Nothing is Ok

If you think I own Naruto, do us all a favor and jump feet first into a wood chipper.


His heart had broken the instant he got the news. Ino, his littler girl, his princess, had suffered true evil. It was what he worked against every day of his career as a ninja. Inoichi had known she would be subjected to horror as a kunoichi but he’d never really prepared himself for something like this. He counted his blessings that she was still alive but he knew she might not see it that way. He’d been in enough minds to know the damage it could cause and it destroyed him to know that his daughter’s mind would show the same scars.

As he reached the hospital, he ran up to the reception desk and slammed his hands down on the smooth countertop. “Yamanaka Ino! What room is she in!?”

The older woman behind the desk, startled as she’d ever been, fumbled through her clipboards until she’d found the right one, “Room 425, sir, but you should know that she isn’t alone in there. Uzumaki Naruto is in the room with her so try not to startle the boy like you did me. He was hurt as well.”

Inoichi never heard the last bit. He’d bolted the moment he knew his daughter’s room number. Nothing mattered except being there for his daughter right now.

The elevators were forgotten in favor of the stairs and haste. As a trained jounin, he of course made the ascent with in moments and was darting down the hall trying to find room 425. He took several wrong turns before finally spotting the door near the end of the hall and charging for it. He gave pause, however, when he heard Ino’s screams.

“You think it’ll be ok!? You think I should calm down!? Well you have no damned idea how it feels! You don’t know how much it hurts my body and my heart so now I have to show you!”

When he felt the release of chakra, he knew just what was happening. She was using one of their family’s powerful jutsus on someone. He burst through the door, though he knew it was too late to stop her. He did hope, however, that he might be able to stop the technique before it did any lasting damage.

What he saw when he entered the room was fairly close to what he’d expected but nowhere near whom he had expected. He’d thought she was attacking some poor medic or a nurse but the one in the grips of her technique was Naruto, the boy who’d been her teammate for the mission.

He knew he had to get the boy out of the technique which Ino still held over him but he was afraid. Now, unlike many, he wasn’t afraid of the boy. He was afraid of what the boy held and knew that a journey into the mind of the Jinchuuriki could very well bring him face to face with the most terrifying beast imaginable. Still, the boy didn’t deserve it and had to be saved.

First, he had to break the jutsu, then he could worry about trying to restore the damage to Naruto’s mind. If something were wrong with that particular technique, he could get trapped in the memory forever and he didn’t doubt that Ino’s current situation could lead to such. It was easy enough to break the technique at least. He simply walked over to his daughter and pinched a nerve in her neck, forcing her to revisit the darkness of sleep.

To his amazement, he saw Naruto stand slowly. By all rights, the boy should be a mess right now, but he was eerily calm. Inoichi looked into the deep blue eyes of the boy and saw no trace of madness or fear that one could take away from such an encounter. There was only an overwhelming sadness residing there.

Naruto stared back at Inoichi for the longest time. He was still recovering from the Forced Memory technique but left no outward appearances. It was all he could do to keep the tears down in the face of the girl’s father. They were tears he didn’t deserve to shed when he was the reason she lay in the bed now.

Walking around the edge of the bed, Naruto stood face to face with Inoichi a moment before dropping to the ground and bowing to the man, his forehead touching the floor, “I couldn’t stop them. I couldn’t save her. It’s all my fault.”

To say Inoichi was shocked would be an understatement. He didn’t know Naruto all that well but he’d picked up snippets here and there from his daughter and the other jounin. This boy was supposed brash, loud and obnoxious even in serious situations. This boy before him was nothing like the Naruto he’d heard of.

“It’s not my place to forgive you, Naruto but I will thank you,” he spoke, kneeling down and resting a hand on Naruto’s shoulder, “Hokage-sama said that she would be dead if it weren’t for you.”

