True Beauty and Courage

Disclaimer: I sadly don't own the world of Naruto.

Chapter 1

I'd never really had a home. I moved from family to family, a lonely leaf blowing lost, tugged along by the unforgiving winds of life. I was unwanted, unneeded, unnecessary. At my lowest moments, I'd clutch my fist to my chest, as if to keep all the hurt bottled inside me from bursting forth, and think, maybe not in this life, but maybe in the next, I would be important to someone, anyone. I'd use that photographic memory that I am so gifted and cursed with to remember her face; twisted in pain, but an expression of pure love etched on her features as she looked at me through the smoky haze of the fires burning around us. It was a nightmare that my mind would never let me forget, but it was my last moment with my mother, so it was precious all the same. Keep your heart, hone your mind. Her words always a faint echo in my mind pushing me to do my best, to be my best.

When my mom died in that fire, I was only 7 years old, but I'd already gone through my share of hardships. I was born incomplete, imperfect, and my father left a few years earlier because he couldn't deal with having a disfigured daughter. It wasn't any great mishap that couldn't be solved with time and medicine, but my clubbed feet, turned up and towards each other, were the escape he needed from the so called martial choker around his throat.

For 3 years, it was just me and her in a little apartment that I remember always had the funniest smell, like dust and comfort- if that could be a scent. Hard as she tried, my mother never could quite get that one room apartment with the faded wallpaper walls to be clean, but we were together, and we were happy.

The night of the fire, we were asleep, my little body tucked against hers, the sound of her heartbeat and breathing a calming lullaby. That moment of peace before the storm. I recall the beautiful lilting voice that whispered in my ear, reassuring, when I started to panic as the screams echoing throughout the building woke me. They always say you forget the sound of someone's voice when you lose them, but my mind could never forget anything, much less the most beautiful voice it had or will have ever heard in that world.

As the building collapsed around us in a fiery inferno, she carried me and tried to run because I wouldn't have been able to go fast enough myself, but when your child weights an extra 20 pounds from wearing a brace to correct her dysfunctional feet, it's hard to move very quickly. I know that if she had left me, my mother would have made it out of that building alive, but there was no way she was leaving her little girl.

We rushed down deserted, burning corridors and steel stairwells from which heat rose in waves. Smoke clogged the air like a woolen blanket that strove to push us to towards our eternal sleep. The adrenaline that rushed through my system heightened my senses, bringing to hyper focus everything around us. I think that is why, right before it hit, I could almost sense it falling towards us.

We had finally made it down the five floors between our apartment and safety, and I could see the outside world just out of reach, but right in that moment, both our heads wretched upward at a great, awful creaking sound. A burning beam of wood broke away from the ceiling rafters and dropped towards us in what seemed like slow motion. I had known right then that I was going to die, that I was never getting out of that place. I had almost felt betrayed. My very home turned against me. It would be a long time before I could call anything home again, but at least I had the chance to, because right before it hit us, my mother gathered whatever strength her exhausted arms must have had, and she threw me away from her.

My own screams rung in my ears as that wooden beam crushed her under its weight. I crawled over to her as fast as I could, my correctional braces feeling like a metal prison encasing my legs. She smiled softly at me and stroked my cheek as I struggled to push the beam off of her.

Even at that age, I knew it was over, but I still pressed my weight into that block of solid wood, tears rolling down my face. She had tugged my arm, insisting with that movement to give up my efforts, and I leaned down to hear her whispered words, her voice weak, her beautiful clear green eyes locked on their exact copies on my own face.

"Remember what we always say; keep your heart and hone your mind. I love you."

And with that, she was gone. My heart felt as if it had been ripped from my chest, and I sobbed, my chest heaving. My body struggled to find the oxygen that was missing from the air in the smoke filled room. Another beam creaked above me, but I couldn't find it in myself to want to move, not that I could have moved fast enough even if I tried. As the ceiling collapsed on top of me, I clutched my mom's hand, my world disappearing with the warmth of her body. Right before I blacked out, I thought I could hear the faint sound of wailing sirens. That night marked the death of not only my mother, but also my sense of safety and my happiness.

When I had finally regained consciousness, I could smell the hospital room before I could see it. The white walls were a bright, clean white and bare of anything that could have made the room more cheery. I'd been in hospitals many times before; my feet had been need of surgery twice before. I remember trying to move and feeling a searing pain across my body, causing me to black out again. I don't really know how long I faded in and out of awareness, all I'd known was that I hurt, and that I wanted my mom.

