When Kakashi re-appears in his apartment, he is not alone. Against the wall stands Rooster, back straight.
Kakashi feels dread drip down his spine.
No one is supposed to be waiting for him.
Kakashi is supposed to give his debrief in the pits of T&I, in a sealed room with the Hokage—who would be transformed into Ibiki—and Shikaku—who would be transformed into Inoichi—while Ibiki and Inoichi themselves were hidden in safe rooms of their respective houses.
Rooster turns to face him.
"Kakashi-san," Rooster says. "You are needed in the council room, post-haste. There was an incident with your student."
Kakashi is in front of the Hokage building before Rooster finishes speaking. The guards at the door step aside to let him pass. The doors open, the silence jutsu breaks, and Kakashi is swarmed with noise that falls silent when all eyes in the room fall upon him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sakura, standing, a little hunched, her posture frightened, her forehead protector tied vertically, like a hairband, instead of horizontally, like she always has before, tails hanging most of the way down her back. Across from her is Hiashi, who, when he meets Kakashi's eyes, pales noticeably.
Sakura turns to him—
And there, on her forehead, is the Hyuuga curse seal.
Three members of the civilian guilds collapse when his killing intent descends upon the room.
Slowly, Kakashi turns to Hiashi. Shikaku, Inoichi and Chouza are all between them. He has no hiraishin seals in this room, so he'll need to cross them, and two other jounin besides.
"Ah, Kakashi-kun," the Hokage greets him, setting a hand on his shoulder that pins him forcefully in place. "I trust you had a restful vacation. I've always loved the land of Hot Water."
Kakashi slowly reigns his killing intent back in.
"Very restful, although it does seem I've missed some very important things while I was gone."
"Indeed," the Hokage agrees, drawing Kakashi with him, away from Hiashi and the five jounin Kakashi was about three or four seconds from tearing through to get to him. The Hokage's hand on his shoulder is like iron, completely immovable.
Kakashi comes to a stop beside Sakura, and she gives him a faint smile. "I guess I should have kept my mouth shut about the Hyuuga, like you said," she says, and Kakashi feels fury rise in him again. He sees her words ripple through the assembled members of the council, turning further glares upon Hiashi.
Sakura, since she received her forehead protector, has never worn it vertically. She has always tied it like he does, like every branch member he's ever met.l. Even the non-shinobi cover the foreheads with plain white linen.
Kakashi takes that thought, and pushes it deep, deep down.
Kakashi sets a hand on her shoulder in comfort, and turns back to the council. The Hokage retakes his position at the head of the table, but still very much in arm's reach. Although really, it's the other way around. The Hokage is still very loudly within arm's reach of Kakashi.
"Now that we have everyone present," the Hokage says. "Sakura, would you mind telling the council what happened?"
"Um," Sakura says, shoulders hunched. Her eyes flicker fearfully at Hiashi, and then up at Kakashi. The tension in the room rises another notch, and Hiashi's face tightens. Behind his shoulders, his second and his elder glare balefully back at the rest of the table, Hyuuga pride on full display. "Okay," she says. "Um," she starts again, her shoulders tensing. "Higura called me into his room, saying um, something about how if I really cared about Neji, there was something he wanted to show me?" Kakashi takes a deep breath. "And then he put one of those, those chakra suppression bracelets on me. I didn't—I didn't know what it was, and then he—" Sakura's voice breaks.
Kakashi squeezes her shoulder, and Gamami squeezes her hand where she sits on the table before Sakura.
"He said if I like Neji so much, then the Hyuuga have something for that, and he started—" she touched her forehead. The seal is still enflamed. "I didn't know they were allowed to do that."
"They're not," Shikaku says, and his ordinarily airy voice is cold and hard. The elder behind Hiashi's shoulder sneers.
"She's lying," he says.
"Let her finish," the Hokage says.
"I have to sit here and listen to this—"
"I am your Hokage," the Hokage says, and the room falls dead silent. Slowly the elder bows his head. "Sakura, please continue."
"After he made it, he um, he used it. It hurt—a lot, and I screamed, but he said no one could hear me. He took off the bracelet, and he said if I ever looked at him wrong again, he would—" Sakura breaks off again, curling into herself, and Kakashi lets killing intent trickle out of him once again. "He didn't stop using it, though. He just—he kept doing it, so I. I took my kunai, and when he stopped to tell me about how worthless I was, I drove it into his neck. I killed him, so he would stop."
Silence weighs heavy over the table.
"Thank you, Sakura," the Hokage says.
Sakura nods, still faintly shaking.
Hiashi's face, across the table, is ashen.
This story, if true, is catastrophic for the Hyuuga. He is, as clan head, responsible for their members. The Hyuuga have built a stable coalition, through the Village elders, the civilians, and three of the major ninja clans, but no one will stand with them in this. And it isn't just a matter of their council status, the legality of their seal. Who will let a Hyuuga have their back in a mission? Who will negotiate deals with them?
Clans have died for less.
"Hikomaro," the Hokage says. "You may speak."
Hikomaro's lips twist. "She's lying. We all knew how much she hated Higura for using his right, by the founding documents of this village, to discipline our own."
