Time Braid

24. Resistance

Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.

I floated in a half-aware daze, my thoughts so sluggish I could barely string two words together. It was dark, and I hurt everywhere, and thoughts that weren’t my own kept intruding on my consciousness.

I’m a bad girl, and bad girls need to be punished. Resistance means punishment. Escape means punishment. Resetting the loop means punishment. I should be a good girl so someday the punishment will be over, and I can be rewarded instead.

I pushed the genjutsu away, but the pain suddenly flared into burning agony. I blacked out.

When I drifted back to awareness it was cold, so cold that the barriers around my mind had turned brittle and begun to crack. Something was beating against them, a methodical thudding that matched the rhythm of my heart.

The thought that I was drugged out of my mind floated past, and snagged on a stray reflex. I tried to gather my chakra and purge myself, but the power failed to answer my call. Wasn’t that impossible? I tried to concentrate, and felt for a moment the leaden pressure of chakra suppression seals. Then the pain flared again, and drove me back down into oblivion.

Eventually I returned to awareness, but I could feel that bludgeon of pain waiting to punish me again. I couldn’t fight like this. I needed to slip away, but I couldn’t. I was pinned in place on a thousand lances of despair, held by cold red eyes that refused to let me go.

That wasn’t right.

“Your eyes have no power over me,” I whispered. The pain came again, and the me of regrets and misgivings screamed in agony. But the me of love and hope slipped her bonds, and vanished away to safety.

“Sakura!”

I woke to Hinata’s voice, and sighed in relief to find her arms around me. I was lying under the trees by my hidden pond, with warm sunlight falling on my face.

“Hey, Hinata,” I said weakly. “I guess I got caught, huh?”

She nodded. “Yes. That monster has been working on you for days. It was all I could do not to march out there and rip his eyes out. But I know he would have caught me as well if I’d tried it, and I can’t do you any good as a hostage.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it, Hinata, you did the right thing.” I sat up, and took stock of myself. I was naked, and covered from head to toe in minor cuts and bruises, but not seriously injured. Since my presence in this place was more a representation of my mind than a physical body, I surmised that the brainwashing hadn’t had too much effect on me yet.

My other self, however, was being questioned.

I suppressed a shudder, and tried not to feel what was happening to her. It wasn’t easy, especially with her reaching out to me and begging incoherently for help, but I needed to think.

“So Sasuke got to the looping Hinata first, and she set us up. They’ve got my contract, so he’s probably signed it by now. Damn it, I do not want that bastard to be able to call me whenever he wants. But the contract works both ways, so if we can get it to Naruto we should be able to work this out. First we summon Sasuke and kick his ass, then we can call the other Hinata and deprogram her. I hate changing someone else’s mind by force like that, but in this case I think I can safely say it’s the right thing to do.”

“I like this plan,” my Hinata agreed. “But the contract is still out there, and how are you going to do a summoning with your chakra suppressed?”

“Hmm. I might be able to pull it off by tapping my storage seal, but there are lots of ways that could go wrong. Better to do this the safe way. Naruto is bound to know something is wrong by now, since we didn’t come back and apparently he hasn’t been able to summon us. They must have me in some kind of containment seal to keep that from happening. But he’ll try again right after the reset, so I should just… I should… crap.”

“What’s wrong?” Hinata asked, concerned.

“Some kind of mind control genjutsu,” I growled, turning my senses inward. “Trying to keep me from deciding to… you know. But I’m not that easy. Yeah, ok, I see it now. I can figure this out…”

Hinata pulled me in close, and kissed me fiercely. I completely lost my train of thought, and for a moment I even forgot about what was happening to my other self.

“You don’t need to figure it out,” she told me, her eyes full of conviction. “You’re stronger than he is. Break it, and get us out of here.”

Nothing could make me disappoint those eyes. Certainly not some stupid genjutsu.

“You’re right, my love. This loop is shot. We need to go back, and try again.”

