A/N: Warnings (mild spoilers!)
Discussions of murder and arson, mentioned non-consensual drug use, descriptions of old injuries/scars, implied abuse, coarse language.
Reader discretion advised! If any of this is triggering, please take care.
He tells her everything and she listens in quiet contemplation, frowning.
"I know I promised him I'd join ROOT, but it's not too late to back out. He's asking too much. I'm sorry for even considering it, senpai." His shoulders slump in contrition but she waves his apology aside.
"Hatsue. That's my name if you want to use it."
Kakashi brightens. "Hatsue," he echoes, obviously not having expected anything to come out from his comment earlier.
"If I'd known that this would make you so happy, I'd have told you earlier," she sighs as she rests her chin on the pillow of her palm. "Tch. Trust Danzou to make an issue of it. I hate it when he's right."
"It's strange that no-one uses your name."
"It's inconvenient and full of bad memories." Kakashi's face falls and she shrugs. "Remember what I said to you about wanting to be someone else?" Her lips twist unhappily. "Here, look at this."
She holds out her arm, palm down against the table, and chakra begins to ripple along her skin as her Henge fades away. Kakashi's eyes widen as formerly smooth skin turns into a mess of scars, ropy and thick at some parts and pale and fragile at others.
"They're burns," Sakumo realises. "Very severe burns." She must have gotten them a long time ago— they lack the raw, reddish look of recent wounds, even though they are too obvious to be considered faded in any sense. The skin is drawn tightly enough over the flesh and bone beneath to prevent her from moving her fingers freely. Rin winces in sympathy and Sakumo hopes against hope that it was caused by something as trivial as a Katon gone wrong.
"Disgusting isn't it?" Snake says with practiced nonchalance, as if she is talking about a stranger she does not particularly like. "The med-nins did an amazing amount of healing, but this was the best that even they could do. My whole body was burnt; not just my arm. For the months afterward, I couldn't even move properly, much less be a shinobi. I was in tremendous pain every moment." A sad smile, tinged with guilt, crosses her face and she looks down at the warped web of scars on her arm. "My sensei was an Uzumaki med-nin sent over to Konoha to help with the war effort. He developed the permanent Henge seal for me.
"Those days... He - and later, your mother - were the only ones who I had. My own father," her voice turning bitter, "did this to me. Fucking possessive psycho couldn't accept that my mother was leaving him. He waited until I was back from Suna before drugging us and burning the house down with us in it." There's a sharp intake of breath from Kakashi and horror overtakes her audience.
Sakumo vaguely remembers news of something like this during his early twenties— a civilian woman who had been murdered by her husband, leaving behind an injured daughter. The man wasn't the violent sort (for a shinobi, anyway). He was just a chuunin admin officer, introverted but friendly enough according to those who knew him. The village buzzed about the incident for a few days, shocked that someone like that would do something so terrible, but soon any concern was carried away by the tide of deaths that the Second Shinobi World War continued to bring day by day.
Pity shoots through Sakumo as he takes in Snake's tightly controlled expression.
True to her skill as an infiltration expert, when she looks up again there is a careless smile on her face. Sakumo would have believed it if not for the faint, lingering pain at the corner of her eyes. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you. If my Henge fails for any reason, don't scream your head off."
Kakashi is lost for words.
She turns away, withdrawing her hand as the glow of chakra prepares to smooth over her skin. It falls away again in a startled ripple of energy when Kakashi's hand shoots out and clasps tightly over hers. Snake stares at him with shock in her eyes before her gaze drops to their hands.
"It's not disgusting," Kakashi says urgently, so stubborn and sweetly earnest that tears spring to her eyes. His thumb traces over ruined skin in an unconscious, comforting gesture. "It looks terrifyingly painful and I absolutely despise your father for doing this to you, but it's not your fault, senpai. His actions may have marked your skin and your past, but you have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide."
Her breath hitches and she turns to the side, blinking rapidly. Kakashi gives her hand a squeeze, waiting silently as she composes herself.
"You're a good kid, Kakashi," she says finally, her voice rough. "After all I've said and done to you... you still believe in me so much." She looks up, her smile wavering into something cold and haunted. "Danzou wasn't lying. I hated my father so much. My sensei was by my side but I pushed him away because I knew he would disapprove of my desire for a bloody revenge. When Danzou offered me the opportunity to make that man suffer in return for a joining ROOT, I thought someone finally understood the depth of my pain." She laughs hollowly. "That man was on death row already. I should have just left things alone, but I broke into his cell and... did what I wanted. It was all so pointless in the end, but it hung over me for years. Every time I tried to leave ROOT, Danzou would threaten to expose me. He assured me no-one would believe me, that I would be punished, that I would die for what I had done. It took me years before I decided I'd rather die than stay in ROOT for another day."
"So that was her?" Sakumo muses with deep unease as he examines the memory that her story had elicited.
That night has been imprinted in his brain vividly for years, shocked as he was at the rare glimpse of his wife's fury. Just weeks after their wedding, he and Yoriko were woken up by the scalding wash of chakra up against the wards of the Hatake estate, chakra that had been tinged with desperation and pain. They threw their clothes on and ran, unheeding of the rain and the sucking mud beneath their feet, across the fields and to the front gate. The screams were ringing in their ears even before they managed to reach the gate; desperate, animal sounds that should have been left behind together with the war.
