Six Years Too Long

Chapter 26

There's no real logistics in this guys, just plot devices dajklsjdla

Third person pov

There's fear that's as soft and slow as the faint patter of rain. It's more background noise than anything, so light you hardly feel it until it's soaked you through and left you weighed down. It is harmless at first, but without shelter, eventually you'll begin to shiver. It'll nip at your skin, make you ache all over. Until you're too cold to move at all. Until you're frozen solid.

Some fear is sharp. It can be one needle, a quick prick that makes you jump. Or it can be hundreds, all jabbing at you, drawing dots of blood and sending you springing forward. It can be a frenzy, a scramble to get away. Something chasing you at your back, points honed to stab if you slow down for even a second.

Fear can be a creeping sort of dread. One that wraps around you like a blanket and leaves you gritting your teeth. It can be the precursor to an inevitability. Something inescapable. It can be hopelessness, something you've resigned yourself to, something you don't even try to brush off-- all because you know that no matter what you do, it'll be there waiting either way.

The fear that Kurama is most acquainted with is the kind he has embodied for much of his existence. His is fiery and angry, and it sinks into the very bones of those who quiver before him. He inspires an awing sort of fear, for as terrifying as his gargantuan size and near limitless power is, it is somewhat amazing as well. 

What do you know about fear? Because Kurama, for all that he brings it... he's beginning to think he never truly knew anything about it at all.

Fear precedes him. It is something that already existed when he came into this world, and it will be something that exists if he ever goes out of it somehow. Fear is constant. It is something felt by all, for can something really be considered alive if it does not feel something so fundamental? Fear is a protection against stupidity, an alarm the body sets off when something is perceived to be wrong or detrimental.

It is a warning. It is one Kurama heeds. 

Kurama has felt fear despite what some may think. It's something he would never admit, but he has thoughts and feelings too, and he is not immune to the concept of being afraid. The thought of an eternity jailed, tucked away, had always loomed over him with an intensity that made him gulp and flood with trepidation. Trepidation he'd become so used to, he'd only noticed it was gone when Naruto took it away from him.

Naruto is bright. He is young and foolish, by far one of the stupidest humans Kurama has ever met, but he is... well, he is a child. Not quite naive, but needlessly hopeful enough to make up for it. He throws himself into life with reckless abandon. Fear is not something he feels enough, perhaps because he'd felt so much of it for so long that it had lost all meaning. 

Fear is something Kurama has seldom ever felt from the boy since their unconventional friendship first began, with a murky sewer and endless insults quipped back and forth up until the point where Naruto wore Kurama down out of his lethal rage and into a rounded, soft fondness. Naruto is brave almost to a fault. 

It's why the attack is so much starker. It's why the alarm bells doing just ring in Kurama's head, but scream. It why when Naruto grows afraid, Kurama is helpless to do much but do the same.

The fear that shoots through the boy is overwhelming. It's a shock to the system, a shot of adrenaline that has Kurama rousing and peering out through the boy's eyes in that strange, roundabout sense that allows him to see and hear what happens in the outside world. Not an open window, but rather one with slatted wooden shutters over it. Shutters that have been cracked just so-- to allow in a faint amount of light, fresh air, and noise from the outside.