WARNING, PLEASE READ

this chapter is extremely graphic. it includes explicit descriptions of physical torture and violence (against both adults & minors), suicidal/dark thoughts, psychological torture/trauma, and implied non-con. due to formatting restrictions on FFN i have not been able to block off those sections, but they ARE blocked off on AO3 if you would prefer to read it there.

if you are unable to read this chapter, but are still interested in following the story, please feel free to ask me any questions in a review/PM and i will fill in any blanks for you!

come away to the water

the sins of the martyr

When Kakashi was four years old, they branded him a genius. A prodigy, a talented and remarkable shinobi in the making; he had little strength, but made up for it in ability and intellect. Quite a feat for a four year old, but really, with a father like Hatake Sakumo, what else was to be expected? From the beginning, Kakashi was meant for this life. This was what he was born to be.

He was born for the Leaf, and he would die for it, too. It was, and always had been, his purpose in life. He never had dreams of grandeur, or even dreams of a quiet, peaceful, mediocre life. He wasn't sure he really had dreams at all, but to die an honourable death befitting a shinobi of Konohagakure, if that could really be considered a dream.

For as long as he could remember, that had been the way. Now, though—now, he had dreams. They weren't the sorts of dreams that filled him with vigor and life, or inspired him, or even made him smile. He dreamt of darkness. Silence. Emptiness. It was the only salvation he had in a life of that was filled with nothing but pain.

The nights—were they nights? He couldn't be so sure what time of day it was—he spent unconscious were his best nights by far. At first, they had been scarce. He had been resilient, at first; holding onto his consciousness the way his comrades had held onto their fleeting lives to their last dying breaths. He had endured their beatings in silence. Eventually, though, they got sick of such crass methods.

He could almost appreciate the art of torture, the way Kiri did it. There was something ingenious in their methods of inflicting pain. The way they were able to fixate on such a small piece of skin, and pull as much torment as they could with so little real estate, leaving so much left to be discovered on the body. He would have appreciated it, had he not been screaming; had he not been blinded with agony.

The first time they broke his silence had been with a senbon. He could still feel his finger itching with it. When they slowly dug the needle right through the centre of the last knuckle of his smallest finger, he had winced but had otherwise remained stoic. They hadn't liked that. The follow-up was far worse. Slipping the tip of that needle under the nail of his pinky finger, not even piercing his skin, had made his heart rate jump and his skin go clammy.

They had waited for his pulse to regulate before they drove the needle between his nail and skin, slowly, agonizingly, deeper and deeper until he couldn't hold back a pained groan. The satisfied smirk on his torturer's face had been telling enough. They hadn't stopped prodding and digging, one needle after another, until his fingernail had fallen off.

"Let's see how that will of fire holds up under water, shall we, Kakashi-kun?" his torturer said. He glared up at them.

"You can do whatever you'd like to me, but I have no information to give you." It was the truth, really. He wasn't sure what he had, aside from the Sharingan, that they could possibly want. The torturer dropped their mask to reveal a twisted smirk.

"I'll be the judge of that," they said before driving that senbon deep through his battered, naked nail bed, through the tissue and bones of the tip of his finger, and deep into the wood of the chair he was bound to. He choked on his scream, but his gurgled sound was pleasurable enough to their ears. They left him alone in that dark room, his finger speared to that chair.

At first, he thought maybe they'd had enough of their little game for the night, but it hadn't taken him long to realize they were just biding their time. When two of them stepped back into his damned prison, flicking on the single bulb that hung above him as they entered, he realized just what they had been waiting for.

Sickly black veins trailed up his arm, from his finger up halfway to his elbow. Poison. They had poisoned the senbon and then sunk it straight into his bloodstream. One of them—the one who had wielded the senbon to begin with, approached him, prodding roughly at his arm and tutting in displeasure at the sight.

"I'm afraid that's going to be horribly painful, Kakashi-kun," they said.

"Oh, good, I was getting a little bored down here," he managed to rasp through his cracked lips and dry throat.

"Mm, feisty," they said before roughly yanking the needle from his finger. He barely managed to bite back the hiss of pain.

"Keep it in your pants, Kanna," the second person spoke, finally stepping under the dangling bulb. Kakashi blearily glanced up, to see a man not unlike Konoha's own head of interrogation. Was it strange that he found the thought of Ibiki-san so comforting? He was likely delirious from exhaustion and pain. Not to mention the poison tingeing his veins black, crawling through his system.

