Questionable Loyalty

A/N: I am very glad that no one seems to be scared away by the contect of the previous chapter! *hugs everyone* Thank you for your reviews, people! Also, I hope that this chapter will answer the question about how Iwazaki ended up as Kakashi's interrogator and why Iruka didn't interfere with that choice.



Oh, and I know that Madara's megalomania seems to be a tad over the top, but it seems to me that it's that way in the manga too, so I tried to make him be in character, I hope I succeeded.



CHAPTER 57





It had been a full week since Kakashi was captured but Iruka still moved as if he were in a dream… or more likely, a nightmare. He went through his classes but didn’t remember what he spoke to his students, he ate his food but it tasted like ash in his mouth, he barely noticed the people around him when they tried to talk to him. If he wasn’t working he barely left his apartment and yet he slept – when he was able to sleep – on the couch in the living room, unable to go anywhere near the bed in the bedroom. He couldn’t even sit on the thing, let alone lie in it. It occurred to him, several times at that, to burn it, but that would require touching it and his neighbours would wonder what was going on, especially combined with Kakashi’s absence. Kakashi. The name itself left a bitter taste in his mouth, the pain of the betrayal, the lies, the cheating finally settling in, his mind finally beginning to process it.



The worst part was that he had to go through this alone – Naruto had been shipped off to train with the frog spirits in whatever mystical plane of existence they resided in – and he couldn’t rely on the young man’s support for this. Still, it was better this way for Naruto himself – training would take his mind off the thought that he had been betrayed by his former teacher. It had to be difficult enough for him as it was without Iruka adding to it with his heartbreak issues.



So he dealt with it on his own, as much as he could – and that meant that he barely dealt with it. Few people outside Tsunade’s closest associates knew the truth – the Council, Danzo, some of the highest ranking Jounins. The general populace was told that Kakashi was on a mission – a mission, Genma had told him the other day, that would turn to be fatal for Kakashi. It was better this way, to say that he died heroically while defending the village rather than let it be known that he rotted in a secret dungeon outside of Konoha for high treason. The latter information would be terrible for morale.



Iruka knew all of this and yet he found it intensely distasteful, that they were hiding so much from Konoha’s people, that said people kept saying Kakashi’s name with reverence and respect when they spoke about him. It left him bitter and angry and frustrated, because he wanted to lash out every time a colleague mentioned something about his relationship with the popular Jounin.



So far he hadn’t asked about Kakashi, hadn’t wanted to learn any details – who was interrogating him, how they were interrogating him and what they had learned from him. His mind supplied him with horrendous images filled with faceless men hurting his former lover and he was torn between pity and gloating – the former making him angry at himself for feeling compassion for a traitor and the latter making him feel guilty for enjoying the thought. In the end, he couldn’t take it anymore and went to the Hokage Tower.



Being one of Hokage’s secretaries meant that he could enter the antechamber of Tsunade’s office, the room which conveniently isolated the visitors in the waiting room from the sounds that seeped through the offices closed door. As he approached, Iruka heard distinct yelling coming from it, Tsunade’s angry voice berating someone:



“You are an incompetent fool! I told you to interrogate him, I didn’t tell you to torture him into catatonia!”



“I had to press him, Hokage-sama, he is a stubborn, willful man! And Yamanaka-san here said that he couldn’t breach his mental defenses without his resistance being broken down first!”



“Don’t pin this on me, Iwazaki! He’s useless now!”



Iwazaki? The blood drained from Iruka’s face when he recognized the name and the voice. Why had Tsunade appointed that man to interrogate Kakashi? Didn’t she know of their previous history? Didn’t she know that Iwazaki despised him?



His heart hammering in his ears, he barged in the office without knocking. They all turned and stared at him, Tsunade, Iwazaki, Inoichi, and, surprisingly, Gai, who was sitting on a chair by the wall.



“Iruka-sensei?” Tsunade said in a much mellower tone than before. But Iruka was blind to her presence, his whole being focused on the bastard before him, the ANBU operative looking at him through narrowed eyes.



“Why is he free to roam about?” he asked sharply. “He’s the traitor’s boytoy, who knows if he wasn’t an accomplice as well!”



Iruka bared his teeth:



“Be careful with the accusations, ANBU. I have always served Konoha faithfully, AND competently, unlike you here, if what I heard is correct.”



“That is true.” Tsunade said, her voice calm and cold. “Don’t try to change the subject, Iwazaki.”



