Between the Trees

That a village could demonize a child, avoid and loathe him, transform him into an untouchable undesirable, and then years later hoist that same child onto their shoulders, call out his name, and greet him like kin.

Uzumaki Naruto doesn’t really think about it too often, though. He prefers to stay focused on the task at hand—rebuilding a broken village, securing their fractured borders, and making sure that he’s in the right place at the right time. This is an especially trying task, considering his teacher, now the Hokage, and his infamous track record with timeliness.

Or lack thereof.

Regardless, Naruto truly does try to be where he needs to be, when he needs to be. He’s become something of an expectation around Konoha; someone who cannot and will not fail—not the village, not the people, and not ever.

It’s a heavy burden to bear. He wonders how Sasuke had done it when he was just a child, too young to really understand how to maneuver out from under that pressure. But then, Naruto thinks, Sasuke had always been sort of incredible, in his own way.

For instance, the way he handled his popularity.

Naruto has had to find new, lesser-used routes through Konoha just to make sure that he’s on time to his appointments and duties, simply because of the amount of people on the street that stop him. He’s not sure what they expect from him, or what they even want from him, and that’s a little bit terrifying in and of itself. He’s not one to back down from a challenge, no matter how terrifying or indomitable, but sometimes he needs to breathe.

Sometimes it’s not a challenge, but survival.

He doesn’t mind the attention. It’s stifling, at times, and always baffling. It took him a solid year to realize that people calling to him on the streets weren’t doing so to scold him or shame him, but to welcome him. To greet him, kindly, without warrant. He remembers looking over his shoulder, wondering if maybe Sakura was behind him—she is infamous in name and power and charm, and the people adore her.

But it hadn’t been Sakura, at least not usually. It’d been him.

Just him.

Naruto likes people. He genuinely likes them. He’s not good at holding grudges, they take far too long and involve far too much thinking. He’d rather just forgive and forget and move forward, forging new paths to peace and freedom and friendship. So now, when people call to him on the streets, he stops for them. He listens. He shakes the first few times, and then for several more after that, unused to attention from Konoha strangers that isn’t violent or repulsed.

They’re kind, though. They seek his well-being, wondering over his health and his life, asking about his nutrition and his sleeping habits, his training and his ideas on grips and scrolls and ramen. They’re interested, and it bewilders him.

Most startling of all is the attention that he receives from those interested in him in a new way, a different way.

Romance is not something he has experience with, beyond accidentally kissing Sasuke on their first day of Academy. By the time he returns home from war, he loses count of how many times he gets asked on dates. It seems that almost every day as he’s heading through the village, either aimlessly or with intent, someone pulls him aside and asks if he’s hungry.

Yes, he’s hungry. He’s always hungry! And so many of these people offer to pay, it’s almost painful to deny them. And honestly, for a while, he does accept them; he’s always hungry, and he’s still broke, and they’re kind.

But then Sakura tells him they’re not just kind, they’re purposeful, and it makes him stop and think.

“Some of them probably want to just eat with you,” she told him, buffing her nails on the collar of her shirt. “But some of them want to date you. They’re asking you out on a date, Naruto. Get it?”

“A date?” He’d asked, blindsided.

“A date,” Sakura had echoed, rolling her eyes. “You have to be clear with them, or half of Konoha is going to think they’re dating you. How do you think that’s gonna go, huh? Not well, I can tell you that right now.”

Naruto thinks about that conversation often. He took it to heart, and immediately started being clearer with those that sought him out.

He started saying things like, “Sure! We can go to Ichiraku! I take all my friends there to eat, it’s the best place!” And, “I’m always happy to eat with a friend.”

He made sure to set the boundaries as clearly as he knew how, in as pointed a manner as he could without being blatant. It seemed to work well, he thinks, considering how many repeat offenders started to dwindle off, no longer asking him to get food with them.

With all this talk about dating and dates and this new twist on the word interest, he started to really think about his own feelings. He’d never really considered them before, not actively, and realizes that they have direction. They lead somewhere, though it takes him longer than it probably should to find out where, and even when he does start to hone in on the target, he’s still clueless as to how to approach them.

Her.

He thinks it starts some time around August, when the sun bathes Konoha in heat and Hyuuga Hinata starts wearing her hair up in a long, silken tail.

Or maybe it was last December, when the snow fluttered through the midnight air in breathless whirls of ice and anticipation, and Hinata’s gaze was the source of his chills.

He doesn’t remember when it started, but sometimes when he becomes aware of the sunlight on his skin he remembers Hinata, younger and rounder and far less confident, supporting him against all odds.

