FicWad

In your final moments, o one-winged bird,
Whose name did you call out?



It was sheer luck that she avoided Kabuto's lunge. Her foot slid a little too far as she moved into a defensive position and she stumbled, almost falling to her knees before she righted herself and moved away again. Kabuto overshot her, but recovered more quickly than she expected, and came at her again.

"I'm afraid I have the advantage here," he said conversationally as Hinata jerked back to avoid his swipe. "I'm healthy, rested, and fully clothed...and I have chakra to keep me from sinking into the mud as you are. Why are you fighting, again? You really don't have a chance."

She didn't want to talk to him: she needed to keep all her breath and concentration for what little she could do in battle. Even as she was clumsily dodging his blows, she used every moment she could grab to scan the land around them, searching for a way out. Nothing looked promising.

He's playing with me/, she thought as she just barely managed to avoid another of his chakra scalpels. /Just like that time with Ne...he could end this in a second if he wanted to. But he wants to play, so maybe I really can....if I can just get one chance....

" 'Never say die' is a cute philosophy, but it didn't save you the last time. I did."

She shook her head and dodged. She retreated and he advanced, never letting her gain a significant distance for more than a few seconds. Her hopes of outrunning him, slim to begin with, had faded completely.

"I saved you. For all your bravery and will, you couldn't do it yourself. What's the use of putting everything on the line in a hopeless fight if you still fall to the ground in a bloody mess as a loser? More sport for those watching, I suppose. Is that what you want? To make nothing more than a spectacle of yourself? Part of being an adult is facing up to reality gracefully."

Kabuto was suddenly much closer: he grinned, tapped her left shoulder lightly and it went numb all the way down to her fingertips. Hinata gasped, partly from fear and partly out of relief that it hadn't been her right. He was still next to her, smirking and she took a chance, pushed her numb shoulder against his chest and shoved /hard/. Kabuto's smirk vanished as he actually stumbled and went down, his chest unguarded.

Now!

She darted at him, hand ready, but once again, Kabuto recovered too quickly: he was already halfway up and met her attack with a kick at her belly, pushing her away. Hinata retreated, panting through her teeth: his kick had been off but it still hurt enough that she wanted to double over. Kabuto, strangely, stayed where he was, then wiped mud off his face and looked at her, unsmiling.

Oh, no...does he realize now that I have some tenketsu open? I ran at him instead of away...

"Still going? Let me give you some advice, Miss Hinata. You're not Naruto-kun."

He raised his hand and reignited his chakra scalpel, watching her over its gas blue blade.

"Miracles," he continued, in a pleasant, even tone, "only work for those stupid enough to believe in them. Only someone as utterly stupid as Naruto-kun can shear the laws of reality by dumb, persistent will. He doesn't have enough brain cells to realize the impossible. But, you and I? Miracles will never succeed for us because we know all too well how the world works. We can't suspend our minds long enough to accept the impossible and deny reality long enough to gain miracles. You went into the fight knowing it was hopeless, didn't you? Somewhere in the back of your mind, a little voice said "I'll never win this. I'm weak and he's strong." We always know the truth, Miss Hinata. We can't escape it. No miracle is coming for you here. Accept that now and I'll be easy with you. Not as easy as I would have been had you done the sensible thing from the start. But...easier."

"I w-won't."

"As expected," he said, and shrugged.

This time he was faster, giving her almost no room to evade him. He's getting bored, he wants to end this/, she realized, the edges of her hard-won calm starting to crack a little with panic. /I don't have many chances left...I can't get him while he's attacking like this--

And then she remembered.

Kabuto was very close now, chakra scalpel aimed low. "I'll cut the muscles in your legs and then you'll have no choice but to give this farce up. Can you walk on severed muscle through sheer will alone? I don't think you can."

His smirk was truly disgusting in its confidence.

Almost there...

She waited quietly: things seemed very slow. She saw his arm start to move in attack, saw the small wrinkle between his eyes when he realised she wasn't trying to dodge him or run away, felt the tip of his scalpel penetrate her thigh, then quite calmly grabbed his right arm, closed her fingers around his wrist and shoved all her chakra into his arm.

