House of Crows
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Talking Crow
I can keep a secret,
And throw away the key.
The door of the doctor's house clicked open without needing much persuasion. Kakashi entered silently, highly alert to his surroundings so that he didn't take one step without being perfectly sure he wasn't seen or heard. If someone spotted him creeping around the doctor's house at this hour of the morning, he'd have some real explaining to do.
Down at the end of the hall a heavy snoring sound emerged from a half-open door. That was reassuring. As long as he could hear that sound, Kakashi knew exactly where the owner of the house was at all times. With that in mind, he began his search.
The first room he checked appeared to be a living room that led onto a kitchen. No good. Kakashi moved back across the hall to a locked door and crouched to prod the keyhole with the same pick he'd used on the front door. When it slid open he took stock of the interior. Glass cabinets, strange paper-covered chairs, a smell of stark sterility, a desk with heaps of notes and files… bingo. This was probably where the items he needed were stored.
Kakashi moved straight to the first cabinet, peering through the glass pane at the rows of small bottles and boxes on the shelves within. The names were jargon – they meant nothing to him. What he was looking for was something very specific, and he reached a hand into his pocket to pull out the scribbled list Sakura had given him in order to remind himself.
"It depends what you want," she had told him, sitting on that couch like the prim medical expert she was. "Depressants are your best bet; barbiturates, benzodiazepines, that kind of stuff. Alcohol is sometimes all you need, but you'll want something more stronger like ethanol. Depends what kind of risk you want to take. Ethanol's useful, but it'll kill you very easily if you get the dose wrong."
"It has to be safe," Kakashi had told her. "I'm not looking to murder anyone."
"We're kinda limited by our resource here. All we have is a general practitioner on the other side of the lake who probably won't have anything too advanced. At most he'll have some sedatives, but he might not have the kind we need. I'm not sure he'll even have any sodium thiopental."
"What's that?"
"What you want from the sound of it."
"Just write me a list of everything you need and I'll get it for you."
Sakura had been awfully specific in her requests, and Kakashi figured he could expect no less from the apprentice of a woman like Tsunade. Not only did she want a list of ridiculously long-named drugs (and her spelling was very questionable anyway) but she'd requested apparatus too. Measuring syringes. Sterile glass test-tubes. He was also not allowed to take whole bottles of drugs because she thought the doctor would notice missing items. Kakashi wondered how he would be able to tell. There were so many bottles and all the contents looked the same that he found it hard to believe even the owner would realise just one or two were missing.
He made sure to check every cabinet and drawer – even the locked ones – for the items on his list. Before long he had around five bottles assembled on the counter before him, a handful of test-tubes in one hand, and a syringe in the other. He looked at the list again, and the last remark underlined at the bottom.
(DONT CONTAMINATE THE SAMPLES!!)
What did that mean? Was she telling him not to spit in them? Use clean test-tubes? Use a different syringe to draw each sample?
Better safe than sorry.
With each tube filled by a few cubed centimetres and stoppered at the time, he labelled each with a pen from the desk. The one for sodium thiopental he simply dubbed ST. He was fairly sure this was everything Sakura had asked for.
From somewhere in the back of the house a horrendous little machine began beeping and the doctor stopped snoring. Kakashi froze. A quick glance at his own watch informed him that had probably been the good doctor's alarm clock.
Graced with speed and nimble fingers, Kakashi simultaneously stuffed the tubes into his pouch as he set the bottles back where he'd found them. Footsteps thumped in the hall. His only escape was though the door he'd entered, but he didn't panic. He doubted the first place the man visited in the morning was his surgery-
The handle of the door began turning.
Medics! he thought viciously. They were all as mad and irritating as one another!
The door began to creak open and Kakashi dove behind it, throwing up the swiftest don't-notice-me genjutsu he could. It might have been unnecessary. The door rebounded against him, squashing him with the couple of white coats hanging on the back of it, and even if the doctor looked back he wouldn't have been able to see Kakashi.
"Could have sworn I locked that," the doctor mumbled to himself as he crossed the room.
It was time to go. Kakashi inched out from behind the door and took one slow, silent step at a time as he backed into the hall. He didn't take his eyes off the doctor, who was now reaching under his desk for a triangular beaker of a nameless yellow liquid. From this, he took a long, long drink.
Medics… Kakashi thought again with a shudder as his hand found the handle of the front door and he let himself out of the house with only a whisper of air to mark his passage.
Across the lake, the sun was half-risen, shining unnaturally large and deep red against the still surface of the water. Kakashi broke into a run. He had to get back to Sakura before her alarm clock went off. If he didn't catch her before her first duties, he'd likely have to wait all day to see her again.
As he charged into the main house, he didn't quite count on not being the only one up and about at that hour.
After the first flight of stairs he turned a corner and ran straight into Reika.
He covered for his surprise by blurting an innocuous, "Morning."
She glowered at him. "What are you running for?"
"Exercise," he side, trying to step round her, which was a little difficult when she insisted on stepping with him to keep him blocked. It seemed everyone was out to make his life difficult this morning.
