Chapter 2
Tenzou kept his promises.
I'll shade you, he said, and brought Iruka deeper into the woods. For every step he took, the brambles holding Iruka captive dragged itself after him like a faithful hound; at every step Iruka struggled, kicking and clawing to no avail.
Behind them, the wall of brambles receded into the distance and behind the cover of the trees. For all of its false promises, Iruka could not bear it gone from his sight.
Where was Tenzou bringing him? Perhaps a cave, with plenty of shadows to fulfill his promise. Or his lair - surely a monster would have a lair - a place to call safe and to rest, to prefer and call home.
A place to keep his food, his mind whispered and conjured up silhouettes of bodies hanging from the trees, swaying in a non-existent breeze. The steady drip-drip-drip of blood down onto the dark soil. A place to keepyou.
To hang from a tree with the solid ground far beneath his feet, to weaken as blood drained out of his body -
Iruka renewed his struggle against the brambles, even if in vain.
It was a surprise then that they emerged from the claustrophobic darkness of the woods and into a glade. The trees gathered less jealously here, allowing the gentle rays of sunlight to slip through their branches. For this concession, the grass flourished wild and verdant as it thrived under the sun. A slight breeze swept by, trailing cool fingers across Iruka's skin before darting into the forest, never to be felt again.
Picturesque. Serene. Beautiful. Iruka might have brought his students here to run and play, the soft give of dirt and grass beneath his feet to cushion their inevitable falls and tumbles. He might have made his camp on his way back to Konoha, stared up at the night sky in awe and humble gratitude for the beauty of nature.
Might have, could have, would have. The brambles shifted around him, curling up against him rather like an affectionate cat - one made entirely out of thorns and deeply unwanted.
It acted as a good reminder that he knew better now.
I’ll give you water, Tenzou had promised next, and Iruka saw for himself another display of Tenzou’s strange powers. In the corner of the glade the grass moved, clearing an empty space of loamy soil. In that empty patch of dirt out grew a plant - from tiny bud to shooting stalk to a bulbous and wide-lipped receptacle - it took mere seconds.
It took Iruka a second more to remember that first unassuming plant. That urn filled with golden nectar and a sweetened death.
It was large enough to fit a person. It was large enough to fit him. He remembered the missing-nin, sinking into the depths of the urn and out of sight. If he went back there and cut open the urn, would her nectar-soaked corpse still be there?
For all of his fears, Tenzou did not toss him into the pitcher. Iruka would know later that it was to be a rain collector - a source of water, as promised.
I’ll give you food, he also said, and it became clear then how the forest loved Tenzou so. Branches bent low under the weight of their engorged fruits; bushes rustled as they parted and proudly presented their berries. Rhizomes and roots alike sprouted and slid out of the firm ground, into Tenzou's waiting hand.
How easy it had been for Iruka to forage for food back then. What a relief it had been, that they would not starve in their attempt to find civilisation. He was lucky, Iruka had thought - in his more prideful moments he thought himself capable.
It was a slap in the face now to see everything he had foraged in Tenzou's arms.
And when you ripen I’ll take what I need, Tenzou had promised last. The only promise left unfulfilled.
Iruka just had to escape before that.
He made his first escape attempt at the crack of dawn.
He made his second, third, and fourth attempts throughout the following day.
He thought it arrogance when Tenzou unwound the brambles from Iruka’s shoulders and let it slink away into the undergrowth. True, Tenzou had left a twist of thorns around his wrist, but that was an insufficient precaution when his legs were free to run. What would have been an insult was an advantage now.
He thought it an opportunity when Tenzou finally tired of Iruka’s furiously mute refusal to eat, to drink, to talk. Tenzou had offered him a drink from the pitcher, a fruit from a tree, words polite and encouraging, before he finally retreated across the clearing and settled down against a tree. An opportunity Iruka could not resist when dawn revealed his eyes to be closed, the rise and fall of his chest to be steady.
Sleeping.
Iruka ran.
