NejiTen "Straight On Till Morning" Interlude: Second Star To The Right
This is an interlude chapter before the final chapter of the main story. It's basically backstory and details a part of the time that Neji and Tenten spent imprisoned by Orochimaru. I was going to post it after SOTM was finished but I actually think the last chapter will mean more if you know the backstory first. In either case, however, you can read the main story without having read this so feel free to skip if you'd rather not be diverted. ♥ Thanks for the lovely support of this story. It's been keeping me going.
Also also, this chapter has theme music!
TITLE: Straight On Till Morning
SERIES: Naruto
CHARACTERS: NejiTen, Orochimaru, Rock Lee,
RATING: R (this may be a tad high but I'm erring on the side of caution)
WORD COUNT: 3,441
NOTES: Please heed the rating. Warnings for offscreen character death and depictions of torture. It's not graphic but please use your own judgement concerning possible triggers.
STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING
INTERLUDE - SECOND STAR TO THE RIGHT
She woke into semi-darkness, the only light in her room a oil lamp that burned on her work desk. She had no way of knowing how long she slept, or even if it was still daylight outside. Time did not matter in her room. Her cell.
For a moment she simply lay there, curled in her blankets, unable to stop herself from listening to the silence. It echoed in her head and in her heart, pressing on her like a physical weight. She had fought against it in the beginning but months had passed and she was growing tired. Orochimaru had piled all sorts of raw materials on her desk along with various tools, just waiting for the day when she would break down and create, Whispering life into a machine born of sorrow and loneliness and pain.
She curled inwards, cocooning herself in her blankets. She could not allow herself to fall so low as to make weapons. But even though she kept telling herself that, she knew she was almost there. Soon enough she would break, the silence growing too loud for her to do anything but Whisper.
Outside her locked room came a sound.
She lifted her head, straining to hear, and stumbled off the bed and over to the door when she could not. She pressed her ear against the door and heard footsteps, many footsteps. The guards then. They came and went sometimes, always silent, but this time she heard another sound. A constant drag against the concrete floors. She frowned. The guards were dragging something down the hallway.
“The Master did a number on this one,” one of the guards commented quietly. Another grunted in agreement but nothing else was said and they went by her door, still dragging something between them.
A body, she realized painfully. They were dragging a body.
She knew there were other prisoners besides herself. There had been an older man once, boldly and loudly arguing with Orochimaru. She had heard him only the once and never again. She was sure he was dead, but there were others - a younger man, quiet and steadfast, and once a man who had been conversing with Orochimaru as if they could stand each other presence. Something about a curse or a seal or something. She had not been able to hear very well.
And now someone was dead. She pulled herself away from the door sadly, the weight pressing on her heavier than ever. She ignored her desk and crawled back into her bed, sitting herself in the corner against the wall with the blankets wrapped around her shoulders. One day she would join that person and they’d drag her body away as well, but not until she bent to Orochimaru’s will. He would not let her die before he got what he wanted.
She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes.
The lullaby came to her from far away, so deep in her past she couldn’t even remember who had sang it to her. Her parents were misty memories now but somehow the song was still intact and she remembered feeling content, safe. She sang it softly, sadly, and from her heart. She sang it to herself and to the poor soul they’d dragged from Orochimaru’s torture chamber. No one deserved to be there, in that place. No one deserved the despair she could feel hovering all around her, just waiting for her to give in. She sang to ward it off
She sang for a long, long time.
And thirty yards away, in a completely separate cell, Hyuuga Neji lay broken on the floor, listening, a tear tracing its way down his bloody cheek.
The next day she had a panic attack.
The lamp on her desk had run out of oil and she’d been in total darkness and silence for six hours before she broke. Something just switched off in her head and she screamed, beating against the door, the desk, herself. She threw whatever she could get her hands on, broke whatever she could. Tears ran down her face and she sobbed even as she screamed in fury, catching a hold of the lamp in the dark, the glass shattering everywhere.
