Chapter 28
"I'm not giving up, but I'm not content to wait forever, you know. My people need me. And I don't care for this place. These people are so base, so wearisome. They think only of themselves. So far, I haven't found anyone else here who even remotely inspires me. I can't imagine why you stay," Jeninki railed, passionately gesturing in the air with his hands.
Danzou shrugged, touching his cheek in a new habit, one born of constant delight in his renewed youth. The flesh was so strong, so smooth, so supple! It made him drunk with the thrill of it. It was hard to focus on Jeninki's tiresome laments.
He shook it off and returned to his work, turning the talisman over to finish the seal. So long as he wore this around his neck, anyone observing him would see the old man, gnarled, scarred and graying, fast aging into obscurity, a threat to no one.
He would hate to wear it, but it had to be done. A hood and long sleeves made for a clumsy, unreliable disguise. Anything else in the way of cover might meet with questions and added scrutiny. And in the privacy of his own home, he would simply remove it to return to the homogenous bliss of youthful appearance and spirit.
"You value your renewal too much, Danzou. It's clouding your thoughts."
"Stay out of my thoughts," he snapped back. "If you've tired of my company and this place, then do something about it! No one's forcing you to stay against your will."
"Oh. I thought we were getting along fairly well. I guess I was mistaken."
"You always have to overstep your boundaries. You never respect anyone's limits. You slip from body to body, always changing, but you never evolve. I prize our friendship, Jeninki. You are truly my oldest and closest acquaintance. You annoy me, in ways I will always scold you for without fail, but that's just how it is. Don't pretend you're offended each time you hear the same old truths. We've had this dance too many times for that."
"Full of fire now, aren't you? Just like the Danzou-kun I remember from so long ago. I guess what you say is true. None of this is new. We've gone full circle once again. You are right, though. I must stay focused. I should stay on a little longer and keep trying to find a way to see for myself what they're doing to him."
"You'd best move soon if you intend to. There won't be anything left by the time that pirate bastard Moreno finishes. He has a high reputation for his interrogation and torture methods, but really, he's just a sadist who found his niche. There's no finesse. By the time they stomp through with their slash-and-burn search and realize that they can't defeat all my seals, I'll wager that he sets off the fail-safe deliberately to hide his ineptitude. When Even self-destructs, he'll say there was no way to prevent it. And he'll get out with nothing intact except his pathetic reputation."
"Your deepest seal and binding are absolute unless you remove them. There will be a few things, elements of repetitive, everyday things it won't cover completely. But none of that should be of any value to them."
"My only doubt is about the training. I sealed it in Even, but Iruka lived it as well. If they have any skills at all, that much they should learn before they're done."
"They already saw some of it anyway. And you've been ordered to stand down. There's nothing useful to them there."
"Then maybe you shouldn't risk interfering. Stay away. Pick up the pieces when they're through, if they leave any."
"I'm not quite ready to give up yet. I've done plenty of observation without being noticed. I'll find a way so that they won't detect me. I have to. I can't do nothing at all while they do whatever they please. He committed to me, regardless of the circumstances, and you, you are the only one I agreed to defer to, and then only if he insisted."
Danzou stopped and watched closely; Jeninki looked all right, but the ambient temperature of the room had risen ten degrees at minimum.
"You're not having odd thoughts, are you, my friend? That body's holding up so far?"
"It's not the insanity again. I know the difference. I'm just passionate about this."
"Obsessive."
"Determined. It's the last of my unfinished business here, and I want it settled."
"If you say so. Just be sure to monitor yourself. You don't want to end up like last time. You, or your precious prize. Hey, hold up. You're going right now?"
"I might be back. But if by some chance you don't see me again, you'll likely hear that Umino has either passed away, or escaped. If that is the case, know that I have him, and that alive in body or not, I've received him into my care."
"I'll see you again. You always turn up. Well, look, I can see you're too impatient to get on with it to listen to reason. So I'll just wish you good luck, and if you need me, you know where I'll be. Come back when it fits your plan."
Jeninki faded and disappeared. His detectible chakra vanished, and the sense of his presence was gone soon after.
Danzou paused a moment to reflect on his friend's relative sanity before removing the talisman; then after a moment, his robe, and the bandages over his powerful eye. He stripped completely, and posed in front of the steel table, tilted upright to reflect his image. It was too exciting, and he fell to enjoying himself while recording it all with the ill-gotten eye.
He didn't care one way or the other whether Jeninki had truly left, or lingered to watch the glory of his strong, beautiful body, sweating and straining in protracted rapture of self-desire.
xxxxx
Dazed and unsteady, the overwrought sensei felt the ominous pressure approaching before he saw them. They were back. It wasn't possible to track movement visually when they were performing their intrusions, causing the world to melt into the heavy realm that only existed within his head. But during the intermissions, he could still see them, despite a clinging, hazy aura that made it hard for his eyes to focus.
