Chapter Text
In the beginning, things are blurry, as though Suki, as the voices call her, is submerged beneath waves. There’re two voices, but they often become one; sometimes the world smells sterile, others rotten; colors make little sense, and her vision is far some clear. You’re safe, one voice says more often than not as a hand with large, callused fingers strokes her hair. Suki, you’re safe as long you’re here.
Suki thinks she’d be safest anywhere but here, even if she were still in the dark. She thinks it might be better she never finds the voice.
Then, eventually, there’s nothing. She sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps. Things aren’t blurry, but there’s something heavy across her eyes, blocking her sight, and something across her chest makes it difficult to breathe. A tasteless cloth is slotted into her mouth, and when she wakes, she feels the fingers in her hair, or on her hand. Now it grounds her, remind her of the moments when the darkness is no longer a dream.
Oh, Suki, the voice says. What did they do to you?
She doesn’t understand what that means yet, and sleeps until she’s free.
There were two voices, as Suki thought. The man who reassured her of her safety is Orochimaru, who saved her after a mission gone terribly wrong when she accidently killed her entire team. According to Kabuto, the medical-nin and other voice, Suki’s loss of memory is the result of trauma from the event, and a genjutsu the extraction team leader used on her as torture and interrogation before her death. Luckily for her, Orochimaru saw her potential, and saved her life.
Though this doesn't feel much like saving, Suki has a feeling it’s better she holds her opinions to herself. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asks instead. “I can’t even remember what I can do.”
With a smile, Kabuto says, “That’s all muscle memory. A few training lessons is all it’ll take for you to be back on your feet.”
“You’re going to work for me, Suki,” Orochimaru says, placing a hand on her shoulder. Her skin burns in discomfort at the touch. “I’ll keep you away from any Konoha-nin. You’re under my protection.”
Clearly, she isn’t getting a choice in the matter. Maybe it’s better that way, because she’s so confused she can barely think. “Thanks,” she says, and adds, “Orochimaru-sama,” because she feels like she should.
It’s a relief when Orochimaru drops his hand to lead the way to her new room. Suki tries not to show it, and concentrates on following her new employer on unsteady feet down the long, dark halls.
On the first day, Suki stares at herself in the mirror, trying to place anything on her body to a memory. There’re faint circular scars scattered throughout her body like pale freckles, and the raised mark of a childhood scrape left on her elbow. Her hair is longer than advisable for a kunoichi, falling to the small of her back with bangs cut loose framing her face.
Her skin is pale, more so than is usually found in the Land of Fire, and her eyes so brown they’re nearly black. She’s small—ribs showing just enough, like she doesn’t eat as much as she should, and short. Since neither Orochimaru nor Kabuto heard her age, they can only guess. Twelve is the best they can come up with, and close to thirteen, because she might be small, but her body isn’t necessarily childish. Maybe she would remember if she had more scars. Maybe she should be happy that she doesn’t.
Whatever genjutsu the Konoha-nin used was strong, she decides eventually, giving up, because nothing comes. It will eventually, or at least hopefully, because no matter how traumatic it was, anything sounds better than the emptiness in her head.
When Suki closes her eyes and focuses hard enough on remembering the nameless team she killed, she pictures a flurry of yellow and orange. She doesn’t know what it means, but it’s a start.
That’s a private memory, and one she doesn’t share with Orochimaru. Despite the number of people Suki’s comes in contact with in any given week, it doesn’t cross her mind to confide in anyone else. She learns quick enough that Orochimaru doesn’t like to share his things, and even Kabuto is left to wayside. Though she isn’t sure of the exact moment when she becomes the favorite, she knows that it happens, and she knows it makes her nervous.
Orochimaru eyes her as though she’s an experiment as she trains herself in what comes back to her slowly—a glowing ball of pure lightning wrapped around her hand, a fire jutsu no one can imitate, a kekkei genkai that labels her as someone important, once. Her taijutsu is something unique, she finds, and her chakra control good enough, but not perfect. During the day, she exhausts herself, because if she’s tired, then she doesn’t dream of those first few days she remembers. It doesn’t take her long to learn what pleases Orochimaru and what doesn’t, and despite Suki’s original reservations about him, her primary goal by the end of each day is just to make her sensei proud.
Figuring it out on her own isn’t difficult, but whenever she finishes on days he’s there, Suki still says, “Was it good, Orochimaru-sama?”
“There’s always room for improvement,” Orochimaru answers. “I expect a better performance tomorrow.”
The negative reply is never a deterrent. Recognizing disappointment is easy, and it’ll happen eventually; she’ll know once he hits her. Until then, she’ll just have to work to improve herself every day, and hope to delay that response as long as she can.
After two months together, Suki fails repeatedly at summoning snakes, and she knows the punishment is coming. Instead of doing so there in the training area, they end up in Orochimaru’s bedroom, and she assumes blatant favoritism means this is supposed to be done away from potential curious eyes. It’s not until she’s flat on her back on the bed, shirt peeled from her body, that she realizes what’s about to happen.
