Honor
Chapter I: Honor
The rusted door opens hesitantly, it's heavy edge scrapes on the metal floor. A shriek travels through the halls and into delicate ears.
A man steps in and there's been so many, their faces have mended together with all one recognizable trait -- they all share the same cruel smile.
"No, please don't," she wants to plead. The fear returns back, the feeling of being alive against the threat of death. Her lips stand still, opposing and held taught like bolts shutting down windows made to open.
Honorable shinobi do not beg, her stubbornness engrained in her mind.
(But it's also honorable to torture your enemy until they cried hard enough to remind her they are all children scarred from war. It's honorable to split the throat of a mother in the night, where sleep makes anyone vulnerable. There are a thousand sins that are honorable, but never gave her the satisfaction of what she's done.)
This cycle of endless pain needs to stop before all that's left is a broken mind and numb body. With enough torture and time, anyone sane will break. Ino knows that fact well and has witnessed it herself. Her willpower not to bend will waver evidently but even then, she has promised herself to remain loyal.
But sometimes when the knife carves to her skin, she questions why she bounds herself to such pain for a nation that will never bleed for her. She prepares herself for another round of shed tears and sobs - her breath comes to a halt and she refuses to feed into the panic just yet.
A man steps in, shrouded in darkness until the candle's light reaches his face. All her worries disappear at the glimpse of the silver headband that bears her nation's symbol. She almost cries in a surge of mindless emotion as she sees the familiar faces - there's relief in their eyes. 'At least one of them is alive," they think.
Kakashi signals for the rest of them to come in and the rest of the generation team follows. Sakura rushes to her broken body, eyes burning with concern and determination - to help what is left of her friend. Ino lets her tears fall and a hope takes her like a sickness. Her legs are weak and her arms are tired - the torture and mental agony have exhausted her further more than any other mission or training. Sakura sits on her knees next to her, muttering a string of unintelligible words that would have been comforting if only she listened. She raises her head slightly, watching the rest open the room across with blurry eyes. In the background, she faintly hears the others free Choji, who grunts awake from his supposed sleep. - "Hey, big guy, we got you," Kiba mutters as he turns him over, revealing the mass of bruises and burns on Choji's bare chest.
Ino just wants to hear one thing as she feels glowing hands healing her bleeding cuts.
"You don't have to be strong anymore."
During the span of days she spent in the dirty cell, Ino had screamed until all that was left of her voice was a low rasp, its confidence, and pride that was embedded at a young age gone. Her agony had echoed through the walls and during the rare moments where she was at some sort of temperate peace, she could almost hear Choji's quiet escapes of despair in the room across from her. His sadness brought her a twisted sort of solace - she wasn't the only one crying in this hell. For the first for few days (or hours, she wasn't sure; the darkness and pain have distorted her sense of time and a part of her as well), Choji would speak to her in hushed whispers in the beginning.
"Does it still hurt?" He stands behind the metal door, his face pressed against the rusty bars as thick fingers slip through them - struggling so hard to reach her. The yearning fills in his eyes but all she sees is guilt pouring out of the dark. A part of her is thankful for the doors separating them, his warm eyes would have been spared of the blood that crawls down her skin. He'd blame himself more if he was in the same room as her, closer but never close enough.
"Not anymore," her words shake with anything but the truth. No, the pain will always linger, either as a physical attribute or haunting memory.
Chouji stays silent and she knows he doesn't believe in her - he understands too well. The guards come back, their ugly cruel mouths stretched into a knowing smile and it sickens the both of them. At the dawn of it all, their voices are no more than a child's. Small and frightened.
They stick Choji with metal rods with glowing orange tips, watching him squirm and squeal likes he's a fucking animal caught in a trap. The smell of burnt flesh stings her eyes and tears prickle out of the corners. Bile rises up her throat and she tries to hold in back - hold it in, Ino, don't' make another mess, it's disgusting.
She vomits the last of her meal and has never felt skinnier. Her fingers roam over the ghost of her ribs and the valleys between them.
(Avoid the lines, they were never there.)
The acidic, deep taste is stuck in her the throat and she's forced to listen to the cacophony of Choji's despair. Ino remembers a time where she spent her days brushing her hair and writing little love letters and planning her perfect wedding bouquet.
White lilies, baby's breath, peonies, carnations.
She wants to be young and beautiful again, where her world is shining with clear blue skies and the soft grass was always dry. Not made up of grey rain and blood splattered on muddled dirt.
She tries to pinpoint where her life went exactly wrong because there must be a mistake - for fate couldn't be so cruel to betray her with an unfair death. There is no honor if this is the end. If this is the end, there is nothing.
The abyss after death calmed her, but what terrorized her was the possibility that honor never existed, that she died committing evils manipulated as "honor."
That this was all for nothing.
Something, there needs to be something she can hold to before her faith breaks.
She could almost hear Choji breathing but almost isn't enough. If he wasn't broken as her, Ino would have tried harder to live for him - to make Choji a reason why she should survive. (But if Choji doesn't want to live either, then there wasn't a reason for her to live either.)