Blood sprinkled her face.

Kabuto didn't scream like Togito: he was too self possessed for that. He reeled away, nearly fell, then righted himself with obvious effort and turned back towards her, clutching his arm. Blood was streaming down it in great rivers, dripping down to the earth below: so she hadn't been able to blow it off the way she had before. From the look of it, he was trying to heal himself, but her attack should have closed all the tenketsu in his arm, making it impossible to bring chakra there. Kabuto looked at his arm, then looked up at her, and Hinata noticed, with a twinge of fear, that the whites of his eyes had gone a bloody red.

Huh? That shouldn't have affected his eyes...

"Oh, we're just full of secrets, aren't we, Miss Hinata," he spat, all pretense at civility gone. "Taking a page out of Naruto-kun's playbook. More fool me--more fool you. This little attack won't save you--"

She ran at him.

He stopped healing and raised his left hand, blue light springing up around it once more. "Did you think I can't do this with both?" he yelled and Hinata strained for more chakra, for everything she had left...

Something stabbed through her right foot: it twisted under her, sending her sprawling and she fell face-first into the mud, eyes wet with pain.

Not Kabuto! He's still over there! What--

She struggled to get up but she simply wasn't fast enough and Kabuto wasted no time. He was on her before she could even rise to her knees, grabbed at her hair with his good arm, yanked her upper body back, and kicked her hard in the ribs.

Bone split and she spit up blood, dazed with agony. He released her, but not before using his chakra scalpel to cut off the nerves in her right arm and she fell hard into the mud, bruising her forehead on a stone.

"No more speeches? No more 'I'll never give up?'" He kicked her again, then used his foot to throw her onto her back. "Have we learned our lesson yet? It was a nice try, but as I said before, you're not Naruto-kun. You're a weakling and a fool and you're supposed to be smarter than this."

The sky was wheeling grey and black above her and breathing hurt so much she wanted to stop. Kabuto was bending over her but she couldn't move; she couldn't even keep her eyes focused in one place.

Kabuto cocked his side to one side. "I think you're done."

Blood bubbled on her lips.

Hands grasped her, pulled her up, twisted an arm behind her back to hold her. "Let's go. It's over. It's done."





Kabuto made her walk back, or tried to: she couldn't breathe properly or walk in a straight line, so he healed her a bit and pushed Hinata on. "A sop that you don't deserve, but your lesson won't be learned in full if you pass out on me," he said and snickered. His right arm was apparently good as new, as he seemed to have no trouble using it now. She had accomplished exactly nothing.

Clouds of red filled her vision and Hinata followed them absently as they passed back and forth in front of her eyes. Each time she stumbled Kabuto pressed a little harder on her arm, so she tried her best to walk normally, which was difficult. At times the clouds left, her body left and everything went black; she came around enough once to realize that Kabuto was carrying her. Once the clouds returned, she was set back on her feet and made to walk again. Eventually, they reached the base.

They went from dark to darker, from trees to stone. "In here," Kabuto said after a time, and guided her through a door. She was aware of brighter light and white tile that almost felt good under her feet after the forest floor. He took her to the end of the room and laid her down on cool linens and for that, Hinata was, for a moment, grateful. Then he placed a hand on her chest and filled her lungs with fire.

Bone snapped together and she was breathless and sobbing when he finished a few moments later, too full of pain and fear to keep it hidden decently inside. Kabuto looked down at her, face clear of expression, as a true shinobi's was supposed to be.

"Now that you're capable of breathing and movement again, we're going to take a walk." Pulling her arm up behind her back again, he marched her out the door and down a short hallway, then through another door. The next hallway was barely lit and freezing cold under her torn, bare feet but Kabuto drove her on until they reached a door set with iron bars thicker than her leg.

The door opened and a man peered out at them, then stood aside immediately once he saw who it was. Kabuto nudged her forward--"Be careful, there's a step here"-- and she came down on a dirt corridor that seemed to stretch for miles.

Kabuto walked her a bit more, then stopped. Torches flickered around them, but there didn't seem to be anything much to see and they stood quietly in the semi-darkness for a few minutes, until someone coughed.