“The outside of your body needs to stay unblemished,” Orochimaru says, pinning down her hands as she starts to struggle with one of his own, “but there’s more than one way to prove a point.”
Though she knows it’s useless, she tries to fight him off. When that fails, she tries not scream.
She succeeds in neither, and he seems to enjoy the struggle.
After the first few times, Suki gives up trying to to get away, or make Orochimaru stop. Things are less painful that way.
Kabuto’s nicer on those days, rather than jealous. “Ask to go on a mission,” he says, “if you can find the right moment.”
As much as Orochimaru claims he doesn’t want to leave marks, more often than not, she ends encounters with bruises. That’s when she goes to the medical wing, even if Orochimaru doesn’t like to share. “He keeps saying I’m not good enough.”
“You have a kekkei genkai,” Kabuto says, finishing with her wrist. “Field experience is the best way to learn.”
Maybe he’s right, maybe he isn’t, but Orochimaru’s always in a better mood...after, and she supposes she can ask then. The thought of leaving for even a few days is a good one. “He wants me for something else other than just to work for him, doesn’t he?” she says, looking down at her now undamaged wrist. “He makes comments sometimes. In future tense.”
When Kabuto answers, “If that’s true, then he hasn’t told me,” Suki knows he’s lying. Even so, she doesn’t press for the truth, because he’s one of the only people she has to talk to, and she’s not ready to give that up.
Surprisingly, Suki gets her mission, and even more surprisingly, she’s given a team.
All three members look older than her, even if her age is only guesswork. There’re two boys, Juugo and Suigetsu, and another girl named Karin. The three of them have been working with each other for a while. Just a month ago, Karin and Suigetsu started dating. He seems wary that their new leader is just a kid, while Karin keeps looking to Suki like she knows her from somewhere, though she insists she doesn’t. Juugo just seems relieved he has someone to be third wheeled with.
The mission is simple: route a group of shinobi-for-higher too close to Land of Sound’s border with the Land of Hot Water. “You’re kind of small,” Suigetsu says, which is stupid, because girls aren’t normally that big. His teeth are sharp, and his irises a solid color. “No cursed seal or anything. Have something to make up for it?”
Orochimaru hasn’t explained the cursed seal, exactly, but keeps saying Suki will understand in a couple of years. Sometimes, though, she feels eyes on the back of her neck, or Orochimaru licks at her collarbone, and she has a feeling she doesn’t want to know. “I have a kekkei genkai,” she says, because teammates shouldn’t hide skills from each other, and risk distraction in the middle of a fight, “and I’m fast. Come on. We’re leaving.”
Somehow, they make it out of the mission with minimal injury, and rapid success. Suki feels lighter than she has in months.
Orochimaru lets Suki keep her team, because she does so well at feigning indifference towards them. It’s not really all that unexpected that by their third mission together, all of them figured out why she ignores their hellos in the hallways, and they try to finish the job up as quickly as they can so they can procrastinate on the way back.
Though she doesn’t say it, and they don’t say it, she appreciates the effort. By now she just lets Orochimaru do whatever he wants, but that doesn’t mean Suki likes sex anymore than she did in the beginning. The only thing that’s changed is she’s forced herself to stop thinking of it as rape. Orochimaru saved her life, as he keeps reminding her, and offered her protection, which he never had to do. Rape happens during interrogations between enemies, not between instructors and students. Suki’s not that weak, even if she feels that way when she’s stuck beneath him.
Convincing herself of this would be a lot easier, too, if her team didn’t act like she, the best out of all of them, needs some sort of protection.
Now they’re in the Land of Lightning, in the north of it with the mission finished a week early and still two away from home. “We should give our team a name,” Karin says on their first extra night, where they lay out on their bedrolls under the stars. They’re all from different places, and have different words for the constellations. Suki, whose memory is just as blank as it’s always been, barely remembers anything about Land of Fire’s beliefs, and can’t name any but Amaterasu’s Loom. “Shinobi teams are supposed to have names, right?”
“Missing-nin teams usually have stupid names,” Suigetsu says, and out of the corner of her vision, Suki sees her two friends join hands. Juugo, who notices it too, rolls his eyes. His calmness from releasing all his adrenaline in the fight earlier should persist for another few days. “We’re closer to missing-nin than actual shinobi.”
In Oto, no one’s a shinobi or kunoichi in a legal sense. Suki has the skill of a jounin already, according to Orochimaru on the days he’s in a good enough mood to offer compliments, but girls who’re hunted by their village don’t get official ranks. “Suigetsu,” Juugo says. “Was there really a team of missing-nin from Kiri called the Demon Brothers? Because that’s—”
“Suki!”