Into the surrounding trees, back towards the wall of brambles. The brambles did not dig into his skin, a sure sign of Tenzou’s current state of unawareness. It only meant that he had to move faster, all too aware of the limited time he had before Tenzou realised his prisoner missing.
Except Tenzou had caught him. Iruka stopped to regain his bearings, coming to a stop on top of the tallest branch of a tree - the next moment Tenzou was there, an arm curling around Iruka’s waist and a hand holding Iruka’s unadorned wrist.
“Caught you,” he said into the curve of Iruka’s ear, sounding all too pleased.
Iruka’s kunai had been left behind at the wall. It didn’t stop him from attempting to assault Tenzou as he was brought back to the glade.
Again, again, and again - Iruka would wait for a moment’s worth of distraction. Iruka would make his escape. Iruka would run, run as far as he could without stopping, run until his lungs burned and his muscles screamed and his eyes blurred from the sweat that dripped into them - and the moment he stopped Tenzou would be there, sometimes following closely every step of the way, and sometimes appearing straight out of thin air and sweeping Iruka into his waiting arms.
Maybe it wasn't arrogance. But there was one last resort, in this forest full of trees.
He turned around and brought his hands up to form a katon -
The brambles around his wrist suddenly constricted, its thorns tearing sharply into his skin. He flinched, his hand spasming out of place for the proper seals; his chakra dissipated with the improper release. Blood oozed out of the wounds and down his fingers, dripping onto the ground; his hand throbbed.
Tenzou was there a breath later. There was a pronounced stillness to his countenance, unsettling; the hairs on the back of Iruka’s neck prickled in response, warning.
He should run. Tenzou realised that Iruka had been about to burn down the forest. It would be natural for Tenzou to kill him for it -
But where could he even run to? No, running was futile - it meant only being caught again.
Tenzou stepped closer. He reached towards Iruka, his motion slow and measured. Iruka was only so brave; he flinched -
As Tenzou closed his fingers around Iruka's bloody wrist.
Iruka stayed frozen as Tenzou brought the wrist up to his mouth. The brambles withdrew into a looser circle, and that tongue flicked out against Iruka's skin, gentle and delicate; licking around the wounds the brambles left, drinking Iruka's blood.
And when Iruka's hand was clean, Tenzou pressed Iruka’s wrist to his lips one final time before looking Iruka in the eyes.
“No jutsus,” he said clearly.
Iruka wasn’t sure if he nodded, or if his silence was sufficient. Either way, Tenzou smiled that empty smile and turned around, tugging Iruka back towards the glade. Under Tenzou's grip, the bramble around Iruka's wrist curled and shifted in place, the thorns pressing insistently against his skin even as they avoided his wounds.
He was suddenly certain that if he tried to form a hand seal again, it might just squeeze - it might tear his hand off.
All of his escape attempts, had been little more than playtime to Tenzou. In that moment that Tenzou had been forebodingly silent, Iruka wondered if it was petulance - similar to a child's when their playmate broke a rule.
He didn't know. He couldn't know, but he knew this at the very least: it was only Tenzou’s continued interest in Iruka that kept him alive.
There could be only be so many times Iruka could run before Tenzou would grow bored. Iruka couldn’t afford Tenzou growing bored. Not if he needed to escape.
A different approach was required.
To qualify for B-rank missions, Konoha required her ninja to undergo anti-interrogation training.
Information was the shinobi's currency. Konoha did not inform her ninja of the entirety of her plans, but her enemies did not need her to. Capture enough targets, or if they were particularly lucky the right target, and it might just be enough to shine a light on plans and actions. An advantage taken away, a weakness exploited - neither was a possibility willingly suffered.
Iruka had undergone such training under Tobitake Tonbo. Every person has a breaking point, Tonbo told him as he picked at a bowl of ramen. The scent wafted its merciless way under Iruka's attentive nose and sent hunger pangs straight into his starving stomach. No one, not the jounins or even the ANBU, could withstand torture indefinitely. Konoha only needed her ninjas to withstand until the usefulness of that information deprecated with time, and to know the various ways they will be encouraged to crack faster: the dread of impending torture, the promise of a reward, the actual pain.
