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The acrid stink of cigarette smoke was the first thing Kakashi had been able to scent in hours that wasn't flavoured with blood. It was jarring. He twitched, pulled out of his own thoughts by the sensory strike. By the briefer's introductory speech underwritten by her not-quite-real smile. The edge of his half-vision was fuzzy, slightly blurred in a way that made it hard to focus. Ordinarily he would have chalked that up to exhaustion and simply forced himself to pay closer attention, but he didn't feel tired. He had every reason to be tired; two days worth of running, fighting, and failure, but the combination had catalyzed in a way that left him tense. Awake. Genma was sitting on his blind side.
Kakashi didn't look at him. It was easier not to gut someone if you could pretend they didn't exist. He folded his arms, ignoring the way they felt oddly light without the weight of his arm guards. Easily broken. The burned right hand he kept close to his chest, hiding the white flash of bandage that screamed weakness. Instinct.
Akayama watched them both for a moment, her expression calm. Kakashi knew she'd had her own run of bad missions. Every interviewer that conducted this style of briefing always had. It was part of the reason they got chosen. The experience promoted empathy and understanding, a shared bond with whatever unlucky agent had fucked up and neglected to bring his teammates home. It was supposed to make it easier to talk.
He hated her. Her and Genma and the last two days. The three Leaf corpses they hadn't been able to bring home.
Kakashi didn't move. His chest felt tight, circled by the immovable bone arches of his ribcage. Painful. He inhaled carefully though his mouth, dragging in air that tasted once more of red, sieved through his bloody mask. It was hard to draw a full breath.
Akayama's level gaze switched to him. "Ordinarily we'd begin proceedings with the captain's report," she said softly, "but in this instance, that will not be possible."
He didn't flinch.
"You're both of equal rank," she continued. "Would either of you like to begin?"
Kakashi said nothing. He wasn't certain he was capable of human speech. Of anything but howling.
"The mission," Genma said, in a voice as dead as his comrades, "proceeded without incident until the fourth day." Four. An unlucky number. So unlucky. Why did they send out teams of four when it was a jinx? Of course ANBU were the death squad. Assassins and killers every one of them. They'd kill to keep from breaking their cover, kill to take out a specified target, kill to save a comrade, kill because it was the mission. Four was a natural number for ANBU, if you thought about it.
"Ayako sent Nobuki and Kakashi to recon the enemy position; she and I hung back, mapped out avenues of possible flight if our targets spooked."
They'd spooked alright. Somehow they'd caught sight of one of the ninja. Caught sight of Nobuki or Kakashi, and sent their own meat squad after their pursuers. The first clue Genma'd had that something was going fantastically wrong was the sound of voices. Shouting voices he hadn't recognized. He'd turned from where he'd been laying a trap of concealed wire and spring-triggered shuriken and been thrown against a tree by the force of an explosion behind him. More voices, screaming instead of shouting, and another flare as a fireball had gone off, someone's fire jutsu, he hadn't known whose. There had been smoke and his ears had been ringing. Blood had trickled down the side of his face from one ruptured eardrum, and he hadn't know where his friends were, where the enemies lay. Who was alive, who had died.
His ears still felt muffled and wrong, stuffed full of cotton wool, even though the medic had healed them. It would take a few days for his hearing to come back to normal, he'd told him, with that same sad look on his face. As if he doubted any agent who'd come back from a mission like Genma's ever achieved "normal" again.
"The recon team was spotted," he said, carefully not naming Kakashi. Privately, he was sure it had been the younger agent who'd made the error. Kakashi was arrogant. Took chances. He'd seen him do it plenty of times on that mission. "And the target had evidently linked up with reinforcements. There were..." He tried to think. He hadn't been able to count. Had had to take Kakashi's word for it as to how many enemy they'd spotted. By the time the enemy had gotten back to Genma and Ayako's position, there had been at least seven of them. That didn't count the ones Kakashi and Nobuki had already engaged. If they'd engaged any. If they hadn't just sent them straight at their rear-guard comrades.
