loyalty [dream o4]
The chair is cold and uncomfortable. She has been sitting in it for a while now; fidgeting, thinking, thinking too much, maybe.
The door opens and the interrogator walks in.
She relaxes a little--she recognizes the man. Morino Ibiki, her senpai of two years. He has been training with the Interrogation and Black Ops units ever since his botched mission from a year or so ago. She's always kind of liked him as a person--he at least looks her in the eye when he speaks to her, and is honest and direct in general.
"Ibiki-san," she begins, but he cuts her off.
"Name."
She blinks. "You know my name, I--"
"Name."
Her eyes narrow a little, but she'll play along. "Mitarashi Anko."
He walks slowly, carefully, to his seat across the table from her. Sits down slowly. Everything he does is slow, controlled, easy.
"Mitarashi Anko," he says. He looks her straight in the eye, but it isn't normal or friendly or conversational. He looks at her like a...like a subject. "You are being questioned under suspicion of involvement in activities against Konoha, specifically regarding your involvement with the criminal Orochimaru. Should you be found guilty, a formal court-martial and sentencing will follow. Do you understand?"
She stares at him, dumbfounded. Just stares.
His mouth hardens. "Do you understand?"
"Ibiki..." This isn't right. This isn't... Icy fear twists in her gut. "It's me, Ibiki. Anko. You know I'd never... I didn't... I have never acted against-- What are you saying?"
He ignores her. "Question one: At any point, were you given orders by Orochimaru that involved the hindering or assault of any registered Konoha shinobi?"
A roaring in her ears drowns out most of the question.
They think she went willingly.
They think she's loyal to Orochimaru.
They think she's betrayed them.
"I don't... no, of course not! I don't..."
The fear is turning to anger now, anger edged with a sense of betrayal. "I left! I'm not with him! I'm with you! Don't--Ibiki, don't look at me like I'm...Ibiki, look at me!" She slams her hands on the table and is rewarded with a kunai to the throat by one of her ANBU guards. Just a warning. Just a reminder.
"Question two: Do you consider Orochimaru as your superior?"
"...How--How am I supposed to answer that? He was my sensei, he left me, he...I don't..." She lapses into silence.
Ibiki writes something down. Observing her. Observing--
(and she's back under the lights, with the drip in her arm, and Orochimaru's asking her how does it feel? can you hear me? can you lift your arm? do you feel any different? and of course she feels different, any idiot would feel different with fire on her skin, ink in her blood, teeth-rimmed mouths and monster claws trying to eat their way out of her body through the thick haze of painkillers and sedatives and how does it feel, Anko? how does it feel? how do you feel?)
"Question three--"
"FUCK YOUR QUESTIONS!" She's on her feet now, the ANBU moves to restrain her, but Ibiki waves him down, and somehow that infuriates her more. "You bastard, you think I'm an enemy? You think I'm a subject?" She's playing right into Ibiki's hands; an outbreak like this can easily, easily be interpreted as a rejection of Konoha, as noncooperation, as proof she's unstable, unfit, another failure; she's playing right into his hands and she knows it, and she still can't stop because this is worse than the drips and the fire, than the cages and disinfectant over bloodstains, this is a total rejection of her entire existence.
She rips down the shoulder of her long coat to show her neck, to show the long, bloody, seeping furrows where she had dragged her nails through her skin, to show the weeping cracked scabs over her Curse Seal, to show her attempts to literally rip the mark from her body.
"This is what I think of him! And this"--here she spits--"is what I think of you and your goddamned contempt! Fuck all of you! I don't need you! I don't need any one of you!"
She's crying. She's crying because she knows she is lying. She needs them so much. She has nowhere else to go.
Ibiki snaps his folder shut.
"Subject was unresponsive, perhaps due to exhaustion," he says aloud to the ANBU behind her. "Questioning will resume at a later date."
It snaps her out of it. "...Ibiki?"
He turns to leave. "Get some rest, Anko-san. We'll proceed with the formalities another day."
~~~~
[ It's all the children that have her remembering; all the damned dreams.
Anko rolls over and tries to fall back asleep. Tries not to think about war. ]
[ooc: A note on dream perspective: the nature of this dream is less hands-on than previous dreams. It is a memory, and the 'feel' of the dream is more observational than personal; thus, it is written in third-person perspective rather than second-person. Note that any observers of the dream will still experience Anko's emotions in the dream, but the 'mood' and 'feel' are noticeably different.
This differentiation will be universally applied to Anko's dreams; third-person dreams are more likely to be tied to Anko's past.]