You Are Demon
A Naruto Oneshot
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I highly doubt that an American teenager owns the Naruto franchise.
Summary: You were a kid once. You had to define yourself, make a place for yourself, free yourself of all restrictions and judgement. This is your story, a story of how Demon became Naruto.
This story came on a whim, and was written on one too. I really wanted to explore Nartuo's development as a character in the darker part of his childhood, so You Are Demon was written. I actually edited this one (yay!) so enjoy the proper grammar for once. :)
0-o-0-o-0
You are five.
You are known as Demon.
You are supposed to suffer.
You don't know anything else.
The rest of the blanks are filled in by them.
They tell you that you deserve the punishments that they deal out to you in back alleyways and roar that you don't deserve to live at all, that you caused them to do this to you. They spit on you and leave after they are sure they've ground the message into your mind, leaving you to pick yourself up. You cry sometimes, as the sensation of flesh knitting together spreads over your body, eliminating all evidence that you were ever injured. Your metaphorical heart never heals though, as if it's telling you that it should be broken, and that there's no possible way it can be healed. Because of that, you gave up on a heart that doesn't bleed two years ago. What use is it, laboring over something that doesn't want to be fixed?
They tell you other things in more subtle ways, like the fact that you aren't supposed to buy anything. You notice that the numbers in front of an object are different than the numbers on the bills that they take from your hands. You chalk it up to the fact that the bill numbers must mean something different from the price numbers; all the numbers are larger than forty five, and you aren't sure of what one hundred or a thousand fifty four is. Then, after they look at you with a scornful expression, and count up the amount of cash they've taken from you, they tell you that you didn't have enough money to buy the bread that you wanted or the clothes that were on the shelf, so they hand you something of lesser value instead. You've survived off of wilted vegetables and stale crackers, and worn their children's ragged clothing for a year now.
They whisper as you pass them in the streets in your hand-me-down clothing and black sandals, which disintegrate as you walk, as if you are a rabid dog unfit to be let into public, even if you had a leash. You can sometimes pick up the exchanges they participate in, centered on you, Demon, and speed out of range so you don't have to hear them anymore, small rocks digging into the bottoms of your calloused feet. Some days they make it especially cruel, making up games where you are the target of sharp rocks instead of the makeshift bull's-eyes that they set up, or telling tales of past wars, with you as the villain who initiated them.
Somewhere in the mass of other's hatred, and your pain, you form a goal. You want people to like you, not treat you like the trash their son left inside the house for five days, or a monster focused on their downfalls, or a punching bag meant for the most violent of training sessions. You spend a year pouring over what you'd have to be to get that like, finally realizing on your sixth birthday that you'd have to be Hokage and a Hero. But that thought hasn't come to your mind yet; the closest you've reached to Hokage is, simply, Hero. The Fourth Hokage was a Hero and was liked, so why couldn't you be one as well? A blonde Hero who saves them all from evil in the end?
So you look at accounts describing past Hokages and their attitudes when you sneak into the library every night. You've become good at hiding and running, skills you developed to stay away from danger, and it's always easy to sneak past the genin guards and the librarian. You learn that the Hokages worked for their people, that they always smiled when someone put them down, that they upheld the Ninja Code, that they were fair, that they liked and were liked, that they were strong, that they were Heroes.
You now know that you're supposed to smile, no matter how much they beat you, like them, no matter how detestable they might be, be strong, no matter how much your opponents put you through, and become a Hero and a Hokage, no matter how hard that goal will be to reach.
When they pull you aside into an alleyway one night, they bash you with recently emptied beer bottles, sharp glass implanting in your skin. Small droplets of alcohol run into your wounds, setting your nerves on fire. You can barely hold back tears caused by pain as you force a smile onto your face. It feels unnatural, as if you're baring your teeth at them and threating them, not showing them a gesture of like. Your smile provokes them and makes them hit you even harder than they did before. You feel your upper lip dry and curl over similarly dry teeth as they cause you to hit a wall, your weight shattering the rotting wooden siding behind you. Your face feels strained and you start to wonder if the Hokages ever felt tired of smiling.
The ANBU find you sitting in the alleyway two hours later as the sun peeks above the Hokage Monument and casts pink and orange light over Kohona, a smile still plastered on your face as you dumbly sit in a pile of brown glass. You would have appreciated the sight of the sunrise if you hadn't been half-asleep, and greeted by the expressionless masks of the ANBU. They hear plinks behind you, and lightly push you away from the cracked wood paneled wall you were against, catching a glimpse of glass shards being pushed from the flesh of your back. They assume that you tried to crack your spinal cord with a glass bottle in some attempt of gory suicide, and broke the bottle in the process.
You are labeled suicidal until you explain what happened to the Hokage.
His eyes are a slightly bit more open than normal as he gives you the keys to room in an old estate, now an apartment building, in the Red Light district with a clear view of the Hokage Monument, in hopes that a new home will alleviate some of the discrimination against you. You've heard rumors that the Fourth Hokage lived in the building when he wasn't at the office or on a mission, but you dismiss them. If the Fourth ever had a home, it would have been turned into a historical site, not a rundown apartment. Despite that, you secretly hang onto the hope that you are living in the same room as the Fourth once did, no matter how impossible that may be.
Then you notice that hope fills you with warmth and something giggly and free, which you assume is childness. You take a moment to review why you would think that- you have never felt 'childness' before- and realize that it's due to the fact that the other kids who are five and six always act free and happy, causing their parents to scold them for being 'childish'. You immediately make yourself a promise as you dump everything else on you mind and bask in the feeling of hope.
You are going to be hopeful.
In your old home, your caretaker called hope a silly thing, a thing that you'd never be able to reach or understand. You were obedient, never vying to hope. But now? Now you're going to hope as much as you possibly can, and ignore everyone who says you can't.
You start a revelation in yourself as you realize that you aren't what they've said that you are. It takes a year, but you finally manage to shift back layers of qualities that others imposed on you- monster, thief, cheap, plaything, suicidal, indecent, hated, unable to love, hopeless, demon; a fountain of insults you've thought that you had to embody- and find your name, your voice, the self you never thought existed until now, which you've slowly uncovered.
You often find yourself lying on your hard mattress, building yourself, Naruto, up. You make a base, not too much unlike the one they gave you, with facts that you know; the good ones, the ones that make you smile and nod to yourself in pleasure. As October 10th rolls around again, you stand on your shabby little balcony, aged boards creaking as you put your weight on them, and shout out what you know to all of Kohona, not quite caring how they, or anyone, responds- you are dependent on your own opinions, and your own opinions alone. After all, you have found what makes up you.
Your seventh birthday is today.
Your name is Naruto.
You are supposed to smile.
You barely know anything else.
The rest of the blanks are filled in by you.
0-o-0-o-0
I hope you enjoy the day! After you review of course... XD