Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ The Stuff Of Legends ❯ Chapter 1

A/N This may be confusing at points, that's because the only dialoged I do properly ie “this” is what the kids are saying, anything said by the storyteller or a character in his stories is treated as part of the prose, except for it gets it's own line. Also, the tense is supposed to wander a little, I hope it isn't too hard to follow. ^^;

 

 

There is a storyteller in Sand, and he has all the history, all the long years of the village and its people. And Leaf. Their ally for as long as most of the adults of the village can remember, he has all of Leaf's stories too. He will tell them to you, for a price.

His home is nestled away in plain sight in the old shopping district. Where people go to get good bread and fresh fruit, and fine fabrics from Bird Country. Where the Iron Smiths and weapons shops are. There is a door next to a brightly bannered café; it has only a dusty white shade to mark it and this door is always open. It would be easy to miss amongst the usual bustle of bodies and clamor of bartering and large flapping sign banners if you didn't already know where it was. But if you live in Sand, then probably you do, and probably you have been there before several times since you were very small.

There are only two rooms on the other side of the door, the one you see serves as a kitchen, a dining room, a living room. It is cramped and dusty. There is one window which the sun slants through sharply and the single glaring shaft tracks its course across the floor by the hours. Bundles of herbs and feathers and other most likely useless things hang from the ceiling. A man-sized puppet with too many limbs and a face like a death mask lolls idiotically in the far corner watching for visitors. The room smells of age and sawdust, paint, incense, and cheap wine.

 

The children come there. They come in wide-eyed gaggles to hear his stories, because they know that he knows all the stories, and his favorites are the ones they can't read in textbooks.

 

The children gather mutely in the doorway and wait with collective baited breath for him to appear, and he does.

 

Come in, I have something to tell you.

 

They all want different stories.

 

The youngest want tales of hope and laughter, they want to learn and they want the world to be good and kind, and they frighten easily.

He takes nothing from them, and he tells them of the Fox that tamed the Tanuki and taught him how to love, of the Cherry Blossom that was slow to open but when it did the world stopped in awe of its beauty, of the friendless squirrel that never gave up.

They leave with smiles on their faces.

 

The next group is children still, six, seven, eight, mostly new students at the ninja academy, and they want monsters.

He holds a clay bowl out to them, and in it they put whatever they've got at the time, a pretty stone, a piece of rice candy. He tells them of the Shukaku and the Kyuubi, of Zabuza the Beast, Orochimaru, and the Akatsuki, and his words are harsh and steeped in blood, and they drink it in with desperate fascination. Someone, usually a boy will always ask

 

“What about the Green Beast of Konoha?” And the story teller laughs.

 

First of all, there were two of them, and secondly, boy, they were heroes, not monsters.

 

They leave pressed more closely to each other than when they came, the boys pick up sticks and cast wary glances down the darkening alleys, some of the girls hold hands.

 

The last group is his favorite. They are older, fresh Academy graduates; new genin, and they come knowing Names, and Histories already, and they come seeking deeper things, bigger things, they come for the stories they would not learn in school. And the storyteller is glad, for those are the tales he likes to tell.

He holds out the clay bowl, and they pass it around, each clinking in a ten yen coin. He ushers them inside and motions for them to sit. They sit cross legged before him on the packed dirt floor and he lets his hood fall back, revealing raggedly chopped brown locks and dark, intense eyes rimmed with paint. He is not as old as he ought to be.

 

The room's small fire cuts his features for their eyes, and he becomes something eldritch and timeless, it casts their shadows stark across the floor, but does nothing to lessen the freeze of the desert's night. Outside the single window the stars wink clear and cold.

 

He folds his hands and looks them over thoughtfully. They wait.

 

Do you know the man whose face is fifth in that hall, the Godaime Kazekage?

 

The girls giggle, because they know the face, and it is handsome, and the boys nod, because it is the face of the hero in so many of their childhood adventures.

 

“Yes, the Fifth, Sabaku no Gaara. He was the youngest, and the strongest ruler Sand ever had.”

“He had the Shukaku demon right?”

“He was crazy.”

“He was the best.”

 

Yes, these things are true. And do you know Rock Lee, of Leaf?

 

And here he is met with embarrassed silence. They know the name, some of them know the face, but he has only a small place in the history that most of them have learned. But maybe, maybe someone offers…

 

“The taijutsu specialist, he, he couldn't use ninjutsu or genjutsu but he was a jounin anyway…. I think, I think he is a hero in Leaf.”

“Yeah, Yeah! The Great Green Beast of Konoha. One of them.”

“The younger one.”

“He was crazy strong.”

“He was just plain crazy.”

“Weren't he and Gaara-sama friends?”

 

The storyteller smiles a smile that bares his pointed teeth.

 

Oh yes, they were allies. They were friends, oh yes they were more than that. Listen, I will tell you.

 

He begins at the beginning, with Gaara, with the demon child. He tells them of the Shukaku, and the boys father, and uncle and siblings. He tells them about the child that could neither sleep nor feel pain. Of isolation and lonliness, and finally of death and violence, the assassination attempts and the murderous rage that sprang from them. The children tremble to think of the cold blooded monster, the ruthless killer disguised as a boy their own age.

