Chapter 9: Consequences of our choices

I had been known for isolating myself for days on end, not answering any kind of communication simply because the act seemed like it required too much work. Weeks of silence and the ability to shut everything out, had given me the unique skill of ignoring my surroundings to the point, where it seemed I was not longer part of the real world.

Kakashi did not handle it very well, when I shut down on him.

One moment my heart was hammering, sweat coming out in buckets and my body shaking like never before, and the next I was still. My head cleared and the world unfolded itself on the inside of my eyelids, small paths lightning up everywhere and most of them leading to a humorous way to die.

None of them were capable of solving my problem. This sudden display of anger had thrown me off. It had not been expected, and the world had a few minutes ago seemed incapable of delivering anything besides washed-up words of wisdom, cliché behavior and characters who seemed to only respond to my actions alone and the chain of canon events, which I knew from the manga.

This was different. This emotion was not in his character description inside my head.

I did not need it, I only needed a moment of entertaining bewilderment and then I could go on with playing my part.

This… I had no plan for this. No manual to tell me how to handle it.

It was like with Chika, a moment when I spoke too much and changed everything, but also entirely different. Chika only existed as an idea in my head; she could have every range of emotion I wished her to. Kakashi already had a template, a way of acting and reacting to the world which dictated him to either crinkle his eyes and be amused at my ramblings or prove fuel for my own amusement.

Not this.

On the other side of the wall which surrounded my mind, Kakashi had gone through every known method of attracting attention, and proceed to vanish in thin air with the correct hand seals. Leaving me alone for barely ten minutes of turmoil, before materializing out of nothing and taking me with him.

Any plans I might have had for the day had completely gone off the rails.

·

The solution to everything was apparently the Hokage.

We sat across from each other, and my presence of mind had returned enough to greet him with a nod before I continued to stare off blankly into space.

"Do you know why you're here, Naruto?"

I repeated the absent-minded nod.

"Is there something you would like to talk about?"

My mind was awfully blank, so no, not a single thing occurred to me as a possible subject. All I wanted was to go somewhere, and repress this whole morning until it faded and became just as insignificant as any other morning.

"It has been observed, that you suffer from self-destructive behavior, which is a troublesome sign, no matter the age." That was one way of putting it. Not a very clinical manner of doing it, but still it got the message across.

How did we get from willingly taking poison to this?

My face cracked up, when my facial muscles started working again. I frowned at his words, trying not to find the implications insulting. "You mean I have psychological problems? Are we talking about isolation and useless tries of repression of behavior which should not be present because of my current age, or are we talking deflection with humor and sublimation, where I take every violent urge and try to transform it to something productive, resulting in my overwhelming state of boredom where I'm always pursuing a new activity?" My brief study of the subject on the net left me somewhat lacking for other fine terms and definitions, so I stopped it there. "If that's the case, then I already know I have problems, and there's no need for this intervention."

He mirrored my gloom. "You're aware that your behavior is unhealthy?"

"Deflection is a mature way of dealing with things." I leaned forward and lowered my tone of voice to its most chilling octave. "There is really no need to do this."

I would only be happy to leave and forget everything about this whole weird day.

The papers rustled on the table, drawing my gaze to what look like a massive patient file. "In the last six months your self-destructive tendencies has caused several fractures of different bones in your body, more bruises than have been accountable, burns, cases of overmedication of medicine yourself have taken from trash bags, and then there is the case of the recently self-poisoning, where you displayed awareness of the herbs ability to possible kill or cripple you."

I blinked. "Yes…?"

"You have been informed several times of the dangers associated with jumping from high building and taking medicine in order to experiment with its effects, the same can be said for sealing…"

"I have upheld my vow." This was beginning to get upsetting. "I'm aware I possess surprisingly potent regenerative powers, which in all cases have caused a minor time being incapacitated by injuries. I believe this makes your other evidence of self-destructive behavior less damning, since it for me was like what paper cuts it for others."

"There have been documented six cases of chakra exhaustion." The old man said in an unnerving calm voice. "This is a problem, whether you acknowledge it or not." A sigh followed and he bridged his nose with a strained expression. "I had never imagined you would grow up so quickly and like this, so this would be necessary."

"You know I'm intelligent." I replied in perfect monotone. "Stop hinting at a possible connection to my parents if you're not going to explain it. This much concern can only be caused by strong emotional ties, and let's face it, a few visits are far from enough to form those, so the only reason you in the first case even showed interest in me must be because of my family… or because you knew from the start about my supposed status as a demon…" I smirked. "Which one is it, Jiji?"

I got a scowl in return. "Naruto, this is not a game."

"No," I grinned and tilted my head slightly to the side. "And that's what makes this so funny." A hysterical edge was creeping into my voice and I let my grin become impossible wider. "This is reality."

