Content warning for suicidal thoughts. Please do not attempt to use anything you read in this book as a medical or personal evaluation, you're stronger than that! I'm always open to talk if you need and feel like it.

I hope you enjoy the chapter! It's short but I hope it's satisfying enough.

***

The ride to the place was long and uncomfortably quiet. Itachi did not mind the silence though, he had other things that preoccupied his mind. His fingers played with the hem of his clothes as he looked out the window dully, never minding his father's eyes gazing at him through the mirror.

He was not going to like where he was going but it was for his own good. At least that was what the doctors and his parents said. Hell was a better place for him but he would never say that out loud for his mother's sake.

She had found him hanging down the ceiling fan from his neck when he tried to escape the world. Unfortunately he was not dead yet and his bedsheets didn't do as much damage to his body as he would have liked. Maybe he should have slit his wrists or overdosed sleeping pills.

Not that he had not done those before. This was not his first suicide attempt but it was the last straw for his parents who decided to lock him up in a mental institution. He was already getting dry eyes from his incessant staring- he had been doing it for the past ten minutes- but Itachi did not blink.

His fingers dug harder into his woolen sweater as they got closer and closer to the asylum that he would soon be calling his home. Yes, he would not like it there. The gates of the place stared back at him through the window as if it were mocking him. It was like it was saying 'oh great, another mad teenager to take care of!'

Itachi could not blame the gate though. It had every right to complain because he was also complaining. If he could, he would become friends with this gate. It seemed like the both of them would click immediately and start discussing about their various life problems.

"Itachi." His father brought him out of his thoughts. Only then did he realise how dry and probably red his eyes were. Slowly blinking to trigger his tear ducts, Itachi turned his attention towards his father. "We are here." The man announced.

Itachi blinked again, noticing that the car had indeed stopped. "As I have seen." He spoke for the first time in hours? Days? He didn't know.

"I really hope that you would get better Itachi." His father said wistfully. Itachi shrugged as the locks of the car came undone. It was on child lock in case Itachi got any less than funny ideas. He opened the door and stepped out to get his bag out of the trunk. This was it. His life at an asylum began.

Signing into the institution was done without a hassle. He had to undergo a full body search for any contraband or harmful object at the entrance. They would have found nothing on Itachi if the nosy searcher didn't think to search his long hair. The boy scowled at the razor that was removed from his ponytail as if it was the one that announced its presence to the searchers. There went his only escape.

After the search, Itachi was directed to a purple haired woman standing not far off. Judging from her uniform, she was a nurse and obviously tired of her job if the poker face she pulled was any indication.

"Welcome to the Akatsuki, Itachi. I am nurse Murasaki and it's a pleasure to have you here." Was it though? Itachi only graced her with a non committal nod. "Right. I would lead you to your room while I explain how things work here." With that the woman set the pace and started leading Itachi through the institution.

The words spoken by the woman were a light buzzing sound to him; he wasn't listening. He was too preoccupied with the beige colour of the walls and how many chips were in the paint to hear what Murasaki was saying. When she stopped at a door he assumed that they had reached his room and was correct.

Nurse Murasaki left him after giving him a closing remark he only half listened to. Sighing, Itachi opened the door to the room and stepped in, taking in the sight as he did so. It wasn't pretty but that was to be expected. Which asylum would be pretty?

The same bland walls stared at him dully. There were two beds in the room impossibly thin blankets and no covers. What? Were they afraid that somebody would try to hang themselves or something? Well it seemed that the heaters were working perfectly so he was not complaining too much.

The four walls of the place itself was not too big but not too small that he wouldn't have any space to isolate himself from his roommate. Speaking of roommate, there was an impossibly tall dude on one of the beds staring blankly at Itachi. How the teen missed the large figure sitting there, he was not sure.

"Yo roommate! I've been trying to get your attention for ages! I'm Kisame, you are?"

Too loud. And too talkative. Itachi already hated his roommate. The dark haired teen ignored the bigger one and moved his luggage to the unoccupied bed.

"You don't talk much, do you?" His roommate was at his side the moment he sat on his bed to try it out. The mattress wasn't too impressive, having been butt-pressed by previous occupants but it was soft enough and had no bedbugs.

Itachi wondered if the person that used this bed actually became sane. Or found a way to end their lives. He would like to meet them and ask how they did it. End their lives, that is.

"That's okay. Everybody doesn't feel like talking on their first day but really, you get used to it." Kisame's voice was a faint yet persistent buzz in his ear, like a mosquito trying so hard to get a human to notice its presence. It often ended with the mosquito being killed. Itachi liked the sound of that. He grinned.

But wait.

The grin fell.

How was he supposed to ask the previous owners of this bed how they killed themselves? He didn't know where they were buried!

Next to him, Itachi's roommate gave a forlorn sigh. It was clear that the buddy was paying no attention to him. In clearer words, he could pay no attention to him because his brain was disjointed from his body at the moment.

"I have me another crazy one." The roommate sighed, never mind the fact that he was in the asylum for the exact same reason.

Itachi and Kisame spent the time in silence throughout which the former stared unblinkingly at his roommate and the other stared back uneasily. It gave Kisame the heebee jeebies how red Itachi's eyes were from not blinking for almost an hour but what creeped him out more was the fact that he was staring at him.

The taller boy could take it no more. "What?!" He snapped.

It was then Itachi blinked. Slowly at first, then rapidly to gather tears in his eyes. He was at it for an irritating while because of how long he went unblinking but after that he spoke his first words since he got here.

