Ophidiophobia

:fear of snakes

"Sasuke."

Kabuto – in a strategically suicidal move – came around the kitchen island and positioned himself between the two teenagers. The only ninja in the world qualified to make such a move was one who could regenerate vital organs. Which was truth. His back to Neji, the Hyuuga couldn't make out his expression, but the block gave him the precious split second out of Sasuke's gaze to activate his Byakugan. His winced as twin jolts of pain lanced through his head, his abused eyes protesting the sudden use of chakra. In the fore of his mind he could hear Kabuto negotiating with the younger Sound-nin, voice irate, colored by undertones of apprehension.

"You can't kill him until we know what his eyes are capable of. You of all people should realize the value of the Byakugan, the value of what he can do."

The doctor sounded too neutral to be truly at ease. The Byakugan revealed the minute tension in the sinew of his forearm and neck, stiffness in his frame previously absent in his bearing. He wasn't sure what Sasuke would do, or rather, he knew what Sasuke would do, if he didn't act.

Sasuke raked wayward bangs from his face, eyes brilliant pin-points of chakra through the Byakugan. He sighed wearily. "Get out of my way, Kabuto."

"What will it prove, Sasuke?" Kabuto was barely murmuring now. "It's a waste."

"Move," he said blandly, attempting to pass Kabuto.

The medic glanced at the teen, now standing at his side, lidded eyes on his Hyuuga target. "Vendetta…is a poor excuse to kill someone, Sasuke-kun."

'He can't stop him.' Neji's entire body felt cold, only his eyes and hands retaining any heat, products of his (pitifully limited) chakra. 'Naruto, how could you possibly think, that he could ever come back?'

"Aren't you even slightly curious?" Kabuto asked.

The dim floodlights over the kitchen island slanted light across Kabuto's glasses, eclipsing his eyes. Sasuke's face didn't reveal any sign he was listening, but he didn't move toward Neji again. The doctor lowered his voice to an inaudible murmur, tilting his head near Sasuke, as if confiding to him a close personal secret. The Leaf-nin watched every stir of dark hair Kabuto's breath set into motion as he spoke, every syllable formed with those lips, so close to Sasuke's ear but still bare to the Byakugan:

'He's capable of disarming the Sharingan, of undoing the most powerful doujutsu in existence, even if only for an instant. Don't you think that's remarkable enough to keep?' He smiled into the teenager's hair, pale strands of his own bangs mingling with black. Sasuke's gaze moved slightly, glancing toward the doctor, but he didn't seem perturbed. 'Besides…he's not worth killing.'

Sasuke made another one of those low, throaty sounds, a mere hiss of syllables from his mouth. His eyes dimmed to the safety of sable satin, providing a contemptuous glance for both of his companions in turn. Neji slowly deactivated his Byakugan, opening his pale eyes to watch the Uchiha's back as he moved away, watching the pale slope of skin between his shoulder and neck, where he could see the damned etching: the curse seal. For a stupid moment Neji found himself wondering if one of those deadly markings was preferable to the one on his forehead. If it was less humiliating to bear?

And suddenly Sasuke had his blade under his chin.

There's something terrible and intimate about a moment like that, where between two people one of them holds the life of the other in his or her hands, pooled like water, fragile, indefinite and warm. Neji didn't move, doesn't even breathe lest that mouthful of air be his last. Strange as it was, he couldn't bring himself to panic. He just met those bloody-red eyes – they'd gone brilliant crimson again in the excitement of his attack – head on. Sasuke looked utterly inhuman to him, scarlet irises set in impossibly pale frameworks of skin and bone, a fairytale spectrum of black, red, white that made Sasuke more fey than human. It seemed impossible that once upon a time this boy (this psychotic entity of anti-anger) had been best friend to Uzumaki Naruto.

"Sasuke!" Kabuto snarled. "If you kill him –!"

"You jump to so many conclusions," Sasuke interrupted the med-nin easily. "Did I say I was going to kill him, Kabuto?"

Kabuto looked dubious. "Your word doesn't convince me as much since that last incident…" He trailed away ominously.

Sasuke made a very slight concessionary frown. "That was…a hasty decision," he consented. (Neji was alarmed.) "But he's coming with me,"

"Orochimaru told me to –"

"Do I have to stab you again?"

