Keeping it all straight was the hardest part. Even screaming became a non-issue, when his voice finally cracked right into silence -- something Kakashi thought would earn him a break, and welcomed with burning relief. But it was a poor interrogator who couldn't lipread, and Takajin was anything but incompetent.

If Takajin was anything but a bastard, Kakashi hadn't seen it yet.

The lights snapped on, so bright Kakashi could feel them all the way down to his bones, and everything happened in technicolour for a while.

There was no pattern, and he gave up trying to find one. Heat became suffocation became buckets of ice-water doused over his head, washing away accumulated filth. At some point they brought in a stereo, set it up next to his head, and played a skull-pounding combination of death metal and screaming infants at full volume. For hours.

Genjutsu brought everything.

Mostly, Kakashi tried not to focus that. On anything but the flood of false information he'd created, ripped from real facts and real people and his home, and twisted into something else entirely. He fed it by drips to start with, testing himself, seeing if he could work around the drugs, his own wrenching exhaustion, and Takajin's scalpel-edge questions, and remember everything.

He could. Just about.

Either way, it was the only option. The drugs kept his tongue loose no matter how hard he fought -- it was only quick thinking and deflection that kept him from betraying every oath he'd ever made. And as time wore on, Kakashi stopped feeling quick. Stopped feeling anything but purely desperate.

He didn't crack, but it wasn't hard to fake.

Takajin kissed him hard on the forehead, like a perverted benediction, when Kakashi first started talking. The medic who bandaged his hand gave him a suspicious look, but left when the thick stench of smoke began to get to him. Kakashi rested his aching skull against the chair-back when he could, and talked.

And talked.

It was almost like sleeping after a while, except out loud and as focused as he could make it. But the moments when he said something interesting were the moments Takajin stopped touching him, and that was good enough.

Then, sometime between a long skid of darkness and a bloody-violent genjutsu, halfway into a slurring sentence about the Hokage's secret predilections for underage boys, Kakashi fell asleep for real. Black sleep, empty and silent, which was how he knew it was true.

Takajin brought him back with a nasty jab of chakra, but after that things deteriorated. Despite the drugs, and despite Takajin's lip-reading skills, Kakashi couldn't keep his focus together long enough to string out a sentence, let alone a lie. Exhaustion crowded his brain, leadened his limbs, and wiped everything out.

He forgot Genma entirely, and knew he'd lost hold of something important.

Then a lethal-looking agent burst in, dressed in anonymous blacks, and dragged Takajin away to confer. After far-too-long, Takajin came back, looking furious for the first time Kakashi could remember, and Kakashi knew he'd won. He'd lasted long enough and Konoha had gotten a message through. Everything was going to change.

Laughter had fallen by the wayside endless hours ago, but one corner of his naked, blood-cracked mouth curved up.

Thanks, he mouthed. Enjoyed -- the therapy.

Takajin's eyebrows flew up, a dangerous scowl hardened his face -- almost as tired looking as Kakashi's by now -- but the lethal-looking agent caught his hand before he could do anything. Kakashi switched his fraying attention to the new man just long enough to see the green-glowing hands reaching for his head, then everything went finally, thankfully black.