Author's Note: Just to let you know, Naruto has never intentionally made an effort to keep what he is a secret. He just so far hasn't felt the need to flat out explain himself.

Playlist: Tell Your Story Walking-Deb Talan, Set Free-Katie Gray

Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto series or any of its characters.


Naruto lies on his stomach on the floor donning a thoughtful expression. In the space between the living room and dining room, Deidara and Itachi dance. Deidara in his scrubs and Itachi wearing dress pants and a white button down shirt with the first couple of buttons undone, only socks on their feet.

Naruto watches and tilts his head. In his mind he envisions his parents. His bored, temperamental mother that kept the house in order. She never complained and always scolded him if he himself complained. Her long, wavy red hair that she always wore up in a bun much to his father's displeasure and soft, thin hands.

His father, a lawyer that stayed at the office until late in the night. He was a well-groomed man, with thick blonde hair and blue eyes. Traits his son had inherited. His father was a handsome, sensible man. His parents never stopped moving. They were always doing something. They never danced, though. Rarely did they even sincerely smile.

Naruto's eyelids droop and he looks away, saddened by the memories. It made him want to laugh at himself, laugh like his mother did; acrimoniously. Thinking about his parents always depressed him. They may not have been as affectionate as the families he sees today, but they were good honest people and they cared about him. Thinking about them made him think about what he had become.

Naruto sits up and exhales, shaking his head as if to shake the unpleasant thoughts from his head. He tells himself what he always tells himself, that this is how it was meant to be.

He glances at Sasuke whom sits on the couch with his back to the dancing duo. He is reading a book and minding his own business. Naruto wrinkles his nose, irritated. It is Sasuke's fault that he is being so nostalgic. That obtuse boy and his ludicrous babblings of love.

Deidara and Itachi part. Itachi excuses himself and heads towards the hallway that leads to the master bedroom. Deidara wipes his brow with his arm and smiles. He turns to look out the sliding doors and takes note of all the stars in the clear night sky. His gaze drifts to his part of garden. His smile grows and he whirls around and approaches Naruto, despite the boy's aura.

He kneels down, takes Naruto hands and pulls him up. Once the younger blonde is on his feet, Deidara releases one of the tan hands and twirls Naruto around. Sasuke looks up from his book and raises a brow. Deidara can be fearless sometimes. Naruto has been moping the entire week since Sasuke's little confession.

Deidara dips Naruto and then quickly pulls him up. Despite his dizziness, Naruto remains graceful and stays upright.

"Naruto, Naruto, Naruto." Deidara says, releasing the boy.

Naruto glances at Deidara and walks around to sit on the couch. Leaning his arms on the headrest as he tilts his head and stares at Deidara inquiringly.

"Yes?"

"Do you know magic?"

Naruto laughs softly as Deidara also comes around to sit on the couch beside Naruto. Naruto corrects his position and looks to Deidara.

"What would make you ask me something like that?"

"Well, first of all I hear that you are the one that magically brought my dead garden back to life in only one day. Second, I can hope to distract you from this mood you've been in for the past few days." Deidara says with a playful smile.

Naruto leans back and looks up at the skylights on the high ceiling.

"I would have never really thought to label it magic, but I suppose that is what it is."

Deidara leans forward, eyes slightly wider as he realizes that he being informed of something very interesting.

"So you can do magic?"

"That depends on what you think magic is." Naruto replies.

Sasuke has already marked his page and closed the book he was reading. He listens to Naruto as he admits he is not your average adolescent. Though Sasuke already knows this.

"I believe there are different kinds of magic." Deidara says thoughtfully, gazing down at his lap.

Naruto smiles with a gentle expression in his eyes.

"So, who taught you magic?"

"No one."

Deidara furrows his brows in confusion. "Then how did you come to being able to do magic?"

Naruto looks up at the ceiling. "It is a very extensive story and not at all a pleasant one. I would hate to sound as if I were complaining by narrating such a tale."

"You're not complaining. I want to hear your story." Deidara urges.

