A/N: Just a one shot I whipped up. Completely AU. I was bored. Wrote the first half of it with my friend Bex. Rated M for language and themes.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Purgatory
Kakashi's head rested weakly on the thin pillow the prison provided. His eyes were closed against the blurred gray space of the cell. He was not alone; several shadows paced the room, but their faces were nondescript and vague.
"Hey, I think he's coming around."
Kakashi groaned. His head lolled to the left. The silk of an eye patch brushed against his cheek.
"Hey, Kakashi, wake up!" Fingers snapped in front of his face.
"I can't believe they didn't keep him in the hospital for longer. This place is a total shithole."
"I suppose it's just more punishment."
"Genma…?" Kakashi whimpered. He managed to set his head back again, stretching out his neck, which felt thick with slime. He tried to sit up, but a hot lance of pain sliced through him. He yelped and lay back down.
"Easy, tiger," Genma said. Although the words were light and joking, Kakashi knew that he meant for him not to move at all.
His fingers curled into a loose fist at his side, rubbing up against the sheets. Why was there an eye patch?
"My eye…"
"You've been out for hours; we were starting to think you wouldn't come to. We were ready to call the guard to take you back to the hospital." Now Genma was smiling. Kakashi's mind was fogged with painkiller grogginess, but even he could tell that the smile was pasted on. It was more of a grimace, disgusted and furious.
Then Kakashi frowned. Something was missing, along with his eye (because he could feel it--there was nothing there, and his eyelid was sagging behind the patch), an all-important piece of the puzzle.
"Obito's gone…"
Tenzou stood off to one side. His arms were crossed, and he was leaning against the wall that had the barred window, watching Kakashi tentatively. He said Obito was gone--but for how long? Would that little demon be back any time soon to strike up animosity between them again?
I should have never gotten involved in the drug business, he thought. He sighed. If I had just kept my hands off that coke, I would be back at my apartment now, enjoying a scotch. Fucking coke. Fucking rehab.
"What are you thinking about?" Genma asked. "Care to share?"
"I was just wondering when the next meet-up with the girls is," Tenzou said. "I need a serious fuck." Genma raised his eyebrow and bit down on his toothpick so that it splintered. He spat it out in the toilet and grabbed another from the pack in his hip pocket.
"No going anywhere near Ino, y'hear?" he growled. He took the toothpick out of his mouth, examined it, and put it back into the pack. He exchanged it for one of the rationed cigarettes that Asuma handed out every month. He frowned at it. "Too fucking bad they don't give us fucking lighters, eh?"
He moved over to the bars and wrapped his hands around the cold iron. "Hey!" he called. The cigarette dangled from his lower lip. One of the guards at the end of the hallway snapped to attention.
"What?" he asked.
"I need a fucking light."
The guard sighed. "How troublesome," he muttered. He traipsed over, a young man with a high brown ponytail and tired-looking eyes. He flicked out a zippo and held it under the cigarette that Genma stuck eagerly out between the bars. When the guard snapped the lighter shut, Genma pulled back and sucked gratefully, blowing out a cloud of smoke through his nostrils.
"Thanks, mate," he said, and turned back to the room.
"Before you leave, Shikamaru, I got a question," Tenzou said. He uncrossed his arms and pushed himself off the wall, standing about two feet away from the bars.
"What is it?" Shikamaru asked. He stuffed his hands in his pockets.
"When's the next time we meet with the ladies?"
Shikamaru met his comment with a dead face. "Next Wednesday."
"That fucking long?" Tenzou groaned.
"You won't be getting your rocks off anyway," Shikamaru said. He leaned to one side and put his weight on his left hip. "No sex allowed."
"Since when?" Tenzou asked.
Shikamaru chuckled. "You obviously haven't been here for very long," he said. "Some of these guys haven't seen cunt in years."
"So how do they…?"
"We provide tube socks."
"Ah. But I've heard that some guys do get laid in here."
"Yeah," Shikamaru said. "The guards. But seriously--you have to be married. Your spouse can come and visit in the black box."
"The theater?" Tenzou asked. "What the hell?"
"There's a bed in the back." Shikamaru shrugged. "Anyway, is there anything else, or can I go back to rotting my brains out and sniffing mold over in the corner?"
"Yeah, actually." Tenzou looked fleetingly over his shoulder at Kakashi. "What exactly did they do to him? I mean, I think he's passed out again. Why couldn't they keep him in the hospital for longer?"
