Will Peace Ever Come?
Naruto found, very early on, that people will always look at you with judgmental eyes, never giving you the chance to say a thing or even explain yourself. Or maybe that was just Naruto? They always have this pre-conceived notion of you in their head that they abide by and no matter how many times you try to be better, no matter how many times you try to prove them wrong they will never get rid of those misconceptions.
NOT EVEN WHEN THE T R U T H IS STARING THEM IN THE ₣₳₵Ɇ
It's a way of life that Naruto had grown used to living, on the outskirts and never inside. Even around his friends, he was being looked upon with judging eyes, though never by them but by the peers around them, just waiting for when the explosion would come and he'd be all alone again. Where he would be forced to be all alone AGAIN. It never got better and he doubted it ever will.
The war may have given him the chance to prove himself that he wasn't the demon they made him out to be but at the end of the day when the threat passes he is, once more, the person they all turn to blame, pointing their fingers at him and whispering behind his back.
He's... grown tired of it all.
How much more should he give for them all to be happy? How much more should he lose before they all finally decide that he had finally given up enough of his life to be able to safely live? He didn't know and he doubted he'd ever know.
Maybe it will N E V E R be enough?
He lost his parents, his childhood, his grandfather, his godfather, his friends; heck he lost his INNOCENCE before he had even been a day old, forced to bear the burden of carrying a terrifying creature within his gut. He didn't know how much more loss he could take.
HE DIDN'T KNOW WHY HE CARRIED ON!
He's thought about just leaving Konoha in the middle of the night, just disappearing from his home village and running as far away as possible. Had Sasuke not ran away himself that day so many years ago Naruto would've done so himself. What did he have those days? A sensei who was more focused on the Sharingan that his team-mate had? A fangirl who prefered to stalk her crush? An avenger who thought of nothing else but killing his brother? A grandfather who was always too busy being the Hokage and trying to deal with the council?
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It got better after Tsunade-baachan had been brought to be the Fifth Hokage of Konoha. He lost a grandfather but he had never been allowed to mourn. He gained a grandmother and a sister in one go - Tsunade-baachan and Shizune-neechan doing everything to be there for him.
AND THEN EVERYTHING STARTED GOING DOWN THE DRAIN
Sasuke defected from Konoha, Sakura made him promise that he would bring him back, their Team had been disbanded, Jiraiya took him on a THREE YEAR training trip, Sakura was taken under Tsunade-baachan's wing, the Akatsuki started making their moves by taking Gaara and extracting Shuukaku from him... and it just went on and on and on and on.
There had been no end in sight.
Losing Jiraiya had crushed him even worse than losing the Third Hokage to Oorochimaru. Seeing half of Konoha being a veritable crater had made everything worse. Fighting Pein no, not Pein but Nagato, Jiraiya's Nagato, a fellow Uzumaki and a BROTHER and witnessing Hinata jump in front of a blow for him just made it all the more horrifying. He lost control of the Kyuubi and found himself lost in a haze of painevenmorepaindarknesssomuchdarkness and then he finally, FINALLY, met his dad only to be ripped apart from the man minutes after their meeting. Who cared if it was just a Bunshin that had been sealed within him to stop the Kyuubi from escaping? It had still been his FATHER. He was once more fighting Nagato, only this time he didn't hesitate and he fought to survive.
And survive he did - beating Nagato was supposed to have been the end of it all. There wasn't supposed to be any more fighting or wars or bloodshed. Just a hunt for Sasuke to bring him back to Konoha.
But the war did start, a war on such a scale that Naruto hoped to never see it again. They lost many people in the war, children lost their parents, parents lost their children. It wasn't a fight that anyone was willing to lose. This was a fight where the entire world was at stake.
Villages, only at each other's throats weeks before, were fighting side by side against a common enemy only to find that the enemy was not above using the recently, and not so recently, deceased to do their bidding for them.
He hadn't seen it himself but the aftermath had been terrible, many shinobi had been lost fighting their former team-mates, sensei and even Hokage. He had been glad that he hadn't been there himself.
They all fought and they all defeated their foe only to realize that Madara and Obito and the Ten-Tails had never been the true terror. No, that honour laid on Black Zetsu and Kaguya's shoulders. Fighting a GODDESS had never been in the plans but like always they all just fought. And they finally had been able to taste sweet, sweet victory.
They finally had their victory, Sasuke finally came back to Konoha, Team Seven got their happy ending. Konoha was flourishing, as were the other nations, but nothing had changed within the walls of Konoha. War may have frightened them but the villagers of Konoha went back to the simplistic and quite annoying viewpoint.
The civilians of Konoha never realized just how much they all gave to even be alive right now, they never even realized just what they had to do to even survive the war. He and Sasuke had the Shinigami breathing down their necks for Shodai's sake! Neji had sacrificed himself just so they all could somehow defeat the Ten-Tails. He kept his mouth shut though and never uttered a thing. Let them live in their small, unsoiled world. Let them have their perfect fantasy that nothing is wrong with the world.
He kept his mouth shut but that didn't mean that he didn't hear what was being whispered behind his back, behind his friends' backs. Those whispers carried and when you have a thousand-year-old fox sealed within you... well, your hearing was even more amplified. You heard things you were not supposed to hear and Naruto heard a lot.
The whispers hadn't been horrible, not even in the negative, at first but over time, over the weeks and months following the conclusion of war those whispers had turned into accusations. The villagers who had hailed him as a hero following Nagato's defeat once more started calling him a demon.
He listened to those whispers, he listened to the threats and accusations thrown about, he listened and he thought, not for the first time and certainly not for the last...
ᵂᴵᴸᴸ ᴾᴱᴬᶜᴱ ᴱᵛᴱᴿ ᶜᴼᴹᴱ?