Chapter 4: The Battle of Tatsumi River

Published: 6/25/2016

I woke up drowning on dry land. The humidity was unbearably bad, and the stench of sweat was even worse. I tried to take a deep breath and immediately regretted it; it took a lot of willpower to refrain from gagging uncontrollably.

Sitting up took a lot of willpower, too. My arms were bound, so it took a bit of awkward shuffling before managed to get myself upright. Then I looked up, felt my heart stop, and scrambled backwards until I hit a wall.

The room was filled with Iwa-nin. They were unmistakable in their one-sleeved red-and-brown uniforms. I nearly passed out again at the thought of fighting them all, but after a moment's observation, I managed to realize that none of these men looked at all like they were about to jump on us. Most of them, in fact, were sitting cross-legged, talking or maintaining their weapons. A few of them were even asleep, curled up around their packs or shoved against their comrades' sides. They looked hot and tired and just as disgusted by the haze of body odor as I was. A few of them were watching us—some surreptitiously, some without reserve—but on the whole we were largely being ignored.

A shoulder bumped into mine. I looked and saw Yoshiya, who was sitting between me and our sensei; they, too, had their wrists tied together. Itsuki-sensei was already sporting a split lip and the beginnings of an ugly black eye.

"What's going on?" I whispered, feeling lost and not insignificantly frightened. I'd never even seen a Rock shinobi in real life before, let alone been bound in a room full of them.

"We've been captured," Sensei muttered back. "It's a bunker of some sort. I don't know. They don't want to be above ground right now, for some reason."

"Well, I doubt they're down here by choice." Yoshiya wrinkled his nose aristocratically. "Twenty unbathed men stuffed in a small, poorly ventilated room in the middle of summer? I think I'm about to be sick."

"Your problems are much bigger than the smell, Yoshiya-kun," Itsuki-sensei shot back with uncharacteristic sharpness. Sweat dripped off his nose and fell into his lap. There was a lull in the chatter around us.

Yoshiya went quiet, and despite the intolerable heat, we found ourselves scooting closer together. Suddenly I wished Akihiko was here. He'd know how to break this tension.

What felt like hours passed like that. Yoshiya and I sat there and fidgeted, biting our lips and exchanging glances. Sensei stared grimly out at the shinobi before us, and the Iwa-nin kept ignoring us. Then, finally, a corner of the ceiling opened up and another ninja dropped in. He walked straight towards us, and Yoshiya and I squished ourselves together once more.

"You're all awake now," the ninja grunted, flicking his gaze at us before looking back to Itsuki-sensei. "I suppose we'll have to get on with this, then. My name's Tokiya, Leaf shinobi. Are you willing to share yours?"

Itsuki-sensei looked away, lips pressed together in a hard line.

"Don't be like that," Tokiya sighed, raking a hand across his brown hair. It stood up in small spikes, wet with perspiration. "This will be more pleasant for all of us if you cooperate. You know what's going to happen if you refuse to talk to us."

Sensei said nothing, eyes still turned to the side. Tokiya squatted down in front of him and spent a few moments more on cajolery, but everyone here knew it was a futile attempt. Eventually, he stood up again and let out another sigh.

"You're not even going to try, are you?" He ran a hand over his face. "You're not going to banter, or argue, or even attempt to mislead me. You're just not going to talk at all."

Tellingly, our teacher was silent. Tokiya shook his head and motioned another person forward. He was a bulkier man, broad of shoulder and several inches taller than his comrade. His face was one of flinty indifference.

"Hatsuta," Tokiya introduced, and then pain exploded on my scalp. I gasped and found myself being lifted into the air by my hair, ponytail coming undone. My bound hands jerked upwards.

"None of that," Tokiya murmured, gently forcing my arms down before I could attempt to jab Hatsuta in the eye. I gritted my teeth as tears began pooling in my eyes.

"Suzu!" Yoshiya sprang up, and Itsuki-sensei whipped his head back around. My teammate glowered.

"Put her down," he demanded with ferocity I didn't know he was capable of.

"We can't do that," Tokiya replied, sounding downright apologetic. "Only your squad leader can make that happen."

