Chapter 30:
Safe and Sound
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Just close your eyes, the sun is going down. You'll be alright, no one can hurt you now. Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound.
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Hanako looked awkwardly at the medic. The green-haired woman was unfazed, and wrote quickly on a chart, her pen making quiet, scratching sounds against the paper. The examination room was different from what Hanako had been previously used to. There were no bright diagrams instructing patients on how to check themselves for conditions. No infographics. The paper crinkled underneath her on the table as the civilian shifted her weight back and forth.
Hanako had been carried back to the Village Hidden in the Leaves in much the same manner she was bore away from it. Filthy, smelling, and tired, she was processed by the guards at the gates. This time, however, in the middle of the night, and at a side gate, she wasn't scrutinized very much by the guards aside from a cursory check.
It didn't seem to matter that she didn't have any documents. Her guards seemed to be verification enough to prove her identity.
Tired, hungry, and dirty, all she wanted was a good hot shower several hours long, a bowl of hot potato soup, and a fluffy blanket to wrap herself in. At least the ANBU guards had fed her, unlike her captors. Hanako received a portion of their field rations and plenty of water. For her part, she did her best to not complain, to take everything as easily as she could, and to not freak out. Although she did feel on the edge of losing her shit once or twice. Or five times.
One thing that struck her as odd, though, was how perplexed Sarutobi Kohaku and Nara Emi were at Hanako's ease around her guards. Even with their masks glued to their faces, they were the height of professionalism. And, well, they were familiar to her. Though she couldn't see their faces, something about each of them almost resonated with her on a level where she felt as though she knew who they were. Wolf, she was ninety percent sure was Hatake Sakumo. And, despite her previous animosity and later apathy toward him, Hanako was grateful for his presence.
But the two chuunin treated her like glass as if she would break at the lightest of touches, and it seemed to confound them to no end her interactions with the ANBU. They were calm, professional, and polite. All good pillars for Hanako to lean on to keep herself from breaking down. She was still holding herself together by fraying strands of self-control.
Sarutobi Kohaku and Nara Emi peeled away from their ragtag group almost as soon as their identities were verified at the gate along with a few other shinobi that met them there, most likely to the hospital for Kohaku Sarutobi's injuries. Hanako was only able to see the loose, bloody pant leg where his foot had once been, and the way that Nara Emi was helping him with everything mobility related. It didn't take much imagination to figure out what had happened to him.
Hanako almost burst into tears of frustration when, instead of being allowed to return to her home, she was quickly pressed into an ANBU building against her will.
The debrief came and went in a blur. A green-haired medic who introduced herself as Ai-sensei, and really, Hanako didn't understand why doctors insisted on going by the honorific reserved for teachers, but whatever, came in to look over Hanako, taking particular care to examine the brand on her neck and shoulders. The lines of the brand had swelled up, peaking in rigid, rough scabs surrounded by angry, red hot flesh that showed exactly where her skin had been burned. They were tender and painful to touch, even more so when they broke if she twisted or moved too much.
Then, Ai-sensei had asked Hanako if she had been touched.
Hanako froze, turning the phrase over in her mind several times, trying to decide if she had translated it correctly. Ai took Hanako's silence as a directive to rephrase the question.
"Did they dishonor you, Yamada-san?"
Hanako blinked once. Twice. A third time. It made her look stupid, she knew, but she wasn't quite certain what she was being asked.
"Do you say," Hanako's voice cracked. She swallowed and tried again. "Do you say to me, did they rape me?"
"Yes, Yamada-san. I'm sorry to have to ask such intrusive questions, but we need to know, for your own safety."
Hanako worked her jaw and blinked a few times, tears springing forth. From where she wasn't sure. A knot formed in her throat and it was suddenly difficult to speak. "I don't know," Hanako finally said, quietly. "I – um – I was un, in-conceit, en-cons, I was not awake." She finished quickly, frustrated at her inability to speak correctly. Hanako shook her head quickly. "I don't know." It was a thought Hanako had tried to avoid thinking. To admit that something like that had possibly happened was – she didn't want to think of herself that way. What way that was, she just didn't want to think about it.
Ai-sensei though, bless the woman, didn't hesitate. She immediately opened a cabinet and started rifling through bottles until she found what she was looking for. She shook out of a bottle that had a scientific name on it that was incomprehensible to Hanako, a single, large round white pill.
"What is this?" Hanako questioned.
