.
All That Binds Us
CADEL
CHAPTER 1
[Insanity]
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It was their first session and Naruto Uzumaki remained to be a most uncooperative patient.
The psychiatrist found he was closed off right from the start. One-on-one conversation was more akin to talking to a brick wall.
They warned her. He had an aggressive side, nearly bit the ear off one of the orderlies when he woke. But as she watched him perched rigidly by the door in his wheelchair like he was expecting some kind of attack, she thought he looked more like a cornered animal. It reminded her all too often of the strays she would find on her way home. Lonely under all that aggression.
'What's your name?'
The boy's only answer was a low growl in the back of his throat.
'I'm here to help.'
A scoff then dismissal.
There was something about his face that carried a more complex story, a tangible one that wanted to be stroked. His eyes were worse. A vortex of unnatural blue.
When she told him her diagnoses, the boy sat silent by his escape route. His eyes had gone somewhere far away and lost within memories that were washed in colours she could not see.
'I can help you.'
'We'll make you better.'
Make you sane again.
He looked at the window with a desire to jump.
He looked at the door with a need to run.
And he looked at her with eyes that could peel skin and melt the muscle off her bones.
III
"What do you see?"
The middle-aged psychiatrist held up a card with an indiscernible ink blot in the centre.
"Ramen."
Another card.
"Ramen."
The third card.
"Miso ramen."
"This would be more productive if you tried to actually cooperate." The doctor admonished gently.
The blonde boy scrunched his nose and tilted his head. "But that's what I see."
The woman held up the fourth card. "What do you see?"
"Ink blot."
Another card went up.
"Shark guy."
"Ink blot."
"Butterfly."
"Butterfly."
"Hungry looking butterfly."
"Fat butterfly."
"Ink blot."
"Aloe Vera."
"Ramen."
The psychiatrist sighed and placed the ink blots back in her drawer. "I think that's all for today."
The boy leaned back and crossed his arms. "What was the point of that?"
"To get a rough idea about your mindset and the thoughts that occupies it."
"Yeah, and what's it say about me?" came the gruff question.
The doctor put her pen down and answered with a sigh, "It says you're hungry."
III
There was an escape attempt.
The psychiatrist was notified early in the morning before she could make her coffee.
Her new patient, Naruto Uzumaki had deliberately crashed his wheelchair down the hospital stairwell. His following attempts to crawl his way out of the hospital was alarming if not a little awe-inspiring.
Even with his atrophied muscles, the boy got down four flights of stairs before anyone noticed.
III
There was a fiery personally underneath all that bluntness and cautious distance.
Naruto Uzumaki was probably the most unpredictable patient she had in a while – even her bipolar-schizophrenics. He had undeniable core of energy and an unbeatable desire to live. His resolve was iron-clad and odd fitting in a boy of sixteen years.
So it all came as a surprise when he stabbed himself.
It didn't match her profile of the boy. So in their third session she asked: "Why did you hurt yourself?"
"Kid, put the pen down."
A growl rolled out of Naruto's throat.
The ball-point pen was held tightly in his hand as he crouched low on the ground, eyeing the loose circle the doctors had made around him, their faces bleeding from alarm to fearful caution.
"Get the hell away from me!"
They weren't real and he wasn't an idiot.
Illusions. God damn illusions.
He couldn't feel his chakra. Void. Gone. Empty.
But he knew. He knew they were all illusions.
Only one way to prove it.
So he drove the pen straight into the soft flesh of his thigh.
Naruto just eyed the woman seated calmly in the chair in front and gave the first smile. It was all teeth.
"I was bored."
III
In their next session, the doctor realised something she didn't notice before.
Naruto's body was always slightly turned towards the door no matter what he did. Even then, as he sat on the leather chair, his entire body poised to get up at any time.
He keeps his eyes on the exits at all times. The doctor noted.
She frowned. Flight instincts are hyperactive and exhibits heightened peripheral awareness.
It was odd thing to see. The only time she could recall seeing that kind of body language was when she did a seminar with soldiers and police officers.
It was more than a little curious.
She brought up the boy's parents; something that was quite common in her line of profession. It was usually her patient's first reaction to the topic that was most revealing. It was no different with Uzumaki.
"Where are your parents? In that world you come from."
"Dead."
He didn't seem sad. He didn't seem happy either.
"Can you tell me how?"
"No."
"Do you miss them?"
There was a pause them he answered, "Yes."
A surprisingly honest answer and at least she rule out any apathetic personality.
