| Rest for the Wicked | [Aug. 22nd, 2014|09:30 pm] |
[Takes place in the early hours of May 9, Yondaime Year 5, some hours following The High Road]
The third time Ryouma twitched himself awake from nightmares, there was someone leaning over him.
For a moment it was the nightmare again, reversed: himself on his back in a tangle of blankets, the hand coming down, the iron band crushing his windpipe. Fear gripped him like shackles. He had no air to cry out.
But the hand settled on his shoulder, not his throat. Katsuko's shadow clone shook him once, urgently. "Tousaki," it whispered. "We need you at the cells."
He dragged in a desperate breath. The clone leaned back warily, but Ryouma's body seemed to be as sleep-stifled as his brain. It took him a moment to push onto his elbow, pulling his hand free of Kakashi's sleep-loosened grasp, and claw his mind back together. "The cells. Fukuda?"
The clone nodded, short and unhappy, and stepped away.
None of the others had stirred. Genma was still snoring softly through his swollen nose, Raidou a rougher counterpoint beyond him. Kakashi's shallow breathing hitched when Ryouma eased himself away, and the tousled head turned restlessly from its pillow on Katsuko's shoulder. But he settled his cheek on the pile of blankets Ryouma had left behind, and his breathing evened again.
Ryouma left them all dreaming and followed the clone out into the hall. The air was cooler, easier to breathe. A generator hummed in the storage room, and shadows swung crazily against the packed earth walls as the second shadow clone posted outside Fukuda's cell clambered to its feet.
There was no sign of a break-out yet, no surge of vicious foreign chakra. He couldn't see any movement beyond the bars, and he didn't want to go any closer. If she was dying, damnit, she could just get on with it.
The clone who'd come to wake him said, "She drank the water. Hasn't touched the food." It jerked its chin at the faintly glimmering iron bars of the cell, and the shadowed woman beyond them. "She's been tossing for the last two hours."
Ryouma drifted two steps closer, despite himself. The metal pot with its congealed lump of stew sat just inside the low grate at the bottom of the door. The tin cup lay on its side, a little closer to the mattress and the woman huddled on it. She'd kicked the blanket halfway off, and the dim light from the caged bulbs in the hallway caught at the sheen of sweat on her temples.
He looked back at the clone. It stared up at him, quiet-eyed. The other clone kept its unwearied crouch at his feet.
If he walked away, he thought, they might keep quiet, too.
But Katsuko would know, when the clones dispersed. She might not say anything either—but she'd know.
He sighed. "The lieutenant's sound asleep, and he's spent too much chakra today already. One of you see if there's any fever meds in that closet. And clean bandages."
The first clone nodded and brushed past him, loping down the hall for the medic's closet. The other stayed in its flat-footed peasant's crouch, but it took its eyes off the prisoner to regard him instead, its head cocked to the side like an inquisitive bird.
They didn't talk as much as Katsuko did. Clones never really did; he shouldn't find it unnerving. He looked away, all the same.
"Here." The first clone was back with an sling tucked full of medical supplies and the same thoughtful stare. He sent it for water and triggered the automatic door lock. The second clone edged back, away from the swing of the chakra-cancelling bars, and then wedged a rock in the gap to prevent the door from closing.
Fukuda didn't stir as Ryouma approached. Her yellow hair was damp, matted to the sides of her head, and her breath was shallow and fast. The IV bag Raidou had rigged for her was flat and dry. He replaced it with a new bag, opened the drip a little wider, and then crouched to sort through the rest of the medicines.
Most of them were labeled, uselessly.
"Can you—"
"Here," the clone said again, stooping back into the cell. It set down a cup of clean water and took the plastic bottle out of his hand. "Not this one, probably. Acetaminophen for fevers, right?"
"Think so." Ryouma followed the clone's directions as it read from the label on a different bottle, crushing four small tabs into the water cup and then swirling until they'd mostly dissolved. He had to steel himself to touch the Kiri nin, to lift her head enough to drink.
Her lips were cracked and dry, her eyes deep-shadowed like bruises. The pale lashes fluttered at the first touch of water to her mouth; she drank, deeply, before her eyes slitted open, vague and unfocused. "Moto? Wha—"
"Moto's dead," Ryouma said.
Her eyes flared wide with shock. She jerked back against his grip, and the stump of her arm twitched as if she were reaching for a weapon she didn't have. The pain of movement ripped a gasp out of her throat, and she lay still again, shaking.
"Finish this," Ryouma said, pressing the cup against her teeth again. "It'll cut the fever."
She clamped her lips shut. Her eyes burned.
Ryouma glared back. "My captain said you won't be harmed. I can obey orders. Besides," he added, sliding a knife-edge of contempt into his voice, "I got a lot easier ways to kill you than poison."
Katsuko's clone shifted its balance, brushing its shoulder against his. Supportive, maybe, or adding an extra edge of threat. He didn't look back at it, but the warm burn of its borrowed chakra sank into his skin all the same.
Fukuda licked cracked lips. After a moment her stump twitched again, as if she were trying to reach for the cup with her missing dominant arm. She flinched, and bit down. A dribble of blood blotted the corner of her mouth. She rasped, "Where's your captain, Leaf ANBU?"
"Busy," Ryouma said.
He tipped the cup, until she had to drink or spill. She drank, reluctantly and then thirstily, but her eyes never faltered.
He curled his lip. "Memorizing my face, Kiri? Good luck. By the time you're back up to my level, somebody else will have beaten you to it."
"Wondering why you didn't kill me," she said. "Back when you actually had the chance."
He handed the cup back to Katsuko's clone. "I thought I did. You'd've had maybe half an hour, if the lieutenant hadn't come."
Half an hour of unrelenting, unbearable agony, before the rot reached her heart.
He'd have said she deserved it, if he'd been thinking about it. But he hadn't been; he hadn't been thinking of anyone but Kakashi, just then. He'd left her to die because he'd been too busy making sure Kakashi wouldn't. Was he supposed to feel guilty about that?
Even if he should, he wasn't going to.
She didn't say anything more as he unwrapped the bandages to check her arm, just bit her lips and hissed quietly at his touch. Most of the cauterized wound was clean, but one edge was beginning to suppurate. He lanced it to drain the pus, smeared it with antibiotic ointment, rewrapped the stump in clean bandages. "Medic'll have a look later," he said, tying the last knot. "You're kinda low on our list of priorities."
Fukuda looked up, her pale eyes glittering huge in her hollow-cheeked face. "You can blame me for Iebara," she said. "But my team didn't murder their own countrymen."
He pushed to his feet. "You should sleep well at night, then."
She laughed, hoarse and ragged, and turned her head away.
He left Katsuko's clone to clean up the medical detritus and ducked out of the cell to peel off the grimy blister-bandages and wash his hands. The small bar of soap he'd left in the bathroom wore down to half its previous size by the time he finished, but its sweet, rich scent was as strong as ever. It wafted with him when he came back out into the hall.
The cell door was shut; the clones must have kicked the rock away. One of them kept its eternal watch crouched just outside the cell. The other was coming back from its medical waste disposal. It peeked in the bunkroom door as it passed, creaking the ancient hinges.
Katsuko's chakra rippled in the room beyond, the barely controlled flare of waking from sleep. The clone said, in a tone of deep satisfaction, "Finally."
It glanced down the hall at Ryouma. "I've been waiting for this all night," it said, and popped into smoke and nothingness. |
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