25

Chapter 25: Twenty-FiveNotes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Warning: the next few chapters are going to contain some disturbing themes – this is Root, after all. I will put warnings at the bottom of each chapter, if people want to scroll down to be prepared. Otherwise, enjoy!

TWENTY-FIVE:

Sansa didn't want to leave the spirit realm. Parting from Lady felt as if she was ripping her very soul in half, leaving it weep and bleed, and as she blinked her way back into awareness in the small bunk-room, she had to turn her face against the pillow to hide her tears until sleep claimed her.

She was woken hours later by Buta, who unchained her from the bed and handed her a blank porcelain mask that she was ordered to put on. Sansa did as ordered and followed numbly after the shinobi as he led her out of the bunk-room and towards her immediate future.

Her first week in Root was spent being tested on her aptitude in basic fields of the ninja arts that did not require chakra and oh, Sansa loathed it all. Only the strategy and intelligence testing even approached bearable, for as she had not given away her ability to read or write the testing was verbal, requiring only her wit. The other tests were so wretchedly physical and Sansa hated them; she hated being forced to perform katas until she was dripping sweat and couldn't lift her arms, to throw bladed weapons until her palms were ripped and bloodied, to run and run until she collapsed, to twist her body into wretched positions, rough hands yanking her limbs far past where they ought bend and holding them there as she blinked back tears.

The physicality was antithesis to who she was, to who she identified as, and it destroyed her piece by piece inside. It wasn't like when Arya had taught her how to defend herself against an assassin coming at her with a knife, or when Tormund had taught her how to shoot a bow. Those were skills she had asked to learn, had chosen to be taught. These were forced upon her, with the purpose of breaking her down to reshape her into someone else's image. Someone who Sansa wasn't.

Root ran on sixteen-hour days and eight-hour nights and Sansa was always exhausted by the time she was allowed to retire to her bed, wrists and ankles bound to the bedframe, and rest. This left her with very limited time to spend making plans with Mito and Kurama or to practice shaping her chakra into seals under her skin. Despite Mito's faith that she was capable of learning how to disable the seals that bound her chakra, Sansa wasn't ignorant to just how far she was from accomplishing such a feat and how desperately she needed the practice– but when she was collapsing into her assigned bunk, body trembling and mind blurred with exhaustion, practicing sealing was the last thing she was capable of doing.

She would appeal to Buta or Washi– as she had learned bird-mask, or rather eagle-mask, was called– for leniency, but she doubted either knew the meaning of the word. She had seen livelier corpses then her two escorts-turned-"instructors". They reminded her of the Unsullied; the pair were little better than slaves– no free will, no emotions, just mindless obedience. They were extensions of Shimura's own will, without individual thought of their own. She would have as much luck appealing to a brick wall. At least they were not intentionally cruel, though that was little comfort when again and again she was reduced to silent tears by brutal demands of "Again!" as her body ached and her limbs trembled and her vision blurred.

And the sparring, oh the sparring! In some ways, Sansa thought, sparring might be worse than a beating. In a beating, pain was expected. In a beating, she could do nothing but endure. With sparring, there was that faint, flickering, insidious hope that maybe, just maybe, she could avoid the pain, the suffering, if she could just get the move right, if she could just react quickly enough, if she was just that little bit better. It was crueller, that hope. Because when she was left broken and bleeding on the floor, thankful at least that the binding seals did not interfere with Kurama's chakra healing her internal injuries, the despair, defeat and agony was far more crushing then the ache and resignation following a beating.

Her days had been so full, Sansa didn't even realise that it had been an entire week into her stay at Root until she was taken to meet Shimura again. The windowless, underground rooms and the strange sixteen-hour days and eight-hour nights made it hard to make sense of the passing of time, making it blend and blur in confusing patterns.

As she sat across from Shimura, exhausted, chakra bound, entire body aching, and at least one rib only halfway healed from broken, Sansa felt so much hatred for the man before her she almost choked on it. Still, she made sure to control her expression, smoothing her face into a mask of indifference. Shimura was beneath her; this was an inarguable truth that she held close to her heart, to comfort her and bring her strength to sit across from him and match wits with the monster.

"What do you think of your new comrades?" Shimura asked her conversationally, as if she was not his prisoner and he hadn't tortured her with isolation and deprivation of food, water and sleep until she had folded and agreed to 'willingly' train as a shinobi under his command. As if her 'comrades' were not broken men and women without personality, freedom or individual thought of their own.

"I think you're cruel," she answered him honestly, as there was no need for lies between them.

"Because you're soft," Shimura told her and Sansa smiled at him, baring each of her sharp, white teeth.

