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I'm so pleased you guys enjoyed Papa Kakashi being intimidating and proactively looking for Sonaru
More of that to come probably. There will be a far more equal balance of Kakashi-and-co. and Sonaru pov chapters than last section.
I haven't been able to go through this and check for really stupid mistakes because I wrote most of it during lunch at work. Gtg work now.
Enjoy!
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Chapter 44 - She Feels No Control
It was difficult to hate someone who was nothing but gentle with me.
Impossible actually.
I'd almost have preferred it if Kuchisake was brusque and impersonal in my imprisonment. The constant strokes to my hair, and arms around me, the casual nudges, stray strands tucked away from my eyes by callused fingers, and kisses to the top of my head - they all served to relax me despite my desire to remain on guard.
I had always been incredibly weak to positive reinforcement. I was mildly disgusted at how regular kind words and platonic physical intimacy had me perking up like a fucking dog, but mostly I was resigned to it. It was a product of my upbringing, I knew, and not one I could easily undo.
[Current state of human interaction in an otherwise uncertain environment increasing the onset of Stockholm syndrome]
I quickly became familiar with the sugary smell of Kuchisake's breath from constantly eating hard sweets, the scent of rain on her skin, the constant hues of old and new blood that seemed to fit hand in hand with most shinobi, and the periodic hints of sex.
I spoke little unless prompted, more concerned with watching everything I could and learning both the culture and rules of the place, as well as a way I could escape. This was difficult when I was almost entirely confined to one room, with only one person to interact with.
During the day I was either left alone with little stimulation while Kuchisake took care of her own business, which she saw no need to share the details of with me, or I was stuck in the presence of the scarred woman.
She told me to call her Shion, and I felt helpless to disobey in the face of my aims at building a sense of protective attachment in her toward me.
One of the things that stood out to me the most was the sheer tactility of the woman. People from Konoha as rule were not particularly physically demonstrative, and I knew my own relationship with DFB was slightly unusual in how casually affectionate we were with each other.
When she was in my vicinity, Shion was almost always initiating physical contact with me in some way, whether to twirl my hair in her fingers, or to hold my hand, or pull me onto her lap as she spoke to me. Initially the fact that she just assumed my positive reception toward her touching me annoyed me heavily, but there was little I could do about it without alienating her, and so very quickly I learned to barely pay attention to her habits.
Besides, the fact that I could feel the slight rasp of her toughened skin and her body heat meant that I wasn't absolutely bored out of my fucking mind, because these tangible sensations indicated there being another person around to entertain me.
She brought morning and afternoon meals back to the room - at least I had to assume that she brought the meals during those particular times because there weren't any clocks or windows to be able to tell. Dinner was the only time in the first three days stuck in that place during which I got any human contact outside of Shion.
Used to a day packed with activity as I was, the sudden ennui for vast sections of the day had my mind running in anxious and stressed circles round and round and round, so that by the time Shion got back from some of her longer tasks she found me restless, pacing and upset.
The association with her that began to implant itself in my mind of a reprieve from anxiety, loneliness and boredom was a slightly worrying one to have. I wanted her to be attached to me in order to keep me safe, the plan was not reciprocation on my part.
I didn't like the fact that she treated me as the young child I looked - that she insisted on helping me dress and wash despite my claims that I was capable of doing so by myself. I didn't like that even after days I still didn't know where I was or why I was here. I didn't like that sometimes she said things that were a touch too possessive or familiar for my comfort. I didn't like that she seemed hyper aware of her own looks to the point of near obsessiveness.
She liked me to confirm to her that she was pretty. I had to confirm that her lashes were long and thick, or that her hair was silky and flattering to her face, that her clothes accentuated her figure, her Glasgow-smile scars didn't detract from the deep rouge on her lips, that her white-grey eyes were captivating rather than frightening, that despite her muscles her frame was petite and dainty looking. All these things and more she asked me about multiple times a day.
