Chapter 23: Prison

Sakura woke to a voice yelling. She was unsure of what the man was saying, but his tone conveyed that she had better be listening. Unfortunately, she could not parse his words over the ringing in her head that his loud shouting had induced.

The ringing was the least of her worries, though. In addition to moderate tinnitus, her jaw felt infected, both of her eyes were swollen, and the left side of her rib cage felt like a mangled disaster. Sometime between now and her last moments of consciousness, she had taken the beating of a lifetime. As much as she wanted to heal herself, she had no chakra with which to heal. Immediately, she suspected with a grimace that someone had purposefully drained her chakra before she awoke—maybe today would be the day to implement the plan that she had never wanted to use.

Finally, Sakura convinced her eyes to open—and immediately regretted it. She found herself on a wet stone floor, wearing front-closing shackles, and sitting on the wrong side of a locked steel door. She sat in an aphotic prison cell with Ibiki Morino's voice screaming at her from the other side.

Danzo's dogs had captured her while the tsukuyomi left her defenseless. Itachi probably incapacitated her and then went on with Kisame to complete their mission, totally unaware or unconcerned that reinforcements had taken her prisoner. Sakura's heart froze: what if the Akatsuki had been successful in taking Naruto?

"By the time I get in there, you'd better be standing up! Or else you won't remember what it's like to stand for a damn long time." Ibiki's voice held a sense of sadistic pleasure.

Sakura shivered, but used the walls to help herself stand. Although her body wanted nothing to do with his demands, she knew that now was the time to obey. As she looked down at her frame, she found herself shoeless, gloveless, and tattered; at this point, she was just relieved to find her dress still intact.

The door opened to Ibiki standing on the other side. "I see that you listen well. Now it's time to see if you dish as well as you listen." He grabbed her by her shackles and dragged her out of the door like she was worth less than a ragdoll. He dragged her just slowly enough to let her walk, but just quickly enough to make sure that she tripped over herself every step of the way.

He led her down a hallway lined with steel doors identical to her own. The whole place seemed like a uniform labyrinth, a tactic undoubtedly employed to prevent prisoners from learning the layout and ultimately escaping. Sakura cared not about the sinuous design, though; no number of turns would be enough to keep her here.

At last, they arrived at their destination. It was behind another steel door but, rather than a prison cell, this room contained a sinister chair with all the trappings of a torture device. Sakura's throat closed when she understood that she would be the next person to touch its cold metal.

He grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the worst seat in the room—bindings automatically trapped her feet and arms into place. Fearfully, she suspected that Danzo had given Ibiki his permission to use whatever force he saw fit. Now that she was a properly restrained prisoner, Ibiki stepped back with crossed arms to admire his work. Sakura noted that there was no one else in the room—a mistake that she would make sure he paid for tenfold if she stuck around long enough.

"Why am I here?" she asked weakly. She knew the answer, but she wanted to know what he believed.

Ibiki smirked. "You're here to answer my questions."

"Then please ask. I'd like to leave as soon as possible," Sakura grumbled.

"Sarcasm? That's brave. Well, I have a lot of questions for you, Sakura Haruno. I don't expect that you'll be leaving any time soon." She stared at him apathetically—he could think what he wanted.

He shrugged, and then began, "Alright, I'll start with something recent and simple. When we captured you, you were trapped in Itachi Uchiha's tsukuyomi. Yet, you were outwardly unaffected. Why?"

Sakura paused—a mistake that earned a backhand to her already bruised left cheek.

"Don't pause. Just answer," he ordered.

Sakura looked up at him with a fierce glare. "I was unaffected because I've already experienced it before. Pain's always easier the second time around."

"But that hasn't happened to anyone else who's experienced it more than once. So why you?"

"Probably because you can't make a person who's already sick in the head much sicker," she growled.

He nodded. "OK, I'll take that. So, when did you experience the tsukuyomi for the first time?"

"When I was battling with Sasuke and Itachi at the same time. I thought that I'd incapacitated Itachi, but then he used his tsukuyomi on Sasuke. He used it on me next, not long after."

"I heard that you wanted to experience the tsukuyomi," Ibiki smirked. "Was it everything you were hoping for?" Shadows flickered unnaturally at the edges of the room—he was casting fruitless genjutsu.