"Naruto, if you do not let the mask down, then I can't help you." Dark eyes surrounded by wrinkled sun-brown skin stared into mine with an intensity I had not seen since the start of this dream-hallucination. "If you're not stable then you will not be given permission to enter the Academy and become a ninja."

"Ah, the carrot and stick approach…" I narrowed my eyes. "You forget it's only efficient, when you have a good enough prize to offer. And what I want, I can't be given." His fingers fastened at the sides of his chair, his eyes suddenly taking on a wary shine. "I can't even get it myself… I know, because I tried and tried and tried… All I can do is wait!"

The force of my shout left my ears ringing; chiming like small bells had been placed inside of them.

I ignored that the Hokage was readying himself to subdue me at the slightest indication of the Fox being in control of my body. Ignored how probable it would have been, if this world was real. "I'm tired of waiting." Nothing of this was real, not even he who had been with me since I had opened my eyes to this house of madness. "I just want it to end, you know…? Want to go back and forget all about this, like it never happened…"

That's when I broke down and started to cry.

I think it was around the same time I convinced him I was human and not the Nine-tail in disguise.

·

I sniffed and tried to cover my red eyes with the handkerchief with had been giving me sometime after the tears began rolling. "I apologize." The response was automatic, since it was never nice to have somebody else fall apart on you, and at the time it didn't matter who was on the receiving end. "I thought I had better composure than this."

Somewhere behind the white piece of cloth was a tired old man, who despite all beliefs was handling crying children better than expected. I would have sat awkwardly and tried to pat the child's back in silence, and instead he come with something like; "It's better to let it out than hide it, Naruto, don't apologize for this."

See, it was genius. He did not even need to get up from his chair.

I loudly blew my nose into the soft fabric and reached for the next one. The pile beside me had grown to contain a dozen, and still the old man continued to give me those things. It was like his office had been packed with every little thing ever though necessary for emergencies, even those involving hysterical brats.

"Are you ready to talk?" His tone revealed it was fine if I just kept ignoring him and continued going at the waterworks. What a patient man he was.

"Not much to say is there?" I roughly dried my cheeks on the new handkerchief, leaving my cheeks feeling awful raw. "It's a wonder I'm even still here. Not going to throw me out or anything?"

"Naruto…"

"It's the general consensus I'm the devil reincarnated, now, try to deal with that for an extended period of time and don't fall apart. Not easy." I chuckled darkly. "I'm supposed to be three, but do I seem like it? No, I'm the farthest thing from it. I want to wake up and find out this has all been a dream, but what do I want to wake up to, that's the question and I don't know the answer."

Truth and lies mixed together horrible and confusing, but I was in no mood to act and play my given character.

"I feel like I could wake up at any moment, but then something happens…" Chika, Kakashi… "And it all seems too real." My breathing was slowing down, which was a clear sign I doing the right thing in sharing my worries. Perhaps this was what I had needed to from the start; use my imaginary characters to perform a psychological assessment on myself.

"You believe this is a dream?" He sounded worried.

I lifted my gaze to meet his, and nodded once. "Can't be anything else. Shouldn't be anything else."

"And why is that?" Yes, we was here to uncover the problem slowly layer for layer and thus bringing me back to a healthier state. I was not sure if should bother getting myself into the delusion that this was helping me wake up.

It was time for a test.

My mouth paused before forming the necessary vowels and sounds of a more familiar language. "Every piece of evidence would form a mountain." I muttered in English. "Let's start with me. Small body, impossible awareness. I feel every day like it was real, time ticking past slowly and hindsight making it seem fasters… but the future's still too far away, so it all leads up to the normal perception of time. That's what's confuses me, the contradiction of this world, so impossible but still obeying laws of physic to some degree, still having people both with the emotional capacity larger and smaller than a teaspoon… But the future's already set in stone, already known, so how can it be real?"

He kept silent, which had to mean I was on the right path. Or the wrong, depending on how you looked at it.

"Let's get back to me, see what's wrong?" I flexed my hands and indicated the whole of my body. "Wrong gender and it's me behind the wheel, not comforting for anyone relying on being saved by Therapy no Jutsu. So we have the set up, but the players are all wrong. Not considering, me as a player is impossible, but repeating the same thing does nothing, right, so I have to stop saying that." A deep breath of air and I was ready to continue, but the Hokage held up a hand.

"Naruto, please speak slowly." He paused. "And in an understandable language."

English was apparently not accepted. While speaking I had clearly noticed it had gotten a bit rusty, so that meant my ability to speak it had decayed over time. Or I was imagining it together with my perception of time.

I was sighing then, knowing I only had one option of dealing with this mess as my 'this is not reality' card grew weaker.