The man turned to his boss, floundered for a moment and said:



“I did what I was told to do. Not all prisoners begin to talk even after forceful interrogation – some simply fold into themselves. Either way, we have the deciphered message from Jiraiya-sama, it provided us with very useful information even on its own.”



Tsunade deflated, nodded and sat back down behind her desk.



“Very well. I’ll send one of my medic nins to patch him up enough so that he doesn’t die yet. Who knows, maybe at a later point Inoichi-san here will have better success in probing his mind.”



Iwazaki nodded, bowed to Tsunade and left the room, but not before sending Iruka a murderous glare. The Chuunin promptly ignored him.



“This man hated Kakashi. He’s always hated him.” He told Tsunade. “Why did you send him to interrogate him?”



The Hokage was surprised enough by the words not to be angry at the Chuunin about questioning her decisions.



“I didn’t want to send Ibiki because I thought that their friendship would make him either too soft with Kakashi or too harsh. It appears that I made things worse by sending that man.” She admitted bitterly.



“He hurt him.” Iruka stated.



“More than I would like to describe to you.” She said sadly. “I really wish that he talked… I didn’t want it to go this far, despite all that he did.”



Iruka looked at his feet.



“His mind…”



“Collapsed into itself.” Inoichi said. “I am sorry, Iruka-sensei.”



A wave of pity and regret once again passed through him. He closed his eyes to keep his tears from spilling.



“May I see him?”



“I don’t think that this is such a good idea…” Tsunade muttered.



“If I saw him, if I spoke to him, then maybe I could get him out of his stupor, convince him to cooperate with us!” he insisted.



Tsunade bit her lip, then turned to look at Gai, who still hadn’t spoken a single word.



“What do you think?” she asked.



“I don’t know.” Gai responded slowly after a long silence. He didn’t sound like himself. “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea. May I go too?”



Tsunade nodded, then leaned forward and put her face in her hands.



“Leave me now.” She ordered them and they obeyed.



Later, Iruka walked down the street accompanied by Gai, both of them moving slowly, their shoulders hunched, looking at the dusty road and their own feet.



“I still can’t believe that he did this.” Iruka finally said.



“I couldn’t either. I never realized… I never noticed that something was wrong with him. It seemed that he was the same as always.” The Jounin answered, his voice too quiet and hollow compared to his usual exuberant manner.



“I did. I noticed a lot of things, but I ignored them.” Iruka muttered and looked at the other man, noticing that he had large, dark circles around his eyes, his skin pale and sallow. Apparently he didn’t sleep much either.



“You did?” Gai asked.



“Yes. He was bitter… he shared with me, more than once, his disappointment in the Ninja system. He seemed… disillusioned.”



“Disillusioned? How?”



“He said that all the villages are trapped in a vicious circle… fed by the same ideology of protecting ourselves by destroying the outsiders, that we fed this war machine with our young. He went as far as accusing me of participating in the whole thing, as if I was the one who killed the Genin on the battlefield. We actually had a fight about it.”



“If he said that, he’s right.” Gai said. “Not the part about you killing Genin… the rest.”



“I know. And you’re wrong, he was right about me too. I am an accomplice. I wonder if Akatsuki used this disillusionment to convince him to cooperate. If they told him they could change things.”



Gai shrugged and didn’t respond.



“I should’ve been more alert.” Iruka said. “I should’ve figured out that something was wrong, I could’ve confronted him, I could’ve prevented this tragedy.” He whispered as they turned around a street corner and walked down a narrow, abandoned alleyway. “I cannot bear the thought of that man hurting him, Gai. Why do I still love him? He used me, manipulated me, he had another relationship behind my back, and yet I still feel responsible for him, I still want to take care of him. I am such a weak fool!”



Gai reached and hugged him then, held him as his tears began to wet the peculiar green garment that eccentric Jounin wore at all times. This was the first time since Kakashi’s capture that he was able to voice, to express his pain, and despite the shame that he was a grown man and was crying like a child, he felt relieved that he was allowed to do it.



“You’re not a fool, okay?” Gai said vehemently. “If I was a better friend, I would’ve seen that Kakashi was troubled, I would’ve helped him… But I was too busy with proving my worthiness to him. I have been selfish throughout our lives, when it came to our friendship.” The older man said bitterly. He looked ready to cry as well, but despite his reputation of a very emotional and expressive man, his face remained stony, as if the depth of his emotion was far too great to be articulated with his usual antics. “At the very least you noticed that something was wrong. I didn’t even notice that.”



