A/N: Okay, so I wrote this a while ago. I was listening to an old Peter Gabriel album and the song "Don't Give Up" came on. I must have been reading the manga or writing another story or something, but for some reason it seemed to really remind me of Naruto. So the idea for this story popped into my head. I'm sensing a pattern here: I think most of my stories start out with some kind of tragedy, at least for Naruto. Something I'll have to think about. Anyway, I have no idea where this is going, so for now I'll just call it a oneshot and leave it alone. Maybe someday (if I ever finish any of my other stories) I'll come back to it. Rest assured I am working on Kougu Identity when I can, but this has been finished for a while, I just thought it might be worth posting. Enjoy.
"Though I saw it all along, never thought that I could be affected/
Thought that we'd be last to go; it is so strange the way things turn.
Drove the night toward my home, the place that I was born, on the lakeside/
As daylight broke, I saw the earth; the trees had burned down to the ground."
When I was growing up, I was in love with my country. I was always taught and believed that we were the best, that we were the most just, and I truly believed that our country could overcome any opposition. I believed in my country, even though my childhood was perhaps less than what I deserved. I could tell that others loved it too just by seeing the way they looked at our leaders and at our children. Later on, when I became more mature, I thought that maybe it was okay if I had suffered as a child as long as it meant that everyone else could be happy. I was willing to sacrifice anything for the people of my country
When I got older, I went to the academy, where they taught me to how to fight and to win. I learned to defend this place that I love with my body, blood and sweat. I thought I could never lose, that I would never fail this land that I love.
I never thought I could be wrong.
I used to have dreams of great things in our country: I wanted to be the Hokage; I wanted to be loved; I wanted to be respected. I wanted to have a family and children of my own. I wanted my country to prosper and be peaceful. These things are all impossible now. My dreams have deserted me. It seems as though I have nothing left to fight for.
Things are so different now, when we have to change our identities in order to just survive. No one wants to hire a defeated ninja anyway.
I knew trouble was out there, I knew it all along. Ever since the day I earned my hitai-ate from Iruka-sensei, the danger that pressed in the world around us became ever more present. Still, I never thought it could touch Konoha. I thought that if the rest of the world burned down around us, Konoha would still be standing, still be fighting. It's funny how reality can be so different from what we dream.
Tsunade had assigned several of us a dangerous mission—we were many years out of the academy by then and all of us thought we could handle anything that came our way. Sakura, Lee, Neji, Ino, Kiba, Hinata, and Shino and I were sent out on a search and rescue operation for an outpost on the border with Ame. No reports had been received for over a week, and given all of the conflict in our neighboring country and the fact that Akatsuki was based there, it seemed important to find out what had happened. We weren't gone more than two days before we encountered the massive destruction that marked the path of Ame's army headed toward Konoha. It became obvious what had happened to the outpost, so we turned back for Konoha to try and warn them. We used everything we had available—I sent summon toads and Ino tried to contact her father telepathically, but it didn't matter. We were already too late.
I ran through the night, never even realizing that I had left the others behind. I had to get back, I had to save my home. I finally made it back to the place of my birth just as dawn began to break. As the sun rose my eyes confirmed what my nose and my ears had already told me: Konoha was gone.
The leafy trees for which the Village of the Leaf was named had all been burned to stubble. The Hokage monument was demolished, the buildings lay in heaps upon their cracked foundations.
And bodies lay everywhere.
I stood at the edge of the destruction for I know not how long. I was broken from my silent mourning by a pair of arms that encircled my chest. I don't know how long the others had been there, but it was Hinata who broke from her mourning first to comfort me.
"Don't give up," she said. "Because you have friends. Don't give up—you're not beaten yet. Don't give up, Naruto—I know you can make it good."
Her absolute faith in me shocked and saddened me, since my faith in myself was so shaken. But as I turned around in her arms to return her embrace I could see that the others were looking to me as well.
"Thank you, Hinata," I whispered to her.
We looked at each other with tear filled eyes for a moment before I looked up to the rest of my friends—my only remaining family. They were looking to me for direction now. I don't know how I earned such trust from them, but there it was.
"Whatever Ame has, it's too much for the seven of us to face by ourselves. We can only hope that one of the other villages is strong enough to defeat it," I told them. We all nodded, but we all knew it was an empty hope. Even our bias aside, Konoha had been the strongest of the villages, which was, no doubt, the reason it had been attacked first. If Ame had suffered serious losses from the battle, another village might stand a chance. But Neji, Hinata, Kiba, and I already knew that no foreign blood had been spilled in the battle.
