*A N D * T H E * S T A R S * L I K E * D I A M O N D S *
…and the stars were like diamonds in the vault of the sky, glittering, tantalizing but locked away, too far to reach but too beautiful to ignore.
Naruto stargazed. Usually, he would lay on the roof of his apartment building, but he preferred the top of the Hokage monument, both for the view and for the symbolism. Because Naruto knew his face would never be on that mountain.
He'd always known.
It might come as a surprise that he didn't remember the first time someone called him 'demon'. He didn't. He'd actually thought it was his name—he was five the first time that anyone (and it had been the Hokage) called him Naruto. Sometimes he still forgot that he had a real name. He'd actually written 'Demon' on one of his academy papers, before he'd caught himself and blacked it out.
He didn't remember the first time his apartment had been ransacked while he was gone, or the first time he had been kicked out of a store for no reason, or sold bad goods at exorbitant prices. That was just how life was for the Demon.
He used to care. Every time someone spit on him, or kicked him, or swore at him, it hurt. But it had been this way his whole life, and slowly, he just stopped. Stopped caring. And things didn't hurt so much, but he felt empty. But empty was better than pain, so that was okay.
Sometimes, though, the emptiness was too much, and it yawned inside him, vast and hollow, a gaping wound he couldn't stitch shut. And when that happened he would wait until dark had fallen, and most of Konoha had turned off the lights, and go to the very top of the Hokage mountain, and look up. And the cloudless sky would be open above him, bigger than anything, bigger than than the world, bigger than the Kyuubi, bigger than the emptiness.
And he would look at the stars, pinpricks scattered on black velvet, so big—bigger than he could dream of—and so far away. So hot and bright and cold and distant. He would pick out the constellations, would count the stars, find the ones he knew the names for and give names to the ones he didn't. He would mark Polaris, the one unmoving object of the night sky, and would close one eye and reach up with his finger and blot it out.
And he would dream. He dreamed that he had friends, real ones, who wanted to be around him because they liked him, not because they had to. That he had family, who waited for him at home when he was away. That old man Sarutobi was still alive, that the Fourth hadn't died, that the villagers didn't hate him.
And sometimes he dreamed he would become the Hokage, because everything he dreamed was impossible anyways, so why not add one more to the list?
He wished he could be a star. Not a movie star, like Princess Fuun, but an actual star.
A burning ball of gas and plasma, held together by its own weight, surrounded in the cold beauty of space and pouring his light-life out, reaching earth from thousands of millions of miles away, admired and untouchable, but unremarkable. Just another pinprick of light. Too far away for anything to bother him, and as patient and ancient as the world itself. To be free of all responsibilities but simply being.
He wished the world would just let him be.
He sometimes believed that there was a part of the Kyuubi that had seeped into the mostly-human nature of himself. The part that was as elemental as a stormcloud, as unfettered as the wind, as unchanging as the dawn. The force of nature that cared not about time or season, that couldn't be worn away and never aged, as ancient as the day it was made. A juggernaut, set in motion and continuing on forever and ever, utterly unstoppable. (And this was why he would never be Hokage; the people could feel it, could sense that he was not quite human, and could not be trusted)
He didn't want to be Hokage to leave his mark on the world; to be remembered. That didn't matter. He wanted to be Hokage to be part of something bigger than himself, something that was more than his puny life could ever amount to. Naruto didn't care about how he was remembered. Naruto didn't want to be remembered. Naruto never wanted to go at all.
He wasn't afraid of death. He just felt like he was supposed to be something bigger than that. Something beyond death. Like a storm, or the wind, or the dawn, or a demon.
Or a star.
But as he lay, face upturned to the heavens, a being not quite human, not quite demon, not quite mortal and not quite anything else, he wished—not for immortality, but for eternity. To simply always be.
The starlight danced on his face, like fingertips over fallen leaves, and he reached for them, forever burning beyond his reach.
A/N: I'm supposed to be studying for an exam on world war two. Clearly, that's going well. But I got side tracked a couple days ago, and the italicized line below the title popped into my head. I considered naming this fic "In Pursuit of a Dream" but decided that this fit better with the next chapter. And trust me—Naruto's got a jutsu you've never seen before. Naruto isn't mine, which is probably good for his health, but is really no fun for me. I do, however, have lawyers, so you can sue me if you want.