"There were at least seven," he said finally. "The recon team was..." careless. Wrong. Half dead now. Kakashi had survived. Had he been seen? "Overrun."
"Ambushed," Kakashi growled, the sound rippling up from his chest and leeching into his voice before he could stop it. "We were ambushed. There were fifteen I counted, and they'd set traps." The growl threaded his words, leaving them raw-throated and just slightly inhuman. He shifted, slouching slightly. "Nobuki and I separated to cover more ground. I missed my trap. He..." didn't.
Three poison senbon and Nobuki had been a dead man long before he'd fallen. Long before an enemy justu had ripped through his armour and opened him from neck to navel. Long before Genma had wasted his time trying to save a still-breathing corpse while others had died.
Kakashi squeezed his right hand, ragged fingernails digging into clean bandage and the messy damage beneath. Pain like a hot slap helped shock him back into control. "Nobuki was hit," he continued, breathing carefully. "We were both engaged by the enemy. They worked to drive us apart. I killed at least three. My summons took down two more. Nobuki must have gotten one, and then..."
You weren't supposed to speak ill of the dead.
"He ran." Kakashi's mouth twisted bitterly under his mask. "He took a poisoned injury, it might have messed with his judgement. He headed straight back for Ayako and Genma, and the enemy followed him." Kakashi had followed, too, and ten people had died. Three from the wrong team. "I didn't see when Ayako fell. It must have been in that first attack." He slouched further and focused on the lady in front of them. He couldn't look at Genma.
Nobuki had run? But he was a good ninja. A veteran ANBU with two years' service under the mask. He wouldn't have made a rookie-mistake like that. Any ninja could spring an unexpected trap, but they had known where the enemies were camped. They'd known they should be careful of traps. Nobuki was too good to have done what Kakashi said.
Although when the smoke had cleared and they'd had only the cooling bodies of the dead for company, Genma had found the three punctures that marked senbon strikes on Nobuki's neck. A tiny target on the big man, a tiny vulnerable spot, and three tiny needles had gotten in and delivered their poison. It had been why Nobuki's blood wouldn't clot. It wouldn't clot, and Genma had had his arms elbow-deep in Nobuki's chest, holding a quivering, dying heart, desperately channeling chakra into it, trying to start it back into something like a rhythm, even though every pulse it did manage just deepened the pool of blood Genma knelt in.
Even if Nobuki had taken a hit from a trap he'd triggered, though, Genma refused to believe the rest of Kakashi's lie.
"Nobuki was a fucking good ninja. He knew better than to lead pursuers to vulnerable teammates. He was hit and hurt, but he was still fighting. I saw him take out two of the enemy after Ayako went down. He was a good fucking ninja!"
Genma didn't realize he was shouting, didn't realize he was on his feet, towering over Kakashi and the interviewer until he felt hands on his shoulders. Sentries, pushing at him. Until he put his weight down on his injured ankle and felt a shock of pain travel straight up the bone and into his brain, sparking blackly in front of his eyes.
"... down, please, Shiranui-san," the woman was saying, in that same calm, soothing, understanding voice. "No-one is disputing the heroism of Agent Ishida. He served his Hokage with honor."
Genma sat. He had no choice.
Kimiho looked at Genma, when he was sitting again, face still lined with pain, eyes rimmed with red. When she offered him another cigarette, his hand tremor, she noted, had grown more noticeable. Pale hands laced with red-purple scars. Perhaps he had been sent back into the field too soon.
She waited while he calmed, while his cigarette burned down by half as he inhaled the smoke. Nicotine was calming. A calming drug. And these cigarettes were carefully laced with a little something extra. It was too bad the other one, Hatake, didn't smoke.
When the tension had ebbed enough, she looked at Genma again. "Can you confirm when Captain Oda was hit?"
"Ayako was hit with an exploding tag at point blank range," he answered her. The dead tone had crept back into the young man's voice, she noted. Dead and ragged with pain, and numbed with drugs. She wasn't surprised he referred to his captain by her given name. That kind of familiarity was the norm for Hunter squads. She made a quiet note on her pad, nodded to the sentries that they could step back and let him continue.
