A/N: Wow guys, you make me feel special. Last chapter was the first to make it passed 100 reviews; want to try for that again? XP So, this is my favorite chapter of this Arc, hope you like it too :3
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Chapter 12; Delirium
The deep silence of night hung over the Tower, most of the presences stilled with sleep and all but the occasional emergency light shut off. The cavernous room Harry had yet to move from was especially dark, lit with only a single light over the main door. Occasionally a shadow moved in the hallway, a presence come to look in on he and Jackal.
Only once was it snake-lady Anko, staring wordlessly into the room for a long minute before leaving; the scent of wary hostility lingered for a while afterwards.
Seeing in the dark was no challenge to Harry, however; sometimes, it was even easier than seeing the world in light. When the eyes of his other form carried over to his human form, his sight had become preternaturally acute. It wasn't often something he took time to consider, but Harry supposed he had to be lucky to have the form of one of the few snakes with decent vision… But it was, again, something only to be expected. A basilisk's eyes were their most deadly weapon…
(Should there ever come a time when he had to use them… It would herald his time to move on.)
Harry shook off his almost-meditative doze and glanced around. Jackal was leaning against the wall a few feet away, apparently at ease – Harry knew better than to be fooled. He'd seen enough from Inoichi's occasional thoughts on the subject of his guards, the ANBU; all skilled shinobi, all hand-picked for one purpose. And all answerable only to the Hokage. If Harry wanted to do anything against them –attack them– it would have to be a complete surprise, something they could not anticipate. It would mean revealing more of his magic, probably more than he wanted them to ever know.
(It would happen someday, an inevitability, but that day would have meaning.)
But at the moment he had no reason to attack his guard, and felt no inclination to do so. Even though he was pretty sure it had been Jackal that had put him to sleep when he and Birdy took Harry from the Tower the first time, he was quickly growing fond of this ANBU as well. (Birdy was still favorite, though.) Harry knew himself well enough to figure that it was because the ANBU kept his distance and had so far empathized with him, rather than pitying him. It was but a small courtesy to anyone else, but to Harry it was a rarity to make note of…
Hmm, no, that wasn't exactly right, either. He would've been bitter if Jackal did nothing but empathize –that came too close to the falseness that steeped his childhood– but Jackal toed the line between empathy and apathy almost too proficiently. He didn't understand his new ANBU: How could the man go so quickly from (muted) indignation to relaxed apathy? Why did he lack Birdy's and Healer's professionalism?
But once more, Harry couldn't complain. It was very…freeing, actually, however it was his guard managed to become so drastically standoffish. Harry had been acting –lying– for so much of his life; only when he didn't have to watch others to make sure he was acting appropriately –following their unconscious behavioral cues– was he free to be himself. And among the shinobi of Konoha, none of them looked at him any stranger than usual for his mercurial changes in behavior as he tried to be himself.
They had only ever known him as they'd found him. They didn't seem to expect anything more or less of him than eccentric quirks and behavior. Harry wasn't supposed to be a hero for them; there were no expectations he had to live up to, no reason to hide that he was damaged. It was… a nice thought. He just had to break himself of a behavior-turned-habit that had been built over the course of a lifetime. It would require work.
Harry stood and took a moment to stretch, relishing the ability to do so after his hours of deliberate stillness. He felt very strong from his four days of sleep, almost energetic; not at all like the nervous energy that built up from being confined in his hospital room. Jackal looked over at him when he moved away from the corner, standing a little straighter when Harry wrapped his covered hands over the railing. Harry leaned over slowly to gauge the –respectable– distance to the floor.
"What's up?" the ANBU asked, the slightest trace of boredom in his tone. He started ticking questions off on his fingers. "Tired? Feeling sick again? Want to go back to the hospital? Contemplating suicide?"
Harry snorted in surprise at the –unexpectedly morbid– last question, but never lifted his eyes from his examination of the railing; it was about the same width as the average broomstick. He answered the questions distractedly, amused. "Ch. No, emphatically no, and no again. Of all the times to kill myself, why would I do so now?"
In the silence that followed his response, Harry clambered onto the railing, sliding from a low crouch to stand at full height as soon as he was sure of his stability. His balance had always been pretty good, and it'd only got better once he had started playing Quidditch: Standing on an immobile railing was nothing compared to balancing on a fast-moving broomstick while racing after the agile golden snitch.
(He was balancing on the knife's edge; the barrier was so thin he couldn't feel it, but it was lacking one last push.)
He held his arms a few inches from his body and started walking; it was easy, and though it hurt his feet some, it was a minor pain and easily ignored. The familiar thrill of being high off the ground was one that he had missed terribly. Flying had always been his release, his freedom from unwanted thoughts and bad moods. It was a shame that he'd had to give it up to have more time to train himself… He would have liked to fly again, especially now, when he knew his chances of ever experiencing the thrill were negligible.
Sometimes he was surprised that his animagus form wasn't some kind of bird, instead of a giant, ground-dwelling –happily subterranean– serpent. Truthfully, Harry had never given his form much thought besides as an ultimate trump card; granted, one that he had quickly been barred from using, but a weapon all the same. It was just another strange thing to happen around him: It was supposed to be impossible for a wizard to transform into a magical creature… Wait.
Harry paused momentarily in thought before continuing carefully along the handrail. Somewhere in the mire of knowledge mixing in his head he remembered reading something, some legend, one of the cautionary tales of Old. Tales of people who for some reason had the ability to surpass the mundane.
