I do not own Naruto. TW for dysphoria, and the Hero's Journey short definition is literally a quote cited in text. Not mine either.
Theresa wakes up, and for a moment, she does not know where or what she is.
She opens her eyes slowly, her senses bombarded by strange signals. There is a warmth around her that is achingly familiar, the brush of something soft against her bare legs. She tries to recall what it could be, but her mind blanks on an answer. There is nothing that should be this comfortable against her skin, not the utilitarian blankets of the cell, or the harsh sands of some un-named desert.
Likewise, she is thrown by the smell of what is around her. It's a strange, nearly chemical scent, tinged with false notes of lavender that barely mask the odor of stale blanket. Whatever she is lying in could use another wash, or at least, it could stand to be hung in the sun for a few hours.
The taste in her mouth, at least, isn't all that bad. It's the universal dry cottony taste that comes after a night spent breathing through her mouth instead of her nose. Arguably she was snoring, but since she wasn't awake to hear herself, there is nobody to ask, it will forever remain a mystery. (Or not, because Franky swears she snores and has captured evidence of such in the past.)
Groggily, her mind full of nothing but the mental equivalent of white noise, Theresa sits up. She registers blankets falling about a full female waist, and wrinkled sleeping clothes draped off a very rounded woman's chest. The silhouette of human legs beneath the rest of the blankets makes her head spin. It looks so alien, so very foreign to her after nearly two weeks of living in a dank cell, and however long she spent as an arachnid.
'Is this…' she asks herself. 'Are we back?'
For a second, she cannot comprehend such a thing.
Almost subconsciously, she lifts her hand to her face, and the sight of five fingers, all human and hers, sends a pang of absolute confusion through her. Her stomach rolls in her gut as she splays them wide, and her heart flutters in her chest. It feels so wrong, so absolutely strange, that she is sure that something has gone wrong. She doesn't have hands, surely. Last she remembered, she had pincers and many sets of legs.
Theresa can almost see them where her hand is, the thick shell around them unyielding and powerful. The phantom feeling of six lost legs shudders down her side, and her spine just feels all wrong where it rests in her back. She should have no bones at all, just a carapace holding her together as she converses with the wind and water in a tongue too old for memory.
She shakes her head, and her brain is telling her that her vision is all wrong. She's missing a bunch of colors, and seeing entirely different ones. After a beat, it switches tracks and says that the floor that she places her (two, very human) feet on should be made of unforgiving concrete instead of comparably plush carpet.
Theresa decide she cannot handle this right now. She needs to go pee. Maybe, after a cup of tea, this will all be better.
She makes her way down the stairs like a ghost, trapped inside the surreal sensations coursing through her. The stairwell, something she has seen everyday for the course of nearly a decade, baffles her. The stains on the wall, the jackets hanging at the bottom, and the single cobweb on the ceiling throws her for a loop. She stares at the house spider in the corner for a long, long moment, marveling at the moths caught in its sticky web. She knows they allow it to live there for that exact reason, but for a moment, she just...doesn't understand.
She thinks about it as she goes through her morning ablutions, and when she's washing her hands, she does her absolute damndest to stare herself down in the bathroom mirror. This is the face she has had since puberty ended. The same auburn hair, the same golden skin, the same rounded features. This is who she is, she tells herself. This is Theresa. This is her home. This is her time. This is her world. This is her life.
She repeats it like a mantra as she walks her way back into the kitchen, carefully ignoring the very existence of the guest room where her cousin should still be asleep. She cannot deal with that right now. She cannot even begin to imagine what she would do if Lien showed her face.
In fact, it comes as a relief to look outside the kitchen window as she's filling the tea kettle, and not see Lien's car. She must have gone to work, allowing her family to learn to cope with what they just went through in peace. To Lien, this must be normal. This must be easy-
-But she doesn't want to think about that right now. She just wants to get used to this place, her home, her body, again.
She mixes herself something to ground her. A black brew with enough caffeine to kickstart her, and in a moment of thoughtfulness, she readies coffee for her sister, alongside a rooibos blend in case Franky wants something nostalgic and calming instead.
