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cyhyr · 3 years ago

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On the Third Day of Whumpmas my writer gave to me

😈Betrayal😈

Fandom: Naruto

Rating: PG

WC: ~2970

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Additional Tags: tied to a tree, blindfolded, humiliation, left for dead, rescued, hospital stay, Do-Nothing Sarutobi, cruel teammates

A/N: This is all @atereal's brainchild. First day of whumpmas I was like "tied to a tree; here's my--" and she was like 🤩 "I HAVE AN IDEA" thus this story was born

Iruka is giddy and excited as he follows his genin teammates into the northern woods. They finished their daily D-rank early and sensei said they could have the rest of the day off. Iruka had offered to buy everyone ramen if only so they’d stay and hang out with him. After the Kyūbi attack, he's found himself so very lonely, and yeah it would have meant that he wouldn't be able to afford to eat for the rest of the week but at least he would have had one night of not eating alone.

But instead, the two of them invited him to play tag in the woods behind the Hokage mount. Kaito tapped him on the shoulder and shouted, “You’re it!” And then he and Aoki ran off and Iruka broke into a wide grin as he chased them.

He could use the substitution jutsu to get ahead of them and tag one of them back. But he’s enjoying running after them, and decides to get them into the woods before really trying to get them. They haven’t really played since they all graduated four months ago, and even then Kaito and Aoki never really paid him any mind. They have their own group of friends and Iruka has Mizuki and that’s okay but it’s not really enough.

Ten minutes into the trees and Iruka veers off course to get ahead of them. He watches them both glance back at where he had been, nearly gives himself away by giggling too hard, and then substitutes himself right in front of them both and tags Aoki lightly. “You’re it!” he shouts, and then takes off further into the woods.

He can hear them grumbling, and he knew going into this that it was going to be two-on-one, but it’s okay because they’re at least hanging out with him, finally bonding as a team. He gets a little bit away, and then he hears Aoki call out his name.

“Kaito wants to stop playing and just explore up here, do you wanna come with?”

Iruka nods and falls back to run closer to his teammates. They’re quiet as they run, and Iruka takes his cue from them to also stay quiet. The further they go, the more birds and squirrels and other animals they see. He motions for them to stop and they all watch silently as a great stag wanders out of the trees into a small clearing. Four does and a fawn follow behind it, and they all graze, tails and ears twitching. Aoki leads them around, and they leave the deer behind.

Another half an hour of travel and they come to a much smaller clearing, only about the size of Iruka’s studio apartment in the genin barracks. They touch down, and Kaito offers both Aoki and Iruka a ration bar each out of his pouch. Aoki takes it without a word, but Iruka thanks Kaito profusely before accepting his. The three of them sit down and eat.

Then, Kaito smirks. “Hey, Iruka, you’re pretty good at traps and stuff. You up for a challenge?”

Iruka preens a bit because he is good at traps. “Sure!” He hadn’t realized that his teammates had noticed his interest. They hadn’t said anything about it before.

Aoki looks around and mutters something to Kaito, but Kaito just nods and stands up. “So,” he says, “You’re good at setting traps, but I wanna see if you’re any good at getting out of a trap.”

Iruka just tilts his head to the side. He can get out of all of his traps; he designs them so there’s always a way out of the non-lethal ones, even if the way out is just to wait until the seal degrades. “I—”

“C’mon. It’ll be a cool training exercise. Right?”

“I… guess? What do you want me to do?”

Kaito unravels a length of rope from his pouch. “I’m gonna tie you up, and we’ll see how long it takes for you to get out. Like I said, you’re good at traps, so this should be easy, right?”

His stomach is flipping over because something doesn’t feel right—maybe it’s the way that Aoki isn’t looking at him, or the hungry sneer showing up on Kaito’s face every other second—but Iruka swallows his pride and reminds himself that these are his teammates and they might not like him but they won’t actively hurt him. If it turns out that he can’t get free, they’ll just cut him loose.

“Okay,” Iruka says, grateful that he doesn’t stammer. “How do you want to do this?”

