Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Author's Opening Note: This is a fic about Naruto Uzumaki. He will be the main focus of all the characters and the fic will be centered on his experiences. He will be a happy-go-lucky guy who has seen the negativity of this world and wants to change it. He will have moments of extreme brilliance eclipsed with his own stupidity and clumsiness. Be prepared. I've written a couple of chapters in already, but I'm not sure if I'm going to include any romantic pairings yet. However, I may change my mind (I've been known to do that).
An Existence Worth Dying For
By: Tiki Rane Gobell
Chapter I: Why?
Naruto Uzumaki
It was one of those nights where an ominous feeling permeates the air. It was raining, a hard rain that dug right into the ground and splashed up mud. There were streaks of lightning in the sky, sometimes coming down to hit the earth in a splintering display of nature's fury. Thunder roared across the land. It was one of those nights that no one would dare go out in, preferring the dry, warm comfort of a home. However, this night, there was one person daring the storm.
He had turned five that very day. Most would celebrate their day of birth, but he had to hide. People tried to hurt him on this day, kill him even. His only previous memories of this day were of crowds chasing him and then pain and then nothing. He would wake up hours, sometimes days later, dirtied and covered in blood, yet without a scratch or a scar. He didn't understand and neither did the people who could have sworn they killed him the day before.
But today was different. Naruto Uzumaki chose to hide this birthday. He buried himself in the woods early morning and stayed there all day with patience that is uncommon to a five-year-old. But he knew what was on the line. He never wanted to feel that degree of pain again.
He was forced out of hiding by the storm. He was headed back to his lonesome apartment that he had been living in for a year already after having been kicked out of the orphanage without even a reason why. The orphanage had been just as lonely as his apartment. The caretakers told the other kids not to talk to Naruto. They said that the boy had a deadly disease and that they would catch it if they even acknowledged the blond boy. Naruto had believed that too, for a while. But as the days passed and Naruto did not even feel sick, he began to realize that people lie. People didn't like him. People would glare and spit at him. But why? Naruto endured it in silence.
The rain glued his blond locks to his head and threatened to get in his blue eyes. It soaked through his ragged shirt and shorts. His sandals were full of mud. But his home was in sight. New graffiti covered the front of his apartment. "Monster" was scratched into the wood of his door. The windows had been broken out. He hoped his landlord wouldn't make him pay for that, but he knew it was a false hope. Luckily, he knew old man Hokage would help pay. The old man was the only nice person Naruto knew. He didn't get to see him often, maybe only once a month, but the old man made sure Naruto had some cup ramen in his cabinets and his apartment paid for. It was more niceness than Naruto had ever received from anyone else.
Naruto pulled out his key as he approached the door, but sighed in sorrow to see that he wouldn't need it – his door handle had been ripped off. Hopefully, whoever had broken to his apartment hadn't taken his cup ramen. He was hungry. He hadn't had a meal since the night before and his stomach growled at the very thought of food.
He opened the door to a very unpleasant sight – the furniture (what little he had) was crushed into pieces; the doors to his cabinets, fridge, oven, closet, and bathroom had all been ripped off their hinges; his clothing and blankets were a singed mass in the corner; his cup ramen was lying open, spilt over the floor; and there was one of the men still there, lounging against the wall, as if he had been waiting all day(which, Naruto reminded himself, he probably was).
"You put up a valiant effort at trying to evade us today, monster, but it was all in vain," the man snarled. He had a face mask on and nondescript dark clothing. Obviously, he didn't want anyone to recognize him, which Naruto's brain analyzed, was most likely a bad thing. This man was going to hurt him.
Two more figures fell from the ceiling behind him. Shinobi! Naruto knew then that he was not going to escape tonight. Hiding all day had been a wasted effort. Naruto did the only thing he knew how.
"Look! The Hokage!" He shouted as he pointed in the vague direction of his closet. He used the minute distraction to jump through the broken window, gashing his arm on broken glass as he did so. He regained his feet only to jump off of his third floor balcony into the muddy street. He took off with the mud splashing around him impeding his progress. He ignored the rain blinding him and gnashing at his skin. He ran for his life. Five slippery, mud-filled steps later and the three masked shinobi seemed to flicker in front of him. Damn they're fast! Quick! Another distraction!
"Look! Your mom!" Unfortunately, yet understandably, the same trick didn't work twice. The tallest of the three grabbed the kid's arm in a painful grip.
"You would know all about my mom, wouldn't you, demon?" he rumbled in a gruff voice, "Seeing as you killed her and the rest of my family!" The man threw the boy into the side of a brick building. Naruto hit the wall and smacked his head against it with a resounding crack. Gravity pulled him painfully back to the ground. Naruto forced himself to sit back up, trying to see past the stars that filled his vision.