"No, you're running upstairs to the second guest wing. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were rushing back to bed." Her eyes narrowed. "Is there someone special waiting for you there?"
That was more or less the case, yes. He gave up trying to edge discreetly around her and resigned himself to a confrontation he'd so far managed to avoid. With every passing day since he'd thrown her out of his bed and then replaced her with a common woman, the pressure had been building inside her almost visibly – every breakfast tenser than the last, every glare filled with more venom than even Sakura could manage. She was due to explode any day now in a shower of poison and vitriol. When that happened, Kakashi hoped he was far, far away.
"Is there something you need, Reika?" he asked, hoping to deflect her attention off Sakura.
"You need to open your eyes," she said, jabbing a finger at his chest with one fist on her hip. "You're going too far, Kakashi."
"Am I?" he said with disinterest.
"You're spending every night with that… that servant," she hissed. "It's sick. It's wrong. How can you stomach touching that – I don't even want to contemplate how disgusting it is to stick it in a pregnant woman!"
"Well," he said slowly, "it's not really about that."
"Not about what? Sex?" she gave him a lewd look as if this was even worse than she'd thought. "You don't like her do you?"
He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Reika," he began wearily.
"No," she interrupted, finger raised once more. "You listen to me, Kakashi! People are talking! They think you're no better than your father, and at this rate you're going to lose your standing! You're the true heir of this clan but you'll never be accepted if you get serious with some low-born piece of ass. In fact, you're worse than your father! At least your mother was a kunoichi – this girl is a nobody! She's just some tart Toshio tossed aside! You're like a goddamn scavenger picking at his leftovers!"
"Hey," he said softly, but sternly. "That's enough."
"No, it's not enough!" she ground out, delicate tears rimming her eyes so perfectly he was sure she'd practised how to cry before a mirror. "I can't believe you'd choose that girl over me! What does she have that I haven't? Why am I not good enough for you?"
"It's not about you," he tried to assure her.
"Of course it is!" she raged. "If you just want to break it off with me, just say so! You don't have to cavort around with other women to push me away!"
"Alright," he said. "I want to break it off."
She almost screamed. "No! We're promised!"
"You decided that, not me."
"I gave you your first blow job!"
"… you decided that by yourself too."
She stomped her feet and bunched her firsts like a little girl. "Kakashi, this isn't fair!" she whined. And then like a switch had been flipped inside her, she moved seamlessly from petulant child to scorned kunoichi. "I could kill her you know. Girls like her are so fragile, they don't last long."
Kakashi fixed her with a sharp look. "Don't joke about that," Kakashi told her icily. "If you harm a hair on her head, I'll kill you myself."
The explicit warning didn't seem to shock her. Instead she just pouted and sighed in disappointment. "You and Karasu. You're both such babies. Neither of you can take a joke."
"Excuse me?" Kakashi frowned at her.
"It's not like I'd really do anything," she said, reverting to her coy, juvenile demeanour. "You don't both have to tell me off. And what's so special about this girl? Why do you both have to go leaping to her defence all the time? You, I can understand it, she has you by the cock. But Karasu? Maybe she's fucking him too the way he goes on."
Kakashi's frown only deepened. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Don't touch that girl, Reika, or I'll make you regret it," she said, miming what he assumed to be an unflattering version of Karasu's voice. "She seems to get around. She is spreading her legs for him too, isn't she? So gross."
Now that was troubling.
Not for a second did he imagine Sakura would go anywhere near Karasu voluntarily, let alone sleep with him. That wasn't what troubled him. What troubled him was that, behind Kakashi's back, the clan leader had been handing down threats against Sakura's harm.
This was a man who had plunged his hand through his own father's chest because he'd made a drunken nuisance of himself. This wasn't a man who offered protection to anyone unless payment was involved, so to protect a common maid? Kakashi couldn't even begin to figure out the reasoning behind that… and somewhere beneath his ribs another stake of anxiety was hammered into his heart. Another reason to worry. Another potential problem that made it just a little bit harder to breathe.
"I have to shower," he said loftily to Reika, no longer caring to bear the brunt of her anger. He moved around her and headed up the stairs, and if she shouted anything after him he didn't hear it. All he concentrated on now was returning to his room before Sakura left.
When he entered, she'd washed and dressed and had even made the bed like a good little maid. He found her sitting on the couch where he'd left her, and there he also found Pakkun in a near comatose state of bliss at the ear rub he was receiving.
"Did you get everything?" she asked.
"I think so," he replied, handing her the tubes he'd stashed in his pouch.
As she ran her eyes over the labels, he looked around to make sure the doors and windows were sealed. He didn't want anyone happening by them right now in this incriminating situation.
"Good… yes…" Sakura nodded. "This will do. Did you get the pipettes?"
"Uh… he only had syringes."
"Fine. Give me your lighter too." She took everything he handed to her and transported the bundle through to the next room and his desk. She switched on the lamp and arranged two small piles of books as a kind of test tube rack, and in mere seconds she had herself a nice little lab.
