BOUND
Chapter 07: Sparks

When we went to the hospital the next day, we were escorted to my mother's room by my mother's doctor. He told Yoshino that my mother's condition had not changed as though I couldn't understand him. He said that at this point, there was nothing they could do for her, what with the technology that they had, and the only person who would be able to do anything had left the village more than twenty years ago.

I watched the patterns in the hospital walls as we walked. Yoshino gave my hand measured squeezes every few moments. Finally reaching my mother's room, the doctor opened the door and welcomed us in as though we were home.

"I can go in with you, Ren," Yoshino reminded me.

I shook my head, pulling my hand out of hers. "I can do this."

She smiled at me. "I believe you," she encouraged. "Go ahead. And remember—"

"You'll be right here," I finished. I took small steps into the room and, before entering, I looked over my shoulder at her. "Thank you, okaasan."

Yoshino put her hand on my head and smoothed my hair down. "You're welcome, Ren."

I stepped into the room and the door clicked shut solidly behind me. This time, though, I didn't feel the need to run and get out as fast as I could or even a tiny flicker of anger. I felt an irrational calm.

I clambered into the stool beside the bed and didn't hesitate to stare at my mother's face. She'd paled from the last time I'd seen her. Her condition had definitely not gotten better.

I reached out and pressed my fingers to her neck, in the spot that she'd taught me I would be able to feel her pulse. Sure enough, there was a steady beat ringing out beneath her flesh. I leaned forward in my seat and swept her hair out of her face and moved her hands so that they rested in a neat pile over her stomach. Now, it looked like she was taking a nap instead of in an irreversible sleep.

I tuned into the vibrations and tried to see if the adults were still loitering around the hospital doors. I felt Yoshino shifting back and forth on her feet restlessly, but she was not right in front of the door as I suspected she would be. The doctor had gone, though. That's what mattered.

I flattened my hand out on my mother's forehead. The doctor had told Yoshino that it was a matter of my mother having dangerously used up all her chakra to heal herself that she was in a coma now, but I could see, with my trained medic eyes, that there was more to it than that. Much more to it.

Of course, the doctors and nurses had their medic eyes as well, but there were significant differences to the injuries of regular people and those of ninja. After all, with such different lives, one should expect that ninja and regular people would have different injuries, right?

My mother said that, sure, bruises, cuts, broken bones—those were wounds that both normal people and ninjas had in common, though the ninjas more often not had those injuries to a more critical degree. But ninja sometimes, for their own protection, took those injuries to a higher level. Sometimes they risked their injuries bringing them death in order to save their teammates, and thus their village.

Which was, I concluded, what my mother must have been doing. For my sake.

She might have been, in that moment, lying to me about being in a coma and not being strong enough to wake up—but because she had something she needed to protect. A secret she had to tell me without anyone else listening in on. And I had the key to waking her up. Hopefully.

I allowed my chakra to pulse through my arm, into my hand, and transfer into her. I focused on letting my chakra soak into her brain because I knew if I was able to stimulate her brain activity, it might be able to wake her up. Not only that but being able to feed off of the extra chakra, her body might regain some of its strength.

I found, however, that my chakra levels were not nearly enough to do what I wanted, and within a minute, I was breathing heavily and perspiring as though I'd finished a long, tiring run. I recoiled from my mother and sat back, holding onto the underside of my seat to keep myself steady. It had been, in theory, a good idea.

My head dropped forward, my eyesight going haywire. The room spun, but only for a second. I closed my eyes, wiped my brow, before leaning forward to examine the situation once more.

The solution had to be simple. All the puzzles my mother had handed to me were. But that was because she had warmed me up to each one bit by bit. So what was I supposed to do now when I couldn't have any help, when this puzzle was seemingly random?

"Come on, Mama," I muttered, running a hand through my hair. "I am helpless."

I had murmured that phrase to my mother on many occasions. It was usually my way of saying that I needed another clue before I could sufficiently solve the problem that she or my father had presented me with. All the other times that I'd said it though had not gained a reaction from her much like it had at that moment.

