Once upon a time, a small blonde child, just 6 years old, was walking down the streets of Konoha. Despite his apparently aimless gait, he did have a destination in mind, and plans for when he got there.

He wanted to die.

And, from what he could tell, everyone else wanted him dead, too.

(This was not exactly true. Though over half of the population would in fact celebrate were he to perish, most of the rest simply did not care. There were even a few--4--that wanted him to live, but one was too busy to provide anything more than moral support from a distance, one was too consumed by his past to focus on what he had left of it, one was no more than a casual acquaintance at best, and the other, despite having a legal obligation to him, was out in the world keeping him safe in a way that meant he would not have to come face to face with the only reminder of his greatest failure.)

But when the eyes of everyone he saw were either filled with with barely restrained--or even unrestrained--hatred, or simple cold indifference--(and sometimes that hurt even more than the hatred)--it became impossible for him to remember the group of few that sort of cared for him--(not to mention he was completely unaware of two of them.)

As he walked, he came to a point on the road where he could turn either left, or right. In another reality, he decided to go right, which was the longer way to get to his destination--(because even though he wanted to die, he wanted to live just a little bit longer)--and he would walk past a boy with ebony black hair and sad eyes, and the boy wouldn't hate him--would even acknowledge him, somewhat--and he would feel hope that maybe, just maybe, it would be worth it to live a little longer. In that reality, he turned back around and headed toward the playground, where he was still--mostly--ignored, but still hopeful that it wouldn't always be that way.

This was not that reality.

Wanting to get it over with as soon as possible, he turned left.

~o0o~

From his spot atop the Hokage monument, dangerously close to the prepice of the Yondaime's head, he could see the village in its' entirety.

It was beautiful.

And he hated it with every fiber of his soul.

Creeping closer to the edge of the stone, maneuvering around great thick spikes of sculpted hair, he peered down at the rocky ground hundreds of feet below.

Shivering, with a horrible knot tying itself into his stomach, he scooted away. Then he started to cry.

Surely, he was the lowest of the low: he didn't want to live anymore, but he couldn't bring himself to end it either. Maybe it really didn't matter either way, since he was so worthless.

For a long time, he just sat there, knees hugged against his chest--(he was the only one who had ever hugged him)--tears sluggishly streaming down his cheeks, eyes staring out unseeingly into the distance.

At some point, a bird cried from somewhere above him and he jumped a little--it was near.

He watched it with disinterest as it flew over his head, then in front of him, then over the village, then--and by this point it was just a speck on the horizon, but he had always had very good vision--it flew over the village walls, out above the forest, and on and on and on, towards lands unknown...

He wondered how it felt to be so free.

With a jolt, he realized he could very easily find out for himself.

His previous plans forgotten, he rushed back up the trail that led down to the village eagerly, running full tilt towards the nearest village gate.

~o0o~

He didn't have much of a plan as he honed in on the gate, only knew that inside the village was misery and outside was freedom from it.

At any rate, whatever plans he may have made were shattered before they even got a chance to form.

"Halt," one of the men in vests called out to him and he skidded to a stop, glancing warily towards the pair.

"State your name and purpose," the other one said as he half-stood up, towering over the short blonde. (He knew good and well just who this...child was, but still had certain formalities to run through.)

"Uzumaki Naruto... and um, I was just gonna go outside," he said nervously, pointing in the general direction of the world outside the village walls. Apparently, his gesture was ignored and the angry man continued.

"We are outside, brat. Now, tell us what you're really up to or you'll regret it." There was that look again--the one that made him want to sink into the earth and disappear.

"H-honest! I just want to go outside the village for a little while." The standing man's eyes widened, then he smirked--though it was not a happy-looking expression, by any means--and looked like he was about to wave him through when the other man punched him in the arm and glared at him. The standing man scowled and sat down, while the other one spoke up.

"I'm sorry, Uzumaki-san. You are not allowed to leave the village." Naruto felt that sick, twisty knot come back in his stomach.

"W-what?! Why? I won't do anything bad, I promise! I'll come right back!" he pleaded

"No, I am sorry," he did not look sorry, "you cannot leave. It is against the rules." His cheeks felt wet again and he realized he was crying.