But when Kakashi tried to look over her shoulder at what she was doing, she glared him into retreat. "You're not to peek," she told him. "The last thing I need is you memorising how to concoct a truth serum."
He blew out a sigh and went to fall backwards onto the bed, taking some measure of joy in messing up the neatly folded blankets. It smelled strongly of Sakura, and just a little bit of unfulfilled sex, and that was enough to remind him to watch his Ps and Qs, although Sakura was by far an easier person to get along with when she was given drugs to play with. "It may be all for nothing anyway," he said, rubbing his tired face. "I've used truth serums in interrogation before. It's hit and miss."
"You may have the benefit of your victim being ignorant to his dosing," Sakura said, as she carefully measured out her samples. "He'll still be able to lie – they're always able to lie – but he won't know he has a reason to. This stuff works as a depressant, and because it takes more imagination and concentration to lie than tell the truth he'll be more inclined to be honest without realising it. What you'll get is an unusually chatty man for a few hours, and as long as you administer it properly, he won't have his guard up."
"He always has his guard up."
"Make sure you give him sake. When he starts to go, he'll go like a drunk… you'll have to ply him with drinks to keep him or anyone else from realising," Sakura told him. "It's partly an anaesthetic so he won't remember any of what he said or did by tomorrow."
"Is that a good idea? Mixing alcohol with this stuff?"
Sakura said nothing to this.
Kakashi sat up. "This better be safe, Sakura."
"It is," she replied lightly.
"Sakura," he said more forcefully, "if this harms Karasu-"
"You're the one who wants to drug him – there'll always be an inherent risk in that!" she snapped at him over her shoulder.
"I'm not naïve enough to think you wouldn't use that as an excuse to give a lethal dose." He began to wonder if he'd made a mistake in asking for her help. She wanted to help save Konoha, sure, but she might just as well believe that goal would be better achieved with Karasu's immediate death than with Kakashi's plan.
Sakura turned in her seat to fix an unreadable look on him. After a moment, her jaw jerked stubbornly to the side. "I'm only doing what you asked," she said evenly. "You should know I can't afford to kill another Hatake. I barely escaped with my life the last time. I'm not going to tempt fate a second time, and certainly not with this baby. I'm taking a big enough risk as it is with this serum."
He relaxed slightly. "Alright," he said.
But she didn't seem mollified. She turned back to her work with a stony expression, her hands moving jerkily, betraying her annoyance.
He stood up and drew close enough to touch her shoulder. It froze beneath his hand. "I believe you," he tried to impress on her.
"But you don't trust me," she forced out.
For a moment there, he realised he hadn't. "It's not like you trust me either."
She slammed the used syringe down on the desk. "Of course I trust you!" she cried. "I don't have a choice! I don't have to like you, or be nice to you, but I have to trust you, because you're the only player in this game who probably doesn't want to kill me. When you say 'jump', I have to jump! When you say 'concoct a truth serum to make my cousin talk', I have to do it. I have to believe you're doing the right thing, because if I don't then… then I'm as good as dead anyway."
She was crying. Tears dripped down her cheeks as if from nowhere and she angrily pushed them away. "And why am I always crying? I hate hormones!" she snarled at herself. "I hate being pregnant!"
"It won't last forever," he said gently, kneeling next to her to turn her towards him. "If all goes well, my family will have to abandon the contract with Iwa and they'll leave this place, and after that, you and I can make arrangements for the baby. Then we can go back to Konoha."
She gave a wet sniff. "We?" she repeated dubiously. "The moment you arrive back through the gates, you'll be arrested."
That was true, but… "Only if you tell them what I did," he pointed out to her.
She stared at him stolidly, leaving him uncertain as to whether she agreed or not. This was a girl who still resented him. As it stood, he knew if he let down his guard she would still hand his family over to Konoha.
He sighed and ran his hand over her hair. "I trust you," he told her, "because you trust me. We're in this together, Sakura."
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand – unlike Reika she made no effort to cry in an attractive way – and picked up a stoppered tube with no label and held it out. "Here," she said flatly. "It works best if you inject it, but I'd like to see you try. If he drinks it, it could take a long time to work but he'll be talking like Naruto on sugar either way. You won't have long before he falls unconscious so you have to get him talking fast."
He nodded. "It's better if one of the maids slips it in his drink. You'll have to serve it to him the next time they gather for a party," he told her.
She looked reluctant. "If I get caught-"
"I won't let anything happen to you." He glanced at her belly. "Or him."
"Right," she said glumly.
Kakashi stood, tilting up her chin so he could wipe her cheeks dry with his thumb. "You believe me, don't you?" he asked quietly. "You know if it came down to it, I'd give my life for you in a heartbeat."
She blinked at him in surprise, her spiky lashes framing wide, moist eyes. "Yes… I think you would."
Her full pink lips were parted. They were tempting. They'd tempted him before, back in a little hotel in a north-western province of the fire country, and last night when they'd opened welcomingly beneath his. Without thinking, his thumb brushed over her mouth… and it was just as soft as he remembered.
