The Uzumaki Family (Naruto X Justice League)

Chapter 4: Paintings for the Dead

He stood like a monolith in the storm—unchallenged, untouchable, and infinitely weary. Naruto Uzumaki had seen cities fall and stars bleed. And yet, in the heart of Amanda Waller's gilded cage, beneath the flicker of fluorescent lights and the hum of unspoken violence, he faced a different kind of battlefield.

The air inside the training compound was a tempest of repressed rage and sardonic laughter, the kind that curdled when left too long in a locked room. The scent of sweat, steel, and something unnervingly sweet—pollen-laced and dangerous—crept along the walls like ivy in bloom.

And like ivy, she came.

Pamela Isley, clad not in petals but purpose, walked with the kind of grace that suggested roots growing through bone. Her crimson hair shimmered like blood caught in moonlight, her smile a practiced blade wrapped in velvet. She stopped before him—Naruto, the man the earth whispered about—and wrapped him in an embrace that might have once meant murder.

"I did not expect to see you like this, Pam," he said, his voice a thread of gold in a room of rust. Not wary. Not cold. Just… gentle. And somehow, that was worse.

"I thought of nothing else," she replied, and in her voice was the echo of obsession. "You asked me to surrender… and so I did. Waller had her terms. I had mine. Now I'm here, and you—" Her fingers brushed his sleeve. "You're the only reason I didn't turn this place into a forest of screams."

He didn't flinch. He never did.

Naruto remembered Gotham—the night air sharp as razors, the tension between them thicker than the ivy curling around her wrists. She had haunted his café like a vine strangling a trellis, smiling, charming, asking nothing and yet wanting everything. He had offered her friendship. She had accepted it like a poisoned chalice.

"I'm happy to see you growing," he said, pressing a kiss to her cheek, more mercy than promise. "I thought I'd be surrounded by strangers. But with you here, maybe this isn't a complete waste."

The kiss left her dazed. Hope bloomed where poison once dripped.

Then came the voice.

Sharp. Wild. Sweet as a scream in a candy store.

"Ivy! I didn't know you had a lover!" Harley Quinn sauntered in, madness tied around her like perfume. Her grin could cut throats if she leaned close enough. "Poor Harley, huh? Am I yesterday's joke now?"

Pamela turned, ever the queen in green, and offered Harley a smirk made of old wounds and unspoken threats. "I wish, Harley. But for now, he's just a friend. The kind who kisses your cheek and steals your breath." Her eyes turned glassy, then iron. "But listen to him, or I'll make you mulch."

Harley cackled, skipping across the tile. "Promises, promises."

Naruto turned from the chaos with a quiet authority that silenced even Harley's mania. He nodded toward a dark-haired woman standing like a blade unsheathed—Cassandra. His shadow with eyes like still water and a silence that whispered louder than screams.

"Cassandra," he said, "take them to the training hall. Assess, sort, and don't be gentle."

The assassin bowed. "Follow me. And keep up. I'm not paid to babysit." Her voice was dust and daggers.

The crew followed. Grudging. Grinning. Unaware.

Behind them, Naruto watched the garden of misfits leave, the seeds of something unpredictable already rooting in their wake.

And beside him, Pam lingered—watching him.

The immortal in a gilded cage.

Her savior. Her curse.

And maybe, just maybe… her future.

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The tree loomed like a immortal grown from grief—its roots deeper than history, branches scraping at the vault of heaven. It drank the sorrow of the land and gave back silence. The kind of silence that made a man remember.

Naruto stood in its shadow, the last golden rays of sun dying against his cloak, the hem stained with wars no one dared recount anymore. The garden was quiet, save for the whisper of wind through leaves—a lullaby sung to ghosts.

Pamela walked beside him, her footsteps soft but self-assured. She was no fragile thing, though the world had tried to shatter her again and again. She bore her pain like armor, lacquered in poise and flirtation, though Naruto had long learned to see through the sheen.

"You should move on, Pam," he said, voice low, tired—not with age, but with the weight of too many lives carried too long.

She didn't stop. Didn't flinch. Just turned that feline gaze on him, lips curling upward. A smirk, yes—but there was heat behind it. A dare. "But they wouldn't be you, Naruto. Why settle for second best? And besides…" She tilted her head. "Why don't you take your own advice?"

