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

Chapter Three

/loy·al·ty/

/ˈloiəltē/

noun

a strong feeling of support or allegiance

//

About two weeks after the incident with Chitose, Naruto woke up unable to breathe.

He immediately panicked, thrashing about like a wild animal, but he wasn't able to do anything when faced with a much older girl kneeling over him, pressing a pillow down on his face– not that he'd been aware of that detail at the time.

All he knew was that he couldn't breathe and he was scared, he was scared and suffocating.

And then, suddenly his attacker is ripped off of him and thrown across the room with so much force Naruto swears he sees her hit the wall.

But he doesn't focus on that, all he cared about was getting the air back into his lungs, he could worry about the girl later.

His chest was heavy and he's pretty sure he can hear himself wheezing.

Around him the other orphans were starting to stir, finally noticing that something important happened while they'd been sleeping. Naruto didn't notice them; he only looked at his savior.

Crouched before him, in black-clad and a bone-white dog mask was a boy. Naruto could tell he was a boy, not much older than Aiya-chan by the way he smelled, too fresh and new to be fully grown like the caretakers and the matron.

His buzzing energy was big, it went everywhere and it tasted of lighting in the back of his mouth. It felt so angry and that scared him, was he going to hurt him too?

He's scared, and he's discovered throughout his life that the best way to get people to stay away from him when he was scared was to growl, the noise settles into his chest instinctively as he bares his teeth at the dog-boy, backing away slowly.

Where is Aiya?! He wants Aiya!

And then the dog-boy picks Naruto up despite his growls and his buzzing energy isn't angry anymore, even if he still has the left-over stench of rage sticking to his jacket.

"Captain," murmured another one of the strange masked people, "here, let me–" the woman wearing a deer mask knelt down and tried to reach for Naruto, only for dog-boy to snarl at her, in a way, not all that different from how Naruto did it actually. The woman flinched, going still and silent.

Naruto's crying at this point, he has been for a while, too many people and smells and noises and he just wants Aiya back.

"Don't touch him," dog-boy warns, a snarl in his voice.

Naruto bared his teeth at the woman, not wanting the stranger near him, one was more than enough.

Dog-boy smells like blood, sickness, and sadness, it makes Naruto's stomach churn.

Naruto looks wildly, searching for Aiya, and finally, see's her staring at him, shaken and wide-eyed.

"Aiya! Aiya!" He watches as she tries to move towards him and he does his best to focus on her sunflower smell as he kicks at dog-boy, why won't he let him go? Can't he see he wants Aiya?

And then the girl, the one who had tried to smother Naruto, stirred from where she'd been left in a crumpled heap, sitting up with a groan and rubbing at her head. He felt dog-boy stiffen as she spotted him and her face turned twisted and distorted with hate, hands balling into fists at her sides as she cried.

"Why can't you just die!?" She screamed, staggering to her feet. "You freak, why won't you just fucking die! I tried all the poisons they gave me, but nothing worked! You're not even human, you're a monster! You killed my parents! You're a dem–"