Chapter 21: Under the Influence
A week later, I had reached the border of Sound country and had been received by a veritable welcome party of guards that escorted us safely, (not that there was anything in Sound I didn't know 'Maro, Itachi, and Kisame could handle), to the village.
"Izanagi-hime, Orochimaru-sama has been expecting you," a servant said, bowing very low and looking nervous as all hell. I'd forgotten what Sound-Villagers were like, and how respected Orochimaru was. Feared, too, I supposed, but it was the painful adoration his people felt for them that caused this man to be such an anxious wreck in front of me.
"Please," he continued, glancing between my three-man entourage as if he couldn't decide whether or not he thought it suitable or appropriate or simply to be afraid of. "Orochimaru-sama had rooms prepared for your arrival. If you would come this way, princess…"
Well, I had to give it to the old Snake-Man. The rooms provided to me were impressive. Especially considering I was only going to be staying two nights. Itachi and Kisame each had a small room within my suite for their individual uses; Kimimaro technically had one too, but he opted to stay with me in mine, as he had the last time, as he did in Rain.
"Is it odd for you?" I blurted without thinking as 'Maro brushed my hair so that I would look presentable at dinner.
I hadn't ever even thought about how it would feel for him, being back here, with the man who tossed him to the side like he was nothing even when he would have died for him. I hadn't given it a thought the entire way here, and I felt so suddenly, terribly guilty.
He gathered my hair deftly, twisting it up into a simple bun. I could have done it myself, seeing as the even-more-simple-than-usual hairstyle was once my trademark, but he had been doing my hair since he swore to me, and I didn't want him to stop. Actually, I mused briefly, it still was my trademark, and I heard that it had really caught on in Rain…
"I don't understand what you mean," Kimimaro answered, and there was an underlying hesitance to his usual monotone that made me falter.
"Being back here?" I expanded, not daring to say anything else for fear of, I don't know, for fear of hurting him somehow.
His expression smoothed into some form of serenity. Stoic, emotionless serenity.
"I swore myself to you, Ikite. Anywhere you are is where I should be."
There was nothing I could say to that, but it bothered me well after he was done, when we were being seated at Orochimaru's table and supper commenced.
"Are your chambers to your liking, Princess?" Orochimaru asked slyly as he observed me taking a sip of the rice wine I was offered by a servant.
I answered his question with a charming grin.
"They are quite satisfactory, my lord." I teased. "Honestly, Lord Orochimaru, I thought that we'd agreed to be fellow intellectuals and throw formality out the window?"
He leaned back in his chair, clearly not offended, and the suddenly stiff servants around us relaxed. Slightly.
"Of course. In that case…I have a new book that I thought you might find interesting. If you recall, during your last visit I gave you The Wheel of the Reaper. You seemed most fascinated by mentions of the Nameless God, and I found a book that contained much historical fact of that pagan idolatry. I thought it might interest you."
The last words were said in a playful, knowing hiss and I smiled coyly at him.
"You know me too well, Orochimaru. What is it called?" I inquired nicely, itching to get my hands on the book already. I remembered The Wheel of the Reaper. It was a very old text about certain sealing techniques like the one the Third Hokage was supposed to have used against Orochimaru, and where, precisely, such techniques came from.
It wasn't limited to sealing techniques, though…There was a chapter dedicated to the Nameless God, who it was written was the giver of fearsome powers of blood and bone. It was interesting, and then Kimimaro swore to me, and I began to connect dots.
"It is called The Watcher of the Dark. It has many mentions of the Nameless God in it, and a god known as the Sentinel," he said quite conversationally, though his gold eyes were sharp on mine, cunning. "I had originally read it because of its mentions of immortality, though its claims were far-fetched and unworthy of further research."
My mind, which had been suddenly, viciously reminded of 'Maro's oath, strayed suddenly to thoughts of Hidan then, but I shook it off.
"I look forward to reading it. I admit that the culture and history of classes of jutsu are more fascinating to me than books about the complexities of the techniques themselves, but I suppose I'm biased since I could never execute such techniques."
It was because I had no chakra coils whatsoever, and I had no magical abilities to make up for it. I would never use jutsu, but I had my mind, and that was as deadly a weapon for a woman in my position to use as a kunai in the hands of a Kage.
"Kimimaro," Orochimaru called down the table to him, eyes flickering briefly to him in interest before returning to me and going on as if it had actually been the beginning of a sentence, "is here. I must admit…I'm rather curious."
