I don't know what that must be like. [It hurts, hearing something like that. Naruto isn't much for romance, so he knows that there's something to her experience that he won't be able to understand. But the expression that moves over her face, and the way her gaze travels to the water- that he knows. What it means to have a most important person, what it means to have someone like that leave you.]

Growing up I was always alone, and it wasn't until much later that I experienced my first real bonds. Even now I think they saved me.

When someone important to me left, he spent years trying to sever our bond. Looking back on it, sometimes I think my promise to bring him home was the only thing that kept me going.

[Naruto had gone to bed each night staring at that photograph on his dresser and he had dreamt over and over again, about a fight he'd lost in the final valley and about the way it had rained afterwards.

He doesn't think about taking her hand, he just does it- palm warm and uncalloused over her fingers.]

But you know, just like I learned back then- you can't stop someone from loving you. [Maybe she's right and people will always hurt one another. Maybe, like Pain had said so long ago, the suffering is inevitable. But there's more than suffering too. By going through those things, they can understand one another, and walk together into the future.]

People deserve to be seen.
I hope you let somebody see you, too.