Summary: After being frozen for four thousand years the remains of the final battle is uncovered and taken to the Jeffersonian. What happens when what was thought to be a corpse is still alive and kicking. Literally.

Disclaimer: Has this story become canon? No? Well then I obviously don't own Naruto or Bones. Seriously if I did there would be so much slash that even slash fans would be a bit on edge... It might even have to go on HBO... I joke... Not really... Well there definitely be canon SasuNaru beyond what there is already... Don't get me wrong, they aren't my OTP but seriously they are so easy to ship it's insane.

Warnings: I will be pairing Naruto with Lance Sweets so there will be one maleXmale relationship. However canon pairings such as Hodgins/Angela, Booth/Brennan and past Lance/Daisy do exist. If this makes you uncomfortable but you decide to read anyways please do not complain about it. There is a possibility of slash but you will be forewarned and most likely not going to happen. In addition I'm extremely tired and so it may not make sense... Yeah.

Also, please stop asking to not make it this pairing. Seriously the pairing hasn't changed in the two years this has been up and it's not going to change any time soon. I wrote this story to fit the pairing not the pairing to fit the story... Yes, there's a difference. So please stop asking. Please.

Authors note: See bottom.

Previously

He was having a great day and he should have realized it couldn't last. As they were walking back into the labs the tension in the room hit him like a ton of bricks. He saw Lance standing next to Angela; both had somewhat grim smiles on their faces. They looked like they wanted to put on a happy face for him but they weren't sure if they could. He had a bad feeling about this.

He was right.

Now

The tense atmosphere of the room seemed to intensify at that realization. There was something happening and he wouldn't like it in the least.

"Something…" He searched for the right word in English before quickly giving up and settling for other words he thought would suffice, "Not good?"

"The word you were looking for is 'wrong' honey and yeah there is. Dr. Brennan wants to ask a favor of you but I'm-We're," She gestured to herself and Sweets, "Not sure how you'll react."

"What is it?" He asked. He was hesitant as he wasn't sure what to make of this.

"Well you know how I give these skeletons faces once they're put back together?" Angela asked carefully.

"Yes." Naruto replied slowly. He had a better feeling as to where this conversation was going and didn't want that feeling to be true. He finally slipped back into Japanese. "What's the favor?"

"I would like for you to identify the remains and give them their names back where possible." Brennan said in a professional tone and Angela quickly translated.

The enlightenment had hit him full force and his face quickly closed off into an emotionless mask. He was figuring it was something like that but he didn't think it would be laid out so blatantly for him.

This brought forth the question he had been plaguing him since before this whole mess had begun. It's what motivated him to run far away after the war was over and what prompted him to finally return to the island where it had all gone so wrong. Could he truly face his friends and now added to that could he bear to see their faces once again?

It was hard enough seeing their bones on that island but even then they were just skeletons. They were bones that may or may not actually be his friends. The bones could even have been his enemies and those thoughts helped him cope when seeing them he was finally able to drag himself back. It had given a slight safety bubble that put everything in a slightly surreal lighting and helped him distance himself. It was a poor source of comfort but it was a source none the less. Kurama was another one but he wasn't enough on his own because for all he was he still wasn't human and therefore couldn't completely grasp what Naruto needed. Together though those two things were just enough and now they were asking him to give that up.

It brought it back to the question. Could he handle facing reality head on?

His mask slipped a bit and the signs of inner turmoil and pain were clear to even the somewhat emotionally stunted anthropologist.

Just as she was going to say something to Naruto Angela beat her to it and quickly amended what she had said earlier, "Sweetie, you know it's not that important. You don't have to do this."

Booth had translated for her quickly and she felt a wave of disappointment and surprisingly a bit of sympathy. Despite how illogical it was to hold on to the hope that it wasn't your dead loved one that was there, especially so in Naruto's case, she could understand the sentiment. The reality of her mother's disappearance and subsequent death had hit her hard and despite having dealt with it years earlier it only hurt so much more when she analyzed the bones herself and the cold hard truth of the situation hit her all over again, harshly reopening the old wounds and renewing the pain.