The words hit like thrown glass. Soft, but cutting.

"I know you're still grieving," she said, brushing an invisible thread from his sleeve. "Maybe it's time you let someone in."

He looked at her then, really looked. And what he saw wasn't a tease or a seductress. It was the echo of something gentler—something he hadn't held in years. Regret crawled up his spine like cold fingers.

"You're right," he murmured, shame dragging his gaze down to the earth. "I was being presumptuous."

He gestured toward the base of the tree, where the grass grew thick and undisturbed. "Sit. Meditate. This place remembers home. It's good for healing."

Pamela knelt without a word. Her fingers brushed the roots, and her expression softened—genuine now. "Thank you, Naruto. I promise… I'll make you proud."

He didn't reply, only nodded. Words weren't needed. Not here.

Then chaos hopped into the scene with a squeak of manic glee.

Harley.

Her eyes shone with the madness of bright glass—shattered, beautiful, and dangerous in all the wrong ways. "Hey, bossman! What about me?" she chirped. "I wanna mission too!"

Naruto faced her, his posture shifting. Still calm, but now he stood like the storm just before it breaks.

"You're a broken soul, Harley," he said. No judgment. Just fact. "A good person twisted by an insane clown."

Her smile twitched. Wavered.

"My first task is to fix what he broke."

And before she could respond—before she could throw out a quip or a punchline—his hand rose. Two fingers touched her brow.

A flicker of light.

A silence deeper than the grave.

Harley collapsed like a marionette whose strings had snapped. No scream. No struggle. Just peace. For the first time in years, her body looked… quiet.

Naruto caught her before she hit the earth. Cradled her like something sacred. And laid her down beside Pamela, beneath the tree that remembered too much.

"This is for you, Pam," he whispered, almost to himself. "But I also want to help her. Maybe I haven't changed as much as I thought…"

He rose, brushing dirt from his fingers. The garden bathed in twilight. Two women slept beneath a monument to loss. And Naruto—child of war, father of peace—stood between them, neither whole nor broken.

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Naruto stood alone.

A relic among relics.

The room—the one they used to call "his sanctuary"—was dim, lit only by a sullen glow that refused to burn bright. It sprawled in quiet defiance of time, its walls bloated with ghosts masquerading as paint. Landscapes had once dressed them—gentle hills, sun-touched fields, nostalgia in watercolors. Now they bled with faces. Faces he knew. Faces he'd loved. Faces he would never see outside the trembling frame of a canvas.

He moved like a man condemned to memory, fingers grazing brush-stroked cheekbones and frozen eyes with reverence too brittle to be prayer. It wasn't a gallery. It was a graveyard. And Naruto, the gravedigger, whispering apologies to corpses dressed in color.

"Move on and change, they say…"

The words slithered out like rot from a crypt. His voice was quiet, low, not made for ears but for the dust. Beneath his feet lay a miniature Konoha—chakra-animated, once precise, now flickering. He stared at it. It stared back.

"Become strong like I used to, Hima says," he muttered.

The bitterness didn't seep in. It gouged.

With a flick of his fingers, he smothered the chakra. The village disappeared, erased without struggle. Not shattered—just gone. Like it had never been. Like too many things in his life.

He stood, empty of movement, filled only by silence.

"Have I really lost awareness and not realized the change?" he whispered to the ghost of the toy town, though the words rang heavier than questions. They clung to the air, desperate and directionless.

A long breath. A hand through tangled, sun-withered hair. "I am too old to be playing with toys, don't you think, guys?"

The silence agreed.

His eyes fell next on Gaara.

There were no mistakes in the brushwork. The sand-user's face was carved in quiet dignity, gaze distant even in oil. Naruto's voice cracked like old leather.

"It's been a long time since we talked, Brother."

The smile that came wasn't warm—it was wounded. A ghost of something once real, now rehearsed.

"I wish you were here. I regret that I can never pay you back for all the love that you gave me." He reached out, fingers brushing canvas like trying to grasp the man behind it. "I had planned to find you a wife, but it will never be possible anymore. Do you think I can find you again, Gaara?"

He knew he wouldn't. That wasn't how death worked.

But he asked anyway.

