Chapter 33 – Heart of Secrets

"When did you first realize Akane Nara was gone?"

Tenzo rubbed his chin, eyes shooting upwards as he thought back to that exact moment. Sitting in the chair across from him, one leg casually set over the other, Ibiki Morino was scribbling on a clipboard with an air of something resembling boredom, like this whole thing was no more than a formality and beneath his station. From the other side of a one-way mirror, his own interview come and gone, Itachi was not still buying it.

"I suppose it was right after Uchiha-taichou asked where she was. I looked around and didn't see her."

"When's the last time you remember seeing her before that?" Ibiki asked, his eyes flitting up to meet Tenzo's before delving back into his papers.

"Rising from Shisui-san's side. I remember it clearly because it was when I realized he must have been… gone. For her to stop treatment, that is. It couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes before."

Ibiki finished writing and looked up again, one finger tapping lightly against the top of the clipboard a few times. Itachi could only assume he had a template for the interview in those papers, since he had so far asked Tenzo the same questions he had asked him. If any discrepancies were to tip him off, that was when Morino would no doubt veer off course like the bloodhound he was, but so far, Tenzo's account corroborated with his own. Naturally. They had not lied in their reports and were not about to start now.

"So, you realized she was gone. What happened next?"

"Uchiha-taichou asked me to locate her."

"And you did that how, exactly?"

"They had all previously swallowed my tracking seeds." Tenzo then proceeded to explain how his Transmission Wood jutsu worked. Ibiki listened patiently, without interrupting him. Once or twice he picked up the pen to write again, but only briefly.

"And did you pick up the signal from Akane Nara's seed?"

"I was unable to," Tenzo replied.

"Was she out of the five-mile range?"

A feint, Itachi noted. Ibiki was casting a net, trying to catch Tenzo with a lie by offering him a tempting way out of the uncomfortable questioning. However, no shinobi could run such a distance within the timespan Tenzo had previously given between the last time he had seen Akane and the moment he had activated his Transmission Wood jutsu.

"No," Tenzo answered truthfully. "I don't think she could have. I just couldn't detect her seed."

"Could the signal have been… jammed, so to say?"

Tenzo shook his head. "No. The seed would have had to be destroyed for the signal to disappear from within range."

"You said the seeds were ingested. How could they be destroyed in this case?"

"Well, they have a layer that's resistant to the naturally acidic environment within the stomach, but it does have its limits. An abnormal level of acidity could eat through that protective layer and destroy the seed."

"Your teammate is a medic-nin. Do you think she could have somehow… tampered with it?"

Itachi tensed. Tenzo was a smart man. He may not have known the whole truth, but he did not need it to put two and two together as far as this particular question was concerned. To tell it true would damn a colleague of four years. To lie would no doubt come to the surface and turn against him at some point. Ibiki was baiting him again, this time going in closer for the kill. It seemed that Tenzo, however, planned to remain on his feet.

"I believe this interview requires me to tell the truth, not indulge in speculation. I'm not a medic-nin myself. I wouldn't know the exact extent of one's abilities, Morino-san."

Ibiki showed no sign of being thwarted, merely went on scribbling with the same look of feigned disinterest about him. Tenzo's ingenuity was to be applauded. So far, he had successfully danced around the traps laid out for him while still managing to give the impression that he was unaware of them. Itachi knew better. Tenzo's calm, often quiet demeanor caused people to underestimate him. His wit was sharper than most under that unassuming appearance. It had served him well today.

Truth be told, it had been neither his own nor Tenzo's interview Itachi was most concerned about. Tsume was up next. Although she had not been there for most of the scene making the focus of Ibiki's investigation, she could still potentially provide him with insights that would call Akane's behavior into question. He had never known Tsume to be petty, but in light of their recent altercations, who could say? A lot had changed lately.