The world is bright and hazed red and clear and she realizes she’s accidentally shifted her eyes. Karin’s arms wrap around Suki from behind, holding her in place, and she’s distantly aware that she’s sitting up, shaking. Her hair, out of its usual careless bun, falls over her face as flimsy protection. It’s not a memory, exactly, but it’s like she woke from a nightmare, and she thinks, for some reason, of scarecrows dying and the feeling of needles in her skin.
As Karin’s pulls Suki back to her, Suigetsu asks, “Did you go against them or something, Suki?”
Karin smells like blood and disinfectant from the fight. “I have no idea,” Suki answers, and tries to remember anything that makes sense.
Nothing comes. She’s not surprised in the slightest.
In a mission in the Land of Rivers, Suigetsu is injured by an earth user, and Suki kills eight men on her own by electrocuting them to death. Scorch marks from lightning needles decorate the trees, dead fish float by in the stream, and the edge of the chokuto she’s barely big enough to remove from its sheath is coated red. “All that for me?” Suigetsu says, rubbing the already healing area of his arm, the fix quick courtesy of his girlfriend. “Aw, I’m touched.”
Before Suki can tell her friend to shut it, her kekkei genkai fades of its own accord, and the chokuto drops from her grasp as she falls to her knees. “Should I,” Juugo starts, but is cut off when Karin says, “We need to hide. More shinobi are coming.”
These eleven men were the mission, and Suki should’ve known the flashes of lightning would attract attention. She grabs her chokuto again, trying to ignore the spots in her vision, and stumbles after the others, walking down the stream to cover their tracks, and eventually ducking for cover under the roots of a tree. Though she feels like a liability, she knows she’s in no position to be running, and Suigetsu isn’t really, either.
They’re far away from the clearing, but not so far away that she can’t make out the forehead protectors of the new shinobi. It’s a four man team, one that doesn’t look familiar, but the Konoha symbol is still clearly visible. “This is disgusting,” a blonde girl is saying as Juugo tenses up, realizing the same thing. He calms just enough when Suki puts a hand over his shoulder. “Asuma-sensei, what did this?”
Nudging one of the corpses over with his foot, the jounin sensei answers, “Nothing good. This is Kawaguchi Hideyoshi of the Black Stone, one of the deadliest missing-nin from Iwa. Konoha’s wanted him dead for years. And that is Yugamori Riku, our target.”
“This wasn’t fire,” one of the boys says, his hair gathered high on his head. “This is lightning. Well, lightning projectile and some form of straight blade. Kawaguchi’s tall. Look at the way he was hit. Whoever the attacker is was short.”
“Like a kid?” the second boy says, frowning down at the man Karin stabbed in the throat. “Or a girl?”
The sensei crouches down in front of the Iwa-nin. “That’s a girl’s kunai,” he says. “The hilt’s thinner. I’m not liking these marks. These weren’t electrified projectiles; they were thrown lightning. Anyone in Kumo will tell you how hard that is. We should go.”
“We aren’t going to look into this, Asuma-sensei?” the second one says, and shuffles away from a corpse. “Our target’s all taken care of already.”
“These weren’t Konoha-nin, and we aren’t in the Land of Fire,” the sensei answers. “We don’t know if whoever did this is a friend or an enemy, and I’m not pitting the three of you against anyone who can take down Kawaguchi.”
An hour after they’re gone, Suki and her team finally crawl out from under the tree. “That was close,” Karin says, flopping on her back. “What does Konoha want you for anyway?”
With a shrug, Suki says, “Your guess is as good as mine,” because she likes them a lot, and would rather lie than lose them over something she doesn’t remember doing.
When Orochimaru casually mentions Suki’s ready for more difficult missions, he also says it’s time the team changes to something more suitable. “Why?” Suki asks, schooling her face to a masking of uncaring. They’re in the closest thing Orochimaru has to an office, covered in scrolls and decorated with petrified snakes. “We’ve learned to work together. They’re more a scouting force than a fighting one, but I can carry that on my own.”
His eyes narrow, pupils shifting into slits. “Teams change all the time, Suki,” he says. “I hadn’t realized you’d gotten attached.”
“It’s not that,” she says. “They’re all more useful than most of the idiots here. We’ve never been ambushed, even after four months. The girl’s too good at reading chakra. Suigetsu’s a good spy; I’d rather send Juugo in as a distraction than myself. Living’s a fun pastime of mine.”
Between Karin’s ability to sense an enemy from long distances away, and Suki’s eyes, they’ve never had to use anyone for a distraction, but Orochimaru doesn’t need to know that. “Besides,” she continues before Orochimaru can answer, “they’re dead loyal to me already. I might not lay down my life for any of them, but the same can’t be said for them. You don’t need to worry about anything happening to me.”
“Attachment is dangerous, Suki,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “You wouldn’t want a repeat of what happened to your old team, would you?”
