Chapter Text
It made Kabuto’s lip curl, watching Orochimaru stride through the base with his new partner. Not out of a sense of jealousy–Kabuto and Itachi both occupied very different roles in this organization–but a personal dislike. The two of them were nothing alike, if the bingo books were anything to go off of. Itachi was a prodigy, a golden child, beloved and lauded by a family he later turned around and slaughtered. Kabuto was nothing to anyone, except a resource for Orochimaru. What kind of nerve must have possessed Itachi to think he could just walk into Otogakure in the garb of a terrorist, a slash through the headband of his home country? To throw away everything he had, and for what? To get stronger? To make a point? Kabuto often leered at him over his glasses, saying nothing but quietly fuming, fighting back the hatred that brewed in him just being in Itachi’s presence.
Months into their partnership, Orochimaru now trusted Itachi to stand by in one of their hideouts while he attended to other business. This time, he’d asked him to wait with Kabuto, and ever-obedient, Kabuto did not protest. He simply poured himself over the samples he was dissecting, pretending fervently that he was alone in the room.
It was quiet for a long moment. Itachi didn’t seem to mind. Kabuto, however, was feeling his skin prickle every time he heard the other man shift, or breathe too loudly.
“Perhaps you’d be more comfortable in another room,” he blurted, not looking up from his work.
He could feel Itachi glancing placidly back at him. “Am I in your way?”
“Oh no,” Kabuto snipped. “By all means, just sit there and stare at me. You aren’t technically impeding my work.”
Not bothered, Itachi replied, “I think you would rather I not be here. If you’d prefer privacy, that’s fine.”
Despite his usual level of decorum, Kabuto was feeling particularly bristly now that he actually had a chance to give Itachi a piece of his mind. “I’d prefer you not be in the base at all, if I’m being honest. I won’t dance around the subject–I don’t like you. I’m tolerating you for Orochimaru’s benefit exclusively.”
“Have I done something to upset you?” Itachi didn’t seem defensive, but curious.
What an ass.
“Not me specifically, but yeah, you could say that.” Completely setting down his samples, Kabuto peered at him over his shoulder, brow pulled tight with disgust. “I’ve read about you, and what you did to your clan. It’s repulsive. I get that none of us are model citizens; you don’t end up in the Hidden Sound for being an upstanding member of society. But I draw the line at what you did.”
Itachi’s casual demeanor faltered. It seemed that even though this was probably not the first time someone had torn into him, it still bothered him. Averting his eyes, he returned a more quiet, “That’s fair.”
“Why’d you do it then?” Kabuto demanded, feeling his face starting to heat up.
“To test my abilities,” Itachi stated, reflexive, as if he’d rehearsed it.
“Bullshit.”
Why was he getting so heated about this? Wasn’t it a bad idea to pick a fight with someone who was an S-class threat to most organized nations? Wasn’t it going against Orochimaru’s orders to antagonize his partner? It was becoming harder to care. Some vicious, acrid feeling that Kabuto often tamped down was boiling to the surface, its cage peeled back by Itachi happening to strike a very sensitive nerve.
“It’s not my concern if you don’t believe me,” Itachi retorted.
Forearms tensing, Kabuto let his hands fall to his sides. “If it was really to test your strength, you would have killed your younger brother. Or maybe your physical abilities are exceptional, but you have a weak stomach.”
Itachi said nothing, his mouth pulled tight.
“That’s what I thought. You’re absolutely full of garbage,” Kabuto spat. He was fully facing Itachi now, caught up in his emotions, staring down at the man sitting in the chair just a few meters away. “You had everything going for you and you threw it away for nothing. I doubt there’s a reason you could give me that would redeem you in my eyes. While you’re working with Orochimaru, I’m only going to deal with you if he asks me to. If you have to be in the same space as me, keep your mouth shut, or I’ll make it both of our problem.”
Not prompting another response from Itachi, Kabuto huffed, turning and walking back to his workspace. It seemed Itachi wasn’t the type to retaliate when provoked, which was probably good, but it just left Kabuto with more questions. He simmered wordlessly, picking up his forceps and scalpel and trying to smother his anger with biology data.