"Can you tell me about them?"
"Why?" there was a touch of frustration. "They don't mean anything to you."
"But they mean something to you."
He glared at her, rolled his eyes and leaned back into his chair, seemingly content with not answering her. But he did. Very reluctantly and only just a little bit.
"They were heroes."
Adoration.
Respect.
Idolism.
Loneliness.
Orphan complex.
Once again there was no sadness there.
She did note however, that he dug his fingernails into his palm till they bled.
The psychiatrist leaned forward and touched the boy's shoulder in comfort. She knew Naruto didn't like to be touched. She knew, yet she could not explain such a lapse in her professional judgment. Perhaps it was the boy's uncanny ability to ooze his emotions from his pores and contaminate his immediate surroundings.
Perhaps, as a professional she had focused too much on the delusions incubated in Naruto's mind that she ignored the boy's physiological reactions. She had clustered her data and made an assumption in the wrong place.
She paid for it in the end.
Her attempts at impulsive comfort resulted in the immediate snap of her wrist.
III
She did not see Naruto Uzumaki for the next two weeks.
Her left hand was in a hard cast due the fracture in her wrist. She was eyeing the hardened plaster when there was a knock on the door. She stared at the messengers note in disbelief.
Apparently Naruto had tried to escape again.
But this time he got out of the hospital.
It seemed all the other escape attempts were just the boy's way of scoping out the area. Reconnaissance. It was his plan all along and it would have worked.
If he hadn't been hit by a car.
III
She didn't see Naruto for another week and her thoughts were occupied by her other patients. So it was a small surprise when Naruto walked in her office with crutches and a bandaged head.
"You seem to keep getting worse every time you walk in here." The doctor mentioned.
The boy shrugged.
"They said if I didn't come here, they would take away my TV privileges."
She gave a small smile. "Of course."
He eyed the cast on her wrist, a flicker of uncertainty danced behind the blue and the doctor wondered how someone so open could have so many secrets.
"Does it hurt?" he suddenly asked. "Your wrist."
"No." The woman looked down at her hand and answered. "It itches."
There was a tired upturn of his mouth. She wouldn't really call it a smile. It looked far too dry. "So it's worse."
The doctor laughed. "Do your legs hurt? And how's your head?"
Another beat of silence.
"I'm not going to apologize." Naruto suddenly said. For breaking your wrist. For escaping. "Don't touch me again." He added softly like she didn't already know that.
"Your right, it was unprofessional. I'm sorry."
He nodded and then the both sat down and said nothing more for the rest of the session.
III
Two words were scrawled at the bottom of her notes.
Iruka Umino.
Naruto's first visitor. His only visitor.
The psychiatrist knew the boy had no blood relations left but it was little odd that not a single person had come to visit the boy in all his time at the hospital. No friends, no teachers and no school mates.
It had been a few days after she last spoke to Naruto when Mr Umino had come storming into Uzumaki's room and started yelling at the boy. He was a frazzled young man with warm eyes that seemed both calm and fiery. Apparently Mr Umino was very displeased with the escape stunt Naruto had pulled the other week and took the car accident even worse.
Mr Umino was protective, paternal and present. It was more than a little relieving to see young Uzumaki had at least one person who cared.
However, it seemed Naruto didn't share the same opinion.
The boy was reported to have attacked the man. He had thrown a vase at the school teacher's head, barely missing then promptly started to growl at the man, telling him to get out.
"He was your neighbor for a great portion of your childhood and he always left flowers at your bedside." She explained gently in their next session. "Why did you attack him?"
The boy said nothing.
"I want to give you the green light to the doctors. I want you to get better and show them that you're not violent or a danger to society or yourself. So tell me why you attacked a man that had been family to you for half your life?"
Her questions, while gentle were heavy. Naruto seemed to coil with tension and anger at her words.
"That man is not Iruka-sensei." He hissed between his teeth whilst turning away from the doctor.
Naruto stood by the window, his cobalt eyes staring out through the glass at the hazy urban-scape below. His fingers traced away a line of dust from the window pane then rubbed them together till the dirt rolled and fell from his fingers.
Naruto clenched his fist tighter as his eyes watched the rain clouds thicken in the sky. Not a shade of blue left to admire.
With a voice that seemed to wilt, the boy whispered:
"I'm not crazy."
III
It seemed Iruka Umino was not an easily scared man.
He came back. Again and again and again.
