| Don't Like It but I Guess I'm Learning [Genma & Kakashi] | [Feb. 20th, 2010|08:24 pm] |
[Backstory. Takes place September 18th, four years post-Kyuubi. One and a half days after Learn the Hard Way, and only a few hours after Mightier Than The Sword]
Low light, hushed voices just out of hearing range, the scent of alcohol blended with chemicals and blood, and the fact that he felt as utterly ill as he ever had in his life told Genma he was in a hospital. For several heartbeats he lay unmoving on his back, trying to remember why. Then he wished he could forget. He tried to move his arms, and found his hands shackled and aching, one to each side, anchored to cold metal bed rails. His ankles, too, were strapped down, with his feet cramped and his legs wrenched apart. Belly up and vulnerable. It felt like night, but he had no idea how much time had passed since he'd last been conscious. Or what time of day that had been.
Someone came in. A young woman with long blonde hair and elfin features. She didn't smile. Not even a little. Her lips were stained a garish shade, waxy and wrong for her in a way that emphasized flaws in the symmetry of her face. She glanced at Genma, pressed a button, and raised the head of his bed. Then she snapped on a television set, added something to the IV in Genma's arm, gave him another cold, unreadable look, and left.
For the next long stretch of time -- long enough that Genma couldn't tell if it spanned hours or days -- he was left almost entirely alone.
The room was not in Iwa's hospital, Genma determined, but a medical treatment cell in their prison. There was a bare metal toilet in one corner, tantalizing him when the needs of the body overwhelmed him. His captors let him rest on stained sheets for hours, before the same stone-faced woman came back, slapped a paralysis jutsu on him, stripped the sheets from the bed, and forced a catheter into him with little warning and no gentleness.
More hours. Hunger came and went. He studied the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Felt his arms and legs come back to life, ache with pins and needles, and compress back into numbness again. No one came to ask him questions, but the woman came back every few hours and checked his vitals, adjusted medications, and scowled. Spoke not a word.
And the television played. Endless, wretched, horrifying images of Kakashi. The interrogator driving cruelly at him. Kakashi's broken, drugged, awful reactions. The techniques they used on Kakashi were textbook. Too much light, too much darkness. Too much heat -- Genma could see the sweat soaking Kakashi's shirt -- a contrast to the uncomfortable chill Genma was held in. The interrogator wreathed the room in smoke, blew it right into Kakashi's face. Held a hand over Kakashi's mouth more than once, suffocating him until Genma was sure his comrade would lose consciousness, but then the interrogator would back off, and Kakashi would fall, limp and gasping, against the chair to which he was bound.
For hours there was almost no sound. The volume was so low that Genma had to strain to catch even parts of words. He heard Kakashi's name. His own name. Mumbled, distorted murmurs that must have been questions. He saw Kakashi fall horribly still, as the interrogator applied genjutsu to his helpless subject. Saw Kakashi snap wide-eyed and panicked back out of the illusion.
Whenever Genma was awake, he had to watch Kakashi being silently abused. And no one -- no one -- came to ask Genma questions.
He tried to sleep. Several hours in he woke to see Kumoto arrive in the little room, strip Kakashi's clothes, bandage Kakashi's hand, and hook up an IV. Keeping Kakashi alive to endure more questions -- questions Genma couldn't hear -- just as they had done with Genma two and a half years ago.
And then suddenly there was sound, too loud, filling the tiny medical cell. The video looped, and there was Kakashi babbling, sounding not even a little sane, spilling secrets, answering the interrogator's every question. Genma fought his restraints until he was lathered in sweat despite the room's chill. It availed him nothing. And Kakashi went on and on and on and...
And he was lying.
Genma fell still. Kakashi was lying. Babbling out half-truths and false secrets. Telling the interrogator wild fictions about ANBU's structure, Konoha's alliances, individual agent's strengths and weaknesses.
He was lying. Genma could have wept. |
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