Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or I wouldn't need a job to live.

A/N: Seinen, more realistic take on Naruto. Deeps into psychological trauma of a neglected child with a "demon" inside their body and mind, merged Naruto Kurama, trauma of being treated like a monster, multiple personality disorder, violence issues, paranoia.

Pretty dark fiction, if you want a shounen where Naruto is a gentle Jesus boy who forgives everyone who killed his loved ones and doesn't kill anyone, please look for something else.

I'm in a pretty dark mood while writing this, so I won't really write anything bright and funny.

Also, shadows are gonna play a huge part in this story. And I'll do my best to write good scenes of mental disorder, terror and denial.

Sasuke also gets the same treatment as Naruto, but well…I won't spoil it. Just know that there will be something wrong with Sasuke. The Uchiha massacre happens later than in the original because Naruto and Sasuke need to have a bond for this to work.

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Chapter 1

"Monster!"

"It's that kid, right?"

"Yeah it's him. Let's get away from here."

"Sure. Don't wanna stay close to such a monster."

"He's not even behaving like a human. I bet the demon talks to him."

"Monster!"

"Look, he smells things like a dog."

"Gross!"

"Monster!"

"Mummy, can I play with him?"

"No dear. Don't go anywhere near him. He's dangerous."

"But he's a kid, just like me, right?"

"He's not like you. Don't play with him. Something bad could happen!"

"Okay, mom…"

"Good kid."

"MONSTER!"

Naruto felt it. This feeling. Everyone was looking at him like he was going to kill them. Nobody took care of him. He was angry, because these kids had parents while he didn't. And these kids wanted to play with him, but their parents kept them from it.

He could feel the anger and the unease grow inside him. He didn't know how to name it. Nobody had taught him how to speak. Nobody had taught him how to write. He only knew the meaning of a few words he heard often. And most people said very little in his presence. The word he knew best, the only word he could really understand. This word was…

"Monster…"

'Monster…coming' he thought before turning his back to the child and their mother. He looked at his shadow. Oh, he knew it was gonna happen. Again. Usually it didn't happen in public. Only when he was in a place where there were no witnesses. But it was too strong now. He couldn't keep it in. It wanted to get out. No, it needed to get out.

Two red dots appeared in his shadow, where his eyes were supposed to be.

He felt terror taking over his body as the dots seemed directed at him. It was as if his shadow was looking back at him. He ran away in the opposite direction, but his shadow followed him. There was no way to get rid of his shadow, and even he knew it, because everything physical had a shadow. But he tried to hide. He went in a bright place, but his shadow looked at him from underneath.

He hastily ran again, to a dark spot this time. Oh, it was better. He couldn't see his shadow in the dark. But soon he realized that it was like embracing shadows themselves. And that's when the two red dots looked at him again. They were right in front of him.

He screamed. A scream of sheer terror. He closed his eyes, got out of the dark place, still screaming as the red dots didn't want to leave him alone, appearing even in his mind. He was holding his head while running, shaking it to try and chase away the red dots, but they didn't want to leave him alone.

Suddenly, he hit something hard and fell backwards, losing consciousness.

.

How beautiful it was. He felt relaxed, now that the red dots had stopped staring at him from his shadow and in his mind. But soon he realized that he was in a strange place. It was red and pink, wet. He felt uneasy.

'Where me?' he asked himself.

He walked and then started running. At the end of one of the corridors, he found a titanic cage.

'What in?'

Looking around, he found that the path he had just taken to come here had disappeared. The walls were getting closer, pushing him towards the cage. He turned around to face the monument and looked inside. And that's when he understood.

Two red dots appeared in the back of the prison. In an instant, the dots were right in front of him. They were big. And they were not dots. These were…gigantic, red eyes with vertical pupils in the center. Under the eyes, a giant mouth was revealed. The lips hidden by the shadows revealed fangs bigger than Naruto. A lot of fangs. And then, the mouth started to move.

"Hello, my jailer…so, you finally deign coming down here to see what's inside? Don't back off, runt. Look at me, look at what is sealed inside you. Look at who I am!"

The creature closed the last meters that separated it from the bars of its cell. It was a giant kind of fox with dark patterns around its eyes and mouth. Its fur was dark orange. Its blow was powerful and hot. It was…terrifying.

"I am the Nine-Tailed Fox, kid. I've destroyed a good chunk of your pitiful village five years ago. Your folk wanted to lock me up again after I had just been freed of decades of imprisonment, so I was trying to destroy the village, so that it couldn't lock me up once more. And these fucking humans…they managed to do it again! Here I am, talking to a kid who doesn't even know how to speak properly, while I should be out there, smelling the grass, the trees, feeling the wind on my fur!"

"You…me…monsters?" asked Naruto, terrified but also feeling connected to this creature who was treated like a monster, just like him.

