A.N.B.U.

Chapter Thirty-Two: The living nightmares

PTSD... Post Traumatic Stress Disorder... First discovered after the second great ninja war. He had been briefed about it in one of the many "psychology" classes he had with TI... He didn't want to admit he was having the symptoms, he hadn't been in war. He knew that not admitting he was feeling the way he was also a symptom. That with the recurring nightmares and the way his eyes would unfocus as small stray things from his past would bring him back to the dark cell... He knew most of TI had meds, but it didn't help. As he looked at the minuscule pill in his hand he laughed, a broken and sad laugh. How was something this small supposed to fix the gaping hole in his soul, he thought about Cat and her big fight for her to be able to have her meds on her missions or inside the building... Those itty-bitty small pills, she said, changed lives and made her nights somewhat ok after she had come back from a mission none of us were in...

He looked at the small whiteish pill, took a deep breath, and then swallowed it... He didn't feel different, yet somehow he looked back at the rest of TI and he went back to the breakfast table. He didn't look at them, he felt ashamed, this pill was just proof he wasn't strong enough. Yet as soon as he raised his eyes he looked at the rest of TI casually smiling and having fun.
"Oi... Fox, stop frowning and pass me the tea, would you ?" He obeyed, he still felt bad but he knew the meds were there to help him...

As he left the building and slowly walked to the training ground where he would ultimately have to face his "friends"... He liked the more silent version of himself he had become, it felt less foreign and less stupid than the happy-go-lucky mask he had to put on for months... He looked at the villagers who still managed to look at him like he was a mistake, a waste of energy and space. He shrugged, they had no idea how many times he had saved the village in some way and would probably never know, like with Kakashi, they believed him to be a monster, a traitor. The thoughts made his vision blurry as he was brought back to the interrogation room, back to his tormentors, back to the countless hours he had spent believing his village and superiors thought he had abandoned everything he held dear for a girl he was sure wasn't even straight. Not that he would ever tell Ombre that he thought she was gay but still... This was the stupidest love story anyone could have thought of.

He arrived at the training ground, it was 5 days before the third round of the chunnin exams... 5 days before the supposed Suna-Oto invasion... And all he could do was pretend to be a Genin with absolutely zero chakra control and a lot of luck... Uzumaki luck, what a joke. People had always thought that members of his clans were lucky, yeah lucky... Lucky to be whipped out. He smiled at the twisted joke he made trying to hide the discomfort he felt at going back to Kakashi's training ground. He was an ANBU captain, he was supposed to be better than this. But was he really? Was he really above the illness that plagued most of his friends? Was he really above the nightmares they sometimes described to a calm Inoichi that would prescribe some sleeping pills... Nobody ever took those pills, we were expected to be ready and aware at any given moment in time. Inoichi knew and still he prescribed those pills because he was a psychiatrist before being a ninja. Well, that's what he told himself anyways... Most of us would say he was TI before being anything else, except he hid the crazy part better than most of the department. He had been scared of his student, scared of the prodigy that was Ibiki. And yet he had just convinced everyone the recovering torture victim would be a perfect fit for Konoha's own torture team.

As he set foot in the training ground he once more only saw Kakashi training the Uchiha heir and Sakura reading... This team was so dysfunctional it was a miracle nobody was dead yet... He looked at the two teammates and the teacher and decided he once more couldn't be bothered so he practiced the strategy they had come up with for the invasion... It relied on a lot of things going right, and a lot of people obeying orders they wouldn't understand... It also relied on nobody knowing the correct plan beforehand since the core of Konoha's strategist knew there was a traitor that had at least ANBU-level clearance among us... He was practicing a fake plan, like the rest of ANBU, a fake plan with so many holes it was a miracle the spy didn't seem to see them... Let Konoha appear to be weak, let them think the village hidden in the leaves was sleeping. Let the other village forget that the one that was sleeping was a giant, and not any giant, the giant that contained the Kyubi vessel.

Nobody knew about who the Kyubi vessel was outside Konoha... They just knew that the kid was bullied and was a loudmouth idiot who caused trouble to the entire village. And that would be a great advantage for the village... Nobody knew that he was actually ANBU captain level, easily a B-class ninja in the bingo book, he was known as an A-rank mostly because his team and he were ruthless when put together... He was in no way overpowered, he knew well enough that his superiors could beat him with their eyes closed if they wanted, and that was fine by him... What was the point in him trying to surpass his Hokage in power if he could rely on his teammates to fill in the gaps he lacked... He was a firm believer that teamwork was essential. That's why, when he looked at Sakura asking Sasuke for a date yet again, he cringed and sword under his breath.

"Konoha, sometimes, I think you've sunk pretty low"

~Luciolle24