Sakura's head jerked back.
Kakashi had to swallow and forcibly drop his hand. "Your shift will start soon, you'd better go," he told her.
She nodded numbly, and stood without a word. The glass tube of her carefully measured serum disappeared into the lining of her sleeve and then she was walking away. Gone. And probably only too happy to escape him.
At five o'clock a storm unlike anything Sakura had seen in this country so far broke out, and like all weather in this place, it came suddenly and with very little warning. The hour before the evening meal was spent running around to every room to shutter every window and door as rain lashed down in a thunderous torrent and lightening split the sky.
Sakura rather enjoyed a good storm, but by the time she was called down to help serve the family and their guests, she wanted nothing more than to go to bed and sleep till morning. Tonight, however, was one night she couldn't beseech Aki to let her off. She and Kakashi had a mission. It was just like old times.
Now Sakura stood in the antechamber outside the room where the Zuru family and the Hatake clan were gathered. Judging from the hearty level of conversation, they weren't troubled by the booms and rumbles going off overhead. Kaoru was a different story. Every time she heard a crack of thunder she flinched, and every time the lights dipped and wavered as if they were about to go out completely, she reached for Sakura's hand.
"It won't hurt you," Sakura tried to reassure her, but she didn't have that much patience for cowardly custards.
"My uncle on my mother's side got struck by lightening," Kaoru quivered out. "He looked like a smoked haddock when we found him."
"Oh." Sakura let Kaoru squeeze her hand as she turned her thoughts back to the people in the other room. Aki and Yui were busy waiting on them in there, and Sakura had decided after Lord Zuru's last reaction to the sight of her it might be best to wait out of sight. The only reason Kaoru was also waiting here was because of her bad nerves.
Another bang crashed overhead, accompanied by a flash. The storm was virtually on top of them.
"Y-You seem anxious," Kaoru commented, which was a bit rich for a girl shaking like a little leaf. "I-Is it the storm?"
"Yes," Sakura lied. She was extremely conscious of one of the items weighing down her left sleeve. How was she going to get it in the sake without the other girls seeing? How was she going to make sure she was the only one who served Karasu his sake?
"Hey, Kaoru," she said softly. "Do you mind if… you serve Lord Zuru?"
"Huh?" Kaoru looked confused.
"I don't want to upset him again," Sakura said.
"Oh. R-Right. Yeah. Um… ok, but you know, if lightning strikes and I spill something on him he'll be furious."
"Would you rather spill something on Karasu?" Sakura asked.
Kaoru went even paler. "I'll serve Lord Zuru," she whispered.
It was half an hour before Aki returned to the antechamber, empty trays stacked in her arms. "Go serve the drinks," she told the two waiting girls, and Kaoru jumped to obey.
She was the one who grabbed the first two porcelain bottles from the sideboard, and Sakura followed more slowly, procrastinating as she selected one bottle, then a second, until she saw Kaoru head into the dining chamber as Aki disappeared into the corridor outside.
Now was her chance.
Sakura reached into her sleeve and grabbed the tube she'd prearranged. The rubber stop made a soft squeak as she plucked it free and upturned a few drops of the contents into one of her selected bottles. There was no smell, but there would be a taste. She had to hope to heaven that the strength of the sake covered it.
Yui appeared in the doorway so suddenly Sakura's heart gave a guilty thump. Somehow she managed to spirit it up her sleeve again with a smooth, nonchalant sleight of hand. She doubted Yui saw anything. Not when ignoring Sakura was still her primary tactic.
Keeping it casual, Sakura picked up her bottles of sake and padded into the dining room. As agreed, Kaoru was serving Lord Zuru first – albeit with a shaky hand – leaving Sakura free to move to the other end of the room where Karasu sat with Kakashi. They both lounged, neither talking, one slumping forward and the other reclining. It was obvious they were bored, but as Sakura approached, Kakashi didn't even glance at her. He gave nothing away that suggested he knew something was different about the meal tonight.
Sakura knelt down carefully between them, reaching out one of the bottles to Karasu's cup.
Automatically he covered it. "…thank you," he declined politely.
Well… that hadn't been part of the plan, although come to think of it, Karasu declined sake more often than anyone else in this room.
Kakashi stirred himself. "Don't be a misery guts. Have a drink," he said.
"I don't feel like one," Karasu sulked.
"So the mission didn't pan out… there'll be others," Kakashi continued. He looked at Sakura. "Pour him a drink."
Sakura tried again, and this time Karasu didn't protest, though he lacked any and all enthusiasm. After she poured Kakashi's drink from the second bottle she stood and moved away, half expecting Karasu to grab her arm and yell something about poison in his cup.
Another crash of thunder. This time Sakura did jump from her own heightened paranoia, and sped up her beeline to the door. She didn't look back. She didn't meet Kakashi's eye and give him a secret nod or a wink to let him know she'd done her part, he would assumed she had anyway. If he trusted her.
Instead she tottered out into the antechamber and muttered some excuse about being tired to Aki. The other girl was naïve enough to believe her, letting her escape work for the rest of the night.
