#tired secret bamf is a fav trope

[secret-engima]

Title thingy if ur still doing that, my friend. Not Everyday Is A Good Day (Live Anyway)

Ohhhhh. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So many things I could DO with this title. *squints*.

Did I ... ever do that ffxv naruto crossover I came up with at like 3AM?

Let’s assume I didn’t and roll with that.

It ends with dying.

It starts with waking up after dying, and finding a world gone bloody and primitive and strange.

It starts with a little boy from a village no one knows opening his eyes one day and ... remembering. Feeling the burning Light under his skin that tangles with the energy in the world around him and realizing he is alive once more ... and the world is completely different from what he remembers.

It is not a good beginning. Because the world has more than fallen apart since he was last awake, and people are superstitious and afraid of odd things.

And there are few things more odd than a little boy with too old eyes and a too sharp mind. A little child with no fear of death, with a birthmark on his front and back that looks like a blade went right through his heart, who dances in the storms with the rain beating his skin and a grin that is two shades too wild to be human.

It is not a good beginning, and there are a very many days that are even worse.

He lives anyway. He lives and he learns. Of ninja and clans, of a world where all have a fragment of magic, a tamer version of the Thing in his veins. Where the powerful wage war and technology is long, long lost (stolen, he thinks, by the paranoid, or perhaps forbidden by them out of fear of another Niflheim).

He lives, and when he is only eleven, he takes what few things he has to call his own and he leaves the village behind. No one misses him.

He walks and walks and walks, deeper and deeper into the wilds. At one point, he meets a giant orange fox who burns with old anger and simmering indifference. Their eyes meet, an old King and a newborn Astral, and the fox dips his head in silent, surprised acknowledgment of the truth men have forgotten. He keeps walking. Living off the wilds like he has done a thousand times in memories not his own, unafraid of the beasts, for they are not daemons, and nothing is scary after facing down daemons.

He finds a nice little nook in an unassuming wood, and there he builds himself a home. There is a village a few days walk away, and after growing bored with making too many potions to place even in his massive armiger, he goes to the village and sells them as herbal remedies. They taste terrible to drink instead of crush against skin, but they work just as well when swallowed.

The people of this village are superstitious too, but they do not know him as a boy turned suddenly too old, only as a mysterious wood hermit who looks too young for his eyes and sells miracle medicine for a pittance, who will save lives from incurable fates with a touch of green hands and a flicker of burning feathers and ask nothing in return.

It takes him a long time to realize the little house they’ve built him for when he comes to visit is actually a shrine.

Yoru, they call him. Night. For his hair and his quiet, for the shadows that walk in his steps. He thinks it’s funny, that even now, in another life, he still ends up with a name that means Night.

And it is a very lonely life, to be held as a friendly, if strange spirit of the woods by other humans, to be alone in his memories and his ghosts in a world that remembers his sacrifice when the humans there do not. The Astrals he has always known are deep in slumber, and for all he is lonely he is reluctant to wake them. Not everyday is a good day.

He lives anyway.

He is thirteen, he thinks, maybe fourteen, when she finds him. She is only his age, and she is so very, very pretty. A rarity with hair the color of pale gold and eyes as blue as the sky.

Funny how they look the same as they did in their last life.

She is a noble’s daughter, and she is too young to be out of her family’s care, but she is not the daughter of the nobleman’s wife, and the son who IS is deathly ill.

Heal my son, says her father with desperate eyes, and I will give you my daughter.

He is angry at the thought of it. At seeing her, who has saved the world and holds his heart even now, being used as a bargaining chip with what these people think is a wayward forest spirit. He could do anything to her in their minds.

And they do not care.

The son matters more.

He accepts and he heals the son they have brought of his illness (something simple, something the non-magical medicine of his era could have healed).

The nobleman, his son, and his escort depart. They leave her behind.

She takes his hands in hers and whispers that she is glad, they touch lips, brief and chaste, and she laughs when he names her Tsuki. His Moon.

Maybe it is a good day after all.

The locals acclimate to her quickly, whisper over the powers they think she has gained by becoming his bride. He does not care, he has his Moon and his little forest home. If his brothers find him ... then life would be perfect, but until then, he is content.

And then a ninja sets his house on fire.

Well, the village shrine really, but it’s the same thing now after Luna talked him into moving in permanently so as to better treat the villagers.

There are five of them, three with black hair and fire licking their bones and two with brown hair and magic like water or earth. They are fighting, and while one of the black hairs sets the shrine on fire, it is one with brown hair that knocks down the lovely Tori gate he’d grown rather fond of.

His magic unfurls, heavy and displeased, and all five drop to their knees with gasps of shock and fear. Two struggle to their feet, collapse again when he presses downward with his magic. They have more magic than the villagers, but compared to him and his Moon, they are raindrops in an ocean.

“Leave this place,” he snarls, his voice layered with a hundred others, and the ninja blanch as they flee.

Except one. The brown haired one who knocked over his Tori gate and is apparently bleeding very badly from his torso, struggles to stand and then collapses.

The other brunette leaves him behind.

He sighs as his magic curls inward and it’s the work of a moment to drag the man inside the crispy house and see what’s wrong. A few potions set the man to rights, and when he wakes up hours later, stupefied and wary, his Moon laughs as he sends the ninja on his way with a scowl.

Three days later, two ninja arrive in the village. All the villagers glare, they are still trying to figure out how to fix the gate on such short notice, but the ninja make no trouble as they approach the shrine home.

