Disclaimer - I do NOT own Naruto or any Naruto Character.

A/N - Fixed some mistakes. Gomen if there's still some!

(WARNING- GRAPHIC VIOLENCE.)

Chapter 17 - Torture

Kaoru hit the floor pretty badly. Thankfully she still had her backpack and that prevented the fall from being worse.

"Don't think I'm done with you, you little slut, you have no idea what I'm gonna do to you..." her father left the room and closed the door.

Kaoru stood in the floor. With her glove she cleaned the blood falling in her eye. Her head hurt really bad, but not as bad as her ear. The kunoichi took of her bag and then she noticed... her room was empty. The bed was gone and her small vanity too. The few items she had were trashed on the floor. In the space where her bed was, was what seemed to be a small futon.

'They took my furniture'

Kaoru crawled into the opposite wall from the door, and embraced herself. Her knees next to her chest. Tears felt, mixing with the blood. She wanted to blame this whole thing on someone.

'If Kankuro didn't kiss me...

But it's not his fault, he didn't knew...

It's my fault, I shouldn't be friends with him

I shouldn't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't!'

The door opened again, her father came with a couple of scrolls in his hands. Kaoru knew very well what does scrolls were. She trembled when she saw them. He was going to do it again... To work on her seal in the back.

The man opened the two scrolls and crossed them, after a few hand signs the scrolls glowed and sealing marks appeared on the floor. Kaoru stood as close as she could to the wall, even though she knew deep down inside it was meaningless.

"Kaoru come here." the man spoke. The girl could barely move, but even if she could she wouldn't. Her body automaticaly responded in a self-defence mode. Every inch of her body and mind wanted to stay as far as it could from that seal on the floor.

"COME HERE NOW!" he ordered the girl, but Kaoru didn't move. Disobeying her father could make him even more insane, but that pain that expected her... He moved towards her and grabbed her again by the hair like before. Kaoru tried to fight back, punching the man unsuccessfully. The man thew her on the floor right in the middle of the seal, she fell face down.

"Trying to fight back? You have become sassy, haven't you? Was it that boy was it?" he grabbed her head with one hand and the other hand grabbed her arm twisting behind her back. Karou screamed in pain, tears fell nonstop.

"P-please father..." she tried to speak.

"Please what?" the man said taking of her forehead protector. He spit on it and trowed it across the room.

"Please stop...", Kaoru cried.

"Why would I stop when I can work on you?" The man grabbed a long kunai he had hidden underneath his clothes and started to cut her vest taking it off. He pinned her hands above her head on the floor and stabbed them with a kunai so she couldn't escape, Kaoru's screams were now louder than ever, if the walls of the house weren't soundproof the whole neighborhood would hear it.

"Stop that noise!", he said pushing her hair. As much as Kaoru wanted to stop she couldn't, the sobbing sounds came out of her without her control. She just wished her father could hit her on the head so bad she would blackout. But she knew that would never happen, her father made always on purpose to make sure she was conscious to feel everything.

For someone who was beaten almost all her life, she should be used to this kind of torture this kind of pain, but in reality each time was even worse than before. Kaoru had won a great tolerance for pain, she could bare it more than a normal person, but there were limits. Even the greatest shinobi would not handle torture above a certain degree. If pain was the meaning of being alive, than Kaoru wished to die.

The fabric of her gloves was cut enough for her arms to be bare. Her seals showing. She could feel now her shirt being cut in her back.

"Now you will tell me everything that hap-", the man suddenly shut up, "What's the meaning of this?"

The man looked surpised at her back. It wasn't what he expected to see, her healed wounds. And the way they were healed caught his attention.

"Are these stitch marks?" the man asked passing his hand on top of it. Kaoru didn't say anything, her father somehow started to panick.

"Who did this?" he asked the girl."WHO DID THIS?"

He cut the middle of her back, right were the seals connected. Kaoru could feel the blood sliding from her back into the front.

"WAS IT THE KAZEKAGE'S BROTHER?" he interrogated mutilating randomly her back. As much as the kunoichi wanted not to scream it was impossible.

"NO!" she screamed.

"Does he know?" Kaoru replied No, if he knew Kankuro knew about it, he probably would find a way to kill him. He was a psychopath. The man started to cut through the sealings in her arms, "WHO HEALED YOU?"

