It is my belief that no one could live their childhood the way Naruto did, and come out wholly unscathed. There would be permanent scars that no amount of time could heal and only love, no matter it's form, could sooth.
.o0o.
Cogito, ergo sum - I think, therefore I am.
.o0o.
Isolation.
There were days when he wondered if he existed at all.
Those were usually his bleaker days, when he sunk too deeply into the depression that clung to his everyday life to even hear the vicious whispers that flew in his wake. He could move through the city and it was as though he wasn't there. No one would look at him. People, who bumped into him, wouldn't even react. They'd continue on as though nothing had happened.
He still smiled as always on those days. But his grin became more forced than normal; it was unsteady, as though ready to collapse the moment he did.
It was days like this when he felt as though he was sinking into a void; where only his racing thoughts kept him going. And even those did not seem enough to convince him he was real. "I think, therefore I am," he whispered, and his voice sounded unnaturally loud in the empty park. Everyone had slowly but surely left. He couldn't even feel that they had left because of him, since they hadn't even reacted to him sitting on the swing. They had merely, one by one, collected their children and left.
"I think, therefore I AM!" this time he screamed it, listening to his voice be swallowed by the trees, his heart thumping madly. He had read that in the library once. An old man had wondered the same things as he did; if he existed at all. The old man had come to the decision that he had thoughts, he had ideas, he had dreams and all those proved that he existed.
But thought wasn't enough sometimes. He didn't feel real. He didn't feel touchable. He had thoughts and ideas and dreams but no one to share them with.
Insanity.
There were days when he felt like he was on the edge of something endless and forbidding.
He never left the house on those days because he felt like he could barely keep himself from falling over and into that emptiness. He would sit in a corner, with a wide grin that was more a barring of teeth, hugging his knees so tightly that his hands and feet would fall asleep from lack of blood flow. It was as though if he loosened up even an inch he would fall apart in some strange and horrifying way.
It wasn't something physical, just a sensation. A creeping sensation in the back of his soul that felt like tar, and kunai, and soundless, raged screams. It was black and scary and unbearable. And perhaps the most terrifying thing was that he knew it was a very real part of him.
It was something he didn't want to acknowledge. Because he felt that if he did such a thing, he would start screaming and never be able to stop. So he never looked too closely at that abyss because it was something that he knew would break him, something that was already broken inside him. Shards of something that made no sense, something that had no logic, something that would consume him entirely because it was empty and would always be empty.
Totally and completely and wholly empty.
Hatred.
There were days when he felt like he was burning.
Nauseating heat would dog his every step and make his body feel ten times heavier. He could hear the vicious whispers on those days. He could see the hateful glares and the way people would turn away from him. And each whisper and glare and turned head would fuel the sick fire inside of him.
It was an effort not to give into that burning thing. That burning need to destroy, to see those that hurt him suffer, to make them feel what he felt. His smile would look almost feral.
It was harder to keep himself above that raging, sickening fire than it was to keep away from the empty abyss. The abyss terrified him. It was cold and it didn't make any sense. It was the absence of sense in fact. But the fire... the fire was disgustingly warm. It made perfect sense and that's what made it so deceptive.
But he would be just as lost in the fire.
Ignorance.
There were days, when looking back, that he figured the only thing that got him through the hell that had been his childhood was his own stubborn cling to naivety. It wasn't really a natural naivety as many thought, it was something that he fabricated to keep those... things at bay.
If he was an idiot, if he purposely didn't understand things and people, if he strode forward with a child-like stubbornness then he, who had never been a child, wouldn't understand those emotions that wafted around him like cloy, choking smoke.
In many cases, especially as a ninja, ignorance can bring harm. It can kill you. But for the fucked up thing he had been as a child, ignorance had been his shield. Not bliss, but protection, until he finally met those few first individuals who... grounded him.
The ones who made his smiles real.
Those who loved him.
His precious people.
Delusions.
There were days that he still wondered if any of it was real; his adopted family, his close friends, his dream job, his loving wife.
He wondered if maybe he was still that non-child of his past and that everything he had was just a deceptive dream.
It was these days that he realized that while he now knew and felt deeply that he existed, and while he had finally put out those sick, twisting flames; the endless, terrifying abyss was still there. Some days closer, others not, but it was still there. It would always be there.
Threatening to consume him.
Love.
There were nights when Naruto would cry out in his sleep with a fear he had never shown while awake. He would cling to her so tightly she wondered if she would break. His face would contort in agony and tears. He would burrow into her frame; hiding from a monster that she knew instinctively was all his own and in no way the fox.
One those nights all Hinata could do, was hold him tightly back.
And whisper words of love and encouragement.
And wait for morning to come.