Safety in His Arms | By : Sasunarufan13 Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1266 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor make profit of it. Kishimoto owns it. |
Author's note: Don't mind me, I'm just testing the waters to see if there's still interest for a sequel to Warmth of his Arms. You don't need to have read that story in order to follow this one, but it might make it easier to get immersed in the setting (as some elements in this story have a more detailed explanation in the prequel). This is either going to be a two shot or a three shot, depending on how active my brain gets. It starts before the events of Warmth of his Arms and will go on beyond it as well, showing what happens afterwards.
I leave the continuation up to you guys: if there's enough interest, I'll continue and if not, I'll understand, given that it's been a fair bit since I posted Warmth of His Arms.
Warnings: Naruto's pov; Alternate universe; Medievalish setting; Omega Naruto; explicit child abuse; mentions of sexual assault; description of injuries; references to prostitution; low self-esteem; self-loathing; angst; beginning of slash; fairy talish elements
Dedicated to: SarahNThatcher. I hope this sequel will meet your expectations!
Part 1
From the very moment Naruto had realised what exactly he was, he had loathed his Omega side.
Omega were pretty. Omega were demure and sweet and nice. Omega knew what to say and when to say it and if they were good enough, they would be rewarded with a stay at the Royal Castle. Every Omega with even the slightest lick of sense desired to be accepted at the Royal Castle, wished for nothing else than to stay there.
Naruto might be an Omega, but he wasn't demure or sweet. He was nice, but that wasn't enough apparently. He never knew what to say or when to say it, it seemed like, because he always said something wrong according to his adoptive parents. But they had been willing to look past all that, because he was still pretty and he was an Omega and that meant he was worth something.
And life had been good for a while even. Mizuki and his wife had never made it a secret that they were not Naruto's real parents; had been honest about the fact that a terrible disease had taken both his parents away when he had just been a baby. They had treated him well, however, had even taught him how to read and write, which was not a privilege many children in the village were allowed to enjoy. Of course an Omega who could read was considered even more valuable, but that was something Naruto hadn't realised at the time.
Why would he have? All he had known at the time was that his adoptive parents treated him well and that he was more privileged than other children.
Everything had changed a few months after he'd turned seven.
It had been a stupid accident. Naruto had seen a cat with its paw caught in a trap and had rushed over to help the poor thing. Right as he had freed the paw, however, the owner of the trap had come crashing through the bushes, swearing up a storm and scaring the cat terribly. In its panic the cat had tried to scrabble away, but Naruto had still been holding onto the little animal – and had received deep slashes in his cheeks in return. The immediate explosion of sharp pain had had him releasing the cat immediately and he'd run crying back to Tsubaki, desiring comfort and care.
He had received neither. Instead of comforting him, both Tsubaki and Mizuki had berated him terribly, screaming at him for being so stupid to ruin his face. Instead of having his cheeks nursed, he'd received a stinging slap and had been sent to bed without dinner.
He hadn't understood why. Why hadn't they helped him? Why had they hurt him instead of nursing his cheeks?
Because he was an Omega. His only worth, what had caused Tsubaki and Mizuki to treat him so well for seven years, had been his looks. The couple had hoped to raise him into a perfect Omega, aiming to have him be accepted by the royal family in the hopes of climbing up higher in society themselves.
But his scars had ruined their plans. His thoughtless decision to help a filthy animal of all things had caused them their dreams, had ruined their future. He was no longer the perfect Omega they could offer to the royals and therefore he was no longer deserving of their gracious treatment. Gone were the reading and the writing lessons, gone were the sweets every Friday evening. If luck was on his side that day, they would leave him alone, ignore him to the point where he would wonder whether he hadn't somehow turned into a ghost.
Those days were much preferable to the other ones, however, the ones when they did pay attention to him. On those days every single little thing he did would be scrutinised and berated and they would unleash their horrible fury on him in whatever way they could think of, be that with the back of their hand, a wooden spoon, a belt or … the whip.
Screaming would do nothing but fuel their ire even further, yelling wouldn't bring any help. The rest of the villagers were content to pretend that nothing was wrong, turning their heads away so that they wouldn't have to see the horrible bruises turning Naruto's skin in splotches of black and blue.
For all the abuse they had loved to inflict on Naruto, however, they had always been careful not to leave any lasting scars. Stupidly Naruto had figured it was because they didn't really want him to be remain in pain – but as before he was horribly betrayed again when the reason why they would always ensure there was no lasting marks had showed up on their doorstep one early autumn morning, a month before Naruto would turn sixteen. A nobleman from a village close to the mountains. He'd heard of the Omega being present in the small village, had sent a letter to Mizuki and his wife, requesting to take the Omega from their hands.