"So is the fur of a wolf," she said, "has no one ever warned you? Soft things can be dangerous too."

Shimura actually chuckled, a spark of what appeared to be delight in his single, cold eye.

"Perhaps not so soft after all," he conceded. "And I do understand that my actions may seem cruel to you. But everything I do, I do for Konoha. I am her most faithful servant."

"But when you serve the kingdom at the cost of its people, can you truly say that the cost of your actions, the blood that soaks your hands, is just?" Sansa challenged him, despite knowing her words would be disregarded, for men and women like Shimura, so firm in their convictions that they were right and everyone else was wrong, would never be swayed, not even by their deaths.

Varys had been much like Shimura; he claimed he served the good of the realm, oh-so convinced that it was the Targaryens who should rule, blinding himself to three hundred years of blood and fire and conquest and madness, preaching instead of Kings and Queens of the people. He had fooled himself with his honeyed words; despite his convictions, neither he nor his Targaryen Queen had served the realm, or its people, more than any of the other high lords who played the game of thrones.

Sansa doubted Shimura was any different.

"Does not the strength of the village protect its people?" Shimura calmly rebutted her challenge.

"The people are the village," Sansa countered in turn, "they are her strength. If you cripple her people, you cripple her."

"And yet, Konoha is already crippled," Shimura said. "Our reputation is one of weakness, of submission; the other villages look to us like predators who have caught sight of a rabbit trapped in a snare. We need to prove Konoha's strength to keep the village– and her people– safe." 

"How can Root prove Konoha's strength when it moves only in the shadows?" Sansa asked and Danzo's scars twisted and stretched as he smiled.

"Movements in the shadows can have great impacts," he said, "and far reaching consequences. For there is one true way and proven way to demonstrate the absolute strength of a village in this world."

"And how is it that?" Sansa asked.

"There is no better show of strength," Danzo told her, "then victory in war." 

Sansa immediately shook her head. "No," she denied. "There is no benefit to war. To fight and conquer in all your battles is not a true show of strength; true strength is breaking your enemy's resistance without the need to engage in battle at all*."

"An interesting perspective," Shimura said. "But you are a child. What do you know of war?"

Sansa raised her small chin high. She knew more about war then this man ever would. For decades she had ruled a kingdom built on bloodied battlegrounds and ashes; her heritage was one of eight thousand years of Kings of Winter and their Queens whose land had known war and peace both; she knew war, and it haunted her dreams even now. But she also knew peace and that was why she knew Shimura's ideals was fundamentally flawed.

"I understand that war costs more than lives," she said. "It costs money and resources, while limiting trade and restricting import and export. Strength comes during peace, when economies can flourish, alliances can be forged and soldiers have a chance to learn and grow strong. Strength comes when resources and funding can be turned inward, towards making the kingdom prosper, rather than outward, toward making our enemies bleed."

Shimura's single eye bore into her own, and Sansa belatedly realised that there was prodigious intellect and there was debating the economics of trade during wartime at the tender age of four name-days. Nevertheless, there was no going back at this point, so she merely kept her chin raised high and gave Shimura a challenging look. He gave her a thoughtful, calculating one in return. She could almost see the ghost of Petyr Baelish and Tywin Lannister both in his cold eye, and someone else, someone new and just as dangerous.

"You will do well in Root," Shimura said finally, and Sansa almost flinched as he reached under his desk, only instead of retrieving a weapon, he pulled out a mask of smooth porcelain painted boldly with black and crimson which he reached across to place in her small, thin hands. Sansa stared down at the mask in wide-eyed disbelief before looking back up at an unmistakably amused Shimura. "Congratulations," He said, "Megitsune."

Megitsune. Vixen.

Who knew Shimura had a sense of humour?

~

Now that she had a mask and a 'name', Sansa was moved from what she now assumed was the room for fresh recruits to her more permanent quarters. The new room contained two sets of double bunks, two sets of drawers, and, to Sansa's surprise, bunkmates.

She was disgusted to realise that her new bunkmates were about as young as her body; one of the boys in the bunk opposite was around four name-days too and the other two, a boy also in the bunk opposite and the girl who shared Sansa's bunk, were perhaps two or three years older. The girl wore a rabbit-mask, Usagi, while the younger boy wore a fish-carp-mask, Koi, and the older boy wore a bear-mask, Kuma. Sansa didn't actually have time to trade pleasantries of any sort with her new bunkmates before Buta and Washi were marching them all to training. 