This does not reduce the tension around the table at all. The fact the Hyuuga's seal can be used to produce agony is, while not common knowledge, well known to everyone in the room. However, through strict discipline on their branch house members, they have kept the frequency with which it is used out of public knowledge.
"How do we even know that seal is real? The shape of our seal is common knowledge, and it would be trivial to copy it." He makes a seal with a disdainful sneer, and Sakura crumples with a cry a moment before Kakashi drives his kunai through Hikomaro hand, and into the table. When he had entered the room, there had been five jounin between him and Hiashi. This time, however, Kakashi had been sitting across the open gap of the oval council table from Hikomaro and Hiashi. This time, there had been no one between them.
Hikomaro is screaming, hand partially crushed under the force, to say nothing of the kunai Kakashi drove through it, but behind Kakashi, Sakura stops screaming.
Everyone is suddenly on their feet, hands on their weapons.
Hiashi hasn't moved, his eyes on Kakashi's.
Kakashi has never been more within his rights to kill one of his fellow Leaf citizens in his entire life.
"Kakashi-kun," the Hokage says. Kakashi looks back at his Hokage, at his student, and then the council members around him. He places his hand on Hikomaro's, ignoring his cry of agony, and rips his kunai from the man's hand.
Hikomaro crumbles to the ground, and Kakashi wipes his kunai off on his pants as he walks back to his place beside Sakura and helps her to her feet.
"That was a little extreme," the Hokage says, quite falsely. "Hiashi, do you wish to take umbrage with Kakashi's behavior before the council."
Hiashi shakes his head.
"I would not."
"Toushu-sama—"
"Be silent, Hikoya. Take my father, and return to the compound."
There is silence as Hikoya helps carry his grandfather to the door.
He looks out across the table. His eyes stick on Kakashi and then again on Sakura.
As far as Kakashi can tell, Hiashi has two options.
Option one: He can recognize Sakura's story in full. He can exile Higura from his clan posthumously for crimes against the village. Sakura will be within her rights to find a counter-seal to the Hyuuga curse seal, which she may distribute as she wishes, up to and including putting it up on the mission board, where every branch house member can see it. There is no guarantee that the physical evidence of the seal will be removed with whatever counter-seal she comes up with, which would lead to the Main House having no way to distinguish the Branch House members they could still control from the ones they couldn't—which could very well lead to a civil war which he really can't see the main house winning. The safest way around this is to officially outlaw the seal, and work with Sakura to develop and distribute the counter-seal. This could save his family's life, at the very least, and some performative punishments on the more egregious members of the main house might just save their lives, too.
If Sakura is telling the truth, this is the right call. The more he fights it, the more likely the branch house revolts when they receive the counter-seal, and the main house is massacred.
It'll cost him a dead clan member, the absolute subservience of the branch house, and quite a bit of his pride.
Option two: He can fight Sakura's story for all he's worth. If he wins, he gets to charge Sakura with murder on his land, and at least arrange her execution. Theoretically this means he can keep the reputation of Higura intact along with his damn slaves.
However, Sakura's actions in Itachi's attempted massacre and her pivotal role in Tsukasa's return are not public knowledge, but they aren't sealed. Kakashi has called in his favors, but Sakura hasn't. If Sakura's really lying, then that might damage her reputation enough no one cares, but it's not a guarantee. Not only that, it will require him airing the Hyuuga's dirty laundry in front of the whole damn village. By the time this is over, everyone will know Higura's name. If Kakashi had to put money on it, odds are, Hiashi will lose every ally he has left, which will leave him wide open for the next time InoShikaChou decide to push for the elimination of his seal in the council room.
In both cases, Higura's name will live in infamy, and the Branch House system will fall. The Main House will likely fall with it.
Very carefully not looking down at Sakura, and her brazenly bared curse seal, Kakashi thinks—it's really almost as if someone was purposefully trying to free the Branch house members of the Hyuuga. Then Kakashi takes that thought, and he buries it nice and deep, where not even Inoichi could dig it out.
The only difference between the two options is that one of them costs Hiashi's pride, and the other doesn't.
Kakashi sees the moment Hiashi decides his pride is worth his whole damn clan.
"This is not proof that Sakura bears our seal," Hiashi says, raising his hands before him, fingers spread to indicate he has no interest in testing this further. "I would like to request that a seal master confirm that her seal is truly our seal. Hyuuga, of course, has many seal masters who would be willing to verify."
Sakura flinches beside him, and Kakashi sets his hand on her shoulder.
"Hah," Chouza barks out without humor.
"I have already called Jiraiya, my student and Konoha's pre-eminent seal master, to determine whether Sakura's seal is truly your Hyuuga curse seal. I trust that will satisfy you?"
Hokage's words might look like a question, but it is clear to everyone present that they are, in fact, not.
Hiashi makes a noncommittal shrug. "I will arrange for a branch house member to attend Jiraiya, to provide an example of a true seal."
"That will be very useful," the Hokage says.
"However," Hiashi says, "even presuming that Sakura's seal is truly our seal, there is no evidence that she did not apply it to herself, simply to distribute a counter-seal to the branch house. She has been very vocal in her opposition to it."