The sterile-masked and goggled assistant, apparently a very specialized T&I operative, had moved him, stripped the wet clothes and sheets and replaced him on the pad, this time binding him with heavier restraints. Everything up until now had been quite unpleasant, but in a slow, methodical, sometimes even benevolent way, sort of like going to the dentist for a difficult extraction. Inoichi's mental voice came to him as the leading presence, probing his raw neural structure firmly but gently, bidding him to trust and rely upon him, like a father or a friend. That presence tried to soothe the discomfort from the sense of invasion as the team scrabbled and clawed through his ransacked awareness and beyond.
Inoichi was persuasive and understanding and seemed to be the very personification of inviting sanctuary. But Iruka's lifelong training compelled him to resist all forms of interrogation, this befriending tactic being one of them. He held the beckoning Leaf shinobi figuratively at arm's length, fighting mechanically to keep from giving in, but his heart ached actively at the invitation.
Somehow his backbone was being all but drained away. He couldn't rummage up any anger, outrage, or hatred. Courage and determination were unreliable at best. His weaker, accursed emotions of fear, loneliness, abandonment and need were so strong it was almost out of control. Inoichi told him it was due to some events that he did not remember yet. He wanted to trust him, flee into his offer of comfort and protection, and curl up in safety somewhere warm without all these complex demands of his blistered psyche. But his training stuck. He just managed to keep resisting, but the more the last traces of the empowering side of his emotional makeup leeched away, the more difficult it was to maintain any semblance of a brave front.
Inoichi was back, but he was flanked by Ibiki and Tsunade instead of leading them, and the warmth he expected to feel when the empath was in the room was non-existent. Terror shot through him from head to toe. His arms jerked on the restraints, and the panic of a trapped animal shook his very soul.
Inoichi's lack of supportive outreach was clearly purposeful. The hand of compassion he'd extended before, which Iruka's training had not allowed him to accept, was now withdrawn. His eyes were hard and unblinking. Iruka could not stand to see the chilling sight of them, yet he could not look away.
The pall of the new attitude sent ice into his veins. They were here to try again, but not to just keep trying. Hovering above, the expressions on the scolding faces clearly revealed that they knew well what they were about to do to him. The suspense was pure agony.
He felt the restraints tighten much harder, spreading him out like a sacrifice, and the slight change in Tsunade's voice confirmed all his fears.
"Relax and cooperate fully, Iruka," she said flatly, with an edge of anticipation. "This is the time for you to try as hard as you can to help us find your truths."
He sensed her stronger emotions all at once. She was determined, stoic, regretful, focused and...very excited.
She was itching to attack. Ibiki was, too. Their enthusiasm was smothering, terrifying. The decision had been made, then, to go forth and take what they sought, without reserve, regardless of the cost. He knew all along it would come to this if he couldn't find a way to give them what they wanted.
But their drilling and prodding and shoving and tearing couldn't reach memories he didn't have access to. They were adamant in denying him so much as the next phase of the return of his memory, yet they wanted him to retrieve some dark secret still hidden behind what he assumed was the barrier she had erected.
He was as still and obedient as he could manage, and quelled the urge to struggle or protest with the few threads of courage that remained. Only the constant quivering of his muscles defied his will; but that visible lack of control gave him away.
Ibiki's eyes narrowed into a glare before he slapped him, hard, making his canine tooth cut into his inner cheek. The taste of blood was somehow comforting compared to the shock of this sudden confirmation of his change in status, from inpatient to captive victim.
"Spit it out! Whatever you have to say, say it!"
He tried to shake his head, but Ibiki slapped him again, and again.
"Say it!"
He gasped, blood like gloss on his lower lip, and complied.
"Why don't you give me my memory back, if you want me to tell you what I know? I don't know anything this way!"
Ibiki slapped him harder, raising a welt on his cheek below his eye. Iruka caught the movement when Inoichi turned his back, facing away. He was not going to help, or lodge any objection. The small move of abandonment hurt far more than Ibiki's blow.
"You're questioning me, Umino?"
"No!"
Wrong answer, it seemed. Ibiki hit him then, with a closed fist, banging his head down against the padding, helpless to do anything but take it. The straps allowed him no movement, and his body was stretched out tight, totally vulnerable.
"Not so rough with the head," Tsunade suggested blandly.
So she was no longer pretending, either. He held his breath, in an attempt to man up, to prepare for the worst, only to get an elbow driven squarely in the solar plexus, forcing all the air out at once.
"No holding your breath! No resistance!"
She was at the head of the table now, hands clamping down on his head on both sides, nails digging in, watching him gasp for air, using her chakra to force his eyes to stay open. Ibiki worked him over, pounding him into panic, then pounding it back out of him, until he tensed less and less with each blow.
"You're actually right, Iruka-sensei. Most of what we seek is still hidden from you. So I'm going to advance you now. We won't be calling you sensei anymore, after this session. Bid that title goodbye."
It's for the good of the village, he told himself desperately, buffeted by fear and crumpling with victim's shame. They weren't just evil, enjoying a chance to torture someone, this had meaning, didn't it? Some value, some reason, something? Because it was intolerable if this was just a game, something for their sick satisfaction. Unbearable. And completely beyond his power to do a thing about it but endure it, whatever their motives might be.