Kaito points to a tree behind him. “Just stand next to that, and I’ll do the rest, okay?”

Iruka finishes the ration bar, wipes his palms on his thighs, and goes with Kaito to the tree, putting his back to it. “Like this?” he asks, looking up at Kaito. He hadn’t noticed before that Kaito was so much taller than him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Aoki shake their head, and make a small gesture. Iruka’s stomach tries to flip again, and his heart is pounding in his chest, and something is wrong but he’s with his teammates and they’re not too far from the village and they’re safe… right?

“Nah, let’s make it harder,” Kaito says. He stands back, hums thoughtfully, and then starts to say something, but Aoki speaks up.

“This tree, over here,” they say. They’re pointing to another tree in the clearing, still tall but not as wide. Iruka goes over to stand in front of it, and Aoki shakes their head again. “Kneel down. It’ll be harder if you don’t have as much room to shift.”

Iruka laughs nervously. “Guys, I’m not that good at escape techniques.”

Kaito waves him off. “Don’t worry about it. This is just a training exercise.”

So he kneels down and lets Kaito grab his wrists and pull them behind the tree trunk. He tries to pay attention to how the ropes are wrapping around his wrists, and that horrible feeling in his stomach settles worse and worse the more he realizes that Kaito is also tying up his fingers so he can’t make hand-seals. Aoki comes to kneel in front of him and pushes on his knees until his ankles are also just behind the tree and—

And then Kaito also ties his ankles, making Iruka a circle of limbs wrapped around this tree and he nervously says, “Okay, I think that’s probably my limit of what I can reasonably get out of.”

Then he feels a tag pressed to his forearm and he knows this tag, knows this chakra, and his voice is gone the instant it’s activated. He made this tag for their sensei, to show what he had been learning on his own over a long weekend. There’s no way that Kaito would have gotten it unless she gave it to him.

Aoki sneers at him and says, “Good fucking riddance.” Then they pull down his headband to cover his eyes and tighten the knot behind his head and he can’t cry out for them to stop, that this isn’t funny, this is too far—but he also can’t see their laughing sneers anymore and that’s at least something. A wet glob of-of spit lands on his cheek, and maybe he can’t see them laughing but he can hear it as they walk away. He can still click his tongue for chakra-location, and through that he’s able to watch the fuzzy outlines of his teammates go.

His tears are hot, building up in his covered eyes. It's just a joke. A prank, like the ones he used to pull on everyone else when they were in the Academy. Snot starts dripping down his nose and lip and his breath hitches as he starts crying in earnest.

They're not coming back tonight. He's… oh gods, what sort of predators live out here?! He moans despairingly and sniffs the snot away.

They can't just leave him tied to a tree. They can't just leave him out here.

...right?

Iruka shivers and listens to the forest go quiet as the light fades from behind his hitai-ate. The sun's gone down. Crickets start to chirp, and an owl hoots in the distance.

He tries so hard to stop crying but every time he thinks he’s got himself under control he shivers or shifts and the ropes burn against his skin and he remembers that he knelt down and let them do this to him.

Surely their sensei will notice that he’s gone. She'll understand that something's wrong, because he’s never skipped a day of training and wouldn’t miss a mission for his life—and Kaito and Aoki will act guilty and she’ll notice… right?

Gods he has to pee.

The sun rises and he moans with the morning warmth. He's just relieved that he can make noises again. But he's had to pee all night and maybe Kaito and Aoki will come get him now that it's morning. He fidgets against the growing urgency, crying anew when the sun rises fully and he loses that battle and pisses himself. Hot shameful tears roll down his face and he sobs at the sheer relief. At least… at least his legs are warm again.

After a few more hours he's wishing for the chill of night again. He's sweating and panting and his mouth dries out so fast. He tries to hold still to keep his limbs from being rubbed raw, but he can only manage it for a half hour at a time before he accidentally shifts and winces with the movement.

Every so often, he clicks for chakra-location. All he can see is the faint chakra outlines of the birds and small animals around him. His eyes itch.