She then takes a seat at the table, warm mug in her hand, and stares at her fingers, fighting the sensation of wrongness in her gut. The warm sunlight filters through the window and casts everything in a cheery, lovely glow, and it's almost terrible to her. She was in those cells for a long time, and there was never any windows.
This is her home, not a cell, and not a desert, she reminds herself. This is her world. This is supposed to be right.
It doesn't feel that way though. Nothing feels right.
Theresa isn't really aware of anything until she hears footsteps on carefully creeping down the stairs, almost cautious in nature. They take the same path she herself did an indeterminate time ago, and after some time, she hears the gentle clinking of cups, and the slosh of liquid in ceramic. Her sister steps around the corner, her dark skin beautifully illuminated by the morning light, coffee cup in hand.
It should be a lovely sight, and something in Theresa's chest does ease a bit, but the look in her sister's eyes is just as lost as the one she saw in the bathroom mirror. Neither of them speak as they settle down and attempt to find themselves again.
The silence, however, is broken when the door to the guest room squeaks open.
Theresa makes every effort she can not to cry. It is a very, very close thing.
The baker, after some very heavy breaths, turns her head toward the noise. In the seat next to her, she catches Franky doing the same, and so it is that both of them seem to glance the newcomer at the same time.
She is… young. A teenager at most, and she has the most striking eyes Theresa has ever seen. A pastel tinge, something that sits prettily between green and blue, with no pupils to speak of. She could be blind, but Theresa does not think so. Not with the way she scans her surroundings so awarely.
Her hair reminds Theresa of a Tolkien elf's, or rather, the movie version of Tolkien elves. Galadriel and Legolas could probably swap secrets with her, in some far off fantasy world, and she wouldn't be out of place. Or maybe she would be, with the outfit she has on. It's one hundred percent something Theresa might see on a fashionable teen in this world, with only hints of the other spattered in, taking the form of mesh and weapons pouches.
Her gaze lands on them, and she stills.
"What…" and Theresa can almost hear the unspoken 'time are we in?', but without a shared point of relativity, it's a useless question. So the newcomer changes it half-way through and says "What is the last event you remember taking place?" instead.
It's a good question, something in the back of Theresa's mind murmurs. Much more orienting than the first one.
"We were in a desert," the plump woman answers hollowly. "I was a scorpion, my sister a spring."
The newcomer gets a far-away appearance for a moment, as if trying to recall the situation.
"I was the wind," she answers breezily, settling her sights back in the present.
"Ino," Franky utters, sounding slightly bitter.
"Ino," she agrees, approaching the table. Her footsteps are sure, and she pulls out a chair in between the two sisters as if she has done it many times before. There is a forwardness in her movements, a confidence that speaks of memory.
Theresa follows that thought to its logical conclusion, considering the circumstances.
"Time dilation," she guesses defeatedly. "This isn't the first time you've been here."
The blond teen flashes her a smile, one that speaks of comfort and familiarity. It's not one Theresa is used to seeing on anybody but family, and that shakes her even more than she already is. At this point she feels as if she might jumble to pieces and float away on a breeze.
"Always the smart one, Verdandi," she teases, her accent playing strangely on the harsh consonant sounds.
"Don't," Theresa breathes softly. "Don't call me that. I can't handle it right now."
The light in the teen's eyes fades a bit, and she nods her head in respect to those wishes. She holds herself straight, her body language opening, but not overly familiar.
"You aren't eight," Franky states, drawing the attention away from her younger sibling.
"Not right now, but somewhere I am," Ino agrees.
Theresa distantly is aware that Franky reacts poorly to this statement. Her jaw grits, causing the muscles in her cheek to stand out in what looks like an almost painful manner, and she can see her sister swallow rapidly. She breathes heavily through her nose, and Theresa can almost feel the rage oozing out of skin.
Franky, it seems, is very tired of riddles and nonsensical speak.