It was going to be okay, I assured myself. 'Tachi was here. Kisame was here, ordered to protect me. I would never let anyone take 'Maro from me, and if I fought, they would protect me. I rationalized this as Orochimaru watched me, trying to remind myself that even here in the heart of his territory, I was not at a disadvantage.
"Of course he's here. He is such an excellent servant," I commented casually, fighting back the nausea I felt at my words, the nausea I always felt when I treated Kimimaro callously, as if he were nothing, simply to downplay how overwhelmingly important he was to me. "I couldn't bear to leave him behind."
"Of course," Orochimaru returned, just as sickeningly politely, and it took every ounce of will power I had not to look at 'Maro then.
When Orochimaru returned to eating, I did too, relieved. He wouldn't ask. He wouldn't ask how it was that Kimimaro, who had been dying of an incurable disease when he left, was well and whole before him. Oh, I'm sure he might have Kabuto try to figure it out, but considering that even Sasori, who Kabuto worked for, had not known of the jutsu…
Orochimaru couldn't know. He was brilliant and I knew it, and if he knew of this jutsu, he wouldn't stop at anything to get it, and I had little doubt that he wouldn't be able to alter it to suit his purposes. No, the plan needed us to have surprises in reserve, and this was a particular one that I believed Tobi would honestly kill me for giving away.
It hadn't been important, not at first. The idea of the caster having to give their life for the person they were resurrecting certainly put a damper on things, even with my solution of using White Zetsu. But it was amazing what a jutsu like that could become in the hands of a Jashinist.
Since Hidan was immortal, we decided to see if he could manage the jutsu without dying. He picked it up very quickly, surprisingly so, apparently because it was similar in a way to jutsu he used to sacrifice people. And then, not long after, it was revealed that he had not simply stopped at learning the jutsu. No, he had gone far, far further than that.
And it was because of this, because of his success, that I had to come to Sound. Orochimaru had the most extensive library on ancient jutsu and their origins in all the world. I had begun to piece together things that should not have fit, but they did, and I needed answers. The Sentinel of Night, the Kaguya Clan, their bloodline limit, Jashin, Hidan's immortality, the Nameless God, gifts of bone and blood.
If the pieces fit, they must be a part of the puzzle. I needed to find out, for my own sake as much as for the possibility of advancing the jutsu on our side. I had sworn myself to 'Maro under the Sentinel of Night, I was the puppet of Jashin. And there was something that connected them both, I knew it. What it was, I wasn't sure yet, but I had a feeling that learning more about the Nameless God would tell me.
"On a more worthy note, I trust our mutual friend got to you safely?" I asked, having noticed the glaring lack of brotherly feuding at the dinner table.
The sly grin that spread across Orochimaru's face told me all I needed to know before he opened his mouth to speak.
"Oh, there were a few minor obstructions on the road, but nothing unexpected. I've always thought that children were best when not seen or heard, don't you agree?" He simpered, his golden eyes flashing in warning.
I smiled.
"Having children underfoot can be quite the hindrance when adults are talking business," I commented offhandedly, raising my napkin to my mouth to hide the dawn of a grin. "So I suppose I must agree."
Sasuke had made it to Sound exactly the way he had in the books. Excellent. I had gone to all the trouble of having Itachi and Kisame sent to the Leaf Village so that Sasuke could have his little moment of realization that would end up pushing him to Orochimaru. And in our little secret chat, I had even gone to the trouble of emphasizing the fact that Orochimaru had fought and had only been beaten by Itachi because he didn't have the Sharingan. I was glad to hear that it had worked, and that the changes I'd enacted already hadn't yet too far overturned the main plot, as planned.
"I wasn't aware the adults were going to be talking business," Orochimaru commented, seemingly disinterestedly, though I knew him much, much better than that.
I lowered my sleeve and flashed him the most charming smile I could manage.
"When adults talk business and those talks result in great fruition, I would think them foolish not to take the time to talk again, don't you agree?"
His answering grin was that of the devil's, and nothing more needed to be said throughout the duration of the rest of the meal.
"You're playing a dangerous game, Ikite," Itachi warned me later that evening as I reclined on the admittedly enormous bed provided to me. (As I did quite regularly, I thanked all the gods in the universe that for all the Japanese culture around me, they had so-called "Western" beds).