His skull began to vibrate with the intrusion of her power. Ibiki's face was close to him now, sour breath mixing with the blood clogging one nostril, the huge hands on his chest up high, pressing down threateningly close to his throat. His gut screamed but the urge to escape became so overwhelming it short-circuited. He was past the point of pretending he had any control or prayer of mercy. Ibiki could do any number of things with his hands so located that would kill him instantly. This team would do exactly what they intended to do regardless of anything he might think, say or feel. Without his strength of anger and ego, the pitiful fact was that fighting back would be a poor choice even if he managed to break free. These people may as well do their worst, and there was no point in resisting.
Ibiki found a heaviness under his hands and the room grew quiet. He made a last move to provoke some response, choking up on his throat-hold abruptly; but it elicited no natural reaction of defense. He released his grip and straightened slightly, both hands still placed firmly on his work. Iruka's eyes were as open and vulnerable as the rest of him.
If only Even would be such an easy mark. But Ibiki knew better.
"Is he still fighting you?" Inoichi asked, sounding like he was a world away.
"No. He's submissive again. You should join us."
Tsunade took over and began her phase of the work, unleashing segments of his confiscated past without further delay.
Memory came back in clots, tearing away part of the dull white barrier, revealing patches of what he instantly recognized as the truth when he saw it. He tried not to dwell on the emotional, personal stuff, skipping past old scenes of the loss of the Third, his role as whipping boy for the jounin and the pall of his ill-fated relationships; even though those things cried out for further examination, they were more suitable for mulling over alone, with plenty of time, not here with a head full of usurpers plotting his demise. He remembered the voluntary assignment to Ibiki, and how he'd handled the filing, and...then came the flood.
Prison bars and humiliation – but the roughest, most painful pothole was the return of Jeninki's face, specifically his eyes, twisting him inside out.
It must have shown.
"Why aren't you talking? What do you see?" the woman's voice filtered through. "Speak! Say it out loud. Concentrate."
"Eyes. Brown and gold and...my duty...in a cell. My assignment, he...he's a kidnapper. A suspected murderer."
She made no comment as he stammered on in vague coherence, but recognizing that he was still able to follow instructions and cooperate, she released another length of the barrier.
Inoichi had to grit his teeth to keep up, applying support to help replace the strengths that Even had sapped away, to try and shore up Iruka's pathetic defenses. This was mild stuff in comparison to what would come next; it was already tricky figuring out the right placement of aid to prevent any one aspect of his personality from taking too much damage; Umino had to be reinforced sufficiently to tolerate the concentrated influx of disruptive memories without losing complete control of his emotions and his mind.
I'm here to support you again, Iruka. You must fully rely on me. I can help you withstand their procedures, and I won't desert you from here on out, no matter what happens.
Tsunade and Ibiki were moving hard and fast, taking extreme risks considering he could make no guarantees about the effectiveness of his makeshift support. As the countless memories were revealed along the way, everything Iruka was telling them fell into place just as they already were aware. This added to the veracity of the visions they were extracting, but advanced their knowledge not one iota.
They finally arrived at the first incident of extreme interest, flinging open the door on that chapter and diving in with him. They rushed ahead with their plan, purposely denying Iruka any chance to re-assimilate that experience as a memory.
Ibiki lofted back out to join the goggled assistant, producing the prepared blade from his belt and touching it to Iruka's sweat-drenched face. At approximately the point in refreshed time where Jeninki would have started his cut, he pushed down at the slight line of scarring and drew it until a line of crimson began to well up, just enough to make sure that the initial sensation of being sliced was unmistakable.
The reaction rippled out in a hard, singular flash of physical truth.
Inoichi took the hit secondhand and cursed inwardly. They didn't warn him sufficiently, and in a split-second, he lost his connection. It was as if the great pressure he was pushing against lifted. Iruka was no longer coming apart in desperation for escape but instead was re-encapsulated, pulled into a reality that did not allow the sort of internal awareness Inoichi's method took advantage of. It was as if they had ripped his subject out of his hands.
Ibiki passed off the blade and returned his hands to his subject, slamming back inside swiftly in full of anticipation of a good result.
The lead interrogators suddenly found they were all the way in. Iruka's memory stuck, matched up with the event, his eyes rolling. He was not just remembering, they had him in the moment, reliving it. There was no awareness left for resistance of any kind.
Inoichi had to struggle to get back in with them, and it was all he could do to find the right connection to shore the man up to the level of inner strength he would have had at the time of the original event. He was certain now that in Iruka's current emotionally crippled condition, re-living this experience would crush him past the breaking point without outside reinforcement. So much of his strength had been seated in stubbornness, resentment and bitter rage, the lost balance to his kindly nature. When his support slipped a bit, the waves of unbridled emotion that burst out threw them all back on their haunches before he could contain them again.
Iruka agonized anew at his role as traitor, far more than he allowed himself to suffer over all the other insults his mind and body had endured. The gross exploitation of his loyalty was difficult for the empath to witness, and even worse to hear as Iruka was compelled to describe it aloud. What a cruel thing, to trick him into abandoning such a core principle against his will, then awakening him from the spell to spend the rest of his life holding himself accountable for that engineered disloyalty.
