Atonement

Chapter 20

Exhausted, Kakashi tried to pry open his blood crusted eyes. He didn't know how long he had been confined to this cold, gruesome torture room.  

Whilst he had made sure that his platoon as well as Fugaku's platoon were able to retreat, Hanzo hadn't hesitate to exploit his momentary weakness that was caused by the stray attack he had taken to the abdomen. Hanzo had mercilessly attacked him and had thrown the boy around like a rag doll! It had only shown the time traveler that although he was strong, his size was a disadvantage that he hadn't even realized before. Somewhen, after being thrown against rocks over and over again and almost gotten killed by Hanzo's kusarigama, he had lost consciousness and the next time he awoke he had found himself blindfolded, his chakra restrained and tied up to a metal table. 

His thoughts had momentarily flickered to his platoon and he had hoped that Mei had been able to lead everyone back to Konoha safely before they had moved on to the purple-haired girl that would hopelessly wait for his next letter and his father who would most likely be notified about his capture soon. Before he could think any longer about what was going to happen in Konoha, the door to his torture cell had creaked open and a foreign shinobi had walked in. Kakashi had known instantly that it had been an interrogator and he had instinctively done the one thing he had perfected during his life.

Shutting out his emotions and pulling up an impenetrable barrier around his mind.

Kakashi had to give it to Ame's interrogator, they were good. 

First, they had started with physical torture, they had beaten Kakashi over and over near death. When that hadn't broken him they had started to drown him until he'd pass out. At first with cold water and later on with burning hot water but Kakashi had hidden everything he held dear, his memories, his morals, his mission, deep in his mind whilst the interrogator had dealt with nothing more than an empty shell. 

After probably the third day or so they had started to try to break Kakashi's mind instead of his physical form. When they had gotten nothing out of Kakashi other than screams and curses, they had left him alone in his cell, drenched in his own blood with broken bones and a tiredness that was so similar to the one he had felt during the Fourth Shinobi World War. Not even the times when he had passed out where refreshing it had only been another realm that was full of pain and terrors. 

A punch in his gut ripped him out of his half-asleep state and caused him to spit out blood. Kakashi groaned from the pain that coursed through his body and he wanted so desperately to let out the petrified screams that were caught in his throat, but his voice was already hoarse from the continues screaming he had done in the last couple of days.

"Wake up boy!" snarled a vicious looking old shinobi and pulled Kakashi up by his hair. 

"Hanzo-sama wants to conduct the next step of your torture. Maybe then you'll break and tell us something useful."

At that moment Kakashi knew he had to get out now if he didn't want to end up loosing his sanity and ultimately doom the shinobi world to the same faith again. The nightmares and flashbacks he had about his team, his adorable students which he had let get murdered by the hands of a mad man and an insane goddess, were slowly breaking his mind apart. 

Kakashi could hear them blaming him for their deaths, hating him for the favoritism he had shown in the first years of Team 7's creation, and despising him for being so weak as to let everything fall apart. At first, he had known that his students, Sakura, Sasuke, Naruto, would never say these things, would never call him a murderer but then it became harder to distinguish between reality and hallucination.

What days of torture from a man as strong and vicious as Hanzo the Salamander hadn't achieved was done by his own mind in no time at all.

So despite knowing the hopelessness of his actions the time traveler fought against the chakra cuffs searching for the tiniest sliver of his chakra and prepared himself for what would undoubtedly be considered a suicide mission.