"They took out the eye that was triggering his schizophrenia," Shikamaru said. He looked in, too. "They'll be making house calls, and you and Genma will have extra free time. But while Genma's charged for rape and you're charged for drug dealing, Kakashi's a murderer. We wouldn't dare leave him in the hospital with all those potential weapons."
"Not even if you strapped him down?"
"He's like an animal--he'd get too stressed. You done now? Can I leave?"
Tenzou waved his hand dismissively. "Yeah, go ahead." Then he watched as Shikamaru made his way back down to the hallway entrance.
--
"She was tiny. A blonde--It wasn't hard."
"But, when did you…?"
"Just shut the fuck up, and let him tell the story," Tenzou spat. Hayate glared at him, but pressed himself back into the couch cushions and waited.
"So she gets up, she pays for her drink, and she leaves," Genma continued. He nodded appreciatively at Tenzou, who just smirked. "And I follow her, right? I pay just so they won't come after me. I tail her for about--oh, I dunno--half an hour, maybe?--before she turns onto this dark side street, and by that time, I'm like, 'All right, here we go.'" He grinned like a wolf does before it whistles.
They were all silent. Genma leaned forward.
"So she turns around, 'cause she hears me coming, right? And the look on her face--mm, mm, mm!" He shook his head. "Priceless.
"So she turns to run, 'cause obviously she's scared shitless, but I'm faster than her, so I slam her against the wall by some dingy old trash heap. I bring my switchblade out and press it to her throat so that her skin goes red. She's whimpering like a child now, and my dick is screaming at me to get this over with already. I was as hard as… I dunno--Hayate is right now?"
The group broke into uproarious laughter, and Hayate swiftly uncrossed his legs, if only to save face. Then Raidou cuffed him over the head and said, "Dude, put that thing away or get a fuckin' tube sock!" and Hayate crossed his legs again.
Genma kept on grinning. "She's offering me all kinds of shit now, blubbering and sobbing all over the hand that I have over her face--you know: money, jewelry, and shit? But I'm like, 'Just shut the hell up. You'll have a good time if you don't make this worse for yourself than it is already.' She's stopped screaming now, but she tries to break away, so I grab her around her middle and push her down to the ground. She's crying, but I'm ignoring all of that. I'm confident in my ability to make her cry in sheer carnal bliss." His wolf-grin widened even more. Tenzou wondered if that was possible, and he looked around him. He snickered into his hand when he saw that a few of the guards were trying to listen in, discreetly turning their heads to hear a little better. Genma continued, "I'm only trying to get one thing, and she knows it. I grin and sort of walk my fingers up her body, stopping at her chest to undo the first button. She screams again, but she stops when she sees my switchblade. I cut open the front of her shirt, right down this way"--he dragged his finger from his throat to his groin--"and even Jiraiya wouldn't believe the rack on her."
Jiraiya, who was sitting next to Hayate, laughed and said, "Yeah, you wish."
"Damn," Tenzou muttered. All eyes turned to him. "If only I'd had a fuck before I got thrown in here." He laughed. "I'm turning out like Hayate. Sorry, man, keep going."
Genma laughed and leaned forward even further. "She's completely shut up, now, not even a whimper. I guess she was in shock. Whatever, the point is, I lean down, and I ask if she's got a boyfriend. She nods. I shrug. 'He's forfeiting you for the night,' I say."
Laughter traveled around the group. Genma continued. "Alright, so she closes her eyes tightly, and I take that as a 'Okay, just get this over with so I can go home'… so…" He lowered his voice. The guards all tried to lean in casually, but nobody noticed them.
"I use the blade to get her out of her skirt, 'cause I'm using the other hand to keep her on the ground, and toss it aside. She is wearing the most ridiculously amazing pair of panties." He could tell that the others were practically salivating at this point. He kept talking. "Really pale blue satin, with white lace around the edges. String. No coverage whatsoever. "
Tenzou leaned back and groaned. "Aw, fuck!"
Hayate hit him. "Shut up! You're making this harder for yourself, you know."
"Literally," Raidou coughed, and the group exploded into laughter.
They calmed, and Genma suddenly clenched his hand into a fist and dragged it across the air, silencing them all. "I tear it off of her, like this. And at first, when I start fucking her, she's all quiet, but then, after a while…" He shook his head, eyes closed. "I have to muffle her. She won't shut up!"