When the man leant down to stare into Kakashi's eyes, Kakashi met him head on, delirium or not. He seemed to find it funny. All the Kiri nin who had seen him bound and suffering had seemed to find the sight amusing. He wasn't sure why they didn't just scrape his eye out of his head and be done with it. It was the only thing of value in his possession. Physical or otherwise.

"My apologies on behalf of Kanna. She likes to play with her food."

Kakashi watched as the woman considered him with a gleam in her eyes that he had mistaken for run-of-the-mill cruelty. He may have been young, but he had seen his share of it. Upon a second look, he thought that perhaps her smile twisted just a little more wickedly, her eyes sparkled with just a touch too much excitement.

If he had the energy to be scared, he was certain he would have been terrified.

But there was poison coursing through his veins, and one way or another; he would be dead before long. He could handle pain. He would endure whatever excruciating pain came with this poison, knowing that it would all come to an end soon. It was a relief, in some ways.

"Don't you want to be saved, boy?" the man asked. Kakashi would have laughed if he were physically capable of laughter.

"Even if you took this poison out, you would find some other way to torture me. I'd rather get it over and done with," he rasped. The man frowned down at him, thoroughly displeased. The sight was strangely comforting to Kakashi. He felt that he'd managed some sort of a victory, with as little power as he had in this place; he had managed to maintain this.

Then the smirk broke out and Kakashi knew he'd been had.

"I thought you might say that," he said before waving Kanna off. When she returned, it was with someone new. Young. Screaming. Kanna dragged the girl in by her hair before throwing her down to Kakashi's feet.

"Here is your choice, Kakashi-kun," Kanna said. "Let's see where that Will of Fire leads you."

"Beg Kanna to remove the poison, or watch this girl die screaming at your feet."

Kakashi glanced down to the girl. She looked younger than him, probably by a few years. Barely out of her childhood years. Possibly still in them. She didn't look like a shinobi; frail and slight and weeping for her mother. What were the odds she would live long, even if he saved her life now? She may not die at his feet, but he had little hope the Kiri nin would set her free.

Black continued to crawl up his arm, past his elbow now. He wondered how long he had to make this decision.

Not long. Kanna pulled a kunai from her thigh holster and brandished it with a delirious grin.

"Decide," she sang, pressing the tip of the kunai to her own palm until blood pooled beneath it. "Decide, Kakashi-kun," she said, her voice lilting with an edge of impatience, her blade twisting more furiously, blood pooling quicker.

When he said nothing, she snarled in fury. Quicker than the girl at his feet could process, Kanna flicked the kunai so it soared toward her face, slicing her cheek open before embedding deep into Kakashi's shin. He gasped at the pain, but otherwise held Kanna's stare.

"Decide," she said through gritted teeth. After a beat, she bent down to grab the girl by her neck, smearing her blood across her skin.

"Take the poison out," he said hurriedly, his voice nearly drowned out by the girl's sobbing. Kanna lowered the girl slowly back to the ground.

"I'm glad you've made a decision, Kakashi-kun," she said with sickly sweetness. "But I do remember you were told to beg."

She dug the tip of a kunai down into the girl's forehead, making her scream bloodcurdling screeches that echoed in the halls outside his prison. Blood trickled down to pool in her eyes, mingling with her tears and continuing in streaks down her cheeks and chin, under her jaw and down her neck.

"Please—stop. Take the poison out of me. Stop hurting her," he rasped hurriedly. Her screaming continued as Kanna drew her blade across her skin in deep cuts, opening her flesh. "Stop, stop, stop, please I'm begging."

Kanna dragged the kunai across her forehead and down her temple.

"I did what you wanted! I'm begging you to take this poison out of me, and leave her alone! Please, please, I'll do anything, leave her alone," Kakashi cried, his voice getting desperate. Kanna finally looked away from the girl and to him.

"Ah…there it is," she said with a smile, approaching him with the kunai soaked in the girl's blood. She pressed the flat of it to his cheek, wiping the blood off on his skin before she pressed the tip gently to the skin below his eye. It glistened lightly when she showed it to him. "Tears, Kakashi-kun? Fire doesn't cry. You'll put out that little flame, you know."

"Take the poison out," he managed to whisper. Kanna's smile grew toothy before she lifted his arm and dug her teeth deep into his skin.

He couldn't say how long she did that; biting into his flesh, tearing small chunks of him out as she did, spitting them out onto him, her teeth covered in his blood. He could feel pained moans clawing out of his raw throat, but otherwise, he felt detached. Floating. Eventually she stopped. Eventually, even she grew tired of this game.

