Naruto is not mine; boo-hoo….

I don't know where people get the idea that I was beaten or something when I was younger. Sure, people made nasty comments, or more often than not, ignored me, and maybe I got into fights with kids a lot…but no one--no adult--ever touched me. At all. They simply did what they had to do--fed me, clothed me, kept me alive--and then forgot that I existed.

In my head, I know that I couldn't be the only orphan in my age group; in a village of ninja, that would be completely unrealistic. But…but it always felt like I was. After all, even if there were other orphans, they still had other family, aunts, uncles, grandparents; people to care for them and take care of them. I never had that.

But I don't understand why people think that that matters anymore. Why do people think that I'm some poor traumatized little boy. The last thing I want from people is pity, especially since I have never pitied myself.

So I had no family or friends, boo-hoo. Yeah, I was sad, and yeah, I was lonely. But I had something that made up for all of that, hope. You see, I figured out, that with all of the people in the world, there had to be someone, somewhere who wouldn't be able to ignore me, who would respect, if not care for me.

When I was a little older, I decided that not only would I find a person who could see me, I would force everyone to see me. I decided to become Hokage, because if I'm Hokage, then everyone has to see me. And, maybe, people would care about me.

Yeah, I did find people to see me and care about me. Iruka, my team, Baa-chan, even the other genin all respect me now. Even Sasuke-teme acknowledges my strength, though he still calls me Dobe…teme…

Funny thing is, they all respect me because of what I learned from having no one respect me. I do things with my own strength; I never give up because my pride is all I've ever had, and if I give up, I would lose everything. I show my emotions because I have nothing to lose by doing so; it's not like they can go back to completely ignoring my existence, even if they try. That's the only thing that would stop me, the fear of being ignored. And why should showing my emotions hurt my pride, anyway? I've never understood that; even though Sasuke seems to be convinced that it's true. Or maybe he's just afraid of getting hurt…yeah, that seems more likely.

But if I were to act scared like he does--doing his best not to let anyone get close to him, even though he knows that he cares for us--that would make me a coward, and I'd lose all of my pride. And I can't do that. I've got my pride, after all.