26

Chapter 26: Twenty-Six

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

A/N: Look for warnings in the end-notes

TWENTY-SIX:

Sansa had actually enjoyed very little in her role as Queen of the North more than the banal necessity of the rote courtesies and formalities of the role. There was just something so steady and comforting about their predictability; the exchanges were so heavily scripted and dictated, the changes in roles and lines existing only in minutia. That was probably why, despite her hatred of the man, the part of Root she most enjoyed was her weekly meetings with Shimura– not that there was enough in Root to enjoy that there was actually any true competition.

Once a week, they would have tea in his office. One of his blank-masked shinobi, which Sansa now knew was somewhat akin to a status symbol representing the most elite of Root's forces, would serve them and they would make simple conversation for around a half hour before slipping into a more pointed dialogue. It was the most intellectual stimulation she had that wasn't related to Buta and Washi's lessons on tactics and strategy, aside from the precious time she spent with Mito, though necessity dictated that the vast majority of that was focused on sealing.

Shimura– or Danzo-sama, as she had been invited to address him, no matter how slimy his name felt on her tongue– was an interesting conversationalist. He was a warmonger, of that there was no doubt, but he was also a very intelligent man and smooth conversationalist with a keen political acumen, a wealth of knowledge of history and a skill for teaching. If Sansa wasn't the Queen that she was, she didn't think she'd realise how skilfully he 'guided' their conversations, raising past scenarios of politics and warfare both and setting her loose on them.

She did wonder what his end goal was. It was clear that this attention he was giving her wasn't standard for a member of Root. It encouraged far too much individual thought, for one, something which was viciously beaten out of the other 'recruits'. And she didn't think Usagi, Koi and Kuma had even met Danzo before, let alone sat down for tea with him and discussed the creation of the treaty to settle the border dispute between Fire Country and the Land of Hot Water. Though it was quite an interesting dispute, and she was impressed with the greater concessions the Fire Daimyo had managed to wrangle from the Hot Water Daimyo. The benefits of having a more established, threatening military power– and yes, she did see the message that Danzo was trying to get across to her there.

Sansa was mildly concerned that Danzo's efforts to converse with her was his attempt to forge a bond between them, a loyalty, like Theon had formed with Ramsay after the bastard had broken him so badly. Captive bonding, the maesters called it. An emotional attachment formed by a prisoner to their captor as a result of persistent stress, dependence and the necessity to cooperate in order to survive. Sansa wondered if Danzo's efforts might have worked, if she did not have Mito and Kurama in her mindscape, and her Pack a warg away. She even had glimpses of Naruto, when she warged into the wildlife of Konoha, though that was… emotionally difficult. Very emotionally difficult.

The first time she had glimpsed Naruto since the Hokage had handed her over to Danzo, she'd warged into a stray dog and had scratched at the door of their shared apartment and howled until she'd woken him up and he'd opened the door (not exactly behaviour she wanted to encourage, but she was desperate and the only time she could warg was at night).

The moment her brother opened the door, she had immediately jumped up on him, beyond relieved to see that Mito was right, that Danzo hadn't touched him, that Naruto was safe, he was free. Naruto had giggled, delighted by the affectionate attentions of the 'dog', patting her happily and scratching her ears and wrapping his small, skinny arms around her in a hug.

She'd remained there for hours, going into the apartment and curling up onto Naruto's bed-mat with him, deciding to lecture him later, when she was finally free, about letting dirty strays sleep on his clean bedding. For now, she was just overjoyed to be near him, to smell his Naruto-scent, to be surrounded by brotherbrotherbrother.

It wasn't something she did often. Her heart couldn't take it. But it reminded Sansa of what Danzo had ripped away from her, that despite the conversations they shared, despite the mask of congeniality he wore, he was no friend to her; he was the insidious, creeping frostbite, turning her fingers and toes numb so she wouldn't realise the damage until it was too late and they were black and dead.

To fight Danzo being her only point of contact in Root, she made an effort to reach out to her bunkmates, but that was… difficult. Conversation between them after they were bound to the bed and the lights went out wasn't forbidden, per say, but by unspoken rule it certainly wasn't encouraged. And despite the fact they were prodigies, they were also young children who were being raised in an oppressive, radicalised environment that suppressed any individual autonomy from a very young age, and it was difficult to make conversation with them, Usagi and Koi in particular.