I barely had time to sit up in bed before Naruto’s summons came, and I gladly let it take me. But just as I appeared in his arms another call came, and plucked me away from him. I tried to resist, but it was far stronger than should have been possible. Even Sasuke and Hinata together wouldn’t have been that strong.

I was dragged unwilling across the void between worlds, but Naruto wasn’t going to give up that easily. He called me again, and my progress came to a halt. I felt a twinge of pain as his immense strength began to pry at the other summons, pulling me back towards him despite its best efforts. For a moment I thought he was going to win.

Then something new and terribly strong joined the other summoning attempt, and the force of the conflicting techniques became more than I could take. I screamed soundlessly as I was pulled back and forth, stretched across the formless space between worlds and nearly torn apart in the process.

I tried to split myself, hoping to satisfy each calling with an aspect and pull myself together later. But while Naruto’s summoning was satisfied with one of me, the other one wanted everything that was Sakura. The instant Naruto’s technique fixed on one of me the other was snatched away, into a quickly-growing maze of anti-summoning wards whose influence bled over onto the rest of me. Bit by bit I was torn out of Naruto’s failing grip, until I found myself sprawled across a concrete floor in the middle of a seal array. By then my other self was already caught in Sasuke’s Tsukuyomi, and his Hinata had my tenketsu closed and was already applying a knockout technique.

This time they kept me under for a long, long time.

I dreamed that I was being tortured, and interrogated, and tortured again. But I was a bad girl, so that was alright. Bad girls need to be punished. I wanted it to be over, but only cowards run away. I was a brave girl, and I could take my punishment. Then I’d learn to be good again, and everything would be alright.

Even in my half-aware state I knew there was something wrong with that line of thought, but I couldn’t put my finger on the problem. When I tried too hard bad things happened, and soon I learned not to do that. I didn’t want to be buried or baked or broken to bits, and those were the nicer options. It wasn’t so bad if I didn’t do anything, so mostly I didn’t try.

But they had to wake me up at least a little to question me, and they had so many questions. I was so dazed from the compulsions crowding my head I couldn’t understand words, but that didn’t stop them from trying. The red eyes spun like drills, burrowing into my soft brain in search of secrets. Vaguely I felt the barriers I’d erected over the course of my long traveling loop with Hinata cracking one by one, but there was nothing I could do.

Until one special barrier broke, and suddenly everything was crystal clear as the techniques I’d embedded in it discharged automatically. I slapped Sasuke’s probe aside and blew away a cloud of genjutsu as my body suddenly cleared of drugs, all to distract him from the aspect that dropped into my hidden mindscape.

I was chained to the floor in the middle of a massive seal array that covered every surface of what looked like an underground bunker. Every visible surface was chakra-forged steel, and there were several people I didn’t recognize spaced about the room. Sasuke stood immediately before me, looking down with an amused expression.

“What is this supposed to accomplish?” He asked mockingly. “Another summoning battle would destroy you, and how else do you expect to escape?”

I formed a Flame Rasengan on the tip of my nose and threw it into his face. But it flew away in entirely the wrong direction, and I realized that somehow I was still trapped in a genjutsu. Between that and my bonds there was no chance of a conventional escape.

“Why are you doing this? I won’t be your puppet, Sasuke!”

He sighed, and for the first time I saw something that might have been a hint of regret in his eyes. “I hardly think you’ll help me kill Naruto of your own will, Sakura,” he said sardonically.

“Of course not!” I retorted. “But why would you even want to do that?”

“It is necessary,” he said shortly. “But I’m not going to make the mistake of explaining myself to an enemy. You are far too slippery for such carelessness. I will win in the end, but I wouldn’t put it past you to somehow get a message to Naruto in the interim.”

Everything was getting hazy again, as the surge of chakra released by my barrier was eaten away by the suppression seals that covered most of my body. But their influence couldn’t reach into my inner mindscape, and I could feel my other self busily doing something in there. So all I needed to do here was distract him, and maybe fish for information.