“If I didn’t know any better,” she says with a smirk, “I’d say you were jealous.”
Voice sour, he says, “You know better than to jump to conclusions.”
Regardless of what he denies, they both know how possessive he is, and Suki is strongly aware of how precarious her position is with her team. Though Kabuto has his moments, they’re still the only people in this place that make it bearable. “Don’t worry, Orochimaru-sama,” she says, swallowing down a taste like shame gathered in the back of her throat, “you’re still my favorite person.”
Orochimaru fucks her even harder than usual, hand tangled tight in her hair, and Suki moans through it, forcing herself not to scream or cry.
In the end, she gets the keep her team.
A Summoning scrolls for hawks falls into Suki’s hands during a mission in the Land of Wind not long after her “birthday,” and though it’s been a week, she can still feel the phantom sting on her face where Orochimaru slapped her for talking back. If the others noticed her fighting wasn’t as neat as usual, they’ve been good enough not to comment.
“Do you still want a name?” she asks when the mission is done, and they’re all crowded in a small room at a local inn.
Karin doesn’t lift her head from her pillow on the other bed when she answers, “I’m always up for being a loser.” She and Suigetsu are taking one bed while Suki takes the other, and Juugo insisted yes, he absolutely wants to sleep on the floor. No matter what he says, though, she knows it’s just so she can have some space. In Oto, the idea of her own bedroom is a thing of the past. “What were you thinking?”
“Taka.” Her Summoning scroll is on the end table next to Karin’s glasses, a bad placement for both items, and all of them are too tired to care.
“Better than half the other ones I’ve heard,” Suigetsu says, half-asleep. “Isn’t that sort of like naming this Team Suki, though?”
Before Suki can answer, Juugo says bluntly, “Hawks kill snakes.”
There’s a short pause. “Yeah,” she says. “I’ll take first watch if any of you want to sleep.”
He sits up. “I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours,” he says, and she rolls over, facing the wall, too sapped of energy to argue.
“Just because you can fly,” Juugo says, “doesn’t mean one of us can’t still follow you.”
If Suki could’ve, she would’ve asked Garuda to bring her higher up the mountain, but she knew he wouldn’t hang around just so she could mope. As much as she didn’t want to be followed, it’s not as though she wasn’t expecting it. “I need a few minutes alone,” she says, keeping her back turned when her friend comes to sit near her, not too close, and definitely not too close to the cliff’s edge. Below her, the valley of Megumareta no Yama sprawls out in a crisscross of tableau stretches and farmland. Night’s fallen, and all the people of the Land of Grass should back in their homes. “You don’t need to babysit me. Leader’s orders.”
She doesn’t care if she’s acting childish. He ignores anyway. “You calm me down all the time,” he says. “I’m just returning the favor.” When she doesn’t answer, he continues, “You don’t need to be embarrassed. We all still turned out okay.”
Getting pinned was a careless mistake; she heard Karin shout like she was in pain, and Suki lost her concentration, giving her opponent time to get her on the ground. Her battle sense left immediately, and she froze. Though she doesn’t want to admit it, she barely remembers anything between feeling the hands on her wrist, and when the blood splattered across her face from Suigetsu cutting the man’s jugular. She told herself repeatedly that Orochimaru doesn’t scare her, but for a moment, she was expecting to feel her clothes stripped off, not a wakizashi to her heart.
“What made you go there willingly?” she asks.
Though she doesn’t look behind her, she can feel Juugo’s gaze on her back. “I thought it would help.”
“Did it?”
“Yeah.” He pauses. “You help.”
Helping through the genjutsu doesn’t seem much like helping at all. “Well, don’t bother ever trying to help me,” she says, flicking a pebble over the edge. “That’ll just get you killed.”
With a noise of light indifference, Juugo says, “Tell that Karin. She’s the one who would claw someone’s eyes out for you. I think she’d actually be able to pull of it off, too. Those nails are sharp.”
Orochimaru doesn’t like the share, something the others don’t seem to understand. For their sakes, she hopes they never have to.
By name but not description, Suki’s sparse profile ends up in the Bingo Book with a startling high bounty on her head. Orochimaru’s so calm and understanding that she’s both scared and suspicious within minutes, and discovers quick enough she had right to be. “They took Juugo,” Suigetsu says after dragging her into a closet far from Orochimaru’s room. “Fucking Oto Four goaded him into it by insulting you. You know how he gets. It was totally set up. Anything you can do about it?”
When she shakes her head, reluctant to admit it, she thinks Suigetsu’s about to hit her. She deserves it; she told Juugo not to help her, because she knew this would be the result. Instead of even trying anything, though, Suigetsu just grits his teeth, and his “Fuck everything” comes out in a hiss under his breath. “If there was a survivor, Karin would’ve known,” he says, which Suki was thinking, too. “Someone on the inside leaked the information, I’m guessing. We’re safe for now, I think, but watch out. If you get hurt, my girlfriend will probably do something stupid.”