Barely hidden sneers of disgust ripple through the civilian half of the room.
"I'm sorry," Inoichi says, voice low and incredibly dangerous. "Are you suggesting a nine-year-old child branded herself with a curse seal as some kind of elaborate plot to get you to free your branch house members?"
Hiashi turns slowly to face him.
"No main house member has ever applied the curse seal to a non-Hyuuga member in our entire history. I find the idea that one of my own would do something so foolish to be far less likely," Hiashi says, serene in the face of the growing contempt in the room around him. "Inoichi, of course, could not be used in this interrogation. His daughter is known to be close to Sakura. I would like to request she be interrogated by Morino Ibiki."
Silence falls over the room, and Chouza shakes with fury as he takes a breath in, and then releases it.
"You're a real piece of work, you know that?"
"My clan is under attack," Hiashi responds, just as calmly. "One of my kin is dead, murdered. I will do what I must in order to protect it."
Aburame Shibi, for the first time since the beginning of the meeting, speaks from Hiashi's left side.
"You dishonor your clan," he says, voice quiet, uninflected in that weird, mildly inhuman way of Aburame. "There is still time, friend, to rescind your words. We can all forget this, still."
The Aburame have been a core part of the Hyuuga coalition for the last fifty years. They keep insecticide for each member of their clan, so that their kikaichu are never turned against them. They have used it to suppress two coups in the last thirty years.
Hiashi turns to his ally and friend, and then to the council room as a whole, taking in the grimaces of the civilian coalition and even the faint ambivalence of the three elders. Even Danzou is wearing a stern face, but that is likely because he does not like having ninja under his command who are also under the control of another. Root's continued existence is Konoha's worst kept secret, and it has never contained a Hyuuga member.
Hiashi's nostrils flare, and Kakashi sees a moment of indecision before he doubles down and signs his own death warrant.
"Hokage," he says.
"It is your right," Hokage says.
And so Hiashi's fate is sealed.
"This is a farce," Jiraiya says, squatting in the center of a massive seal in a large, once-pristine room. He claps a hand on Sakura's shoulder, and she smiles faintly at him. "You know, the Hyuuga forbade Branch House members from allowing me to examine their seals. You really kicked the hornet's nest with this one."
Sakura touches her still-bared Hyuuga curse seal.
"This wasn't quite what I expected to come out."
"I'll get it off of you, don't worry. It's a thousand years old, and people like to claim everyone was better and stronger back then, but let me tell you a secret," he beckons Sakura closer and leans towards her. "They were shit at seals."
Sakura coughs out a giggle.
"And who's this?" Jiraiya asks, leaning forward and peeping at where Gamami is crouched by Sakura's foot.
"Gamami," Sakura says, moving her foot out of the way, so that Jiraiya can get a better look.
"Oh wow, you're a little one, aren't you?"
"I'll kill you," Gamami says, glaring at him, and Jiraiya blinks before bursting into laughter, leaning closer.
Gamami spits out her knife, and draws it.
Jiraiya just laughs.
"You can take him," Sakura assures Gamami. "He's not even a real ninja."
Jiraiya stops, and looks up at Sakura.
"This is the second time I've had to leave beautiful naked women to come help you, and this is the thanks I get?"
Sakura shrugs.
"If you don't like it, try wearing your forehead protector?" she offers.
Jiraiya barks out a laugh.
"You're not going to try and steal it this time?"
"I'm biding my time," Sakura says, and something like her ordinary smile peeks out from the corners of her mouth.
"Uh-huh."
"When I steal it, I'm gonna throw it in a fire."
"This is the symbol of Mount Myouboku, you know? I feel like you're obligated to give it some respect."
Sakura makes a face. She looks down at Gamami, who gives her a little shake of her head.
"Boo, nope."
"Gamami-chan," Jiraiya says, easily batting aside the spitball she spits at him.
"Gamami has taste," Sakura says proudly. "Who would want to go around with 'oil' on their forehead."
Jiraiya shakes his head.
"Kids these days. No respect."
Hiashi enters the room, hand clasped on Neji's shoulder, and Sakura's smile drips off her face.
"Sakura," Neji says, sounding heartbroken.
"It's okay, Neji," Sakura says, reaching out to take his hand. "Jiraiya will fix it—and then I'll tell you what he did."
A moment of irritation flashes across Hiashi's face. Sakura raises her gaze from Neji, and glares at him defiantly.
"I trust, as Neji's guardian, I will be allowed to observe?" Hiashi says, not even acknowledging Sakura.
Jiraiya's face hardens, his buffoon mask falling away. He points at the corner. "Yeah, you can park your ass over there."
Hiashi, making a face that says he is being treated just terribly unfairly, does so. When he reaches the corner he looks pointedly at Kakashi.
"I like Kakashi, so he can stand where he damn well pleases," Jiraiya says, his smile an unpleasant slash across his face. Then he turns away from Hiashi's moment of shock, and kneels before Neji.
"Hey, kid," Jiraiya says.
"Jiraiya-sama," Neji says.