Beyond that, it was Akane's own interview that crowned Itachi's worries for team Yon. She would have to face not only Ibiki, but also someone from Inoichi Yamanaka's Analysis Team. The more he thought about their last conversation – and it had been on his mind over the past couple of days - the more Itachi gained the impression that she was cutting them loose. Being caught with a lie would likely cause her to lose her position within the ANBU, perhaps even her medical license. Was she bracing herself for the fall and trying not to drag them all down with her?

What difference did it make? A traitor to the village had died, yes. The higher ups often did not bat as much as an eyelash over rogue-nin being permanently dealt with as opposed to being dragged back to Konoha. It was less of a bureaucratic headache and financially easier on the village that way. A prominent family like the Hyuugas was also likely to prefer this whole affair kept quiet. So what if the medic had been the one to do it? She was still an ANBU operative, perfectly trained to kill herself. The most anyone could accuse Akane of was insubordination.

Try as he may, Itachi could not shake the feeling that this investigation's focus was not what it seemed. His hands, however, were tied. Even if he was right in suspecting an ulterior motive to this, there was nothing he could do to bring it to light.

There were days in winter when no matter how many layers of clothes one wore, the cold seemed to slip through them all, one after another. Today appeared to be one of those days. Akane's breath misted even through the thick muffler draped around her neck, which she had pulled up to shield her face from the cutting wind. Wrapped in gloves and shoved into the pockets of her coat, her hands were still ice-cold.

The recent snowfalls would have buried the cemetery whole if not for the caretakers clearing the gravestones every day. The wind howled distantly above Konoha, then whirled down among the graves, sweeping the paths. It blew cold powder into her eyes, but she trudged on.

The Memorial Stone rested under a thick blanket of snow. Akane had visited this place so many times over the years she did not need to read the names etched into its shiny surface to know where to find them. Her mother and father had died defending Konoha on the night of the Kyuubi attack. They were both here, reduced to nothing but a series of scratches in the cold stone, one underneath the other. Koga was not much further to the left, a rather reluctant addition at the time, but one the Ino-Shika-Chou clans had all fought for tooth and nail.

Her eyes already knew precisely where to find those three names. A few days ago, however, another one had been added. Her fingers brushed away the snow, looking for it near the end, and lingered there when she found it.

That's what friends are for.

Akane did not believe in ghosts. This was nothing but her own conscience haunting her, taunting her with his words. She had once promised she would never let another friend die, had chosen her path to honor that promise. She had broken it and made another. Would she only end up breaking this one, too? Her hand balled into a fist and slipped from the stone to fall at her side, numb. She was still angry, both with Shisui and herself. Perhaps she had come here too soon.

"Yo. Long time."

Akane was so distraught she had not noticed another presence in her vicinity. Of course, he was a former ANBU member himself; one with more experience in the field that she was now likely to ever gain. She turned her weary gaze to him. "Kakashi-senpai," she said in greeting. It appeared she was not the only one undeterred by bad weather when it came to haunting this place.

"How's Itachi holding up?" he asked before the silence could stretch beyond comfort. Not that his question did anything to help in that respect.

"We haven't spoken lately."

She felt Kakashi's uncovered eye lingering on her as he measured her words. He had likely picked up on what they meant, though could only speculate as to the reason behind it. It was not uncommon for a colleague's death to give rise to tensions within a team, after all. Kakashi was too considerate to inquire, having known loss himself. Akane would have been safe behind that smokescreen, but it felt wrong to let the blame fall on Shisui when the fault was hers alone.

"You were right, back then," she said softly. I chose vengeance and now I'm bleeding out, too.

It only took Kakashi a few moments to catch on. "I see," he said.

His gaze turned to the Memorial Stone. He had no reason to care, but even so, Akane could not help but wonder if letting people down was becoming a habit. One more thing slipping through her fingers, spiraling out of control.

Kakashi's voice seemed to come from far away, but it did reach her. "Maa, what's done is done. You salvage what you can and you move forward. There is no other way."

