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Chapter 22: Twenty-TwoChapter Text

TWENTY-TWO:

Hiruzen smiled down at Naruto. The little golden-haired boy looked hesitant, constantly glancing to his side, where his sister usually stood. The guilt of his decision weighed him down as those bright blue eyes, the same colour as Minato's, looked up at him from Naruto's small face.

He hadn't wanted to give Fuyuko-chan over to Danzo. But after the catastrophe that had been attempting to get her to attend the Academy, followed by the equally catastrophic attempt to have a Yamanaka perform a mind-jutsu on her while she was unconscious following her injury to help… change her mind on the matter, only for the shinobi's consciousness to be torn apart by the Kyuubi that lurked inside Fuyuko's mind, impossible though that should be, he hadn't had a choice. Fuyuko had to train as a shinobi and Danzo's methods may be… questionable, at best, but they were effective.

"Um… Hokage-sama," Naruto said shyly, and Hiruzen interrupted him.

"Naruto-kun, please… I like to think we're friends now," he said, smiling warmly down at his successor's son. "Why don't you call me ojiisan? Or jiji?"

Naruto's blue eyes widened. "Really?" he asked softly and Hiruzen nodded.

"Really," he said warmly and Naruto smiled tentatively up at him.

"Ojiisan… when will Ko-ane be coming home?" he asked. "It's lonely without her."

The surge of guilt the little boy's innocent question prompted made Hiruzen feel like the monster he knew he was, the monster he had to be for the good of Konoha. He let none of his turmoil show on his face, however, and instead smiled gently down at Naruto.

"Well, she was hurt very badly," he told Naruto, "so badly that she can't have any visitors for a little while, like the med-nin told you. But hopefully soon, she'll get better."

Naruto's lip wobbled as tears welled up in his eyes. "I miss her," he whispered and Hiruzen's heart ached for the boy.

"How about we go get some dinner together?" he suggested, hoping to cheer the poor boy up. Naruto's small face brightened.

"Can we get ramen?" he asked excitedly and Hiruzen chuckled, thinking of a certain red-haired kunoichi who had also loved ramen.

"Of course," he said warmly, bending over to pick Naruto up.

"Ojiisan," Naruto asked as Hiruzen exited his office and started to make his way through the Hokage Tower, nodding to all his staff who bowed to him as he passed, "why do you wear such a funny hat?"

Hiruzen couldn't help but laugh. "This funny hat is a symbol of the Hokage," he said, "it means I was chosen by the people of Konoha to uphold the Will of Fire in the village."

"Ko-ane said only the really strong shinobi get to decide who the Hokage is," Naruto said with a small frown. "Not the villagers."

Fuyuko had said that, had she? That was… a concerning belief system, if perhaps a bit too accurate. But Danzo could help correct such thinking.

"Do you know what the Will of Fire is, Naruto?" he asked the more easily guided of the twins.

"H-Harada-sensei said it was a fa-falsy?" Naruto tried, stumbling over the name of the man whose throat he had ripped out in defence of his sister.

"Philosophy," Hiruzen corrected gently. "The Will of Fire tells us that Konoha is a family and that every shinobi of Konoha loves, believes in, cherishes and fights to protect the village, as the previous generations have done before them. Just as your parents did. That is why the symbol our shinobi wear is a flame."

Naruto looked awed. "Whoa," he breathed, hushed, and Hiruzen smiled kindly.

"Whoa, indeed." He agreed. "That's why it is an honour for me to wear this 'funny' hat."

"Ojiisan," Naruto said slowly, "I think… I think I wanna be Hokage one day too. 'Cause then Konoha would be mine and Ko-ane's family, so then they would love us and wouldn't hate us anymore."

Hiruzen didn't know whether he wanted to laugh or cry. "Oh Naruto-kun," he said, "I think you'd make a wonderful Hokage. But you'll have to train hard to become a strong shinobi if you want to be a Kage."

"I will," Naruto said determinedly. "I'll be the strongest, dattebayo!"

