Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Bathing in Blood
22. The Spin
They'd traded deaths,
Danes and monsters, and no one had won.
Both had lost!
-Beowulf
The doctor flipped through the sheaf of manuscripts briskly, bushy gray brows drawn together in an impatient glare at the mess fanning out around him on the floor of his study. With an oath, he flung the folder away from him, leaving it to drown in the quicksand of its fallen comrades.
Muttering curses, he waded sadistically over to the last filing cabinet left, the three drawers he hadn't yet dumped into his personal rage-fueled landfill, kicking aside the stray pages clinging like little lost ghosts to his legs. Sweat collected in crystalline beads on his haggard face, turned cherry-red from the heat. What on any other day would be his office, his stronghold, his cool, safe sanctuary, had been turned into some hazy hell; air thick with dust tainted by the heavy scent of musty books and portfolios of unread reports.
It had gone from a cathedral to a crypt of his professional life, a tomb of works rotting peacefully in unison until some unfortunate disturbs their decay.
And today's unfortunate is...
"Damn it," he growled under his breath. "What a day to lose...to lose..." A fit of disgusted coughs racked his bony shoulders.
Damn it. What a day to lose something, and then forget what you lost.
Livid with frustration, the doctor throttled the first drawer of the filing cabinet, taking the bull by the horns, ready to put up a fight and a good one at that. All for nothing, of course; all for nothing but a channel for his fury, because it slid open with the grace of a butterfly to land on the toe of his Corinthian-leather slipper.
Empty.
Not giving himself time to react, he damned the cheap factories that could do no right, and laid a slightly more gentle hand on the handle of the second drawer. Empty. This time it didn't fall on its own. Rather, it was thrown, across the wide expanse to the bookshelves on the other wall. Made a tremendous racket, for sure, but the doctor had no tolerance for subtlety today. Today was war, and he didn't care what anyone said. Still resolute, he grasped the handle of the last drawer. Graciously, with the elegance of an agitated pickpocket, he—
swore out loud once more, with maniacal zeal, because the drawer, the last drawer, was stuck.
Pulling away from the sheet-metal cabinet without knowing it, he eyed his target with near-religious fervor, as if it was one of the many Holy Grails he remembered a younger, more archeologically-inclined self to have pursued in his books. Something must be jammed in the runners, his needle-sharp mind reasoned to itself. Perhaps shaking it a bit will dislodge whatever got caught...
Eagerly, and armed with a plan of action, he reached skeletal fingers once again towards his imaginary treasure chest. Wobbling the drawer slightly, the doctor smiled wolfishly as he heard the screeching protests of grating sheet-metal. He let out a triumphant laugh as he felt it slide out one inch, then two, then three more.
Normal people did not celebrate when they opened their filing cabinets, he knew, but he wasn't a normal person. He was a doctor. A degree and everything, the whole kit and caboodle. He didn't need to be normal. Grinning as abnormally as possible, he grabbed at the offending scrap of newsprint that had obstructed his all-important mission, forgetting all about the object of the mission itself. Just as he'd thought, it was stuck in the runners; displaying the scars of ball-bearings wearing black text into a sickly silver.
Just for kicks, he decided to read it.
Apr. 8 (or was it the third? He couldn't tell. Probably the eighth. Odd, that this date was exactly two months from today. Odder, that it was exactly two months ago that he'd gotten that new chakra-reading machine. And oddest, his meticulously-organized brain noted, that on that very same day, that machine had malfunctioned for the first and last time.)
Patient number A24J67.
Yesterday, the Sand shinobi museum reported a theft regarding certain valuable scrolls displayed in the lobby, after a team of Konoha genin discovered the break-in on a retrieval missi- (the rest of the word had been torn off, and some others as well. The doctor had the oddest feeling that he should be taking notes on this.)
-t was noted that several of the scrolls were extremely rare, and potentially dangerous if-
-n the right hands. Luckily, says the museum's representative, "These scrolls were written in an old language that few can read. I think these thieves were just common thugs hoping to find a source of extra cash- (another pesky rip. These were beginning to frustrate him. Or maybe it wasn't just the lost letters themselves, but the phrases formed by the remaining words and the parallels beginning to take shape in his mind...)
–ore pessimistic Sand residents beg to differ. "I heard from my neighbor that one of those scrolls had some, like, secret chakra technique or something", says a girl identified only as Yumi. "'Cause my neighbor's, like, a total expert on scrolls and stuff, and he says this one would, like, totally screw up your chakra coils or something. Something to do with an energy ...thingy. But don't, like, quote me on it or anything." Sand officials would like to remind all ninja nations that there is no conceivable threat, but please report all suspicious persons to y-
The doctor's eyes widened. Something tightened in his throat as his infinite intellect leapt ahead fearlessly, making the connection.
This simply isn't possible.
It had to be some kind of cruel coincidence. Yes, that's what it was. A coincidence, nothing more than that one-in-a-million chance of everything lining up oh-so-perfect—
But wasn't that pink-haired girl a genin?
Wasn't she on a retrieval mission to Sand?
And wasn't it April eighth, exactly ten minutes after midnight, that her teacher had carried her into the lobby and demanded she see a physician?
Were coincidences always this blatant?
This isn't possible, he reminded himself. I've always been one to jump to conclusions. That's saved me plenty of times, for sure, but not this time, not this time- Rambling, babbling like a village idiot. Which was really all he'd ever been; too smart for his own good, growing up holed up in his room with only the moldy old textbooks for comfort. He'd wanted to be a medical ninja. His parents said no. "Too dangerous," they would croon. "Too dangerous for our little boy."
And he would grumble and whine about how he wasn't so little anymore, all the while knowing he couldn't do a damned thing about it. Not a single friend until he'd graduated from college; what friends he had now, he suspected were bought. So sad, so sad, so goddamned scared of the world—
She has the scroll. And you can't do anything about that, either.
Eyeballs bulging from purple sleep-deprived sockets, the doctor seemed to fall in slow motion to meet the sea of documents. The welcoming texts closed gently around his twitching form, as if they had expected his return. He knew the maid would find him sooner or later, when she brought his dinner on the silver tray. Perhaps she would find it in herself to spare him a little laughter, at the first bona-fide case of a man drowning in his memories.
She has the scroll. I know it.
Shifty aquamarine eyes rifled eagerly through the layers of trees. This was a green, murkish realm, and Gaara liked it. He could feel his senses tingling as he bounded from branch to moss-covered branch. The Shuukaku felt it too, the thrill of the mysterious and the unexplored, although it certainly didn't compare to that of swimming in fresh blood.
He smirked broadly at the thought of finding that overconfident pink-haired brat. He'd fight her, and then kill her, and then paint the forest red with her blood- The demon was doing most of the tracking, of course. He himself was, for the moment, merely content to have lost Temari and Kankurou. Weak humans, but so clingy and annoying that they were almost hard to get rid of. They would never have let him run off alone like this.
They would never understand his need to prove himself, a need fueled by the rage of Hell itself.
What was more, they didn't have to understand, and he didn't have the patience to bother with details. He was himself, and that was all the explanation they needed.
