A/N:Hey, mina-san! … Again, it took me a while to finish this because- again- I lost another chess-bet and had to write a short story in between… I'm a degenerate gambler and if not for my bad luck I'd have no luck at all… Anyway. First of all, I need to say that I enjoyed writing a torture chapter waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much… I'm telling YOU guys, because telling my friends would have a serious impact in my social life and I HAD to tell someone. LOL Seriously tho, Ibiki was a pleasure to write and I hope you guys have fun with reading it. ;-)

Also, TWNJ got her Photoshop and started drawing again- which in turn made me a very happy camper. I'm one of those extremely fortunate writers to have art made after their chapters by such a talented artist… For those of you who haven't fallen victim to my shameless advertizing of her art in previous chapters, you should definitely look her up in deviantart. :-D She's so talented and I'm SO spoiled. ;-) Makes me deliriously happy. Lol

My anon readers: Insideout – Thank you thank you! I hope you enjoyed the rest of the story as well. :-D Kakashi's Dog – Kitty is not anonymous, just lazy. LOL I loved the praise… now if you can stop with the threatening emails… LOL You're a riot.

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto, BUT I want to own a Snuggie… you know the blankie that has sleeves. You can point, laugh and say I'll look like the cheapest version of Gandalf imaginable to humankind, but I'll be warm. Warm is good…

Tides and Ebbs of Honesty

Ebb 17: The Hammer and the Anvil

He tapped his fingers against his chin, once again considering the scroll in his hands. The light in the room was minimal- intentionally so. His eyes had long since been accustomed to the grating half-light of the interrogation room- lit with sparse candles and revealing only a couple of feet of plain, bloodstained floor around the prisoner. That volume of light was just enough to trigger fatigue that was cruelly amplified by the volley of questions- some of them apparently meaningless, some agonizing, all of them useful to him- and pretty soon the people strapped on that chair in the middle of the room were chasing shadows.

Once again his eyes narrowed at the scroll musing over the order that he could recite by heart now. It was preposterous.

His current quandary, was physically strapped in that single chair in the middle of the room, watching the darkness straight ahead of him. It was a necessary precaution that experience had insisted that he kept with all his prisoners. There and then Uchiha Sasuke was his guest, one might say, since the Hokage had ordered him to interrogate and attest to the truthfulness of his intentions, but provisionally. The boy had managed to maintain a prissy attitude, even as small beads of sweat had started to form on the side of his face, even as the unyielding look in his eyes was slowly succumbing to fatigue- a kind of fatigue that lurked in his mind before he had even stepped into his division. There was something weighing inside the boy, something almost palpable, with a life of its own- and he was determined to chase it out of the shadows and into the light. It had taken them a while and it was going to take a long while longer considering his orders and the fact that he was not satisfied with the answers he was getting. They sounded true and, perhaps, the boy even believed them to be true, but they weren't- not really.

Morino Ibiki's dark eyes moved from the scroll to the young boy, hard and unreadable as always, betraying none of the expletives he was currently thinking at the situation.

"What did you not say in your hearing that landed you here?" He asked conversationally. Again.

The boy looked up at him. It was the fourth time he was repeating this particular question and the Uchiha seemed to be getting a little agitated. That was good. Agitation was the purpose of repetition. "Isn't that what you're supposed to find out?"

Ibiki smirked. Touché. For the first time his answer had changed from the casual, "I was sent here.", to a spunkier attitude that resonated a lot better with Uchiha Sasuke's true nature. What he had found in his long career as an interrogator was that every man had passions and those passions were the crack in what might have been an impenetrable armor. Now he had dealt with men far more hardened and set in their deplorable ways than the boy that his Hokage had ordered him not to go all out on. She should have know better that try to be selective about his services, a hint being that no one had ever attempted to give him directions or request details about his methods and sessions.

If he were versed to using parables, he'd view himself as a hammer- the thing that molds objects and breaks through walls, some of them flimsy others requiring patience and perseverance. What he hammered through was not physical obstacles- though his fighting skills were quite commendable- but the curious, unique defenses of the mind.

"How honest do you think you are?" he asked, once again pacing in a circle around the boy.

