Chapter Eighteen-
Pressed up against the corner of her prison, Sasumi wondered when the dream had first started. Or maybe she had just died. None of it made sense anymore and Sasumi couldn't think, not with her wrists and ankles chained together and the smell of rotting food and urine permeated the room. They had come five times since she had awoken; only leaving food and water which was most assuredly poisoned. She had managed to drag herself to one corner of the room, but lack of water was taking its toll. It was hard to keep her eyes open, even though there was no point because of the blindfold, and her limbs felt like lead. Sasumi was no stranger to starvation and she knew that she was dying. Before they had always made sure she stayed alive, but now they seemed to no longer care. Or they were overestimating her will to live, but she doubted it. It wasn't worth eating to only feel those horrible sensations of untested drugs wrack her body.
It was strange, how apathetic she was to the concept of Death. Humans in general were terrified of it and did everything they could to delay its inevitable approach. But Sasumi was all too familiar with Death. She had wanted to die countless times, and she had killed countless times. Now, she was merely passive in its face. Death was coming and Sasumi waited patiently.
Naruto was really getting sick of waking up in unfamiliar places. At the moment he was too weak to move, however he could see plainly that this was not his room, nor the cell he had been in. Something next to his head was making steady beeping noises and a window to his left was streaming in sunlight. It looked like Naruto was still wearing that stupid yukata though.
He raised his head slightly and surveyed the room. It looked like a hospital, but not the one in Konoha. Where the hell was he? All he remembered was being locked up and thirsty…oh, that must be it. He'd passed out from lack of water. Well, he wasn't thirsty now, but he sure was hungry. He pushed himself into a seated position and felt something strain on his arm. Naruto looked down and saw a tube stuck in his wrist. He gave an involuntary shiver and put his arm on the tube as to pull it out. What were they doing to him?
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Naruto gave a start and looked up to see the Fifth Hokage staring down at him. Oh, shit.
"You almost died from dehydration and that tube is giving your body back fluids that you lost."
Oh…Naruto guessed that made sense…sorta.
"What happened?" he blurted out, unable to keep quiet, "Why was I locked up? Where are my teammates? What happened to that snake bastard? Why are you here?"
Naruto would've said more but he needed to take a breath. After he did he saw she looked amused by his questions. Now that really pissed him off.
"Oi, what the hell is so funn-"
"You don't remember?" she asked.
"Huh?" Naruto said intelligently.
"Orochimaru is dead," she said, "And you killed him."
"What?" Naruto heard himself say.
That was impossible, though Naruto hated to admit it, there was no way someone at his power level could've killed the snake Sannin. He was distracted momentarily as he saw the bottle of sake in her hand.
"Are you drunk?" he asked suspiciously.
Well, she was an old teammate of Ero-Sennin, wasn't she?
A blood vein popped on her forehead.
"Look, you little brat-"
"Aha, you are drunk!" Naruto cried, surprised by how tired his voice sounded.
"Don't accuse your elders of being drunk, brat!"
"Hey, don't call me a brat!"
"I'll call you whatever I like, I'm Hokage!"
"That's not fair! And it's a stupid excuse!"
"I'll give you a stupid excuse, you little-"
"Tsu-Tsunade-sama?"
Naruto looked up to see a woman with short black hair at the doorway looking slightly apprehensive. Naruto swore he had seen her somewhere before.
"What is it, Shizune?" the Godaime asked, gaining her composure more quickly than Naruto would've liked.
"Er…well, I heard raised voices…"
"Her fault!" Naruto interjected.
The woman, 'Shizune' apparently, looked at him confusedly.
"Er…yes, well, you probably should be quieter, these walls aren't that thick."
"I'll take that into consideration," the pigtailed woman said dismissing the Shizune person, "Now, where were we…?"
