A/N: Seriously guys, please poke me with a sharp stick if it ever takes this long again -.- I am a certified Master Procrastinator, and this was put off for far too long. The good news, for those of you not following my rambling little profile notes, is that I have been writing a lot, and the next fifteen or so chapters are done :3 Just not typed. Anyway, enjoy!
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Chapter 8; Resolve'd
Time passed, as it was wont to do, though Harry found himself hard-pressed to actually track how many days he'd spent in Konoha's secure hospital wing. All he was sure of was that it had been long enough for a routine to develop, and the two people -the only people, really- he had contact with barely thought twice of Harry's ...quirks, anymore. He knew, though, that the routine started the day he realized the lengths Voldemort had gone to circumvent the literal Prophecy, when the ANBU/medic-nin rushed into the room as he laughed.
She'd stopped at finding him sitting upright on the uncomfortable hospital bed, knees tucked to his chest and arms wrapped tightly around them, smothering high giggles and paying no mind to his sluggishly bleeding arm. It was odd. For all that he'd scared her earlier, she had simply waited until he'd calmed to tired lucidity, sighed, and re-attached the needle he'd torn loose. She made him swallow a handful of vitamins, promised to return with some broth for him to 'eat', and just left: No one ever asked him why he had been laughing in the first place. Not even Inoichi.
The healer rarely ever talked to him, though she was the one Harry saw the most. Her thoughts -though somehow disciplined- never rid themselves of a lingering nervousness, so woefully close to fear. She had assumptions, unproven as Harry successfully resisted all attempts to have his blood drawn, that he was the spawn of a snake demon and that man, 'Orochimaru'. Until someone said something aloud, however, Harry couldn't ask any questions, though he dearly wanted to know...
Inoichi -whom Harry found himself becoming reluctantly tolerant of- always had questions for him, a whole variety of questions, some of which he couldn't understand why they were asked...until the voice whispered that they were feeling out his temperament. In the end, Harry shrugged, giggled -which caused Inoichi to flinch minutely, every time- and 'answered' the questions as he saw fit, building himself a story of half-truths and deflections, but never lies.
Of all the things that could have given Harry pause, he only hesitated when they asked him how old he was. He should be about eighteen, but... this body didn't look anywhere near that old. Explaining that would be... troublesome, to say the least. And he didn't really feel eighteen, either; most of the time he felt so very old, like he had existed forever... and then sometimes it was like he'd just been born, and everything was bright and new and strange. But he'd decided already that age didn't matter so much anymore -why should it matter when he could barely keep track of the days?- and finally told them that he didn't know his age.
He didn't argue when the healer had given him a very long look -and another near-useless application of healing chakra- and said he was about twelve years old. (That was okay; he'd slain the Basilisk at twelve years...)
More questions were asked of Harry's 'home country', and all of these were answered with very real bitterness. He reiterated that it was hidden -had never been marked on a map, even- and he couldn't get back even if he wanted to. Which he didn't. He couldn't if he tried, which he wouldn't. There were factions within the country, he told Inoichi, which warred often; the latest civil war had lasted decades. The man listened, but in his mind, he doubted.
That topic eventually led to why, exactly, he had been in 'enemy hands' in the first place.
Harry had been a prisoner of war. He admitted to himself that it had never quite sunk in, the reality of the situation he had been in -(because wasn't magic supposed to mean everything was better? Wasn't the cruelty of humanity supposed to be rid by the wonder of magic..? )- before he had to say it aloud. He decided, in the interests of keeping himself looking relatively harmless, to hedge around anything that suggested he had been a participant in the fighting. After all, these shinobi started their training as children, so his apparent youth wasn't enough of a reassurance...
In the flattest voice he could muster (if he listened to himself he shivered; he could never have made himself sound so dead before...), Harry told Inoichi that he had been used, made an example of to lower morale of the other side; the side his parents had been prominent figureheads of before they had been killed... and did he have to keep talking about this..? So the topic was dropped to preserve his lucidity, and rarely mentioned again.
Inoichi always had something else to ask about, anyway.