The Uchiha frowned. "Honest." He said somewhat befuddled. "I didn't have to agree to this-"

"Ah, but you did." Ibiki smirked. "Why is that?"

If he were a hammer, words would be his chisels. He used them precisely, chipping away at one's defenses and patience. A man had to stand naked, bereft of any feeling of safety or comfort in order to reveal the truth- not just to his interrogator but to himself as well. Oftentimes, people were unsurprisingly dishonest with themselves.

"The Elders required it." Came the reply, a bit too easily. "There was no point in prolonging the argument."

Interrogation was an art of sorts- brutal and ruthless, its beauty revealing itself as the human mind unraveled to its basic components. It was different than sculpting a statue out of a boulder only in that, even if the stone felt the excruciating pain of the artist's hammering, it could not cry out in terror. Maybe the new image revealed at the hands of its sculptor would be haunted by nightmares of what it used to be, but it would remain silent, keeping it all inside its rocky heart. It would not weep, nor cradle its form into a dark corner like his prisoners would.

"Why is that?" Ibiki reiterated, as though Sasuke had not answered. He hadn't actually.

"I just told you. For the fourth time."

"And you will answer the question as many times as it takes until you decide to tell the truth." He countered sternly.

Frustration more often than not worked to shorten people's fuse, so it was to his surprise that the Uchiha looked down for a moment, apparently considering his interrogator's words and his own response. After a moment he drew a deep breath. "Because the Elders are right."

The voice was steady, but his tone much more quiet- that was easier for those heaving a guilty conscience. "What was that?" he said, though the words were still somehow echoing loud in the room. It didn't matter. What mattered was that the Uchiha did what he didn't want to do- and that meant admitting to this out loud.

Charcoal eyes snapped at him in a venomous glare. Yes, the boy knew what he was up to. "I said, because the Elders were right." He repeated in a louder voice with a clear, begrudging undertone. "I did betray Konoha. I'm getting off the hook too easily."

It must have been rather hard to admit to that. It wasn't just a matter of hurting one's pride. Ibiki knew truth when he heard it- truth hurt and it rarely came with a sense of deliverance from whatever wrongdoing had occurred. The past wasn't left in the past, bygones were not bygones and sleeping dogs were just waiting for his whistle to word of truth he would force out of those he would interrogate was just another throbbing hammerlock that would only lead to more truth. And more pain.

If he were the hammer, his prisoner's soul was the anvil- and on it he forged the truth, unrelenting to the red, hot agony that the anvil might feel with each strike.

"But you think that you should get off the hook. Eventually." He rephrased Sasuke's statement offhandedly, so that the boy would fully realize what he was just said. "Even though you did betray Konoha."

That was met with silence and that was quite alright because there would always be brief respites to the hammering. The Uchiha's reactions was surprisingly uncomplicated, in spite of his notorious reputation as unreadable- to amateurs perhaps, most definitely to those who cared about him and sang his praises. He was neither and could easily tell that, though the boy would very much like to simply let him know, in no uncertain terms, that he was playing with fire pushing his buttons like that, his innate sense of self-preservation wouldn't let him do it- fortunately for him. Nonetheless, even as his reactions were almost predictable- and somewhat amusing- the Uchiha had proven quite talented at dancing around his actual answers.

It was time for another kind of chiselling question. "You and your brother have sure caused the Village a lot of trouble."

The reaction was once again immediate and very much expected. "Don't compare me to Itachi."

"Oh?" he arched an idle brow. Hammering down one's past would always reveal a vein of gold when it came to information. People were passionate about their past- it was what shaped them- and oddly possessive of their tragedies. They tended to stick to patterns as a way of shaping reality in their minds- and there was no pattern as real to someone as their own experiences. It was his job to tear then down and show then what reality really was.

"What makes you different than him? He betrayed Konoha. He left. He-"

"I didn't massacre my clan. How about that?" the boy snarled.

Uchiha Sasuke was no different. In fact, he was a prime example of how a single day can change everything of what one's life was supposed to be. Really, who would that boy have gown up to be, had his life been sheltered from the atrocities he had to experience? How many more lives could have been spared the horrible hurt that the dark boy's choices had rained upon them? Sasuke's very existence had a very chaotic effect on the reality of the village- he was a destructive force. Ibiki had to wonder if it was possible for that to have changed or if he would forever gravitate to heartbreak and death- and pulling everyone down with him.

