WARNING: Contains rape. Mostly allusions to it than actual graphic scenes depicting nonconsensual sex, but there you go. Also, this will be a twincest kind of thing, so if you don't dig that, maybe you should take your shovel somewhere else. Just saying. This fic will be DARK and will contain a DARK Naruto.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

ONE

Fixing Broken Things

Everything between them is natural.

They have known only each other their whole lives. They have been together for so long, stuck in their own cruel predicaments. Him and his sadness, her and the hopelessness she keeps hidden from everyone else, or tries to. To both of them, words aren't entirely necessary, and silence is comfortable. He would braid her beautiful red hair if she frowns, and she would kiss his whiskered cheek if his eyes are too sad. They would hold hands when they feel like the rest of the world is against them, which is all the time.

Bound together by unfortunate circumstances, they lean on each other, each finding solace in the other's presence. It has always been the way things were between them. Nothing is forced. Everything is natural. They flow and gravitate to each other like magnets, and they never question the connection they have. Sometimes it bothers her though, how easy it is to be with him, how snugly he just... clicks, with her. Because it is as unnatural as it is natural, as abnormal as it is normal. After all, she knows that the connection should never even exist in the first place.

Not that she'd ever tell anyone that.

Everyone is entitled to their secrets, after all.

She enters their room and sees him staring off into space, his eyes narrow and furious, and she knows instantly that he's remembering it again. It's the thirtieth time in as many days. It's so easy for her to glean his thoughts, his emotions, as hints of them flitted across his face like flies on food. A twitch of his eyebrows, a weight pulling down the corners of his lips, a line in the middle of his forehead as he no doubt went back to...

... to that night.

"Stop thinking about it," she says, masking her worry, because she knows how much he hates it when she goes parental on him. Especially since he is older than her.

Technically.

Supposedly.

He's always been rather mother hen-ish since before they could even talk, and it has only gotten worse after it happened. Especially after it happened.

His clouded irises clear up and return to their usual bright blue, and he gives her a wide smile. "Stop thinking about what?" he asks with a look of confusion so genuine-looking that she would have believed it if she hadn't seen the tumultuous look on his face just seconds before.

They've never really talked about it before, and whenever she tried to broach the subject he just looked away and glared at his feet like they had mortally offended him. Whenever she asked him about how the whole ordeal made him feel he just stared at her with such wide eyes she would have thought he was looking at the bogeyman — not that he would know what a bogeyman is — and then looked away and proceeded to studiously ignore her.

He's talking to her now, at least, so at least there's progress on that. But he's still acting like a wounded kitten about it, hackles raised while he hisses and glares at everything, and it's just so unfair, she thinks, that he's being all traumatized and shit when all he did was watch as it happened. To her, not to him. Some part of her thinks that he has no right to feel the way he does, no right to act like he has seen too much of the world, because she's the one who has seen too much, been through too much, felt too much.

Although she supposes she's probably expecting too much emotional maturity from him. For all that he's much sharper and smarter than... well, than he should have been, Uzumaki Naruto is still just an eight-year-old kid. Not that it makes her feel any less bitter of the fact that she's the one who has to be stronger. That she's the one who has to move on past the shadow of the past and drag him with her to the light of the present when she's not even ready to step out from the shadows herself, when the darkness clings to her still.

She meets his gaze. "That night," she replies flatly. "You're remembering that night again."

You shouldn't, goes unsaid. You should just forget about it like I'm trying to. I shouldn't be the one doing this comforting shit.

"Don't you think," he says, quickly dismissing her annoyed tone, "Don't you think that maybe I shouldn't forget? That maybe I should always remember?"

Ah. There's that word. Should.

But what should and shouldn't people remember anyway? There is a point in remembering pain because you learn from it, but then it's stupid to never forget pain because that shit haunts you. So should you or should you not remember it? Is it better to forget something and never learn your lesson, or to remember it and forever fear its hold on your life — on your past, present and future?

