Author’s Note: I have no idea why I wrote this or where it came from. Word vomit is the only fitting description. Bits and pieces of this idea have been floating in my head too long. Had to get it out. I like the theme though. I wound it all around a common thread of inspiration. Hope you guys like it! (Un-beta-ed, but please leave crit!)

Hermit

The morning sun stretched across his face like a lazy cat. His eyes opened slowly, drifting to regard the pillow of warmth beside him. Naruto propped his elbows up, leaning over to scratch at the old dog’s muzzle with affection.

“Come on, Hirichi,” he murmured in a tone of voice reserved for him and the mutt. “Time is wasting.”

The earth and water and air were so pure here, but it couldn’t banish the taint of death. No, death had melded with him, imprinted in his mind for all eternity.

He went to fix breakfast, filling the small space with the heavy scent of fried meat and boiled eggs.

He thought he smelled blood.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Naruto emerged from unconsciousness to chaos. He was restrained and injured. His partner had been gutted next to him, his entrails like blood sausage. The scroll was missing. They’d retrieved it from Hidden Rain with the help of a sympathetic daimyo.

He wondered who’d betrayed them.

Prone in the dirt, he watched as the mob seized the daimyo’s wife, whose pleas for clemency went unanswered. Her husband had already been beaten until his limbs twisted in ways limbs shouldn’t, but still the man cried out for them to spare his family. The poor soul didn’t seem to register that it was hopeless. The children were already burning. The mob had become a living thing, of one mind and one purpose. Hatred fed it, nurtured it, set it throbbing like a beating heart.

Naruto was no stranger to violence. He grew up as an estranged orphan in a powerful ninja village, burdened with a power no mortal should bear. Before he’d ever seen a dead body in the flesh, thousands had died in his dreams, aftershocks of Kyuubi’s near necrophilia fantasies. He had focused his energy, his thoughts, his emotions – everything – on becoming Hokage. At first, it was the childish desire to be acknowledged, seeking for a place in this violent world, needing acceptance. As he grew, he wanted to be stronger, first to protect himself, and later to protect others from being hurt.

He had thought being in ANBU was what he wanted. He had thought being stronger was what he wanted.

Now?

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

-0-0-0-0-0-

The hoe was like an extension of his arm. That was the trick to it. A seamless flow. Naruto bent his back to the task, feeling the strain in his shoulders after long hours of work in the full afternoon heat. He remembered despising these tasks as a gennin. Pointless, he’d thought. Now, it was the only thing that held meaning for him.

He plucked a cheeky weed from the edge of the plot, tossing it carelessly towards the woods. He knew it would spawn more of the little bastards. But if it weren’t for them, what would he do to keep busy anyway?

He smiled softly, absorbed in the deep trance of growing his garden.

The soil was dark and rich, black almost.

He thought he saw red.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Violence didn’t seem to encompass the horror of what Naruto was witnessing. The temple burned, and smoke clogged the blue sky until the light seemed grey and oppressive. The fire was roaring like some mythical beast, spitting flames and cinders, but the screaming from inside was loud enough to rise above the bedlam.

Children screaming. Fire screaming. Women screaming. Innocent people screaming.

The fire was a stage for the more intimate horror taking place in front of it. The wife’s latest tormentor cackled like a demented hyena as he took her by force, fisting his hand in her elaborate coif and shoving her face into the filthy mud. Ever nuance of his thrust was lit against the backdrop of flames and churning smoke. She had stopped struggling; only making broken, animalistic whimpers.

Bound and kneeling, blood pooled at his knees, soaking into his pants, drawn up as if the cloth was thirsty for more; Naruto shook with loathing.

All this for a scroll. All this for a mission.

He wanted to eat his own heart.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Naruto was cleaning his equipment, polishing the wooden handles, shining the steel. He didn’t clean weapons anymore. Garden tools. Clotted dirt instead of clotted blood. He hummed softly. It was still warm outside. Would be for another two months. He left the door open to call in the evening air.

An owl hooted to the east. The crickets were beginning their nightly chorus, warming up with brief clicks and chirps before the real serenade began. It was dusk. He didn’t have much light left, but he wouldn’t light the hearth unless it was necessary.

He preferred the faceless night and he hated the smell of burning.

He thought he heard fire.

-0-0-0-0-0-

The daimyo was finally dead. His naked body was trussed up in lengths of hemp rope and drug through the street. The cheers were jovial as the passerby landed kicks on his pliant flesh. He looked like pounded flank beef.

The wife had bit her tongue, drowned in her own lifeblood. Death from life. It seemed like sacrilege.

It didn’t stop the men from using her body.