In an instant, everyone was looking at Itsuki-sensei. I couldn't move my head, but he was easy enough to see regardless.

The whole bunker was silent now.

"Put her down," our teacher finally said, looking up and meeting eyes with Tokiya.

"Tell us where your allies are encamped," was the soft reply. "I swear no harm will come to her if you do."

"I don't know where they are. Put her down."

"Then give us the message you were sent here with. Anything you can give will help."

"I can't. Put her down."

Tokiya took a deep breath. "Perhaps I'm moving too quickly," he said. "Let's get to know each other better first. Why don't we start at the beginning? Give us your name, stranger."

"Sensei…" I whispered then, trying not to tremble, as Erina-sensei's face suddenly appeared in my mind. Itsuki-sensei lowered his gaze.

"Put her down," he repeated, quieter than before.

Tokiya's friendly expression flattened. I held my breath as he sighed, crossed his arms, uncrossed them, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then sighed again.

"Hatsuta," he finally muttered.

"Ugh!" I grunted as I was dumped unceremoniously back onto the ground. I knew right away there was going to be some nasty skinning on my knees, but I had the feeling that that was going to be the least of my worries.

I was right, of course. Suddenly, Hatsuta's right foot lashed out, and the whole room resounded with the sound of my rib cracking.

"Suzu!" Yoshiya cried as I immediately began choking on my spit. My vision lit up like a New Year's fireworks special; I spent a valiant moment fighting to stay upright, but failed and fell over, collapsing in a heap. It was nearly as excruciating as a second kick.

"Torturing little girls is not a pastime of mine," Tokiya said over the sound of my gasping. "I don't want to do this. But it doesn't have to be this way. We're starting off slow, so just give us your name, Sensei, and I can stop. I'm sure my men don't want to listen to this, either; spare us all the pain."

Just don't scream, I told myself as Itsuki-sensei remained mute. I inhaled deeply, bearing both the repulsive stench and the incredible stabbing pain in my side. Just don't scream. Just don't scream, and it will be fine.

Another sigh. "Hatsuta," Tokiya said again.

Do your best—

My best, we discovered in short order, was not terribly much.

Things got progressively worse over the next few days. At first it was just kicking. Then they started up on beatings. After that, it was stepping on my stomach—pure agony. By the time they started with strangling I was pretty sure I was just going to break in half any day now. Sure, they were ninjas, and they probably knew just how much would be enough before it would actually kill me, but I was positive they had broken more ribs the other day and if I wasn't going to die of internal bleeding, traumatic pneumothorax was sure to have already occurred. It definitely felt like I was breathing with only half a lung, anyway, and it was so damn hot that it was impossible to tell whether I was running a fever or not. We probably wouldn't find out about any infections until it was too late. Maybe I was already on my way out; I certainly felt like I was dying.

And wouldn't that be a relief, if only it didn't mean that the exact same thing would happen to Yoshiya next. I knew I was disposable. I didn't have any information, after all, and as long as they had a person to use as leverage against Sensei, I could expire right now and they wouldn't be bothered.

With that thought hanging over my head, I spent most of my free time—that is, all of the time I spent free from the tender mercies of Hatsuta—propped up against the wall, throbbing and aching and unable to move without being sent into spasms of unbearable pain. I didn't catch sight of Itsuki-sensei often; according to Yoshiya, though, he was hunkered down in the corner of the bunker. He had stopped speaking even to us by the time the third day had rolled around, so I had no idea of how he was faring. Hopefully better than me; if he quit here, after all, that was the end of all of us. But he was probably all right. Aside from the black eye and the split lip, which he must have gotten while fighting in the initial ambush, they hadn't touched a hair on his head.

We fell into a sluggish rhythm. Some time in the morning, Tokiya would come back with Hatsuta and ask for Itsuki-sensei's name once more; Itsuki-sensei would ignore them; I would get thrashed. Then they would leave and come back in the evening to repeat the process. Yoshiya, whose existence was mostly being ignored by Tokiya, seemed like he was doing the best out of all of us.

