Chapter Two
Her awakening doesn’t jolt her out of her unconsciousness.
It is slow and dull and pulsing. A slow, burning awareness that makes her mind flutter and arch, wondering and wondering and wondering. Her consciousness is different now, and she feels alien inside of her own body.
(Her fingers are not her fingers, her toes are not her toes, this skin is not her skin—)
There is something different about her now, and the awareness brings loss.
There is a sharp, searing pain behind her eyes and there is the familiar, alien beat that hums underneath her skin. She feels papery, broken; as if someone has taken the very soul from her body and put it right back into her, changed and irreparable.
As if her heart is going to beat right out of her chest, taking the hum and the heat and the blood right with it.
The first thing she notices is that everything is wet.
Wet. Is this what the Blue should feel like?
Her fingers twitch, enjoying the way the cool slick feels against her skin; how it soothes and soothes and soothes until she feels replenished and her skin doesn’t feel so papery anymore and creases at the edges of the wet.
The next thing she notices is that everything is gray.
The black of her mind and the familiar dreamscape is gone, replaced by blurry, broken images, ones that flicker and shift over her. All she could see, all she knew now was the gray. It shifted and hissed and slurred over her vision, taking away the darkness but leaving only murky, undefined light.
(The gray took and took and took and took until—)
It was terrifying—so, so different from the dappled yellow-blue-green landscapes that her mind had built her. She didn’t like the gray. It was menacing; silence reigned in the gray, only broken in the dripping, slurring sound of machinations that were too far to see. Sometimes, she thought she could see the edge of a brown box, the panel of translucent pane, and then it was gone, the gray sliding over her eyes again, swirling, twisting, and threatening.
The first couple of months after she wakes are gray.
(She panics at first—her screams echo in the lab—but she doesn’t remember anything apart from heavy arms dragging her down—sharp, gleaming scalpels clawing their way into her skin—“stay still, stay still.”—)
The dreams were gone; leaving in a swivel of ill thought and sharp, glittering knives that choke, carve, and slice away at her skin. All she could remember, from before, was an expanse of pale, the glittering shallows of the Blue and the muddy, earthen yellow banks of her dreams. The gray took it all away, choking the life, the thoughts from her very mind—little shifting, slurring shadows that flickered in front of her and moved threateningly, ready to tear her away at any moment.
Little whispers of echoes crawl up her spine when she looks at the gray and the agony of the loss of her dreams fill her up once more. When she awoke, there had been pain, there had been loss and now—
Now there is nothing.
Her world has changed.
The hissing noises have stopped the slurring and the slow, tinkling of words are unable to reach her now. Even the heavy, thrumming beat under her skin is less audible now, and she has to press her fingers against her wrist to feel it again.
Sometimes, the pain comes back. The slices that slip under her skin burn and burn and burn, for days and days after the pain returns. She can’t get comfortable. Her breath is always coming short. It feels as if someone is pouring something into her, taking and giving at the same time and it aches.
More than it should—more than it ever should.
She still hears echoes even though the noises have stopped. The beat humming under her skin rises when she hears them—the words. Slow, hurried, quick, gentle, she can hear them all. They play over, and over, and over in her mind and—and—it terrifies her. She does not know what they mean, only that they bring pain, and that they have given her gray instead of the dappled blue worlds she so hungers for.
There are more slices under her skin now, more than ever before and it blisters against her, so much she has to bite her bloody lips to stop from screaming. The worst part is that every single inch of her body aches. She shivers, her skin hot, and they press another slice under her skin. She whines, jolting against the heavy, pounding ache that drills into her temple, and they hold her down, making her take more and more of the sludge until her own bubbles are choking and gasping under the strain.
The gray soothes, if only a little. But she yearns for fields of blue and yellow and dappled brown-green. She aches for the dreams that they have taken from her and replaced with echoes of words and sludge, slices and pain.
So much pain.
She just wants it to stop—
And then.
And then—
One day. The world. Jolts.
Something slides against her thoughts. It is distant at first. Fleeting, like brushes of the thing’s hands when the put the slices under her skin. She doesn’t pay much attention to it, not for a while—she’s in too much pain; her attention is split between panting, trying not to move too much and praying for unconsciousness. Her existence is littered with nausea, regret and lingering hope that someone—something, even—would come, maybe, and help instead of cut her down again and again and again.
But then, it happens once more.