My mother's eyes snapped open, scaring me. I shot back in my seat, almost tipping over, but my mother was fast. She reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me into her before I fell and stifling my scream on her shoulder. Her breathing was raggedy, as though she herself had been scared and was now trying to regain her breath. The heart rate monitor beeped at the same rate at which it had been before she'd woken up.

I pounded my fists against my mother, feeling the impossibility of that moment, or maybe it was the miracle of it. Either way, I knew that it shouldn't have been happening and was emitting the correct reaction to a woman who had technically been dead not a few seconds previous. I tried wriggling out of her hold, tried to scream to get Yoshino's attention, tried to beat her off of me, all of which were ineffective.

"Ren, Ren," she soothed, her voice wispy and tired. "You're okay, you're alive, I knew it."

"Let go," I whined, still trying to shove her away. "Let go let go let go of me please."

"Listen," she said instead, pressing close to my ear so that she wouldn't have to speak any louder than she was. In fact, she lowers her voice even further, so that even the mechanical beep of the heart rate monitor makes it hard for me to hear her. "Listen, listen, Ren. You have to get out of here before it awakens. Before the bond takes a hold of you and you can't get away. You have to get out."

"Let go," I said again.

"Not until you listen," she hissed in a tone that I'd never heard her use before. It shocked me and made me stop resisting. Was this really my mother? Was this really the woman who had birthed and raised me? For all I knew, she could've been possessed by some spirit that was driving her insane. After all, she was telling me that I had to leave, but I was only at the tender age of seven. I was, as I had said before, helpless. And what was it that I had to get away from? My bond with Sasuke? It was hardly anything to be afraid of. Or so I thought.

"Now are you ready to listen?" she asked me after I had stopped struggling, her voice switched back to soothe mode. I tried to turn my head away from her, but her strength was overwhelming, another thing that was odd for someone who just woken out of a coma.

"The bond that you share with Sasuke is not a little thing, Ren," my mother warned. "It is a burden that you will have to bear, and I'm sorry to say that it is yours to bear alone."

My mother released me, but cupped a hand over my mouth so that I couldn't speak. She glanced out through the window in the door to her hospital room nervously, biting her lips. For a second, I could see myself in her heart-shaped face, though her hair was significantly longer than my own and a light, mousy brown instead of a deep chestnut color. And she was, through and through, much more beautiful than I was, could ever be.

"No one will be able to help you, not with us all gone," she said. "I am still here for the moment, but I will not be here long." She managed a smile, and moved her hand off of my mouth to tuck a stray stand of hair behind my ear. It flopped back into place since my hair was still short and choppy from when I had rebelliously cut it off with my kunai one night. My mother sighed mournfully.

"Pay attention," she continued. "I don't have much breath left in me to repeat what I'm about to tell you."

I blinked at her, uncomprehending. I was still strung up over the line that she'd fed me earlier; the one where she told me that she was still there at the moment, but not for long. It was like she wanted to run away from me. Like we were playing some sick game of hide and seek, and since I had found her, she was going to have to disappear forever.

"You need to leave the village and find a way to break this curse that your father's ancestors have to left to you," she told me, oblivious to my confusion. "There are few resources in Konoha for that. After all, our clan has caused more trouble for the village than they care to retell. There is a family—a few families, actually, but one in particular—called the Kannagi that may help you, but you must not let them know you are Kagiru. Do you understand? While you are away, under no circumstances should you tell anyone who you are. Because there are people out there who think of us as murderers," she said in response to my confusion. "And there are people out there who would do anything to hurt you. You must understand the world is not as kind and friendly as the people of Konoha have led you to believe."

"But if I break the bond," I said, "Sasuke will be alone. All of the Uchiha are dead except for him."

"As are all the Kagiru," my mother replied, "except for you. It is because of the Uchiha that this is so. And the Kagiru line will really go extinct if you are to fall prey to the Uchiha-Kagiru bond as well."

