Title: The
Unreachable Star
Rating: G
Pairing: None
Word
Count: 251
Warning/s: None, unless you have no idea who
Naruto is.
Summary: Everyone
has an unreachable star. Naruto just has a longer reach.
Notes: This
drabble is, of course, based on a verse from the musical "Don Quixote."
I had no idea where I was going when I started it, but I rather liked
how it turned out all the same. The epigram still fits, at any rate.
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star
-
He doesn't wear his scars for the world to see. The Kyuubi takes care of that. Life-threatening wounds, like the loss of half a lung from a chakra-charged hand shoved through his chest, heal almost at once; smaller wounds, like a kunai plunged into the back of his hand, take a little longer, but before he wakes the next morning they've always vanished, leaving his skin as smooth and clear as a frog's silken throat. He keeps the calluses he's earned, and the muscles he's built, and the reflexes he's trained, but you'd never tell it from a glance at his unmarred, golden skin. He doesn't look like a ninja, scarred and battle-weary and broken in body and spirit.
He looks like a demon.
The six slashes across his cheeks are the only scars he'll ever bear, and by now he's realized that they're not so much scars as markings, like the black rings around Gaara's eyes that recall his tanuki resident. Still, they serve to remind the villages of What He Is, and they serve to remind him of Who He Is.
To the village, he's Kyuubi no Kitsune, the demon fox that nearly destroyed them all.
To himself, he's Uzumaki Naruto, the legacy Yondaime left to become a hero and a weapon to protect the village he loved. He's the vessel for the only power strong enough to protect the village he loves, and he's the future Hokage of Konoha.
He hopes the Yondaime would be proud of him.