"There's no need to be that polite," Sakura corrects him, and Jiraiya turns to glare at her. "If he keeps calling you kid, you can just call him old man, and he'll stop."
Jiraiya pushes her away, towards the corner opposite Hiashi, his massive body still solidly between them. Hiashi does not fail to notice this, and his lips twist.
"Jiraiya-sama," Neji repeats.
Jiraiya laughs. "Wow, is that what interacting with a normal child feels like? Maybe I don't hate kids after all."
Sakura makes a farting noise at that, and Jiraiya ignores her, raising a hand to Neji's seal and brushing his fingers against it.
Neji flinches, momentarily, before moving his head back in Jiraiya's direction.
"Sorry," Jiraiya says, and it doesn't sound like he's apologizing for making Neji flinch. Neji shrugs, like it's nothing, and Jiraiya makes a bit of a face. He quickly gets over it and jerks his chin at one of the two loci in the massive seal array they're all standing on. "Can I get you to lay down there for me, kid?"
Neji does as he is told, and Jiraiya moves over to squat beside him. "Yeah, just like that." He produces an inkwell from the scroll on his back, and Neji flinches more visibly this time.
This time, though, Jiraiya is kind enough not to acknowledge it.
"I've just got to connect your—" Jiraiya's face twists in disgust "—curse seal to this array so I can take a look at how it works."
"You don't need to know how it works," Hiashi says, stepping out of his corner.
Jiraiya raises his gaze to Hiashi, and Hiashi's steps falter at whatever expression he finds there. Then Jiraiya laughs, standing.
"Well, in that case!" he says. "The outward marks are clearly identical. That's my considered impression as a seal master. They look the same, so they are the same. Are we done here?"
Hiashi's face twists.
"Is that… not what you wanted, Hiashi? How, exactly, did you think I was going to verify the seals are the same, if not just by looking at them?"
"I didn't agree to this."
"Well, shit, Hiashi. Sucks to suck. You can go talk to the Hokage. I'll stay here, keep your boy Neji here company." He pats Neji's shoulder.
Hiashi takes a deep breath, composes himself. "That seal is clan property. You cannot reveal anything you learn from Neji's seal."
Jiraiya smiles.
"Sure," he says. Hiashi looks relieved, but Kakashi knows better. "Her seal on the other hand—" Jiraiya says, pointing to Sakura, "I can shout that from the rooftops. Write it down and nail it to the damn mission board. If they happen to be the same seal, well damn, you shouldn't have gone off and started using it on people you don't—" Jiraiya's face twists "—well, own."
Kakashi and Hiashi both flinch at that.
"If she stole it from us, then—"
"What I see with my eyes is my own, regardless of whether its stolen property or not. The Uchiha founded this damn village, Hiashi. Y'all managed to get an exemption for your curse seal on your people, but there's no way anyone will let you claim Sakura as your own."
Silence reigns.
When Hiashi doesn't respond, Jiraiya continues, "Pick your poison, Hiashi. No one in this entire damn village is going to let you examine Sakura with your own seal masters."
There is another long moment of silence from Hiashi.
Hiashi has taken it on faith Higura is innocent. In that case, either Sakura's seal is fake, or someone else has already stolen his jutsu. To say nothing of—
There is no counter-seal
"Fine. But keep in mind that if their seals do not match, anything you say will be an s-class crime."
Jiraiya hums, painting Neji's seal into the seal array around them.
"It's okay it's okay," he says, under his voice, humming all the while. When he's done, he pats Neji's chest. "Great job, kid. Just stay still a little longer."
Jiraiya tromps over to the second locus of the seal array and sets himself down.
"Alright, everyone off the seal array! Hiashi, get back in that damn corner where you belong."
Everyone gets off the seal array, and Hiashi moves back into the damn corner where he belongs, looking a bit like he's sucked on a lemon, but lacking the political power in this particular arena to tell one of Konoha's Sannin just where he can shove it.
Jiraiya looks at Hiashi out of the corner of his eye.
"One thing you seem to be forgetting, Hiashi," he says with a smile, setting his hands down on the activation points, "is that some things—some things are worth dying for."
Hiashi's eyes widen, but before he can do anything, the seal array goes up in a blazing array of colors. Neji, at the second locus, tenses, eyes clenched shut. A moment passes, whatever pain he's waiting for doesn't come, and he slowly relaxes.
"Yeah, just like that," Jiraiya says, eyes closed.
By his side, Sakura sucks in a gasp, and Kakashi glances down to her.
"He's using natural energy, Sensei," she says to him.
Kakashi briefly activates Obito's Sharingan, and finds the orange of Jiraiya's natural energy, spreading from his hands, and out through the seal around him. Across the room, Hiashi has his Byakugan activated.
Gamami leaps from Sakura's feet, over the whirling mass of the seal array, and crash-lands onto the top of Jiraiya's head.
Jiraiya's head bobs slightly under the impact, more cushioning Gamami's fall than from the impact itself.
"You gonna help me out, Gamami?"
She digs her hands into his hair, and enters that bizarre state of stillness, raging orange energy flowing away from Jiraiya and then back into him again, smoother, stiller. The orange energy that was boiling from his hand cools a bit, spreading faster, more evenly through the array.