A woman who –as the legend went– befriended a phoenix, one who routinely cried healing tears for her to counteract a childhood wasting illness. And many years later when she was struck with a mortal wound, instead of dying, had burst into flames and emerged as a phoenix. The woman returned to her human form as a young girl, with the black eyes of her phoenix form. She was captured and forced to cry so that her valuable tears would be used to heal the same people who she had fought against: They were tears of poison, though, and any used would ignite a living flame that took the form or nightmares, and consumed the person to naught but ash.
The creation of the dark spell Fiendfyre was supposedly based on that nightmarish, living flame.
Another legend told of a young boy –called a prodigy in all things magic by the people of his village– who witnessed the slaughter of his family and friends by invading forces. Powerless, his wand snapped, he fled into the forest and quickly came upon a herd of thestrals –death omens attracted by the scent of blood. Near insane with grief and want for vengeance, the boy proclaimed upon his magic that he would become a death omen to those that destroyed his village. Set upon by the herd of thestrals –roused by his hysterical Oath– he transformed into one of them, young still. He was raised by the herd of gaunt, reptilian horses and eventually grew to become their leader.
That boy only transformed back when he led his herd to slaughter the families of all that destroyed his home. White-eyed, gaunt and winged, the man in the legend was sometimes called the Grim Reaper.
It made Harry wonder just how much truth those 'myths' held, and –if they were true– just how close the Veil had come to actually killing him. Although he had known about his form –had actually transformed before, unlike the spontaneous transformations in the stories– the basilisk traits hadn't appeared until he went through what everyone believed to be a portal of death. The subtext of the stories didn't elude him. Harry recognized that the creature transformations only took place after a mortal blow: The woman had a hole blown through her chest and the boy had been mauled by thestrals.
He almost wished he was back in his own world, if only so that he could look more thoroughly into those legends. As it was, he wasn't even sure if he was remembering something from his own mind… or Voldemort's. It would have also been nice to do some research into why he was remembering things so well when he never intended to integrate Voldemort's soul into his own…
(Oh, but Voldemort had, and he did…)
Hm. Maybe it would be worth trying that spell… To be able to look upon his own magic and soul could shed a lot of light on the whole matter.
Harry became aware of just how long he'd been standing motionless on the rail –staring at the floor so far below– only when Jackal moved quietly towards him. Not silently though; Harry was sure the ANBU was making himself create just enough noise so as not to startle him into jumping.
"You should come down from there," Jackal advised, close enough to catch him should he have startled anyway. Harry continued to stare blindly at the distant ground, and vaguely contemplated jumping for a brief rush of flight; he could apparate before he hit the floor, he was sure of it.
"Do you not trust my balance?" he murmured at last, unnaturally motionless, still entertaining the thought of jumping.
A pause, then; "Your balance is exceptional for someone in your condition, I'm sure. No, you have been standing there for over an hour; if you want to sleep, there are better places to do so. Places where you couldn't accidentally kill yourself." The statement was delivered in an even monotone. A good enough reason. Harry shrugged and hopped backwards, landing beside the man with a quiet thump and a rustle of cloth. He barely felt the strain the action caused, more focused on a new, interesting thought.
"Would you get in very much trouble if something were to happen to me on your watch?" Harry asked curiously, stepping back to lean against the wall. It was a new experience for him; the person watching him actually talking to him. (Not even Birdy did that…) Back when the Order members watched him –supposedly guarding him against Death Eaters– they went out of their way not to talk to him. It was funny, in a not-fun ironic way, that the shinobi babysitters were more… polite that the Order members, when the ninja were watching him for threats against them.
It was a bit backwards, he thought.
"That depends on the circumstances. Why do you ask?" Again, the ANBU appeared at ease, leaning lightly against the handrail, hidden gaze directed somewhere over Harry's shoulder. Harry wondered, offhandedly, if the ANBU also had orders to report whatever he said to Inoichi; it sounded more likely than not.
"Because something always happens," Harry said, honestly. "I just don't think you should get into trouble because of something you had no control over." The blunt sincerity of the statement made Jackal's attention sharpen perceptibly, before relaxing again for some reason. Harry was too curious to resist looking for the reason to the shinobi's strange behavior, forcing more focus into his usually light touches to get more that the vague, murmuring thoughts all the mask-wearers gave him. It must've had something to do with not seeing their eyes…
What Harry found annoyed him, even if it continued to give him the advantage of being grossly underestimated. Jackal had begun to forget himself, talking to Harry: He had been briefed by Yamanaka Inoichi, had been warned of that trap. Harry could sometimes act passably like a normal boy, but ultimately there was something very wrong with him. In the Interrogator's exact words; "Harry has an amazing ability to recall his past –his trauma– but there is something fundamentally wrong with his mind. It looked… like there always had been. For all intents and purposes, he lives a life of functional insanity; you can trust nothing he tells you without hard proof."
Functional insanity… but Harry already knew that; he knew he hadn't been quite right even before Voldemort got hold of him. But not to trust what he said? He almost always spoke the truth (some form of it, anyway)… It was almost like they were calling him a liar… Like all of Hogwarts called him in his fifth year.