“Sasuke, I’ve had decades to think of ways to fight you,” I protested. “You can’t break me the way you did before. Why are you so intent on doing it this way? If you’ve found out something we don’t know, just tell us!”

“I’ve said all I intend to,” he replied. “Fight as hard as you feel you must, Sakura. But you’re experienced enough to know that no one can hold out forever. If you’re wise you will give in while there is still something left of you.”

Then the world faded away again, and the me on the outside lost consciousness.

The seal array around my body was supposed to prevent me from using my own summoning techniques as well as keeping me from being summoned, but the inner regions of my mindscape are only loosely connected to the physical world. So I dove into the depths of myself with Hinata in tow, and arrived at length at the place between worlds.

“What are you going to do?” Hinata asked me. “Do you think you can summon the Sakura from Naruto’s loop here, and give her a message for him?”

“I could, but I’ve got a better idea,” I told her. “Hold on to me, ok? We’re going to go see him.”

“Alright,” she said as I stepped out into the void, with one hand on the golden thread that served as my guide. “Are we going the slow way, then?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure we have time for that. They’ve had me for at least a couple of weeks, and I think it took me a week or two the first time I made this trip. I just want to get well out into the void, to make sure nothing from the world we’re in can interfere with me.”

“I see,” she said. “This is a very strange place, Sakura. I have this feeling that there’s more around us than just darkness…”

“Oh, no. No, please, don’t try to see through the darkness, Hinata,” I hurriedly told her. “There’s a sort of mental block that protects mortals from seeing what’s really there, but peeking past it is dangerous. With your Byakugan you’d probably see enough to flash-fry your brain in a heartbeat.”

“Oh. Um, I’ll try not to look, but telling me I could doesn’t exactly help,” she said nervously. “We’ve come about half a mile now, is that far enough for whatever you wanted to try?”

“Should be. Hold on tight, sweetie.” I let go of the golden thread, and tried to summon Naruto.

It was like trying to lift a mountain, of course. But at the moment there was nothing anchoring me to the world I’d just come from, and I found myself flying towards him instead. Just as I’d planned.

It took all of a few seconds to pull myself across the whole vast space between our loops, and emerge into Naruto’s world. For a moment I was very confused, because I could feel Naruto’s chakra and assorted other people in the general area, but I couldn’t see anything. Then I realized that you need eyes to see.

“This feels very strange,” Hinata observed. “Are we both ghosts here?”

“Yeah, forgot I didn’t have a body waiting on this end. Let’s see now…”

Projecting chakra into the physical world without a body is hard, and shaping it to interact with matter when you don’t even have tenketsu is even harder. But I could feel exactly where Naruto was, and that’s all a good mindwalker needs. A moment later we were in Naruto’s mindscape.

Anyone with the ability and an ounce of sense builds some kind of defense around their mind, but he’d never offered to show me his. A glance around revealed why. We were standing in a vast cave lit by torches, with several feet of water covering the floor. The bars that bisected the room looked entirely too familiar, but I noted with relief we were on the proper side.

“Hello, Sakura,” the Kyuubi chuckled. “Ah, and you’ve brought your tasty little pet with you. Have you come to see if you’re strong enough to be interesting yet?”

“Considering that Sasuke is currently trying to brainwash my other aspect with his damned Sharingan, I’m not really in the mood,” I replied sourly. “So, Naruto made it so visitors have to go through your cage to reach his mind? Cute trick.”

“It gets me a snack now and then,” the great fox rumbled. “You’ve come a long way, if you can be here in that state while the Uchiha has you. Maybe I really won’t eat you when I get out.”

“Flatterer,” I said sarcastically. “I’m sure you say that to all us insignificant insects. Hey, I just realized. The idiots in Konoha always called you a demon, but your chakra isn’t black. Are you some other kind of celestial being, or—”

“Sakura!” Naruto’s excited cry cut off my question, and a moment later I was swept into a frantic hug. “Sakura, is that really you? Are you alright? What happened?”

