Naruto was feeling bold, and carefree, and utterly happy and light—states of mind he had rarely been in even one at a time, so to experience them all at once was somewhat overwhelming.
Yet despite all of the positive feelings buoying him up, he was still a little wary about his situation because he had no idea where the heck he was and what he was going to do with himself now that he was here.
He figured the people who lived here could probably give him some advice...
But that was where his biggest problem lay: he didn't know if he could bring himself to approach a stranger.
Even though no one had been hateful or cruel to him yet, he still wasn't sold on the idea of trusting... well, anyone, really, but especially not some random villager.
God only knew he'd gotten enough negative reinforcement in the past for daring to ask a question.
But... maybe if he asked a child...? They weren't nearly as intimidating... and couldn't really hurt him physically, at least, if they were so inclined.
He caught sight of a little girl, not too much older than him, sweeping sand out of her front door and into the street. He tried to approach her as meekly and silently as possible, but she still noticed him when he was a few feet away. He flinched when she glanced up at him in annoyance, but she didn't really look that mad at him, just frustrated with her chore.
If he had to sweep all of the sand out of a house made out of sand, he'd be pretty annoyed, too.
"Ummm..." he attempted to start a conversation. She stopped sweeping and leaned against the broom handle.
"What?" She wasn't ignoring him, at least!
"This is probably a weird question... but, um, what village am I in right now?" She shot him a very impressive 'are-you-stupid?' look and then gave a forceful sweep of her broom, sending a pile of sand airborne into the street.
"We're in Sunagakure no Sato, dummy! Where else would you be?"
Suna? As in the village hidden in the sand?
The afore-mentioned grainy particles she had swept into the air settled onto his exposed toes.
Well, that was... kind of really obvious, now that he thought about it.
It really was a stupid question.
"Ehehe... sorry, I forgot..." he grinned, scratching the back of his head. She just rolled her eyes and waved him off.
"Idiot, how can you forget something like that?" She turned around and went back to her sweeping.
He might have left it at that-he still wasn't completely comfortable with talking to people-but he still had questions he needed answered:
Like, where was he going to live?
"Err..." The girl looked back up at him in annoyance, only this time it seemed more directed at him.
She hadn't been nice to him, exactly, but would anyone else even bother to answer his questions? Sure, he'd seen some people on the street today that acted nice, but he knew he couldn't take that at face value.
Never again.
Well, it couldn't hurt to try...
"Do you... know where the orphanage is?" It wasn't that he particularly wanted to live in the orphanage again, but it was either that or sleeping in an alley. Which he had done before, but it was far from pleasant. So even if living in another orphanage was not something he really wanted to do, it was better than the alternative.
At his hesitant question, her annoyance dulled and a thoughtful look appeared on her features.
"Sort of... hmmm... i've only been there once to visit my friend... let's see... it's pretty close to the Kage tower... you know, that big, giant, bubble shaped building with the 'Wind' kanji on it? In case you 'forgot'," she added dryly.
"Yeah, of course I know!" He didn't, but if it was as big as she said it was, he'd be able to find it.
"Right," she looked at him skeptically, "well, I don't know how to tell you to get there from here, but it's really close to the tower, so just ask someone to point you there when you get to the tower."
"Ah, well..." Surely he would be able to find at least one more person willing to talk to him when he got there, right?
"What?"
"Err, nothing. Ah, but, thank you, er..." Was he supposed to ask for her name, or what?
"It's Asahi Mera. And you...?" Burning morning sun? That was a pretty cool name, but his was better!
"Uzumaki Naruto!" She made a weird face.
"...fishcake?"
"Ack! No, no, it's Maelstrom Whirlpool! Not fishcake..." As much as he liked eating the things, he certainly didn't want to be called that. That wasn't awesome-sounding at all!
She just shrugged.
"If you say so... fishy-kun," she laughed. He didn't think it was so funny, though.
"Humph. Well, whatever, I gotta get going, so uh, thanks again, Mera!"He grinned brightly and ran off in a random direction.
"You're welcome!" She yelled after him. She shook her head as she resumed her sweeping.
Idiot... doesn't know the name of the village... and what kind of name is fishcake anyway?
Then she realized something.
"Hey! Dummy! You're going in the wrong direction!" But he was far enough away that he did not hear her yell.