Startled, Hinata looked in the direction of the sound: it seemed to come from one of the sacks lying piled around them in great humps. She squinted, leaning forward: Kabuto called sharply and a Sound-nin appeared from the far end of the room, carrying a torch to them.

"Take a look," Kabuto said into her ear and the Sound-nin swung the torch towards the sacks.

The first thing she saw were black bars set vertically, and then the curve of someone's jaw, blotchy with dirt. The torch moved higher and picked out hair, hands, feet, chains: the sacks were prisoners hunched together in tiny cells and fear set all its hooks into Hinata's body.

"The useless ones," Kabuto said. "The ones too old, too infirm or simply not suitable for whatever reason to either join us or become part of Lord Orochimaru's research. They will lie here in the darkness, wasting away, until they die, because he has decreed so: once you come inside Otogakure, you can never leave again." He turned his head as he finished, apparently looking for something.

She was shaking so much she was surprised he could still keep hold of her. "W-why..d-did y-you...?"

"To show you the consequences of stupidity," he said, quite calmly, and gestured at a prisoner seated in the far corner of the holding cell: an old man if his grey hair and hollow cheeks were any indication. The Sound-nin holding the torch stepped forward.

"Kill him."

"NO!"

Hinata howled, pulled and somehow twisted away, landing heavily on the floor. Spikes of pain dug into her chest and she suddenly couldn't catch her breath, but she begged all the same. "Pleasedon'tpleasedon'tdon'tpunishhimbecauseofmeplease," she whispered and coughed so hard it felt like another rib broke.

"Well, if you're going to be like that about it..." and Hinata managed to turn her head enough to see the Sound nin walking back towards them, looking a little peeved.

"Heh. Heh." Laughter rustled like mice through paper and to Hinata's shock, the old man unbent himself and crawled out of his corner, pressing his face against the bars. "I appreciate the thought, young lady, but--hehe--it would have been kinder if you had let them kill me. Now I'll spend more days in the dark."

"Don't push it, old man," Kabuto snapped, then knelt and bent over her tormented body. "Breaking the ribs I just healed, again."

Hinata tried not to cry as his hands pulled and tugged, separating tissue and bone, forcing things back into their proper configuration again. The prisoners had gone back to being silent, lifeless lumps strewn around the cells: the only breathing Hinata could hear was her own pain-filled gasps. "The next time you pull a stunt like this, I'll have you kill one with your own hands," he said and Hinata was beginning to wish that she could just will herself dead.

Kabuto finished and sat back on his heels, watching her, his mouth in a thin, tight line.

"Listen to me, please. Do you see now that I'm not fooling around? You are of virtually no interest to Lord Orochimaru. You are weak; he doesn't care about the Hyuuga as he does the Uchiha; you are at best a mild curiosity to him, and only because he wonders why I really want to keep you. Apparently the fact that you're an unsealed Byakugan user and such things are as rare as white elephants isn't good enough." He smiled briefly, but his eyes were cold. "In short: your life depends on you not becoming a liability and if you continue to do things like run away and make a fuss, he will kill you (or more likely order me to do it) as painfully as possible. Do you understand? I have very little leeway here, and you, none."

She focused on the white sliver of throat between his jaw and high collar and thought about cutting it.

"Do you understand?"

"I-y-yes. I understand y-you. A-and I w-wish you had left me to die," she said, and held her breath. She could feel, somehow, that the prisoners were watching her.

Kabuto's expression skipped between anger and amusement for a moment; then he took hold of her wrist and pulled Hinata to her feet. "Heh. Be a little more specific, Miss Hyuuga: I've saved you twice, you know. And besides," he said from over his shoulder as he led her out and the guards locked the door behind them, "what's done is done. All's fair in war, after all...I can't take any of it back."




Hinata was alert enough this time to see the line of bloody footprints leading from the corridor onto the tile as they re-entered the medical room. Her feet still hurt dreadfully and each step she took had a slight pull as her torn flesh tried to stick to the smooth floor. Kabuto led her back to the bed and told her to sit, but not before he swept the bloody sheets off, then produced a pair of shackles and chained one of her arms to the bedpost.

