Title: Louder Than Words

Summary: It's the worst sort of cliché, but it just became my life. Here's hoping I survive it.

Author's Notes: Written for the Tumblr Self Insert Week 2016.

This story features a powerful SI (eventually), lots of fluff, lots of ANGST, family bonding, minor alternate universe, nonbinary & neurodivergent SI (because that's what I am!), effed up indoctrination (essentially an outsider's look into the Naruto world), hella awkward romance, queer characters, and more.

I want to have some fun, and this is the fic I'm going to do it in.

Chapter One:

Awakening

[...an act or moment of becoming suddenly aware of something...]

When I woke up, something deep inside my brain was screaming at me.

It was a loud, peeling refrain, muffled under the remnants of what long experience told me were the remnants of a drugged sleep. This is not right, this is not right, my head screamed.

My first inclination was panic, helped along by the fact that it was exceedingly difficult to move, and that I ached like a bitch.

…What the fuck had I been doing last night?

Trying to move my arms or legs accomplished nothing but pain oh god fuck, so I slumped back, and worked at opening my sleep-crusted eyes all the way. The first thing I saw when my eyes finally cracked open was white.

A lot of white.

I groaned, the sound rattling through my chest like the wind through chimes and managed to raise my head up a scant inch before my strength gave out. But I had seen enough to know exactly where I was.

White walls, white ceiling, medical instruments scattered around (and in my arms), paired with the bed I was currently sacked out on and the faint sickly scent in the air that reminded me of far too much of my childhood. I knew this place.

"A hospital," my voice wheezed out, the dying tones of a broken accordion, and I degenerated into a coughing fit.

Shit, I felt like hell – and that something inside of me was screaming ever louder, not relaxed in the slightest. But I'd spent a great deal of my childhood (and my life, too) in hospitals, enough that…

…But why was I here?

I didn't remember going in for a surgery. I didn't remember being in an accident. So why-?

…What had I been doing before this? I closed my eyes – since I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, not with the sheer agony in my limbs – and thought.

I had been walking home, I remembered that. Through the park near my house, after having spent the day with a friend.

What friend?

Coldness suffused my limbs. I saw a face flickering before me for a second, the name dancing just out of reach. The banging in my temples and my limbs grew steadily worse, and I moaned in pain.

"Oh, you're awake!" Through blurry, streaming eyes, I saw a woman entering the room from the door to my left, and hurry to my side. She placed her hands on either side of my head, and a look of concentration crossed her face.

Coolness spread across my forehead, sinking deep tendrils of blessed relief into my throbbing brain, and I slumped back, groaning.

"Feel better?" she asked, sweat beading on her face.

I nodded, unwilling to risk another coughing fit by speaking out loud.

"Good. Are you up to having some visitors? Hokage-sama wanted to speak with you," she said, and something inside me stilled.

"H-Ho…kage-sama?" I whispered, my voice barely more than a rasp. "Who?"

The woman paused – and I could see more of her features now, small brown eyes, brown hair, nurse's scrubs – and smiled reassuringly down at me.

"The Hokage, silly girl. The leader of the village. I know you don't come from around here, but surely you've heard of Sarutobi Hiruzen-sama?"

My thoughts felt very distant, very removed from me as that name trickled in deep, ignoring even the misgendering. I knew that name. I knew that name, but that was impossible, how-

"S-Sarutobi H-H-Hiruzen?" My voice felt just as distant as my thoughts, and I was vaguely aware of the woman making a startled noise, before backing away.

I felt a warmth in my hands, and looked down in time to see-oh my fucking god my hands were on fire my hands were on fire THE BED WAS ON FIRE WHY WAS THE BED ON FIRE-

A figure clad in black and grey appeared in my vision, and I felt a hand come crashing down on my neck. Darkness was immediate and overwhelming, and I didn't feel it when I fell into the figure's arms.

When I woke again, I still hurt.

But the pain was numbed by the feeling of something not-right in my veins, a sensation I was as familiar with as the feeling of waking up in a hospital.

The most important part was that it didn't quite feel as though some giantess had used my muscles like clay any longer.

God bless pain drugs, I thought with a dopey smile, cracking open my eyes again. This time, pushing myself up came much easier, and I managed to prop myself up on my elbows for a good look around.

It was still a hospital room, and looked much the same. But this room had no windows, and seemed much more closed off than the previous one had. But the bed was still very comfy, and I laid back, content to simply doze until someone came to tell me something.

