No idea what brought this along.
Shino never wants to admit it, either to himself or those who mean something to him, that he has a severe problem with his body. Not that he is unsatisfied with his physique (And even if he did, the clothing he wore would not identify anything in that regard) or that he believes that he should begin shaving earlier.
You would never guess it, beyond the glasses, behind the austere face that was the Aburame prodigy; that past the camouflage was a great disquiet. It stirred up his bugs, made Akamaru pace nervously when his irritation reaches the odd peaks. It made Hinata flinch when, in the middle of a scouting run, her Byakugan-enhanced vision showed a great swarm of Kikai bugs marauding within a rabbit hole to provide for dinner.
This was not especially strange in itself; Hinata would stand guard with Kiba and put up the camping gear while Shino searched for the pheromones of small mammals. His bugs would drain the animals of life, Akamaru would be allowed to act like an actual dog for once and go digging for the catch.
Never did his bugs invade the animals and shred their innards from the inside. Shino apologized for his lapse in control, and after a few months, everyone plain forgot. It was not significant.
And that was one of the indirect factors as to why Shino felt the way he did. That his problems were insignificant. Another was the fact that the others would think his reasons for a (Almost. To him.) humiliating deficiency in his body were foolish at best and stupid at worst.
It was not sickness. It had nothing to do with the bugs. It had something to do with pride and manhood and a sense of silent ambitions and an unspoken theory that he had built up in his own mind. It had something to do with a similarity in Neji's once unyielding Fatalism, yet the principles behind Shino's were far more… narrative orientated.
Perhaps it was the soft music he listened to, or his own observations concerning Kiba and Naruto and… yes… even Chouji. Once he had heard about the death of Uchiha Itachi, and once the description came in, he stood in his seat and walked straight out of the room.
Naruto looked over at Kiba, shrugging. 'I only said he had a deep voice. Is he sulking again?'
The doors to the debriefing room slammed shut, and Shino looked up at the sky, daring whatever laughing god, whatever Cosmic Harlequin was mocking him to show itself and die in a hell of his creation.
Two months later, the frustration turned into an obsession. He would search through opera, leaf through transcripts of choirs; analyze every other male he knew. He wracked his memories open, found the tentative voice of Sarutobi Asuma before the grave claimed him, and heard hints of the Toad Sennin before he too fell into his own watery tomb.
He met with evidence after yet more evidence. His eyes searched in a frenzy behind his cold glasses, irrational fear burned in his soul as his mind made deduction after deduction after cruel, slap-you-in-the-face deduction. The universe, it seemed, did follow some logical pattern after all.
The deepest voices die the first. We are nothing more than side players in the story.
But the tenors become the heroes.
I will be next.
Before long, Shino's paranoia became visible to the people who knew him better than the others. Hinata would assure him that her Byakugan would not fail the group's detection, and Kiba had chewed him out for the fifth time in as many days for sending his Kikai to attack a rogue presence that turned out to be Akamaru rolling in the grass.
A red cloak spelled disaster, and he made sure to remove anything red around the household as soon as he was given permission. Nothing went by his scrutiny, he checked and double-checked and slowly caved in, one veneer of sanity after another.
Reasons come back to him. He did not talk much, but he made his statements twice as long as he had to, because Basses rarely get major parts and he wants to prolong his. He wants to prolong everything. Life, love, the smell of dew, the taste of bark in his tea, the feel of tiny antenna, the sight of Kiba chasing after his imaginary tail and the sound of Hinata gasping every time Naruto came into view.
And so, he takes steps.
It is a week before he awakens in the recovery room, Shizune gladly informing him that the damage that had been inflicted (She was wise enough to not add 'Self-inflicted' to the medical report) to his vocal chords was mostly healed, but he may have a little scar tissue over the cartilage from the incisions.
And Shino despairs silently, because the voice is even deeper now.
One day, he becomes lost in thought, walking down the streets, out the gates of the village. He finds his mind returning somewhere in the wilderness, among the trees and vines and shrubbery, and he suddenly does not care.
And when his father finds the note with the legend 'Do not weep', he finds that his son asked the impossible. Aburame Shibi cannot control the tears.
Logic tells him that he is a fool. Logic tells him that he cannot link his destiny to the voice he was born with.
He doesn't want to hear about logic, not here. His song is one of madness, a slow descent, a throbbing, lonesome pulse that crumbles mountains and speaks of terrible power. He does not want others to feel the pain at his inevitable passing.
Aburame Shino smiles as he begins the long years of wandering. His song, his story is in Bass, nothing more than support, nothing to become famous from.
But it is his choice not to sing it.
And he is glad.