They worked hard, from all angles, to question and manipulate and apply enough pressure to get Iruka's words to flow. The descriptions came in gasped, rushed sentences, in between guttural sounds of anguish and bouts of vomiting.
The goggled assistant had his hands full re-positioning all of the players quickly enough to prevent the subject from aspirating, yet keeping everyone firmly connected. He used jutsu to remove the mess and the odor quickly, knowing well how the sense of smell could provoke the mind in unpredictable ways.
There was no useful information there, however. Jeninki was truly insane, judging from his words to Iruka. The mutilated man had no sense of anything happening to the dead nin or his eyes; Iruka was living what he thought were his last moments before condemnation as a criminal and a traitor. His personal injury and trauma paled in comparison to his shame and disappointment in himself.
Tsunade paused to let Yamanaka catch his breath from the acute trauma, then pushed forward just a bit more, through the recovery in the hospital, back into everyday life, before stopping him by chance at his time of retreat from the academy.
He grieved silently, his face stiffly motionless, as if he was disfigured and masked. His pain was leaden, dark and full of self-loathing. The sudden tumble from his place as a central social figure to a shunned, silent outcast was stunning to witness from the inside. His core adult identity had been brutally stripped away.
The grand plan to work Iruka's mind with a 'good cop, bad cop' group presence fell apart completely. Several times, Inoichi had to recruit Tsunade to assist him in keeping the pieces together. Iruka lost the ability to subjectively understand his own mental state. The information they found here was somewhat new to them, and while of no benefit to their quest, it all rang true, confirming the effectiveness of the method at this stage. They were getting closer, and so far, the mining was going better than expected. Iruka was no longer able to conceal any of his mortifying secrets. They had succeeded in tearing down his psyche to the point where he was a helpless witness to his own past, unable to filter it enough to lessen the pain and embarrassment one whit.
"Finally. Perfect," Tsunade muttered, nodding grimly. This was exactly the level of disintegration she was hoping for – not too much, not too little. Costly, true, to his already destitute well-being...but one had to break eggs to make omelets.
She considered how far and whether to push ahead again, just past the offer of the assignment with Danzou, or into his first training sessions.
But now things would be more difficult. They would have no way to ground him in events they had no knowledge of. And somewhere, soon, they would start hitting Danzou's security measures. Even was already straining to confront them from behind the barrier, rattling the cage, raging at the intrusion. Inoichi was losing effectiveness noticeably in the past hour, running low on chakra for his technique. His skills were going to be vital from here on out.
They had been locked in this struggle long enough. They were at the next stage, a natural breaking off point for the day, so she reluctantly made the decision to stop here and start again tomorrow. She froze Iruka in place to ease the retreat before she disengaged and slipped away, only to find Ibiki had evacuated just as swiftly.
Inoichi didn't let their rush influence him. He stayed behind to clean up some of the damage, applying as much of an emotional bandage as he could before backing out.
Tsunade healed Iruka's bodily injuries with little effort. If he showed any renewed signs of resistance, or any lack in concentration or cooperation, Ibiki could tune him up again in the morning.
But it was with great caution that she lifted the freeze on his movements and voice.
He struggled then, and they let him, watching, assessing.
"Please...give me...my mask..."
"Ah," Tsunade said, now understanding. "Find him something."
Ibiki had but to leave the room for a moment, to pick up a blank porcelain mask from his office. By the time he returned, she was undoing his right arm, allowing him the freedom to put the mask on himself with trembling hand.
"I will...I will...I will do as you wish," he said, holding the mask so tightly to his face his speech was hard to understand.
"Yes. It will be all right. We will be resting now, Iruka. The attendant here will clean you up and prepare you for bed. Eat if you are able, then let him assist you with going directly to sleep. You'll need strength for tomorrow."
Iruka agreed, in thought, trying to latch on to anything that made sense through the humiliating pain and fear. The mask was protecting him. He was being interrogated, and it was about the things that had happened to him in the future, things he did not yet know about. His brain bent and folded into the disrupted sequence of events he was trying hard to assimilate already. Riddled with fright, insecurity, guilt, loneliness and aching for a safe place to hide, it seemed that the mask was all that he had in the way of a friend. It, alone, stood between him and all of the bad things, a woefully inadequate defense against the talons of the world when he had none of his own to call upon.
Through the preparations, and right up until the drugs sent him into dreamless slept, he clutched the mask with both hands, unable eat, drink, toilet, or to gain control of his mind in any useful way.
Jeninki's spirit clone hovered, near the ceiling, well away from the businesslike man in the goggles just in case. This manner of interrogation made him wonder at their righteous indignation over Danzou's training. Iruka was suffering acutely, and they merely changed and trussed him up like an infant, leaving him to squirm and tremble strapped to a cot, obsessing over a mask they'd given him in lieu of anything in the way of real comfort.
They were back to their old tricks. He really was starting to despise the Leaf. Ham-fisted oafs. Given a few days, he could easily have sorted through the mess and aligned the chakra-division however he saw fit. Any eye technique user worth their salt could have been used as the internal guide to make this much easier on the subject, and give them a much higher chance of success. The empath was very skilled in reading and relaying information, but his ability to soothe and influence an individual's will and emotion was limited to suggestion and support. An eye technique user's ability to merge into a person's awareness and move them into carefully crafted realities was far superior in understanding and working with a truly disturbed or dislocated mind.