Yoshiya talked to me a lot while they were gone, as if he were trying to make up for Sensei's silence. I learned a lot about nature transformation and shape manipulation when I was lucid because of it; he was explaining his way through the whole set of Yamano Yuuhei's Treatises on Chakra and its Forms. It was strangely cathartic despite his choice of subject matter; it was almost like I was back at the Academy, daydreaming my way through lectures again. I smiled at him when I felt up to it, and even found myself indulging in a laugh or two despite the searing pain it caused.

We were in the company of Tokiya and his men for five days. Our stay with him came to an end when they were eliminated in the campaign that would eventually come to be called the Battle of Tatsumi River. Or, as most people remembered it, the Yellow Flash's debut. We didn't see any of it, of course.

Our comrades' arrival was heralded by a sudden break in the well-established routine. Some time during the very still and soundless night—at least, I thought it was night—all of the Iwa-nin suddenly got up. Someone whispered something, and then they were all pulling on their gear and reloading kunai and shuriken into their belt pouches. In short order they shuffled over to the far corner of the room, where they jumped up through the little hole and out to the ground above. We were left in the bunker alone.

Soon after this swift and silent mass exodus, though, Tokiya and Hatsuta appeared again. They moved quickly and urgently. They also skipped greetings and went straight to grabbing me and throwing me down in front of my teacher.

"We don't have a lot of time left, Sensei," Tokiya said softly. "I'm giving you an ultimatum. Just tell us what you know—anything, whatever it might be—and we will let you go. Otherwise, Suzu-san dies."

I heard the sound of a sword being unsheathed. For a moment, I stared at Itsuki-sensei. He had his arm around one leg and his face buried in his shoulder; he didn't attempt to look up at Tokiya, or down at me.

I squeezed my eyes shut and waited.

"Sensei, you have to say something now," Tokiya urged. "She's going to die."

There was silence, just as there ever had been. And then there was a step forward. Hatsuta's step, which I had known better and dreaded more than anything else in all these past days. I couldn't help myself; I let out a whimper.

It was pitiful. I'd never heard myself make such a pathetic-sounding noise in my life.

But then there was something else. "No," said Yoshiya's voice. There was shuffling, scrambling, and then a footfall next to my head. Yoshiya's footfall.

"Move, Yoshiya-kun," Tokiya ordered, coldly and quietly.

"No," Yoshiya repeated. "No. Just stop. Don't touch her again. I'm sick of watching this; if someone has to die, then just kill me."

There was a pause. Then Tokiya said, "I don't think you know what you're asking for."

"Maybe I don't," Yoshiya bit back with heedless abandon. "But I don't care. It's an honor to die for your comrades and your village." His voice took on that cold, haughty lilt that it had had when I had first met him; it was the lilt of his bravado. "Go ahead and make me a hero. Give them a reason to celebrate my name."

"Yoshiya," I managed to force out between shaking breaths. Oh, God.

There was a deep sigh. "As you wish, then, little Leaf shinobi," Tokiya said, sounding resigned. "We'll make you into a martyr. Your blood was bound to spill before long, anyway."

And they did it. There was a rushing of air, a grunt—a short gasp—

Something wet splattered over my back. And then, a beat later, Yoshiya fell against me. I felt his head hit my shoulder.

"Yoshiya," I began to sob in earnest, and at once my sides were on fire again. Every heave of my chest felt like a sledgehammer. But even though I tried, I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop, even though I desperately wanted to. After all, there was nothing more painful for a person with broken ribs than uncontrollable bawling. In fact, it hurt so much that I thought that maybe, just perhaps, I would finally stop breathing now. Just now—just stop.

But I didn't. I breathed, I cried, and I kept on living, even when it felt like I could have—would have, should have—died.

"You've only got one chance left, Sensei," Tokiya's voice spoke again, as measured as always. "We're going to leave you alone for a bit, so you can think in private. We'll come back in a little while; you can give us your answer then."

They left. Despite their promise, though, they never returned. After that, there was nothing; no more chatter, no more Iwa ninjas sharpening their blades or shining their kunai, no more quiet patter of footsteps. It was just me, Itsuki-sensei, and Yoshiya's blood soaking into my shirt.

