A boy, nine or ten, sat in a wooden chair that was for someone bigger than him, pushed up to a small, square table in a well-lit kitchen. The patter of rain was the only noise. He wore a white shirt and tan shorts without shoes, and to his left his mother, a short, thin woman with red hair, and to his right his father, a tall, brown-haired, and somber man, sat eating. Through his long, red hair he stared at the bowl filled with steaming broth and noodles and at the adjacent chopsticks, but he did not want to eat. The explosions he heard when he was outside a few hours ago, playing in the mud and rain, set him on edge and killed any appetite he had. His parents might get angry with him for not eating, but they could not be furious anymore. He had eaten a lot less since the war had entered the Land of Rain, bringing with it the constant fighting and nervousness. His father set down his chopsticks and cleared his throat.

"Nagato," he said, his voice harsh and demanding, "You should eat. We don't want the food to go to waste."

Nagato nodded and picked up the chopsticks, because he was too timid to refuse. His father had been a lot angrier since the fighting started and all of their neighbors had left, leaving them the only people for miles around. Nagato's mother looked at him as he fished out some noodles and slurped them down, and Nagato looked back into her blue eyes, bloodshot and with bags under them. He forced a small smile despite the sick feeling he got from the noodles in his stomach. She smiled back, a soft smile he had not seen for weeks, as Nagato looked back at his bowl and reached in for a few more noodles, hoping he could eat it all and avoid his father's rage if he took it slow. He heard his dad sigh and shift his weight and could tell his temper had cooled

His father said, "Maybe we should leave like everyone else, Harumi. I don't think we can last much longer with this fighting going on constantly."

Nagato chewed on the noodles he put into his mouth and looked up at his father then his mother. His father was staring at her, but she still looked at Nagato, smiling. She reached forward and stroked his hair, pushing it back from his blue eyes and making him shiver as he swallowed.

She said, "No, Masao. We need to wait it out. We can't let Nagato grow up a refugee like we did when our parents had to run away from war. We've fought and worked to make this place ours, haven't we?"

Nagato flinched as Masao stood and pushed his chair back. His dad let his head hang, concealing his eyes from all but the reflection in what remained of his soup. His mother withdrew her hand and looked at Masao too, and Nagato did not know what to do but fish around in his noodles, averting his eyes from the two. His dad had been talking about his desire to leave the house for a while. His mother had managed to rein him in, but she was having less success than usual. His dad took in a breath slowly and let it go just as slowly. Nagato recognized it as his dad's way of controlling his emotions and clearing his head.

He said, "You're right, I'm sorry…I'm just not sure if staying here would be better than being refugees. We've been lucky so far, but the war isn't dying down. I heard that Konohagakure was sending its forces to the Land of Rain to join the war while I was visiting Amegakure last week."

Masao let the threat of what he had said hang in the air and speak for itself. Nagato chewed on the noodles and stared ahead, but his mind raced inside of the outer lack of expression. He did not want to leave his home. The walls of his home and his mother had always kept him safe, and he did not want to face the endless trek in the rain, away from the place he had grown up. Despite himself tears welled up in his eyes. He swallowed and shoved more noodles into his mouth, feeling his parents' worried eyes settle on him. He heard his mother speak first.

She said, "Let's stay until the end of the week, and if it gets any worse we can leave."

Nagato relaxed a little as he heard his dad grunt something that sounded like agreement and left the table with his bowl. He swallowed and reached for more noodles when his mother's hand touched his face and wiped away the tears, making his hand freeze in place, and Nagato looked back into her tired eyes that were the same shade of deep blue as his. His mother had told him that red hair and blue eyes were the traits of all the Uzumaki clan. She had told him a lot of stories about their clan to comfort him at night, and he often wished he could meet the rest of their family. But his mother had told him that the Uzumaki had fled across the world since they had lost their country to war and that the Land of Rain was now her family's home. It did not stop Nagato from dreaming of a place without rain, though, a place with sun-lit, grassy hills and a river like in his mother's stories, a place without the constant fighting that kept him up and made Nagato's dad so angry and frustrated. His mom shook his shoulder and kissed him on the forehead.

"You don't have to eat all of your food, Nagato. I'm proud of you for getting through so much when you're nervous," she said, "I'll pick it up for you later. Let's just get ready for bed."

