Home

By King

-Line-

His heart ached with an unknown feeling as he watched the others. He watched their smiles. He watched their sparkling eyes. He watched their joy. He saw. He saw everything.

... but he could not understand.

How could one expect to understand what they have never experienced?

Joy, he was told, was something that made you feel like you were flying on the inside, like you could never be brought down, and lived in a world so surreal and different from the one they lived in every day.

The boy, for he was no more than that, sat alone on a rickety swing set that creaked as he rocked slowly back and forth. He wallowed in self-pity, in sadness, in hatred. Not for those who had caused his sadness, his suffering, no. For him. For giving-in to their words, woven like the soft silk of a spider's web, trapping him in like a helpless fly only worthy of being their next meal.

He cried – not externally, for that showed weakness, and he knew weakness was preyed upon – but internally, for he knew that he would never be like these people. He would never feel the joy, the freedom, of being a child. He had grown up too quickly, the necessity for survival urging him to progress at inhuman levels.

Karma, it turns out, it not someone to be trifled with. Even in one's thoughts.

For, in complete contradiction to what the boy had been so incredibly sure of, two rays of salvation, two young, ignorant little creatures approached him, and changed his world forever.

"Hey, you wanna' play with us?"

-Line-

The loud, hiccupping sobs of a young girl with her platinum blond hair tied in a ponytail were difficult to hear for most over the sound of raging flames, but to Naruto, they were louder and clearer than any sound he'd ever encountered in his life.

Ino was buried in Chouji's arms, the boy's own eyes still widened in slight shock at the scene before him. None of them had expected it to happen. They all knew it was an accident.

And yet... they couldn't help the pain twisting their hearts into knots as they watched the large apartment complex slowly, agonizingly slowly, burn to the ground.

How he was taking all of this in with nothing but a teeth-glinting smile, none of the others would ever know.

They were all there. All of the friends that Naruto had made in the past year; a year Naruto would come to remember as the best he'd ever had, were there, standing before the burning complex with their throats closed from holding back tears and their chests heavy as they shifted their attention to their now-homeless friend.

He was still smiling.

Something in young Ino finally snapped as she spotted the easy-going, happy grin on Naruto's face. His real grin, not the one he hid behind in the presence of anyone but the eight of them.

"What the hell is wrong with you!" she screamed, her voice hoarse and raw from crying as hard as she had been, "don't you get it, Naruto? You're homeless!" Shikamaru's sharp, but low, admonishing 'Ino!' was completely and utterly ignored in favor of her continued screaming, "you don't have the money to go anywhere else! You lost your home! You don't have a home anymore!"

Naruto simply shook his head as he took a few, tentative steps in Ino's direction. Everyone was quiet when he finally reached her and he planted his firm hands on her shoulders.

"Ino-chan, I'll be fine. I promise. I didn't lose my home, I lost my house. Homes are irreplaceable; houses are not, no matter how expensive they are. My house no longer felt like home, because my home is with you guys. I am not homeless, because for me to be homeless, I'd have to lose you guys, and that's never going to change."

The nine children sat there, watching the house slowly fade to ashes in the night sky, and contemplated life. They were young, yes, but they could tell that their lives had been affected by the words of their friend.

From that day forward, they understood something about Naruto that they never had before. And it touched them all in a way that they never would have expected.

These houses no longer feel like home, because home is where the heart is. Our hearts have come together, so that no matter where we are, as long as we are together... we are home.

-King