It was a chore to deal with the blond interrogator, and oftentimes Harry found himself caught between amused and angry at the thoughts he compulsively read from the man. When Harry had quickly taken to drawing the blinds and covering the window with his robe -(something about the light unsettled him, but it was just another one of those things that he pushed to the back of his mind and tried to ignore)- and constantly persisted in turning off the overhead light, Inoichi had been bemused; it turned to wary alarm when Harry hissed at him for turning on the light. There was pity whenever he entered and found Harry sitting silently in his barricaded corner, and the one time Harry succumbed to sleep and woke from a screaming nightmare had been worse: On those days, Harry refused to talk to the blond -he couldn't stand the hidden, pitying looks- but that only led the interrogator to assume it was a 'bad day'...
It was tiresome, but it had to be better than having the village as an enemy... (Hopefully... maybe...)
Harry slid smoothly out of his dozing meditation, absentmindedly peeling the tape off his arm and removing the needle. That was part of the routine, too. The healer always became quietly frustrated when he removed it -she had told him off for it once, in the beginning, but he had just smiled at her, and she never did again...- but Harry never paid her any mind. Whatever substance it was coming in with the IV was starting to feel weird to him, and it required constant attention to prevent his magic from rejecting the needle; he had to remove the needle, or run the risk of his magic slipping his control and destroying it.
He suspected that it was a sign that he was physically recovering (or that they had started to poison him...), that the steady regimen of IVs and vitamins was doing some good. He was still extraordinarily weak, and hadn't gained much -if any- weight yet (according to the medic), but his body was no longer eating itself to keep him alive. His magic no longer had to block out his pain. It no longer hurt him to move... not as much. For the first time in a long time, Harry had the desire to move.
With barely a whisper of noise, Harry slipped out from under the covers and off the bed, silently padding over to the covered window. It was quite dark in his room; enough that it often took Inoichi half a minute to adjust enough to contemplate coming close enough to begin his usual round of questions, the casual, ongoing interrogation. For all the man liked to appear calm, he was one of the most wary; he wanted to see Harry for signs that he had pressed too far, that something was wrong and he could get away.
He lifted the corner of his hanging robe -dazzled momentarily by the brightbrightbright light- just long enough to see the many green trees outside and ascertain it was rather close to noontime, and Inoichi was running late today, wasn't he...
Harry sighed and moved away from the window, standing silently in the darkness (safe, comforting, nonono, wasn't the darkness cold and bad?), trying not to let himself fall into the dark hole he felt stirring in the back of his head. There was another reason he had covered that window...
Unfortunately, his new desire to move made him unable to simply sit quietly in bed anymore. Even being in the room, now, was making him anxious. Anxious was bad. Anxious was making an uneasy feeling rise inside him -a feeling that would keep building until he reached critical mass, and something exploded. Probably the unfortunate ANBU-shinobi that was always outside his door.
The thought of the masked ninja exploding into bloody chunks made him giggle -quickly muffled by his hand- and it was only because he didn't feel like leaving Konoha (they're not at three strikes, yet...) that he didn't allow himself to entertain more serious thoughts about allowing it to happen.
Hm. Maybe he could try to ask Inoichi if he could be allowed outside. If that failed, he could always push aside his revulsion and take advantage of the pity the mind-reader constantly aimed at him, and mention that this room was starting to feel more and more like his cell, and could he please just go outside? The roof, even!
Without moving from his place before the blocked window, he felt the guard change, the less familiar presence being relieved by Bird mask. Harry was tempted to stick his head out the door and stare at the man, as he knew that this shinobi was the one most bothered by his appearance, and Harry, frankly, found that funny as hell. A bare, silent second was all it took for the gnawing boredom to crawl up his spine, and Harry drifted towards the door.
The hallway was artificially bright, so for a long time Harry stood just inside his room with the door barely open, letting his eyes adjust. Bird-mask didn't move from his spot just a few feet away, but Harry felt the eyes on him, even if he was unable to see them through the dark holes of the white mask. (Was it shinobi irony, that the mask be so cute when the man smelled like so much old blood?) When he was satisfied that he could see, and his eyes stopped stinging, Harry stepped out and sat on the floor, staring at the shinobi.
The silence was somehow easier to bear when he knew his mere presence could make someone squirm.