For any training exercises where she wasn't paired against either Buta or Washi, Sansa was paired with Usagi. This wasn't actually to any benefit to her– Usagi had clearly been training much longer then Sansa's measly week and left Sansa on the floor spitting blood more often then she didn't, but Sansa couldn't find it within herself to resent the little girl in the rabbit-mask. That would be cruel. Usagi was trapped in a wretched situation and she genuinely did not know any differently.

It made Sansa sick.

Training with three others at least meant that Buta and Washi's attentions were split between them and for the first time after returning to the bunk-room following the usual dinner of tasteless rice, steamed vegetables and plain-cooked meat and their hands and ankles were bound to the bed frames and the lights extinguished, leaving them in a blanketing darkness, Sansa for once wasn't so exhausted that she immediately fell asleep.

Instead, she retreated to her mindscape, activating Mito's seal to wake her ancestress before slipping through the weirwood branches to greet Kurama with a quick hug, breathing in the scent of fox-musk and pure-raw chakra. "Silly little vixen," Kurama sighed, even as Mito groaned and muttered something undoubtedly unflattering about Sansa's sanity under her breath. Sansa couldn't help the way her smile hitched at Kurama's nickname for her and they immediately snarled. "Don't you dare give ownership of the name I gave you to that pitiful meat-sack!" They spat. "Do not ever forget that it was never his to give, it was already yours!"

"I will not forget, I promise you," Sansa vowed, a weight lifting off her shoulders that she hadn't even fully acknowledged until that moment. Kurama made a grumpy sound and shoved her towards the bars of their cage with a sweep of one of their tails. Sansa went along with the momentum of the push, slipping through the tangle of bone-white branches and into Mito's welcoming arms.

"Oh my little seastar," her ancestress said, warm and despairing both, and Sansa couldn't help but laugh even as she leaned greedily into the embrace, not realising how starved she'd been of friendly touch until the moment it was offered. "How are you?" Mito asked gently and Sansa gave a weary laugh.

"Oh, I'm absolutely awful," she said, "it turns out that Shimura may have sabotaged Hatake Sakumo's final mission in some manner, so the wolf summons have tasked me with his death, something I already need if I ever want to be free to see Naruto again, but even if I manage to free my chakra, actually killing a shinobi who has managed to live as long as Shimura is not going to be a simple task. I'm going to have one real chance to take him by surprise, which means the assasination seal needs to be perfect, which means I need practice. At least I seem to have graduated from new recruit status to a mere lowly recruit, so I don't have to deal with two instructors for just myself anymore and I actually have the energy for sealing practice for the first time since this nightmare began."

"Well then," Mito said, her eyes stormy with determination, "we best not waste this opportunity. Are you ready?"

"I am," Sansa agreed, pulling back. "Let's begin."

~

Sansa didn't actually get an opportunity to talk to Usagi, Koi or Kuma without either of the instructors around until nearly three weeks after she was first introduced to them. This was because after they were bound to their bunks, the lights in their bunk-room were extinguished and the three children would stay dead silent and Sansa would either sleep, turn her attention inward to her mindscape or warging, or practice shaping her chakra under her skin.

Kuma was the one who broke the pattern. It was after a day where Usagi, Koi and Kuma had been taught a basic clone jutsu by Washi while she was made to spar against Buta and after the lights were extinguished and Washi's footsteps faded behind the closed door, the boy spoke up.

"Why didn't they make you learn the clone jutsu?" He asked.

Sansa almost didn't answer, she was so shocked at the sign of individuality in the form of the boy's simple curiosity. Then she almost didn't answer, because she wasn't sure what the consequences for answering would be, if any of the Root operatives overheard them. Then, finally, she wondered if she had truly been beaten down so far, so quickly, that she would hesitate to make innocent conversation with a child, for fear of potential consequences. And so, she answered.

"They didn't make me because I can't use chakra externally to my body," she explained, not bothering to simplify her words too much– from listening to how the instructors spoke to the three children, she knew that they were real prodigies, the way that she, as a reincarnated soul, was not.

"Why not?" Piped up the other boy, the younger one– Koi.

"Because they bound it," she answered honestly.

"Why would they cripple their own asset?" Usagi asked, sounding confused. "That doesn't make sense."

"Yes it does," Kuma said softly, and Sansa was delighted to hear that the boy sounded intrigued.

Because he alone of the three children seemed to understand; for why else would they cripple their own asset, unless they were afraid?

Because they were afraid; they were afraid of what the abuse they called conditioning might release, and they were right to be afraid, for the destruction of a bijuu was a terrifying thing and Sansa planned to make each and every one of their fears come true.

~

*adaption from the quote "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting" – Sun Tzu

Notes:

Chapter Warnings - this chapter actually isn't too bad, in the scheme of things, just general unpleasantness against a child for the purposes of training and conditioning