Then I remembered.

I jackknifed upright, my muscles protesting the sudden movement quite severely, and looked at my hands.

They were pale, a little stubbly, the fingernails bitten to the quick – but they weren't on fire, not burned nor smoking, not anything beyond normal. I felt the bed, and found untouched, cool linen sheets.

I sat back, wincing, and wondered if I had just dreamed my Portgas D. Ace impression earlier. Certainly wouldn't have been the first time, I mused. I had always dreamed of having powers like that, and a great deal of my obsession with the fictional pirate had been because of his power over fire.

When others kids had dreamt of having flight, or invisibility, I had dreamt of…well, stupid stuff, mostly, but having elemental powers had been a particularly close kept secret of mine.

I sighed, and threw the arm that wasn't stuffed full of IVs over my face, closing my eyes. Then something else occurred to me and my eyes shot back open.

The nurse – she'd mentioned Sarutobi Hiruzen. The Hokage.

Of a goddamn fictional comic series.

For all that my memory seemed a little bit fractured – what had I been doing before this, who had I been visiting – I remembered that name and where it had come from.

There was a polite knock on the door, and I let my hand drop back to my side, turning my head to face it. The door opened, and-

What the fuck.

Two men entered the room. The first was a blond man, with bright green eyes, and a chiseled, handsome face. Around his forehead was something I recognized distantly as a hitai-ate, engraved with a leaf-like design.

A memory filtered up through the shock in my head, depositing a name before my consciousness.

Yamanaka Inoichi.

He looked a great deal more…real, than he had in the manga (from what my mind could remember), but it still looked just like him. But that was impossible.

Yamanaka Inoichi was fictional.

Then my attention was drawn to the older man slightly behind him, and panic fizzled down my brain like a spike of ice jammed into my spine.

The man was old, wizened, with deep lines etched into the skin around his mouth and too-intense eyes. His goatee was off-white, and he wore robes of white and red, along with a cone-like hat emblazoned with a kanji, the writing stark red on the white background.

"Ah, so you're awake," Sarutobi Hiruzen – or a very convincing cosplayer, which I was praying for - said, and the two men stopped at the foot of my bed. "That will make things easier."

"E-Easier?" I rasped out, and winced. For all I was a great deal less sore in other places, my throat still felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to it.

Sarutobi nodded. "Inoichi, if you would."

The younger man helped me sit up, and placed a cup of water at my lips. I drank greedily, and pulled away when I was done. Inoichi helped me sit back against the pillows, and I watched him warily.

"Do you remember how you arrived here?" The man asked.

"N-No, actually, I don't," I said, trying not to tremble.

If this wasn't some weird fever dream, if this was actually happening…I knew that this man could break my mind ten times more thoroughly than the very worst dregs of the Rule 34 website ever could.

"Do you remember anything?" Inoichi asked, his voice calm and non-threatening. But I knew – and I didn't know how I knew – that this was very much an interrogation.

Something inside me reached out, and gently brushed through me, sending waves of calm through my body. It was like the calm I had called upon during debates, or when I took to the stage, but…different.

Steady, it whispered. I am with you.

"U-Um, I was walking home through the park, and that's about it. Where am I? How did I get here? I don't really remember anything, but I'm pretty sure this isn't the hospital near where I live," I said.

It was almost too quick for me to see, but I caught the look the two men exchanged.

"Two days ago, you appeared in the middle of my office, in a wave of fire," Sarutobi said wryly. "You are in Konohagakure no Sato, my dear. Do you remember that?"

I blinked, and swallowed hard. No way, no way, there was no way-

"Uh," I said, for lack of anything better. "No?"

My brain throbbed, and I was still halfway convinced that this was just a particularly weird dream.

But if it was really just a dream, I really, really wanted to wake up now.

Sarutobi sighed, and I got the feeling that he did not believe me in the slightest. "I cannot have someone with your…ability out, without being sure of your sincerity. Would you be willing to submit to an interrogation?"

I shrank away, my breath coming short to my lungs. Interrogation.

My mind flickered to a man with deep scars crisscrossing his head, and cold look in his eyes. I saw torture devices springing forth from summoning techniques, a man in a long black cloak – Morino Ibiki.

And I shook with faint terror. I did not want to end up in his hands at all.

"There's no need to be afraid," Inoichi said, very soothingly. "I will simply use a technique that will allow me to enter your mind, and see what you may have forgotten."