"Hmm…" he thinned his lips, rather unimpressed with the Uchiha's line of reasoning. "But then again there was no one left to kill…"

That had been the closest he had believed the boy to have been to some sort of reaction. What he had said was horrible, he was quite aware of that. The insinuation that the, now, last Uchiha could have repeated Itachi's unspeakable sin had lit a dangerous flame behind those eyes that threatened to spiral with the Sharingan. No regrets or apologies had ever left his lips- nor would they ever- because someone had to do this and he would rather carry the burden himself than let another have it. Because there was no other.

"You did, however, try to kill your best friend." He continued. "You can see how something like that might confuse people."

That made him wince imperceptibly, but Ibiki's trained eye caught it. "Naruto and I have already talked about this."

"I see. Good for you." He noted tersely. "Now, how about you tell me all about it."

The Tokujo was a master at what he did, it was what gave his life purpose and the way he could best serve his country. And there really was no other that could take over without getting crushed under the horrors of what his line of work demanded. Some had tried, but for the most part, people remained ignorant- and that was for the best. Outsiders could never understand the techniques he would use, and that was for the best, because unless they had proper conditioning beforehand, his tips on interrogation techniques would give them something to have nightmares about. It wasn't just what he did, but how he did it.

This wasn't the case here though. By the Godaime's order's he was supposed to stay within some vague boundaries of what dealing with one of their own entailed. He didn't quite understand that as it made more sense to him that because the Uchiha might be rejoining the ranks, there could be no doubt in the air about him.

Said Uchiha suddenly didn't seem quite as willing to chat. It was a tangible shift when people clammed up, almost like watching someone took physical steps back or folding their arms defensively. Not that the boy could fold his arms presently. "What do you want to know?"

Ibiki gave him that look that reserved for the stupid bunch. "All about it." He strained the words to further stress his point. "Your understanding of the language greatly diminishes when you don't want to answer a question."

The insult obviously had an effect on the proud boy, but even that took a back seat to something a lot deeper. Apparently, this was a touchy matter and he was looking to wiggle his way out of it quickly. "I apologized. We came to an accord. End of story."

"You apologized." He repeated. "End of story."

It was touchy enough that the Uchiha entirely disregarded one of the ground rules of a line of questioning. The more reluctant the subject, the more questions would arise as to why. "Yes."

"Why?" he asked, not entirely expecting an answer.

"Because I owed it to him." was the clipped reply.

"You owe Konoha as much." He shot back. It was true, but it didn't seem to hurt him as much. The situation with Naruto did. Interesting. "I don't hear you apologizing to the villagers or the Hokage, for that matter."

Those charcoal eyes snapped to him accusingly, as though he was purposely rubbing salt in a wound. "I almost killed, Naruto." He spat the words as though the answer should have been more than evident. As though forcing him to say it was undue cruelty.

Now they were getting somewhere. Now it hurt. "Why did you?"

The Uchiha's eyes widened in shock for a moment. Though the question was absolutely legitimate it seemed as though no one had dared to come and straight out ask it. The dark boy dragged a deep breath out of his lungs. "After Itachi had killed everyone, he told me that if I wanted to have the power he had, I'd have to kill the person closest to me." He paused and met Ibiki's eyes again. "I had gone up against Itachi and, in spite of my training and all I thought I had accomplished, the difference in power was still too great. Even after everything, I was just barely powerful enough." He mused, mostly to himself, with a bitter smile. "The technique is called Mangekyu Sharingan."

To be honest, Ibiki had been surprised by the eye contact whenever the answer was hard. Most people would look down; in a way it helped make the moment less real. His current prisoner seemed to treat this more like a confessionary than an interrogation- more like trying to confess his sins and earn his forgiveness than answer questions. "I've heard of it. Supposedly it is quite powerful."

The boy nodded resignedly. "It is."

"Powerful enough to be worth killing someone you love to get it?" he posed the question casually, in spite of the terrible gravity it carried.

The charcoal eyes never wavered. "Itachi seemed to think so."

