Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Bathing in Blood
14. The Yellow Denizen
"...Your luck may change if you challenge Grendel,
Staying a whole night in this hall,
Waiting where that the fiercest of demons can find you."
-Beowulf
Sasuke traced a feverish finger along the razor-thin edge of the page. So many lines, so many dotted empty lines, just waiting to be filled in! All those squiggles were certainly troublesome, though; parts of that impossibly perfect cipher which might have formed words, ages and ages ago.
They had long since shed their meanings for him. Inching away from what they used to represent so proudly, slipping unnoticed from the chasms of what was probably his memory but could have been no more than some plot-less, poorly-told story. But then again, such tales have no ending, and only a shade of a beginning, and he simply couldn't have that. It wasn't the Uchiha way, you know? Uchihas, real Uchihas, finished what they started.
Or perhaps they didn't. Did it matter?
The troubling, twisting characters met the raven-haired boy's Sharingan eyes with eerie placidity. This Uchiha was outnumbered here, outclassed. Defeated by a jumble of senseless wing-dings.
The voice didn't tell him that, though. It was still in hiding, somewhere, cowering from Sasuke's short-lived rebellion with the silver-haired boy. And now, when Sasuke was on his knees, begging it to come out, because the novelty had long since worn off, it ignored him. He could feel it, crumpled like a scrap of paper in the back of his mind; tried to grasp it like a child clawing for his favorite toy, without success.
And whether that was because of the confusion over who, in reality, was the true toy, or for one of the million other unreasonable reasons the raven-haired boy couldn't think of...that was anyone's guess.
Except his, evidently.
Dust motes crawled across his cornea, adrift in a shaft of artificial light. Gripping the crippled, tooth-scarred pencil he'd found on the desk, Sasuke shut his eyes tightly. It was so alone in his head, so deserted, when the voice went away like this. So painfully vacant. And this emptiness was reflected on the blank cells of the test sheet, watching him with such unbearable scrutiny.
If you can't see it, you're safe, Sasuke...
His eyes snapped open. The voice. It was back.
Don't say it like that...you knew all along I never left you...it was just a game, wasn't it? All just a game...
The Uchiha nodded furiously. Of course it was. All just a game. Always a game.
He smiled, clutching the pencil with the strength of the crazed. He didn't care that he hadn't heeded the warning; he was safe now regardless. The voice was back, to stay this time, and he wasn't so lonely anymore.
The vast waves of petals, an endless expanse of voiceless pastel shades, rustled mutely in defiance of the suffocating still air. Dancing for no reason at all, without the slightest sound. So quiet.
And that was the worst thing about it, Ino thought brokenly. Not the flowers themselves, not the aching pulses of agony that this place seemed to be made from. Just the silence; the soundless void which should have been the whisper of leaves brushing leaves.
And behind that, the rising scream that was slowly dissolving the world outside.
The blonde-haired girl huddled in a pathetic scared-to-death ball, the fetal position, clutching her arms and hugging them tightly. She was locked into place now, and the scream still rose, louder, louder, louder still! It was like an unscratchable itch, an unitchable scratch, something that wouldn't go away even if you did say 'please'.
It was emerging step by step from the chasm of noiselessness, though it wasn't a noise to begin with. More like a feeling, an emotion expressed, though what feeling it spoke for remained obscured.
And it wouldn't go away, it wouldn't go away. She didn't know what it was, but that made it all the more horrible. Maybe it couldn't go away. But neither could she.
The shrieks rose to a fever pitch, splitting and budding and raising their shrill offspring with it to the sky. Then they died, because life is so short, only to mount again with new force, warbling like some natural siren throughout the unnatural plains.
All at once, she could move again, and was moving; had somehow landed on her feet in that tall ghost-grass and was running faster than the non-existent wind. Out of the corner of her eye, the screams had become black lines of vultures, diving to the earth and assembling in a ring. Heads down, wings hunched, with much ripping and tearing at an object in their midst, squawking good-naturedly to each other like any other birds.
And Ino kept running, closer and closer, and much too much closer, until she was standing between the dark-feathered fowl, gasping for breath. With no idea why she'd even taken the trouble, until the vultures fluttered a respectful distance away and she could see their prey.
Picked almost to the bones, it was. Pale skin still clinging in some parts to the hands and feet, patches of it folded neatly against slick yellow ribs.
Why don't I run?
The screams ascended once again.
Why do I stand still?
They rose higher.
Is this something I want?
A new kill, it was. The skull gleamed brightly with a coating of golden-red, one eyeball missing, the other dangling by a single thread-like nerve. Nearly burst, it was, but you could still see the iris.
And through the throbbing of her vision, Ino did see it. Or thought she did. What a beautiful, beautiful jade orb, wasn't it? Gleaming with the blood and the bodily fluids—
Swiftly, almost reflexively, she snatched at the hated, oh-so-lovely shade. Shoved it into her mouth without a moment's hesitation, crunching and gnawing the leathery outside, until she felt it burst in her jaws. Then swallowed it, just like that. All so quickly.
Licking her lips, the girl stared in wonderment at her slimy, shiny fingers. The world became a shifting haze. She didn't notice the flaxen strands of hair still clinging desperately to the last fragments of scalp. She didn't notice that the eyeball she'd eaten with such relish wasn't green at all...
"I have done...a horrible thing."
But she didn't mean that; she never did. Surely that didn't make a difference.
With a harsh, braying giggle, it all went black.