"I've had quite enough of you running off today," he said as he disappeared into a nearby doorway. Hinata heard running water.

Her teeth chattered: she clamped them together but that just sent the shiver down into her neck and shoulders. Her arms and legs wouldn't stop shaking, even though she was doing her best to control herself. What now? What now? What now?

Kabuto returned, pushing a small cart with a large basin of water, some cloths and several instruments all sharp and shiny. He smiled at her, then dipped a cloth in the water, knelt before her, and began to wipe the mud off her face. The water was warm.

Hinata sat very still.

"I can't stand untidiness," he said as he washed her. "Close your eyes, please... that's better." He dropped the now filthy cloth on the cart, then reached for another, and one of his instruments. "Now, let's see about those feet."

"Why bother? You should just cut them off," a voice said from the doorway, and laughed, low and strong.

Something snapped inside Hinata and for a moment it was as if Kabuto had never healed her and she was still struggling to draw breath through bone shards and blood. She was so very tired and hurt and frightened already, just from Kabuto and now terror beyond anything Kabuto had brought to her was splitting her heart in two as she watched Orochimaru glide into the room, smiling at her.

I can't...I just can't...I have nothing more in me...Please, no more...

Kabuto turned halfway and Hinata could see his expression, tolerant and amused. "It would be a fitting punishment, wouldn't it? But I have other things in mind. And, well, she simply won't be very useful without feet."

Orochimaru flickered a hand, a faint look of contempt coming into his eyes. "Hmph. Useful...I thought you were going to experiment on her for her bloodline limit? She certainly doesn't require feet for that."

"She doesn't," Kabuto acknowledged as he reached for another instrument and began to pull at something in her right foot that made Hinata nearly bite through her lip with pain. "But I hate to give up any advantages at the onset...At least grant me a trial run. I'm short staffed. And she could be so very helpful to me."

Hinata bent her head and tried to make it look as though she was staring at nothing as Orochimaru looked her over, clearly comparing her mudstained, bloodstained shambles of a self with his purple silk kimono and long, smooth hair. She was very good at watching things out of the corners of her eyes while pretending her attention was really on something else: all those years spent cowed amongst her family had really turned out to be surprisingly useful in some ways..."If you want to play with the filthy little louse so very badly, I'll let you have her. Though, I can't believe that you still want this...this.../insect/ even after she caused such a disgusting fuss. Really, my dear, you should have done the appropriate thing and killed her on the spot."

Kabuto said nothing, but he smiled up at Orochimaru, a soft, pleased smile that spoke of secrets between them and Hinata felt something hot and wet run down one cheek.

...I won't live just so they can play with me...Please...

"Ah, I see now why you went down like that. You stepped on something nasty and it's embedded in your foot," Kabuto murmured suddenly. "Poor Miss Hyuuga...to be undone by a twig." He dropped something twisted and bloody onto the cart, then wiped the bottom of her foot and pressed his hand there. "You'll heal well enough, I think."

"Kabuto," said Orochimaru, "is so very good at keeping his experiments alive. Why, I've even been able to reuse the same experiments again and again...all thanks to him..."

"Yes. Because they're alive," Kabuto said and there was a prickle of something underlining his words that made Hinata forget her fear for a moment and take a second look at his bent head and stiff shoulders. Orochimaru's lips pursed, just slightly.

Kabuto rose and tossed his bloody instrument onto the cart, where it clattered down amongst the rags he had used before to clean her. "Do me the honor of staying here for a moment more, my lord," he said and disappeared back into the other room. Orochimaru's gaze followed him out and there was an expression on his bone-white face that Hinata could not quite name--calculating and disdainful, and even, Hinata thought, maybe a little surprised? No, not surprised. Wary. Orochimaru had looked and not liked what he had seen.

Kabuto returned with a small smile on his face and a glass of amber fluid in his hands. "For you," he said, and placed it in her unchained hand.

"W-what is it...?" Hinata whispered after a moment. There were tiny swirls of something moving in the liquid and even though she knew that there was no choice not to drink, she just couldn't bring the cup to her lips.