"Hmm…" Ibiki gave a small smirk at the evasive answer. "You were starved for power and killing Uzumaki Naruto might have just given you the edge you needed."

"Maybe." He acknowledged.

Ibiki paced around the boy in the dark part of the room, always studying him, always looking for the next spot that needed to be chiseled away or hammered through. "You had the opportunity. More than once." He stated it as a fact, because it was. "Why did you stop?"

This time the Uchiha's lips thinned as though holding back whatever words were threatening to spill out. It appeared that he had finally found the topic of most resistance. It surprised him, because his best friend shouldn't have been the taboo topic it appeared to be. That little fact started a chain reaction of probabilities and possible scenarios in his mind. Really, he never posed a question unless he had an idea of what the answer might be. Surprise had an awkward effect on interrogation- it made the inquisitor seem human again, breaking the supernatural picture of the all-knowing being. That was unacceptable, because it made people think they might have some leeway with the truth or inter a lie somewhere in there. It was imperative that a prisoner thought that the answers were already there- at least some of them- and that they were being tested. It kept them honest and sweating.

"Why did you stop?" he reiterated, the only effect being the extra tension that washed over the boy.

Wasn't that precious? Entirely unhelpful too. Ibiki cursed, for the umpteenth time, at the Godaime's list of limitations, because this was the point where he'd go into a new level, forcing through those mental defenses and eventually adding pain to the mix. It expedited things exponentially.

Being unable to use physical techniques was much like having a hand tied behind his back. Some people would have an extraordinarily strong mind, they could withstand any kind of psychological stresses. If he had to guess, he'd say that the Uchiha would probably be one of them, not one of the best, but quite a tough nut to crack- with nut not always being a figure of speech. The boy was just too traumatized to be mentally or emotionally impenetrable. He had come across it once or twice though. That's where what imbeciles would brusquely call torture would come into play. Many could convince themselves that pain was a myth, but he was familiar with a few special, myth-busting nerve endings. No human could ignore those.

Suppose this just had to be done the hard way. "Are you proud of your clan, Sasuke?" he asked then, picking up from another angle.

Sasuke, not "Uchiha", not "you". That had been the first time that his name had been used so the boy looked back even more suspicious than before. "Of course."

"Why?" he arched a brow.

"Why?" he scoffed. "It's my family. It's my heritage."

"Quite a heritage." Ibiki deadpanned. "You think that Itachi was the first to kill someone precious to him?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed dangerously at the inference. "Better watch what you say next."

The Tokujo smiled, a full set of white teeth. "Denial can be all yours, but how do you think that the knowledge of the technique came about? Itachi didn't come up with it, it was there for the taking." He practically guessed, but if theboy's expression was anything to go by, he had been bang-on right. "Your clansmen had probably been murdering their most important people for centuries."

For the first time since this session had started Uchiha Sasuke looked like he had just been backhanded. His hammering had just broken through him, he could tell. The thought that he had so simply presented had never even occurred to the boy, no matter how much he knew about the Sharingan and even as his power had been seasoned on years of bloodshed. For the first time, Uchiha sasuke looked like a lost child- just like everyone he had ever interrogated.

That had never deterred him. It didn't now either, so he hammered on. "In fact, an argument could be made that you Uchihas shouldn't be allowed to breed."

"Shut up." Sasuke hissed- and it wasn't an order, it wasn't a plea, but something deep… and hollow.

"What a treat… to be loved by an Uchiha…" He continued unimpressed and somewhat disgusted. "Killing seems to run in the family, so why spare Naruto?"

The Uchiha shook his head. "I wasn't like Itachi. I couldn't just-"

Ibiki wondered if the boy was just about ready to be honest, so he posed the question again. "Then why?" he said and waited for the haunted eyes to meet his. "Why did you stop? Why didn't you kill Naruto?"

"Because…" his brows mingled in confusion. "I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I had killed Naruto. In the Valley of the End, for a bit, I really had thought that I had killed him. I didn't like how that made me feel… empty? I…" He spoke in a hurry, almost as though he wasn't exactly filtering his words. "I couldn't bring myself to deliver the final blow."

