The collar was the worst of it and the one real indignity they had subjected me to, thus far, peeling back the high collar of my white, medical-nin uniform to clench the leather around my neck. The band was wide and stiff. They hadn't cinched it so tight as to choke, but enough so as to leave me on the brink, thinking of it. Every time I swallowed the band seemed to constrict, like a hand encircling my windpipe, and the leather was beginning to chaff my too soft skin.

Though it frightened me, I understood the purpose of the collar and so did not outright resent it. Affixed to the front of the thing, just under my chin, was a thin, metal plate inscribed with bold strokes of kanji characters. A chakra seal, ensuring, even if I wanted to, I couldn't use any form of ninjutsu. Vulgarly, I wondered when sealing the chakra of medical-nin had become common practice. Though not normally soldiers, we were dangerous in our own right. How many Iryō-nin had chosen to slit their own wrists with the Mystical Palm Technique or chakra scalpels rather than risk breaking and divulging information they would rather not speak before those who dealt in the realm of intelligence had determined even such tame creatures as we so often were portrayed could not be allowed the use of our chakra? Alternatively, how many medics, at the end of themselves, reduced to the last of their squad, shattered and alone and deranged, had turned their skills on those who questioned them?

Enough.

The answer was always enough, whether it was few or many. Medical-nin were not the simple, tender-hearted beings we were so much seen as, even if most average shinobi still felt the need to watch over us. Protect us.

No, I understood the necessity of the collar, just as I understood the need to fasten it that extra, undesired notch before locking it in place. The requirement of letting it catch on my fear and induce the sensation of choking. It was the same necessity which called for the manacles.

One set of iron rings locked my ankles to the legs of the chair, and the other connected my wrists to short lengths of chains embedded in the table in front of me. Both table and chair were bolted to the ground, ensuring, even if I had the strength to try, I couldn't move them. Creating a sense of helplessness. Eliciting twisting anticipation.

Collar and manacles alike primarily served to spike my heart rate and put me on edge.

An unsettled prisoner was more likely to talk than one at his ease. I knew this, but it did not stop me from breathing heavily, until I curtailed the rhythm of my lungs by force and concentrated on the singular in and out of a steady pattern.

The waiting also stopped my overt panic, even while it added to my overall feeling of tension. I was brought in, secured, and left. Left in the moderately lit room with nothing but blank stone walls to look at and the furniture I occupied. Hours dragged on into something more, and weariness began to overtake my fear.

It was uncomfortable to sit, and I hadn't properly rested in days. But my bonds wouldn't permit me much movement. I couldn't even reach my face with my hands while sitting up. All I could do was lean forward over the table and bury my head in my arms. A thing which put pressure on my immobile feet. Yet, it was a slim comfort to put my head down and close my eyes. Feeling tears prick hot behind my closed lids I let out a stuttering breath and reached for another comfort.

Song.

The words dropped off my lips one by one without my even having to call for them. They were eternally familiar, like the beating of my heart, and as old as memory. The song sounded hollow in the room and my voice was quaking, but it didn't matter. The singing mattered. I'd learned that before.

I got lost in the words, forgetting myself, while my muscles unwound, and my body slumped. I might have fallen asleep, despite myself, if it hadn't been that moment the door opened. The words flowing out of me stopped midline, cut short and clean, even as my head sprang up off the table and out of my arms. Every nerve in my body felt like it was tingling, and my head swam on a wave of dizzy vertigo.

Several people entered the room, but it was clear when his appraising eyes met mine, who was my main concern. The one I would be dealing with, contending with. He was a big man in a long, black coat that swept around his feet when he walked. Triple lines of scar marred his face, and the way he wore the band of his Hitai-ate up over his head, bandana fashion, made me think he was hiding more scars there.

This intimidating presence's eyes swept me again, taking in my frozen features and the tear prisms in my wide, startled eyes, and I suddenly felt the need to swipe the evidence of my weeping off my face. Only the chains snapped me up short and I realized I couldn't without dropping my head back into my hands.

He watched me do it, watched me stop, watched me slowly settle my hands back on the table, deciding to leave the oozing tears, and keep my head up. Gauging everything I did, determining just what kind he had to deal with. I sucked in a shuddering breath while he did it, and my own eyes skittered over his face. There was something in me which said I should know this man. Should know the description of his features, even if I had never seen his face before. And it frightened me I should feel that way, frightened me I couldn't place him when I should have that ability.

I wasn't given long to fret over it, though. He didn't let me stay in that way more than a few heartbeats. After he'd completed his initial sweep of me, while two of his assistants set up some form of recording equipment to one side, he lowered himself into the chair across from me and murmured, "Don't let me stop you."

