I don't own Naruto.

I hope this is a different take on the stories of Naruto leaving the village and what not. I got the name from the book The Stranger, which I actually didn't like so much, but the name intrigued me.

XX

Even though he was a stranger, he attracted the town's kids and entertained them easily. Perhaps it was the disarming smile on his face, his infectious enthusiasm for being in a new place, or maybe it was just his sunny blond hair and twinkling blue eyes. He just seemed like a kind boy.

"You looking to hire?" the stranger asked carrying in the sign he was asking about.

Tanaka smiled softly, "I think you're a bit too young."

The boy blinked. "I'm nineteen," he said to her surprise, "and I really need a job. See," he settled himself down on a stool by the counter, "I left my town for a while. I'm trying to find myself for a few years before I'm… well, I'm kind of being inducted into something when I come back.

"But, I've always been a wild child, and I think I need to do some self-exploration and mature and settle." He scratched the back of his head. "At least, that's what Tsunade-baachan says."

"Who?"

"She's kind of the village leader, but she treats me like her brother or something." He spun around on the seat like a child would and stopped himself to stare at her. "So? Do I get the job?"

Sighing Tanaka asked, "You know much about ramen?"

He just laughed.

XX

There was something off about the young man, but despite his mysterious nature he quickly threw himself into life at the village and gained the friendship of even the most stubborn. He was never late to work, however he could always be seen running in at the last second throwing out apologies but never excuses.

And he was really good at making ramen. Tanaka found her little shop gaining more business as people flocked to taste his ramen, or just to visit him while he was working. Yet, despite the fact that he was a regular social butterfly, he always ate his lunch in the back of the shop, alone.

Before he left the shop everyday a small group would gather out front waiting for him.

"I see your adoring fans have gathered to spend time with you," Tanaka teased.

He scrunched up his nose. "Thanks for point that out, Tanaka-san." He peeked out from behind the counter to verify what she said. "I think I'll be leaving by the back door today."

"Oh, don't be like that, Kiyoshi-kun. You're still young, go out, flirt with a few girls, don't be in such a rush to mature and get old."

"But," he started argue, but stopped himself. "I suppose it should be that way, I just… I'd rather not." He bowed his head slightly. "I'll see you again tomorrow, Tanaka-san."

XX

Oftentimes he could be seen entertaining the young children with his stories.

"Do you want to hear about ninja?"

Always, always about ninja. Everyday he'd ask if they wanted to hear about ninja, as if the day before hadn't been a story about the same thing. However, they all had to admit, no story was like the other. Even after weeks, probably months of him telling stories, the storyline continued to progress and his crowd of listeners only grew.

"This one is a little darker than the others, okay? Do you think you can handle that?" Kiyoshi asked once. One little girl in the front looked a bit terrified at the notion so he pulled her around and tucked her against his side.

"I left off with Naruto catching up with Sasuke…"

Amazing how the children couldn't keep their attention on lessons for longer than two minutes, but two hours later they were all still gathered around Kiyoshi, waiting for the end of the story, waiting to see the outcome.

"…by the time Kakashi-sensei arrived, Naruto was unconscious and next to him was Sasuke's scarred hitai-ite."

"That's it?" Nobu calls out from the front. "Sasuke-teme gets away?"

"Naruto doesn't win?"

Kiyoshi laughs. "That's the end of that fight, but that's no where near the end of their story."

"Do they kiss by the end?" Chikako, one of the older girls, asked out of the blue.

There was a moment when Kiyoshi couldn't respond he was so surprised by her question. A few laughed quietly at his shock that his fictional characters had apparently turned into homosexual lovers sometime during the story.

"What makes you ask that?" he asks truly curious.

"I mean, it's obvious there's something there. I won't say true love or anything silly like that, but there's some raw emotion, this desire to be better than the other, this desire to be with the other. I just got the idea that they couldn't stand to be apart."

After Chikako stops Kiyoshi stays silent, pondering her words and perhaps the truth behind them. The children get bored now that the story is done for the day and begin to wander off. Still, Kiyoshi stays, thinking over what he's heard, and no one can figure out why it means so much to him.

They're just fictional characters after all.

XX

"You've been to Hidden Villages before?" A customer just visiting town once asked Kiyoshi shortly after he'd arrived.