No further argument was given. Neji was still alarmed.

- - -

Outside it was cold again. Sasuke's breath hung like dull cobwebs or an afterthought in the air as he walked and Neji tried to make out the message in them, whatever it might be. Between the two former allies the silence stagnated like old oxygen, a strange feeling not quite like anxiety rippling through the Hyuuga. He felt…like he wanted to ask him something. But he didn't have any questions yet that wouldn't get him gutted. Something started buzzing in the back of his mind, like radio static in his skull, trying to tune into whatever frequency of insanity needed to make itself heard. Neji felt as though he could almost hear it, like he was just a twitch of the dial from hearing what FM Psychopath sounded like.

The Uchiha led him into a large antechamber, big enough to room hundreds and only dimly lit by torches. Towering stone columns supported the eventual ceiling overhead and a mammoth stone serpent was hewn into the wall at the far end of the floor. At roughly the middle of the room Sasuke stopped and stood there, unmoving as Neji halted behind him. The back of his dark head moved, turned slightly toward him.

"Activate the Byakugan." It was an order.

Neji didn't immediately obey (because fundamentally he was kind of obstinate like that); just tilted his head slightly instead. His eyes didn't read any killer intent in the other ninja, or any malice. Only vague annoyance at being disobeyed and Neji entertained briefly the possibility of sticking his tongue out at the Uchiha, just to gauge a reaction in those dead-man's eyes. He tried to imagine all the reasons the missing-nin could have for separating him from the medic – besides the obvious desire to kill him without interruption – and taking him off alone. Even as they stood there Neji could feel the chakra spinning through the other boy, hot and potent as sulfur behind his eyes.

"Activate it," he repeated.

The Hyuuga didn't react.

"Activate it."

Having braved the waters, Neji closed his eyes and let his chakra well up to his head, warming his face slightly and washing through him. Thin lines traced their way up from his temples to his eyes, veins of chakra pumping into them until the second lens slid away and took the color of the world with it. Before him, Sasuke became a translucent shape shot through with glowing lines, humming inside the body like an electric current. From here, he could sense the slumbering power. His energies were dangerously focused, not overwhelming in amount like Naruto's or other chakra powerhouses, but sizable, enough to massacre, enough to be S-class…potentially.

Sasuke faced him. "That didn't do you any good last time."

He ignored him. He kept his eyes closed.

Then – rather more suddenly than he liked – Sasuke's fist shot past his left ear, missing only narrowly, taking Sasuke himself over his shoulder and carrying his well aimed knee into the air where Neji's nose would have been a split second before. Luckily, another Uchiha had taught him rather strongly how Sharingan users were fond of attacking randomly and he was ready. Neji twisted away, spinning back up, around and sliding into the lethal familiarity of his Juuken stance even as Sasuke landed out of range of the Hakke. Neji narrowed his eyes. Sasuke wasn't looking at him, just inspecting the ceiling in a thoughtful way a Nara might consider clouds.

"You reminded me of someone I've fought before," said Sasuke neutrally. "In the Land of Waves." He turned to face the Leaf-nin, face and body language dead in Neji's expert eyes. His gaze still smoldered though, a tic of emotion there if nowhere else. "He's dead now. Chidori cut his heart out."

"Why did you leave?" Neji asked, perfectly serious.

The other teen didn't react.

"Sakura and Naruto. They do nothing but train, nothing but grow stronger and I know they do it for you, more so than for themselves." Neji shook his head, loose bangs falling into his eyes. "Does that mean anything to you?"

No reaction.

"Did it ever?" Neji murmured.

Sasuke stepped into the Hakke-field and engaged him.

The rhythm of the next wave came faster than the last. Sasuke's attacks were coming at him so fast as to be simultaneous, lashing out from all sides and driving the Hyuuga to utilize the full breadth of his speed and flexibility to drive off the would-be killer blows. At these speeds, it was impossible not to consider Sasuke might be trying to kill him. That he might do it by accident if Neji didn't keep fighting, that maybe he was being toyed with and he didn't know it. In the dim gray of the empty room the two of them fought, their freak-show eyes picking each other out in the darkness, flashing white limbs in the gloom, pale hands that darted like starlings, the slap of flesh on the flesh as Neji's palm smacked his opponent's deadly blows away.