The rest of the mission was all up to Kakashi now.
"This sake tastes wrong."
Kakashi kept his expression schooled and took frugal sips of his own cup. "Philistine. You have no appreciation for fine wines."
"There's nothing fine about this slop," Karasu said. "It's been poisoned."
Kakashi's heart nearly stopped. "You're joking," he muttered, staring at his cousin, who in turn stared at his cup. Kakashi snatched it out his hand and brought it to his own lips. "Smells alright to me." He took a sip. "Tastes alright too."
"It tastes like cleaning products."
"It's supposed to taste like that." Kakashi handed to cup back. "Don't be such a girl and drink your drink."
At this, Karasu shrugged and did as he suggested with only a faint frown on his brow to show his perplexity at the taste. Inwardly Kakashi relaxed. Karasu drank so little and so rarely he was hardly what you'd call intimate with the variety of sake flavours, and if Kakashi told him his drink was supposed to taste like medicine, who was he to say anything different?
But now Kakashi hoped that small sip he'd stolen wouldn't backfire on him. It was only a miniscule sip… surely it wouldn't have any adverse reactions. It wouldn't do if the only one spilling their guts tonight was himself. Kakashi had plenty of things he'd like to keep hidden, thank you.
"It's not that bad, I guess," Karasu downed the rest of his cup and started pouring another.
He wouldn't be doing that if he really suspected it was drugged, Kakashi thought. More likely that had just been one of his weird jokes.
"Your girlfriend has disappeared," Karasu told him.
Kakashi had noticed. Obviously Sakura had felt her duty was done and had vanished in case the plan backfired. "Probably tired," he grunted, taking a sip of his drink and vainly hoping it diluted the anaesthetic he'd taken.
"Does this mean you might leave her alone tonight?" Karasu inquired delicately. "You've had the girl every night since you arrived back here. Do you ever let her sleep?"
"Jealous?" Kakashi asked.
The other man rolled his shoulders and tilted his head, smiling like he was daring Kakashi to believe that. But Kakashi wasn't naïve. Karasu thought of women like he thought of sake; a needless indulgence that created weaknesses in men. In the twenty years he'd known Karasu, he had never seen his cousin show an interest in women – nor in men for that matter.
Somehow Kakashi doubted he'd started now.
"She's pretty," Karasu mused. "but she's not the prettiest here. And she may be strong-minded, but if that's what you were after, Reika beats her hands down."
"Oi," said the eavesdropping girl to Kakashi's left.
Karasu waved a hand at her dismissively. "I don't know what you see in her," he said to Kakashi.
"What do you see in her?"
Karasu paused. "Hm?"
"You heard me."
"Yes, I know, but the question was dumb. I don't see anything in her but a nuisance," Karasu now flapped that dismissive hand at Kakashi.
"Is that why you've been telling Reika specifically not to hurt her?" Kakashi asked.
Karasu's eyes flicked to Reika. If there was a look that could universally be understood as I'll kill you later, that was it. Reika pretended not to notice. "Don't get me wrong, Kakashi," he said smoothly. "I'd happily watch her die, or even slit her throat ear to ear myself, only you would bitch about it and it's not worth the effort. Reika was just a little upset that you're neglecting your responsibilities to her. I was just trying to reassure her that your interest in this pink candy is just a temporary thing and she'd be better off letting you work it out of your system."
"I told you," Reika sighed loudly. "I was joking. I wasn't really going to hurt her."
"You stabbed the last girl who crossed you," Karasu pointed out.
"That was different."
"Yeah, she only made a joke about your nose. I'd hate to think what you'd do to a girl who stole your fiancé away from you." Karasu looked rather deliberately at her nose at that point, and after that Reika was silent, trapped in an internal war of self-consciousness about a nose she'd always been paranoid about.
"See?" Karasu turned to Kakashi. "That was all that was about."
It was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Reika harming Sakura would almost certainly end any chance of a marriage between himself and Reika, and that was a marriage Karasu had always encouraged. You need to settle down with a decent girl, he'd always said, which Kakashi had always taken to mean Reika, one of his third cousins, a girl who was part of the upper house but had been detached from the main family line for four generations. Karasu would overlook dallying on the side as long as it didn't get in the way of a legitimate clan marriage.
Kakashi idly wondered if he might feel differently if he knew how often Reika expressed mutinous thoughts towards him.
"Reika understands a man has needs," Karasu explained to him, pouring another copious amount of sake. Kakashi was pleased to see he was turning the bottle upside down to dribble the last drops. "A temporary infatuation is just that. Am I right?"
"Hm?" Kakashi pretended not to be listening. So in turn Karasu pretended he didn't care, tipping his head back to unwittingly drink the last of his truth serum. It wouldn't take affect for a while yet.
Which assured Kakashi that the perfectly reasonable explanation he'd just been given about Karasu's issue of protection over Sakura was almost certainly a lie. He'd have to ask more about that later when Karasu was feeling more… honest.
