He loved her, but she loved the Uchiha. That was fine, life was still alright, as long as she was happy. He stood in the shadows of the relationship while she and Sasuke danced in the sun. But why did he love her? Why did he allow himself to constantly feel this pain when moving on would have been so much easier on both of them?
She was something special, alright. Her cotton candy colored hair was almost as unique as his own golden locks. Her cerulean eyes, those eyes that shone with such determination when her adversaries thought her beaten and down, were almost a mirror to his own cobalt blues. Her fair skin matched nicely with Sasuke's ivory, but would have looked so much better contrasted with his own natural tan.
So why did he feel this way for her? During their years in the Academy she had shunned him, called him names, fawned over the Avenger; that kind of behavior was almost normal for kunoichi his age or older. She had beaten him mercilessly when he tried for her attention, though she loved the Uchiha for ignoring her. Maybe if he had ignored her she would love him. After all, Hinata, who he had barely said "Good morning" to most days suffered from a crush on him so severe that she sometimes passed out from just being near.
He still loved her though. He loved her even as she courted the aloof third of their team, he loved her even as she wept over the Uchiha's wounds and practically ignored his own. He loved her when she begged him to bring back her Sasuke, never mind that he had betrayed them all. He loved her even as his heart broke into a thousand little pieces when she mourned the loss of her Avenger. She was precious to him, not just for her strength, both physical and mental, but for her undying spirit and love.
He knew, even as he watched over her, that she belonged with someone else. He knew that she would never be happy with him; it just was not fated to be. He accepted the fact that her heart belonged to another, and still he loved her. Still he yearned to put his arms around her; to hold her in her pain and in her joy. He longed to see her holding a babe, sweating after hours of labor, with her hair and his eyes. He desired her with every particle of his being, but he knew it was not to be.
He knew he could not have her. She was too good for him, too pure for the touch of his tainted soul. They were ninja, and yet he had killed, destroyed lives for the sake of his precious one, while her hands remained lily-white. Later, her hands became green, green with the love and honor she expressed for all life by healing. She had studied with his hime to become stronger, this is true, but she would never be like him. Never lose that innocence, or at least that is what he prayed. For this purity is why he had come to love her, come to regard her above all others in his life.
He had been alone when he was younger, so alone that the world seemed a dark and cold place. No one had wanted to adopt him when he was in the orphanage; the people who ran the place barely wanted to feed him, much less play and love him. He had been shunned by the others, abandoned for a crime he did not commit and sins he could not control.
He had taken to walking, not during the day when more people were about, people who would undoubtedly yell at and beat him, but at night, when those people were in their homes, snug in their beds and dreams. The caretakers at the place he stayed in didn't care; later he used this to his advantage and just stopped coming back. He had liked to walk, though, at first; somehow he felt connected to the others in his village just by walking where they had walked, peering in the windows where they had shopped. It felt nice to be connected to somebody in his solitude, almost like being there with those other people, but without the physical and emotional pain that would have come had he actually been there. They never knew he was there, where they had been, and so he never hurt.
But soon this pseudo connection became not enough. Having felt even a slight bond with those who had never been kind to him before made him yearn for more. He wanted now to see these people, watch them interact and perhaps—oh hope!—interact with them, have a conversation, laugh together. He began hiding near dawn, in a place, like a rooftop, that they would never look. He had trouble getting that high, at first, but practice makes perfect, and soon he could scramble to the top of the Hokage tower, theoretically at least, in less than five minutes.
So he watched them, sneaking off after the populace had bedded down to a glade he had found one of the numerous parks of the city. He watched them and grew envious, seeing the friends meet, chat, and move about their day. He was confused as to what made him different from them. At first he spent his days comparing the others with himself physically. They had two arms, the same number of legs, and one head. He had all of those appendages and none others from what he could see, and so he became even more confused. Why were he so different from them that they could not stand his mere presence? Eventually, though, he gave up that line of questioning and simply watched, hungry for any interaction he could get, even this second hand kind.
But it was not enough! He was still alone, and after a while watching others together only reinforced his solo position. So he stopped watching the adults as they milled about in the many shops around town and began to watch the children. The children that he spent most of his time observing were around his age, as nearly as he could tell. He had never had a real birthday party while in the orphanage, and had stopped even going back a year or so ago. He never needed the roof for shelter from a storm; he had found a convenient cave nearby his favorite glade. When he was hungry he caught fish or squirrels. It had been an interesting time before he had learned to create a fire; many a night he had skinned the creatures with a rusty kunai he had found (that no doubt some practicing ninja had thrown and lost) and ate them raw. But after a while, he figured it out, and was from then on mostly comfortable. Who needed a place where you were kept from the outdoors by walls and surrounded by people who didn't like you? Most nights now he slept under the stars, as comfortable as a king on a dense patch of grass.