He's used to being hungry. Thirst, however, is a new sensation. He smacks his lips together to ease the dry, cracking stretch. The village has always had clean drinking water available, so he’s always had water. But now he’s gone almost a day and a half without anything to drink, compounded with the tears and snot he’s lost and he’s parched. He shifts and the rope rips into his skin. He can feel thin streaks of blood welling up on his wrists, and he just knows that he’s going to become even thirstier.

The ache of kneeling for over twenty-four hours hits him at the same time as he realizes that this isn’t a prank. Or if it was, then Kaito and Aoki forgot about him. Either way, he’s not going to be freed. And he’s tried a few times in the last hour to wiggle free of the ropes, but Kaito tied him up very well. He’ll make a good field interrogator someday.

Iruka will make good wild animal feed.

He tucks his chin down to his chest and passes out. It’s been a long day, and he didn’t sleep the night before.

He wakes up in the middle of the night and wonders why he bothered.

So many dreams he’s had of being a magnificent shinobi like his parents, of making them proud, and he's going to die tied to a tree by his own comrades because he's such a bad person, because he's a fool.

He only hopes that he’ll die, somehow, in his sleep.

He shivers in the night’s chill and goes back to sleep.

Just another Kyūbi orphan, gone unnoticed, uncared for.

Iruka dreams of a dog sniffing his face and whining. He tries to turn away from the cold mask—face—Hmm?—but he doesn’t have the energy. He’s so hungry, thirsty, he feels disgusting; the dog speaks, saying, “Okay,” over and over again, but Iruka just closes his eyes and relaxes into the darkness again.

He hears the glint of a knife being unsheathed and honestly, he just wishes that this wasn’t a dream, that some odd dog with a knife saying okay repeatedly would come and stick him dead. It’d be better than dying of thirst or starving.

The blade shines in the moonlight as the dog swings it. He passes out again before it lands a killing blow.

Kakashi holds back his snarl as he slices through the ropes holding this genin up, and catches the kid as he sags forward. So close to the village, how could this have happened?? Gods, Kakashi wouldn’t have even noticed if the wind hadn’t blown in just the right way. He picked up the bitterness of salty tears, the pungent stink of terror, and the sharp tang of piss; these aren’t strange scents on a battlefield, but within an hour of Konoha?!

How did no one notice that this genin was missing?

He carefully rubs the kid’s limbs to stimulate blood flow. His wrists and ankles are ripped up with rope burn, so Kakashi stays away from those injuries initially. He props the kid back up against the tree he had been tied to and takes out a tube of healing cream from his pouch. Gloves off, he smooths the cream across the rope burns and watches the kid’s face turn from unconscious to sleep.

This is more than a training exercise or a punishment. Someone had meant for this kid to die out here.

The wet stain in the kid’s pants is a minor deterrent, but Kakashi sighs and reminds himself that his shirt is probably stained with blood as it is; it’s just dark fabric. It’ll wash. He lifts the kid up into his arms, another wave of heated anger rolling across him as he registers just how light he is.

Then it’s back into the trees and the sprint to Konoha continues.

The kid wakes only once the entire run, enough to croak out, “Thank you.”

Kakashi stops them briefly and hands the kid his canteen. “There’s not much,” he warns, “but what’s in here you can have. Just drink it slowly, alright?”

The kid nods rapidly and takes small sips of water, gasping sobs of, “Thank you, Thank you so much,” in-between swallows.

Kakashi picks the kid back up and continues on to the village. “You’ll need to be admitted to the hospital,” he says. “What’s your name?”

No response. Kakashi glances down; the kid’s back asleep.

He tries to drop the kid off with the medi-nins, but the second he tries to pull away the kid’s hand reaches out for him and he murmurs, “Stay? Please?” and Kakashi’s not strong enough to resist those brown eyes, half-lidded and holding back more tears. Kakashi doesn’t leave his side, not until after the medi-nins have seen to him, cleaned him up, and put an IV in his arm to run fluids and antibiotics. Only then does Kakashi step away for a moment to grab a shower in the adjoining bathroom, but he’s back quickly to stand guard at the kid’s bedside.