She knew Naruto had no reason to comply with her request, even more so now since it obviously caused him so much distress, so it greatly surprised her when Naruto, whose face was now showing signs of deep resignation, replied with a short breathy, "Hai." An affirmative.

"Are you sure? Don't force yourself hun." Angela put a gentle hand on Naruto's arm to try and comfort him.

With a shaky hand Naruto took Angela's before removing if from his arm and kept hold of it. He had been so deprived of skin contact his whole like that he relished every time he got any but at the same time he didn't know how to handle it and it made him a bit uncomfortable. He had only ever had brief physical comfort, a pat on the back or a ruffle of his hair maybe a fist bump, but anything that had ever been prolonged was usually not something to draw comfort from as they usually ended up with him being beaten and bloody. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate Angela's gesture, he really did, but it felt odd.

"Yes, I'm sure. To see their faces once more will be a blessing as much as a curse. They died long before I was frozen and I think that after four thousand years it's time to deal with their deaths so I can finally let their memories rest peacefully." The blinding smile on his face put the others at ease but Angela wasn't sure who he was trying to convince, them or himself.

Despite being said in an upbeat tone the solemn maturity of the words conveyed put Naruto in a new light. Before she had thought him more childish due to his sunny disposition and almost naïve amount of optimism but now she had to reconsider. Perhaps what she had seen was merely an act? She didn't think so. No one could be that way all the time. Maybe he was just genuinely bright but had his moments? Yes that seemed more likely to here and she didn't know why but she was glad that despite his wisdom it seemed that he was still able to be genuinely optimistic as well.

She was also glad that she had called in Sweets and got him clearance from Cam. The cheerful persona could only last so long and by the time this was over he would definitely need someone to talk to, someone who was better equipped for this type situation and fully aware of the circumstance. Someone Naruto could confide everything to. She knew the young psychologist would be perfect for the job. It was only a bonus that it would help along the vibe she was getting from the two the other day. They probably hadn't noticed it yet but with time they would and her woman's intuition was rarely wrong with this sort of thing.

Angela grabbed the hand Naruto had let go of a little while ago and gently led him to her office and softly sat him down in front of a monitor with a push.

"Are you sure you're ready for this? We don't have to do this right now." Her only response was an affirmative grunt. "Alright we'll take this slowly though."

She looked up to Sweets who had followed them in and taken a seat next to Naruto for a confirmation as to if this was the right thing to do. He gave a slight nod as Naruto just sat there with his eyes stared fixedly at the blank screen as if it were about to bring about his doom.

Angela started to set up the programs while explaining them to Naruto and then again to Lance, "I'm going to run two programs. The first one will obviously be the facial reconstruction program and the second will be a translation program I designed. Basically the microphone will pick up anything said in Japanese or English and translate what was said in the other language as text on the screen. I figured it would be useful."

Lance was fairly impressed she was able to do it over night but figured there were plenty of programs she had to build off of. It took a few more minutes to set everything up but all too soon everything was ready.

"Alright, here's the first one." At her words a face popped up on the screen.

Naruto didn't recognize the person immediately. The person was male, a fairly handsome one at that, in his late twenties or early thirties. Angela had portrayed him with dark eyes and brown hair. Despite not recognizing him there was something eerily familiar about him. It was just something about the shape of his eyes and jawline. It was on the tip of his mind. He might actually recognize this man and it wasn't until he looked at the spiky swoosh of one of the man's bangs did it click. He quickly reached over and put his hands on the monitor to cover three quarters of the man's face and stare into the only eye that was visible.

The sudden movement startled Angela and Sweets as there weren't expecting such a reaction from him. Misinterpreting said action Lance gestured for Angela to turn off the monitor but just before she could, Naruto, who hadn't looked away from the eye, whispered, "Kakashi-Sensei."

The psychologist stopped gesturing and remained in silence as he watched Naruto was still staring at the man on the screen. After a few minutes Naruto sat back down with a sigh and a somewhat sad half smile.