"Will you tell me what the hell is going on? Where I am and why are you here already? Gods!" Naruto said, annoyed, but then quailed under the look she gave him. "Ehehehehe…umm…"
She silenced him by raising her hand, "Look, I'm only gunna say it once, so listen up. About a week and a half ago Orochimaru, apparently alone, infiltrated the leaf. He attempted to, presumably, kill Uchiha Sasuke-"
That reminded Naruto, "Hey, lady, where is that asshole anyway?" his voice dropped and he whispered, "Sa-Sasuke's okay, isn't he? And what about Sasumi? Tell me!"
"If you keep interrupting me I won't tell you a thing."
Naruto scowled, glaring, but wisely kept his mouth shut. No telling what the crazy lady would do.
"As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted…" she said, sending him a glare, "Orochimaru tried to kill Uchiha Sasuke. You and your…friend apparently got in the way. Your friend was stabbed in the abdomen and directly on one of her ribs bones and passed out. Uchiha Sasuke apparently couldn't move from his injuries. This is when, we assume, it all started."
"What all started? And why aren't you referring to Sasumi by her name?"
She gave him a pitying look.
"The seal on your stomach apparently has eroded over time which caused Kyuubi's chakra to leak through. So much chakra leaked through that you apparently were possessed and preceded to kill Orochimaru."
Naruto stared at her. No way. Sure, he had used the Kyuubi's chakra before but he hadn't been possessed! She must be lying.
"T-That's impossible," he said, still staring at her, "I…I would have remembered it! I couldn't have…"
But maybe her wouldn't have remembered it. There was a great blank in his memory when he tried to remember what happened after Sasumi had been stabbed. He just remembered being angry and then…red. Red like the color of the Kyuubi's chakra.
Naruto suddenly looked down and stared at his own hands. Had he really killed Orochimaru? With these hands?
"Or claws," a nasty voice in the back of his head reminded him.
"I…I really…killed…"
He couldn't say it. Orochimaru hadn't been a saint and he had done more than enough to Naruto, his teammates, and friends to warrant Naruto's hatred. To tell the truth it really wasn't about Orochimaru, though it certainly helped that in Naruto's view he deserved death. But it was one thing to believe someone deserved death, and another to actually killed them. No, it wasn't about Orochimaru, it was about Naruto. And the fact that Naruto had just…just killed him. Suddenly Naruto felt his stomach heave and he wretched over the side of the bed opposite to where the Godaime was sitting. He coughed out a bit more and stared at the white tiled floor now covered in his sick.
"Murderer!"
"Shut up," Naruto thought fiercely, "Shut the hell-"
"Monster!"
"Get a hold of yourself, you idiot," a voice said irritably from behind him, "You're a shinobi, aren't you?"
He didn't want to look at her. He didn't want her to see his weakness, so her just sat there waiting until his breath slowed down, staring down at the floor.
What had he done? More importantly what was he going to do? He couldn't just stay here. They'd lock him up again. But…maybe he deserved to be locked up. If he was turning into the Kyuubi then he'd be much too dangerous to be around normal people. Normal, innocent people that he could kill. With a sudden motion, Naruto wrapped his arms around himself. No, no, no! He's never let the Kyuubi take over his body! He wouldn't, couldn't, give up. He had a dream to accomplish and there was no way something like the Kyuubi could stop him. But how did you fight something inside of you?
Naruto was scared. Really, really scared. He suddenly wanted someone, Iruka-sensei, Kakashi-sensei, Sasuke, Sasumi, someone besides this woman who didn't know him and therefore couldn't care. Goddammit, it was stupid and utterly moronic, but he wanted his parents, the people he'd never known and had abandoned him because he was a monster, or so the villagers said.
"Ughh, Goddammit, we're going to need a mop and look at you, kid, you're a mess."
He heard her rise from her chair and walk around the bed to the other side which he was facing. He squeezed his eyes shut and stiffed his shoulders.
"Oh, Dammit, don't be so emotional. If anyone's gunna be emotional it should be me. C'mere."