Kuma was easier for her to talk to in a way, but he was also harder because Kuma had the unfortunate habit of questioning things around them, and that worried Sansa because Root wasn't an environment that encouraged any sort of freedom of thought. In fact, it actively discouraged it. 

Kuma was aware enough of that to be careful, but he was also a child and as a child, even a prodigious one, he was clumsy in his discretion. He was going to ask the wrong person the wrong question at the wrong time, and Sansa didn't know what the consequences to that were going to be, but she knew enough to know they wouldn't be good. She tried to steer his questioning and she tried to keep attention off him, but everything inevitably came to head as she knew it would.

She thought it might have been around three months into her oh-so lovely stay at Root that Kuma made the mistake of asking what he thought was an innocent question. "Why do we have to wear masks?" the little boy asked Buta during training one day, and Sansa froze as fear for him lashed through her. "Wouldn't it make more sense if we knew what each other looked like?"

No, Sansa thought with dread, because then we'd know we were human, not just faceless tools for the village. And asking such questions... they're going to make an example out of you, in front of the rest of us.

She couldn't let that happen. Not if she could stop it.

She immediately stepped forward, desperate to try and distract the instructors from Kuma, knowing her efforts were likely useless but unable to just stand by and do nothing. "That was my question," she said loudly. "I asked Kuma why we had to wear the masks. I said I didn't want to. He's just repeating my words. I don't want to wear this stupid mask."

And then she did the unthinkable– she pulled the mask from her face and tossed it aside, letting it clatter against the floor of the training room.

A terrible stillness settled over the training room, like the haunting calm before a blizzard. Sansa could feel the fear creeping over her, a chill seeping through her blood, right down to her very bones.

"Kuma, Megitsune, take off your clothes," Buta ordered coldly and Sansa froze, her breath catching in her throat, tightening her lungs; nakedness was an old fear, but no less stale for it. It was all-consuming, a terror she didn't think she could ever shake, not after suffering under the threat of rape for so many years in the Red Keep, not when she had been stripped before a jeering crowd of nobles so a knight could beat her with the flat of his sword and a bastard king could point a crossbow at her heart, not when a mob of filthy men had tried tearing off her dress so they could all fuck her, not when she had been raped over and over by a monster wearing the guise of a man.

When she didn't move, couldn't move, Washi moved forward to strip her. Sansa didn't fight them. She didn't fight Washi when they pushed her to the ground either, or when Usagi and Koi were made to hold her arms down, keeping Sansa's body pressed to the floor as the whip Buta wielded struck her back.

The tail of the whip had glass embedded in it to rip and tear and Sansa almost passed out at the first flaming streak of fire made her scream, high-pitched and raw, but she didn't start struggling until the third strike. At the sixth strike, she passed out and didn't wake until she heard Kuma's screams. She couldn't move from where she had been left on the ground, barely had the strength to turn her neck to face Kuma. Usagi and Koi were holding him down as Buta whipped him, just as passionless and mechanic in his movements as he'd been when he'd whipped her. He clearly took no joy in his actions, felt no anger, no regret; somehow, that made it worse.

Sansa didn't know how many times Kuma had been struck before she'd regained consciousness, but the boy's screams abruptly cut off after she witnessed him receiving two strikes and Buta applied three more to his unconscious form before ordering Usagi and Koi to return to their training.

Kuma didn't wake up and Sansa spent the next several hours in agony as the burning skin of her back slowly knit itself back together. She considered trying to inch her way over to Kuma, but she didn't fancy opening herself to the possibility of additional punishment for showing evidence of humanity.

Eventually, Usagi, Koi and the instructors left. She and Kuma were left on the ground of the training room and Sansa waited a half hour before finally taking the chance to carefully stand. Her legs shook but she managed to walk over to Kuma, ignoring the agony that flared in her back, taking care not to agitate the half-healed wounds.

As she knelt beside the boy, she immediately noticed there were glass shards embedded in the wounds on his back and she cursed under her breath at the realisation that her own wounds might have healed around shards of glass. Frustrated and in pain, tears burned at her eyes as she carefully plucked the glass out of the deep gouges while Kuma was still unconscious. She could ask Kuma to return the favour later; there were kunai in the training room he could use to split open any fresh-healed skin.

After she was sure there was no glass left, she took a moment to fetch a kunai before she lifted Kuma, thankful for the strength that her Root training had given her, and, ignoring the blood seeping down her back from her half-healed wounds being split open anew from her actions, she started making her way slowly to the room with the showers.