"Oh, something to take the pain away," Kabuto said airily and exchanged another knowing smile with Orochimaru.

Her hand wouldn't move...

"What are you waiting for? Drink it," Kabuto said, his smile gone and his tone starting to shade into annoyance. He leaned forward, frowning, and she cringed back before she could stop herself.

"Do," Orochimaru added, giving her a wide snake's smile.

The cup was so heavy in her hand that she had trouble raising it, but it did, bumping against her closed lips. She shut her eyes and tried to fix the faces of her dearest people before her--/Naruto-kun, Hanabi-chan, Neji-niisan, Kiba-kun and Akamaru, Shino-kun, Kurenai-sensei/--so she would at least have pleasant things surrounding her if she died, and drank.

The liquid was oily and coated her tongue, but the taste was not unpleasant: she finished it and dropped the empty glass on the bed.

Several minutes passed, in silence and nothing happened, as far as Hinata could tell. Her heart still beat, she could still breathe, her mind remained unclouded...

Hinata opened one eye enough to see Kabuto looking puzzled and somewhat exasperated, while Orochimaru's face bore an expression of polite incredulity. "Kabuto, my dear boy," he murmured, "wasn't she--"

"She was," Kabuto said, no longer bothering to hide his annoyance. "How could she--well, never mind. It's interesting, though. Very interesting. I'll have to do a little further testing on her later." His voice faded towards the end of his sentence, as if he was walking away, so Hinata opened both eyes, but kept them directed at her lap.

Footsteps approached, then stopped in front of her. A hand grasped her free arm, there was a quick burst of pain and Hinata looked up to see Kabuto smiling at her over the hypodermic syringe now in her shoulder. "Lights out," he said, and pressed the plunger.

This time she didn't stay awake.





Something rocked her, gently and Hinata came awake, blinking at netting and dark wood. Water slapped the wall beside her and set her to rocking once again. Her ribs felt like knives under her skin, her head heavy and tender and sore.

"Where...am I..." The words seemed to fly from her mouth on splintery wings, her throat still raw from screaming. "This...isn't...my...room..?"

There was a rustle nearby, a dry cough, the sound of a foot moving on the floor. She turned her head, slowly: beside her, Kabuto turned a page in his book and looked down at her with indifferent eyes.

"A boat," he said, as if it was perfectly natural for them to be adrift together, then bent his head again to his reading. Another wave rolled into them, setting the lantern above Kabuto's head to bobbing: he reached up and stopped it with one hand and a look of annoyance. The light was only a soft, pale blossom of fire, yet it still hurt her eyes.

"Go back to sleep," he told her, hand still clutching the lantern. A finger on his free hand turned down the corner of the page in his book, marking his place: he closed it and set it aside, then took the light away. "Sleep." He was preparing to go.

I'm...not tired is what she wanted to say, but the words fluttered in her throat and went no higher.

"While you can," Kabuto added, then disappeared into the dark.




It was the cold that woke her next and Hinata came awake to find herself squatting knees-to-chest on a broken concrete floor no larger than her wardrobe at home. Light filtered in from an arrowslit window high above her and puddled around her feet, picking out the bruises, blood and scratches on her legs in high relief. Hinata could see patches of skin on her upper thighs where the fabric gaped, very white against the dirt.

Her robe had not been changed: it was the same one, filthy and bloodstained, that she had worn when she tried to escape. If she stretched out a leg, she could touch the door in front of her: steel thicker than her entire body, with a barred observation window and a slit at the bottom for food. There was a bucket to her left and one to her right, one empty, the other filled maybe a cupful with dusty water. There was mold under her feet and she could not stop shivering.

And now/, she thought over and over as she rocked to keep warm, /what now?

Now it begins...

She stayed as she was for three days and did not move except to rock and take a mouthful of the water, which left her lips and tongue coated with chalky dust. Voices went past every now and then: occasionally eyes appeared in the observation window and watched. She did not look back and eventually they went away. There was no food for her, not even a crust. Evidently she was going to be starved. Hinata rocked and thought of the prisoners Kabuto had brought her to see, bent against themselves and staring into the darkness through their bars. Next time I'll have you kill one with your own hands. What next time? Her blood was ice and her stomach was empty: soon enough, she'd collapse in on herself.

