Fracture
Summary of the chapter:
He lost. He lost too much, there is no comfort that could ever ameliorate this. The fracture is too chasmic, too deep-rooted, it won't heal. He doesn't have the resilience to pretend it ever will. Not anymore.
. . .
Losing is not a one dimensional process, nor is it a mutually exclusive one. It's everything all at once and then it's nothing. It's the blaze of ash fire and the ice of rain water, and it's their fumes when they erase each other. It's jarring. It's overwhelming. Stuck in denial, Naruto was drowning. Overwhelmed with shock, he is burning.
It's like waking from a lifeless dream inside a living nightmare, he is finding out for the second time.
Crouched low against the blankness of his apartment, every section of it is enshrouded in shadows, all the doors are locked, every window is boarded up after the storm—because the curtains have already been pulled, the storm has already hit. The stupor of denial clings to him like the smoke clings to the air after rainforests go up in a blaze of inferno, living somewhere in between the haze and the darkness in the recesses of his mind.
His world has tumbled end to end. Naruto tries, tries to say anything, do anything, move inside this marred reality, imprinted in anguish, filled with shadows and murk to the brim, filled to the brim with loss. But no sound escapes.
It's like someone has sucked all the air out of the room, replacing it with an asphyxiating oblivion and impelling him to breathe in the irremissible absence of it. It's the shock all over again—those few disorienting, split-second moments of flat shockwaves of pain right after a collision.
Naruto closes his shaking hands in the overwhelming flatline of shockwave, but his clenched fists are only holding onto air and emptiness. The ghost of something that used to be, but he is incapable of touching anymore.
The illusion came crashing, collapsing, debris lie all around him. And standing in its place now is the shattered version of reality, shedding off like garments of clothes, like peeling away layers of skin to push to the core.
And the core, he finds out, is a hollow cavern now. The inside of him was already torn, gutted out of him and thrown away, too far away for him to find again. And still, his squirming insides, his fragile organs, his breakable skin, his brittle bones, every line of fiber making up every cell of him, the map of his soul; it's all ripped to shreds, disjointed and in pieces. It's a vacancy that drains him of the precious air he so desperately needs—needed to live.
The wound breaks open once again. A fresh wave of sorrow bleeds over the scarred tissue, stitched together by the glaze of broken dreams and the slow motion end of a warped promise.
All over again. It's like Naruto is getting told his mentor is nothing else but a fractured memory inside a suffocated corpse all over again.
It doesn't feel real.
Confusion and horror war in his mind. Abnormality tugs outward of his skin, everything feels wrong. Different. He feels like an imposter, a stranger barely standing on his own feet, inside his own flinching skin—it has never felt like this. It's not supposed to feel—to be like this.
His world used to have a starting line, an end goal, balanced and whole. But now all that's left of it is a little less than a fracture that knows a rent beginning and no dead end in sight.
And Naruto is trapped in it. In his cracked, lifeless world, with no way out or forward. It's nothing more than a disfigured universe splintered in fragments that he can't see the outside of, but only the inside to. Its overpowering walls grow above him, split the ground wide beneath him, standing so tall he is buried alive at their center.
Trying to stitch broken glass back together was never bound to work. He knows now.
A wave of emotion rocks him to his core.
Jiraiya is dead. And Naruto, due to some sick joke the universe devised at his expense, was left alive instead.
In his shocking absence, all he can do is feel. Feel the crushing aftermath, the frozen web of memories, the char of blame. That's it...that's it.
Right or wrong, black or white, winning or losing, it doesn't matter. Nothing of it matters anymore. Because in the end this was never a victory, it could never be considered as such, no matter the restored destruction, no matter the reinstated casualties, no matter the arc of redemption; and in its wakening defeat he lost everything.
Loss is drowning in the depths of an open ocean of air with floundering lungs imbued in saltwater. It's the ashes strewn across the lifeless stretch of a barren ground as they never stop burning.
And at the hollow core of this tragedy all he sees is gray.
Every tedious, brand new second is worse than the last.
The symbol of his unyielding endeavors lies inside the hidden corner of his drawer, gathering dust and the final brunt of a broken promise.
When he cowered underneath this make-believe pretence, he forgot of its existence entirely, of the missing pressure of it from his exposed forehead. He doesn't know how many people noticed the absence, but Shikamaru was the only one to demand a confrontation about it.
Naruto has not been able to wear his hitai-ate ever since Jiraiya's death, ever since the clash with Pain.
The involute meaning it bespeaks, the torturing pledge it represents—nothing will erase it, not even bleeding to death will.