Jeninki itched to lift his soul, here and now, and take him straightaway to his village.
They made you believe that I took your face away again, didn't they? Without ever understanding that I did it for your sake, not theirs. That it revealed to you what selfish, cruel animals they are. And you learned my lesson well. But...they didn't let you remember that part. The gave you back all the difficulty and the pain and isolation, then left you alone to let it eat into your mind like acid, with nowhere to turn and no way to work through it like you managed to before. My mental issues may have warped my methods, but never my intent. I never intended for you to suffer meaninglessly like this.
The man in the goggles was starting to look around the room with an air of suspicion. A crystal on the shelf was wavering with a touch of red light, and he would look closely at it before searching the area.
Jeninki felt the attendant's chakra rising, the sweeping tendrils trying to detect if it was an intruder causing the faint reaction in the sensing crystal, or just something nearby but outside of the room.
Iruka's guard was just one man. Wouldn't it be a good opportunity to attack and take his precious subject away? That sounded so tempting. He could straighten out the mess the interrogators made in no time. And Iruka-kun would be relieved, and grateful, and since his defenses were oh-so sweetly softened by all of this stress and damage, they would surely bond together more deeply than they ever might have otherwise.
But he held his impulse of desire in check. This was the intelligence facility, and the presumed perfect, undetectable method he'd used for spying had been detected to a degree, so they did have some rudimentary skills. He'd have to transport his physical body into the room to perform an induction here, and that was not even his first choice. The risk of trying to remove Iruka alive and intact was far greater. He was certain of his ability to do so; his fighting skills, enhanced by his unbeatable eye technique, would prevail against oafish brutes such as these. But it would surely be an act of war, one that the egotistical, vengeful Leaf would insist on combing the world to answer. It would start exactly the sort of situation he had spent so long lurking about in the shadows to avoid.
He took one last look in frustrated sorrow at the tormented figure on the cot, whose welfare was now largely ignored by his suspiciously searching caretaker, and moved up, skirting away along the ceiling. He stayed high, making sure he could reach the exit door before dropping swiftly to seep out through the threshold in order to finish evaporating in the hallway, in case the release was detectable, all without getting touched by the now vigorous chakra search.
Jeninki stared at the hammer in his hand dimly lit by the setting sun, reunited with his physical body on the property just outside of the T&I compound. It had come to a choice, and as the steward of his village, he was not free to risk his own freedom nor his villager's safe harbor in exchange for one man's soul no matter how he felt about saving him.
Taking up the rhythm of pounding nails in wood, he had to take a hard look at his own motives again.
I'd like to think that I'm better than your people, Iruka-kun, but from your perspective, I think it would seem just the same. It's best that you didn't know I was there, witnessing that they are hurting you terribly yet offering you no solace, no escape. I'm a bit restricted by the situation, though, and their options are endless. They torment you as their chosen path, even when it makes no sense. I guess it comes down to greed in the end. We still think we have the right to vie for the prize that is your soul, despite the fact that it already resides with the rightful owner – you.
Danzou had offered to provide shelter and solace, and right now, in spite of the mechanical sort of comfort he was offering, no doubt itching to put his new body to the test through sparring or whatever – it was better than lingering here, torn and tempted to betray his people's trust, putting himself at risk as well.
No one was about; he moved out of the line of sight of the nin's home and the compound, just far enough to finish the day's work with a sweep of chakra instead mind-numbing labor.
He used the minimum amount of power, to keep the backlash from his teleportation from alerting anyone who might be sensing the area; he knew it would have been wiser to walk, but he suddenly felt far too impatient for distraction from his guilt to wait for any other form of transport.
xxxxx
"He'll be very difficult to hold together now," Inoichi warned over his shoulder, cleaning errant vomit off his hands under the steaming tap, anxious to rein in their mistaken assumption of victory. "Very difficult. The risk of losing everything, the information and any chance of restoring him, will just keep growing."
"But we've got him in exactly the right condition. Whatever he sees, whatever he experiences, whatever he remembers, we'll get it all out of him. 100%. No filters. Zero defenses. He's cracked wide open. This is better transparency than I dared to hope for," Tsunade said. "As we bring Even in, there's every reason to believe that we'll be able to see straight through him as well."
"I don't think this is a good development at all. And I see the next step as possibly negating all of what you're calling progress. Even was an impressive, formidable force when he was without feelings. Now you must add to his side the raw power of negative emotions, the inflated confidence and bravery, the pride of self-glorifying conviction, all of it untempered by the compassion and conscience and fear and self-doubt that's strangling his other side. Separated from the personality we've been dealing with, this is an incredibly dangerous opponent. If he gets a free hand, the very first thing he will do is try to eliminate his weaker self, and we may not be able to stop him."