"I believe you," Hiruzen promised.

~

Sansa wasn't sure what to expect from her captors. Torture, perhaps? What she wasn't expecting was for medics in blank ANBU-style masks to come in and take samples of tissue, blood, saliva, hair and fingernails, along with analysing her chakra system and scanning her body.

She had felt less violated when Grand Maester Pycelle had checked to see if her maidenhead was intact then she did as these people took and took from her, as if she was an object who had no agency over her own body. She had tried to channel her chakra only for it to feel like raw lighting was crackling through her body and one of the medics sharply reprimanded her. "You have suppression seals inked on your skin, Uzumaki-san," they said, "attempting to use chakra is useless and will only cause you pain."

A single further attempt, this time using Kurama's chakra, proved that the medic was right and Sansa was left laying there helplessly, all the while feeling Shimura's eyes on her. Knowing he was watching, she forced herself to remain silent and keep her face passive throughout the humiliating ordeal. The only time her mask came close to cracking was when one of the medics sheared off her hair, her lovely hair, the hair that reminded her of her mothers, her brothers, her son, but she bit her tongue and her rage tasted like iron.

As her bare scalp prickled, Sansa remembered Cersei's infamous Walk of Shame. How they had stripped the Golden Queen and shaved her, just as Shimura had done Sansa. Cersei had ruined them all for the humiliation they had dared make her suffer, had destroyed them so thoroughly she'd left nothing but ashes and rubble behind. Sansa vowed to herself, in that moment, that like Cersei she would destroy Shimura for the humiliations he had forced her to bear and the wolf in her soul howled its fervent agreement.

It wasn't until the last medic retreated that Shimura approached her again. "The reports from the Academy describe you as defiant and unwilling to engage in the classes," he said, mild as mother's milk. "Are you, perhaps, willing to reconsider your stance?"

Sansa stayed silent, not trusting herself to speak. Not trusting what she might say.

Shimura sighed. "A shame," he said. "I would much rather have done this the easy way." He then smiled. "The Academy reports say that you have an excellent pain tolerance. Of course, my people are much better at applying pain then a chuunin hired to teach children to throw kunai at a post, but I've never been fond of such clumsy, brutal measures. They lack finesse, don't you think?"

Sansa still did not reply, remaining silent. Shimura chuckled.

"So stubborn," he said. "I can appreciate stubborn. Just so long as you know where to direct that stubbornness." Sansa's skin crawled as Shimura stroked his hand over her face. "Have you ever heard of kintsugi?" Sansa continued her silence, but Shimura didn't appear to be expecting a reply. "It's a form of art," he explained to her. "When an object such as a vase or a bowl falls and breaks into a thousand pieces, instead of discarding it as broken, a precious metal such as liquid gold, liquid silver or a lacquer dusted with powdered gold is used to glue the fragments together, enhancing the breaks to create a piece of artwork. A masterpiece. I can make you into a masterpiece," he said, no doubt in his voice. "But first, I need to break you."

Sansa couldn't help her shudder, a dark panic clawing at her more rational mind. There was a despicable art to breaking people, she knew. Ramsay had been a master of that art, of breaking people and moulding them to suit his needs and desires, twisting their minds, shattering their sanity and making himself their entire world. Sansa's mind was her greatest weapon, the idea of having it turned against her… she did not think any violence Shimura could have threatened her with could have terrified her worse.

She didn't see Shimura make a gesture, but two blank-masked shinobi appeared at his side and Sansa was, at last, released from the metal table. The two shinobi held her by her wrists, forcefully escorting her after Shimura who led the way out of the hospital-like room. They were underground, she vaguely noted, as she was forced to walk through dark, winding corridors. Glancing down at her bare body, she was able to see the seals the medic-nin had told her about, dark and ugly against her pale skin, and it made her shudder.

She was almost relieved when they arrived at their destination, having barely been able to keep up with the long strides of her escorts. It was a small, cold room, bare of furniture bar for the restraints; just white walls, white floors, and a white roof. Inside, she was forced to her knees by the blank-masked shinobi and her arms chained above her head while her ankles were secured to a metal ring set in the floor.

