Chapter Text
The Fourth War has been over two years, and the world stutters itself back onto its feet. Which of course means that something must inevitably go terribly wrong.
While the rebuilding efforts are happening, Naruto and Chouji (the two worst people for this to happen to) stumble across an emaciated child at the border of Fire and Sound.
She is no older than ten years old and is delirious with hunger. Her feet are bloody from walking. When they ask her where she comes from, she tells them that she is of Oto. That she is the first one to try to escape, and that the rest are back in the village proper. She tells them that they have been out of food for weeks, that they had been abandoned once the war began in full swing. That she was one of the strongest of them, and had left to find help.
She dies of exhaustion shortly thereafter. Her name was Yona. She is the first casualty of the peaceful era they had all hoped for after the Fourth War.
They bury her in the Orphan's Cemetery in Konoha.
Naruto is frothing at the mouth to do something about the children left behind in Oto. Chouji is in much the same state.
Kakashi is the Rokudaime, and he of all people understands that the Sandaime was not very good at his job. Blind favoritism allowed Orochimaru to more or less roam freely in the world without consequence. The fact that there were any number of dying children, the products of his experiments, dying alone in his hidden village was a direct result of the Sandaime's inaction.
Which made it Konohagakure's fault.
Kakashi is not Sarutobi Hiruzen. When he recognizes a problem -regardless of his emotional attachment- he seeks to correct it. Orochimaru had not discriminated while he experimented on Konoha children; there was an opportunity that the dying children left in his village were by rights, citizens of Fire Country.
And more than that, they were children.
Before Kakashi can even take the proposal to the Elder's Council (a tradition that will assuredly die once Mitokado and Utatane did), Naruto singlehandedly (pun absolutely intended), creates a big fuss about it to the public.
"This is the village that murdered the Uchiha Clan!" he bellows to a crowd of gathered shinobi and civilians. "This is the village that allowed Hyūga Hizashi to be killed to satisfy a foreign government! Will we atone for our sins by saving these dying children? Or will we add to them by turning a blind eye? Will we let Yona-chan die in vain? Or will we rescue her brothers and sisters?"
After that, Kakashi would probably get stoned in the streets if he didn't let a group go retrieve the remaining orphans. He may be a war hero twice over in his own right, but Naruto's got one thing he sorely lacks: charisma.
The little girl called Yona, her name becomes a rallying cry in the streets. Utatane and Mitokado try to delay making a decision for as long as they can, but Naruto starts circulating petitions. He's got the Kazekage on his side, the single remaining Uchiha, the Nara and Yamanaka heirs; all of them children orphaned by the war. All of them with incredible sway over the village and in international politics.
Naruto was going to make a devastatingly effective politician.
Sakura is chosen to go to assess the physical health of the children, as well as to retrieve whatever may remain of Orochimaru's research. Ino is there to assess the mental health of the children, and to determine which can or cannot (will or will not) be brought back to the village. And while two kunoichi leading a squad is a sign to any shinobi that danger is ahead, the sight of a married couple usually eases some tension.
Married couples are terrifying on the battlefield, and so are kunoichi. Yet, there is a measure of trust that seeing two people wearing matching rose gold bands inspires. It means the couple has lived long enough to find each other, and that any instance of one being kidnapped or used as a weapon against the other has failed. It's confusing for any shinobi. But for children that had been taken by Orochimaru, experimented upon by him, two soft looking married women would be a welcome sight.
Sasuke comes because he is respected in Oto; if those who remain in the little village put up any fuss, the sight of Sasuke is likely to calm them. He's let out of his prison to go on this mission as a way to knock down years on his sentence. It's a bargain that doesn't really need to be made; if Naruto had asked him personally, Sasuke would have gone. As it is, Sasuke already knows that Naruto wants him to go, so he does.
Sakura and Ino hand pick a small number of extra medic and psych nin, all effective in their area of expertise as well as in combat. They leave for Oto as soon as their teams are amassed.
The state of the children is - despairing to say the least.
When they arrive in the village, many of them are nowhere to be found. The shinobi must loudly telegraph their movements, allowing their footfalls to come loudly to keep themselves from startling the children.