No, no, stop; he had to ignore that thought. These shinobi were different that the wizards back home… Now, what else did Jackal think? Harry stared more intensely, and saw: The ANBU was supposed to listen to what Harry had to say, listen and remember his exact words, even if he wasn't supposed to take anything said at face value. He had to play along, but ignore the implications. Even if the last thing Harry said to him sounded ominously like the boy was warning him of an attack…
Harry slid down the wall until he was seated, legs drawn to his chest and arms wrapped around them. "Even if you don't believe me, I still don't think you should be blamed when it happens…"
Jackal might have sighed, but he still crouched down across from Harry and asked. "What do you think will happen, Harry?"
Harry blinked and waved a hand negligently, feeling oddly off-kilter. "You would know already if you looked. Inoichi told me of my unfortunate resemblance to your Orochimaru, and how he has infiltrated your Exam." He dropped his head to one side. "Someone is likely to come after me for that resemblance, whether it be to capture or kill, and I will inevitably flee…" Harry trailed off, voice distant and thoughtful. Huh. He hadn't even realized just how likely that was until he spoke it aloud.
(It was one thing he'd had to work hard to train himself out of, and he'd regressed back to old habits… Flight had always been his first reflex, not fight.)
Jackal, noticing Harry's waning interest in their 'conversation' –which was actually quite close to the casual interrogations Inoichi held– had many questions running though his head, trying to choose the most vital thing for Harry to answer. "Who do you think will come after you?; Do you not believe I could stop anyone who would come after you? I did stop Mitarashi Anko.; You would flee at the first opportunity, the first sign of danger? Doing so would break your agreement with the Hokage…; (What kind of life have you lived, that you're so resigned?)"
"Where would you flee to?" The ninja kept his voice soft, but hidden eyes bore unerringly into Harry's own. A sharp pain spread viciously behind his eyes, like hot lead seeping into his brain.
Harry groaned and looked away, breaking eye contact and shaking his head. He pushed himself away from the man, further down the wall, back towards the (safe) corner. "So many questions," he muttered, pressing his palms over cloth-covered eyes. "So many questions. Where will I go — Where do I want to go?" Harry moved further from the man yet. "Where do I want to go, Jackal? Wherewherewhere…"
It took more focus than it should have to disconnect himself from his watcher's mind. (Why could he still see the thoughts when he'd already looked away..!) He caught the man's understanding –Harry wanted to go to the Forest of Death, he would run there, where he felt safe– before he could completely sever the strand of magic. A piece of knowledge that he identified as Voldemort's –because he knew, his 'newfound skill' in Legilimency was really a carryover of an oft-used talent of the Dark Lord's, imprinted into the magic he possessed– let him understand that it put a terrible strain on his mind to read the thoughts of another without actually seeing their eyes. He had to avoid reading the minds of his ANBU guards, because right now his body could not cope with the strain.
"What's wrong, Harry?" Harry could sense the man had stood, was moving through the fringes of his personal space.
"Shut up, shutupshutup…" He buried his face in his knees and, before he could consciously realize it, had already retreated deep into his mind—
Dark. It was dark, but a warm dark –peaceful. Harry liked it here. It was… familiar. The air was heavy and rich, smelling of soil and decaying leaves, and snakes…
Yellow eyes shot open and Harry stared around wildly, seeing only the thick, miasmic swirls of magic that he knew protected the core of his mind. He was again without his blindfold, and wearing the wispy black robe he'd donned when Inoichi invaded his mindscape that first time.
"How the hell did I get here…" he murmured, confused that he didn't sense the intrusion of another mind. Neither he, or Voldemort, ever had the ability to enter the visible mindscape, even if Voldemort did know how to shield his from invasion. To get here without even meaning to –not even knowing how he had– and also without some other mind-reader messing with him was frankly perplexing as hell.
He glanced around guardedly, somewhat daunted by the serene stillness. There, in the near distance and blocked by waves of thick yellow mist, was the silhouette of an immense serpent –so large, a much bigger form with the same shape– that looked at him placidly with his own eyes. Still safe; still protected.
"Lord Harry," a voice whispered. Harry collapsed to his knees in shock as a fiery red-orange serpent seemed to ooze out of the abyssal blackness that made up the ground, exuding a glowing aura of warm colors. Lustrous orange eyes –pupils no longer round, but instead slit like his own– shone with a new, hidden power as the serpent moved closer, rearing up to bring its face closer to his. "Why haven't you called me out yet? You needed me…" The serpent's voice carried an indecipherable note… something close to grief.
It took more than a few seconds for Harry to find his voice, weak when it emerged. "Pretty one," he breathed, eyes wide, disbelieving. "My Fire Scales. How are you here? I thought I remembered you here before, but the meddler made me hurt so much I couldn't trust it was true…" Trembling, near-skeletal fingers delicately trailed over warm, smooth scales. The serpent hissed in pleasure, arching into his touch like a cat, and Harry finally gave in to the urge to lift his companion to his chest.
Harry shivered as the serpent's angular head rubbed against his throat in an affectionate –nearly intimate– gesture. "You wanted me to stay, and I didn't want to leave. Your power is keeping my spirit attached to you, Lord Harry, so you would not have to be alone." Harry felt its tongue flicker across his skin. "Your power has kept me here, waiting, until you call me out."
A grin tugged at pale lips, and Harry bent to kiss the serpent's head in a strangely familiar motion –(Voldemort would sometimes do the same to his companion, Nagini)– before he stood. Fire Scales moved onto his shoulders smoothly, as if they had never been apart at all. As the last of the silent grief that had weighed on him so long finally lifted, Harry sighed, deeply content.