Naruto looked up slowly, his eyes drifting over to the unconscious girl, “No. It’s not good enough. I should have protected her better. I shouldn’t have gotten taken down so easy. If I’d just been a bit faster or a bit smarter, we could have taken those guys out in a heartbeat.”

Inoichi stood again and looked at his daughter and sighed, “We always have regrets, Naruto. There’s always something we could have done differently. Something we should have seen but let me tell you something. You will be faced with situations like this again and again. You can either let them destroy you or empower you. Learn from them and be stronger for it. Make sure there is no next time to regret.”

Finally standing as well, Naruto nodded, “Ero-sennin told me something like that once.”

Grunting, Inoichi looked over at the boy next to him, “Never makes you feel better, does it?”

“Not at all,” Naruto responded with a sigh.

Inoichi grabbed a new chair from the corner of the room and slid it to Ino’s bedside before sitting down, “Naruto, I heard what she said before I came in here. Let me remove the memory she forced on you. You don’t need to carry that around with you too.”

Naruto too sat down, though back in his chair on the opposite side of the bed, “No.”

Furrowing his brow in confusion, Inoichi looked at the boy as if he was mad, “Naruto, there’s no reason for you to keep it. It’s not your memory. Besides, rape is an incredibly destructive force. Look what it’s done to Ino. I can’t let that happen to you too.”

The Jinchuuriki just shook his head and leaned back in the chair, “It won’t harm me, Inoichi-san. Just,” he paused, looking for the right words, “Just trust me on that.”

“I can’t leave it at that, Naruto. Don’t force me to make this an order,” said the older man, trying to reason with him.

Naruto’s eyes narrowed and he spoke in an agitated whisper, “There’s no need for that!”

Inoichi was quickly losing his patience, “And there’s no need for you to punish yourself! Don’t let this ruin two lives!”

“I’ve been through worse and come out fine!” he spat back.

“I know you’re brave, Naruto but you can’t even imagine what kind of effect being raped can have on a person.” His words came softer now and full of compassion.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Naruto softly. It was so soft that Inoichi almost missed it.

“What?” the jounin asked, “What do you mean?”

Naruto looked up at the man with eyes full of pain and shame, “I know exactly what it’s like.” Rising from his seat, he walked to the door, “I thing you should keep her asleep for a while. Tsunade-obaasan said she’s latched onto me and I really need to get a few changes of clothes so I can stay with her.” He opened the door to walk out when Inoichi’s voice stopped him.

“Naruto? Were you,” he let the question hang in the air, unable to bring himself to finish it.

Naruto turned to the man and nodded, “You must have seen how I was treated when I was younger. The glares were the best of it. Beatings were usually kept out of the sight of the public since news would reach the Hokage too easily.” He gripped the edge of the door hard enough that he could swear he felt the metal beginning to give way the slightest bit, “When I lived at the orphanage, there was a man there named Boku. He chose me because no one would listen if I told on him. Even if they listened, they would have turned a blind eye.” Naruto paused a moment and smiled a bitter smile, “Stupid bastard left me alone when I stopped fighting back and moved on to someone else. Someone that people actually cared about. I heard later that Ibiki made Boku scream for seven full days before he let him die.”

Inoichi just stared at the boy, completely speechless. Never had he imagined things had gone to that extent in the boy’s life. If he were still in the orphanage when it happened, that would mean he had to have been less than nine years old at the time. It was all he could do to keep from emptying his stomach at the mere thought of it. Before he could recover enough to form a response, Naruto had left, the door softly clicking shut behind him.


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I didn’t really want to end it here but I haven’t developed the next bit in my head yet. I don’t want to force it and make something that was below what I feel my standard to be. Chapters this short shouldn’t happen often, so please bear with me. I just complete a chapter when it feels complete. Hopefully I’ll do better at fleshing out the details as I write.

Someone tell me if I’m right about Ino’s dad’s name. I can’t remember if it’s Inoichi or Inoshi or something I’ve completely forgotten.