Naruto Fanfiction: Written, Erased, Re-Written [ch.2]
Written, Erased, Re-Written.
Summary: It’s not enough to capture a man. You need to be able to break him. But how can you cripple something already so damaged? AU, still in Naruto’s world, but a far cry from canon events. Eventual KakaIru.
A/N: Chapter two, lo and behold I actually got around to it!
Dedicated to unjaundiced . *Poke*.
And I would like you to pay attention to who says ‘Umino’ as opposed to ‘Iruka’ and when and where the difference in intimacy pops up.
[ chapter one ]
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“Is your name Umino Iruka?”
Coughing, the chained man licked the dribble of blood before it could trail down his chin, and then he grinned, a sadistic twist of the lips not at all unfamiliar. It was feral - and vicious. Ibiki was tired and cranky, and felt no guilt when he pulled the lever that tightened the chains; even when he heard a crack.
Groaning, prisoner 011850 muttered around a laugh, “Whoever titled the bastard sure had a bitter sense of humour, naming him after a fish.” Biting back the growl bubbling at the back of his throat, Ibiki allowed some slack in the chains before tightening them again.
“Technically, the dolphin is classified a mammal.” The Root prodigy looked up from the book he was reading, closing it with the muffled snap. Ibiki didn’t like how Root was sniffing around 011850; the curse seal was luring them to him like a moth to a flame.
He thought of his second-in-command, her wicked smile, and felt a wave of protectiveness hit him-she was Underground, and Underground protected their own. Root be damned with their snooping; he wasn’t going to let them get more than what was bare minimum. Unlike the hollow child before him, he had a Will of Fire and knew where his loyalties were deserved; to the betterment of the village, not the sly destruction of it.
A low cry of pain made him realize he was pulling the chains a little too tightly and loosened his grip, outwardly unperturbed. Quietly, the crippled part of his consciousness wondered how he could stand his work. Another part of his psyche was more curious to know when he just stopped caring about morality.
“Did you know dolphins are one of the few animals that engage in sex for fun?” laughed the man, rattling his shackles weakly. Then he eyed the boy and noted offhandedly, “With that outfit, I’m sure you do.”
The head of T&I merely smirked at the casual observation of the gear the Root child was wearing; it showed far too much stomach and skin, especially in the eyes of a man who preferred leather coats that brushed the floor and had plenty of space to conceal weapons.
“Be careful with your words,” the young boy smiled flatly, the upward tilt of his lips anything but amused, but something bitter and warped, like cracked carnival mirrors. “It says here-” the Root tapped the front cover of his book boldly emblazoned with the title How To Make Friends: Ninja Edition “-that if there is nothing good to say, then silence is a better choice.”
“Well, no one must talk to you about your tastes fashion if that’s the case,” grinned their captive who seemed too light-hearted when he was locked and secured in a room that stank of his own blood, sweat and vomit.
Sighing internally, Ibiki asked again calmly, “Is your name Umino Iruka?”
“Depends,” mused 011850 with a contemplative look on his face. “Are we role-playing? I thought bondage was your kink, but hey; whatever floats your boat.”
Gritting his teeth, Ibiki slowly tightened the chains, and when he heard a sickly wet popping noise-a dislocated shoulder for sure-he asked, “Where is it?”
011850 cleared his throat and spat on the floor, his saliva a patch of bloody red on the concrete floor. “Leaf-nin and their impatience,” he sighed, as if suddenly tired, frowning in a way that bunched up the prominent horizontal scar on his face. “I’ve been here two months and you’ve never taken the time to clarify what ‘it’ is.”
“Don’t play coy,” growled Ibiki darkly, feeling the murderous intent of his chakra flow around his body confidently like a hissing viper. “We want the exact location of the hidden bunker to Sound.”
“Then you will never be satisfied,” the man intoned smugly, “because you will never know.”
Sudden shocked yells echoed around the interrogation chamber, but Ibiki was mildly surprised that the noise was not from his own hands. The pale little runt-spy was straddling the prisoner, and three throwing stars were piercing 011850’s midgut.