Hayate clapped his hands over his ears. "Dear God!"
"Get a sock, man," Jiraiya patted him on the shoulder.
Genma ignored them. "So turns out, she's a howler. Not just like, a little whine, or anything, but this girl is fucking screaming!"
"Okay, seriously, is it next Wednesday yet?" Tenzou asked. "I can file one of them down as my wife."
"Hang in there, kid," Jiraiya muttered.
"I finish up, and I'm all like, 'Fuck, I hope she didn't see my face…'" Genma started.
A loud groan went around the group. "Idiot!" Raidou called. "Total and complete…"
"Who's the idiot here? Who was the one robbing a fucking convenient store without a mask, and who was getting laid? I rest my case. Shut your fucking mouth. So I'm running back home, and I'm ready for a shower, when I hear all this bullshit as I approach the building. And then I realize what's going on. ANBU. On my fucking doorstep. Caught, and I hadn't even gone ten minutes. Turns out, she'd run back to the bar, and the bartender had seen me follow her out earlier. The rest is history, I guess," he sighed.
Jiraiya whistled. "That's a keeper for the kids," he said.
Genma scoffed. "Her eggo is probably preggo," he said. "No condom."
"Nice," Jiraiya said, smiling.
"Oh, hey," Hayate said suddenly. Everyone turned to him. "I heard Kakashi got out of surgery. How is he?"
"No longer a schizo," Tenzou said.
"Didn't he try to kill you when you first came here?" Raidou asked.
"Yeah," Tenzou said. He glowered. "Tried to fucking strangle me. Apparently Obito made him do it."
"Obito? His imaginary friend or what?"
"Or what," Tenzou muttered. "He was a fucking schizophrenic. Whenever he saw that weird red eye of his in the mirror or something, he'd go ballistic." He leaned back, trying to remember his first day at the prison last week. "I was suffering from cocaine withdrawal because they took away my stash and wouldn't give it back, so they were practically dragging me through the prison, showing me around."
"Well, just for the record," Jiraiya said, "duh, duh, and duh."
Tenzou shot him a glare. "So then they showed me the cafeteria and had me get some food while they watched from the doorway. I was stumbling around, and I bumped into Kakashi by accident. He turned around and he said, 'And who the fuck are you?' I told him, and he said, 'Well, welcome to Purgatory.' I was ready to take his word for it, but it's not that bad, looking back on it. Better than having to pay bills, anyway. So I got my food and was eating it, when all the sudden he stood up and said, 'Why are you even trying to fuck with me?'
"I told him, 'I wasn't doing anything… I don't know what you're talking about…' but he wasn't taking any of it. He grabbed me by the collar and slammed me up against the bars, and everyone was watching, even the guards. He had this weird look in his eye, especially that red one, like he couldn't really see me, like he was seeing someone else. He shouted, 'Do not fuck with me!' and then he wrapped his free hand around my neck and started pressing down on my windpipe. I was completely out of it, so I couldn't struggle or anything, and so Genma actually had to come over and rescue me by knocking Kakashi out of the way."
Everyone was paying close attention now, and Genma nodded grimly.
"Yeah," he said. "I was like, 'Get off of him, you schizophrenic bastard!' It was kinda freakish, because he's a murderer and all, so I turned to Asuma and was all, 'Give him his meds or fucking do something!'"
"He talked about how he couldn't, or something," Tenzou said. He shook his head. "That they were testing on him later that day. We didn't see him for the next week, and we were all assigned the same cell. He just came back yesterday afternoon, out like a light without a switch."
"Is he still asleep?" Hayate asked.
"Shikamaru talked about the medics making 'house calls' because they didn't want him near any potential weapons. I bet he's awake now, being poked and prodded and surrounded by guards so he doesn't hurt anybody, though I'm pretty sure he'll be out of it or in pain too much to do anything. I still don't know why they didn't send him to an asylum. I mean, he killed someone, but he's a schizo. He should have pleaded insane."
"He killed his best friend, Obito, before he went schizophrenic. According to the opposing lawyer, the ghost of Obito haunted him after the deed was done."
"Why would he kill his best friend?" Tenzou asked, shocked.
"Obito slept with his girlfriend, Rin, and Kakashi got pissed," Jiraiya said. He shrugged. "Rin told the people at the hospital that Obito would always make fun of Kakashi's red eye, so she thought seeing it might be the trigger. Turns out she was right, and now they took his eye out."
