Katsuko chuckled, running her tongue over the front of her teeth. Her skull was already starting to buzz a little pleasantly, making it easier to dig up old memories than usual. “Straight to the point. I like that.”

His mouth under the mask moved, as if he was possibly considering smiling. "Compliments are a good way to derail a question."

“Even if they’re sincere?” She batted her eyelashes at him and took another long swallow of beer, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her hoodie. “Well...I’d been in the labs for six months when Kaminari finally managed to put a successful seal on me. This one.” She motioned at her belly and stared out into the darkness, remembering flames licking at the bars of her cell. “The ANBU arrived a day later. The orderlies panicked and set the holding cells on fire. Burning people alive. Wanted to tie up loose ends, I guess.”

Kakashi was a still shape in the darkness, as immovable as the men carved onto the Monument. Katsuko met his eye, glad that his mask hid any expression; she didn’t want to know what he was thinking. Not right now.

“There were dampening wards in the stone, in the walls,” she said. “It was what kept me from frying, that first hour after they threw me back. While my chakra adjusted. That fire—it burned through them, easy as anything. I lit up; I glowed. Blue, for some reason.”

Smoke in the air, a man screaming as he burned alive, the scratch of Asuma’s calluses against her skin the second before she let go of his hand—

She licked her lips, looked away. “An ANBU translocated me out to keep me from bringing the whole damn facility down on their heads. That was how I escaped when everyone else, well.” She shrugged, took another swallow of cheap beer.

Kakashi’s voice was very quiet. “I’m sorry.”

Katsuko barked a short laugh. “I never know how to answer when people say that. It’s over, it happened, it’s done with. Nothing can change that.” It was high time for another dose of shochu, she decided. She wasn’t nearly drunk enough for this conversation. She set down the beer can and went for the long-necked bottle.

Katsuko settled back against the structure that housed the generator for the building, legs sprawled out in front of her. “You’ve been through worse, I imagine. A lot worse.”