Guuuuhh I am loving Kabuchimaru,
holy crap. Yeah. Basically, I saw chapter 356, and the idea for this story was
there. Let me just reiterate the fact that it contains SPOILERS, OKAY?
And...it's weird. Very weird. Probably one of the weirdest things I've ever
written. XD I hope everyone enjoys.
Reflection
Kabuto sits
before a mirror. It is old, older than he is. It has reflected countless faces
wearing countless expressions, sad, hopeful, terrified, blank. He wonders if
he’ll see them all in his own face if he looks long enough.
“So many faces…”
Yet none of them, he knows,
are quite like his. None of them will ever be quite like his. He has a special
face, yes, very special.
“You chose it. You chose
me.”
His fingers brush against
his cheek, and then trail down, over skin that tingles. They are his fingers,
but not. He feels his eyes flutter shut as the fingers glide back up, and he
tilts his head into the palm.
“I am yours. You are mine,
and I am yours.”
That’s what he’s always
wanted, in his heart of hearts. Everything he’s done up until this moment, he
has done for that person. The person he hates. The person he loves. The person
who gave him purpose.
“What are you searching
for, Kabuto? You’re wasting your potential here, with fools who put limits on
knowledge. Join me. Serve me, and you will reap the rewards tenfold.”
“But…my master…”
“You have no master,
Kabuto. No father, no mother, no siblings, nothing to keep you rooted. Don’t
you want more than this?” He gestured around him, ageless, serpentine features
cold, mocking. “Or do you wish to remain a simple medic, a gopher at the beck
and call of creatures so far beneath you while your true talent withers?” He
pinched a lock of Kabuto’s hair between his thumb and pointer finger and
brought it to his nose, his slitted eyes locked on Kabuto’s as he inhaled
slowly. “If that’s the case, I have no use for you.” He let the hair slide
through his fingers and straightened.
Kabuto watched his
retreating back for as long as he could stand it, gnawing his lip so hard it
bled. What was
he searching for?
A person worthy of his service. A person
to whom he would offer himself, body and soul, and ask nothing in return,
because the opportunity to do so was all the satisfaction he needed.
“Wait…Orochimaru-sama!
Wait!”
The beautiful head
turned.
Kabuto didn’t stop to
think. The words tumbled out of him as if they’d been waiting for the chance to
escape.
“Take me. That’s what I
want. Use me. I’ll spy for you. I’ll do anything you ask.”
Just tell me who I am…
Orochimaru smiled.
“Come along, then. We
have much to discuss, you and I.”
He opens his eyes.
They are special, too. One
is a normal, human eye. One is golden and glimmering, a reptilian eye. An otherness.
“No…you didn’t choose me.”
He reaches behind and
removes the band securing his thick, silver hair. Orochimaru preferred him to
wear his hair loose when they were at the base, because he enjoyed the texture
of it, the scent of it, the way it seemed to glow in the candlelight.
Reminiscent of that time,
Kabuto touches it, brings a strand to his nose and inhales slowly, his human
eye and reptilian eye watching him in the mirror, witnessing something lewd. Something
intimate.
“I chose you.”
“Why me,
Orochimaru-sama?”
Delicate eyebrows
arched. Orochimaru closed the leather-bound tome in his lap and set it on the
stand beside his armchair. The stand also contained two glasses, one of which
he passed to Kabuto, and a crystal decanter full of an amber liquid.
“Are you disappointed?”
Kabuto frowned. “No,” he
said cautiously. “Of course I’m not, but—”
“I’ve found,” Orochimaru
began, leaning forward to fill Kabuto’s glass, “that those who ask “Why me?”
are often frightened, lacking confidence, or dissatisfied with their current
situation.” He filled his own glass, then replaced the stopper on the decanter
and put it down near the book. “It is a question that leads to nothing, so I
advise you not to ask it again. Drink, Kabuto.”
Thrown off guard by this
man’s intense, yet mild tone, Kabuto obeyed. The liquid burned his throat,
though it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. He took another sip, the dull ache in
his clenched stomach begging to recede.
Orochimaru knew. He had
to know that Kabuto struggled to define himself, that he was no better than an
empty shell, animated only by habit. Do this, and this, and this…sleep, wake,
eat, fight, kill…deceive…bleed…
New faces, always new
faces, so many faces telling him to do this, and this, and this, but not
telling him who he was.
“I…guess I’m weak,” he
admitted, and grinned a weak grin.
For a long moment, the
only sound in the study was a clock ticking, ticking away seconds, hours,
months, years.
“Kabuto, Kabuto…you
silly, stupid boy. Do you still not know what you are?”
“Now you can’t leave,” he
murmurs into his hair. “You’ll never leave.”
“Mine. You are mine,
Kabuto.”
“Mine.”
“My tool.”
“Mine.”
“My eyes, and my ears.”
“Mine.”
“My treasure.”
“Mine forever.”
The mirror reflects
countless faces, wrapped around this face. His face. Around and around
and around.
But his face is special. His
face is two faces. Two faces, but one. There is no separating them. No cutting
them apart.
Two faces, but one face.
His face.
“Don’t worry. I’m your
treasure. I’ll take care of you, wait and see.”
For the first time in his
life, Kabuto knows.
“I’ll make you proud.”
Orochimaru told him, yes. He
told him then, and Kabuto finally knows.
“No more faces. Only my
face.”
He knows who he is.