Naruto inhales and exhales through his nose and stares straight ahead, in his eyes there is a faraway look. As if he is reliving something from the past.

"So many years ago that I have lost count, I lived with my parents in a heavily populated town. My father was a lawyer and my mother did what every wife was supposed to do. Kept the house orderly. My parents, they tried their best to make sure I would be able to live a commendable life. My father would make sure that I would have a job as a lawyer. An occupation that made good money. Both my parents warned me of the common dangers; robbery, assault, rape. Although they highly doubted I would ever become a victim of rape and rarely brought the topic up. My parents cared for me and if I had lived I would had a reputable life."

"If you had lived?" Deidara queries with raised brows.

"I am not finished." Naruto replies.

"Papa was working late again. Mama gave me a small pot of stew and sent me out to give Papa his supper, for he could not live off ginger nuts and those spicy cakes. It was very late, very few were out at the time. Only drunks, whores, and those who fought underground. In that life, I was not happy. I felt trapped and bored, like my mother. I often thought of taking my own life, but that was all it was. I could never do it. Though, I imagined what it would be like to have my life taken from me. What if someone else removed me from that life? That night, some lust-filled drunk decided to make my deranged fantasies a reality."

Both Deidara and Sasuke cannot believe and yet at same time can believe what they are hearing. Is Naruto telling them that he has been murdered before? How is that possible? If he is a victim of murder, how can he be sitting in front of them telling them how he was murdered?

"I heard his feet shuffling against the ground as if he were too drunk to remember how to pick up his feet. He paused then began approaching me quickly. It startled me, so I ran. It was what I had been waiting for, but my body kept moving away from the man. The weight of the pot slowed me down. He caught me, I dropped the stew. The sound of the lid breaking against the cobble stones brought no one from their home. As it should not have, for it would be nonsensical to look out the window every time you heard a loud sound on a usually busy street. He drug me over to the woods a crossed the street. My body did what it was supposed to do, resisting fiercely. I was not strong enough though, I was not stronger than him. I was afraid, as I was supposed to be. I did not want to feel the pain that I knew would come. He first raped me. It was quick, I knew. But to me it seemed to last so much longer. Then, he pulled out a knife and lifted it up into the air. It came down quickly. My vision blurred and then eventually everything went dark."

Deidara looks at Naruto with sorrow in his eyes. Sasuke clenches his jaw and furrows his brows.

"That night." Naruto continues. "That night was the first time I died."

Both Deidara and Sasuke envision Naruto on the mountain side, lifeless. Covered in blood and dirt.

"The first time?" Deidara enunciates.

"I have died several times since my first death. Do to eating foods that are malignant to me, hunters have accidently shot me, I have drowned countless times, Hypothermia, heat stress, I have attempted to rid myself from this planet as well in moments of frustration many times. That is, until I finally realized that it is pointless."

"How is that possible?"

"Allow me to continue and perhaps it may become a bit more facile to understand."

Deidara bites his bottom lip and bows his head as he looks at Naruto. A motion that says, 'Okay, okay. I'm shutting up now. Go ahead.'

Naruto smiles softly. "I awoke, tangled in soft green vines and covered by fallen leaves. The vines twined up my limbs, between my fingers and toes. The leaves covered me as a blanket would. It was as if nature was welcoming me. Informing me that she was there for me, that she was always there for me. At the moment though, I was quite perplexed. In my last state of awareness, I remembered quite clearly preparing myself for death. Was I not dead? Was I a ghost? I pulled free from the vines and felt myself. I was warm, unlike a corpse. I was breathing. Furthering my inspection, I noted the dried blood that made my top stick to my chest. I searched myself and found no wounds. Standing I regarded my surroundings. I was in the woods. In the distance I could hear very little commotion. Though I knew the city to be close by, people should have been bustling about. I rushed towards the city and stood at the edge the woods. I felt this reluctance tugging at my stomach. The thought of stepping away from the shadows of the trees made me uneasy. I stood there and stared out at the street, not a soul could be seen. But a distance away, I heard a rumbling of several voices whispering at once, down at the very end of the street.