When no one is to be found within the village proper, Sasuke leads the team down into Orochimaru's base of operations. The air is cool and stale inside, speaking of several pathways out. The stench of urine and feces gets stronger the lower they dive, and every once in a while, the sharp tang of blood mingles with it. There are whispers occasionally, and the sound of running feet. The shinobi are loud so that the children know they are there. It appears they are loud enough.
Sasuke deflects the first syringe with his own kunai, and when the nearly feral child erupts from the darkness to attack him, he's almost gentle as he disarms the boy. He's hissing, spitting, screaming with rage, damn near frothing at the mouth.
"I won't let you hurt them!" he shrieks, and Ino's heart breaks. "I won't let you touch them!"
Sasuke holds the writhing, angry child back from hurting himself. The boy bucks wildly until Sasuke peers down at him with a bright red eye. The boy stills immediately. Ino has half a mind to march up to the idiot and demand why he's using a Sharingan genjutsu on the boy, but Sakura puts out an arm that keeps Ino back.
"Sasuke-sama," the boy whimpers. Tears well up in his eyes. Sasuke drops the boy's arms, and the child throws himself at Sasuke, hugging him fiercely. "Sasuke-sama!"
"Chitose," Sasuke says, voice cool and low, peering down at the boy whose grasp is bony and desperate. "Where are the others?"
Chitose looks from Sasuke to the group assembled behind him, and Ino puts on her kindest expression. The boy is wily, probably no older than fourteen, and he looks like his wild attack on Sasuke was probably the most strength he's mustered up in ages.
"They're medical shinobi from Konohagakure," Sasuke explains. "We found Yona, and we're here to take all of you away from here."
Chitose visibly flinches at the mention of Yona; Ino wonders how close they were. The boy doesn't let go of Sasuke, but he does edge just a little bit behind him, wary of the contingent wearing the Konoha insignia so proudly.
"Chitose."
Sasuke's voice is stern now, and the boy ducks his head to avoid the accompanying gaze.
"Stop that, Sasuke-kun," Sakura says. "You're frightening him."
Sakura steps forward away from their group and slowly towards Sasuke and the cowering boy. Chitose hides a little behind Sasuke, behind his navy cloak. Sakura gets down to her knees a little bit in front of him, allowing Sasuke's body to act as a shield.
"Hello, Chitose-kun," she says lightly. "I'm Sakura. Sasuke-kun is so mean, isn't he? I've known him since we were twelve, and he's always had a bad attitude."
Chitose peers at Ino's wife, hesitant to agree with her but enamored by her relationship to the man he clearly sees as his superior.
"I like your name, Chitose-kun. It means the strength of a thousand, right?" Sakura continues. She points her finger at the purple diamond on her forehead. "This seal gives me the strength of a hundred, so if we ever had an arm wrestling competition, you'd probably beat me, huh?"
Chitose's eyes flicker from Sakura's forehead to her green gaze, and though he is still tense, curiosity is beginning to win. He feels safe, Ino knows. Sakura is just close enough and Sasuke is a human shield. She feels proud of her wife, for acting so quickly and for understanding what this boy needs.
"I know you guys probably don't trust medical shinobi," Sakura says, voice going soft.
The boy tenses up again and shakes his head quickly.
"But we really are here to help you. Your friend Yona was very brave, and our Rokudaime Hokage knows you all have been really brave, too. And he sent us to help. Will you let us, Chitose-kun?"
The boy looks from Sakura to Sasuke, who nods only once. Then, Chitose looks back at Sakura and nods again.
"This way," he says with a trembling voice.
He leads them further down, until they are in the bowels of a place deep within the earth. Ino feels chilled to her core, knowing that these children have probably not felt sunlight on their skin in quite some time.
They come upon a group of kids around Chitose's age, all wild eyed and angry looking, wielding bits of glass or stone, prepared to fight whoever's come to take them away. They're all as thin as Chitose, all as haggard and hungry and sick looking.
