Tenten woke up in a bleak holding cell. She felt strangely groggy. Whether it was due to some precaution against inmates built into the cell or from Neji knocking her out with the Gentle Fist technique, she could not tell. The room was sparsely furnished, dimly lit, windowless except for a small, barred peep-hole on the door, and altogether not a pleasant place to be in.
The dismal atmosphere was threatening to rub on her. She had failed her sole mission in life, which would have been quite a lump to digest even in more cheery circumstances.
On the other hand, she had never been one to mull over things in the past. What was done, was done, and now she needed to think what to do next. She tried to look at the situation from a more distant perspective, now that she could not immediately affect it in any obvious way. From the bird's-eye view, she found herself wondering if this outcome hadn't been for the best of the village, after all. It felt like such a lousy rationalization, but she was willing to indulge in comforting thoughts for the moment.
Rice country was tiny. While she had no idea why Konoha would be interested in investing so much to covertly bring the country down, she had to admit that it felt a lot better than the option of an army of shinobi marching into the almost completely civilian country, butchering and pillaging as it went. War was pure nightmare, particularly for the civilians who could not do much else to change their fate than try to run or hide. Her foster parents, both non-combatants, had perished in the devastating attack of Orochimaru and the Sound ninjas some years ago. Even though her relationship with them had been more courteous than warm, she did not wish such an experience upon anyone.
If the option was to go down peacefully, in a bloodless coup even, she was not sure if she should mourn her inability to have stopped it from happening.
This line of thought did not reduce her anxiety over Konoha's motives or Rice country's future under either direct or indirect Fire country rule, but it made her feel somewhat better about her own failure.
Her musings were interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the hallway. She could not recognize the one walking in front; she concluded it must be a guard of the holding area, as they mostly kept to themselves. When she turned her attention to the chakra of the second person, on the other hand, her stomach got all tingly.
Maybe Hatake Kakashi, one of Konoha's elite trackers, had come to deliver another prisoner? The unexpected opportunity had her hesitate for a few precious seconds, before she hastily scrambled to the door to call out to him.
"Kakashi-s...-san!" As an afterthought, she hastily threw in a honorific. Using the usual "Kakashi-sensei" sounded just a little bit inappropriate, after she had all but sexually assaulted him. Yet she did not want to make the guard accompanying him unnecessarily suspicious about her informality either.
She heard the footsteps pause, then resume, as the two men located the direction of her voice and walked up to her cell door. Kakashi shifted to peek in through the bars in a fluid movement, catching her face a mere breath away from his before she had time to back away. She quickly thought of cold showers and other un-heated things in an attempt to stop herself from blushing pink.
"Oh, you're awake already? How's your head?" Also backing to a more conversational distance, Kakashi flashed her a cheerful grin. Due to the mask covering his face, the expression was mostly conveyed by his uncovered eye, which was crinkled in amusement.
Tenten strongly suspected that the lackadaisical attitude he projected had to be a product of years of training, but it melted her heart nevertheless. He was consciously putting her at ease, despite her being a despicable traitor and all. Being in the receiving end of even such small kindnesses in her situation made her throat constrict. She barely managed to loudly whisper, "Uh, could I ask you something?"
Kakashi, catching her intention, smoothly turned to the guard to tell him he'd be right after. Once the other shinobi was out of earshot, he turned back to her.
She summoned up her courage to produce the briefest fragment of the question churning in her head: "Er. About that genjutsu...?"
Kakashi crinkled his visible eye at her, and innocently queried: "Yes?"
How the same smile could be a lifesaver at one moment and fully infuriating behaviour moments later, she could hardly understand. It made her envious of the capability, however. And it was not going to stop her from pushing for the answer. "Was I actually still out of it by the time... Neji showed up?" As euphemisms for their steamy smooching scene went, a memory of Neji's mortified look was luckily among the least blush-inducing.
Kakashi feigned to consider the matter carefully. "Would it be easiest for you if you were?" His look was a flawless imitation of innocent concern.
