Chapter Five: Terce
Mid-Morning
If the Boy had realized how long the girl was going to drag things out, he might have handled things differently.
The girl is discharged after a week in the hospital, and for a while, the Boy laughs silently every time she flinches whenever anyone touches her. However, the joke quickly gets old when he realizes that the chūnin exam is coming up soon: it's not that the girl has ever been really helpful on any of their missions, and he and the black-haired boy could probably handle the exam on their own – but unfortunately, only teams of three are allowed to take the exam. And the way the girl is now, it is unlikely that the jōnin will recommend their team for the exam.
All training sessions begin to go awry as the girl falls apart, and after one particularly trying one that is terminated before the morning is even done, the jōnin takes aside the two boys and talks to them privately.
"Sasuke...Naruto," the man says, his dead-fish eyes boring into them. "As the two of you know, Sakura is currently distraught. In most cases, it is important for a team to learn to overcome any obstacle together, but the current situation is extremely personal. It is regrettable, but there is a chance that she may have to abandon any hopes of becoming a ninja." He looks at the two of them, and the Boy makes sure to look suitably depressed. "For now, the two of you must be there for her, as her teammates. But at the same time, I do not want to compromise your own learning curves. You are both talented in your own ways, and I believe that you would perform well in the upcoming chūnin exam. If you are willing, I can arrange for a stand-in to act as the third member of your team in the exam."
The Boy discretely looks to the black-haired boy for a cue, but his face is blank and gives no answers.
"Is this a trick question?" he muses.
"Tread carefully," the Voice warns him. "Don't commit to anything just yet. What does the man want from this?"
The Boy thinks over what he knows of the jōnin's personality.
"Is there anything we could do to help Sakura get better?" the Boy asks. The black-haired boy looks at him sharply and something flickers in the jōnin's eyes.
"What are you proposing?" the jōnin asks.
"We've come this far with Sakura...I wouldn't want to just throw her away right when she needs us the most," the Boy says in a hesitant voice.
"How about you Sasuke?" the jōnin turns to the other boy. He is silent for a solid minute before he suddenly nods.
"I feel the same way," he says, surprising the Boy.
The jōnin lets out a sigh.
"I don't think you realize what you're trying to get into here," says the jōnin, shaking his head. "While your peers take the chūnin exam and advance their careers, you will be putting all your time and effort into helping someone who might not ever get better. I know she is your friend, but you two also need to think about yourselves."
But the jōnin agrees to give them time to think over their decision, and in the meantime, training sessions proceed much in the same way as before. However, to the Boy's irritation, the girl's condition does not improve. Or rather, in fact, it gets worse: if anyone addresses the girl or accidentally brushes into her, she falls to the ground and bursts into tears.
By the time the week before the chūnin exams rolls in, the jōnin has given up on physical training for the team, and has turned to going over team tactics. This strategy seems to work, as the girl falls apart less and training sessions usually go as long as planned.
One day after such a session, instead of going straight back home as usual, the Boy makes a detour through the marketplace and picks up a box of instant ramen. On the way back home, he takes a shortcut through the village park. Whistling his favorite show's theme song and swinging his new purchase in one hand, he almost doesn't see the girl. It is only by chance that the breeze blows against his face, and he turns his face slightly to the side. When he does so, an unnatural flash of pink catches his attention.
"Tell me. What is that human doing?" the Voice commands.
The girl is sitting on a bench with her head bowed, hiding her face.
"I suppose she's still crying," says the Boy, continuing to swing the plastic bag in a circular motion. "Why?"
"Remember what I taught you about how to break a woman?" the Voice says. The Boy nods, the memory still fresh in his mind. "Now I am going to teach you how to bind one to you."
"Bind?" the Boy repeats curiously.
The Voice tells him.
By the time the Boy approaches the girl, she has stopped crying, but her shoulders are still shaking. He silently sits down at the other side of the bench, and though she stiffens at his proximity, she doesn't move away.
"A good sign," the Voice encourages him.
The Boy mulls over what to say, thinking over what he knows about her.
He clears his throat.
"You know," he says. "Sasuke won't care if you're a virgin or not."
At first, she doesn't respond. She begins to sniffle again, occasionally pushing her hair out of tear-stained face. But after a few minutes, the girl finally speaks.
"That's not what I care about," she grounds out, her sentence punctuated by hiccupy gasps. "Now go away."
The Boy hides a grimace, and tries switching to a more light-hearted approach.
"Did you know? Your forehead is smaller than Ino's. I checked." The girl raises her head and looks at the Boy in disbelief. Having grabbed her attention however, he hurries to soften his approach. "Come on. Lift that head up. Tell me what's wrong?" The Boy tries to imitate the kindly reassuring tone of voice he has heard mothers use to their children. His intonation is a little off, but it seems passable to his ears.