"Why is it bad?" For as long as I had known about the bond, I had always fought against it. But I didn't think that it was this bad. My father always told me I was overdramatizing things with the way I reacted to the bond. "This bond that Sasuke and I have, Father always—"

"Your father was wrong," she interrupted, anger flashing through her eyes. "If I had known how extreme this bond was, I would have never—" She stopped as though she didn't know how to put it nicely that she would have never given birth to me. She exhaled deeply, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she took me by the shoulders and said firmly, her voice still a hoarse whisper, "This bond will consume you, Ren," she said, her tone begging me to heed her warnings. "It will take every other relationship that you have created with your closest friends and it will tear them apart. Your life will become nothing but a toy for Sasuke."

"Sasuke doesn't seem like such a bad guy," I cut in.

My mother's eyes grew grave, like she wanted to believe it. "After what has just happened, Sasuke will be ridden with revenge and guilt," she said. "But it's not a matter of what Sasuke is destined to do. It's your life that I'm concerned about. I don't want you to be trapped in a life that you can't control. I don't want you to have a life where your purpose is to live for someone else you may not even care for or haven't chosen to live for. That is what this bond is."

"Ma—"

Suddenly, my mother clutched at her chest and gasped, her head dropping forward.

"Mama!" I cried, reaching for her. She took the front of my shirt, the whites of her eyes riddled with pink veins I hadn't noticed before.

"It's killed your entire family, Ren," she wheezed. "Don't let it ruin you too."

"Mama!" I shouted louder. Her eyelids fluttered haphazardly. I braced her up as best I could as she leaned all her weight against me. Or more like gave up all her weight on me.

"Break the bond," she muttered. "You must break the bond break the bond Ren before it breaks you."

"Wait!" I shrieked as the door slammed open. Nurses and doctors rushed in faster than I could count. They were yelling but I knew that no matter what they did, it wouldn't work. A nurse came up beside me, heaved my mother off of me, laid her back down, and told me, "It's okay honey it's okay. We're here we're going to take care of your mother everything is going to be okay."

"NononoWAIT!" I called to my mother, and someone picked me off of the bed and wrapped me up in arms. The medical personnel thought I was yelling at them though and the head doctor ordered the person holding me to get me out of there now because this was not something that I or any child should see, witness, should ever have to remember or hold in our tiny little brains.

But I kept reaching out for her, even as I was pulled out of the room and the tubes that were stuck in my mother were adjusted and a mask was placed over her mouth to force oxygen down her throat to keep her alive alive instead of in that sick comatose state she had been in earlier. I reached out to her and screamed, "Wait wait wait wait wait!" over and over again until the word started to sound like nothing in my ears, until they closed the door and separated us for good, until I watched as they tried to beat my mother's heart back to life, knowing all the while that none of it would be any use.

"Wait!" was all I could manage, all that would sound from my throat for some reason, like if I shouted it loud enough or obnoxiously enough or in extreme excess than it would be enough enough and my mother really would wait and the doctors would wait and the world would wait and I could finally get my answers, all the answers I needed to know what I would have to do next in order to not end up like her or like my ancestors or like any other Kagiru that had been burdened with what was now confirmed to me as a curse.

I had known it, known it all along that this bond would be nothing, nothing to me, and that it was something that would crush me with its weight. But Sasuke—I couldn't imagine Sasuke taking control of my life the way my mother had said he would.

No, not him. He wouldn't do anything.

It was the bond.

And I knew, at that moment, I would have to break this bond before it killed me.

[+]

My mother was dead within minutes.

[+]

I think that loneliness is the worst feeling in the world. Involuntary loneliness that is. The loneliness of not being understood or having no attachments to anything in the world when that's not what you want.

That is the loneliness I felt after my mother died.

Of course, I suppose the feeling of losing a loved one could one-up the feeling of loneliness, but isn't that the same thing? Because it isn't until you lose a loved one that you feel true loneliness.

That was probably how Sasuke was feeling, I realized, and what my mother had meant by saying that he would want revenge for his family. I definitely wanted revenge on the Uchiha for wiping out my clan, for taking control of my childhood the way they had, however inadvertently. And that night, while I was supposed to be sleeping, I concocted plan.