In turn she was almost covetous of the refined arch in my nose, the unique purple-red hues in my eyes, the softness of my hair, the doe eyed look my lids gave me, the sweet roundness of my face and cheeks, the colour and shape of my lips, the light dusting of freckles on my shoulders - unusual in the Elemental Nations.
But despite all of my complaints, these things were dwarfed by the relief her presence brought from my own thoughts, interrupting their self cannibalising nature when I became stressed and unable to do anything about it.
Kuchisake Shion had a particular habit that stood out to me above the rest; her regular eating of hard sweets often had her holding a few in her hand for long enough that they melted slightly, making her skin sticky. After finishing them, she would apply a suiton jutsu to her mouth in order to wash the sugar off her tongue, then lick away at her entire hand - almost like an animal cleaning itself.
With her compulsively touching me, I often had sweet smelling saliva streaks on my shoulders and neck and cheeks. Initially the fact that her spit was layered on my skin like splashes of paint had my gorge rising and my stomach churning. I hated that I smelt like her so strongly due to this, and even after a bath I usually only had a few minutes of peace before spit slick hands were brushing against me again.
When I pointed out to her that she was getting her saliva on me, in a carefully childish manner, the flash of satisfaction across her face had me realising that this was an intentional habit cultivated into absentmindedness. It was like she was scent marking me, claiming me as hers.
The realisation had me shuddering in unease. It was what I wanted, but it didn't mean I had to like it.
On the fourth day of captivity, on the verge of literally crawling up the walls, Shion entered the room, her head dipped and her face pinched. She closed the door behind her and for a few seconds she leaned her forehead against the metal, taking deep breaths. She then turned to me, her carefully reassuring smile had me instantly wary.
I sat up fully from where I had been propping myself on my elbows at the end of the bed, watching with apprehension as she approached. She broadcasted in her body language something that wasn't quite fear, and wasn't quite reluctance, but probably might as well have been in that it didn't bode well for me.
"Shion? Are you okay?" I asked timidly. Her face softened and she crouched down on the floor in front of me, hands wrapping around my waist and ribcage to pull me onto her lap as she turned and sat with her back against the bed frame.
There was a moment of getting comfortable while she manoeuvred me to straddle her lap in order to look me in the eye, one hand coming up to card through my hair.
She controlled her expression to convey assurance when she opened her mouth, and had I been a child or possibly a teenager I would have been convinced, but I saw the slight lines on the scars by her mouth, under her eyes, and on her forehead which conveyed the doubt and concern she tried to hide with her smile.
"I'm fine, sweet thing, don't you worry about me. Now I know you've been a bit bored in here with nothing to do, and so today we're going to talk to the very important man who runs this place and see if he'll let me go out and buy you some clothes and books and toys. He's very interested in meeting you, but he's also a very busy man.
"He may have some questions to ask you or some instructions for you. Answer him politely and try to keep the answers short, because you don't want to annoy him."
Perhaps realising that she might have made me even more concerned, she quickly assured me with a stroke to my cheek, "don't you worry, you'll do fine."
[Further confirmation of intentional targeting of Sona]
The fact that I still didn't know what they thought was so special about me had me feeling unprepared for meeting this guy. I didn't know what he was looking for and I didn't know whether I wanted to give it to him or not. I felt revoltingly powerless.
"What's his name?" I inquired.
"Call him Nagao-taichou, and make sure you bow properly when you enter. Like this," Kuchisake got to her feet and demonstrated, bowing far lower than someone of Sona's status was supposed to for most people in the Elemental Nations.
Seemed like this man had delusions of grandeur. Unless he was secretly royalty, which I highly doubted.
"When are we going?"
"Now," she replied with a touch of nervousness, pulling the small indoor shoes she'd managed to get her hands on out from under the bed- still a size too big but at least that made me wobble and shuffle like a normal graceless civilian child without effort on my part.
She bent down to help me put my shoes on and tie my laces, speaking with a level of seriousness she'd never used before toward me, "Don't look him directly in the eyes for too long, don't fidget or wander off, don't touch anything even if you're bored. Stay standing quietly where I put you, and don't follow me if I move around the room," she guided my chin up with a finger to look directly at her, "It's important to remember not to speak unless you're spoken to by Nagao-taichou first. You do exactly what he says no matter what he asks you even if I've told you something different."