“Yes, it’s me, Naruto,” I reassured him. God, it felt good to be held in his arms again. Was I crying? How embarrassing.

“Sasuke got to the other me first,” Hinata explained, as I struggled to get my emotions under control. “They captured Sakura, and they have her body locked up inside a mass of anti-summoning seals right now. Fortunately our treasure is too slippery for him.”

I shook my head. “I haven’t escaped, Hinata. I’m sorry, I thought you understood. My other aspect is still trapped in his genjutsu, and I can’t break it like this. He’s working on her right now, trying to nail enough compulsions in her head to keep her from escaping if he lets her wake up. If he realizes I’ve split myself he’ll just summon this aspect back, and do it to both of us at once.”

Hinata gave me a horrified look, and Naruto clenched his fists.

“Damn it,” he exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Sakura, I never thought trying to help the other Hinata would be this risky. How can we get you out? If I use you as a focus I should be able to lock a summoning on your other aspect…”

“No!” I warned him. “That last summoning tug of war almost killed me, and I don’t think the loop will fix me if my soul is torn apart.”

“I was afraid of that. How did he get so strong, anyway?”

“He probably brainwashed a couple of jinchuuriki,” I guessed. “He can do that to most people in a few seconds, and he can teleport too, so it wouldn’t take long to set up if he already knows which ones are vulnerable and where they are. My contract didn’t appear back in my mindscape when I looped, but it obviously still exists, so he must have a way to hold on to it. That means he can have every strong ninja he knows how to control sign it, and use them all to keep me away from you.”

“Damn. Ok, so we can’t summon you. Can you just cancel the contract or something?”

I shook my head. “I’d have to change my true name somehow, and even if I could do that I wouldn’t be me anymore. I—”

I swayed as a lance of agony surged down the connection from my other self. Naruto caught me before I fell, and gave me a concerned look.

“Sakura?” He asked. “What was that? You’re so pale…”

“I still feel an echo of what’s happening to the other me,” I explained, a little ashamed at my own weakness. “I think he just realized something is wrong. I’m sorry, Naruto, but I don’t have any good ideas on how to get away. I can keep slipping away like this, and probably cause him all sorts of hassles in the process, but in the end that’s just going to piss him off. I have to steal my contract back before I can escape for more than a few minutes at a time, and he isn’t careless enough to let me do that.”

“Don’t tell me you’re giving up,” Naruto said. “Come on, Sakura, we can beat this. We’ll think of something.”

“Yes,” Hinata agreed. “You’re my treasure, and he can’t have you!”

“Thank you,” I said. “I hope you’re right, but I don’t have much time. I need to do what I can to limit the damage he can do if he breaks me, and make sure I can come back if I end up getting brainwashed before you can find a way to rescue me.”

“All right, Sakura,” Naruto said gravely. “What can we do?”

I stepped away from him, and manifested the chain of my contract with Hinata.

“This is the most important thing,” I told him. “As long as Hinata is tied to me there’s a chance Sasuke will find her, and then he’ll have us both. So I need to pass the contract to you. That means she’ll be tied to your loops instead of mine, and you’ll be able to put her soul in a clone body so she doesn’t have to live in here all the time. Just please, please be careful not to ever let go of the chain. If you do she’ll die for real, and I don’t think anything short of a true resurrection would be able to bring her back to us. Find something really solid in your mindscape to tie it to, ok?”

“Believe me, I’m not taking any chances with Hinata,” he reassured me. “But that thing looks like it’s attached to you.”

“I’m about to fix that,” I said, and sang.

I offer my claim to my Hinata’s soul to the Naruto that I love.

Naruto stared at me for a moment as my end of the chain came free, and I offered it to him. “I accept,” he said firmly, and it was done.

Next, I reached inside myself and gathered the largest memory bubble I’d ever created.

“This is a copy of all of my memories since the loops began,” I explained. “If something goes horribly wrong, and I can’t fix myself, give this to one of the non-looping versions of me. That’s tricky in the physical world, but if you can get her into your mindscape all she has to do is touch it and accept the memories. After that just give her a chakra feed, and she’ll be able to put me back together.”

