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Karin first glimpsed at the orange of his hair through dancing leaves. They shook, green against orange, in a brisk rustle. Hidden, she shook, her hands sinking into the soil, and she fisted the sandy soil. It flowed, haltingly, between her fingers as she clawed and fisted, and fisted and clawed. Her nails itched and stung uncomfortably, rimmed black with dirt.
Steadfast, Karin watched them-Lord Orochimaru, Kabuto, and the new recruit– progress painfully slowly through the forest toward the hideout.
Her calves burned from crouching while her fingers moved restless by her sides, silent through soil, pushing through rocks and insects.
She didn’t move.
Karin momentarily saw Lord Orochimaru’s head bobbed above the leaves and out of reflex, she stilled and stopped breathing, drawing her chakra even more tightly around herself to be invisible.
Since she had been brought to the hideout, she had run away countless times. More times than she cared to remember. Even now, it didn’t matter whether Lord Orochimaru spotted her or not. He could always find her if she didn’t come back first, starving and desperate.
He knew she had nowhere else to go.
From where she crouched, Karin moved only her head to follow their progression. The new recruit had orange hair, lighter than her own. Lighter than anyone she remembered from the Uzumaki compound, but she still hoped that he could be like her. His upper body was almost naked, wrapped in tendrils of fabric like it had been torn off his back.
Unlike when she came to the hideout, there were no ropes, no gags, no half-drugged daze. He walked of his own volition, free, between Kabuto and Lord Orochimaru.
It could still be, Karin thought, with childish fervour. He could be like her, a kin.
She bit her bottom lip until she could pull and tear at the tender skin there.
Maybe, she was being replaced.
For the first time in months, Karin smiled, blood from her split lip trickling down her chin. She dropped her bruised forehead to her knees, her scrawny shoulders shooting up. She laughed silently, as easily as if she had cried.
Around her, the forest shook alongside her rocking body, growing agitated from the rising wind.
Far away, the village chimed with the steady cries of northern hawk cuckoos when the new recruit reached the nightingale floor in front of the hideout.
He was not like her.
Karin watched the new recruit warily as she approached the hideout with light, careful steps. Her face still throbbed from her last experiment, but it was her neck and her shoulder blades that burnt the worst. For the last two days she had wandered in the woods, she had adopted the posture of an old lady.
She was only comfortable if she hunched, her shoulders almost to her ears.
Karin stopped and dropped low, hunched over, as close from the boy as she dared.
He didn’t seem to sense her nearby presence.
His trousers hung loosely around his legs in uneven rags, while he had no shirt on. Blood dotted his skin and had dried in heavy strokes, undoubtedly from one of Lord Orochimaru’s experiments.
The boy’s skin was the only thing about him that was intact.
He sat on the ground, his head up, immobile, watching the sky.
Every time a nightingale floor echoed from the village, he watched the sky eagerly as if searching for the singing birds among the clouds. He hummed the melodies low before, imitating them perfectly, louder.
Tentatively, Karin reached out with her chakra to touch his. The brief contact drenched her in sweat, beads dripped down her back and forehead. She retreated instantly, closing her mind to his.
He had the fleeting chakra of wild animals; hot tendrils that spun chaotically around him while his core was cutting, icy.
After watching him a bit longer, Karin retreated deeper into the forest, crushed, hungry, and desperate.
No, he was not like her, she thought angrily, her thoughts whirling as she kicked at the ground and flayed her hands. Blindly, she reached out to break a branch off a tree. She snapped it in two. Again and again, she snapped and broke branches off trees until her pain flared awake in her shoulder blades where men had bitten her.
As she walked back to the seaside to steal food from the fishermen, she drew her body in again, hunched back, raised shoulders, for a moment of relief.
Through clenched teeth, Karin repeated it inwardly: He was not like her. He was not here to save her.
She blinked away bitter tears. Angrily, she wiped her face and nose with the crook of her elbow, releasing a sharp cry of frustration. Her glasses sat skewed on top of her nose.
He was not like her.
She could tell from the freckles of blood on his face, from his peaceful, almost blissful expression as he searched the sky for birds.
He was one more monster she needed to fear.
“Karin, why don’t you show Juugo how to walk through the nightingale floor?” Lord Orochimaru said saccharine over his shoulder as he approached the door of the hideout. “We can’t have him alerting everything and everyone every time he comes and goes, now do we?”
His suave voice floated punctuated with low laughter. Kabuto closed the door after them after throwing her a sharp smile.
From her hiding spot, Karin snarled at him. She hated Kabuto more than she hated Lord Orochimaru. Instinctively, she knew he would replace Lord Orochimaru one day, not out of ambition, but out of comfort. Out of loyalty.
Stubbornly, Karin remained hidden until she was certain Lord Orochimaru and Kabuto were gone.
She emerged from the forest noiselessly, but Juugo didn't move.
“Is your name really Juugo or did they rename you?” Karin asked, her voice hoarse.
She knew better than to approach him. Even Lord Orochimaru and Kabuto had stood at a distance from Juugo to explain the mechanisms of the nightingale floor to him. Earlier, Karin had watched them outline and point where he ought to step not to make any sound.