"A ra-random low genin... I-I ahhh... I told her it was from a mission, no one knows...please stop." Kaoru couldn't handle it anymore. There was so much blood on the floor. Maybe she would die from the blood lost. The thought sound so marvelous in her head, but the image of Kiba appeared in her mind. The good moments she spent with him, and there was also Kankuro.

'That's what... friends do right?'

Kankuro's words...

'Friends...'

*Flashback*

"Kaoru-chan why do you always play with me?"

"Because it's what friends do, right Kuro-kun?"

*End flashback*

Kaoru cried even more thinking about it. The lost memories she had locked inside her mind. Her body begged for death, but her mind couldn't, she couldn't leave them, her lover and her... friend.

"LIAR!" the yell from the man awoke her fainted state. "I can feel your chackra when you're lying! WHO HEALED YOU? IT WAS HIM, WASN'T?", the man took of the kunai pinning her hands and turned Kaoru around so she was facing him, her bloody back on the floor. He pulled her shirt up, showing the seal on her stomach. He smirked.

"You think you can stay silent? I just broke the seals that prevent from others to use chackra on you." he passed his hand slowy through her summoning seal, "You will tell me everything right after you start to feel your inside's boiling."

Kaoru's eyes widen in despair. Her father had put a seal on her stomach a couple of years ago, it was to summon a Katon (fire style) jutsu inside her, he always threatned the girl that he would activate the jutsu if she tried to escape. That was the main reason, she always bared with the whole suffering. It was impossible to escape her father. The man hold the key in his own body.

He took of his shirt showing in his chest a small hand size seal, if he activated it with chackra and blood the summoning seal on Kaoru's stomach would react immediatly. So the man didn't even had to be nearby Kaoru to make it work.

The man stood up and smirked. Kaoru tried to move but she couldn't, the grand circle on the floor drained slowly her chackra numbing her pressure points. It was a personalized seal that would only drain Kaoru's chackra.

The man bit his thumb, and made hand signs. Kaoru screamed for the man to stop. She wasn't to say anything about who knew her previous wounded seals, but she didn't wanted to die.

She saw the man's lips moving... "Katon: Hi no..."

'Please someone save me...

Kiba-kun... Kankuro-kun...

Kankuro please'

The girl screamed with full lungs. The burning inside her was behind unbarable. Reasonable thought was long lost... The light in her eyes was gone, the sounds around her disappeared, she could only hear the miserable screams of a woman. Herself...

Kankuro watched as the girl and her father leaving the office. He had a bad feeling, as if something was escaping from his fingers. The puppeteer turned to his brother. The younger boy was looking at him, as if he wanted to ask something. The older brother frowned.

"What?", he asked Gaara.

"I see your relationship with Kaoru-san improved." Gaara said, clearly refering to that kiss the puppeteer gave to the girl.

"What relationship? We are just friends..." Kankuro said puting his scrolls and bag next to the wall.

"Friends is a good thing, I'm glad I put you two in the same mission." Gaara spoke, Kankuro could swear he saw a little smile in his brother's face.

"Whatever... Did you get what I asked you?" Kankuro said changing subject.

"Yes, but it wasn't as easy as you think to get these without no one noticing." Gaara said giving some scrolls and files that he kept in his desk's drawer.

"I knew you could do it. You're the Kazekage after all." Kankuro said sitting in the couch Gaara had in the corner of the office. He unscrolled one of the scrolls and started to read it.

"Aren't you going home? You also have a couple of days off." Gaara said.

"I'm just gonna give a quick glance at this." Kankuro read the first scroll, it was about Kaoru's personal information. Nothing out of normal. Then he opened one of the files, and a picture fell, his eyes widen. It was a woman dead in the morgue's table, the woman had the same colour of hair as Kaoru.

"What's this?" he asked himself, knowing perfectly it was the file about the kunoichi's mother death.

Gaara across the room, saw the file Kankuro held in his hands.

"That was the most problematic file to get.", the Kazekage said. He saw his brother carefully reading every single line of that document. It was strange, he wasn't used to see the puppeteer so interested in someone besides himself.

"Why this says that Kaoru's mother death was inconclusive? Didn't she killed herself?", Kankuro asked. Gaara thought for a moment his answer, he had read the file too before Kankuro.

"Her husband had said he found her dead at home, she had performed a suicide jutsu, but the coroner thought differently. He had found a strange seal in the body and thought about homicide. However two days later the coroner was executed for treason, it seemed he was selling national information to other countries, so his word wasn't considerated reliable."