He was breaking the almost-comfortable routine by doing this, and he could smellfeeltaste that it was putting Bird-mask on edge. Harry only ever left his room to shower, and only then when they prompted him to (it was probably a kindness to allow him that much freedom, when they so obviously distrusted him), and even that had bothered them for a while until Harry got curious enough to steal the thoughts from Healer. He hadn't realized... it had been so long... There was more that had changed, internally, and when he felt his magic deeply enough he knew: His magic was supporting most of what his body should be doing naturally, but instead it was breaking down everything into energy, to the point that there was no waste. It was disturbing, and he didn't look forward to ever saying that, no, he wasn't dying, his organs weren't failing... he just didn't use the bathroom anymore. (All things did, though, so what did that make him..?)
Harry scented the air, still staring unwaveringly at his guard, and wondered when the smell of unease had become so familiar to him.
He drew his knees to his chest and tipped back to lean against the door, tilting his head to get a new angle in which to study the shinobi. There was a swirly sort of tattoo high on his left arm that Harry hadn't noticed before. Still, the man remained resolutely silent. Harry slowly raised a thumb to his mouth and dragged the nail across his teeth, creating a quiet, ominous clickclickclick in the otherwise silent hallway. This time the ninja reacted; a barely perceptible twitch developed in the fingers of his right hand, a sign Harry had learned to recognize as the restrained reflex to reach for a weapon.
Harry kept on, hidden eyes keenly focused, smiling with bared teeth as he continued to click his nail along his fangs. His nails weren't really nails anymore; he finally discovered why they had looked so strange to him before. Each of his fingers now ended in a single, strange, basilisk scale, ridged but of an unidentifiable dark color. They had annoyed him at first, being slightly longer than he liked to have his nails, and thus prone to catching on his blanket, but he resigned himself to them and was glad that they didn't appear to be growing.
"Birdy, birdy, birdy," Harry crooned quietly, thumbnail resting against his bottom lip, head tilting farther to the side. His sibilant accent had barely diminished even as his vocabulary expanded, and it colored the playful words sinister. Bird-mask stilled completely, and Harry caught a string of thoughts amounting to 'Creepy little fucker...'.
Oddly enough, the thoughts held none of the vindictiveness he'd expected, or even the pity he had peevishly anticipated. Just a statement of fact -an observation- only slightly colored by the suspicion his appearance aroused. It was refreshing to find such a relatively unbiased opinion, as Harry knew he was a 'creepy little fucker'.
He was still bored, though.
Harry quietly informed the ANBU of that, and fully felt the weight of the incredulous stare leveled at him; it confused Harry until he took another look and caught the man thinking he'd just been subject to some unfocused psychological warfare. A moment was all it took for Harry to realize that that was exactly what he had been doing -trying to do- and it amused him to no ends. If psychological warfare resulted from boredom, he could only speculate what fury -or even happiness- would cause him to do...
Harry tilted his head back, silently amending his previous thought, as he realized he was pretty sure he did know.
It was probably a good thing that the ninja were only focusing on improving his physical health, and hadn't seriously breeched the subject of his mental health, or they would probably have been watching him more closely than they were. Then they might have known, too...
He rested a fingertip gingerly between his sharp teeth, still thoughtful and less bored, but peripherally aware of the somewhat tense ANBU just feet away. Again, his thoughts turned back to what he'd been stuck on for almost the entire time he'd dwelled in the hospital room, and he couldn't help but wonder, for how much Inoichi pondered it... Just how sane was he, really? It was running him in conflicting circles, and with nothing to distract him, Harry just couldn't seem to push it aside like everything else.
He wasn't even concerned, just mildly curious, but if he couldn't stop thinking about it than it wouldn't matter anymore because it would drive him insane!
So again he was weighing the factors of his sanity, stepping back to look in impartially (which was almost disturbingly easy to do; one shouldn't be able to separate themselves, so.). First, the pros: Why he was sane. He was bothering to ask himself? Hadn't he heard, so long ago, that the insane never worry that they're insane? He wasn't worried so much as mildly curious, but that still had to count for something... So that wasn't such a great point...
A better one then. Harry was still more than capable of making rational decisions, such as the ones to learn the language and stick around to take advantage of a hospital to recover in. It was smart and beneficial... and common sense, which those lacking sanity didn't have much of, or so he'd heard. He also didn't make it a habit of wandering around and killing people for no particular reason, though it was well within his ability to do so; he didn't want to. Those were good points for proof he was sane... (Sane enough...)