Akane could certainly see the wisdom in that. The only thing left to figure out was what she could salvage from within a house burning down around her. She had already saved what she had thought worth saving. Right now, it seemed like the flames were closing in, barring her way out. Instinct was telling her to douse them first, but that was easier said than done when the fire was Ibiki Morino and she was sitting on a barrel of oil. Moreover, was there someone fanning the flames?

Kakashi was still right regardless, of course. There was no going back. There would be no giving in either, even if it meant going up in those flames.

"Thank you," Akane told him. "I'll see you around, Kakashi-senpai."

She left him with his ghosts. She still had some of her own to appease.

"So, you weren't there when Akane Nara left the battlefield?"

"No."

"Where you there when she returned?"

"Yes."

"What happened when she did?"

"Uchiha-taichou had a word with her, I think. I didn't hear any of it."

Ibiki jotted down something before his next question. "How would you describe your teammate?"

A bloodhound, indeed, Itachi thought from behind the one-way mirror. Difficult as it was to tell where Tsume's hostility was directed, he had picked up on the undercurrent in her recount of the events. Itachi half expected Tsume to ask which teammate, but she did not play coy this time. Her eyes darted to Kuromaru, who was sitting stoically by her side.

"Dependable."

"Which is to be expected of a shinobi of her rank, not to mention a medic-nin," Ibiki said, leaning forward in a challenge to Tsume's own defensive pose. "What's Akane Nara like as a person?" he clarified. When Tsume delayed replying, Ibiki pressed the issue. "Would you describe her as overconfident? Impulsive? Unruly?"

Tsume scoffed. "I think you have the two of us all wrong, Morino."

Itachi could almost hear Ibiki's trap spring shut. With that one truth, warm out of Tsume's golden heart, Akane's account would begin to fall apart. Her story rested on all the things she was not. In that, she had failed to fool him and now Ibiki would know, too. It was nothing but a lie, soon to be exposed. If someone had wanted the truth uncovered so badly, Itachi dreaded to think of the consequences.

His fingers twitched, aching to curl into fists and bang against the mirror. An impulse, quickly curbed. Proof that a human heart still beat in him, though this was not the time for it. It never seemed to be. How many times had he killed such impulses throughout the years to be the weapon Konoha needed him to be? Every time, it took something from him. Would there be anything left in the end?

"Send her in," Ibiki told Tsume as she made for the exit.

Itachi braced himself. His gaze moved to the door, which opened not long after it had closed behind Tsume. Akane unwrapped a scarf from around her neck, took off her jacket to hang it and sat in the chair facing Ibiki without waiting for an invitation. She seemed poised enough, sending none of the signals of one about to be interrogated. Certainly not those of someone about to be caught having lied in an official report. Still, knowing her, she must have suspected something would give her away. Must have planned for it, in any case.

Stay out of this.

I can't, and you know it, Itachi inwardly argued as he watched her answer Ibiki's same first questions without a hitch. He wished he had argued with her then, but he had not yet recovered any of his strength after Shisui's death. If he had pushed himself harder, maybe he would have convinced her to give up whatever she was keeping from him. It was too late now. She had to weather the storm alone and all he could do was watch from behind a one-way mirror.

"Itachi?"

He had heard the door open, just not reacted to it in time. When his head finally turned left to acknowledge Tsume hovering uncertainly in the doorway, her eyes had already flitted between Akane and him, separated by that thin yet unbreakable window. She sighed and held out something to him – a piece of paper. His stomach cringed as he took it.

"I'm sorry," Tsume said. "It's a bad time. But I've been thinking about it for a while." She hesitated. Scoffed, even as she frowned. "Truth be told, I'm getting too old for this."

Itachi did not need to read every word to understand what the piece of paper in his clutch was. Somehow, it did not come as a surprise. He did not resent Tsume's choice, either. As for what it meant, well, he had the impression team Yon had begun falling apart some time before this.