The position was not unbearable but it was uncomfortable and she hated how it forced her to kneel before Shimura. He had done his best to strip her of her identity, her dignity, her pride, but she lifted her chin high and met his eyes, regal and icy-cool; this was his shame to bear, not hers.

"You will not break me," she told him.

"Everybody breaks," Shimura said, almost kindly, before turning and leaving, the blank-masked shinobi following after him.

The sound of door of the cell closing behind them had a terrible sort of finality to it.

Sansa immediately reached for Kurama, falling back into her mindscape. Finally out from under the weight of Shimura's stare, she felt her breath start to come quick and shallow and she stumbled over to the cage of weirwoods, slipping through the branches without thought to press herself against the closest part of Kurama– one of their tails, as it turned out. The fur felt just as she remembered, like hot, crackling flames that licked at her skin in little simmers, but there was no pain; it was like being kissed by fire, she thought distantly, remembering Tormund's epithet for her. His Queen Kissed By Fire, he had called her.

Kurama had gone very still, Sansa belatedly realised. Stepping into the cage was probably not something she was supposed to do– or at least not something she was expected to do. But she counted Kurama as among her friends and she dearly needed the comfort they offered after such a harrowing experience– one that wasn't over yet.

"Truly, I have never met another like you, little vixen," Kurama finally rumbled, gently lowering themselves down and curving their large form around her tiny one. Sansa leaned into them and let herself feel safe, protected; Kurama made a huffing sound. "To seek comfort from a Tailed Beast…" they said, in a way that was almost amused.

"It is humans who are true beasts," Sansa said bitterly.

"Yes they are," Kurama agreed before sighing. "But you should wake her," they said, the disgruntlement clear in their tone. "She knows more about this pathetic village and its shinobi then I. She may be of use."

Sansa reluctantly rose to her feet, less then eager to leave the protection offered by Kurama. But they were right and she slipped out from between the branches of the weirwoods, channelling her chakra to manifest the seals that made up the mindscape, including Mito's seal. For a terrifying moment, she feared she would be unable to access her chakra, but within the mindscape her chakra rose easily to her call, the ocean currents flowing easily around her.

Mito appeared in a flash of blinding light, as she always did, and her eyes widened before a terrible anger settled over the other woman's face, a rage as fierce and endless as the ocean itself. "What happened?" she demanded as she swiftly unfastened the obi from her kimono, kneeling to drape it around Sansa's thin shoulders, tucking it around her small, bare form like an over-large shawl. "Fuyuko-chan, what happened to you?"

"A man who wishes to strip me of my identity happened to me," Sansa snarled, more wolf than woman. "He wishes to break me, to shape me in an image of his choosing– to turn me into his masterpiece."

"Who is he? What is his name?" Mito demanded, her lovely face a mask of rage, even as her hands held Sansa so delicately.

"He introduced himself as Shimura Danzo," Sansa said bitterly, swaying forward into Mito's soft touch.

Mito went very still.

"I know him," she said quietly, and there was an emotion lacing her voice that Sansa could not quite identify. "He was one of Tobirama's students."

"The Nidaime Hokage?" Sansa queried. "Your good-brother?"

"Yes," Mito confirmed, and there was an old, heavy grief in her eyes as she spoke of her husband's brother. "Tobirama was Hokage for sixteen years. He did what he could for this village with the mess left for him. Hashirama spoke loudly and to all who would listen of peace as he brought together the warring clans into villages and handed out the Bijuu as supposed balances of power, but he only ever escalated the size of the battles– and the number of the dead."

Sansa made a harsh noise. "What could he have possibly been expecting? How could he presume there to be no more fighting when the main source of income for the village he built, the others were modeled after, is dependent on violence?" She asked scornfully. "Konoha's economy is built on corpses, not peace, and for as long as it trains its children to kill, first and foremost, it will continue to turn to war as its first option."