It was the sound of the broken glass that drew them, she knew. They could never allow her to hurt herself. Hearing footsteps outside, she threw herself at the door, beating on it like a madwoman even as the shards of glass on the floor cut her feet.
“Let me out!” she screamed brokenly. “Let me out! I want to go home! Please, let me out!”
Outside she could hear Orochimaru barking orders at his men. “Get that door open before she kills herself!”
The door opened and she fell out of the room, her knees hitting the concrete. She looked up blearily to find Orochimaru glaring down at her while two of his lackeys caught her by the arms and hauled her to her feet. Behind Orochimaru, though, there were others. Two guards, she thought, with someone between them. Another prisoner. He had long hair and pale eyes, one of which was swollen and black and barely open a slit. He was bloody and bruised all over and it was obvious that he’d been going into the torture chamber for another round when she’d halted the party with her tantrum. Their gazes met and she felt something pass between them.
Anger welled up once again, no longer fiery but hard as steel and deep as an ocean. She looked to the guard on the right side of the prisoner. He’d been foolish enough to wear a digital watch to work that day. What a shame.
She Whispered and the watch exploded, taking half the man’s hand with it.
Everyone moved at once. The guard screamed in pain and dropped to his knees just as the prisoner brought up his elbow and smashed it into the face of the other guard. In the span of five seconds he was completely free, but instead of making a run for it, he barreled towards Orochimaru and the two of them went down in a tangle.
Something smashed into the side of Tenten’s head and she fell forward to the ground, completely dazed. She was lying on her stomach, her cheek pressed against the floor and she could blurrily see that more guards had appeared to restrain the prisoner, pulling him off Orochimaru and slamming him into the ground 10 feet away. His head was turned towards her and their eyes met again even as she felt someone pull her hands behind her back and fasten them securely, just as they were doing to the prisoner across the way.
She felt a sharp pinch in her neck and knew that they had given her a sedative. She kept her gaze on the pale-eyed prisoner and managed to mouth ‘I’m sorry’ to him before everything went dark.
They brought her a new lantern and oil to keep it lit and Orochimaru made sure she knew that they had killed the prisoner she had tried to help escape. She had killed him, he said, because she had tried to interfere. He then had one of his men give her ten lashes with a belt across the back for her disobedience.
Afterwards, she painfully sat down at her desk and began.
Twisted things came forth from her mind, horrible things meant for maiming and killing. And the more things she imagined into being, the more the Snake hurt her until pain was all she could conjure, mentally, physically and spiritually. It poured into her work and she begat strange and terrible weapons whose voices hissed like snakes and whose blades cut her even as she formed them.
And even as she worked, she cried and bled and grieved for the man she had killed. But in the end even he too was swallowed by the blackness growing in her mind, hollowing her from the inside out.
Eventually she lost herself so deep that she stopped creating and no matter how much they hurt or beat her, she could not be made to rise from her bed. Orochimaru had her carried from the room and placed outside in the courtyard where the sunlight could reach her and then posted guards to watch her before disappearing somewhere.
It took her a long, long time for her to even realize where she was. She sat blankly for hours on a stone bench before she realized that there was grass under her feet and blue sky over her head. And when she did realize that, she wept, great tears rolling down her face without a sound. She cried for herself and for her lost freedom and family, and for all the others Orochimaru had stolen from their lives and brought pain to. She cried because she knew she had made things for him to hurt people with and she cried because she knew she was going to die and it would not be soon enough, not soon enough.
A small voice spoke.
She paused and looked around, wondering if she had finally lost her mind. The courtyard was empty but for her and her two guards. The surrounding buildings were silent.
The small voice spoke again.
Her face went white and her hands clenched in the ornamental robes Orochimaru had had her dressed in that morning. Her hair, so long and unruly now that she had stopped tending to it, brushed her knuckles as stared hard at her lap. Something was Whispering her.
