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…”
“He isn’t your 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.
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Yeah. XD I hope everyone enjoyed. ^^