I was totally bored and tired but not enough to sleep, and a random line popped into my head. I wrote this entire one-shot based around that line - the last one - and worked backwards from it. I like the result. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Naruto does not belong to me; I just borrow it sometimes. The setting and characters belong to Kishimoto Masashi, with the exception of Gekkou Shizuka (who is alluded to in this fic, if not named), who is my own creation.
Sunrise
Hayate can't sleep. It's not something really new for him; he has sleepless nights all the time, more and more now as summer fades into fall and the air draws closer and tighter to the biting chill of winter, and he only gets sicker and sicker. He's only nine but he's had so many nights where he just lies awake, just stares at the ceiling from the futon lying flat on the tatami of his room, just stares and stares until he's sure he's going to bore a hole into the ceiling with his own two eyes.
That'd be a pretty nifty jutsu, he thinks, but it'd never work. He doesn't have the eyes for it.
Sometimes it's because he just can't sleep - but more often than not it's because he's sick. Sometimes his nose and throat are clogged with so much mucus and phlegm that he can't even bear to lie down, and he spends the entire night sitting upright, tucked into the corner of his room with his pillow cushioning the small of his back against the wall. The walls are pockmarked with little dents and niches from kunai. Hayate's seen the walls of other people's houses and they're smooth and free of scars like this - but then, he supposes that those other people don't have moms who throw kunai at their kids and always, always miss. Those other people think his mom is weird, crazy, dangerous even. She just calls it training and says as long as those kunai keep missing then Hayate has nothing to worry about.
Tonight it's his cough. He knows from the second his head touches the pillow and he feels the rough tickle gather in the pit of his chest that he's not going to have an easy night. He tries to hold it in, tries to see how long he can breathe steadily before he gives in to the irritation gathering thickly in his throat, but he doesn't last long. He considers only once, very briefly, using the suppression jutsu he was taught to ease his asthma and steady the coughing, but the jutsu always wears off eventually and he doesn't like what it feels like after. There's no real cure, only fake cures, and Hayate thinks that maybe it's better to just stick with being sick than to use the fake cures.
Sitting up doesn't really help, either; it's just as hard to breathe when he curls up into the corner of his room, on the end of his futon. So he stays lying down, flat on his back even though it might be a little easier to breathe on his side, and he lets himself cough. Holding it back, letting it go, it doesn't make any difference to whether or not he'll fall asleep. Some part of him thinks this is kind of interesting, but he can't seem to place why.
He lies there for what might be hours, might just be minutes, before he sits up again and reaches to close the curtains on his window, just out of habit. He always closes the curtains when he can't sleep - especially when he can't sleep - because Hayate prefers to sleep in total darkness and because some part of him is convinced that if there's no light then he'll sleep easier. He's wrong, but he likes to think it anyway.
He stops himself this time, though, and leaves the curtains where they are, almost thoughtfully. Maybe tonight he'll just try and stay up until morning instead of trying to fall asleep. He's tried staying up all night in the hopes that it would somehow make him fall asleep instead, but that never works because the motives are the same in the end. And all those times Hayate's had his curtain closed, and so maybe this time will be different somehow. He's not thinking he'll fall asleep tonight - he doesn't want to fall asleep anymore, because instead, now he wants to see the sunrise. He's always had his curtain closed before, so he's never stayed up just to watch a sunrise. He likes to look at the sky, but he's only ever watched the night sky; moongazing is his secret hobby. He likes the stars, too, because when they're splayed out so haphazardly, all centered around the moon, they somehow remind him of his own village, his own home, in a vague allegory too complicated for him to really and fully grasp. He hears his knees crack as he shifts, sitting seiza, and pushes the window open. And as he rests his arms on the windowsill and stares tirelessly at the night sky, he thinks to himself -
If I stay up to watch the sunrise, will I see all the stars fade away into nothing?