Haruno Sakura took her first glimpse of Konoha in more than a decade.
It was night when they arrived, so there wasn't much to see. After a brief delay with the gate guard (Kakashi had bypassed the entire issue of explaining her appearance by telling her to keep her hood up and signing her in as a new client), they walked through the streets she had called home as a girl. Now, seeing how little had changed, it truly struck her that it had only been a month for everyone else.
Ichiraku ramen was still open, doing a roaring trade by the looks of things. Naruto made an automatic beeline for it, and Sakura followed, hypnotised.
"Tower first," Kakashi said before they could get too close.
She forced herself to obey. He was right; the village needed to know she was alive and technically well. It was just a shame she couldn't eat ramen before they locked her up and asked her hundreds of difficult questions.
The Hokage tower always had some sort of skeleton crew at all times, for this exact sort of situation. Kakashi led them to a desk, muttered something to the attendant in a low voice, and then suddenly everyone was either running somewhere or staring at her. She stared right back.
Before long everyone was ushered to an empty room, and then she and Kakashi were led to a different room, and when the Hokage himself arrived, looking exactly as he had in her childhood (it felt like he should be long dead by now), she was moved to a mirrored room labelled 'Interrogation Room 3A' all by herself and left there.
Time passes differently when you don't get tired or hungry or need to use the toilet. Her isolation seemed to last a while, though. Possibly they were trying to make her uncomfortable and impatient before the actual interrogation. If so, they would be sorely disappointed. She could wait forever.
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"So someone has had Obito's other sharingan this entire time?"
Kakashi fought the urge to rub his temples. "It would seem so, Hokage-sama. I maintain that he was beyond recovery at the time, but the apparent connection of this 'Inside' to my sharingan is difficult to deny."
"No possibility it was just a well-timed substitution jutsu? The girl jumps into action just as you reveal the sharingan, makes it look like you did it?" That was Inoichi Yamanaka. He was a bit older than Kakashi, but the handful of times they had worked together he had struck him as a fair man. He'd also been unafraid to disclose that he already knew (and liked) Haruno Sakura from playdates with his daughter; an admission that made him look potentially biased, but increased his standing in Kakashi's eyes.
"I think it's time to check the sharingan for ourselves." Danzo weighed in at last. "Kakashi?"
He couldn't refuse an implicit order from a village elder, but he still glanced toward the Third for confirmation. The Third nodded imperceptibly, and so, resigned, he pulled back his forehead protector. He'd been putting off using the sharingan because it seemed so sensitive after Sakura's appearance. Even now, several days after the incident, his chakra hadn't fully recovered from whatever it was doing.
The others in room crowded around to examine it. "It didn't always look like that, did it?"
Perhaps he was a fool for not checking it sooner. He stood up to examine himself in the (probably two-way) mirror: the black tomoe marks, formerly separate, were now connected by a new ring of black.
"No, it wasn't," Danzo said, and Kakashi didn't like how easily he knew that. "This is an evolution."
"Into what?" Inoichi voiced the question on Kakashi's lips.
Danzo and the Third exchanged glances. "It's unclear," the Third finally said, "but for now you should keep it covered until we can find out more. Dismissed."
"Dismissed?" Kakashi blinked. "Aren't my genin still being interviewed somewhere?"
"Naruto and Sasuke already gave their report and were released," Danzo said. "Now that your report is complete, you're also free to go."
Kakashi bristled. "Sakura is also one of my genin. Where is she?"
"She is still in processing, with Ibiki."
Morino Ibiki specialised in what people generously called 'enhanced interrogation' but was actually just torture.
"Respectfully, I'd like to stay and watch. I brought her to Konoha, so she is my responsibility." He didn't aim this at anyone other than the Third. The Third had let him keep searching for Sakura all this time, and he wasn't about to walk away now that he'd actually succeeded.
"Very well." The Third Hokage looked very old in that moment. "Then let us all make our way to interrogation room 3B."
They walked into the darker room behind the two-way mirror connected to Sakura's. Kakashi's imagination had run wild with the many devices that Ibiki could have been applying to loosen her tongue, but it seemed like it had been a normal interview thus far.