When they see Sasuke, they drop their weapons. Their eyes shine bright, misting over with tears. Ino has to wonder why exactly they are so happy to see him; Sasuke never caught her as the type to like kids overmuch, and he's his usual gruff self with them. There's no tenderness or soft words to be had, but the children don't seem to care at all.
They look at Sasuke like he's the one singlehandedly saving them all. They vie for his attention like flowers desperate for the sun.
Ino looks to Sakura with a smirk on her face and asks, "Did we ever look at him like that?"
Sakura visibly suppresses a shudder, and Ino hides a laugh behind her hand.
"This way, Sasuke-sama," Chitose says, tugging at Sasuke's cloak. He looks from him to Sakura, and adds shyly, "Sakura-san."
He leads them down a number of hallways, each of them lined with cold metal bars and the sound of weeping or murmuring or silence. It makes Ino's stomach turn. The stink of shit and blood and disease is stronger down here, much stronger than it was on the upper levels. Even though Sakura is the head medic for this mission, Ino wants to coat her hands in green right now and start fixing what she sees.
The rest of the children are found huddled up in their cells. They quickly realize why Yona had been emaciated when she was found.
Some of the children were never released. When Orochimaru left, he must have left Kabuto as his second command to keep watch over his experiments. But when Kabuto left, it was clear that no one else had been around to take care of the children. Those who were old enough to escape assuredly had; those too young or too weak to follow were left to perish.
There were some children, who had been perhaps twelve or thirteen when Kabuto had disappeared. Some of them had been well enough along to get themselves out of their cells, or at least they were strong enough to do so. The oldest amongst them were no older than fifteen, and had taken to pushing meager rations through the cell bars of those whom they could not release.
When Chitose leads them from one end of the hall to the next, Ino counts a total of eighty children including Chitose and the others who were prepared to defend those that were still caged.
Ino can just about feel the moment when Sakura's breathing changes, and a shift takes place in the room.
Her wife tugs on her black gloves. The children who have accompanied them jerk backward; Ino is reminded of Orochimaru's history of medical experiments, and wonders how much trauma these children have associated with a movement as innocuous as Sakura's.
Her wife is not deterred; Sakura looks over at the children around her with a gentle smile on her face.
"I'm going to release them," she says, voice low and soothing. "I'm going to open up these cages, and you're going to have to help me and my team get them upstairs, okay?"
The children shift warily amongst each other until Chitose takes a step forward. He looks to Sasuke, who says nothing. The boy swallows thickly, but nods.
"We can take them upstairs to where the barracks are," Chitose says waveringly. He turns his head to all of the older children around him, who nod furtively. Ino makes a note of that, and wonders what authority Chitose has among them that he is listened to despite their collective fear.
Sakura gently brings her hand down onto Chitose's head of thick black hair and gives it an affectionate rub. Chitose flinches hard under the touch, like he's expecting it to be violent, but Ino knows what it is like to have Sakura's healer's hand on her head. When Chitose is sure Sakura is not attacking him, he looks up at her.
"Thank you, Chitose-kun," she says. Chitose goes a little red. Ino smiles; she understands that exactly.
Sakura takes her hand back to herself and places her hands on the middlemost bars of the cell in front of her. Without even the hint of strain, she peels the bars apart wide enough so that the children can get in and out safely.
Chitose and the others balk at her strength, and yeah, Ino understands that, too. The little girl in the cage is wide eyed and terrified, but Sakura doesn't take a step inside of her cell. Instead, she steps back and Chitose scrambles inside to get the girl to her feet.
"C'mon Nori-chan," he says, helping her up. "Sasuke-sama is back and he brought his friends to help us."
"Sasuke-sama?" the little girl whispers.
She moves with difficulty, Ino catches that first. There's something wrong with her leg, her left leg. When the smell of rot hits her nose, Ino knows why. There's a wound there, something ugly and awful and contorted into hideousness that's been left to infection. She knows she won't be able to tell without an accurate diagnostic jutsu, but there's a likelihood that leg will have to come off.
Which is hideous, because Nori-chan doesn't look any older than six. Maybe seven.