Naruto might have still been young, but he hadn't been that naïve anymore. While uncertain about the man's real intentions, he had known they couldn't have been anything good. Not with that odd glint in his beady eyes, which had made Naruto so uncomfortable. Not with the way the man had kept cornering him the entire time he'd been in the house, his hands too freely near Naruto.
Naruto had lashed out the second the man had tried to grope him between his legs, not even two seconds after Mizuki had stated he could take the Omega with him. He had kicked the nobleman in his stomach, before chomping down on the vile hand which had dared to grope him. When the man had screamed and had tried to tug his hand away, Naruto had kicked him harshly again for good measure.
The nobleman had left the house, bent over, clutching his aching stomach, with his badly bitten hand limp next to him, swearing he would never come back.
Naruto had paid for his insolence dearly that same evening and ever since neither Mizuki nor Tsubaki had cared whether their punishments would leave lasting marks behind. He had cost them their last way out to get rid of him and they wouldn't hold themselves back anymore.
Naruto had believed he would find his end underneath their hands eventually. One day they would go a bit too far, would smack a bit too hard or reach too far with the belt and it would be over. No matter what he did, every action, every word, every breath had insults being hurled at him and fists and belts and spoons raining down on him. There was no one on his side, nowhere he could go to in a bid to nurse his wounds. Nobody who would take a second look at him and take him inside, even if it was to be out of pity.
Nobody cared for him.
Until one day, when Naruto had dared to feed a stray fox, enraging Mizuki once more to the point he was using the whip on Naruto's bare back, slicing skin apart and sending nerves alight with fire, that everything suddenly stopped.
One second the whip had lashed across his back still and he'd been bracing himself for yet another one, biting down on his tongue to refuse the bastard the gratification of hearing him scream, and the next there was no more whip.
Or wait, there was, the whip continued its awful slashing sounds, cutting through the air high and whistling, but it no longer landed across Naruto's back. Instead, when he turned around, confused, uncertain what was going on, he witnessed a red haired man whipping the daylights out of Mizuki, it seemed like, his face a picture of unbridled rage as he brought down the whip again and again.
Over and over, the long thin whip, the one which had caused Naruto so much pain and misery, was brought down across Mizuki, extracting pleas and cries and screams out of the man. The red haired man offered no mercy, however, and continued to whip him until Mizuki was nothing but a crying mess, curled up on the ground in a weak attempt to defend himself. Only then did the mysterious man stop, looking down with such scornful loathing that it made even Naruto flinch; the movement making him involuntarily whimper when it pulled at the slashes across his back, the stinging flaring up mercilessly again now that he was no longer distracted by the red haired man.
His whimper of pain had the unknown man abruptly turning towards him and Naruto couldn't help but shrink back a bit, afraid of what was going to happen to him. Tsubaki would be no help; she was fretting in the doorway of the house, wringing her hands together, silent tears dripping down her face as she stared horrified at her bleeding husband, but unwilling to come forwards, most likely afraid of drawing the man's attention.
The red haired man stepped towards Naruto, pausing when the blond flinched again. Slowly, he removed his cloak and gently, oh so gently, wrapped it around Naruto, shocking the young man to his core.
"My name is Gaara, I'm a captain belonging to the Royal Guard," the man introduced himself in a soft voice; a stark contrast to the absolute fury he had just unleashed. "I'd like to take you back to the palace, so that we can take care of those wounds, if that is all right with you?"
Naruto could only numbly nod, because what else could he do? If he stayed here and Mizuki recuperated from his injuries … He shuddered; his mind flinching away of the potential punishment that would await him then.
Gaara helped him stand up and trembling like a leaf, Naruto shuffled along with him, clutching onto the cloak which felt soft and warm and had tears welling up in his eyes for some stupid reason.
It took a bit before he could climb onto the horse, which had been patiently waiting in front of the house, but Gaara remained patient, aiding him in getting up on the large animal without aggravating his wounds even further.
"Don't worry," he said; his voice deep and soothing as he settled behind Naruto, carefully guiding his hands onto the ropes to hold on. "I promise you, you won't ever be hurt nor have to be afraid ever again. You're safe now."
Safe.
The word, so simple yet so loaded at the same time, bounced back and forth in Naruto's mind as the horse galloped away. When was the last time he'd felt truly safe? He couldn't remember; years of abuse and pain and fear supressing any memory he might have had of the feeling. What did safe even feel like? It was a question he couldn't answer just yet.
And when they arrived at the palace and Naruto stood there, swaying on his feet, holding himself up by the last pieces of pure will he managed to dredge up from within him, watching Gaara call out to a woman named Temari, all his delirious brain could think about was –
He'd ended up in the palace after all. Bruised, bleeding, lacerated and scarred; too ugly to ever be of a service to someone of royal blood, Mizuki and Tsubaki had always insisted.
But now he was here, in the palace.
