Chapter 31: Returning Favors.
Being on the receiving end of the Mind Walking jutsu of the Yamanaka Clan was not a pleasant experience. Walking naked around Konoha would have been less of an exposure. Letting someone explore the deepest, darkest corners of your brain was very scary to say the least; you can cover your body if exposed, but there is nothing to shield your thoughts once the barriers of the physical have been breached.
Even if allowing the person doing the mind walking was supposed to make it easier for all parties involved, one's mind will still unconsciously try to defend itself when faced with a foreign presence. I could clearly feel my mind recoiling when Inoichi-san's chakra first disturbed my own. My chakra system had been through enough genjutsu to know they were no good, so when a foreign signature mixed with my own, my body decided it was having none of it.
But Yamanaka Inoichi was not head of the Interrogation department for nothing. He stripped my mind of its walls with frightening ease and started to dig for everything and anything that would help him get what he wanted. He wasn't looking to incriminate me, nor did he want to spare me. No, Inoichi only wanted the truth in order to make up his own mind.
He flew from my childhood memories to my first meeting with Itachi, to the night he put a sword through my gut. From the first time Shisui agreed to train me, to the moment I found his hidden letter. From Hana and I's first day in the Academy to the night she agreed to take Sasuke under her care. Minute by minute, second by second, Yamanaka Inoichi flew through the archives of my life. Until he came to the point where Orochimaru was about to give me his snake. And then, it all came to a screeching halt.
My memories would not move forward. And when they did, it took an unusual amount of effort from Inoichi and a whole lot of pain from me. My brain burned, as if someone had poured acid over it. Inside and out, from the back of my head, to the crown, to the back of my eyes and all the way to where Inoichi's fingers touched my forehead, I burned. Maybe I screamed, maybe I didn't, I wasn't quite sure. Even after my interrogator forced the information out of me, I felt as if my skin were on fire and my eyes saw no more. It was hours, maybe days, or most likely just a few minutes; but the burning never seemed to stop. Until it did.
My eyelids were heavier than I'd ever felt them. It took all of my energy just to open my eyes. The baby hairs on my temples and on the back of my head stuck to my skin with the weight of sweat. Droplets ran down my spine and made me shiver as a chill shook my body. I heard someone say the fever was my body's reaction to a foreign presence in the organism, and would fade in an hour or two.
I didn't recognize the voice, and the arms that pulled me up from my chair and dragged me out of the room felt foreign, unfriendly, unyielding. Someone gave me a blanket before the door to the cell shut behind me, leaving me in the dark, alone and shivering. Naked, bare, and still not lacking a single item of clothing.
My mind felt like it had been put through the grinder. Memories mixed together, names did not match the faces assigned, and feelings flew around and intertwined in ways I did not think possible. I found myself calling out for my brother in between tears and broken sobs. I felt vulnerable, weak, broken, and for the first time in my life, I wanted someone else to do the saving.
I was cold, I was weak, I was alone, and as much as I hated it, I felt sorry for myself. My mind was the only thing nobody had ever been able to hurt, and now, all my fears, all my secrets, all my hopes and dreams had been dissected, torn apart to be studied and evaluated. My very soul had been bared, and now, I felt like somebody else owned it.
I lost track of time. Not that I was able to do anything other than shiver and hold the rough blanket tighter to my chest anyway. But at some point, the door opened again. The masked figure seemed familiar, but I couldn't say where I'd seen it, or if I ever had in the first place.
"The Hokage will see you now."
I didn't move, I just shook on my spot in the corner and stared at them with a dead look in my eyes. They came forward and helped me up. They guided me forward, through stairs, hallways, and empty rooms. At some point, we made it to an office where a blonde woman sat at a mahogany desk. My mind provided me with no names, no ranks, nothing. But somehow, I knew she was important, powerful, not to be trifled with.
"For Kami's sake, Inoichi! If I wanted her to resemble the dead, I'd given her to Ibiki!" the woman said to the ghost eyed man beside her. I shivered.
"I apologize, Lady Tsunade, but the aftereffects of the Mind Walking jutsu differ from one person to the other. The outcome is never up to me." he seemed apologetic, but whether it for disappointing his superior or for the state I was in, wasn't entirely clear to me.
She turned to face me with a deep exhale.
"Uchiha Akane, the interrogation has found evidence to back your claim of Sarutobi Hiruzen's actions, as well as the vile doings of Councilman Himura Danzo," she looked at me so intently that I thought she might be expecting an answer. "You will be allowed to rejoin active duty as a Jonin, Uchiha Sasuke and Uchiha Itachi will be allowed to remain in exile without prosecution until the threat to your clan has been dealt with. But you will remain under observation before being allowed to return to the active roster."
Had she been expecting an answer, she would have been very disappointed. I glanced around the room. It was so much brighter that my cell. Speaking of which, Had there been something, anything, before the cell? I seemed to remember dark, common sleeping quarters, or was that just another cell?