She sneered, "It gave me exactly what I wanted and then some. I have no regrets, if that's what you're really asking."

"Well, I'm just relieved! I'd hate for you to have any regrets. Not a soul who enters this room ever has any of those." He grunted and continued, "But, let's get onto more serious questions. Why did Itachi take you as his captive?"

"How am I supposed to know why? He didn't say why and treated me relatively well the entire time—I wasn't going to complain. In fact, he treated me way better than you have."

"Lies, Sakura, earn even harder hits than pauses." He followed through with the promised backhand on her other bruised cheek. A crack indicated that it made the transition from a mere bruise to a full fracture.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "It seems like this room needs a tune-up. We're done for today. But don't worry—we'll be back tomorrow." Sakura's deduction was correct: he had laced the room with genjutsu. It seemed that Itachi's training was useful, after all. For a moment, she wondered what he was doing now; she hoped that he was in a better condition than the one in which she found herself.

When the restraints retracted, she realized that her slowly recovering chakra had been depleted—the chair had a mechanism for sapping chakra. Sakura bit back a smirk.

Ibiki yanked her from her seat and dragged her back to her room. He said nothing before throwing her inside of the cell and locking the door. She heard his footsteps echo down the hallway until they faded to silence.

Sakura had spent many years preparing for a situation like this one. She never wanted to end up here, but she knew what to do to keep her stay short and unsweet. She would love to see Ibiki's face when he found out, but she could not stand the idea of breathing the same air as him any longer.

Sakura put her hands together and focused. Her eyes closed and her forehead glowed with warmth.

"Yin Seal: Release," she commanded and then opened her eyes, "Creation Rebirth."

Enveloped by a green aureole of chakra, pleasantness tingled in all of the places that once hurt. As she marveled at her own success, Creation Rebirth healed her body at an unimaginably fast rate. She opened her eyes and smiled—she was already feeling better. In fact, she felt well enough to tear the ominous steel door right off its hinges.

As much as she hated to cut her bonding with Ibiki short, it was time for her to leave. She snapped her shackles apart as if they were made of tissue paper and stretched out her freshly healed limbs—Sakura felt brand new.

Not intending to wait around, she punched through the wall opposite of the door hoping to meet fresh air on the other side. Her eyebrows twitched in irritation at breaking through to another hallway, but she moved forward without pause. Her next inanimate victim was the door across from where she stood. Whatever course of action she chose, she knew it had to be fast—breaking through walls did not make for a quiet escape.

When she blasted through the steel door, it slammed into the unfortunate prisoner that it was meant to detain. Unfortunately, Sakura had no time to inspect his physical state and moved onto punching through the next wall without hesitation. Finally, she reached the precious fresh air for which she had been searching.

She was unsurprised to find herself at least ten storeys high—it appeared that Danzo had been keeping her on the highest floor of his putrid tower.

For a moment, she contemplated climbing to the roof and sending fractures through the building's cornerstone supports. As much as she wanted to—to send a message to Danzo and free any other innocents trapped inside—she knew that she might release some nefarious criminals if she did. Instead, she would have to petition Tsunade to review the records of prisoners held here if she wanted to help other innocents without endangering Konoha.

In order to help anybody, she needed to get herself out of here first. Sending chakra to her extremities, she crawled onto the outside wall of the building like a gecko. As she wriggled her way down, she saw that guards were following from above and others were crowding on the ground below. To any rational observer, she looked trapped. However, Sakura was feeling in peak condition today.

Once she deemed herself close enough to the ground for a safe landing, she used the wall as a springing point and took the plunge. The guards down below must have felt something between incredulous and irate as they watched her soar like a flying squirrel right over their heads and into the cover of the surrounding forest.

Now that she was running, she faced a fresh dilemma: Sakura had no idea where to go. She surmised that she was somewhere in Fire Country, but she needed more specific information than that if she hoped to get home.

Unfortunately, time to think was a luxury that Sakura no longer possessed; she quickly determined that running in any direction away from the prison would land her in a better place than where she had started. If she wandered into another country, then she could enlist foreign aid. If she found herself back home, then she could beeline to Tsunade's office for an emergent report; her teacher was probably worried sick about her.