"If you could talk," he murmured, "you'd tell me to move on and be strong. I am trying, Brother. Aren't I?"

The painting remained silent. They all did. That was their curse—to witness, not to speak.

"When I change…" he said softly, wiping dust from the frame, "I'll make a better painting of you."

Promises made to the dead. They always sounded so honest.

And then, Sasuke.

Ah, Sasuke.

Naruto looked at him like a man looks at the storm on the horizon—familiar, inevitable, and already gone.

"I apologize that I haven't made time for you, but you know I've been busy with my daughter."

The words were thick. Sticky with shame. The sort that never fully left your throat.

"You're happy that I decided to do that… Thank you."

His hand lingered at Sasuke's cheek, the paint still vivid despite the years. He looked away.

"We are brothers by spirit," Naruto said. "But when that explosion happened… I was unable to protect you. I chose my daughter."

There. He'd said it.

The guilt was an old scar—it didn't bleed, but it itched, deep in his soul where no healing ever reached.

"Was I selfish?"

It wasn't a question. Not really.

He exhaled and closed his eyes.

"I tried connecting to the souls. I tried guiding you. But nothing came. That explosion, as expected, contained a soul attack… I felt it. That wound in my spirit. It's still there. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm even fully me anymore."

He stepped back, voice softer now. "I contemplated dying."

The confession lingered, heavy and unapologetic.

"I thought, maybe if I had died… more people could've been saved. But Hima… she'd die too. I didn't think she'd be so attached to me. Not this much."

He smiled. It was painful.

"She stuck to me when she was young. Still does. Guess I'm glad she doesn't act like normal kids. I'd be too sad otherwise."

He stood still again, as if any motion would fracture him. His gaze lingered on Sasuke's painting.

"Sorry if I bored you with that," he said. "But for now, it's farewell. See you later, Brother."

His hand reached one last time for the frame—this time not to clean, not to touch, but to hold.

Just hold.

The room didn't breathe. It never did. Not anymore.

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The room lay quiet, a tomb more than a home. Dust danced through slanting rays of amber twilight, like the ghosts of things unsaid. Naruto moved like a man trespassing on sacred ground, though the shrine was his own making—walls hung with memory, and a single canvas that bled him dry every time his eyes dared rest on it.

She looked alive. That was the cruelty of it.

Captured in the prime of her softness, the gentleness of lips that no longer kissed, the curve of a smile that death had failed to erase. Hinata. Rendered not in oil and pigment, but in pain. His pain. His brush. His blood.

He sat before her like a sinner seeking penance.

"I hope I didn't make you feel lonely," he whispered, the words brittle, like a boy's confessions to a mother long buried. His fingers hovered inches from her cheek, suspended in the air like a prayer afraid of being heard.

"You know, Hima has grown so beautiful," he murmured, his eyes flickering with warmth that couldn't chase away the shadow coiled around it. "If you stood beside her... I don't think I'd tell you apart."

His laugh was a broken thing, barbed at the edges.

"She's strong," he admitted, as though it were a sin. "But I might've sharpened her too well. She clings, Hinata. Clings like a drowning soul to a corpse. Her love for me... it doesn't end. It devours. And still, she calls it devotion."

His voice dropped, laced with guilt that never died. "I wonder where she got that from."

Outside, wind clawed at the windows, but within, the silence screamed louder. His fingers curled, knuckles whitening. Regret was a steady poison—slow, silent, inescapable. Every lesson he taught her carved away a piece of the girl he once knew, and in her place stood something frightening. Something too much like him.

A monster who wore his love like armor.

Hinata's smile watched him still. Forgiving. Eternal. Unchanged.

He bowed his head. His shadow fell over her painted face like a veil.

"You always loved too much too," he said, eyes closed now, lashes trembling. "But you didn't burn everything you touched."

He stayed like that, a king on his knees before a ghost, seeking counsel from the only heart that ever understood the ruin beneath his crown. There were no answers in that room—only echoes. And the ache of love long dead, still bleeding.

Naruto stood eventually, shoulders heavier than when he entered.

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He laughed, a sound like rusted chains dragged across stone. In his mind, he heard Hinata giggle—the soft, airy tone that once cracked through his darkness like dawn. For a moment, the weight on his chest lifted. A flicker of comfort. A ghost of peace.

