[Lonely] The Healing Process.

[Shikon]

The Healing Process Part I
Miss Aikou, are you listening?

The young girl looked up at the women sitting to her right, the silver charms in her hair chiming from the movement. "What?" This happened often, the young shinobi found herself drifting off in her head during these sessions with some frequency. She usually missed half of what the middle aged woman was saying.

"I asked if you were listening."

"Oh, I'm sorry no. I was..." Her voice trailed off as Aikou Satsui tried to remember what she was thinking about. Something about spacial seals and application, she couldn't really remember now though.

"That's okay. We can talk about something else." The woman made a note on her pad in front of her, Aikou rolled her eyes. Dr. Hutouko was always taking notes, the woman was meticulous, something that Aikou found useful, but annoying all the same. The middle aged woman was slender, with long arms, delicate fingers and slightly greying brown hair. She never took to dying or hiding that fact, she lived her life being proud of who and what she was, hiding her age was not something the Medical Ninja thought to be acceptable. 'Be proud of who you are, inside and out' the woman always followed that mantra.

The Doctor set her pen down on the small table next to the note pad and looked at her patient. "How goes the writing for the new book?"

"Okay." Aikou always knew questions about her writing would come up during the sessions. The Doctor say it as a vice to work through her troubles, and encouraged her to continue it often. Aikou found it relaxing, but also quite stressful, her agent and editor insisted she go to book signings, in order to increase publicity. The last of her books did not sell as well as they wanted, she did not care, but her agent obviously did.

"Your last one was rather interesting, I admit I have read it twice now." She said this as she reached to the book case behind her, revealing Aikou's work. The young shinobi could see the familiar cover from where she sat, bright red and black, Seals: How Complexity Simplifies Their Use clear across the top in gold lettering.

"I see."

"You don't care?" Of course it wasn't that she did not care. Aikou was always happy she inspired her readers, though she knew that was not what Dr. Hutouku was doing by sharing that she was a fan of her work. She knew that in therapy, a connection of trust had to be made. The Doctor was attempting to relate and solidify a relationship with her. The young girl did not care to indulge her.

"Can we move on to something else?"

"Very well." Aikou could hear the scribble of a pen on paper. "Have the dreams been getting any better?"

Aikou closed her eyes. This was a topic she was not earnest to go over. Though she did know why the woman brought it up. Aikou's frequent night terrors were obviously related to her past trauma, getting to the bottom of the terrors would shed light on how to move her forward from the events that transpired to cause them. Despite this, Aikou found it hard to speak about the nightmares, not because it frightened her, but because she never remembered them.

The nightmares stemmed from the events that occurred a few years ago. Aikou had been tricked by another young genin to leave the village with him. She was promised they could live together and be happy, Aikou was young, foolish and in love. Or so She thought. The boy was playing her the entire time, telling her what she wanted to hear most and twisting her mind to be putty in his hands. In the end, he handed her off to the Criminal Cartel that hired him for the job. She had not seen him since that day.

Her time in captivity was mostly a blur. She remembered lots of pain, threats, blood. Mostly she was left alone in a cell for long periods of time, starving and thirsty. That was all she could recall, just small glimpses and flashes of the long eleven month period. That was probably best though, Aikou felt she didn't really want to remember exactly what was done to her. Luckily, her family money could by the best Medical Ninja in the village to remove whatever scars on her skin were left to remind her. Unfortunately, Medical jutsu had a difficult time repairing someone's mind. Her nightly dreams seemed to be the scars that could not be removed.

"Relatively the same."

"What were they about this time?" Aikou had never told the woman she didn't remember the dreams. It seemed silly and embarrassing that she should wake up screaming, covered in sweat with no reason as to why. So the girl found it easier to simply lie. " Darkness. A pure abyss of nothing swallowing me whole."

More writing on the note pad. The doctor always wrote down the descriptions Aikou gave for her dreams. She always found this amusing, her own little joke of having her write her meticulous notes on nothing but Aikou's made up lies. The writing went on for a few moments, and she stayed silent throughout.

"Do you think maybe this dark abyss relates to your trauma?"

"Possibly."

"And..."

"And I suppose my traumatic event has induced a phobia into my mind in order to prevent me front returning to unpleasant and suppressed emotions and memories." She this mockingly, copying the Doctors diction in a way to show she knew where the woman was attempting to steer the conversation.

More notes. "Closing yourself off to the self exploration through sarcasm is also a defensive mechanism Miss Aikou."

She bit her lip. "My apologies." The girl understood that Dr. Hutouko was simply there to help her, assist her in get through her problems, and that Aikou had to put the effort in to accomplish it. Still the girl found the Doctors obvious tactics rather off putting. Perhaps her family could have gotten her a therapist that was specialized in shinobi trauma, not just woman's physical abuse therapist. Though getting this doctor made sense, as the family wished to hide as much as possible of the true events from the village. Getting a shinobi trauma therapist would have been far more invasive.

"Yes, my dreams could be a way of my mind trying to process what happened. Though cannot consciously interpret what they mean given they occur why'll I'm asleep."

"That's why we are talking about them now Aikou."

The clock in the room chimed loudly, causing Aikou to open her eyes startled.

"It seems our time is up. Do you have anything else you'd like to ask before we stop for the week?"

Aikou though for a moment, trying to think of something that might have an answer that held some meaning. Once she thought of one, the words left her lips before she was able to stop them. Once spoken they filled in air, bringing a silent stasis to the room. The doctor's eyes held fixated on Aikou's for what felt like hours, the silence hanging over them like heavy water.

The quiet was only broken by the sound of a pen moving across a note pad.