Without pausing from his task he replied, "I traveled a good deal, and I spent a decent amount in some Hidden Villages."

"Which ones?"

"Konohagakure, probably the most. There was some time spent in Takigakure, Sunagakure, Kirigakure, and even Otogakure."

"Sunagakure?"

"I know the Kazekage there."

"The demon boy?"

"I meant I know him personally, and you wouldn't have the guts to say that to his face," Kiyoshi said calmly still cooking.

"Recently there was a war between the villages," the customer says. "Didn't you end up getting caught up in that?"

Kiyoshi laughed. "It was kind of impossible. I ended up entering Konohagakure just before war broke out with Otogakure."

"You must have gotten out of there fast."

"Nope," Kiyoshi shook his head. "I like Konohagakure, so I stayed. I made lots of friends there, and I guess I was nervous about leaving them during a dangerous time."

"I guess you dislike Otogakure then? You know that boy, Uchiha Sasuke? The one who betrayed Konohagakure for Otogakure? Or had he already left?"

There was an odd silence as Kiyoshi stopped and set down his cooking utensils. "I knew him."

The customer stayed quiet and ate the remainder of his meal in silence. Kiyoshi didn't engage in anymore conversations with other customers and even Tanaka couldn't prod any smiles out of him. Before the customer left he couldn't resist opening his mouth once more.

"Did you know the demon child of Konohagakure, Uzumaki Naruto? The other boy from the stories you like to tell? I heard he's disappeared, which makes people real uneasy, and yet, they are going to name him Rokudaime Hokage. I don't understand that village."

Upon standing up he left a folded note with a name scrawled on the front. Kiyoshi hid it away quickly mumbling something unkind under his breath.

The next day Kiyoshi came into work with the remnants of a bruise over his left eye, but no one could figure out why it looked like it was three weeks old when he could have only gotten it the previous day.

XX

Some villagers claimed they saw Kiyoshi early in the morning heading out of town; they always had this slight fear that he was leaving them for good. However he never had any bags with him. No one ever asked him what he did out there and they didn't believe it was any of their business, but they had grown so attached to the young man that they were loathe to see him walk away from the village.

"You're such a friendly person, Kiyoshi-kun, but you like to be alone most of the time," Tanaka said out of the blue. She wasn't sure where she was going with this conversation, but Kiyoshi saved her from the awkward silence.

"I told you that I was coming here to find myself, to mature and grow up. Well, that's why I'm alone a lot. I train a lot. I think a lot."

"I'm sure you're exaggerating on the last part, because from what I remember," an entering customer spoke up, "you never thought much."

Kiyoshi seemed to twitch. "Sakura-chan," he greeted bowing his head.

"Now that just isn't right," she sighed. "You being polite to me just seems wrong. Go back to being your normal loud, annoying, cocky self."

The girl was an interesting one and Tanaka took the time while they were greeting and talking to study her. She was obviously a shinobi, which was exciting because few shinobi ever stopped by in the village. At least, they rarely stopped by looking like shinobi. This girl had on a dark red tank top that was zipped low over three quarter sleeve fishnet. She wore loose black pants that fell just below her knees and had the decoration of sakura in white and pink towards the bottom hem of the left leg. Strapped to her right leg was a pouch that undoubtedly held weapons. Most astonishingly the girl had light pink hair cut crudely to just below her ears.

"I see you wear your hitai-ite over your forehead now… where you're supposed to," Kiyoshi teased slightly.

"Well, yes, I'm to be married, so I've grown up."

"M-married!"

A dreamy smile came over her face, "To Lee of course."

"Rock Sakura," Kiyoshi began to laugh. "That's a priceless name."

"Shut up!" She fiercely punched Kiyoshi straight in the face.

"Please don't hurt Kiyoshi-kun, Sakura-san!" Tanaka came forward.

The girl snorted, "Kiyoshi-kun could definitely handle worse than that. I'm Haruno Sakura, soon to be Rock Sakura." She held out a hand.

Tanaka shook it tentatively. "Tanaka Izumi. I run this shop."

"A ramen bar, eh? You're so predictable, Kiyoshi."

The boy winced, "Really?"

"Oh yeah. I heard Gaara visited a short while back. He bragged about giving you a black eye that you couldn't fix as quick as usual."

"Bet that pissed off Sasuke," Kiyoshi laughed.