"A strange seal?" Kankuro asked.

"Yes, there's a picture in there with the seal."

Kankuro turned the pages until he found out the picture, and he couldn't believe what he saw. The photo showed a familiar seal in the woman's stomach. Kankuro stood up quickly and searched in his bag, for Kaoru's medical file that Sakura gave him in Konoha. He found it and open it, he looked for the piece of papper which Sakura had copied the seal Kaoru had in her stomach. He compared it with the dead woman's photo, and he gasped.

Gaara stood up and move towards the puppeteer. He saw the two images.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Kaoru has this seal in her stomach. It's a summoning seal. It's the same that her mother had also in the same place." Kankuro frowned, "The autopsy said her mother died from the seal...", Kankuro grabbed the file and read loud, "The seal summoned a Katon Jutsu inside the subject's body. The jutsu caused the death, boiling the organs and flesh, and evaporating the blood and water in the system. This is bullshit, who would kill themself in this horrible way?"

"Maybe it wasn't suicide after all. Someone might put the seal on her, and then ignited it. However there was no psysical proofs of that. Summoning seals normally are opened with chackra or blood, and there was nothing in there. The body was untouched."

"Damn, Kaoru had the same seal... at least she's safe." Kankuro reminded himself loud.

"She's safe?"

"Yes, no one can use chackra against her. She has seals on herself that prevent from others to use chackra on her or against her."

"Against her? That's impossible. At least has to have a limited usage."

"Yeah, I think it's in a radius of 3 meters.", Kankuro said.

"What if the attacker is farther than 3 meters? What if someone can turn on the summoning jutsu from distance?" Gaara asked like he was proving a point.

"No one can do that, it's too difficult.", Kankuro said frowning.

"Not even for an expert in seals?" Gaara asked. Now Kankuro knew Gaara was trying to say something.

"Are you thinking in someone in particular?" the puppeteer knew who Gaara was refering to, but he wanted to hear him say it.

"Yes, and you know who I'm talking about..."

"But her father... is an alright guy, right? He's a hero..." Kankuro frowned, thinking about everything. All the events of the past weeks flashing through his eyes, everything coming together like pieces of puzzle, "She has being tortured for several years. Her body is mostly covered by seals, her back had seals cut in to the skin, impossible for her to reach."

Gaara was shocked hearing what his brother was revealing, but his face kept looking normal as always, only a small glint of anger was in his eyes.

"Her father is an expert in seals." he spoke. Kankuro nodded.

"She begged me to not tell her father several times, to not inform him about her accident." Kankuro said, he continued, "She was scared he would know someone knew about what he did."

"In his file, it showed that he had an accident in a mission, where most of his team died. The previous Kazekage... our father made a confidential report saying Kurokaze was in no psychological conditions to be outdoors. He removed him from shinobi duties and his wife took responsability to take care of him." Gaara said.

"I heard that. He got better when his wife died, Kaoru's mother died. Some said he got better because he was raising Kaoru alone and that gave him a sense of purpose."

"He didn't raise Kaoru-san alone. He re-married less than a year after." Gaara looked straight forward to his brother, "Kankuro I think our father covered it all, it is a fact that he killed his wife. It's obvious."

Kankuro stood there without knowing what to think. Gaara put an hand on his brother shoulder. Kankuro looked at his brother in disbelief, that kind of affection wasn't something Gaara usually did.

"Gaara... I'm so stupid... when we were young... she was always with me, and when her mother died, she stopped talking to me... and now in Konoha... the signs were all there and I..."

"It's not your fault."

"But I was the only person she had closest to a friend..."

"You didn't do anything to triguer her father's madness." suddenly Gaara's eyes widen.

"What?" Kankuro asked afraid of what his brother realized.

"You kissed her and in front of her father..."

Kankuro's heart fell on the floor. He remembered the reaction the girl had, she acted politly towards him, like they were mere fellow shinobis. She was scared. The bad feeling he had when they both left. That scared look in her eyes. She was completly afraid.

"Fuck." Kankuro grabbed one of his scrolls and ran away from the office.

"Kankuro wait!" Gaara said, he knew where his brother was going, but it could be too dangerous.

Kankuro ran as much as he could, it was all his fault, he tried to find who hurt the girl and he ended up feeding the wolf.

He ran as fast as he could hoping it was not too late...

To be continued...