Awakening, Chapter 8
Story Title:Awakening
Rating: R
Warnings/Pairings: None yet. Um, realism?
Summary: Sasuke wakes up in the worst possible circumstances. In a world he doesn't recognize, can he make his name once more?
This time when they ripped off the hood, the world spun around him. Sasuke gritted his teeth, forced his eyes to focus. He looked up, across the long table stretching in front of him.
Nara Shikamaru sat at the far end.
Ridiculous, Sasuke's brain quickly corrected, pepper-gray roots and fine wrinkles around the man's narrowed eyes registering belatedly-- this man is 40 at least. Shikamaru's father-but this man lacked the distinctive scars across his cheeks. Another Nara? He hadn't thought the clan was all that large.
His peripheral vision took in the mask lying face down in front of the man, slightly off to the side. As if the man had laid it there. As if he couldn't be bothered. His manner seemed outwardly casual, too, elbows resting on the table, hands crossed in front of his mouth, fingers folded in a very particular way.
But the ice-cold fury radiating off of him spoke otherwise.
Sasuke met his steely glare without fear. That lazy good-for-nothing in his Academy class had never intimidated him. Neither would this lookalike.
The tension stretched between them, a thick presence in the air. The Anbu stood at attention, on the very edges of Sasuke's view. Nothing moved.
“...I am hard-pressed to explain to myself why I did not just order your death and be done with it.”
Even the drawling voice sounded like goddamn Shikamaru. A burst of laughter nearly escaped Sasuke's mouth, the scene was so surreal-- shaking himself, he snarled out the reply he'd been preparing in his head during the bumpy ride from the torture chamber.
“If you're the one who sent those poor excuses for ninja on their last mission, then you have more important things to explain to yours--”
A hand tightened around his throat like a vise, nearly jerking Sasuke back off the chair. Sasuke's eyes flew wide, world suddenly crystal-clear with adrenaline--catching inexplicably on the stained ceiling, the shaft of sun from the high windows, the motes of dust in the air--
“Let him go.”
Sasuke slumped forward, coughing, the oxygen a little more welcome than he would have liked. Dammit.
“I need to ask him some questions anyway.” The man's voice sounded tired. He broke the set of his hands, massaged his forehead with two fingers. “So damn troublesome.”
Sasuke forced his breathing back under his control. Focus. He needed to be aware, evaluating his surroundings. He needed to be impartial. Reading beneath the beneath. Why would they send a poor copy of Shikamaru here? How would Madara even know who Shikamaru was? Or was this another Nara he had known long ago?
The man looked up again, fixing his cold gaze back on Sasuke's. “Tell me your name.”
“Uchiha Sasuke.” He spat the last syllable. Calm, stay calm. “Don't pretend you don't know it. I'm getting tired of repeating myself.”
One slanted eyebrow twitched. “I see. What are you doing here, then, Uchiha Sasuke?”
Sasuke looked at him incredulously. Did the different people involved in this operation not share information with one another? By that measure, did the shattered fragments of Madara's mind keep in touch?
“I was brought here. By two ninjas who are, apparently, from this fort.”
There was no immediate follow-up. The man's eyes focused inwards as if in thought. Rage began to coil in Sasuke's stomach, eating through his calm like acid.
What sort of bullshit, slop-shod genjutsu was this? And how was it still ensnaring him? He spoke through clenched teeth.
“Though the quality of Leaf ninjas does seems to have gone down lately.”
“Is that so,” the man replied, voice unruffled, eyes flicking up to search Sasuke's face. “Glad to be back, Uchiha Sasuke?”
“Judging from the welcome I've received so far?” Sasuke laughed harshly. “Not so much, no.”
“And what were you doing,” the man continued, “before you came on this journey to Konoha Village?”
Images flashed through Sasuke's mind - tanks, the mole-for a second he wasn't quite sure what to say. He decided on the truth. It wasn't anything Madara didn't already know.
“I was attempting to assassinate the 6th Hokage.”
At this, the man's eyes focused in on his face like lasers.
“Were you now.”
“I'd have succeeded if the Mizukage hadn't interfered in what wasn't her business,” snarled Sasuke. He couldn't believe he was stuck in this stupid genjutsu. He was an Uchiha, dammit, the clan that had written the final word on genjutsu! “Hell, I'd have succeeded even then, if the Tsuchikage hadn't also decided to intervene. When it really wasn't any of his business either.”
“Hmm,” said the man, voice still casual, though his eyes remained riveted to Sasuke's face. “Tell me your age, Uchiha Sasuke.”
This entire exercise was getting closer and closer to farce. Sasuke couldn't help rolling his eyes as he snapped, “Sixteen.”
“Hmm. Come to think of it. Would you mind reminding me of today's date?”