"If Danzo had his way," Mito said softly, "Konoha would always turn to war as her first option."

And Sansa finally recognised the emotion lacing Mito's voice as she spoke of Shimura Danzo– hatred.

"After Tobirama's death," Mito said, her eyes stormy with loathing, "Danzo approached the Council of Clans with the idea to create a branch of Black Ops that went beyond ANBU. The Elite of the Elite, he called it. Hiruzen approved, of course, and Danzo personally oversaw the creation and training of what would become known as Root. His methods were... effective. And inhuman. He stripped the humanity from his operatives to create perfect soldiers."

"And this is the man the Hokage has given me to," Sansa breathed, and a sudden, terrible fear struck her. "Naruto–" she said urgently. "Mito, do you think he has Naruto too?" The thought of her brother bound like her, in chains, tortured; it terrified Sansa beyond any other threat Shimura could possibly hold over her.

"I don't believe so," Mito soothed her, her gentle hands reaching to cradle Sansa's face. "You said Naruto was compliant, that he followed the Academy curriculum?"

"He did, I made sure of it," Sansa confirmed.

"Then there is no reason that he would be here." Mito said firmly and Sansa breathed out slowly, letting her panic slowly ebb as Mito's hands lowered to her shoulders.

"Tell me about him," she said. "Tell me about Shimura Danzo."

"He is obsessed with making Konoha the strongest of the Hidden Villages," Mito told her. "To the point that he believes his own opinion of what makes a village strong holds greater weight than that of any other person or group of people. And he is willing to go to whatever lengths it takes to realise his goals." She paused, her jaw tightening. "While I could never confirm it," she said coldly, "I suspect he murdered a dear friend of mine, Uchiha Kagami. Kagami was one of Tobirama's students– and one of Danzo's teammates. They were on a mission together and Danzo claimed they were ambushed."

"But you don't believe his story," Sansa observed and Mito smiled bitterly.

"On the previous mission, Kagami witnessed his wife, Masa, die. It awakened his Mangekyo Sharingan– something only myself and his old team were aware of, Danzo included. Kagami was not close to his clan, you see– his friendship with Tobirama put him at odds with many of them, as did his choice to put the good of the village over the good of his Clan."

"What is a Mangekyo Sharingan?" Sansa asked, confused. "And, pardon me for asking, but if it was such a secret, why did this Kagami tell you?"

"A Mangekyo Sharingan is an evolution of the Uchiha's Sharingan," Mito explained, "it is far more powerful, but comes at the heavy cost of eventual blindness. And as for why Kagami told me…" Mito gave a small, pained smile. "He and Tobirama were very close, you see, and he was such a dutiful young man. After Tobirama's death he kept checking in on me, making sure I was okay. We grew… close. In our sorrow, we formed a friendship built on an understanding of the particular grief we shared."

Sansa thought to ask after her suspicions of the particular grief Mito referred to, then decided against it. Sometimes it was better for such truths to remain buried in memories. Instead, she focused on the more imminently concerning part of Mito's story. "What does Kagami's Mangekyo Sharingan have to do with your suspicions about Shimura lying about the ambush?" she asked and Mito smiled grimly.

"Did you know," she said, "that Sharingan can be stolen? Danzo lost his right eye in that ambush. And Kagami's body was never fully recovered."

Sansa stared, sickened. "Oh Mito-obasan," she breathed. "I'm so sorry."

"His daughter, Manami, was only five years old," Mito said quietly. "She lost both her parents within a month. I held her at Kagami's funeral as she sobbed like her heart was breaking to pieces while Danzo stood across from me, with those bandages hiding his eye, as if he had any right to be there when his hands were stained with Kagami's blood."

Sansa felt numb, almost, as she looked helplessly up at Mito. "He will never let me go, will he?" she said, despairing. "Even if, by some miracle, I manage to escape here… a man like that, there is nowhere in Konoha that I will be safe from him."

"Then the path before us is clear," Mito said calmly. "We must kill him."

~