"Please, just for a little while? I really want to go-"

"No. Now please go back into the village." It was cold, final, and caused something--and it was not the first, nor would it be the last of the many in his lifetime--to snap inside of him.

"NO!" He cried--screamed--and bolted toward the village gates. It was wide open, he could see the trees, see freedom-

He hadn't even been running for a full three seconds when the ANBU were upon him.

~o0o~

Kicking, screaming, biting, punching, he tried every violent way he could think of to break free from the ANBU's grasp as they dragged him to the Hokage's tower in the center--farther and farther away from his freedom--of the village, returning the thrashing boy's efforts with equal roughness to keep him detained.

Once inside, they barged into the Sandaime's office without preamble, held the boy up for a startled Sarutobi to see, addressed him curtly,

"Hokage-sama," and then proceeded to summarize Naruto's attempt of fleeing the village. They left the boy in an unceremonious sniveling heap on the floor and departed seconds later. The heavy doors to his office shut with an ominous finality.

Standing up and peering over the edge of his desk, Sarutobi observed with a deep pang of pity as Naruto curled into himself and wept onto his carpet.

"Naruto..." he started, but a small, frail, squeaky voice interrupted him.

"Why...? Why, Jiji? Why does everyone...?" He inhaled sharply as a sob constricted his throat for a moment, then continued.

"Why does everyone hate me?" Sarutobi tensed and prepared to make up an excuse for his villagers actions, even as a deep burning anger coursed through him at having to do so at all. But the boy preempted his response with another, heart-wrenching, sob.

"Why can't I leave? I just wanted to go outside for a little while... why...?" Hiruzen sighed as he felt every single one of his years settle into his bones.

"Naruto... you can't go outside the village. It's not safe. You're only six years old, and..." he continued on, but Naruto was not listening. Something was eating away at the back of his mind and it threatened to break him, again. But he could not hold his thoughts back for long and the logic of the situation as he saw it unfolded before him.

The Old Man was the Hokage, so he made the rules, right?

"I am sorry, you cannot leave. It is against the rules." The man at the gate had said that.

The Old Man made that rule, then. He--the one person who was kind to him--was denying him what he wanted most. He was the one keeping him trapped here, in this hell.

How could he care for him if he made the rules that made him so miserable? He didn't care if it wasn't safe! He'd rather be dead than here, anyway! Couldn't he see? Didn't he know? If he was the Hokage, why could he make rules that only made him miserable but not make a rule that made people treat him better? Unless...

Unless the Hokage really did hate him, but was only pretending to be nice.

It wouldn't be the first time... someone would pretend to be nice to him, but then when he did something, even just a little bit wrong...

He shuddered as the phantom pains raced across his skin.

And then he clenched his fists and tried not to cry harder as an even worse pain coursed through his body.

Old Man Hokage, the one person he knew for sure cared for him... did not.

For the second time that day, something inside Naruto--and this time he could tell what it was: it was his faith and trust--crumbled and broke.

"...and sometimes enemy ninja get close enough to the village to-" The Old Man was still making excuses. He didn't want to be in the same room as him anymore.

"Okay," Naruto interrupted quietly.

Sarutobi was startled at Naruto's calm acceptance--he had anticipated having to lecture the boy for hours about safety, and having him yell back at him, and only getting him to promise to stay in the village after promising to treat him to some ramen, but this...

"I'll stay, Hokage-sama." His voice was dead, flat. And then he turned and left.

Sarutobi was shocked into silence at the boy's complete 180 in attitude, and felt a belated shiver at the look he had seen in his cold blue eyes--a look that should never exist on anyone other than a war veteran--and couldn't help but feel that somehow, someday, he was going to regret this.

"Minato..." he murmured to the photo on the wall behind him.

"What have I done?"

~o0o~

As it turned out, 'someday' ended up being just two weeks later.

In another reality, Naruto would develop his latent creativity and organizational planning skills with elaborate pranks.

Today, he was using it to escape.

He had spent the last two weeks observing--observing the different gate guards, the ones who checked people thoroughly and those who did not, what kinds of people were allowed easy entrance and exit to the village and those who were examined more closely--and came up with a plan. A simple, but effective, plan.

