Chapter 4 - Swallowed up by Blood-soaked Darkness

All things, in time, will break. Bodies grow old; are influenced by the passing of time, and become weaker, eventually succumbing to death. Our journey is a short one. How long one lied matters not; what one did with this one, short life is paramount. Fleeting though it may be, a life is not to be wasted through senseless killing, or indeed senseless love. To find success in life is to find balance of all things, and to leave an indelible mark on this world.
Whether that mark be good or evil, those that leave such a mark are always remembered.
Especially by their victims.

Though the embrace of Yuji’s surprise bed companion was warm, he found himself wracked with cold sweats and shudders. He had failed after all, and it was only Azami’s pity that spared him from giving out information, or anything else she wanted.

No. She could not make herself ask, so she lost as well. After five days, we pushed each other to our absolute limits.

It stunned Yuji at first to notice that he was naked, as was his companion. But slowly, a small smile of comfort flickered on his face. In the midst of all that pain and suffering, there had been that bright spot. A bright spot he would never forget, neither due to circumstance nor due to the actual nature of the act.

As he lay there, Azami peacefully sleeping next to him, Yuji wondered about a few things. Mostly, he was curious why he had finally cracked. A pierced nipple…sure, it would hurt, but he was already in pain so often that it wouldn’t have mattered. And the damage was reversible. No, there was some other reason why he had finally given up.

It hit him after maybe ten minutes of lying there, contemplating the breathtaking female curled up next to him. It dawned on him as he recalled the restrained passion they had both exercised until last night. Then it was clear to him.

At some point, I stopped caring about this ’battle of wits’ we were having. I would never reveal the secrets of the Leaf. But I also stopped caring about my freedom. I wanted to belong to her. I welcomed the way she treated me. Belonging somewhere; to someone- that was the desire that finally got me.

Maybe it was healthy. Certainly it wasn’t good to deny yourself anything. Any little shred of happiness Yuji might have had he threw away without a second thought. All in the name of a greater good. An esoteric concept he could barely grasp at this age. Somehow, though, the battle never seemed impersonal. It was always close to his heart. Personal indulgence had been a luxury he’d foregone.

Until now.

Next to him, his raven-haired mistress; his tender lover; his captor- she was all these things. He looked at her, sleeping peacefully next to him, and he knew that he could belong to no other. He belonged to her, for better or worse. He had known it was coming deep in his heart- perhaps the moment he saw her on the battlefield. Somehow, both covered in blood of enemies, regretted their deeds, they shared a deep bond without ever speaking a word.

Azami sat up, stretched her arms high above her head, and reached right over Yuji to grab her whip.

“Just kidding,” she told him, playfully kissing his chin. “We don’t need to go down that road, Yuji. Not unless we’ll be in bed together afterward.”
She cocked her head, seeming to note that his gaze had lingered on her eyes for a while before dropping below the neck.
“Do I need to get dressed, or can you focus on what I’m saying like this?”

Yuji assured her it was the latter, naturally. He’d had enough of being the only naked one for at least a little while.

She nodded, arms folded on her breasts. Okay, so that was a bit distracting…

“Here’s the thing: That stupid Raikage is going to be coming to look for us. We either need to run for it, or we need to deceive him.”

Yuji rolled his neck to one side, trying to get it to be less stiff. Not just awkward positions during a first time romp, but a new bed, too.
“I’m not one to run from a fight normally, but why borrow trouble? We make it to the Leaf, we’re golden. They had to have won by now.”

Azami nodded again. This time, she leaned forward, on top of him, and gently bit down on the side of his neck. Yuji felt a strange, icy feeling moving through him. He guessed it was chakra of some sort. Warmth came in it’s wake, and he felt the return of his chakra flow.
“I’ve released the seal on your chakra. It means I trust you…and that we need each other to get out of here.”