 

And then he begins again, with Lee, with the nobody who had no family and no talent, and how he worked and worked and worked. He tells them about the friendless child that nobody wanted and nobody believed in, and about the sensei that saw through that and gave the friendly boy the acknowledgment he needed. He tells them of the boys genin team, and the friendships he forged there and how he never stopped fighting fate and he became strong, unbeatable. The children admire this boy that dragged himself up, and came out of it warm and loving and loyal strong.

 

Their eyes are wide when he talks of the chuunin exam. Of Orochimarus plot to over throw Leaf, and how Sabaku no Gaara was almost beaten, almost beaten, by this nobody. When Gaara breaks him, shatters his bones, and his Sensei steps in to save him, some of the girls start to cry and the boys exchange awed glances when he gets up to fight again.

But it is too late, he has already lost.

And he has made Gaara feel pain.

 

Orochimaru fails. A new alliance is forged between Sand and Leaf, and only months later the two boys who had fought each other fight side by side. Gaara saves Lees life, and that is the real beginning.

 

They see each other only rarely after that, for many years. Gaara is appointed Kazekage, and he begins to change, he is no longer the wild, impulsive murderer of the villages nightmares. Lee remains the same, and fights his way upward to higher and higher ranks. Their friendship remains, and when Gaara is kidnapped, Lee need not be asked twice to aid in his rescue.

 

Finally Lee is stationed indefinitely in Sand, at the Kazekages request of course. They trained together, and they fought, and they sat on together on the western wall and watched the sun go down in silence.

 

But they are shinobi, and there are missions, and one day Lee leaves.

I will be back in five days, he promised. Or I will run five hundred laps around the village backwards.

And Gaara believed, because Lee always kept his promises.

Five days passed, and became a week, a week became two, three, Summer turned to Fall in the desert, and neither Lee nor word of him returned to the Kazekage.

Both villages sent out search parties, it was not often that one of their best men simply disappeared. They found nothing, not even a body. He had made it as far as his first checkpoint and then…vanished.

But there was not proof that he was dead, and Gaara would not believe that he was, so he waited.

 

Gaara stood on the high wall at sunset each day while the sun set and the shadows grew long and the air grew cold. And he waited. No runner from Leaf ever appeared out of the dusk, no telltale speck of green on the horizon. Time crept steadily onward, and the seasons turned again. The War with Sound intensified each battle more brutal and desperate than the last. There was little time to waste on such trivial things as potential search and rescue.

It was two weeks after Lee had bee officially declared Missing In Action, and Gaara had quietly not given up, that people began to talk. And if Gaara knew of the rumors he neither made any move to disprove them nor discourage their spread. People were saying that he was in love. That he was standing on the high wall facing Konoha because he refused to believe that his lover was not coming home, and they found I tragic and beautiful and told each other other stories. The chuunin exam. Kimimaru. A hundred other missions he'd been on with Leaf. Before long the whole village knew who their leader watched for at sunset, and they knew why. There were many things the villagers knew.

 

That Lee would follow Gaara into sandstorms without fear.

That Gaara had learned to sleep a few hours at a time, provided the Leaf, or something that smelled like him was nearby.

That they made love in empty battlefields once the killing was done.

 

A year passed, and Sound was beginning to weaken. Unfortunately, so were Sand and Leaf. But there was news coming out of Rice and Stone Country. News of growing unrest from Orochimarus underlings, and still more encouraging rumors flitting on the wind of a resistance in Sound. People were saying that there was a rebel army, small, and rag tag, but strong, all escaped prisoners Sound-nin deserters. They were wreaking havoc wherever they went, ambushing Sounds troops, wrecking supply lines, freeing more prisoners and feeding false information.

It was said that their leader was a loud, dark haired man with scarred hands, and that he never used ninjutsu or genjutsu. When the Kazekage heard this, he allowed himself a brief, knowing smile.

He no longer stood sentinel on the high wall. The sun was left to set alone.

 

It was a bare six months after those rumors reached his ears that Sand and Leafs forces had started to gather for the final thrust. Stone had fallen easily. Now Sound itself was all that remained, and every able bodied fighter from the two villages were gathering around the target. This time they knew Orochimaru was there, and this time, he had no where to run.

The Kazekage was on the front lines with his men, so were his siblings.

Some of the jounin had reported brief encounters with members of the resistance, skirmishes along the border had brought them out, and those soldiers had readily joined forces against Sound at the time, and shared whatever information they had.

 

Then it happened.

Gaaras squad, 20 jounin, including his brother and sister, and 30 chuunin, was ambushed. Clearly sound had taken a gamble on taking out the Kazekage, the woods around their camps exploded inwards with masked Sound-nin. They were out numbered, those that were sleeping startled and tumbled out of their tents with weapons drawn, ready to fight with eyes still foggy. The assault was fast and brutal; Suna-nin fell choking and writhing over organs scrambled by supersonic vibrations, Sound-nin crumpled under waves of sand and flame and shuriken. Gaara did what he could to stem the flow of enemy attackers, but in the midst of battle he could deliver no single crushing blow that would not have killed most of his own men.