"You're blue."

Kisame's eye twitched. He was just noticing?! His skin had a bluish tint to it because of a rare nonterminal disease he suffered from so he had gotten used to people asking him about it on their first meeting. His roommate, however, was so mentally disgruntled that he didn't notice.

"You're blue. Like a smurf."

Oh no he didn't. That was one thing Kisame hated people for. Why must their first inference to blue skinned people be smurfs?! The big teen kept his irritation under check because his delirious roommate probably wouldn't even understand what he did wrong so he decided to ask his name again.

"Itachi." Itachi spoke. At least that was out of the way.

"Nice to meet ya, Itachi. I said it before but I'm Kisame. I'm here for anger issues. What are you here for?" Kisame asked but Itachi's attention had steered off topic to something else. Thankfully, he was vocal about it this time so he knew what was going on in that head.

"Do you think Jesus snores?"

O...Kay?

His roommate was here for delusion. Definitely.

"It'll be bad if He does. I wouldn't be able to sleep in heaven. Can I take earplugs along?" Itachi's rambles were cut off by a siren and Kisame stood from his bed. A little bit too eagerly if you asked Itachi. Maybe he had bedbugs? What a pity. He wasn't sharing his bed though.

"Come on, it's time for group therapy."

That caught his attention. "Group...therapy?" More people were here. He knew that but he wasn't expecting to meet them. He didn't want to meet them. He just wanted to sleep and keep on sleeping forever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And-

"Yes, group therapy. Now come along, you weirdo." Kisame dragged him by hand out of their room and led them down the beige hallway to a room. It was already occupied, much to Itachi's chagrin, by other patients and they both took the empty seats

Itachi looked around him at his, should he call them house mates? They were practically living under the same roof. Who cared anyway? They were in a circle with one last empty seat marking where the loop began.

Sitting left to the empty chair was a blond whose long hair was cut unevenly. Some parts even looked frazzled as if they had been burnt off. A nasty scar marked the left part of his face and some parts of his head, leaving the spot bald and constantly red. His arms also had second degree burn scars on them like he walked through hell on his hands.

The burn scar on his face made his eye lax like he had no control over it anymore but from his second, good eye, Itachi could see that they were a dazzling blue unlike his constantly red ones.

Next to the blond was a kiddish looking dark haired guy who was currently bothering the blond. A scar also marred his face but they weren't burn marks. It looked more like his face was hit badly by something. The marks, however, didn't stop at his face. It continued down the right side of his body as if not just his face but his whole body was hit. By a truck? Itachi wanted that truck to hit him but finish the job.

The crushed boy spoke childishly in third speech and high pitched voice that grated on Itachi's ears. No wonder why the blond on the receiving end of his trouble looked like he would walk to the nearest socket outlet and suck on a naked wire. That was a good idea! Itachi scanned the room. Tch. No outlets. He should have known.

Next to the childish boy was a stone faced redhead who just stared impassively at nothing in particular. He would have given the illusion of being perfectly still if not for his fingers which drummed against his laps fervently. He was itching to do something, so it seemed.

A girl sat next to the redhead and Itachi grimaced at the sight of her. A broomstick was fatter than she was and from her seat mate's reaction, she probably reeked of vomit. Ah. That was what the redhead was itching to do- kill her for smelling like vomit. She had bluish lavender hair and golden eyes. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyes hollow. She looked horrible.

The next person seemed normal but if he was here, he had to be abnormal like the rest of them. He had ginger hair and that was the only notable feature about him. Itachi moved on to the next person and holy makarena was this person thin!

If Itachi called the girl slimmer than a broom, you could pick out ten of this guy from one broomstick. His hair was a dull red that was whitening at the base and his skin was sickeningly pale. Golly, if this guy got into an accident there would be no need for an X-ray because Itachi could practically see his organs and skeleton.

His eyes were purple, cheeks sunken and bones protruding. He was pitiful to look at. Somehow, Itachi knew this was an effect of drugs.

Kisame sat next to the thin redhead. He was blue, tall, his roommate, and looked like a fish. No, Itachi wasn't making things up. Kisame actually looked like a fish and it wasn't because of his blue skin although that added to the factors.

He sat next to Kisame and to his other side sat a bulky dude. If Itachi were to come up with a nickname for him, it would be Stitches because of the numerous stitches that littered his body. The one sitting next to Stitches also looked normal save for the bandages on his body. They both look like zombies. Hehe. The zombie duo.

"Can I have your attention, young man?"

A voice pulled him from his observations. Itachi blinked. He had been staring without doing so again and apparently, he was inside his head so much that he didn't realise the doctor was here already. Itachi sighed. This would be a long stay at the asylum.

***

Yo! How was the first chapter? Excited for more?

As you're all aware, I still have other stories to complete so this one would have slow updates. Don't worry, you can do it!

QOTC: if you were to be a Naruto character based on your behaviour, who would it be?

I would be Sasori because he best describes me. I like to sit in the comfort of my house writing instead of socialising and I hate waiting and being waited for. If you know me well enough from my end notes, you would discover that I have the patience of a chipmunk high on caffeine and an incredibly shorter attention span.

This is why I keep branching off to other stories while simultaneously writing them. I just can't keep my attention on one thing for too long. Except writing that is. I could write for hours and Sasori loves to make dolls for hours so...we're the same!

Which Naruto character based on your behaviour would you be?

Don't forget to vote and leave a review. Thanks for reading!

-Star.