The teenager seems to see this, and she raises her hands, a silent plea for forgiveness. She bows her head once, and Franky seems to register that it wasn't what the girl intended.
"I can give you space, if that's what you want," she offers, and the depth of understanding in her voice is what causes Theresa to shake her head.
"We want answers," Frank says, her hands gripped tight around her mug. "We just want answers."
The newcomer nods, straightening her posture. It seems to Theresa that this is done entirely on purpose, to give the sisters distance from a figure that seems to know them, but acknowledges that the reverse isn't exactly true.
"I have some of those," she responds clearly.
The relief on Franky's face is heartbreaking, but Theresa has no doubt she is wearing a similar expression as well.
"No riddles. No mumbo jumbo. No philosophy," Theresa requests.
The blond tilts her head, and again, gives her something of an apologetic smile.
"Some of that, but I can try and make at as clear as possible," she says. "We can take a break at any time, if that helps."
Franky somewhat numbly nods her head.
"Give it to us as straight as you can," she says airily. "We'll tell you if it gets to be too much."
Ino nods and takes a deep, grounding breath. For a second, Theresa watches in envy as she laces her hands together in front of her with such calmness. Her palms do not shake, her hands are not sweaty, and she looks nothing like a teen that just woke from bed, let alone one that spontaneously jumped worlds. She's so calm, so comfortable in her own skin, even though she once embodied the wind itself. It gives Theresa something to latch on to. A hope for the future.
"To begin, I should clarify what what I meant earlier by the statement that somewhere I am eight. I mean that literally. Time, as we three experience, is not linear to anything but our perspective of events. As we understand it, all events in time are happening all at once. Meaning that as I sit here talking to you, there simultaneously exists a me that just watched you all appear from thin air in an interrogation cell. It's all happening all at once," Ino asserts calmly. It sounds like the product of many sleepless nights, and years of thought. Not something Theresa thought she would hear from the mouth of a wizard assassin, as she assumes this teen has come to be.
"Time doesn't exist. Everything we can or will do is already been done," Franky states.
"Is happening," Theresa corrects, a void in her heart.
"But why us?" Franky demands.
Ino gives no sign of hesitation, but her next words are bit more carefully stated. Theresa braces herself as the tone of the teens voice smooths out to a soothing tone.
"Because your cousin isn't just your cousin."
Nobody has words for that. Silence is king at the table, and Theresa watches the shadows cast by the leaves outside skitter across the wooden tabletop in front of her.
"I know that isn't easy to hear, or even something you want to think about, but as far as we know Lien isn't originally from this dimension. It's why she traveled to ours so often. We are of the understanding that she, as she prefers to be known, is actually something of a sentient mass of chakra, or as you know it here, energy."
She says it quickly. Clinically. Like if she states it this way, it will be easier to accept.
"That's not possible," Franky denies, a fragile grin stretching across her face. "That's not...I was there when her mom got pregnant. I was alive when she was just a baby. That's not possible, right Theresa?"
Theresa cannot bear to look at her sister.
"What makes you say that?" she whispers damningly.
"We can take a break," Ino replies gently. "You can stop here."
Theresa closes her eyes.
"What. Makes. You. Say. That," She forces out.
Ino casts a level gaze at the both of them and nods once, respecting the choice they have made.
"In our world, interdimensional travel isn't unheard of. After your appearance, some questions were asked about the specifics with those who have knowledge of the subject, mostly those with knowledge of summons -or allies who exist on separate planes that can be contracted to travel to ours- and those with knowledge of fuuinjutsu. They...well, the closest existing thing we know of is called a bijuu. There was precedence, in other words, for Lien."
"Bijuu?" Theresa demands.
"Chakra -or energy- constructs, capable of dimensional travel. The summons said they once traveled the worlds at will. Understand what I tell you is considered confidential to the point of no questions asked execution, but they didn't disappear. What I know is that they've been sealed away, or most have been, inside human containers," she answers solemnly.
"That doesn't explain anything," Franky hisses.