Maybe…that was when…

“Naruto!” Someone calls, seamlessly shaking him from his thoughts. He pauses in his stride, turning over his shoulder with a curiously receptive expression. He finds a new friend, a girl that had introduced herself weeks prior and had yet to give up on his attention.

“Mei,” he greets, smiling. He tries to clear his mind of snow tufts and sunshine and doesn’t much manage to succeed at all. Still, he tries to give Mei his attention. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” she says, coming to his side. She gestures for them to continue, smoothly and easily, and Naruto follows her stride. He has to report to Kakashi—to the Hokage, but the message wasn’t urgent. At least, he didn’t think it was urgent. Either way, he’s not necessarily in a hurry.

“You heading to the Tower?” Mei asks, and Naruto grins at her in response.

“Yup.”

She grins, shrugging her shoulders happily. Her hair, sallow and flickering, skims her throat in the slight breeze. Naruto notices freckles, there, and on the crests of her shoulders; without even realizing he does so, he begins to wonder if Hinata has freckles, too.

He hasn’t looked closely enough to know, but his gut tells him she doesn’t. Her skin is pale, soft and smooth like cream; he can’t imagine a blemish marring the surface. Even as he thinks it, he refutes it—Hinata is a warrior, a shinobi, and she has scars. He has seen some of them.

He knows she suffered the edge of a katana through the left side of her waist, and miniscule kunai scars mar her back. He wants suddenly to trace them with his fingers, callused and worn as they are, and soothe any wayward ache they might still offer her.

“Naruto?” Mei says, and he realizes instantly that she’d been talking to him, and that he’d missed it all. He rubs at the back of his neck, embarrassed and stuttering.

“Uh,” he replies smartly, “Sorry, what?”

“Dinner,” she says, with nothing but gentle amusement. They slow to a stop and he realizes that they’re at the Hokage Tower, too, and he feels bad that he hasn’t listened to her. She deserves more than his wayward attention.“You wanna go tonight?”

And it’s not a new question, a new concept—she asks him out to dinner frequently, without pressure or judgment, just open hope. It’s not new, and he’s not surprised, but suddenly he has a new answer for her, and it’s one he feels like he’s been chasing for weeks.

“No,” he says, brutally honest by way of distraction. His eyes trail around the structures around them, openly searching, suddenly intent. He bites at his lip. “Sorry, but no.”

Her disappointment is measured, controlled, but noticeable. His heart twinges in his chest, and he wants immediately to soothe her, but Sakura taught him about leading people on, and he refuses. He refuses.

“You have plans?” She asks, and this is new; persistence, possibly in response to his sudden diverted attention, and the way his heartbeat seems to have picked up in excitement. He wonders if she can hear it, and feels bad again, because it’s not for her.

“I,” he begins, hesitating. He runs a hand through his hair, mussing it up completely. “I hope so,” he says, and he turns back to her with a muted smile, one borne of novel understanding.

It feels powerful, when he finally admits it, both to himself and to the world.

“I like someone,” he says, and his heart sings in the coliseum of his chest, echoing joy right back at every facet of his being. “And you’re beautiful, and smart, but I don’t think you’re for me. You’re…not her.”

He doesn’t mean to hurt her, tries desperately to soften the blow, but the words come out jumbled and tripping. She doesn’t flinch or shy away from him, merely tilts her head with a muted expression of disappointment. Shadows crawl over her features, but she smiles through them, and that’s when Naruto knows she’s going to be okay. It’s a relief, he thinks, as she purses her smiling lips and laughs lowly under her breath.

“Yeah,” she says quietly, nodding her head. “I’ve seen the way you look at her. I just thought maybe I still had a chance.”

“Her?” Naruto asks, suddenly thrown. His eyes turn back to her and hold, steady and intimidating, and she shivers under his gaze. He barely notices, too focused on her words, on what they mean.

“Yeah,” she says, her laughter a little more genuine. “The Hyuuga princess.”

Naruto’s heart feels like a garden suddenly blooming, a thousand different kinds of flora opening up to the first kiss of sunlight. So they know, he thinks wildly, happily, unable to hide the smile crawling over his face, everyone saw it but me.

The thought stops him in his tracks, because that means—if everyone sees it, if everyone knows, then does she—does Hinata—

Naruto turns on his heel and heads in the opposite direction of the Hokage Tower. He knows he’s being rude and he knows it’s unacceptable (he can practically hear Iruka-sensei scolding him already) but he only turns over his shoulder and calls out a farewell to Mei, and a thank you.

She grins shyly after him, but from then on he doesn’t see anything else but the paths through Konoha he has to take; the people he has to bypass with hurried excuses and rushed apologies; his only intent solely focused on the curved figure of pulsating chakra as soft as rose petals spiraling over the closest training field.

Naruto moves with purpose.