The girl at his feet was quietly crying, sniffling softly and whining when Kakashi's discarded blood and flesh splattered onto her.

"That's enough, Kanna," the man spoke up from a darkened corner. "Finish things up, will you?"

"You got it, boss." Kanna dipped down to pick the girl up by her hair again, turning her tear and blood stained face to Kakashi. He held her gaze, even though his own eyes were heavy-lidded from exhaustion. Her eyes were green. Bright green and sparkling. They felt familiar somehow.

"Thank you," she whispered softly. He could barely hear her. She parted her lips to speak again. "Thank y—"

She never finished her sentence. Kanna's kunai was buried deep in her temple, and the sparkle in her eyes died swiftly.

"Y-y-you said you wouldn't kill her," he whispered in shock as her small body crumpled to the floor.

"No," the man said coolly as Kanna left the prison, leaving the two of them alone with the girl's corpse. "I said she wouldn't die screaming."

Being left alone in a dank room with a rotting corpse gave him time to consider his captivity. He wished he could fade away into nothingness, to forget who he was, where he was, how long he had been here, but he couldn't. His mind, befuddled with pain and sleep deprivation, with hunger and thirst, and countless other ailments, was not deterred from noticing the patterns of his visitors. He learned their shifts and their habits.

He learned that decomposition was repugnant, and while that was unsurprising, he was surprised to learn that the smell brought with it a certain delirium.

It was in that delirium that he realized what a fool he'd been. There was never any poison. He had been under the influence of hallucinogens, and was susceptible to the manipulation of his captors; they had said he was poisoned, and so he saw his poison. The poison was a fabrication, but the dead girl, her decomposition, his chewed up arm—those were real.

Hallucinogens were in common rotation for the Kiri nin, he quickly learned. He kept his observations to himself. It was easier to endure his hallucinations when he knew they were coming. They had begun to slip drugs into the food and water they force-fed him. They refused to let him starve himself, or die of thirst.

The trouble with the hallucinations wasn't really consciousness; it was unconsciousness. His dreams were filled with delusion and imagery that haunted him. Waking from those dreams was a nightmare, and every time he convinced himself he was free and safe, he opened his eyes to the horrors of his dungeon.

One moment he would be smelling the sweet flowers at his father's grave in Konoha, and then suddenly the flowers grew sickly sweet, the smell of decay. A mangled, rotten hand poking out from the dirt, reaching forward to grip his ankle. To drag him down into the depth of the earth so he could become as sickly sweet as the bodies that lay beneath his feet.

It wasn't until he opened his eyes and he saw the rotting flesh of the dead girl he had tried to save that he understood he had fallen victim to another dream. Kakashi was accustomed to speaking to the dead, but he never had to look upon their faces when he did. He could remember his father alive when he spoke to the makeshift headstone; the grave of a disgraced man. He could see Obito's childish grin and hear his giggle when he visited the cenotaph.

This girl didn't smile, or giggle, or breathe with life. Her skin was gaunt and wilting away from her bones. Her once green, sparkling eyes were completely clouded over, blindly gazing up at him. Still, he spoke to her. He told her what day it was, who he was, where he was, and when the next guard would come in to shove food and water down his throat so violently he would choke and spit most of it up.

He understood that he was telling her all these things because he needed to hear them himself. The more he spoke, the less he slept. The less he slept, the less he dreamt. And those dreams were a thousand times worse than any torture Kiri could ever inflict on him.

He wished with every screaming, aching, burning bone in his body that he could escape them.

He'd been down there for twenty-eight days when they made their first attempt at the Sharingan. They must have gotten tired of trying to coax answers out of him that he did not have. He didn't know why he'd been sent to the frontlines; he assumed it was because someone had to go, and he had served his purpose to the village. Perhaps they thought his presence would inspire the other shinobi. They had been wrong, in any case.

Those were not the answers Kiri wanted, though. Through their questioning he learned that while he and his comrades were fighting in the mist, a small squadron from Konoha slipped through their ranks and infiltrated their base of intelligence. His captors were clearly under the impression that it didn't matter what they revealed to him. He wouldn't be leaving this place alive.

Judging by the body at his feet, he may not even be leaving this place dead. He could only hope his soul found freedom in death. And he hoped it came quickly.

The drugs they pumped him with were, more often than not, truth serums. They didn't magically expel the truth from him, only made him more susceptible to coercion, and lowered his inhibitions greatly. It helped that he knew he was being drugged. It helped that he didn't have much information to give them in the first place.

