Remember

There are little things strewn throughout his apartment that he can't remember putting there, and things that ought to be there that aren't, though he can't remember what should be filling those empty spaces. Of course, his apartment had always been messy. As cramped as it was he'd managed to stuff it full with stacks of magazines he didn't read, blank scrolls for homework he hadn't done, empty ramen cups, and worn dirty clothes lying in orange little heaps over every available surface among countless of other useless little trinkets he's picked up through the years.

One day in a drawer in his desk he finds a hitai-ate. There is a horizontal line cut into the metal plate, marring the symbol of his Village. It isn't his. The only forehead protector he has ever had was the one Iruka-sensei had given him. The dark blue cloth of this scarred hitai-ate is not as soft and worn, and besides the slash across the symbol representing Konoha the metal plate is new and shiny, unlike his, which is dulled with age. He likes his hitai-ate, likes the way the cloth is going threadbare and how sunlight doesn't bounce off it. It had been Iruka-sensei's, and so he treasures it.

He looks at the hitai-ate for a long time before putting it back in the drawer.

One day when on a rare whim he cleans his night table of its clutter underneath all of the general knickknacks he finds a framed picture. It is the one of his Team, of course, how could he forget that? Sakura-chan is standing in the middle, hair long (and why did she cut it again? He knows it was because of something that happened during the Chunin Exams but for some reason those memories is hazy. Lots of things in his mind are hazy. He can barely remember his first C mission. The day he and Sakura-chan are introduced to Kakashi-sensei is a blur) and smile bright, Kakashi-sensei standing behind her, his mask stretching across his smile. One of his hands was ruffling his blond hair. In the picture he was glaring to the side, in Sakura-chan's direction, but he is glaring past her, that is visible. But where his glare is directed someone has torn a corner out of the picture. Kakashi-sensei's other hand is ruffling someone else's hair but the tear has taken away that person completely.

When had that happened? Who was he glaring at? Whose hair was Kakashi-sensei ruffling?

He didn't know.

When he meets up each day with his Team (just him, Sakura-chan, and Kakashi-sensei. It is odd to have only two Genin on your Team, he knows, but he can't remember why there weren't three of them. But there must be a reasonable explanation) there feels like there is something missing. Sakura-chan smiles at him, almost nervously, and he wonders if she's always been like this around him, so careful and quietly pitying. Hadn't she been angrier at him before? Hadn't there been more outbursts? More punching? More yelling? Less uncomfortable smiles and sad eyes? He can't remember. It's all a blur.

Kakashi-sensei will act normal though, yet there is still something off about him, something tense, something fake, as if he's an actor with stage-fright, rattling of his lines desperately as the lights glare into his eyes and the audience looks on.

And there is something missing. But he can't put his finger on it. Because it's all a blur.

Iruka-sensei is like Kakashi-sensei too, all tense shoulders and too loud laughter and a shifty guilty lying look to his eyes.

When he tells him stories about the day's missions there feels like there is something missing. There is something he ought to be complaining about that isn't how boring the missions are, how degrading and stupid they are. There feels like there ought to be something (someone) else to complain about.

It's all a blur.

When he sleeps he has strange vague dreams about far-off figures with dark hair and pale skin. Whoever it is he's just far away enough in the darkness that he can't make out his face, can't make out whatever that symbol on his back is. But whoever it is the sight of him makes something within him ache horribly and after awhile he grows to hate sleeping and draws out the day for as long as he can, makes up excuses to keep him away from the bed and keep his eyes open because every time he closed them the person in the distance would flash before his eyes and it would feel like someone had just sucker punched him in the gut.

After a few months the aching just grows and grows, like a decaying tooth but worse, and he starts to wonder where his motivation had gone. He remembers having drive, ambition, freaking spirit. Somewhere along the way that vanished. He dreams about becoming the Hokage though. Yet that isn't the same. He dreams about becoming Hokage with a fevered urgency, but…

He remembers having something he was willing to die for.

He doesn't know what (who) that was but for something reason it's (he's) gone now.

He knows that these memory gaps are definitely not good, not good at all, he could have some sort of serious head injury, but he doesn't go to the hospital (they'd just throw him out on his ass and call him a Demon anyway) because he once broached the subject with Sakura-chan. She had looked at him with wide eyes, pupils swimming in two pools of brilliant green, face pale and visage stricken, not even breathing. And then the next moment she had broken out into uncontrollable sobs, her face a miserable grimace as hot tears spilled down her face.

He had not dared bring it up once ever since.

His friends knew something, Kakashi-sensei, Sakura-chan, and Iruka-sensei knew something and he didn't. They knew why there was a hitai-ate with a scar in his drawer, they knew why his picture was torn, why his dreams were nightmares, his memory a blur, and his heart a constant ache.

He can't though. He can't remember ever having something to complain about (my rival), something to give him motivation (my best friend), and something to die for (my precious person). He can't remember and it aches.

(Sasuke)

Okay, imagine that after Sasuke defects Danzo decides it would be for the better if the Jinchuurki didn't have fond memories of a traitor, and so using his political power and ROOT he gets Naruto's memory wiped and forces a law for everyone not to speak of the Uchiha in Naruto's presence.