"The other option," replied Ai-sensei cryptically. "It hasn't been too long, only a week. This will prevent any quickening."
"Quickening?" Hanako repeated the unfamiliar word.
"Conception," the medic clarified. "Fair warning, though. This might make it harder for you to conceive in the future, should you ever decide you want to." What she really meant was that it would make it harder for any woman to conceive. Several times harder, in fact, but Senju Tsunade hadn't had time to perfect the formula before she had left for the frontlines of the war and departed from the village after that. It didn't matter though, because Ai-sensei had barely finished her sentence before the pill was snatched out of her hand and swallowed without any water to help wash it down.
Hanako made a face at the bitter, powdery taste of the pill, but swallowed it all the same. She didn't care about the potential consequences. The other option was – unthinkable to her.
The next step was a pelvic exam that Hanako endured uncomfortably but was more concerned with the implications of what would happen if she were pregnant. The results weren't bad, or at least, Ai-sensei didn't indicate anything negative. After the exam, Hanako was allowed a shower.
It helped. A lot. It just felt good to be clean again. Hanako had been a little horrified at the amount of brown that mixed with the water from her body. She'd vigorously scrubbed every inch of skin that she could reach and shampooed her hair three times just to make sure that she got it all off. She spent a while standing under the hot spray of water trying to get her thoughts into order. She began to slowly feel a little bit more human again before she stepped out from the water spray and began to dress. Similar to her previous stint in ANBU accommodations, there were clothes laid out for her. Loose, black pants and a long-sleeved shirt, both designed for someone larger than she was, and a small pair of sandals.
Ai-sensei came back in and spent a considerable amount of time examining Hanako's shoulders and neck and smothering an antibiotic cream across the scabs. She flinched and hissed when probing fingers pressed too firmly in certain spots. A tube of the cream was supplied to Hanako, along with an explanation that it should speed the healing and minimize scarring. All of her other minor nicks and cuts were also treated in a similar manner. Mostly scratches and bruises from being knocked back and forth between tree branches and rocks.
Given a clean bill of health and strict instructions to go to the hospital if there was the slightest sign of infection, Ai-sensei left, and Hanako was alone for a time. Until there was a knock on the door of the examination room and Pumba was there, and it was time to recount everything that had happened again. At least with Pumba, she could just show him what happened instead of having to recount the hazy details in her halting Fire Dialect.
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Hanako slept for the next thirty-six hours. Waking up in her own bed, nestled in a cocoon of blankets, she didn't want to leave. Her bladder insisted though. Not to mention she was terribly hungry and had a pounding headache. Drawing back her curtains, bright morning light washed over her bedroom. After performing her morning ablutions and dressing, she entered the kitchen. A sensation like walking through a static barrier crackled through her ears, and the sounds of life greeted her. Several shinobi were already in the living room, relaxing and playing shogi. They must have put up a ward against sound or something to let her sleep peacefully.
"Hanako-chan!" Asuka's strong arms enveloped Hanako quickly and she relaxed in the embrace of the purple-haired kunoichi.
"Good to see you, Asuka-chan," Hanako replied warmly. Asuka held her at arm's length, searching her over with concerned eyes.
"How are you feeling?"
"Tired," there wasn't another response, really. "And hungry."
The kunoichi smiled back at her. "I bet you are."
Beyond her, Tetsuo was in the kitchen with Ko, who was making eggs in a skillet while Tetsuo observed with a steaming cup of tea in his hand. Hanako leaned against the kitchen counter and waited for Ko to finish making his monstrous amount of food before he turned the skillet over to her custody.
Cracking three eggs open, she seasoned them quickly with salt, pepper, and paprika before scrambling them up. Asuka leaned against the counter next to her and chatted idly about everything Hanako had missed.
Hyuuga Ko was now engaged to a chuunin kunoichi. "She's got the potential to make jounin, easily," he offered from the dining room where he was eating his breakfast. "If she gets around to taking the test," he added after a pause.
"She still refusing after all this time?" Queried one of the shinobi playing shogi, a shorter shinobi with red hair.
Ko shrugged. "She says she doesn't want to have to take on a genin team."
"Not all jounin do."
"She's afraid she'll be pressured to by the administration."
The other shinobi nodded in understanding. "The Sarutobi clan does do that a lot, don't they?"
"Always on the hunt for the teacher of the next Legendary Three."
"She's not a direct relation to—"
Ko shook his head in the negative. "Nah, just one of the distant cousins."