He sends a note to Sandaime that he’s returned and he’ll report in shortly. But someone’s got it out for this kid, and the least Kakashi can do after saving him from dying of dehydration or starvation is to make sure he makes it. He’d also like to find out what, exactly, happened, so that he can include this event in his report to the Hokage.

A nurse comes in an hour later, saying that Sandaime is coming here to receive his report. Kakashi just barely holds in a groan, but he does nod so the nurse isn’t put out by his lack of verbal response. This isn’t the ANBU floor; the people who work here aren’t used to seeing ANBU masks.

After she leaves, Kakashi checks the file at the end of the kid’s bed.

Umino Iruka, age 12, genin rank under jōnin sensei Ishida Kei

Acute dehydration

Friction burns (wrists, ankles)

Psychological trauma—treatment suggested (scheduled)

“He’ll be alright, Hound. He’s a resilient child.”

Kakashi scoffs. “He shouldn’t have been out there. He was tied up and blindfolded when I found him. Someone—”

“I already spoke to his jōnin-sensei,'' Sarutobi says, stepping further into the room and sliding the door closed behind himself. “She says that his teammates had only meant to play a prank on him and possibly got carried away.”

“He had a seal on his forearm,” Kakashi seethes. “To prevent him from calling out to anyone. He was tied up away from normal patrols. No one would have found him if I hadn’t smelled him on my way back.”

“I’m sure that Kei-sensei would have reported his absence before it became a real problem.”

“Had she?”

“Hmm?”

“Reported it. Because the medi-nins told me when they put the IV in that I brought him just in time. A day or so more and he would have died out there.”

Sarutobi doesn’t respond, and that is enough of an answer.

“You said it was a prank?”

“That is how Kei-sensei describes it.”

“Comrades don’t prank each other, not like this. This was a deliberate attempt on,” Kakashi glances back down at the file to refresh his memory, “on Umino-kun’s life.”

“They’re just children, Hound.”

“They’re genin, and are in service to this village. Fuck, I never liked my genin team either but I wouldn’t have tied them up and left them for dead—”

“That’s a bit far—”

“You didn’t see him!!”

Iruka moans lightly in his sleep and Kakashi winces.

He hisses, continuing, “He was delirious. He’d been out there for at least a day, probably longer. He’d given up. Don’t tell me I’m going too far when you hadn’t seen the condition I found him in.”

“Hound. I understand your frustration, but until Iruka wakes we have to go with the word of his jōnin-sensei.” He takes a sharp breath in, and then says, “Now. I believe you owe me a report.”

#amow twelve days of whumpmas #betrayal #tied up #blindfolded #kakairu #umino iruka #hatake kakashi #OCs #my writing

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superchicalonelyviking · 7 years ago