But peace never stayed long.

The world buckled.

Reality folded like a book snapping shut. Gone was the warm room. Gone was the flickering candlelight and the painted smile of the woman he loved. In its place—a void. Black and bottomless. He was kneeling, cradling something limp in his arms. It was cold. It was dead. And the grief was so sharp, so immediate, that his heart forgot how to beat.

His breath caught.

His vision warped like melting glass. For a second, eternity stretched its jaws open around him, hungry for what remained.

And then—

It was over.

The room returned, quiet and undisturbed. The candle still danced. The portrait still smiled. But Naruto's skin was clammy, his breath like broken wind. He sat back, shaking.

"What was that?" he muttered, more to himself than anything living.

A growl stirred within him, low and ancient. Kurama's voice, rasped by time and tempered by battle, rose from the depths of his soul.

"A crack," the fox said. "In you. Your sorrow tears at the seams of the world, Naruto. It bends what should not bend. You must master it—or it will unmake you."

Naruto swallowed hard. The silence pressed in again.

"You should overcome the darkness," Kurama continued. "It has been long enough now. Ten years, Naruto. That's no blink for you."

But time, Naruto thought, was a cruel master. Ten years was a heartbeat when filled with war and blood. Yet endless when marked by absence and silence.

He looked again at Hinata.

"I'm trying," he whispered.

But the darkness within didn't answer. Not with words.

Only with weight.

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Naruto had lived through wars. Seen immortals fall and monsters bleed. Carried corpses of dreams through broken cities and made the sun rise over graves he dug himself. But nothing—nothing—left him as defenseless as the girl who now lay curled in his arms.

She came like a phantom of warmth, blinking into his private dusk with a soundless teleportation, chakra-mist shimmering around her like breath on cold glass. She wrapped her arms around him before he could speak, before the mask could slide back over the hollowness in his chest.

A father. That was what he was now. A monument built from bones and memory, wrapped in a smile for the sake of a child who still believed the world could be fixed.

"Man is weak," he whispered, not to her, not to himself, but to something deeper. The old immortals that watched in silence. "But for you, I will be strong."

And in truth, he meant it. Even if the strength came from borrowed time and lies stacked like corpses beneath a golden throne.

"I love you, Daddy," she said, voice trembling like a blade held too tight. "So Daddy shouldn't show weakness. It makes me feel sad."

He felt her words cut into him like guilt wrapped in silk. She was too young to speak like that. Too pure to carry the weight he bled out behind closed doors. Her soul pressed against his through the chakra-bond, tugging gently—desperate to carry a burden she couldn't name.

"It doesn't matter how long it takes," she whispered. "I'll wash the sorrow of Daddy's soul. I'll make Daddy whole again."

He looked down at her. His beautiful girl. So full of hope. So utterly blind.

"What a precious child," he murmured, the words mechanical, rehearsed. He turned his face away so she wouldn't see the splintering in his expression. "But I am complete, as you can see."

Liar.

Her eyes narrowed, all warmth gone. She was her mother's daughter—no illusion could blind her to truth.

"Daddy, you said you'll always tell me what I want. So tell me—was Daddy not feeling sad? Or did Daddy wish to join Mother?"

Mother.

The word dropped between them like a blade, sharp-edged and unfamiliar. She spoke it as if tasting ash. A name she barely remembered, but one that haunted her father's shadow.

Naruto inhaled. Felt the edges of his grief bite deep beneath his ribs. Hinata's name burned on his tongue, but he didn't speak it.

"I'm sorry, princess," he said instead, voice softer than prayer. "You're right. I was feeling sad. But with you here... I'm not incomplete. I found in you what was lost in me."

Their chakras entwined, braided in pain and peace. A storm calmed by presence alone.

"So together," he said, pressing his forehead to hers, "we are whole."

She blinked at him, her eyes wet with tears she refused to release. "I also feel complete with you, Daddy... but the thought of you leaving terrifies me. Promise me... Daddy will never leave me."

He brushed her hair with trembling fingers. Not the warrior now. Not the savior. Just a man, trying not to crumble.

"I promise," he said, and for once, it wasn't a lie. "I will never leave you. I'm immortal, and I'll always be by your side. Just as you're always by mine."