"I'm glad I'm not in one of the clans," chimed in the shinobi's opponent. "Times like this, at least I know whoever I marry will be because of my own choices. No outside pressures."
The red-haired shinobi claimed a piece. "Nah, it'll just be your genin sensei, and your grand-sensei and your parents chiming in about it." He thought about it for a second. "And her clan and sensei," he added as an afterthought.
"Yada, yada, yada," the opponent waived his words off and claimed a piece in a countermove.
"Fuck," muttered the shinobi and leaned forward, his hand on his chin as he studied the board.
Hanako concentrated on scrambling and mixing her eggs for her perfect consistency where they weren't runny but not too solid all throughout. Asuka poured two cups of tea for the two of them and offered Hanako a mug, which Hanako took with a grateful smile. A good black tea with flavors of citrus and lavender. One of her favorites. Hanako put the cup down and drew Asuka into a warm hug and tried her best to push her emotions of happiness and love into it.
Normal, that's what she needed. Normalcy. Hanako sat down at the table to eat. This felt like a normal morning. No one was dancing around her feelings, no one was treating her like glass. The shinobi kept up their banter around her, and she listened in with half an ear. The two playing shogi were talking smack to one another as the clan-less shinobi started to sweep the floor with his opponent.
The civilian jumped slightly in alarm and then relaxed when the shogi board was overturned in a clattering hail of pieces and the two started grappling with one another, shouting insults at each other. Tetsuo deftly plucked Hanako out of harm's way when one of the shinobi body-slammed the other to the ground.
"How are you feeling?" he asked quietly under the cover of the fight in front of them. Ko and Asuka shouted encouragement from the sidelines, neither picking a side but seeming to encourage the fight in general. They didn't seem to be truly angry with each other, their insults were centered around each other's mothers' sexual satisfaction.
"Tired. Sore. Angry. Am I supposed feel angry?" Hanako questioned.
Tetsuo was silent. "Yes," he finally said, when Hanako thought he wasn't going to reply at all. "You were taken against your will. Abducted. Of course, you should be angry."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"You talk about it. You find someone who understands, who can be your rock, and you tell them about what you're feeling. You find your touchstone, and you face what you felt, your situation, and you confront it until there's nothing left to confront. Until you've healed and the pain doesn't feel quite like pain anymore. It'll fade and pass, with time. But what you do now will determine how long that will take."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Maybe."
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A crate lay on the floor in the dining room – the word processor that Hanako had purchased. The rest of the merchant caravan had reached Hidden Leaves, with none of the product damaged, miraculously. Hanako's insistence on contracts had saved her, as the paperwork for all of the product remained intact, including her agreements with both the village and Mr. Eiji. The Nakano's were good people. Honest, true, and fair. All things hard to come across when dealing with shinobi. All of her belongings had been delivered to Yamada House, untouched, aside from being tossed around a bit. The word processors had been delivered undamaged to the village, aside from the two set aside for Hanako and Mr. Eiji.
It took a crowbar and all of Hanako's body weight to leverage the nails in the lid to release their hold. The machine was nestled inside on a combination of straw and newspapers. Hanako delicately lifted the twenty to thirty-pound machine out. Its grey and black casing wasn't what she would have called sleek, but for the time and era she was in, it was as close as it would get. So, sleek it was.
She let out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding when the machine powered on and a green flickering light lit up against the black screen and began to boot up. She began to laugh. It was worth it. It was all worth it. Her future was contained in this little machine, green light flickering, waiting for a command to be typed in.
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Two weeks later found Hanako typing away in her office. There had been so much work to catch up on that she was staying in the office until the sun went down and had even sacrificed what time there was in her weekend to catch up. The little radio in the corner was a dutiful companion, singing out jazzy songs or more traditional music, depending on what she decided to turn the dial to that day. Half of a day had been sacrificed to spending with the Nakanos, assuring them of her good health and finding out what had happened after she had been abducted. One of the other merchants had tried to make off with a good twenty units, and only the fact that Nakano Eiji and his son were good bluffers had convinced the man that he would be missing his head within days if he made the attempt. Of course, they probably weren't lying, but it would have taken a good deal more than a few days for that to happen. Hanako would have spent the last of her savings to make sure the man was dead if that's what it took.