The human brain is a strange thing, she thinks. It's funny what it can remember and what it can't and what it should and what it shouldn't. It's weird that it sometimes doesn't remember the things it should, and that it remembers a lot of things it shouldn't. It's also funny what she remembers and what she knows, because she isn't sure if she should remember or know the crap that she does. Hell, she's not even sure if she's supposed to be in the first place.

But then that line of thought strays too close to what she wants to never ever remember, so she—

"Demon whore!"

Trousers slipping off hips and thighs. A kunai pressed against her throat.

"You're an abomination! You should have never existed!"

"Take this! Take it like the dem—"

— Oops. Too late. She remembers it now. Damn it all to hell and back, everything gave her flashbacks nowadays. Damn Naruto and his retarded questions.

"Don't you think that maybe I shouldn't forget?"

She wonders if the kid has brain damage. Maybe he's a masochist? Because who'd want to remember that shit?

She just wants him to forget it, really. To super forget the fuck out of it until he goes back to being the ball of sunshine he's supposed to be. The cheerful kid he should be.

Huh. There's that word again. Should. Funny how it keeps bouncing around in her brain and reminding her of how badly she's mucked everything up.

"I wanted to forget at first," Naruto admits in a soft voice. "But I can't." The laugh that suddenly comes out of his mouth sounds bitter and angry and at the same time resigned. "It's my punishment for not protecting you, I think. For not being strong enough."

She winces at that. "Naruto, we're only eight—"

He throws a glare that seemed a touch feral. "And they cared about that, did they?" the question all but oozed with sarcasm.

"Naru—"

"It didn't matter to them, so it shouldn't matter to me," he continues. "I mean, damn, I was so stupid, thinking that ninjas were... damn it... I should have known better that there was no decent human being in this place."

"That's not true, Naruto. Jiji has always been kind to us. And Teuchi-san and Ayame-nee."

"And that's it, isn't it? Three people. In all of Konoha, only three people ever showed us any kindness. The rest hate us. What did we even do to them? Why are they calling us fox demons? Is it the whiskers? If we hide them, would the villagers treat us as normal people?"

She debates whether or not she should tell him the truth that she knows but by all means shouldn't — it's a secret, sure, but in her opinion it's the worst-kept secret in the whole Fire Country — however, before she opens her mouth to speak, he goes on again.

"I'm sick and tired of these people! We tried doing good deeds and helping old ladies carry their groceries and sweeping the leaves from streets, but they still hate us! They sell us rotten fruit, half-rotten meat and torn clothes, and they keep hurting us on our birthday! And... and what those ninjas did to you... it proves that there is no good in this place. We have three people, and I'm glad they're nice to us, but in the end three isn't enough, Aki-chan. Not in a place with thousands that would want nothing more than skin us alive!"

He shouldn't be this way, she thinks. He shouldn't be filled with such... anger and loathing. He shouldn't be so bitter. He's supposed to be all smiles and positivity. He's supposed to be Naruto.

And he is. But he also isn't, somehow, and she doesn't know how to fix that. She doesn't even know what went wrong, what had changed, for him to deviate so far from his... character.

(Deep in her mind she knows that of course she is what went wrong. She is the only new element in this fixed system, the only anomaly in this world that already has a predetermined fate.)

She thinks that maybe she should have sliced her own neck when she found that stray kunai in the playground two years ago. Would have saved her a lot of grief. It might've released the Kyuubi from its seal (or maybe just half of it? She doesn't know jack about fuuinjutsu), but under the weight of what-should-have-been-but-never-will-be, she finds it difficult to care. She loves Naruto, of course, and it makes her feel like a right bitch that she wants to all but unleash a bijuu on an unsuspecting village and murder a few thousand people just because the kid's putting too much pressure on her, but she realizes that it is slowly driving her insane knowing that with every breath she takes, with every word that comes out of her mouth, that guaranteed "happy ending" she remembers and knows should come to pass might not be quite so "happy" of an ending. It might just be an "ending."

And seriously, who can live with knowing — or remembering, whatever — something like that? Who do the gods of delusions think she is? Moses? Jesus?