~o0o~
Despite his earlier error in direction, he eventually managed to find the Kage tower without too much running around. Once he was in the square surrounding the massive structure, he gathered the courage to ask an adult for directions to the orphanage. The man, smiling, had pointed down a side street and told him to take a left past the Soba stand. From there, he said, Naruto should be able to see the orphanage.
He followed the man's directions to the letter, and he did indeed come across the orphanage like he said he would...
...only now that he was actually seeing the place, he was starting to reconsider the alley.
The place was an absolute dump! Sure, the orphanage back ho-in Konoha-was no mansion, and his apartment hadn't been all that nice either, but this...
It was a squat, roundish, sand-colored structure like most of the buildings he had seen during his brief stay here, but unlike the others, he could see cracks running all up and down the buildings' sandstone front, looking for all the world like it was about to shatter under its' own weight. There were piles of trash littering the ground surrounding the place, and what few windows he could see were small, damaged, or not even there at all-just covered with wooden planks.
He weighed his options. On the one hand, the orphanage-probably-had beds, while the alley for sure would not. Also, even if it was minimal, the orphanage would shield him from the elements, whereas he would be exposed out in the alley. Even though it had only been a little while since the sun went down, it was already getting cold. Very cold. He also hadn't eaten in nearly 24 hours, so whatever the orphanage was handing out, even if it was gruel, would be better than what he could scrounge out of the garbage.
Yet even with all of the relative 'perks' the orphanage held over the alley option, there was a downside to it that almost cancelled out all of the positives.
He would have to live with other children here.
That was ultimately the reason he had left the orphanage for his apartment back in Konoha-because even though it had been terrible to come home to an empty apartment every day, it had been even worse to come back and find that his clothes were missing, or his bed was covered in hoisin sauce and insects, or to find that he'd been wrongfully blamed for writing on the wall or breaking a window, or that the other children were waiting in a group to pounce on him...
So lost was Naruto in his resentful musings that he did not notice the girl approaching him until she spoke right into his ear.
"What'sa matter?" He flinched so violently that he actually fell on his butt. Startled, the girl took a few steps back and stared at his prone form in confusion. He was looking up at her with wide, surprised-almost fearful-eyes, and even as he pushed himself to his feet he scooted farther away from her.
"Uhh…. Sorry there, pal. Didn't mean to, uh, scare you like that…" she said uncertainly, scratching her head. For his part, Naruto was blushing slightly and avoiding her eyes in embarrassment.
"Ah, no, I wasn't scared, you just surprised me is all…" He stood there awkwardly for a moment, letting his words trail off into silence. What was he supposed to do now?
"What's your name?" He blurted out suddenly, and immediately regretted it. He remembered hearing somewhere that it was very rude to ask for someone's name before giving out their own. Or at least he thought that was the rule. At any rate, he remembered getting less than positive responses to his similar straightforward attempts at learning his new academy classmates' names—the rejections from the girls had been particularly violent.
His worries, though not unfounded, were soon relieved however, for they barely had time to even cross his mind before the girl smiled and replied in a friendly tone.
"Oh, I'm Nasamu Eiko, what's yours?" Caught flatfooted by her unexpected reaction, he could only gape.
He must have been making a very strange face because after looking at it for only a few seconds Eiko began to giggle. The sound of her laughter seemed to return him to his senses, though, and he snapped his mouth shut.
"What are you laughing at?" He asked warily. Was she just playing a joke on him or something?
"Just…snrrk…your face!" Before he had time to even be offended by that remark she continued. "You look like a fish when you do that!" He made a choking sound.
"I don't look like a fish!" he contested, pouting.
"Sure you do! Fish have big lips, see?" And here she pointed to his face, where, indeed, a rather large set of pouty lips resided. He pulled his lips into his mouth.
"Mhhy dnt hhhvff bgg lfffs, hhyyy?"
"You even have gills!" She continued, ignoring his mumbled protest.
"Mhhls?"
"Yeah, on your cheeks!" She was about to poke one such bewhiskered cheek, but at the sight of her hand coming rapidly towards his face he flinched and jumped away from her. Startled, again, Eiko's teasing demeanor vanished.
"Ahh, sorry, I didn't mean to…" she trailed off and watched as Naruto seemed to gather himself and walked back up to her, though not as close as he had been before.