“Date?” Sasuke asked in disbelief. They had to be mocking him now. This was Madara pulling a goddamn prank. “I've been in captivity for the last several days. I have no idea what the date is. What is this? Are you trying to fulfill your prisoner question quota?! Are you all damn fools?!” His voice had risen to a shout. To hell with calm! He was going to destroy them--
The falcon's hand tightened threateningly on his wrist.
“I'd like to think not,” replied the man neutrally. “Who do you work for, Uchiha Sasuke?”
“No one,” snarled Sasuke, lunging forward against the falcon's firm grip. “I work for no one but myself. You would do well to remember that.” Madara.
“I see. And your allies?”
“I have gathered a team to support my goals,” Sasuke ground out, still seeing red. “I would not call them allies. They are expendable.”
“And what are those goals, Uchiha Sasuke?”
Sasuke knew better than to enumerate any goals he hadn't told Madara already, but he was happy to rub them in this bastard's face.
“I will kill the 6th Hokage.” He leaned closer. “I will kill the Elders.” He allowed himself a smile, felt it spreading across his face like a wildfire out of control, let it-- “And I will destroy Konoha.” And you, you backstabbing blood traitor. He imagined he could see that swirling mask right through the overlay of the Nara's stony face. Oh yes. I will certainly kill you.
“Hmm,” said the man, but no further question was forthcoming. He recrossed his fingers, leaned his chain into them, and closed his eyes as if in deep thought.
The Anbu stood like sentinels. Water dripped somewhere in the background.
Sasuke wished they would just get on with torturing him already.
Madara surely wouldn't do the dirty work himself; there would be numerous opportunities to break the genjutsu when the administrators recklessly assumed he couldn't possibly be in his right mind. It was his last best chance to escape, to get out of here and concentrate on making all his goals a reality. His last best chance to recompense his stung honor.
He would also appreciate not having to spend one more minute staring at this man's too-familiar face.
“Are there any traps or unusual jutsus on his person?” This time, the man was asking a question of the silent others in the room.
“None visible through a standard check. Sir.” The lizard's answer was prompt.
“What about the eyes?”
“It will not be possible to fully examine them without a medical expert, sir. Based on current observation, the right eye does appear to possess the two-tomoe form of the Sharingan.”
Only two? thought Sasuke, then crushed the feeling ruthlessly. Nothing Madara said - or even implied - could be taken as truth.
He'd had enough of this, anyway.
“If you aren't going to ask any more questions of me, take me away!” he commanded, glaring back up at the incompetent figure across the table, wondering if whoever was butchering this genjutsu would respond to the authority in his voice. “I've had enough of your insults to the Uchiha name.”
One eye opened across the table. “That's an interesting thing to say. Uchiha Sasuke.” His other eye opened. “You seem to think that you are in a position to give orders to those who have you in captivity. Some things never change.” He muttered the last line. “But, you're right, this is a very troublesome interview. And there are certainly people in this room who have better things to do with their day. One last question.” His voice couldn't have been more mild, but his gaze zeroed in on Sasuke's face like a targeted projectile.
“Where do you think you really are? Uchiha Sasuke.”
At first Sasuke didn't understand the question. Something was niggling at the back of his mind, something important.
Something is off.
You seem to think that you are in a position to give orders to those who have you in captivity, then man had just said. Some things never change...
Some things never change.
And suddenly Sasuke realized, this man knows me.
From Sound? From Akatsuki? No--
“A dungeon in Leaf,” he answered without thinking, and suddenly realized, I really am. I am back in Leaf.
I am in the custody of ninjas from Leaf.
“Hmm,” said the man across the table. He tapped his fingers together, one after the other, in a perfect cadence. “Hmm...”
Not Madara, thought Sasuke, mind somehow blank and whirling at the same time. I was wrong. Madara isn't involved at all--
The man slammed both palms face down into the pitted wood. “This is all so damn troublesome!” Glaring at Sasuke like he had personally poisoned his morning coffee, he looked more like an aged Nara Shikamaru than Sasuke had thought possible. Sasuke stared back in a state of shock. Not Madara--
I just told them everything--
“Medium security. Relaxed conditions. Hold him until I give further orders.” He massaged the bridge of his nose with one hand, muttering under his breath. “I have a terrible premonition the Hokage is going to want to meet him.”
“Any further... examinations, sir?”
“Not at the moment,” sighed the man, rising from the chair he was sitting in, revealing - Sasuke head jerked back in shock - his full-length Councilor's kimono. “Maybe we'll be fortunate and he'll be too busy to bother. But if he isn't... you know the Hokage.” He stepped away from the chair with a swoosh of robes. “He doesn't like to see things broken.”
“Yes, sir.” Before the Lizard had even finished speaking, the hood had been replaced.
The last thing he saw before the darkness was the man looking back at him.
He caught no flash of pity in the Leaf Elder's eyes.