Oh shit, I had just told him I didn't think this was real. Time to either act crazy, or get some bullshit going about childhood traumas and blaming everything on the inability of a toddler to separate reality from fiction, which would only confirm the notion that it was perfectly acceptable to view and handle me as a small child.

There never was a good time to break down.

"It all changed from one moment to another." I tried, testing the words on my tongue and finding them horrible naïve. I nailed it if I was going for childlike. "One moment people would worry for me, view me normally, like another… the next I'm being thrown out the door. They call me a monster, and even knowing the definition I can't see how I fit into it." I cleared my throat, and decided to end my own babbling. "With all these evidences, how can this be reality?"

He only nodded; a thoughtful expression on his face.

"They are right, aren't they?" I resisted rolling my eyes and continued with a deadpan voice. "You know they are right. I can see it in your eyes, jiji. The question is only whether you can't or won't tell me."

If I put enough pressure on the old man, perhaps he would forget the suspicious stuff I said. Or at least make it seem less important at the moment.

"So, I'm a monster." I blinked and tilted my head. "How did I miss that?"

"Naruto," The Hokage looked sourly tempted to rub his temples. "You know there are many dangerous individuals in this world, yes? How would civilians, with no power, view them, but as something foreign and out of this world? They do not know better, and you have felt the consequences."

Very nice save, old man. "So they know who I am. Either the circumstances of my birth were very exciting." Serious understatement. "Or my unknown parents were quite infamous. Neither of the cases explains why my identity is common knowledge, unless somebody screwed up with the secret keeping or…" I turned my head and stared out the window, which gave a nice overview of the city. "Something happened which was impossible to miss." I paused, wondering whether I should just get on with it or play too stupid to connect the pieces. "Would you deny my suspicions if I voiced them, or would you tell me the truth?"

"Sometimes the truth isn't the kinder option. I'll tell you when you're older."

"Living in ignorance can be dangerous, jiji." It looked like I had saved my own hide this time. There could not be a repeat of this incidence or it would draw too much attention to the nonsense I had blabbered in this conversation.

"This does not seem like the right time for such a heavy burden." I glanced at the small man and tried to look expressionless while a large part of me burned under his searching gaze. "I think you need time to calm down and accept that you're currently not asleep. Self-deception is dangerous, Naruto."

I ground my teeth to stop myself from glaring at him. I forced the expected agreement out after several heartbeats. "I know."

That could not have been more obvious.

·

"Naruto."

I looked tiredly up from my sandals, and stopped swinging me legs back and forth on the chair. The last bit was especially depressing since I clearly remembered a time where my feet easily could have reached the floor.

Now my very real fragile limbs barely managed to get me up on a random piece of furniture by their own power.

"Kakashi." I breathed quietly. My mouth opened and closed without any more words coming to me. I tried forming the sounds for brother, but pictures of my real family kept popping up in my head every time.

The silence stretched out awkwardly. I raised an eyebrow at him, when he kept staring at me like he was expecting me to get up and perform some sort of a song and dance routine.

"I'm not a monkey you know."

A flick of surprise crossed what could be seen of his face. "What?" He replied sounding momentarily stunned.

"If you can't follow that train of thought, then there's no use in elaborating." If I had had the energy I would have doused the words with light hearted humor and ended it all with a big grin. Now I could barely muster enough to keep looking at him and feigning interest in whatever purpose had driven him to come. "I'm not going to explain how my mind works to you."

"Well, I think I'm glad for it." Was that teasing? No, couldn't be.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall, while wishing it would just swallow me whole. He let me be for a couple of minutes, before cutting through my self-misery with a question.

"Where did you actually get the magazine from?"

Huh, that's was unexpected. "I remember telling you."

"I know you left the shop that day without anything." But not for lack of trying. Those ninja watchers of mine were quite the tattletales.

I cracked a single eye open. "Trying to rouse a response from me, nii-san?" It was working; I had to give him that. "It's an excellent question, but perhaps not the best place to ask it." I whispered in a tired attempt at being dramatic while indicating the whole room with one finger.

We were, after all, still in the Hokage tower.

The look of confusion told me I had to give him one more pointer. I smiled weakly. "Some people have weird hobbies. You never know what you find hidden in the dark corners of…"

He interrupted before the end like it would make the implied meaning behind my words go away. "I see."

"So," Would he go away if I ignored him? "Are you here to lead me back to the hospital?"

I needed those green walls and their promises of unending repetitive days.

"No."

I flinched. "No?"

"An apartment's been cleared." He crossed his arms and looked over my head, showing he too was feeling the overwhelming awkwardness of the situation. "You're not going back to the hospital." There was a bit of satisfaction in that tone. Had he anything to do with it? Was it some sort of an attempt to stop me from falling further into the spiral of depression?

I was not amused.

Author's note: Somebody had to confront her. Her actions have been careless, a bit stupid and showing more instability than could be allowed to go on.