A/N: Found this when snooping, and thought I should post it. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto!sobs
When Naruto dreams, he dreams of nothing and everything, all at the same time. This is his philosophy- his secret philosophy- in life; nothing is everything, and everything is nothing.
When Naruto thinks of love, he thinks of it as being nothing. It is not tangible, a physical piece of matter that can be held, grasped, clutched. And because it is nothing, to him it means everything.
When Naruto grasps a kunai or shuriken, he thinks of them as everything. They are physical- dangerously so- enough to take everything that others hold dear away in an instant. And because they are everything, to him they mean nothing.
Naruto stares at the whirling leaves, skittering across the ground, as the sunlight falls on the autumn colored trees, painting with brilliant splashes of gold and crimson light. His head is resting slightly against a tree, his back at a slight angle from the ground, and he fights- in his head, in his heart- the simple ideals that are a shinobi; a kunai should be thought of as everything and believed to be everything and love is useless; it is nothing and should be thought of as such.
As Naruto thinks, he thinks of all the things that could have gone wrong, that surprisingly went right. He thinks about the things that could have gone right, but went horribly wrong. He fights these thoughts within himself; the past is done and over with, and he can't change a thing, but if only he had done this or that differently…
If only…
Few have ever seen this side of Naruto. This quiet, pensive boy that hides under the façade of childish mirth, the mirth that has somehow wormed its way into his personality, becoming a part of him as much as it hurts to realize it. His mask has now become him, and now almost nobody will ever see him, the true him that is in actuality a jaded fifty year old man inside a fifteen year olds body.
Naruto is grateful. He has a team that cares for him, the perverted sensei that openly reads porn in public, and the filibuster medic-nin kunoichi that he has the almost prerequisite crush on. Sasuke…well Sasuke is another matter altogether.
Naruto thinks about Sasuke almost all of the time. The boy who had become a brother to him, and that he had come to be friends with; maybe even have a sibling-love in his simple world where everyone was like family. That is why, as the condensed bubble of chakra caused by the super powered rasengan and chidori burst, he clasped fingers with the other boy. A silent sign of support- he would always be there for Sasuke, even after the boy had just tried to kill him.
The life of a shinobi says that Naruto should give up on Sasuke. That he and Sakura should just move on, finding the seeds of love that they harbor for one another, and letting them blossom under the constant attention that they could now give each other. But that could happen only in a fairytale, and as much as Naruto wishes life to end happily ever after, he knows it never will. He is a shinobi, a man who is raised to take the lives and hopes of others and pretend that such actions were justified.
As much as Naruto acts like a child, he never had a childhood. His outlook on life had always been tinted with the bloody stain of maturity that no child should retain. He has always noticed that the adults hated him, and in order to survive and endure and understand he was forced to gain the analytical skill of an adult, that way he could watch, listen, and formulate reasons as to why he was called a monster.
Now that Naruto no longer formulates these ideas, being well aware of the reasons behind the gutting glares, he uses the adult brain hidden behind the childish portion of his personality to create things; strategies, jutsus, anything and everything to bring him closer to his ultimate goal. To become Hokage is his dream, his ambition, his inherent and irrevocable need, and he will never give up on it, even if it is impossible. Not like Sasuke, when he gave up on his village.
And so, as Naruto leans back against the tree, drifting off to sleep thinking of these things (the past, the future), and when he is unconscious and unaware of his actions is when he lets his deeper, much truer emotions show. It's the only time he allows himself to not be overly optimistic and self assured. It's the only time he allows himself to be a realist.
It's only when asleep that Naruto cries.