“She’s just as temperamental as Juugo,” she says, trying not to think about what must’ve happened to him. Quick deaths are considered too kind in Oto. “Make sure she doesn’t fly off the handle at something, too.”
“Well, Karin can keep her head when she knows she’s at risk,” Suigetsu says. “Should’ve known teaming up with you would get us in trouble one day. You’re lucky I like you.”
“Don’t let anyone hear you say that,” she tells him. Juugo liked her too, and it hadn’t gotten him anywhere. “That’s how I get you killed. Wait before leaving.”
By some miracle, no one’s nearby, and even if she can’t do anything for Juugo, she can at least make sure nothing happens to the others, too.
When Team Taka isn’t given a replacement, Suki’s just relieved, and none of them mention it.
“This better not be the thick syrupy kind,” Karin says on their first mission without Juugo, eyeing the bottle of plum wine she stole from their target’s kitchen. “I’m a lightweight, so don’t expect me to be competent in a fight after two cups.”
“I’ve never had alcohol before,” Suki says, and neither of them seem surprised. “We probably shouldn’t get drunk now that I have a half a million ryo bounty on my head.”
With a shrug, Suigetsu says, “Not everything’s like the older generation’s old warfront stories. A toast’s point isn’t always to get drunk.”
Karin pours the wine into paper cups they found along with bottle. “I feel so classy right now,” she says, and Suki accepts the one she hands her. “Don’t drink too fast, Suki, that always leads to bad consequences. To Juugo, who at least managed to take the Oto Four down with him.”
The plum wine is disgusting, and sweet to the point of harshness, and the aftertaste is a bit like blood. It’s appropriate and fitting, which only makes Suki hate it more.
Maybe the worst thing about Orochimaru is that no matter what he does, Suki still wants his approval. “I’ve learned how to record and adapt my opponents’ techniques,” she says when Orochimaru calls her for a report on her latest mission. Even with Juugo gone, they’re as easy as they’ve always been. “It uses more chakra than if I use fire or lightning, but I can copy lower level nature transformation based jutsu that I don’t have an affinity for. I took out a wind user with her own attack.”
Lately, Orochimaru’s been distant, pulling away, and she doesn’t understand what she’s done wrong. They’ve barely even touched, and though she thought she’d feel better about that, instead she’s worried. Karin said she seemed distracted. Suki’s somewhat surprised she was even able to finish the mission as efficiently as she did.
“Mission completed with all instructions?” he says, not even looking up from the scroll he’s pouring over. “No survivors?”
“Yes, Orochimaru-sama. Success in all areas.”
She hesitates a moment too long, mildly panicked, and finally, he looks up. “Is there something you want to ask me, Suki?”
After a moment of debate, she answers, “Did I do something to disappoint you?”
“Did I give you any indication you had?” he says, straightening, moving from the desk. “I wasn’t aware you thought so highly of my opinion.”
“I—well, uh—”
It’s almost frightening, how relieved she feels when Orochimaru pulls her closer, carding his fingers through his loose hair. Though Suki doesn’t remember who her parents are, she still manages to feel like a kid, because kunoichi aren’t supposed to want attention.
He notices, as he notices everything, and offers his attention generously after he’s taken what he wants, too.
In the end, Orochimaru notices everything, and Suki should’ve known better than to smile in a conversation with Suigetsu and Karin while still in Oto. Any act of indifference was torn to shreds.
Though Suki expects Orochimaru to be angry, he’s unnervingly understanding about it. He calls her to the bedroom earlier than usual, and says, “I’m not going to deny you friends, Suki.”
It comes across so blunt and honest that she believes him. “Thank you,” she says. “We’ll finish the mission quickly.”
As she leaves, she thinks of Juugo, and how things are often too good to be true. She tells herself, or hopes, that this time is different.
Suki doesn’t have a problem with killing, on normal occasions, but no one warned her the targets had a son. “What are we supposed to do?” Karin says, voice cut by the sound of the little boy banging his fists against the closet door. “I’m not killing a kid.”
“None of us are killing kids,” Suki says, and even Suigetsu, the one willing to do anything, seems nauseous at the thought. “Karin could drop him at the orphanage at the end of town.”
“And have him tell everyone he saw us?” Suigetsu says. “You might be immune to dying, Suki, but we’re still disposable.”
Something like terror settles over Suki as she says, “I’ll use genjutsu. Wipe his memory of the whole night. No trauma. He won’t remember us.”
Karin and Suigetsu glance at each other. “If he doesn’t remember,” she says, “then no one has to know. A five-year-old is the sort of thing that ends up on a report, you know?”
With unanimous agreement, the three of them kill their perfect success rate. Karin stands against the wall as Suigetsu pulls open the door, and when the little boy comes tumbling out, hands in mid-bang, she catches him under the arms. “Suki, now!”