Her white-grey orbs flicked from side to side as she examined me in the eyes for a few seconds, not taking her finger from my chin, and then her features warmed and she leaned in to kiss me on the forehead.
Except she didn't lift her face. The breath from her nose was hitting me too low, curling into my nostrils, and there was malleable skin and flesh and warmth moulding around and flattening my own lips, the edges of her raised scars pushed gently against a portion of my cheeks, the seams of our mouths misaligned slightly and I could feel a small dot of wet that cooled rapidly on my upper lip when she pulled away.
I shuddered inside and viciously fought the urge to scrub at that wet dot with my sleeve until the skin was red from friction. I wanted to grab some soap and water and wash my face and then the inside of my mouth just in case.
I swallowed thickly and my imagination cruelly supplied me with the image of some of her saliva going down my throat. All it would take was one accidental press of my lips together, or wetting of my lips with my tongue and her spit would be in my mouth.
I wasn't really sure how I felt about parents kissing their children on the lips. My parents had both done it, and while it hadn't damaged me in any way, I'd found it gross to be on the receiving end of then and I found it gross now.
This woman was not my mother.
I tensed my stomach to prevent it from heaving, and waited frozen while she held my face in both hands with a fond smile, "you're so beautiful. You remind me so much of my little raindrop. She was just like you."
As she stood, I gave into the urge to scrub at my lips quickly with my head ducked down. She held her hand out to me, two of her fingers to my whole hand, and made her way to the door, taking care to account for my little stumbling footsteps. I was convinced I could still feel a cold spot on my top lip when we left the room.
I determinedly purged the experience from my mind and focussed on the new twists and turns we were taking. Just like on the way to dinner, all the doors were the same metal, all of them closed. The halls didn't change in width or design, and although different sections smelt slightly differently - I guessed depending on who frequented them - I wasn't familiar with enough the scents to put a picture together in my mind. All I could do was memorise the route.
Finally after five minutes of twisty corners and clinal corridors, Kuchisake stopped in front of a door and knocked smartly against it. The way she automatically tugged me behind her afterward combined with her previous warnings told me everything I needed to know about this man.
A few tense seconds of waiting, and the door was opened by a man I wouldn't call attractive, but could be classified as handsome. He had a professionally polite smile on his face and eyes a washed out blue colour that stared both impenetrably and sharply at us.
We bowed too low. He barely inclined his head.
"Shion, come in," he stood aside, looking down at me, his smile unwavering, "and the child, of course."
Despite her previous displays of tense anxiety, at Nagao-Taichou's appearance she beamed, her shoulders subtly moving back- arching in order to push her tits out, her head tilting in coy flirtation and an extra flick to her hips as she walked past, keeping herself between me and him.
I trailed behind her half a step, enough to see his hand land on her lower back to guide her, before he closed the door.
I looked around the room with blatant curiosity craning my head round in a swivel. It was obviously an office, and obviously a man's office at that. It was personalised in a way our room wasn't, with a dark wooden desk unnecessarily large enough that I assumed he'd chosen it to serve as a metaphor for the size of his dick.
Everything was incredibly neat and orderly, the pens aligned and the art work on the walls perfectly picked and placed to suit the colour scheme and tone of the rest of the furniture. The chairs were expensive, with his chair larger and more comfortable than the others.
I noticed he didn't offer either of us a seat, and took one of the smaller seats on the side of the desk closest to us, leaving only one viable place to sit. We stayed standing.
His features were pleasant, if a little too perfect for any of his smiles to seem genuine. His hair was cut relatively short and far neater than almost anyone I had seen since my old life. It was dark brown, short at the sides and longer at the top, slicked back and to side. His clothes were also incredibly neat, formal trousers and shoes that were closed at the toe but not too dissimilar to shinobi sandals, his top half was a little more casual with an open jacket and grey shirt slightly unbuttoned.