Akane walked a fine line between taking the time to detect Ibiki's traps and giving the safe answer. They had crossed paths before, at the beginning of this road, and a man like him would certainly not fall for the same tricks twice. On the contrary, he was warier the second time around, watching her every reaction like a hawk ready to dive at any moment. He seemed almost certain she was lying. Whatever had tipped him off, there was nothing for her to do but build up the case against it based on the skeleton of her report.

"The coroner's report specified the cause of death as a high-voltage ninjutsu that penetrated the chest cavity and struck the heart," Ibiki said. "You are the only one in your team able to perform the Chidori, am I correct?"

"Uchiha-taichou's Sharingan would enable him to copy it as far as I know." There was no shifting the blame in this case, since she had been alone with Suisen at the time of his death, but Morino needed to get his facts right. Had she not been in such a tight spot, she might have found her own self-righteousness amusing. No wonder Tsume still called her Princess.

"Did you or did you not use the Chidori to kill Suisen Hyuuga?"

"I did."

"And you claim it was self-defense?"

I was hoping you would use the sword. Less messy, less… personal.

"I do."

Ibiki's pen scratched against the paper in the silence that ensued. He then raised his eyes to Akane once more. "Chidori," he reiterated. "Copy Ninja Kakashi's one original technique, a rapid speed jutsu more suitable for assassinations."

"The very same."

"You used it to defend yourself?"

Trap, she thought. However, not even Ibiki could use information he did not fully understand. "For someone without the Sharingan, the shorter the range the better," she said. "No tunnel-vision. I wouldn't have had time to immobilize him, he was too fast. I used the Chidori point blank."

Ibiki's eyes might have narrowed infinitesimally. Then again, they might have not. They were nearing the end of her report concerning Suisen's last moments and he seemed close to wrapping up his part and calling it a day. Whether she had convinced Ibiki or not was irrelevant. The real challenge was drawing near.

"Did Suisen Hyuuga say anything to you before he died?"

Well played… Akane.

"No."

Such an odd question, Akane mused as Ibiki resumed his scribbling in the silence that ensued. So casually integrated and asked. Like an afterthought. Except it stuck out like a sore thumb. A shiver licked down her spine and crawled underneath her skin, raising goosebumps in its wake. Ibiki glanced up, quirking a brow.

"I'm cold," she said in reply to his silent question.

"You can put your coat back on."

She could feel him watching her every move as she went to get it. She heard the interview room's door open and close, but thought nothing of it until she turned around and saw who was standing behind Ibiki. There were now two pairs of eyes set on her, one of which was achingly familiar.

"Shall we commence with the second part of the interview?" Ibiki asked.

Akane had known her account would be recorded by Ibiki and checked by a Yamanaka. She had mentally prepared herself for it and it did not surprise her to find one standing by his side now. She had simply expected a different Yamanaka to delve into her mind. Inoichi, most likely, or perhaps someone else. Certainly not her.

Not Yui, her childhood companion and former teammate, whom she had not seen or spoken to in years. Not since…

"Hello, Akane," the tall blonde said, displaying a smile that almost made her shiver again.

"You are a Konoha shinobi, not an enemy," Ibiki said. "You deserve this courtesy. I thought you might be more comfortable letting a friend in."

It's you who should be dead, not Koga!

Yui had not been smiling then. Her amber eyes had been filled with venom and traces of it were still there now, as they measured each other from opposite ends of the interview room, more than eight years later.

Ibiki knew. There was no way he did not. He cared nothing for conflicts of interest and this was the opposite of courtesy. He would lie through his teeth even as he brandished his sharpest weapon. Anything to tear down her walls.

"Is something the matter?" Ibiki asked.

Rub it in, you sly dog. "No. Let's get this over with," Akane said, retaking her place in the chair as Yui pulled one for herself at Ibiki's side. She could not let his tactics get under her skin. Although Yui was the last Yamanaka she wanted rummaging through her head, she was also the only one whose chakra and methods Akane was familiar with. If she was careful, she could use that to her advantage.