"Lee, you can travel fast without the use of chakra, I need you to run to Suna as fast as you can and warn Gaara. No doubt Ame will already be on their way there." Lee nodded and went faster than we could blink. I hated to ask it of him, but we all had too many friends in Suna to not at least try, and if anyone could do it, it was Lee.
"For the rest of us," I took a deep breath. "Let's bury our home so we can move on."
We spent the better part of two days collecting the bodies and burying them. We each went to the places that we were most attached to and attended to our closest relations. I gathered my precious people up and buried them together. I found Iruka, not surprisingly, at the academy standing between the entrance and the students. Teuchi and Ayame Ichiraku I found in the basement storage area of their ramen stand. They left a note for me on the wall. 'Don't give up, Naruto!' it read. It took me a long time before I could gather myself to bury them properly.
I found Kakashi, Yamato, Shizune, and Tsunade in the center of the crater where the Hokage tower used to stand. It was clear they had put up a hard fight. Tsunade was holding a sealed scroll addressed to me. When I opened it a toad was summoned who handed me two things—a scroll explaining my heritage and a copy of Jiraya's first novel, the one which I was named for. Again, it took some time for me to collect myself before I could properly put my loved ones to rest.
By the time we had all finished, Lee had returned with Gaara and the last three survivors of Suna. Things had not turned out differently there than they had in Konoha. Gaara was the quietest he had been since the first time I met him. We shared a brotherly embrace before he went to grieve silently by himself. I left in my own direction and wandered the ruins of my home for what seemed like hours before I arrived at the bridge that Team 7 used as its meeting place. It amazed me that it was still standing, and what was more, that the water was still running beneath it. Of all places in Konoha to have been left untouched, this bridge still stood. I walked out onto it and just watched the water run beneath me. At some point Sakura arrived and joined me, leaning onto my back and embracing me from behind. When I felt her tears soak through my shirt I could no longer contain my own, and I watched as my tears fell down to join the flowing water below me.
I don't know whether she could tell I was crying as well, but eventually she spoke to me. "Don't give up," she said, "You still have us. Don't give up, we don't need much of anything. Don't give up—because somewhere there's a place where we belong."
I could only place my hand over hers and say, "I know." I watched the river flow a bit longer and realized that it was going to take some time for this pain to fade, but that life was flowing like the river. As long as we were alive we could make things better. I decided that no matter what happened, I still had to protect my precious people and to take care of them. Life would go on, as the river flows.
When I came out of my reverie the others had joined us. I looked up and saw Gaara standing there with his brother and sister, and his assistant. I could see my pain reflected in their eyes, but as I looked at each of the survivors I could see the same resolve I felt building within me. I finally stood and Sakura stood with me. She joined the others and turned to look at me expectantly. I glanced to Hinata and saw her looking at me with proud eyes and a tearful smile. I could not refuse them if I tried, so I squared my shoulders and addressed them.
"Geez guys, way to make a guy feel uncomfortable," I started and they all chuckled a little. "You're all looking at me like I've got the answers. I'm not sure that I do, but I'll do my best because I love you guys, and I owe every one of you at least that much. Our homes our gone, along with most of the people we know and love—there's nothing we can do to change that. But we're still alive, and as long as we're alive there's hope. We'll worry about strategy later—Gaara, I get the feeling we've got a long talk ahead of us," he nodded, "But for right now lets get to someplace safe and start living again. Whatever is happening is not going to be over soon, so we've got to think in the long term. It's safe to say that this is part of Akatsuki's plan to create 'peace,' and they're obviously destroying all of those who make war. So for now let's all lose the ninja gear and try to be civilians. I recommend we go to a country with no ninja population, like Tea Country. What do you guys think? Do you have any other ideas?"
They did, and some we used, others were set aside for a later time. Since then we've moved to Tea Country and tried to survive. Soon enough we heard of the fall of all the known ninja villages. Here and there we heard rumors of survivors, but we never encountered any that we knew, just as none ever knew they encountered us. As ninja in hiding, it's hard to make a living as a civilian. With all of the destruction there is a surplus of labor and not enough jobs for all of them. Life is hard, but at least we have life and most importantly, we have each other. We will wait and bide our time until we can take back what belongs to us and to find the place in the world where we belong.