"Gran and Gramps always say you can't do anything by yourself," Gamami says.
"I've been doing this for longer than you've been alive," Jiraiya says, features slowly shifting, warts blooming on his nose, teeth sharpening.
"And I'm still better at it than you."
Jiraiya laughs, a low, motionless chuckle.
"Thanks, Gamami. This is a lot easier with your help."
Gamami says nothing, just flickering her chakra in that way she does at Sakura when Gamami's in Sage mode.
Kakashi watches as the orange energy in the array seems to draw in a rainbow of different colors of energy from the air, the energy flow between Jiraiya and Neji's seal ebbing and pulsing through the array, drawing in different colors of the rainbow, until finally the energy all starts to walk back towards Jiraiya. The lines around Neji's head go dark first, then in a wave around him, the colors and light vanishing, a line of darkness washing through the seal until the last of it vanishes back into Jiraiya, and he breathes in deeply, eyes closed.
And then Jiraiya begins to laugh.
"Oh, Hashirama," he says, shaking his head. "You sick son of a bitch."
He lifts his hands from the seal array with a sigh.
"I had always wondered," he says, mostly to himself.
"Does Tsunade know what you think of her great-grandmother?" Kakashi says, unable to help himself.
Jiraiya checks Gamami's place on his head, turns to Kakashi.
"Everything I know about the Senju I learned from Tsunade, Kakashi," he says, smiling slyly, and—
Oh.
Kakashi carefully keeps his realization from his face, and drags his eyebrows up instead.
"So the next time I'm in—" where was she again, Cloud? "—Cloud, I can just tell her that you said her great-grandma is a bitch?"
"I remember you being less obnoxious," Jiraiya says, moving to crouch beside Neji and removing the ink from his forehead in a sealless water jutsu. "You've been spending too much time with that student of yours."
He helps Neji to his feet. "Great job, kid. Go play with Kakashi." He pushes Neji in Kakashi's direction and beckons to Sakura.
He's smiling at her, and she's grinning a bit back at him. Jiraiya is still a mildly revolting frog man, so his smile, full of sharp teeth, is really something.
Kakashi rests his hand on Neji's shoulder as Jiraiya draws Sakura's seal into the array around them. Sakura waves at Gamami, who sympathetically pulses her chakra back in return.
It's faster the second time, either Gamami's influence or Jiraiya's experience. He pulls his hands from the seal array with a sigh.
"Damn, brat."
"Sakura," she corrects, sitting up and rubbing the ink off her forehead. The curse seal, of course, does not come away.
"I'm sorry," Jiraiya says, and she shrugs, a little helplessly. He opens his mouth, to say something more, but something in Sakura's expression stops him.
"Jiraiya, your verdict?" Hiashi asks, as he steps out of the corner.
"It's the Hyuuga curse seal. The seals are identical. If I didn't know better, I'd assume you'd sealed them together."
Kakashi notes, and appreciates, the use of the word you.
Hiashi breathes in, clearly trying to find a politically appropriate way to tell Jiraiya he's full of shit.
"You doubt my honor, Hiashi?" Jiraiya asks, pulling himself to his full height, and in Sage mode, his every word echoes through the fabric of the world, shaking the floor and the walls and the village itself. "I swear, upon my honor as a seal master. I swear, upon the sacred oil of Mount Myouboku. I swear, upon the First Tree."
Kakashi can feel the truth of Jiraiya's words in his soul, which is something he wasn't even sure he still had.
Hiashi, clearly, feels the same. He turns to Sakura again. Another round of indecision plays over his face. Kakashi can see a moment of remorse on it before it hardens.
"Neji," Hiashi says, and Neji brushes off Kakashi's hand, still on his shoulder. He crosses the room to Hiashi, and his and Sakura's fingers brush as they pass each other. Hiashi stops at the edge of the room, and bows stiffly to Jiraiya.
"Thank you for your service to the Hyuuga clan," he says, like every word pains him.
"The Hyuuga clan," Jiraiya says, "is a pillar of Konoha. I have not forgotten what the Hyuuga did for me, in my hour of need. I am forever in their debt."
His words still pound with that heaviness of Sage mode, and there is no chance Hiashi missed Jiraiya's use of the word their, and not your.
Hiashi rises stiffly and leaves the room, his hand on Neji's shoulder.
Jiraiya looks down at Sakura and raises an eyebrow.
They are under surveillance. Nothing happens in the village that a Hyuuga cannot see. He has worked with many who could read not just lips but tongues, throats, lungs.
Nowhere outside of a blood room is safe.
Jiraiya plants one massive hand on Sakura's hair and ruffles it, disturbing her forehead protector. He crouches beside her, as she tries to get her forehead protector back in place on the top of her head.
"Just a little longer, kid," he says, and Sakura nods.
Sakura is jumpy, the morning she is to go to T&I. This makes sense.
She's going to her own village's Torture and Interrogation unit.
Fuck Hiashi through a thousand hells.
She's jumping at shadows, her shoulders hunched, eyes darting. Her forehead protector, for once, is covering her forehead—hiding her seal.