"It's alright. I just, um,…"
"Don't like people touching you, ha?" She said softly.
"Well, no, it's not, I mean," he floundered with his words, trying to find a way to say that he didn't mind being touched so much as he wasn't used to it. Eventually, though, he gave up and huffed out a simple 'yes' in response.
Eiko blinked in confusion at his bumbling reply, but eventually just shrugged and let the matter rest.
"So, were you looking for someone here, or what?" She asked brightly.
"Huh?"
"Well, you were just standing there staring at the orphanage for like, five minutes…"
"Oh, right. Well, um, you see…" Eiko seemed nice enough. Maybe the other kids would be too…?
"I was just going to, um, canIstayhereplease?" He blurted out all at once.
"…I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"IjustwantedtoknowifI—"
"Whoa, slow down there!" She interjected. "Now, say that again. Slowly." He took a deep breath.
"Can I stay here, please?" She blinked.
"Here?" He nodded. "…in the road?" She asked incredulously.
"Huh?"
"Why do you want to know if you can stay in the road?" She continued on, either ignoring or simply not hearing his response. Her face was screwed up in confusion, and she rubbed her chin thoughtfully as she mumbled possible explanations to herself. "He was already just standing there anyway, so why'd he need to ask if he could keep doing it? Maybe he was trying to make sure it wasn't someone's yard? That would be the polite thing to do, although why he'd want to just stand around in the same spot is a mystery. Though I suppose…"
"Oi!" He shouted, waving a hand in front of her face. That seemed to be enough to snap her out of it.
"Hmm?" He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. She was kind of weird, but she had been nice to him. The least he could do was not be a jerk back.
"I was talking about staying there," he pointed toward the orphanage, "not in the road." Her eyes lit up.
"Oh! Well, that makes a lot more sense." A minute of silence.
"Uhhh, Eiko-ch…chan?" He choked on the honorific. Was that too familiar? She didn't seem to mind, though.
"Yeah?"
"So…can I stay?" She looked thoughtful for a minute. Finally she responded.
"Stay where?" He couldn't help it: he face-vaulted.
Recovering before she could ask him why he'd decided to take a nap in the street, he repeated his earlier question, this time making sure to be specific.
"Do you know if I can stay here in the orphanage or not?" She shrugged.
"Are you an orphan?"
"Well, yeah…"
"Then you can stay!" She proclaimed happily. "C'mon!" She then proceeded to beckon him towards the orphanage, all the while regaling him with stories of her friends and the people that lived there. Luckily, she didn't ask where he had been living before—maybe she just thought he'd just fallen out of the sky? Or maybe she just didn't care—but he figured he'd better think up a story pretty soon. If any adults suddenly noticed him living here, he doubted they'd just let him stay without some sort of explanation. At this point, he was only half-listening to her pleasant chatter, up until…
"Well, fishy-chan, I know that you'll probably—"
"What?" He choked out. "I do NOT look like a fish!" And fishy-chan! That was even worse than fishy-kun! What was up with these ridiculous nicknames!
"Fine, fine, " Eiko huffed. "Then what's your real name, huh?" He hesitated. Would she make the connection?
"Well?"
"…Naruto," he muttered.
Needless to say, the nickname stuck, and the rest of Eiko's tour-guide speech was interspersed with giggles.
~o0o~
Creak, creak.
It was bright outside, in the middle of the day,
Creak, creak.
But he was in the shade.
Creak, creak.
He thought he liked the dark.
Creak, creak.
Or, at least, he was afraid of the light.
Creak, creak.
He didn't belong there.
Creak, creak.
That was where the other children played, like they were doing now.
Creak, creak.
They were all laughing and yelling.
Creak, creak.
It looked like a lot of fun.
Creak, creak.
He squeezed his stuffed bear tighter.
Creak, creak.
'Monster, Demon, Freak'
Creak, creak.
He didn't dare join them.
Creak, creak.
No, he would stay here in the dark, on his swing, and watch them.
Creak, creak.
He knew all of their faces, by now.
Creak, creak.
So he noticed the new face among them, today.
Creak, creak.
Happy, laughing.
Creak, creak.
He had blue eyes, and blonde hair.
Creak, creak.
Just another laughing face in the crowd.
Creak, creak.
Just another happy child.
Creak, creak.
