Of Cat's and Mice

Of Cat’s and Mice

Chapter 2: Captivity


A/N: Ok, this chapter is entirely about Neji, no Kimimaro…yet. The next chapter will be entirely about Kimimaro. I don’t know if I’m going to keep doing it like that but for now it works.

Neji woke up quietly. He didn’t open his eyes, didn’t change his breathing, he didn’t move a muscle. It wasn’t normally the way he woke up but something was wrong, he could sense it even with his eyes closed. The last thing he recalled he had been fighting the spider-like man.

He was sure he had won but at the very end it seemed as if he had traded his own life for the victory. But here he was, alive. Somebody had saved him and he was positive it wasn’t anyone from Konoha. This place was dark and cool and reeked of blood.

Cautiously, Neji cracked open an eye, just enough to peer under his eyelashes. To much and his silver eye’s would be visible and as much as he loved his eyes they were to noticeable

“Don’t play games.”

Neji jumped in surprise, his eye’s flying open. The voice had been right next to his ear.

A quiet chuckle filled the room and silver eyes turned in the direction of the laughter and saw a figure leaning back into a chair. Neji squinted to see who it was but all he could see was bandages.

“Did I startle you?” The figure asked in a deep, oddly feminine voice [1]. “I’m apologise.” Though the voice sounded anything but apologetic, it seemed to be holding back amusement with every word.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He stared into the visible eye of the bandaged man and shuddered. It was a snake’s eye, yellow with a slit pupil and abnormally large for the man’s face.

Neji tried to get up and nearly screamed when he was stopped by a thick chain connected to a cuff on his leg, trapping him to the hospital bed. “What is this?” He demanded, in a voice shakier than he would have liked.

“Just a precaution. Now lay down, you’ve been very sick. You were near death when you were brought here.” Neji didn’t trust the man’s intentions for a moment and glared furiously at him. Though the face was almost completely covered he could swear there was a grin on the face. “I see you’re a stubborn one. Well, all the better I suppose, I would have no choice but to kill you if you were a weakling.”

“I don’t understand,” he ground out, more frightened than he’d ever admit to anyone “who are you and what do you want with me?

The voice chuckled softly, as if that was the most amusing thing he had ever heard. “You’ve heard of me, I’m sure. In fact, I’d think that everyone in Konoha knows who I am by now.” He stopped speaking for a moment and studied Neji. “But I think we’ll hold off the introductions until I’m more myself.” He stood up to leave.

Neji watched him go. “W-wait!”

The man didn’t turn around and closed the door behind him, leaving the boy alone once more.

That was pretty much how things went for the next….he didn’t even know how long it was. The room was completely cut off from the sun so he couldn’t tell the passage of time. He had tried escaping several times but it was pretty much useless, the chain on his leg, the bed he was in, the entire room, in fact, seemed to be completely guarded against any form of jutsu. He was cut off from his chakra as long as he was in that room and was forced to rely on the bandaged man to keep him alive.

He had nearly lost it when he had tried to break the chain only to find that he couldn’t feel his chakra. He didn’t think he had ever felt so helpless. His chakra was always there, it was woven into his very being, it was in his blood and without it he felt crippled. He thought he would go insane as the time passed and he tried uselessly to break that damn chain or form an attack, anything.

The only thing that kept him together was the bandaged man. He was the only person Neji ever saw and the man would bring him food, clothes, books, everything he asked for….except for his freedom.

Neji wasn’t stupid, he knew what was happening. But as much as he tried to fight it he could help but become attached to the bandaged man. He had tried to ignore the man when he would come into the room, and the man ignored him in return, coming in only to bring food (good food at that), or clean clothes or whatever else and then leaving again.

Neji broke quicker than he would have thought. Though he didn’t know how long he had been in that dark room, chained to the hospital bed, but it felt too soon to crack. He remembered when it had happened. When he looked back he couldn’t help but feel a deep burning shame. He was weak. His father would be ashamed.

That day the bandaged man brought him dinner, setting it down beside the bed. He turned to leave when Neji’s hand, seemingly of its own free will, reached out and grabbed his arm.

He paused and turned around, looking curiously at the boy. “Yes?” He asked softly.

Taking a deep breath Neji let go of his pride and whispered, “Stay. Please.” He must have sounded pathetic. Hell, he sounded pathetic to his own ears but he couldn’t stand it anymore. He was lonely.

The man reached out a thin, pale hand and tucked Neji’s loose hair behind his ear. “Of course. You only had to ask.”

It was Neji who had taken the first step and like it or not he knew he was falling into the bandaged mans trap but he couldn’t help it. He needed some human contact. He needed to talk to somebody, anybody. The bandaged man became his companion, spending hours sitting with him. He never learned much about the man as he obviously wanted to keep his identity a secret, but that didn’t matter, Neji was just happy to be able to speak to someone again. Even though he wasn’t a big talker he soon found himself opening up to the man, telling him things he had never told another person, things about his family, about his hatred of being from the ‘branch’ house, the cursed seal on his forehead, everything.

He trusted a man, whose face he had never even seen, with thoughts that he had never shared with his own family. After a while he even stopped being creeped out by him, he got over the snake-like eye, the odd mannerism, that strange voice and began to truly enjoy his company.

It was a while later, after he had gotten comfortable with the man that he was finally able to see him without his bandages on. When he came in Neji was shocked and could feel his stomach turning, first because didn’t recognize him and was afraid the bandaged man had abandoned him, secondly because of the strange mans appearance. He looked like a demon or a snake wearing human flesh. It wasn’t that he was repulsive, in fact he was rather attractive, but something about him didn’t seem quite right, he didn’t seem entirely human or entirely real.

His skin was white, deathly white, like a corpse and was a sharp contrast to the long inky black hair. The pale face was long and angular making his cheek bones all the more prominent, his nose seemed to be the only thing that fit his face at all. His mouth was very shapely but to long for his face which only reinforced the snake-like appearance. But the eyes were what clinched it. They were beautiful, no doubt of that, but evil. They curved like a snakes and seemed all the more slanted because of the purple tattoos that went from the inside edges of his eye’s almost to the bottom of his nose.

It was the eye’s that Neji recognized, yellow, slitted eye’s that seemed to glare even as his mouth smiled.

“You,” he said.

The man laughed at his surprise. “Are you shocked? Am I what you expected, Hyuuga Neji?”

“Y-you look like a demon. A snake,” He said, realizing a second to late that he probably should have been more flattering to the man who held his fate in his hands.

Rather than being angry or embarrassed the man grinned widely, making his mouth stretch abnormally wide. “I’ll have to thank Kabuto for bringing you here. You really are more than I expected, so much like Sasuke and yet nothing at all like him. You two will make me very happy.”

Neji didn’t really follow what he had said; all he could hear were the two names echoing through his head.

Kabuto.

Sasuke.

He finally knew who this man was, his captor. Of course he had suspected it but with the bandages on it was hard to tell what he looked like. But now he knew. This was the man who had tried to destroy his home, the one who had killed the fourth Hokage and ruined so many lives.

“Orochimaru.”








[1] Don’t know if you know this but Orochimaru’s Japanese voice actor is actually a woman. Creepy, no? And, according to Wikipedia, in the Japanese version he speaks in ‘very formal female japanese’ to make him creepier. And when he’s fighting the 4th Hokage and he takes off his ‘face’ he’s actually a woman underneath and in the Chuunin exams he takes the body of the grass ninja who, surprise surprise, is also a woman.