A shiver worked its way up her spine and realized that she was afraid. She had heard no voices in so long except those she brought forth, the dark things from her dreams. The tiny spark of light in her mind was almost terrifying next to that great maw of darkness. In her lap, she shakily cupped her hands together as if to protect it.
She Whispered and heard her own voice creak with disuse. Where are you?
The small voice answered in a mix of words and images. The black. Space, then. It could not be far, however, or she would not have been able to hear it. Perhaps a ship in orbit around the planet.
What do you want with me? she Whispered. The voice was so tiny, so frail.
To help you.
She laughed and even in her head it sounded sad and defeated. I am lost, little spark. You should find another to Whisper to and leave me.
The answer that came was the human equivalent of someone refusing to budge.
She closed her eyes. What is your name?
It came to her as a complicated tangle of symbols and memories. White Eye That Sees In The Black.
Byakugan.
And when she said the name in her mind, the tiny spark flared bright and grew, pushing the darkness back into the corners, and she understood that it was not the ship’s voice that was weak and frail, it was herself.
Byakugan, she Whispered, and the spark glowed like a firefly. Let me speak with your captain.
The captain, Tenten soon learned, was dead and his second-in-command was on the planet that the Byakugan was now orbiting. He was being held captive somewhere in Orochimaru’s compound due to a deal gone bad. She learned all of this from a man named Lee, the ship’s mechanic, strangely enough.
She was able to speak to him through the Byakugan, the ship transmitting her thoughts as if she were speaking into a comlink. She was able to do so a bit every day as apparently Orochimaru had decided that she needed at least fifteen minutes of fresh air every day or she’d sink back down into depression again and stop making weapons for him. She might have helped this impression along by acting a little more melancholy than she really felt.
The Byakugan had saved her from the abyss. Talking with the ship and with Lee had awakened her mind again and cleared out most of the shadows. Day by day, she became a little more herself again and the weapons she worked on changed subtly in response. They were still clouded by her pain and imprisonment but she was in control now. She could silence their sharp voices if she wished. And she was working on something, something secret, a combination of something born of both despair and hope.
Lee had given her the name of the Byakugan’s second-in-command. His name was Neji but that did not help her much, as she rarely saw, let alone spoke, with any other prisoners. And after the incident with the guard whose hand she’d maimed, Orochimaru was very careful not to allow other mechanical things in her presence that she might use against him. He thought her range to be limited to what she could see, and that was true. She could not mobilize anything not in view, not without being directly linked with it, but she could certainly speak with machines a fairly great distance away. The Byakugan being one of them.
For fifteen minutes a day, she was free. When she was locked in her room, things grew dim again but she hung on to herself. It was during one such night, when she lay in bed, mentally bracing herself against the shadows in her mind, that she heard it.
Outside, in the courtyard, a man was humming her lullaby.
It was rough and his voice caught in places, stopping altogether in some moments, but she recognized her song, the one someone had sung to her all those years ago. Rolling to her knees, Tenten pressed herself against the wall, trying to hear. Perhaps it was one of the guards who had heard her that night? She shook her head after a moment though. No, whoever was humming so brokenly had to be a prisoner. The pain she heard in that voice echoed in her own.
Almost without being aware of it, she started to hum along with him, pressed into the very corner of her room. She heard his voice stumble when she joined him and she smiled, knowing he had heard her. They hummed only a few bars before she heard footsteps outside and his voice broke off suddenly. She stopped humming as well, tensing as she realized that Orochimaru was now in the courtyard with the prisoner.
“What was that? Was the girl singing again?”
Tenten curled in tighter to herself. She hadn’t known there were guards close enough to hear them. One answered.
“She heard him out here, I think. She was singing to him.”
Orochimaru’s voice hissed. “Fascinating.” There was the sound of shuffling and a grunt. “So, how did you like my little pet’s singing, Neji? You’re very lucky. Not many have the privilege of listening to a Whispered.”