For a long time, the girl doesn't answer, and the Boy is about to call it quits when she finally says in a quiet voice, "Everyone thinks I'm dirty now. I know it. They...look at me with these pitying eyes. My mom, my dad, Kakashi-sensei, Ino...Sasuke..."
Unable to help himself, the Boy rolls his eyes but the girl is too blinded by fresh tears to see it.
"Nobody thinks you're dirty, Sakura," he says dutifully.
"I'm dirty!" The girl suddenly screams hysterically, alarming the Boy. "I don't want to remember what happened but I dream about it every night now. My parents come into my bedroom when I'm screaming and they have so much pity in their eyes I can't stand it! But at the same time I want them to pity me...I'm disgusting."
"You are," the Boy agrees silently.
"No you're not."
"You don't understand...nobody understands..." The girl begins to moan pathetically and buries her face in her hands. "I don't know how to handle it. I can't."
The Boy silently counts to three.
"...when I was young, I was...special. I was kidnapped by ANBU," he says. The girl sniffles. "They took me to a secret facility and they conducted experiments on me...a lot of experiments. This here," He points out a small white scar on his inner arm that he got while trying to make ramen, "they burned me with heated metal bars to test my pain tolerance." The girl stills and her eyes widen. "And this here..." He points out several more scars on his body, making up semi-plausible stories for each.
"No way. The ANBU are here to protect us." The girl shakes her head, sending flecks of tears and snot flying. To his dismay, the Boy feels something wet splash on his face.
"O...orphans like me aren't so important to protect I guess," he says with a shrug, discretely trying to wipe his face on his sleeve. "Afterwards they tried to erase my memory, but it didn't work on me. At first, I tried telling a few people about it but nobody believed me...instead, they all called me a lying freak. So I've been keeping silent about it ever since...you're the first person I've told this to in years."
"Why me?" The girl's eyes begin to glisten.
He pauses dramatically.
"I thought you'd understand me," he says. "I thought you'd understand what it feels like to be helpless...what it feels like for other people to stare at you like you're a piece of meat and nothing else."
A lone tear slides down the girl's face and her mouth drops slightly open.
"I'm not saying I understand what you're going through right now, but I think we're pretty similar in a lot of ways. So if you feel like you're different or you don't belong or that you can't handle things. Just remember that I'm here, okay? I'll protect you until you're ready, no matter how long it takes. That's what teammates are for, right?" He gives her a small, hopefully winning smile.
It works.
The girl flushes and gawks at the Boy, who keeps eye contact for a few more seconds. Then he purposefully breaks it and gets to his feet.
"Well I have to get home now...not that anyone's waiting for me, but I do have my dinner to make."
"O-okay..."
He walks away, keeping a slow but purposeful stride. Just before he turns a corner, he hesitantly looks back and sees the girl still looking at him. Her face is pink and a glimmer of hope is beginning to flicker in her eyes. The Boy raises a hand in farewell, which the girl returns.
As soon as he turns the corner, his face twists into a wide sneering grin.
"You were right. People are so easy to manipulate. Tell them what they want, and they'll become complete putty in your hands..." the Boy crows to the Voice, who just chuckles at him.
Two days later, the Boy sees the efforts of his hard labor already begin to bear fruit. The girl, though pale-faced, doesn't fall apart during training and the jōnin is so surprised that he doesn't even bother pretending to read a book like he usually does. Whenever the Boy 'accidentally' brushes the girl's hand or taps her on the shoulder, she turns as pink as her hair.
"Her hair down there was a lighter shade though," the Boy remarks in passing. "Do you suppose the sun makes head hair darker?"
"I suppose we'll find out when you actually grow some."
After the Boy drops some prodding hints, the girl insists to the jōnin that she doesn't want to drag the team down, and they are successfully registered for the chūnin exam.
Having let some of his expectations build up with all of the drama surrounding the events leading up to the exam, the Boy finds himself rather disappointed when he learns that the first part of the exam is literally a paper exam.
Having planted several clones disguised as generic chūnin around the exam site ahead of time, he raises his hand and asks to take a bathroom break. One of his clones 'accompanies' him to the bathroom, and once there, he creates several more clones, giving each one a specific question to find the answer to.
With that done, the Boy returns to his seat, twirling his pen to pass the time. Every time a new memory suddenly fills his mind, he jots down the answer to a question, and within twenty minutes, his exam paper is complete.
He passes the rest of the remaining exam time picking off some of the stupider genin around him by tempting them with his test paper.
"Number 23, you fail!"
"43 and 27, you fail."
"I'm practically doing them a favor." The Boy mockingly waves goodbye at the genin slinking out of the exam hall. "They wouldn't last two seconds in a real fight...is this exam always this easy?"
He doesn't expect the Voice to answer, but to his surprise, it does.
"They haven't changed the exam since my last host took it."
The Boy stops waving – it is the first time that the Voice has ever talked about what it did before it was sealed inside him. But when he hesitantly asks him about it, the Voice clams up and refuses to talk anymore about it.