Tenten leaned her forehead at the cool bars of the door, letting out a sigh of exasperation. "Oh dear."
Kakashi winked at her. "Don't worry, I can tell Neji-kun to play along either way. It's completely up to you!"
She could not help but giggle at his incorrigibility. "Oh, just leave me to meditate on my embarrassment in peace then, you fiend."
"Such coldness!" Kakashi dramatically lifted a hand to his heart, as if mortally wounded. Then he touched the side of his nose and glanced at her conspiratorially. "Surely it must be the headache talking. I should ask Neji to not be so rough in the future!"
She rolled her eyes at him, but then sobered up a bit. "I'm sorry, though. About the rest," she added, hopefully not too hastily.
Kakashi waved her off. "You'll have a chance to say your piece soon enough." He paused and locked her in his one-eyed gaze, suddenly serious. "We're all shinobi here. It's nothing personal."
She blinked when his posture shifted slightly to indicate the moment of bafflingly sensible behaviour had passed. Only a long-time ANBU member could shrug off the conflict between personal ties and orders that lightly, she surmised. His membership in the black ops was of course all speculation on her part, all operatives working fully masked and under code names, but then it would be madness to not hire a shinobi as talented as Hatake Kakashi for such an organization. "Thanks," she exhaled, then pulled away from the door.
She saw Kakashi raise his hand to wave her bye, and listened to his footsteps grow more distant. She was suddenly saddened again. If Kakashi was indeed in ANBU, was he in on the planned destruction of her home village as well? Was that why he wouldn't take her betrayal personally, in return to his own? Because he knew Konoha was already betraying her home?
She caught herself. Did he know it was her home, though? Then, maybe he had concluded it to be the most likely reason for her to run with the scrolls. But did that mean he had checked what the scrolls were all about before returning them, or was he in on what she had taken even without that?
There simply were too many unanswered questions, and her head was starting to throb again. She opted to rest her eyes for just a moment instead, and fell asleep out of sheer mental exhaustion within moments.
Once her deep sleep had taken the edge out of her exhaustion, Tenten's dreams turned... distracting. They featured Kakashi, sometimes Neji as well, in situations sufficiently enthralling to make even a world-wise kunoichi's cheeks redden upon remembering them. When she woke up, disoriented and covered in a fine sheen of sweat, Tenten wished very, very empathetically that she had not been talking in her sleep.
She got up and did what she could to bring her somewhat dishevelled appearance under control. She suspected that since she had already been seen awake, she would indeed be interrogated soon.
While reorganizing her dark hair into twin buns, Tenten meditated on whether she should just divulge all her information or try to hold something back. It wasn't like she knew a whole lot that would have much weight either way; it was one of the upsides of being a sleeper agent with no contact to Rice country for years.
Some time after a guard had dropped off some bland but digestible food for her, her expectations were indeed fulfilled. Neji showed up with a guard to take her to be interrogated, in a room down the long hallway of holding cells. She could not catch any sign of the earlier shock on his face to confirm her suspicions about Kakashi's genjutsu, but then again he had had plenty of time to get over it by now. Neji's control over any post-traumatic twitching would of course be superb, along with every other aspect of his self-discipline.
Tenten, on the other hand, could not muster up enough of the same to ask him about it directly. In any case, it was theoretically possible that he could actually decide to conspire with Kakashi on the topic, as the latter had earlier proclaimed.
One half-lost in her musings and the other being his typical, stoic self, the two former team members walked down the hallway in silence.
In the interrogation room, Morino Ibiki awaited. His appearance demanded respect, if even a little bit of fear. With scars criss-crossing over his face, the torture expert of Konoha looked nothing if not experienced in his chosen line of work. He was seated behind a large table, and motioned for Tenten to take a seat across him.