I was lying on my side, my hands under my pillow, watching with dull eyes as Shikamaru slept soundly beside me. He was facing me, unperturbed as usual. As he should have been.

It was late. Late enough for me to know that I shouldn't have still been awake. Shikamaru's parents had even gone to bed. But I couldn't bring myself to close my eyes, couldn't bring myself to put that day behind me. Not yet anyway. Not until I knew that there was a way for me to get out of there.

And so, as quietly as I could, without waking Shikamaru, I slipped out of the bed and through the shoji, and out into the night.

[+]

In my mind, I see myself running straight through town to the administration building without any kind of hindrance, but I know that wasn't the case. I remember trying to be really sneaky about it, to the point of an annoying over-caution. But everything's kind of going too fast for me to really catch up with, so before I know it, I've snuck into the Hokage's home and am standing before him in a hallway, holding my head up high. This part I remember perfectly.

"Hello, Hokage-sama," I greeted, bowing my head, slightly out of breath and surprised to have been able to catch him so easily.

He puffed on his pipe, looking down his nose at me. He didn't seem surprised that I'm standing before him, so late in the night. It's almost as though he'd anticipated it. "Ren," he replied after a long silence. "What brings you to my home at this ungodly hour?"

"I have a request," I said, trying to honey him up with good manners and words that I had heard my father use. "And I know how busy you are during the day, so I decided to come before you had anything to do. Also, it would have been hard to explain to Yoshino-san why I want to meet with you."

The old man closed his eyes, holding his pipe with his right hand, his left hand behind his back. He nodded slowly, his bald head gleaming in the artificial lights. "I see. And what is this request that is so important and so secretive that you must sneak into the home of the most powerful man in the village and risk all the consequences of getting caught?"

He was trying to psych me out. I bowed my head again, to show that I honestly didn't mean any harm. "It's just that, Hokage-sama," I start, "as you may have heard, my mother passed away this evening." I didn't give him time to respond to that because I didn't want any of his pity. I had enough of that at Shikamaru's home. "Before she passed away, however, she left me with an assignment, of sorts. Some last wishes, if you will, that she ask I perform in her honor."

The smoke of his pipe reached me, the scent of tobacco making me dizzy. The smoke made my eyes water. "Your parents had a will written up," he said. "Any last wishes of hers that she told you are probably written on there. It is nothing that we can't go over in the morning, Ren."

"Sir, I respect your logic," I said, "but I doubt that this is anything she would have been comfortable speaking out loud, or even write down, with anyone else but myself."

He quirked his brow at me, rolling his teeth on the bit of the pipe. "Is it?"

"Yes, Hokage-sama." I still had not lifted my gaze. "And I do not feel comfortable speaking it aloud as well. Not in this place at least. If we could move into more private quarters, I will explain it all to you."

He paused a moment, like he wasn't sure he could trust a seven year old. However, I heard his feet clomp across the wooden floorboards and toward me. He patted his hand on my head, signaling for me to be at ease and follow him. I allowed him to lead the way down the hall and to his office.

He got situated while I stayed standing. Once he clasped his hands together, he nodded for me to go on.

"Being the most powerful man in our village," I said carefully, staying close to the door, "you must know about . . . a certain bond that exists between my clan and the Uchiha."

At the mention of the name, he visibly froze. He blinked, massaged his brow, and leaned forward. "Go on," he muttered.

"It is," I said, "because of that bond that my family lies dead today. My family has, for as long as I know anyway, always been affiliated with the Uchiha and helped them on their rise to power and stayed loyal to them when they lost their power. So, knowing this, I can't say that I'm taking this recent betrayal very well. Especially after all that we've done for them in the past. It makes me wonder: Is this suffering the only thing we'll ever get from our bond with them? Which leads me to what my mother told me in the hospital.