"It's getting a bit noisy in here," Kakashi said, even though it wasn't, "do you want to drink somewhere else?"
Karasu thought for a moment. "Sure, why not?"
It was no good interrogating him in the dining room with Reika listening in on everything they said. She would certainly notice if Karasu started acting like a drugged up drunk, or if Kakashi started asking sensitive questions he shouldn't.
As they left through the antechamber, Kakashi made sure to grab extra bottles of sake from the sideboard to keep his victim carefully watered. "Your room?" he suggested.
"Sure."
"What about the bug?" Kakashi asked.
"Hm? Oh. It's still there, but no one's using it anymore," Karasu replied, and already Kakashi could see he was a little unsteady on his feet. "Maybe no one ever used it at all? Shit, how drunk am I?"
"You're fine. Come on."
It took a little extra patience to walk Karasu to his room. He slowed down, stumbled a few times and had even tried to walk out onto the veranda with the suggestion that they "drink outside!" Kakashi steered him back onto the path to the master guestroom. "There's a storm, remember?" he pointed out.
"Storm? I thought those banging noises were in my head…"
Inside the room, Karasu dropped gratefully to the floor next to the table, leaning on it heavily for support. As soon as Kakashi produced a bottle of sake, he went back to drinking. "This stuff isn't so bad," he remarked. "Cheers you right up."
Kakashi drank at a more sedate pace. "You looked like you needed cheering up. How's the campaign going?"
"Well, the last mission was a dud… but we still have operatives working within Konoha. With the food and water contaminated, half the fighters in their hospital aren't in there because of injury. They're fighting an epidemic. Iwa's getting bolder, but they're still chicken shits. They couldn't even penetrate the fire country border from the waterfall country. It seems like they won't assault Konoha directly until every last Konoha nin is out of commission. Cowards."
"I heard you were having trouble with one of your contacts from Iwa," Kakashi said casually. "What was his name again?"
"God knows." Karasu sighed. "After we finish with Konoha, we'll start on Iwa, but that could be months away."
"It's still progress."
"I promised myself that by the time I was thirty, I would have reduced Konoha to rubble."
"Thirty five isn't so bad."
"Fuck off."
Kakashi shrugged and watched his cousin pour another cup of sake, his hand wandering so freely that half of it went on the table. He didn't seem to notice, or care. "There's someone in Konoha with the same ability as the first Hokage. He can rebuild anything in seconds, and that's posing a serious problem to us."
Poor Tenzou. "You want I should kill him?" Kakashi asked.
"Nah, nah… I have someone working on that already."
"Shit."
"What?"
"I was hoping for some action," Kakashi amended quickly. Now he had one hell of an urgent message to send back home tonight, although he doubted anything short of a particularly strong brand of weed killer had any chance of killing Tenzou. But more importantly, he had to get Karasu talking about his contacts in Iwa.
"Once that bastard is out of the way, things will move faster, but it'll all end the same regardless once I complete the jutsu," Karasu said.
"What jutsu?" Kakashi asked.
"Ya, see? Iwa didn't pay us in money, Kakashi. They paid us in scrolls, on the condition we used them. Psht. Idiots. I can't wait to see their faces when we throw it right back at them." Karasu chuckled darkly. "Why aren't you drinking?"
"Sorry," Kakashi took a long drink and refilled his cup. He had to keep up with the other man if he wanted this conversation to seem like nothing more than loose talk between two drunk friends, rather than a carefully staged interrogation of a drunk man by a sober man. When Kakashi looked up and he saw two versions of Karasu sitting across from him, he felt suitably caught up. "Ssso," he slurred. "What you want to do is get on to your Iwa contact. Maybe one of them can persuade the Tsuchikage to take more decisive action against Konoha."
"Yeah, maybe…" Karasu sighed.
"Do you have any contacts close to the Tsuchikage?" Kakashi asked hopefully.
"One of his advisors," Karasu began, and for a moment his lips were pursed, as if he was about to elaborate further. Then rubbed his temple. "I feel really heavy…"
"You're drunk."
"Fuck off," he grumbled. "I've been drunk before. Not like this though. How are you feeling?"
"Light as a feather."
"You're drunk."
"No, you're drunk.
"No, you're drunk."
"Haha, no you're drunk."
"Am I? Oh, dear…" Karasu peered at his cup. "How many have I had?"
"Four," Kakashi supplied helpfully. "I've had five."
"Ffffffuck off," Karasu reached for his bottle again. "I'm not being outdone by a p-pansy like you."
The drugs were definitely beginning to take effect now. Where before Karasu's hand may have wobbled as he poured, now he couldn't even lift the bottle off the table. Sakura had told him to keep plying the drugged man with drinks, but surely this was enough. She didn't particularly care about liver damage but Kakashi did, and he reached out to take the bottle from his cousin.
"Oi!" Karasu grew annoyed. "Give that back."
"You'll be sorry tomorrow."
"You'll be sorry tomorrow."
"No, you'll be sorry tomorrow." And before Karasu could respond, Kakashi upturned the bottle and drank the last of the sake in three big gulps.