Neji! She covered her mouth with both hands. The Byakugan’s second-in-command was just outside! Tomorrow she would be able to tell Lee that she had found him and that he was still alive, something Lee had been unsure of.
Outside, something heavy hit the ground.
“I think it would be...educational for you to stay and listen to a bit more.” Orochimaru said, only this time his voice sounded just beyond her door and she turned as it slammed opened and two guards strode in, followed by Orochimaru himself. The Snake wore a hooded expression, his fingers steepled together.
“Seems like you’re feeling better this evening, my pet. Perhaps you should sing for me this time.”
She cried out as the two guards dragged her from the bed and pushed her up against the wall. One reached up to the collar of her dress and violently ripped it down the back to her waist. Fear made her panic and she struggled and thrashed until one of the guards punched her clean in the face and she dropped instantly, held up only by their hands on her. Outside, she could hear Neji shouting something through what must have been a gag. She couldn’t understand him.
Wild-eyed, she did not resist when the guard pushed her up against the wall again. Behind her, Orochimaru picked something up from her desk.
“You’re very talented, my pet, but I think it’s time we field tested one these, don’t you think?” Something dark and coiled slithered to the floor. Her stomach immediately dropped. She knew what the Torturer held in his hand. “Sing for me,” his hissed.
The laser whip cut a line from her left shoulder all the way down to the small of her back with the first lash.
“Fifteen lashes, I think, this time,” Orochimaru said thoughtfully.
Tenten screamed.
The next day, they carried her out to the courtyard on a stretcher on Orochimaru’s insistence that she get her daily dose of sun. Tenten lay on her stomach on the cold stone bench and reached out for the ship circling overhead.
Neji’s alive. We’re out of time.
That night she did not sleep. Instead, she worked, her fingers bleeding right along with the welts on her back as she painstakingly etched glowing words into a sword’s edge.
The next evening the Byakugan attacked. She heard the explosions as it rocked the far side of the compound, red fire bursting towards the sky. She was locked in her room but Neji was not. She had given specific instructions on when the ship should attack and it had to be a moment when Neji was not confined, as she otherwise did not know where they were keeping him. She had chosen the usual time when Orochimaru had Neji brought to his torture chamber. In the courtyard she could hear the chaos as men ran to and fro, yelling for weapons and for the fire-ships to launch.
Knowing it was time, Tenten hefted the black sword she’d only just finished, the white symbols on the blade shining brightly. This weapon could not be used to hurt her, this one she could Whisper to without fear of darkness.
Lifting the sword level with her shoulder, a move that made her grimace with the way it pulled at her back, she rammed the sword into the outside wall of her room with all her might. No ordinary sword could have sliced through the lead-lined walls her room was made of, but Nightsong could. She Whispered and it obeyed, the hilt vibrating softly with power under her hand. She let go of the hilt and watched as the sword continued to move through the wall on its own, until the entire length of it went through and it clattered to the floor on the other side.
A fight broke out, she could hear the sound of punches being thrown, and then a hand closed around her sword. Reaching out through the blade thin hole in her wall, she knew it was Neji who had grabbed it.
Hope bloomed in her chest and outside she heard men yelling as every light flared to brightness, every machine whirring to life, every computer system powering on to full.
There was more fighting but this time it was the guards who yelled and fought and fell. Nightsong could cut anything. Anything. Nothing could stand in it’s path and live. It brought both hope and despair, as she had known it would.
When her door finally burst open, there were tears on her cheeks as she looked upon Neji for the first time and she could not help the happy sound that escaped her. Neji was the man she’d seen outside her door the day she’d lost her mind to the silence. Long hair, pale eyes, and bloody, but not dead. Not dead. Another of Orochimaru’s lies.
“I heard your song,” he said, his voice hollow and open, somehow soothing despite the state he was in. Nightsong glowed in his right hand. “It saved my life.”
She blinked away her tears, still smiling. “As you have saved mine.”
