Rain

Naruto knelt on the floor, his forehead resting against his ever-present wall, and traced a slender finger over the raindrops running down the other side of the stainless glass.

"They are beautiful," Naruto whispered. "So tiny. They move. They melt and separate." He tilted his head. "I can hear them falling down. They are loud."

Naruto placed his hands reverently on his wall and watched in fascination as tiny drops thundered down onto a green leaf. It trembled under the relentless patter of the rain. "So strong," he marveled.

"It is called rain," his masked companion told him in his indifferent tone.

"Rain," Naruto tasted the word. It was sweet. "How does it feel like?" he asked curiously.

The mask stepped next to him. "Cold. Wet. Unpleasant."

"Like the baths I always take?"

"Colder," the mask replied, "Like ice needles pricking your skin."

Naruto winced, still remembering the bite of thin, pointy steel on his bare feet. It had been the only time he had ever dared to try and escape the rigid supervision of his masked caretakers, but he had been so curious to find out what grass smelt like.

He still did not know.

Naruto threw a pitying look at the few wall-less people running about outside, trying to protect themselves with strange contraptions they held above their heads.

But these things looked feeble, and they were still walking quickly. Whatever they were carrying for protection was obviously not working properly.

"I am glad I am inside," he decided.

He felt the mask's gaze on him, apathetic and detached and two hands gripped him tightly by the shoulders. "And that will never change," the mask replied.

The room suddenly felt smaller, and as Naruto knelt, trapped between the glass and the man's body, he suddenly realized that he had been completely wrong all this time.

He did not have a wall.

He had two.


A/N Well, that was an unplanned addition, but I suddenly had another scene idea. Naruto's first rain.