Her arms tightened around him like chains of love and desperation. In that moment, he realized—she had become his anchor. She was the weight that kept him from drifting into death.

"Then will Daddy fight by my side?" she asked, voice soft, but steel beneath it. "I want to see you shine again. Like you used to. I want to see the old Daddy... the one who made even the stars hold their breath."

Naruto exhaled, long and slow, like a man coming down from a ledge.

"Give me a little more time," he murmured. "I've erased what tied me down. Until I'm ready, they stay gone. But I promise... I'll return to you whole."

She nodded. Just once. A small gesture full of unwavering faith.

"Thank you, Daddy," she whispered. "I love you more than the world itself. You are the best Daddy I could wish for."

Naruto smiled—but behind it lay the truth.

She believed her love would save him.

What she didn't know... was that love, when twisted by grief, could possess more fiercely than hatred.

'I will definitely change Daddy,' Hima thought as she clutched him tighter, her chakra humming with resolve. 'He only needs me. Let the dead rest in peace. Mother should want Daddy to be happy... so I'll make sure of it.'

Naruto held her close, feeling the warmth of her soul fight the frost within his own. For now, this was peace. A moment carved out of the chaos. But he had seen too many futures. Too many paths.

He feared this love—beautiful, devoted—might one day become a cage.

And cages, no matter how lovingly built, always demand escape.

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The throne room of a immortal-king rarely echoed with such lightness. In a world where silence weighed more than words and glances could raze empires, it was almost criminal for Naruto to laugh. But laugh he did—deep, rumbling, and painfully human—as his daughter looked up at him, pouting like a child and speaking like a queen.

She was everything he feared and everything he loved.

Himawari, born in blood and sunshine, stood tall now—not just in stature but in shadow. She moved with the grace of a blade drawn halfway, always close to slicing but held in restraint. Her words—simple, affectionate—carried undertones of execution orders and quiet threats to a world that didn't yet understand she had already outgrown it.

"I love you too, Hima. You are such a kind child. The best I could ever dream of," Naruto said, his arms around her like a cradle forged from war-worn stone. The weight of his affection was heavy, but she bore it like a crown. "I hope you enjoy playing around with your sisters."

"Playing" was a word that belonged to the past. A word dipped in nostalgia and colored by battlefield ash.

"I'm trying my best to keep them in line," she said, voice smooth as sharpened silk. "But for now, there isn't anything big to worry about. Except the heroes. They sniff where they shouldn't."

At this, the warmth in Naruto's eyes cooled, the fox beneath his skin pacing. "They don't understand common sense," he said, tone sharp, detached from the man who had once believed in peace and flowers. "Try your best not to get in trouble with them. They shouldn't be able to tell when you kill someone."

That word—kill—was spoken as easily as breathe.

"But keep away from the Lantern. I'm unsure if he can trap you or not."

That one warning said more than a father's concern—it was the whisper of dread from a man who had faced immortals and still found fear in uncertainty.

"I know, Daddy," Hima replied, lips curling into a near-smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Daddy should have more confidence in me. I'm not a little child anymore. I'm a bona fide warrior."

And she was. No training could forge what the world had done to her. A girl carved by loss, honed by expectation, veiled in love.

But Naruto only chuckled, as if her power didn't frighten him. As if her certainty didn't sting. "Haha. You'll always be my little princess. Some things need to be said, even if they're remembered. Especially then." His fingers found her cheeks, pinching gently, teasing the ghost of innocence.

"Will you play with me, Daddy?" she asked—no longer a command, not quite a plea. Just a daughter's yearning to reconnect with the part of her father that hadn't turned into stone.

He nodded. "Of course. I'm happy that you're being so considerate of my feelings these days."

With a flick of the wrist, chakra flared like the beat of forgotten drums. A card deck shimmered into existence. Holographic light filled the room, casting monsters and legends into living color.

"It's time to play Yu-Gi-Oh."

A child's game. A warrior's pause.

And for a moment, as they faced each other across the glowing field of battle made from memory and pixels, Naruto found himself again—not the ghost of war, not the immortal who ruled from behind silence—but the man who had once wanted nothing more than to protect what he loved.

Even now, he did. With a game. With a warning. With love dressed in steel.

Outside, the world sharpened its knives. But inside, the King played cards with his Princess.