Ophidian eyes glanced around again, less alarmed, but were unable to see anything but the thick, toxic yellow miasma. "I should take a look around, before I try to leave." Harry murmured. "Will you come with me, Pretty One?"
"Always and forever, Lord Harry," The serpent assured him fervently, without hesitation. Harry nodded and pet his companion as he started off, out of his sheltered center. He was relieved to note that it was still apparently unharmed by the escaped memories, exactly as he remembered it.
One less thing to worry about.
When the miasma thinned and everything grew cold, Harry took comfort in the fiery warmth of the serpent around his shoulders. A wound opened on his forehead, hot blood streaming into his eye, burning. He traced it with a fingertip and was somehow unsurprised at the familiar lightning bolt resting there: The physical mark was gone, but it was still a part of him, a scar that would brand him forever. His companion became distressed, but Harry kept walking, hissing nonsense to distract the both of them from the increasingly malevolent feeling saturating the very air.
Icy, thick liquid oozed out of the soft ground, squelching like fresh mud with every step. Wounds continued to open over his body as the last of the yellow mist drifted away; the smell of decay was almost overpowering, and Harry thought it might have become worse since his last visit. The contrast between the searing heat of his blood and the arctic chill of his mind left him ill and shaky, stumbling blindly over the ambiguous 'ground'.
Overwhelming, absolute darkness fell –the abyssal blackness of the ground spread– and the familiar ache in his chest flared so violently that Harry was left momentarily breathless. He gasped in the frozen, humid air and almost choked on the sickly smell of rot, but kept forward. The painful, shallow furrows in the ground were expected –Harry remembered them vividly– but expecting them didn't make stumbling over them any less agonizing.
He couldn't stop, not yet. He needed to know how bad the damage had been, had become. Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop…
Harry fell to his side and wailed pitifully as he slipped into a knee-deep furrow, one much deeper than he could recall at this part of his mind. He lay panting, blind, the cold oozing blood soaking into his tattered robe and open wounds for a long time before he could rally the strength to stand. Fire Scales was strangely silent, triangular head pressed snugly to the pulse-point on Harry's thin neck, coils gripping tightly. The pain –both internal and external– kept him in place, shaking, for a while longer before he could attempt to move forward once more.
He could finally see. The sight hurt him still, but this time he saw something strangely beautiful about the shape the surface of his mind took. The ground, the sky, were all the deepest of black, yet in some way it wasn't blinding darkness. It was definite. He got the impression that the light cast was red, but it somehow didn't affect the vivid, nearly neon colors existing against the blackness. The frozen, Avada-green lightning that cut across the sky was unchanged, as were the deep, green-glowing craters carved into the ground. The rancid smelling blood slowly filling the craters was perhaps a bit darker; less crimson, more burgundy.
Things had changed, though.
The impressive gouges torn into the ground, ones he knew to be impossibly deep, were now filled with violently roiling crimson smoke. It would lap at the edges of the fissures, boiling like water, and splash onto the blackness, bleeding across the ground like a live thing. A kind of red, smoky haze surrounded the fissures; Harry got the impression that it was spreading. (Like an infection eating away the flesh until all that remained was the bone…)
He vividly recalled the crimson smoke that had flowed from the shadowy mass Inoichi broke. This was where the bad memories had taken root. (So near the surface, so near his thoughts, but at least they hadn't contaminated his core.)
Harry turned and looked back; in the very far distance –beyond an ocean of blackness– he could barely distinguish a small blotch of toxic yellow. The sight felt of bad news: Such a small, undamaged oasis amongst all this ravaged wasteland…
"My mind has become worse," Harry lamented, wiping blood out of lethal yellow eyes. "I do not believe I can fix this." It was unlikely a bloody Mind Healer could fix this, even if he had access to one. If he would have ever let one see this at all.
"Did the hunters do this to you?" The voice was airy with shocked disbelief, incandescent orange eyes taking in the ravaging scars around them. Harry trailed his hand down the slender body in a calming motion, one that felt like habit more than anything else.
"No, I am sure it was bad before I had even met you." He stated mildly, raking over the sight around him, pressing it to memory. "One did make it worse, however. You have not met him yet." Harry wiped yet more blood out of his eyes, ignoring the sting of the open, agitated wounds. (The more he bled the less he felt the cold… but was it just a remnant from his cell, or was his blood actually helping?)
"Will you let me bite him, Lord Harry?" Pretty hissed violently, dragging a tired chuckle out of him. Still so loyal…
"Maybe. I need to bring you back to the realm of the physical, first. I don't know if you will even have a corporeal body…" Harry sighed, rubbing at the persistent ache in his chest. "I need to leave here, Pretty. This pain is becoming quite bad."
His companion responded by looping itself around his throat and tightening the coils in a gentle hug. Harry smiled again, blood from innumerable wounds coloring his face crimson, and let himself go—
With a great lurch and quick gasp of air, Harry sat bolt upright, and found himself momentarily confused. He was on a small, hard bed, in a little room with no windows – the single light had been blown out and glass was scattered over the floor. A streak of white light cut brightly across the floor from the crack under the single door.
The tiny room was saturated in his magical energy; he discovered mostly privacy wards erected, specifically to divert attention away from the room. Harry also found something most humorous: Jackal ANBU was stuck to the back wall, silenced and bound by thick, conjured ropes from shoulder to ankle.
