Pain was the first thing.
Not sharp. Not sudden. But the pain was everywhere. Pressure wrapped around him, crushing and squeezing in a way that made no sense. His thoughts scattered, breaking apart as sensation took over. Heat pressed against his skin. Something tight wrapped around his chest, then released, then tightened again.
He tried to think. He tried to remember where he was.
Naruto. The presence. The light.
Air rushed into his lungs like an attack. His body reacted before he understood what breathing was. His mouth opened and a sound tore out of him, loud and raw and ugly. Crying was not a choice. It was instinct, desperate and uncontrolled.
Noise flooded in. Voices. Too many. Too close. They overlapped, rose and fell, carried urgency he could feel even if he could not understand the words. Light stabbed through his closed eyes, forcing tears out that mixed with everything else.
Hands grabbed him.
They were rough but practiced, moving quickly, wiping, turning, lifting. His body shook as if it belonged to someone else. Every nerve felt exposed. He cried harder because it was the only thing he could do.
Somewhere nearby, another voice cried out.
It was weaker. Strained. It did not last long.
The voices around him shifted. The urgency changed shape. Faster at first, then panicked, then suddenly restrained. The hands holding him tightened slightly, as if whoever held him realized how easily he could be dropped.
Kris was still there.
That was the worst part.
He remembered everything. Not in fragments. Not in flashes. Everything. His room. The show playing late at night. The hallway at school. The streetlights. His brother's voice cracking as he shouted for him to stop.
The memories did not feel distant. They pressed up against this new reality, heavy and suffocating.
He tried to move his arms deliberately and failed. His body responded with clumsy jerks instead. His legs kicked without direction. Panic rose, slow and cold.
I am trapped, he realized.
Someone spoke close to him. The voice was male. Calm. Controlled. It cut through the noise around it without rising in volume. The hands holding him adjusted, firmer now, more confident.
Kris felt himself being wrapped in cloth. The sudden warmth dulled the sharpest edges of sensation. His cries faltered, hitching as exhaustion set in faster than it should have.
He was carried closer to the source of the other voice.
A woman lay on a bed nearby. Her face was pale, skin damp with sweat. Her eyes were half open but unfocused. Her chest rose shallowly, each breath weaker than the last. Her lips moved as if she wanted to speak, but no sound came out.
The people around her worked quickly. Too quickly. Kris recognized the pattern even without understanding the language. This was not normal post birth care. This was damage control.
Her breathing slowed.
Then stopped.
No dramatic moment marked it, just a stillness that spread across the room, obvious only because everything else kept moving.
The voices fell quiet one by one.
The man holding Kris did not move.
He stood there, shoulders squared, eyes fixed on the woman's face. His jaw tightened. His grip on the bundle in his arms was careful, almost tense, as if afraid of breaking something else.
Kris felt it then. The absence.
He did not understand death yet in the way adults did, but something deep inside him recognized that something essential was gone. The warmth nearby was wrong now. The air felt heavier.
His body reacted with a small, confused sound. Not a cry. Just a noise.
The man finally moved.
He stepped closer to the bed and bowed his head. Not deeply. Just enough to acknowledge what had happened. His lips moved, forming words Kris could not understand. The tone was low and steady, but something beneath it trembled.
"I will raise him," the man said.
The words were clear enough even through unfamiliar language. The meaning carried weight.
Someone asked him something. He answered briefly. Another voice pressed, quieter now. He shook his head once.
The woman was covered. Her face disappeared beneath cloth. Kris felt a strange resistance inside himself at that, a sudden urge to cry again, louder this time. His body was too tired to obey.
He was carried away from the bed.
The room changed. The noise faded. The light softened. Kris's eyes fluttered open for the first time. Shapes blurred together. Colors smeared without definition.
He saw the man's face above him.
Dark eyes. Sharp but tired. Lines around them that spoke of years spent watching things go wrong without reacting outwardly. There was dried blood on his sleeve that did not belong to him.
This is my father, Kris realized.
The thought landed without comfort.
The man stopped walking and looked down at him. Really looked. His expression shifted, just slightly, as if he were measuring something. Not strength. Not potential. Responsibility.
A name was spoken nearby. A question.
"Kousuke," the man said after a moment.
The sound meant nothing to Kris. It felt foreign, empty, like a label being attached to something that had not agreed to it.
The man continued. "Uchiha."
That word hit harder.
Even as an infant, the weight of it pressed down. Kris felt a faint echo of old resentment stir. The clan he had mocked. The choices he had criticized from a safe distance.
Now there was no distance.
The man adjusted his hold and began walking again. Kris's body sagged against him, exhaustion finally winning. His thoughts slowed, dragged down by the limits of flesh and bone.
As sleep pulled him under, one final understanding settled in, quiet and unavoidable.
This life had begun with someone else's death.
And whatever came next would not erase that.