Naruto stiffed as he felt something soft come in contact with his mouth, but then realized that she was wiping the sick off his mouth. He heard her footsteps walk away from him and stifled the urge to yell out 'don't leave!' He heard a spray of water and then she approached him and felt a hand on his cheek and something hard pressed to his mouth.
"C'mon drink this, kid, you'll feel better."
Naruto quickly took the glass from her hand and looked down as he drank it, not wanting to meet her gaze. He finished the water quickly and let his hand fall to his lap, fiddling nervously with the plastic cup.
And maybe it was the effect of the water, but to his horror, he felt his eyes beginning to water. He quickly brought up his hand to wipe the tears away, but he couldn't stop the sob that tore itself out of his throat. He hated it. Hated the sound. Weak, weak, sound.
"Oh, no, don't start crying on me. Oh, godamm-…why does this always happen to me?"
She sounded annoyed and it was probably because now Naruto was sobbing full out.
He didn't remember the last time he had cried like this. After Haku died he had come close, but it was nothing like this. He'd had to have been little, really little.
The Godaime put her hand on his back and tried to calm him down. And maybe it was helping. Maybe.
Tsunade was not amused. She had sat for two days waiting until the kid to wake up and he had been annoying, real annoying and loud. She hated kids like that. Besides Nawaki, of course. And then she had told him what happened he got all weepy and Tsunade had to wonder what drugs the Council was on, thinking a kid like this was dangerous.
Then, after the kid had sufficiently calmed himself down, he was all happy. What kind of person cries their eyes out after finding out they killed a mass murderer and then starts grinning like crazy? A bipolar person, that's what. Well, she fixed the grinning problem right after she told him about his teammate, the Modoka. The weird thing was he didn't even seem surprised. He just argued with her about how Sasumi was a really nice person. Nice person, right. Granted she had probably only killed her captors to escape, but the little information she had on the girl didn't look promising. For a trial at least. To tell the truth, Tsunade was having enough trouble at the moment with the Council hounding her about her break in at their building, so much that she, Shizune, and the kid, were hiding out in one of the deep underground hideouts from the time of the Great War. She had promised them that she'd escort the kid to his trial, grudgingly of course. She knew as well as they did that the only chance of Uzumaki and herself not becoming missing nin or worse was to go through with the trial. Though it hardly mattered, because Tsunade didn't plan on losing.
"Hey, I'm hungry do you have ramen?"
She shook herself out of her reverie and raised an eyebrow.
"Ramen? No."
"What?" he whined, "That's not fair!"
"If you ever plan on getting out of bed, you're going to have to eat something healthy."
"Ramen is…sorta healthy…maybe…"
"Ramen is carbohydrates in high-fat vegetable broth. You need protein."
"You can have ramen with meat in it! That counts!"
"Well, it hardly matters, since I don't have it on hand," she said, brushing back a loose strand of hair, "I packed the healthiest and energy supplying foods I could get. It's a miracle you're not dead you know."
"Huh?" he said, perking up at the mention of food.
"You were locked up for seven days without water and you're still alive. No normal human being can survive without water for two days."
He looked slightly troubled by this information, "No…normal human?" he asked, carefully.
Oh no, he was getting emotional again! Quick, distract him!
"That's right," Tsunade said, "Now let's see if you can stomach some food."
"Yay! Ramen?"
Tsunade swore if he weren't half-starved and immobile she would've hit him.
The next few days passed quickly. If the brat gave any indication of being afraid or nervous about his upcoming trial he was hiding it incredibly well. He was bored of being in bed since day one and seemed to want to go outside immediately. He tried to get out of bed so many times that Tsunade threatened to chain him to the bed which began a long chain of comments that must have originated with Jiraiya. By all rights, she should stick a bar of soap in his mouth to clean it out. But then again, then she would have no one to argue with.