She hates this responsibility, this self-appointed task of keeping this world's destiny on-track. She feels the weight of it on her now tiny little shoulders, feels it bog her down like nobody's business and she just wants to shrug like crazy and let it all fall to pieces because fuck destiny, she isn't made for this.

She hates knowing that everything that goes wrong is — either directly or indirectly — her damn fault. And it's not even a cognitive error like assuming personal causality or anything like that, because it's the truth. A fact, even, though she isn't quite so keen on proving it.

His eyes meet hers again, and he frowns at her, as if knowing how she feels. Naruto's creepy like that, in the way that he just gets her. Like a kid reading a word and knowing that a bunch of squiggles on paper really mean "Ramen" or "Dog" or "Tree."

He crosses the room in a few strides and wraps his arms around her shoulders, as if to make sure she still exists. It makes her happy and sad and pissed at the same time, the way he clings to her as if she's the only person that's real to him. She can't help but think that he's not supposed to be this attached to her, or attached to her at all. That special place in his heart should have Konohagakure no Sato in it, not Uzumaki Akiko.

They stay that way for a while, until she pulls away and looks him in the eye.

"You don't have to keep doing it, Naruto." she eventually says. You don't have to care.

"But I do," he replies. Serenely, as if he is just talking about the simplest of things. In some way she supposes he is. Naruto, for all his subtle complexities, is a simple creature by design. She could even understand the thoughts running a mile an hour behind the blue depths of his eyes: They hurt Akiko, and they should pay. She knows that he wouldn't be nearly as furious had he been the one wronged.

Not that he hadn't been wronged at all, of course, but that's just Naruto in his full selfless glory. His own hurts don't matter to him as much as hers. So really, it's all simple.

And that simplicity makes her wonder how it was possible for her to so monumentally fuck everything up.

When she doesn't reply, he continues, "I have to remember, Aki-chan. I have to care." Because no one else would, goes unsaid. "I have to remind myself every second of every minute of every hour of every day, because..." He trails off, his eyes glistening with with unshed tears. Akiko waits for those tears to roll down his cheeks, but they don't. She knows what keeps them from falling.

Fury. Violent, righteous, vengeful fury. And how she wishes that he'd just stop feeling that way because she's fine, damn it all.

Naruto sees the mildly annoyed and guilty expression — why does she even feel guilty? he wonders — on her face and it only steels his resolve to become stronger. For her. To avenge her. He hopes that one day, when he gets strong enough — and he will, he swears to himself— he would hunt down those seven men and kill them as slowly and as painfully as possible. He remembers their names and ranks. How could he forget? They'd all but handed him their identities on a silver platter as they defiled his sister in front of him — as they violated her and said, with each thrust of their disgusting... things, into her small body: "... These are our names. Remember us. Remember that you are worthless to us. To Konoha. Don't you ever forget, you demon scum."

He returns to the present with a sharp jolt, and finds his sister studying him the same way she studies Jiji. With fondness and exasperation. Naruto steadies his gaze and hardens his voice. "Because I can't allow myself to forget what they did to you. Not now, not ever. They hurt you, imouto."

"Naru," she murmurs, her shoulders sagging with resignation. "It's been a month. I've healed already. You know I always heal, just like you do. I'm not hurt anymore. I'm fine."

"No," he snarls vehemently, because she isn't fine. She would never be fine again after that night, no matter how well she heals, no matter how unscarred her skin is now. Naruto knows better than anyone that not all wounds bleed and leave scars.

Not all broken things have cracks.

Sometimes a thing would just... break, and people don't understand how or why because it's broken inside and there are no cracks to see. It just stops working and nobody can explain why it doesn't work because it looks fine, and it looks whole, and it should work.

"I won't let it go," Naruto says, eyes ablaze.

Akiko frowns, a million thoughts racing through her mind and waiting to spill forth from her lips: Don't break your heart over this. Please smile, I haven't seen you smile since that night. Please forget what happened to me. Pleasepleaseplease.

After a long stretch of silence, Akiko whispers the one thought that truly matters. "It won't be easy."

He stares at her for a moment. "...I know."