For now, though, Hanako was working. Her fingers which hadn't typed in so long were quickly remembering the flow of it, and she was rapidly drafting document after document, cutting the time that would have taken her hours, into minutes. She typed up balance sheets, calculated statements of cash flows, and calculated out paychecks and taxes. The bi-annual taxes were weeks away from being due, and it was time to start sending out statements to employees.
The sad little fan on the edge of her desk whirled and whirred away, clicking all the while. Hanako kept the windows propped open for what little she could get of a breeze, as well as the ceiling fan blowing what air it could. Her loose linen shirt ruffled against her skin, irritating her bandages slightly. She was liberally applying ointment to her scabs and then covering them with gauze every day until they were healed. The tips of some of the lines had healed and created white scarring. She regularly had to stop herself from scratching and itching at them, and sometimes couldn't help herself. Hanako found that patting at them was the best alternative she could come up with, so as not to damage further, but relieve the terrible itching.
She was sweating more and more each day and was finding deodorant a more precious commodity. Walking through the city streets, it became more obvious that not everyone had heard of that societal requirement, judging by the smell. She had found herself wearing lighter and lighter clothing by the day. Hanako had even gone out to a marketplace to find lighter linen fabrics to wear.
Hanako had found a seamstress, Morika, who was rather adept at modifying different, lighter fabrics into the styles that she wanted and was rather adept at creating styles appropriate for businesswomen. In fact, Hanako had started wearing a few of Morika's own original designs. Several of them sleeveless, high waisted, and clean cut. Hanako rather liked them as they were refreshing and fashionable styles. She wasn't the only one in the village who did. Other civilian women who were either married to higher-ranking men or high-ranking women themselves wore the young designer's styles. It was just one of those small steps she was taking into the 'high society' of Hidden Leaves.
If a woman wanted to be influential in a Hidden Village, they either had to be married to a wealthy merchant, a prominent and high-class kunoichi, or prominent within one of the shinobi clans. There were limited pathways into the higher echelons. A few civilian women were managing it on their own though. Morika was one of them, building her influence slowly, but Hanako could see it. There were only just a few other women in similar positions, two of them were owners of tea houses, and another one a woman who had inherited her father's blacksmith's forge and with the help of one of her cousins and her father's apprentices was running an armory business on one side and a metalworking smith on the other. The rest were all kunoichi, with all the power, freedom, and money that came with the occupation.
Hanako tapped pages into neat, even stacks and laid them out depending on the client and the document type. Her desk was covered in stacks of paper. Hanako yawned and stretched in her chair before deciding to take a break. One of the plants she had let grow wild in the back area of her garden was mint, a rather invasive plant. She had to regularly weed it back away from the beds she didn't want it in, but the upside was that she had more mint than she knew what to do with. A few ladies in the marketplace had suggested that she dry it and use the excess for tea, but Hanako didn't like mint tea so much that she wanted to make oodles of it. An alternative that she had found was a mint lemonade, and she was making lots of that and keeping it cold in her refrigerator at the office.
A glass was poured and filled with the lemonade, and it didn't take but a few moments for the glass to start fogging up with condensation. But it was sweet, refreshing, and most importantly, cool.
Hanako leaned against the counter and looked through the doorway at her desk. "I've got to get a better system," she muttered to herself before taking another swig.
The next task was to sort everything into envelopes, receipts for the clients, and stacks to be filed with the tax office. The tax office stack didn't really matter what order they were in, but Hanako still took care to make sure they were well organized. The admins there could make her life more difficult, and it was wise to keep a good relationship with them. Hanako also planned on taking a box of sweets with her when she filed them.
Overall, business was back to normal. She went back to work and gardening, and the ninja around her resumed their normal routines, although Hanako felt like she was a little more closely watched. Not in any stalker-ish way, but she tended to see more of the ANBU agents around in her day to day business. Her guards were less subtle, as evidenced by the woman dressed in black and silver armor laying on the couch of her office. Asuka wasn't even wearing her mask and was sprawled back, reading a book.
"Mah, Hanako-chan, could you get me a glass of that, too?" She asked lazily.
Hanako grabbed a second glass and poured some of the lemonade in it before crossing the office and handing it to her friend. Hanako flopped down on the couch next to the kunoichi.
"I don't want to work anymore," she bemoaned.
"So, stop working," Asuka took a sip without looking over at Hanako.
"But I need the money."
"Well, that's why we call it work."
"I need a vacation."
"Yeah, no." Asuka drawled. "Remember what happened the last time you left this village?"
Hanako waved the statement away. "That was just one time."
