Carry Our Burdens.
Chapter Twenty-One.
Don't Send Her.
Edit: 06.10.11
[lyrics]
Naruto leaned against the wall around the corner from Mr. Weasley's room in St. Mungo's. He didn't look up from the ground, even when he felt the presence of the rest of his team gather around him. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he seemed to count every dot in the obnoxiously speckled tile. He knew that they were watching him silently, all of them with their eyes shadowed by the implications of what they knew he was about to tell him.
"I know that we have been watching Harry Potter closely before now but… I think it is vital that we keep a closer watch. There is just too much going on in his head that we do not understand. Why is he dreaming of being a snake? Why does he react like one occasionally? These are questions that we need answers to. I don't care how you get answers or who you question. We will take watching him in shifts, decide amongst yourselves who will go when. I shall take the first twelve hours."
"Fox, what do you think that he is so closely connected to snakes?" Hinata asked timidly as she poked her fingers together behind her back. She no longer dared letting her captain or her elder cousin see her do it. The action annoyed them both to a point where Neji had threatened to cut her fingers off.
Naruto looked up from the floor and met eyes with Hinata. He could see the worry that most Anbu would have hidden. She had kept the emotions that many of her rank would have long since cast away. It was one of the many things he loved about her. One of the things that made her unique.
"I don't know," he answered truthfully. "But I assume it must have something to do with Voldemort. From what I've heard and read of him, he seems to have a strange fascination with snakes. It reminds me of someone else I've heard of…" his voice trailed off and he fought to keep himself from looking at his long-term teammate Sasuke. He could practically feel the tension rolling off of the old Cell Seven in waves.
"We need to find out what is going on with Voldemort. Panda, that will be your job –"
"No."
The captain's eyes snapped to Neji as the usually stoic shinobi snapped out in the negative. None of the others looked at him except for Tenten, who gave him a sad smile that he frowned at. Blue met with furious lavender.
"Care to explain why you disagree with me, Dove?" Naruto asked in a deceptively calm voice that he had picked up from being around Tsunade for too long. Neji's face was a mask of indifference.
"I was under the impression that this would be a stealth mission and perhaps Mouse's abilities would be more useful in this situation," he said. The captain got the distinct impression that his team member was trying to cover up his protective blunder.
"Then why did you not say that instead of your interruptive 'no'?" Naruto asked as he chose to have fun and push Neji into a corner. It wasn't often that he got the opportunity to catch the Hyuuga being protective of his teammates.
"I thought that perhaps you would be too busy explaining the rest of your plan before the Weasleys come back from being locked away in their father's room."
"Regardless. Would have you reacted the same if I had said that it would be you going to spy on Voldemort?" He smirked slightly. "Or was it simply because I assigned a dangerous portion of the mission to Tenten-san?"
Neji glared at the ground and bit his lip. He didn't answer. He didn't have to. Everyone there knew precisely what he said. Tenten smiled just slightly although she was a little embarrassed by this. They didn't know whether to laugh or to stay silent. In indecision, they decided upon the latter, until Naruto spoke again.
"I've changed my mind. Dove and Panda will go infiltrate Voldemort's hide out together. But if one of you comes back without the other, consider your lives forfeit. You leave now, is that clear? I assume you are ready."
The two nodded and Tenten dropped her jutsu and sighed in relief as she fingered the knives hidden expertly about her form-hugging Anbu uniform. She pulled her mask over her face, hiding her concerned brown eyes. Seconds later she vanished. Viper, Slug, and Mouse trotted back to the Weasley's room where they stood a silent vigil.
Neji released his henge and tied his hair back in a ponytail at the base of his neck. He drew his mask in front of his blank look and for a moment but just as it covered his face, Naruto saw a tired expression flicker over his aristocratic features. Just before he vanished Naruto reached out and caught his arm. The older man turned to look at him.
"I wont say that emotions are bad but I will say that… you need to be careful how you show your relationship with Tenten. If anyone from the other side found out about it –"
"I understand," he answered simply. Naruto frowned but released him and the scout ran out so fast it looked like he had melted into thin air. He stared at the open door for a long time as the wind banged it on its hinges. He made no move to close it but wondered exactly what he had just sent the couple off to do.
Sasuke sighed heavily as he sat down in one of the many hard chairs that were scattered around the halls and the waiting room. Since Naruto had decided to take the first shift and Neji and Tenten were gone, it had been left up to them to decide who would go next. Sakura had volunteered even though they all knew that Naruto would probably try to watch over Harry unceasingly.
He ran a hand through his hair. Where it had once been black it was now white but the spikes fell limply in his face, over dark eyes that turned red with his bloodline. A nurse scurried by with an armload of herbs and neon bottles filled with unappetizing potions. A few more met her at the end of the hall and relieved her of her load. She ran past him again, doubtlessly to take more potions and plants to another part of the hospital.
He tipped his head back until it touched the hard brick wall behind him. He felt the coldness of it through his hair as it seeped into his skin like water. He had always liked the cold. It was perfect, biting, and clean. People had often told him that he was cold but he had always disagreed in his mind. He was no longer clean and he was far from perfect.
Fingertips brushed over his shoulder where his Anbu tattoo resided. He had been surprised when Tsunade had allowed him to become part of the elite, most trusted ninjas. He knew that there were many in the elders who had hated her for it, but they had also disagreed with her decision to name Naruto as her successor when she retired from Hokage. There were many things about the old Cell Seven that the elders didn't like. They had even been against Kakashi going back into Anbu, which had done anyway.
Pale fingers moved from his shoulder down his arm, tracing his muscles absently until he reached his forearm where they stopped. He rubbed his skin through his thin sleeve, remembering what he had been told was an option for him. To become a Death Eater, perfectly preposterous but he had thought about it anyway.