Between stopping the blond from running around the hideout like a maniac, Tsunade had wondered more than once what the hell she was doing. Why was she risking so much for this kid anyway? For all she knew, the Council could be declaring her and the kid traitor right now. Shizune had gone into the village (in disguise, of course) several times to see what was going on, but maybe they planned to ambush her the second she entered the village. She couldn't be sure that Konoha's shinobi would be loyal to her if such a thing did happen. She knew that she certainly wasn't well liked. Tsunade had never been really liked. That was just who she was. She was rude and pushy and impatient and almost like a foreigner to them. She had left the village before half the ANBU were born and the other half to young to remember her.
There were so many things that could wrong and ruin everything. So why do it at all? Sure, being the Hokage wasn't her dream job, but she wouldn't become a traitor to her village to get out of it or save some random kid. It hade to be something more. It had become something more after seeing Uzumaki, sprawled out on the stone floor of a place he had been locked in for days without food or water and without even knowing what he did wrong. It had become something more the second she saw him because he looked exactly like Nawaki. After, seeing him up close, she saw the differences, but still, the resemblance was uncanny. And loud and annoying he might be, but he amused her with his stupid antics and that in itself was something, she guessed.
In the end, did it really matter if it turned out that she was so intent on saving him because he looked like her dead kid brother? Or did it have to be some other more noble cause? Well, she certainly wouldn't be so motivated to help him if he was an asshole, so maybe part of it had to do with the fact that she was a bit fond of him. Just a bit. Tsunade tried to keep such thoughts out of her mind, but they kept coming back to her just like Shizune irritating her about not drinking and gambling so much. It never ended!
The other thing was that he was a jinchuuriki. It was strange to think of Uzumaki as a walking prison of a monster. He was just so…happy most of the time that Tsunade knew that none of the kids his age would have ever guessed what he was, if not for the Council's interference, of course.
The Council. What to do about them? The Council was one of the reasons that Konoha had become one of the most successful countries in the world. In other countries where there was no balance of power, one corrupt ruler could ruin a country and cause countless repercussions even after dethroned. In the early days of Konoha's history the Council was a good representative for the people and everything was simple. Why did everything a hundred years ago seem so much simpler? But as time went on, the Council became more and more comprised of wealthy, powerful, and influential citizens with no ninja training or status whatsoever. It wasn't the fact that they weren't ninja that was the problem; it was that the Hokage was and they weren't. Two forces trying to work with each other that thought so differently. Most people didn't know how differently shinobi thought from normal civilians, but the fact remained that shinobi, good shinobi, had a totally different mindset. Sarutobi had a way of compromising and debating with which he was able to get along with the Council easily, but unfortunately Tsunade did not posses that skill. Tsunade, like most ninja, did first and thought about it later. In situations where there was no time to think, you had to trust your gut. However, the Council didn't seem to get that. Even those who once had been ninja had not fought or trained in so long that they had lost the feeling. They were too, though it sounded crass, intellectual. They were not used to making a decision in less than a second and were panicked when they saw their Hokage make a quick choice. The system had more good that bad, Tsunade would give it that, but it's most egregious fault sure caused a lot of problems.
Finally the day came of Uzumaki's trial. They left early in the morning, not wanting to draw a crowd, though Tsunade had a feeling that there would already be a huge one at the trial. The kid was nervous, she could tell. As they walked through the streets he looked straight ahead and ignored the villagers whisper in a way that slightly impressed Tsunade. Though, then again, the poor kid was probably used to it. It was only when they reached the Council's main building when they started to have problems. Tsunade had worn the ceremonial Hokage garb that she secretly hated, hoping it would discourage people from causing a fit, but it apparently wasn't working.
"Monster! Demon!"
"You killed my son, you murderer!"
"Go to hell!"
"Let me through you bastards! I'll kill him for you!"