It was so amazing, feeling the chakra coming back into his body in a steady flow. He felt like he had the power to do anything. He wondered if this was like having a cigarette after sex for some people? He mentally noted to try that someday. Because now he was getting out of captivity and into a new life with a gorgeous woman. Part lover, part mistress, all perfect. Maybe it was the mental and physical torture he had endured, or maybe it was just his tendency to be submissive to women, but he felt no urge to try to run for it. He was free for all intents and purposes, but he had no desire to leave her side.

“I can make sure you’ll be welcomed in the Leaf. We forgave the Sand when they attacked us. I hold some sway, so that’s not a problem.”

Azami started to smile and reply, but silenced that quickly.
“shoot! They’re here!”

Yuji had been without chakra for so long that he had been delayed in sensing the approach of four powerful chakras. He cursed, looking around for something to work with. Then he had an idea.

“Here!” he said quickly, stuffing Azami’s whip into her hand. He put his arms behind his back. “Tie me up, quick. We can still make this work.”

Azami did, quickly getting dressed. She made up for lost time by beating Yuji up quickly. She looked up when the door opened. In came the Raikage and three of his aids.

“I didn’t expect you for two more days, Lord Raikage,” Azami noted amicably, giving Yuji a good smack with the whip across the stomach. He did his best to look beat up, which wasn’t hard. He just remembered how he felt when he really did give up and let the emotions play across his face.

The Raikage strode over, tall and imposing. “Have you cracked him yet?”

Azami indicated Yuji. “He’s stubborn. But he’s breaking. He’s given me approximate troop numbers.”

“It matters little. The war is over,” the Raikage told her. “The Leaf routed us, even without this-” he indicated Yuji “-pest.”

Yuji made sure to not register anything they had said. Instead, he lay on the floor, completely devoid of any motion or fight. He just lay like a used up rag.

“You can kill him,” the Raikage told Azami. He was clearly eyeballing her, though. Attired in her sleepwear, she was a tantalizing image. It took a lot of control to stop Yuji from getting up and removing the man’s eyeballs.

Azami strutted over to Yuji, running the whip down his chest to his groin, then back up, using it to lift his chin. She gave him a dark-eyed gaze and an evil smile.
“If it’s all the same, I think I’ll keep him. Since I’ve come so close to cracking him that it’s become a personal challenge. And maybe I’ll use him for pleasure.”

A very ugly look crossed the Raikage’s face. It made Azami recoil immediately, and she was not an easy girl to scare. Something had gone wrong…
“You’ve already done that. You slept with him.”

Azami gasped- of course! They’d been watched.

“I never thought you’d turn traitor- not for the price I paid you,” the Raikage snarled, the ugly sneer still on his face. He nodded, and two of his aids seized Azami’s arms.
“Did you say ‘pleasure’? Maybe I’ll use you for pleasure, you traitorous slut!”

Yuji rammed into the Raikage from the side, knocking his head into the wall. The recoil knocked Yuji down. He tried to get up, but an aide of the Raikage seized him and threw him hard into the wall, head-first. Yuji blacked out.

“Yuji!” Azami said, but couldn’t do anything else. A chakra seal was placed on her. She was thrown onto her bed and tied up, the same way she had tied up Yuji. Except now there were four men glowering at her, lust in their eyes. Undressing her first with their eyes and then their hands. Soon she was naked and defenseless as they removed their own clothes. And then came the pain, and the shame, and the fear.
--

It took a full day for Yuji to wake up. Something smelled odd- odd enough to wake him from his unconsciousness.
Then he noticed the heat. Red and orange tongues of flame were licking the walls. That was horrifying enough. But then his eyes wandered toward the bed. And he saw Azami.

Rage immediately consumed him. Those bastards! They had raped her! Those four sons of doges! Yuji burned their faces into his memory. They had obviously not counted on him or her surviving either the rape, burning cabin.