The showers had only cold water, and she hated the thought that that might wake Kuma, who she'd prefer to leave unconscious, but she needed to wash out any remaining splinters too small for her eyes to see out of his wounds. Setting Kuma down on the tiled shower floor and leaned up against the wall, she turned the water on. She was unsurprised to see him start to stir and he began to cry as soon as the pain hit. "Shh, shh," she soothed, kissing his forehead, even as she tugged him so the water was pouring onto his back. He struggled at first, shrieking out in pain, but she forced him to stay in that position and eventually he slumped forward, pressed against her, and she wrapped her arms around him and sang.

"High in the halls of the kings who are gone

Jenny would dance with her ghosts

The ones she had lost and the ones she had found

And the ones who had loved her the most

The ones who'd been gone for so very long

She couldn't remember their names

They spun her around on the damp old stones

Spun away all her sorrow and pain

And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave

Never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave"*

Kuma eventually stopped sobbing and Sansa picked up the kunai from where she had left it on the ground, just within arm's reach. "I need you to cut the glass shards out of my back," she said reluctantly and Kuma looked horrified.

"Megitsune, no!" He hissed, and Sansa leaned forward so her mouth was pressed over his ear.

"Fuyuko," she breathed, her voice so low it was barely even a whisper. "My name is Uzumaki Fuyuko."

And Kuma... Kuma went very still, before leaning forwards slightly, turning his own head so his lips were pressed to her ear. "Shin." He breathed, and his voice trembled slightly. "I am Shin."

"Shin," Sansa murmured, almost reverent, before pleading again. "Shin, please. I am sorry to ask this of you, I am so, so sorry, but I have to get this glass out of me before the skin heals over it completely. Please."

And Kuma– Shin– took a deep breath and accepted the kunai from her hand. Sansa turned around under the spray of cold water and clenched her teeth, preparing for the pain. 

It hurt. It reminded her of Ramsay and his knives, of how he'd liked to cut her, to carve her up, and she couldn't help her tears and her sobbing. Shin cried with her, but he still cut the glass shards from her, opening up the long gouges left by the whip at her instruction so that any invisible splinters could be washed away by the water spray.

Exhausted and in agony, Sansa didn't even have the energy to stand. She didn't even have the energy to turn off the shower spray, only to use her hands to push herself out from under the spray of water, Shin following after her, before she collapsed forward onto her stomach, Shin following her example, pressed against her side, and she fell into an exhausted sleep that was closer to an unconsciousness due to pain, shock and blood loss then true exhaustion.

~

Sansa woke on the steel table of the 'infirmary'. She almost wasn't surprised. What did surprise her was that she wasn't bound. Tentatively, she pushed herself up into a sitting position. Her vixen mask was by her left hand and she brushed her fingertips over the smooth, cool porcelain, tracing the crimson swirl of the Konoha symbol over its forehead.

Footsteps heralded Danzo's arrival and Sansa looked up to meet his single eye. "Foolish child," he said and Sansa smiled coldly at him, baring sharp teeth.

"You'll have to be more specific," she said.

"I received a full report," Danzo told her. "I know full well you wouldn't have asked any questions about the masks. You understand exactly why they are necessary."

"I understand why you use them," Sansa corrected, "their necessity we can agree to disagree on." Danzo looked coolly back down at her.

"You tried to take Kuma's punishment in the boy's place," he said. "That was your first act of foolishness. Your second act lay in trusting a child to perform rudimentary field surgery on you instead of returning him to the barracks then seeking out professional medical help. The boy made a mess out of your back."

Sansa grimaced. "I admit I wasn't thinking straight," she said. "I was in shock and exhausted, and I wasn't thinking clearly. I'm not making excuses, I'm just explaining the circumstances. I will do better."

"You will," Danzo agreed. "Resistance to interrogation training usually starts later, but you are a special case." He then smiled. It was not a nice smile. "And because of your foolishness, you will temporarily be trading partners. You and Kuma will be paired for the duration of your RTI training."

Sansa looked over at Danzo with sinking horror. There was no point in begging, she knew. There was no point in resisting.

"You will do better next time," Danzo said and Sansa looked him dead in the eye.

"I will." She said. Because she knew she didn't have a choice.

~

*Jenny of Old Stones– Florence + the Machine really brings it to life!

Notes:

Warning: extreme violence against young children under the guise of 'disciplinary action' and non-explicit reference to Sansa's past trauma (rape)