"I've never hurt anyone!" he cried out. Oh, if he could just make them understand!
"Of course you would say that demon!" the man chuckled darkly, sending Naruto flying back out into the middle of the street with one heavy-booted kick to the stomach.
Naruto curled in pain. This was the longest he had gone without blacking out. He briefly wondered why until the man started talking again.
"You have used that disguise too long, demon. You're not fooling anybody except for the Hokage. That old fool is blind to not see you for what you truly are – Kyuubi, sealed within a human body by the fourth Hokage. The Hokage thinks you're just a boy sacrificed for the village. I am not so blind, demon. And tonight, Konoha will finally be safe once I kill you."
Naruto's eyes were wide in surprise and understanding. Now, he finally understood the glares and the contempt from people he had never even met. He understood why people called him monster. But could he really be the demon? He was Naruto Uzumaki, just another orphan in the Village Hidden in the Leaves. He had no desire to hurt, to maim, or to kill. They had to be wrong about him!
"No! You're wrong! I wouldn't hurt anybody! I swear!" he cried out to them. It didn't seem to reach his attackers at all. They all began to draw their swords, rain drops glistened off their deadly edges.
"No more lies, demon!" One man shouted. In an instant, the ninja was behind the boy, and then that blade sunk into his young flesh, cutting him across the throat. Blood gurgled at the wound as he tried to scream, more of it pouring out.
"Let's kill him!" Those were the last words Naruto Uzumaki heard before the comforting blackness grabbed hold of him and took him away from the pain. The other two ninja jumped upon the poor boy, drawing out the torture with slow shallow cuts rather than a finishing blow, regardless of the fact that the boy was already unconscious. When they were done, a sword thrust through the heart ensured that he was dead. They dumped his torn and broken body back into his apartment and then set the room on fire. They left before any witnesses came to the scene.
When Naruto awoke, he was laying in three inches of water. It was still dark all around him. He could hear the echoes of water dripping and loud breathing. The blond sat up. He noticed that there were pipes above his head and that he seemed to be lying in a sewer of some kind. The loud breathing was coming from a barred door down the sewer a bit. Naruto stood and approached the bars. He could feel the power coming from the room. It was so tangible, it was practically like heat. Red eyes stared down at him.
"So it's true? I really am the Kyuubi?" he asked the air.
To his surprise, the beast behind the bars chuckled in hellish delight, "Ku, ku, ku…if only it were true, little human, then I would be out there and not stuck in here."
"So I'm.." Naruto began.
Kyuubi cut him off, "Just another ignorant human. Oh yes, that's true."
"How did I get here? And where is here?" Naruto asked the red beast.
"You are dying, little human. You are just about dead. Your body has already died, but your mind lives just a little longer, which is where we are now. See the blackness encroaching on us? We have very little time left." Kyuubi's voice was venomous – power and anger in every syllable. Most would be struck with knee-shaking pain at the sound, but Naruto viewed it all with an almost detached impassiveness. It earned him a smidgeon of a degree of respect from the nine-tails.
"So this is what dying is like?" Naruto sighed.
That evil amusement was back. "Hardly," said the Kyuubi. "When you die, I die as well, so it is in my best interest to keep you alive."
"But how?" Naruto asked amazed.
"I'm already working on it. I have been healing and repairing your body as we have been speaking. In a few, your consciousness will return. We are surrounded by fire in the outside world. I will get you there, but you will have to get us away from it."
"You can heal me?" The boy asked.
"It is in my best interest. It has nothing to do with you," snarled the beast.
The blackness seemed to be backing away, but now the sewer and the bars seemed to be fading. Naruto knew he was regaining consciousness. He shouted back at the receding image of the Kyuubi, "And how do I get back here?"
"You don't!" Kyuubi growled back.
Naruto woke up again to the heat of flames licking at his skin. He recognized the room as his apartment as he jumped up off of the floor. He jumped through the broken window as he had done previously that evening, this time missing the glass that cut him before. He started to run, away from his pain, away from his misery, away from his loneliness. He stopped running when he reached the top of the carved heads of the Hokages. This was his safe place, the place he always went when things were too much. He sat on the fourth's stone head and just looked down at the village, out of range of the glares and the hurtful words. The village always did seem so much more pleasant up there. It seemed peaceful. It seemed calm. It looked like a good home. For the first time in his short life, Naruto finally was able to see past the charade. Kohoha would never be a good home for him. He stood and turned his back on the village, hoping that his path never led there again.
He never stopped to think about things he might need. He didn't think about food or water or clothes or shelter. As the rain washed the blood and mud off of his skin, he could see the scars the village had left on him. Why had the Kyuubi left them? He had healed him scar-less before. Was it because the pain from these wounds reached his soul? As he felt the raised scar tissue on his throat, he knew, somehow and unexplainably, that that was the reason.