Yuji started toward her, but found that his hands were still tied behind his back. Undeterred, he put his hands right into the fire, burning the rope off. He was heedless of his own injuries right now. The second the rope fell into a twisted, burning mass off his wrists, he was off toward Azami.

She was unconscious, mercifully. She had been battered horribly. Abrasions all over her body, but especially near her anus and vagina…it made Yuji so angry he was sure that he was going to explode. But he put that aside, freed her from the bed, paused only to grab some clothes of theirs, and took off from the burning cabin.
--
--

Yuji rushed until he was back at the Leaf. He had stopped to bathe Azami, heedless of the infections he may contract. He washed her body carefully, scrubbing every bit of the filth those rapist pricks had left. She hadn’t woken up yet, and that was both worrisome and a relief. He had carefully clothed her in modest clothes that kept her covered up, even across his shoulders as she was now.

He pushed past the guards in front of Tsunade’s office. He barged right in and laid Azami on Tsuande’s desk. He hit the floor in a formal bow, his head to the wooden floor.
“Please…help her.”

Tsunade was stunned, and understandably so. Yuji had been captured, and was presumed dead when a search didn’t find his body. He had been hailed as a hero, helping to pave the way to the Leaf’s overwhelming victory. He had obviously not talked while interrogated, because the Leaf routed the enemy just like before.

And now, he was here, carrying an enemy soldier who had been badly beaten and raped. Tsunade didn’t know what to think of it. Ordinarilly, the medic in her would have sprang up and helped. But Yuji was alive? The two shocks combined stalled her reflexes.

Yuji’s head snapped up. Tsunade was stunned at the urgency in his eyes.
“Will it take money? My life?! WHY AREN’T YOU HELPING HER?!”

He began to pace her office, muttering to himself, gesturing with his hands with abandon, his stoic demeanor gone. He then racied back to Azami’s side. Tsunade called for Shizune and Sakura. Together, they carried Azami off to a private room to recover. Her life was no longer in danger. But her body was still damaged. And more worrisome yet was her mental state. Being raped for a full day by four men would unhinge anyone.

That in mind, Yuji knew there was nothing else he could do. He let his own minor wounds be healed, then returned to his apartment. He needed a bath and a change of clothes. Then he would decide what to do. With the war over, his tour of duty had ended. As a jonin, that meant he would either be assigned a team, or possibly some other special duties. That was what he had always dreamed of. But now that dreamed seem far and distant. Like a big shadow covered it.
--

The water stung the hell out of his body, cut as it was from both torture and pleasure. His mind hummed in tune with the shower’s rhythm. Ideas floated through his head. Bad ideas. Scary ideas. Things he’d never considered. Things he knew he shouldn’t be thinking of. Things that his pre-war self would never have considered.

He rested his head against the shower wall, massaging his temples. He righted himself, unable to keep still, and began to wash up. When his hand went to clean his groin, a smile spread across his face. A virgin no longer.

Then the thoughts of what Azami had endured hit him. They hit him so hard he sunk to the floor of the shower in despair. How long he sat there, he didn’t know. The cool, wet tile seemed to mock him, laid in an endless pattern. Just like his life. One setback after another. The water swirled down the drain, and Yuji was sure that was where his life was headed. If he could just get back on the front lines, he would be okay. His mind and body would be occupied.

The water had long turned cold, beating down on Yuji’s head.

He heard a knock at the door. Hastily, he shut off the shower and flung a towel around his waist, not bothering to dry himself off or cover up any further. There was only one reason someone would be at his door right now.

Sure enough, it was Sakura. She seemed surprised to see Yuji half-naked, but she didn’t comment.
“Yuji…she’s fine…but…”

“But?!” he demanded.

“But she’s in a coma,” Sakura finished. She hated delivering this sort of news. Especially to Yuji. What this girl was to him, she didn’t know exactly, but if he’d found someone, even a friend, it made her happy for him. Her own obsession with Sasuke prevented her from looking for a relationship, or maybe she could have acted on the obvious attraction he had for her.