Cons, then; Why he could maybe, possibly be insane.
...
And there it was again, that part of him that kept saying 'this is the most sane you've been in a long time'. It always distracted him, because the feeling with it was that he hadn't been sane for years -decades- in the literal sense of time. Harry was sure that he'd been pretty okay sanity-wise before sixth year when his insomnia started up. (The sleep deprivation was a calculated risk; thankfully he had been fully able to retain what he learned, and the hallucinations and fits of mild psychosis had stopped after the first month or so...). That, and he was only eighteen, and he hadn't been alive long enough for him to have been insane for decades.
Broken before, whole now -but different. Better. Broken begets insanity... He twitched, but couldn't force himself to ignore the voice.
Harry lolled his head back and forth against the door, chuckling quietly. Suppose that was another reason against his sanity, then; he believed the feeling more than he could intellectually call it impossible. And then there was a voice in his head that he listened to, responded to, sometimes.
Harry chuckled again, but quickly cut it off when he felt himself slipping closer to the hysterical laughter again. Well, fuck. That carried too much weight to ignore... maybe it was a functional kind of insanity then? Sometimes he regretted his complete abandonment of all things muggle; they actually devoted some time doing research on mental disorder. Hell, in the Wizarding World, nobody cared if you went insane so long as you didn't go about killing people! There were more stories bartered around the Gryffindor common room about batty relatives than there were stars in the sky!
Harry removed his finger from his mouth, frowning slightly: Maybe it had something to do with magic in the first place. It wasn't the most outlandish thing he could think of; magic-users had the ability to make the impossible into something commonplace, and something like that really couldn't be without consequences. If that was the case, it really said something about the more magically talented... Dumbledore, Grindelwald, Voldemort... himself. Hell. Putting it like that, he really had to be insane, didn't he?
The voice was conspicuously silent, and Harry snorted.
It was a pointless thing to dwell on, really, and it annoyed him that he was stuck thinking about it all the time. If he was sane, well, that was all well and good. And if he wasn't, he had no real way of knowing, as any 'insane' actions wouldn't seem unusual to him. It was pointless.
It. Was. Pointless!
And he was fucking tired of being stuck on the same train of thought!
Harry snarled (the ANBU startled) and every muscle in his body tensed in an effort to resist the overwhelming urge to just bite something -Bite an arm, add another pretty crescent to all the rest. Better, bite the ninja! Oh, yesss, pump him full of venom, make him writhe! Something pulled, tightened, in the back of his mouth, and suddenly bitter, hot something was flowing over his tongue.
Venom. It was venom. His venom.
Just as quickly as he tensed, Harry relaxed again, slumping back against the door. With half his attention on the cautiously wary shinobi, he casually swiped a finger over his lips, allowing the tiniest bit of venom to seep out of his mouth before swallowing the rest. His venom was mostly clear; if his skin wasn't so lacking in color, he wouldn't have been able to detect the slightest of a yellow-green sheen. It looked like spit. He snorted softly, licking the remnants off his finger, and tilting his head back to give full attention to his guard. Even if he were to read the man's mind, there was no way of knowing just how much of that had simply been passed off as just another 'quirk'.
"I'm still bored, Birdy," he said quietly "Can you take me outside?" Harry was so sure that his anxiety would diminish if he could just get a breath of fresh air. He knew, intellectually, that this room was not that dark little cell, but it was starting to feel the same -he was still a prisoner, there. The only difference now was that he could manage escape on his own this time... he'd just rather give them a chance before leaving such a beneficial situation.
For the first time since he was escorted here, Harry heard the voice of the Bird-masked ANBU. "You have to ask Yamanaka-san." Oh? Did that mean that Inoichi was the one with say over him? Or did it just have to go through the mind-reader, and then to the Hokage?
Harry sighed and reentered his room, leaving the door a crack open as he drifted back to sit on the bed, dodging around the puddle his detached IV was making on the floor. He folded himself up in the center of the bed, blanket bundled around him and over his head, and sat in the quiet darkness with only the hissing, whispering voice in his head for company.