Naruto puked up his dinner from last night, the acidic smell lodging inside his nasal cavity. His captor booted him in the face. Acid and copper in his mouth. He dry heaved and earned another cuff to the head. He was dizzy, but he didn’t pass out. He wished he could. He hung his head to the ground, praying for some indescribable thing like mercy or hope or release. Escape.

The hum of the mob reached a crescendo, and, despite himself, Naruto looked up.

“No,” he moaned.

A child. There was a child left. The thing looked like a waif, like a spirit, soot blackened with the wide whites of his eyes glowing. The last of the house’s lineage was thrown on the piled corpses of his parents. The one-voice of the mob jeered, willing him to break. They pelted him with rocks, and he was forced to crouch over the lifeless lumps that had been his parents. Then someone was throwing rice wine on the bodies. The boy was sputtering, too shocked to react with any sense.

And the torch was brought.

“NOOOOOO!”

-0-0-0-0-0-

Naruto was tending to the thyme and coriander when he felt the presence. He rose slowly, acknowledging. Hirichi growled a warning at the trespasser.

“Down, boy. It’s a friend.”

The old man stepped from among the blackberry brambles at the edge of the clearing, approaching with the unhurried pace of someone on a journey, wherein the purpose is the walking of it. His long, coarse ponytail swayed like the tail of a white mare.

“Glad you still recognize me,” Jiraiya offered with a grin.

“Your stealth has always sucked,” Naruto replied with an answering smile. “It’s why you were always caught peeping, you pervert.”

Jiraiya rubbed his chin as if to contemplate this fact. “I shall have to practice more…”

Naruto felt a laugh escape his lips unexpectedly. It had been a long time since he’d spoken with a human. He had plenty of friends in the forest, but they never talked back. He’d stopped talking to himself after the first year. Sakura would have been proud of his self-control: He never spoke loudly anymore. “Passing through?”

“Ah.”

“Stay for dinner then.”

“I don’t suppose you have takeout?” Jiraiya asked, looking green at the thought of a Naruto-made meal.

“Shut up,” he growled, but he was still grinning. He threw a bucket from the nearby well at the old man’s head. Jiraiya caught it deftly. Figures. “Go catch some fish.”

“No respect,” Jiraiya growled, but he ambled away in the direction of the stream.

Some hours later, they sat down to herb rubbed, broiled fish and steamed rice. No veggies. Naruto still hated veggies. He made up for it with grains and fruit as best he could, but green stuff turned his stomach.

“Damn good cooking,” Jiraiya declared, patting his belly fondly, “for a brat.”

“Thanks, sensei,” Naruto murmured, heartfelt.

Jiraiya set his plate down, a somber look settling on his features. “When are you coming back?”

Naruto shook his head, sighing. “I knew you were lying,” he grumbled. “Is that why you’re here? Did Tsunade send you?”

“No.”

Naruto pointedly ignored his gaze and collected the dishes to wash in the stream.

“Sasuke.”

He felt his heart accelerate in his chest, like a race horse in the stockade, waiting for release.

“He came back.”

“Oh?” he said casually, feigning indifference as he went about tidying up. There wasn’t much to it, and soon his hands were left with little to do but twitch nervously in the air.

“They all miss you.”

“That’s not my place anymore,” Naruto answered firmly. “I don’t belong there.”

“What happened to becoming Hokage? You’re telling me that was a lie!” Jiraiya raised his voice, slapping a hand on his thigh to emphasize his point. Hirichi yelped in surprise and slunk into a corner.

“No, but I was young.” Naruto turned steely eyes on his former sensei. “I wanted to protect everyone. You can’t protect people from themselves.”

“You’ve changed.”

“You can’t say I’m wrong, can you?” Naruto said, but his tone was sad, hardly triumphant. “After all, I’m just following in your footsteps. You must have seen it, too.”

Jiraiya was silent.

“The Great Frog Hermit!” Naruto recalled the title fondly.

“You’ve decided then?”

“Yes.”

“Tsunade is naming her successor soon,” he paused for emphasis. “If you return…”

“No. I won’t go back to that.”

“So be it.”

Jiraiya rose, his face drawn and older than it had any right to be. “You don’t have to be like me, you know,” he whispered. “This gets lonely, kid.”

“I know.”

His former teacher paused at the doorway, before turning to regard his last student sideways. “If that Uchiha prodigy tortures me for not bringing you back and I give away your location, you can’t blame me.”

“Don’t you dare, you old bat.”

The mood lightened. Jiraiya chuckled as he left, passing through the herbs and summer-packed earth, the barbs of wild berries and the musk of wild animals.

Naruto hunkered down in the dimming light, absently running his hand through the shaggy coat of his mutt. He was too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice at first, but by the time he woke up the next morning, it was gone.

The smell of blood was missing.

He thought he felt hope.

TBC

Closing Note: Drabbles are still in the wings, my sweets! I just have to update my multi-chaps first!