The same, fleeting, swift brush of consciousness on hers. The press of a fluttering warmth in her skull, the strange, foreign flicker of something that makes her choke back screams and hope for something to save her. She swallows then, mouth drier than normal, and tries to cough through her anxiety—she doesn’t know what the sludge has done or the slices, but it can’t be good if—
Something trickles, oozing like sludge and wet brown, inside of her mind and she tries not to scream.
Wet slides down her cheeks, leaking from her eyes—she is so scared—she doesn’t know what’s happening to her.
‘Hello?’
She stays very, very, very still. Maybe, maybe, if she doesn’t move, they won’t—
‘I can hear you talking to yourself, you know. It’s not very nice that you’re trying to hide.’
The thrum picks up in her chest and her throat goes dry, hands clenching in fear. The glint of silver had done something and she isn’t sure—she isn’t sure just quite what it has done. The searing, blistering pain from months ago came back to her thoughts like a sick, faded memory, broken by rage and fear and pain and she whimpers, jerking against the slices under her skin.
‘I think...is this what happens after you die? I mean…not exactly what I was expecting. I thought—angels for sure. Church always taught me that if I died I’d be going to Italian heaven—choir angels singing, unlimited buffets, God maybe sitting on a throne or something—‘
She whines, the sound grating against her dry, aching throat and the slices move under her skin. She just wants the words to go away—she doesn’t know anything—she doesn’t have anything to share—there was a skitter of steps, an inhale and then—
“She’s moving. She’s moving—Kabuto!” Something shouts. It’s too loud, too rash against her ears and she wants them all to shut up. The noises in her head, the thing that’s shouting all too loud—she craves the quiet now and she regrets her wishes for familiar echoes of dreams and scattered, skittering sounds—she just wants them all to be quiet now—please—
“Prepare the chakra.” The thing says, in the familiar, hissing tone that has haunted her mind. “She’s awake now, so she should stand it.”
Something brushes her forehead and she tries to jolt away, but it catches her face, keeping her very, very still. A soft, feather-like thing brushes her brow, moving down, down, down until it reaches between her eyebrows. It moves to her cheeks, looping and whirling and until her cheeks and forehead and covered in wet, dripping liquid.
It’s cold.
‘Hey—hey what’s going on? What’s happening—‘
Shut up, shut up, shut up—please go away—
‘I can—what’s happening to you? To us? To me—
NO WORDS—PLEASE NO WORDS—
“Orochimaru-sama,” Something else says a low, calm rumble of words that scramble her panicked thoughts. The voice feels calm, like it knows what its doing and she…she trusts it more than the other one. “It’s in here.”
“Good.” The other croons, low and sweet, a sultry dance of threat and promise. Something brushes her ear. “You will be perfect.”
She tries to jerk away, but the things keep her in place.
‘What’s going on—hey, hey—tell me—‘
Blinding pain rushes through her and she wails, choked and broken, her spine arching while the things—‘hands, oh my gods—what are they doing to you’—keep her down. Something similar to the sludge settles into her bones and she chokes on her tongue. The beat rushes wildly in her chest, thumping against her bones and she claws at her skin, trying to tear it out of her.
She needs the sludge out. She needs it out now.
“Inducing natural chakra. Harvested from Hashirama forest, inner bark. Properties include sage chakra and healing abilities. Effect, unknown.”
This time the sludge does not press inside of her, does not edge its way under her skin—
It rips into her, tearing into her flesh so painfully she bucks against the slices, a scream leaving her lips. Wet rushes down her cheeks and she chokes on the fluids that coat her tongue, eyes suddenly going wide.
There are two figures above her, swathed in gray and slurring color that makes it hard for her to keep her eyes open. She screams and sobs, cries and bellows in pain—it aches, it aches so bad and she just needs it to stop—
‘WHAT IS THIS?’
She lets out a garbled screech, choked through her screams and soaked in lingering echoes of pain and anger and rage—who are they to do this to her?—
“I’ll kill you,” She sobs, but she’s not sure what those words mean, she doesn’t know how to say them other than a scrambled, misunderstood imitation of the resonances in her mind, but she screams it at them—
‘I’LL KILL YOU!” She roars the things called words and hopes, that maybe, maybe, maybe if she—if she does something—
The meaty, thick things that hold her down stutter and she bellows in pain.
Then, there is a crash, a scream and—
—she forgets the words that flickered against her mind—
Pandemonium erupts.