Juuken at its highest level, some say, looks like dancing rather than fighting.

Neji could feel himself giving into the pattern of this fight and the intensity of its level, his heart thrumming crazily like only a high-speed battle could trigger. Strange though it was, he couldn't help but feel as though he were home sparring with Lee again. There were nuances in style, surprises, fierceness of attack strength, of course – he was fighting Uchiha Sasuke for crying out loud – but fighting Sasuke didn't feel like fighting for his life. Neji decided that was a bad way to feel while fighting a Leaf Village traitor, but his body was buzzing with that comfortable discomfort of being pushed hard by an opponent. Decidedly not the racy panic of being pressed by a killer, which was only odd because Sasuke was a killer. Neji ignored the politics and just fought.

He fought like only a Hyuuga could fight; with that loose liquid gentleness that looked passive until it hit. The 'crack' of palm to flesh and you felt the vibrato of pain through your bones. Neji feinted hard right, Sasuke anticipated him and met him on the left, snatching his arm and twisting it up. The Hyuuga slammed a fist home into a nerve cluster below the ribcage in Sasuke's right side, forcing the Uchiha to stop before he snapped the ligaments in Neji's wrist. He threw Neji to the ground, but he rolled, somersaulted to his feet and repositioned for Juuken. The missing-nin inspected him critically, Sharingan spinning.

"Your eyes are damaged." Sasuke made the observation like one might on weather.

"It was a last resort," Neji answered, startling himself.

Sasuke accepted this silently, then a flurry of blows bulleted at the Hyuuga's torso. Neji's palms caught and turned the hits until he gained room to recover, twisting into a desperate spinning kick. Neji licked a bead of sweat from his lip, missing his Kaiten acutely, missing chakra acutely. Sasuke rushed him suddenly, darting at him so fast Neji could do nothing but swear and raise his arms to take the blow like a sledgehammer, knocking him into a pillar and bouncing him off it like a thrown toy. Arms numb, he staggered back, bracing himself against the stone, blank eyes clenched more tightly shut against the pain.

"Who taught it to you?" Sasuke demanded.

"Hiashi," he lied instantly.

"Liar."

Neji thought it ironic only his enemies ever pegged him for a liar.

Then Sasuke blurred, zig-zagged, lunged, and Neji flinched.

The Uchiha's elbow crashed into his temple and Neji hit the floor, a short startled cry retched out of him as pain jolted white-hot through his brain, crackling through his skull in hyperactive synapses. The Byakugan kept blurring and jumping wildly as he shoved himself to his feet, spinning back to face his opponent. Bright copy-wheel eyes looked him up and down, by increments, and every increment seemed to trigger Sasuke's disgust.

"Why would he use you?" he asked softly, eyes bright red and dark.

"What makes you think," Neji said thickly, "I wasn't just lying about that?"

Sasuke didn't elaborate. His eyes drifted fractionally to the left through, back on some blood-soaked memory (one blood-soaked night) then back to him.

"Whatever message he told you to deliver," he said at last. "I have no interest in it."

"What makes you think," Neji said calmly, "it had anything to do with you?"

Sasuke dashed at him, lunged and slammed a vicious roundhouse into Neji's blocking forearm. The Hyuuga reversed his block, grabbing hold at the elbow, pivoting and hurling the other boy like a discus. Unfazed, the Uchiha managed an easy torque mid-air and hit the far wall feet-first, crouched there and looked bored. Red eyes flashed up, then he was gone, snapped out of perception and only Neji's ability to see everywhere at once tipped him off to the uppercut before it soared out of some pocket of neither-space three feet behind of him. Instinct is what slammed his free arm up and around, rammed the heel of his hand up and just nicked the corner of Sasuke's chin as he dodged it.

He didn't alter his style to match Sasuke's familiar lightening-fast brutality, but met it with illusionary slowness, functioning in Juuken's delicate state of fragility: evading blows through anticipation and momentum reversal that looked dangerously like dance. More often than Neji struck, he turned Sasuke's own force against him then counter-attacked with vicious accuracy. In the back of his mind, Neji knew how this fight would end because he had no chakra and that was that. Without chakra, Juuken was just another fighting style and Neji knew he wasn't a stamina fighter. Lee's tactic to beating him was to hold out and avoid being hit long enough to wear the Hyuuga down. Without being able to disable him, Neji knew he'd tire before Sasuke.