As Tenten followed his instructions, she spotted Kakashi standing in the corner of the room, pretending to be deeply engrossed in an Icha Icha book. Despite this, he cast her a quick acknowledging glance when she looked at him, before returning to his deep literary endeavours. Sitting down at the side of the table, Neji seemed likewise prepared for passive observation; judging by his equipment, he would be taking notes of what happened.
So, Ibiki would lead the interrogation; this was not entirely surprising, but the ominous aura constantly surrounding the man did nothing to reduce Tenten's nervousness. She focused on collecting her resolve and clenched her hands into fists under the table, to stop them from shaking.
"So. Do you know why you are here?" Ibiki's tone was, for the time being, rather conversational. Tenten did not take it as any kind of reliable indication of how the rest of the interrogation would go, but appreciated the calm start for all it was worth. She nodded.
"Sir. I assume I am here for breaking into the ANBU Root archive, appropriating a bagful of classified scrolls detailing a large-scale mission in Rice country, disobeying a superior and attacking two Konoha jounin as they came after me."
Ibiki returned her nod. Neji was scribbling something down, no emotion evident on his face.
"And what prompted this kind of behaviour?"
Tenten, all but determined by now that she should just come clean, but afraid of what she did not yet know of the classified operation, hesitated. She glanced at Neji and Kakashi, in an attempt to remind herself of the time when she trusted Konoha to be fair and wanting most of all to retain peace. She also considered that the extent of her own mission must have been quite apparent already, given her earlier actions.
"Sir. I've been planted in Konoha as a Rice country sleeper agent." There, she got the worst part out, openly admitting to holding another country's allegiance. When Ibiki did not as much as raise is eyebrows at this, she was emboldened to continue. "I've been like this since I was a child, and I was raised to the task by my late foster parents. My recent actions have been the first time that I came across information so critical that it was necessary to break my cover in an attempt to deliver it back to Rice." Tenten squeezed her fingernails against her palms, the memory of her shock and dismay upon finding the documents jolting through her.
She caught Ibiki's gaze and held it. "I always assumed that peace would go on forever between the two countries, and I was almost certain the only reason I had been sent here was that there was no way to train me as a shinobi and weapon master at home." Her clan had gone extinct, but for her. "I still cannot understand why Konoha would invest to much into covertly taking over Rice. Surely the small country cannot pose a threat of any kind to Fire country!"
Her look had turned pleading, but Ibiki remained impassive. "We are not here to discuss Konoha operations." After a short pause, giving it time to sink in, he continued: "Do you maintain that this was the first time you acted against Konoha or Fire country?"
Tenten was briefly taken aback by the question, then vigorously nodded. "Yes, sir. Up until now, I have been nothing but loyal to Konoha - as far as that can be said of one assigned as a foreign covert agent."
Ibiki tapped his fingers together, as if giving this careful consideration. "If you were to learn that Konoha was about to mobilize against Rice country in order to keep the peace, what would you do?"
"Sir?" Tenten asked, puzzled.
"Humour me."
She considered this. "Although I find the concept hard to imagine, if I were convinced that Konoha was trying to prevent a war, I would support Fire country in any way I could."
"Even if it meant betraying your home country?" Ibiki's gaze pierced through her.
"I feel that unleashing a war, particularly one that could be avoided, upon the civilian population would be the ultimate betrayal of my country, sir."
She thought she heard Kakashi mumble something about the "Will of Fire" in the background, but when she glanced at him sharply, he showed no sign of having ever moved his focus from his most enthralling book.
Ibiki reeled in her wandering attention. "Now, if Konoha were to plan a bloodless coup in Rice country, do you not think that interfering upon it would most likely lead to war?"
Tenten's cheeks burned. Had Ibiki been reading her thoughts? "It occurred to me afterwards, sir. But at the time, I did not stop and think; I knew I had to make a choice there and then, and it escalated quite fast. To be honest, the shock of a large country mobilizing against a small one, without any provocation that I knew of, made me doubt everything I knew about Konoha."
"But not what you knew of Rice country." Ibiki was relentless, despite maintaining a conversational tone.