"For your village, yes. We are monsters. Because we are powerful. Dangerous. Because they can't control us. Seeing as you can't speak normally, I guess you've never been educated, have you?"

At the kid's incomprehension, the Kyuubi was proven right.

"Then I'll make you an offer, kid. Release me from that prison, let me inside your body. Why should you do that? Because I will help you. You will learn to speak. You will learn to defend yourself from bad people. And the best part…you won't have to fear your shadow anymore."

"You…shadow…me?"

"Not exactly, but I can make you see me in your mind, and if your eyes are open, it just shows in your shadow. Or in the shadows if you can't see yours. If you don't let me inside your body, if you don't release me from this cage, you'll be chased forever by these horrific shadows."

"You…cage…in…me…me…cage…in…shadow…" realized the blond boy.

"You could say that, yes. So, if you release me from my jail in this cage and let me inside you, I will release you from your torments and stop making you piss your pants through permanent nightmare visions. Like that we're both happy and you can sleep better, while you won't ever have to fear anyone or anything, because with my power, you'll be invincible."

"You…here…so you…lost?"

"I was sealed. But there's no one left in this village who can do this. So you will be invincible if you accept me inside you."

"I…strong…with you?"

"More than strong. The strongest."

"Strong and…monster?"

"Everyone already treats you like one, kid. Time to accept becoming a real monster, no? They will stop being mean towards you if you become strong. And with me, you will become strong. The strong are respected, even if they're monsters."

"Me…okay…you and me…one monster."

"Then, come closer. Put your hand between the bars so that I can fuse with you."

Naruto hesitated, still terrorized, but did as he was told. The fox was the first thing to talk to him directly. Everyone else avoided him. At least, this monster knew how it felt to be treated like one, and it accepted Naruto. It even wanted to be one with him. Sure, it was a terrifying idea, but Naruto didn't want to be treated like he was for his whole life. So he close the distance and extended his hand, getting it between the bars. It was sucked in the darkness of the cell and then…

…Then he was bitten. He felt a monstrous pain as the fangs crushed his arm, and suddenly a tongue licked the wound and something was sucked into him.

He felt pain and power as, pulling back his shoulder, he saw his left arm regrow from the shoulder. Instead of his normal arm, he now had a dark arm. It looked like an arm made of shadows, but it was solid. And the hand was clawed.

Suddenly, the world vanished around him. Everything started crumbling and spinning, giving him nausea. And in an instant, everything disappeared…

.

He woke up with a jolt. He sitting was on the pavement of the street and people was passing by, avoiding him. He remembered suddenly of the talk and his arm crushed. He looked at his arm. It looked normal. He sighed. Not for long though, as he felt his arm being crushed once more, but in reality this time. And the pain came back. Just like the feeling of something being sucked inside his body from his stomach. It went to his left arm and saw the missing arm – all the blood around showing it had really happened physically – and he watched it regrowing as a shadow arm with claws. Of course he had been crying in pain during the whole process, drawing much unwanted attention.

The people around him, they were watching the scene without helping. They were looking at a monster losing an arm and growing a new one made of shadows with monstrous claws at the extremity.

Looking at the people looking at him like a monster, Naruto felt sad and angry again. He felt it. Looking at his shadow, he saw red eyes open. But now they weren't looking at him. They were looking at the people treating him like a monster. And they wanted blood.

"Monster… Monster. Monster! MONSTER!"

"AAAAAAAAARGH!" cried Naruto, feeling his mind being pushed by another. A strong one.

The eyes in the shadow seemed more oppressive.

Suddenly, everything became a blur. He watched blood splattered everywhere. He watched limbs fall to the ground. He watched heads fall to the ground, some with the eyes missing. This was the best. Without their eyes, they couldn't look at him like he was a monster. He could feel peace when he felt no one looking at him. It was finally peaceful.

.

He woke up once more, looking at the sky. Was that just a dream? Was everything just his imagination?

He lifted himself into a sitting position. It hadn't been a dream. It was a nightmare. And it was real. He was sitting in the middle of the street, surrounded by dismembered corpses. Civilians and ninjas alike, everyone was dead, missing one or more limbs, and in particular their eyes.

He looked at his shadow.

"Yes, I did it. And yes, I did inside your body. You wanted them to stop looking at you like a monster, didn't you? Now they can't look at you anymore. It's peaceful without those annoying gazes. Isn't it?"

"Yes…no look like me monster…better…"

He felt something hit him in the back of the neck and he fell unconscious.

.

"Yes, Hokage-sama. The Kyuubi seems to have found a way to take possession of his body."

"Then it is a serious issue. We cannot let it kill people as he pleases. We cannot let the Bijuu take possession of him as it pleases either. We must find a way to contain it or to free it far away from Konoha."

