Chapter Text
Tsubaki was no stranger to rough treatment. The Rising Phoenix was not so high class of an establishment that they could afford alienating clients who had certain predilections for violence.
But at least with a client, she always knew where she stood. They wanted certain things from her – attention, touch, access to her body – and after they got what they wanted, they would leave. The rough treatment always had an end.
There was no guarantee that this encounter would end in anything but her death.
These shinobi were definitely after information regarding Kisame and Itachi. Biting her lip at the memory of having her mind invaded, Tsubaki thought it was pointless to try protecting what little information she had, at the risk of her life, when they had such easy ways of prying it out of her.
She had to trust that Kisame and Itachi would be able to protect Tomoe and her baby.
As for her own fate, she didn’t have much hope. For now, the blonde mind reader was under the impression that she had birthed a child for Itachi. She didn't know if that meant she was going to be kept as bait, but she couldn't help her own fatalistic thoughts from keeping her awake.
It was hard to tell whether it was night or day. Her captors liked to either keep her in darkness, or when interrogating her, in near blinding artificial light.
She made note of everything that she could, though chances of her escaping from her shinobi captors were slim.
There were at least three men always around her. The blonde masked man who mind raped her. The larger man who had advised her to eat. A skinnier black haired boy that she thinks she remembers kidnapping her from the inn. Sometimes she heard other voices which reported information about Kisame and Itachi’s movements, making her believe this must be a bigger operation.
When she does manage to fall into fitful sleep, she is plagued by dreams.
It's the day that they went on a picnic with Aoi-chan. She remembers sitting on a blanket by the river as the two ninja competed over who could catch the most fish.
Kisame and Itachi brought over their catch, with Kisame offering to roast them over a campfire.Tsubaki protested that they couldn't possibly eat them all. At her words, Itachi tips the bucket of fish back into the water. The fish twist and turn in the water in agitation before flicking their tails and swimming away.
“What is happiness to you?” She asks suddenly.
Didn't she ask Tomoe this? But it is Itachi that looks back at her now.
“What do you want me to say?” Itachi’s eyes are dark, with lowered lashes that cast fluttering shadows along his cheeks. “That I'm happy here with you?”
The implication that she wants him to need her as much as she needs him, flusters her. “No!”
“For you, happiness would be your freedom.” At her stare, he quirks a brow. “Am I wrong?”
“No, you're right. I've always dreamed of being free.” But even with her contract destroyed, her life as a courtesan behind her, why is it that she feels so trapped, even in the confines of her own mind?
“That still doesn't answer my question. What does happiness mean for you?” She asks him again.
Itachi stares up at the sky, as if in contemplation. Black feathered wings spread out from his back. “It would mean a release. An end.”
The perplexing answer distracts her from the sudden appearance of flying appendages. “What do you mean by that?”
Itachi’s eyes glow red. “I'll be there soon. I've traced their scouts to an approximate location.” He looks down and addresses her then, voice hard. “Wait for me. Don't be reckless.”
“What?”
His wings beat once, twice, and the gale of wind that follows in his wake as he flies away makes her cover her face with her arms.
She startles awake, eyes open wide.
There is Itachi’s crow summons in front of her, wings folded, and it hops closer once she wakes up. She notices that one of its eyes is red with spinning black tomoe, like Itachi’s dojutsu.
The sound of footsteps coming from down the hall makes her shoo the bird away in panic, but it's gone before the door to her makeshift cell is unlocked.
“Eat up,” the man says, dropping a tray of food onto the floor.
She winces at the clatter it makes.
“We’ll be moving you soon and I doubt we’ll be stopping on the road for you. Better get your fill now.” The man leaves as abruptly as he came, the door locking behind him.
She crawls towards the bowl of gruel, yellowed rice grains cooked down to mush, seasoned liberally with salt. The news that they're moving her is worrying, but the fact that Itachi’s crow summons has managed to track her down makes the food go down her throat a bit easier.
The idea that he was coming for her, that she wasn't left for dead, makes everything more bearable.
They allow her two bathroom breaks a day. Once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. One of her shinobi captors is always present even if he is just outside the door, turned away to give her some modicum of privacy. Her hands and legs are left untied, but once she goes back to her room, her restraints are back.
Once she's led back to her cell this time, she hears before she sees the fight happen. Masked men, distinctly different masked men to her captors, are fighting in the halls. While her captors wear bone-white, plain, smooth faced masks with slits for eyes, these new men have masks that bear colored markings and animalistic features. She spots at least six men: a dog with pointed ears and a longer muzzle, a bird with a beak and a red crest on the forehead, a boar with a snout and protruding tusks, a bear with rounded ears and black marks around the eye holes, a monkey with red cheeks, and a cat with round eyes and painted whiskers.
Something tells her that these new men are not reinforcements from Itachi. Itachi and Kisame have always emphasized working alone with utmost discretion because they didn't want Tomoe and Tsubaki’s existence to be discovered. They would never hire a team, even if it was to rescue them.
But then, who are these people?
Whoever sent them, now was an opportunity to try to escape.
The man who was leading her back to her cell is about to toss her over his shoulder when she ducks down and rams her body into his stomach. The impact makes the man curse as he bowls over, but it doesn't stop him for long, as he slams her head into the concrete floor.
Her nose caves in and she can taste blood.
The man’s punishing grip on her hair slackens suddenly and she can feel him slump over next to her.
Her eyes squint upwards and she sees two masked men, the dog and the bird stand over her, the dog man retrieving a bloodied kunai from her captor’s neck. He signs something to the bird man with his other hand and the bird man signs something back before bending down to lift her off the floor.
She tries to struggle, but the man taps at a spot on her neck with his fingertips and her limbs hang from her body, like a doll with its strings cut.
Bird man hoists her over his back, gripping her legs from underneath before breaking out into a run. The dog man covers their back when her other captors try to intervene.
When they make it out of the building – the blonde man who invaded her mind, someone she can recognize on sight, masked or not – stands before them, fingers flying into a hand seal that he thrusts forward.
The bird man who's carrying her grinds to an abrupt halt.
The blonde man is also completely still and one of his teammates next to him comes forward to take her body away from the bird man.
Just as he’s about to grab her, almost appearing out of thin air he’s so fast, is the cat masked man wielding a tanto blade that strikes out at her assailant. His opponent parries the sword with a blade of his own before jumping away. As he attempts to re-engage again, bear man crashes into him and the two trade blows in a flurry of movement she can't follow.
The cat masked man then goes to incapacitate the bird man before flinging her over his own shoulders.
All this jostling is so disorienting that it makes it hard for her to focus, and she closes her dizzy eyes before she ends up regurgitating the meager contents of her stomach.
Suddenly they are in the tree line, cat man moving at a breakneck pace from branch to branch. Sidling up next to him are dog man, monkey man, and boar man, the last carrying the unconscious body of bird man.
They all keep moving through the trees in silence and all she can see before she loses consciousness is a black crow circling overhead.