Naruto accepted the memory bubble, and looked at it thoughtfully. “Ok, I think I can use this if I need to. But this better be a backup plan.”

“It is,” I reassured him. “The main plan is a tricky little bit of seal work.”

I stepped back a few paces, mustered my concentration, and sang a trigger seal into being. Threads of identification touched all three of us, wrapping around a pocket of folded idea-space that had just a bit in common with a storage seal.

“He’s trying to use compulsions to keep me from, um, doing that thing that makes it be a new loop,” I explained. “I think I can still break it if I have some time, but that won’t be true forever. I’m going to try that after we’re done here, and hope you guys can figure out a way to get me out next time around. But if you don’t find a way soon he’s going to wear me down to the point where he can actually make the genjutsu stick, and if he can do that… well, if he can drug me up and spend a whole loop working on me it isn’t going to be pretty.”

“So I’m going to take this back to my own mindscape,” I went on, “and use it to hide as much as I can get away with about myself, my abilities, and other things we don’t want Sasuke to know. The last thing I put in will be my memories of making this seal, and then if I realize I’m not going to get away again I’ll lock it up and hide it in a part of my mindscape that wouldn’t even exist in a normal person. That way if Sasuke does manage to turn me into a loyal little slave girl I won’t be able to give away too much. When we meet again, I’ll need one of you to say the magic words to release the seal and restore me. I need each of you to pick a key phrase we won’t forget, something that means something, but that Sasuke or a non-looping version of you would never think of. Any ideas?”

Naruto mustered a cocky grin. “Pretty girls who fight big, scary monsters with a seduction technique running should know what they’re going to get when they lose.”

Remembering that day was almost enough to make me smile. “That works,” I agreed.

Hinata stepped up and put her hands on my shoulders. “I will guard you for all the ages of eternity, till the stars die and the twilight of the gods brings the end of all things.”

I faltered, seeing the guilt in her eyes. “Oh, Hinata…”

“I will,” she said firmly. “I’ll guard your memories now, and I’ll find a way to overcome this weakness of mine. Next time we face the Sharingan I’ll fight as your side, my treasure, and even death won’t stop me from defending you.”

“I believe you, Hinata,” I reassured her. Another stab of pain hit me, and I hurriedly finished setting the triggers. “I’m sorry, but I need to go soon. I think he can tell that part of me is missing. Naruto, he thinks he has to kill you for some reason, so I’m assuming he has an idea about how to make it stick despite the loops. He probably means to use me against you, so from now on don’t assume you can trust me. I… I love you, both of you.”

For a moment they both hugged me, and I got a kiss on each cheek. Then I felt the tug of a summoning, and I knew for sure I’d been found out. I dismissed myself with a hurried gesture, snapping myself back to my inner mindscape before the summoning could trap me somewhere else as a ghost.

Then I was alone.

I contemplated my own memories for a moment, noting with dismay how many important secrets were interwoven with long stretches of my personal history. I couldn’t make myself forget about my inner mindscape without creating massive gaps all through my recent memories, and I was bound to miss references if I tried it. But if Sasuke ever found his way in here he could attack the parts of my personality that were inconvenient for him directly, instead of just trying to beat me into submission with torture and conditioning. If that happened even recovering my memories might not restore me.

So I gathered my will, and folded the entirety of my inner mindscape into the box I’d made. Then I made a fake, with parts that had more ordinary associations with my memories, and linked it to the hidden path to the outside. It was an exhausting project, all the more so because I had to work quickly, and when it was done I felt strangely diminished. I wondered for a moment just how much of my growing strength in recent years had been tied to finally having a proper mindscape, and how much I had just weakened myself. But I didn’t have time to woolgather, so I shook my head and went on.

