The Hokages' Secret Closet

By eternalshiva

AN – This is dedicated to Pyx because she said something that brought this on!

Disclaimer –

I do not make any monies off this fanfic.

Naruto is copyright of Masashi Kishimoto.

One Shot

I was forgotten.

I was an escape route that had long disappeared from the blue prints of the Hokage Tower.

Through the years my space had caved in and I was nothing more than a oversized closet, full of dust.

For nearly a hundred years I collected memories, waiting for an invasion that never happened.

Oh, there were close calls, I must say.

I was almost used when The First met with Madara at what they call the Valley of the End.

He fought fiercely against that demon fox but I wasn't needed.

They fought away from the village and I remained silent, brooding and impatient in my youth.

* *

The Second had passed away naturally and that's when I began to fade from memory, a relic for a purpose that was pointless since the strongest ninja of the village ruled.

Why would they ever need an escape route?

* * *

The Third had lived to a long life and to my dismay, stepped down unscathed and trusted a young blonde with the secrets of the Hokage Office.

I watched in the shadows as he did great things, married a girl and had started his family in a time of war.

He was a god amongst men I heard but I'd never seen it, considering I was unable to move from my foundations.

* * *

The Fourth used me once and the sorrow that echoed inside my shallow walls tattooed themselves against my will.

The sound of a child crying at the end of my escape route brought joy to me, a small fleeting moment of joy, as I recorded in my hallways the sight of the young Hokage kiss his dead wife and seal the fox demon inside his newborn child.

The earth groaned and the demon was silenced after the Fourth had made the pact with the Death God.

The third finally used me after things had settled in the village. His face was sombre as he reached out his hand towards my cracking walls and let his fingers linger in thought while walking towards the sound of a child wailing in the night.

He disappeared out of my sight into the cave; the cry stopped.

His footsteps were heavy while walking back and I imprinted the echoes of it in my history as the Third leaned against me, weeping while the child slept tightly against his chest.

My halls were silent again and I wanted to keep it that way.

I slept.

* * *

I was rudely awakened one day when snakes burrowed through my cave and ate the walls of my foundation.

I heard the Third lecture his pupil about the will of the fire and I wondered how long it had been since I'd fallen asleep.

I shuddered as the familiar sound of the Death God being summoned and I paused in my recording of events.

I heard his pupil shout out obscenities and the ground shifted.

The Third had fallen and I felt sorrow.

* * *

The fifth was a woman; this caught my interest and I decided to stay awake this time, my hallways had crumbled down and I was cut off from the cave the Fourth had died in.

She did not know about me, the secret never passed on from the Third.

I was now a deep, glorified, forgotten closet hidden behind a panel in the Hokage Office.

I counted the days in boredom, faintly recorded events, deaths and wondered why I bothered. I would never be used again as I was meant to be.

I knew my time was near but I did not want to fill, crumble.

* * *

I let myself imprint the memories of her reign, especially the loud mouth boy who grew into a loud mouth man, he caught my attention.

I was worried when I felt the village disappear one day under the crush of an attack but somehow I managed to remain, hidden and forgotten.

My chance to be an escape was non-existent with my hallway filled in from the Fourth's battle and the cave was crushed, so I'd assume after hearing the loud crash from the outside world.

The Fifth had fallen, but still lived.

The Sixth was someone I did not care to record so I slept a short time until I was rudely awakened for a second time in my long, boring existence.

The Seventh squinted at my open mouth in confusion, his hands full of empty ramen cups, his blond hair looked familiar and I decided to stay again, to record unwritten history and see what this young man would do.

It became obvious after several seconds that I should have ignored my curious interest and stayed asleep.

The brat threw the cups inside my blocked hallway as though he were hiding evidence of a crime.

Threw them.

Inside me.

Like a garbage can.

"Hokage-Sama, your wife is here."

"Let her in." the blond mumbled as he kicked the hidden lever he discovered by tripping on a lose floorboard.

"Ready for our lunch date, Naruto-kun?" a female voice muffled through the wall.

"Am I ever! I'm starved! Where do you want to go-" I thanked the escape route gods that they'd left.

My history was marred, destroy in a simple second.

I, the great escape hallway turned hidden closet, was now a common garbage dump.

I could barely contain my rage.

* * *

Several years would roll on by and the cups would continue to pile up, the smell was terrible and one day I was opened by an indigo-haired beauty.

She looked angry and the blond idiot was cowering behind the Hokage desk.

"What is this?" she yelled inside my mouth, the once impressive echo of the hallway was gone. I was crawling with insects and rot, quite humiliating. Her eyes were bulging oddly and I wish I had the ability to cheer her on.

"Hinata! I'm sorry!" I had no pity for him. I was –not- a garbage dump for his snacking crimes.

"This is where that horrendous stench is coming from, Naruto!" Her voice had a certain steel behind it that made my beams groan in fear.

"I forgot about them!"

Liar.

He used me this morning, dumped so many cups inside me I was drowning.

"Forgot them? This one's still wet!" she picked one out of the heap and threw it on his desk.

I cheered as best as an inanimate object could. I liked her more and more.

I recorded their argument that day, amused that the Sage trained Hokage had been stared into submission and cleaned me out with his Bushin; he was supervised by a petite woman with her arms crossed, her foot tapping and a glare that could kill.

Hinata Hyuuga had become my favourite Hokage wife and I wrote it in my secret memoire.