Slowly and carefully, he lifted his free hand towards her, palm up, beckoning. “Come with me.”
She placed her hand in his and, for the first time in a long time, she was without fear.
“Yes.”
END INTERLUDE.
Also also, this chapter has theme music!
Click to viewTITLE: Straight On Till Morning
SERIES: Naruto
CHARACTERS: NejiTen, Orochimaru, Rock Lee,
RATING: R (this may be a tad high but I'm erring on the side of caution)
WORD COUNT: 3,441
NOTES: Please heed the rating. Warnings for offscreen character death and depictions of torture. It's not graphic but please use your own judgement concerning possible triggers.
STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING
INTERLUDE - SECOND STAR TO THE RIGHT
She woke into semi-darkness, the only light in her room a oil lamp that burned on her work desk. She had no way of knowing how long she slept, or even if it was still daylight outside. Time did not matter in her room. Her cell.
For a moment she simply lay there, curled in her blankets, unable to stop herself from listening to the silence. It echoed in her head and in her heart, pressing on her like a physical weight. She had fought against it in the beginning but months had passed and she was growing tired. Orochimaru had piled all sorts of raw materials on her desk along with various tools, just waiting for the day when she would break down and create, Whispering life into a machine born of sorrow and loneliness and pain.
She curled inwards, cocooning herself in her blankets. She could not allow herself to fall so low as to make weapons. But even though she kept telling herself that, she knew she was almost there. Soon enough she would break, the silence growing too loud for her to do anything but Whisper.
Outside her locked room came a sound.
She lifted her head, straining to hear, and stumbled off the bed and over to the door when she could not. She pressed her ear against the door and heard footsteps, many footsteps. The guards then. They came and went sometimes, always silent, but this time she heard another sound. A constant drag against the concrete floors. She frowned. The guards were dragging something down the hallway.
“The Master did a number on this one,” one of the guards commented quietly. Another grunted in agreement but nothing else was said and they went by her door, still dragging something between them.
A body, she realized painfully. They were dragging a body.
She knew there were other prisoners besides herself. There had been an older man once, boldly and loudly arguing with Orochimaru. She had heard him only the once and never again. She was sure he was dead, but there were others - a younger man, quiet and steadfast, and once a man who had been conversing with Orochimaru as if they could stand each other presence. Something about a curse or a seal or something. She had not been able to hear very well.
And now someone was dead. She pulled herself away from the door sadly, the weight pressing on her heavier than ever. She ignored her desk and crawled back into her bed, sitting herself in the corner against the wall with the blankets wrapped around her shoulders. One day she would join that person and they’d drag her body away as well, but not until she bent to Orochimaru’s will. He would not let her die before he got what he wanted.
She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes.
The lullaby came to her from far away, so deep in her past she couldn’t even remember who had sang it to her. Her parents were misty memories now but somehow the song was still intact and she remembered feeling content, safe. She sang it softly, sadly, and from her heart. She sang it to herself and to the poor soul they’d dragged from Orochimaru’s torture chamber. No one deserved to be there, in that place. No one deserved the despair she could feel hovering all around her, just waiting for her to give in. She sang to ward it off
She sang for a long, long time.
And thirty yards away, in a completely separate cell, Hyuuga Neji lay broken on the floor, listening, a tear tracing its way down his bloody cheek.
The next day she had a panic attack.
The lamp on her desk had run out of oil and she’d been in total darkness and silence for six hours before she broke. Something just switched off in her head and she screamed, beating against the door, the desk, herself. She threw whatever she could get her hands on, broke whatever she could. Tears ran down her face and she sobbed even as she screamed in fury, catching a hold of the lamp in the dark, the glass shattering everywhere.
It was the sound of the broken glass that drew them, she knew. They could never allow her to hurt herself. Hearing footsteps outside, she threw herself at the door, beating on it like a madwoman even as the shards of glass on the floor cut her feet.