But now the phantom weight of it is killing him.
Naruto is a little more than a skeleton held together by mass, by the glue of flesh and bones.
He can't keep track of the time as it slips between his fingertips. And whatever new information he comes in contact with, in the next minute it fades away, his brain swiftly rids itself of it. Life is scattered pieces of motions frozen in time he can't think around of.
The only ever present constant is his mentor, now rotting into his death. The macabre thought wastes away in the forefront of his mind.
His appetite is inexistent. Sakura is trying, she keeps on trying, doting on him, trying to take care of him in the way a sister, a mother would.
He can almost see her helplessness. But Naruto is blinded by his own.
And once again, he's pushing away the plate. Pushing away the offer of comfort.
He lost. He lost too much, there is no comfort that could ever ameliorate this. The fracture is too chasmic, too deep-rooted, it won't heal. He doesn't have the resilience to pretend it ever will. Not anymore.
He steps into the tub with exertion, his body weight in exhaustion. Naruto feels stained, marked by blood only he can see. It's everywhere. It won't leave.
Ice has turned to embers.
Nimble, trembling fingers reach forward, and without a flash of hesitation he turns the handle, dragging it in the opposite setting.
A blaze of rain cascades upon him, burning his skin. He doesn't step away from it.
In a distant corner of his frazzled brain he thinks this might be self-inflicted punishment, but he doesn't have the strength to dwell on it as his body starts turning a rash red hue. His arms, his nape, his upper back, his chest, his calves, everywhere the water drags, it sears.
He doesn't try to scratch off the invisible streaks of crimson anymore. It's useless, he already knows. It would still be there when he opens his eyes and gasps awake at fears lurking in the shadows, reminding him of a loss so profound he can taste the remains in the back of his throat.
Underneath the blaze, his features crumple; a blister that chokes him from within, and he barely has the sense to breathe underneath the abysmal weight of it—because the storm has already hit, remember? He is forced to stand inside the eye of it now, getting washed away in the emptiness of its violent gray.
"...please." He was muttering again and again, wearing barefaced fear and translucent dread, burrowed into himself and shaking into his flesh. With death interwoven into the very fabric of his soul, permeating, staining it. "...please."
Across from him Kakashi was only a silhouette, a flat and unmoving line.
When he looked at him, all Naruto saw was Jiraiya. How he would have lied motionless, drained. How he couldn't will his eyelids open any longer. The strength that consumed him as he took that last breath—
.
.
.
Naruto startles. Badly. He is wheezing for air he can't find, stuck in the shadow of a living memory. The beating of his heart slamming down across his temples and inside the roof of his mouth drowns the suffocation of his muted scream in the sweat and tear stained sheets.
He can't hear the urgent tone with which his name is being called, Kiba's hand on his shaking back steading him.
All Naruto sees behind the dark skin of his eyelids is Jiraiya's lifeless body plunging inside an endless body of water slated in gray.
He can't—isn't allowed to feel anything else around his loss.
The persistent knocking at his door pulls him from his weakened conscious—he wasn't sleeping, he can't, the release of slumber is too kind, too good to be, it's a luxury Naruto isn't allowed. Not when his thoughts devour, consume whatever shadow is left of him, leaving behind a tangle of memories that come back in fragmented echoes and flashbacks.
Whoever is on the other side has not apparently gotten the memo that he is currently unavailable. Sakura and Kiba are the only ones who get in and out, and even their visits are scant. He's starting to push them away, now.
On the other side he finds Sai. There is but a beat of delay as the other teen takes in his appearance, he must look worse than he imagined.
Naruto distantly wonders how he might be wearing loss. If it shows, if it has eaten through his outside the way he can feel it chewing through the soft inside of his bones.
After a smidgen more of hesitation, Sai seems to find his footing and seemingly look past the shell his teammate has molded into.
"You missed every mission this week."
Wordlessly, Naruto closes the door in his face.
In the darkness all he sees is his anxious, overzealous ambitions taking shape, gaining form underneath his driven passion and the interminable hours of strain and effort he put in, and then losing it. Losing it all in the missed beat of a heart that ceased to pulse. Getting erased with the single-handed drive of unsounded hatred, the split-second action of putting an end to a good man's life.
This is unparalleled and abnormal, an event this calamitous shouldn't be allowed to exist. It feels too surreal, something that shouldn't have even been contemplated in the sheer possibility of a thought. He put a rift between himself and the world for this very reason, alienating himself from a reality he couldn't believe in, too unreal to exist.