She has never been this cynical to herself. It must make her next in line to develop a smoking habit, she attempts to make a joke but it only made her sadder.
Ino can't remember how she laughs - was it unbearably loud or soft, quiet smile?
Silence breaks her more than the screams her mind surrounds itself in. In silence, she thinks - of things that were never there, of happiness she can't grasp, or memories that drown her. Those thoughts never gutted her, but the dawning of the hell she was in always came upon her, ruining every peace she collected.
But on some hours where she's alone, she replays all of Choji's screams and the slow agony of Shikamaru's torture.
Shikamaru. She promised herself not to think of him - it only brought her more pain.
He doesn't scream for the first fourteen lashes. His teeth clench down until they scrape each other like working iron, twisting his jaw into a sharper angle. He looks straight at them and the men behind, dark eyes roughened out of its vulnerability and into a hard, definite stare. Without evident fear, Shikamaru braces his body but the first crack against skin happens, his eyes widen a bit, and she knows he isn't prepared - no matter how powerful his mind is, it isn't enough to build walls around pain that great.
He's only twenty-three, but he carries himself with twice the maturity and following exhaustion.
Blood rolls down his wet back and he begins flinching after ten.
Chouji screams at them, fury in his eyes while Ino had tears in hers. She feels ashamed for crying, yet the guilt in her stomach has to empty somehow.
"Stop! Just stop - we don't know where they are!" They plead.
"No, but he does." Another bent wrist, another scar.
They continue onto thirty-five lashes. Shikamaru keeps his lips tight except when he silently screams and shudders out the pain.
Then salt water pours down all the gashes and Ino watches Shikamaru lose himself in calamity.
It's unnatural almost, she hasn't seen him cry until Asuma died. After that, he became colder that it burned her to touch him until he learned how to forgive himself. He became human again, but he never grasped his emotions as strongly as before - he never cried since then.
But now, sobs escape from those pale lips, now bitten down red, and they sounded more of a wartorn veteran than a child's. He was always another kind of shinobi, carrying more sins - more blood and tragedy - without being blessed by ignorance. They hold him down harder as his body struggles against it all, no matter how far those chains dig into his wrists. He sputters out of curses, but he doesn't give them the answer. "I won't tell you, even if you fucking strip me to my bones," the blood from his nostril crept into his mouth and stained his teeth as he said this.
The leader approaches Shikamaru and slowly, a strange smile is formed across his face. "We'll see," he replies as he slips his fingers into one of the larger gashes, burrowing under the rising blood. Shikamaru lets out a strangled cry and writhes under his suffering. Those hands then crawl up to Shikamaru's thin neck, choking him until all that comes out are just pained whines of a wounded dog. The hands behind his back are tied, unable to claw himself free. Ino can only watch and scream; if she looked away from his pain, it would be a betrayal. Sweat gathers at his forehead and pools down to his temple, his breathing restless once those hands release his neck.
"Separate them into different rooms. We'll torture them each. One of them is bound to let some information slip on where the bonds are."
She and Chouji were grabbed by their arms and taken away together to the same hall, but Shikamaru continues to fight against hands too hard on him.
"Do not give in," he mutters, still trying to speak through a crushed throat. His last words were his last command, but she was too much in shock to realize it.
She snaps back into reality.
Shikamaru.
After they were separated, she tried so hard to go back to him - she needs him to stay calm. Shikamaru was the one who held her heart when her mind went against her. When they dragged him away with a trail of blood behind his feet, her fears swallowed her and never left.
"S-Shikamaru," she grabs the soft petals of Sakura's hair and whispers in a panicked tone, eyes widening. The dawning realization that she's been recused means there is a chance for him to live - and the possibility of being too late adds another cut to her heart. "P-please find him, please," she gasps out and her grip loosens as she falls back.
Let him live, dear God, if you ever existed - let him live.
"We'll bring him back to you," Sakura promises firmly, but in a vague tone (and it sounds so remorseful, because the chance she'll bring Shikamaru's dead body is too high to have hope) and with her strong arms, picks Ino off the dirty floor and wraps the feeble body into her side. The sweet, bitterness of Sakura's natural scent and gritty sweat reminds Ino of warm soil - a comforting nostalgia to her gardening days. She wonders if her sunflowers are still standing tall or have wilted from neglect. Her mind is feverish, blurring around the clear edge of thought and she slowly finds herself becoming increasingly tired. Her back is sore from sleeping on the ground and her legs tumble over themselves trying to learn how to run away again. Ino mumbles something about being a newborn fawn, and Sakura plays a sad smile in return.
"We're almost here, Ino. We'll return Chouji and Shikamaru back to you," her voice is softer than the darkness around her eyes.