He was still smiling when he lost consciousness.
The next couple of weeks were spent in a ridiculously comfortable bed while he healed from his injuries. The room he was in was rather large; definitely larger than his old bedroom had been, and pretty with dark wooden panels covering the walls, the floor equally dark wooden, only letting out the gentlest of creaks whenever people walked across it. The bed was large and soft; the mattress comfortable but firm and a window to his right let him see the sun coming up and descending behind a lake.
A servant would come in at fixed times, delivering breakfast, lunch, tea time and dinner. The woman never really spoke, just nodded in greeting and ensuring that he could sit up to eat. The doctor came by often and she did speak to him a lot. She was a busty, blonde woman, whose age he couldn't really discern at a glance; she could either be as young as twenty-five or as old as forty, he could not say. Her appearance was youthful but she carried herself around with an attitude that spoke of years of experience and wisdom.
"Have you taken a look at yourself yet?" she questioned two weeks into his stay at the palace. She was busy writing something down, continuously brushing back a piece of her hair when it would fall forwards, casting shadows across her face.
"I have," he answered after a pause; his hands resting in his lap. "I – was surprised that the wounds on my back – they seem to be healing without looking like they'll be scars."
"Of course they are," she said and clucked her tongue, looking at him with piercing brown eyes. "Give it a couple more weeks and you won't see any reminder left on your back, I guarantee."
"How," he licked his lips, "are you – are you some kind of witch?"
She threw her head back, biting out a sharp laugh. "By the gods, no, no, I'm not a witch, though it does not surprise me you think so. I'm just that good at what I do, my boy. My medical paste won't leave you with any scars, I promise you that."
"But why? I'm just an - " Naruto cut himself off, but even though she claimed not to be a witch, she seemed to sense his thoughts either way, knowing where they had been headed to.
"Everyone deserves decent care, whether you're an Omega or not," she said and abruptly closed her book.
"I don't – I can't pay for your services, though," he cautioned; his stomach twisting sickly.
It was something he'd been thinking about for several days now, how everyone was taking care of him here, making sure he was fed well, bathed, his injuries checked and taking care of every singled day. He couldn't afford any of it, however, wouldn't be able to pay for everything once the time came for him to leave.
"Don't insult me," she said sharply and scowled at him. "I don't need your money; I work for the royal family."
"But I don't have anything to offer."
She leant forwards; her lips pursed together for a moment. "There is nothing to offer. You were brought here because one of our captains saw you in dire need of help. I'm a doctor; helping patients is what I do."
"But those pastes you give me … They can't be easy to make," he said tentatively. A paste which would ensure that his back wouldn't carry any scars? That was no simple paste; it could not be.
"They are if you know what you're doing," she replied primly, before her face softened a fraction. "No Omega should carry the signs of their abusers. I consider it as my act of spite by removing all their marks. They consider themselves tough by laying their hand on you, well, I take away all their pleasure by making sure that not even the slightest scar remains. There's no better way to triumph than to overcome what they did to you."
"You speak as if from experience," he said cautiously, not wanting to offend her.
She leant back in her chair and smiled wryly. "I had the gall to not only be a woman but also an Omega who took on the study of medicine. Not many people were happy about that." For just a couple of seconds her gaze turned distant and she touched her right arm as if remembering something unpleasant.
"But that only served to encourage me even further," she continued and put her book in her satchel. "And I was fortunate enough that the Royal Family recognised my skills."
Naruto was quite for a moment, watching her store the remaining bandages and vials with paste in her satchel as well.
"What's going to happen to me once I'm well again?" he eventually questioned.
She lifted an eyebrow. "Did anybody come to speak to you yet?"
He hesitated, his eyes quickly flicking towards the door. It was closed, of course, the doctor always closed it behind her when she visited him, but that probably wouldn't keep the people outside from trying to listening in if they were curious enough.
"Some of the other Omega have," he admitted and wrung his hands together. "They have … They have been telling me about the happenings at this castle and about … About the Comfort Quarters."
The words left a foul taste behind in his mouth and his stomach twisted into tight knots when he thought about what would await him once he was out of this room.
He startled when a soft hand came to rest on his and his head shot up, staring at the doctor with wide eyes, who sat down next to his hip on the bed, barely making a dent in the mattress.
"All the Omega who come to this castle live in the Comfort Quarters," she began in a neutral tone. "As they may have told you, it is a place where Omega can offer comfort to those in the castle who seek them out."
He nodded, biting down on his lower lip hard; trying to ignore how hot his face felt. He wasn't naïve anymore; the Omega girls he'd spoken to had been more than clear about what was meant with comfort, though they had giggled and laughed and blushed about it, clearly not minding what was meant with it.
It's very pleasurable! They had exclaimed amidst a fit of giggles, their cheeks pinkish and their eyes too wide and glistening. And if you're lucky, a handsome man will seek you out!
