Title: Strength

Author: ishala8

Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Romance

Rating: T (contains mentions of torture)

Word Count: 1491

Disclaimer: I still don't own it, but now that Itachi is back I wish I did.

Summary: When both body and mind are held prisoner, all the world stands to a still.

Delay due to: My unwillingness to post an awful chapter. *IMPORTANT* It's still painfully bad, but I posted a oneshot of the same pairing called Devotion as a sort of peace offering. I hope you forgive me.

Last Revised On: 03/11/11

Chapter Three: Routine

Kiba did not know how long he lay there, battling with the ever-present darkness that threatened to overcome him after that latest torture. When he noticed the change in atmosphere, there was already a gruff healer pawing at his body. He poked at open wounds with unnecessary force and simply stemmed the blood-flow in some of the more serious ones.

"Boys don' wan' ya passing out 'gain t'night," he said as a way of explanation, fixing his mangled shoulders with a crude jutsu.

The man's exit was as abrupt as his entrance had been. In his wake, he left nothing but a broken, trembling boy, a slice of stale, mouldy bread and pitcher of a vile-smelling liquid that could not even pretend to have been mistaken for water.

True to the promises of both the camp's leader and healer, that night was like the first for Kiba. The brawly hands, drunken talk, tormenting men, sadistic laughs… Worse of all was the defilement of not only his body, but also his soul.

That night, Kiba tasted hell. It was a place of constant torment and the stench of death. It suffocated ones senses with pain, attacking from all fronts while tempting one with a half-forgotten memory of peace that would forever elude them. Hell was cold, dark and lonely, tormenting to both mind and body; it was eternal suffering that would forever hound its victim.

As the time passed, Kiba's daily life settled into routine. He would wake up drenched in sweat and chocking on suppressed screams two hours before dawn, retreat to the forest bordering the clan's training ground to work through katas and meditate, making it back home just as Hana's alarm would go off, waking her to leave for the clinic.

A short shower and rushed breakfast later would see him at the Team 8 training grounds napping with Akamaru as he waited for his team to arrive for training. Shino would arrive an hour after him, followed by Hinata and Kurenai and they would train for two hours. They would then complete D-ranked missions within the village till the afternoon – breaking for lunch if possible – before he had to leave to attend clan meetings.

This last was a new development insisted upon by the clan elders and loudly opposed to by Kiba. As it turned out, clan heir or not, the young Inuzuka was allowed no say in the matter and had to subject himself to two hours of daily torture. He would just sit quietly to a side as his mother talked and resolved issues concerning finances, mission injuries, rosters, patrols, disputes, engagements, births, deaths…

Seriously, if a clan of around six hundred individuals and their dogs produced such bureaucracy, just what did the Hokage have to deal with on a daily basis? It was no wonder she was always drunk; he would be too if he was in her place.

As it was, he was simply frustrated and antsy by the time he was let out to join Kurenai for extra training. He was only allotted two hours with her before he was required to return to the compound for a shower before dinner, to which attendance was compulsory. Afterwards, his mother, sister and their ninken would trap him in the living room for an hour-long lesson on clan and village politics before he could escape to bed for five hours of disturbed sleep.

All of a sudden, everyone found it necessary to be stepping on glass whenever he was around. Friends would abruptly end conversations whenever he entered a room, everyone but his team mates would make excuses to avoid training with him as if any kind of combat would cause him to lapse into some kind of catatonic state… Even his clan, in a rare moment of unwarranted and unwanted concern, had forbidden him to accept missions outside the village. This decision was seconded by the village council who deemed him too 'unstable' to accept any missions, period.

Tsunade and Kurenai had done everything in their power to loosen the restricting leash with which he was bound, but even the power of their influence had limits. All missions were accepted by his team and his involvement was kept off-record, his training sessions were kept quiet…

As days morphed to weeks, those many 'nothings' in Kiba's routine became a 'something' that was threatening his sanity. His body and mind no longer ran in the same reality; his dream self was breaking and yet there was nothing he could do.

It was as those around him started to notice the small signs of him loosing touch with reality that something changed.

He did not know how long it had been. One's sense of time changed when in captivity – days felt like months and weeks like years. Kiba no longer cared, no longer reacted. It had been a really long time since he last attempted to fight back. That last time hadn't even been an attempt at freedom, simply an affirmation of will.

That same medic-nin had come to visit him at the end of day. It had become an expected, but undesired ritual by now. With every visit, the pain would become worse and even one as clueless as Kiba was at healing knew that it was being done on purpose. Wounds like the ones he acquired from the nightly 'fun' and the daily torture were not supposed to be healed artificially.

Below the smooth, sickly coloured layer of skin lay broken bones, torn ligaments and cut muscles. It hurt, excruciatingly so, and Kiba wanted nothing more than the pain to stop. That's why he resisted the healing. Like a cornered animal, he had turned and bitten the healer's arm with elongated fangs and feral eyes.

Within second he had been on his back, four men holding him down and the medic-nin glaring from above while easily closing his own injury. He made a show of inspecting his arm, before smiling in a show of rotten teeth.

Instead of being raped that night, Kiba had been dragged to the centre of the camp and tied to a tree. The change of procedure had been easily explained to the men by their leader: feeling unappreciated, the medic-nin had demanded for a chance to showcase his skills.

After that first introduction to chakra scalpels and their many uses, his captors no longer sought to sate their lust through Kiba's body. Instead, they derived pleasure from the sight of his blood and the tortured screams that tore through his bloodied throat.

Body broken and mind well on its way of joining it, Kiba now lay near the campfire where the last bout of torture had taken place. No one even bothered to tie him up anymore – he would not be moving, no matter how strong his will.

There was more activity around the camp than usual, but Kiba was in no shape to acknowledge the fact. On the border of unconsciousness, he distantly felt hot tears burn trails down his dirtied cheeks. It hurt to know that death was so far away, especially when there was no chance of escape.

He refused to eat, but the medic-nin simply injected him with unknown chemicals. He insulted his captors during his torture sessions, making them mad, but not enough to kill him. He attempted to kill himself in every way possible, only to end up so tightly restrained that he could barely breathe.

It was hopeless and he knew it. There was no escape in any form of the word, all he could do was endure and learn to block out the pain. He was getting there and that's why he barely registered the motions of someone picking him up and throwing him in a supply wagon.

He didn't feel the bumps in the road that jarred his body and reopened past wounds. The raucous of voices, bad singing and feet trampling over dried leaves, hard-packed soil or green vegetation did not reach him. Even as burly arms picked him up and threw him into a mouldy dungeon, he was too out of it to understand what was happening.

Kiba woke up numb but thoughtful. It was the first night in a long while where pain and fear did not reign over his dreams. He might have not realised it at the time, but looking back now he understood that something was different that day. Aside from whether the change was for better or worse, it was still a change and that was what mattered.

This latest dream had showed him that the passing of time can alter anything. Sooner or later things would move forward once again and he had to be ready to meet them. Despite appearances he was not a prisoner, but rather a shinobi of the Leaf and heir to the Inuzuka clan. Nothing would stop or cripple him, not even his own mind.