Nagato was going to stand when a loud knock came at the door into the hallway behind him, making his mother stand up and open her eyes wide. Nagato twisted around to see his dad come down their single flight of stairs into the hallway and rush up to the door to look out a small slot cut into it to look outside. He leaned back, quietly slid down the metal covering for the slot, and stepped back from the door. He looked into the kitchen and waved his hand at Nagato and Harumi, and Nagato felt himself start to shake. His dad had never backed away from the door like that, so cautiously, unless it was something dangerous outside. Harumi picked Nagato up and walked to her husband, bare feet making no sound on the wooden floor, and Massao turned to open the door to a small closet beneath the stairs. Nagato closed his eyes to avoid the feeling of claustrophobia as his mother carried him in, his father's footsteps following soon along with the gentle closing of the door.

His dad whispered, "They're ninja from Konohagakure. I don't know what they want."

Nagato buried his head against his mother's shoulder and wished it would all go away. He told himself that he would be safe since his dad was here, because nothing bad ever happened with his dad around. He shut his eyes tighter when he heard the front door burst open; the voices of two men broke the silence after their feet had clicked against the wooden floor.

A deep voice said, "This place must have been abandoned.'

A higher and younger voice said, "It can't have been too long ago. The kitchen light's still on, and there's still fresh food here."

The footsteps migrated into the kitchen, and cabinets loudly opened up to the rustling of the two men pilfering what was there. Nagato imagined two tall, white-masked men wearing all black clothes, which was the appearance of the men his mother said had destroyed her homeland and a form that filled many of Nagato's nightmares, chasing after him endlessly. Tears again began to flow involuntarily from his eyes. His mother patted him on the back and rocked back and forth to calm him down. Nagato felt his head bump against some of the junk sharing the closet with them – he thought it felt like a clay pot – and caused it to come loose, falling next to him and shattering. Nagato expected his father's anger and held more tightly to his mother, his tears flowing freely. She had stopped rocking, and his father's anger did not come. The footsteps outside ceased.

The younger voice said, "What was that?"

The older voice did not respond. Nagato's shaking grew as the footsteps clicked against the floor again, coming towards the closet, and he clung as hard as he could as his mother forced him off of her to sit alone in the closet. He saw his father pass his mother something dark and metallic, the two nodding in agreement at one another. His mother turned back to him and whispered in the dark.

She said, "Nagato, we're going to distract them. Run as fast as you can. We'll come find you soon, ok? Just don't stop running."

He could not tell if his mother's voice was shaking. He was beginning to lean towards her and formulate a question when the door burst open, light flowing in, and his father leaped out, his mother close behind, holding a black kunai towards the two ninja who had opened their eyes wide and raised their hands in a defensive position. Nagato could not move as he watched the older ninja deflect first his father's and then his mother's kunai with their own kunai. Then the two ninja each stabbed one of his parents. The two fell to the floor with a soft thud. Nagato was shaking so hard and so afraid he could barely think. The two ninja looked at him then his parents, stepping back and dropping their kunai.

The older ninja said, "Th-they attacked us, w-we didn't know they were civilians. We're sorry kid…we didn't know."

Nagato felt something else entirely now. He felt hatred, pure and strong. The sharp burning in his eyes did not distract him as he looked at the two in a bloody haze and lifted his hands towards them. He did not know what he was doing, his body was moving on its own in response to what he felt, and he surrendered to it. He saw blue light leaving the men, who froze in place, and flowing towards his hands, disappearing into his open palms until the stream disappeared entirely. The two men collapsed to the ground, as lifeless as his parents lying in a pool of their own blood in front of him. Nagato felt exhausted and fell completely limp. His anger left him, replaced with a creeping fatigue as he succumbed to sleep. Where there had been blue eyes, now his half-closed eyes showed his pupil surrounded by concentric circles of purple, which disappeared beneath his eyelids as he lost consciousness.

Nagato had wandered in the rain for weeks. When he had woken up and seen his dead parents, he had cried for hours and yelled at them to wake up, but he knew he could not stay there forever and that they would never wake up. He found his grey, plastic raincoat and backpack in his room upstairs and tiptoed around the four bodies in the hallway into his kitchen to pack what food he could take. He then pulled his hood up and stepped out into the endless rain without looking back. He had watched footstep after footstep sink and squish in the brown-grey mud until his legs grew tired. The first day of walking he had seen the outline of a house from far away and gotten excited, but then he saw it was half-reduced to rubble and abandoned when he came closer. He slept in the creaking, empty ruin to find shelter from the rain. In another abandoned house he had stayed over the last several weeks in which he saw a puffy hand sticking out of a pile of rubble that gave off a wretched scent. That was when he realized the war had made these houses empty and dead and grey too.

He wanted to fall down to his knees as he kept on walking in the rain. He wanted to cry and have his father pick him up and carry him, but he reminded himself that he would never see his father again. He did not think he could cry anymore, anyways. He looked up from his feet to look in the distance and saw the dull outline of a house, dome-shaped with a grey, concrete exterior like all of the others in the Land of Rain. It did not excite him beyond the mild satisfaction of knowing there was a place to stay for the night. If Nagato were lucky there would still be good food to eat, left by the refugees. He had run out of food several days before and had a constant, dull pain in his stomach from the hunger.