If there was anything at all linking those two young men together, it was their shared stubbornness – an intractable, inflexible, bull-headedness that bordered on the ludicrous.
There had been reports of their encounters – Mr Umino's unbending insistence on staying and watching over the blonde-haired boy despite Naruto's cold shoulder and mulish resolve in ignoring the older man.
However, it was Iruka's soft words and gentle nature that seemed to smooth out Naruto's rough edges bit by bit, whether he liked it or not. Eventually the two men could stay in the same room without instigating a cold war. It was a relief to the surrounding staff.
"It seems you've warmed up to Mr Umino." The psychiatrist noted. "You like him."
Naruto scratched the back of his head and answered a little dejectedly. "I never said I didn't. I just said he isn't my Iruka."
The doctor paused for a moment and asked, "Are they similar? Your Iruka and this supposed imposter who shared you his meal every day for the past week?"
Naruto glared at her. "Yes."
"Can I ask what they are?"
There was frustrated growl. "Look, they're just not the same."
The psychiatrist placed her pen down and gave Naruto and direct expression. "Naruto. You realize that this world you live in has people in it that have feelings, fears and dreams?"
"Yeah?"
"Isn't that real enough?"
There was a beat of silence then a heavy sigh from Naruto.
"No."
The psychiatrist smiled sadly then picked up her pen again.
III
Their time was nearly coming to an end.
"The doctors had hoped that your time with me could at least reverse some of your substituted memories. But it seemed that might not happen. There was a seventy percent chance that you would never recover your previous memories – but there are people who will help you acclimatize back into society."
Naruto Uzumaki was once again standing by the window. The pallor of his skin had a healthy flush and his leg had healed up from his car accident.
"We will have one more session after this one and then you'll be discharged."
Naruto nodded but before he left the woman asked suddenly and with some hesitance, "Before you go, could you answer one last question?"
The boy frowned but nodded.
"As a ninja, have you ever killed anyone?"
The boy blinked with visible surprise then a heartbeat later turned away, an air of weariness cocooning him. He didn't answer her.
She knew what he meant.
III
She put away her pad and pen.
This would be their last session and she would make it count.
"So you're a shinobi." She starts.
Naruto Uzumaki's finger's twitched.
"I never asked before," The psychiatrist inquired politely. "But what's it like? I assume it's quite an active job to have."
The boy didn't answer.
"What kind of skills do you need to be one? My son sometimes plays at being a ninja, it nearly always ends with him nursing a grazed knee." The woman laughed softly. "Can't imagine children realize what a dangerous occupation it is. Almost glamorous even, in the way it's been portrayed." The woman paused. "Is that what attracted you to being a shinobi? The glamour?"
Cobalt blue eyes traced the lines in the leather, ignoring the woman in front.
"Or was it the idea of being strong, being a hero or being something worth more than what you were?"
Those eyes moved up and slowly met hers.
"Why are you asking? You think I'm crazy anyway."
"I don't think you're crazy, you just –"
"Have a delusional disorder and false memory syndrome or something. Ya, I heard it the first seven times. It's all just fancy words to say the same thing. You all think I'm crazy."
"No. Crazy is a brutish term and mostly misused. Really, all that marks you as different from the average person is your memory. You've replaced everything that has happened to you with a fantasy. There is a disturbance in what you perceive as the past, present and future."
There was a sigh as the blonde boy crossed his arms. "None of that means anything to me."
"I'm real aren't I?" The doctor finally asked. "I'm here, sitting right in front of you. Can you still say that I'm not real?"
"Lady, you've clearly have no idea how easy it is to make illusions."
"You really think I'm an illusion? You think that leather couch you're sitting on is fake? Is that breeze coming through from the window is made up?"
"No." There was a tense silence then Naruto continued. "You're real."
The psychiatrist was surprised by the admission by smiled in response. "I'm glad to hear that."
"I'm not." Naruto added bluntly. "That only makes this entire thing worse. My memories are mine, and they mean something to me. Real or not. Why does it matter to you what I believe. I just wanna go home."
There was pining there in his voice, an undeniable homesickness. The psychiatrist sat back, her body relaxed and calm which only made Naruto more annoyed and agitated.
"You never answered. What it like being a shinobi?"
"What's it like being a mind doctor?" Naruto replied back with more exhaustion then bite.
"We're talking about you, not me." She countered calmly.
Naruto tilted his head and scrunched his nose. It was almost sweet. "It must be an annoying job. I can barely stand being in my own head let alone someone else's. Did they train you to not get annoyed at your patients?"