This enigmatic statement left me reeling for a moment, until my mind caught on what he meant. The last thing I'd been doing before he walked in.

Singing.

Don't let me stop you from finishing your song, he meant. I stared at him blankly long enough for him to drop his gaze to the file he'd set on the table next to his hand before doing the thing he clearly didn't expect. The action I didn't even expect of myself: picking up my song where I'd left off.

My voice broke and quaked, shuddered, but I didn't care. I looked in his face while I got out the last verses, stuttered over the last lines.

Let the rain carry you into the last goodnight,

Let the rain carry you, everything's gonna be alright.

I had to sniff when it was done because I was still crying, and my nose was clogged.

Whatever the scarred man thought of me and my act and tears he didn't say. "What is that?" he asked instead.

"It's an Ame lullaby," I managed. I shook my head, still trying to clear my tears, then I gave it up and dropped my face into my hands so I could deal with myself properly. Smudging at the dampness with my fingertips.

"Sounds gloomy," he commented.

A hiccupping, sobbing laugh came out of me. "Ame's a gloomy place."

"You say that like you've been there."

"I was born in Ame," I said absently, looking out between my fingers. I let this go easily because it didn't matter. I didn't care he knew.

"Funny, considering you're not an Ame shinobi."

I sniffed again, swiped at my eyes a last time with the back of a finger, and brought my head up. "I'm not anybody's shinobi, I'm a medical-nin."

I watched him take this in, watched his face blank and something twitch under one of his scars as he digested this information, picked it apart to see what it said about where my loyalties lay. My gaze was absent again. I didn't care if he suspected my loyalties were skewed, any more than I cared if he knew where I was born, or I never would have said it. What he thought of my sensibilities was of no concern to me. He wouldn't understand I didn't have any loyalties he could comprehend and didn't give two shits about those he did.

After a moment, he nodded. "So, what happened?"

"My family was killed." My eyes dropped to my hands. I flexed the right and, without really thinking of it, my fingers began massaging the scar in the center of my palm. It was white. Old. A long, vertical slit that had bled profusely when I'd pulled the kunai from it and tossed the blade away. "I escaped."

"And you ended up working as an Ishi medical-nin."

I winced, looking up at him with pained eyes. "Yes."

He didn't say anything else for a moment, just watching me, trying to decipher that pain in my gaze and what it meant. I let him. I didn't have the energy or ability to do anything more. What little I had was being diverted to keeping me upright and keeping me facing the man with something like a semblance of calm. The strain on my dwindling internal supplies left me listless. While he watched me, I found myself returning the glance with dispassionate anxiety churning in me. Again that feeling I should know this man studying me swelled and I felt my face crumble at the sensation and the knowledge I still could not dredge his name out of the place it was lodged in me.

The dark eyes looking back at me noted it and the man seemed to take pity on me. "You look like you have something on your mind."

"Please pardon me," I said, voice cracking over the words, "but who are you?"

A flicker in his eyes. "I'm Ibiki Morino."

"I… see." It was like everything in me had dropped out of me, leaving me hollow and blank, wishing to wrap myself in my arms. Only I couldn't because my wrists were still manacled to the table. I felt all the blood drain out of me and my eyes unfocus. "That's… why I thought I knew you. He mentioned you once. Said I should be glad not to meet you. I suppose this means this is Konoha."

I was rambling and hardly even knew what I was saying, what words were coming out of my mouth. At some point after he'd said his name, I'd gripped my left hand with my right and started massaging it, trying to compulsively rub feeling back into the numb digits.

"You seem disoriented," he noted.

My eyes wavered and turned to him. "War has a way of doing that to a person."

He nodded. "It does. How long have you been on the front lines?"

I stared at him, seeing how easy it would be to reply to that causal question, how easy to follow it without a thought. As though this were just a normal conversation. My fingers were working on my hand. Working, working, in endless destress over my numb limb. Noticing it, I felt the tears start hot at the back of my eyes again and gave into them, dropping my head back into my hands and letting my shoulders shake with the sobs.

No one said anything. Morino let me cry myself out until I was a bit quieter, a little calmer. Then he spoke, his voice pitched low, striving at being as gentle as the situation allowed. "We can start with something easy. What's your name? We searched our records for an Ishi medical-nin matching your description but couldn't find anything."

Sucking in a breath that shuddered my whole, slight body, I scrubbed at my eyes with the tips of my fingers. It was amazing how exhausting crying was. The act left you physically and mentally empty and so worn. Red-eyed, I tilted my head to look up at him.

