- Survivor -
When they first move Tayuya from Konoha's prison, she doesn't plan out her escape. Orochimaru will come for her. She just needs to be patient. He will unleash his unending wrath. He will pull her from what ever pit this Danzo asshole is sending her to.
Her new jailers can sneer at her all they like. Kabuto will pluck out their eyes and put them in his little jars. They won't be able to sneer at her once they have no eyelids to blink.
She tells her jailers this, spitting at them as they bind her chakra for the trip. She screams her curse words in their faces as they seal away Orochimaru's mark. They tease her about how no one is ever going to see her alive again. They transport her blindfolded to some unknown cellar in a building that smells of yeast and rubbing alcohol.
They tell her that this is where the real jailers are, not the henchmen hired to watch her. The first thing they do is strip her of her weapons. They kill her Oni and take away her flute, thinking this will be enough. They shave her head so the fleas and lice will have nothing to hide in.
They tell her she deserves what she's about to get for the murder of the Sandaime. She eats like an animal, she sleeps like one. They treat her like an animal, so she becomes one.
But her new jailers don't stop there. They don't just want to punish her. They want information on Orochimaru, the location of his hideouts. Where is Sasuke? Where have they gone? But she does not say a word. She waits for Orochimaru to come.
Every three months, they break her fingers. It becomes the way she measures time. They let her hands heal just enough before pulling out the hammer again. They place her flute on the table after, taunting her to do her worst.
She never reaches for it. She knows she can't.
They say they do what they do as punishment for her loyalty to a traitor. They say every finger broken is payment for a life she's ruined. They goad her for loving such a weak master. They break her hands, but they don't break her.
She holds out for years, believing Orochimaru will still come for her.
She stops believing when eventually he doesn't. She's been such a fool.
She will never play her flute again.
Over the years, the binding seal around her curse mark begins fade. They can't completely seal her chakra without killing her entirely. They allow her just enough to pump her heart. She circulates that whisper of power, tunneling through the ward on her neck one spoonful at a time.
She weakens it just enough to become the monster they tell her she is.
Because what her captors do not know is that her Oni were not alive. Their bodies were just mutated vessels made for her by Orochimaru. They were not the source of her power, and neither was her master. Her mind is her power. Her demonic familiars are her weapons. The Oni are disposable.
Power lies, not within the blade, but within how you wield it.
Even if their host bodies die, her demonic familiars can not die until she does. And she is still very much alive. Somewhere, so are they.
They keep the prison cells dark to disorient her. Every prisoner is isolated, no contact except with their regular guards. She hasn't left the compound in years, and she hasn't seen sunlight in weeks. Even still, she perseveres.
They thought hammering her hands would make her beg. They thought breaking her fingers would make her weak. But it's just like men to underestimate a woman. To misunderstand what makes her dangerous.
In the corner of her sun-free cell, Tayuya hones the weapons she has left. With no fingers and no flute, she finds another way to make music.
She starts to whistle in the dark. After seven years, her jailers think she's finally lost it. They think they have finally broken her.
She lets them think what they like. Soon, their time will come.
She whistles every minute of every day. She learns to spin Genjutsu again, manipulating chakra with her mouth instead of her flute. She uses her new music to call her demons back to her.
They thought it would be enough to break her hands. They should have taken her fucking tongue.
It takes time for them to find her again. The suppression of her chakra leaves her only the faintest melody to offer them, but she is patient. She has nothing but time.
Her demons are more willful without bodies, more difficult to control without her flute. They are mad with hunger, and several times they almost consume the little chakra she has left. But the seal diminishing her chakra has a silver lining. It makes her a less appetizing meal than the guards around her.
She convinces her demons to wait. The real struggle is keeping them in check until she's ready to make her move. The timing has to be flawless, like a well executed concerto. She will know her opportunity when she sees it. In the mean time, she's finally strong enough to begin her real work.
The shadow boy. The sand girl. We are only here because of them .
In order to escape, she needs new bodies. Better Oni for her demons to possess.
Stronger. Bigger. Meaner. But how?
She does not have Orochimaru's resources this time… but no. She will not make the same mistakes twice. She will rely on nothing and no one but herself. Over time, her strategies shift and change. People are much more hesitant to destroy the things they love.
Smaller. Weaker. Human. But how…
Tayuya composes a whistling Sonata comprised of 3 movements. This will be the foundation for her new jutsu. One that corrects all the weaknesses of her old strategy.
It turns out, weakness just means a different kind of strong.
She doesn't start with the biggest guard in the prison, she starts with the newest- a fresh faced boy that becomes her new guard when her old one finally retires. She sends her demons to haunt him now. They sip slowly from his chakra, day and night.
They feed on him a little at a time while he sleeps poorly in the guard room. They follow him down empty hallways, always staying out of sight. The food he eats isn't enough to replenish the energy she steals from him. He grows frail, thin, worn down.
It's different, willing her demons to possess a living body rather than an empty shell. She will have to carve him out, make him hollow from the inside first. She will have to make him surrender. Her grip on his will must be iron-fisted, the obedience of her demons must be absolute.
When he is finally weak enough, she whistles a Berceuse; a lullaby.
The frail, worn down guard staggers over to her cell, entranced by the Genjutsu she weaves for him. His mother is putting tea out on the table, smiling to him from her kitchen window. She beckons for him to come inside and fall asleep while she makes dinner.
He believes he is letting himself into their home when really, he is unlocking her cell. He believes he is untying his shoes when really he is unlocking her shackles. He rubs at an ache in his poor mothers shoulders when really he weakens the seal around her cursed mark.
He frays the spell just enough that she is able to break it entirely.
He lays down in her filthy prison cot believing he's finally laying in his bed. His mother's image whispers pretty words of pride, stroking back his sweat slicked hair.