“Let me out!” she screamed brokenly. “Let me out! I want to go home! Please, let me out!”
Outside she could hear Orochimaru barking orders at his men. “Get that door open before she kills herself!”
The door opened and she fell out of the room, her knees hitting the concrete. She looked up blearily to find Orochimaru glaring down at her while two of his lackeys caught her by the arms and hauled her to her feet. Behind Orochimaru, though, there were others. Two guards, she thought, with someone between them. Another prisoner. He had long hair and pale eyes, one of which was swollen and black and barely open a slit. He was bloody and bruised all over and it was obvious that he’d been going into the torture chamber for another round when she’d halted the party with her tantrum. Their gazes met and she felt something pass between them.
Anger welled up once again, no longer fiery but hard as steel and deep as an ocean. She looked to the guard on the right side of the prisoner. He’d been foolish enough to wear a digital watch to work that day. What a shame.
She Whispered and the watch exploded, taking half the man’s hand with it.
Everyone moved at once. The guard screamed in pain and dropped to his knees just as the prisoner brought up his elbow and smashed it into the face of the other guard. In the span of five seconds he was completely free, but instead of making a run for it, he barreled towards Orochimaru and the two of them went down in a tangle.
Something smashed into the side of Tenten’s head and she fell forward to the ground, completely dazed. She was lying on her stomach, her cheek pressed against the floor and she could blurrily see that more guards had appeared to restrain the prisoner, pulling him off Orochimaru and slamming him into the ground 10 feet away. His head was turned towards her and their eyes met again even as she felt someone pull her hands behind her back and fasten them securely, just as they were doing to the prisoner across the way.
She felt a sharp pinch in her neck and knew that they had given her a sedative. She kept her gaze on the pale-eyed prisoner and managed to mouth ‘I’m sorry’ to him before everything went dark.
They brought her a new lantern and oil to keep it lit and Orochimaru made sure she knew that they had killed the prisoner she had tried to help escape. She had killed him, he said, because she had tried to interfere. He then had one of his men give her ten lashes with a belt across the back for her disobedience.
Afterwards, she painfully sat down at her desk and began.
Twisted things came forth from her mind, horrible things meant for maiming and killing. And the more things she imagined into being, the more the Snake hurt her until pain was all she could conjure, mentally, physically and spiritually. It poured into her work and she begat strange and terrible weapons whose voices hissed like snakes and whose blades cut her even as she formed them.
And even as she worked, she cried and bled and grieved for the man she had killed. But in the end even he too was swallowed by the blackness growing in her mind, hollowing her from the inside out.
Eventually she lost herself so deep that she stopped creating and no matter how much they hurt or beat her, she could not be made to rise from her bed. Orochimaru had her carried from the room and placed outside in the courtyard where the sunlight could reach her and then posted guards to watch her before disappearing somewhere.
It took her a long, long time for her to even realize where she was. She sat blankly for hours on a stone bench before she realized that there was grass under her feet and blue sky over her head. And when she did realize that, she wept, great tears rolling down her face without a sound. She cried for herself and for her lost freedom and family, and for all the others Orochimaru had stolen from their lives and brought pain to. She cried because she knew she had made things for him to hurt people with and she cried because she knew she was going to die and it would not be soon enough, not soon enough.
A small voice spoke.
She paused and looked around, wondering if she had finally lost her mind. The courtyard was empty but for her and her two guards. The surrounding buildings were silent.
The small voice spoke again.
Her face went white and her hands clenched in the ornamental robes Orochimaru had had her dressed in that morning. Her hair, so long and unruly now that she had stopped tending to it, brushed her knuckles as stared hard at her lap. Something was Whispering her.
A shiver worked its way up her spine and realized that she was afraid. She had heard no voices in so long except those she brought forth, the dark things from her dreams. The tiny spark of light in her mind was almost terrifying next to that great maw of darkness. In her lap, she shakily cupped her hands together as if to protect it.
