t get it right.” Naruto pouted, and Itachi had to hand it to her—it was pretty adorable. “Whenever I try it…” She made the proper hand sign and concentrated. “…that happens.”
Itachi couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at the crumpled figure that only vaguely resembled the Naruto standing in front of him. The real girl smiled sheepishly.
“Very well, Naru-chan,” he said, slipping into the role of teacher as best he could. “I understand the problem here. You don’t usually have trouble focusing chakra, do you?”
“No. That’s why I don’t get why I couldn’t get this jutsu.”
“I think… I have an idea.” He hesitated, then nodded as if deciding. “I’m going to teach you something right now, okay? It’s called tree-walking.”
“Tree-walking? The heck is that?”
“That’s what I’m going to show you.” He walked to the nearest tree. “Basically, you’re going to climb this tree. Except you can’t use your hands.”
Effortlessly, he placed a foot onto the trunk and kept walking until he was completely horizontal.
“You must focus your chakra into your feet in order to stick to the wood. Too much, and the wood will break. Too little, and you will fall off. It’s a chakra control exercise,” he explained. “It’s easier to learn if you start by running up the tree.”
At this point, Naruto had already found her own tree to practice on. Itachi turned to watch her.
Hesitantly, the five-year-old placed the ball of her foot onto the bark and started to run vertically. She got a few steps before she tried to apply chakra to her feet.
The next step she took, the back of the tree exploded outward.
Naruto felt herself flung backward. She was far enough away that she couldn’t grab on and protect herself from the ground below. She tensed, preparing for impact—
—and instead of dirt, she fell into Itachi Uchiha’s arms.
He set her back on her feet and patted her head awkwardly, which was not at all something Naruto expected him to do.
“I’m sorry,” she said the instant she steadied herself, bowing her head and curling in on herself because she was sure he was going to be angry.
Out of her line of vision, Itachi’s face tightened with concern. He could feel the heat and tension of rage bubbling in his chest but refused to let it show. He wanted to hurt the awful people who had hurt this cheerful little girl enough that she connected even the smallest mistake with pain.
He knew that if anyone even thought of hitting his little brother, he’d kill them. But this child had no one to protect her—no siblings, no parents. It was just her against the entire village.
From the moment he bent down and put a hand on her shoulder, Itachi knew he was volunteering to be that person.
“Hey, Naru-chan.” His voice softened into the tone he reserved for Sasuke. “That was pretty good. And I think I know why you can’t use the clone jutsu.”
Naruto peeked up at him, and he tried his best to look kind.
“Really?” she asked. “Why couldn’t I, then?”
“You, Naru-chan, have too much chakra.”
“I have— that doesn’t make any sense,” she countered.
“Sure it does. There are actually a lot of really powerful people who have the same problem.” He shifted from crouching to sitting directly in the dirt. “The Academy uses the normal clone jutsu because it takes a very small amount of chakra to activate. That means most children can perform it relatively easily after attending classes. But in your case, that small amount of chakra is too hard to section off from the huge amount you have. So while you can do the Henge—a jutsu that requires more chakra—it’s going to be very hard for you to learn the Bunshin because of your large reserves.”
“Oh.” She was quiet for a moment, then a small smile crept onto her face. “Can I try tree-walking again?”
Itachi’s expression mirrored hers. “Sure.”
—
The duo trained until the sun started to disappear behind the Hokage Monument. Itachi finally called the session to an end when Naruto was able to confidently walk up half the tree before she inevitably fell.
The girl in question was slightly disappointed she couldn’t yet make it to the top, but Itachi assured her it was extremely impressive that she managed any chakra control at all, considering how young she was.
Naruto resisted the urge to point out that he made chunin at ten.
Itachi offered to buy her dinner since they’d been training all day, but she politely declined. She wasn’t usually one to turn down free food (especially not free ramen), but she wanted to talk to the Kyuubi, and it was already late.
Both content with their progress, the pair agreed to meet in the same spot in two days. Finally, they went their separate ways: Naruto to the Red Light District, and Itachi to his clan compound.
—
It went on like that for a couple of weeks. Itachi and Naruto met every few days, did training (after Naruto managed tree-climbing, Itachi began teaching her water-walking, which was waaaaay harder), and occasionally, after training, Itachi bought Naruto something to eat.