"Sad," Genma said.
Suddenly, one of the guards cleared his throat and pushed himself off the wall. "All right, Yamato, enough small talk. You've still got rehab for the next six months, remember? Follow me."
"Yeah, yeah, Gai," Tenzou said. He stood and waved briefly to his friends before muttering to Genma, "He needs it more than I do, though."
"I heard that, Yamato; let's get a move on."
"Bite me!" Tenzou snapped. The other prisoners laughed while Gai came forward and twisted Tenzou's arm behind him, pushing him along.
"Howzabout I break you instead?" Gai whispered in his ear.
"It could always be the other way around," Tenzou said quietly back.
—
"So, what's rehab even like?" Genma asked. He lounged against the far wall of the cell, watching Kakashi sleep. He was smoking a cigarette—only Asuma smoked more than he did.
"I might as well tell you, since you'll be in it for your smoking problem any day now," Tenzou said, smirking.
"They don't do that, you know," Genma said. He frowned. "They only do that for crack whores or potheads like you."
"Oh, lighten up, Bones," Tenzou said. He leaned back over his bed and chucked a pebble at Genma, one that had come loose from the corner. "I was only kidding. Anyway, it sucks, if you must know. They show you pictures of coke and then don't give you any."
"Poor baby," Genma whined.
Tenzou had half a mind to search for a bigger pebble, but instead crossed his legs and said, "Imagine being shown twenty pictures of naked women a day and being told how horrible it is for you to even go near them. How it's detrimental to your health." He rolled his eyes. "You'd never be allowed to have sex again, would you?"
Genma sucked in a long draft of smoke and blew it out again with an open lip. "Yikes. I guess that would suck."
"No shit, Sherlock."
"Do you think they have rehab for crazy people?"
Genma and Tenzou turned to look at Kakashi, who was awake now. Either that or he had been awake the entire time, listening to their conversation. He struggled to sit up, and then leaned back against the wall.
"Welcome to rehab, man. You're sitting in yours," Tenzou said. He spread his arms like wings, to encompass the whole of the cell, and then let them drop with a huff of disappointment. "But you're not crazy anymore. Anyway, how long've you been here? I've been meaning to ask you that."
Kakashi sighed. "Some introduction, huh?" he asked. Tenzou grimaced. He clearly was still a little delusional. "I've been here for three years now on counts of murder in the first degree. Frankly I deserve them."
"Three years?" Tenzou gasped. "They waited to do surgery on your eye for three years?"
"A-B-C, just as easy as 1-2-3," Kakashi sang. He gave a short, caustic bark of laughter. "Testing, testing, 1-2-3. Is there any other way to describe it? Third try's the charm. They fucking made me crazier."
"A surgery per year, wasn't it?" Genma asked, and Kakashi nodded. "And all of them failed until now."
"I can still feel a bit of a buzz," he said. "And this fucking eye patch is going to give me hives." He rubbed at it.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Hatake," Shikamaru said from across the hall. He was leaning against the bars of an empty cell. "You don't want them making another 'house call', do you?"
If Kakashi was a cat, his back would have arched and his fur would have been standing on end. As it was, he made a terrified face, one a kid would make if their parents caught them crapping themselves.
"Dear god, no!" he said. He wrenched his hand back down and sat on it.
Genma laughed. "What did they do to you this year, Scarecrow?" he asked.
"They tried to give me a glass eye," Kakashi said. He shuddered. "It was like someone was filling it up with a helium balloon because they got the wrong fucking size, and they're trying again to-fucking-morrow." He sighed.
"Well, they'll be flaunting coke in front of my face and watching me twitch on the floor from withdrawal, so you won't be alone in the pain department," Tenzou said. He rolled his eyes. "Seriously, these people have no clue what they're doing."
"Withdrawal?" Kakashi asked. He narrowed his one eye and then winced. He must have tried to narrow the other.
Tenzou shrugged. "Addict," he said.
"Oh yeah," Genma said. He looked between the two of them and shoved himself off from the wall. "You two haven't been properly introduced yet. Hatake Kakashi, meet Yamato Tenzou, the addict who was busted for dealing out coke. Yamato Tenzou, meet Hatake Kakashi, who's here on counts of first degree murder and is currently as sane as a civilian."
