Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Bathing in Blood
11. Clutching at Trouble
The best and most noble
Of his counsel debated remedies, sat
In secret sessions, talking of terror
And wondering what the bravest of warriors could do.
-Beowulf
The raven-haired boy looked at the crowd in silence. The silence of agoraphobia and utter fear, silence misinterpreted by the masses as aloofness and lone-wolf-ism. Silence often misinterpreted by oneself, as well.
Don't you worry, Sasuke, you aren't scared. Trust me, you aren't scared...
Still, Sasuke hung by the door. Why should he leave his stronghold of safety, when there were so many eyes out there? He watched Naruto follow the pink-haired girl through the ocean he refused to enter, sitting at one of the scarred benches. This was nothing but a classroom! Nothing but a classroom! Nothing but a stupid, genin-level classroom! Did they not think he was good enough for chuunin standards!
The Uchiha lapsed abruptly from an epidemic of anger to one of third-person musings. Because it appeared that Naruto could see the ghost, too. Because he was making a damn fool of himself, following her...no, it... around.
And Sasuke just couldn't do things like that. He had so much more class.
So he edged, scared in a bite-me way, slowly around the perimeter of the room and away from the door. Deliberately moving towards the hated, much-abused seats, scanning the surroundings with comical caution.
Like a cornered tiger.
Looking scariest when he's trapped.
And then, out of the corner of a bloodshot eye, he noticed his salvation. A way to blend with the rest of the ninja without arousing unneeded suspicion.
A silver-haired teenager wearing a Konoha headband was kneeling on the tiled floor, flanked by eager genin. He held a neat pile of blue-black cards in one gloved hand, with the word 'shinobi' written on their backs in impeccable calligraphy. And he was talking. Talking all the while.
"The name's Kabuto. Like I said, I just wanna give you kids a heads-up...You're rookies, all of you—think you know everything. I remember how it felt. Heck, if anyone would know, I would. This is my seventh time applying for Chuunin." He spoke fast yet slow, his tone shaped into a lazy, premeditated drawl. "The least I can do for you is provide some intelligence on what you're getting yourselves into."
With the skill of a practiced salesman, he used the gap in his pitch to flourish the handful of cards in a fan. 'Shinobi' overlapping 'shinobi' overlapping 'shinobi', over and over again. The others gave a unified exclamation of awe, gazing upon the artfully-displayed goods with admiration.
"These are shinobi skill cards. They contain information about the skills that we use, burned into regular paper using chakra. I've got almost two hundred total—took me four years to collect all the data for this exam. They look blank, of course, but that's because there's only one way you can read 'em." Kabuto slapped the top card onto the scuffed linoleum, hunching over it and flicking quickly through a set of simple hand-seals. His audience leaned in closer, watching the white surface of their attention's focus crowd suddenly with a jumble of lines. The scribbles hurriedly rearranged themselves into familiar shapes—a map of the ninja nations.
Sasuke's eyes widened and he took a step forward, shivering with sheer excitement. Whatever was going on, the voice didn't like it. But rebellion coursed through his veins, if only for a little while, and he knew that the voice would never leave him. He took another step.
"This shows the number of applicants that each nation is sending to the Chuunins," the silver-haired teen explained smoothly. The observers held their breath. Look at them. They're just eating it up. LOOK at them!
"Do you by any chance have dossier cards? Cards for every individual applicant?"
Heads turned in the direction of the inquirer, who had gone unnoticed until then. Eyes took in the image of a handsome, dark, raven-haired boy with a posture radiating ice-cold confidence. A girl squealed; another blushed and gave a shy smile. Boys grumbled or wallowed in the rapid deluge of jealousy and inferior feelings. Kabuto snorted.
"Funny you should ask...Why? Is there someone you got a particular interest in?" He paused to smirk, then resumed speaking. "Yeah, I've got a set of dossiers for the current applicants, including your team. You're in Cell Seven, aren't you? Anyways, tell me what data you have on this person, and I'll be happy to look him up and let you know what facts I've got."
Don't do it you already know the truth don't you dare ask that question don't you—The voice was tense, hurried, harried, repeating the warning like a broken record. And he didn't really want to ask anymore.
But words, even unwanted ones, have a way of scaling the most well-guarded walls, at the most inconvenient of times.
"Haruno Sakura from Konoha." His tone was clear and strong; too clear and too strong. Strength for all to see, concealing the rotten core.
"You know the name? That makes my job simpler." Flipping leisurely through the deck with a card-shark's swift fingers, Kabuto plucked one dark rectangle of paperboard and performed the hand-seal. He took a moment to check it over, pupils dilating imperceptibly behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
"Odd...That he would choose to look up someone from his own team...and such a weak member, too..."
But there are other words and thoughts that remain dutifully imprisoned, and the silver-haired self-proclaimed genin handed over the information without comment.
The pounding of the voice in his head increased as the Uchiha ran a finger over raised lettering.
'Shinobi'.
Turning the dossier over with outer nonchalance, paying no mind to his own inward protests, he skimmed the paragraph and diagrams below it. Sasuke pointedly ignored the picture in the right-hand corner, in which green eyes stared with all-too-real realness. A leer pasted haphazardly across his countenance, he handed the card back and thanklessly retreated to a corner of anonymity. Relief flooded through him as he recited the facts in the unexpected emptiness of his mind.
"Proficient in genjutsu, poor in jutsu, low stamina and lower chakra." Reassuring systematic syllables that lined up in the straightest rows he'd seen. She was dead anyway; the voice had burned that undeniable fact into what had been his brain long ago. But maybe they weren't aware of that. They didn't need to know.
It was fine by him if they kept deluding themselves like this, thinking that the specter they saw was a living, breathing human being. She was weak either way. She didn't matter, in life or in death.
A sophisticated excuse for a brawl broke out between Kabuto and an unfamiliar team of genin. Sasuke leaned back against the wall, watching sightlessly, smiling without expression. And somewhere, in the depths of his consciousness, the voice was purring, "I told you so."