Iruka looked away, his face wet and reddened.



“Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve… they all seem meaningless now, don’t they?”



Gai nodded.



“Yes. Come on, I’ll walk you to your place. And we’ll go to visit Kakashi tomorrow.”



Whatever Iruka had been expecting to see before he was allowed inside the underground prison, the sight that met him and Gai when they entered the room was shocking. The place stank of blood and chemicals, the stone walls were splattered with gore, and in a corner, curled as much as his broken legs would allow, sat Kakashi. He didn’t look like the proud Jounin Iruka once knew – covered in bruises and lacerations and lash marks, fingers swollen and twisted into odd angles, blood on the insides of his thighs… Only his face was untouched, unmarred, but it was the most horrendous feature of this ruined creature – empty of emotion, his jaw slack, the single eye next to the empty socket blank and unfocused, staring somewhere into empty space. He made no indication that he knew that they were in the room, had no reaction when they approached him and crouched down on the ground before him.



Iruka’s horror at the sight before him was so great that he couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t even pronounce his name. Gai, though, managed to croak:



“Kakashi?”



There was no reaction. Nothing. The expression on his face remained unchanged.



“Kakashi!” Iruka suddenly yelled and reached to grab the bruised shoulders, shaking the man in an attempt to force him to regain his senses. The man’s head swayed like that of a dashboard doll’s and Gai grabbed the Chuunin’s hands and pried his grip open.



“Iruka, Iruka, stop, he can’t hear you. You’re hurting him.”



Horrified even more Iruka pulled away and stared at his hands, at the blood that stained his fingers when he gripped the man. Kakashi’s blood. A soft, animalistic keen tore from Iruka’s lips and he turned away. He couldn’t bear to see his lover in such a state – bloody, broken, unresponsive. His guilt, however great it was after his capture, increased tenfold. This was his fault – not only did he fail to notice that something was wrong with Kakashi, but once he was captured he was too angry to be interested in the details of his interrogation. If he had asked about it earlier, he would’ve prevented Iwazaki from ever laying his hands on him.



He had always known that Konoha did torture prisoners, but this was beyond anything he had ever heard of, especially considering the aid provided by the Yamanakas. Between their abilities and the drugs that Tsunade and her team created, there was rarely need for such maiming. What Iwazaki had done was perpetrated purely out of hate and sadism, rather than any need or want for information.



“That bastard.” Iruka hissed. “I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him with my bare hands!” His entire body shook with rage, his vision so tinged with red, his ears booming with the sound of his own thundering heart, that he failed to notice Kakashi’s reaction to his anger – and there was a reaction, the first since they had entered this terrible room. The Jounin was whimpering, trying to press himself further into the wall, his eye finally focusing on Iruka, his lips mumbling soft, unintelligible words. It took Gai’s calm, cold voice to pierce through the fog of fury clouding Iruka’s mind and make him notice his lover’s distress, his raw fear.



He immediately stopped raging and threatening and stared at Kakashi who was cowering in a terrified stupor in the corner. Gently, Iruka reached to touch him, to comfort him, to tell him that he wouldn’t hurt him, only for the man to flinch back even further.



“Kakashi, it’s okay…” he began gently but stopped when he noticed that Kakashi was mumbling something once again. Iruka leaned forward and strained his hearing in an attempt to hear him, then slowly recognized the name Kakashi repeated as a desperate litany: “Nagato… Nagato…”



Jealousy and rage gripped him, as vicious and great as they were when he first saw that obscene video, and he pulled back sharply and looked away. If he hadn’t done so, he would’ve been tempted to strike him, and if he did that he would never forgive himself, considering Kakashi’s current state.



Thankfully, Iwazaki chose that moment to open the door and walk in, so Iruka could focus his fury on him, rather than Kakashi:



“Your time is up, Chuunin.”



“You!” Iruka growled. “You did this!”



“Of course I did. I was doing my job – for some of us it’s actually a chore to fuck that whore…”



Iruka jumped and would’ve probably attacked the man – and gotten himself killed – if it hadn’t been for Gai who grabbed him and kept him in place.



“Calm down.” He said in his ear “You’ll achieve nothing if you attack him here and now – this place is crawling with his men.”



Iruka jerked in Gai’s arms several times in an attempt to dislodge him, but the older man held fast. Finally, he gave up.