"Yeah, the only time. Lord Fire Shadow won't let you out without an entire retinue after this."
Hanako sobered at the thought and fell silent.
Asuka put the book down when Hanako didn't reply. "Oh, Hanako-chan, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to –"
"It's okay," Hanako cut her off. "I should have known – It was stupid to say such thing. I'll never be let out after that."
Asuka sighed. "I wouldn't say that so soon. The admins seem to be quite happy with the purchase you made, and besides," she added, "You are far from the first person to be abducted while outside of the village walls."
"Yeah?"
"Happens more often than you would think," Asuka confirmed. "Granted, most kidnappings happen because there's a ransom involved so it's more an issue of making sure the deal goes through safely. But it happens frequently to the nobles connected to the daimyo and the higher lords." She took another look at Hanako's downcast face. "We got you back, and that's the important thing."
Asuka hesitated for a moment before continuing with her next question. "Did – did you ever get debriefed about Hidden Cloud?"
Hanako nodded quickly and drew her feet up on to the couch, holding her knees close to her chest. "Yeah. Pumba went over with me. He said –" Hanako trailed off. Pumba had gone into quite a bit of detail about Cloud, and their less than ethical practices of "breeding programs." And by that, Pumba had said plainly that Hidden Cloud was notorious for abducting men and women who showed promise in the way of bloodlines, to strengthen their shinobi forces. Women who were forced into this program were forced to have as many children as their bodies could handle and weren't allowed to have contact with their own children, who were put into the village creches to be raised communally. They also sent out female agents to try and seduce men who were considered for the program but were too powerful to be forcibly brought into the program. All they needed was their genetic material, anyways. Men who were abducted into the program were usually disposed of shortly after, for the same reason. Hanako would have tried to commit suicide, if she had been forced into it, she knew. Whatever it took, starving herself to death, finding some sharp object, something. She couldn't imagine the horror that took place and was taking place in Hidden Cloud.
"Why do you think no one else buys into their "'equality and freedom for all' bullshit?" Pumba had said, before spitting on the ground. Well, he didn't really spit, they were in a mind palace, but his construct of a body had spit on the ground.
"Pumba? You mean Yamanaka Noboru?" Asuka asked in surprise. Hanako nodded.
Asuka wrapped an arm around Hanako and sighed. "Bastard didn't pull any punches either, I'm sure," she muttered. "Look, the important thing is that you're not there. You're here, and you're safe. You even have all of your plants and your files with you." She winced as that was apparently the wrong thing to say.
"Fuck the files," Hanako sobbed, tears in her eyes. Her lip trembled. "What if I not rescued? What about women who weren't resikued? Who not have anyone rescue them?"
"Rescued," Asuka corrected just quietly enough that Hanako couldn't hear what she said. Then, louder, "Better not to think of that, duckling. It won't bring you anything but grief."
Hanako's body shook harder. "Don't think of? How can I not?" Shock and anger colored her voice.
"I – I don't – Look, there isn't anything that you or I can do about that. There are some bad people out there, even for shinobi. The only thing I can do is stick a knife in their hearts whenever I see them."
"But Totoro – he was nice," Hanako wailed. "How could he have been so nice and still – How could he do that and not care?"
Asuka closed her eyes. "Some of us justify the worst things by following orders. If we just follow orders, it's not us doing it. They hide behind it. Distance themselves from the horrible acts they commit. Totoro was probably just as bad as the rest of them. Maybe a little bit more of a heart in him. Not as far gone."
"Not matter now," Hanako sniffled. "He dead now." She wiped her eyes and tried to keep a fresh wave from forming her eyes. "Dead," she repeated, before curling into Asuka's side.
They stayed that way for a bit until the trembling stopped. Asuka realized that Hanako just needed someone to talk to and decompress to. The woman's chakra felt clearer, less jumbled after their talk. More back to the old Hanako. Finally, the civilian stood.
"Gotta get back to it," Hanako muttered as she heavily rose to her feet and went back to sorting the files.
Asuka nodded. Like a flooded stream washing debris and detritus away, Hanako's chakra was flowing smoother and cleaner now. She turned the radio up just a little. It was a good song playing.
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A/N:
If you're deemed an essential employee at work, raise your hand! AKA, the quarantine doesn't really exist for me and my workplace right now. Boo, because I could use the time to sit down and get some good writing done.
Y'all stay safe out there! Wash your hands, cough into your elbow, and try not to touch your faces. Flatten that curve!