As the Ninetails understood it was going to be troublesome because they would try to seal it back, it decided to merge completely with its host.

.

"Naruto has made great progress in speech, Hokage-sama, without anyone teaching him," said a doctor. "He speaks like an adult. Well, he's still acting as a special kid, but he's made great progress intellectually speaking. I fear something that has never happened just did, Lord Third."

"The Bijuu had merged with its host…" replied an old man's voice. "Fascinating…I didn't think it was possible…Hound, keep him under permanent watch, in case he behaves violently. I want three jounin constantly ready to stop him if he starts lashing out."

"It will be done, Hokage-sama," answered a man's voice stifled by a mask.

"Dismissed."

They were gonna be under constant surveillance. They needed to behave if they didn't want to be restrained. This child's body was too weak to draw the full power of the Nine-Tailed Fox. It was like being a puppy all over again. They were strong, but compared with three experienced ninjas acknowledged by the Hokage, they would be in trouble. They should keep a low profile.

"Then let's live on the outskirts of the village. We'll be able to hunt our food. There will be less people to look at us like monsters," said the monster's voice in their mind.

"Yes, Kurama. We'll do that," answered Naruto without a sound.

.

Naruto went to live near the walls of Konoha, hunting their own food since the people didn't want to have anything to do with them. They survived like that, with little human contact, until they reached their nine years old.

One day, Naruto went to the park near the academy to find kids of ninja, since the ninja population seemed less afraid of them than the civilians. They met another child, a child with dark hair and eyes. This child looked at them in the eyes without fear. He even looked at their shadow's red eyes and didn't freak out.

"Are you an Uchiha?" asked the boy.

"No, why do you ask?"

"Because your shadow looks at me with red eyes, just like our Sharingan."

"Are you not afraid?" asked Naruto.

"Why? My entire family's got red eyes. They just have them in their actual eyes, not in their shadow."

"If you're not afraid of me, do you want to play with me?"

"My mom wants me to stay away from you, but I don't understand. You're not gonna hurt me, right?"

"No. As long as you don't hurt me or look at me like I'm a monster."

"Let's play then.

"Okay."

They played children's games. At some point, someone yelled.

"Sasuke-kun! Please stop playing with that child! It's dangerous!" said a woman with red eyes.

She saw the red eyes in Naruto's shadow and put a hand over her mouth, as if the shadow was gonna devour her child.

Sasuke lost his focus because of his mother and got too close to Naruto. The boy felt like his personal space was intruded and headbutted the dark haired boy in reflex. He ran away while Sasuke fell on his butt, unable to understand why he had been hit.

"I told you it was dangerous, Sasuke-kun! Why don't you ever listen to me?"

"But…we were playing normally until…until you came and treated him like a monster…"

"He is not normal, Sasuke-kun! You can't play with someone who can hurt you anytime!"

"That's not fair, mummy! He's got no parents, no friends, everyone treats him like a monster! And he's got red eyes like us, they just are in his shadow instead of his real eyes, so maybe he's kind of from our family?"

"It has nothing to do with the Sharingan, Sasuke-kun! These are malevolent eyes! Don't look at them or something bad can happen to you!"

She refused to hear her kid's protest and lead him back home.

.

Naruto was back to his place, a small flat in a deserted building that didn't look very safe. They were trying to cool down. They were playing like normal children with that dark haired boy, Sasuke. But then the child's mom had appeared and ruined everything. Then the boy had come too close to him, and Naruto had reacted without thinking, headbutting him. Now the boy must be hating him…

"That's not fair! Why does everyone else have what I don't have? Parents, friends, a home… All I have is this crumbling flat in a building that might collapse anytime and food I find by myself in the woods!"

"That's our curse, but in compensation, we're powerful. I can teach you a spell, if you want. You will feel less lonely with this spell."

"Really? What's this spell?"

"Shadow Duplicate. You can create a clone with this spell and it will do whatever you want."

"Cool! Show me!"

Kurama taught Naruto how to use this spell and was satisfied with the results. Well, since they were one, the kid had just been able to feel the process of creating the duplicate, so it was easy for him to juts copy it.

A clone rose from his shadow. It was creepy, made of shadows, like their left arm, and also solid.

"Can you talk?" asked Naruto.

"I can," answered the duplicate.

"Woaaah…amazing…"

.

At the academy, Sasuke met again with Naruto. They were ten years old. Naruto explained him why they had headbutted him, that he was inside his personal space and that it was a reflex, he hadn't wanted to hurt him. The boy had understood and they had bonded with each other.

Naruto was very talented with the transformation technique taught at the academy, having refined it to the point that the transformation was complete, physical, you could feel it and it also affected their voice. That's how they were able to transform into a girl, feeling like one – even working as one internally – and talking with a female voice.