He nearly fainted.
"That's just showing off," Karasu slurred. "Overcompensater. I can still kick your ass in a fair fight – and I'm better looking, and smarter, and my dick has two inches on yours."
So much for a truth serum. "You've never seen my dick."
"Not lately. That maid's been keeping it in her handbag."
"Watch it," Kakashi snapped, slamming the bottle down.
"What're you gonna do?" Karasu raised his eyebrows and spread his arms. "Bring it on, Fatty Lover." He probably didn't really expect Kakashi to launch himself over the table, aiming right for his hair.
The two men tumbled to the matted floor, too drunk to coordinate any serious hits. Kakashi pulled at Karasu's hair and Karasu pinched at his face until one of them cried mercy and they fell into separate panting heaps beside one another. Exactly who had given up first was anyone's guess.
"You're too much like your father," his cousin panted angrily, hand resting on his heaving chest. "Letting yourself be drawn away by a woman. What am I supposed to do with you? I had to listen to eighteen years of my father bitching about your father for abandoning us…I had to sit through eighteen years of hearing how we'd once been an elite clan – until Sakumo walked out and left the clan in the hands of his entrepreneurial little brother who turned us into a clan of businessmen. By the time I finally killed him, it was already too late. We had money and contacts, but we'd almost stopped being ninja. It's never been the same. When Sakumo walked out the purity of the bloodline was broken. My father was never meant to be leader, Kakashi. He was branch family, like me, like my children are. The clan will never be the same again until the real heir is back where he belongs."
Kakashi listened, disorientated. He'd never heard this. He knew his father had once been leader of this clan, but what did that matter? "What do you mean like your children are? What are you on about?"
"I'm not the true heir of this clan. Not while you're alive."
"Are you saying you want to kill me?" Kakashi asked uncertainly.
"I'm saying I want what's best for the clan, and that's not me," Karasu ground out. "The descent of leadership was an unbroken chain for over two hundred years, handed down from eldest son to eldest son, right back to the founder. Then your father left. But you're still here, and you're the one this clan should have fallen to."
Kakashi held his hand out, palm up. "Ok, hand it over."
"Fuck off," his cousin grumbled. "I still have plans to enact just yet. You stick to your lily pad."
"My what?" Kakashi frowned, wishing he wasn't so drunk right now. "What plans?"
For a while Karasu said nothing, he was thinking hard. Kakashi suspected he was tying to lie. "You have to become Hokage," he said eventually.
"Maybe you can do the same thing in Iwa," Kakashi suggested.
"Huh?"
"You know, get your contact there to usurp the Tsuchikage. What's his name again?"
"The contact?"
"Yeah."
Karasu shook his head. "Atashi would make a terrible kage."
"That's kinda the point," Kakashi said, turning away so Karasu would not see the triumphant smile on his face.
Atashi.
Gotcha.
Sakura couldn't sleep. How could she when she'd drugged the leader of an international crime syndicate? One which happened to be the cousin once removed of the baby she was carrying.
Kakashi had probably been found out by now. He was a strong fighter, but he would be overwhelmed against his family, and perhaps right at this moment people were coming for her. Any minute now the door would burst open and-
Bang.
The door burst open.
Sakura shot upright with a start, almost dislodging the small pug curled up on the bed beside her, chin resting on her ankle. Pakkun looked up too, but not so much with surprise but with curiosity. His collar tinkled in the dark as both bed fellows watched the partition door without moving.
There was a thump, then a crash, and then what sounded like a soft, slurred swear word… followed by a slightly devious laugh.
Pakkun's ears went down. "Oh, no," he sighed, before scrambling off the bed to hide beneath it.
She might have asked why the hell he was hiding – and if she should hide too – but that was when the partition door slid back and Kakashi fell into the room. Sakura had never seen anything like it. It wasn't like watching a man trip over the wooden tracks, and there was no actual tripping involved. Instead he looked like a man who realised the horizontal floor he was standing on was fast becoming a vertical wall, and he'd tried to hold onto the doorframe to keep up with the tipping world only… the floor was actually still a floor, and suddenly he was on his back looking bewildered.
"Well, fuck me…" he said, sounding surprised.
"Are you drunk?" Sakura gasped.
He tilted his head back to look at her. "Oh… no." Then he began to laugh at his masterfully executed lie.
There were many identifiable ways to tell just how drink Hatake Kakashi was. If he smiled at jokes, it was one glass. If he laughed at jokes, it was two. If he was telling jokes, it was around three glasses. If he was laughing at his own jokes, it was four. And if he was laughing spontaneously at nothing at all, he'd had too damn much.
Sakura didn't think she'd seen him this drunk since his thirtieth birthday party – a night which had made the other three members of team Kakashi take a ritualised vow to never ever allow that man near that much alcohol again.
"You were supposed to get him drunk," Sakura pointed out. "What happened?"
"I had to drink, or he'd be a suspicious sausage, so I drank so much…" he sobered a little. "Then I threw up in a vase."