Thankfully, the second exam promises to be more interesting, as it traps the remaining genin in the forest for several days in a test of survival and wits.
Barely five minutes after they have set foot inside the jungle of overgrown trees, they hear several agonized screams echo across the treetops.
"That...was a human scream, right?" the girl whimpers. "I'm scared." Trembling, she edges closer to the Boy, who casually brushes off her hand and steps away.
"I've gotta pee," he announces, and slinks away to a denser area of the forest.
After relieving himself, the Boy loiters around for a bit expectantly. He is not disappointed when a hand suddenly breaks through the surface of a seemingly innocuous puddle, and grabs onto his leg with an iron grip.
"You were right. Someone was watching," says the Boy, as he nimbly leaps up. For an instant, the hand's grip slackens in surprise and he takes advantage of it by bending over and slashing through the wrist with his kunai. The hand, still grasping on to his ankle, comes cleanly off. A cloud of red fogs up the puddle, and a gurgled scream bubbles up to the surface.
The rest of the body soon follows, to reveal a furious boy wearing a rebreather. Blood dripping from the stump on his arm, he hurls himself at the Boy. Easily sidestepping him, the Boy lifts a foot and kicks down the other boy.
Pinning him down to the ground with his knee, the Boy pulls the rebreather boy up by his hair and holds a kunai to the front of his neck.
"Hand over your scroll," he breathes.
"Don't have one," the rebreather boy spits out.
"Don't be like that." The Boy smiles, pressing the kunai closer. A thin line of red appears on the struggling boy's pale skin, and the Boy licks his lips. His eyes flicker to the rebreather boy's remaining hand.
"Naruto?" The pink-haired girl and the black-haired boy finally seem to have noticed their struggle and climb their way through the bushes just in time to see the Boy slash the kunai downwards at the rebreather boy's other hand.
However, the rebreather boy furiously struggles just as the kunai makes contact, and the cut is messy, spraying the Boy's face with blood. Roaring in pain, the rebreather boy flips his lower body, and kicks out at the Boy, who ducks. The rebreather boy flips through the air and lands on his feet, clutching on to his remaining hand, which dangles precariously to his arm by a few strands of skin.
The girl screams at the sight, startling the Boy, and the rebreather boy takes advantage of the opportunity to dash away.
For a second, there is stunned silence. And then –
"What were you doing?" The girl looks at the Boy in horror, and he realizes that his face is dotted with blood. The black-haired boy does not say anything, but from the way he is avoiding the Boy's gaze, he seems troubled as well.
"I was trying to pass the exam." The Boy tries to look upset as he raises an arm to wipe his face. "Or do you not want to pass? Were you lying when you said you wanted to help the team?"
The girl flushes as pink as her hair again.
"Of course I want to help the team! But – "
"But?" The Boy's arm drops to his side.
"But – you didn't have to do that!" The girl protests. "That – that was uncalled for!"
"You didn't even see the whole thing," the Boy says, cocking his head to the side. "What if he attacked me first and I retaliated?"
"You seem unharmed," the black-haired boy comments, and the girl mutely nods her head.
The Boy looks at her for a long moment, and then lets out a loud sigh.
"I get it," he says sadly. "You don't believe me either. You think I'm a lying freak too."
The girl gapes.
"What? That's not what I think!"
"All my life, everyone's only looked at me with eyes filled with disgust...just like yours. They think I'm weird – they think I'm sick in the head." With every biting word, the Boy takes a step toward the girl, who backs away. The whole time, she is wildly shaking her head back and forth. "You're just like the rest of them."
"No – no – " She trips over her feet and falls backward to the ground.
"You're no better than them."
The girl's eyes grow impossibly wide and she begins to shake uncontrollably.
"You – "
"That's enough," the black-haired boy cuts in harshly, finally stepping in. The Boy snaps his head towards the other boy, and eyes him balefully. The other boy coolly matches his gaze.
"You still need them," the Voice reminds him.
So after a few seconds, the Boy lets out a sharp bark of laughter, shattering the tense silence. As his laughter echoes through the trees, the girl grows still.
"I'm just kidding Sakura," he says lightly, smiling down at the shocked girl. His fingers twitch. "I know you're different from the rest."
The Boy wipes his bloody kunai on his pants, leaving a red trail behind.
A/N: A very conversation-filled chapter. And I know several reviewers have expressed the desire that I cut Sakura from the story but well...we'll see what happens.
I think most of you missed this but in the last chapter, the "girl" was Haku making a cameo.
I apologize for the delay. I was conflicted over the contents of this chapter (not morally, but in terms of story flow) – I actually had most of this chapter written a long time ago, but I let it stew for a while because I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not. I came back to it and I still hadn't decided, so I just decided to finish it and put it up...it was supposed to go on for a bit more but it seemed like a natural place to stop (?) so that's it for now.
Thank you to all reviewers!