[Sai isn't quite so sure Chilton does understand, though. The people that come even close to it are few and far between, like Minato and perhaps to some extent Annie. Those who grew up in a nonstandard way like him, soldiers, fighters. Chilton wants to understand him, that much is obvious, but he's too different--too ordinary, Sai would think, surely much to the psychiatrist's chagrin if he could be privy to exactly what his potential future patient was thinking just then.]
Do you mean my feelings about the secrets themselves, or the fact that I must keep them?
[He doesn't have much in the way of feelings about either of those, really. The stirrings of human emotions reawakened in him are still fledgling at best, difficult to decipher, and further, most are of a far more personal nature--the sense of obligation to Naruto and Sakura to retrieve Sasuke, the heaviness when Naruto disappeared, the tension in his stomach when Kitty had been hospitalized after her kidnapping by the Hornets...]
If it's the former, that would not be of much use to you without my ability to provide you with details, correct? For example, if I were to tell you I was sad, you would ask why, which I would not be able to tell you. It would be a bit like reporting mission success or failure without being able to disclose the mission itself.
[There's a pause, as he realizes something. He remembers what Luvander had once said-- "If I never had to know that there were people training kids to think of themselves as 'nobody', I would quite frankly feel a lot better about humanity as a whole."
"I don't think so now, anyway."
"I am heartily glad you don't, kid. But if it is all the same to you, that won't exactly change my deep and sudden desire to set fire to the bastards who made you think so in the first place. I've been told I have my funny little ways."]
...But what you are really asking me is if I bear ill will towards Root and my superiors, isn't it? Because I am what you consider a child, and the most common form of society among imPorts is that which views children as innocent, hands which should remain unsullied until the arbitrary point of eighteen, the age designated as the start of adulthood.
You wish to know if I regret those lost years, if I consider my circumstances unfortunate.
[There's a tick of something mildly impatient as he speaks, of the very beginnings of a sort of exasperation.]
I don't. Everything we ever did was always ordered with the best interests of the village in mind. There were things that needed to be done, and we would do them. It doesn't matter to me that it wasn't something I chose. I would do them all over again without hesitation.
[There are things he wants to learn and understand, about people, about himself, but trying to live for himself and decide what that means isn't about getting away from Root, for him. He finds that he likes being part of Team Kakashi, likes "existing", but the village is still everything. He'd still lay down his life for it at a word, and doesn't mourn for those things he doesn't remember about birth family, or the childhood before he became an orphan and then a weapon.
(Deep down in his newly reawakened heart, quiet and unheard, a part of him thinks if it weren't for Root, he might not have met Naruto--and that's something he could never regret)]
no subject
Do you mean my feelings about the secrets themselves, or the fact that I must keep them?
[He doesn't have much in the way of feelings about either of those, really. The stirrings of human emotions reawakened in him are still fledgling at best, difficult to decipher, and further, most are of a far more personal nature--the sense of obligation to Naruto and Sakura to retrieve Sasuke, the heaviness when Naruto disappeared, the tension in his stomach when Kitty had been hospitalized after her kidnapping by the Hornets...]
If it's the former, that would not be of much use to you without my ability to provide you with details, correct? For example, if I were to tell you I was sad, you would ask why, which I would not be able to tell you. It would be a bit like reporting mission success or failure without being able to disclose the mission itself.
[There's a pause, as he realizes something. He remembers what Luvander had once said--
"If I never had to know that there were people training kids to think of themselves as 'nobody', I would quite frankly feel a lot better about humanity as a whole."
"I don't think so now, anyway."
"I am heartily glad you don't, kid. But if it is all the same to you, that won't exactly change my deep and sudden desire to set fire to the bastards who made you think so in the first place. I've been told I have my funny little ways."]
...But what you are really asking me is if I bear ill will towards Root and my superiors, isn't it? Because I am what you consider a child, and the most common form of society among imPorts is that which views children as innocent, hands which should remain unsullied until the arbitrary point of eighteen, the age designated as the start of adulthood.
You wish to know if I regret those lost years, if I consider my circumstances unfortunate.
[There's a tick of something mildly impatient as he speaks, of the very beginnings of a sort of exasperation.]
I don't. Everything we ever did was always ordered with the best interests of the village in mind. There were things that needed to be done, and we would do them. It doesn't matter to me that it wasn't something I chose. I would do them all over again without hesitation.
[There are things he wants to learn and understand, about people, about himself, but trying to live for himself and decide what that means isn't about getting away from Root, for him. He finds that he likes being part of Team Kakashi, likes "existing", but the village is still everything. He'd still lay down his life for it at a word, and doesn't mourn for those things he doesn't remember about birth family, or the childhood before he became an orphan and then a weapon.
(Deep down in his newly reawakened heart, quiet and unheard, a part of him thinks if it weren't for Root, he might not have met Naruto--and that's something he could never regret)]