Creak, creak.
Creak, creak.
~o0o~
Naruto could now officially say that this had been the greatest week of his life.
Nobody seemed to hate him.
He had a bunch of new friends.
He had a decent place to stay—the orphanage had looked much nicer on the inside than he'd expected—and enough food to never be truly hungry.
In short, his life was perfect, as far as he was concerned.
That's not to say his stay in Suna had been without problems, though, especially in the beginning.
It had taken three days before one of the caretakers at the orphanage noticed an extra kid running around, and when the man confronted him about his origins, he'd just said his parents had died—which they had, six years ago, just not recently—and claimed he didn't have any paperwork—which was also true: it was probably buried in some filing cabinet back in Konoha. Surprisingly, the man didn't ask any more questions and told him to claim an empty bed on the third floor.
No, what had really been giving him trouble this past week was the pile of treasure he'd nicked from Sasaki's wagon. During his Eiko-guided tour of the orphanage, the easily-distracted girl had noticed his strange bundle of scrolls and the wrapped-up sword strapped to his back. She pestered him about them, but he—as nicely as possible—told her "heck no! This is my stuff, I don't want people playing with it!" She grudgingly dropped the issue after that, though he did notice that the next day everyone seemed mysteriously aware of his new nickname…
But that had really been the only trouble he'd had. After Eiko had left him to settle in, the first thing he did was find a proper hiding place for his goods—and he felt totally confident that no one would find it, because if there was one thing he was good at, it was finding places to hide.
So, unhindered by worries of theft, starvation, or pursuit, he'd spent the past six days doing what he'd always wanted to do: being a normal kid.
Man, I never knew that other kids played ball this much…
"Hey! That's cheating! You can't just…" Naruto scratched his head and smiled nervously as yet another squabble broke out between the two teams' captains.
"It was SO fair, Daiku! Just ask…" Just about every day all of the children in the orphanage, and even some that had families, would spend hours out here playing fun. It was hot, he was sweaty and tired and thirsty, the other kids seemed to squabble as much as they actually played the game…
…and he loved every minute of it.
By this point, one of the older children had helped settle the little fight—in his teams' favor!—and Naruto hopped back over to his position, where he was greeted by an old friend.
"Fishy-kun," Mera nodded towards him without taking her eyes off the field.
Well, an old friend by his standards, anyway. Considering all of his friendships were less than a week old, she fit the title. The day after he'd settled down in his new home, Mera had stopped by to visit that friend of hers she'd mentioned—which just happened to be Eiko-chan, to everyone's surprise—and, Mera added, 'to make sure that fish-baka hadn't ended up running around all night.' Shortly after that, the two girls had sort of ganged up on him. It was the first time he had ever been the victim of good-natured teasing…and he still wasn't sure if he liked it or not.
"Sunshine-chan," he rebutted. She just snorted.
"I'm not gonna answer to that stupid name," she said in a sing-song voice.
"But it's your nickname!" He whined.
"No it isn't! It isn't a nickname if only you call me that!"
"Sure it is! And besides, I let you call me fish-boy!" He reasoned.
"Let me? Pffft, yeah right. And since everyone calls you that, it's—look out!" They had both gotten a little caught up in their argument, so it was only through sheer instinct that Naruto managed to turn his attention back towards the field just as his foot snapped up to kick the ball away.
"Woah…" Several children collectively mumbled as the ball sailed up into the air, flying past the field and beyond.
"Uhhh…" Oops. Mera turned to glare at him.
"Way to go, baka! You kicked it into the cliffs!" The way the other children were all turning to glare at him too was eerily familiar. He suddenly felt like bolting.
"Umm, sorry about that, guys," he gulped. Then he smiled so wide his eyes crinkled shut. "But don't worry! I'll go up there and get it!" He ran away as fast as he could towards the cliffs, ignoring their shouted warnings about the creepy abandoned playground where the ghosts and monsters lived.
Ghosts and monsters? Ha! He wasn't afraid of no ghosts!
But people? He thought idly as he pounded up the winding path of the stony cliffs. Now, people can be scary…
~o0o~
Someone was coming.
That was the thought at the forefront of his mind, the knowledge that was churning his normally subdued thoughts into a swell of panic, anticipation, and sheer terror.
Someone is coming, someone is coming,,, towards me…!
