Welcome back, everyone! First off, let me again thank everyone who favorites and follows this story! It means a whole lot to me! And a special shout out to those of you who commented! It really brightens my day to see everyone's thoughts on this work. It's been a really rough week, so you all are the ones who inspire me and make sure I keep writing and updating!
Second, this chapter is going to be dealing with some dark stuff yet again. Suicidal thoughts, mentions of self harm, and death. These are things that will very likely appear in later chapters as well. If anyone needs me to specifically mention in future chapters when these topics come up again, leave me a comment to let me know. If not, then I'll use this note to cover this chapter as well as all future ones.
Last, please keep America in your thoughts and prayers tonight. This election is a rough one and has a lot of people scared, myself included.
Please enjoy the chapter.
Hiroko was aware of voices, muffled and distant. Shapes and colors appeared before her, moving in and out of her line of sight, and then disappearing at the same time that the voices did. She breathed, in and out, careful and uncertain because every breath felt too heavy and hung in her lungs. They burned, like she was inhaling salt water, and she felt like she was weightless. She felt like she was drowning without dying.
It took her a long while to come to the realization that that was exactly what was happening.
She was floating in a test tube, suspended and helpless. It was nearly impossible to move, and she felt no hunger, no pain, no exhaustion or energy, not much of anything at all. It was like everything about her had been frozen. All she could do was float there, the gentle currents of the thick, goopy liquid making her hair sway and tangle around her. Sometimes, if she focused really hard, she could make her fingers curl and uncurl and her eyes slide to track the blurred shapes moving outside her pod.
As she adjusted to being surrounded by the luminescent blue liquid, the movements and sounds all around her began to make more sense. She could make out the words being spoken, distorted and echoing as they were. She could figure out what the blurred blobs and muted colors came together to create around her. She could see the identical pods beside her and across from her, holding more children within their murky depths.
She watched, only half aware, barely even a person anymore, as people crowded the pods around her. They took the children inside them away, one-by-one. Watching them disappear was the only way she knew that any time was passing at all. Slowly, the numbers dwindled down. She watched with bleary eyes as the people outside swarmed the tank across from her, taking the limp body of the child inside and carting it away. She felt strange pressure in the air around her as someone outside her pod yelled, and the liquid she resided in rippled with the force of it. In response, something inside of her seemed to awaken, to sing. It was a bone-deep surge of warmth, filling up her insides and rushing through her veins. The glass of her pod frosted over, but the strange thrumming inside her body kept her warm.
It wasn't long before she was the only one left. The pods around her were left empty, and she was left to float there, aware but not fully awake. The heat inside her veins continued to hum, and she was vaguely aware that that was perhaps the only thing keeping her alive. Looking at the empty vessels all around her, she felt an aching sorrow settle in her breast, but couldn't quite put her finger on why. When she tried to think on it, her mind shied away, and so instead she let herself drift along with the current.
The vibrations of the liquid were what brought her back to awareness, and the heady thrumming of a power that seemed to chafe against her own. She refocused herself, tried to pull the fragments of her personality back together into one being, and did her best to understand what was happening around her.
"It's a pity that there was only one survivor." A voice, rasping and soft, filtered through to her, surprisingly clear. The water caused it to echo and amplify, filling her senses. Her eyes rolled, trying to find the source of the voice.
"I have to wonder if it was just dumb luck, or if there's something special about her," a second voice interjected. "After all, her sister hasn't adapted to the introduced genes nearly as well."
A surge of confusion coursed through her, leaving her head aching and her thoughts muddled. Something heavy settled in her stomach. There were a million half-formed thoughts spinning through her mind, slow and disjointed. His words...what could they mean? Was her sister alright? What did he mean by saying that she was special; that she had adapted?
"Now Kabuto, you of all people should know that the intensity of the two experiments were very different," the first voice simpered, though it did not sound truly reproachful. Just vaguely amused. "After all, Hyoton is actually fairly common within members of the clan. Shikotsumyaku, however…" He trailed off, and the quiet noise of amusement he made echoed through the liquid. It raised goosebumps along her flesh and made the weight in her stomach turn into something yawning and dark with trepidation; a lizard-brain that somehow knew that the sound meant something bad. "—well, you saw how they treated the old woman. The ability is rare enough to be feared as much as it is revered, and it makes sense that it would be significantly harder to cultivate."
Kabuto hummed thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose that is true. It's remarkable, though, that out of dozens of subjects, only this one survived the treatments."
"True. It would seem that the others lacked a certain...shall we say, spark?" He sounded so casual, perhaps even amused, as though the deaths of multitudes of babies meant absolutely nothing to him. "They were able to develop the abilities and yet unable to survive the effects. It's such a shame."
Out of all of those children, she was the only survivor? Hiroko felt a chill climb her spine. Inside her, the heat seemed to flare in response, and the liquid surrounding her began to turn slowly to frozen slush. She didn't want that weight resting upon her shoulders. She didn't think she would be able to bear it. If she was the only one to survive, what would that mean for her? What did Orochimaru want from her, now that he knew his fucked up little experiments has worked on her?