Harry giggled; Jackal thrashed his head back and forth –his chakra flared, but the magic ropes absorbed it before it could move outside his body. Harry giggled again, a bit more darkly, and the ninja stilled, going limp within his bonds.
"What is funny, Lord Harry?" Pretty's voice sounded unexpectedly. Harry glanced at his lap and saw his companion curled there, though the serpent appeared to be nothing more than an afterimage. A phantom.
"The human over there," Harry hissed distractedly, a furrow forming between his brows. He was surprised at the feel of smooth scales under his fingers, when it looked like his hand should have passed through the spirit. "He struggles uselessly against his bonds. I wonder if he brought me to this room when I fell into my mind…"
"The hunter reeks of fear," the phantom stated, red, forked tongue lingering outside its mouth. Harry directed his companion onto his arm –oddly, he could feel the pressure of the sinuous body gripping his forearm, but no weight– and stood, vanishing the broken glass from the ground with a negligent gesture.
"So he does," Harry concurred, slipping back into a language the shinobi could understand. "Does Jackal want to tell me what he fears?" he queried lightly, removing the spell of silence that held the man's tongue.
Jackal remained stubbornly silent until Harry frowned and cast a compulsion –'answer me'– over him. "Y-you we-re d…de-aad…" the ANBU slurred and stuttered his words; signs of his strong attempt to fight the compulsion. It seemed… as if his guard possessed a strong will, after all. It was impressive he could fight as much as he did without magic to back it up.
"Was I?" Harry breathed as the words sunk in, checking his chaotically swirling magic for proof of the claim. A half-thought diagnostic spell insisted that for a span of seven hours… his heart had stopped. Only his magic had circulated his blood and moved his lungs until it had started beating again. "My, my…"
It seemed his magic was no longer quite so occupied with whatev— no, he knew what it had been occupied with now. His magic wasn't so resolutely focused on merging his and Voldemort's souls anymore, so it had started acting even without his conscious control… Which was a good thing, else he would have actually died when his heart stopped, and Jackal would have escaped the room and told instead of being detained.
(What kind of Dark Lord would he be… if he couldn't cheat death…)
Harry refocused on the ANBU, still bound and motionless against the wall. "You know," he smiled, deliriously gleeful at how there his magic was. "It will cause me no end of trouble if you told anyone about all this." He licked his dry lips and took a step closer, feeling acutely the agitated way Jackal's chakra moved.
"You are going to kill me." His guard had lost all of his casual, lazy aloofness, warped voice back to a sure monotone.
Harry snorted. "No! No," He shook his hand free of the confines of the voluminous sleeve, reaching up to touch the smooth mask with light fingertips. "That would be rather counterproductive to a peaceful stay. You don't have to worry, Jackal, you will live. I like you, after all." Harry removed the man's mask, contemplating the snarling visage for a long moment before turning to study Jackal's revealed face.
Harry thought it was an odd thing to notice, but the man was actually somewhat attractive – very nearly pretty. And quite young. In his late teens, skin healthily tanned –he must not have worn his mask all the time; must have a life outside his duties as ANBU– with nearly auburn hair and pale green eyes… His coloring was quite striking. At the moment, though, to look upon his face was disquieting; it was as blank of emotion as the vulpine mask that Harry had just taken from him.
Harry quirked a smile, watching inscrutable jade eyes track his free hand as it rose, coming closer, only to still just a hair from touching newly exposed skin. It was amusing, because Jackal was watching Harry's long, spidery fingers instead of the translucent serpent coiled around his forearm, watching predatorily.
Apparently, the ninja was unable to see Pretty.
Jackal twitched when Harry's fingers made contact: Harry dropped the mask and held the man's head firmly in place between his palms, –momentarily chagrined at his lost height (because, though Harry had never grown very tall, he'd still lost height with his change… and Voldemort had always been tall, original body and other)– readying himself, calming and softening his magic so he could be careful. He breathed in through his teeth as he pushed and smoothed, and muttered aloud to the room to remind himself. "This doesn't have to hurt, don't fight, don't push… I won't make it hurt, I just need to know…
"Look at me," he compelled, voice laced with an order as green eyes turned away, tried to close. "Legilimens!"
The mission, in and of itself, was a stark contradiction. Assigned permanently to five members of the ANBU Black Ops and a semi-retired shinobi of the Torture and Interrogation department: An A-rank, off the books, babysitting mission. The Hokage had practically said as much… maybe just a bit more officially.
It wasn't until he started hearing Sparrow's reports on the Orochimaru-kid –they were encouraged to trade observations to flesh out Yamanaka's overall report– that he started to really understand the need for such an odd mission. For some ungodly reason, the boy –Hari, he'd told them, and what a name it was…– had taken a shine to Sparrow and did more than sit silently in his room when it was the older man's turn to take watch. He did things that the Interrogation Specialist warned them of, things that reflected the torture he suffered, but also things that hinted at the …unnatural.
It started taking its toll on Sparrow, and even Owl (and wasn't it damned strange to see the woman without her mask, but after working S-rank missions together it was hard not to recognize her) expressed unease with the strange boy. She confessed that his chakra –untrained like a civilian's, but bizarrely elusive to detect– had an alien feel that put her on edge. "Inhuman." She said.