"I won't forgive you if you don't," Ino whispers back, tears threatening to spill again over her own words. The dirty strands of her silvery blonde hair are heavy with blood and grime, falling from her scalp into her eyes. Sakura then stops her feet, turning to her friend-sister- struggling to put herself back together. Ino's blue eyes were like glass: they cut the sharpest when broken. She swallows and nods with understanding and empathy. If anyone were to deliver the earth-shattering news that her teammates were dead, then she wouldn't forgive them either regardless if it wasn't their fault. It was selfish and cruel to condemn someone to that bitter resentment, but it's easier to blame someone else for your own mistakes.
The prospect of freedom touching her tongue sets her eyes at ease, but her heart aches at the thought of her brothers. She hadn't turned back to check on Chouji, but she doesn't want to see those damned cells again.
They continue to walk until Ino feels the soft blades of grass stabbing through her bare feet and drops into Sakura's warm arms tightening her shoulders.
Waiting in silence, Kiba and Rock Lee drag out a half-starved Chouji whose weight has dropped immensely and sunken cheeks defined under the bright sun. His amber eyes are dropped to the ground and his breathing is quiet from his half-asleep state. His burns were visible and ranging from blistering second degrees to charred thirds. Ino crawls towards Chouji, who bends down and her cold hand touches his hot cheek.
"You're alive," he breathes and a hint of his kindness peeks through his smile - smiling through the numbed pain while his eyes are haunted, just likes hers. She hums back, too tired to understand herself and give him an honest reply. They sit down, anxious as they wait for their final member to come back - dead or regretfully alive.
Chouji still has hope that his best friend is alive, if they're alive then he must be too. Ino doesn't know what to believe except for the fact that she will never sleep peacefully again. She knows Shikamaru that if anyone of them had to make it, it would be him. Yet, she knows too many stories of fallen leaders and the tragedies of being caught in the enemy's home. She remembers how she believed that Asuma was invincible, but no one is immortal and Shikamaru himself taught her that.
They wait and Naruto comes out, his face grim with wet streaks down both of his dirt-smeared cheeks. He looks straight at them and every emotion - the sadness, pity, defeat - pours out of those hopeless eyes. He mouths the words "I'm sorry" and truly, at that point, their world is tilted and torn.
Ino, despite all her exhaustion and every bone in her bodying telling her to quit, she walks up with a limb (fuck her sore legs - Shikamaru is dead so is her sanity). "No, no, don't look at me like that," she cries out. She refuses to accept his death with grace or dignity, he was not Asuma who died in the honor of a fair battlefield.
He was blinded by iron and tortured with spiked leather against his bare back - he died in captivity like an animal instead of finding liberty at the last breath.
Shikamaru wanted a simple life that mimicked the elderly. He would have been perfectly content with having a wooden shogi board across his knees and a pillow facing the blue sky.
In her desperation and mourning, she walks up to Naruto and grabs his jacket down to her chin. Chouji is right behind her footsteps, having his large calloused hands quietly holding her shoulders. Ino wants to yell and break a million things at him that it will somehow express how empty she feels. But having Chouji's presence drains her of all that anger, through those hands he's silently telling her that anything cruel she says will fix nothing.
She hangs her head down, the waterfall from her eyes once again pouring down. The droplets land at Naruto's sandals, who stands still with Ino's weight pulling him down.
"He's not dead," he whispers.
A hope almost rises, but Ino steps down on it as soon as her heart feels lighter at Naruto's words. If he isn't dead, then he could only be in a state worse than death. Ino pictures the gruesome images of what could be left him and it twists her stomach so much Chouji stops her from falling completely. Silence is exchanged between the three of them as she looks up again.
"We should have come earlier, but we didn't. We didn't know," Naruto continues, his eyes shifting away from hers and at the sound of the cell door opening.
Kakashi walks out, his arms burdened by a body covered in so much blood it makes her squirm. The older man's olive army jacket is stained black from the bleeding torso. Heavy gashes cut into his sides and folding over his heavily bruised chest. His hair is loose, oily ebony strands dangling as his head is arched back in unconsciousness. A stream of dried blood from his nose reaches to the hem of his waistband, moving along the land masses of broken blood vessels. Sakura, who disappeared in the background, closes in her injured comrade. Kakashi bends his knees to carefully put him down and peeking out from the black hair over his face was a dirty beige bandage covering his eyes. Crimson soaks through the layers and it worries them all.
"...too deep for me to heal...infection has been prevented from the salt water...but the exposure is still a risk...has a fever" Sakura plays out her medical knowledge as she roams over all scars. She hesitantly unwraps the bandage and everyone watches her hands to reveal the truth. He hisses at the intrusion as the final cloth sticks to the cracked blood and the sensitive skin is out to open. A thick jagged cut slashed across the bridge his nose and through the eyes, a pink rash blistering on the skin surrounding it.
Sakura just shakes her head.
Everyone has different reactions: Neji's pale eyes do not move, but his lips tightened at the sight. Hinata releases out a small sob but tries to compose herself. Rock Lee looks immensely saddened but puts a hand on Tenten's shoulder, who looks down at the ground. Kiba curses at the bastards who ruined a good man. Shino has to hold him and Hinata, stoic and expressionless.
Ino can only stare at the remnants of a fallen Shikamaru.
Chouji weeps in her place.