"Because then you would have been the same as your brother?" now his voice was quieter because any kind of violent thrust of his hammering words just might break him. And he wasn't supposed to do that.

"That too." He admitted in that dull tone. "But also…" he paused, his eyes lighting with a thought that had apparently just occurred to him. "… if I had killed Naruto, I could never come back. I wouldn't want to come back."

Ibiki tilted his head and wondered if the boy had realized that he had just admitted his resonating desire to sooner or later come back. "Because you'd be killed on sight?"

"No…" he sounded almost shocked at the words he was uttering, as though it was someone else talking through him. "Because… there would have been nothing for me to come back to."

Facing someone with the truth- an undiscovered truth, a truth they've been denying, a terrible truth- required that he dissolved this confusion and that would cause pain. His Hokage had banned such things from this session, since, as his orders would have it, everything had to be sugarcoated in this special case. Too bad that the Godaime had refused to understand that she couldn't have something like this both ways.

"Here's how I see this, Uchiha." Ibiki said, slowly drawing a deep breath. "I might as well let you go on your merry way now and inform Tsunade-sama that you are more than likely honest."

The boy was proud. Ibiki was counting on that pride kicking in at his choice of words. After all, he could not disobey his Hokage- who had asked for the truth on a silver platter. With all those limitations she had set for him though it was not going to happen at this point. Ibiki could not give her what she wanted.

"More than likely?" the boy reiterated with a frown.

Uchiha Sasuke, though, could- he would. "More than likely, as in more or less the truth or the truth for the most part."

Dark brows mingled over perfectly puzzled charcoal eyes. "And here I thought you were an expert in interrogation. Does more than likely cut it?"

"Of course not." Ibiki sneered. "Anything but the whole truth is half a lie.

The boy looked confused beyond all reason. "Then why…?

"You need to understand something, Uchiha." He said then. "I am not pushing or prodding as much as I can. As much as I would. Our Hokage sent you here with a memo for special treatment." He waved the scroll at Sasuke.

The Uchiha frowned. "I did not know that."

"Hmm." He noted dismissively. "In any, case it makes no difference. Orders are orders."

"It makes a difference to me." The boy protested. "I want this to end. There can be no qualm about my loyalty or this has all been pointless."

It was almost beautiful, how eagerly the mind worked once set on a specific track. To achieve a set goal it would bypass reason and comfort. Once things got to that- and they rarely did- his subject would no longer need to be hammered or chiseled. "Oh? How do you suggest we go about that, when I'm not supposed to go the distance in your special case?"

"Go the distance. Then go the extra mile."

Then- in that glorious moment- his subject would be tamed, accepting its part as the anvil. The main difference between him and whoever was strapped on that chair was a lot simpler than his definition as the interrogator or the Tokujo or even the skilled ninja that he was. The difference lay in the way that he faced his passions. His prisoners were swayed by their emotions, their desires. Whatever they had done that had landed them in that room had sprang from a source so deep inside that they had been compelled to listen to its beckoning call. Their passion was stronger than their will and they let themselves be swept off their paths and into unknown lands- literally or figuratively. Their weakness had defined them.

"Make no mistake, though. Your co-operation does not guarantee you a favorable report." He warned. "If, by the end of this, I decide that the ideal place for you is in the Hokage's kitchen, you'll spend the rest of your life katon-ing rotisserie chickens."

The Uchiha actually smirked at that. "Understood."

Ibiki smirked back at the boy. They had reached an understanding, and now he would proceed to break him. "Let's start then."

The main difference between him and his prisoners was his mastery over his weaknesses- and unlike what people thought, he had a lot of them. A man who governed his passions was master of the world. There were no two ways about this- he must either command them, or be enslaved by them.

It was better to be a hammer than an anvil.

This is the Ibiki chapter… I know he's not considered one of the MAIN characters but he has a special place in my heart and I think his place is justified here. I know that no one is too fond of the Elders, but I think they make a good anti-Sasuke argument and that Ibiki is the man to cut this Gordian knot. ^.^ Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. Yamato picks up next. I'll try to update soon, but RL is kicking butt right now, so… sorry. No worries tho, I WILL finish the story.

Take good care, people! Kissies!

Ja,

M.