Clean shaven, mid to late thirties, with only a one-centimetre scar crossing into his cupid's bow marring his visible skin.
He leaned forward, eyes roving from her to me intently and his hands clasped loosely together between his knees, "So this is the child."
"Igarashi Sona, yes," Kuchisake confirmed.
"And you told her..."
"That we were hired by her parents to rescue her from a kidnapping and she's to stay here until the entire thing is solved. I did."
She was obviously just informing him of the lie she'd told me, but the ruse they were trying to lay down would have probably worked on a young child.
"Of course," he agreed dismissively, not taking his eyes off me in his uncomfortably assessing manner. His was completely unaffected by my perceived age, and the way he eyed me made me suspect he saw me less as a human and more as a thing to be used for whatever purpose I was taken for.
"How old are you?" He asked me, the corners of his lips tilting up in a smile, but there was something wrong about it.
After a reassuring glance at Shion I held my hands behind my back hiding the tight fists they were clenched into and answered, "three, sir."
"And your father is named Igarashi Saburo and your mother Igarashi Kumiko?"
I paused for half a beat before I nodded.
[Personal information memorised by most senior member of facility suggests Sona is considered of high importance. Perhaps specifically in regard to her parentage]
"Yes, Nagao-taichou."
If I'd been kidnapped due to parents I didn't actually have, I was going to be so pissed off.
"Information about your father and his clan is fairly easy to come by, but there's not much on your mother. Tell me, what do you know about her family?"
[Claiming ignorance and young age should prevent being caught on a lie at a later date]
I fidgeted uncertainly and looked up at him shyly, "I don't know, I'm sorry. She doesn't talk about her family to me."
To my consternation, my answer had a pleased look crossing his face. He leaned forward even further until there was no way I'd be able to move out of the way in time if he physically lashed out, assuming he was Jōnin level.
"Tell me about her. What does she look like? Does she look like you?"
I remembered the written description I had briefly seen of both Igarashi parents when DFB was showing me how to flesh out the documentation on false Konoha civilian identities, which were set up in order to provide historical evidence of a paper trail when shinobi went undercover.
"She has light purple hair, and she has grey eyes and she doesn't look much like me," I kept my voice quiet but clear, more concerned about why he wanted to know these things.
"Does she love you? Is she kind to you?"
Sona's background was of a very close relationship to her father as his sole child and heir, and a much more distant relationship to her mother who had frail health and kept to herself in her room a lot. It was done so to prevent me from having to make up details of a completely non existent maternal relationship.
"She's not around much. She likes to stay in her room and wait for Tou-san to come back from work and spend time with her. She gets sick a lot and she doesn't have the energy to spend time with me," I injected a small amount of sadness into my voice.
"She doesn't look like you and she doesn't like to expend any effort on you," he concluded, far too satisfied.
What was the point of confirming that, though?
[Seeking evidence of a weak relationship to more easily break emotional links with maternal figure?]
"What of your father, you look like him?" He sounded expectant this time.
"Yes, sir."
"He spends time with you, too, I presume."
"Yes, lots, sir."
"Just as I thought," Nagao murmured to himself with a victorious tint to his words.
[Seeking evidence of negligent mothering? Positive response to close paternal links suggests not seeking to replace weak parental bonds. What significance does lack of maternal family records, lack of physical resemblance to mother and lacking effort mother puts into child have? Potential belief that Igarashi Kumiko is not biological mother. Potential conclusions made from this belief; unknown]
Nagao sat back with a thoughtful look on his face, and we stood there awkwardly watching him take his glass of water and drink from it languidly. When he was finished, he sat back and turned his attention to Kuchisake.
"Has she been seen to by medical, yet?"
Shion stiffened slightly next to me and shook her head, "they've delayed until tomorrow."
"Well that's no good," a too-smooth sound entered his voice and I heard Shion's breath hitch, after a tense pause he continued, "I'll have a word with them and see if we can free up some space for this evening."
She breathed out quietly and relaxed, and I saw out of the corner of my eye as her posture shifted until suddenly her hips and tits and arse and waist were that much more noticeable.