The psychiatrist took a moment to absorb his words then answered. "Did they train you to make every word that comes out of your mouth an interrogation?"
"I dunno." The boy shrugged. "I'm not T.I. That sort of stuff goes way over my head."
"T.I?"
"Torture and Interrogation."
There was a beat of silence.
"Torture and Interrogation. That sounds…invasive." The woman added.
"Nah…honestly it's just head tricks and stuff." The boy waved off. "Kinda like what you do miss."
There was another beat of silence.
"I'm surprised you're telling me any of this. It took nearly two week for me to get you to tell me your name."
The boy pulled another comical expression. "Well, you already knew my name. Why the hell did you want me to tell ya something you already knew?"
Children's logic, the doctor noted. And it was usually spot-on.
"Fair enough." She nodded.
"Besides," Naruto leaned back and scratched the back of his neck. "This is our last session isn't it?"
"Yes it is."
He shrugged, "Figured why not. I'm getting outta here anyways."
"Are you nervous about leaving, seeing the world not being what you expect it to be?"
"Lady, it's not the world that scares me. It's the people in it."
The doctor tilted her head. "That's very insightful Naruto…if not a little bleak."
He shrugged again. "It's the truth." He picked his ears. "Besides, you all think I'm living in some fantasy I made up when I went into that coma but your wrong."
"But you no longer believe that this place is fake. That's progress." She added optimistically.
"I get that this place is real, I get that your real but like I said, my memories are mine. Let me keep them."
"So you believe both are real? Is that what you're saying?"
"I dunno. I'm not good with all that thinking stuff but…maybe." Naruto admitted with a tired shrug.
The psychiatrist just nodded. "So what's your game plan when you leave here? The world out there is different."
"I'm going to tackle it like I tackle my missions." Naruto rubbed the back of his neck. "Nothing to it."
The doctor looked at her watch and a feeling of fondness descended on her when she realised their session was over.
"It seems our time is up Naruto. It was certainly a new experience having you as a patient. I hope you do well out there in the world. I truly do."
Naruto suddenly stood and gave a traditional bow. That was another strange, dichotomous part of her patient. He was oddly polite when so much of his character was brutish and uncouth.
"Thank for your time." He said sincerely.
Watching her odd patient leave, something in the woman's gut couldn't leave it at that.
So as Naruto made it for the door, the psychiatrist spoke:
"I think you can still recover, it's just the matter of if you want to." She stood up from behind her desk. "This world has good people in it and I want you to fully appreciate all the gifts it can give you. Being a ninja is a fantasy. A lovely one but it remains just that – a glamorous fantasy. Live in make-belief long enough and your real life will die." She took a step towards him but moved no further. "Come back to us Naruto."
The boy had his back to her as one hand held the door handle. For a long few seconds she thought he would leave without saying anything but suddenly he spoke.
"It's not glamorous." His voice cut through the silence like a hot kunai against wax. "You keep saying that, but being a shinobi is not glamorous. It dirty, exhausting and cold and it nearly always end in heartbreak – for both enemies and comrades." He turned his head to the side, only his soft profile in view. "No one ever wins, no matter how many flags you collect at the end of the war."
Naruto pulled the door till it was only open by a fraction.
"My fantasies are painful miss. I didn't create them to feel important or to 'substitute a need to justify my mundane life' or to cope with a 'cerebral trauma' or whatever. They're just there."
Naruto looked at her with honest certitude.
"Being a shinobi means to provide, promise and protect."
Cerulean blue met the doctor's russet eyes and she could feel palpable electricity swirl behind the boy's sunny façade. A cobalt maelstrom underneath honey coloured lashes. The conviction there burned her.
Maybe, for a stillborn moment, just a fraction of second, she believed him.
"Goodbye, Kurenai-san."
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NOTE: I was enthralled with the idea of Naruto in a world that had no ninjas. No chakra. No demons. No jutsus.
Essentially our world.
I wanted to explore how our Naruto would navigate himself in a place where there are people with the same faces but totally different personalities and occupations. I wanted him to be stuck in a place where child-soldiers are not the norm, killing in not an acceptable occupation and he's suddenly the most dangerous person in the room at any given time just on principle alone.
It's an old concept I dreamed up years ago but I was too young to truly tackle the nuances involved in such a trope, so I waited till I was older and more ready.
I hope you enjoy this with me my fellow readers.
I appreciate any feedback.
Cheers.
CADEL