"If that weaker side is eliminated, we will never get a crumb of useful information from him. Even's seals are integrated into his consciousness and if he fully reinstates control of the entire mind, he will be able to sabotage any attempt to remove or disarm them. They will remain intact and in full, if not greater, force. He cannot be allowed to prevail. There must be some way to empower Iruka so that Even can be absorbed back into his psyche, while leaving Danzou's booby traps behind for removal," Ibiki frowned and dropped his pen on the note pad, shaking his head. No brute force would have any effect. And after this tremendous assault, there would certainly be no hope of tricking him or slipping by his defenses.
"It's clear to me that in our current configuration, just going ahead the way we have been, the odds of success are actually quite low. Our abilities enable us, as a team, to extract the information that he can be made to reveal; but not one of us can see past that, into the memories and emotions that Even retains so long as he has his seals and the will to resist. We need reinforcements, someone with that rare technique. Can we utilize Hatake Kakashi?" Inoichi asked.
"That would be a mistake," Ibiki snapped. "Like throwing an anchor to a drowning man."
"Not so fast," Tsunade said, suddenly liking the idea very much. "Go on."
"He's an important person to Iruka. While they seem to have had a somewhat unhealthy personal relationship, he is someone that Iruka readily admits to regarding as powerful and reliable when it comes to duty, someone he admires for his capability in controlling people and events in extremely hazardous conditions. He would definitely be an empowering influence if he were to provide the support. And I would suspect he would know when to be subtle in penetrating Iruka's defenses."
"You must be thinking of somebody else if you think this guy's subtle," Ibiki snorted. "And of course he's powerful. But is that really a positive when there's the matter of trust?"
"Deep down, Iruka solidly regards him as a comrade. Whatever else they've gone through, he is adamant that he never suspected him or had any doubt about him in a business sense. Witness his description of seeing him decapitate his captor; he knew instantly upon seeing Kakashi's face that his life was saved, and he also knew that his presence meant the situation was solidly under Leaf dominion. This isn't a social situation. I believe that Iruka would trust him with his life if he were in danger, as much or more than he would any of the elite jounin class nins. And in this particular situation, I also believe that their former relationship will make it less stressful. Surely Kakashi has witnessed him in a variety of emotionally difficult times. I'm not saying that it will make it easy for Iruka to be seen in this way, but it should be easier than if we used someone he's always presented with a polished image. Don't forget that embarrassment and mortification are two crosses this side of his personality bears alone now. With the sort of history he has with Hatake, much of his personal weakness should already be known to a Sharingan user."
"I'm not nearly as convinced of his reliability. I've already seen proof that he's not above using a professional situation for his own seedy, subversive agendas. If he makes some shady move to get in places he doesn't belong, in this situation, everything could be lost. Couldn't it? We'd lose Iruka's faith and cooperation. If Even sensed any of it, his rage element..."
"Morino, I will take your protest under advisement," Tsunade interrupted. "but I have to go with Inoichi on this one. Meeting's over. I'm heading to the infirmary."
"It's a huge risk!"
"It all is, no matter how we play this. I honestly think, now, that this whole mess is a huge risk, the risk of becoming a lost cause. I've made many mistakes in judgment, ever setting this up the way I did. Danzou is too devious and clever to be caught by such fragile, intricate games, and the eyes are an issue we still don't fully understand. I take full responsibility for the fallout. And so, now, I'll do what in my opinion gives us the best chance of getting anything of value out of this venture."
She left the conference room without further comment or farewell. Ibiki wanted to slam his fist into the wall, but he had better self-control than that.
"It's not the same at all, is it?" Inoichi asked rhetorically. "It's really so much less complicated to maim and torture and interrogate an enemy than to debrief our own man."
"I enjoy doing a proper debriefing. That's not what this is. This, this is just a ridiculous fucking mess. She's right. We cooked up a massive failure of a plan and now we're just cleaning up our own shit. What's just as bad, if not worse, is that the problem we were trying address with the Uzingan hasn't been advanced at all, and it won't be while we're wasting all our time and resources coddling one man!"
"You're not angry at Umino, are you?" Inoichi asked incredulously. "None of this is his fault!"
"If he wasn't such a massive pussy to start with..." Ibiki shot off without thinking, and stopped. No, that was his old opinion, a knee-jerk reaction he used to have to Iruka from the old days. He wasn't even sure why he said it, because he didn't think that way about him anymore, even about the Iruka from before his assignment to work on the files.
It was his low opinion of Iruka that started all these balls rolling, way back then. So maybe the fault was his own. In his role, assessing the men was part of his job, one that didn't always seem all that important at times, compared to his other responsibilities. In this case, his mistakes in assessment were germane to all that came to pass afterward.
"Are you serious?"
Ibiki shook his head. "No. Sorry. Forget it. I'm just frustrated. Go home. Rest up. I'll try to come in with my happy face on tomorrow. You do the same."
Yamanaka swallowed back the argument his head was still cranking out and with a nod, left the chief investigator to his own devices. He didn't look like he was planning on going back in with Iruka. The idea that he was now a touch worried for Iruka's well-being when left alone with Ibiki was most discomfiting. There was an odd dynamic there that he still did not quite understand.