Kakashi places his hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her, but she flinches away from his touch, and he snatches his hand back.
Fuck.
Kakashi can't go in the room with Ibiki. He has to stay outside. T&I regulations, which Morino Ibiki will not bend for him.
He crouches beside her.
"You don't have to do this—"
"No!" Sakura shouts. "I just want this to be over. I don't want to have to be scared anymore! I see them everywhere, Sensei," she says, and Kakashi takes a step back, shocked "It hurt," she continues. "It hurt so much. If they win, then… then they'll be able to do it whenever they want."
Kakashi opens his mouth but finds no words to say.
Sakura turns away, still jumping at shadows.
"Let's go," she says quietly.
Slowly, Kakashi stands and follows her.
Hiashi is waiting for them at T&I, and when Sakura sees him, her body shakes with a full-body flinch.
Hiashi looks as surprised by this reaction as Kakashi, Kakashi's hand on Sakura's shoulder as she huddles against his legs.
"You have no right to be here," Kakashi says, and his voice is hard.
He thought—
He thought.
He doesn't let it show on his face.
"I—"
"Leave, or I'll make you."
Slowly, Hiashi turns and leaves. Kakashi holds Sakura against his legs until he's out of sight.
"Sakura," he says. "I'm sorry."
She shakes her head.
Slowly, they move forward, into T&I, and then down, down, down.
Morino Ibiki is waiting for them, scarred head hidden from view. He looks at Kakashi, and then down, down, down, at Sakura.
Although his face remains passive and stoic, he takes a deep breath in, then out again.
He pushes the door behind him open.
"Come on in, Sakura. I just need to ask you a few questions. As long as you answer them truthfully, this can all be over quickly."
Sakura looks briefly up at Kakashi, down at her feet, and then at Ibiki.
"Okay," she says, voice small. She steps forward in small, slow, steps, like she's waiting for someone to call her back.
No one does.
She steps over the threshold.
Ibiki looks down at her, over at Kakashi, and then closes the door.
It closes with a booming finality, leaving Kakashi alone in the corridor, surrounded by nothing but silence.
You'd expect T&I to be loud, but it's not. Every room is soundproofed and chakra-sealed. This is probably one of the few places in the entire village the Byakugan can't see.
Minutes tick by, slow and agonizing, and Kakashi can't even find it in him to pretend to read. He has porn and pirate ninja manga in his pockets, but—
All he does is look at that damn steel door and listen to the ticking clock in his brain. The one that lets him perfectly time missions, say in thirty-two seconds, and actually do it in thirty-two seconds.
He worked hard on it.
It's a tricky thing to get right.
He's really wishing he hadn't, right now.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Five minutes.
Eleven minutes.
Twenty-seven minutes and fifty-seven seconds.
The door opens, and with it comes a torrent of sound.
Sobbing.
He is standing before Ibiki in a moment, filling the door, right in Ibiki's face.
Ibiki looks intensely unimpressed.
"This is why people aren't allowed to wait outside during interrogations," he says. "I didn't do anything to her, except make her remember things she didn't want to remember." In one hand he has a file folder, clenched tightly closed in his gloved hand. "Move." It takes Kakashi a moment to get his limbs to listen to him. Finally, he steps aside. Ibiki steps past him. "I'm done. When she gets herself together, she can leave."
Kakashi does not ask Ibiki what the result of his interrogation was, because he knows Ibiki won't answer him. He steps in, and the door closes with a settling, deafening finality.
"Why did I even think this was a good idea," Sakura says, hands dug deep into her pink hair, tears streaming down her face. "All I've done is hurt. What good is being a ninja when all you can do is hurt."
"Sakura—"
"Shut up!" she yells at him. "This is your fault! For letting me think I could be something!" She clutches her face in her hands. "I just wanted to help," she says in a small voice. "I just—I just wanted to help."
"I know."
Sakura nods miserably. Slowly she raises her hand to her head, and drags her forehead protector from her face.
"I don't even deserve—" The forehead protector comes loose, and her entire demeanor changes. Her tears stop, the grief and terror drain out of her face. For an instant, he sees the Sakura he knows, the Sakura who smiled conspiratorially with Jiraiya, the Sakura who would walk around with her forehead protector in her hair, baring her curse seal for all to see.
It's only an instant, and then she has herself scrunched up and crying again, but—Kakashi knows Sakura. He knows that this time, it's false. "I don't even deserve this," she says, voice hoarse from crying.
Kakashi restarts his heart. He does his best to show none of his emotion on his face, keeping it evenly on sympathetic.
What the fuck did Sakura do?
Kakashi knows of exactly one technique that does that—that can cause that kind of behavior, personality changing like flipping a switch—and it's—
It's a Yamanaka clan technique.
The Triggered Implanted Memory technique.
What the fuck did Sakura do?
Kakashi takes her forehead protector, and raises it to her head. She flinches for a moment, but the tenseness in her face subsides when he angles it to leave her forehead exposed.
"You do," he says. "You have nothing to be ashamed of."
Slowly, she smiles, splitting her tear-stained, snot smeared face.
"You really think so? Did I—Did I do the right thing?"
Kakashi takes in a breath.
