Demons

Rin thought she knew nightmares.

Cold hands wrapping around an innocent neck, malevolent eyes glowing red in pitch black hallways, beasts that slithered or crawled or crept, she'd faced them all.

Each one held a purpose, a reason for tormenting their host and it was her job to fight them off.

She brought light to darkness, peace to chaos.

Ever since she walked into her first mind, she'd seen horror as a profession. Night after night, she gazed into the face of evil and held her ground when it looked back.

But nothing prepared her for the creature waiting in that cell.

It wore her friend's face, but with a mockery of his charm.

The light from the torches did little to illuminate him, casting cruel shadows across his gangly form, making him seem like a hunched skeleton, with his trail of poking vertebrae.

"Haru?" Her voice reverberated.

He twitched at the sound of it.

The scuffling sounds of hands and knees sliding against the ground, echoed in the tense quiet.

He crawled closer to inspect her, breathing the raspy wheeze of a corpse.

Stuffy, cold air sputtered beyond the wet nub of his severed tongue, which still flicked about in his mouth.

His grubby fingers curled around the bars of the cell, each fingernail split down the middle, the surrounding skin gnawed and scabbed over.

Rin's stomach twisted at the pungent stink of sour milk, letting her know whatever wounds he sustained, were infected. Beads of sweat dripped down his face, pooling in the hollow collarbones.

Fever.

She took a step closer, hands plastered over her mouth. "Haru. How...why are you...?"

His eyes, which once held the sparks of mischief, were dull voids in the torchlight. The skin of his face was sallow, sunken in at the cheeks, with dark shadows that seemed too deep to be real.

He looked like he hadn't eaten a proper meal in weeks, if not months.

"You know this man?" Gaara's question sounded miles away.

"I did."

"Who is he?"

Tears trailed down her cheeks in two hot lines. "His name is Haru, he's an experiment of Orochimaru's. Just like me."

"Why are you so upset?" The guard to her right asked, raising a hand to rest on her shoulder, but lowering it when he saw the Kazekage's face.

"Because he was my best friend and..." Her voice choked off in her throat.

"And?"

Rin sobbed at the jagged scar showing through the prisoner's ripped up shirt. "He was dead."

As if the word were a signal, the prisoner pulled back and forth at the bars, rattling them in a frenzy.

The once soft and comforting voice, that carried her through so many sleepless nights, pitched in a crazed laughter.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Over and over he slammed his head against the steel door, the bars working their way into his skull.

A stream of blood poured from the new crack in his forehead, splattering red against the walls of his cell.

"Haru! Stop!" Rin screamed, stretching her hands out to keep him from doing any more damage to himself.

"Rin, don't!" Gaara tried to grab her, but she grasped the bars before he could.

In one final smash, that sent a chipped tooth skimming over her cheek, he stilled into an unnatural quiet, panting deep, exhausted breaths.

Rin reached out to touch him. "Haru?"

Quicker than she could blink, foul hands shot through the bars and latched onto Rin's arm, pulling her against the door and seizing her there.

With a smile, that stretched too far up his face, he brought the pale skin of her arm to his mouth and bit down with full force.

White hot pain raced up and down her body in waves.

She screamed, trying and failing to pry herself away from the crazed man, who started ripping away at her flesh like a wild animal.

His dirtied, rotting teeth sunk down deep, squishing sounds of blood and tendon and the sickly crunch of bone, filling his mouth.

Suddenly, a great wall of sand shot through the bars, slamming into the prisoner and flinging him against the wall of his cell.

The force knocked him out cold.

He slid down the stone wall and fell in a heap on the floor, his body bent like a ragdoll in the darkness.

Rin clutched her bleeding arm to her chest, eyes never leaving the demon who wore her friend's face. "Haru."

Gaara swooped his arms under her legs, lifting her up into his grasp and running her up the stairs. "We need to get you to the hospital."

Though she was jostled from his frantic steps and his broad shoulders kept her from seeing much, Rin's treacherous eyes refused to leave the man, who was not a man, but still held the form of one.

He wasn't moving.

"Gaara."

"Shh, it's okay. I've got you."

"No. Make sure he's all right. Make sure Haru is okay!"

He scoffed at her request and nearly pulled the prison door off its hinges. "I don't know who that person was to you in the past, Rin, but I assure you, there's nothing left in him. Forget about his wellbeing and focus on your own."

"But..."

"No."

Gaara's voice held the authority of a general. Between that and the stabbing pain of her arm, she didn't find the strength to argue with him any further.

~

There was a frenzy of movement in the medical building.

Nurses and doctors, in white coats with pale faces, pulled her every which way.

The scent of disinfectant, the sounds of machines beeping and people barking orders, made her feel more at home than it should have.

This was the life she knew. This was where she began... where Haru began.

An older doctor took Rin's arm and held it straight out, dousing it in antiseptic.

Fire burned her nerves wherever it touched and she tried not to scream. It never helped the situation to scream.

"Keep control at all times. If you lose control of yourself, you'll never get it back again. Be brave. Be brave." She thought to herself, as they started scrubbing away at the dirt and human saliva already festering in her wound.

"Lord Kazekage, you need to step away."

"No! I'm staying."

"Gaara..."

He tried to come to her bedside, but was shoved back, as another nurse rushed to bring the attending physician his tools.

"Rin."

Though it felt like her arm was dipped in acid, she managed to keep her voice steady. "You need to get out of the way."

"What?"

She swallowed down the yelp that threatened to claw its way out of her throat. "Let. Them. Work."

Her tone made him pause.

Gaara looked around at the fusing medics, each with their own job to do and him, standing there in the middle of it, useless.

"Right."

He stepped outside of the operating room and tried not to startle when the door slammed behind him.

There may have been no other corner in the world where he would be seen as just another person and not the esteemed leader of his village.

Inside that room, with those medics, he wasn't powerful or even worth a second glance. That was their kingdom and he was an intruder.

Gaara found his way to one of the chairs and sat down, in a daze.

The image of Rin's blood, the sounds of her screaming, all of it played in his mind, on some sort of sick repeat cycle.

He placed his head in his hands. "I never should have brought her down there."

~

Needles, sutures, gauze; these were her companions and soon, they would be her enemy.

Though the doctor knew his craft and the nurses tried their best to be soothing, she knew what was coming and she would be damned if it got the best of her.

This wasn't the first time she was strapped to a table.

"We don't have time for anesthesia. The wound is too deep. It's cut through her arteries."

"But, sir!" One of the nurses protested.

"Young lady, brace yourself."

Rin nodded, her good hand squeezing down on the white sheets, which were now stained with her blood. "I'm ready."

"Okay. Here we go."

A rush of his chakra flooded her veins, stitching her tendons back together, piece by painful piece.

Like shards of glass, each nerve ending stung when it found its brother, reminding her how to feel and making her wish she could suddenly stop.

She focused on the white ceiling above her, trying to distract herself with the holes in the tiles.

"It's a game I figured out. When they're working on you, breathe in super deep, hold it and count as many holes as you can, before you have to let it out. It almost makes it fun!" Haru's voice filled her memory.

Rin tried to count the holes, but the blurring in her eyes, made even that impossible.

"Haru." She whispered, but her voice fell flat against the shouting around her.

Once again, she was in a cold, sterile room, crying for her friend, but this time, she wished he'd stayed dead.