He suspected that Ibiki didn't, either. People did have a tendency to get attached to Iruka for all the wrong reasons, perhaps because he was attractive and unusual and interesting, and gave off a unique vibe that excited people with predatory tendencies. Inoichi was still hoping to figure out what was so different about him after all this was over, but depending on the level of success here, there might not be a second chance.
"Morino-san?" the bird-masked ANBU inquired, worried at his leader's scowl as he stormed into the office.
In his mind, he walked up, smacked the mask right off his man, told him to pick it up and get the fuck out, and proceeded to smash all the furniture in the room to bits with his bare hands.
"It's nothing," he said tightly. "Stand to in the hall. No visitors. Close the door on your way out."
If Kakashi pulls this off. If he comes in and succeeds. Does that make him the hero? I've fucked this up from the start, but so has he. Will this make that son of a bitch come out on top?
Since when do I give a shit about something like that, comparing myself to a jounin? We're not even in the same field. Comparison doesn't make any sense. It isn't because we're both trying to control the life of the same man, is it? Two dogs in a dominance contest, always snarling over the same bone?
"Ridiculous," he said out loud to the empty room. "Absolutely ridiculous."
xxxx
Sakura pulled the empty bag hanger aside to stow it away and smoothed the sheet. Kakashi was half-in and half-out of sleep, so she was deliberate in making her identity known before she touched his skin directly. You didn't make that mistake more than once with an injured jounin, at least not inadvertently. There were times when you had no choice but to move on them when they could not be sure who was around them, but that was part of the reason medics had to be durable nin as well.
"Much better," she said, smiling. His skin tone was back to normal, his vitals all strong again. Lagging just a little behind, his chakra was about 2/3 restored, if not more. There was no question now that his recovery would be full and robust, despite his brush with death.
"Thanks," he sighed. "Whatever that last stuff you gave me was, it's really strong."
"Well, now that you're stronger, anything that's going to help you relax has to be stronger as well."
"Hn."
"Don't worry; I can't imagine that you'll have to stay much longer."
Kakashi said nothing; in a normal recovery, he'd have been out of here days ago. But the ANBU liked him right where he was, where sedation and seclusion were quite handy and the options for movement few.
He raised his head slightly and caught the ANBU's sudden shift. Before he could shake off the cobwebs enough to be concerned, a familiar figure was filling the doorway.
"Hey, brat. Are you tired of lazing around yet?"
He nodded, noting Sakura's sincere flush of admiration for her mentor. That was how things should be, between teacher and student, he reflected. He kind of got that vibe from her, back in the day, and even now at times. But Naruto wasn't exactly reverent as a student...and don't even think about Sasuke or Sai.
"Good. We need you at the compound."
"T & I?" he asked, a little surprised. After all, he had been cordially invited to steer clear of the place under threat of severe punishment.
"Yes."
"Of course. Let's go."
"Whoa, now. That's an excellent attitude. But I'll send some men to bring you in early tomorrow, around dawn. You've been able to eat normally? How are your motor skills?"
"Good."
"Here is his chart, Lady Tsunade. I just finished the last update. He's off the I.V. for good now. The only thing he's had in the way of medication is the tranquilizer you ordered."
"Excellent. You have the constitution of a bull elephant, Hatake. Fortune has smiled upon you once again."
"Has something happened?"
"Nothing to worry about. There's a little matter of complexity in our investigation that we need your help with, that's all. You do have enough stamina built up to use the eye technique, correct?"
"Yes. Absolutely." Did this imply that Iruka was okay with letting him back into his mind? Or was there some other angle? He would not pass up an opportunity to be there, on the inside, to make his own decisions about the way Iruka should be treated.
Tsunade stepped up close.
"What do you think? Will your chakra need a boost?"
"I'll concentrate on raising it, starting now. By the morning I'll be fine."
"Good, good. Keep him calm and no interruptions, Sakura. You as well," she addressed the ANBU. "Insure that there are no visitors."
Kakashi pressed his fingers together and let his hands relax on his chest, already folding into a trance to induce the maximum amount of chakra recovery in the shortest length of time.
"Such obedience boggles the mind," Tsunade chuckled as she waved farewell to Sakura and the silent animal mask, flouncing into the hall with a nice relaxing evening of recovery sake high on her agenda.
Shutting out the world was one thing. It was silent once her footsteps faded away. The man at the doorway didn't make any detectable sound, trained to the point that you couldn't even tell that he was breathing.
But shutting down his thoughts? – quite another.
They needed his skills to assist them, and for Ibiki to cave to that need, it had to be acute. Iruka's circumstance was dire. There could be no doubt. His mind spun double-time with worry and anxiety. She should have given him more information. It might help to be prepared, somehow.
Were they looking to him to be the hero? Many people pinned that badge to him over the years. Legendary. Genius. Unparalleled elite.