She Whispered and heard her own voice creak with disuse. Where are you?
The small voice answered in a mix of words and images. The black. Space, then. It could not be far, however, or she would not have been able to hear it. Perhaps a ship in orbit around the planet.
What do you want with me? she Whispered. The voice was so tiny, so frail.
To help you.
She laughed and even in her head it sounded sad and defeated. I am lost, little spark. You should find another to Whisper to and leave me.
The answer that came was the human equivalent of someone refusing to budge.
She closed her eyes. What is your name?
It came to her as a complicated tangle of symbols and memories. White Eye That Sees In The Black.
Byakugan.
And when she said the name in her mind, the tiny spark flared bright and grew, pushing the darkness back into the corners, and she understood that it was not the ship’s voice that was weak and frail, it was herself.
Byakugan, she Whispered, and the spark glowed like a firefly. Let me speak with your captain.
The captain, Tenten soon learned, was dead and his second-in-command was on the planet that the Byakugan was now orbiting. He was being held captive somewhere in Orochimaru’s compound due to a deal gone bad. She learned all of this from a man named Lee, the ship’s mechanic, strangely enough.
She was able to speak to him through the Byakugan, the ship transmitting her thoughts as if she were speaking into a comlink. She was able to do so a bit every day as apparently Orochimaru had decided that she needed at least fifteen minutes of fresh air every day or she’d sink back down into depression again and stop making weapons for him. She might have helped this impression along by acting a little more melancholy than she really felt.
The Byakugan had saved her from the abyss. Talking with the ship and with Lee had awakened her mind again and cleared out most of the shadows. Day by day, she became a little more herself again and the weapons she worked on changed subtly in response. They were still clouded by her pain and imprisonment but she was in control now. She could silence their sharp voices if she wished. And she was working on something, something secret, a combination of something born of both despair and hope.
Lee had given her the name of the Byakugan’s second-in-command. His name was Neji but that did not help her much, as she rarely saw, let alone spoke, with any other prisoners. And after the incident with the guard whose hand she’d maimed, Orochimaru was very careful not to allow other mechanical things in her presence that she might use against him. He thought her range to be limited to what she could see, and that was true. She could not mobilize anything not in view, not without being directly linked with it, but she could certainly speak with machines a fairly great distance away. The Byakugan being one of them.
For fifteen minutes a day, she was free. When she was locked in her room, things grew dim again but she hung on to herself. It was during one such night, when she lay in bed, mentally bracing herself against the shadows in her mind, that she heard it.
Outside, in the courtyard, a man was humming her lullaby.
It was rough and his voice caught in places, stopping altogether in some moments, but she recognized her song, the one someone had sung to her all those years ago. Rolling to her knees, Tenten pressed herself against the wall, trying to hear. Perhaps it was one of the guards who had heard her that night? She shook her head after a moment though. No, whoever was humming so brokenly had to be a prisoner. The pain she heard in that voice echoed in her own.
Almost without being aware of it, she started to hum along with him, pressed into the very corner of her room. She heard his voice stumble when she joined him and she smiled, knowing he had heard her. They hummed only a few bars before she heard footsteps outside and his voice broke off suddenly. She stopped humming as well, tensing as she realized that Orochimaru was now in the courtyard with the prisoner.
“What was that? Was the girl singing again?”
Tenten curled in tighter to herself. She hadn’t known there were guards close enough to hear them. One answered.
“She heard him out here, I think. She was singing to him.”
Orochimaru’s voice hissed. “Fascinating.” There was the sound of shuffling and a grunt. “So, how did you like my little pet’s singing, Neji? You’re very lucky. Not many have the privilege of listening to a Whispered.”
Neji! She covered her mouth with both hands. The Byakugan’s second-in-command was just outside! Tomorrow she would be able to tell Lee that she had found him and that he was still alive, something Lee had been unsure of.
Outside, something heavy hit the ground.