But Tenzou didn’t want Konoha or her secrets. He wanted something smaller and less significant; something he did not need to resort to torture for. Save for the brambles, Tenzou had yet to raise a hand to Iruka; when they returned to the glade he presented again the fruit and water - both an unconditional offer.
How could he possibly apply his training to this situation? Tobitake himself probably didn’t foresee the need for training in the event of captivity under a monster.
It didn’t matter. Information was the shinobi’s currency, Iruka repeated to himself - it was what he lacked. Save for the barest of the abilities to control plants, Iruka had almost no information on Tenzou. He knew that Tenzou could heal himself, but not to what extent; he knew that Tenzou could move through the forest at speeds that defied logic, but he didn’t know how.
And despite everything, he didn’t know why Tenzou was still keeping him alive.
(What did ripening even mean?)
In hindsight, it had been a mistake to escape when he knew nothing of Tenzou the monster, having only known Tenzou the man. Did a monster need sleep, or had he been feigning all along? Did Tenzou need to eat, or did he go through the motions?
Were there more out there? More monsters wearing human skins, enticing wayward travellers into their part of the woods. Was this world a far more dangerous place than Iruka had thought?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know, and he wouldn’t find out anything if he kept on running. But if he did what Tenzou wanted…
If he talked. A compromise instead of a surrender.
He fixed his eyes on Tenzou’s back, on the deceptively light grip around his wrist. And Iruka asked, “how did you catch up to me?”
Silence. They trudged onwards, with only the crunching of fallen leaves beneath their feet. Iruka faltered - maybe Tenzou guarded his own abilities just as jealously, lest his captive learnt how to outrun him.
But Tenzou eventually answered, “I followed you through the trees.”
“Through the trees.” Despite the moratorium on jutsu, shunshin was apparently excluded if only to provide a greater challenge (or so Iruka suspected). Nevertheless, it should have been difficult for Tenzou to track him. Furthermore, Tenzou's movements were far from stealthy, even now - Iruka should have heard him coming. “You mean you just ran after me?”
Tenzou repeated, “I followed you through the trees."
Anger at your students did not teach them any better, Iruka reminded himself as he slowly breathed in and ignored all the times he managed to get through to Naruto only because he got angry. Anger at your captor was little more than a provocation. “How did you follow me through the trees?"
Another silence, that Iruka hoped was more thoughtful than irritated. “I went through the trees.”
Something was getting lost in translation. He squeezed at the bridge of his nose with his free hand. It didn’t feel quite as satisfying when the hand he wanted to use was with Tenzou.
“Could you show me,” he finally asked.
Tenzou stopped in his tracks; Iruka almost walked into him. His expression was unreadable when he turned around to consider Iruka. Unsure of what he was looking for, Iruka met his gaze steadily.
“I won’t run.” That was reasonable. “I promise."
That blank expression slipped into a slightest hint of a frown.
“I can’t bring you along,” Tenzou said. It sounded almost tentative.
Iruka shook his head. “That’s alright. I just want to see."
Tenzou stared at him for a few seconds more before bringing a hand up to rest against a nearby tree. It sunk into the bark, disappearing up to Tenzou's elbow. Skin, fabric, both melded seamlessly into wood.
“Look behind you,” Tenzou said.
Iruka looked. A hand stuck out of a tree a few paces away. Absurdly, it waved at him before retracting into the bark. He turned around, mechanically, to see Tenzou pulling his hand away from the first tree - no trace of a hole, a mark, anything.
“You,” he said. Tenzou waited, patient. “Why did you - why'd you let me run?”
“I like the chase,” came the plain answer. Iruka stared blankly at him. “I like chasing you.”
He smiled at Iruka, eyes glinting, before turning around and continuing the trek back to the glade. Iruka followed behind him, mute in his revelations.
Running had been futile after all.