"She took a full detonation to the face. Right when they reached us. Before I even knew we were discovered." And he stopped again. Lost. Perhaps he had had feelings for Oda? Though there was no evidence of that in either of their files. But clearly he was unable to continue. Kimiho turned to Kakashi. "So when you arrived, you found Captain Oda already incapacitated?"
There was a reason they made sure to disarm ANBU before they debriefed them. When Genma lost his careful calm he'd taken Kakashi's with it. The copy-nin tensed when his teammate lunged to his feet, adrenaline soaking through his system and adding an extra charge to a body already crouched on the wire-edge. Genma yelled; Kakashi reached for a kunai... which wasn't there.
They had sentries for the same reason. Three of them blurred in fast enough to ripple the air, two to flank Genma, and one to stand in front of Kakashi with a meaningful look. The briefer didn't move, except to smile that same not-quite-smile and talk about honor. About serving the Hokage.
The sentries did their job, Genma settled down, and Kakashi stayed in his chair and reminded himself of rule twenty-five.
"No," he said evenly. "I found Ayako already dead." 'Incapacitated' was a pretty word, it looked nice on reports. He'd learned the kanji for it when he'd been young enough to care how his paperwork read. "Genma had been caught by surprise. Nobuki was busy getting himself a chest piercing--" with a katana, "--and there were between seven and nine enemy shinobi left. I don't know how many Genma took down. I got at least two, my summons took down one. And one escaped."
Kakashi hadn't followed. He'd been busy. He'd been the only one left standing, with Genma kneeling to shove both hands into Nobuki's chest and waste his chakra. One captain dead, one teammate dying, one head wound from a stone jutsu Kakashi hadn't dodged fast enough, and one dog bleeding out under his hands.
One dog Genma hadn't healed.
He didn't bother to say it. It was already in the paperwork, written down in pretty kanji set aside for just that purpose. Mission failed. Casualties sustained. Agents wounded. Collateral damage.
"Two. I killed two in combat, and wounded a third badly enough he was out of the fight." Genma's voice picked up a harsh edge. A hint of mania. "The third died afterwards, under questioning. He proved an unsuitable information source." He'd been a kid, maybe a chuunin, only thirteen or fourteen. Only a few years younger than Kakashi, and still with baby-fat in his cheeks and a desperate plea for his life on his lips. Genma had asked him just enough to determine he didn't know anything they didn't already know themselves, then he'd looked at Kakashi, slumped in grief over the blood-soaked carcass of a deep-chested hunting hound; looked at Ayako's ruin of a face, skin peeled back from her skull, ruptured eyeball hanging grotesquely from one socket; looked at Nobuki flayed in half with pink-grey lungs and a purple heart swelling up through his desecrated chest. He'd looked at his own bloody hands, tipped his mask back so the boy could see the face of the man who killed him, and smiled grimly while he crushed his larynx.
"I killed two, disabled the third, and sustained an ankle fracture in combat. I was unaware of the severity at the time. Once the enemy were down, I turned my attention to attempting to save my team." Genma gagged. He hadn't felt that coming. He was telling the woman from Intel what had happened, remembering what he'd seen, what he'd done, and suddenly he felt his stomach seize, felt a hot rush of bile in his throat. It was one sneak attack after another, it seemed. Ambushed by their enemy. Injured without realizing it. Brought in for questions by a Sentry escort from the moment he and Kakashi had shown up at Konoha's Southern Gate, blood-covered and in Genma's case, limping badly. Silent but for the occasional grunt of pain.
He swallowed hard, swallowed again, felt his eyes tearing and his mouth flood with saliva. He was not going to humiliate himself, he thought, and grit his teeth, breathing slowly through his nose. After a moment the nausea receded, and he picked up his cigarette again. Inhaled the smoke which burned in his acid-stung throat.
"I ascertained that Ayako was beyond saving. She still had a pulse, but her injury was too severe to sustain life. She had an open fracture of the skull with partial avulsion of the face." She had been still breathing, a terrible, gurgling sound, as air burbled in and out of her ruined mouth and the hole where her nose should have been. "I terminated her so that she wouldn't suffer."