The Hyuuga can't see them here, but T&I can, which is really just as bad, although they're likely to have different enough pieces of the picture, he can—
"Some missions are worth dying for," he says.
Sakura wipes the snot from her face with the back of her hand, and then, of course, wipes it on his shirt.
"That's what I thought," she says. "Some missions are worth dying for."
This.
Fucking.
Student.
She gave herself the fucking Hyuuga curse seal, just to end it for good.
How many idiot fucking children put their lives at risk for this?
Why was it them, and not him? Why was it them, and not the adults?
A genin and who knows how many fucking academy students.
He—he and InoShikaChou—could have run Hiashi through the same damn farce, and they just—never did.
No one was willing to take the seal on themselves to remove it before.
He stands, and extends his hand to her. She takes it, and pulls herself to her feet, still sniffling, just a little, shoulders still hunched, because she's got an image to uphold.
Somewhere, under all of his irritation and fury at Sakura risking her damn life on a something that could kill her in a dozen stupid-ass different ways, he's proud of her.
He can never tell her.
There are some things too dangerous to ever say out loud.
But fuck—he's so fucking proud of her.
One day later finds them in the council room again, on the left side of the Hokage. They are here to officially hear the results of Jiraiya's tests and Ibiki's interview.
It hasn't started yet, and Hiashi is already ashen on the table across from them. But—ashen is perhaps not the right word. He was ashen last time—this is different. Today he is pale, worn, drawn. Today, at his shoulders are two jounin members of the branch house and not two members of the main house.
Kanna.
And Kenji.
"Jiraiya?" the Hokage asks, and Jiraiya unrolls himself from the lethargic sprawl he had been in by the Hokage's right side into a mountain of a ninja that is all hard planes and fury.
"I used the Sixteen-Circle and Five-lines seal, a common diagnostic tool, infused with natural energy to get a clearer picture. With it, I have been able to distinguish otherwise identical seals, such as the Nested Rat seal and the Five Ravens seal, to which the Hokage, as well as the Aburame clan head and the textile guild master, can attest." Jiraiya gestures to them, and they each nod in turn. "Using this method, I found that the Hyuuga curse seal on Sakura and my Hyuuga curse seal exemplar, Neji, were literally identical. If I did not know better, I would assume they had been branded on the same day. Not only were their seals identical, but so was the damage done to the surrounding chakra pathways." Jiraiya's lips twist with disgust.
Hiashi swallows heavily.
"Thank you, Jiraiya," the Hokage says.
Jiraiya doesn't sit down so much as drop down, shaking the floor as his bulk crashes into the chair.
"Ibiki?"
Ibiki stands. "My full report is not available, due to the age and innocence of the interviewed individual. The Hokage, however, has seen it in full, and can attest to the veracity of my claims when I say that there are some inconsistencies between what was presented to this council and the information I obtained, but nothing that is out of the ordinary for a traumatized child."
Branded.
Traumatized child.
Nobody is pulling punches today—
And nobody is at Hiashi's side, to protest their language.
Slowly, Hiashi drops his head into his hands.
"Are you satisfied, Hiashi?" the Hokage asks, and his voice is hard.
Sakura, where she sits next to Kakashi, has her shoulders hunched, looking appropriately meek, despite the brazenness of her bared seal. On her folded hands sits Gamami, possessed of that disturbing stillness that Kakashi is sure would manifest as swirling orange if he had Obito's Sharingan activated.
Hiashi's shoulders sag.
He knew.
From the moment Ibiki left T&I to deliver his results to the Hokage, he knew.
Ibiki could have hidden it, shared it in secret, but why bother? It would all be public, regardless.
"Yes," Hiashi says, head bowed.
"You do not dispute that a member of your house tried to enslave another member of Konoha?"
Hiashi's shoulders freeze, and he lifts his face to the Hokage.
There are many ways to phrase that.
Unauthorized clan jutsu use.
Inappropriate cursed seal application.
The use of the word enslave means that not only is the Hokage not on Hiashi's side—he never was.
(Kakashi had wondered why he had asked A about the possibility of Tsukasa—)
(It was nothing but performative, they didn't have any leverage over A to actually force him to do anything.)
(Well—now he knows.)
Hiashi looks around the room, but he has no friends in this room any longer.
"Yes."
"This member of your house—Hyuuga Higura—do you recognize he has committed an S-class crime?"
A pause.
"Yes."
"Do you exile him from the Hyuuga clan for that crime?"
Another, longer pause. Hiashi looks at the hard faces that surround him once more.
"Yes."
"Let it be noted," the Hokage said.
To his left, the notary repeats, "It is so noted."
The Hokage isn't done.
"The charter recognized your right to keep your clan traditions when you joined Konoha, up to and including using your traditional clan curse upon your kin as you see fit," he says, and there is movement in the room at the Hokage classifying the Hyuuga curse seal as a clan curse, and not as a seal. "Up to and including classifying any investigation into the curse and how to remove it as theft. In the application of your curse to an outsider, you have forfeited that right. Do you recognize Sakura's right to investigate the curse placed upon her, and what would be necessary to remove it?"
"Yes."