It goes on like that, Sakura peeling the bars off the cells before Chitose and the older children can squirm inside to release the young prisoners. The older kids hurry the younger ones up the stairs to wherever the barracks are, and a couple of medic nin under Sakura's command follow them. Sasuke stays at the base of the stairs so that each child gets to see him as they're ferried up; he gives them a peculiar kind of strength. Ino sees several of them gain a measure of resolve, or steel themselves when they see the black haired man.
Sometimes, when Sakura opens a cage, one of the children inside of it is not breathing. One of the medics on their team will enter without one of the older children to attempt resuscitation. Out of the eighty children Ino had initially counted, only seventy are alive by the time they are released. The medic nin take the lifeless bodies to the surface, ferrying them away so that the living children cannot see them.
Ino had never thought she would have to see the corpses of children, left behind. Discarded like trash. She had known war was hell from living through it. Only now does she understand how incredibly lucky she has been, how privileged. She may have lost her father, and she may have lost Asuma-sensei, but at least she had a clan name. At least she had been able to fight back.
These children were helpless, and it showed. She marvels at little Yona's bravery, and reminds herself to make a substantial donation to the orphan's fund when they return to the village.
The older children are all upstairs when Sakura frees the last little one in captivity. He has long dark brown hair that has gone matted towards the ends, and inquisitive green eyes. They are sunken in from lack of food, and his skin is pale from lack of sunshine. His fingers are bloody, and from the scratches along the sides of his cell, Ino can tell why.
She steps into the opening Sakura has made, and crouches down so that she's eye level with the boy. He curls in on himself in the corner like most of the younger children had, but his green eyes are squinting like he's trying to remember something.
Ino stays away from him because that's the safer bet, to let him come to her. Sakura waits just behind, scanning the hallway for anyone that might have gotten left behind on accident. They hadn't been able to get very much information out of Yona before she died, but Yamato had let them know about Orochimaru's experiments on children younger than these, on babies only a handful of months old.
Ino isn't sure how well the test tube children will be holding up about now, and wonders if they have died. If these remaining children look as starved as they do, she has little hope for whatever babies remain.
"Did you hear Chitose and the others? We're here to help you out. We've gotten everyone else. Now it's just you, little one," Ino says softly.
She gives the little boy a wink, and reaches out her hand.
"We were saving the best for last."
Something seems to click within the boy, and then his green eyes are filled with tears. He stumbles to his feet. His knees are bony and thin, but his legs carry him across the cell with a sudden burst of energy that Ino knows comes from adrenaline alone.
The boy bypasses her outstretched arm and throws his arms around her neck.
"Mama!" he wails. "Mama!"
Ino's head jerks back in surprise, but the little boy is burying his face in her throat and weeping heavily there. Slowly, she brings her arm around the sobbing child, and looks to where Sakura is standing just behind her. She looks just as confused as Ino feels.
The boy may think she's his mother, but Ino knows instinctively that he's under a great deal of stress. He probably never expected freedom, and now here it is, and here she is, looking like someone he likely hasn't seen in years. It would do more harm than good to tell him she wasn't his mother, at least right now. The way he shook, he'd probably fall asleep soon after expending so much energy running into her and crying.
It would be best for his health if she told him later. So Ino wraps her arms around the little boy, and rubs soothing circles onto his back.
"It's okay, little one," she murmurs as he cries. "I've got you. Everything is going to be okay."
With steady feet, Ino stands, and supports the boy's bottom with her arm. He cries loudly into her neck the way only a child can, and Ino soothes him to the best of her ability.
Over the boy's head, Sakura's face looks sad and grim.
Ten children dead, seventy in dire need of food and water and sunlight and medical attention. The odds were stacked against these little dying ones. And this war was much different than the one Ino, Sakura, and her comrades had just fought in.
Ino purses her lips and nods once at Sakura, still soothing the boy in her arms. They leave the cells, and once they are at the top of the stairs to this hideous little hallway, Sakura slams her fist into the low hanging rock carved ceiling above their heads. The boy yelps in her arms, and Ino can feel him wet himself at the sound, but softly she soothes him as he apologizes.
She can't be mad at him over the fierce swell of satisfaction she feels at seeing that terrible underground prison sealed off forever.