"Lovely to meet you," Tenzou said, nodding, "so long as you don't shove me up against a wall and try to strangle me this time."
"Ah, that was you then?" Kakashi asked. He grinned. "I must have imprinted Obito on you. Sorry about that."
"You seem to be getting along fine," someone from the front of the cell said. All three men turned to see a blonde woman in pigtails with a huge bust, dressed in a green top and a pair of black shorts. She was carrying something that looked like a toolbox.
"Oh no!" Kakashi said. He pressed himself against the wall. "Not another house call! If I knew I had to go through these, I would have been fine staying crazy, thanks!"
"No choice," the woman said. She opened the cell door with a key from her pocket. "Now, be a good boy and I won't grind you to a bloody pulp."
She made towards them, and Tenzou and Genma instinctively backed away from her domineering presence.
Kakashi sat up a little straighter as she approached, and when she told him to stand, he did so, using the wall for back support as she poked at his cheek. His expression was not an amused one.
"Off with the patch," the woman said. She set her toolbox on the bed and opened it, pulling out a little black pouch and taking from it a glass eye wrapped in plastic.
Kakashi groaned and hunched his shoulders. "Not another one," he said. He turned his face away when she made to take his patch off for him.
"Would you rather go around with that patch for the rest of your life?" she asked.
Kakashi glared at her. "Frankly, Tsunade, yes. But I was too fucking doped up to say that the last time," he spat.
"Don't get hissy with me, Kakashi," Tsunade said. She wagged her finger in his face. "I could knock you into next week, and you know it."
"Yes, ma'am," he said stiffly.
Genma elbowed Tenzou in the ribs and whispered in his ear. "They must know each other from somewhere else." Tenzou leaned in to listen, and nodded.
"All right," Tsunade was saying. She was packing her toolbox up again. "I'll give some pain medication to Shikamaru. It seems he's more trustworthy about that kind of thing than Asuma is…" Her gaze slid over to Tenzou, who swallowed under the piercing gold of her irises. "Holler to him if you need it."
"Yes, ma'am," said Kakashi.
—
That night, Kakashi woke to the quiet sounds of a shivering man. Kakashi was a light sleeper. Every whisper that he heard, every bump in the dark—it would all be first translated over to his dreams, and then they would become so fantastic so quickly that he would wake up not a moment later. So, while he was dreaming about holding Rin again, her face turned to Tenzou's face, and Tenzou was shivering uncontrollably, as though he was close to getting hypothermia.
Kakashi sat up and watched as his cellmate huddled on his corner bunk with the blanket pulled up to his collar, wrapped around him like a cocoon. Even in the dark, and even from across the cell, Kakashi could see him trembling and twitching.
He got up and went over, worried, and placed a hand on Tenzou's shoulder.
"What do you want?" Tenzou asked bitterly.
"What's wrong with you?" Kakashi asked. He pulled his hand away. Tenzou turned his face slightly to look at Kakashi with one tired eye.
"What do you think?" Tenzou said. "It's withdrawal." He shuddered and pulled himself into a tighter ball. "I think it'll go on for another few days. I used to get up at midnight every night to take some sort of drug." He sighed and buried his nose in the mattress. "You know, it'd be so fucking easy to kill myself in here?"
"Why?" Kakashi asked.
Tenzou chuckled a little bit. "All I'd have to do is smash my head against the wall a couple of times. Bam—I'd be gone."
"So why don't you?"
"Because I know that it'll be over soon. Half an hour, tops. And then, once I'm done with rehab, I'll be able to get out of here."
Kakashi crossed his arms. "To go drug deal again?" he asked.
Tenzou fell silent. Kakashi could hear his teeth chattering. "You called it Purgatory," Tenzou said at last.
"Purgatory's in our heads," Kakashi said. "It's in the stuff we do. It's drug dealing, rape, murder. It's not this place."
"So what did you mean when you said 'Welcome to Purgatory'?" Tenzou asked.
"I meant welcome to the consequences," Kakashi said.
"For your evil deeds…" Tenzou said.
"Not necessarily," Kakashi said.
"But Heaven is consequences for good deeds," Tenzou said.
Kakashi sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned back on his elbows. "Let me tell you a little secret that I found out while I was schizophrenic."
"And that is…?" Tenzou prompted.
"Heaven and Hell? They're one in the same," Kakashi said.