As it turned out, he didn't get to go outside that day. When asked, Inoichi had become markedly suspicious, and it wasn't until Harry started to mutter under his breath about his cell that the interrogator relaxed again. In the end, Harry got a vague "I'll see what Hokage-sama says." and more questions about the aforementioned cell.
The next day -(it was probably the next day...)- found Harry lying in bed once more, propped up against the headboard and slowly shredding the edge of the blanket ragged with his claws. One. Thread. At. A. Time. Healer had finally gotten the message and had ceased her attempts at sticking him with another needle, so in place of the IV hook was a glass of water on the bedside table. He was almost surprised they'd given him an actual glass cup, as they had been excessively paranoid about leaving anything remotely dangerous in the room with him. Whether it was to keep him from suicide or otherwise, he hadn't yet determined.
Harry ignored Inoichi's entrance (as he did most every time) and only twitched a little in annoyance when the man pulled back the hanging robe enough to dimly light the room out of its near pitch blackness. He then took the chair near the foot of the bed and patiently waited for Harry to acknowledge him. As usual.
Harry dropped the blanket onto his lap, but as he did so his attention caught again on the almost-red scars covering his arms; he found his fingers tracing the marks with a strange sort of fascination. Jagged and vivid, but they should have been more than mere indents in his skin that they were... They would have been so much worse had magic not healed the damage, but they could have been healed perfectly that way, with no sign that it had ever happened... Harry ran a fingertip over a tight cluster of bites at his wrist, enthralled by the strange smoothness inside each one... like a burn, almost...
Inoichi was watching him, leant forward in the stiff little chair, and asked him about the marks on his arms. Harry took a quick glance at the sharp green eyes, and got a mind full of wary suspicions: They looked like they were the result of some strange torture, and the only thing that kept him from suspecting attempted suicide was the fact that they were all over his arms, and not just at the wrists. He was also perplexed, as he knew them to be bite marks, but they had healed... wrong. It was just... wrong. No signs of infection (the mouth was a very dirty place, after all), and the scars had a strange consistency, unlike anything he'd ever seen before.
Harry didn't begrudge the man for thinking his thoughts -if he was in the interrogator's position, he wouldn't know what to think- but it made him want to tell the shinobi. Talk about his time in the Dark, perceived weakness be damned (and really, they had already seen the results, so why not tell the cause?).
Harry stretched his thin arms out, twisting them to show the extent of the bites; both arms, practically covered from wrist to shoulder -(how had he managed to bite the back of his elbow..?)- with many overlapping, but his hands were curiously unscathed. "I think I did this sometime in the beginning, Inoichi -" Harry never bothered with attaching honorifics, and it made the shinobi uncomfortable of his undue familiarity, but he'd never corrected him yet. "- because when they first captured me they put me in a black little hole. When they took me out, I couldn't walk anymore, but I could still pace when I did this..."
Harry dropped his arms back into his lap, head tilting to one side. It felt... almost good to say it aloud, to have someone listen. "The cell was very small. Very dark. Very... cold." He frowned and raised his head enough that the blond could tell Harry was looking at him. "When you broke open the shadows, doing this was one of the first things I remembered." The shiver that ran down his spine as he recalled what else was let loose was minute, but Inoichi saw it all the same.
When Harry continued, his voice was a bit more listless, and he traced a particularly jagged mark on his right arm. Somehow, out of all of them, he knew that was the initial bite. "I think it was the cold, more than anything. The silence was worse that I though it would be." His tone turned rueful; he had lived in a cupboard for ten years, and silence was an old friend, but it still got to him in the end... "I didn't think I would mind the silence so much, but in the end it was the cold. I was too cold to really feel any pain... And blood stays warm for a while, you know?"
Harry saw that, yes, he did know. The blond mind-reader was quiet for a moment, watching him carefully, assessing. "How is it that you didn't bleed out?"
Harry couldn't tell if the smile that formed on his own lips was bitter or amused, shying away from the dark in his head that wanted to hurt the shinobi for asking. "I am too stubborn to die." The horribly, wonderfully ironic statement slipped out before he could think to stop it, and then he sighed and glanced at the mostly obscured window. "I still do not remember much. I assume they found me before I could bleed out, and healed me... I doubt I will remember everything." Only the worst of what happened, he was sure.