True to his prediction, Sasuke caught him on a straight punch. Neji blocked, but the force of the blow stunned him and Sasuke yanked him into his arms and twisted him into a choke hold.

His put his mouth against Neji's ear, saying his words like a secret.

"I recognize that kind of chakra manipulation," he said. "I know that doujutsu. What did he say to you, Hyuuga?"

"I thought," Neji gritted out, "you weren't interested."

Sasuke jerked him painfully. "What did he say?"

"Nothing about you."

Neji rammed his thumb into a pressure point in Sasuke's inner arm, startling a hiss out of him as the limb spasmed. He pivoted and lashed his thumb and index finger at a pressure point – not a tenketsu, he had no chakra for that – but Sasuke was faster. Four blows across the Leaf-nin's torso and the last one slammed him into a rolling recovery, stopping and reversing and lunging back like a cat rebounding from the floor and he slammed the heel of his hand into Sasuke's face, blackening one bright red orb. He staggered; Neji lunged away, hands up again before he had time to think about what he'd just done and what he'd just risked by doing it. Sasuke spat and there was blood in the saliva.

Then there was a retching scream and it took Neji a moment to realize the scream was his and the pain ripping through every corner of his body had nothing to do with his Cage Seal and everything to do with the electrical current ripping through his skeleton. Sasuke had activated the Chidori Current. The surprise strike put Neji on the floor, stunned and sprawled as excess lightening crackled off his shoulders, burning the skin at his finger tips. Neji swallowed, getting to his knees as the last sparkles of lightening blitzed through his system, freezing his muscles and jolting nerves. His nose tingled, the smell of ozone in the air.

"Enough," Sasuke said coolly. He was inspecting the hand he'd just hit the Leaf-nin with, as if not sure it was his. "We'll stop for now."

The Uchiha was crouched a distance off, eyes briefly closed. When he opened them again they were black and Neji let his Byakugan recede.

"Orochimaru will be awake soon," the missing-nin said quietly. "Leave. Now."

The Hyuuga levered himself up, aching, battered, fatigued and hot with adrenaline still. He didn't move.

Sasuke's eyes flashed crimson again. "Leave."

Neji pushed his dripping hair from his face, not caring if his Cage Seal was bare. 'Nothing but his brother even phases him. Nothing else I said mattered.' He turned to leave, feeling Naruto's loyalty was less admirable now so much as it was fanatical desperation. …and froze.

Chakra flooded his eyes, whiplash fast and drenched his world in monochrome colors, but not fast enough to react. Through instinct alone Neji braced himself, but the blow took him off his feet and slammed him to the floor, skull cracking back against the stone and bursting lights through his head. The lights meant his Byakugan had deactivated. Sad. Not even enough chakra to maintain his bloodline. A hand seized him expertly by the hair, fisting painfully against the back of his head and hauling him upright.

"I thought Kabuto was breaking you in a lab somewhere," murmured someone, voice sick and sweet.

The timbre was like that of a man but too soft, too delicate to be male. A contradiction in terms. It sent instinctive shivers down the jounin's arms, crawling down his spine and into his gut. Then his captor grabbed his arm and threw him into the nearest stone pillar with enough force to blur the world into a terrifying smear. After that, he slammed into the granite and managed to not scream when his ribs cracked like porcelain inside him and he collapsed in a heap, unable to scream now that his ribs were broken and he could no longer breathe.

Nevertheless, Neji forced himself upright (dying on your knees was just not cool, after all) and braced himself against the cracked stone column, breathing shallow and fast to spare his ribs. Something had come into the room with them, something in the dark, exuding a stale and miasmic presence from the shadows near Sasuke's left. Like a reflex, Neji was all at once afraid. The darkness at Sasuke's left held something unspeakable, sick, unnatural grotesque darkness. There was a soft chuckle and something shifted and separated from the gloom. Hideous, slanting green eyes glittered with amusement, thin lips upturned in a frightening smile.

Neji froze up again, inside and out.

