Blood of the Broken, Scars of the Spiral (there are whirlpools in our veins)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Naruto didn't want to leave the mind space. Parting from Mito and Kurama felt as if he was ripping his very soul in half, leaving it weep and bleed, and as he blinked his way back into awareness in the small bunk-room, he had to turn his face against the pillow to hide hia tears until sleep claimed him.

He was woken hours later by Sika, who unchained him from the bed and handed him a blank porcelain mask that he was ordered to put on. Naruto did as ordered and followed numbly after the shinobi as she led him out of the bunk-room and towards his immediate future.

His first week in Root was spent being tested on his aptitude in basic fields of the ninja arts that did not require chakra and oh, Naruto loathed it all. Only the strategy and intelligence testing even approached bearable, for as he had not given away his ability to read or write the testing was verbal, requiring only hia wit. The other tests were physical and Naruto hated them; he hated being forced to perform katas until he was dripping sweat and couldn't lift his arms, to throw bladed weapons until his palms were ripped and bloodied, to run and run until he collapsed, to twist his body into wretched positions, rough hands yanking his limbs far past where they ought bend and holding them there as he blinked back tears.

It wasn't even the actions themselves that left him distraught, but that he hadn't chosen to do them. These were forced upon him, with the purpose of breaking him down to reshape him into someone else's image. Someone who Naruto wasn't.

Root ran on sixteen-hour days and eight-hour nights and Naruto was always exhausted by the time he was allowed to retire to his bed, wrists and ankles bound to the bedframe, and rest. This left him with very limited time to spend making plans with Mito and Kurama or to practice shaping her chakra into seals under ish skin. Despite Mito's faith that he was capable of learning how to disable the seals that bound his chakra, Naruto wasn't ignorant to just how far he was from accomplishing such a feat and how desperately he needed the practice– but when he was collapsing into his assigned bunk, body trembling and mind blurred with exhaustion, practicing sealing was the last thing he was capable of doing.

He would appeal to Sika or Washi– as he had learned bird-mask, or rather eagle-mask, was called– for leniency, but he doubted either knew the meaning of the word. There were livelier corpses then his two escorts-turned-"instructors". The pair were little better than slaves– no free will, no emotions, just mindless obedience. They were extensions of Shimura's own will, without individual thought of their own. He would have as much luck appealing to a brick wall. At least they were not intentionally cruel, though that was little comfort when again and again he was reduced to silent tears by brutal demands of "Again!" as his body ached and his limbs trembled and his vision blurred.

And the sparring, oh the sparring! In some ways, Naruto thought, sparring might be worse than a beating. In a beating, pain was expected. In a beating, he could do nothing but endure. With sparring, there was that faint, flickering, insidious hope that maybe, just maybe, he could avoid the pain, the suffering, if he could just get the move right, if he could just react quickly enough, if he was just that little bit better. It was crueller, that hope. Because when he was left broken and bleeding on the floor, thankful at least that the binding seals did not interfere with Kurama's chakra healing his internal injuries, the despair, defeat and agony was far more crushing then the ache and resignation following a beating.

His days had been so full, Naruto didn't even realise that it had been an entire week into his stay at Root until he was taken to meet Shimura again. The windowless, underground rooms and the strange sixteen-hour days and eight-hour nights made it hard to make sense of the passing of time, making it blend and blur in confusing patterns. As he sat across from Shimura, exhausted, chakra bound, entire body aching, and at least one rib only halfway healed from broken, Naruto felt so much hatred for the man before him he almost choked on it.