"Don't worry, this will be just like falling asleep," Yui told her, though the icy undercurrent in her voice did little to set Akane's mind at ease. The timeframe would be small. She would have to be careful even after squeezing through. "Are you ready?"

"Yes."

Yui's hands formed a variation of the Mind Transfer jutsu seal. "I'm going in." A split second later, she projected her chakra and conscience across the room, into Akane's mind.

Ibiki watched the two women slump in their chairs, as if they had both suddenly fallen asleep. This would take a while. Yui liked to take her time. Sooner or later, the truth would come out though, and that was all he cared about, whatever this overblown inquiry was all about. Perhaps the Nara woman had stepped on the wrong toes this time around. Either way, Ibiki would do his job.

Yui waited patiently while her chakra flared to map out the darkness inside Akane's unconscious mind. This mind-delving jutsu was often used to retrieve memories, and it enabled her to make out the abstract pathways within one's hippocampus and reshape them into something concrete; a decoding process that allowed her to walk those very paths in order to sift through a person's memories.

Floorboards arrayed themselves under Yui's feet, a ceiling stretched over her head and walls rose on either side, punctuated by closed shoji doors at various intervals. She found herself standing in the middle of a hallway, the beginning and end of which were obscured by lingering shadows. More often, the pathways could be reconstructed into something resembling a library, but this end result suited Yui just as well. As long as it could be navigated, it did not matter that it appeared to be a traditional house.

Something skittered in the darkness, producing a faint sound like tiny claws scrabbling against the lacquered floorboards. Yui turned abruptly, startled by the echo. She waited for a few moments that dragged on, but no other noise rose from the shadows. Instead of a library, leave it to Akane to have a mind reminiscent of a haunted house. And here Yui had thought once a nerd, always a nerd. She supposed working in the ANBU required a whole other level of compartmentalization.

Yui reached for the nearest shoji panel and pulled it open. The shadows shifted, dancing along the walls to reveal a simple room. A little girl with dark hair was curled up at the foot of an empty double bed, sobbing into her knees. She had projected herself too deep, Yui realized, snapping the panel shut. Too far into the past. The broken sounds of crying receded as she walked away and down along the hallway.

It was impossible to determine how far the corridor stretched on, or behind which door she would find the memory she was looking for. Memory reading was not an exact science, with the reader's experience varying from subject to subject. The quality of the material itself differed. Older memories tended to be more faded, like damaged video tapes. This part of Akane's mind was full of them. Yui started running. Her time here was not without limit.

Snap. Snap. Snap. One shoji door after another. The same skittering sound echoed along the hall, behind her, giving Yui pause for a moment. Something was not right. Something was here that was not supposed to be. She had no time to investigate how such a thing could be, unfortunately.

She opened another panel, her arm muscles flexing, by now used to pulling them shut almost immediately. A scream tore out from behind the door and the scene laid beyond the threshold caused Yui to stop dead in her tracks.

"KOGA!"

Yui saw her genin self, wide eyed and trembling, standing by frozen in the middle of the Forest of Death. Koga was down in the grass, eyes closed, a trickle of blood streaking his cheek from the corner of his mouth. More frothed and bubbled between his lips as Akane pressed into the gaping wound on his chest. His flabby, mangled arms, which he had used to push Akane from the blast of an explosive tag trap, lay still in the grass.

"Help me!"

A teary Akane was shouting at the younger Yui, but her eyes were on the blood, all the blood: on Akane's arms, spattered on her face, spilling in the grass and seeping into the ground and Koga was dead, he was gone, why couldn't she see and it was her fault-

Yui pulled the panel shut with such force it reverberated through her arm. She brushed a curl behind the ear, allowing herself a few moments to regain her composure. Of all the memories she could have stumbled upon. She scoffed. What were the odds?