He didn't see it. His entire life, he had been a failure. His mother died and in his tiny heart, seeing his father's grief and isolation, he felt that it was his fault. The only way to redeem himself was to become a powerful ninja, in order to protect the people he held dear. Yet one after another – his father, Obito, Ren, Minato, Kushina, Jiriaya...they all died, directly or indirectly, because he failed to protect them. Yet year after solitary year, the accolades increased; of course, his fame all centered around his mercenary work. His keen instincts for the hunt, and his cold capability in taking lives. The only difference between being lauded as the legendary copy-ninja and being hung as a deranged serial killer was the existence of the mission desk. A scroll legitimatized his heinous activities, but heinous they were, and he didn't blink twice at taking on the worst of them. As each elimination burned darkness into his soul, he took it in and hardened just a little more. It was just. It was his role. He strove to beat his fellows to the kill, earning well the reputation for blood lust and heartlessness.
It was all right. They would think bad things about him anyway, he was the trash that let every person he loved in the world die. His only reason to live, then, was to spare others the same fate. Every throat he slashed, every family he murdered, every marked child whose mind he froze with his dead friend's eye to shield them from the pain and fear as he robbed them of their lives...every one became his burden of guilt instead of his comrades'. The more he killed, the fewer his peers had to. The more blood on his hands, the less on theirs. His talent for slaughter, ever-increasing with practice and his broadening collection of copied jutsu, grew without limit. If he could kill all that must be killed, and save all that could be saved, no other would ever find themselves damned to be the failure he would forever be. An impossible dream, but he saw no choice but to pursue it to the exclusion of all else.
He tried to tell himself that he never let people get all that close. His friends were just comrades in arms, the peers who shared his professional angst over brews and the odd buddy-fuck when his depression tried to get the best of him. By eliminating close personal relationships, it seemed that he had managed to stop watching loved ones die one after another, and while the trade-off was painful, at least this pain was his alone.
But it was too late to refute the truth here. Iruka had come to be very special, very deep in his heart. He hadn't asked for it. He'd fought it unconsciously all along, sabotaging their relationship as he greedily took all that he could from the situation without making the commitments necessary to give it half a chance in the long run. He tried to spin it as if he were some superior being, allowing Iruka to service him in hero-worship, dismissing him as lesser man, then gracing him with the gift of undeserved equality just to show how generous he was.
What an ass. In the end, he fell completely, like a stone, like a tree, dropped by the gravity of the truth when he witnessed the rare qualities of Iruka's inner mind.
He stood in awe and knew at once he was the lesser man. Morality, honesty, benevolence, selflessness, diligence, bravery...Iruka was made of those things, and most of them he concealed, under the cloak of deference and servitude. No wonder he was confused and frustrated by his lover's behavior. It was known far and wide by comrades and strangers alike how admirable and brave a soul the legendary Kakashi was; but up close, man to man, the reality of the human being did not bear up under close examination.
Yet Iruka did look closely, closer than anyone, and he never shied away or allowed himself to be intimidated. He cared for his friends with an almost unheard of honesty. Through all of the bravado and posturing and provoking and manipulations, Iruka persisted in his attempt to cut through the bullshit and stay by his side. He toughed it out for an insanely long time, taking shit no one else would have tolerated, fighting in hopes that Kakashi would finally settle down and stop creating the hellish dramas the tore through their relationship like cannon fire. Not because he was star-struck and wanted to get collateral admiration as the partner of a bingo-book superstar. Not because he had designs on getting better treatment or moving into a nicer neighborhood.
But because he truly cared for Kakashi, in a special way, in a way that he felt for no other. That caring, the exact form of which Kakashi railed in jealousy over, accusing Iruka of just the opposite – despite all his partner's efforts at poisoning, despite being brainwashed and divided and scrambled back up again by Danzou – that caring was still intact inside Iruka's soul. He'd given up on the fight but never denied it in his heart, something Kakashi, in all his courage and wisdom, could not begin to risk.
I've lied to myself, while living a lie. But this is not a time to be giving up. It's time to commit; to admit that I do have a bond, every bit as strong as the ones I had with those I let die. I must not let history repeat itself again. With everything in my power, I must swear to protect him. I won't shy away, and when all of this is through, if he shares that will - I won't leave him behind ever again.
I don't want to live endless days alone anymore, marking time until I take the mission that takes me out for good, sometimes wishing for it, always pretending that I don't care if I die tomorrow. Konoha needs my ugly mug and tough exterior, but I need to be more to survive the privacy of my own home.
I need to do this. I need Iruka to live. I never wanted to feel for anybody again, but it can't be helped. I have to save him. In my life, somehow, as I live and breathe...I need to stop turning a blind eye to the truth and actually save him. I can't allow them to harm someone who is close to me again. I must not fail.
Obito's eye was outdoing itself, weeping ridiculous torrents of tears, soaking through the gauze and tricking down his jawline to drip off his chin. In contrast, his natural eye was dry and a bit itchy and sore.
"Are you all right, Hatake-san?" the ANBU guard asked quietly, regarding him at his bedside. "Shall I call someone?"
He shook his head and tried to dry his eye, but Obito was having none of it.
He cleared his throat roughly and shrugged. He supposed he might feel differently, in the cold morning light, rested and free of the tranquilizer, standing once more in front of the people he habitually distanced with his lifelong façade of brutality.
"It's just the medication," he managed in a tight, hoarse whisper. He almost wished it were the truth.