The smile slowly turned into a smirk as he said, "So that's what that bastard looked like without his masks. I don't see why all those women went crazy over him." The translation program worked flawlessly.

"So you knew him?" The taller man asked tentatively.

"Yeah, the lazy pervert was my jounin sensei when I was a genin," Seeing their blank face he explained, "Jounin are one of the higher ranking ninja and genin are the lowest. Genin are assigned to be in teams of three with a jounin to teach and lead them. Anyways, despite being a pervert that man was one the best men I have ever known and taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life." He got a far off look, lost deep in the memories of his teacher.

"He always wore a mask for whatever reason so I've never actually seen his whole face but this is enough for me to be able to tell it's him. You did a really good job Angela! It's absolutely spot on except you got the hair all wrong. You got the spiky part down but the color is supposed to be a silvery grey and it all swoops to the right." Naruto gestured wildly trying and unsuccessfully show her the general shape the hair should take.

She raised an eyebrow, she must have heard wrong. "Silver? He can't be older than thirty two at most and even that's stretching it."

It was Naruto's turn to raise an eyebrow. "So? What does age have to do with hair color?"

He was confused. Now that he was thinking about it though he supposed he hadn't seen anyone else here without brown or black hair. He'd seen one intern with yellow hair but that was it. Where were the reds and blues and pinks and all the other colors? Was this area only prone to certain hair colors or something? "Do people here only have brown, black or yellow hair?"

Kyuubi had smacked himself in the face with his tails. 'Your skills of observation will forever astound me.'

'What? It's a valid question!' Naruto mentally argued.

Lance and Angela looked to each other. They weren't sure how to approach this. It was another eccentricity that they didn't know how to deal with. Sweets finally decided to respond, "There are also people with red hair and older people with white or silver but unless they dye it another color those are the only ones there typically are in the world. Is it very different where you're from?" While at this point it was an obvious question it still needed to be asked.

Lance expected an affirmative going by the looks of unnaturally bright blond hair. Despite its unnatural brightness it somehow seemed perfectly natural on him. If it had been dyed that shade it would have been obvious but the fact that it blended so well tipped him off that there was something else in play.

Naruto looked a bit shocked at this newest revelation. In fact he looked more shocked about this than anything he had learned before about this place. What they didn't realize was it wasn't the hair color that really bothered him, it was the bigger implications. If something so trivial and for granted as hair color was that different just how much of a difference was there between this new world and his own? Sure there had been a lot and he was starting to think that maybe overall nothing was so different that he couldn't adjust given time but this? Something so commonplace and natural was this different?

Any footing he thought he had been gaining in the last few days suddenly vanished as a torrent of doubts started to whirl through his mind. Was everything so different that their basic make was different? Their societies seemed to be so different to begin with and he was beginning to suspect absolutely no one knew about, yet alone used, chakra or anything similar to it. So did that mean he was a different species entirely and more importantly did that mean he was alone once more? Was he truly the last of his kind?

He already knew he was different thanks to merging with the nine tailed demon fox but had he been born so different from them that he was never the same to begin with? Would he ever truly find a place to belong in this new world? Was a fresh start impossible before it had even begun? When they found out would he become an outcast once again? Had the villagers who shunned him as a child been right and he would never fit in?

Even when he had been shunned as a child at least he was at home. He knew the customs, he knew the people and despite them not liking them he still had shared the commonalities of that society. He had the tools to eventually thrive and grow relationships with his peers and connect with them due to shared experience. He had no such opportunities here. It finally hit that he was totally and completely alone in a foreign land with no chance of a homecoming. No matter what happened he could never have the home he once had and while he had accepted that a long time ago it still hadn't hit him completely because he was still physically there… And now he wasn't. It had taken him awhile to finally realize it but it had finally hit home.

He was alone.

Naruto's breath had grown more and more erratic as the thoughts escalated quickly and before the panic attack could get any worse Lance decided to give the boy, who he knew was unaccustomed with friendly touch, a shock by grabbing him into a full bodied embrace. It worked as Naruto immediately stilled at the foreign contact, now fully focusing on the unfamiliar feeling of having a body be that close to him. He was too shocked and his mind too erratic to try and escape.