Next were my own memories. Most of them had to stay, but I plucked out key bits here and there. Everything about the chakra storage seal, and the wish, and my recent assimilation of Orochimaru’s work. Everything from the year Hinata and I spent infiltrating Akatsuki, including my true sight and the curse of misery. Oh, crap. Anko’s memory bubble, and the ones for the non-looping versions of myself and Sasuke. What else?

I surveyed my now-fragmented memory blurrily. Surely I was leaving too much? All my secrets were still there, weren’t they? But no, there were lots of memories in the box. I’d given away clues to most of what was left, so I had to trust that I’d just forgotten the important things. Wait, my true flight jutsu. I didn’t remember inventing it, so I shouldn’t have the skills to use it either.

I fretted for a moment about that, wondering what other practical skills might still be ingrained in my reflexes even if I didn’t remember learning them anymore. But a flash of giddy pleasure from my other self distracted me, and I realized the poor drug-addled idiot had just given in and promised not to reset her loop again without permission.

“Oh, no,” I moaned. “No, no, no. Crap, I hadn’t even thought about that. Now I can’t reset, and if he figures out that I can’t break my promises…”

I shuddered. If he figured that out he could bind me in ways that I’d never escape. How could I put a stop to that? I only had one idea, and once I tried it I probably wouldn’t be good for much else.

“Naruto, you’d better come through for me,” I said softly. “All I can do now is limit the damage.”

I dropped into the place where the traces of all my aspects slept, and tucked the box into my demon’s arms with a whispered admonition to wake if it was disturbed. Then I put my name in the box, and closed it.

I blinked in confusion, and put a hand to my head. What kind of delusional fever dream did I just wake up from? I was sitting in the hidden part of my mindscape trying to… well, I’d been doing something. Something about resisting Sasuke. But why did I think I’d just hidden most of my soul in a metaphorical box in a place that didn’t exist? That was silly. Mental defense techniques just don’t work like that.

“Trust yourself, Sakura,” I muttered. “You probably put a genjutsu on yourself to scramble the memory of whatever you really did. Which means you shouldn’t remember this either.”

They had me locked down with enough chakra suppression seals to pacify a bijuu, but fortunately you can’t completely cut off the flow of chakra inside someone’s brain without killing them. It took three tries, but eventually I managed to hit myself with an amnesia technique that would wipe the last six hours of my memory. Unfortunately it also knocked me out, and when I woke up there was only one of me again.

I calculated later that I must have spent most of a month in a drugged haze, while they picked me apart and pounded compulsions into my head. Don’t reset the loop. Don’t try to escape. Don’t split your mind. Don’t try to resist. It went on and on and on, until I dreamed the words, until I could barely think anything else.

I was dimly aware that they did other things while I slept. Someone with techniques like the Yamanaka’s peeled what was left of my shields apart one step at a time, and sifted through my memories looking for god knows what. They might have erased things, or put in memories that weren’t mine, but I was in no condition to tell the difference. I know they tried to make me forget… someone… golden hair and clear blue eyes and a smile that could light the world… Naruto, that was his name. I loved him, and they couldn’t change that, and as long as that blazing beacon of emotion remained I’d know the man it burned for. Some things are more stubborn than mere memory.

But who he was, how we met, what our past was together? I had only fragmentary images, of that any many other things.

One day they let me wake. I looked up from the floor where I was chained to find Sasuke, Pein and a redheaded kunoichi I felt I ought to recognize studying me.

“How are you feeling, Sakura?” Asked the woman.

“I won’t reset the loop,” I told her. It was a silly thing to say, since I somehow knew I could never do such a thing without permission anyway, but it was the rule that echoed the loudest.

She frowned. “I hope we didn’t overdo it. I asked how you’re feeling, not what the rules are.”

Oh. Well, in that case. “I’m badly dehydrated, I’ve got serious kidney damage from being overdosed on Vexadrine and Restasol at the same time, and I’m going into shock because you took me off the will suppressants too quickly. You’ve been starving me too, and I never got a chance to buff up my body this loop, so unless you plan on letting me heal myself I’m probably going to die soon.”

She hissed in frustration, and Sasuke raised an eyebrow. Pein frowned.