He had noticed that the guards that ran the six to noon shift were much lazier and more inattentive then the others, so he decided to leave as early in the morning as possible, when they were the sleepiest. He also saw that merchants were given the most leniency at the gate check, compared to other civilians and especially to shinobi. Most of the merchants seemed to arrive on Wednesday, and leave on Friday--probably because market day was on Thursday, not that he had ever attended one.

So with these three things in mind, Naruto got up at the crack of dawn and packed everything he thought he'd need that he owned into a plain white sack and tied it off with a long piece of rope. It was a small sack.

As he turned to go, he glanced back at his tiny, cramped apartment. He hadn't spent much time here--in fact he had only moved in two months ago--but even in that short time, he had thought of it as a haven, where at least no one would bother him. Even if he was alone.

He closed the door behind him. He was never coming back.

There wasn't much foot traffic this early in the morning, for which he was grateful. Fewer witnesses.

He crept up to the corner of the large horse stable that faced the main road into (and out of) the village, and waited. The smell of manure was unpleasant, and probably skewed his perception, but after an eternity of waiting, he finally spotted a likely target.

Waddling along from the direction of the marketplace was a rather fat man, pulling a covered wooden cart. It had two wheels, similar to a rickshaw, but much too big for the man currently wheezing his way towards the livery. With a muted thud, he set down the two large poles of wood that jutted out from the front of the cart and walked into the building to retrieve his horse.

Glancing around quickly, he saw that no one was watching and darted to the back of the cart, where there was a small door. The back of the cart was tilted up slightly, making it somewhat difficult to clamber up and crawl into it, but he managed, though not without landing in a heap towards the front of the cart. Crawling back up towards the back of the cart, he managed to reach out and shut the door--apparently just in time, too, as seconds later the cart tilted back up to its' normal position and he was thrown forcibly into the wooden door. After rubbing his head and cursing silently, the cart jostled and began to move forwards.

He knew he didn't have much time, so he quickly scrambled towards the front of the cart--as far away from the door as possible--and scrunched himself down as small as he could go in a corner, after covering himself with an old blanket he'd found. He was pretty sure these guards wouldn't bother to check the inside of the cart, but he was going to be careful, just in case.

Moments later, the cart stopped and he heard a command he'd become very familiar with over the past two weeks.

"Halt. State your name and business." He heard a rustling sound as the man produced the needed papers.

"Ruuro Sasaki, merchant of Wind Country, eh? Very well. Please sign out here." The scritch-scratch of pen against paper, and then:

And then they were moving. And he felt rather than saw when they passed the gate, because it was like an enormous weight had been lifted off of his chest.

He was free.

~o0o~

The next week was not an easy one. The moment he was safely out of the village, he had wanted to burst out of the cart and run around and laugh and do whatever the hell he wanted because he was free-

But, he suspected (correctly) that Ruuro-san would not take too kindly to the knowledge that he had smuggled a stowaway out of Fire country--(though Naruto would also learn that a child wasn't the only thing he was smuggling)--so he somehow forced himself to stay put until it was dark out and they stopped for the night to rest. (They had also stopped several times during the day, and Naruto had had to dart back into his corner and hide since this usually meant Ruuro was coming back into the cart to dip into his food stores, which Naruto borrowed from shamelessly.)

He had also planned on leaving the merchant behind as soon as night fell and he could exit the cart safely, but the first night they had stopped in the middle of the forest, (and though he was ecstatic that he was now able to run around freely--though more silently than he would have liked--and finally use the bathroom,) the giant, dark forest also made him feel more alone than he had ever felt--and that was saying something. So he decided to stick with Sasaki and his relatively poor company for however far he traveled, or until Naruto came to a place that he felt compelled to stay.

So, it wasn't an easy week--every time the merchant stopped he was afraid he'd been caught, and up until he noticed a small knothole on the wooden floor of the cart, he'd had to hold his bladder for 14 hours at a time--but it was certainly an interesting one. The first night they had stopped in the woods, but on the second night they came to an inn, and though Naruto obviously didn't get to sleep in a bed, he did get to explore the town a bit.