Sakura took a seat at the counter finally. "Definitely, and speaking of Sasuke, it won't take him long to find you here if I did. He'll be checking ramen bars. I'm supposed to tell him if I found you, but he's been a bit of a pain in the ass lately, so the longer he stays away from the village, the less stressful things will be. Lee and I have enough on our hands planning the wedding to worry about Sasuke being a bastard to everyone."

"He's looking for me?"

"Oh yeah. You thought he wouldn't?"

There's was a moment of silence and Tanaka couldn't help but realize just how little of Kiyoshi they all really knew. Apparently the boy knew some fighting, and was incredibly close friends with a group of ninjas, one of whom was a boy Kiyoshi told stories about. Tanaka figured it was just because of his friendly nature and the time spent in the Hidden Villages. However, there was something about Kiyoshi that was just different when he was around this girl. He was a different person.

"Come home soon, Kiyoshi. Shishou is getting worried and that means she gets mean."

"Baachan is always mean."

"You said it, not me."

Kiyoshi paused. "I've been telling the town kids about Naruto and Sasuke."

Sakura's interest peeked then, "Where are they at in the story."

"Sasuke just came home dragging Naruto's body and you and baachan are working furiously to fix him." Sakura nodded, clearly remembering the events of a story that is either true, or one that they made up using people they knew. "Anyway, a while back, after Sasuke had beaten Naruto at the Valley of the End, one girl, Chikako, asked if the two ever kiss in the end."

A soft smile grew on Sakura's face, "And you were curious about that as well, huh?" Sakura stood up, "You're the storyteller; you tell me. How does this story end? Do Naruto and Sasuke end up happy together, or do they dance around each other for eternity and never come to terms with their feelings?"

"I think they end up miserably together," a third person says dryly. "We're supposed to be on a mission, Sakura-san. As it is, we only made this detour because we were curious about Kiyoshi-kun as well. Otherwise, there's no way we'd take orders from Uchiha."

"You mean, there's no way you'd take orders from Uchiha," Kiyoshi laughed. "I missed you Neji. You are the light of my life. Miss me?"

"Not terribly. In fact, it took me about four weeks to realize you were gone."

"You're a terrible liar, and this is troublesome."

"God, Shikamaru, is anything not troublesome."

"Cloud watching. But this is particularly troublesome, because in order to come here to find you and to assure ourselves what we knew, that you're perfectly okay, we're not on course for our mission and it will take us an extra two days to get home. But Neji manhandled me here, so there wasn't much I could do."

Kiyoshi smiled, "Neji, that's so like you."

The three ninjas stared at Kiyoshi for a bit before bidding their farewells and disappearing from the shop.

"You have interesting friends. It's odd how an outsider from a Hidden Village became so close to some of the shinobi." Kiyoshi just smiled uneasily. "And I had no idea that you made up your stories based on people you knew! You're a wonderful storyteller. Have you ever told them the stories?"

"Oh yes, they know the stories. They even helped me make them."

XX

The people in the village were a little wary for a while shortly after Kiyoshi's shinobi friends had visited. An unknown man had taken residence in the local inn and he was quite the mysterious type. He kept his cloak on with the hood up if he was ever in anyone's presence and he didn't seem to be there for any real reason.

Something that got people nervous was that he'd disappear for the entire day only to return at night and no one knew where he went. Some claimed he stayed in the village and spied on people from the trees. Once, young Teuchi alleged seeing the man running among the trees and he was a shinobi. Of course Teuchi was also Kiyoshi's biggest fan and loved the stories.

However ever since Teuchi's allegations Kiyoshi had a tendency to get jumpy when he left the ramen shop. This caused even more people to believe that the man was a shinobi that Kiyoshi may have met.

The man didn't make himself known until Kiyoshi managed to finish his entire story.

"He just left the village?" Ken asked.

"Did he return?" Kin asked.

"What about Sasuke and Naruto?" Chikako demanded. "They never got together." She seemed to find this completely unfair.

Kiyoshi shrugged. "Their story isn't finished. I don't know how it ends."

"I do." The crowd turned to see the strange man, Kiyoshi whipping around the fastest. His hood was down and it revealed a handsome face with jet black hair contrasting with his ivory skin. "Dobe comes home in the end."

A/N Tell me if there are any problems. I do my own editing.