Yuji wobbled, but grabbed a wall for support. “When will she come out of it?”

“We don’t know. Her body is fine, but her psyche…”

BOOM!
Yuji had put an enormous hole in the wall with his fist, smacking it with the side of his balled-up hand. Sakura remained sympathetic outwardly, though she was worried privately. His reaction wasn’t uncommon, she supposed.

“Thank you for all you’ve done,” Yuji finally muttered, bowing carefully. “Will you please pass on my gratitude to Lady Tsunade? I just…can’t go there right now.”

He looked up at her pleadingly. It was not like him to ignore social protocol, but this was a special occasion. No one would blame him, and he really did need some time alone.

“Is there anything I can do for her?”

Sakura shook her head. “No. She can’t hear you or see you.”

That was where the conversation ended. Yuji thanked Sakura again, then turned to head toward his room.
--

Yuji returned every day, just to look at her. The very site of Azami lying helpless brought him to tears each day. How could the one girl who had managed to turn his head so sharply be lying in shambles? And right before his eyes, where she should have been protected?

“How…?” The anguished question burst from his lips after a month of sitting at her bedside. “How could I have let this happen?”

There was no one to answer that question. It wasn’t even a fair question, Yuji knew. He was being too hard on himself. They had been taken by surprise, and he had played the role he had been dealt the best he could. But that seemed to be of no consequence now.

He replayed the situation in his mind over and over, and yet he found no winnable scenario.
-
--

Finally, a year had passed. Each day, Yuji visited her. Again and again, no change.

Yuji trained and worked missions, trying to piece himself back together. He could now admit that she hadn’t really broken him, nor had she been trying. There had simply been an attraction between them, and neither one knew how to make it work any other way. So he played the part of a prisoner; she his captor. It was sexy, it was fun, but it was masking their true feelings, up until she finally ‘broke’ him and they connected physically.

It seemed an eternity since he had held her. Since their lips had meant.

Sitting on a bench, Yuji stared directly ahead. Some children ran by.
What right did they have to be happy?

A couple walked by arm in arm
Why should they have each other?

The rain began to fall.
That seemed right. The vindication of all things depressing.

Yuji glared at nothing. At nobody. No one even approached him anymore, save for his closest friends. They each had opinions about where he should be now. Someone had even dared suggest that he leave her behind and enjoy his life. That it was what she would want.

What she would want?! How could he possibly pretend to know her?! It still made Yuji furious. The well-meaning jonin had gone flying through the door as a snarl erupted from Yuji’s very soul. The man was no longer quite a friend, but neither was he an enemy. Just another raindrop.

Rain. The Rain village had hurt the Leaf. They had caused pain, given birth by Pain.
Pain? The war had caused a lot of pain. The Raikage had caused pain.

And all at once, it came. Heaping upon him like a rain with a vengeful torrent. Despair, anger, frustration- all mingled within Yuji. He sank to his knees, hands over his head in the position of defense known even to the earliest of men.
The images flashed through his brain in rapid-fire succession. Them storming the cabin, raping Azami. Again and again and again. Those bastards.

“THOSE BASTARDS!”
Out loud, this time. But no one heard the cry for help, spoken through rage. Not in these empty streets, inhabited only by an upturned garbage can. A sign, maybe? No one would oppose him, if-? Surely not? He would only be doing what was necessary to save the next girl.

That, Yuji decided, is what Azami would want. He knew her like no one else. She wouldn’t cry for revenge. No, she would want to ensure that no more pain came at the behest of that man and his fellows. And really, was that so different from his own mission? He wanted to protect people. Yet he had taken lives. Shed blood. And it made sense…all of it. What he could finally do for her.
--

Inside, Yuji’s room was dark, save for what little light shone through the blinds. He got dressed in the dark, welcoming it’s embrace. No one could see him suffer in here. And under these clothes, no one would see him suffer at all.