The agony and excitement had started when he saw one of the children kick the ball too hard, sending it hurtling towards the prepice just below his position. That alone had startled him. Their games never drifted this close to his cliff. Would they abandon their ball? Would they stop playing?
Shortly after this, he heard the children erupt in a chorus of shouts, seemingly directed at him, but when he stopped to listen…
'No, don't go up there! That place is haunted!'
'My mom told me to never go up there! She said monsters live up there!'
Their warnings puzzled him. He knew for a fact that nothing lived up here. And no one ever came up here, either.
Just him and him alone.
And then he'd realized something: they weren't shouting at him, so who…?
That was when the panic set in: someone was headed his way to get the ball, and they were yelling at him to stop.
Someone was coming.
Someone was coming!
Which left him in his current predicament. Should he run? Should he stay? He could already hear the loud slap of feet running up the stone path…
He gripped the chains of the swing with trembling hands.
I'll stay, he decided.
He didn't even have time to change his mind, for at that very moment, a blonde-haired boy came rocketing up the path, only to skid to a halt right in front of him.
For twenty, long, fateful seconds, he stared him in the eyes and said nothing.
It's the new kid, he realized.
Carefully, the newcomer spoke.
"Hey," the blonde began. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding—he could detect no hostility in his voice, or fear. "..did you see where our ball landed? I thought I kicked it right here, but…" he trailed off into silence, and a sudden nervousness came into his features. He felt his throat constrict: the blonde boy was going to run.
Much to his surprise, though, the boy continued, though now he could hear fear in his voice.
"You're not… you know… a, a ghost or something, right?" The question confused him a little—he was obviously not a dead person, wasn't he? Of course, he wasn't exactly sure what a ghost looked like, either, but…
"No." He nearly jumped at the sound of his own voice. He heard it so rarely that he could barely recognize it, gravelly from disuse as it was.
His answer seemed to put the other boy at ease, however, as the blonde boy's previously cheerful features settled back into place. That look of happiness on the boys' face, for some reason, caused a… a painful feeling to erupt in his chest.
"Oh, good!" The boy responded, ignorant of his internal struggle. "I was worried there for a second—I mean, I don't really believe in ghosts and stuff, but with the way everyone was scared of this place…" He scratched his blonde head. "Ne, so anyway, did you see where the ball went?"
Carefully placing his stuffed bear down on the swing, he got up and slowly shuffled towards the edge of the cliff. He felt like he was in a daze—like, like one of those dreams he had heard about, where everything he saw wasn't really real.
He hoped this wasn't a dream. He hoped that someone was actually talking to him, being friendly.
He also hoped it wasn't a dream because dreams only happened when you were asleep.
He wasn't allowed to sleep. If he slept he'd get in trouble.
And he had never wanted to cause trouble.
The blonde boy shuffled aside as he passed him, giving him room to walk up to the edge of the cliff.
"It's right there," he whispered, pointing. The blonde boy peered down as well.
"Aww, man!" He exclaimed right in his ear, nearly making him topple over. "There's no way I can get down there!" Indeed, there was no path that led to that particular section of cliff.
He didn't need to be near things to move them, though.
He knew the boy would run as soon as he saw him use his gift, but it was the least he could do after talking to him.
He would help.
Wordlessly, he stretched his arm forth and willed the sand underneath the ball to rise, creasing his brow in concentration as he floated the ball up to their level and brought it to rest at the feet of the now stunned blonde.
He looked away from his face and waited for him to run.
Instead, he got the biggest shock of his young life. Throwing his arms up into the air the blonde exclaimed,
"THAT'S SO COOL! What's your name, kid?" He stared at him gaping. Finally, after thinking for a moment, his mouth formed the words.
"…Gaara."
Unbeknownst to either of them, that brief exchange of words would mark the beginning of a life-long friendship.
~o0o~
A/N – Finally finished! So, this chapter turned out all right, I guess. I'm happy enough with it to post, at least. Sorry for the wait, but my muse has been rather distracted of late… I'll try to get the next one up in a (somewhat) timely manner, but don't expect a set schedule of updates. I finish the chapter when I finish the chapter, people! (Although, reviews do encourage me to work faster ;) )
Also! I might have put this somewhere already, but this will NOT be a yaoi story. Sorry.
As always, comments and questions are welcome.