When I came around again, I could move without my vision darkening. My body stung and itched everywhere, but that had confused me. It took me a couple moments before my memory kicked in and the horrible night replayed itself behind my dark eyelids. Tears sprung from my eyes and traced tracks down my face. A nurse must have heard me, or maybe she was just finishing her rounds, but she opened the door with a quiet click and headed over to my bed, picking up my chart. She had given me a sympathetic glance.

"You poor girl. The doctors will be happy to hear you've woken up. Let me just go get them."

With that she walked back out of the room, leaving me to myself once again. I couldn't gather the strength to even sit up, so laid there, waiting. Soon, the nurse had returned with two men in white coats and scrubs- my doctors.

"Don't try to talk, the smoke inhalation damaged your throat" the older of the pair told me. "Now, I don't know how much you remember, but there was a fire at your apartment building. The firemen pulled a burning log off of you and brought you here so we could make you better."

His voice was soft, his tone the same one all adults seemed to use when talking to children, which at that moment, I still was. "You have second and third degree burns all across your body. It was touch and go for a while. We didn't know if you were going to make it, but you're here, so you are a very lucky little girl."

He had given me a gentle smile then shared a look with his colleague. The other man, the younger of the two, turned towards me and uttered the words I had known to be true, but until that moment had not yet been said out loud,

"I'm so sorry, but we couldn't save your mother."

I could feel my anguish at her death creep up my body, threatening to choke me. I had tried to drown out the world around me, my body so weak I was unable to even bring my hands up to cover my face to hide the tears that had once again appeared.

The older stepped closer and placed his hand on my head which I had just realized seemed lighter, my hair just brushing against my ears, much shorter than mom had kept it before….. the incident.

"You'll be here a little while longer so we can monitor you, and after that, they're going to find you a nice family to live with." He then bent lower so he could look me in the eye. "Don't give up. You are strong and I know your mother loved you and would want you to live a good life."

Right then, pain in my heart and body almost completely destroyed, I had decided I would remember her, remember the good, but from that point on all the bad would just be a lesson because that old man was right. I had told myself I was going to make my mom proud, even if she couldn't be there to watch me.

Three weeks later, I had moved out of the hospital and into the house of what would be the first of many foster homes. Turns out, no one wants the ugly disabled kid.

The first couple foster families I had been placed with, I was nervous and hopeful, and I tried my very best to be the best kid they'd ever taken in. After foster family number six in two years, that had waned away. The burns from the fire covered sixty percent of my body. That was sixty percent of my body covered in twisted scars. That was always the first thing those families would see when I was dropped off at their doorstep. They either tried unsuccessfully to hide their disgust or they didn't bother.

During those two years, I had upgraded from the metal braces to just correctional shoes, but I was still having problems with my feet. See, the thing is, a common problem for kids with club feet is that sometimes one of our legs stops growing. What the doctors had to do was go in and snip at my Achilles tendon then stretch it out to help it keep growing so I didn't end up like a human seesaw when I walked.

The surgeries were some of the most painful experiences I had ever been through, and with what I'd been through, that's saying something. People also did not want to keep a child that was that much work. They all requested to have me transferred pretty fast. They never mentioned my deformities as to why I had to leave though; it was always that I just "wasn't the right fit for them". I started to forget my conviction to my mother's words.

Most families kept me for no more than five months, with one exception.

The Carters were some of the most amazing people I'd ever met. They were an elderly couple whose son had gone off to college, and they wanted to have children in the house again. I was nine when started staying with them. By then, I'd lost sight of myself and who I wanted to be after having been rejected so many times. They changed that.

They genuinely cared for me and treated me as their own. The Carters helped me to remember that I could be whatever I aspired to and could do anything I put my mind to if I put in the work. They never let me use my past as an excuse, always saying that who I was was not what happened to me, but what I chose to do. They taught me to love to learn again and restored my faith in the good of people. That family gave me another chance at life, and I ran with it.

Mrs. Carter taught me to cook and sew- they had owed a restaurant when they were younger- and Mr. Carter would take me outside to show me all the things he knew about gardening and botany. When their son, Orrin, came back for his breaks from school, he would sit with me for hours teaching me all about his passion, music. Mr. Carter, a talented artist whose specialty was woodwork, made me a little flute that Orrin insisted I master.

Of all the things in the world though, what I loved to do most was read. I would tuck myself in the most comfortable chair in the house and lose myself in other worlds bound only by the dark ink on crisp pages.