The sickness came back, sharp and insistent, and Genma shut his eyes and lowered his head to the table, face turned away from Kakashi, from the interviewer. It was the sentry still in the room who pushed a wastebasket towards him. A kindness or a practicality? Genma didn't care. He was past caring. He swallowed again, and used the same willpower that had gotten him home to keep himself from vomiting now.
Kimiho looked from one agent to the other, the first slumped over as if he simply didn't have the strength to remain upright, the second slouched and held carefully still in his chair, and made another note on her pad. Between them they'd accounted for all the enemy shinobi reported present--
Fifteen total. Fourteen killed in combat. One escaped.
-- as well as the deaths of both teammates --
Oda Ayako: fatal injuries sustained; terminated by comrade. Ishida Nobuki: killed in combat.
-- the reasons behind their own reasonably unharmed status --
ANBU veterans. Luck.
-- and the failure of the mission--
Greater enemy force than anticipated. Casualties sustained. Retreat recommended as the most advisable option; two agents still retrieved.
She glanced up again, neutral gaze moving from one only partially visible face to one she couldn't see at all. "Very well, is there anything either of you would like to add?" She paused as a flicker of killing intent uncurled. The sentries stiffened. "Hatake-san?"
Kakashi's focus wasn't on the woman calling his name. His attention was on the teammate to his left. On Genma, laid down with his head against the table and his scent curdling with nausea and misery. On the man he could finally see because he'd turned to look.
Genma wasn't much older than Kakashi. They were both built about the same; tall and long-limbed. He wasn't any stronger. Certainly not smarter. Definitely no wiser. He was just an ANBU, like Kakashi was an ANBU. Different masks, same armour. Same mission.
Except Kakashi had killed five Rock-nin, while Genma had let two teammates die. Killed one with his own hands, in fact, and ignored the other. Refused to heal the other because he'd been too busy shoving his chakra into a dead man's ribcage and a corpse was more important than a canine.
More important than one of his pack.
The careful numbness wrapped around Kakashi's chest shattered, splintering into jagged shards of raw grief. His focus dissolved. Another one. He'd lost another one. Thirteen now, of the closest thing he had left to a family. Thirteen dogs and Arihiro shouldn't have been one of them. He'd been wounded, but not gone. Hurt enough to scream, but alive enough to save.
And Genma hadn't, even when Kakashi had begged.
His fists clenched again, fingers digging into bandages and skin. Pain spiked a nasty little corkscrew. He didn't feel it. He was too busy looking at the man who'd cost him a life, a family member, by refusing to do his job. Too busy watching the image playing through his own head, written in sharingan red. To busy feeling blood run under his hands and harden in the cracks, feeling a heartbeat flicker and stutter against his palm, feeling his chakra run away like water, because he'd put as much as he could into his friend, given away as much as he had. Watched it make no difference because he didn't know enough medical jutsu to shape it right.
What he had left rippled now, coiling under his skin with a slippery red pulse. "It's a good thing," he rasped into the quiet room, trying to find the right words to hurt, "that you don't care about your teammates, Shiranui. It must make it so much easier when you kill them."
Genma came alive in a heartbeat. Came alive, shoving back from the table, away from Kakashi. Knocking over the wastebasket, the chair he'd been sitting in, the pair of crutches he'd limped into this room on. Backing up, reaching for a katana that wasn't strapped to his back, and at the same moment realizing that if he'd found it there, and used it, he'd be exactly what Kakashi accused him of being.
"I had to," he rasped, staring in horror at the Intel agent as she rose to her feet. At the sentries as they moved back into combat readiness. "I had to, she couldn't survive. You saw her face! You saw her! She was in agony!" His appeal fell on deaf ears. Just as his own had been deafened on that blood-soaked battlefield.
It wasn't Ayako's agony that Kakashi cared about, not then and not now. The sounds had been muffled and wrong, distorted by a horrible wind that had rushed past Genma's ruined ear drums. Ayako's dying gurgles, and Nobuki's anguished screams, and Kakashi keening for his dog.