But if she was meant to suffer and die...why the warm water and the clean white bandages wrapped around her feet?

On the second night, someone draped a scrap of blanket over her as she lay half-dead and dreaming and took the water away. When she woke the next day, her fingers were purple and blue from the cold, so she wrapped the blanket around her hands to try and warm them: the bandages kept her feet from freezing, she thought. It was on this third day that they came for her.




She had dozed off and the sound of her cell door being slammed against the wall woke her with a jolt.

Two men stood in the doorway, both almost as broad as they were tall. Moving as one, they stepped forward and seized her by her bruised arms, pulling her into the air between them. She cried out and wriggled in their grips, too weak to do anything else.

"Where to?" one said and the other replied: "Second lab. Come on, he's waiting."

She watched dirty stone sweep by under her feet as they bore her swiftly away. He...which he...could it be...I don't want...to see either....

The men stopped abruptly at a metal door, Hinata swinging in the air like a hooked fish. One knocked at the door and received a muffled "Come in," in response.

Lights glared and tears streamed from her eyes, grown used to shadows. There was nothing in the room but a bed, stripped to its mattress, another cart glittering with instruments and Kabuto.

He was sitting on the bed, reading a scroll as they entered, but stood up as the men brought her forward. He raised his eyebrows and nodded at the bed, then carefully re-rolled the scroll and placed it somewhere in the bottom of the cart.

They threw her down on the mattress, pressing down hard on her shoulders and arms to keep her in place as Kabuto walked to the cart, looked over his instruments for a moment, then selected a scalpel and turned back to her. Over his shoulder, there was something Hinata had not noticed before: a large cutaway diagram of the human eye.

"No..." she whispered and tried to pull away despite her weakness and the strength of the hands holding her down. I won't...I won't...!

"Hold her head," Kabuto said softly and stepped forward, scalpel raised. The bed sagged slightly under his weight: he knelt on top on her, knees on either side of her body and reached out for her eyes.

Dry fingers pulled her eyelids apart, holding them open and she turned her face as far to the side as she could go, pressed her cheek down hard into the mattress. The large hands slapped her, yanked out hanks of hair, but she would not move, she would not, she would not...

Kabuto released her eye with an exasperated /hmm-hmm/, then touched a point near her throat and all her muscles locked and would not answer her.

Hands turned her head again and the scalpel's point touched her eye, very lightly, then pressed down. She could not move to get away but she could scream all she liked, her last act of control and resistance. She screamed to deafen, she screamed to shatter and pierce and slash, she screamed in fury and the noises that sprang from her raw throat were grating, wordless and ugly, and she would not stop.

Tears and blood down my face...

"It's over, Miss Hyuuga," Kabuto said and her uncut eye saw full moons in duplicate and a mask of horribly patient annoyance and pity before the scalpel made another cut and she could not see at all for pain.

A guinea pig? An experiment? Was this...all I was ever meant to be?

"No! No! Let me go! No! NO!"




Hinata stirs and makes a soft whimpering sound and Kabuto wakes from his twilight sleep at her side. A moment's examination reassures him that she is still truly asleep and he presses close once again, rests his cheek against her breasts and lets her heartbeat calm him.

There is a flutter of motion in the room and Kabuto looks up to see a shadow bending low over the bed, looking down at him.

"Go. You know what has to be done."

The figure vanishes and Kabuto resettles himself. Hinata is completely quiet again, her breathing deep and calm, the breathing of someone safely enfolded in a sleep jutsu, wrapped in sweet dreams.

Not much longer, he tells himself, listening to each breath, letting the sound sink down within him. So little left...but this wasn't a failure, it's merely that the situation has changed. I won't be stopped now, I can't--

Kabuto woke up.

It took him a moment to remember who and where he was, and once he did, he put out a hand and touched the space beside him just to verify that it was truly empty. It was.

He sighed. Moving his stiff body carefully, he rolled over so he could look out his window and watch the last few minutes of the pre-dawn grey through his one good eye.