He walked away from the village, unprepared for what may come, but knowing that anything had to be better than what he left behind.
A five-year-old should never have to leave his home village. But, then again, when had Naruto ever had a choice in the way the world treated him?
Gaara
What was pain? What was love? Why did they fear him?
So many questions and Gaara could never find any answers.
Yashamaru tried to help.
But look at him now. It was all lies. Just lies…
Why am I the only one who is a monster? What am I? Yashamaru..
Gaara cried on the rooftop as kunai sailed towards him. It was futile. Nothing could penetrate his sand. What? Why? Why do I…Why am I the only one who has to go through this?
Gaara turned to see a masked shinobi. Gaara felt anger. He attacked the person who dared attack him. He sent out his sand to engulf the man. The sand compressed and left the man in a sad, bloodied state.
"Who are you..?" a frightened and confused Gaara asked. "Why…?"
And then Gaara saw it. The bandage on the finger that Yashamaru had sliced that very day in order to demonstrate the difference between pain of the flesh and pain of the heart.
He slowly went over to the crumbled ninja and removed his masked. It couldn't be…
…Yashamaru!
"You are strong, as I expected…Gaara-sama," the bloodied Yashamaru said.
Gaara could feel the wound in his heart growing bigger. He clawed at it to try to find the pain, but he could never touch it.
It welled up inside him until his sand rose up around him as he gave an unearthly shout, "Yashamaru!"
The sand came drifting back down, but the pain…it lasted.
"Why…why…Yashamaru...why did you…why?" he cried out to Yahamaru, tears in his eyes. He remembered what his uncle had explained to him earlier that day. Love is the spirit of devoting yourself to someone important and close to you…you are a person who is important and close to me, Gaara-sama… "Why…You…you…I thought that you were…"
Yahamaru seemed resigned to his fate. "It was an order. I was ordered to kill you by Kazakage-sama." Gaara looked up surprised and frightened.
"Father did…Father? Why? Why me?" Gaara cried, tears running off his face and onto the ground.
"You were born with the Shukaku of the Sand, and then observed like a guinea pig, Gaara-sama. But since you could not control the power of the living soul, Shukaku, and were unable to manipulate sand on your own, you existence was deemed a danger to the village. Before that happened…"
Gaara suddenly found hope, "Then you did this unwillingly because Father ordered you to?"
"No, that is not correct." Gaara's looked stricken. "It is true I received the order from the Kazekage-sama. But I could've refused if I had wished to." Yashamaru was bleeding a lot. He didn't have much time left. "Gaara-sama…Deep within my heart…I hated you. You took the life of my beloved sister when you were born. My sister's memento…I tried to love you by thinking of you as her treasured gift, but I couldn't. My sister did not wish for your birth. She became this village's sacrifice, and she died cursing this village. After that, I carried around a wound that could never heal. My sister gave you your name. Gaara – a demon who loves himself. Fight so that you can live. But my sister did not give you the name because she cared for you or loved you. She gave you that name so that you could continue to exist, because she hated and cursed this village as she died, and she wanted her deep hatred to exist and remain…To let others know of it. You were not loved." Yashamaru opened his vest revealing the explosive tags attached to himself, the fuse already lit. "This is it. Please die."
He exploded in a bright flash of light and then smoke and fire. Gaara's sand came up to save him, but Yashamaru was no more.
Gaara sat, curled into himself. He was crying. The pain was too great. His heart…his heart felt like it was being squeezed to death, but he couldn't stop it. The sand began to rise around him again. It came back down, drilling into his forehead. It carved the word "Love."
This is what Gaara is…me…I finally understand. I'm alone. I won't believe in anyone, or love anyone. I'm alone. I don't need this village. I will leave.
He gathered some sand up and condensed it to its hardest form, shaping it into that of a gourd. He filled the gourd with regular sand, tied some straps to it, and pilfered a plug for it from a large storage vase in the street. It was heavy but his natural ability to control sand allowed him to lessen the weight by suspending in the air just a bit.
He was not alone here. He didn't want to be with anyone. He walked through the streets of Suna, leaving for good.
That was the last time Suna glared at a boy who was just misunderstood and confused.
There were greater powers at work when these two young boys set out all alone. They were both searching for the same thing, even if they didn't know it yet. They wandered the land, not sure where they were headed but they were sure that it had to be better than what they were leaving behind. Neither of them even took the time to stop and look back in the direction they had come from. They continued on, scrounging for food where they could find it, and Naruto sleeping only when he could go on no longer (Gaara rested, he never slept).
O0o.end chapter.o0O
A/N: Another chapter will be out Saturday, but from then expect one a week.