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Update 5

(Note: As usual, time has passed between writing this and being able to post it! Today is our 5th day in China, so this post is 5 days old!) Mat here, aboard the ferry to Shanghai! We are feeling sad to have left Japan, the 3 weeks here have flown by! But we have loved it. Here's what we've been up to with our final days here. After leaving the Fuji area, we made our way to Komoro. We arrived at Komoro station where our host Yuu San collected us. He seemed quiet and cautious, but friendly. We drove out of the city and over the hills, into a beautiful area filled mainly with rice fields. Yuu San and his family run a book cafe, which was an incredibly tranquil room filled with art (all created by family friends) and many shelves of somewhat antique looking books. The place had such a nice relaxed feeling. It was helped by the cup of green tea and acoustic guitar Japanese singer/songwriter music that Yuu San played. After meeting Yuu San's wife, Megumi San, we had a tour of the place, noting some interesting musical instruments that we were allowed to play, and also seeing a huge loom that Megumi San creates big textile artworks with. It's a really lovely house. Our room was outside - the home-made building was made from mid and straw, with old Japanese tatami mats used for insulation! It was a nice, comfortable place, and nice to be outside and feel connected to nature. We joined Yuu San and his family for meals. Megumi San's cooking was amazing! We had all sorts of brilliant traditional Japanese food that was totally different to what we could find in the restaurants around Japan. They are big Beatles fans! Yuu San proudly told us about when he sang with Paul McCartney - leaving us in disbelief before adding that it was with tens of thousands of other people, at a Paul McCartney concert! After dinner he got out his guitar, which he let me play - it was so nice to play a guitar again after over a month without playing any music! Yuu San played and sang us his 'welcome song' - a version of John Lennon's 'Imagine', with each verse sung in a different language! They have had their guests from around the world contribute translations to help expand the song. It was really beautiful and quite moving! Megumi San is a textiles artist, and so they have many artist friends. The cafe is a nice, creative space, and they seem very keen to support creativity. One thing they like to do is arrange festivals with music and dancing - the biggest one they held had 700 people show up, just in their garden!! They have one in August, called the International Bon Dance Festival. In the past they've had guests help create adverts for the festival - they showed us some videos of previous adverts, before Yuu San quietly suggested, "Why don't you try to create a Bon Dance advertisement for us?" Challenge accepted! So outside our Tatami house was a big crazy looking wooden building. This was the Doraku Organ- the entire building is a musical instrument. It used to be in a city as an art installation, but heavy snow on the roof meant it couldn't stay, so it was transported to Yuu San's house. We had listened to a song that was written about the organ - at the festivals, they perform this song and everyone does a special dance to it! The organ contains many different ways to create funny sounds - most of which work like a pipe organ. It's really amazing, because you have to go inside this huge wooden sculpture to play it. The sounds are weird, and unlike any other musical instrument in the world! It was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen. We decided to make the Organ, and the song, part of our advert. The advert is on YouTube, here: https://youtu.be/Mc7zlM0_YgM Everyone was really happy with the advert, including us - we both really enjoyed coming up with ideas and making the video! It was a fun, weird, creative day. Aside from playing music, we explored the local area a bit. The family have a goat in their garden, who seemed pretty friendly! And we walked through the woods down to a nice lake. One evening we walked down with Yuu San and Megumi San's daughter, Mizuki, to see the family's rice fields, where they had spotted fireflies! Apparently there's only a couple of weeks in the year when you can see fireflies, so we felt very lucky to see them! It's really quite a beautiful site, it feels a bit like seeing fairies! Yuu San also encouraged us to go to the local Onsen (hot spring/public bath). We'd heard trying an Onsen is a good experience, but we're a bit nervous about it, because, well, everyone goes completely naked. No swimsuits allowed. Apparently the Japanese like this, because it is a great equaliser in society! I'd find it awkward enough in England where I understand the culture, but because there's a lot of rules and etiquette in Japan, it's even more scary! Still, we thought we should try it. We decided to walk to the Onsen, which was a nice walk through the rice fields, over some hills and through a tiny village tooked away in a valley. It was a nice walk, and it seemed we had earned our relaxing bath. We arrived at the Onsen, and said goodbye - for obvious reasons, the Onsen is gender separated. (Blue curtain for male, red for female, don't get that wrong!) It's easy enough, you get undressed, go to the washing area and shower off so you're clean, then you're free to enjoy the indoor bath or the outside bath. I spent my time in the outside bath, because, well, you can have an indoor bath anywhere... The water is very hot, and it is believed that the water contains lots of minerals that are good for your skin and for relaxation. The last thing I should mention about Yuu San's is the