"Nobuki was... I.. He was alive, dammit. I had to try to save him. I didn't know about the poison. He was alive, and I could have saved him. You know medical protocol, damnit." He was staring at Kakashi now, shouting--no whispering. Whispering his defense. There was no defense. He'd killed Ayako, and he'd failed to save Nobuki. He'd felt Nobuki's life pulsing out between his fingers, felt his own chakra draining away to nothing as he worked frantically to bring his comrade--his friend--back from a death he'd refused to accept was inevitable.
Kakashi had been screaming at him that Nobuki was already dead, which Genma had known was a lie. It had been a lie. A crazed, desperate lie, because Kakashi's dog was dying, too, and Kakashi wanted that dog to live even more than Nobuki. It hadn't mattered what Kakashi wanted. Humans came first. Human comrades always came first. Summoned animals were lower priority, and if there were two catastrophic injuries, one to a human and one to a dog, and only one medic, the medic worked on the human. Always. No exceptions.
The medic worked on the human.
Genma had worked, frantically, desperately, shouting to Kakashi to just hold on a little longer. To keep his dog stable with chakra support, and he'd get there as soon as he had Nobuki stabilized. As soon as he had Nobuki's heart back. As soon as he had the bleeding under control. But the bleeding had been uncontrollable, and Nobuki had died and by the time Genma turned to try to help Kakashi, it had been too late. Too late for Nobuki, too late for Ayako. Too late for the dog.
He'd stared at Kakashi, and Kakashi had stared at him, mouthing words Genma couldn't hear. All he could hear was the rushing wind silence of damaged eardrums and the frantic hammering of his own heart.
What ever had happened on that mission, it clearly wasn't over. Not by a long shot. There had been three sentries in the room, now there were five. Two flanking Genma, taking him by the arms, holding him up in place of the crutches he'd knocked aside. Restraining him with a steady flow of chakra that easily overpowered his drained flicker.
Two more flanked Kakashi, who was also on his feet. Holding him in place, lest he make a lunge for his teammate. The fifth stood at Kimiho's side, sturdy, calm. In command.
These sorts of debriefings always went one of two ways: either the survivors clung to each other like frightened children, or they did this. Turned on each other in their rage and their grief. Violent men pushed pass the point of tolerance. Kimiho turned to the sentry commander at her side and nodded. She had finished her interview, but she still had a job to do. They both did. They all did.
"Hatake-san, Shiranui-san," she said, looking from one to the other. "My finding is that the actions taken on this mission were justifiable. There was no way to achieve a satisfactory outcome beyond your own survival. You will," she said, and her voice took on a steely tone, "stand down. Immediately. Or be confined on a psychiatric hold."
It was no idle threat. And it would hurt them, to have that in their records. It wouldn't be the first such hold for either man, she knew. Perhaps it had been too soon to send Shiranui out. Perhaps Hatake's antisocial bent had grown pathological since his last evaluation. She would make a recommendation that he be assigned exclusively solo missions for several months at least.
Kakashi leashed his chakra back, pulling it once more into exhausted pathways. It flooded back from his hands, released now that he hadn't called on it for a jutsu, and threaded back through his body, settling down to a tired pulse. The sentries didn't let go.
The woman was threatening them. He tilted his head slightly, sliding her a look. She was, technically, a senior agent. An Intel personnel assigned to review their case and determine just how much they'd messed up by bringing back dogtags instead of people. She had her own story, her own mistakes. Her own dead people that meant she was the best person to get them to talk. To stop them killing each other.
He still hated her. She might have been a senior agent, but she wasn't the Hokage. ANBU swore an oath of loyalty when they joined, and 'senior agents' wasn't on it. Honor, village, Hokage, teammates.
It didn't list summons.
His mouth fractured into a raw smile. Genma hadn't broken the rules, but Kakashi had still lost anyway. He looked back at Genma, held between his own guards, and tried to remember what detachment felt like. What numbness was. He still couldn't catch a full breath.