When Hokage-sama told them that the boy had to be in the Tower during the second stage of the ongoing Chuunin exams, it was decided that he was the most well-equipped of the team to take Hari (being as proficient with Genjutsu as he was, even if he lacked the experience the older ANBU had). It was only then that he was give access to the only written compilation of the team's reports to prepare. It was… enlightening.
The first part of the report was strictly about the boy's physical health, and it was lengthy with observations. He could be twelve, but not much older (he hadn't yet entered puberty, apparently) and was about average height for that age, though he was severely underweight. He weighed 62 pounds, exactly, and hadn't gained or lost an ounce in the entire six weeks; he should have been dying, but while he wasn't thriving, he also wasn't getting any worse…
(They'd found pictures from Orochimaru's youth. It seemed that beyond the obvious similarities in coloring, Hari shared the same, delicately sharp facial structure as well…)
Supposition noted extensive serpentine features: Sharp, fanglike teeth, a forked black tongue (that he did use to taste the air, just like a snake; it gave him chills just thinking about it), and a neat line of thick scales down his spine. Theories on those features included much of everything. Orochimaru manipulating his own genetic material with that of a snakes'; someone else doing the same; a lost member of the Snake Sannin's dead family; Hari not being related to Orochimaru at all, but the spawn of some lesser Snake demon (the most horrifying though; if he was both Orochimaru's progeny and part demon)… The demon angle was helped along by the unbelievable revelation that somehow his body broke down every scrap of food into some useable energy.
The report noted, almost as an afterthought, the numerous scars that littered his body, old and new. The boy wasn't forthcoming about his scars most of the time, but the majority were obvious enough. Hari only got particularly defensive about one of them, a thick scar that ran across his back from shoulder to hip. When Yamanaka had asked, the boy snarled about the poor aim of his 'allies'.
He didn't care about who the boy's father might have been; when Owl had finally been able to do a proper physical exam, and discovered the full extent of his scarring… No one could blame him for his readily apparent near-phobia of touch.
After that came an in-depth analysis of his psychological health, and a profile made through use of Yamanaka Inoichi's extensive knowledge of the Mind. It was considerably longer.
According to the Yamanaka, the damage to the pale boy's mind was far more extensive than anything done to his body. The physical manifestation of his mind was dark and scarred, bleeding and horrible. The pervasive smell of rot and decay hinted that at least some of the significant damage was old and festering, left untreated. Even the representation of his consciousness –the avatar of his body within his mind– was hurt just by being there.
The Interrogator confessed a fear that he had only made the psychic damage worse by dragging the boy's consciousness into his physical mind. Let alone releasing repressed memories of torture. He still couldn't understand how the boy could think, let alone interact with them on the level that he did.
Most of the 'behaviors' listed in the report came from Sparrow and Yamanaka, though it was Sparrow who found many of Hari's quirks – the little fits of obvious insanity that Yamanaka expected. It was beginning to take its toll on the thirty-something man; this was his last mission as ANBU after nearly ten years of service in the Black Ops, and he was edgy. It was hard not to be, when the ophidian boy had a potent enough gaze to be felt through his blindfold –(and more than once, when they spoke of it, the speculation of demon blood and a new doujutsu came up; how this boy could be the start of a new bloodlimit)– and sometimes enjoyed sly psychological warfare in the hallway.
The worst part was, that most of the time Hari didn't seem to realize what he was doing…
The list of things that qualified as 'consequences of psychological damage' was extensive. The 'tame' quirks included long hours –sometimes days– of total immobility and silence, coupled with the penchant for covering his window and sitting in the dark. He was hyperaware of people at those times, and would rather place his back to a corner –foiling any 'escape' routes– than have someone stand behind him. He enunciated his words slowly, a strange sibilant hiss in his voice, and sometimes didn't seem to understand what was said to him… most often after one of his 'fits', when he would take to covering his head and sitting in the corner. He never acknowledged social niceties in regards to one's name, and had apparently been amused by early insistences for him to do so.
The boy's screaming nightmares were expected; for lack of any other place to qualify them, they were placed in that section.
The rest of his habits had to be made note of, if only to be thorough. They ranged from 'odd' to 'potentially dangerous'. His insistence on wearing an oversized, pullover robe that reeked of his own blood was something that would turn even some ninja's stomachs. Sparrow had witnessed, more than once, the boy talking to himself in another language; not just talking, but having a conversation. The boy's tone and posture, even inflection, would changed from one sentence to the next. When told, Yamanaka wrote the cautious suspicion of a split personality: One, the lackadaisical, jaded, resigned boy and the other a sharp, fierce, offensive authority.
All those things, however, could be found in most any study of prolonged, dehumanizing torture. No, he now realized the reason the damaged, weak boy needed to be watched by a contingent of ANBU, locked in the Ward reserved for dangerous, off-the-books prisoners. One completely independent from his frightful resemblance to one of their most well-known traitors.
Hari possessed a power they had never seen before; unnatural and potentially deadly if only for the lack of information they had on it. There was terrible potential, for all that they'd only seen it once.
He could still remember carrying the filthy, bony intruder from the Tower so long ago – could remember being stunned when Yamanaka's family jutsu suddenly ended, leaving the blond dazed and guilty. He had been there, when the boy had disappeared from Interrogation's seals with only a crack of displaced air. The chakra seals on the chair the boy had disappeared from were still intact and functioning; his power was not chakra.