It took a few more minutes of remaining in that position before Naruto's breathing had steadied a bit and he came back to his senses. When he was able to think a little more clearly he realized he was being held against someone's chest and he was clinging to their shirt. It took another second to realize that he had been crying if the dampness on his cheeks were anything to go by. By this point despite this unfamiliarity he didn't have it in him to even try and resist the hold and tried to recollect his thoughts some more.

By the time he fully come back to his full senses he realized that whoever he was clinging to was rubbing circles into his back while saying things to him. While he couldn't understand their meaning they were soothing due to the tone they were being said in. This was obviously a gesture of comfort and even though it didn't send him into a panic attack it did send him into a bit of a shock.

No one in his entire life had ever offered him such reassurance before let alone while he was crying all over them. Never had anyone held him as his grief overwhelmed him to the point of breaking down. He had always had to remain strong in front of others to show him that they hadn't won, that they didn't kill him inside. He had always cried alone and now he wasn't.

He wasn't alone right now. There was someone holding him and trying to make him feel better. There was someone who cared enough to do this for him. They could have just left Naruto to his tears but they didn't. There were many ways to get him to calm down but they chose this one. Before he was wrong because right now he wasn't alone. Someone had chosen to be there.

Suddenly his tears and sobs renewed themselves however instead of them falling for an uncertain future and a missing home it was for his past. They were for the little boy who never knew a warm touch or a loving smile. They were for the attention seeker who was only ever spared a harsh glare and angry grumblings from the villagers but happily accepted them because it was proof that he existed, it was still acknowledgement. He cried further still for the genin who finally made friends that cared for him and the brother he strove to save but ultimately failed them all by being unable to save any of them in the end when it had mattered.

Finally he cried not for his loses but for those were innocent in all of this. He cried for those who didn't deserve to die in a war that didn't involve them. He cried for the villagers who had lost everything and that despite their ignorance and bitterness they eventually learned the error of their ways and finally made him feel welcome with open arms to the place that would always be his home. A home he would never get to fully appreciate again and all that it represented to him. A home he was just beginning to feel the welcome and acceptance that he had dreamed for his whole life and while it hurt for that to be denied to him in the end though his tears turned into those of joy because with this he could start to put the past behind him now and while it hurt he was already building a new home here.

He cried all because something as trivial as hair color had set him off.

When he calmed down once more he was still clinging to the person's shirt. Only now did he realize that it was a man's chest he was resting on due to the lack of let's say padding. The man was apparently rocking him slightly instead of rubbing circles into his back like he had been doing earlier. He did this while humming some sort of melody in a soft tone but despite its calming effect it sounded suspiciously like the tune to one of those loud "Rock" songs Hodgins had been playing at his work station yesterday. Even though Naruto had quieted down completely by now he continued what he was doing which allowing the blond to collect himself once more. It was embarrassing really having to do that twice in one day and in front of the same person no less!

Naruto finally realized the man must be Lance. He tried to sense if Angela was nearby but came back with nothing, there were absolutely no signs of chakra in the entire building, further proving his theory about no one having any chakra. He tried listening for her in the room and since he didn't really hear anyone else's breathing or shuffling around he concluded that she had left the room so that he could break down in privacy. He was grateful for that. It was embarrassing enough that it had happened in the first place but to have an audience on top of that would have made it so much worse.

A few more minutes passed before Naruto let go of the shirt that he had been clinging to so tightly and was surprised that the fabric hadn't ripped due to the sheer force he was gripping it. Even though he had let go of the shirt he remained in the hold the other man had him in and let his forehead remain on the solid body underneath as his hands fell into his lap He tried to relax despite the fact that he was not only in such close contact with somebody else but he was, for all intents and purposes, sitting in their lap. By this point Lance had stopped rocking and humming. They just sat there unsure how to move on from there.