Inoichi eyed him levelly for another long moment before conceding with a slow nod, satisfied that what Harry said was true enough. In the end, they were strangers to one another, and there was nothing the man could say to him. Not when Harry knew it was the interrogator's job to milk him of all the information he could, about everything. It was alright, though, because Harry would never truly care what the man thought: Inoichi was still under the annoying (yet beneficial) assumption that Harry himself didn't know the real truth, and thus was passing false information.
There! A new piece of information as the interrogator silently lamented the likelihood of Harry's parentage: The uncanny resemblance to a young Orochimaru, and the excess of enemies that man had - most of whom would gladly carry out a grudge on someone who appeared to be even distantly related to him. And Harry...
Finally, finally, Harry got the barest of glimpses of the person who he was supposed to resemble, the man called Orochimaru. Oh, was it uncanny, was it eerie, how very right they were... What kind of strange coincidence could have led to this..?
Harry smothered a slightly hysterical giggle at the thought of ever meeting him face to face.
He startled slightly when Inoichi spoke again. "Hokage-sama has decided to allow you some time outside of the hospital, provided you can follow a set of conditions." The man trailed off, eyes searching his face for some acknowledgement; Harry inclined his head, then tilted it in silent curiosity. 'Conditions?'. "I am the only person who will ever take you anywhere, but ANBU may bring you back..."
There weren't really that many conditions after all, but that was probably because they still didn't expect him to remember all that much, and Harry wasn't inclined to tell them otherwise. (Better to be underestimated...). What wasn't common sense were mostly things that Harry wouldn't consider doing anyway; why would he want to talk to the little-chakra civilians that were bound to be around? Common sense, like if he tried to lose his escort (babysitter...) they would treat him like an enemy. It would be Inoichi's choice as to how long he was allowed outside; if force had to be used to bring him back, chances of being let out again became quite scarce...
Harry thought the last rule was rather stupid. They knew that he could escape from their chakra seals; if Harry wanted to he could leave at any time, and they could do precisely nothing. He could disappear before they had the faintest hint he intended to. Such an oversight of his known abilities made his mind wander to paranoid thoughts of them lulling him into a false sense of security and rendering him unconscious...
But no, Inoichi had not thoughts of that. The interrogator wasn't pleased that Harry would be allowed outside the hospital, not at all, especially among civilians. The bottom line was that Harry was dangerous; his loyalty to Konoha was nonexistent, his abilities unknown (they were aware he was hiding things, and this was one of them) and his mental state erratic at best. Also -though he hid it well, even in the confines of his well-organized mind- the blond was anxious over the idea of Harry chancing upon his daughter, Ino, a genin of Konoha.
He was worried Harry would harm his family.
Harry decided that the man was right to worry, so very right. As soon as he recognized Inoichi's fear, he realized that if a favorable opportunity presented itself he would gladly attack the man's family in retaliation for the initial intrusion and disruption of his mind. It was simply a fact, like his persistent desire to hurt the man when he prodded too deeply.
Inoichi had him recite back the rules, testing him and making him elaborate to make sure he comprehended what he was saying, finally ending with "I am to leave my hood up until you say otherwise."
The light finding its way through the window was by now a brilliant orange, signifying the day's end. Diverting a bit of attention back to his magic let him know that it was still Bird-mask outside his door. Hm.
"Can I go outside now?" Let it never be said that Harry wasn't persistent when he really wanted something. Inoichi stood and went to the door, sighing, and told him to put on his robe.
The door shut, and Harry was left alone again, though Inoichi was standing with Bird-mask now, most probably talking. Harry slid out of bed to retrieve his robe, warm from blocking sunlight all day. As he pulled the worn, charcoal-colored material over his head -it still smelled faintly of his blood, actually...- he acknowledged that at one time it probably would have bothered him that they didn't offer him fresh clothes before he was allowed to wander. Not even shoes. The only thing he felt about it now was faint amusement; the reactions of people outside the hospital would be quite funny, if they managed to see him.
Harry checked his blindfold in the window's reflection -noticing but disregarding his silent reflection's urgings to sort out his rampant memories- and pulled his hood low over his face, until everything above his mouth was in shadow. They were keeping him secret, because of his appearance and resemblance to 'Orochimaru' (and really, he needed to find out just what the man did. He had the sneaking suspicion it was really bad, especially if he was right, and the bad guys did always have snake affinities...), so it would be best for his continued peace if he just went along with it.