"You must have heard about her having been in a coma for the past few days," I elaborated. "She had used all of her remaining chakra to heal the fatal wounds that had been inflicted on her, which led to her body shutting down. However, she'd also put a mental lock on her brain that was deactivated by a phrase—a phrase that I often used with her when we were training to ask for help. When the lock had been deactivated, she woke up and used her remaining energy to tell me the truth behind the bond and its parasitic effect on the Kagiru. Having the same kind of state of mind about our one-sided relationship with the Uchiha as I did, she asked me—practically begged me—to go out and find a way to break this bond with them, using whatever resources I could find. She even provided me with a few names of Kagiru relations in the Sound Village that I could go to for help.

"What I'm asking you, Hokage-sama," I said before he interrupted me by raising his hand. I shut my mouth immediately, thinking that he knew what I was going to say.

Instead, his reply was this: "There's no need to be so formal or professional, Ren. You are a child. Hard times have befallen you. It's all right to act your age."

I was taken aback by his words. After all that I'd filled him in on, this was the best he could provide me with? "I'm sorry," I answered, bowing my head so that I could hide my glower, "but this isn't the type of situation that I can take lightly. It is of grave importance that I am able to do as my mother asked of me before she died."

The Hokage sighed heavily and rested his chin on his clasped fingers. His pipe had long since stopped smoking, though he hadn't bothered to take it out of his mouth. "Go on, then," he said tiredly.

"What I'm asking you, Hokage-sama," I repeated, "is to let me go out and research this blood oath that has chained my family down for so long and allow me to find a way to break it. It was my mother's dying wish that I do so, and it is also something that I wish to do so that, in the future, if I decide to have a family, my daughters will not be burdened by such chains."

There was a long silence in which all I heard was the thumping of my own heart. I wasn't nervous or anything. It was the only thing I was really conscious of at the moment, the only thing I really tired to focus on. Because I knew that there was one less heart beating that night, and it kind of scared me. I can't remember why.

"Ren," he finally said. "You're only seven years of age. You haven't even graduated from the Academy yet."

"The man responsible for the massacre of my family and the Uchiha was my age when he graduated," I muttered then.

Another silence ensued. I diverted my eyes from the Hokage, waiting for him to dismiss me. That was, after all, the only argument I had really come in with, besides trying to push how much my mother had wanted me to run away and break the bond.

"We'll have to do this quickly, then," the Hokage sighed, pushing his seat back and getting up, "and quietly so as not to arouse the suspicion of the villagers."

My head whirled back to the old man, eyes wide. I was confused. "Do what?" I asked. "What are we doing?"

He smiled a little, maneuvering himself around his desk. He had his hands clasped behind his back classically, his pipe hanging from his lips. "We're going to prepare you to go out on your own," he answered. "Tomorrow, we'll take you in for some testing. We'll have to think of something to tell the Nara of course, but if you pass, you will go through another preparation course the day after, and then you may leave whenever you're ready to go." He took another breath, too deep and too loud to be a relaxing one. "When you leave, a lie will be fed to the villagers explaining your disappearance." He played with a pen on his desk, pushing it to one side and then the other. He leaned his head back and blinked at the ceiling. "Relatives," he muttered more to himself than me, closing his eyes and nodding. "We've found relatives for you to stay with in the next town over."

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, trying to think of something to say. All I could come up with was, "What if I fail the test?"

"Hmm?" he hummed, looking at me. "You'll have to wait until next year to take the test again then."

"This is . . . ," I started. "This is all okay with you?"

He bowed his head, taking the pipe out of his mouth and tapping it against his chin. "No," he said. "No. A seven-year-old should not be alone in a world like this, not even one as talented and blessed with a bloodline limit as you." He stuck his pipe back in his mouth and moved around the desk. He circled me once, then went to the door. "I think you may do well though, Ren. In my day, the Kagiru were the best at surviving. And your mother and aunts must have taught you a thing or two about medical ninjutsu, yes?"

I managed a nod here.

He patted me on the head and smiled before moving on out of the office. "You should get back to the Nara home before they notice that you're gone. Besides, you'll need your rest for tomorrow morning." He regarded me over his shoulder. "Good night, Ren."


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