"All I know of Rice country, really, is that it hardly seems a threat from any point of view," Tenten conceded.
"You have not been there for the last decade, however."
"True. But I've taken the bold assumption that if Rice turned from a civilian, neutral country to a military power, I would have heard something about it by now. Things like that do not happen overnight. In any case, Konoha has more power to treat international matters through diplomatic means rather than resorting to dirty tactics or a full-blown military operation."
The empathetic declaration seemed to amuse her interrogator. Tenten cringed inwardly; had she spoken out of line?
"Very well, one final question for the day: If Konoha were to ally with Rice country to wage war on a third civilian country for reasons you did not know, what would you do?"
Tenten buried her face in her hands. This was beginning to feel like an overall judgement of her values and beliefs rather than an interrogation. "Agonize over it for days to start with, I guess. As a shinobi I'm supposed to be a tool for my home country, but even then I am a human first." She sighed. "I'm not sure if I would have the courage to become a missing-nin to protect a small country against a huge army. I'm not particularly suicidal. But assuming that I couldn't change the situation from within Konoha, and was eventually sent out to kill civilians myself, I wouldn't be able to follow my orders in any case. I... would probably betray both countries, sir."
Ibiki nodded and straightened up. "I see. You are dismissed." He turned to the pale-eyed Hyuuga secretary, who had just finished his notes. "Neji, would you escort her back to her cell?"
Tenten followed Neji out of the room, baffled. This had not been at all the kind of interrogation she had assumed it would be. Once she got back into the bleak cell, she lay down on the bed and simply boggled at the situation. She spent a good while turning all that had been said in her head before she finally fell asleep.
That night, Tenten dreamed of Orochimaru's attack on Konoha during the chuunin exams, and how she had felt powerless to help the innocent bystanders from getting hurt in the onslaught. It was not particularly uplifting.
She had woken up and was staring at the ceiling in silent contemplation, when Neji showed up and called out to her. It was early in the morning. She had not even been given any breakfast yet, but she shuffled out of the bed and followed him out without comment. After all, if Morino Ibiki was going to finally get serious, it might be just as well that she had nothing in her stomach.
The moments between her cell and the interrogation room passed in silence, once again. She was honing a theory she had come up with during the long hours of the night, juggling it around in her mind to see if she could spot any obvious holes.
Once she had sat down in a setting exactly like yesterday's, Ibiki once again asked her, "Do you know why you are here?"
It was all the confirmation she needed. She leaned forward, and tried to pierce through the shroud that concealed his true intentions with her gaze. "Sir, if you allow me, I have a theory."
Ibiki raised his eyebrows slightly. "Go ahead."
"There is no infiltration of Rice country. The scrolls I 'found' were actually planted in the archive for me to discover, probably to see what I would do. Important parts of them were simply, even casually decipherable without tools and time, which would be amazingly sloppy of Root. Yesterday's questioning was nothing like an interrogation, it felt more like an elaborate academy test.
"I've suspected for a while now that I was set up in the same team with Neji-kun in order for him to keep an eye on me, and the main reason to use a jounin like him as a secretary for a case like mine would probably be to have him cross-check my words against what he has learned of me through prolonged observation."
She had to pause to inhale, but did not dare to tally longer, lest her forward momentum be lost. "Why Kakashi-sensei would be involved boggled me for a while, but I'd assume he is the ANBU contact to make this work out. While Neji-kun seems like definite ANBU material, he has not been jounin for long and is therefore not likely to have the appropriate connections to set up something like this. Hatake Kakashi, on the other hand, has probably been in ANBU for years already. Not to mention that he is one of the few shinobi present who I could not outrun, making him perfect for the job of reeling me in once I did take the bait."
She did not have the gall to hold Ibiki's gaze longer, and broke eye contact. "What I have not figured out is why go through all this just to confirm that I'm a spy, and why now, and not when I was a genin if the suspicion were there already."
When she did dare a fresh glance in Ibiki's direction, she saw he was smiling, why, like an academy teacher about to tell you that you passed your exam.
