Six Years Too Long

Chapter 22

Third person pov

"You be safe, Naruto. Listen to Kakashi and Ayumu and don't go wandering off, okay?" Minato swept down to press a kiss to Naruto's forehead. The blonde haired boy received it with grace. "I'll be back later and we can go try out another one of the restaurants here! Trying some traditional Suna cuisine could be fun, right?"

"Believe it!" Naruto agreed eagerly, giving his best smile in hopes of reassuring his dad that he would, in fact, be perfectly fine if he went off and did whatever important kage stuff he had to do. Presumably talking about sealing things and boring treaty stuff. Naruto wished he could go with him. If his dad did have to do any sealing stuff today, it would probably be on the very Jinchuriki he was looking for, right? What else was there to seal?

His dad had made it clear that what he was doing was too dangerous and too secret for Naruto to tag along, though. Even Kashi couldn't go. Just his dad and the creepy old stalker dude that none of them liked, and that was it. Which Naruto understood, but that meant he had to try and find his fellow tailed beast jailer out in the wild. And that was assuming said jailer was even a person, too.

The main issue with this was that Naruto has to be extremely, extremely subtle about it. Saying anything out loud would alert... well, everyone-- his dad, Kashi, Kurama-- that he knew about his own predicament. He had no other excuse as to why he'd be seeking out a tailed beast container. He'd totally give himself away, and if he did that, he could put Kurama in danger. What if his dad found out and tried to put another seal on top of the other and Naruto wasn't able to talk to his friend anymore?

The thought of Kurama trapped in complete isolation, lonely and with no window to the outside world? Naruto's heart was normally pretty sturdy, up to taking every manner of hit, but even he felt like it could crack right down the middle at the mere notion of Kurama being left in the dark like that. Naruto had only been alive six years and has known intimately the effects of disdain and malice, the grief that can come with being completely alone. 

Kurama had experienced that for so much longer, and in so much more depth. Naruto has worn the label of monster, but Kurama has had it seared into his very identity. He'd been around a long time, alone and locked away as though he weren't alive and a thinking, feeling being. He was big and he was terrifying, but that's all people saw. They didn't care that he was so much more.

If Kurama was misunderstood, the other tailed beasts probably were too. Naruto was sure they'd done bad things, but so had other people! They'd imprisoned them as weapons and abused their powers as their own. It wasn't fair. Besides, if Kurama could change and be nice and not hate Naruto, maybe his siblings could too! He just had to be very, very round-about in his approach. So that nobody caught on.

He watched his dad go, trying to formulate some sort of plan. If it was a person the tailed beast was sealed in, they'd be naturally easier to find, probably not as secret. Naruto's own status was clearly not well known, but some sort of rumor had to have spread if people were calling him a demon. Naruto could see now that it wasn't just him they were calling a monster-- indirectly, it had been Kurama too. 

It was odd to realize that it had never actually been about Naruto at all. It was nothing he'd said or done. Some people obviously knew he had Kurama in him. Others had just gone along with the animosity of those who were aware of his condition, jumping on the bandwagon to fit in because they couldn't see any reason not to. Naruto felt oddly at peace to finally have a real reason for the way he was treated, even if none of what they'd done was justified.

Not the point right now. Point was, if Naruto had been mistreated and people had inevitably known despite efforts to keep it a secret, there was a good chance people here knew about their own Jinchuriki too. And if people here knew it too, then all Naruto had to do was find someone who was being very obviously avoided in the village. Someone people were repulsed by, who created a berth in the crowd wherever they went.