"There are no vases here," Sakura deadpanned. "Just priceless twelfth century artefacts."
"And then I drank some more," he went on more cheerfully. "And then the floor hit me."
Sakura slid out of bed to come stand over him. She peered into his sweaty face and noted his almost totally dilated right eye. If he'd been her patient, she would have ordered a stomach pump. "Are you ok?" she asked, trying not to sound concerned.
"I am…" he began, pondering his choice of words carefully, "drunk."
"You'd better have some water," she told him, moving to the nightstand to pick up the pitcher of water. "And at least tell me if you got what you wanted out of him."
"That, and a whole lot of other crap," he said, twinkling his fingers in the air. "Did you know he used to have a pet cat called 'Mogu?' He put her in the tumble-drier. I think it explains an awful lot. What kind of awful person does something like that to an animal?"
Sakura closed her eyes. "Kakashi. That was you."
"No!"
"You told me that story five years ago! You said you were two, and you cried for weeks afterwards!" She returned to his side with a glass of water. "And you're right, it does explain a lot. What kind of awful man would do that to a cat and then hold it against all cat kind for the rest of his life?"
"I don't remember this event you speak of," he said suspiciously, but he accepted the water nonetheless.
It reminded her vaguely of the last time she'd handed him a glass of water after he'd drunken too much. It was the night right before the one in which they'd slept together. But this thought only seemed to occur to Sakura, Kakashi was too drunk to even hold his head up. "The drug worked then?" she asked
"Yes. I even tested it myself," he said.
"Oh, no."
"Yeah…," he smiled sleepily. "You could ask me anything you want and all sorts of embarrassing truths might come spilling out of my mouth."
Somehow, Sakura doubted even truth serum could extract honesty from this chronically insincere man. Not ten seconds ago he'd tried to pass off his history of animal abuse as someone else's. Still… "When did you last wet the bed then?"
"At twenty-one. I was drunk then too."
Sakura was impressed. "And here's me without any diapers."
"It's ok… I already went."
Unfortunately that probably meant there would be more than one desecrated artefact waiting for her tomorrow. "I think we should get you into bed," Sakura said with patience that surprised even her as she reached down to grasp his arm. He rose awkwardly, but when she tried to urge him in the direction of the bed, he stood his ground and shook his head.
"I have… I have stuff to do," he protested. "I have to send a message to Tenzou or he's going to get stabbed."
"He always gets stabbed," Sakura pointed out.
"There's five other agents in Konoha… it could be any one of them. Pakkun – I know you're there you little fleabag."
"Yes, boss?" came the tired response from under the bed.
"Warn Tenzou now… go go, shoo shoo… tell him I heard it off the street. Be vague."
"Right, boss."
The dog vanished eagerly as Sakura stared at Kakashi mutely through hooded eyes. Five, huh? She filed that away for future reference.
"… I have to send a message to the contact," he said, sinking down onto the edge of the bed. "Tonight."
Sakura looked at him and doubted he'd even be conscious in a few minutes. "You're too drunk," she said. "Tell me what to do and I'll do it for you."
He looked at her blearily, and as drunk as he was there was still a spark of sobriety in his eye as he contemplated her suggestion. After a moment he decided he could trust her. "Yes," he said flopping onto his side. "Alright."
"You have to tell me what to do though," she reminded him.
"Oh? Oh, yeah. Go down to the mews and find the crow that flies to the codename Atashi. They're tagged. You have to check their wings," he said blithely, closing his eyes and waving his hand in the air as if he was conducting some unheard melody.
Sakura caught the errant hand and helped take his glove off, followed by the holster around his thigh. "Then what?" she asked. "What message do I have to write?"
"Nothing. No message. It's a code," he murmured happily, and as she reached over him to loosen the black band covering his eye, he slipped his hand over her bottom appreciatively.
The last time he'd tried that exact same move she'd been too drunk to mind. Even then she'd punched him for his trouble, and right at this moment Sakura had to hold herself rigid and bite the inside of her cheek to keep from grabbing one of the knives from the holster she'd just removed and sticking it in the offending hand. It was worth remembering that whatever blood she spilled tonight would have to be cleaned up by herself tomorrow. This was enough to calm her violent urges, and instead she settled for just grabbing his arm and pinning it to his chest where it could do no harm. "What's the code?" she asked him slowly.
He was losing consciousness. The room was dark, he was stretched out on a luxuriously soft bed, and his booze addled brain had decided it was closing down for the night. "Your pillow smells nice," he mumbled.
Sakura felt her face heat up and she gave him a rough shake. "Tell me what the code is!" she hissed. "I'll send it tonight."
"The garden," he said. "Go to the garden and find a red flower. Send that."
Sakura waited. "Is that it? A red flower? What does that mean?"
"It means that by tomorrow, the Syndicate will be just as much an enemy of Iwa as it is of Konoha," he said, slipping his hand free to tap her nose. "Do you trust me on that?"
"Yes." What choice did she have?
"Good girl," he said smiling.
And for good measure he patted her bottom one last time.
Next Chapter: Betrayal