Rating: R
Warnings/Pairings: None yet. Um, realism?
Summary: Sasuke wakes up in the worst possible circumstances. In a world he doesn't recognize, can he make his name once more?
This time when they ripped off the hood, the world spun around him. Sasuke gritted his teeth, forced his eyes to focus. He looked up, across the long table stretching in front of him.
Nara Shikamaru sat at the far end.
Ridiculous, Sasuke's brain quickly corrected, pepper-gray roots and fine wrinkles around the man's narrowed eyes registering belatedly-- this man is 40 at least. Shikamaru's father-but this man lacked the distinctive scars across his cheeks. Another Nara? He hadn't thought the clan was all that large.
His peripheral vision took in the mask lying face down in front of the man, slightly off to the side. As if the man had laid it there. As if he couldn't be bothered. His manner seemed outwardly casual, too, elbows resting on the table, hands crossed in front of his mouth, fingers folded in a very particular way.
But the ice-cold fury radiating off of him spoke otherwise.
Sasuke met his steely glare without fear. That lazy good-for-nothing in his Academy class had never intimidated him. Neither would this lookalike.
The tension stretched between them, a thick presence in the air. The Anbu stood at attention, on the very edges of Sasuke's view. Nothing moved.
“...I am hard-pressed to explain to myself why I did not just order your death and be done with it.”
Even the drawling voice sounded like goddamn Shikamaru. A burst of laughter nearly escaped Sasuke's mouth, the scene was so surreal-- shaking himself, he snarled out the reply he'd been preparing in his head during the bumpy ride from the torture chamber.
“If you're the one who sent those poor excuses for ninja on their last mission, then you have more important things to explain to yours--”
A hand tightened around his throat like a vise, nearly jerking Sasuke back off the chair. Sasuke's eyes flew wide, world suddenly crystal-clear with adrenaline--catching inexplicably on the stained ceiling, the shaft of sun from the high windows, the motes of dust in the air--
“Let him go.”
Sasuke slumped forward, coughing, the oxygen a little more welcome than he would have liked. Dammit.
“I need to ask him some questions anyway.” The man's voice sounded tired. He broke the set of his hands, massaged his forehead with two fingers. “So damn troublesome.”
Sasuke forced his breathing back under his control. Focus. He needed to be aware, evaluating his surroundings. He needed to be impartial. Reading beneath the beneath. Why would they send a poor copy of Shikamaru here? How would Madara even know who Shikamaru was? Or was this another Nara he had known long ago?
The man looked up again, fixing his cold gaze back on Sasuke's. “Tell me your name.”
“Uchiha Sasuke.” He spat the last syllable. Calm, stay calm. “Don't pretend you don't know it. I'm getting tired of repeating myself.”
One slanted eyebrow twitched. “I see. What are you doing here, then, Uchiha Sasuke?”
Sasuke looked at him incredulously. Did the different people involved in this operation not share information with one another? By that measure, did the shattered fragments of Madara's mind keep in touch?
“I was brought here. By two ninjas who are, apparently, from this fort.”
There was no immediate follow-up. The man's eyes focused inwards as if in thought. Rage began to coil in Sasuke's stomach, eating through his calm like acid.
What sort of bullshit, slop-shod genjutsu was this? And how was it still ensnaring him? He spoke through clenched teeth.
“Though the quality of Leaf ninjas does seems to have gone down lately.”
“Is that so,” the man replied, voice unruffled, eyes flicking up to search Sasuke's face. “Glad to be back, Uchiha Sasuke?”
“Judging from the welcome I've received so far?” Sasuke laughed harshly. “Not so much, no.”
“And what were you doing,” the man continued, “before you came on this journey to Konoha Village?”
Images flashed through Sasuke's mind - tanks, the mole-for a second he wasn't quite sure what to say. He decided on the truth. It wasn't anything Madara didn't already know.
“I was attempting to assassinate the 6th Hokage.”
At this, the man's eyes focused in on his face like lasers.
“Were you now.”
“I'd have succeeded if the Mizukage hadn't interfered in what wasn't her business,” snarled Sasuke. He couldn't believe he was stuck in this stupid genjutsu. He was an Uchiha, dammit, the clan that had written the final word on genjutsu! “Hell, I'd have succeeded even then, if the Tsuchikage hadn't also decided to intervene. When it really wasn't any of his business either.”
“Hmm,” said the man, voice still casual, though his eyes remained riveted to Sasuke's face. “Tell me your age, Uchiha Sasuke.”
This entire exercise was getting closer and closer to farce. Sasuke couldn't help rolling his eyes as he snapped, “Sixteen.”
“Hmm. Come to think of it. Would you mind reminding me of today's date?”