"Your brother's here," I pointed out cheerfully, hoping to change the subject.
"I know," he replied curtly, turning to face me fully rather than continuing his rather disinterested perusal of the amenities provided to make my room more inviting and "befitting my station" as Kimimaro noted earlier, much to my amusement. "That, however, is not the point I was making, Ikite."
I fought the urge to pout. I promise, I really did. Didn't succeed, but…
"I know, I know, but I've been doing dangerous things for a long time now, 'Tachi, I can handle myself. Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?"
His answering look of calm disapproval told me precisely what he thought of that.
"You seek danger where you should avoid it. I understand why you sent Sasuke to him, but coming here yourself, even with me here, it was foolish. What is it you stand to gain by bantering at dinner and playing at friends with him?"
"Everything!" I answered vehemently, sitting up and setting my bare feet on the floor so that I could stand. When I did, I was in front of him in three short strides, taking him by the shoulders and looking him squarely in the eyes.
"Everything, 'Tachi. I have everything to gain here, and now that he's told me about that book…I had a reason for coming, and now I have every reason to stay. I need that man's library. So please, bear with it for now. Bear with me."
Whatever lay behind the inscrutable depths of his scarlet eyes was guarded too well for me to read, but he nodded, just once, and took his leave of me. And you know what? Standing there, surrounded by the lavender and white and grey opulence of my suite, standing there in silk that flowed like water over my suddenly slightly hunched body, with the weight of the ornaments in my hair substantial and pressing against my skull-
I had never felt more alone.
He hadn't left her unguarded when he left her, no, Kisame would watch over Ikite, and the devoted Kimimaro was never far, leaving her with Itachi more out of tact than trust. She was in safe enough hands, and though he had told her truthfully that he wanted to accompany her as a part of her guard for her safety, he had another reason to make the journey to Sound and risk meeting his brother prematurely.
Left, go left.
He didn't pause for a second when the thought came to him, he simply obeyed. Slipping unobtrusively past a pair of patrolmen of mediocre skill, he came to a study or office of sorts. Not Orochimaru's, of course, not nearly grand enough to belong to the Snake Sannin, but clearly belonging to a trusted subordinate of his.
Look, there. On the desk.
Without a sound, without so much as the sound of his foot meeting the tile floor, he was there, immediately finding what he was looking for, in form of a crumpled piece of paper. He read it, memorized it, but did not touch it, and having what he came for, turned to go.
Go back. Go back and say nothing. Do nothing. Go back to her.
Ikite did not need to know of his investigation into her kidnapping, nor of his suspicions. No one should, not her 'Maro, not Kisame, not Pein or Tobi. He would go back to her in his own time, once he had cooled the raw and terrible rage that his findings brought once again to the surface of his mind, so unlike him, so wrong.
Go back to her, and sleep.
I was awake when Kimimaro came back to the room, expressionless as always, though I detected a hint of a frown pulling at his mouth. He didn't say anything about it, so I didn't mention it, and when I decided it was time for me to go to bed, he helped me out of my kimono in silence. I couldn't bear it.
"'Maro," I called gingerly, so softly that it would take a ninja to hear me, even when he was standing on the other side of the folding screen as I stripped of my simple inner robe and pulled on an oversized t-shirt. "Did something-"
I stopped midway to asking him if something had happened and changed my mind. He would tell me, I knew he would. I had to believe he would, I had to believe he felt he could trust me with what was on his mind, had faith in me as a friend and love for me as a companion. He did. I knew he did. There was just…
"Is it just me, or is Itachi…different?"
There was something hanging over us all, and I knew deep in the pit of my stomach that it wasn't Orochimaru. It was something bigger, 'badder,' and it clung to us like a mist.
"I don't know the man as well as you do, Ikite. If anyone would have noticed, it would be you, or perhaps Kisame," he answered noncommittally as I stepped out from behind the divider. He turned his face away from me and I drew back a little.
"Have I…Have I done something, 'Maro?" I asked, the teensiest bit of the hurt I was feeling bleeding through my deliberately composed countenance.
"No."
It was a curt answer, and it would have served to silence me on the matter-as well as convincing me that I had hurt him somehow, were it not for the way he suddenly strode over to me, his eyes boring into mine. He was pale, pale as he had been when he was ill, and when he took hold of moth my wrists in a grip that ached, I only just managed to stifle an anxious gasp.