"Yoriko-taichou!" begged the voice, choked off often and interspersed with the sound of struggle and cursing. "Yoriko-taichou!"
He threw the gate open and his wife rushed out, her chakra a dark cloud capable of rivaling the thundering sky. "What is this?!" Yoriko shouted as Sakumo followed a step behind, the weight of their blades heavy on his hip.
The young woman that had been pinned under several ANBU stopped writhing and slumped, her wide eyes flashing with relief as Yoriko stalked forward, unarmed but dangerous all the same. The ANBU said something, something Sakumo can't remember, but he recalls clearly the mud streaked on the young woman's pale, bruised cheek and the hope shining in her glistening hazel orbs. As she reached out to his wife, her chest heaving with sobs, blood seeped from her grazed palms sluggishly.
Yoriko reached out to help her up - careful not to aggravate the wounds on her hands - only to freeze at the finger-shaped bruises that had been pressed into paper-white skin.
Sakumo never found out what happened to the young woman after Yoriko swept her up with the fierceness of a mother wolf protecting her cub. With only an apologetic meeting of his gaze, she had disappeared for days on end.
"ANBU," she murmured when she returned, her fingers cold against his cheek and her shuddering breath against his neck. With that one word he knew the conversation was closed, but he'd held her tightly, his hand splayed against her ribs to feel her heartbeat. "Sorry, my dear."
"Senpai..." Kakashi murmurs, drawing Sakumo back to the present.
"Just what had been going on in ROOT?" He looks at Snake with new eyes, seeing the smothered desperation in her frame and little of her bravado.
The ANBU captain's mouth pinches into a thin line as she regards Kakashi solemnly. "Don't waste your sympathy on me. Learn from my mistakes. The way he threatened me is one of his favourite tactics. He's trying to do the same to you, do you see?"
Kakashi nods slowly, reluctantly letting her move the conversation on. "By getting me to kill you."
"Yes. When you don't have blackmail, you create it."
There's a moment of hesitation before she withdraws her hand from under Kakashi's, her Henge turning it whole and unblemished again. She clasps her hands before her. "But Kakashi, there are some things you deserve know." Taking a deep breath, she meets his questioning gaze. "From the very beginning, I wanted you to go up against Danzou. It was one of the reasons why I took you on as my protégé. By then, I had long realised that it was impossible for me to do it alone."
Staring at her warily, Kakashi dips his chin in a nod again. "...it's alright."
A sliver of guilt crosses her face. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for dragging you down with me." He tries to protest but she halts him with a shake of her head. "Kakashi, from the moment Danzou revealed ROOT to you, it was either join or die. You already know he is testing you. If he can't be certain of the amount of power he holds over you, whether it is loyalty, blackmail or something more crude like one of those silencing seals, you become an enemy that he'll do anything to ruin."
"But what about you? You've been going against him for years and you're still here."
She runs her hand through her hair sheepishly. "Well, this is the other reason why I don't use my name. The person Koshima Hatsue is supposed to be in the Konoha Strict Correctional Facility for breaking into ANBU holding facilities, murdering a certain man there, and after a number of years, defamation of various elders and the Hokage, housebreaking and attempted murder of Danzou, ecetera, ecetera." Kakashi's eyebrows have disappeared under his hitai-ate. "There's also treason and various miscellaneous false charges like spying to top things off." Shaking her head, she sighs. "This is why I don't have a social life or a house or a bank account. I keep all my pay in a stupid tin can. The only reason I'm working for ANBU instead of rotting in a cell is because the Hokage believed me when I told him about ROOT. If not for your mother defending me, he might not have believed me at all. In the end, he could sneak me out of prison and give me a job, but he couldn't clear my charges. Danzou produced a lot of evidence both real and fake. Meanwhile, I couldn't even prove the existence of ROOT; not when my credibility as a witness was completely shot."
"That's terrible," Kakashi murmurs.
"That's why I said it's join or die." She straightens in a burst of movement, her eyes lighting with fervour. "But this is also a golden opportunity! Always choose to die later. We can make something good come out of this by having you join ROOT under the best circumstances we can manufacture."
Her words are like iced water down Sakumo's back, scraping down his nerves and making his breath seize.
"No," Rin breathes.
Movements stiff, Kakashi crosses his arms. "I've already made myself clear: I won't kill you."
"Not even if it means giving up the opportunity to save other ROOT agents like me?" she asks sharply.
The ghosts wince and a strange mix of betrayal and shame twists Kakashi face. "That's not fair, senpai," he grits out.
Snake's expression softens. "I'm sorry, I really am. I know this is unforgivably selfish, but do this for me, please? I've been struggling all my life to destroy ROOT and as much as it hurts to admit this, I lost my chance all those years ago. But you, Kakashi, you can. I need you to help me." Her voice gentles into a plea. "Please. No one else can do this."
A/N: That "always choose to die later" line is paraphrased from one of my lovely reader's reviews, although I may have taken it out of context :P