Then he got closer and saw there was light in the windows, the warm kind of light he saw when his parents were making dinner for him while he was out to play. Nagato's heart began to beat faster, and he started to run, putting his hands on his backpack straps to keep it from shaking around. He could only think of food, warmth, and the company of happy people as he skidded to a stop at the door and nearly fell. He knocked as hard as he could on the thick, wooden door. It opened, and a middle-aged man with short, grey hair looked down at him. Nagato looked back up.

He said, "Could I have some food, please?"

The man's eyebrows furrowed, and he shook his head. Nagato opened his mouth to say more, his hair falling out of his eyes. The man lost his concerned expression and raised his eyebrows, shrinking back from the doorway.

He said, "N-no, we barely have enough for ourselves. Go away, you little freak."

The door slammed in Nagato's face, and Nagato fell to his knees. He did not know why the man had called him that. Then he realized it had to be something about his face. He bent down and looked into a puddle, pushing his hair back so he could see his eyes, and he stood up in shock when he saw the circles that covered them. He turned around and shook his head so his hair fell back into his eyes, running. He ran for longer than he could remember before he had to stop, feeling the pain in his stomach and heaviness in his limbs. He wanted to eat, but the only thing he could do was take off his backpack and pull out a bottle of water to take a drink. He put the bottle back and stared at the backpack for a moment, feeling sleepy. He wanted to stop and sleep, regardless of the mud and rain. He shook his head and remembered what his mother had told him: to run. He could not stop here. He pushed himself off the ground and picked up the backpack, stumbling from slight dizziness, and then he began to walk again.

He stared at his feet and kept going for a few hours. The world grew darker and darker in his vision, and his body began to feel numb. Finally he fell to his knees and then flat on his face, managing to turn his head so the mud would not smother him. He blinked and thought about his eyes, and he thought he hated them for making him into a freak, like the man in the warm house had said. Images of his father and mother floated through his mind, smiling at him. He wondered if they would be ashamed of him, giving up in the rain like this. He focused on the rain again and saw with his fuzzy vision a female in the rain. Nagato swore it was his mother, and as she drew closer he closed his eyes and tried to bury his face in the mud, because she must be angry with him, having been looking for him for so long.

He mumbled, "I'm sorry, mom…" into the mud and gave up trying to stay awake.

He woke up leaning against something hard, his body hurting. He could not feel the rain anymore, and his eyes fluttered open. He was in a grove of trees, leaning against one of their trunks. A girl with dark blue hair, around his age, wearing a grey raincoat and wearing a white, paper flower in her hair, was staring at him. Here eyes were a pleasant light brown and reminded him of the deformity of his own, so he looked down at his lap to hide his eyes. He heard her laugh before dropping something in his lap, and Nagato looked down to see a piece of bread. He grabbed it and started shoving it in his mouth as quickly as he could.

The girl said, "You don't have to hide your eyes, I like them."

Nagato did not respond. He was so hungry he could not swallow fast enough, and with his latest bite he nearly choked, coughing so hard his whole body shook. He heard the girl stand up, shifting in the mud.

"You haven't eaten in a while, have you?" she said.

Nagato nodded as he cleared his throat of the piece of bread and took the last bite. He did not know her, but she had said she liked his eyes, so he was not afraid to look up at her. He tried to ask her name through the bread in his mouth. She raised an eyebrow.

She said, "My name's Konan, if that's what you said. What's yours?"

He swallowed the last piece and took a moment to breathe. He wanted more, but he did not want to be rude.

He said, "Nagato."

Konan held her hand out to Nagato, and he grabbed it, letting her pull him up. He still felt light headed and shaky. He almost thought this was a dream and that he was still lying in the muddy field. Then Konan drew a large umbrella from the bag on her back and opened it over them.

"I found you lying not very far from here, face down in the mud. Are you an orphan too?" she said.

Nagato nodded. He did not want to talk about his circumstances beyond that. He had almost forgotten his parents lying dead in coagulated blood in their home, but it came rushing back. He did not sob, although tears came to his eyes. Konan frowned at him.

She said, "I know a place where you can have more food and be safe. There's another guy there, an orphan like us, who I've been staying with us. Let's go and get you something else to eat."

Nagato closed his eyes and nodded again. Konan started to walk, and he followed under the umbrella with her, not saying a word, staring at his feet again. He did not know what to say. He just wanted to eat and go to sleep.