Could have saved him, Genma had said. Whispered. Looked at Kakashi's face and lied to him while they both still had blood on their hands. On their swords. He'd granted one mercy stroke and refused the other. Instead he'd kept his fingers around Nobuki's failing heart just long enough to make his death truly agonizing, while Kakashi's dog had paid for doing his job right. While he'd bled out in a hot rush of red that hadn't stopped no matter how hard Kakashi had tightened his grip. While he'd died pointlessly, needlessly, because Genma had made the wrong choice and family didn't mean the same as people.
"If you could have saved him," he said, granting himself words as the only weapon he'd use against a teammate, "then you would have. You failed. Arihiro paid for it." His chakra rippled again. The sentries' hold tightened. "If you ever get the nerve to defect, Shiranui, you better run a whole lot further than Stone. You owe me a life, and I don't mind it being yours."
It had been coincidence that this mission had crossed their paths with Stone ninja. Coincidence that it had been Iwagakure ninja they had faced down, fought, that had killed their teammates. Coincidence. Genma had told himself that over and over, not fate. Not karma. Coincidence. But when Kakashi spat it now, it didn't seem so innocuously coincidental anymore.
The worst insults one ninja could hurl at another: traitor, comrade killer, coward--and Kakashi had deftly called Genma all three and meant every word of it. Defect to Stone? Genma would sooner cut off his own crippled hands. He stared at them now, at hands still purple with healing scars, hands perverted from their natural shape to something monstrous and broken. Hands that would never be right again, thanks to Iwagakure's tender care.
Hands that had failed him when it had mattered most.
He looked up at Kakashi, and felt his chakra draw down into a tight, hard knot. Concentrating. Molding. He felt the sentries' hold on him tighten, heard a murmured word of warning from one anonymous guard to another. Genma wanted to lunge for that arrogant, spiteful face. Wanted to wound back as deeply as he'd been hurt. He wasn't eloquent like Kakashi, but he was just as bitter. Just as full of vitriol.
"You'd have traded Nobuki's life for a dog? A dog? For all I know you set off the trap that hit him, set those Iwa ninja on me and Ayako. What was your real objective? Make contact and let one escape with whatever information you passed him? And then you wanted me to trade my friends' lives for your dog's?"
It wasn't enough. It wasn't anything at all. Kakashi stood there, smug, unconcerned about the sentries. Unconcerned about anything except himself and his damn dog. Genma was mourning lost comrades. Lost friends. He wondered if Kakashi had even bothered to learn their full names.
ANBU wasn't a place where threats were given and ignored without consequence. Neither were accusations of treachery idle phrases to be bandied about. There had been no indication in the initial reports of any kind of disloyalty on the side of either agent, but they both had warning flags in their files. Hatake carried the family legacy with him, and any child of a suicidal parent was one that needed to be watched. Particularly when that parent had killed himself to wipe away a sin committed against his village. Shiranui carried his warning marks much more openly now, emblazoned on each hand. A month spent in the ungentle care of another village before rescue arrived could easily twist someone against their home. Turn their loyalties to something else.
On the other hand, it was unlikely the Fourth's golden boy was conspiring against his sensei's village, particularly when everything in his file pointed towards an obsession bordering on a neurosis about bringing his teammates home alive. And if Shiranui had plans to run back to the people that had broken his hands, his feet, and most likely done considerable damage to his mind, Kimiho would eat her clipboard. There were cases of captives growing to love their captors, but it was something that affected civilians far more than it did ninja. Especially ANBU.
She glanced between both of them, noting the signs of exhaustion and strain. Of grief. The way it curled in the ebbing shape of their low chakra, and showed in pale skin and red-rimmed eyes. The way both of them were shaking very slightly, and the way they'd turned on each other, flinging accusations. Assigning blame. Dealing with guilt.
And neither one of them was standing down.
"Very well, then," she said quietly, and signaled the sentries. "I'm recommending you both be confined on a psychiatric hold for a mandatory period of forty-eight hours. In two days you will be re-evaluated." Two nights spent under observation, preferably sedated, in a safe place where they couldn't hurt each other. Or themselves. It wasn't the best way to deal with personal tragedy, but it was the best ANBU had to offer.
