Chapter 30: Breaking point.
Some shinobi, make a great effort throughout their lives to conceal the abilities they worked so hard to refine. Kakashi, myself, and most ANBU operatives were the case. It was to our advantage and benefit that the enemy misread or completely underestimated our power.
Senju Tsunade was not one of those shinobi.
The second you stepped into a room she was in, you could notice the change in the atmosphere, in the very air. She was not someone to be trifled with. Not unless you were looking for an early grave. The Hokage's office suddenly felt too small, too restrictive, like it did not have enough exits. For the first time in my life, I wanted to run; far and fast never to look back. And if the tension among the kneeling ninja was anything to go by, I was not the only one.
We were in the presence of something, someone, beyond us.
"Rise," snapped the woman's voice like a whip. "I'm not one to go on and on, so I will make it short and expect everything to run smoothly and everyone to do their job."
She was met with silence, pure obedience, blind loyalty.
"Any shinobi within my personal guard will be allowed a voice in this room. You are my shadows and often see more that I do." She strode back and forth in front of the twelve of us. "I do not want your services if you are not fully committed to me. Political freedom exists, we will normalize it, but I will not encourage or tolerate disobedience. You have a problem with me or how I run things? You bring it to me."
This behavior was so out of character, lacking all protocol, some of my seniors' shoulders kept tensing and I didn't know how many of them would remain after this.
"If it were up to me, I would disband the Hokage guard altogether, but there's only so much fighting I can do while running this village." She sighed and ordered us to take off our masks.
"Before the day is over you will choose your own masks, paint them yourselves or have your SO paint it for you. When you report to me you are to take off your masks, and never kneel before me again."
And within ten minutes, Senju Tsunade had inspired more loyalty than Hiruzen had in years. She was humble, but not stupidly so, she was strong and she knew it, but she didn't overestimate herself. Senju Tsunade had traveled the world and learned, and had realized that admitting to be ignorant was the first step towards knowledge.
I could follow this woman, I just didn't know if I could trust her yet. I neded to bide my time, to see where her allegiances lied, how deeply did the council and Danzo himself had their claws into her, how much did they plane to interfere in her rule. She seemed honest enough for a person who had been gambling her life away until Jiraiya convinced her to come back. Still I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
She had assembled a team of whichever shinobi were available at the time to try and get my Otouto back. Regardless of the failure of the mission, she had refused to brand Sasuke as a rogue, and that in itself meant something to me.
And then she took Naruto for her apprentice.
Everyone would have thought he'd leave the village the second he got the chance, but when Sakura asked Jiraiya to be her mentor, Naruto would not be one to lag behind. I asked the kunoichi of team 7 why the Toad Sage of all people, he was known to have quite the lecherous tendencies, her answer was quite simple: she had always been the kind to learn from a book, now she wanted to learn from experience. There were things the library would not prepare you for, and she never wanted to be caught off guard again. I respected her decision, but told her to reach out for Emiko should she decide her mentor was being a special kind of nasty.
On the other hand, Naruto had decided long ago that what he really needed was not more power, but to learn to control what he already had. And who better to ask for guidance that the world's pioneer in Chakra control? Senju Tsunade had been dragged back to Konoha as a blessing in disguise. On the outside, a gambling drunk old hag, on the inside an experienced shinobi and medic, the first to propose each team of three should have at least one field medic. A woman with knowledge of strategy, politics, and the experience of war and loss on her shoulders, not enough to traumatize, but sufficient to know the price for violence.
Naruto would become a brilliant shinobi under her tutelage.
With the future of team 7 in safer hands than my own, I decided it was time to come clean. I owed it to everyone I loved to tell them the truth. I had lied and schemed, and killed so that I could get revenge and call it justice. I knew I had forsaken everything Shisui had taught me, and I knew it was against Itachi's wishes as well; but I just could not live with the knowledge of what had happened and do nothing about it.
If no one would fight for them, then I would be the one to do it.
Tsunade's office was empty. My mask lay on her desk facing the ceiling and two of my comrades stood beside me as I knelt and confessed to everything I had done, from conspiring to kill Sarutobi Hiruzen, to arranging Sasuke's escape. I confessed to not saying anything for lack of trust, and confessed my attempt to stop Danzo from continuing to maim my clan.
While I spoke, Tsunade listened with her fingers intertwined ande her elbows on her desk, face like a mask. She asked for Shisui's letter, I provided it. But when she asked for Orochimaru's snake, I refused. No one would gain access to the sanke sanin while he had Sasuke under his care. Not through me at least. she ground her teeth and said nothing.
She asked about Itachi, my relationship with him, and demanded to know about his plans within Akatsuki. I answered with as much detail as I could. She did not seem pleased with my lack of knowledge on the matter, but didn't press it. She seemed to believe me, but I wasn't naïve enough to think that would be the end of my interrogation. With enough luck, I'd walk out of T&I with a not-so-damaged psyche. I may not have been able to see them, but I knew there were at least two interrogation operatives in the room.