"I gathered my nerves and stepped out into the street and cautiously made my way in the direction of the whispers. Once I was near the end of the street, I could see them, the people. A large group of people peering around the corner. I wondered why they were doing that, if they wanted to see the object of their fascination so badly why not round the corner completely? Upon coming closer I realized that the reason they did not go further was because they could not. For it was as if the entire city crowded before them, preventing them from moving forward. I was still very apprehensive to be out in the open, to be seen. But I very much wanted to see what had all these civilians' integral attention. I stood at the end of crowd and stood on the tips of my toes, yet I could see nothing. The person before me, a boy that appeared to be a few years older than I, swiftly turned his head to stare in my direction. When he looked at me, it was as if I were not standing there at all. I backed away and stared down at my hands. I could see myself. I looked to the window of the home that I stood before and realized that I could not be seen in the reflection. Frightened, I reached out and drug my hand against the backs of the people that stood before me. Surprised, they all turned quickly. I could tell that they could not see me, but I could see in their eyes that they knew that it was me. They stared down the sidewalk behind me with an air of pity then turned back around. I decided that I had to see what they were all gawking at. So I walked around, back to the edge of the woods beside the church. From there I saw what had to be the aftermath of a hanging. Men in dark robes had a limp body of a man in their arms. The people started moving away from the scene, some stayed to gossip. Their words did not go unheard by me.

"It was him, the man that had made me this way that was hung. He had bragged about what he had done, they said. For this, he was punished. Sentenced to death. Poor boy, they said. He would never get a chance to truly live." Naruto smiles after saying this and turns his head to look Deidara in the eyes. "They were wrong. I would soon realize that this was my chance to truly live. In that life, I was tied down by rules. On a path flanked by walls too tall for me to even dare to climb. My life was already planned out for me. I could not stray in that life, there was no adventure. Adventure, I craved it so. I longed to feel wild and unbound. That is what I became. In my new life, but in moments of frustration and depression I would think, haven't I lived long enough?

"I came upon a group of children; all had drowned in the nearby lake. The lake was designated fairy territory, as I heard the local teenagers say as they came to secretly swim in the lake. That was when I first heard of fairies. Young individuals that have died before it was their time, before they had ever even began to truly live. I realized that that was what I was."

"Why would you tell us all of this?" Sasuke asks. "Isn't it dangerous?"

"What are you going to do? Kill me? What do I have to fear?" Naruto laughs.

"I wondered what was the point in me living for as long I have. Those children taught me, they taught me the reason that I was still on this planet. I became very attached to them, we became a family. I became the mother they all had to depart from. I would wake up and one of the children would be deceased never to open up their eyes again. At last, there was just one child that remained. Cradled in my arms, that child reached up and embraced me. As if to thank me. I was perplexed by the act. Then, she died in my arms. Died for the last time. I was confounded by that for a while; then I realized what made my friends go away. My affection. They had passed away. Those children needed to be comforted and that is what I did, I comforted them. I gave them my affection and cared for them as if they were my own siblings. But in order to finally pass away I would have to have affection directed towards me, to feel affection, to want to have anything to do with whomever the affection was offered by."

Sasuke's gaze shifts to the floor as the last sentence passes Naruto's lips.

"I then realized that I would be stranded on this planet forever."

"Naruto." Deidara scolds, hoping that Naruto is joking about not being able to accept love.

"Sasuke."

Sasuke looks up and meets Naruto's glowing orbs.

"I hide from no one."

Deidara laughs. "What are you going to do to him? Wait, what can you do to him?" He queries, leaning forward with wide eyes.

"I would not harm anyone if I did not have to. I am not a predator. I do not have to hunt. I can live purely off the sun and if it is nighttime, leaning up against a tree will suit me fine. Yet, I am very capable of defending myself and I have a rather notable temper. So I would not go as far as to say I am not a threat."

Deidara laughs again. "I would love to see Sasuke get his little pale behind handed to him by a fairy."