Fresh blood glistened in the light, and Ibiki watched curiously at the turn of events, ready to intercede should the boy lose control and kill their prisoner. Not that he expected a brainwashed Root to lose control, but in the cells of interrogation, there was always a first for anything.
“I never cared for Sasuke, you know,” Root’s prodigy said with a pale imitation of a smile as he stabbed a kunai slowly into the man’s intestines. There was a sensual air to how slowly he slid the blade into his flesh, and soon the blood wasn’t purely red, streaks of greyish-brown now mixing in, destroying the purity of the crimson.
Gasping, but not allowing any other sign of discomfort, prisoner 011850 queried lowly, “Isn’t that Uchiha brat your reason for talking to me?”
Shrugging, the Root ninja pulled a brush from one of his inner pockets and dipped it in the pockets of blood formed at the points where skin met blade. Swirling it around, it soaked the horsehair and he moved it gracefully to the older man’s face, pressing the dampened brush on tanned skin, tracing the white scar that branched it.
“I never liked Sasuke. But Naruto misses him. So does Sakura.” Mindless red lines now took up a strange artful shape-was he trying to draw a cobra? Ibiki wondered. “And since they are my ... friends, I will try, for their sake.”
011850 looked confused and intrigued and out-of-sorts in a way that the head of interrogations never seemed to be able to manage. Amazingly then, black eyes constricted and then softened, a shade of hazel edging the pupil. Dark hair grew darker as it soaked up blood. The air grew thick with the haze something sour and metallic.
A lot of people compared the smell of blood to rust. Ibiki felt it was more the other way around - rust smelled like blood. He knew blood before he knew the smell of corroding metal, so it was only fitting to him.
“Not all barbarians,” he thought he heard murmured softly. Yet that was all the warning he got before the Root boy was knocked off the prisoner by a solid punch to the face; it seemed as though Ibiki had carelessly allowed some slack in the chains. Pulling the level tightly, he rectified his mistake with such harsh speed, another pop was telling to another dislocated shoulder.
Hissing between clenched teeth, 011850 flashed a glare at Ibiki before concentrating on the child slowly standing from the ground, wiping away the blood trickling down his jaw with blank eyes.
“You take hits like a man. Well done,” commented the man wryly. “And thus, you deserve a reward. I don’t know about Umino, but my name to the best of my knowledge is-” Whatever was about to be said was cut off by a tortured choking noise, as if he was suddenly choking. Eyes flashed a wild black before they clenched closed in pain.
Ibiki stepped forward, his chakra swirling and humming with tightly restrained power, because if this is a trick-
But the noises ended as abruptly as they came, and with some difficultly, the prisoner coughed out, “It’s Iruka. Though I s’pose Umino tacked on wouldn’t be half bad.”
“Nice to meet you, Umino,” the Root ninja said politely, and smiled a fake smile that looked more like a grimace. Yet the stiff manners still coerced a short, restricted bow from the prisoner-Umino Iruka, apparently-and a murmured return of the gesture.
“You know,” laughed Umino almost drunkenly with blood loss, “I think I could like you at the very least, slutty attire notwithstanding.”
“May I remind you to be careful of your words?” A raised hand, a flare of cold, cold chakra, and the cobra painted in blood moved.
Gurgling yells filled Ibiki’s ears as he saw prisoner 011850 begin to choke on his own blood, serpent’s tail flicking as it sped down his throat.
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“I’ve worked with Umino before he was listed deceased-and-missing,” Kakashi stated in a deadpan voice, a dark undercurrent in his tone. “I was a captain of one of the last missions he took. He came to me for advice about retiring. I saw him when he was working at the orphanage. That prisoner can’t be him.”
The man he remembered didn’t have black hair that curled down to the middle of his back; didn’t have a body that looked starved of food but packed with muscle. He didn’t have eyes with pupils blown so wide you couldn’t see the hazel iris that surrounded it; didn’t have pale-tanned skin covered with white scars; and most certainly he didn’t have a red curse seal on his back.