“I am Hashirama, leader of the Senju Clan,” the elder says with a low bow, so low his long brown hair touches the ground, “and I came to offer thanks and apologies for my clansmen.”

The white haired one just scowls, skeptical as he stares at the shrine and its inhabitants.

“I am Yoru,” he answers, all of maybe seventeen now, “and this is Tsuki. Your ninja knocked my gate down. And three more set my house on fire.”

Hashirama winces, “I am sorry for the gate, I can fix it if you like.” Yoru tilts his head and Hashirama takes it as an agreement.

Tsuki makes a noise of surprised delight when a new gate grows up from the ground, living wood in the desired shape. Yoru makes a pleased noise, his magic couldn’t do that. He looks back down at the Senju in interest, “I’ve never seen a ninja do that before,” he muses, and the man laughs a touch nervously.

They have come to make amends, but as far as Yoru is concerned, the gate has paid their tab. Even so, he asks questions and when he learns of the Senju’s war with the Uchiha, he frowns.

“Leave my village and my forest alone,” he says, “So long as you are within twelve miles of the village, you are not to fight.” The white-haired one protests, but Yoru will not budge.

It doesn’t take long for him to have to enforce that rule.

He hears the burning of wood and the feels the flare of magic and sighs as he warps over there. A glance proves it’s the brunettes and the black hairs again.

He lets his magic surge out and flatten them in their surprise, snuffs the flames with an ice spell, and glares, “I said,” he intones darkly, “no fighting near my home.”

“You dare-!” snarls the leader of the black haired ones, only to falter when Yoru turns his gaze on him. Speechless under the weight of the gaze.

Most people are when facing eyes the color of age and blood.

“I don’t know what war you fight,” he says slowly, “but you will not fight it here. If you do this again, there will be consequences.”

He looks over at the Senju, silent warning that his message applies to them too. Then he sighs and folds his arms over his chest, “Are you even fighting for a cause? Why are you so determined to kill each other?”

Both sides break out in shouting, accusations of death and vengeance that makes him feel weary. Tsuki touches his shoulder from where she has caught up, her eyes solemn, and Yoru scoffs, “What a pointless reason to fight.”

“And what would you know?” Snarls one of the Uchiha as he stalks forward, moving under the weight of Yoru’s magic only because Yoru is not projecting it all. The sword lashes out for Yoru’s neck, and his armiger flairs to life, blocking the blade and pointing four more at the man’s throat.

The leader of the Uchiha hisses a name, it sounds like “Izuna”.

Yoru looks into red eyes with black marks and crushes the attempt at an illusion (so pathetic compared to Ardyn’s a lifetime ago) with barely a thought, “What would I know?” he muses softly. “What. Would I. Know?”

His magic begins to rise, shifting into visible spectrum, crystalline shares and licking blue fire, an armiger of dancing blades risking in ghostly white. He can feel his skin cracking open and gleaming, mortal skin fracturing under the pressure of angry magic, he lets it form, lets his skin turn grey and terrible, lets his magic coat the summer field with ice and his shoulders with ghostly blue fire.

He watches as the Uchiha who lashed out at him pales, eyes flickering frantically, trying to see through a trick that does not exist.

“Do not presume to know me,” Yoru growls, “do not presume to know my heart or my ways. I have seen what vengeance wreaks. I have walked through its graveyards, I have stood beneath its blackened skies and tasted its ash as the world rots beneath the endless night. Vengeance will eat you alive and hunger for more, it will demand more blood than the world contains and at the end of the day, the dead you claim to be avenging Will. Not. Care. Vengeance is not a reason to fight. It is a reason to die. And if it is death you want, then I will give it to you. I will burn your home to as he and stand upon the bones, and when I am done and the world goes quiet, there will be none who look upon them and will be able to tell your bones from those of the Senju you despise. Is that what you want, little ninja? To paint the world brown with your dried blood? To rouse what lies sleeping and destroy what yet breathes?” All the ninja have gone dead white and Yoru snarls, old, tired fury in his blood, memories of Conqueror-Fierce-Warrior-Mystic stirring him toward violence, “Well? SPEAK and it will be so. Speak and I will SHOW YOU what vengeance is-.”

Tsuki’s- Luna’s- arms rest on his bicep, unflinching from the heat, and she whispers, “Peace, my love.”

His anger cools. His skin heals over. His armiger fades.

Yoru steps back from the white-faced ninja, those who have heard of the supposed healer guardian of the forest but not believed it until this moment, and he warns with dark exhaustion, “Leave. Leave and think about what it is you really want. For your world to burn? Or for your children to be able to grow old rather than lie forgotten in shallow graves and crows’ bellies. Fight here again, fight anywhere with in fifty miles of my home, and I will end your blood feud for you, and neither side will celebrate my intervention.” Yoru turns away, ignoring the wide-eyed Hashirama, the spinning red eyes of the Uchiha, “go away and cease playing at war.”

Tsuki leads him home and he lies on the floor for a long time. Letting the cool of the wood leach into his bones, letting his magic curl lazy patterns in the air as his Moon and his Love curls patiently against his chest, waiting for him to rise out of the memories howling in his head.

Today is not a good day.

Tomorrow might be better, when it comes, but even if it isn’t ... well.

Not every day is a good day.

He lives anyway.

And he will never forget what a blessing that is.