Suki digs into the boy’s memories, and rips the night away, giving him instead a dream about sakura blossoms on the breeze, and a calm lake disturbed by a light wind. Everything goes better than expected, and he falls limp in Karin’s arms, blonde hair in his face, and blood on the side of his palm.
“I’ll take care of the kid,” she says as Suki stands. “Go to the meeting point.”
Together, she and Suigetsu walk the twenty minutes it takes to reach their destination, and Suki tries to ignore the disquiet growing in the back of her mind.
The kid wasn’t listed as some sick kind of test, and the resulting failure leaves Suki with a bruise on her cheek, and body wracked with pain from sex she said no to too many times to deny it was anything other than rape.
Later, when she loses the edge of her quick temper, she says, “I’m sorry.”
Everything hurts, but he forgives her with a gentler touch. For some reason, she’s stupid enough to, again, believe this is the end of it. Sometimes it’s amazing, how bad she is at learning her lesson.
Finally, Juugo’s replaced, clearly as a sign that while Team Taka works well together, they still need to be watched. Suki’s past the point of arguing, close to a nervous breakdown already more often than not these days. As distracted as she is, it doesn’t cross her mind that the replacement could be here for anything other than babysitting duties.
Midway through a fight, she releases a series of lightning needles for an enemy moving towards Karin, and Juugo’s replacement knocks Suigetsu directly in the way. He falls sideways, too fast to catch himself, and the attack shoots through his chest.
Karin screams, sound shrill, and the replacement babbles about not understanding their synchronization. Though Suki screams, too, it’s from a sudden pain behind her eyes, burning like fire. Orochimaru tried to warn her this would happen, that history would repeat itself, and she hadn’t listened. Now her teammate, her friend, is dead, by her hand. She wonders even through the haze of pain if she can lose her kekkei genkai by killing someone she cares about.
Then one of the Kiri-nin says, “What the fuck just happened to the kid’s eyes?”
The scenery is bright, and all movements even clearer than before. Everyone but Karin stares, confused or scared, and Suki sees. A few feet away lies Suigetsu, blood pooling across the grass. First, she thinks, It’s all my fault, followed by, Not entirely.
She doesn’t know where the black flames come from. She doesn’t care. Her left eye is bleeding, running down her cheek, and she and Karin are standing untouched in a circle of people burning alive. Though Suki should care, she doesn’t, because everything hurts, and Suigetsu’s dead, and as abruptly as it came, the clarity fades.
“Not you, too,” she hears Karin say, but Suki loses consciousness before she can answer.
Something changes along with Suki’s eyes. “I killed all of them in less than a minute,” she tells Orochimaru when she and Karin return with just Suigetsu’s body. “The other one got in the way.”
As Suki turns to leave, Orochimaru says, “I warned you. Attachment is dangerous.”
“Well, I guess I’m not that good at listening,” she says, pausing. “What can I say? I had a great teacher.”
In her stress and anger, her eyes flash without her meaning to activate them. “You’d be wise to watch your tone,” he says, and she fluffs out her hair, still half-wet from her recent shower. He doesn’t make a move to touch her. For the first time, she has some measure of power.
“We should probably figure out what I can do,” she says, and smiles. “Can Karin and I have a new mission, Orochimaru-sama?”
It’s a question that isn’t a question, and two days later, she has a file in hand with the mission specified as a two person team.
Karin isn’t angry, though she should be, and instead clings. As selfish as it is, Suki’s relieved, because she clings right back. She never asked to be here; Karin never asked to be on a team with Orochimaru’s favorite. All Suki wanted was a few friends and a chance to leave for a few days at time, and she’s so afraid she’s going to lose Karin, too.
“Do you ever think about running away?” she asks a few days into the first mission after Suigetsu’s death when they’re curled together on the on the same bedroll, one of her legs thrown over Suki’s. “Running away sounds fucking great.”
Though it does, she knows Orochimaru would hunt her down and drag her right back. Not only that, but as much as she hates him for what he did to her team, and as much as he terrifies her sometimes, she’s gotten too dependent to leave now. “Please don’t,” she says instead of admitting all this. “I know—Konoha’s still after me, I’m pretty sure. One or the other would catch me, and either way, you’d get killed, too.”
Karin doesn’t answer, and Suki closes her eyes, pressing her face into the bedroll. “Why does Konoha want you?” Karin asks. “I know you know.”
“I killed my whole team on a mission,” Suki answers quietly. “Orochimaru didn’t hear why. The extraction team tortured me so badly I snapped and can’t remember anything.”
There’s a long pause before before Karin says, “That sounds like complete bullshit.”
The thought crossed her mind once when Suki realized genjutsu didn’t work against her, but she’s refused to let it since. “Well, it’s not like I can just approach a Konoha-nin and ask,” she says. “We should get some sleep.”