There were other things they couldn't prove, but suspected the power of anyway. The mirror Hari broke in the hospital, for example. There was nothing to suggest why it had broken; there was not point of impact, no blood on the shards. It was like it just… fell apart. But the boy had apologized for breaking it. Took responsibility for it. The way Owl's healing chakra worked at only twenty percent efficiency when it came in contact with the boy, as if were drained into an empty, yearning hole.
The only reason they hadn't been given the order to execute the boy because of that power was the wary hope that they could one day utilize it. That, and Hari had never shown any inclination to attack them with it, or use it at all. Never intentionally. He privately thought that the boy didn't have much control of his power at all, not after what he'd said to Yamanaka about his eyes.
(And though it wasn't in the report, not yet, Sparrow confided in him –as a friend more than a shinobi– that it sometimes felt like the boy would act in a certain way… Calm, when all his behavior before said he should have been on edge. Angry when he should have been calm. His bird-masked fellow said the boy knew too much; knew what someone would say before they actually did. A little like the Yamanaka clan could, when they became exceptionally proficient in their family jutsu... Like he could read their minds. But then he'd sighed and said that he was probably being too paranoid –his judgment clouded by Hari's resemblance to Orochimaru– and was ready for his retirement from ANBU, right after the Chuunin exams… That hospital guard duty was supposed to be a good way to ease out of the mindset…)
So this mission was necessary, quite possibly life-threatening. Not the first in his short tenure in the Black Ops, but one of the most interesting. At least the boy had only been passively, almost causally, threatening. Probably Orochimaru's son and possibly of demon heritage (as if Konoha didn't already have enough to deal with, with the Kyuubi sealed up inside the Uzumaki brat!); the mission no one but the Hokage would ever hold proof of, and most certainly a concern to the safety of Konoha… But…
As he watched the huddled form of the kid –face hidden against his knees and arms curled tightly, defensively, to his chest– he couldn't help but soften some. Hari could be dangerous, but then again anyone pushed far enough could be dangerous. This boy, no older that the average graduating genin, had been through more than most peacetime jounin would ever have to bear.
It heartened him to know Hari could still act like a normal enough boy most of the time, and when he did regress it was more likely to be a defensive reaction than a violent one. It meant there was less of a chance they would have to… eliminate the boy. And it may have been unprofessional, but he didn't want to have to kill the kid.
(It wasn't the boy's fault…)
He was only somewhat concerned at Hari's lack of response when one of the Tower chuunin came to let him know (covertly) that the boy's presence was not welcome in this room any longer. Concern turned to perplexity, then understanding when the boy wasn't roused by his voice, or a careful hand on the bony, covered shoulder: Forced unconscious after a breakdown for four days, and then suffering another breakdown… It would exhaust anyone.
So he gingerly carried Hari to one of the small, out of the way rooms, and was struck again by how light he was. How someone could live so long with their body in such a state… it just cemented the idea that the snakelike features meant more than a clan jutsu, meant something inhuman…
It bothered him less than it did the rest of the shinobi on this mission, if only because of the stories he was raised on. His grandparents had been a huge part of his childhood –telling him stories and legends that they heard in their youth. They had come to Konohagakure from the far western reaches of Wind Country, where the vast deserts clashed with the dangerous, uncharted wilderness. Where even the most skilled shinobi would still go missing.
Where the wild beasts were cunning enough to learn human speech and lure people to their deaths.
Where demons were said to lurk.
Even if they were only stories… it was easy to believe in such things, in his line of work. Some of the things he'd seen…
As he watched the pale boy –trembling but still unconscious on the bed– he thought that Hari probably knew the truth of his heritage; why else would he have so ferociously denied Owl from taking his blood for testing? But it was of no matter now, for she had drawn a sufficient sample during his four day 'coma'. They just had to wait for the odd energy to fade –the power interfered with their equipment, but every day the range decreased a bit more– and they could test Hari's relation to Orochimaru. And for anything else strange.
A low, keening wail filled the room; Hari twitched and shuddered on the bed, face nearly gray and jaw locked, obviously in agony. Before he could even make it across the room, the boy let out a strained gasp and all was still again. Much too still.
Without hesitation he reached out, pressing two fingers gently to the pulse point on the delicate looking neck (and he would have to go and alter the report; the scar across his throat was actually two, one at least a year older). He was unsurprised to find no pulse, though he cursed softly anyway. The Hokage wasn't going to take the news of the boy's death very well, not when everyone else thought it better for him to remain at the hospital still…
He jerked back in surprise when Hari drew in a slow, strained breath, then exhaled equally as slowly. He watched the barely visible rise and fall of his chest for a few seconds before reaching out again to check his pulse for irregularities – a heart didn't just stop for no reason.
He wrenched his hand back as if the ghastly white skin had burned him, though it may have been less unexpected if it had. The boy was breathing, slow and steady, but his heart wasn't beating; he was dead.
Though startled he fell back on his ingrained training, forming the seal to make a Shadow Clone –unwilling to leave Hari but in need of backup– but staying firmly at the boy's side.
(That was the mistake.)
The moment he began to mold his chakra he knew something was wrong; it felt like he was trapped in a chakra-draining jutsu, like little hungry mouths were ripping, tearing, devouring. His jutsu failed before his clone could even appear.
Not a moment later he was suddenly bound –shoulders to ankles, with barely enough slack to breathe let alone reach a weapon– and somehow attached to the wall he had been farthest from, a foot off the floor, and no clue how he got there. Shimmering lights overtook his vision; blues and purples and one angry red-orange, before they flickered and settled over the door, disappearing. He knew, without a doubt, that Hari had to be the cause.