Nagao certainly did miss it either, and his eyes sharpened while his lips twitched upward, but otherwise he didn't react.
"Their delay has been difficult to deal with, but I've done my best. She's a well behaved little thing, but she's still a child and she gets bored quickly. Since you've agreed to let me take responsibility for her, it would help me to distract her with some books and maybe a few toys. I could get her clothes while I'm out, too," as she spoke she slowly and almost tentatively made her way toward him step by step.
It wasn't until she was standing right in front of him that he finally moved in anyway, merely watching like he'd been enjoying her perform for him before that point.
He reached out a confident hand and placed it on Kuchisake's hip, his legs widening as he guided her to sit on his thigh so she could easily turn to see both of us. One hand stayed on her waist, and the other was placed possessively on her outer thigh, running his fingers lightly up and down.
Shion relaxed back into his hold, a smug grin tugging at her scars.
"Now then," he breathed, lust fogging his words, "that sounds like a time consuming task. If you're shopping, you're not working for me."
His hand settled firmly, cupping her thigh, and her cheeks reddened, her breath hitching for an entirely different reason.
I wanted to close my eyes and look away but I wasn't supposed to understand what I was seeing. Discomfort squirmed in my gut, but I was stuck there as an unwilling voyeur to their seduction - badly disguised as power play.
Even if I had been a child I would have seen something was off about what they were doing, if not the words to explain it. As it was I bit my tongue harshly, barely keeping myself frozen in one spot and preventing myself from fidgeting unhappily.
"I'm sure I can make the time up to you," her voice had gone high pitched and airy, and she was certainly not holding herself back from fidgeting. I fixedly kept my mind from thinking on why she was wriggling ever so slightly like that, and carefully prevented the embarrassed and anxious blood from rushing to my face and giving my horrified discomfort away.
"Right now?" He confirmed roughly, sounding like he was challenging her. She paused for a second, and he added, "a couple suiton bunshin can take her back."
"O-okay."
I cleared my mind and counted careful breaths, looking blankly and unseeingly while they both made a water clone and had them direct me from the room.
On the edge of my thoughts I pondered on my chances of destroying the clones and making my escape while Shion and Nagao were busy, but there was no chance of me successfully taking them both on at once.
Instead, I docilely let them lead me back to my room, and with another kiss to my lips the metal door was shut behind me.
I forced myself not to think about the fact that Shion's clone was kissing me while her real body was doing the same and more to Nagao.
Was this the way that people got by, beyond the bare basics here? Fucking their superiors? Or was it just Kuchisake?
Goosebumps covered me and I briskly rubbed my arms. I felt ill and cold - not just because of what I'd been made to watch, but because I knew with sick certainty that while this immature body wasn't fully capable of it yet, had I been in an adult form my flesh would reacted to the display despite myself.
I knew from the tightening in my gut that was more pain than pleasure, the fizzing feeling in my blood, and the flush I was still denying from existence.
It wasn't arousal, but I felt like it might as well have been from the betrayal running through me at this body.
Hours later, when I had given up on Kuchisake coming back to take me to dinner and lay silently in the bed, the metal door opened. I heard her enter. I didn't open my eyes.
The mattress dipped behind me and I was pulled backward into her embrace. She was still slightly damp, and she smelt of Nagao, sweat and sex. Her humid breath hit my ear as she sighed tiredly and relaxed into the mattress.
I prevented myself from tensing or wriggling away from her.
"I'm leaving this evening after dinner to buy you some things," she whispered. Even her breath smelt like him.
"Thank you," I replied quietly, not sure if I was being genuine or not. She'd done that for me, but she'd done it in a completely fucked up way. I didn't know how I was supposed to feel about it.
"You're welcome, sweet thing. Come on, let's go and eat."
She gave me a fond squeeze, then leaned over and kissed me in the corner of the mouth. My stomach roiled and I quickly swallowed to keep the vomit down.
Impressions of two of the few significant OCs during this section?
What are your opinions of Kuchisake Shion's behaviour and actions toward Sonaru?