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These Memories:
A Series About Friendship and Forgetfulness

: Before all things / I had a name / I think it left me long ago / Why can't I remember / Today I have another chance / to step out / I will not rest / until I know / what it all means / I will not give in / until I have you back / where you belong / I will not stop / because this is who I am / Maybe in time / these memories will fade away :

Because This Is Who I Am
Nothing is more painful than remembering who you are.
These Memories; Part XIV

"And you don't remember how you got these?" The woman indicated his neck and the bruises again.

He scowled. "If I did, I would have told you."

"Hmm." She frowned. "What do you remember?"

He spared a glance for the boy he knew to be Chouji. There were still tear trails lingering on Chouji's face, and because he felt guilty for causing them, he tried to remember something again, however useless he knew it to be.

Nothing came except the expected headache, so he shook his head. "Nothing."

"Are you sure?" The black-haired woman touched two light fingers to his forehead. "Close your eyes and try again."

He did.

There was an amazing flash of pain; his eyes flew open in panic, but instead of seeing the room, he saw images, scraps of scenes and things he hadn't remembered before.

The falling branch—being swept downriver and finally hitting his head against a rock and the men who'd found him and taken his jacket and the girl who'd died after two days and walking in the streets and seeing Chouji and the lightning that had danced laughing over his face—

"Gyaaah!"

Caught in a haze of memories, he didn't feel the tell-tale throbbing behind his ear again or the blue sparks snapping across his face. Dimly, he heard someone yell to "go get Tsunade-sama!" before those fingers touched his face again. Instead of reversing the effects, the electricity only worsened as what had to be memories flashed by faster in a whirlwind of sound and color, stripping him of who he wasn't and showing him who was all in something too fast to comprehend.

Shikamaru blacked out.