Uzumaki just kept walking straight ahead, as if he did this everyday. There were annoyed looking guards that were holding back the crowed and the whole scene seemed slightly surreal to Tsunade. What happened to the nice, friendly people of Konoha? It was almost…laughable. And that's exactly what she wanted to do. Laugh at the scene of maybe seventy-five angry people shouting at a thirteen-year-old boy for murdering their families while he was still half in the womb. It wasn't particularity funny really. Well, maybe in a morbid sort of way, maybe. Either way she wanted to laugh her ass off. But instead she bit her lip like she knew Shizune would want her too and continued on down the road remembering the glare at every other person. They were quickly shuffled into the main building by more irritated looking guards. A bunch of workers stood on tiptoes to see them pass and Tsunade thought of making a comment on their work ethic, but decided not to alienate people that could potentially be on their side. They walked down a white hallway and then another. On the way Tsunade saw one of the people she had knocked out several days ago and laughed…a laugh that quickly turned into a cough. They walked until they reached two huge dark brown wooden doors.
"Are you ready?" Tsunade muttered to the orange clad boy beside.
He grinned, "Like hell."
The two doors opened.
Wet. Cold. Water running down her back. Hands grabbing her forearms.
"Wake up already, you stupid bitch!"
She coughed, the darkness terrifying her. She couldn't see. She couldn't see! There were hands on her face forcing her mouth open. Sasumi struggled pushing her cuffed arms against the person in front of her and squishing herself even further against the wall.
"God…Dammit! Stop struggling! Do want to die?"
No, no, no! She didn't want their poisoned water or their drugged food! Get it away!
"Let me go, let me go, let me go!!"
Every single nerve was intensified to the person grabbing her and it made her want to wretch. The person's grip intensified on her arm and her left arm throbbed with pain. Sasumi gave a surprised cry and tried to kick with her legs, but it resulted in her sliding down the wall, and therefore further away from it.
"I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm just trying to feed you, alright!"
Sasumi wasn't listening. She wasn't stupid and had heard enough of their lies. Evil, evil, lies.
"Gods! Hold still! Oi, c'mere and help me with her! She's insane!"
Another person approached, and she fought harder. She didn't want this. She didn't want to be here! A pair of arms grabbed her shoulder and pulled her away from the wall! Sasumi gave a scream of fury and flailed about, trying desperately to escape. She tried to move her arms, but pain filled her arm and she cried out and went limp.
"Finally, gods, she's strong for a kid who hasn't had food or water for days!"
Clanking noises. Smells of food. Oh, no! Oh, no! Sasumi couldn't move, from fear or the pain in her left arm she didn't know. And hand grasped the back of her neck and pulled her up from the fetal position she had been in on the stone floor. Another pair of hands forced her mouth open and even as Sasumi tried to wrench away she knew it was too late. Liquid filled her mouth and she choked and had no choice but to swallow, food followed and Sasumi wanted to choke. She wanted the food stuck in her windpipe so she could die before she felt any more pain. She was sick of it. Terrified of those chemicals.
"Gods, that wasn't that hard, wasn't it? Just eat next time and we won't have to do this again."
"Don't talk like that, she's a mass murderer, remember? Half the Rain's ANBU ring a bell?"
"Like I could forget."
"Hurry up, will you? The bosses are gonna brief us on the demon's trial."
"The Uzumaki kid? I dunno why, I mean he's just a kid…"
"You're just soft, c'mon"
There was a screeching noise of the heavy door closing leaving Sasumi shivering, curled up within herself. Waiting. Seconds, minutes. No pain.
"Half the Rain's ANBU…"
"…demon's trial."
"…Uzumaki kid?"
The water tasted different. Uzumaki. Demon. Rain's ANBU…
Sasumi's eyes widened. She wasn't in the Rain. She was in Konoha. It hadn't been a dream. But they had found out about her! Would they send her back? But Naruto? On trial…
"Get up. Get up now!"
"Let me out," she whispered, "Please!"
A/N: Woah, long chapter! Yes, I've drawn out this part of the fic long enough so I thought I'd try and finishe the beginning part. The last part of this chapter kind of scared me a bit. I hope it wasn't too creepy. Hopefully, I'll finish Naruto's trial next chapter and then get onto what the Leaf are going to do with Sasumi. My beta, Sleeping Soundly, is made of win and you are too...if you review! Oh, god, it rhymes too...