The man's face was a thin caricature of humanity; cheek bones hollowed in such a way they gave the impression of starvation without any of the weakness that accompanied such a human disability. His faded white robes draped a slender frame that did not suit a man of such hideous power and malice, a familiar rope-sash knotted at his waist, billowing sleeves dangling limply off thin shoulders to delicate white hands. Up close Neji could clearly see the man and the light casting him out of the darkness did nothing to alleviate his fear. Long blackish hair hung in long sheets down the Sennin's narrow shoulders, framing a thin, bloodless face.

Orochimaru regarded Neji coldly. "Nostalgic for Konoha imports, Sasuke?"

Neji was finding it absurdly difficult to breathe.

"I'm finished with him," Sasuke replied, bored and annoyed.

"He managed to hit you," the Sennin observed, tilting his head like a curious animal. A faint smirk curved his mouth. "Interesting. Don't move just yet, Hyuuga. Introductions after all, I'm sure you have a fascinating story to tell."

"If the Hyuuga continues to delay my training," Sasuke said coldly. "I'll crush his skull now."

Orochimaru blinked once then chuckled quietly. "That's incredibly mean, Sasuke."

Sasuke glared, pin-wheel red and black spinning –

Neji jerked right and dove sideways as Sasuke's kusunagi slammed into the stone where his throat had been with a resounding 'crack!''

"I'm not kidding," he said, standing over the stunned Hyuuga.

Watching bits of stone crumbled from the edge of the weapon, Neji found it in himself to be impressed as well as very, very concerned about that naked steel and where it might be going next. With a masochistic fascination he wondered at the depth the edge had been driven in. The Uchiha wrenched the blade free and turned his attention to Neji. Those eyes met his with the force of a freight train, jerking him like a physical blow and freezing his tongue behind his teeth, his muscles in his skin. The Sharingan slammed through him and took his breath from his lungs, sparking a reactive adrenaline rush, weird urgency in him and 'Fuck, the power there…' Then a pale hand settled on Sasuke's shoulder.

"You've made your point," Orochimaru soothed. "Quit scaring the poor thing. You'll frighten him to death."

"You're stalling," Sasuke said coldly.

Orochimaru smiled, venom colored eyes fixed on him and lifted his arm. Casual at you please, a great glistening black snake nosed out of the man's sleeve, coiling lazily over Sasuke's shoulders and directing its reptilian attentions toward the Hyuuga. Neji stiffened, gaze locked on the reptile as it flicked its tongue, tasting the tepid air, licking up the smell of sweat and weakness. Its master laughed a little, amused by the obvious affect his pet was wreaking.

"What do you think?" said the Sannin slyly. "Where should I place the curse seal?"

"He won't survive that." Sasuke's statement came across irritably.

Neji felt every nerve and tendon in his body seize up in a blind dread.

"He might," replied the man.

Sasuke turned away sharply, shoving the snake off his shoulder and walking swiftly away. "I'll be outside, Orochimaru." He didn't look back. "His left shoulder."

He vanished.

The snake struck.

The force of the blow knocked him back as inch-long fangs punched through the cloth and bandage to flesh, injecting hot venom into the still healing juncture at his torso and bicep. Neji screamed accordingly. The giant serpent pinioned him to the ground, thrashing and writhing as poison and heat pumped through his skin like cancer, infecting him in increments, taking over everything until Neji was clawing at the great, scaly head, half-sobbing, trying pointlessly to tear it off him, out of him. It bit again and again, driving the fangs in again, deeper, harder until he couldn't feel the puncture wounds through the venom.

Neji yelled until his voice broke, but the agony dragged on and on; like someone scraping a heavy bag through broken glass and him inside, suspended. The poison attacked the nervous system, sending the Hyuuga into violent paroxysms, jerking him around like an out of control marionette. He couldn't breathe. His didn't remember his broken ribs through his new, acidic pain, every inch of him eaten up in heat and blistering cold. Neji sucked a halting gasp as the fangs ripped free, dripping blackened blood and venom and left him limp on the ground.

'Neurotransmitters,' he thought wildly as fire breathed underneath his skin. 'Electrolytes. Dendrites, ganglions, fuckithurts!'