Not having a watch is a bad idea, but Karin just says, “Yeah,” and lets that be the end of it.
A few missions later, what’s left of Team Taka fights off a target so powerful Suki has to use every trick her new eyes give her. It’s not far from Oto, thankfully, because Karin has to lead her back hand in hand.
When they explain the situation, Suki has her eyes activated in their lesser form, and even Orochimaru’s a little worried, if the pattern of his chakra is anything to go by. Kabuto kicks out a patient of lower priority, lies her back against the cot, and exams her. “I can’t find the source of the problem,” he says, which is bad, because he’s the best medical-nin she knows. “How much can you see?”
The blindness affected her the moment the fight ended and she deactivated her kekkei genkai. Even Karin couldn’t fix it. “Everything’s blurry,” she says, squinting at him. “It’s gone out completely a few times. There’s nothing you can do?”
He places two fingers glowing with chakra below her left eye. “Your eyesight should be as perfect as it always is,” he answers. “I can’t heal something that’s not there.”
Crying is for the weak, but she relies on her sight for everything. The tears come, and Kabuto doesn’t comment. She appreciates it more than he knows.
When Suki’s in Oto, she can navigate it blind, or with the lesser form of her kekkei genkai, even when after a few missions she loses her vision completely, but the same can’t be said for the outside world. She can sense chakra enough to fight without her sight, or not to walk people, but inanimate objects aren’t something she can feel her way around, and red eyes are suspicious. Sexuality isn’t terribly important in most places, thankfully, because the solution is to walk around holding Karin’s hand like Suki’s her blind girlfriend.
Orochimaru pays Suki less and less attention, even though her skill level is better than ever. She’s imperfect now, and he doesn’t like imperfection. It bothers her more than it should, but she’s used to this confusion. “Do you need help with anything?” she asks after she returns from a short mission in the Land of Frost.
A pen scratched against paper. “No,” he answers without explanation. “If you want to be occupied, I can offer you a longer mission.”
That wasn’t what she meant, but still she says, “Thank you, Orochimaru-sama.”
He leaves her a file she gives to Karin to read. Suki tries to pretend she isn’t disappointed in herself for whatever she did, and fails dismally.
Suki didn’t have time to extinguish the black flames when the Konoha-nin show up to investigate, and she and Karin clutch at each other behind a lower wall, the furthest they could go without attracting attention, hiding their chakra signatures. “This is a problem,” says a man’s voice. “The only thing that cause fire like this is a Mangekyo Sharingan.”
A woman says, “You’re joking,” and Suki doesn’t have any sense of familiarity. “Shisui?”
She grips Karin’s hand tighter, and pictures, suddenly, red eyes like hers, and rice paper. “Shisui can’t do this,” the man says. “Each one’s different. Kakashi explained it to me.” Suddenly, Suki can’t breathe, and Karin digs her nails into the back of her hand before she does anything. “And look at that. Lightning marks.”
“This is the Land of Lightning.” He doesn’t answer. “Wait. You mean like his lightning?”
After a short silence, he says, “The pattern’s same. These flames burned the rest of the enemies alive, so either this one escaped, or died first. Kurenai, there’s only one Uchiha in generations that’s affinity is lightning.”
“They never did find a body,” the woman—Kurenai—says. “I said the extraction squad should’ve been more thorough instead of just declaring her dead.”
“If there’s a Uchiha running around out there we’d know.”
“There are people in Konoha that didn’t know she exists.”
Sighing, he says, “We have to go tell the others. Uchiha’s sister had enough issues already. I don’t even want to think about what could’ve made her snap.”
If Konoha calls a search party, Karin will probably suffer for it, if not Suki too. She activates her kekkei genkai, looking to her friend, who nods once in understanding, and Suki jumps over the wall, alerting the attention of the Konoha-nin. “Suzu,” Kurenai starts, but she and the man are walking away without any memory of this before she can even finish.
Suki extinguishes the flames, and takes Karin’s hand, trusting her friend to lead her home.
Orochimaru’s gone for the day, and Suki’s alone in the bedroom. “Uchiha,” she says aloud, surprised by the comfortable way her mouth forms the word. “Sharingan.”
Though she doesn’t know for certain, she thinks she just found out her surname, and her kekkei genkai. Something sounds wrong with Uchiha Suki, but there’s something wrong about Suzu, too, and she doesn’t ask Orochimaru what he thinks.
The problem with two people needing to cling to each other is that after a while, things get messy. It doesn’t help that Karin’s still grieving, and Suki’s confused to the point she doesn’t know what to feel. She isn’t sure which of them initiates it; all she knows is that an inn is a lot better than the outdoors.
Karin’s lips are softer than Suki expected, and Orochimaru never kissed her, so this is new territory. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, either, but her friend doesn’t seem to care. “Let someone actually make you feel good for once,” she says, running her hand down Suki’s side so light it makes her shiver despite the heat blasting from the radiator. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful not to leave marks.”