They had no talent for the academy clone technique, though. But they didn't even need it as they had their own technique.

The last skill taught in the academy, Substitution, was basic yet effective. It allowed them to swap places with an inanimate object.

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Naruto and Sasuke were friends and Naruto followed Sasuke in the shadows everyday to ensure he got back home safely.

One day, when they were eleven, Naruto had a bad feeling. He followed Sasuke inside the Uchiha compound, something he'd never done before. He saw the corpses of the whole clan lying on the ground. He rushed inside Sasuke's house, lead by the boy's smell, and found him in the middle of the main room. His parents were lying on the ground, dead.

The boy's gaze was empty. He looked unconscious, as if his mind had left his body. His eyes were red.

"Sasuke! Who did that? Hey! Sasuke! Who did that? Are you with me?" tried Naruto, without success.

As they tried to awaken their friend from his trauma, they heard light footsteps approaching. They knew that if someone saw them here, they would frame them for the massacre. So they looked at the closest corpse and transformed into the person it had been, before leaving with said corpse to be carried by a Shadow Duplicate.

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"We found the boy in the middle of his house and I saw his big brother, Itachi Uchiha, leave the house when we arrived. He must have fled when he heard us coming. I believe Itachi Uchiha killed his whole family before leaving the village to avoid the consequences of his actions. I think the motive was to put an end to the rising protests of the clan against their political situation as well as the recent watch they were placed under, Hokage-sama," said an ANBU.

"Thank you for your detailed report, Hound," replied the village leader. "Track him down as far as you can and I am going to prepare an entry for him as a missing ninja in case you can't stop him. Dismissed!"

.

At the outskirts of the woods, Naruto had used a very masterful combination of Substitution and untransforming, reappearing several tens of meters away from the point where they had vanished from in their Naruto body, not leaving any trace of their embodiment. Meanwhile, their Shadow Duplicate carried the body far away and made it disappear.

'Sorry, Sasuke, but I couldn't be framed for a crime I didn't commit,' thought Naruto. 'Better send them on a false lead than getting caught near the corpses of your whole clan.'

.

Naruto went to see Sasuke everyday at the hospital, trying to comfort him. They wouldn't let their only friend alone after the shock of what had happened to his family. They were certain he had only killed the person who had slaughtered the clan.

One night, Naruto was sitting on the balcony, the closest place from Sasuke they could come to. Suddenly, the boy turned his head towards them and their eyes changed. The red irises were the same, but instead of black komas around the pupil, there were three black pointy branches linked in the center by the pupil.

'His eyes have changed," thought Naruto.

Indeed, Sasuke's eyes had changed. He had awakened the Mangekyou Sharingan by killing whoever had massacred his clan.

.

Sasuke saw it for the ten thousandth time. Everyone was dead. Itachi was standing in front of their parents' corpses. His eyes had three pointy branches instead of the komas they used to have. He told him he had killed their clan to test his power and showed him an illusion of the massacre he'd perpetrated. Then, Sasuke charged at him and stabbed his brother with his own kunai. The man chuckled mockingly and slapped him before leaving through the door.

That's all he remembered when he woke up and saw Naruto sitting on the balcony of the hospital room he was in.

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A/N: Yes, there are changes from canon. And everything will be put together to keep a coherent story. I think I'm going to go for an original story rather than sticking with the overdone vanilla events, even though I'll keep some key events but maybe the circumstances will change.

Naruto and Sasuke won't be the first ninjas you'll read about in this story that have massive mental scars. But they will be the main characters.

To be honest I've hesitated between making Naruto make a Shadow Duplicate and change it into Sasuke after the real one was killed by Itachi and fake the boy's survival, while Naruto would be in denial themselves, believing the Duplicate was really Sasuke and making it follow Sasuke's life as if it were really him.

But I thought it'd be easier and offer more development to make it so that Itachi offered Sasuke the power of the Mangekyou Sharingan by hypnotizing him to kill him, and then Naruto who needed an escape without showing who they were made it look like Itachi had escaped, and Sasuke in his denial just replaced Itachi's death by his escape he saw when Naruto left, persuading himself that his brother had left and confirming the official version.

You don't know how far one's mind can go to deny reality or to accept what is said to be the truth by the social group you live in. It can be scary. Especially when it makes you look innocent. Self-persuasion is terrifying.

As you see, this story starts pretty dark. I'll go on with the shadow theme and the overall darkness. If you feel uncomfortable with it, you should look for something else to read, because there's gonna be a lot more. Remember that Naruto becomes more gore during fights and events like the Chuunin exams (that I might entirely skip in favor of more missions in the style of Nami no Kuni, because the storytelling at that point in canon was still great, before the characters stopped for thirty minutes in the middle of a fight to explain their backstory as if you'd ever do that in a fight to the death and before Naruto became Dragon Ball).