I blinked again and felt myself relax. The man was very good at this, I thought distantly, a different part of my mind feeling amused and wary in equal turns.

"How?" I asked blankly. "My mind? What?"

Of course, I knew how – whispering images in my mind, a girl with Inoichi's features, "Mind Body Seal!" – but I couldn't let them know. I could not let these people know what I knew.

"It is a…trait, of my clan, that will allow me to look into your mind," Inoichi said. "Will you consent to it?"

I certainly didn't want to, even if it might tell me the missing pieces in my head – I had been going to see a friend, but what was his name? What street had I lived on? What were the names of my pets? Why can't I remember? – but it wasn't as though I had a choice in the matter.

Then, the voice spoke again, soft and distinctly masculine.

He will see nothing we do not permit him to see, it said calmly, but faintly, as if from a great distance. And you will give away nothing we do not permit them to see. We have a plan, and you will know of it soon. Trust us.

I did, against all common sense. And I knew, without a shred of doubt, that the voice in my head wanted only to keep me safe. Schizophrenic delusion, or whatever it was, it could do what I alone could not.

It could fool these two men.

There was a sigh of relief inside me as I sent back quiet confirmation.

Good, the voice said. Now look back at them, tilt your head to the side half an inch, and pull your lip down. Suspicious, suspicious. Not trusting, but not dangerous. They've already seen you channel fire, now you must look innocent.

It was like listening to my theater professor again – what was her name? – and the tone had me following the instructions obediently, just like I had done then.

Looking up at Inoichi, I pursed my lips and gave him a beady eyed stare.

"Will it hurt?" I asked, my tone just shy of a demand. I doubted very much I could truly manipulate this man, but if it eased his impression of me, to think young and girlish and child-like when he looked at me, then, well…

That couldn't be a bad thing.

"It may give you a mild headache," Inoichi allowed, his lips crinkling up at the sides. The fucker knew what I was doing, and was amused by it.

God damn it.

He may know, the voice said again, reassuring. He may know, but he softens anyway. He cannot help it.

I paused for a second longer, judging for the right time – "you have the worst sense of comedic timing ever, _ , I nearly spat out a lung laughing" "But doesn't that mean I have a good sense of it, then?" – before I nodded.

"Okay then," I said. "What do I need to do?"

"Lean back, and close your eyes," Inoichi said.

I did so, feeling unease tiptoeing through me, like a mouse desperately trying not to be noticed by a cat. The pillows were cool, and Inoichi placed his hand against my forehead, after whispering something too quietly for me to catch. Something cool and weird, strange-but-not-strange brushed through me.

And then I was sinking, sinking, sinking-

My mindscape was…

Well, to put it mildly, I really was not expecting what I found.

I stood with Inoichi in what looked like an enormous temple, bright and airy and absolutely beautiful.

We were standing in an immense room with richly colored walls, and a floor that felt like pure marble to my bare feet. A row of pillars made from the same mosaics that covered the walls formed a pseudo-corridor to the large set of double doors in the far distance. It felt like I was standing in some ancient, lovingly-maintained temple set deep in the forests of India, or the mountains of Tibet.

Sunlight poured in from the great windows that were flung open across the wall, and there was music in the air – flutes and pipes, and the steady beat of drums.

"Wouldja look at that," I said, putting my hands on my hips and looking around in bemused wonder. "I wasn't expecting this. Are you sure this is my mind?"

"It should be," Inoichi says, sounding amused.

"Bruh," I gushed in fangirl-ish reverence. I had never been quite a fan of the Yamanka techniques before, but damn if they weren't cool to see in action.

"That's such a freaky ass power you've got, but it's so friggin' cool. Is it a family thing, or what? Do you got any cousins with the same freaky superpowers or what?"

Inoichi laughed, the sound vaguely startled.

"It is something in my family," he said, and the two of us began to walk down the corridor of pillars.

"That's freaky as shit," I said with glee. But then I paused – wait for the timing, another voice said softly.

"A problem?" Inoichi asked.

"Well, yeah. See the thing is, shit like this?" I said, throwing out a hand to encompass the entire room and him as well. "Shit like this wasn't even remotely possible back home. 'Getting inside someone's mind' is just a saying, and it's not supposed t'be real, y'know?"

Inoichi made a hmm noise.

"Do you remember where you came from?"

I sighed. "Well, yeah, but I don't know names."

Frustration creeped into my words, because I didn't know anything.

Anything that mattered.

