Drabble, SPOILER for that thing Sasuke does, fourth paragraph hasn't happened yet. Somewhat confused style. Lemme know what you think.
Disclaimer: Of course it's mine! I also own a jet, a baseball team, Santa Claus, every pair of flip-flops in the world, Bastille Day, and a T-rex I stole from my roommate. And if you believed any of that, please send me your contact info so I know where to send the men in white coats.
Ghosts
For awhile, when he was young, Naruto wondered if everybody around him really existed. When he fell at the age of four and scraped his knee, he screamed and cried but no one came. When he accidentally cut his hand on a piece of glass, no one came to bind his wound and stop him from getting blood on anything. Nobody touched him. Oh, they talked. He heard them, sometimes talking about him (why do they say those words in that tone?) and sometimes not. They glared sometimes (why do you hate me?) but no one ever touched him.
As he got older, he wondered if he was the one that didn't exist. Nobody talked to him, except children, now and again (before their parents called them home and they never came back). No one smiled at him, or laughed at him. They looked away when he walked by, or worse, looked through him (see me, please! What will it take for you to see me?)
After Sasuke left (tried to kill him), he wondered if he had imagined his best friend. Wondered if the one person who saw him and knew his pain (not knew knew, but understood because he had felt the same) had been nothing more than the projection of his need. Wondered what kind of real best friend stuck his hand through his friend's/rival's/teammate's/brother's chest and then just walked away. Wondered if he was devoting his life to reclaiming a figment of his imagination (but why would he really want it back?)
They wondered when they noticed that the sun had gone. There was an emptiness in the village and in their hearts, and they didn't know why. They thought, sometimes (in the morning getting up, at noon over ramen, in the evening after a mission, at night staring at the ceiling and failing to fall asleep) that once there had been something filling that void they hadn't noticed. Something yellow and blue and orange and tan and red and bright and vibrant and loud and annoying and impossible. But it had vanished without warning, and now there was only a name carved into a stone (a promise spoken in ignorance that was fulfilled nonetheless.)
The worst kind of ghost is the one you can't see.