(Naruto always pretended to be annoyed whenever they went, but secretly, it was probably her favorite part of the whole day. No one dared bully or harass her when she was in the company of the prodigious heir of the Uchiha clan.)
During the fourth week of their schedule, things were interrupted.
Itachi, still an active chunin, was called away to escort some advisor to the Fire Daimyo. The Hokage had tried to schedule him only for a couple of C-rank missions during his first month tutoring Naruto, but Akio Ikeda, the man Itachi was set to escort, requested Itachi specifically, so Hiruzen was forced to send the boy on a two-week trip.
The young boy, while still respectful, was very obviously upset with his assignment.
He didn’t know what he was going to do with Naruto. He knew she’d somehow managed to survive on two eggs a week, ramen, and water in the past, but he didn’t want her to have to go through that again.
Nevertheless, he pushed down his concerns and agreed to the mission. For the village.
It left a bitter taste in his mouth.
—
In the end, he enlisted the help of his superior, Kakashi Hatake.
Kakashi-senpai easily promised to bring Naruto Uzumaki meals every day, even solemnly swearing that he wouldn’t be more than ten minutes late for mealtime. A difficult challenge for the one Kakashi Hatake.
Reassured, Itachi left for his mission with a weight lifted from his conscience. Naruto would be just fine with him gone.
—
As Itachi stepped back through the village gates, he smiled. The comforting sound of the wind ruffling the many leaves always reminded him of home.
Perhaps he would pay Naruto a visit before heading back to the compound. He glanced up at the sky, noting the lack of sun. Winter often meant a quicker turn into darkness, but it couldn’t be more than an hour past dinnertime. One detour couldn’t hurt.
Quickly, Itachi made his way toward the far end of the village, speeding across rooftops near-silently. Normally, he’d be too tired to do anything but stumble into bed after a long mission, but Itachi and his escort had encountered little to no trouble on the road, letting the ten-year-old conserve his energy.
As Itachi reached the Red Light District, he was greeted by a plethora of noise. The commotion wasn’t uncommon in this area, so Itachi paid it no mind—until a single jeer graced his ears.
“Monster!”
At once, the young chunin was fully alert. He slammed to a stop on a nearby roof, activating his Sharingan as he searched the crowd.
There was only one person he could think of who would have that particular insult lobbed at them.
Finally, he spotted her: a bright splotch of yellow curled on the dirt, arms over her head as she braced for impact. One of the men in the crowd was screaming at her, poised to bring a beer bottle down on her tiny skull full force.
Itachi was there in an instant.
The blood red of his eyes forced the man to freeze in shock, arm still raised. Itachi grabbed his wrist, then summoned a bright—but contained—fire jutsu to clear the area around him and Naruto. The crowd screamed and scattered.
Naruto pried her head from her knees, large blue eyes peering up at him. Itachi released his Sharingan, not intending to scare her. While the two had sparred many times, Naruto was nowhere near his level, and she had never seen anything like the killing intent radiating off him now.
“S-senpai?” she asked quietly, confused.
Itachi looked down at the girl, something in his chest twisting at the injustice of it all. How many times had shinobi witnessed this and done nothing? How many times had they walked by?
He let his expression soften, turning his back on the remaining civilians, and placed a hand on the top of her head.
“I’m home,” he said, and let a rare smile grace his lips, eyes crinkling as he tried to comfort her. “Can you stand?”
Even as her lower lip trembled, Naruto smiled—ever a brave girl. “Of course!”
Slowly, she rose to her feet, disregarding the scratches on her arms and legs where she’d tried to protect herself. Beneath her, the packed dirt was smeared with blotches of blood.
Itachi exhaled, refusing to let his rage consume him. This girl didn’t need to witness any more violence.
Carefully, he pulled Naruto to his chest, wrapping an arm protectively over her shoulders, his hand settling between her shoulder blades. She was so small. So vulnerable.
Naruto buried her face in his uniform and pressed into him, careless of the grime of travel coating his clothes.
As he turned his attention back to the crowd—many of whom had vanished at the appearance of a shinobi—Itachi let his vision flicker crimson once more.
“This sort of treatment will never be tolerated again,” he warned, voice flat and unyielding. “You—and any who would hurt this child—best keep that in mind.”
Then he leaned down so Naruto could hear him clearly.
“Come, Naru-chan,” he murmured. “Let’s go home.”