She stormed further along, blasting like a whirlwind from doorway to doorway, through Akane's chuunin years, her medical training, rooms full of books she had studied and committed to this light-forsaken place, then into the ANBU and through a whirl of faces and happenings Yui had neither the time nor the patience to sift through. She cursed under her breath with relief when she finally made it out of all that into Akane's last year.

It was halfway through it, however, when Yui noticed something odd. The shadows along the hallway were growing thicker, shifting with her as she moved, as if to cover something. She gravitated toward their midst, her fingers brushing over torn rice paper panels clinging to the lacquered skeleton of their broken shoji frame. Something so out of place within Akane's orderly mind beckoned to Yui like a lighthouse through the storm. She grasped at the door's edge and gently pried it open.

At first, the light of the dying embers cast everything else within in darkness. Then something moved within that darkness, followed by a strangled whimper. A shiver ran through Yui as her eyes began adapting to the lack of light. She stood in the doorway, transfixed. It was not what she had been looking for, but it filled her with a different kind of understanding.

"There's motive," she murmured to herself.

The shadows parted as she backed away, only to fall back like a curtain over the memory Akane probably wished she had repressed. The one that had festered, instead. Yui followed that corruption like a bloodhound, pushing those insistent skittering noises in the dark to the back of her mind. Omission of the truth was still a lie. One lie led to another. By picking up that one thread, Yui could almost feel the whole thing unravelling under her fingertips. She laughed. This steaming pile was likely bigger than even Ibiki thought.

She went back to her rampage through the shoji doors that bore the marks of that one, terrible memory, looking for either more clues or the denouement that she had actually come for. How much more could there be, after all?

A door to the left caught Yui's attention at some point. She had moved faster and the shadows had not been able to cover it in due time. She stepped closer. Cold air blew against her face through the hanging corner of one paper panel. A couple of snowflakes floated through, spiraling into the darkness behind Yui.

A voice came from within, though barely audible. "Tell Itachi…"

Yui reached out to pull the door open, only to stop short when a second set of panels slid closed over the broken ones with a loud snap. Her jubilance came to an abrupt end.

"Please. Promise me."

She did not recognize the voice. Her hand went to the second set of doors, when another snap caused her to jerk it back. Impossible, she thought. The already faint sounds coming from within became inaudible through the multiple sets of doors springing shut from the walls. There was no getting through this one, it seemed. She was running out of chakra and out of time. Whatever memory this was, Yui could not access it. She needed to move on.

The truth is always in the last place you look for it, one of her mentors from the Analysis Team had told Yui during her training. The words had stuck with her throughout the years. It was not as much about the truth as it was about finding that last place. The thread she had uncovered led Yui to it unerringly: one of the last few doors she could see. The same winter chill blew through it. The shadows danced around it.

Yui opened it and stepped inside.

It seemed like they had been out of it for hours when in truth, only minutes had passed. A clock had been ticking on the wall behind Itachi all this time, its constant noise loud enough in the silence to keep anyone on edge. Perhaps the Yamanaka's jutsu enabled her to bend time, like his Tsukuyomi.

He remembered her, of course. He had always been adept at remembering faces, even without his sharingan active to make the job a real piece of cake. She was probably the one being he would not want to literally pick his brains. This Yui person seemed the type to sooner hack through them with a katana.

She was the first to stir.

Itachi's eyes immediately darted to Akane, who snapped out of the jutsu a few moments later, looking groggy and beaten. Ibiki's one question to the Yamanaka woman came through the sound system crackling.

"Well?"

The blonde's back straightened as Akane remained doubled over, as if in pain. Itachi felt himself tensing again. When Yui's voice finally came through, it did so with the force of a tsunami.

"She told the truth."

I know you have questions. I can only say most of them will probably be answered in the next chapter (do feel free to ask if need be, I will answer in a PM). I already stretched the usual word limit with this one, but I ended it with what I think is a smaller cliffhanger than it could have been.