So while he didn't know exactly how old he was now, he could guess the others' ages. They played mostly in a park, with benches strewn here and there around a circular field of flowers and grass. The playground they used was surrounded by trees, dense in their almost uninterrupted growth. His earlier roof climbing skills were put to good use climbing those monstrously tall arboreal plants; from about twenty feet up a trunk he had an uninterrupted view.
And so he watched; he watched them run and scream and laugh with pure joy. He watched games of tag and soccer and blind man's bluff. He watched, and they played. And again, for a while, it was enough to fill him as no food could. It was enough to simply watch them run, hear them laugh. He was sated, for a time, no longer starving for company in his lonely existence, no longer alone.
Before he knew it, though, he was hungry again. Hungry to talk, starving to laugh, yearning to be there with the children as they ran and jumped and played. Oh so hungry, a hunger tempered, though by fear. He remembered, remembered well indeed, what had happened when the adults knew he was around. The sneers and whispers that had followed him, or worse. It had hurt, hurt badly, when they had taunted him, almost hurt worse than when they had beat him. The children were his last hope for company, a hope that could live on until he approached them and was rejected. And so he watched; alone in his tree he watched and hoped. And one day, his hopes came to pass, in a way that he almost could not believe.
The children had played hide and go seek that day, abandoning the wide open field in favor of the forest around it. Once again in his accustomed tree, he watched as the children ran, some still laughing, from the pink haired one who was left counting, her eyes screwed shut, in the middle of the grass. He watched as she finished numbering as high as she could, shouted the traditional warning phrase of the beginning of the hunt, and ran off, right under his tree, deeper and deeper into the woods.
He followed her. Though there was nothing overtly dangerous in this wood, being one of the preferred hangouts of under Academy aged kids, he knew she would be shortly lost. All alone and in a great big forest, he knew she would be scared. And while a part of him had slowly died under just that solitude, he didn't want her to feel the same way. So he followed her, having learned stealth by creeping up on squirrels, and she was no wiser. Ten minutes passed in her hunt, and though she was thoroughly lost she was not worried. After another twenty, though, she began to jump at the slightest sound, her mind tricking her into seeing monsters at every turn.
It was getting dark. She knew that her mother would be furious with her if she stayed out much longer, but she could not find her way out of these blasted trees! She cursed herself for ever volunteering the game in the first place, figuring that the others had already given up and gone home after the first hour or so. She began to tire; her feet and legs hurt after so much walking. She slumped down next to a tree, leaned her head on her knees, and began to cry. That's when he came along.
He had followed her the entire time, not stopping to eat his lunch like he usually did, slightly worried that he would lose where she was as she became more and more lost. He, of course, knew this forest like the back of his hand; his cave and glen were situated here. When she began to cry, though, he could not remain her shadow for any longer. Tears were something that puzzled him. He had cried, sure, when he was in intense pain, but no one was bearing her, so why was she crying? He knelt down next to her and started to awkwardly pat her head, trying and failing to stop her sobs.
When she felt his presence, she looked up. He was puzzled, she could see, but she had to put brave face for this boy she had never met. After all, they might become friends, and surely he wouldn't want a cry-baby for a friend, right? Had he just spoken? She couldn't tell over her sobs what he had said, but she saw his mouth move so she assumed he had. What had he said? She had to control herself! Crying never did anyone any good, especially when she was trying to get out of these woods!
He asked her if she was lost. She didn't seem to hear him the first time, so he asked her again. When, after the third questioning, she managed a shaky head nod, he told her that he was not, and that he could help her get home. Her face lit up at that and he smiled involuntarily. After helping her up and dusting her off, they started together for the nearest part of the city. He figured that as soon as she saw some familiar streets (surely she had gone shopping with her mother at least once!) she would know the way home and no longer be alone. While they walked, she talked. She talked about herself, about her best friend, about her mom, about her favorite color, her favorite food, anything she could think of in her relief to no longer be alone, at night, in the trees. He nodded his head, smiled some, and added a few words here or there. And as they reached the glow of the houses, she turned to him, and with a great big smile, she kissed him on his cheek.
That was why he loved her. She had kissed him, had shown him the first favorable interaction from another human being he had ever known. They had been very young then and she had thought nothing of it. She had forgotten all about him after a few years, and when they met again in the Academy it was, for her part, as strangers. But he had never forgotten. He treasured that kiss, that one memory which drove him back to the orphanage, back to the people. They had treated him just like they had before he left, but he no longer minded the loneliness, for he had the memory of that simple kiss to hug close to his heart.