It was difficult for him to separate fact and fiction, though. Under the influence of those drugs, it was hard to decipher what images were fabrications of his muddled mind, and which were sparked by information brazenly divulged by his captors. He had been particularly lucid during the conversation they had regarding a Trojan horse being prepared for Konoha. Once consciousness slipped away, however, his dreams were filled with images of a monstrous, three-tailed turtle wreaking havoc on his home. It was a difficult image to justify.

He had written it off until that dream came to him a third time. Twenty-seven days after his capture and he had had that dream three times. Kakashi was not a superstitious sort of person, even after his experience in the mist. His suspicions were confirmed on the twenty-eighth day, when they reached for his eye.

He was neck-deep in a drug-laden hallucination when that hand stretched out toward his implanted eye. He had resigned himself to losing it the moment his back hit the cold ground of that battlefield. He hoped losing it killed him.

That hand never made it as far as his face, though, because its owner was lost as he stared into Kakashi's active Sharingan. That was the trouble with implants. Kakashi's chakra couldn't control the Sharingan seamlessly, and no amount of chakra binding in the world would make it inactive. It wasn't his choice to enrapture the would-be thief in his hallucinations, but as the man stared into that eye, he was overcome with it.

He reeled back, shouting, clutching at his head.

"What did you do to him?" someone in the room yelled. Kakashi felt a hand wrap around his neck, but all he saw was the wreckage of Konoha; his home being razed to dust at the hands of a monster. Children screaming. People dying. Kakashi just watched, and watched, unable to turn away from it. The screaming intensified. There was so much blood, he could see it, he could see it all so clearly as it ran through the roads in rivers. He could smell it. He could feel it lap at his feet as he stood and watched.

When Kakashi came to, there was a second body at his feet.

The next day, both corpses were gone. Kakashi said a silent farewell to the dead girl that had kept him company these past weeks.

They upped the dosage. He wasn't sure if they were trying to drive him insane, the way the Kiri nin who continuously tried to extract his eye did. If it was their intention to have im slowly lose who he was to the drugs that coursed through him, then they were on the right track. Everything moved sluggishly, blurred and surreal. He almost convinced himself that the dingy light bulb that dangled over his head was the sun. He almost convinced himself that the spit that his captors expelled onto him was rain.

"All your friends are dead," he heard a voice say. He knew that already. He had no friends anymore.

"So am I," he responded, though he wasn't sure the words actually made it out of his mouth. His tongue felt foreign, too large and soft to be a real, functioning organ in his body. He bit down on it until it bled.

"Not yet, little wolf," the voice said.

"Why not? I want to die," he said with a sigh. He was so tired.

"You had the chance," the voice said. Kakashi's mind replayed the memory of laying in the thick fog, waiting for his maker. The Sharingan kept his memories clear, even when his mind was a mess. He could see sparkling eyes hidden by a veil; the closest he had come to seeing the stars. Then, a flash of colour in a sea of grey.

"Kill me," he begged.

"Who?" the voice changed until it was clear and bright, high and airy, cutting through the fog like that strange wind.

"Me. Please. Please kill me," he pleaded.

"Who is killing the Konoha shinobi?" Gruff. Close. He wanted the other voices to come back.

"The mist," he gasped, "the mist takes them all. I heard it." He could hear it still. The thumping of bodies hitting the ground. Or maybe that was his own heartbeat.

"I didn't take you," the gentle, bright voice said. "Such a special eye. Who are you?" He wasn't sure that mattered anymore. Who was he? A shinobi of the Leaf? Was that still true, when he could no longer fight? A Hatake, then; the last Hatake. What did it mean to be the only clan member left standing? This name would die with him. It meant little more than a plot of land in Konoha.

"Who?" the rougher voice demanded again, constricting Kakashi's airflow even further. Who, indeed?

"I don't know," he answered honestly. The twinkling eyes were fading from his field of vision. "No," he pleaded. "Please don't leave me here."

"He's delirious."

"That's the point."

"What do I do with one that isn't dying?" it asked.

"I need to, please. I need to die." The chokehold dropped and air come flooding to him.

"Hold on, little wolf." That voice nearly brought tears to his eyes. Maybe it had. He couldn't tell anymore.

"Rest, shinobi-san," the mist whispered. "Just rest."

"Who killed them?" Kakashi shook his head. Who? The girl at his feet, the man who had tried to take his eye, his friend, his father, his comrades. "Who killed them?"

"I did," he choked out.

"This is useless," he heard before a blow came to the side of his head and he felt—finally—blackness sweep over him. Blackness and one flicker of colour.