“The nightingale floor should only chime when there’s a threat, see? It’s like an alarm,” Kabuto had tried explaining with a cajoling voice.
She had watched as Juugo had refused to step at the correct places. He had made the nightingale floor chime half a dozen times, every time an expression of awe blooming on his face, before Lord Orochimaru and Kabuto had conceded defeat.
“I’m Juugo,” he said softly, still not looking at her. “I told them, that’s my name.”
He kept looking at the sky. Slowly, he drew his leg in and let it fall again in the wrong panel. He smiled up, childish, as the wood-like cooing of a bird echoed around them.
“Oriental turtle-dove,” Juugo hummed, and he stepped at the same place to make it chime again.
His mouth rounded, and he imitated the wood-like cooing to nearly perfection.
“It’s the sound for workers,” Karin said flatly, still watching him.
Juugo finally turned his head toward her, his eyes bright with excitement. He drew in his leg, and silence fell.
“They mean something different? The different birds?”
“Yeah,” Karin replied with a stiff shrug to feign disinterest. “In the village, they want the nightingale floors to chime.”
Her eyes cut through him.
He was still not wearing a shirt, and there were traces of dry blood over his arms and face. They were close enough for her to make out the blood under his fingertips.
She scratched her arm, never looking away from him.
“Why can’t we have a song too?” Juugo asked with a perplexed expression on his face. “Like this.” Juugo stepped in front of himself, and a different cooing resonated beneath him. “I like this one.”
Karin's frown deepened.
She analyzed his frail voice, his hesitant, rounded posture. He appeared too soft, so unlike the monster he undoubtedly was.
“No one is supposed to know we are here,” Karin said carefully. “That’s why they don’t want you to make a sound.”
Juugo cocked his head to the side, then his expression regained its dream-like quality as he looked up again. A flock of dark birds drifted lazily above.
“Are you like me?” Juugo asked after a while.
Karin scowled.
“They fear you,” she spat. “They don’t fear me. So I guess you don’t have to do as they say.”
“I want to be a good boy.”
Karin pushed back her glasses with the knuckle of her index finger.
“I don’t want…” Juugo bit his lip, and for a brief moment, she saw the veins in his neck bulge beneath his skin. “I don’t want to lose control,” he added quietly, his voice breaking and rigid. “Bad things happen when I lose control.”
Karin’s first instinct was to flee. She could feel the weight of his chakra drawing her in, close to eruption.
“Then, do as they say,” she said slowly through blanched lips.
Just as slowly, she drew back.
Juugo looked at her, troubled, agitated. He stepped off the nightingale floor, his steps drawing the cacophonous chirping of three different species which he recited under his breath.
Karin froze. She knew better than to turn her back to him now.
As Juugo approached her, he begged her with his eyes to stay, for his rage to stay at bay.
Karin's outstretched fingers grazed the bark of a nearby tree. If only she was faster, she could outrun them all, the monsters hunting her.
“I want to hear the birds,” Juugo pleaded, his voice pitiful, his eyes gleaming with tears. “That’s why I came.”
The tip of Karin’s tongue darted out to lick her dry lips as her mind raced. She had never met a monster like him, terrified of his own image. Kabuto thrived on terror, whereas Lord Orochimaru was indifferent to it. Every man who had bitten her had felt powerful, comfortable in her terror.
Yet, Juugo had yielded, uncomfortable, as terrified as her.
“Okay, but you need to listen to me first,” Karin said slowly with more conviction than she felt. “Do you understand?” She gulped with difficulty.
Juugo nodded solemnly, inches from her, his chakra growing dimmer.
“I’ll teach you what the other chirping means if you don’t make a sound just this time. Okay?”
He watched her, his jaw working, and she held her breath. Finally, he nodded and returned to the nightingale floor.
He crossed it in silence, his steps hovering on the wrong slates of wood only twice. Karin crossed the floor, faster than he did, guided by the depression in the wood where everyone regularly stepped.
Karin panted as she looked back at the wooden floor. It looked grotesque against the floor of the forest. Lord Orochimaru hadn't bothered to hide it.
Juugo watched her, still solemn, his hands uncomfortably open and empty by his sides.
“The sound you said you liked earlier,” Karin said between pants, feeling his stare on her. She turned her head back toward him to face him. “That’s for friends visiting each other.”
Juugo smiled brightly, once more calm. His hands stopped quivering as he opened the door to the hideout for them.
“Friends,” he said and paused to imitate the guttural cooing. “It’s a red-collared dove,” he informed her.
Karin looked back one last time before the door closed after them.
Maybe one day, she would cross the nightingale floor, and she wouldn’t need to come back here.
Next to her, Juugo hummed another chirping sound. He rolled his tongue around the sound, sharply, twice, before letting it rise more strongly and stopping.
“And this one?” he asked. “It’s a quail.”
“Family,” Karin said curtly, unblinking, unfeeling. “That one is for family visiting.”
Maybe, someday, she would cross a nightingale floor, purposely, her steps falling where they ought to for a melody to chime back at her.
Friends.
Family.
Maybe, someday.