"So just to summarise," The heavily-scarred man looked down at the coded script in his notebook, "you were kept in a large, lightless room or cave-"
"It was a void. Like a pocket dimension," Sakura interrupted, and Ibiki made a note.
"Pocket dimension, with no day or night, no plants, animals or running water, no things living or dead of any kind except large grey stones and eight other people: one from Mist, three from Cloud, two from Waterfall, one from Grass, and one unknown. You shared with them all some minor details about the village and your life over a period of," he made another show of checking his notes, "ten or possibly more years, you lost count once your hair grew too long and you got 'taken out' too many times."
"That's right. Except Teeth aged out and then it was only seven other people." Sakura leaned back in her chair. It had already been about three hours since they had arrived in Konoha, meaning Sakura had been in there for at least two and a half hours (half of which was probably spent sweating her). Even Kakashi, who had not been treated like a possible hostile, was thinking longingly of cup noodles and his warm bed by now. Sakura, on the other hand, was still sitting upright, speaking calmly, and otherwise seemed completely at ease. They had taken her sword, bag, goggles and coat, and between Tsunami's civilian clothes and Kakashi's haircut he was impressed with how normal she looked. Things might work out after all.
Ibiki opened up a file and slid it across to her. "Do you recognise any of these people?"
Sakura opened it and started rifling through photographs. Some, Kakashi knew, would be dummy photos designed to test whether she was making things up; but he could see the three photographs of the fake Konoha nin in the mix, and he knew the confirmed abductees from other villages would be there as well. Sakura pulled the picture of Yakushi Kabuto almost immediately.
"This is Sensei," she breathed, staring at the photo. "Wow, he really did spend a long time Inside if that's how he looked. He's kind of handsome. And this is Karin. She's practically a baby in this, but the hair and glasses are exactly the same. That's Pinch, Siren, and Manami. No picture of Chu-chan by the looks of it."
Ibiki frowned, eyes sliding to his notes. "Which one was…"
"The puppet. Oh and here's Jun. Ha, he's so skinny! And that's Naomi, but with long hair and – wow – the biggest smile I've ever seen on her face. And…you don't have one of Teeth, and I don't recognise any of the rest." She tucked the leftover photos back in the file. "Anything else?"
Kakashi glanced at the examiners watching in room 3B with the rest of them. They nodded to one another.
"She picked all the real photos, except for the other two Konoha plants."
That was a big point in the 'telling the truth' box, and Kakashi felt a weight in his chest ease. If this was indeed the real Sakura, then there was a chance she could recover even from the hell she had clearly gone through.
There was a knock on the exam room door, and a man with pale eyes and a medic's cowl entered. "Morino-san." The newcomer bowed.
"Hyuuga-san," Ibiki greeted, "come in. The subject has completed their interview. We just need you to examine them, and barring anything unusual, we should be done here."
The Hyuuga nodded, then turned politely to Sakura. "Miss. Do you mind if I begin now?"
"Go ahead." For the first time since Kakashi had started watching, Sakura looked a little uncomfortable.
The Hyuuga formed the seals for the byakugan, staring at Sakura from across the room. Usually these examinations were a simple formality, just to make sure there were no hidden control or spying seals on a newcomer wishing to stay in the village. A byakugan was second to none for this particular task, as they could examine the entire body within seconds.
Two minutes passed, and the Hyuuga had to be reminded more than once not to approach Sakura. In the end he asked if she'd be willing to lie on the table so that he could get a better look. She obliged, her expression difficult to read. Amused? Embarrassed?
He spent another four minutes staring at her before making an imperceptible nod at Ibiki. They both exited the room and joined the audience in 3B.
"Well?" Kakashi knew Ibiki was a patient man, if it got him the results he needed. But drawing out the physical exam clearly wasn't his plan, and certainly hadn't done much to rattle Sakura (who was still lying on the interview table like a polite cadaver). The torturer sounded annoyed, which made the Hyuuga flinch.
"I apologise for the delay. It's just – it was a bit difficult to make sense of what I was seeing."
"What does that mean?" Danzo had once again taken an interest, which got Kakashi's back up immediately.
"Well, at first it looked like she was just moulding a lot of chakra through her internal organs. Almost everything inside her is blindingly bright, which would make sense if she were, I don't know, about to perform an extensive medical jutsu on herself; but none of it seems to be moving."