"Oh my, it seems we've woken her up," the man hissed, and she could see his ghostly outline as he stepped closer to her pod. His lips were curled up into a sickening grin, the dark line of his mouth starkly visible against the frightening paleness of his face. Even through the blue slush that surrounded her, the gold of his eyes was still bright, flashing as he stepped into the glow that her pod emitted. He seemed otherworldly, something not quite human and all the more horrifying for it. If she could have, Hiroko would have run as far away from him as she possibly could. Instead, she was frozen by fear and weighted down by guilt and horror, stuck staring at his monstrous visage and unable to tear herself away or even retreat to the far side of the tank.
"I do wonder if there are any links to what happened with the reanimation jutsu," Kabuto said, still outside of her line of sight. "After all, you've tried twice more since then, and neither attempt has been successful, has it, Orochimaru-sama?"
His tone was mild, but she could hear the slightly mocking nature to it. Orochimaru's eyes narrowed, but he did not rise to the bait. Faintly, Hiroko wandered what exactly the silver haired boy could be trying to do by angering such a powerful man.
And, shit, wasn't that strange? She was internally debating on what thoughts could be running through two fictional characters' heads, when just two weeks ago, she hadn't so much as thought about Naruto since middle school. She felt like something inside of her was breaking. This was all so fucked up.
Laughter bubbled up in her chest, manifesting in a stream of bubbles escaping her mouth before the liquid rushed in, filling her throat.
The action made her laugh more, because she was effectively drowning, yet she somehow couldn't fucking die. Wasn't that irony? Ever since she had woken up here, she had been feeling the crush of her own overwhelming existence and she wasn't sure if she could handle it anymore. She wanted for it to all just stop. Wouldn't it be so much easier that way? The people here wouldn't be able to hurt her anymore, if she could just close her eyes, if she could just...stop.
It was the first time in a long time that she found herself thinking it might be better if she just didn't exist. After years of working and recovering and hanging onto her own sense of self by her fingertips, it was a couple of stupid anime villains who were only steps away from dragging her back into that dark and empty place. The absurdity, the irony, the absolute and total unfairness of it all was enough to send her further into hysterics.
She could feel their eyes on her as she convulsed, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of toxic blue liquid, feeling it burning her eyes and throat and filling her lungs and belly. She knew what it felt like to drown, had almost died of it once (she had almost died a lot of ways, once) and this feeling was so close to how it had been then. But her mind refused to shut itself down, the darkness didn't swallow her, and she couldn't find any peace from the fever dream that her life had begun to become.
The ice continued to form, sharp edges brushing against her bare flesh, but she couldn't feel the sting of them over the heat that burned through her body. Distantly, she could hear raised voices over the crackling of the ice. A sharp cracking noise, rippling through what was left of the liquid in her pod. A crack appeared in the glass, sharp and jagged, and she focused on it and tried to force the ice there, to force the glass to further destabilize. Like a bottle of alcohol stuck in the freezer for far too long, the glass wasn't able to handle the rapid change in temperature or the increase in volume that it held.
Just a little more, just a little more pressure, and it would break and the jagged edges would be right there and she would be able to convince herself that she was alive, with blood all around and it would finally start to make sense again, and then—
And then a thick purple substance filtered into her pod, billowing around her like a cloud. The edges of her vision began to go black, pulling her down into the oblivion that she craved, but not how she wanted! She tried to scream, but her liquid-filled lungs couldn't produce a single sound.
She struggled against the darkness, head thrown back and mouth gaping, ice forming all around her and freezing the strands of her hair into violent, wild spikes. She heard Orochimaru's laughter, violent and full of triumph and a twisted sort of delight. Somehow, far away, she could swear that she heard the screaming of children. She wanted to scream with them, wanted to hear her own cries reverberate and resonate with theirs. She wanted them to know that she never wanted this and that she felt their pain. Maybe then, if they knew how sorry she was that she had survived, some of this guilt might be lifted from her shoulders.
She fell under to the sound of shattering glass.
Mayuri was whimpering, her voice long since lost to the screaming days before. Emi had done what she could to keep the child alive, making sure that the gaping wounds where the bones had punctured through her flesh wouldn't bleed out and trying her best to ensure that the shock and adrenaline that accompanied each break didn't end up killing her. Still, all the strain couldn't be good for a child. It wouldn't be good for anyone, if she was being honest with herself.
As the days passed and Mayuri showed no signs of improvement, Emi had worried. But Mayuri was the only one of the experimental group that was still alive, who hadn't bled out or whose body hadn't been consumed by bones growing too quickly, bursting through skin and organs and nervous systems. That had to mean something, didn't it? Out of all the subjects, surely this one had the best chance of survival, being directly related to one of the clan members in possession of the kekkei genkai. Emi wasn't sure if that was how it really worked or not, but she still did her best to cling to the hope that things would turn out alright for the little girl.
When she went to break the 27th bone, Mayuri's ankle tiny and fragile beneath her hands, she found herself pleasantly surprised. She squeezed, twisted, applied just the right amount of pressure and chakra, just like all the times before. Although the tender flesh bruised and bled beneath her hands, there was no telltale crack of a delicate bone snapping.
