A/N: Yes. Another songfic. I love writing songfics. ; And also, people keep telling me to continue my fics. I'm sorry, but I never write second chapters to my songfics. XD I mean, I might one of these days...but more than likely I won't.

Oh yeah. Download Don't Panic by Coldplay for this. It's on the Garden State soundtrack.

The gates of Konoha rose over the horizon, easily becoming the most welcome sight the returning shinobi had ever seen in his short but eventful life. The sun was sinking behind him, spraying pinks and oranges across the sky like splattered paint. It warmed his back, wet and slightly chilly from his blood-soaked clothing. The wounds that spawned this massive gore had healed long before.

He was the soul survivor of the team sent out to assassinate a well-known and corrupt official who apparently had S-ranked criminals guarding him at all times. He had wanted to bring back the bodies of his fallen comrades, but he would simply not be able to stop their decaying on the three day return. They were buried in a forest, their graves marked by large stones he had managed to roll over their graves. He had wanted to carve their names into them, but he was already late. There were people waiting for him.

The mission had been completed. A small tinge of satisfaction settled over him, almost compensating for the bereavity of lost friends.

The gates loomed ever closer. They had lost their lives for these gates and he would do the same one day. Had he been any other man, he would have felt regret. Resentment.

But these words were nearly nonexistent in Uzumaki Naruto's limited vocabulary.

All these places we've grown,
All of us are done for.

He didn't want to be seen. The village gates were just ahead of him now, but he veered off to the right, the setting sun glowing just outside his peripheral vision. The shirt and vest clung to him, thick with the smells of blood, sweat, who knew what other secretions. Normally, Naruto fed off the presence of others, but he was in one of his rare moments of introspection.

Even the air was familiar, warm and humid in the Konoha summer. He was reminded of the summers of his childhood, when each day seemed to stretch into weeks. The old trees and worn paths added to the nostalgia as he found the familiar trail. He could navigate this area with his eyes closed and had done so when trying to prove a point to Sasuke. He couldn't remember the point and thought to ask Sasuke when he next saw him.

Only, he would never see him again.

He peeled clothing from his torso, back stinging from the removal of the crusted liquid, and threw it to the side. The rushing of the stream chorused loud in his ears, though whether the sound was from memory or reality, he didn't know. Setting off in a dead run, he removed his pants as well, then in a fleet of fancy, his boxers. Stark naked, he ran and jumped into the shallow water.

And we live in beautiful world,
Yeah we do, yeah we do,
We live in a beautiful world.

The air was so crisp here and the water pleasantly cool. He floated on his back, ears filled with the sounds of rushing and sloshing. Even his heartbeat was louder here, pounding steadily and rhythmically within his chest. He had not done this since he was seventeen, two years ago. With his jounin position came an influx of missions and responsibilities, leaving little time for jumping into the creek completely nude. It was something he used to do after his chuunin missions, often leaving the male members of his team shaking their heads and chuckling and the female members blushing wildly, save for Sakura, who on one occasion tripped him.

The sun was gone now and his fingers were wrinkled, but he stayed anyway. The water was now warm and comfortable, the evening breezes sending goosebumps across his skin. The vague light of the waning twilight filtered through the canopy of trees overhead, tracing shadowy patterns over his torso. This was why he loved Konoha.

Bones, sinking like stones,
All that we fought for.
Homes, places we've grown,
All of us are done for.

Wrinkled feet gripped the worn stones at the bottom of the creek as he waded to the edge. Water dripped from his scalp, matting blonde locks of hair to his face and leaving tiny droplets in their wake. It was nights like these, nights after missions, that he wondered just what he was supposed to do. If anyone else had asked him that, the answer would have been automatic: "Be acknowledged and become hokage." With each year that goal grew closer and still, it seemed as if he was going nowhere.

I could leave. The thought echoed through his brain, mocking in its dishonesty. As much as he sometimes wanted to, he could never leave the place of his boyhood, the nesting grounds of his last innocent memories. His loyalty to Konoha was rivaled only by his love of existence and the two clashed often.

I could leave. He said it again as if to further immerse himself in the often-quoted lie. Even as he said this, he was walking back towards the so-called hidden village, wearing only pants with the shirt folded over his arm. He didn't have very many pairs of jounin fatigues, after all.

We live in a beautiful world....

He counted the stars and then when he got bored with that, he counted the trees. Thinking was simply too dangerous right now, so he relied on counting to distract him. If he had returned from another mission, if his team hadn't been decimated, he would be running along the trees by now. Before, there had always been time to commit every aspect to memory, there had always been time to savor his home. Time seemed to be running out.

The scents of dirt and grass mingled in his nose, the perfume of Konoha. The moon was a fingernail crescent and if he squinted, he could make out the moon's shadow.

Oh, all that I know,
There's nothing here to run from.

Heads lifted and people stopped to stare as he walked into the townsquare, his shirt still reeking with the biting pungency of blood. He was going to report to his hokage, even with townspeople looking at him as they did. Surely, they noticed that there was no one with him. Their team was not expected back until a few days later. He supposed the quickness of the mission pleased him, but it seemed ironic that they did the mission so well and so efficiently and still lost almost all the team members.

They always looked at him like that when he returned from a mission. Their eyes were full of admiration and pity, there were buzzing whispers from all directions. He would report to his hokage. Later. Suddenly, there was something much more pressing.

He traced the familiar back alleys to the apartment in which he had been residing since his genin days. She'd be mad when she found out that he'd lost the keys again. He rumbled upstairs and knocked on the door.

Because yeah, everybody here's got somebody to lean on.

The door swung open and he remembered the real reason why he stayed in Konoha.