Not the name of the school where I'd spent my childhood, not the name of my first cat, not the name of the street I'd lived on all my life, not the name of the doctor who had sat beside me on that cold day and asked if I was being abused, not the friends who had left me (one after another) and who I still loved like burning in my chest, not my father or my mother-

There was a dawning sense of horror inside me as we approached the double doors, the screaming sense of something wrong even in my own mind growing even as the music did.

I didn't know my name.

I didn't know my name.

I didn't know my own name.

A shudder trembled down my spine. I remembered – very distinctly! – seeing the birth certificate my mother had used to help get me a driver's license. But the name was fogged out in my mind.

"Are you all right?" Inoichi asked, and I shook myself.

"I need to get some answers," I said quietly, grimly.

The two of us pushed open the door, and a light blazed out, cool and welcoming and blinding, all in the same burst of brilliance. There was laughter, and song, and-

"Mom?" I whispered, as I saw a woman with dark gray hair standing in an empty room with about five doors lining the mosaic-covered walls, as translucent as a ghost. On her ample hip, with tiny, pudgy arms curling around her neck, rested a little girl with long, curling dark hair.

It was me. I'd been a little girl then, had been this woman's precious daughter. I remembered that.

The ghost – memory – was singing, her voice low and soft, soothing.

"Dancing bears, painted wings, things I almost remember…and a song someone sings, once upon a December," The ghost whispered, rubbing the sleeping child's back.

Then she looked up, looked at me. And her gaze was so sad, so mournful, even as she gave the words to me, even as she rocked the sleeping child in her arms.

"Someone holds me safe and warm, horses prance through a silver storm. Figures dancing gracefully, across my memory..."

Then she faded, and I staggered, feeling tears trickle down my face, anguish and homesickness nearly driving me to my knees.

Memories flickered through my head, one after another – her cooking dinner, driving me to school in the dark hours of the morning, her pale face as I cradled a snake to my chest with childish glee, her sitting in the audience as I made the crowd laugh with jokes.

I saw her standing haloed in the light as she told me to wake up and laughed when I groaned.

Five more minutes, Mama, pleaseeeee…

You said that half an hour ago, I'm not buying it. Up, or I'm dumping water on you!

I remembered events, I remembered her laugh, and I remembered her smile, her voice.

But I didn't know her name. How could I have forgotten the name of my best friend?

I staggered back up, and hurried through the only open door, focused only on getting any sort of answers…

What the fuck.

If I had thought the rooms before were huge, they had nothing on this one. We stood on a pathway between two statues made from some metal or wood, or some material I didn't recognize. There was a soft, impossibly welcoming light illuminating everything, making the path gleam.

The pathway spiraled down to my right, and up to my left, going as far in either direction as was possible for me to see, wrapped around what appeared to be a bottomless pit. And spaced perfectly out along the wall along the pathway in both directions were statues like the ones to our right and left.

Something stuttered in my chest.

"This is interesting," Inoichi said, and I shot him a quick look.

Nothing showed on that handsome face, which I thought was only appropriate for a member of the Yamanaka Clan. But still, there probably wasn't anything to worry about from him.

He'd probably seen a lot weirder in his time.

(At least it wasn't gratuitous visions of killing people or conquering the world.)

Though I did want to know why in the hell my mind looked like this, of all things.

I had highly expected something boring, like plain-ass white walls and a boring old therapy chair. Considering how much time I'd spent in a psychiatrist's office, it wasn't a far-off assumption.

I was a first rate head-case back home, with so many disorders that it bewildered me (and my parents), though I highly suspected that I didn't even come close to that term in this world…Dream?

Whatever this was.

(Fuck, I really hoped this was a dream. Even if I was fighting for my life in a hospital back home, I would accept it. Anything would be better than this actually being real.)

I walked up the path, and felt Inoichi fall into step behind me. There was a faint tune in the air, far less prominent than it had been before. Just a flute, or something equally soft and lilting. Maybe panpipes.

Humming quietly, I let my hand reach out, brushing against each of the statues as we climbed ever higher, the light growing in brilliance as we did, but it never blinded me. Instead, it pulled me steadily on, until I was jogging up the path, my bare feet slapping against the wood of the floor below me.

I barely even noticed Inoichi keeping pace, his eyes focused on me. It didn't matter.

Then, the light dimmed, and I slowed. We were near to the top, and near to the end of the long line of statues that twined up the path. I paused for a moment at the statue that was the fourth to the last.