Something easy he'd said. Something to get me talking and make all the other talking that would come later feel easier, more natural, yet again. Sniffing, I pressed the palms of my hands flat to my face, then I lifted my head again, trying to find something to hold onto mentally. "People call me Ko."

I felt dizzy again and wished the world would stop spinning. It'd make it easier to concentrate on the man if everything didn't feel upside-down. His voice seemed to come to me from far away. "People call you that, or it's your name?"

I laughed a little, hitching sound and the laughter in itself, as broken as it was, seemed to help. "There is a difference, isn't there? People call me Ko. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to tell you my name, Morino-san. It wouldn't matter if I did; you wouldn't know it and there wouldn't be any record of it. I stopped being the person it belonged to a long time ago. I'm Ko. Just Ko."

His intent gaze took in every twitch and tick I made while I said it. I knew he noted how my fingers went back to tracing the scar on my right palm, but I couldn't stop it and it didn't matter anyway.

"Alright, we'll let it go for now, Ko," he said after a moment. "Tell me about being a medical-nin in Ishigakure no Sato."

We'll let it go for now. A hint we'd come back to it later. A weight of despair and dread on me. But not like those other words. That second invitation to speak. I knew this tact. The way of slow patience and gentle prodding. The strategy used on those already half broken and likely to talk, if steered with enough softness.

Yes, I knew the tact, and I knew where it led when it proved ineffective.

My eyes swam. I didn't have enough moisture left to cry properly, but I still clung to the fringes of it. "You're going to torture me, aren't you?"

Ibiki sighed because here were signs the nin sitting before him wasn't as broke or ready to speak as he hoped. Though I wept unabashedly, I'd still blatantly informed him I wouldn't tell him my name and now inquired how much he was going to hurt me. "I'd prefer not to, Ko, and there isn't any need for it to come to that. You're a medical-nin. I don't like breaking medical-nin, if I don't have to. Just talk to me about Ishi and we can take this ease."

"I'm sorry, I can't talk to you."

His face was unreadable, but that twitch moved under his scar again while he took this in. Such a polite and terrified refusal to speak and take things simply. "Can't or won't, Ko?" he asked after another moment of pondering me.

Heart thumping, it was like I collapsed into my hands. My face was hot in my palms. "There is a difference there too, isn't there?" This was strained, as stretched out as if the collar around my neck really was choking me. "I won't talk to you, Morino-san, I'm sorry."

Silence greeted this, but I didn't look up. I knew he was thinking, considering. His voice was still soft when it came. "I don't want to do this the hard way with you, Ko."

Another, tiny laugh like a whimper. "Because I'm a medical-nin."

"Yes, among other reasons. Talk to me, Ko. You said it yourself, you're nobody's shinobi, you're a medical-nin. A lot less people are likely to die if you tell me what you know and help us end this war."

"I don't give a fuck!" The words broke out of me, tearing out my throat with enough force I at last did choke under the collar. The room went still in a way I knew meant I'd startled even the famed torturer of Konoha with the rawness of my outburst, but I didn't care for this. Didn't care what he saw when I coughed and coughed and raised my head to shriek it at him again, defying the collar's ability to strangle me. "I don't give a fuck! I don't give a fuck how many live or die! You and all your villages can burn for all I care!" Then I slumped, the last of my precarious energy evaporating out of me, and another half-hearted round of weeping replacing it. "I won't talk to you, I won't," I whimpered. "It'd be better if you just killed me."

"I'm not going to kill you, Ko." This was low. Soft.

"I wish you would."

That twitch moved under his scar while he read my words. Read the sheen of tears across my eyes and the helplessness and desperation beneath them. His next words were careful, borderline kind. "When they took you, our operatives reported they saw and pursued several members of your squad. They were injured, but mobile, and managed to elude our ANBU. They're alive, Ko."

I knew what he was doing, how he was trying to reassure me I still had reason to live. Doubtless he had worked on medical-nin who were the last of their squad before and didn't want to deal with such an unpredictable creature again, if he could help it. But in his reassurance he had misjudged, under lack of information. "They weren't my squad," I let out, voice tear-rough and wounded from my shouting. This too I didn't care if he knew. Yet, it was information he took in with care. I'd given him the unexpected, once more.

A medical-nin who, by his own admission, didn't care for the lives of others and disavowed the teammates he had been working with. The blankness of his face said he hadn't worked on something quite like me before.

"They weren't your squad. But you were working with them."

"Yes."

"And you won't talk to me."

"No. I'm sorry."

His fingers found the edge of the file near his hand and toyed with it while he sighed a second time. "Maybe a few days in a cell will change your mind."

My eyes unfocused again when he ordered a few of his assistants to take off the manacles and escort me away.