"Lien isn't exactly a bijuu. Most don't need bodies, but Lien seems to be searching for a stable form. She continues returning to our world, so we think that subconsciously she may be looking for one she left behind there," Ino attempts to clarify.
"That doesn't explain us though," Franky states, slamming her hands down on the table. "Your theory has more holes than swiss cheese."
"Lien still believes that you are her family," Ino states, her voice unwaveringly calm. She didn't even flinch when Franky moved, and her breathing is exactly the same. Her control is iron clad, and Theresa doesn't doubt for a second that every move she makes with it is deliberate. "And as such, she's granted you the ability to travel as well by pumping your souls so full of Yin chakra they can actively move worlds as well. I may be wrong, in fact, I could be incredibly off. I don't think I am, but a well structured argument could change my mind. What do you think is happening?"
Franky goes to open her mouth, and Theresa can literally see the moment 'This isn't actually happening' crosses her mind. She closes her mouth and clasps her hands around her mug, silenced.
"I went off topic and got confrontational," Ino laments apologetically, running her hand through her long bangs. "Sorry."
"You're just a kid," Franky says after a beat. "I should have been more in control."
Ino waves her hand, as if shooing the mistake away.
"Ignoring the semantics of age if we include dreamtime-" Theresa jolts at the thought, because Jesus Christ, does that count? "-I should probably ask if you guys know what the Hero's Journey narrative is."
"No," Franky says defeatedly, losing her hold on her cup and pulling her phone from her pajama pocket. "But I can find out in about thirty seconds."
Ino shoots a longing glance at the device, her gaze hungry and wanting.
"Ah Google. One day, maybe my life will be so simplified," she sighs.
"It complicates more than you think," Theresa says, her voice still shaky.
"Yet contains almost all of mankind's collective knowledge. I'm honestly unsure why your civilisations have such focus on schooling when you've developed a tool that allows for near instantaneous information sharing. I know people that would commit atrocities for such a thing," Ino drawls conversationally. The thing is, Theresa doesn't believe for a second that Ino is exaggerating.
"According to The Writer's Journey dot com, The Hero's Journey is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development. It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization," Franky reads out-loud. "It then goes on to list a bunch of stages."
"Good. Memorize those stages. Maybe not in order, but the stages are kinda important."
"Why is this important?"
"Because Lien is trying to ascribe to religious folklore, but can't decide which. Granted, she keeps messing up the stages, and it's all muddled, but it's a good as map as any at this point," Ino informs them in all seriousness.
Franky breathes in hard through her mouth, then carefully lets it out again.
"I don't care if she's at work, this is ridiculous," she says through clenched teeth.
Ino glances at them both, and then leans back in her chair. Her lovely hair catches the sun, and for a moment it looks like liquid fire.
"Lien didn't go to work, Franky," she announces.
Something like dread settles in Theresa's gut. She can feel a shiver run down her back, and she feels nothing more than like she is living in Plato's allegory of the cave. She's been inside the stone walls for all her life, and they are all she knows. The dancing shadows are real to her, they are everything.
But she can't be that person anymore. She can't live in a world full of false forms. That's not who she is.
Theresa turns to Ino, who, most likely, will be the one who drags her from the cave into the real world.
"Where is Lien, Ino?" she asks.
Ino turns those startling pastel eyes on Theresa, and she can see the satisfaction in them. She can almost hear the teens thoughts, the echo of her earlier words. 'Always the smart one, Verdandi.'
"Back in my world, we think."
Theresa, despite not wanting to have the knowledge, picks up exactly what is implied by that statement. Lien stayed behind when the others woke up. What came back is just wearing her skin.
AN: Siartha on tumblr, again, has gone over and made sure this is all squeaky clean and makes at least passing sense, and kept my moral boosted. The Hero's Journey is a thing. A fairly important thing, maybe? I would suggest looking it up and having a fun time seeing who goes where and what not.
I also want to take a second for the cadre of reviewers who have been posting pretty reliably. Bless you. Seriously, you guys have kept this story alive more than I have. Lurkers are important, but you are the spine, brain, and heart keepin me going.