In the meantime, she needed to keep herself moving. She felt confident in her ability to outrun them—assuming that none of the guards could match Itachi Uchiha on speed. With determination as her only guide, she let her feet pound tree branch after tree branch, using the fastest speed she could muster.

When she saw Konoha's proud wall beckoning to her through the thinning trees, she nearly paused at her own surprise. It seemed that her old mission instincts had led her back home in her time of need. If only there was time to celebrate, she might have felt relieved. Alas, Sakura suspected that she would not recall the meaning of relief until Danzo died.

As she approached the wall at high speed, she was blocked by two guards. "Who are you and why are you trying to enter the village over the wall instead of through the front gates?" the boy demanded. Sakura studied them with a heavy heart—they looked too young to be anything above chuunin level.

"Let me through. I need to see the Hokage without delay," she said. She would give them one chance to permit her entry. How they responded would determine her next course of action.

The girl asked her, "You're Sakura Haruno, the Hokage's apprentice, aren't you?" Seeing Sakura's confirmative nod, she continued, "You must hurry. Lady Tsunade said that you're to report to her at once."

Sakura sighed with relief. Life had forced her to do a lot of ugly things as of late, but she would never forgive herself if she added "hospitalizing comradely chuunin" to that list. She had enough dirty deeds to keep her up at night for the rest of her lifetime—plus an excess, if Danzo got his way.

With a running start, she jumped clear over Konoha's barrier. It took less than sixty seconds for her to find her way to Tsunade's door. As much as she wanted to barge inside, her heart stopped, her throat closed, and her body froze instead. The last time she was in her mentor's office, Danzo had put out the orders that landed her under the caring custody of Ibiki Morino. Even though she had only been there for one day, thoughts of returning to the prison made her tremble with a fear that even she did not quite understand; her body's reaction did not seem warranted for the results of the circumstances.

Before she gathered enough nerve to open the door, Shizune opened it and nearly barreled into Sakura on her way out. Shizune's eyes ballooned upon recognizing her and the pig lover immediately dragged her inside the Hokage's office.

Before Sakura could take her next breath, Tsunade was across the room and enveloping her student in a bone-cracking embrace. Sakura returned the hug, but it was comparatively weak. The shock of everything left her less responsive than usual.

"Sakura, I'm so sorry. I sent search parties everywhere I could. Danzo claimed that he had nothing to do with it, but we all know he's a lying bastard. If he wasn't an elder, I'd have beaten it out of him. Making things worse, Ibiki was nowhere to be found. The past month has been a tremendous mess," Tsunade explained with an exhausted sigh.

Her student offered a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, shishou. I mean, it wasn't ideal, but I was only stuck in a cell for a day, so it could've been worse."

Tsunade paled and her face slackened. Despite using a jutsu to keep herself looking young, she appeared much older upon hearing her student's words.

"No, Sakura. You haven't been gone for a day. You've been gone for a month and a half."

Suddenly, Sakura's mind flooded with the memories of abuse that had lain repressed. A man and a woman who she did not recognize came into her cell and beat her to near-death every day. The daily beatings only halted when Ibiki decided that they had roughed up Sakura enough and that she was ready for direct interrogation. She spent over a month barely alive and conscious, merely floating from one day to the next. She would wonder how she could have forgotten, but the real wonder was how she had a brain left with which to wonder.

As every beating and torture device flashed through her mind, Sakura found herself feeling hollow—there was so little left to her in an instant that she might fade out of existence. She knew that she should feel something, but the only thing she could feel right now was incredibly nauseous. Nauseous and empty.

As she recalled how she came by tangled ribs, swollen cheeks, bruised eyes, and an infected jaw, Sakura sank to the ground and did the only thing she could: she retched bile and pain onto the Hokage's well-shined floor.


Authoress's Note:

Thank you all for reading! Also, thank you to the reviewers for taking the time to provide feedback (and encouragement). It's very appreciated. :)

As a random reminder, I still have the poll up on my page for your preferred posting date. The current lead is Mondays, so I'm going to try to post the weekly chapter on Monday. If you have a preference, please make it known through the poll.

Have a fabulous evening, everybody! I hope you all enjoyed the chapter.

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