"Do you recognize her right to disseminate that information as she sees fit?"
For the first time, Kakashi realizes that Hiashi looks a lot less like a clan leader, with his two seconds, and more like a prisoner, with two guards. Kanna and Kenji are the two most powerful members of the Hyuuga clan.
They do not wear their forehead protectors over their seals. They instead have their forehead protectors tied into their hair, their cursed seals on full display, just like Sakura across from them.
Hiashi looks at Kanna and Kenji out of the corners of his eyes.
"Yes," he says.
"Let it be noted," the Hokage intones.
"It is so noted."
"Do you recognize that any act to activate the curse that has been illegally placed upon Haruno Sakura as a crime in and of itself, equal to Higura's original crime in its application?"
"Yes," Hiashi says, this time, and for the first time, without hesitation.
For a moment, silence reigns.
"Do you have anything you wish to add to the record on this matter?" the Hokage asks.
Slowly, Hiashi rises in his seat and turns to look at Sakura, for the first time since the meeting began.
He places his hands on the table, and bows deeply, head to its surface.
"I'm sorry."
He straightens up, shakes himself faintly, and then sits back down.
Nothing but two words, but Kakashi hasn't heard Hiashi apologize in his entire life.
"Haruno Sakura," the Hokage says. "do you have anything you wish to add to the record on this matter?"
"Yes," Sakura says, standing. She crawls over the table, because she has no sense of decorum, and walks across the empty center to where Hiashi sits, almost directly across from them.
"Upon the first council meeting of Konoha," Sakura says, her voice pitched to carry, "Hashirama objected to the Hyuuga curse seal. In the first vote of its legality, he was the lone dissenter. For every council for the rest of his life, he would bring it to the table, and he would be shut down."
She draws a scroll from a seal beneath her dress, and holds it in her hands. It looks old and is sealed closed with Hashirama's seal.
Where the hell had she gotten that scroll?
"He had hope that there would come a day when it could be removed," she says, looking down upon the scroll in her hands. "This technique healed me when Itachi burned out all my tenketsu—" she looks back up at Hiashi. "But he made it to heal the Hyuuga. I can give this scroll to the Hyuuga, and if I do, they'll kill you."
Hiashi flinches.
She sets the scroll on the table before him. "But if you give it to them, maybe they won't."
Hiashi looks up at her, and Kakashi sees Hiashi realize that, in fact, he'd been right in the first place. Sakura played him, played Higura, played Ibiki. She lied—Higura never sealed her. She sealed herself.
For this.
To give him this.
To make him give his clan this.
"Can you activate your Byakugan for me?"
Slowly, Hiashi raises his hand, and his Byakugan activates.
Sakura raises her gaze to Kanna and Kenji behind him. "Kanna-san, Kenji-san," she says. "Could you activate your Byakugan, too?"
Kanna smiles faintly, and they both activate their Byakugan signlessly.
Sakura draws an inkwell and a brush from a seal beneath her dress, and place the inkwell on the table before her.
She tilts her head back and carefully draws the Seal of False Chakra on her forehead with the ease of long practice. For the first time, Kakashi sees its true form. The seal had looked so bizarre, on Sakura's unmarked forehead. Stretches of pale skin, where there could have been lines. On top of the Hyuuga curse, it makes perfect sense, every stroke of the Hyuuga curse seal filling what had been empty on her unmarked forehead. The seal flares and the Hyuuga curse seal flares with it. She re-seals her inkwell and brush.
Sakura closes her eyes, flinching faintly as she destroys and re-creates her chakra pathways. It takes two minutes, but with every second that passes, all three pairs of Byakugan eyes widen a little further. Finally, Sakura opens her eyes. "It's really hard if you don't have the Byakugan, because you have to see your chakra system from the inside. But, you can see it, so I think it would be easy for you—which makes sense, because he made it for you." She reaches up, and wipes away the Seal of False Chakra, but not the Hyuuga curse seal.
"The mark doesn't go away," she says, a bit sheepishly. She looks back over her shoulder. "Um, Hokage-sama?"
"Yes, Sakura?"
"If I give someone permission to use one of the hand seals for the Hyuuga curse seal, would they get in trouble if they used one?"
The silence of everyone assembled is deafening.
"No."
Sakura turns back to Hiashi.
"If you would?" she asks.
Slowly, he makes the seal for pain. On either side of him, Kanna and Kenji both tense.
Nothing happens.
Kanna slowly raises her hand to her lips.
"By the Sage," she says. "We can be free."
Sakura nods. "Yeah," she says. "You can."
Hiashi just looks down upon his hands, and at the scroll before him.
Sakura turns around, and then immediately turns back.
"Oh, and um," Sakura looks awkward. "If you uhh, destroy it, I have the scroll memorized. Jiraiya, too. Don't do that. Please." She pauses. "The seal has already killed enough Hyuuga, I think."
Behind Hiashi, Kanna speaks. "We'll remember that, Sakura," she says. "You have done the Hyuuga a great service."
Sakura flashes a little smile, and turns back to Kakashi.
She smiles like she just won the whole world and does not pull her forehead protector back down to cover the now-empty curse seal on her forehead.