(At least the first time.)
Inoichi and Bird-mask stood waiting with an almost solemn air; Harry scented the air and found it laced with the bitter tang of a slight, nervous sweat. Was that apprehension?
"Do you expect me to be bad, Inoichi?" Harry's voice emerged with an ironic, nearly amused lilt, one he didn't bother to censor. Of all the times... Inoichi didn't deign to answer, however, instead making a gesture with one hand that sent Bird-mask down the hall and away. It must have been what they had talked about before, because the interrogator didn't think anything of the ANBU after that.
Harry wanted to ask where Birdy went, but didn't want Inoichi to become distracted when they were finally going outside. Instead, he fell in step beside the blond and traveled the opposite direction, a hall he had never had reason to go down before.
The few people in what was obviously the lobby stared as they passed; Harry spotted none of the metal plates called hitai-ate, and detected with his magic none of the honed chakra of shinobi, so decided they must be Civilian, and thusly ignored their existence. All but the part of him always focused on the flows of his magic was honed in on the sight of orange light shining through the glass doors, growing closer with each step.
And he was finally outside. Harry took a deep breath, the anxious feeling that had been building dissolving into nothing at the feel of fresh, moving air flowing into his lungs. A soft, warm breeze tugged at the charcoal colored material he was swathed in, rustling the dragging hem over verdant grass. What a lovely idea, he thought, to put a park outside a hospital.
Harry drifted aimlessly under the tall (alivealivealive) trees, stopping often to touch the delicate petals of a flower or to watch small birds hop among the branches over his head. He had never had such an opportunity before, and found if refreshing to be able to take the time to admire the simple tranquility -the quiet peace- of the world around him.
Inoichi was easy to ignore, utterly silent as he followed Harry with an almost comfortable half dozen feet separating them. The twilight of dusk slowly gave way to night; pale orange seen through swaying leaves turned a muzzy purple, and finally to blue-black. Harry observed it all with fond nostalgia, before the slightest pangs of longing made themselves known as he realized that it was the perfect weather for flying. He hadn't flown in so long... And he never would again...
The birds had retired to their nests for the evening, crickets chirping loudly under the rising crescent moon. Night blooming moonflowers opened, pale petals catching the weak light and glowing luminously amongst the darkened branches. Harry could admit that they were very pretty, though the unblemished petals bothered him in their untainted perfection. They... could be better.
He drifted towards the curtain of vines that the flowers bloomed from, humming quietly as he considered a single glowing flower, nearly as large as his hand. He would make it better. It was too perfect to be beautiful in his eyes. Harry brought a thumb to his mouth and sliced it open on the largest and sharpest of his many fangs, squeezing until dark blood welled from the clean, deep cut. With great accuracy he flicked the blood across his target flower, again and again until he was satisfied, and the need had finally gone.
Absently licking his bloody thumb, Harry stood back from the curtain and admired his flower, unique and beautiful amongst its glowing fellows. It was better, now. Inoichi came forward (It was really too easy to forget sometimes, that he was not alone... Chakra still felt so alien from magic...) to stand beside him, studying Harry's bloody moonflower as Harry studied him. The man gave no indication of his thoughts, though it didn't take him long to speak up.
"Why did you do that?" With that tone... it was easy to pretend that Inoichi was not a ninja, and just another school counselor asking why the people in his pictures were always broken. It was just as easy to recall that nothing ever came from telling things to the counselor, that nothing really mattered in the end.
Harry turned his head in the direction of his flower, though his hidden eyes stayed riveted on the blond. "I didn't like it how it was, so I changed it." He saw that his response surprised Inoichi; perhaps the conviction and surety he said it with. The man had no clue the power that kind of resolve had when in Harry's possession.
This went far beyond the realm of moon-blooming flowers and their flawless imperfection.
It was as simple -and complicated- as the fact that when Harry saw something he didn't like, he attempted to change it. While Harry had very nearly been sorted into Slytherin for his cunning and ambition, in the end it was his courage and stubborn nerve that put him into Gryffindor... Those traits put together would have made him a hell of a politician, had the circumstances been different. Magic had allowed him to start changing things, from the very beginning.