The Iruka he remembered always wore a soft smile and had gentle hands-which made Kakashi recommend the role of teaching. The Third had agreed wholeheartedly with the suggestion; added the idea of placement in the nin-orphanage, too. How long ago was that?
“Suck it up, Hatake.” Tsunade rubbed at her temples before exhaling heavily. “The prisoner acknowledges the possibility. Blood tests say different to you. Naruto knows it’s him.”
“Naruto is misled,” reasoned Kakashi. “He’s desperate and saw Umino where none stands.”
The sun was rising and the first of the morning rays broke through the blinds covering the window and hit him in the eye. He turned away from the light, itching to get back to the dark of his apartment. Just to get away from everything.
“That boy knew Umino for a good five years; enough that the man was filing adoption papers,” Tsunade said as she moved papers and scrolls around her desk. “I trust his word, and the evidence science has given us.”
“Ask the Third to come in,” Kakashi asked, changing tact. “He’ll know and he’ll agree with me-”
“No.” Tsunade knocked down the request as if she were expecting it. Which, thinking about it, she probably was. “I can handle it. He was hit pretty hard by the supposed death of that boy. Leave Sarutobi alone in retirement. Spirits know he’s deserved it.”
“He should know there’s an imposter in the village,” Kakashi said, leaning heavily against the windowsill, crushing his back against the bamboo blinds.
“Damn it, it’s him!” The walls shook when her fist slammed the desk. “Just because he’s twisted beyond recognition does not mean his humanity isn’t there. Once we fix him-a matter of when, not if, if I get my way in the matter-and that’s when we’ll drag Third into this.”
“It can’t be him. I refuse to believe it.”
“You want to know where Sasuke is, right?” The regent Hokage snapped angrily, impatiently. “Umino knows. Our job is making him remember he’s Leaf. It’ll be better than torture.”
Kakashi couldn’t say otherwise. He never did like torture. Ibiki didn’t understand when he had asked to talk to the prisoner-talk and not maim-but he wanted to get an idea of the man who so willingly worked for that viper that stole Sasuke.
But he saw the prisoner several times over the span of two whole months. He never got a grasp, an understanding of the thief’s mind. All he got were mildly amusing taunts of manners and barbarian behaviour, and nothing more.
If it was Iruka, I should’ve known straight away.
“His chakra is poisoned,” Tsunade said in a soft voice. Snapping his head up, the jounin realized far too late that he spoke his thoughts aloud. “I checked. The curse seal tampers with it. It fluctuates unnaturally, almost as if there were two systems, not just one. I’m sending a Hyuuga in later for more detailed analysis.”
“Still...”
“It’s been many years. People change.”
“I don’t want it to be him. If it is him,” Kakashi paused and frowned before continuing, “he’d been better off dead.”
Without waiting for dismissal, Kakashi stalked out of the room, aware of how rude he was being. Then again, he never cared much for convention.
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Iruka woke up silently on a soft bed. That was the first thing he noticed - the mattress supporting his back was a luxury prisoners were not usually privy to, so it stood out more to his senses than the threadbare blanket or the paper patient’s apron covering him. Actually, even when he was with his teacher he rarely got a proper bed unless he’d completed a mission perfectly.
Strange that he failed in stealing the forbidden scroll but he got the prize anyway. Teacher would never have allowed it. He refrained from wincing at the thought of his teacher’s fury when he’d report in on his treatment. If Leaf had simply tortured him senselessly until he was rescued, then his teacher might have let him off the hook for failing.
-for days he only coughed up red, red and more red-
There was the beeping of a heart monitor next to him, and Iruka almost felt pride in the steady beat of the noise never changed once upon his awakening. Other than the artificial ticks of noise, and the sounds of his deep, calm breathing, there was nothing. As if the room was empty.