"You'll lose so many nights of sleep working for it, and even then you might not achieve it. People hate us, Naruto. And you'll get hurt a lot. You might even die. Ninjas aren't as glamorous as Jiji makes you think they are."

He bristles at that. "You think I don't know that? Ninjas hurt you, imouto. Ninjas violated you. Trust me when I say that I know exactly what ninjas are."

"But ninjas aren't all evil, either," Akiko says, feeling the inexplicable urge to defend the rest of Konoha's shinobi. Strange, that. She doesn't even like them. "They're not all heroes, yes, but they're not all villains. You can't..." She sighs. "I understand your need for vengeance. I do. But those... those men... they don't represent all Konoha-nin. You can't judge everyone else for things they haven't done."

He stares at her like he thinks she just said something monumentally stupid, and she doesn't get it, because weren't her words simple enough?

But then he asks, "You mean I shouldn't judge them the way they've always been judging us for things we never did?" He sits on the edge of their bed, fists balled tight. "It doesn't matter what I think anyway. I'll be a ninja. I'll be strong — the strongest one in this village. I'll be Hokage if I have to, and I'll make them fear us."

Fear, she thinks. Not respect. Would one changed word in Naruto's goal make a big difference?

She hopes not.

She also hopes she never finds out.

Her face remains carefully blank. "Fine," she eventually spits out, trying and failing to keep the acid from her voice. "Fine. But you have to be careful. You should forg-" she flinches at his thunderous glare and corrects herself, "You should pretend to forget what happened to me. Because you... we can't even so much as look at them wrong, Naruto. We can't. You know what they'd do."

Naruto looks away. There really isn't anything he can say to that.

"What happened..." she grimaces, and she hates that she has to explain this shit to him because doesn't he get that people don't just hate them? Naruto and Akiko are so passionately loathed that it's a miracle they haven't been murdered yet. Though maybe that's because of their permanent ANBU guard. Not that the stupid animal-masked nins were of any help during that night, but that could have been due to the fact that Naruto and Akiko had been avoiding them that time. It was their birthday, and both of them were sick of celebrating it with just the two of them while masked strangers watched. So they snuck out. It was so funny that they were driving their guards nuts.

Not so funny when seven drunk chuunin found them in that abandoned alley.

"Well well well," a drawling voice, scratchy and hoarse. "What have we here, my friends?"

Akiko shakes her head and meets Naruto's gaze. "What happened to me was bad, but it could be worse. It could," she insists when he begins to protest. "Naruto, if we give them any more cause, they'd lynch us."

"I know that," he growls in annoyance. "But I can't just sit here and smile like an idiot after what they did to you! This stupid, depraved village that you always loved..." That I always loved, she can almost hear him correct in his mind, "It violated you, and I can't just roll over and accept that!"

"... Do you really hate Konoha that much?"

He instantly gives her a flat stare, as if he has expected her to ask. Perhaps he has. She wouldn't be surprised if he's been asking himself the same thing for a long time.

But his answer is simple. "No. I don't hate Konoha at all."

She sighs in relief.

But Naruto's not done yet. "I have other things to worry about than hate," he adds. "I don't hate the village, imouto. When I think of Konoha, I only feel motivated."

"Motivated?"

He beams at her then, the way he always did before, the way he should, and Akiko can't help but grin back.

She ignores the nagging sense of foreboding she feels, and chooses to simply bask in his smile.

A/N: To those who can't tell, this is an OC-insert/SI fic. You probably noticed that in my other fic, NARPG, I stressed my belief that the how of things (like, how did the real-world-based OC enter the world of Naruto) is important. This still holds true in this story, though I'll be bottlenecking this fic to focus more on thought processes and interpersonal relationships and drama, so there won't be much extrapolation on existentialism and the like. However, that's not to say that there isn't some explanation on how Akiko came to be. It just won't be explicitly stated.

Q: Why hasn't Sarutobi executed the seven chuunin? How can the Hokage allow such depraved monsters live?

A: Can't say much about this, because the answer will be in future chaters, but what I can say is that the Hokage doesn't know about "that night." There you go.