“Date?” Sasuke asked in disbelief. They had to be mocking him now. This was Madara pulling a goddamn prank. “I've been in captivity for the last several days. I have no idea what the date is. What is this? Are you trying to fulfill your prisoner question quota?! Are you all damn fools?!” His voice had risen to a shout. To hell with calm! He was going to destroy them--
The falcon's hand tightened threateningly on his wrist.
“I'd like to think not,” replied the man neutrally. “Who do you work for, Uchiha Sasuke?”
“No one,” snarled Sasuke, lunging forward against the falcon's firm grip. “I work for no one but myself. You would do well to remember that.” Madara.
“I see. And your allies?”
“I have gathered a team to support my goals,” Sasuke ground out, still seeing red. “I would not call them allies. They are expendable.”
“And what are those goals, Uchiha Sasuke?”
Sasuke knew better than to enumerate any goals he hadn't told Madara already, but he was happy to rub them in this bastard's face.
“I will kill the 6th Hokage.” He leaned closer. “I will kill the Elders.” He allowed himself a smile, felt it spreading across his face like a wildfire out of control, let it-- “And I will destroy Konoha.” And you, you backstabbing blood traitor. He imagined he could see that swirling mask right through the overlay of the Nara's stony face. Oh yes. I will certainly kill you.
“Hmm,” said the man, but no further question was forthcoming. He recrossed his fingers, leaned his chain into them, and closed his eyes as if in deep thought.
The Anbu stood like sentinels. Water dripped somewhere in the background.
Sasuke wished they would just get on with torturing him already.
Madara surely wouldn't do the dirty work himself; there would be numerous opportunities to break the genjutsu when the administrators recklessly assumed he couldn't possibly be in his right mind. It was his last best chance to escape, to get out of here and concentrate on making all his goals a reality. His last best chance to recompense his stung honor.
He would also appreciate not having to spend one more minute staring at this man's too-familiar face.
“Are there any traps or unusual jutsus on his person?” This time, the man was asking a question of the silent others in the room.
“None visible through a standard check. Sir.” The lizard's answer was prompt.
“What about the eyes?”
“It will not be possible to fully examine them without a medical expert, sir. Based on current observation, the right eye does appear to possess the two-tomoe form of the Sharingan.”
Only two? thought Sasuke, then crushed the feeling ruthlessly. Nothing Madara said - or even implied - could be taken as truth.
He'd had enough of this, anyway.
“If you aren't going to ask any more questions of me, take me away!” he commanded, glaring back up at the incompetent figure across the table, wondering if whoever was butchering this genjutsu would respond to the authority in his voice. “I've had enough of your insults to the Uchiha name.”
One eye opened across the table. “That's an interesting thing to say. Uchiha Sasuke.” His other eye opened. “You seem to think that you are in a position to give orders to those who have you in captivity. Some things never change.” He muttered the last line. “But, you're right, this is a very troublesome interview. And there are certainly people in this room who have better things to do with their day. One last question.” His voice couldn't have been more mild, but his gaze zeroed in on Sasuke's face like a targeted projectile.
“Where do you think you really are? Uchiha Sasuke.”
At first Sasuke didn't understand the question. Something was niggling at the back of his mind, something important.
Something is off.
You seem to think that you are in a position to give orders to those who have you in captivity, then man had just said. Some things never change...
Some things never change.
And suddenly Sasuke realized, this man knows me.
From Sound? From Akatsuki? No--
“A dungeon in Leaf,” he answered without thinking, and suddenly realized, I really am. I am back in Leaf.
I am in the custody of ninjas from Leaf.
“Hmm,” said the man across the table. He tapped his fingers together, one after the other, in a perfect cadence. “Hmm...”
Not Madara, thought Sasuke, mind somehow blank and whirling at the same time. I was wrong. Madara isn't involved at all--
The man slammed both palms face down into the pitted wood. “This is all so damn troublesome!” Glaring at Sasuke like he had personally poisoned his morning coffee, he looked more like an aged Nara Shikamaru than Sasuke had thought possible. Sasuke stared back in a state of shock. Not Madara--
I just told them everything--
“Medium security. Relaxed conditions. Hold him until I give further orders.” He massaged the bridge of his nose with one hand, muttering under his breath. “I have a terrible premonition the Hokage is going to want to meet him.”
“Any further... examinations, sir?”
“Not at the moment,” sighed the man, rising from the chair he was sitting in, revealing - Sasuke head jerked back in shock - his full-length Councilor's kimono. “Maybe we'll be fortunate and he'll be too busy to bother. But if he isn't... you know the Hokage.” He stepped away from the chair with a swoosh of robes. “He doesn't like to see things broken.”
“Yes, sir.” Before the Lizard had even finished speaking, the hood had been replaced.
The last thing he saw before the darkness was the man looking back at him.
He caught no flash of pity in the Leaf Elder's eyes.