"Pink…"

It took Kiri three more tries before they had the idea to cover his eye before attempting to extract it. Three Kiri nin lost to insanity, driven to the brink by Kakashi's hallucinations. In his more lucid moments, he felt a shock of arrogance roll through him. He had lived with these images in his mind and was, he believed, still sane. It was difficult to tell what sanity looked like these days.

There was another problem with kekkei genkai transplants; no history, no documentation, no research. Only secrecy, and in Kakashi's case, a lot of pain and unfortunate side effects. He wasn't sure that he could blame his torture on his Sharingan, but in his truly desperate moments, it did occur to him.

Perhaps the being in the mist would have killed him had it not been startled by that red eye. Perhaps he would have died at the hands of a Kiri nin on the battlefield, were it not for that eye. Perhaps he would have even made it out alive, not having had his chakra sapped. Perhaps he would have died long ago, before even stepping foot in the Land of Water.

Well, Kakashi had known his only remaining friend was a gifted medic. Rin had performed the surgery to the best of her abilities, and he was certain she had outperformed many medics in the process. It seemed she outperformed Kiri's expectations as well, because when they attempted to forcefully remove the eye, they were met with waves upon waves of chakra outpouring from where his ocular nerve fused to the Sharingan.

The smell of burning flesh lingered in his nose for a week. He was certain the flesh had melted off and dripped onto him, or at least somewhere near him. It was vile enough that he wasn't able to keep food down for the days the stench remained with him. He didn't think there could be a smell worse than the rot of human flesh, but he learned differently that day.

He wondered how many minds, limbs and lives would be lost in the pursuit of the Sharingan. He felt the Uchiha clan would be proud that he had managed to hold onto it for this long. Either that or they would be furious he'd managed to be captured. Probably the latter.

He supposed it was befitting of this eye, to be captured, considering who its owner had been. Obito would have been furious at the insinuation. Obito was generally furious with everything Kakashi thought about him. Rightly so, really.

"Come on, Bakashi. You're supposed to be a genius, what are you doing here?" his childhood almost-friend asked as he paced in front of Kakashi.

"I'm not exactly here by choice," Kakashi mumbled back.

"You're not exactly doing anything by choice," Obito said back, rolling his eyes behind those stupid goggles of his.

"Do you think I want to be sitting here in my own filth?" Kakashi asked tiredly. He was such an exhausting person, even in death. "Make yourself useful, and kill me."

"Would that I could," Obito said with a snicker. "But I'm just as trapped as you are."

"Because you aren't real," Kakashi admitted to himself. Obito laughed.

"I'm real enough. I can sure as hell smell your shit and piss well enough. How long have you been down here, anyway?"

"Two-hundred-eighty-six days," Kakashi answered without hesitation. "I've bathed exactly seven times."

"Hopefully you're due for another one soon, because you are rank."

"Thanks. I'll let them know I demand a bath be drawn immediately."

"That's the spirit," Obito said with a wide grin.

"I owe you an apology," Kakashi mumbled after Obito began to waver slightly. His image was fading around the edges. Kakashi wanted to say this before he disappeared forever. "You were my friend and I doubted you. You're dead because of me." Obito remained silent. "And now I'm probably going to give Kiri the Sharingan, so there's that."

By the time Kakashi finished speaking, Obito was gone.

"You're Sakumo's boy." Obito was gone but someone was still speaking to him.

"What?"

"Hatake Sakumo. You're his son. Shit, how old are you?" How old? He'd been down here for just over nine months now.

"Seventeen," he answered the disembodied voice. His birthday had been three weeks ago. He'd forgotten. He had been hoping he would be dead by this point. He wasn't sure what they were keeping him alive for.

"Seventeen," the voice whispered.

"Who are you?" Kakashi asked. "How did you get here?"

"They brought me in yesterday."

"The mist didn't kill you?" Kakashi asked, shocked.

"No, kid. The Mist like to take prisoners. You should know that better than anyone." He had misunderstood what Kakashi was saying, but it was probably best. His own absurdity wasn't lost on him. He knew he had the ramblings of a madman. Still, it all felt so real. He still saw those twinkling eyes in his sleep. He still heard that melodic voice.

It was nice to talk to someone who talked back. Not a dead body, or a torturer, or a figment of his imagination.

"You knew my father?"

"He was my captain." He said nothing more. He didn't need to; Kakashi understood. He was one of the comrades Sakumo had dishonoured himself to save. He was one of the people who had turned his back on Sakumo in Konoha. One of the many reasons Sakumo had killed himself. "Why are they keeping you down here?"