“The Hokage will learn about this.” He told Iwazaki furiously.



“The Hokage knows everything, Chuunin. She told me that I could do whatever I had to do to make him talk.”



“And yet you produced no results.” Gai said, still as focused and controlled as he had been the whole time. “What you did to Kakashi wasn’t out of professionalism” he spat the last word as if it were poison “you did it to satisfy your own sick desires.”



Iwazaki shrugged.



“Prove that if you can. Now, both of you, leave. As I said, your time is up.”



“If you touch him again…” Iruka threatened.



“You’ll do what?” the ANBU smiled mockingly. “But don’t worry – I am to give him a few days of respite – Hokage’s orders. She thinks that if he heals a little he’ll respond better to Yamanaka’s probings.”



They left after that, or better said, Gai left and dragged Iruka with him.



While traveling back to Konoha, Iruka’s eyes stung, and not from the wind blowing in his face as they ran through the trees.



“I finally understand.” He said to Gai, right before Konoha’s gates.



“What?”



“I finally understand what Kakashi said, about how the system dehumanizes us, turns us into objects, into weapons. How it takes everything away from us, and makes us capable of such monstrosities.”



At the same time, many miles away from Konoha, a man paced up and down in his office at the top of the highest tower of Amegakure. Nagato hand’t heard from Kakashi in more than a week, even after he told him that they needed to get Naruto out of Konoha as soon as possible. The agent who was supposed to pass Kakashi a written message returned three days ago and said that Kakashi couldn’t be found because he was out on a mission. But if Kakashi was on a mission, outside of Konoha, why hadn’t he contacted him telepathically? What was more, his spies told him that the Jinchuuriki seemed to have disappeared as well, and no one knew where he was. If Kakashi had him, he would’ve called by now.



He was worried sick and finally gave in – that morning he focused and tried to contact his lover, only to realize that he couldn’t reach him, no matter how much he tried. Something, or someone, was interfering with the connection. Kakashi wasn’t dead, he was sure of it – the mental triggers he installed in his mind before he left would’ve notified him of such a tragedy, only they had been silent the whole time. Something was very, terribly wrong.



He was about to try again when he heard the double doors of his office open and Madara walked in, his chakra signature surrounding him like a foul stench. Nagato turned and looked at the man, his eyes narrowing.



“What do you want?” he asked.



Madara shrugged.



“Just thought that I should tell you that your little Jounin was captured as he was trying to smuggle the Jinchuuriki out of Konoha. They arrested him, and from what I heard, he’s been left to the tender mercies of his former ANBU colleagues.”



Nagato stared at the man, at the casual slouch of his shoulders, at the swirls of his gaudy orange mask. He wanted to wrap his hands around the ancient throat and squeeze, as hard as he could, he wanted to rage and tear this whole place apart. Kakashi. How could this happen?



“How did they found out?”



Madara shrugged.



“Who knows? A spy somewhere in our midst? Your Jounin being less of a pro than you thought? Maybe the pretty Chuunin he was whoring to noticed that something was wrong with him and blew the whistle? The possibilities are endless. Oh, and the Jinchuuriki was shipped somewhere, if you’re still interested.”



Nagato put his hands on the desk and leaned forward, panting with the effort to stay calm. He needed to keep his wits about him if he was to rescue Kakashi and get that damn Jinchuuriki. He couldn’t waste valuable energy to attack and kill this bastard now.



“Nagato?” Madara asked lightly.



“I am leaving in an hour. I’ll deal with this personally.“ he said, straightening up, head held high, glaring right into the eyehole of the gaudy mask. And if a hair had fallen from Kakashi’s head, he would deal with Konoha too.



And hour later Madara watched from the tower as Nagato and his puppet bodies slowly disappeared into the constant curtain of rains that embraced Amegakure.



“Looks like your plan worked, Master.” A mechanical voice sounded next to Madara and the man turned to look at his companion.



“Zetsu. You manage to sneak up even on me.” He merrily accused him.



Twin sounds of laughter answered his accusation – one deep and mechanical, the other higher-pitched and human.



“You are right though – the plan worked.” Madara conceded. “That Jounin is out of Nagato’s life, and even if he survives, he’ll never share his bed again. Nagato would bring me the Jinchuuriki and Konoha would be destroyed. And then, if Itachi’s brat of a brother does his job correctly, I’ll have enough power to hold the world in my fist.”