"Would you be willing to go through an interrogation with Yamanaka Inoichi?" her hazel eyes burnt like scalding iron on the skin, they had a sharpness to them that reflected her years of experience and the mind behind them. Not all shinobi lived long enough to reach her age.
Senju Tsunade was a force to be reckoned with, and I would not want to be on the receiving end of her wrath. Yes, she was a drunk in the process of sobering up, and no, she probably would never stop gambling, but no one could deny the woman was a damn incredible shinobi.
"Yes, Tsunade-sama."
"Good. I hope you have nothing to hide, Uchiha. I'd hate to have you tried for treason." She said. "You will remain in the T&I cells until your interrogation, and under observation for a week. Dismissed."
Someone grabbed me by the upper arm and dragged me out of the office and down the stairs. My comrades stayed silent as we went down into the underground tunnels and towards T&I. I expected they didn't quite want to be in my company, they were a part of the Hokage guard and had been for longer than I'd been a legal adult, so having one of their own juniors plot to kill the man that they were supposed to protect, didn't exactly sit right with them. I couldn't blame them for it.
Treason was not something shinobi took lightly, even if there was so much of it within our area of expertise.
The door to the cell closed behind me with a heavy metallic 'clang' and I didn't have to look around to know there were no windows, no indicator of the passing of time. It was a cell designed to drive the prisoners within it mad. T&I's take on information gathering was cold, ruthless; to strip a person of what they were and lay them bare, open, as easy to read as any book.
No one outside the division knew exactly what went on inside the building; within the interrogation rooms, but the consequences of Yamanaka-Morino interrogations did nothing but feed the horror stories going around common rooms. Shinobi were very fond of gossip as well as superstitions. Rumor had it that when Yamanaka got inside your head, there was close to nothing they would not find out. In the event that Inoichi-san did not manage to get it out of you, Morino Ibiki would make sure your body reflected the broken state of your mind.
In any case, thinking about it wouldn't make a difference in the outcome of my interrogation, but it would definitely make me miserable until then. So I decided my best choice was to remain as calm as I could, train, meditate, get some rest. Kami knew I would need all the strength I could get. For the first time in a very long time, the only concern I had was for myself. I needed to get through this to be able to start over fresh, serve well if I was allowed to, and continue to protect those precious to me.
I hoped Inoichi-san could get the confirmation he needed, and be able to vouch for my honesty. I doubted it would be enough to spare me from punishment, but I hoped it would make running away unnecessary. I knew I might get stripped off my hitai-ate, I knew I could be sentenced to a life behind bars. I knew for a fact there was no way they would exile me, state secrets could never fall into enemy hands. It was dismissal, incarceration, or death, and the more I thought about it, the bleaker my future looked. Still, I resolved I'd done my best, and Konohagakure could never claim otherwise. My conscience was clear.
I sat with my back to the wall and rested my arms on my knees. I closed my eyes and breathed out, long and steady. And then, when my breathing had evened out, I grounded myself, connecting to the earth beneath me, feeling the energy of the world around me. I started to open each of my chakra gateways, draw they power out in little amounts so they would clear, unclog themselves, and heal my body, mind and spirit. I was not wounded, but keeping your gateways clear was a way of keeping chakra flowing, even with my damaged coils, maintenance of one's chakra system had more benefits than it had drawbacks.
The process was slow, not exactly tedious, but it did require a fair amount of concentration. It took time, but if done regularly enough, it not only improved health, it also made one's chakra reserves grow. Many shinobi honed their physical body, trained relentlessly to obtain the muscle memory required to be exceptional; but they sometimes forgot that muscles were not the only part of the body which required memory. Many shinobi had died because their chakra control did not match the speed of their physical reflexes, and when you had such crippling disadvantages as a damaged coil system, you tended to try and cover as many gaps as possible. Either way, I had a lot of time to spare, if anything, so I might as well make sure I was in shape in every aspect I could think of.
No visitors came, but that didn't surprise me, I was under arrest for charges of murder and treason, should any visits come, they would definitely have an ulterior motive, and they would be chosen very carefully.
The only way to tell the time I could think of were meals. They came three times a day, and helped schedule my daily activities inside the cell, which is a fancy way of saying I trained all day. Muscle building, endurance exercises, stretching, meditating, and kata practice. Over and over, three times a day, only spaced by meals and the occasional nap. I was allowed no books, no magazines (paper is surprisingly sharp if you know the right way to fold it), no art or writing supplies, but despite how mind-numbingly boring the situation was, I refused to bow under the weight of imprisonment.
One week seemed an incredibly short time compared to the period I'd spent inside that cell, but it did pass. Like everything in life, it passed. But it wasn't an ANBU mask that came to take me to the interrogation room. When the door to my cell opened and Cat-taicho came in, I knew it was meat to make me feel guilty for what I'd done, to make me regret it all. but I couldn't bring myself to do so. Yes, I'd betrayed him, Tenzo had trained me for years and I'd used the knowledge he gave me to help kill the very person he was supposed to protect. Even now, I was using every strategy he'd ever taught me to get through the interrogation as sanely as possible. But I did not, I would not regret it. Ever. Not when Hiruzen had messed with the most precious thing I had: my family.