“I think it would be...educational for you to stay and listen to a bit more.” Orochimaru said, only this time his voice sounded just beyond her door and she turned as it slammed opened and two guards strode in, followed by Orochimaru himself. The Snake wore a hooded expression, his fingers steepled together.
“Seems like you’re feeling better this evening, my pet. Perhaps you should sing for me this time.”
She cried out as the two guards dragged her from the bed and pushed her up against the wall. One reached up to the collar of her dress and violently ripped it down the back to her waist. Fear made her panic and she struggled and thrashed until one of the guards punched her clean in the face and she dropped instantly, held up only by their hands on her. Outside, she could hear Neji shouting something through what must have been a gag. She couldn’t understand him.
Wild-eyed, she did not resist when the guard pushed her up against the wall again. Behind her, Orochimaru picked something up from her desk.
“You’re very talented, my pet, but I think it’s time we field tested one these, don’t you think?” Something dark and coiled slithered to the floor. Her stomach immediately dropped. She knew what the Torturer held in his hand. “Sing for me,” his hissed.
The laser whip cut a line from her left shoulder all the way down to the small of her back with the first lash.
“Fifteen lashes, I think, this time,” Orochimaru said thoughtfully.
Tenten screamed.
The next day, they carried her out to the courtyard on a stretcher on Orochimaru’s insistence that she get her daily dose of sun. Tenten lay on her stomach on the cold stone bench and reached out for the ship circling overhead.
Neji’s alive. We’re out of time.
That night she did not sleep. Instead, she worked, her fingers bleeding right along with the welts on her back as she painstakingly etched glowing words into a sword’s edge.
The next evening the Byakugan attacked. She heard the explosions as it rocked the far side of the compound, red fire bursting towards the sky. She was locked in her room but Neji was not. She had given specific instructions on when the ship should attack and it had to be a moment when Neji was not confined, as she otherwise did not know where they were keeping him. She had chosen the usual time when Orochimaru had Neji brought to his torture chamber. In the courtyard she could hear the chaos as men ran to and fro, yelling for weapons and for the fire-ships to launch.
Knowing it was time, Tenten hefted the black sword she’d only just finished, the white symbols on the blade shining brightly. This weapon could not be used to hurt her, this one she could Whisper to without fear of darkness.
Lifting the sword level with her shoulder, a move that made her grimace with the way it pulled at her back, she rammed the sword into the outside wall of her room with all her might. No ordinary sword could have sliced through the lead-lined walls her room was made of, but Nightsong could. She Whispered and it obeyed, the hilt vibrating softly with power under her hand. She let go of the hilt and watched as the sword continued to move through the wall on its own, until the entire length of it went through and it clattered to the floor on the other side.
A fight broke out, she could hear the sound of punches being thrown, and then a hand closed around her sword. Reaching out through the blade thin hole in her wall, she knew it was Neji who had grabbed it.
Hope bloomed in her chest and outside she heard men yelling as every light flared to brightness, every machine whirring to life, every computer system powering on to full.
There was more fighting but this time it was the guards who yelled and fought and fell. Nightsong could cut anything. Anything. Nothing could stand in it’s path and live. It brought both hope and despair, as she had known it would.
When her door finally burst open, there were tears on her cheeks as she looked upon Neji for the first time and she could not help the happy sound that escaped her. Neji was the man she’d seen outside her door the day she’d lost her mind to the silence. Long hair, pale eyes, and bloody, but not dead. Not dead. Another of Orochimaru’s lies.
“I heard your song,” he said, his voice hollow and open, somehow soothing despite the state he was in. Nightsong glowed in his right hand. “It saved my life.”
She blinked away her tears, still smiling. “As you have saved mine.”
Slowly and carefully, he lifted his free hand towards her, palm up, beckoning. “Come with me.”
She placed her hand in his and, for the first time in a long time, she was without fear.
“Yes.”
END INTERLUDE.