When Tayuya finally lets him sleep, her demons worm through his mouth, up his nose. They wiggle in through the corners of his eyes. She makes sure they leave just enough chakra for his heart to pump.
They do not like having to share a body, but this will have to do for now. They leach onto his very soul and spindle threads of energy through his body. They possess him like an invasive plant takes root in occupied soil.
As he sleeps, her demons feed on his chakra. When she beckons, they syphon it off to her. It is meager food, but food enough. After seven years of nothing, it is euphoria.
Her demons want to keep feeding, but they obey her orders. For some reason, they always do. They always come back to her for the music. She gives them something they can not make themselves.
There is a saying that good music brings you closer to God. She wonders if somehow that's a part of it.
When her guard's body rises again, she follows him out of her cage. The first phase of her prison break is complete. As she crosses the threshold of her cell, she looks back to the bars that have been her only home for the last seven years.
No one is ever going to put her in a cage again.
She isn't just going to survive this place. Some day, she will come back and burn it down. She will be its only survivor.
When she approaches the guard station at the base of the exit tunnel, she spins a new Genjutsu over herself. She is not Tayuya, she is the Warden; an old man with a greasy beard and too many meals around his belly. The other guards snap to attention, averting their bleary gazes.
She spins the Genjutsu deeper. Wider. The Warden must return to the surface. They will let her pass, or else.
Graciously, they open the gate for her, as obedient to their master as she was to Orochimaru.
The urge to slit their throats is overwhelming. She doesn't want to show them mercy. They were never merciful to her all these years. But she knows that she is still too weak. If she attacks them now, she risks never getting free.
She ascends the stone steps leading out of the mountain, vowing to return. Walking ahead in staggering steps, her unseeing escort leads the way.
The next month is hard, but no harder than the last seven years. She tests the bounds of her new abilities. She forgoes food for liquor and chakra, numbing with one and getting high off the other.
She carves out vessel after vessel, starting with the small and working her way up. She hones them into deadly weapons, then she begins her strike. She starts with the easy marks first. She gets cocky with every victory.
She attacks a band of traveling merchants. Then a Konoha Genin team. Her demons consume a rogue mercenary. She nearly kills the copy-nin.
She loses one of her demons in that fight, underestimating Kakashi's willingness to sacrifice her host. She regroups. She changes strategy. Her puppets have to be more targeted, more personal. They need to be more painful to kill.
She gets stronger. Faster. Drunker. Higher.
She gets hungrier.
Angrier.
She sets fire to a lumber mill.
And like a miracle, she sees him. A familiar face with dark hair. He's grown tall in the seven years that she's grow savage. She watches his shadows move about him. She wants to take him out now, but her years in a cell has made her patient.
Where she use to be a chainsaw, she is now a scalpel. She won't make those same mistakes this time.
She decides to take his companions first. She attacks like she has nothing but time.
But Shikamaru does not have time. He listens as Tayuya spins her tale. Every second this story drags on, Utsuho's blade inches closer and closer.
"Why are you telling me all this?" he finally asks. He's been stalling for time, but his time is up.
Tayuya looks at him, trying to find the right words. She sighs when she does not.
Instead, she walks over to Utsuho. She caresses his chin with her bandaged knuckles, a pantomime of a loving gesture. He cries out at her touch, opening his mouth. His neck bulges when she feeds him the second smoke demon sleeping around her neck.
Shikamaru's shadow clutch snaps taught. A new, overwhelming force claws against his will. Her hostage has just become twice as dangerous, filled with Ruya's stolen energy. His Jutsu breaks. He's going to die-
But when Shikamaru staggers back, Utsuho steps to Tayuya's side, obedient and unmoving.
She turns to Shikamaru now.
"By now, we have taken many hosts, but not a single one has lasted longer than a week. Right before they are fully drained and ready to become true shells… each host does the same thing. They all have a moment of complete awareness, the last nerves in the brain all firing off at once. It's like the final light show before the body fully dies…"
She steps forward. Shikamaru steps back.
"When that happens, the host wakes up, fully aware of what's about to become of them. It doesn't matter though, they are all helpless to do anything about it. Do you know what they all do with those last moments of life, before I snuff them out?"
Shikamaru only glares. He's not giving her the satisfaction of playing into her games.
But Tayuya just smiles wider when he doesn't respond. He sees more yellow. More rotten teeth.
"They beg. Every last one of them. They try to reason with the humanity you countrymen stole from me years ago. They snivel like animals and they piss themselves. When they realize they can't beg for life, they plead for a quick and merciful end. They ask me for death instead of bodily imprisonment. If only they knew the irony."
Shikamaru Turns to Utsuho. He will not let his captain be taken. He vows with his eyes if not with his words that somehow, he will free his friend.
"I'm telling you my story because I want you to know what I have endured to get here. What it has taken all these years for me to survive, long enough to find you." Tayuya's eyes are pinpoints of madness, glossy in the winter sun.
"I need you to understand, Shikamaru. That way, when I'm done hunting you down, when I carve you out and finally break you…When you reach for that last hope of a merciful death...
…You won't even have that."
She says it like a lovers vow, and finally Shikamaru understands. She has survived seven years of brutality.
His are only just beginning.
He staggers, suddenly woozy from fear and from loss of blood too. His face is still bleeding and his fingers are numb. He can only hear from his left ear. The world around him slides in and out of focus. He staggers backwards, heart in his throat.
And then, his foot collides into something small. Something wet and terribly soft. He trips over another body he hadn't noticed in all his dread.
When he looks back… he finds the field of survivors. Every survivor his convoy team had pulled from the burning building. Their bodies are scattered like railroad tracks, their throats slit by a Katana blade.
Tayuya's voice is a hollow ringing climbing in his ear.
"Run, Shikamaru."