* * *

I was explored by the blonde idiot once I was cleaned several weeks later; he tapped the blocked exit, piled with historical rubble from twenty-five years, an attack that changed his life and he'd never remember it.

I'd eventually learn that the Seventh was the son of the Fourth and I was disappointed at first, then I was annoyed at his cowardice on his dealings with women.

He'd discovered that I was a good hiding spot.

Not that I blamed him when the pink-haired monster would come rampaging into his office and destroy half his furniture. I was almost tempted to open once when he rudely slammed me shut and let her have him. But his snickers reminded me his father and I let it go, protecting him in my darkness like so long ago.

I wanted to show him, here on the sixty-seventh page of my memoire, that was where the Third had wept for his father while holding him.

That same spot he snickered while his Head Medic swore his name out like a prayer to the devil.

* * *

His wife had gone missing on a mission.

He used me again to hide, but this time it was to hide his sorrow; his worry on where his wife had gone.

I didn't even mind when he had begun to scrape his own history into the walls of my hallways.

He'd scrapped her name.

A poem filled with want, misery and barely there hope.

Straight lines to count the days he'd yet to hear from her.

He would apologize every time he carved a line, his fingers tracing the injury he'd caused me, but I did not mind. I was his only source of comfort.

Eventually, he grew tired of the cold floor. He brought in a chair, a small table.

The single futon was pushed against the rubble in the back and I would later see him every night when he couldn't bear to be alone in his bed at night.

Still, he continued to carve his sorrow, his own miserable history on my walls and I prayed for him. I prayed she'd come back to him.

* * *

Another month had transgressed into three and here he was again, curled into a ball weeping silently calling for her.

Someone was looking for him, I could hear the shuffling of feet against the wooden floor near my mouth; that pink-haired girl called his name softly inside the office but he did not budge.

This is when I realised as I wrapped him in a protective layer of darkness: I was an escape route for the Seventh.

My purpose found again, I grew possessive.

I had accepted him, learned his sorrow and tattooed it to my pointless book of history.

The Seventh was a man of secrets and I was his keeper.

* * *

The day she came home, he dismissed his ANBU and opened my mouth with the casual kick of the lose floor board.

For the first time I was used as a bedroom.

I had been used to smother the sorrow that had eaten at my Hokage for nearly six months.

His wife had cried and so had he, but it was a sweet sound, not one of sorrow.

I did NOT record the details of when the Seventh was reunited with his wife.

I did however note that this is when their first born was conceived.

* * *

Pale blue eyes framed by long dark hair blinked at my open mouth in confusion.

She watched as her father lead her into his secrets.

He pulled a kunai from his pants pocket and grinned at his daughter. He asked her to lean against the wall and made a mark, her eyes grew wide and he commented how big she was getting.

For the first time I was used as a growth chart for the Seventh's first born.

I didn't even mind when I met my foe again and again, the marking Kunai, on the second born, third and a set of twins.

* * *

I was used again but not by him.

The children played hide and seek, I was marked with hearts of first love.

I hid the broken hearts and soothed the children's sorrow.

I was graffiti, scrapped, drawn on.

The children loved me as their get-away.

I was a diary, a pact.

A secret for life.

* * *

The Hokage still used me as a bedroom when his wife would return from a long mission.

When they didn't have time to see each other with their busy schedules.

The futon replaced with a more comfortable one as they aged.

I was that secret smile between the two lovers when they entered the Hokage Office.

* * *

Sorrow touched me again.

The Hokage's wife opened my mouth and laid down on the old futon.

Her eyes red and she called his name brokenly, her fingers touching the heart he drew so many decades ago, her voice whispering the poem she knew by heart.

Her hair had gone from indigo to white and her once youthful face was now riddled with wrinkles.

The Seventh had passed and heart-broken,I slept again.

* * *

I woke to the sound of hammers and saws.

I felt something cut through the memories of my favourite Hokage and I panicked.

My memoire wasn't done, I wasn't finished.

I paused when I saw a pair of pale blue eyes, long indigo hair wearing the Seventh's coat.

Her eyes were red and fresh tears spilled as she ordered her men to cut out the walls of her parent's legacy, their memories.

Their love plainly written on my slabs of stone.

I soon found out my favourite Hokage wife had passed as well, lived for a decade before joining her love.

The Eighth was taking me out of my darkness, closing in the forgotten sorrows, the secrets of the Hokages.

She took me to her home.

* * *

I was poked at by a little boy, his deep blue eyes touched the heart my Hokage had drawn for his lover in sorrow.

"Grampa drew these?" he asked.

"Yes, before I was born." His mother replied.

"Was grampa really as great as history says, mommy?"

"Yeah sweetie, he was the one to bring peace to the world."

"Peace?"

"Mhmm, he made sure you and I would live together without having to worry about anything, Naruto." She kissed his cheek.

"Oh." The boy touched my written history and I felt something shift deep inside my hollow walls.

"And these marks here?" he pointed at the map her father made insistently until she was 16, the map of her sibling's growth year by year.

"That's when grampa used to mark with a kunai how much me, your two uncles and your two aunts, grew every year."

My heart ached at the memories, the sounds of their laughter, tears and the sunlight he brought into my darkness.

I slept again.

My memoire was finished; his legacy was plain to see.

I did not wake when the little boy grew into a man and became the Ninth.

* * *

Pyx's fault I'm not working on my other fics! She had to say something that made a plot bunny procreate.