"You brought me back to you, Ikite. You brought me back to you, and you brought back something of the void with me."
His hands tightened even further around my wrists and he looked younger than I had ever seen him. It was so easy to forget that he was younger than me, even if it was only by a meager handful of years…It was so easy to forget that any of the shinobi I adored were so young. Just as easy as it was to forget that I wasn't old enough in years to feel so tired, so weary of the world and all its promises.
"I've been dreaming," he started, his voice hoarse and quiet. "Terrible things, strange visions in the dark and cold. I see the way I should have died, I see the demon come and court you with whispered promises, sinking its black talons into your back as it draws you in, I see the descent of my clan, rising, rising out of the ashes of endless burning fields. I see the devil sleeping, I see the devil wake. I see him come and every night he snatches you up and you too are clad in his red. You are the lady of the dawn, the empress of the moon, and…when you are at his side, the world is encompassed in rain."
He wasn't there. He wasn't there with me as he talked, he was living in his dreams, his nightmares, living them over again because even daylight wasn't enough to banish the black spirits that haunted him in sleep.
"I watch you die," he admitted quietly, "Every night. I watch you die, and I can do nothing. I watch those red eyes," he spat with very real hatred, "I look into the eyes of the person who kills you and I do nothing. Every night. I fail you every night. I see you standing there, calling my name, afraid, and I fail you."
He was so far away, so angry at himself and so distant from me, he was threatening to break my wrists.
"'Maro!"
He snapped out of it in an instant and let go, drawing back in self-loathing and staring at his hands as if they were stained with my blood.
"Tell me what else you see, 'Maro."
He came back to me only for a moment a flash of lucidity in the face of such intense recollection with regret and hope and love and fear and a thousand other things, then the memory of his visions consumed him again.
"Red. There's always red. So-much-red. It's everywhere. You die and the demon snatches you up. You sit at the window, looking out, and the ground is red. You cry. You die a thousand times. I see you screaming in a dark place, and the devil snatches you up in his embrace. It rains the world over, and then he raises you up and presents you with a throne. You wear his red, red that starts in a ribbon around your neck and runs down you and pools on the steps.
He takes you by the hand and raises you up to the level on which he stands, and your gown overflows, pouring down the steps in rivers into an ocean of fire and blood. The world is red, and the Sentinel walks the earth once more. The reach of his shadow extends to all corners of the earth and…and you go to sleep in a field of red flowers and never wake again."
The image he has painted sends a shiver down my spine. A field of red flowers, never waking. I try to laugh in some distant part of my mind…it was so Wizard of Oz. But I can't, because the image of my porcelain white skin, my face transfigured to that of an angel's in its serenity. Poppies, scarlet poppies, a tribute, a symbol of oblivion. Everywhere. I shudder-what sort of future would be the cause of this omen? What sort of future would relay that the only peace to be found is in that of death, in forgetting?
"I won't fail you, Ikite. I will do whatever I must." Kimimaro says quietly, as his eyes shutter closed and my glimpse of his vision shatters. "Bound by the hand of the shadow, by blood and by bone, bound and bound again."
He gently takes my hands in his and inspects what damage he might have done to my wrists. They are red, bruising. His ninja strength is too much for me, would be enough to effortlessly snap the bones of a civilian, even less someone like me, from another world.
"We are bound, you and I. All that you are is mine, and all that I am is yours. Your joy, your triumph, your sorrow, your defeat. Your pain is my own, your rage and your fear, your ambition and your courage. You are everything, now, everything in the world. I am the last son of the Kaguya clan. I have died and been brought back. I have seen the cold dark of the void, and it brought me visions of red eyes and death."
He looked at me as if he were trying to will me into believing him as he quietly said, "I can do nothing against a field of red, Ikite. I cannot fight your grave, only avenge you once you lay in it. But be it the masked man you fear or the devil himself, any red-eyed demon that tries to put you there will die on my blade, or I will await you in the shadow's embrace, and greet you there when you are called to the void."
His gaze bored into mine, willing me to understand what I couldn't yet, and a little of what I did. In his dreams, every night, I am killed. He will fight that. He will fight that to the death, because I am everything to him, the only thing. This, I understand. What I couldn't understand, not then, was how much his time in the void weighed on his mind, and how the ties between us pulled at his very being. What I couldn't understand was what he didn't tell me as he swore to keep me safe or die in the attempt. But that's a story for another day.
Under the Influence/End.