He had never been in a civilian town before, and he honestly wasn't sure what he thought about it. It was just too weird, and the people didn't look all that nice. He had decided to stay with Sasaki for another day.

During the day, while traveling in the cart, the only thing he really had to do was eat, drink, sleep, and poke around the merchandise in the cart. While most of it was pretty useless--big bolts of silk that would be ripped to shreds in any kind of fight, chokingly strong perfumes, fancy teas--he found a few things that he was pretty sure weren't supposed to be there, but had decided would be good to have around.

One was a rather beautiful sword that was nearly as tall as he was. It was a slightly-curved ninja-style katana, with a black leather shoulder strap and scabbard, and a dark blue crosspiece, with wrappings the same color blue covering the black hilt. The blade itself was nearly black, but the single edge was almost silver.

He also found a variety of scrolls, most of which were full of poetry or philosophy, but there were also several scrolls on chakra formation, manipulation, and control, as well as several E to C ranked ninjutsu scrolls that all bore the seal of Konoha, so he guessed they were stolen.

Well, nothing wrong with taking from a thief, right?

Right.

They had stopped in two other towns besides the one they had visited the second night, but for the last three days in a row, when the cart had stopped for Ruuro to take out his tent and sleep, it had been in the middle of the day. Not only that, but when Naruto was finally sure that he was asleep and ventured out of the cart, all he saw was sand.

He had never seen anything like it.

This place was hot and dry during the day, and freezing cold at night--and he had never been more grateful for the relative shelter the cart provided him until that moment.

Now, though, after three days, he was starting to get a little concerned. Because even after traveling for what seemed like an eternity, he could still see nothing but sand in every direction when he ventured outside the cart.

That, and they were almost out of water.

Those worries were immediately banished by a loud, commanding voice...

"Halt! State your name and business."

...and reawakened a set of old ones.

He sat in a frozen panic as Ruuro finished checking into the gate of the village--a ninja village, it had to be, they're gonna find me, no, no, no--and the cart bucked forward once again, leading him deeper and deeper inside his new prison.

He clambered up to the door of the cart and peeked outside, but he couldn't see more than flashes of brown, yellow and white, along with sunlight so bright it hurt his eyes after being in the cart so long.

As soon as the cart came to a stop, he flung open the door and bolted down the street.

He managed to dart around the startled pedestrians without bowling anyone over, but the sword was pretty heavy on his back, and his bag kept tripping him up, and he had just stolen from that guy, even if he was a thief, so he had to be right on his heels by now...

He shot a quick, fearful look behind him and nearly tripped in surprise.

Ruuro and the cart were nowhere in sight.

He slumped in relief against a rough, sandy wall near the edge of an alley, trying to catch his breath.

And then he thought about what he'd just done.

He had panicked when he realized they were back in a ninja village, and had bolted from the cart without thinking about anything other than exiting the gate... except he probably couldn't do that when he wasn't in the cart...

...and now that it was broad daylight, he couldn't sneak back into Ruuro's cart, either, especially not after he had just stolen from the man...

...and it would take weeks before he could figure out how to get out like he did in Konoha...

...which meant he really was trapped here, now.

He slunk further into the alley and curled up into a ball, clutching his hair on the sides of his heads, and began to weep.

~o0o~

He knew he couldn't stay in the alley forever, so after the sun set, he crept back out of the alley, bracing himself to face the stares, the hatred, the coldness...

...and instead got the biggest shock of his young life.

There were a lot of people out for this time of night--and he did see some wearing headbands, confirming once and for all that this was a ninja village--and a lot of them did stare at him, many indifferent, but also many curious, and some...

He nearly fell to his knees when someone actually smiled at him.

This...

So... maybe, not all ninja villages were bad? Was it just Konoha that hated him? Sure, no one in the civilian villages had been outright hateful towards him, but no one had smiled either...

For the first time in a long time, he felt warmth bubble up in his chest.

So what if he was stuck here?

Somehow, he didn't think he'd mind all that much.

~o0o~

A/N - Not a very original idea, I know. But I've seen it done poorly so many times that I felt the need to do it myself (though whether i've made any improvement in quality is up to you guys.) So, tell me what you think!