Maybe even one of the princes; those words said in a hush, but still bright and eager.
It appeared that in the end Mizuki and Tsubaki would still get what they had wanted after all: Naruto being treated like a whore to whoever guy wanted to quench his lust.
"I can also see that they may have left some important details out of what they told you," the doctor remarked, raising an eyebrow. "While you will live in the Comfort Quarters and people might seek you out to lie with you, you have the right to refuse them. No matter their rank, no matter who they are, they can't force you to bed them. Everybody in the castle knows this. Should anyone ignore that cardinal rule, the consequences will be dire."
"So I – I won't have to …" He couldn't even get the words out of his mouth; disgust making him fear he would throw up any second now.
She shook her head. "No, Naruto. Nobody can force you. If you say no, it's no and they have to back off."
"But what will happen to me if I, you know, if I never want to – to sleep with anybody?" His mouth was suddenly dry like a hot summer's day and he didn't dare to look her in the eyes.
An Omega who wouldn't sleep with anyone at all – there was no way they would allow him to remain here then, right? What use would he be if he would never agree to spread his legs?
He flinched slightly when slender fingers slid underneath his chin and raised his head, forcing him to look her in the eyes. "Then you don't sleep with anybody," she said simply. "And you just spend the rest of your life here, where you'll be safe from any harm. Unless, of course, you want to leave, in which case you can. You're not forced to remain here after you've healed, but if you do, you can stay here for as long as you like."
She rose up and took her satchel. "A bit of advice: don't listen too much to the other Omega," she told him and walked to the door. "They tend to think everyone is like them and loves the male attention. If you have any questions, you can always ask me. And remember: it is always your choice."
Naruto sat there, long after she'd left, considering what he had been told.
Always his choice, huh?
From the moment he'd set foot in the Comfort Quarters, he'd been wary. In spite of the doctor's, Tsunade, reassurance that nobody would touch him without his permission, his first two weeks in his new room was spent in fitful sleep at night, constantly waking up when one of the Omega became a bit too loud with their approval of the person who was with them.
It took until the third week before a man tried to approach him, a gardener, he believed. But Naruto wasn't interested in that, wasn't interested in him, and fortunately the man backed off as soon as he realised that, holding up his hands and apologising before he left Naruto be, turning his attentions to an Omega who was more susceptible to his charms.
Bit by bit Naruto dared to relax in his new surroundings, sleep coming to him easier at night once he learnt how to block out the undesirable noises. He came to know some of the Omega better, like a red haired girl named Karin, who was sassy and sharp tongued, but also nice and who didn't mind just sitting with him, listening to him reading a book aloud. She was one of those Omega who had never learnt how to read, having fled from a similar abusive home like Naruto had experienced. She liked listening to stories, however, and Naruto liked to read aloud, practicing his reading skills after not having been able to use them for years.
There was also a quiet boy named Haku who kept mostly to himself, but who had practically flown to Naruto's aid when one night, a guard had refused to listen to Naruto. With Haku's help, the guy had been kicked out, never to be seen again. A second overzealous guy suffered the same fate and after that, the rest of the household seemed to have got the message that Naruto wasn't interested in bedding any of them.
It made him the butt of joking for a lot of other Omega, however. They couldn't understand why he wouldn't give anyone a chance, tried to convince him that fucking someone could be very pleasurable and did he really think he could wait until someone loved him to actually be fucked? He was an Omega, not someone noble waiting to be courted.
Naruto ignored them all. Maybe he would never come to love anyone, so what? Tsunade had reassured him he could stay as long as he liked, without ever be expected to bed someone if he didn't want to. That was good enough for him. Where else would he go to? He couldn't return to the house; this time Mizuki might actually kill him.
No, better to stay at the Comfort Quarters and ignore men's advances and still be treated decently than try his luck outside the castle's walls.
Because he was still an Omega and most people only looked at Omega for one thing only.
Naruto had never expected to fall in love. Treated well he might be, but he was still an Omega living in the Comfort Quarters of the Royal Palace and men – and the occasional woman – visiting this area of the castle did not so in search of love, but in search of lust. A quest Naruto never wanted to fulfil with any of them and so he was left alone, mercifully enough.
He had never thought he would fall in love – and yet he did. Not with a gardener or a cook or a maid or butler. Not with a washer or a guard. Not with another Omega.
He fell in love with the youngest prince himself, Prince Sasuke.
AN2: If there is still interest, I promise you, the heavy moments will lessen as the story goes on. With that said, is there still interest? Let me know!
Please leave your thoughts behind in a review; should you spot any mistakes, please point them out to me.
I hope to see you all back in the next chapter! Please stay safe and take care of yourselves!
Cuddles
Melissa
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