"I don't know. Information?" He didn't have any of that. "My Sharingan?" They had failed to take that multiple times. "Maybe they think Konoha will negotiate for my release."

"Two-hundred-eighty-six-days," he repeated from what Kakashi had told Obito. Except Obito wasn't real, and Kakashi was a deluded boy, rambling into the darkness. "They haven't negotiated yet."

"And they won't," Kakashi finished. He wasn't that deluded. "If they wanted me alive they wouldn't have sent me to Water to begin with." He and his new companion stewed in their bitter silence for a moment together. "Guess we have that in common."

"I wasn't sent to the battlefield, kid," he said with a long sigh. "I guess I owe you a thank you. My team was able to collect safe house locations and supply routes. My team and I had just sabotaged a trade route when they got us."

"We were the distraction."

"And we were the moles."

"And now we're in here together," Kakashi finished. "Here's to the Will of Fire."

Kakashi grew quite accustomed to his cellmate's screams over the next few months. The man was about the same age his father would have been, and there were brief moments, every now and then, when Kakashi wondered if he would feel any sort of familiarity in him. They had been teammates, after all.

But this man was far gruffer than Sakumo had ever been. He was rough around the edges, he cursed and spat, he roared with pain instead of the choked back screams Kakashi let out. He was deeply unfamiliar to Kakashi, yet he came to be the one source of consistency and comfort in this dank cell. Kakashi never did learn his name, though. He wondered if this man knew his. So far, he'd only ever called him "kid", or "Sakumo's boy". He supposed that was better than Copy Ninja.

"Did Baby Leaf and Old Man Leaf have a chance to bond?" Kanna's familiar voice broke Kakashi out of his reverie. He felt less sluggish today. They must have skipped a dosage of his customary drug cocktail. He wasn't sure in what world he was a baby, and his companion an old man, but he supposed Kanna's bandwidth was fully used by her imaginative torture methods. She had a knack for inflicting physical pain, but her quips suffered.

"Ah, aren't you a sight for sore eyes?" his cellmate jeered. He did an impressive job of it, considering he was missing about half his teeth by now. He tilted his head back to get a good look at Kanna. "Ah, fuck, never mind. Still the ugliest bitch I've ever laid eyes on."

"Well, I can fix that for you," she said as she slipped onto his lap, grabbing a fistful of his hair and pulling until his neck was bent completely back. "Just ask Kakashi-kun. We love to go for the eyes."

"Well, you're doing a piss-poor job of it, considering he still has both of his." The crack of her fist against his face was deafening. After a moment, he spat onto the ground, another tooth flying out of his mouth and bouncing against the floor. Kakashi figured that one must have been loose for awhile.

"Hm, good point. Perhaps I should relieve him of that not-so-pesky eye. It is such a pretty grey. Like water in the night." Kakashi kept his gaze downcast. He didn't think she was being genuine, but he knew that if he tested her, she would have no qualms ridding him of his one good eye.

"I think she's got the hots for you, kid," his cellmate said. Kakashi remained silent. So far, the one thing he had not endured in this place was anything sexual. He supposed they were all just too disgusted with him to go there. That, or they were waiting for him to get a little older. By the way his pants were far shorter than they once had been; he'd say they wouldn't be waiting long.

"I prefer old fucks like you," Kanna said, leaning down to bite into his lip until it bled. He hissed and bucked beneath her. "You know, as fun as this is. I have a better idea."

Kakashi tensed. When Kanna was in the mood to talk and tease, those days were usually much easier. A few cuts and twisting digs, but hardly the worst of it. On the days she wasted little time, he knew they could expect something far more vicious.

"I do hate to ruin such a pretty face," Kanna said with a sigh as she climbed off his cellmate's lap and moved to his. He kept his eyes downcast until her cold blade under his chin prompted him to meet her eyes. Her fingers softly brushed over his cheek as she gazed down at him. Her touch was deceptively soft compared to the hard glint in her eyes.

True to her word, Kanna always was very gracious about his face. Bruises and light cuts were usually the extent of it. Once, someone had taken up the mantle in her place, and they had broken his nose and shattered his cheek bone. She had been furious, though she did take great pleasure in resetting his nose.

"I know," Kanna said with a wide smile before she dug her dirty fingers between his lips and pried his jaw open. "Open wide, Kakashi-kun," Kanna prodded. There was no use in resisting. He let his jaw drop as she bid and waited for her to continue as she planned. He was expecting her to free him of a couple of his teeth, as Kiri seemed so fond to do to his cellmate.