He put on the combat clothes he’d gotten with Azami. First came underwear with a protective cup built in. Then came black socks from the west that came up halfway to his knee. The pants came next- thick but breathable material, with shin guards and kneepads built in. Next, he put on a light black t-shirt, over which went a charcoal-colored vest, held in place by two straps that ran across his back and shoulders and fastened in front. From there, he put his boots that were held in place by crisscrossing straps. Next came his long coat with three metal buckles in front to hold it closed. A pair of black, fingerless gloves and a pair of sunglasses completed his look for the most part. As an afterthought, he tied a surgical mask over his face. No one would question it; it was common to wear that when you were sick so as not to spread the germ to others.
-

“Bigger nose…yeah, that’s him. And the other guy, he was bald, with a mustache…It was a little thicker than that…yeah, that’s it, that’s him.”

Sai was happy to sketch the men Yuji was describing. It was good practice for him, both from an artistic standpoint and from the standpoint of practicing his interpersonal skills. Yuji was pleasant enough to talk to. They were acquaintances through Team Kakashi, which allowed Sai to pick Yuji’s brain for ways to not irritate his oft-pissed teammates.

It took a couple hours, but the drawings were done. Yuji nodded, thanking Sai again, and took them with him.

“Oh, Sai?” he turned back at the door. “You didn’t see me. I was never here.”

That would have been a peculiar statement to anyone without ANBU training, but Sai read the meaning immediately.
“You were never here,” Sai echoed.

Yuji smiled and left. Sai frowned more than usual, however- that was not right. There was something not right about Yuji. His smile, perhaps?

Ah. Vicious. He seems more vicious. Even with a smile…

Sai shrugged mentally. He hadn’t yet mastered the art of the smile, so he could hardly say anything to Yuji. He could have just misinterpreted the gesture. It was possible.
--

Yuji handed the three drawings to Shizune.
“I’d like to know their names, if we have them. Last location, height, weight, what they had for lunch- you know, the usual stuff,” Yuji smirked behind his mask.

Shizune began to rummage for the files, smiling a little bit at the joke. Yuji was one of her favorite people to deal with.
All the stress he’s under and he’s still always so polite!
“Do you have a cold?”

Yuji looked up, wondering why she would ask, then remembered the mask on his face. He smiled again behind it.
“I think that’s the case. I’m feeling a little better than yesterday, though.”

Shizune held out three green folders.
“Here you go,” she said cheerfully. She straightened up a small a few falling folders and scrolls. “So, what are those for, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Yuji coughed, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth despite the mask. “I think I’d better get going. I don’t want you to catch my cold. I don’t know what Lady Tsunade would do if she was deprived of you…”

There was a scary thought.
--

Aido Namikawa
Denryou Miyazaki
Masahiro Harunobu

All of them in the BINGO book assigned to the Leaf. That would make Yuji’s job easier. Well, at first. The biggest problem would be the last of the four.

Killing the Raikage meant war. But perhaps it was necessary? Besides, with their leader and three of his aides killed, the Cloud would fall easily, if they chose to fight at all. Yuji hoped they wouldn’t- he would feel guilty for starting a war. Innocents did not need to die.
Only the four on his list. They would pay for their crimes.

Rape
Attempted murder
Arson
Assault

I have no proof. So this would make me..the bad guy.

At that moment, Yuji came to a fork in the road, both literally and figuratively. To his right lay a brightly lit path; one he knew well. The place where he’d first seen Sakura and began crushing on her. The place he went to after his promotions to celebrate. The picnics he’d come to when he was a little boy were in a park not far down the path.
To the left lay a dark path that Yuji had always been a little afraid of, even now as a jonin. He hadn’t ever traveled down it. There were stories about it being haunted; an old, forbidding shrine lay a ways down.

To the left,evil.
To the right, good.

“…So be it…” Yuji said softly.

He walked down the path to the left.

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