-5-
Naruto is not someone who cries easily. In fact, she tries really, really hard not to let herself be consumed by anything that might drive her to shed a tear. She hates crying, and not just because it makes her look weak. No. It doesn't make her look weak only, it also makes her feel soft and incompetent.
Despite the childish behavior and brashness, Naruto knows she can't afford to be all soft inside if she wants to be someone who can live and survive the street, and as a girl no less. She has recognized her disadvantages a long time ago since when she gets thrown out of the orphanage. To get her own food and a place to sleep, she had to harden up.
A survivor, a shinobi, they don't need soft and incompetent, they need hard and strong. Naruto made sure to give them that, even thought it was with silly grin and idiotic antics, she did make them believe that she was not so helpless, after all. That's why she tries hard not to let her tears fall even when she is under heavy pressure and pain. Like when she lost her godfather to Pain, and when she realized for the first time that Sasuke, her first true friend and rival, might actually be an unredeemable jerk.
She instead laughed, and smiled.
She knows that things will always try to break her, she also knows that she can't let them win.
But now she is not a shinobi.
So, when she looks at them - the complete strangers - who, after giving her a set of clothes, are now looking at her blankly while she is trying her hardest to convey her gratitude and tell them her story.
She tries to tell them that she is very glad to see a real and living human in this place, and not a weird monsters which smells like it has never bathed. And even if she was naked, she wasn't usually going around in her birthday suit. No! She is not a pervert and they have no need to be wary that she is going to molest them.
She tries to tell them that she actually came into this forest with a group of bandits, nice and immoral bandits, to loot some sort of treasure from the corpses that are scattering around the forest. And no, she isn't a thief or one of the bandits at all. However, she had to survive. She wouldn't know at all where in the world she is if it weren't for them. Waking up all alone in the middle of nowhere can make almost everyone go panicky, she believes.
She stops when she realizes that they really wouldn't understand, like she wouldn't understand most of what they say. The language they use is weird, musical and sounds beautiful, but weird. It sounds completely different from the language they speak in the Elemental Nations.
Naruto finds herself feeling very foolish for even trying.
Seeing their blank stare, and seeing how they speak something to each other, using the same language and seem to understand whatever the others are saying so effortlessly, Naruto feels like a fool. And alone.
Her eyes burn, and she sniffs.
Naruto is not a shinobi. But she needs to be strong.
But she is alone.
She misses her village and her people. She misses her friends. She misses Sakura and Shikamaru. She misses Tsunade. She misses Ichiraku Ramen. She misses the grass and the trees that omit pure energy she felt so connected to.
God, She misses her chakra.
It has not even been two days yet since she woke up here, in this strange place, but she already misses everything so terribly.
Among these people, the people who look like her, but so alien and so strange, she feels the loneliness so profound that it makes her heart clenches. They don't speak her language, they may look like her, but she can't feel even one ounce of chakra from inside them.
Nothing feels like chakra.
To her, everything in this world seems dead.
She is alone. Alone. Alone.
So, that's why she finally breaks down and cries.