“I thought your people were better than that, Sasuke,” he said. “If we lose her all of this work will be for nothing.”

“Karin?” Sasuke asked pointedly.

“I can save her,” the redhead said hurriedly. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not good enough to work on someone like this without pushing the limits. Her mind is fantastically resistant to every drug I know of, but her physical reactions aren’t consistent at all. One day she throws off a treatment in minutes, and the next it lasts for hours, so I have to recalibrate constantly. I’m doing my best, but I don’t think she’s even human. Her chakra tastes so strange…”

Pein sighed. “Fine. See that she lives. Sasuke, I believe you’ll have to modify your standard program. I found memories of her absorbing a demon somehow, and spirit beings don’t react to stress the way humans do. Do they, Sakura?”

“You can torture me for a hundred years, and my mind will never snap,” I confirmed. “But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Can we make a deal?”

“You see?” He said. “She won’t break in the traditional sense, but she can be made to adapt.”

“Hnn. What should I do with you, Sakura?” Sasuke asked thoughtfully.

“I’m a bad girl,” I heard myself say. “Bad girls need to be punished, and taught to be good. Why do you make me talk like this, Sasuke? I don’t like it.”

“Then why are you still here?” He said coldly.

“I won’t reset the loop!” I protested hotly. “I’m strong enough to take my punishment. I won’t give up, and what the hell am I saying?”

Pein gave a satisfied nod. “The compulsions will hold for now. I’ll warn you she was highly resistant, and there was considerable damage done. You’ll note that she isn’t entirely coherent.”

“I’m confident that she’ll recover once they wear off,” Sasuke replied. “How long will they last?”

“Years, normally. In her case, perhaps two or three months.”

“Plenty of time,” Sasuke said confidently. “Even for her, one month should be enough.”

“Can we please just make a deal?” I asked plaintively. “I don’t want to hurt anymore.”

Pein shook his head, and bent to put a hand on my forehead. “Sleep,” he said gently.

I did.

My cell had a light.

It was three feet wide and two feet deep, just big enough to hold me. Cold bands of chakra-forged steel encircled my limbs, three on each arm and four for each leg, all of them anchored deep in the wall of steel they pinned me to. On the inside the bands had spikes that pierced my limbs all the way through, between the bones and through the major muscle groups, just to ensure that I couldn’t wiggle free with some fancy technique. The three around my torso were the same, their spikes carefully placed to impale major muscles and bracket my organs without actually puncturing them.

The collar around my neck was festooned with IV lines running up to a fancy fluids dispenser above my head. The needles itched terribly, especially when my wounds got infected. But they never removed the ball gag and harness that kept my mouth shut, so the liquids the whirring machine dispensed into my veins at intervals were the only thing keeping me alive.

Of course, the drugs it dispensed were so strong I barely knew who I was most of the time. But floating in a dazed stupor was better than waiting for my next punishment, so I didn’t mind.

They didn’t bother to clothe me, and I worried sometimes that I’d catch cold and suffocate while no one was watching. There were chakra suppression seals tattooed over most of my skin, so many that even clearing up a little congestion was more than I could have managed. Karin was one of Orochimaru’s old assistants, and I could tell she wasn’t used to working on patients who were actually supposed to survive. She was far too careless about little details like that.

It made me a little sad that Sasuke still didn’t trust me not to escape. There was also a thrill of pride that he thought I was so dangerous, and sometimes curiosity about why. The few shattered fragments of memory I had left told me I’d been a damned good ninja, maybe even kage-rank. But in my current condition I’d be lucky if I could walk, let alone fight. An academy student could knock me out with ease.

Did I have other abilities I didn’t remember, that made all the caution justified? Or was Sasuke just that paranoid? I wondered.

But my cell had a light, and that made me happy.

There was writing on the inside of the door, right in front of me where I could read it easily. It said:

Sakura’s Punishments

For escaping — 11

For resetting her loop — 20

For hiding her powers — 10

The first number had started at 30, but I was more than halfway through it now.