Cracking open an eye, he was mildly surprised to see that it was empty, until he saw the walls lined with mirrors and the sight made him roll his eyes. They were using one-way glass to observe him? Amateurish; the ideal trick was to have no doors or windows or anything and let the prisoner go insane from paranoia while watching from a hidden camera. He’d seen the effects of that method first-hand. Cruel, perhaps, but devilishly effective.
Attempting to sit up, Iruka finally noticed the leather straps holding him down to the bed. Sighing heavily, he slammed his head back on the mattress-no pillow, thank the deities, because if teacher knew he’d been treated a pillow-and froze when the pain receptors were slow to react.
Turning his head to the left, he saw his arm hooked up to an IV-drip and hissed at it. Though his teacher tried, Iruka couldn’t get over his aversion to medical needles, which was bad because he needed a lot of shots to keep strong. A lot of shots to stay in line, in control, he was told.
-get that fucking needle away from me-
-it’s either you or the kid, so shut up and take the injection-
-it burned like a torrent of blue fire through the veins-
A buzzing filled his ears and Iruka vaguely wondered if there was a fly in the room. His eye twitched until the noise disappeared and only the beeps of the monitor echoed. The irrational urge to rip the IV from his arm faded as his mind moved on to other things.
Now awake, he was burning through whatever drug they were pumping in him and his cognitive senses were speeding up again. He’d been underground for two months and it seemed a reasonable idea to attempt to break out - teacher still had yet to contact him, but perhaps he couldn’t get through...
Ridiculous; he quickly discarded the idea. Teacher was all-powerful. If he needed Iruka to escape, he would’ve heard. Letting him stew in prison was probably part of his punishment for failing. But he wouldn’t go back to him without the scroll. He’d get it, one way or another.
-failure is repaid tenfold with sweat, blood and tears-
Part of him finally wondered why he was transferred to this new, clean room. Last thing he remembered was a golden-haired child running into his cell, screaming some nonsense, and then he blacked out. He was pretty sure that the head of T&I was there, along with Scarecrow.
No, wait. There was something else that happened. There was an interlude of pain; a feeling of betrayal; and of mocking laughter. But he remembered another bright moment of gold and something vague.
Sluggishly, flashes of the scene were popping up in front of Iruka’s eyes, but none of it made sense. He couldn’t see the child’s face, for one thing. Blurred edges made the scene feel like one of his childhood memories, the ones erased for his own good. Teacher was so kind.
“Your parents are dead - memories make you mourn them,” he had said. “Without them, you’ll be stronger,” he had promised. His teacher never lied.
A portion of the mirrored wall cracked smoothly and a door appeared. Indifferently, Iruka watched a procession of people walk into his room. The head of T&I foremost and easily recognisable from his towering frame, Scarecrow - but one now eying him warily, his aura more cautious than impassive, and two others he hadn’t met before.
The shortest of the pair had brilliant yellow hair that clashed with an ill-coordinated black and orange jumpsuit too baggy for his frame. He seemed subdued and his eyes were downcast. Leaf, it seemed, were sending in more children to torture him, re-enforcing his notion they were barbarians.
The other was a woman, and she was tall and willowy; graceful and radiating power. Iruka didn’t know why, but he felt a gut instinct that he’d seen her before: a picture in his teacher’s room had someone eerily familiar... Then again, she was blonde and was incredibly well-endowed - her type were a dime a dozen.
“There was once a young child, born under two high-ranked ninja, and though orphaned early on, was well on the way to follow in their footsteps,” the female was suddenly talking, hands on hips, her piercing brown eyes burning into his. “He was then later honourably discharged from active service when he was nineteen years old. Afterwards he was recorded taking a teaching post at a nin-orphanage-any of this ringing a bell?”
Blinking, Iruka asked, “Why are you telling me the history of one of your ninja?” He felt a little off-balance and a ringing headache was beginning to build underneath his left eye. “If this is some weird Leaf interrogation custom, can we skip it-?”
“He doesn’t remember,” the mumble came from the subdued child, who Iruka now observed a little more carefully. Three marks on either cheek - was that a sign of the Inuzuka tribe? Iruka couldn’t remember. He thought brown hair was a dominant gene of the clan though... “I shouldn’t have hoped; it’s been four years, after all.”