A sudden burst of familiar chakra, his eyes widened.

 

Kankuro had been forced into hand to hand combat with two Sound-nin, the three flailed in a haphazard, deadly dance of blades and fists. He felled one with a lucky strike from a kunai and spun to catch the other in a neck snapping choke hold. While he struggled to regain control of his puppets someone came up behind him.

 

Kankuro-San!

 

A half turn, he couldn't react fast enough, something struck him and he hit the ground, sprawled flat and windless. It was a good thirty seconds before it dawned on him that he wasn't dead, that maybe he wasn't even hurt.

 

Are you alright, Kankuro-san?

 

A man with a long black braid stood above him, kunai locked with a Sound-nins elaborately bladed weapon, one blade hadn't been stopped, and it bit into his shoulder, blood dripping down to stain the ground .

Around them the Sound-nin are shouting in to each other in confusion and terror, shinobi with tattered clothing and without headbands drop from the trees, some burst from the ground and they fell on Orochimarus men like wolves.

 

Y-y-you…no way! It's really you!

 

Then the man was gone, disappeared into the mêlée and the Sound-nin dead on the ground in front of Kankuro.

 

Konoha Senpuu!!

 

Movements faster than the eye, and bones broke under his hands.

The Sound-nin that were not dead or captured fled into the forest, and what was left were stunned but grateful Sand shinobi standing face to face with the rebels.

And Gaara Saw.

His hair had grown out, now in a braid that hung halfway down his bandaged back, and no more were the orange legwarmers and green jumpsuit…but he saw and it was, it could only be

 

…Lee…

 

The man turned.

 

K-Kazekage-sama!

 

For a long time nobody moved, the Sand shinobi awe-struck collective breathe held in, the rebels anxious and untrusting waited their leaders reaction.

Lee dropped to his knees in a bow.

 

K-Kazekage-sama my apologies, I-I broke my promise…please allow us too join forces with you! There are not many of us but I can assure you they are all excellent shinobi and we have information you can-

 

Stand.

 

Ah?

 

Stand.

 

He did, uncertainty clear in his face. As Gaara stepped towards him the sand writhed from the mouth of the gourd and shot forward. Lee tensed as it enveloped him, ghosting over his body from the toes up and slithering off his fingertips, retreating back into it's container as Gaara stopped before him. His face remained impassive, but his fingers trembled as he raised them to the Leaf-nins face.

 

Are you real?

 

….yes?

 

Gaara turned back to his men

 

Go, see to the injured, dispose of the dead, salvage what you can. We move out in the morning.

 

Then to the rebel

 

You may rest here, be ready to leave when we are.

 

A towering bulky man with shock white hair stepped forward from the rebels ranks, voice low and eyes sharp.

 

Lee-san?

 

It's alright, he's a friend.

 

Gaara turned and walked away, towards his tent. He motioned, and Lee followed at his heels.

 

Temari, Kankuro, come.

 

That night no one slept, their work was quickly done, and the hours passed with all eyes fixed on the Kazekages tent. Inside, four silhouettes hunched around a candles flickering light.

Inside, Gaara, Temari, Kankuro and Lee muttered over maps and battle plans. Lee could tell them the location of three supply chain drop offs in the area as well as where Orochimarus troops had started massing their defense. They set to planning. Once they called a runner in, to carry a message to the Hokage and her forces. Once when Lee leaned across the table to better point out a location, the candlelight caught a nasty cluster of scars on his arm that had not been there before. Gaara caught his arm, and turned it to see better. The lacerations spoke of torture, and bones breaking skin. Lee reclaimed his arm and scratched his head embarrassedly. He flashed the others his trade mark smile, gapped now, two of his teeth were out.

 

Eighty one hours later the final attack against sound was launched. For the first time in almost two years Gaara and Lee fought side by side, and the months melted away into nothing, their attacks flowed together like clockwork, attacking and defending as one being, and the ranks broke before them like waves on rock.

 

As you know from school, that battle ended it. Uzumaki Naruto killed Orochimaru.

 

……………….I'm done. Go home.

 

“ What!?!?!”

“But but Gaara-Sama! And Lee! What happened to them!?!”

 

They both survived.

 

“That's not what I meant!”

 

The storyteller just shrugs.

 

Who knows.

 

And he ushered them out into the lamplit streets. He knows that very few of them will go home to sleep. Some, inspired, will head for the training grounds, others will wander into the hall, to stand in the shadow of the Godaime and look with a new awe, another few will bury themselves in books, trying to find how the story ends. They wont. Things like that aren't written down.

 

Little mater that.

 

 

A/N. So. That's that. Really, wrote this because I had some images stuck in my head that I adored ( Gaara on the wall waiting for Lee, The storytellers house, the little totally anticlimactic reunion) and can't draw for shit, so I tried to write a fic that incorporated these things and it sorta…got away from me…just a little. *shrug*

 

For the record, no, the storyteller is not Kankuro, although it is possibly his grandson.