I read and studied everything I could get my hands on. In school, I leapt ahead. I was doing coursework years above my peers. My photographic memory allowed me to never forget a single thing I had ever learned. I was learning calculus and reading at the college level by the 7th grade. This further ostracized me from my peers though.

My interests were in the working of macromolecules but all they wanted to do was stalk the latest boyband. The scars, glasses, and excessive amount of pimples I had starting acquiring from puberty didn't help either. I was teased mercilessly. That didn't bother me though. I had my family.

It didn't last. Four years after the Carters had taken me in, they had gone out for the night to have a fancy dinner for their anniversary- they never came back. On the way back from the restaurant, they were hit by a drunk driver and died in the crash.

They were gone, and my heart ached. Orrin wasn't old enough to try to take care of me, so I was back in the system. The only thing I kept with me was the little wooden flute. My heart started to close off again. I kept losing everyone I loved, and I couldn't – wouldn't – let myself lose another.

I was thirteen, but I already knew I couldn't stand to be bounced around again like I had been when I was younger, so I asked to be put in a group home. I found a way out fast by using my best weapon, my mind.

I started college the next year; I was fourteen, premed track. I finished in three years and was accepted to the best medical school in the country. All the while, my mother's motto became my own, one that I tried, but failed to keep fully: "Keep your heart and hone your mind". I never let myself become conceited or unkind, but I also never let anyone in. I didn't want to become the monster inside that everyone else saw outside, but I still never found anyone again that loved me, or even cared for me since my mother and the Carters. I was alone, and I wouldn't have really wanted it any other way at that point.

I graduated med school when I was twenty, with honors, and got accepted into my top choice hospital. Today, as it was, was my first day. I never could have guessed how terrible today would end.

I had woken up this morning, and nearly jumped out of bed I was so excited. It had been years since my feet had been fixed. My deformity had been one of the many parts of my life that had pushed me into medicine.

I grasped the sink in front of me and examined my familiar visage. Muddy brown hair cut short around my shoulders, gnarled scars running alongside the right side of my face, pimples dotting my skin (I was still twenty and my ache hadn't gotten any better), and clear emerald eyes behind thick wire-framed glasses- the same shade as my mother's. They were the only feature of mine that I liked. I didn't put makeup on, it wouldn't have helped with my looks.

I stepped out into the living room. The book I had been reading the night before lay open on a small table next to the small flute I had kept with me all those years. Plants were blooming on the pots along the windowsill of the singular window in the tiny apartment. Besides for those and the small bookshelf filled with novels, the place I lived didn't have any amount of what could be called a personal touch. I had learned to live light.

I put together a small lunch from the last night's leftovers. I still loved to cook. I seemed to have kept a piece of the Carters with me in the form of the skills they had taught me with such care. I grabbed my purse and headed to the hospital.

Walking from the garage, I entered from the back. I was supposed to be receiving a small orientation from one of the older doctors in the back offices, so it wasn't so surprising that I wasn't aware of the commotion that was going on at the entrance of the hospital.

After a small wait, I figured it wouldn't be terrible if I got some coffee from the cafeteria while I was waiting; I was twenty minutes early. Making my way up to the front of the hospital, I started to hear it. Angry voices and people crying out in terror.

"YOU KILLED HER! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO MAKE HER BETTER, BUT SHE STILL DIED! I LOVED HER!"

Worried, I stepped out of one of the hallways into the main foyer, maybe someone had come in severely injured.

I was wrong. A single man was standing at the door, gun in hand, sobbing and screaming. Everyone else was crouching on the floor or trying to hide behind chairs and counters. I must have startled him when I moved into the room, because the second it took me to take in the scene around me there was a loud shot and suddenly my stomach hurt like never before.

I fell to the floor as people screamed and tried to run. More shots rang out. Amidst the chaos, I sat propped up against the wall from the hallway I had been in, and brought my hands that had been covering my stomach up to my eyes.

The blood was a crimson red and warm on my palm. I looked down at the puddle of red that was slowly blossoming around me like a flower on the white marble. I could feel myself slipping away, a black tinge to my glaze, a ringing in my ears. The more the darkness spread, the less I could feel the pain. I could almost make out a man in front of me, trying to keep pressure on the wound that just wouldn't stop bleeding. My last thought before I blacked out was that I hoped I had lived a life that my mother would have been proud of. I'm sure she would have.

A/N: This is my first fanfic, so please read and review! Much appreciated :)