I have no memory of being found. I don't remember anything, really, up until the point I woke up in a tent back at our camp. Minato told me later how it happened, though:

He had split a part of the main force off to search for any remaining enemies. While sweeping the area, the Hyuuga leading the team spotted the underground bunker with her Byakugan. When they investigated, they found us; after my cousin had been summoned and their medic-nin had administered first aid, they brought us back.

And that was all. That was how our stay in hell came to an end.

Despite the brutality that had occurred, I no longer have any scars to show for it. My bruises faded, my broken bones healed, and the cuts that I had received under the care of Hatsuta have all gone away. By the time a month or so had passed, there was not a single mark on my body left to show for the whole ordeal.

I don't think the same could be said for my heart, though.

Though by the time I returned to the village most of my bruises were gone, they were still there in the immediate aftermath of my captivity. My ribs had been the chief concern of the medics, so they fixed those right away, but the rest they left for time to heal naturally. They could have dealt with my other injuries easily enough, I think, but there were only two properly trained iryou-nin left alive in the company deployed at Tatsumi River, and there was only so much chakra to go around. Consequently, the act of breathing no longer sent me into unbearable agony, but I was still very much sore and in pain all over.

The worst of these ills was my throat. There was, I knew, a very dark ring of abused flesh still encircling my neck. I had to hand it to the Iwa ninjas; there was little else more torturous than choking a person with a half-destroyed ribcage. Who among them had come up with that technique? Whoever he was, he had the art of sadism perfected.

It made an excellent excuse for not talking to people, though. It saved me from answering several uncomfortable questions when I first woke up, and if I ever rolled over in my futon and buried my face in my pillow mid-conversation, whoever was talking to me would assume I was tired of straining my very raspy voice and would generally leave me alone. I was able to sleep several days away unmolested because of it.

I didn't really want to do anything else besides sleep. Everything was a trial; I went into total safe mode, performing only the essential acts of eating, drinking, and breathing. Anything else was just too much. Too much effort, or too much pain.

Minato visited me several times. He even sat by my bed and kept me company when he could be spared for it. That wasn't often, though; the previous commander of the troops here had died almost two weeks ago, and since then he had been made into the de facto leader of the company. He hardly had time to do anything but run the camp.

I made a bit more of an effort to interact with him, if only because his time was so precious, but I still felt better being alone. Well, maybe not better, but I preferred it to being gawped at or given sorry looks. I knew being tortured was plenty of cause for concern, but there was no need for so much attention. Unlike other people, I wasn't—wasn't dead. Or… insane.

That was what they were saying about Itsuki-sensei. News traveled fast, even to the bedridden. People were saying that the captured jounin had snapped and gone crazy—that the Iwa ninjas had broken him. I knew most of what was reaching my ears was the usual nonsense, if only by the sheer number of contradicting stories—he's catatonic, no, he won't stop shouting, no, he's hallucinating and he keeps calling for his students under his breath—but there was a seed of truth in every tall tale.

He refused to see me. It was the one thing I would have gotten out of bed for, but he refused to see me at all. Adamantly.

I think I spent about a week in that state. Sleeping until noon, eating what was left out for me, lying around, not talking, not doing anything… I refused to believe it at first, of course, but it was damning evidence of how eminently not-fine I was. It was ridiculous of me to think that I could be anything but not-fine after that. Still, it wasn't out of line with my personality; I'd always been the type of person to deny the problems that were right in my face. Even back on Earth I had been the kind of girl who had stuffed and stuffed and stuffed her stuff, right up until the moment it all broke loose.

It was a drenching rain that broke my stupor. Poetic on one level, I supposed—a deluge of water breaking through the dam of blocked emotion, or something like that—but strangely out of line with what the literary standard of what weather after a major death ought to be. After someone important dies, one part of me must have been thinking, there should be nonstop rain symbolizing grief and mourning, right? It was only after things became hopeful again that the sun was supposed to burst out from behind the clouds.

Really, though, it was just the opposite. The sun had been beating down on us as it had been all summer, cracking the soil and scorching anyone unfortunate enough to come under its gaze. Rain was the exact relief needed for this infernal drought. The thought of water falling from the sky was so compelling, in fact, that the sound of it forced me outside of my own accord for the first time since I'd been rescued.