kittens. Oh my god the kittens. Their 1 year-old cat recently had kittens, one of which still lives with them. They are so damn cute! Then a friend who took another of the kittens home brought him round to see his family, so the 2 kittens spent ages wrestling on the table whilst their Mum watched. She was very protective, and extremely talkative, always meowing for attention. So that was our experience in Komoro! Next up was our final stop in Japan - Kyoto! Our first evening was a trip to the Hoon district, which has a street considered to be one of the most beautiful in all of Asia! From there we walked across to a ramen restaurant in the downtown area. It was Saturday night so the downtown area was rammed with people, it was almost as busy as some of the busiest parts of Tokyo! The next day we walked to a craft museum, which had lots of examples of and demonstrations of traditional Japanese crafts. Then we went to the Philosopher's Walk, a popular walking route near a river where university professors used to like walking for quiet reflection time! On the way we found a pottery shop where you could make your own pottery on a wheel - I convinced Libby to have a go, and she seemed like a natural! We walked through the university where Mizuki used to study- it seemed like a nice university building, but we passed the student halls and couldn't believe how crazy untidy and run down it was! No idea what the students had done to the place! And the building itself looked like some kind of prison camp, all in all the most un-japanese thing we saw on our trip! We then headed to the Yuu San family reccomended Beatles Bar - a beatles themed bar, which played Beatles music videos on a massive projector all evening! The next day we saw the world famous rock garden at Ryoku temple, a temple of zen buddhism. The garden consists of just white gravel, and 15 carefully placed rocks. Its been there about 1200 years and there is much speculation as to why it was built the way it was. It's a very beautiful, meditative space, as is the rest of the gardens that surround it. Then we headed to the Arashiyama district, a residential suburb with the famous bamboo forest, a really magical place with dense tall bamboo trees and fantastic colour, shame you spend most of your time trying to get out of the background of other people's photos! Theres also the famous moon crossing bridge and lots more parks and temples. We then went to see the Fushimi Inari Taisha. Inari shrines are dedicated to prosperity, and this is the grandest one in Japan. The animal spirit of inari shrines is a white fox, so there are fox statues everywhere guarding the shrines. It has 1000s of Inari gates, which help prayers reach the temple, so they line all the paths around the hills, which makes a really interesting spectacle of long bright red tunnels! We walked up to the top of the mountain passing many small shrines and really haunting graveyards, all lit by lanterns as it was early evening , passing through another bamboo forest before reaching the top of the mountain , partly overlooking the city . A lot of effort is made to look after the surrounding environment , particularly as Shintoism sees many aspects of nature as sacred - this gives the surrounding environment a real importance and I wonder how this affects how Japanese shintoists see the world around them. The next day we headed to Nara, a city where deer used to be sacred, so there are hundreds of deer roaming free in the huge park! You can buy crackers to feed them, and they seem used to knowing that humans = free food. Which makes them pretty tame, but big signs warn that they're wild animals which may kick, bite or push you over. Nonsense! Although they did try and eat both mine and Libby's clothes. Anyway, they're insanely cute. I gave most of my biscuits to a cute deer that seemed a bit shy and was hanging out by himself, I think he was grateful!There's also a huge ancient temple with an absolutely humongous golden Buddah inside, its hand is the size of a human being, really breathtaking! The next day we went to Kurama, a beautiful temple atop a mountain out in spectacular hills North of Kyoto. Feeling lazy from several days intense walking, we cheated and took the cable car up. An easy day, we spent a lot of time just relaxing and taking in the wonderful views. Theres lots of statues of a red face with a huge nose, it's a sort of evil spirit. One winter the nose of the biggest statue fell off, so the locals put a giant plaster on it! The train home had awesome comfy seats that faced the windows directly, so you can really enjoy the great scenery. Then for our last day in Japan (!!) we headed to the South Higashiyama area to see this area's very well preserved old architecture. It is also an area famous for having a lot of geisha houses. From there we walked up to Kiyomizudera temple, which was a beautiful old temple with great views of the city. Many of the Japanese visitors wear traditional Kimonos to visit the area, including wooden shoes that make a very satisfying sound but I imagine must be pretty uncomfortable! One last ramen (a really good on too, with a veggie option and everything), one last sake, and that was it, our time in Japan was up! It's hard to sum up 3 weeks in Japan, but in short, it's been a wonderful time. The people here are so nice and welcoming, the cities are amazing, the scenery incredible, the food delicious, the roller coasters massive... It's just a wonderful place and I'm so pleased to have had the chance to come here! This ferry is a ghost town, I think there's about 10 passengers on board! No idea why, but it's very relaxing! Shanghaï here we come!

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