In the back of his mind he shouted at himself for being a stupid idiot. How could he do that to Sakura, to Naruto, to Kakashi? They all trusted him again and he had only recently begun to gain back the trust of those in the village. He had noticed how the Hyuuga and Tenten still watched his every step warily.
They were all teammates and had been together under Naruto for almost two years, long enough time for an Anbu to decided whether or not they would put their lives in their teammates hands. Hinata and Naruto were willing to give him a try and had soon come to trust him, Sakura had given him her unconditional love, but the elder two still didn't seem sure. It was almost as if they still expected him to take his katana to their backs when they were asleep.
He shook his head. If he followed Voldemort now they would never trust him again and, though he might deny it, their trust was something that he valued highly, something that he felt had to be gained. He might feel stronger than Neji but he still found him to be an equal, a peer that he wanted to have trust him with his life. And it seemed that what Neji decided, Tenten usually went along with.
But there were still the promises that they had made to him. He knew that Orochimaru was up to no good, he had seen it himself when he followed the snake in the first place. But… he was still sorely tempted by the power that they offered.
It was his one weakness that he could not shed when he became an Anbu.
They had been traveling around for hours, trying to find the chakra patterns that belonged to the Death Eaters and their snake-like master. But it still seemed that as soon as they would pick up on one it would vanish, as if they were playing hide and seek. Tenten grinned. She had always loved games.
She glanced over at Neji and realized that he was just staring straight at the trees, she couldn't see his eyes but she was sure they were glowing with the chakra of his bloodline limit. Perhaps it was a good thing Naruto had sent him along with her. He was very good for these kinds of games. She knelt on the ground and gently traced her fingers over the dirt. It had been disturbed not to long ago, and not by an animal. She and Neji had kept to the trees to avoid putting more tracks in the ground. She brought it to her mask and sniffed it curiously. She was no Inuzuka but she could tell when someone carried chakra by the smell they left behind.
Nodding happily, she crept a little further until she found another track, this one carrying the same chakra signature. She frowned when they vanished into thin air and looked up. She reached out into the air and felt nothing but the cool wind flitting over her fingers where the fingerless gloves cut off. She pulled a kunai from her belt.
All of the tracks had disappeared near here and she was sure that it had something to do with Voldemort. If only magic wasn't so hard to track. It was so much weaker than chakra and much more elusive. The wizards could not contain it or hide it but the magic itself seemed to take measures to remain hidden. She pushed her chakra into her kunai and watched it flare blue for a moment before returning to its normal polished grey. She stood back a few paces and hurled it into the air.
It slammed into the invisible force and created an explosive reaction. The kunai itself blew to pieces and she saw the transparent wall turn black for a moment around the edges of a nice sized hole before returning almost immediately to normal as it healed its burn wounds. She whirled around when she felt Neji's presence behind her.
"What did you do to it?" he asked her. She grinned at him and held up another knife.
"I think that I might know a way to get in," she half-sang. She wondered if he was smiling behind his mask too.
A minute later Tenten was standing next to her clone and Neji next to his. With a wave of their hands the Bushins slipped away into the trees and continued their scouting in placement of the real shinobi. Tenten touched the sealing on of her scrolls and released a mace and chain. She pumped it full of her chakra and held it back with one hand. Beside her, Neji henged into an almost comical rat form. The smaller the creature the better. She held her hand ready with half of the sign for henge. She cranked her arm back and let the mace and chain fly and change almost simultaneously into a mouse. They shot through the fire and the charred edges of the hole and found, as they almost expected, the hideout of Voldemort, hidden cleverly by magic.
They ducked into the bushes when several Death Eaters ran past to find where the explosion had come from. They could hear them from where they sat in the foliage as rodents.
"Do you think it was those shinobi we saw hanging around?"
"No, just checked. They're still out there."
"I guess they might have just hit it accidentally."
"Maybe."
"Nothing to worry about."
As they wandered away again Tenten changed into a graceful chestnut cat, seconds later Neji was a black feline. They slunk off into the castle-like structure that served to house the Dark Lord and his minions. It didn't take long to find their chakra and it too just a moment longer to realize who was with them.
"Orochimaru is here?" Tenten whispered hoarsely. She pressed herself into the shadows next to her teammate. She could feel him tense beside her, worried at what this could mean. She lashed her tail against her sides with agitation. This day just kept getting better and better, please note the sarcasm.
"We'll have to tell Naruto and leave the decision up to him. But for now, we have to focus on what he sent us out here to do." She glared at him as best she could with her marbled cat eyes. There were snakes everywhere that they had seen so far. But they still didn't explain how Harry became a snake in his vision.
"Do we send word now or later?" she asked. She unconsciously referred everything that they did to him. Ever since they were young and first put together with Lee and Gai-sensei, Neji had always been the leader, the strong one who knew exactly what to do and when to do it. Even Gai-sensei looked to him for direction at times, especially now that they were all higher rank than their teaching jounin.
"Later. For now we just need to find a place where we can return to our normal forms and create a plan." She grimaced.
"You always have to have a plan for everything, don't you?" she asked sarcastically. She got the feeling that he was glaring at her and smirked at him as best she could, made all the more infuriating by her fuzzy, cute kitty face. He just growled and stalked away. She darted after him. They would have to tell Naruto soon, before it was too late.
[Author's Note]
New chapter! Yes, that last line of chapter twenty was a hint at something that comes later! This chapter is more centered around what the Anbu are doing when the Weasleys are visiting their father in St. Mungo's. Some of what happens here is simultaneous with other stuff so it all just kind of overlaps. But anyways. We are going back to see our snake bastards!