Disclaimer: Naruto and all characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto. I am just dipping my feet into it all. I don't own any of it.
Our Obsession
Chapter 1
The first time she had seen him, he'd been in a throng of classmates, the brightest light. The most noticeable of all, a shiny star held up for all to see and praise.
She had been one of the many admirers, and like them she had thought herself the one who felt the most fervently towards him, and thus the one who was deserving of him above all else.
The wind stirred the pink strands of her hair, the short crop she sported marking the new season in her life.
Her hands callous from training, her heart worn from the constant fluctuations of hope and disappointment.
Sakura Haruno wore a smile, but it wasn't the smile she wore at age 12, or at age 14. It was the haggard, tired smile of a sixteen year old girl who had known too much so soon, beaten by the Shinobi world as she tried to stand on her own, but always found that her legs were never strong enough.
Her words were never the right words, her timing was always off, and her help was never what was needed at the moment. She was in the background, like music in a store, never the main feature.
She was a cliché, the smart just-pretty girl with the large forehead. The girl who had all answers in class. The childish fanciful girl who was too vain to notice humble people, but who hurt easily the modest souls around her. Although, she herself was fast to feel the lick of pain when she got what she dished out to others.
A complete cliché of vapidness as she chased and daydreamed about the dreamy crush of a boy in her class.
That boy who was the best student admired and envied by all.
Oh, and yeah, of course with his Adonis' face, he felt the others were far beneath him. Arrogance.
The boy strut around with his hands in his pocket, with brooding good looks and with just enough carelessly thrown 'Hmpfs' to make a girl create a mysteriously romantic figure out of the empty spaces of his personality, which he didn't care to fill in.
Sakura Haruno sat in her room, staring out at the stars for the hundredth time of her existence, feeling very small as she often did, and with a fierce glare in her eyes which were there to convince herself that, no, she was different now. She had to be, and yes, she would do something next time, of course.
How could a boy with a face like moonlight and hair like the night. He used words like weapons, and they were sharp when they cut her. He had become the most perilous test of her life.
She was the girl who shouldn't really have been where she was, sandwiched between two teammates. Two boys who had the greatest brimming potential, chosen obviously by destiny and lineage while she was just there hanging on by a thread and not of any importance.
She was just a cliché, a voice to scream the obvious things, to feel the same formula of emotions felt by all teenage girls of a certain age with no obvious qualifications.
It had all started as a simple crush, the declaration of a normal adolescent girl had now turned into a lifelong burden, she now carried on muscled shoulders. She was the first to admit she had an eagerness to masochistically dive headfirst into danger without much to sustain herself but an ability to heal, for which in the midst of a brutal battle made no never mind to either opponent nor ally.
Sakura got off her bed, dressed, and put on her gloves.
Time to get back to the routine that rung her heart inside out.
To search for the boy who didn't want to be found, spend the time she didn't have, and find out anew how many other things there were in this world that she didn't know, couldn't understand and would never accomplish.
At least she had a partner in this cycle.
And he was the most persistent of all.
The first time he had truly seen him was sitting at the docks, staring out at the waves with the most poignant sadness his small heart couldn't put a name to.
A boy with hair like a crow's wing seated at the edge of the water, ebony eyes forward, flushed empty so they appeared like holes in his young pale face.
Naruto hadn't known anyone could mirror the loneliness he felt inside his 7-year old body, but this boy not only matched it but surpassed it.
And as boys have been taught since the beginning to time, to behave as if softer emotions were an inherent weakness they avoid displaying, the young blonde boy easily adapted this notion as he neglected to let out the sea of words that coursed through his belly as he strode by the docks on his way to nowhere and no one in particular.
The sunset sizzled on the horizon with a red tinge that splashed out into the atmosphere, creating a picture that would be etched into his skull for years to come.
It would be a memory that would hurt him. A memory that would would give him warmth and assurance. A memory that would give him clarity in his darkest hour and seat confusion in his breast all at the same time.
His deep azure eyes were narrowed with a concentration, not particularly shown across his whiskered cheeks as they were drawn sullenly.
The memory would end as the two kids noticed one another and recognized what they couldn't say—their similarity—but turned their faces away from one another, a denial. A moment that could perhaps save them, at some forwarded time, but for years would cause an ache of regret to accompany the remembrance and little else.
Naruto opened his eyes, sixteen and awake now in more ways than one. He raises from his bed and as he thinks of his dream-memory, reality sweeps in.
A picture frame is on his dresser; his hands instinctively find it in the dark and grasp it hard.
He doesn't need to be able to see it, to know what it contains. It's there in his mind's eye, always. A focal point for everything he's been doing and everything he will do for years to come.
The blonde checks his supply of weapons, straightens his headband and wears that resolute smile that is his signature.
He is the dead-last of his class, the Usuratonkachi, everyone avoided like the plague. The boy with wide cerulean eyes that felt every bit of the stab from the cold glares from the villagers, who ignored this and dealt with the pain through mischief.
The boy with the messy blonde hair who talked too loud, walked without refinement and did the most outrageous things to gain attention and made no apologies.
He could see himself clearly sometimes.
He tried to smother the loneliness from inside him every night he sat alone eating his dinner. The only sound the rustic fridge shaking out ice.
But loneliness stretched her wide arms and hugged him, his heart empty, his eyes wide and searching, hungry for affection.
Morning spilled her soft dress over his face as he woke. He would drown out the rattling silence with his boisterous declarations.
He settled the picture frame back in its place. He had found a purpose now.
And he'd pursue it to the end. He would take back the thing which had brought him a flicker of light in his darkening world.
He would be good for that much, at least.
They met at the gates at dawn. They didn't look at one another. They only looked forward. After all they only had one goal, one single-minded obsession that sparked from the spaces of their hearts they needed fulfilled. The boy they couldn't forget had done something to them, irreversibly.
And they could hope, That person had taken a part of them with him as well as he went on his cold and lonely journey.