How can Naruto be living when the first grasp of family he was latching to isn't anymore? How can he be living in this reality, in this world still, when it already shattered to infinitesimal shards?
It can't be.
They were supposed to keep traveling the world together, he has so much to see, so much to learn still, Jiraiya was supposed to teach him everything he knew. He had given him his word he would. He had promised. And Naruto had naively put every ounce of trust he possessed in his word, Naruto put every last bit of himself into this trust.
Because he wasn't alone anymore.
Jiraiya took him under his wing, offered to train him, until one day he would be ready. Until one day Jiraiya would be sitting at the front row to see him crowning his lifelong dream, see him become Hokage, knowing it was because of him too, because he taught Naruto how to be, how to carry on, how to live—he taught him everything.
And it wasn't enough in the end.
How could this happen? Why did no one prevent it? How could anyone let it happen?
Being left behind was never contemplated, he can only think, as he stands alone once more. With blame knotting in his chest and paralyzing him, searing him to his hollow core, unable to do anything more but mourning the loss of a life, and mourning a life that could have been.
This was how it ended. An unforeseen conclusion that was never expected in the grand scheme of things, that was never supposed to happen—how did it happen?
How could it be that one of the strongest people he knew lost a fight, lost his life to it? It's impossible. Naruto is incapable of answering.
There's breakage beating in his eardrums. Naruto faintly sees the straight lines of hardwood, feels them beneath his hot temple and cheek and jaw, a scratching friction against soft tissue and bone. He can't stand. His legs refuse to carry him, to support his weight any longer. He doesn't know how he got here, doesn't know if it's his own mind playing games on him, doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know how is he still alive. How is he breathing still?
Did he close his fingers around it? Was it too soon? Did the glass shatter in his palm? Was it his fault—has it been his fault since the beginning? Could he have stopped it?
Naruto is this, now, he is a shard of his glass world, cracked and spineless, with a soul that can never be stitched whole again.
With effort, he strains himself past the limit, undiscerningly reaching with his trembling fingers, nails digging down. He is looking for something—and realizes with benumbed shock that is over two months old, two months dead—...he has nothing left to hold on to.
All he finds is the void of what once was. A fist of ashes around an extinguished fire, left to burn and burn and burn—but there is none left anymore; there is nothing left.
The memory of him lingers like billowing smoke out of the wasted ashes, in the corners of his mind it's crisp, besmirched. That last afternoon, eating a meal together, talking, he was well, he was alive, his reassuring smile—
This...cannot be happening.
It can't.
Is he not coming back?
Because—because life is not supposed to work like this, it's not supposed to be a perpetual spiral of ruthlessness. Naruto has lost his parents already, he never truly had a place to call home, never really had someone who cared for him unconditionally, who put up with his antics and ambitions and dreams and fears and anger and bullshit, and never wanted him any less for it.
But with Jiraiya, he had, he did, he finally, finally found it. A home. Care in its unconditional form. Knowing what it meant to have parents. What it meant to be part of a family.
Only to be losing it all over again now. Why was he given all he had ever wanted and needed out of life, only for everything to be taken away from him now? It's not—it's not supposed to just end like this...right?
The news comes back over and over again in his mind, like the singe of acid, a black and white vision wrapped around a needle of pain. Despite the summer heat, the glacial cold of her office seeping into his skin, Tsunade's dull eyes swimming in an endless ocean of gray that he is drowning in now, too. He was pleading with himself then, with his eyes as he searched her gaze, for it to not be true, for her to tell him it was all a lie, for her to take everything back. But she couldn't even stand the sight of him.
On the floor of his newly restored apartment Naruto is writhing, begging, begging. He has to come back. He can't just vanish this way. It doesn't work like this.
He keeps crawling, struggles through it, and he is swallowing down the saltwater filling his throat, gnarling his vision, and tries to reach for something in the distance that doesn't exist now. Weak and malnourished, his body gives out underneath him. It tastes like the slaughter of defeat all over again.
"...s-se-nninh..." In the flood of encompassing darkness he attempts to call out the moniker, the same one Jiraiya always told Naruto he detested, but in the end grew irremediably fond of—Naruto recalls it, the blotched memory, the glare of the sun sinking down the blaze of the afternoon, the crack of a joke, his expression as he called out to him, the comforting weight of his warm palm on his shoulder as he walked away from him one last time—but all that comes out is a strangled version of it stifled against the floorboards.
...it can't be real.
Jiraiya can't...be gone. He has to come back, he has to. Because Naruto is right here...Naruto is still here, waiting, and waiting, and waiting for him.
