Naruto is fifteen, and in some ways, more mature than he was at thirteen, but in others, more child-like than he has ever been, because children know almost nothing but are certain enough of what little insight they possess to move mountains.

And when he stops to think about it, he realizes that he feels as though he knew more about the world he lived in when he was thirteen than he does now, but he wonders if maybe that's because he has slowly grown to accept his ignorance. He tries to imagine how he will feel when he turns forty or fifty or sixty, and the cloying dread chokes him until he lets that particular thought go. He tries to reassure himself that he'll probably never live long enough to get that old, anyway, not with the Akatsuki and Orochimaru and Sasuke and all the other people who want him dead for various obscure reasons, but that thought, too, leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.

Naruto is fifteen and he is no longer the idealistic wet-behind-the-ears idiot he used to be, but he is still travelling with Jiraiya, still trying to suck all the techniques and the experience and the wisdom off of the Sannin, and time seems to fly by much too quickly and he feels as though he'll never be able to do it fast enough, never finish in time, because the perverted toad is old, so unbearably old, and he knows so much, and he's lived for so long, and maybe, one day (tomorrow or in a year or in a hundred, and somehow, no number feels right), maybe one day, Jiraiya...

He stops his train of thought again, before it takes root and he has to watch his sensei out of the corner of his eye until he's convinced himself that the old man is really here, alive, with him, until the tightness in his chest disappears (and the white haired man always notices the strange glances the blond throws his way, and then gives his student that unreadable look, the one which makes the teenager feel both naked and smothered, the one he has never been able to stand for too long). Naruto has to stop himself before that happens because he already did that too many times this week, and he doesn't want to have another conversation with the perverted sage about needless worries.

Naruto is fifteen and he knows that the difference between right and wrong is (just a matter of perspective) sometimes not as black and white as he would like it to be, but he still can't quite wrap his mind around the idea of a world where him longing - lusting - virtually burning with desire for a man forty years his senior can be anything but disturbing. Maybe if it had been a woman (and an image of Tsunade comes to his mind, but he has never liked her in that way, could never quite bring himself to get that close to a woman who wore so many masks that she forgot what her real face looked like). Or maybe if it had been someone younger (and then an image of Sasuke comes up, because that was the person - his age - he'd been closest to, but whenever he thinks of the dark haired man naked and flushed in arousal, he only gets a little angry and a little sad and more than a little sick). But it hadn't been, and he thinks he should feel guiltier about it. Still, he doesn't. Some days, he even comes close to understanding why it happened - loneliness and hope and desperation, and simply Jiraiya being Jiraiya, wise and jaded and yet still so foolish, always smiling and cracking jokes, even when his heart was shriveling inside his chest. (Some days, he can almost convince himself that what he's feeling for the older man isn't love, not that kind, anyway, but even then some part of him remains skeptical.)

Naruto is fifteen and he realizes that he can't spend his whole life travelling with the perverted hermit , but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to. And he thinks that if not for Sakura and Tsunade and Konoha and his dream of becoming Hokage, he might have tried it. Actually, even with the way things really were, he might have still tried it, had he not suspected that the older man would get bored of his company after a couple of years and disappear without a trace one dark and lonely night.

Naruto is fifteen and no longer a child but not yet an adult, and it shows, in his dreams (where strong warm arms hold him close and he feels so safe he doesn't want to wake up), and his nightmares (where the arms are replaced with chains and the warmth with pain and safety with despair), and the things that are neither but which nonetheless come to him when he sleeps (heat and friction and white hair and chapped lips and rough hands gripping his hips like vices). And he thinks that if given the chance, he'd exchange the latter for nightmares, if only he could hear the Sannin chuckle again without flushing red hot with desire. But he is never given the choice, and that unconscious and traitorous reaction, too, gets shoved deep inside his chest, along with all the other things the blond isn't supposed to feel, think, hope for.

Naruto is fifteen and he's learnt to think before he speaks and to avoid the truth without lying, but some days, he can't even meet the hermit's eyes without feeling like the older man is seeing right through him, right down to his unnatural, deviantdesires, and even if he knows that not to be true, his breath still catches in his throat and he feels slightly light-headed.

Jiraiya notices his student almost never makes eye-contact with him lately, notices the way the other acts as though he has something he cannot bear to tell his mentor, and thinks - assumes - it's normal, thinks that the blond is getting weary of travelling and wants to go back to Konoha, and something inside the white haired man wishes their roads wouldn't have to part so soon, but he's already resolved that the first time Naruto asks him about going home, they'll head back.

And the elder knows it won't be long now, but as they travel together, dragging their feet tiredly towards the next town, he looks up at the cloudy night sky and he can only hope the day they must return - the day their roads part - hasn't come yet.

Um, so I might have a tiny little thing for relatively short (angsty) introspective fics - I'm not sorry in the least.

The things in this fic are supposed to be happening sometime before the first episode of Naruto:Shippuden, but I kind of stopped watching the anime around the fiftieth episode of the original Naruto, so feel free to correct me if I got some things wrong - wikipedia and google search are the extent of my research skills.

wiki definition: Nyctalopia, also called night blindness, is a condition that makes it difficult or impossible to see in relatively low light. It is a symptom of several eye diseases. Night blindness may exist from birth, or be caused by injury or malnutrition (for example, a lack of vitamin A). It can be described as insufficient adaptation to darkness.