With the Sharingan activated, she can see every dip and inconsistency in Karin’s chakra, and it’s different movement than her usual. One moment she’s above Suki, who’s on her back, the move comfortable position because it’s what she’s use to, and then the next, Karin’s between her legs. Suki’s spent years convincing herself she enjoys sex with Orochimaru, but she’s forced now to admit it’s all lies, because it’s never felt like this. Maybe she’s just into girls. Maybe he’s just bad.
She doesn’t last long, a sensation she’s never felt before hitting her suddenly, twitching her hips, and when Karin lifts her head, glasses askew and looking unafraid right at the Sharingan, she’s grinning. “That, Suki-chan,” she says, “was an orgasm.”
Suki returns the favor, and reduces her friend to a quivering puddle of shivering chakra. If there’s one thing to be said about Suki, it’s that she’s quick learner, and everything is easier when it’s fun.
On a mission in the the Land of Wind, Suki and Karin are separated when Suki misses a jump while they try to hide from a group of Konoha-nin. She’s too exhausted to activated even her normal Sharingan, and ends up in a cramped, unknown space with no idea where her friend is.
“I’d know her shurikenjutsu style anywhere, Gai,” someone says, clearly agitated, and Suki tries, and fails, to activate her Sharingan, because the voice is so familiar it hurts. “I’ve known her since she was six.”
“It’s been two and a half years, Kakashi,” another man says, softer. “We would know if she was alive. Someone else could have a similar style.”
The first man lets out a low sigh. “There was never a body,” he says. “She’s not dead.”
Suddenly, someone lands on her, and before she does anything, she registers the hand over her mouth as Karin’s. Above them, the second man says, “It might be better if she was. It’s a better ending than what Orochimaru will give her in a few months.”
Suki tenses. What’s that supposed to mean? Orochimaru might be distant lately, but he’d never hurt her. It’s just these Konoha-nin trying to justify what they’d do to her instead, she tells herself, and doesn’t believe a word of it.
“You’re right,” the first one says. “We should fan out anyway. With what just happened with the Kazekage, I don’t want to take any chances.”
Karin leans over until she’s right next to Suki’s ear. “This is a crawl space,” Karin whispers. “I’m going to get in front. Follow me.”
After she moves, Suki rolls over and wiggles into the darkness, away from the Konoha-nin, and away from answers to questions she doesn’t know how to begin to ask.
Suki initiates sex with Orochimaru, which is rare but not unheard of, and does everything she knows makes him happy until he’s ready to give answers. “You seem so distracted,” she says, half in his lap, and looks at him with sightless eyes as she strokes him back to hardness. Her hair’s down, as he likes, and her head hurts from it being tugged. “I feel bad that there’s nothing I can do to help.”
“I’m almost finished with preparations, Suki,” he tells her. “You can help me then.”
He runs his teeth down her throat like a promise. She thinks the Konoha-nin might’ve been right.
A few days later, Suki explains everything to Karin the moment they’re out of the Land of Sound. It’s easy, telling secrets to Karin. With her around, no can sneak up on them. “I’m freaked out,” Suki says. “I mean, sure, it might’ve been overdramatic or whatever, but what’s worse than death? Or do you think I’m overreacting?”
Karin pulls Suki closer as the path narrows, and answers, “Do you trust me?”
“What?”
“Do you trust me?”
She activates the Sharingan, eating away at her chakra but needing to see her friend. Though Karin’s eyebrows are set with determination, Suki can’t glean anything else. “Yes?”
When Karin kisses her, it’s sweet, and a little sad. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you,” she says, and Suki believes her because friends aren’t supposed to lie.
Suki’s out of chakra, down to one kunai and her chokuto, and can’t see. The fall off the cliff that’s distance she didn’t estimate correctly leaves her with a fractured wrist, twisted ankle, and a few cracked ribs. To make it worse, she doesn’t know where Karin is.
The Konoha-nin came from nowhere, somehow hiding their chakra signatures even from her, after Suki and Karin just finished fighting off an Akatsuki member, going by his cloak. Running seemed like the best option, giving the state they were both in, but then Karin lost her grip, Suki hit a root, and now she’s here. Falling down into crawl spaces and shallow ravines is degrading for someone of her skill level, and she seems to be making a habit of it. It’s better than getting captured, she thinks, but as she forces herself up, limping and feeling along the dry stone cliff face, she doesn’t feel convinced.
When the team of four surrounds her, she pulls out her last kunai, the space too narrow for the chokuto, knowing she can at least defend herself in this state until her friend can make it down and act as her eyes. Someone’s on her in a moment, though, arm around her middle as he pulls the kunai from her hand. “We’re not going to hurt you,” says a voice that leaves her paralyzed and shaking, “little sister.”
Before she can answer, two fingers press against the pressure point in her neck, and everything fades.