I was soaked through in mere moments. It was a pounding, pounding rain; I felt like I was being bombarded by thousands of tiny weights, like a flood of heavy glass marbles were being dumped on me over and over. It made me ache, as covered in bruises as I was, but something about it was also… odd. It was a sensation I wanted to hold onto, despite the hurt.

Minato was very alarmed to see me standing outside, doing nothing, under the force of a torrential downpour. He called my name, but I beyond looking up at him, I didn't do much else.

"Suzu?" he said again once he had left the shelter of his tarp and run up to me. He made an aborted move to touch my shoulder, stretching an arm out and then halting his hand. No one besides the medics had really had the gumption to touch me since I'd first arrived here, since pretty much anything made me flinch and quiver.

It was a reaction beyond my control; that wasn't unusual for people who had suffered some sort of great trauma. I knew that he wouldn't hurt me, of course, but my body couldn't seem to get that through its head. It was tiresome, and embarrassing; I wanted to return to normal at once.

I took a step forward and let his palm hit my shoulder. Minato let out a noise of surprise, but since I'd been the one to move, he didn't draw back even after my hands started trembling again. I fisted them in the hem of my shirt and said the first thing that came to mind.

"Sorry," I mumbled.

Minato's expression melted. Not into pity, which I had quietly been dreading to see on his face, but of something else. Something very warm and brotherly.

He put his hands under my arms and lifted me up, settling me on his hip just like he had when I'd first come into this universe. It was more awkward than it had been back then, because I was much bigger now, but he paid it no mind at all.

"Don't be sorry," he murmured, letting me latch onto his neck and shake like a leaf. "None of it was your fault."

I took several deep breaths. "Right," I said.

"No one is to blame for anything but the ones who are dead now."

"Right," I said again.

"He didn't die because of you. Your sensei didn't get hurt because of you, either."

"Right," I said, one more time, and my eyes began to itch.

Minato began walking back toward the tent. He smoothed my wet hair back and didn't speak again.

My old clothes had been thrown out, as no amount of washing or redyeing would have erased the bloodstains. Since my only spare outfit was currently soaked though, Minato gave me one of his extra shirts to wear after I was dried off. It was long enough on me to be a dress, and its turtleneck collar was loose enough for me to stick my chin in without pulling it out, but the elastics on the sleeves at least kept my arms from being swallowed by the garment.

"I have to go back to work," Minato said, changing his own soaked shirt, as I sat down on my futon again. "Will you be alright?"

"Yeah," I said, and then I gave him an embarrassed look. "Sorry. Um, for taking up your time. And your shirt."

Minato laughed and shook the water from his hair. "Don't be sorry," he echoed himself, smiling. He came over and crouched in front of me, and I found something metal being pressed into my hand. "Call me if you need me. I'll be there in a flash."

He vanished back outside. I looked down at the object in my hand and made noise of recognition. It was a kunai, slightly heavier than I was used to, with a three-pronged head. I unwrapped fingers from the handle and found it painted with all the manner of marks. It didn't look like the neat four-character Hiraishin seal that I had seen him use in the series, and I suspected after a moment of thought that he hadn't yet refined it to the one that I was familiar with.

Some children slept with blankets or stuffed animals to feel better in the darkness, but that night, I went to bed clutching my big brother's knife instead. It worked just as well as a teddy bear would have—better, even.

A/N: Did you see it?! Did you see my amateurish use of foreshadowing?!

I confess that I yanked on my own hair several times while writing the opening scene. It did hurt, but just pulling on it probably isn't nearly as painful as having the whole of your body weight hanging from it for an extended period of time. I feel wincy just thinking about it.

Physically harming myself for research aside, I had to take a lot of breaks while writing this chapter. Nothing truly explicit is ever even described, but it was exhausting to compose anyway. And after all of that was over, the h/c in the final scene felt positively saccharine… it was probably twice as hard as writing the torture. I guess even in fiction it's easier to be cruel than it is be loving.

Oh, and FYI, the new sidestory companion fic is up! First chapter is Minato's POV of finding Team 11 in the bunker.

Cheers,

Eiruiel