I don't think I'm a sleeper agent. I'll never tell anyone why I think this, least of all the old man, because I doubt "That unknown ninja who kidnapped me just doesn't strike me as a bad guy" would go over well with anyone.
...
Honestly, since Sakura's insanity has passed and I've been able to refocus on other things, I've become more curious about Kazu than anything. But like I said, never gonna tell anyone about that.
"Yeah, yeah..." I concede to the old man's wisdom, crossing my arms over my chest and sulking.
"Don't worry," Yamanaka says. "Since we've gotten through the first cycle from now on you'll only have to come in to see me once every six months, or anytime you want to leave the village on a mission."
That's not even a little reassuring. "I'm a shinobi," I deadpan. "Going on missions is what I do." Yamanaka shrugs and begins packing seemingly random pieces of paper into another folder.
"Not all shinobi. There's plenty of work to be done right at home," he says easily. "But if that's all, Hokage-sama, I have a couple more appointments I'd like to get in before lunch."
"Of course," The old man says, amusement glinting in his eyes, and creaks to his feet. "Come, Naruto. Why don't you accompany me to my office for your debriefing?"
"That's today?" I blurt, scrambling after him.
"You only just got back from your latest mission yesterday, Naruto. How did you forget?" The old man asks in exasperation.
I scoff. "You obviously don't know how much I have on my plate right now-" I stop short as white and red robes swish off to the right, down a hallway that I've never been through. "Uh, old man, the exit is on the left."
"I'd rather not deal with the morning crowd," he replies over his shoulder. "I've been very busy myself lately, and I'm afraid it's starting to wear on me."
I pad alongside him, eyeing the solid cement walls surrounding us on all sides. "So is this taking us to a back road, or...?"
The old man shakes his head. "Straight to my office."
"Wait, what?" I ask, turning my head to stare at him. "How does that work?"
"A staircase that winds up from the bottom to the top of the Hokage Tower, and a specially concealed entrance into my office," he explains, smiling a little at my no doubt bewildered look. I chew on this for a moment.
"So do you have paths hooked up to other places too?"
"Every pivotal building and complex in Konoha," The old man confirms, sounding pleased. We hang a left and enter into a hallway with windows lining the walls, depicting bleak images of padded cells and chains on the other sides of them. I shiver, bad memories resurfacing once more.
"Why do you have it all linked up like that? Couldn't you just shunshin?" I ask to take my mind off the old memories and the new ones laying just beyond the glass panes. The old man pulls down the brim of his Hokage's hat, shadowing his eyes, and his smile turns mysterious.
"Sometimes doing something unexpected is more valuable than doing something a bit more practical. A Hokage can not afford predictability." He doesn't elaborate past that, so I let that sit as we walk past the cells of Konoha's worst and most disturbed.
We've nearly reached the end of the hall when a familiar face catches the corner of my eye, and I jerk to a stop in front of one of the windows. I stare at the girl chained up within, manacles clapped around her wrists, ankles, and neck. She's sitting down, unconscious, held up only by the chains connecting the manacles on her wrist to the ceiling. Her head hangs low, ragged, dirt brown hair falling down around her face in a disarray.
"What the-" I turn to the old man, who looks back at me with a grave, knowing look in his eyes. "What the hell is she doing in here, old man?"
"I'm afraid that while you were gone on your latest mission her condition took a turn for the worst," The old man says quietly. "We had to move her here for the safety of herself and those around her."
"That's garbage," I snarl. "What could she have done between now and last week that was so bad? She wasn't even awake when I left!"
The old man sighs, looking away from me and through the window. "Two days ago Tenten tried to kill one of her doctors."
I open my mouth, close it, open it again. "She what?"
"She attacked them in a blind rage one day while they were tending to her IV, and refused to respond to any of our questions after she was restrained," he continues. "Eventually it had become too dangerous to feed her, and she was making the other patients around her nervous with all the noise she was making trying to escape her bonds. So she was moved down here."
Tenten's shoulders rise and fall slowly, her face twitches in discomfort, and I can't help but wonder if maybe the old man is lying. There's no way this girl could hurt anyone. She looks far too tired to do anything but hang there on the wall.
It's been two months since my first mission, and two months since Sakura and this girl inside the cell were ambushed by a nukenin that I never got the name of and had his Bijuu memories shoved into their heads. My teammate, thankfully, was able to save herself- from what I still don't know- with a seal that broke a lot of rules and sealed the memory away. Tenten wasn't so lucky.
I've been visiting her room in the hospital as often as I can since then, sometimes once a week, sometimes daily, depending on whether or not I have a mission. And always with a scroll on Fuinjutsu tucked under my arm and the scroll containing Sakura's outline seal in my weapons pouch. Sometimes I see Lee or Gai in there and talk with them for a while, but it's usually just me, Tenten, and my scrolls.
I had thought that her suicide-induced coma would keep her under until I managed to figure out why Sakura's damn memory seal wouldn't work, and how I could fix it. But now, according to the Hokage, I was wrong.
"Did they do anything to her before that?" I ask the glass quietly. I'm fishing now, but I still can't believe it.
"No. My specialists have yet to figure out your teammate's seal."
That day when I visited Sakura in the hospital, after I'd left her room, I'd gone straight to my apartment and drawn up as accurate a copy of her seal outline as I could. Then I handed the original over to the old man, along with all of the information I'd gotten orally from my teammate. I didn't have any illusions as to my skills with Fuinjutsu- if I wasn't going to be getting any guidance from Sakura, I wasn't going to be any better with her seal than one of the village's various specialists.
As it turned out, I hadn't arrived a moment too soon, either. The old man had been just about to interrogate her on the seal when I barged in. If I hadn't let him know just how tricky the situation was with her forced amnesia... well. Tenten might have happened.
"Can't you..." I struggle for an alternative to this situation, a plan of action, words. "Can't you make her more comfortable, at least?" Whatever that thing has done to her, she doesn't deserve this.
"Once she's deemed capable of handling a more lenient environment," The old man says. The beginnings of a snarl pull at my lips, but when I turn to lay into the Hokage I find him walking down the hall. "Come now, we have work to do." He looks over his shoulder at me and smiles in reassurance. "She's in the most capable hands I have to offer, Naruto. Don't worry."
I press my hand against the glass until my fingertips bleed white, staring at what Sakura could have been, then push off and stalk after the Hokage.
...
"See, I told you he'd be here," Hatake's cheerful voice sounds from the doorway to the Hokage's office a couple hours later, disrupting my concentration on the balloon in my hands just long enough for a strand of wind chakra to slip free from the ball I'd compressed it into. The latex bulges, I scramble to contain the strand, and the balloon gives with a loud pop.
I curse, sinking back into the couch I'd settled into and shoving the broken balloon into my pocket. The old man chuckles merrily from behind his desk, the jerk. "I almost had it that time, too."
"Really?" Hatake asks, cocking his head. "How far did you get?"
I cough, averting my eyes. "Two minutes."
"Ma, at least you're making progress," he drawls, eye curling. Prick.
"Why didn't you meet up with us at the training grounds?" Sasuke cuts in, having moved into the room from around Hatake. He's got a familiar look in his coal black eyes- the "I'm curious and you're going to sate my curiosity or else" look.
"I had a meeting," I say simply.
...
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