"None of what?" Inoichi asked.
"None of the chakra. None of the organs. Her chakra looks like it's burning so quickly, doing something so powerful inside her, that she should have died of exhaustion within minutes. But the entire time I was examining her, none of those organs moved. Her reproductive organs look normal enough, though I can see scars from old sterilisation procedures so I doubt they have full function. Her entire digestive and lymphatic systems on the other hand are just…frozen."
"But she eats," Kakashi argued. "I've seen her do it."
"Interesting," the Hyuuga stared at Sakura through the two-way mirror. "I wonder, could we test something?"
Ibiki and the Hyuuga went back in, and this time Ibiki was carrying a brightly coloured tin. "Biscuit?" he offered, while the Hyuuga reactivated their byakugan.
"Yes please." She sat up and ate as enthusiastically as she had every time he'd seen her, and Kakashi wondered what flavourless gruel she must have been living on if even a few dry biscuits could make her so happy. When she'd finished the entire tin, she smiled wryly at the Hyuuga. "Are you trying to figure out where it goes?"
"Where does it go?" the Hyuuga asked, before Ibiki could reassert control over the interrogation.
Sakura hopped off the table and back into her chair. "The prevailing theory is this: The Watcher's time-space jutsu can do more than create a void to put us all in, it can also connect our bodily functions up to his. That's why he had to sterilise the women manually; because he didn't have the equivalent organs on the Outside." She picked a crumb off her shirt and placed it in her mouth. "It's also why I've barely eaten or bathed in the last ten years, and never used the toilet or slept."
"Slept?" the Hyuuga and more than one examiner in the watching room gasped.
"That's right. Take a closer look at my brain."
After silently confirming with Ibiki that it was okay to approach, the Hyuuga stepped forward and gently examined her head.
"Wow," he breathed, "that's…wow."
"What is it, man?" Ibiki snapped. Protocol had clearly gone out the window. "She says parts of her brain are connected to her kidnapper; which parts?"
"Nothing that makes me dangerous." It was Sakura who answered instead of the Hyuuga. "Just the parts of that control sleep, temperature regulation, stuff like that. My decisions are all my own, believe me."
"She's right," the Hyuuga confirmed, and once again everyone crammed themselves in 3B to discuss what should be done.
"It's certainly odd, but it doesn't make her inherently dangerous, does it?"
"If she's still connected to this Watcher, it means he's still connected to her. Who knows what he could make her do!"
"He could send her back in." Kakashi realised why Sakura had been so keen to make sure his sharingan was working.
"Possibly," The Third mused. He'd been quiet ever since they joined the interrogation, but now it seemed he was ready to make a decision about Sakura's fate. "In any case, everything is speculation unless we can confirm it with further testing."
"Further testing? It's already been hours, isn't it inhumane to keep her any longer?"
"Clearly not, if she doesn't get tired or hungry," Danzo said, watching Sakura through the mirror. "In some ways, she's the ideal ninja."
"I want to talk to her," Kakashi declared, and stalked out of 3B. The Hokage must have indulged him because he managed to get into 3A and close the door behind him without getting tackled to the ground.
"You look like shit," Sakura said by way of greeting.
"You…don't." Now that he was looking for it, she really didn't seem tired after the countless hours of gruelling interrogation. "Why didn't you say something sooner?"
Sakura shrugged. "Because it's weird as hell, and you were already debating whether or not to keep me?"
"I wasn't," he said, but she gave him a look like she didn't need to be touching his chest to see the lie in his heart. "Alright, of course I was cautious. But you can hardly blame me."
"No, I can't." She smiled sadly. "In fact I completely understand."
"They want to run more tests. You'll probably be here all night."
"That's fine. Most interesting that that's happened to me in a while, believe me." She nodded at the door. "You should go home and get some sleep, though. Honestly, I thought you already had. You didn't hear all the embarrassing questions about my childhood, I hope."
"I'll come back first thing tomorrow," he promised. "You'll get to see your parents then, too." This doubled as a threat to the men behind the mirror that any attempts to make Sakura disappear would go badly unless they wanted the rest of Team Seven to disappear as well.
"Until then." She waved cheerfully enough, but Kakashi still felt monstrous for leaving her in yet another prison, even temporarily.