Instead, she slipped her blade into his mouth and rested it heavily on his tongue. Even in her impatience, Kanna had a knack for drawing out her torture. It was almost bad enough for him to beg her to get it over with, to please torture him, because it was easier to endure the pain than it was to wait for it to come.

Just when he thought he couldn't take it anymore, the edge of her kunai sliced swiftly into the inside of his cheek. He inhaled a shaky breath as the blood pooled inside his mouth, flowing hot onto his tongue. Kanna's head tilted as she observed him, taking in every detail of his face and his pain as she dug her knife deeper, and deeper. When he felt the tip of her blade finally poke through to the outside skin, he let out a long whine.

"Alright, you made your point," his cellmate said gruffly. "Pretty soon the kid's gonna drown in his own blood. Hard to pull information out of a dead boy."

"I beg to differ," Kanna said coolly with a sweep over her blood-soaked thumb beneath his Sharingan. "I can pull a lot from a dead Kakashi-kun."

"The only reason you haven't killed him and plucked that silly eye out of his skull is because you don't know what will happen to the Sharingan if he dies." Kanna was not pleased at being challenged and quickly climbed off his lap. Just in time, too, because he couldn't stop himself from coughing around the blood that had gathered at the back of his throat. Red sprayed into the air she had previously occupied, and Kakashi counted his lucky stars that he had not sprayed it onto her. He ducked his head away from the two of them, glaring at each other, to drool his blood onto the floor beside him.

"And do you know why we haven't kill you yet?" she asked. Kakashi didn't need to look at her to know that her signature twisted smirk was in place.

"You want to know what information we were able to gather, and what our next hits were. Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but I don't know shit. The second my squad was compromised, the plans would have been changed." Kakashi was impressed that this man could be so articulate after months in this hellhole. After having most of his teeth knocked out, and his tongue nearly bitten off. When they turned their questions to Kakashi these days, he could barely string together five words.

"It's so interesting, the way we retain things," Kanna said calmly as she slipped back onto the man's knees. "The smallest details can be the most telling, wouldn't you agree, Kakashi-kun?" Kakashi managed a gurgled hum in affirmation. If he didn't respond, he was certain her blade would find its way back into his mouth again.

"For instance," she started, "you don't like it when I cut your baby leaf over there. Worried he won't grow back?"

"Worried I'm going to be left with no one to talk to except for your crazy-ass self," he said. Kanna's hand cracked against the side of his face deafeningly.

"That was very rude of you to say," Kanna berated with a long sigh. "I thought you enjoyed our little back-and-forth?" Kakashi raised his head to see Kanna's hand slip from his cellmate's face and down his chest. She had done this before. Kakashi always closed his eyes and tried to focus on the sounds of his own breathing instead of the grunting and struggling going on beside him. No matter what he did though, there was no hiding from it when it was happening barely three feet from where he sat.

"But you see," she continued as her hand travelled down to his pants, "it's not your mind I'm after."

"I guess dog-fuckers aren't that common in Water?" His words turned to a hiss as Kanna gripped him with too much force, though his smirk remained unperturbed.

"Careful," Kanna warned. His smirk widened into a grin.

"Ah, go ahead and kill me, bitch. You can still fuck a corpse, can't you?" Kakashi wondered if his cellmate was trying to die. He couldn't blame him, but he worried he'd be left alone with nothing but his nightmares again. He supposed it was selfish of him to want to keep the man alive and in this hell with him, just so he could feel a like a human again.

"Even with all those teeth missing, you've still got quite the smile," Kanna said, the kunai that had once pierced Kakashi's cheek now pressed to the corner of his cellmate's smile. "I'll bet you were quite the charmer back in Konoha."

"Well, you're definitely at the bottom of the totem pole, that's for sure," he said. The tip of her kunai dug into his skin, a bear of blood emerging from the corner of his mouth.

"Hm," Kanna hummed vaguely. "I'll let you in on a little secret. We don't want your information, or even that little prick between your legs."

"Little, huh?" Her knife dug in deeper until he hissed through his teeth. Satisfied, she continued.

"I don't even particularly care for torturing you, you know," she said a little wistfully. "I think you're fun. But," she continued with a wearied sigh, "they want you in here, and they want you to bleed in front of the boy." She had caught Kakashi's rapt attention with that. "He's such a sensitive thing."

"The kid doesn't give a fuck about me. He doesn't know me from Adam," the man said with an uncomfortable shift beneath her weight. Kanna pouted mockingly.