Time passed, hours, but no one ever came to the room. It must have been because of whatever Hari did; the patrol was supposed to stop by every second hour. He tried to escape the mysterious ropes, but they were too strong to break with the little leverage he could find, too tight to allow him to reach any of his hidden blades, and his chakra was drained as fast as he could mold it…
He wasn't as fearful for his life as he could have been. Because when he thought about it, Hari had never tried to attack any of them before, however many times he could have with this strange power. Because Hari was tortured before, and must be hurt now, and was reacting on instinct against a perceived threat…
(But he wasn't awake. He was dead. How..?)
He hoped that was the case, anyway.
Doubt crept upon him as the hours crawled by. What if Hari was not only a demon, but akuma –evil– and this was all a long ruse, some game with malicious intent? If he was akuma, he had power enough and the cunning to strike a harsh blow against Konoha, even if he wasn't one of the great Tailed Beasts…
The sound of the room's only light bulb exploding drew his attention in time to see the boy jerk upright with a gasp, his thin, bony hands curled over his heart. It was only when he attempted to call the boy's name –being overridden by a quiet giggle of all things– that he realized his voice had been stolen. When he moved and flared his chakra –Hari had shown himself to be hyperaware of their chakra flares– he was rewarded with another, much more sinister laugh.
Against his will, something in that sound reached a deeper level of his psyche, and a wave of primal fear washed over him. His instinctual fear wasn't assuaged at all when the (undead) pale boy began to hiss. In that moment the angularity of his face, the smooth way he moved, the way his sharp teeth –fangs…– glinted in the light, the way his forked, black tongue casually flicked out to taste the air (how did something so aberrant look so natural?)… Every ophidian trait seemed that much more obvious.
When Hari spoke, casually demanding to know the source of his current fear –wrapping the demand in a polite, patronizing question the same way some interrogators did–, he couldn't help but be reluctantly impressed that no signs of his earlier breakdown were apparent. (That is, if he wasn't an evil demon and this wasn't a huge act. But then, kudos would have to be given for his acting; he might've made a good shinobi, with such skills in infiltration.)
A soft feeling washed over him, urging him to speak, to tell the truth. He tried hard to still his tongue –on principle– as another new facet of Hari's power was worked on him, but ultimately failed as the urging softness pulsed harder behind his eyes.
Even with the blindfold hiding Hari's eyes, it was surprisingly easy to read the boy's face, as he unwillingly stuttered out the demanded 'fear': 'Dying but not dead' was somehow easier to admit that 'something about you makes me want to run, and not stop'. Hari appeared to take the news in stride, though he expressed a certain wonderment that suggested he hadn't expected such news.
(It was good; it meant this wasn't a regular thing, a demon thing.)
Unsettlingly, he also appeared pleased, an inherently sinister expression flickering onto his face, but gone in a second.
His heart nearly stopped when Hari insinuated his death would keep him from telling anyone of the boy's powers. When the threat of death was casually waved off as 'counterproductive', though, he didn't find himself reassured, especially not with the statement it continued into.
(So, he would live, but after whatever the boy did would he want to?)
He wished he wasn't so curious about what the boy intended to do –if he would do something so blasé as trying to 'silence' him, or if there was yet another aspect of his power to be revealed– as his mask was removed and he felt unseen eyes studying his face. He couldn't begin to understand why the boy started smiling –a real smile, not that bitter, angry smirk he'd seen previously– at him, nor why sharp-nailed fingers were suddenly so close to his face.
Hari continued to smile up at him, forcefully tilting his head down with surprisingly strong hands, until he knew their gazes were locked. (Were the boy's covered eyes those of a serpent as well? A predatory, hypnotic gaze barely dampened by the dark blindfold he willingly donned?) Chill palms held him still while long fingers threaded his hair in an unsettlingly intimate gesture, and he only kept himself from jerking away when he heard light whispers of hissing speech, talking of pain and knowledge.
(No! Kami-sama, Sparrow was right!)
The soft pulsing behind his eyes urged him not to blink, and he felt something numb and slick squirming into his head—
Harry blinked and shook off the brief disorientation of leaving Jackal's mind, curiously observing the man's wide eyes and too-pale face. He was sure he hadn't hurt the ANBU, though… Ah. That's right. He'd grown so accustomed… He'd forgotten that most people back home viewed forced Legilimency as something akin to the rape of the mind; it was probably the same sort of personal invasion among the ninja…
He licked his lips and stepped back, removing his hands from Jackal's face, ignoring Pretty's curious hisses as he integrated the vast load of information he'd stolen. A long moment passed before he looked at the ANBU again, taking in the shell-shocked appearance –(…with only the faintest stirrings of guilt. He had been gentle! He'd let Jackal's thoughts and memories meander along their own path instead of forcing them!)– before he spoke.
"I told you, you would live." Harry said placidly, summoning the discarded mask to his hand. "The question is, what to do with you now?"
/-/-/-/-/
A/N: Everything looks a little different from someone else's perspective... Let this be a reminder to you that Harry is not omnipotent :3 Just keep in mind that the ninja don't know everything, either... Feel free to tell me what you liked and didn't about this chapter; I'm very much curious to what you think about it...
(Pretty returns! Bwahahaha!)