Back in the mists of first year, when magic was still new and exciting and wonderfulchanceescape, Harry noticed the way everyone was treating Hermione, and he didn't like it. He made a friend of her, and the taunts that had followed before had diminished greatly as she was seen in the limelight with the Boy-Who-Lived. What he had told neither Ron or Hermione was that not everyone had backed off immediately, but those who hadn't found themselves receiving anonymous letters full of compiled blackmail, and the warning to bugger off. Or else. (Oh, and he would have done it. You don't need to be a Potion's Master to get your hands on a poison potent enough to drip on paper and kill someone with contact...)
Third year made Harry aware of his glaring weakness to the creatures called Dementors, and that was something he could not allow. So he learned a spell that was well out of the ability of most Aurors. And when he found out his Godfather had been framed for turning traitor and getting his parents killed... and the real framing traitor was still alive and a rat; that the Dementor's Kiss had been administered... No, nonono. He didn't even have to think; going back in time a few hours to save his Godfather. (And though it took almost four more years -Sirius dying anyway- and Harry's own capture, he finally paid Wormtail back. Everything came full circle.)
Umbridge. What a joke. Harry undermined her at every opportunity, going so far as teaching real defense to the DA. He even got to kill her! That might have been the only thing Harry would have ever thanked Voldemort for... besides the Dursley family, anyway.
And after hearing the Prophecy, Harry decided that he was too weak, too forgiving. So he got stronger, more ruthless, so that just maybe he could win before it was too late. If he lost more than a bit of humanity to gain his power, well, it had to be worth it. Because no one else should have to die for, or because of him, ever again.
Ahh, if only we could have stayed in the Wizarding World the little voice lamented quietly. Our power could have turned that outdated society on its head...
Harry pulled a face as the voice drifted out of mind again. He wasn't sure why, but it bothered him when the voice grouped it and himself together. Something about the use of plurals sounded... off. We. Our. For a reason he couldn't pinpoint, ideas of souls and the nature of magic came to mind-
The voice prodded him and kindly reminded him that Inoichi was still standing beside him and was trying to get his attention without actually touching him.
Harry slowly turned his head to look at the blond, peripherally aware that at some point his eyes had drifted to his blood-spattered moonflower, though he shivered now that he realized; in the dark, his blood looked far too close to black...
"Come, Harry." the man commanded, and Harry tensed in unknowing anger at the order. "You've wandered enough tonight."
Harry stared at the flower for another long moment, before shivering. "Okay." If he didn't feel as faint as he sounded, he would have been surprised at the sound of his voice. He was glad to have been outside, but he was very... tired, now.
The journey back to the hospital, back to his room, was made in silence, though Harry often felt Inoichi's eyes on him. Only when the door closed behind him, when Inoichi left and the only presence he could feel was Birdy standing guard in the hall... Only then did Harry allow himself to shuck his robe and slump onto the stiff bed, pulling the blanket up over his head.
He meditated for a long time, drifting aimlessly in his mind -half hoping, for some reason, to find the voice- before he reached a gaping darkness and fell asleep...
Harry woke screaming at first light, though he remembered only one image from the dream; one with such clarity that it must have been a memory.
Himself, seated cross-legged on an obsidian tablet, under cold winter moonlight. In one pale hand a was a bloodied clear-quartz athame, index finger adorned with a similarly bloodied golden ring, a large black stone set imperiously. In the other hand a small golden cup with two finely-wrought handles; there was blood within the cup. The slash across his throat spilled crimson over the heavy golden locket that hung from his thin neck. Blood was likewise smeared over pale lips.
There was a flash. Between one blink and the next, something had changed.
The three golden items he was adorned with had changed somehow. Became...mundane. All the blood was gone.
The gash across his throat closed, leaving a second scar over a much fainter, smaller line.
Glassy green eyes, deep-set in dark bruises, widened, flashing hellfire red before closing.
When they opened, the pupils were slits set in bloodshot green eyes.
/-/-/-/-/
A/N: Because I'm evil, that's why :3 Anyone care to tell me what they think? And if I remember correctly -not sure, I haven't read the chapter after this one in months- we have some 'Rookie 9' interaction next chapter~