"Do you feel that, Mayuri-chan?" she asked, excitement coursing through her. Mayuri made no move to answer, just whimpered softly, glazed eyes rolling in their sockets. Emi turned away to make a few marks on the clipboard that was kept on the little table beside the cot. She was grinning, bright and happy. "This means that it's working! Just a little more, and soon, you'll—"
She heard Mayuri rasp out a soft, desperate, "No more!" before a now-familiar hair-raising sound stopped Emi dead in her tracks. She froze, eyes going wide, because she hadn't touched Mayuri! How were her bones breaking again? She was afraid to turn around, scared that she'd see the little girl skewered in the same horrifying manner as all the others, pierced through 206 times from the inside. After everything, when they were so goddamned close to a breakthrough, it wouldn't be fair….
With a deep, trembling breath, Emi turned to face the nightmare she was certain would be waiting to haunt her sleepless nights. When she saw Mayuri, whole and unbroken, sitting up on the cot and staring at her hands like she'd never seen them before, Emi's mouth dropped open in shock.
"Mayuri-chan, how did you...?" She shook her head, stepping forward. The little girl didn't move, still staring at her hands like they held answers to the mysteries of the universe. The places where the bones had pierced her skin were still bleeding sluggishly, the cuts that Emi had healed having been reopened when the bones had been pulled back into Mayuri's body. The binds that had been keeping her restrained to the cot looked like they had been shredded.
"What did I…how—?" the little girl breathed in her hoarse voice, her eyes slowly tracing the lines of her hands. She eyed the oozing wound where her ulna had broken three days back and then stared, fixated, at the fresh blood that streaked her arms and wrists in jagged lines.
"This is amazing!" Emi gasped, leaning down to get a closer look at the marks. Mayuri flinched back as her space was invaded, a whine escaping her lips.
"Pl-please don't! No more," she whimpered, eyes enormous and full of fear. Emi felt the guilt surge up again, stronger than before, because she had never wanted this little girl to fear her like this. She moved slowly closer, only centimeters away, preparing to scoop Mayuri up as soon as her fears were soothed.
(She had never wanted any of them to fear her. She had never wanted to hurt any of them.)
"Hey, it'll be alright," she said, reaching out. "I'll just go get Orochimaru-sama and Kabuto-san and then you can—"
Her fingers brushed over Mayuri's hand, gentle and caring. There was a sharp crack and Mayuri's eyes grew round, filled with tears, and she whimpered again. There was fresh blood, blooming like a flower upon her cheek.
Emi didn't notice, too enraptured by the foreign rib cage that had pushed its way into her chest. When Mayuri jolted backwards, trying to scramble away from the horror before her, Emi was dragged along, stuck on the 24 kunai-sharp bones invading her chest and curving around and between her own ribs.
She could feel her lungs begin to collapse, filling with blood. She choked, and could feel blood as it bubbled up her throat, which in turn began filling up her mouth. Mayuri threw herself backwards again, tumbling off the cot and hitting the floor with a thud. In the process, the curve of her ribs were pulled from Emi's, a few of them getting stuck on the way out and tearing the medic's own bones out of her torso. She was reminded, oddly, of flowers sprouting from the ground. Her chest was the dirt and her bones the beautiful red and white flowers.
She choked again, struggling to draw breath as her lungs began to fail her. Somewhere far away, she could hear the sound of a child screaming for help, voice barely a whisper after weeks of abuse. Mayuri was standing before her, towering over her, and that was funny, because Emi didn't remember lying down.
"Emi? This...this can't be real. You're alright," the girl was saying, hands fluttering uselessly, face full of horror and a morbid sort of fascination. Shock, her mind reminded, and she didn't even have the air left to snort out a laugh. Instead, she just coughed a little, and watched more blood bloom across Mayuri's face and neck. The little girl flinched back, and her babbling went on, trying to assure the dying medic that things were going to turn out okay.
"'Yuri...chan," Emi breathed, her voice barely a whisper. The little girl leaned closer, her loose hair tumbling over them both like a curtain and brushing the floor. The tips seemed to soak up the blood that was pooling around them, staining the whites of their clothes but not affecting the dark strands at all. She smiled. "Y-you...you're a flower," she said, and watched the way the girl's face crumpled. "Mayuri," she gasped, watching her hair soak up blood like roots did water. The red stood in such stark contrast against her grey pallor, against the paleness of her clothes. Her green eyes were bright again, glistening with horror and shock and unshed tears. They reminded her of leaves after a storm, back in her old home. Her smile grew. "L-look at you. You're a wh-whole goddamn garden."
She felt her heart slowing in her chest. She felt numb all over, and far too cold. She was always cold, here. That was one thing she missed about Waterfall—the warmth of the country.
She wondered if Orochimaru-sama would be proud of her, for being there when Mayuri's kekkei genkai was awakened. She was glad that the little girl would grow to become strong, and she was glad that her lord would be there to take care of her and would benefit in return.
She was glad—