It was a few minutes before Itachi spoke up, his tone soft and distant.
“I did what I had to do.”
What was that supposed to mean?
“Oh yeah? Enlighten me, what compelled you to wipe out your clan?”
Itachi mulled over his words, seeming to debate how much he should say. “The alternative was worse.”
That gave Kabuto pause, and still facing away, he stilled his hands for a moment. “What alternative?”
“I…was under orders,” Itachi admitted. “The choice was wipe out the Uchiha, or allow a civil war to break out in the village. Higher ups in my clan were planning a coup.”
Kabuto’s eyes widened, and he peered over his shoulder. “Under whose orders?”
Shaking his head, Itachi just stated quietly, “I was given the choice to save my brother, or save no one. I chose Sasuke.”
There was a tense moment of silence between them.
“You chose Sasuke,” Kabuto repeated.
“I did.”
“But he hates you. I’ve heard about that.”
Itachi didn’t meet his eyes. “He deserves revenge. I want him to be strong enough that he never has to go through something like this. If I have to be who he strives to defeat, I will accept that role.”
Kabuto hadn’t expected any of this. He slowly turned away, not pressing the subject any further. Itachi had a history with the ANBU black ops. If he was given the command to wipe out his clan, it wasn’t hard to imagine who had made the call.
He returned his focus to his work, leaving the conversation at that. It was hard to say how he felt about this revelation. Itachi remained quietly at the back of the room, until sometime later, Orochimaru stopped by to collect him. The pair of them parted ways, Itachi leaving without comment, Kabuto not looking up as he did so. It ended up being the last and only time they spoke.
—-------
Scalpel in hand, Kabuto stood on the precipice of a decision: Sasuke Uchiha, who had been injured in the Chunin Exams, was unconscious and at his mercy. He could, per his orders, abduct Sasuke to be prepared as Orochimaru’s next vessel. Or–he contemplated tensely–he could stop Orochimaru in his tracks. Though he owed the man a lot, Kabuto was reaching a breaking point with his tenure in the Hidden Sound. He considered himself possessing a strong stomach and a fairly skewed moral compass, so he often didn’t protest when directed to handle less savory work. It was to benefit himself as well as his master.
And yet…
Puppeting a disguised corpse, he stared down at the unconscious boy in the hospital bed, grip on the scalpel tightening in an undead hand. The remains of the three ANBU guards he’d killed to get here lay slumped around his feet, his real body hidden among them, silently operating the transformed cadaver he was impersonating. He could hear movement nearby; he knew he wasn’t alone. It was likely to be a Jonin, possibly Kakashi or Gai, someone he didn’t want to fight unless he absolutely had to. He already knew how this might go wrong. The whole reason he’d set up multiple body doubles was in preparation for an ambush. The corpse that wore his face could collect Sasuke only to be stopped by the Jonin outside, or he could just try to jam his scalpel into Sasuke’s throat, again almost definitely intercepted.
An impulse hit him to just leave.
Why did he need to meddle with Sasuke? Yes, for Orochimaru, to help his master, but at the expense of this child? Kabuto had done worse to even less-deserving people, but something about this made his stomach turn. Sasuke wasn’t involved. Sasuke was doing what he thought he had to do to punish his brother, and was inclined to seek Orochimaru to achieve the necessary power.
Kabuto’s mind flickered back to Itachi, just briefly. It had been over a year since their exchange, but the tone in Itachi’s voice still stuck deep in Kabuto’s mind. He’d been under orders; it wasn’t hard to deduce who had given them. How many higher-ups in the Leaf were ready and willing to push a man to kill his own family? To “prevent a civil war”. In this village, the only way to deal with dissenters was to silence them before they had a chance to strike.
Like him.
Something clicked in Kabuto in that moment. What happened to him, what happened to Itachi…there was no reason Sasuke had to suffer the same fate. There was time to intervene. Time to stop him from falling into the clutches of another megalomaniacal monster, time to get him away from people who wanted to use him. He didn’t deserve this. Any of it.
