SasuNaru Thunderstorm Chapter 1 - What's my Word?

Beautiful.  No, that did it no justice.  Magical?  No, it’s still not the right word.  Enchanting.  Nope, still not it.  I know I’m not the sharpest pencil in the case, but I didn’t think that this would be so hard to describe!  It’s not often that we get a thunderstorm in Konoha, so I don’t really know what the hell to describe it as.  I wouldn’t say it’s a rarity because we do have our rainy days, but it’s also not common for the lightning to flash so brightly or the thunder to roar so loud and strong.  Let me back up for a second, my name is Naruto Uzumaki and I am currently 17 years old.  I am the jinchuriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox demon, or known to me as Kurama.  The Fourth Great Shinobi War has ended, Madara defeated, Sasuke-teme returned, and the infinite Tsukuyomi dispelled.  Everything kind of went back to the way it was before, except for the fact that we now have an alliance with every other nation in the shinobi world.  However, these facts are a bit irrelevant at the moment because for the last hour, I’ve been trying and failing to come up with a single word to describe a freaking thunderstorm!  Here I was, perfectly comfortable in my brand-new house that the villagers made for me, raking my brain for a single word of all things.  A freaking word!!  I sunk down into my couch that sat below the wide, display-case like windows and resumed watching the beginnings of a potentially humongous thunderstorm.

Days like these always take me back to when I was still little and alone in that tiny apartment of mine, curled up by the window in a blanket and staring out into the darkness of the world.  Back then I really couldn’t appreciate what exactly I was seeing and never really understood what happened.  I never had parents or, at the time, parental or familial figures in my life to explain it to me.  I never really counted the Third Hokage due to the fact that he was always working and also had a family of his own to attend to.  Even as a child I knew what not to involve myself in and another persons’ family was one of them.  I wasn’t near as acknowledged back then as I am now, and I wish I could go back in time to hug the little five-year-old me and tell him that life really does get better.  However, the feeling I felt back then and the feeling I feel right now I can tell are the same thing.  As I gaze out the window of my living room into the blackness the clouds are bringing to the sky, I can honestly say that I was never able to put a word to the feeling then or even now.  Hence the reason I am thinking about a freaking word.  What bothers me a bit more is the fact that I’ve been thinking on this for so long.

Maybe I should go ask a few of my friends.  Sakura isn’t on a mission and neither are Sai or Sasuke.  Maybe they’ll know what word to use!  Though I’m kind of reluctant to ask Sasuke for anything right now; he and I have been on pins and needles for the last couple of months since he came back home.  It makes me feel a bit uneasy whenever I think about it, but there isn’t really much I can do at the moment that I haven’t already tried.  The only thing I haven’t done is confess to the guy that I love him and let me tell you something, unless I know one hundred percent that he shares those feeling towards me, I’ll take that information to my grave.  I worked way too hard to bring him back to this village to keep him as a friend - no way am I going to risk him leaving again because he’s simply to disgusted to look at me.  That doesn’t stop me from wanting to spend time with him, don’t get me wrong, but when he just turns around and walks away without saying a word or even one of his signature ‘hn’s it makes me sort of sick.  I keep telling myself that he’ll come around if I just talk/fight it out with him, but he keeps avoiding me as though I were diseased.  It’s not like I’m mad at him for everything he’s done in that past few years; water under the bridge in my opinion.  You can’t step in the same river twice and that’s what Sasuke seems like to me.  He’s always changing and you never really know what kind of mood he’s in until you’ve dipped your toes in the water that is Sasuke Uchiha.  Then again it may just be that I’m the only one to see him like that because everyone else sees him as Mr. Dark and Scary.  Maybe I was just privileged and he actually let me in to his dark and lonely world.

However much I hope for that to be the case, I think I know the truth.  Sasuke just tolerated me because I was his rival and he needed to get stronger.  Through exchanging blows, I got to know and understand him on a level no one else could even pray to comprehend.  I also know for a fact that he got to understand me on that level as well because of some of the subtle things he did for me when we were still kids.  He would spar with me when I was having a bad day in order to let me vent off steam.  He would walk the same path home with me after a mission just to give me the feeling that I wasn’t alone anymore.  He pushed me and inspired me to train harder than I ever had in order to be more like him and an overall better shinobi.  Whether or not he did those things consciously or subconsciously was, and remains, a mystery to me, but I am grateful for all of them and will be until the day I die.  Sadly, I know that those days are over and the hope that I may have new ones like those is dwindling.  I can’t say that I’ve given up on the idea that Sasuke and I could be at least friends again, it’s just that at the rate things are going now, I may die before he acknowledges me again.

Shaking off the rather depressing thoughts of Sasuke and saving his opinion of a good word as a last resort, I grabbed an umbrella that I really didn’t remember purchasing (seeing as I always loved to play in the rain ever since I was little) and walked out the door.  The light shower was going to turn into a torrential downpour soon; I could smell it in the air.  The atmosphere was heavy and thick with heat that it kind of made it hard to breathe for a bit.  That’s what a summer storm will bring for you; lots of humidity and stickiness.  I opened up the orange umbrella once I was outside of my doorway and off my front porch (I think Iruka-sensei must have gotten it for me, he’s always paranoid I’ll get sick) and walked out into the scarcely populated streets.  Seeing as the rain made being outside a little uncomfortable, I could understand why people wouldn’t want to be out here.  They just didn’t know how to have fun in the stuff.