Sasuke visited at irregular intervals, which was a classic tactic. I had no way to tell time, without clocks or windows or even mealtimes, and his schedule offered no clue. All I had was the numbers, slowly ticking off the increments of my punishment for transgressions I could barely remember.

We never stayed in my cell for long. He’d catch my gaze with those spinning red eyes, and I’d find myself kneeling at his feet in some outdoor location, under a night sky lit by a bloody moon. The first few times I’d tried to leap to my feet and… well, it was something bad, but I couldn’t remember what. A few days of uninterrupted punishment had taught me to be more obedient.

Usually he’d lecture me first, telling me how disobedient I’d been and instructing me in how to do better while feelings that probably weren’t my own washed through me. Deep respect and reverent awe whenever I heard his voice. Sickening remorse at my own evil ways, and a desperate determination to do better. Abject terror at the thought of being punished again, and an overwhelming eagerness to please that still made me feel vaguely ashamed. Once I’d been strong enough to break the genjutsu that fed those feelings into my subconscious, but that had been a terrible mistake. I didn’t do it again, and by now I’d long since lost the ability to even feel the omnipresent intrusion.

After the lecture came testing. That could be anything from answering questions to being ordered to torture my own parents, and I was expected to obey without hesitation. At first I’d been sullen and resentful, balking whenever an unexpectedly unpleasant task was presented. But again, I’d quickly learned not to refuse. Refusing got me flayed or burned or eaten alive by insects for hours at a time, while shame and remorse filled every corner of my mind that wasn’t occupied by agony. Feeling my heart swell with proud satisfaction as I butchered my childhood friends for the hundredth time wasn’t nearly as bad as that.

I’d tried to console myself with the thought that they were just illusions, but for all I knew they weren’t. Sasuke could pull two people into his Tsukuyomi illusion as easily as one, after all. I was pretty sure the Ino that cried and pleaded and begged me not to cut her eyes out again was real.

Part of me still hated Sasuke, and struggled to give him as little as possible despite the constant siren song of genjutsu that promising a life of bliss and contentment if I just stopped fighting. But another part of me was tired of fighting. Tired of being an evil bitch who needed to be punished and trained and forced to obey. Tired of straining to deny that I belonged to Sasuke, and doing his bidding was my rightful place in the world.

Sometimes that part of me won, and I did my honest best to give him exactly what he wanted for hours at a time. On those days our sessions always ended in a sunlit field, where I was a beautiful woman instead of an emaciated little girl. Then he would take my hand, the only time he ever touched me, and lead me to the mouth of a cave with steps leading down into darkness.

“You’ve made good progress today, Sakura,” he would say to me. “You can rest now, if you like. Or you can get the next phase of your punishment over with, and be one step closer to getting out of your cell.”

The first time I’d been overwhelmed by giddy exhilaration at his praise, and run eagerly down the steps into the dark. Now I hesitated on the top step, trembling in fear. The darkness was full of pain. A waking nightmare that preyed on my own fears and phobias to construct the most horrifying scenarios I could imagine, and make me live them over and over again. Each session lasted for days, and already I was sure I’d never sleep well again.

But each session was marked against the tally on my wall, and Sasuke had promised me that when the last one was over I’d be done. As long as I was a good girl, and tried my best to do what I was supposed to, I’d never have to be punished like that again. So each time he offered the chance to move forward I gathered my courage, and walked down the steps again.

The last time he’d waited for me until I stumbled back out into the light, and gathered me gently into his arms, and told me I’d done well. That I’d been brave, and strong, and he was sure I’d be a good girl for him again someday. Everything went bright and hazy after that, and I floated in a euphoric daze for a long time. Not as long as my punishment session, but long enough to give me the strength to go on.

Still, I was glad my cell had a light. When I closed my eyes the memories of my time in the dark crowded around me, and it was hard not to scream. I slept with my eyes open, and prayed that the single bare bulb hanging from its wire overhead would never burn out.