Iruka interrupted the mumbling with an indignant, “Are you guys here to confuse me, or pump me for information?”
“Cut the crap,” growled the burly man to his right, and Iruka raised an eyebrow in challenge. Turning his eyes away from the bound prisoner, the head interrogator said to the woman, “We’ve done this a few times already; he just keeps wiping his memory blank.”
“It’s true, though I doubt it’s voluntary,” the woman nodded, crossing her arms and tapping her foot impatiently. “But what else can we do?”
“Shock therapy has had proven results-”
“No.” The authority in that one word rebounded and echoed in the empty room.
Persistently, the other continued with, “It’s been two days-”
“We need more conclusive evidence.”
“Your healing chakra is ineffective against this.”
“And what makes you think electricity would do better?”
Iruka listened to them bicker with an amused tilt to his lips. Yet his eyes kept drifting over to the child in the room who was watching him with an almost desperate glint in his eye. The frown bending the boy’s lips echoed at a memory locked away.
He couldn’t stop himself from saying almost reflexively, “Naruto, wipe that puckered expression off your face or the wind will change and you’ll be stuck like that.”
-and then he’d hand Naruto a candy bar so he’d stop crying-
Before Iruka knew it, the brief grin that lit up his face disappeared and he was left confused. Who was Naruto? A sick feeling overturned the strange warmth in his stomach, and he somehow felt like he’d betrayed his teacher; he wasn’t sure how, but he was sure he broke a rule.
The sudden silence of the room barely registered until it was broken by the child screeching, “Iruka, you do remember!”
Remember?
-helping him throw short blades at a trunk, tutoring him-
-you’ll be a powerful ninja one day; I’ll make sure of it-
-I acknowledge you, so don’t let the others with their pettiness bother you-
Remember what?
-patching up various cuts and scrapes-
-warm bowls of broth and something salty and tangy-
Choppy static filled his mind.
-Naruto, I promise I’ll get you out of here one day-
Blinking, a sudden weight crushed his stomach and the air left him in a rush, winding him. The boy was hugging him and he instinctively bucked, trying to get him off. The belts held him tight, though the adults of the room moved fast and got the kid off him before he had to struggle much.
Scarecrow was holding the kid back. The boy’s eyes were brimming with tears. Such weak ninja Leaf had. No wonder they deserved an invasion. Teacher never lied.
“Boy, what the hell is wrong with you?” he snarled, panting and feeling slightly panicked, the heart monitor ticking with a slightly raised beat. Distracted, he didn’t see the boy’s eyes darken with pain. “How do you know that name?” he snapped angrily.
“See?” interrupted the burly male aggressively. “It’s the same every time!” Why did it look like they were all looking for orders from the blonde? Iruka wondered.
“Fine,” she said after a heavy pause. The woman moved to the IV and fiddled with it. His eyes drooped down with a heaviness that felt forced and he barely caught her next words.
“Try the damned shock therapy, then.”
A child’s scream of outrage, and then the peacefulness of oblivion covered everything.
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Everything hurt.
Like thousands of tiny pinpricks of burning needles, but worse, so much worse.
Sometimes there would be seconds where the pain stilled, paused, lessened in its intensity, but it never completely stopped.
Teacher would be pleased Iruka stayed quiet the entire time. Well, he was quiet when he wasn’t blacking out.
-remember, pain is your friend, and your only friend at that-
Blinding white crossed his eyelids, only to be replaced with poison-red.
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A/N: Originally, I was going to make this all Iruka POV, but then it got too difficult to explain things when Iruka keeps forgetting, so I’m making this a multi-POV. And, okay, to be honest, I was confusing myself, too. *Head desk*.
So... how do you like the story’s progression? Too fast, too slow? What’d you think? Remember, details are changed in this AU, some subtle, others more important. They will (hopefully) be cleared up and better explained as the story progresses.
[ chapter three ]