The corpse tossed the scalpel at the door, caught by Kakashi stepping over the threshold.
“You…I know you. You aren’t just a regular Genin, are you? Maybe you’re one of Orochimaru’s goons?” Kakashi pondered, stepping closer.
Chuckling, the puppet didn’t turn around. “You think too highly of me. Perhaps I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Narrowing his eyes, Kakashi slowly withdrew a kunai. “Not likely. What do you want with Sasuke? I should have you detained just for trespassing in here.”
“By yourself? You don’t have backup?” Turning to face him, the corpse smirked casually.
As if to answer his question, two of Kakashi’s shadow clones stepped in from the hallway.
“I’m not so arrogant,” Kakashi chided back. “Now why don’t you be a good boy and come along quietly? I won’t hurt you unless I have to.”
Drawing his own hooked kunai, the puppet ducked forward, jabbing the point of his weapon into the thigh of one of the clones. It burst into a cloud of smoke, though the second one managed a quick sweep under the decoy’s legs. He toppled to the floor, Kakashi pinning an arm behind his back as his own clone dissipated. Grunting, the puppet glared back at him, his glasses askew.
“I guess you like doing things the hard way. C’mon, up you go,” Kakashi drawled, pulling out a pair of handcuffs and securing his captive’s hands behind his back.
It was draining Kabuto’s chakra to keep the decoy moving, let alone having it fight, but he held out as long as he could. He just needed a few seconds.
Kakashi hauled the false Kabuto to his feet, starting to walk him out of the hospital room. After just a few paces though, the corpse buckled at the knees, falling to the ground in a heap. Sensing movement, Kakashi whipped around, watching in shock as what appeared to be one of the dead ANBU members on the floor leapt to his feet, bolting for Sasuke. The real Kabuto whipped a smoke bomb out of his hip pouch, using the cover to quickly pull Sasuke’s ventilator from his face. Another of the dead ANBU guards arched up, throwing shuriken to break the glass of the hospital window.
Kakashi was fast, but Kabuto had caught him off guard. Before he could rush back into the room to stop him, Kabuto was already diving out of the broken window, Sasuke held tightly to his chest. Panicking, Kakashi whipped his kunai at the retreating figure’s face, knocking the mask free, and he caught sight of the man he thought he was arresting only seconds ago. Turning back to the collapsed figure in the hallway, he saw the transformation technique fade, leaving behind another dead ANBU guard.
“No…the Dead Soul jutsu…” Grimacing, he rushed to the window, watching Kabuto drop to the ground and break into a run, headed for the treeline, carrying Sasuke in his arms. “Shit!”
There was no time to waste. He leapt out the window after the pair, sprinting as soon as his feet hit the ground. In an instant, Kabuto had already disappeared from view. If Kakashi couldn’t even detect him in the room while he was laying on the floor just feet from him, he must have erased all traces of himself. Running straight into the woods, even where Kakashi was sure he’d seen the man head, yielded nothing. There was no scent to pick up, no footsteps to hear. He’d essentially vanished.
“What kind of skill does that kid possess, to disappear completely?”
Kneeling down, Kakashi pulled out a scroll, releasing the summoning seal. In a puff of smoke, a sandy dog appeared, his long nose twitching behind a pair of round sunglasses.
“Akino, I need you to track down Sasuke,” Kakashi instructed. “He’s been captured unconscious. Follow at a distance and keep an eye on them, but don’t engage. We might be dealing with Orochimaru.”
Nodding, the dog leaned down to sniff the ground, his senses much sharper than Kakashi’s. “I can tell what direction Sasuke went, but whoever is with him is practically invisible. Are you going to go for help?”
Kakashi nodded, getting to his feet and stowing the scroll. “Yeah. We need to mobilize Jonin immediately. If Orochimaru gets his hands on Sasuke, our situation is going to get a lot more dire.”
“Right, I’ll hurry.”
Akino took off running into the woods, Kakashi watching him go with a tense expression.
“So will I.”