He was hyperventilating by then, arms twitching erratically as he tried and failed pathetically to lift them, move them, anything even resembling cognitive muscle control. He remembered the Chuunin Exam and watching Sasuke crawl to his feet, purple chakra leaking out his skin like steam and boiling off his body in fuming clouds. Had he done this – this, what he was doing now, screaming, passing out in increments and inches –? To do this at age twelve (or was he thirteen? Did it matter? Who cared? Did he?) seemed impossible. Horny beaked maggots were burrowing through his skin, digging into the webbing of nerves in his flesh.

'I'mgonnadiegonnadiegonnadie.'

A lightening bolt ripped through his head and he shrieked, spine arching off the floor, kicking and clawing indiscriminately and – 'ANBU never said anything about this!' – tasting blood and metal. Bit his own tongue? Internal hemorrhage? Bloody nose? It felt like he was frying in his own chakra, his internal network little rivers of fire in his bones, bile boiling in his stomach, his eyes rolling up in his skull, everything burning. Then the electricity went out of him. Let his vertebrae liquefy, dropping him in a shivering heap back on the floor. He whimpered and curled in on himself, whole body a mess of maxed-out nerves clusters and crazy-mad phantom pains.

Orochimaru knelt beside him, took his chin between a pale thumb and forefinger and twitched his face up to look him properly in the eye.

"You'll learn to appreciate your Clan's kindness after tonight," Orochimaru said, the thinnest of smiles about his mouth. "Try to stay alive, Hyuuga."

Then he was gone and Neji was alone in his burning skin.

- - -

"It doesn't count if you don't do it for real."

His legs ache from kneeling here so long, having dropped to his knees after the last blow fell and forgotten to move for hours afterward. He doesn't remember if he's said these words before – that it doesn't count – but his throat is choked up and dry like he's been repeating them for days. He can't taste the air here. He can't wrench his hands off the corpse. Who knows how long he's been sitting here with his head on her hollow chest, listening for a heart that's not beating because it's exploded in her ribcage.

"It doesn't count if you don't do it for real." He's breathing through his teeth. "It doesn't count…It's not real."

"I decide what's real, Neji. This is real."

"Itdoesn'tcount! You're lying!" he screams, burying his face against her shredded sweatshirt, the giant ugly one that Inuzuka boy bought her. It smells like dog and dead girl and he'd vomit if he had anything in his stomach to get rid of. He can't cry here. It's a physical impossibility. There's just the burning sting of trying to weep with none of the liquid relief. He folds his arms around her twisted neck and hides his face in her throat, sobbing against her broken collarbone and shaking for the fresh shock. "I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. Genjutsu. Illusion."

He spun around. "GO AWAY!"

The empty Hyuuga courtyard is colored red and black like a photonegative in a slasher film. It may or may not have something to do with the some two hundred dead warped and twisted on the ground all around him, pristine white robes still spotless but for some dust and the occasional vomiting hemorrhage. Exploding arteries do that, leave corpses gargling blood afterward like she did. She's dribbled all over herself. The Chuunin Exams were a testament to his rookie skill – this time it took one blow and a split second. No defibrillation. Just the meaty pop as her arterial walls blew, muffled through bone and cartilage.

Neji clutches his head. "Stop it! Stop it, Itachi! It's not fooling me!"

"Did it feel good?"

"Stoppit!"

"You enjoyed it."

"You're wrong."

"How long have you wanted it?"

"Stop."

"You've planned it in your head. I didn't have to show you how."

"It doesn't count…"

"Poor Neji."

Hinata's bloodless hands twitch up and seize his wrists suddenly; twist them bloody palm up to show him and in Itachi's voice she says, "I used to tell myself the same thing."

Author's Note:

Bloody hell, this chapter was hard to write. However, I did receive some incredible and helpful reviews. For example, gray bugs brought it to my attention that I mistakenly referred to Sasuke's Chidori Current as an open circuit…which doesn't exist. Duh. All that anatomy and I forgot electricity 101. Thanks again, bugs. Also, gratitude shout outs to Beboots for being so dedicated to her Neji obsession. Dayadhvam for noticing my Kabuto fixation (I prayed someone would). And last but not least Lellian for kicking ass and taking names. If you lot still having dropped her a line, you're missing out. Thespian skillz that killz!

Next Chapter: fear of strangers.