Short Stories and Oneshots

Abandoned - Naruto

Author: Whispering Darkness

Platform: Fanfic.net

Type: Naruto

He left in the night, the only things he took with him aside from food supplies were his sleeping cap, his book and his name. Slipping through the darkness and silence of the sleeping village, Naruto Uzumaki didn't let himself look back even once. One-Shot.

~

As an orphan, he was familiar with the feeling of being ignored, of being walked past as if he wasn't there at all. It was a feeling that was somehow worse than the glares, the scowls, the muttering, because it didn't acknowledge his existence.

While his classmates walked away from the Academy with a parent or sibling, Naruto was left staring after them from the lone swing on the playground and felt the big, hollow space inside of him open up just a bit more.

He ignored the feeling as best he could and scrunched up his eyes, stretching his face into a grin that hid the pain away deep in his blue, crinkled eyes. One day he would be Hokage, he told himself, just like Jiji, and everyone would acknowledge him. He held onto that dream with all the strength he had, and his grin didn't waver.

And in the meantime he pulled the most awesome pranks and afterwards, when he ran down the streets of Konoha with an angry shopkeeper or even a group of ninja on his tail, the villagers' eyes would be on him, and it didn't matter that they were filled with annoyance or anger because at least they noticed he was there.

Besides, Naruto was good at pranks. And no one but Iruka-sensei ever caught him. Sometimes he even spent his time in class planning the next big prank because, even if he didn't want to disappoint Iruka-sensei, the lessons were just really boring when sensei droned on about things that weren't important. He was right here in Konoha, so why did he need to know what all the other countries were called? It wasn't like he was planning on leaving – he had to become Hokage first!

And his future awesome missions couldn't possibly take place in a country that sounded as dull as the Land of Tea. He was certain that nothing ever happened in a place called that.

But then his sensei talked about missing-nin from other countries – criminals who had abandoned their village – and Naruto frowned and wondered vaguely what it was like, to be the one who walked away.

~

At night, in the silent, sleepless darkness, he sometimes thought that perhaps he really was the monster that everyone called him. When the weight of hatred was too hard to shake off even under the covers in his own bed, Naruto thought that maybe his parents hadn't died at all. Maybe they'd just left.

Those were the worst nights and on nights like that he would get up from his bed and leave his small, empty apartment behind.

He'd go to a place he had discovered during one of his pranks when he'd needed a place to hide out. It wasn't hard to sneak into the library, to get into that locked room all the way in the back and down the stairs.

No one ever noticed him going where he wasn't allowed.

His pranking wasn't just fun, believe it, it was also good for learning how to get in and out of places unnoticed. A valuable ninja skill!

And despite his bright hair and orange jumpsuit, Naruto could disappear into the shadows far more easily than he'd ever really wanted to.

Late at night, his hideout felt even more empty than usual – like a place that had been left behind by time. Naruto didn't like reading at all, but he liked it there because, surrounded by all of those forgotten books, he felt like he wasn't the only one left alone. Sometimes he even picked one of the abandoned books up and looked through them – out of boredom, or perhaps a sense of companionship. Other times he just sat there and thought, or brought his notebook and planned out some more masterful pranks.