::Remember the Name::First Interlude::

::Remember the Name::First Interlude::

Naruto didn’t know what he was doing. All he felt was a sudden urge--no, a need--to break from Kakashi and Sakura. He let out a short warning to them then bolted off the path, disappearing among the trees.

It had just turned dark. The sky overhead reeled in his vision, churning into a blur of streaks of stars, the dark outlines of trees barely registering in his mind as he staggered. He could feel the blades of grass beneath his feet, the slight bite in the cold night air. He collapsed to his hands and knees, desperately mouthing his teammates names, calling to them silently. Tears coursed down his cheeks from pain; a pain he had never felt before, never in his life.

All of them. Every single memory. I'm taking them.

This pain came from the demon inside of him, erasing memories one by gradual one. He could feel them disappearing.

The streets of Konoha, running through them as a child, trailing always behind Sasuke and the fury of always being a few steps in his wake. Then it vanished, torn away. He felt the Kyuubi dig its nails into it, clawing the memory into shreds and ripping it out of his thoughts with raw fury. He let out a strangled sob.

Again it happened, and again.

How happy his Kakashi-sensei was when he said that he had passed his test. The Chuunin Exams, in the Forest of Death, when he, Sakura, and Sasuke had almost died. The beautiful, sparkling emerald eyes of Sakura, who never returned his feelings for her. When Tsunade had place her special necklace, the one that had belonged to the First Hokage, around his neck--how cold the crystal felt against his chest. The pain in Sasuke’s voice when Naruto spoke to him for the last time during their battle at the waterfall, and the way his eyes glinted with such malice he didn’t think even existed.

Vanished, torn away.

Then, he felt the voice’s nails brush the edge of a particular memory, one he had hidden away into the folds of his mind. His eyes suddenly grew wide. He looked up in panic, muscles clenching with the aftermath of torture.

“No,” he whispered through cracked lips.

This is the memory that has to go.

Fresh tears stung his eyes. He sunk his head to the ground in a desperate plea. “No,” he said, sobbing. It was the memory of a certain afternoon nearly five years ago from now…the day Iruka--his first friend, his mentor, his guide--had saved him from Mizuki. The day he found out what was inside of him; the demon that was the cause of all his suffering and loneliness for years. The day when it all ended.

He cried. “No, no…please, no. Do not take this away from me.” The memory…he felt the demon’s claws dig into it. They raked across the memory, sending pieces of it flying. “Please! Let me keep it! Let me, please!” He let out a pitiful scream. “Please, no!”

Then it vanished, torn away.

In the end, he was left with only the memories that the Kyuubi itself cherished. Horrible ones of torture and solitude and isolation even in huge crowds of people. His thoughts were mostly empty now, he was little more than a shell of the boy that he had once been. He felt a terrible hatred of the monster inside of him.

“What…what have you done to me?”

You speak as if I’ve changed you. As if I’ve made you any different. Why? I just unearthed the hatred you’ve been hiding…I simply pushed you in the direction you were already going in. Now. Stand up, and let me breathe. I have a village to obliterate.

He could feel a powerful surge of chakra from his core, pulsing through his veins, taking over. Naruto tried to fight it. He did. But when a Jinchuuriki demon wanted something, it wouldn’t be denied. In the end the boy let the Kyuubi consume him. It was easier, so much easier, and the pain even disappeared.

Sleep, the fox demon whispered in his mind.

Slowly, his eyes began to shut as if weighed down by lead.

Sleep, and let me do what I’ve wanted to do for so long.

===

The next morning Naruto would find burns razing across his skin, lying on the ground in the middle of a forest, hearing cries in the distantce and screams mingled in fire haunting his dreams, with no memory of what happened the night before.