Someone stepped forward. I knew him. Not his name, but he felt warm, even at a distance, like the sun on a winter afternoon.
"Akane, you understand you are being pardoned, right? Lady Tsunade is giving you a second chance. No running away, no constant fear of death…" he had a desperate look to him, which didn't suit him at all.
"I know you." I said, racking my brains for a name, a label, anything. Was he a friend? A family member? An acquaintance?
"Yes, better than most." He agreed. Pulling the hairs that had stuck to my temple from my face and behind my ear.
"Inoichi, Explain. Why is one of my best shinobi not recognizing her own brother's step in?" asked Tsunade irritated.
"It's not permanent, Hokage-Sama. But going through a person's mind might mess with the order of memories, even misplace information temporarily." Answered the man. "She did remarkably well considering her psyche struggled to cast me out during the entire process."
The jonin still standing before me, seemed to remember he should not present his back to a superior and stepped aside, but he didn't go far. I could still feel him to my right, but something told me I would be able to find him even in the most crowded of marketplaces. But there was a stiffness to him that day, one that could be seen with the bare eye. My memory told me it was very unusual of him to show so much.
"Her psyche? Didn't she go in there willingly?"
Inoichi'san tensed.
"She did, it seemed like a reflex of the mind. It tried to conceal information on her communications with Orochimaru."
Tsunad sighed.
"She did refuse to give away Sasuke's whereabouts. Maybe forced entry to her memory archive triggered her."
I felt warmth on my right shoulder and watched through the corner of my eye as the familiar one moved to stand closer to me, shoulders square.
"All of the information Uchiha Akane has provided will, under no circumstances, leave this room." Tsunade addressed the present. "Hatake Kakashi will be in charge of Uchiha's safety until she is fit for duty once again. Should he encounter any issues, he will speak to Yamanaka Inoichi only. We will catch this bastard and make him pay. Dismissed."
We left the room, all of us except the Hokage Guard, or were they regular shinobi? I knew the masks meant something, but I couldn't figure out what. We walked down the stairs and out into the streets, towards a shinobi district, was it a clan exclusive area? No, this man had no clan, I knew.
Him. Who was he? I knew him, he was familiar, warm, he felt safe. So why couldn't I remember his story? His relation to me? Or even how we'd met? I knew I trusted him with my life, or even my family's. Was my little brother with him?
"you don't remember who I am, yet you said nothing when you were told you'd be coming with me." he noted.
I nodded.
"I know you. That's enough for now."
He nodded distractedly and looked ahead.
"You feel warm as well; it can mean nothing but trust. People I don't know feel prickly"
"Warm? I don't think anyone's ever called me that before…"
"Why shouldn't they? There's nothing cold about you, no matter how hard you try."
He chuckled and scratched the back of his head.
"I never could get you to stay away from me; you were quite the headstrong child…"
I smiled.
"If you wanted me to stay away, you would have managed." I frowned. "Was it long ago? It feels like it…"
We took the steps to the fourth floor of an old apartment complex that could have used a few new layers of paint.
"Since you were four, but we became closer about a year and a half later."
"So about fourteen years. It's been a while then, I'm sorry, I feel like I know most of this, I just don't know where my memories went. To I just feel like I need to find a misplaced file. It's in there somewhere; I just need to find it."
No one could have told by his covered face, but I knew he was smiling.
He opened the door and disassembled the traps he'd set up before leaving that morning.
"Don't worry; it will all be back soon. In the meantime, you can hang out with the pack, it's been a while and they won't shut up about it."
Eight heads turned our way as soon as they heard Kakashi had company, and once they smelled me, they all rushed to greet us. Being jumped by eight ninja hounds was hard enough for a shinobi, but in the state of utter confusion I was, it took only one of them to bring me crashing down to the floor. Eight excited voices mixed together in greeting and though I couldn't match voices to faces and faces to names; I did feel an overwhelming amount of love. I felt warm.
"Alright, pack, don't crowd her, you'll all get to cuddle her. I don't know how long she'll be staying, but it's our job to keep her safe." Announced Kakashi. "She's been through the Mind Walking jutsu of the T&I, so she's a bit lost right now."
It was almost funny how attentive the dogs were being to the explanation, I would go as far as to call the entire situation cute, were they not trained summons that could kill lesser men. The only answer he got before they all turned to me once again was a chorus of "Yes, boss."
I took that evening off to rest, gather my bearings and try not to go insane with my own mind's inefficiency. It felt as if Inoichi-san had gone into the archives of my brain and thrown every file he came across out of its cabinet and onto the floor while he searched for what he wanted instead of going through them like a decent human being would have. And when he got to the locked drawer, he'd forced it open with a wrench. Now, I was left to pick up every file, return every stray page where it belonged and maybe find a better lock. It would be some time before I was done, but I would get there.