"Oh, but doesn't he? Old war hero, strong and tough…" Kanna's eyes twinkled with unbridled joy. Kakashi wondered if this experience—toying with them—was what got her going. He couldn't imagine it was appearance, or scent, or anything else going on in this room. "A comrade of his dead daddy."

Kakashi felt dread crawl through his skin. The one other time they had brought someone to his cell, it had been to play mind games; make him beg for her life just to kill her right before his eyes. Had he been so foolish to think that was not the case again? He watched his cellmate, the gruff, unrefined man who had become such a comfort to him in the last five months.

The man's dark eyes met his. He gave Kakashi his most roguish smile—as roguish as any toothless smile could be, he supposed—and a wink. Kakashi wondered if that was his way of saying goodbye with a kunai to his lips.

He didn't have a chance to look away before Kanna's knife was slicing the man's face open, carving a wide smile from ear to ear. He was screaming, loud and unabashed, and so jarring Kakashi was certain he found a new subject for his nightmares. Blood dribbled down his chin and neck, soaking his already tattered and stained clothes.

It didn't stop Kanna from resuming with unbuckling his pants and taking what she wanted. Kakashi looked away, but the sounds—gods, the sounds. He heard her groan, low and raspy, once she was done. He looked up in time to see her climb off of him, covered in grime, sweat, blood, and who knew what else. He couldn't stop himself from gagging.

He tried to hold it back. He tried to keep the measly contents of his stomach where they were, but seeing his one comfort in the world mutilated and debased made it impossible. A mixture of the slop they had force fed him the night before and his own blood splattered loudly against the cold ground and splashed onto Kanna's feet and legs.

He heard her disgusted grunt before looking up in time to see her boot head straight for his head. He and his chair fell forward into the puddle of his own vomit where he fell unconscious.

Two years. Two years, one month, and nine days. He wished he could forget. He wished the days would slump together, and that he could lose himself in the atrocities, in the repetition and horrors of his life, but every minute was as vivid as the last, and he was too lucid for all of it.

They had tried to get to him with cellmates again, but after that last one—that man whose name he had never even learned—he refused to let it get to him. In that, he could maintain his resolve. They beat and bloodied him often, and each day brought more brutal punishments, and physically he had succumbed to them completely. But they would not get to his mind again.

He wasn't sure what he looked like. Pieces of his body were exposed in ways he'd never seen them before. His bones lay a little askew after being broken so frequently. His muscles deteriorated as he stayed strapped to his chair. He couldn't tell which of his pains were his body screaming in protest, and which were inflicted by Kiri.

They asked him questions about Konoha. The gate, the passageways, the Hokage. They asked him about who went where, and at what time. He didn't know. All he ever told them was that he didn't know, and that was the truth. How could he possible know after two years, one month, and nine days?

He kept any unchangeable details to himself, no matter how many drugs they poked into him. No matter the delirium they brought, he was never tempted to disclose the secrets he'd observed about Konoha in the sixteen years he'd been there. He kept them under lock and key, and it was easy to fixate on the mundane tragedies of his life when the drugs muddled his mind. He was fairly certain Kiri was uninterested in how he'd found his father dead in their home, or how he'd watched his teammate be crushed to death.

His last visitor had been two days ago. He was due for another session. Feeding, injecting, beating—he wasn't sure what he would draw out of the hat today, but he knew it would come. The halls outside his cell seemed to echo with life, which was rare. In his two years, he had heard a couple of rowdy groups pass through, but this seemed different.

He closed his eyes and held onto whatever peace remained to him. The clatter seemed to be coming closer though, and that made his shoulders creep up to his ears. He had a feeling he would be in for an especially enthusiastic beating.

His door caved in with a shocking force, clambering loudly as the iron flew from its hinges and scraped against the concrete ground and walls. Slowly, reluctantly, he lifted his head to see what angry beast he would face today.

His vision was blurry and confused, but not enough for him to mistake the sight before him.

"You came back for me," he rasped through his dry throat. A bone-white hand reached out for him. "Help me. Please."

"We're here to save you," the being said. Its voice was less twinkly than he remembered. Lower, smoother, but no less soft and comforting.

"Kill me," he begged. Its head shifted slowly, side-to-side.

"Not today, shinobi-san. Today you get to live."

A/N: this should be the worst of it. i had a really tough time writing this chapter (for obvious reasons) bc i wanted to capture kakashi's hopelessness throughout. hopefully i managed that. but! a light at the end of the tunnel. chile let us hope it gets better from here

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