"Your theory is quite laudable. There is one piece of information that you do not have access to, which explains your confusion."
Tenten blinked. She was right? Of course she was expecting to be right, she would not have spilled it out if she wasn't, but was it really that simple to crack?
"You see," Ibiki continued, "Rice country has indeed been under some pressure lately, but from Water, not us. Rice got thoroughly tired of getting stomped on and started secret negotiations with Fire to join us, as an autonomic area. We'd benefit from trading their goods and the produce of their extremely fertile lands, and in exchange they could trust to be effectively protected by a larger country with a hidden village. The Water daimyo would not cross us to get at Rice.
"As a sign of goodwill, the leaders of Rice recently gave our representatives access to their classified archives, including the handful of agents they have placed outside the country borders."
Tenten tensed slightly at this, but Ibiki waved her worries off dismissively.
"You are right, we suspected you for a long time already, but were content to keep an eye on you, and to stop you from climbing in ranks to get too dangerous. After we had confirmation of you working for Rice, we knew that there was a small window of time during which we could take advantage of this information without you knowing that we knew."
Tenten shook her head in disbelief. "So, you took advantage of it by setting out to watch me run off with forged documents?" She still could not see the point in going through with something this elaborate to confirm her as a traitor.
Ibiki chuckled drily. "It was an opportunity to test whether you had held on to old loyalties, or forgot about them after spending so much time making new friends at your assigned location."
Tenten's face shifted between shock, bogglement and finally comprehension. "So, my running off with the documents..."
"Yes. It was the correct answer. You passed your academy exam, congratulations!" Ibiki was struggling to control his obvious amusement.
Tenten glanced around again, and found Kakashi watching her with evident curiosity, while Neji seemed, strangely enough, like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Tenten, on the other hand, had a hard time doing anything but gape. "So... what now?"
Ibiki's smile broadened until he was beaming in a way that was not only completely unforeseen of the man, but also reminded her disturbingly of a feeling she had not realized she had been missing after her departure from the academy and the violent death of her foster parents. The psychology expert of Konoha, or the ANBU head sadist, depending on whom you asked, had played a little afternoon game with her and seemed to be pleased with what he had seen.
"Why, we let you advance in ranks beyond mere chuunin, of course. You've been delayed for long enough. And once you're a jounin, I expect we'll have another chat with some more... formality."
She blinked and glanced at Neji, who seemed unperturbed by the implication. Ibiki was one of the high-ranking officers of ANBU, and was quite probably referring to recruiting her. Yet to say something like that in front of Neji and Kakashi all but confirmed that they knew this already, and therefore probably were ANBU. Then again, she wasn't, not yet at least.
But after all that had happened in the last two days, she suddenly realized she had just passed what had to be the strangest job interview ever.
As she was walking out of the prison compound of Konoha, flanked by Kakashi and Neji, she could feel the spring returning to her step. She actually felt like she had come out of this episode with more confidence in her abilities than before, and to top it off, it seemed that her bonds with Konoha had become both stronger and less complicated.
And speaking of bonds, the way Neji was looking at her right now was drastically less guarded than before - if not downright hungry. She glanced to her other side, where Kakashi was looking inexcusably smug on top of his usual sleek nonchalance.
She stopped, suddenly, and pulled the two jounin into a double bear hug by their necks. "You know what, guys, getting out of jail calls for celebration. My treat." Kakashi seemed to perk up at the notion immediately, while Neji's reaction was more carefully schooled. "But before that..."
She released her arm from around Kakashi's neck, took hold of Neji's with both hands, and gave him a deep kiss that left him gasping for air.
Actually, left both him and Kakashi gasping. She was quite pleased at how well a single visible eye could convey an expression of acute shock so effectively.
Now it was her turn to smile smugly at the two. She concluded that when it came to her bonds with Konoha, it wouldn't do to let them get too simple.
[Reviews - 0]Chapter or Story
Table of Contents
- Text Size +