A bearded man in strange robes stood there, wrought in a bronze-like material, a solemn expression on his face, his feet bare and planted like tree trunks.

The plaque on the pedestal below his feet was empty, and bore no name, no identifier…but.

But.

I knew.

"Abhaidev," I whispered, brushing a hand over the symbol – strange and familiar, all at once – emblazoned on the front of his robes. Then I moved to the next.

A woman, tall, proud, curved. Her eyes seemed to blaze with inner fire even as a statue, and she wore robes cut just as strangely as the man's, but different.

"Jiao-long," I said, and I could have sworn that – just for a moment – her still, carved lips curved into an approving smile.

The next statue was of…I didn't know if the carved person was male, or female, only that they looked as though they could step from the pedestal and leap into flight at any moment.

"Dorje," I said, and bowed to them, feeling a kinship here unlike that with any of the others. A wind tickled my neck, like teasing fingers, and I giggled, before going to the second last.

A man stood there, and for a second I had the greatest sense of déjà vu I had ever experienced in my life. His carved face held a great, endless sorrow, and he wore thick furs about his body.

Though I did not see a name written on the plaque below his feet, just like with the others – and, just like with all of these statues, a small part of me thought quietly – I knew his name.

"Hello, Amaruq," I said.

There was another statue beside it, the very last one. This one was of a girl, dressed in rags.

For all her shoulders were as broad as Abhaidev's, for all she stood as straight as Jiao-long, and for all her eyes tried to smile as Dorje's did, there was something utterly broken in her face, even more so than Amaruq's. And like her expression, the statue was cracked, fragile.

"Vasundhara," I said, and my voice trembled.

Inoichi – and I'd long since forgotten that he was there, and it seemed for the first time a blasphemy that he was, as I knuckled away tears of frustrated grief – laid a hand on my shoulder.

"How do you know these people? Are you related to them?"

Related, no. I knew that at least. We five shared no blood between us, no connection from mother-to-son, or cousin-to-cousin, or any of the bonds normally shared between family members.

What was between us was far deeper, far more.

This was such a weird ass dream.

But…what if it wasn't? What if this wasn't some lucid fever dream while I was in the hospital-I shoved that thought aside with extreme prejudice. What else could it be? Not real, certainly. It couldn't be.

(I hoped.)

I walked past Inoichi, past the broken statue of the woman in rags, and up the empty pathway, Inoichi following behind. We walked still higher, the air growing thin as though we were climbing a mountain, though I never felt the strain one might expect.

"Where are we going?" Inoichi asked, his voice still as calm and curious as it had ever been.

"I have no clue," I said absently, my thoughts more focused on what might lay ahead.

Soon the path flattened out, and we passed through another door that lead into yet another mosaic-covered room. This one had only two windows on either side, allowing a gentle light to pour into the room, reflecting off the mosaics and dancing like hundreds of stars.

There was a door on the opposite wall, intricately carved with symbols that were setting off all sorts of alarms. I approached it, and placed my hand on the thick wood.

But then-

"You are not ready yet," a voice said behind us, and I whirled around, noting – distantly – that Inoichi had done the same.

There was a man standing there, and I felt my hands tremble at the sight of him. Maybe my heart did as well, I didn't know.

He was tall – taller than me by about a foot – and he had a brawny build. His beard was cropped short around a face a shade lighter than the dark brown hair that fell around his shoulders. His clothes were a mix of light and dark blues, heavy furs that seemed utterly incongruous when paired with the warm air that drifted in through the windows like teasing fingers across bare skin.

I knew him.

"Amaruq," I whispered, because his resemblance to the statue was borderline uncanny valley.

The man smiled and flicked out his fingers, and I was falling, falling, falling-

"Peace, Yamanka Inoichi. I am no threat to you," The man – Amaruq? – said calmly as the shinobi rushed to catch the girl, keeping her from hitting the ground.

"Then what are you?" he asked, shifting his grip on the girl in his arms.

Inoichi had seen many, many things, and been in minds far more twisted and broken than this girl's, minds that made this gorgeously decorated series of rooms and paths a refreshing breath of fresh air, but…

No dissociation event, no shattered piece of a broken shinobi's mind should have been able to do what this man just did to the unconscious girl in his arms. Not without breaking his jutsu.

It should not be possible.

And yet.

The man's face cracked into a smile.

"We have much to speak about, Yamanka Inoichi. Come. I will answer all questions that I can," the man said, and the world dissolved around them.