Kakashi almost missed Akayama's calm words. He was too busy dealing with the surge of anger that came from being called a traitor. It was just a shot, he knew that, Genma striking back with an argument that made no sense because he didn't have a better one to offer, but it still hit too close to home. He wasn't a traitor, he'd never be a traitor. No matter what anyone said. He'd give anything for his village. Everything. He had once or twice. Everything except the last thing, and that was only a matter of time. His chakra slid like oil under his skin, slick with exhaustion and fury. Bile rose up in his mind, clouding his thoughts, demanding to be said. Demanding he find the right set of words, wrap them up in snarl, and stab Genma through the heart with them. He opened his mouth--
And the sentries' hold tightened. Kakashi jerked. "What--?"
"Don't fight us, son," said one of them, voice rumbling quietly in Kakashi's ear. "Do the sensible thing."
Kakashi's eyes narrowed. Akayama's words registered with their own little flicker of panic. "I'm not," he said with icy clarity, "your son. Get off me. I don't need a watch." He didn't. He needed to go home and take a solider pill, then he needed to call up the pack and explain why they were one member short. How exactly he'd failed. He needed to sleep as long as they'd let him before the next mission order came in.
The sentries' chakra surged up, strong and well-rested. Overpowering against his weak, battle-weary energy. Kakashi tensed, testing the grip. It was solid. He didn't have the chance to get his hands together before theirs pulled his apart, destroying any chance of calling up a jutsu. Kakashi snarled.
"Stop," Akayama's calm voice cut across his own. "Or I'll consider this a sign of a full break, and suggest you be held for a month."
Kakashi stiffened. Then, very, very slowly, he shifted his balance, falling off-guard. Chakra uncoiled, settling. The sentries didn't relax.
"With all due respect," he said, glaring and furious, "I consider your decision a sign of gross mental instability, and suggest you try a little of your own therapy." Broad hands wrapped around his forearms tightened further, holding them pinned to his side. Kakashi's teeth sank into his lower lip, hidden under his mask. "But we don't always get what we want."
"No," said Akayama quietly. "We don't." She signalled the sentries again.
The hands on Genma's arms tightened, and for a wild, pulse-pounding moment, Genma fought them. Not the sentries, really, and not the woman from Intel. Not even Kakashi. He'd just been pushed so far past his limits that when those hands shifted to a restraining, rather than supportive hold, he reacted with the instinct ANBU had trained into him. Arms restrained, upper body threatened, he had to rely on his legs. The man on his left was slightly farther back, the one on the right a better target for a kick. Genma wrenched violently to his left, putting all his weight on his broken ankle. Even with the splint in place, it gave way. There was a sick sound of bone grating against bone, a harsh cry from Genma, shouts from the sentries...
Even if he'd had a solid ankle to stand on, and had been able to attempt that kick, he'd never have succeeded. Combative, exhausted ANBU were nothing new to the sentries. They immobilized him completely with a combination of jutsu and shear physical force. Caught him when he sagged between them, fierce eyes losing their focus as pain and defeat took over.
He heard the Intel woman sigh as if she were disappointed. "He'll need another visit to the medics before you take him to psych," he heard her say, and knew she meant him. Kakashi was still there, glaring at him like a caged tiger Genma remembered having been taken to see as a child. Could see what looked like triumph twist the mouth hidden behind that black cloth mask, as Kakashi watched him. His muscles were like water, unresponsive and flaccid under the jutsu the sentries had used on him. He had nothing left to fight with. The pain in his ankle was sharp enough to bring the nausea back, choking him. Completing his humiliation. He gagged and swallowed and didn't look at Kakashi anymore.
There were still ghosts in the room. Three of them. A woman who had been an ANBU captain. Who had been beautiful and intelligent and had a quirky sense of humor. A man who'd liked salted dried fish with his beer and danced better than you might think such a big guy could. And a dog, tall and long-legged, with a deep chest and a high waist, and paws too big for him, because big as he was he hadn't reached his full size yet. Two dead ninja. Three ghosts. And two shattered survivors.
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