The silence reigned for a few minutes before Sweets asked softly, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Naruto knew enough English to understand what the other man had said and seriously considered what was offered. Should he tell this man, a man he hardly knew, his life story? It wasn't as if he had anything to lose by telling him but at the same time it was his life and he knew that if he were to start talking now everything would pour out. His whole life story would be laid bare before him for the other man to see. His past and inner most thoughts exposed and judged. He wasn't in the right state of mind to filter anything out. He knew he needed to get things off his chest and that it would be nice to have somebody to talk to but this was everything that he was, even the parts he tried to deny having.

It was all or nothing.

Could he trust him?

'Well,' He rationalized to himself. 'He's already seen me like this. I might as well continue.'

Let it be known that Naruto Uzumaki never did things by halves.

With his head still resting on Lance's chest he shifted a bit to get more comfortable since he knew that they would be there awhile and began talking. It would be many hours before he stopped.

Lance remained quite the entire time. He let Naruto say everything the blond needed to say and he knew there was nothing he could really respond with so he listened and read the translations that were popping up on the screen. He was quite when silent tears fell through many of the more tragic parts and he was quite when Naruto chuckled at the more amusing memories he shared. Despite the numbness Naruto caused his legs due to the lack of circulation he remained a silent pillar that would occasionally offer physical comfort if the situation called for it. It took a little bit before Naruto warmed up to it but about a quarter ways through he accepted his touch with out stiffening and by the time he was half way through Naruto would even lean in to him.

Naruto's story was so fantastical that it hardly seemed real but he knew it had to be with all the passion that was practically dripping from his voice. The sheer emotions that were riddled with everything being said had brought tears to his eyes many times or such a broad smile to his face it almost hurt.

By the time Naruto had finished they were both emotionally spent and just sat there on the couch in silence. Naruto's breath eventually deepened as his body finally caught up with his mind's exhaustion and he quickly fell into a deep dreamless slumber. Sweets couldn't find it in him to move and soon the rhythmic breathing started to draw in his tired mind and he too succumbed to sleep.

As he was falling asleep his last waking thoughts were how unprofessional this entire situation must seem but he quickly dismissed them. Naruto didn't need a professional, not really. What Naruto needed was a friend. He needed someone who would listen to his problems and then go further than that and accept him as he was, no, for who he was. He needed a good friend and he was more than happy to fill that role. He finally fell asleep with a blond burrowing into him and a small smile on his face.

A little while later Angela had walked into her office to find Sweets holding Naruto as they slept while otherwise spread out on her couch. She shook her head with fondness, got what she came to get and left quietly as to not disturb the boys' nap.

She was happy for them and had a small skip to her step as she went to go bother her husband.

TBC...

Author's Note:

Please Read This!: I know I'm going to lose some of you with this chapter. To be honest I have a feeling I've been losing a lot of people with my last few chapters so I want to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, thank you to those who have stuck with this story. This story is probably the one, of all my stories, that I'm most proud of and when I see all the lovely reviews it makes me so indescribably happy and when I see people criticize it makes me go back and review to see where I went wrong so that I can correct it in the future. I know this story is so far from perfect and it's impossible to please everyone and so I'm so glad when someone takes time out of their day just to read it let alone actually review. Again thank you for the last two years of support and I hope that you will continue to enjoy this story until the very end.

On that note I would like to inform you I have the next chapter physically written out but I still need to type it out. Unfortunately I have finals coming up so I won't be able to type it out until sometime in June. Sorry...

Anyways, reviewers get birthday cake and pizza in honor of this story's two year anniversary! Yay! Also I have decided that with the rate I'm getting reviews 188 reviews seems impossible so I'm lowering the prize of a one-shot for the 188th reviewer to the 150th unless by some miracle that this chapter actually gets to 188 reviews in which case both reviewers get a one-shot. The only terms I set for this is that the request be in a fandom I know enough about and that if it turns out to be a request for a certain pairing and I dislike that pairing don't be disappointed if it isn't a happy one-shot. Other than that I live for the challenge so bring it on!

Published: 1 May 2013

(I've been sitting on this for three days and I'm so relieved to finally be posting it. Seriously I'm typing this two hours to midnight and the suspense is killing me!)