FicWad

Okay, I'm sick of fighting with Ficwad, and my hectic schedule. This story has been ready for over a year. I'm just reposting it, in huge chunks, rather than drabble by drabble. For those who like my author's notes, I'm sorry, they're gone.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, and these characters are not mine.

... Break Down ...
... by IWCT ...
... Part One: Crane ...

They’re calling this the Great Ninja War already, and it’s only the tenth year since Sand has been involved. He has been a jounin for a year and a half, and his fourteenth birthday is nothing more to him than a marker to tell him that he has another five months before it’s been two years. Already the villagers are calling him the most ruthless man in Sunagakure.

He shrugs the title off, as he teaches the chuunin he’s been paired with how to tear a man apart from the inside, using the air in his blood stream. It’s taken five years for him to develop this signature technique of his, but the war’s on, and he could die tomorrow. He isn’t so irresponsible to leave his village without his weapons.

The Third has even praised him on his dedication to Suna, and his tricky killing move. It might require a lot of control, but he is certain his chuunin partner can master the bloody typhoon. After all, Baki is a friend of the wind, too.

…

A truce means that ninja mutually agree that they need time to re-forge their kunai. He decides that the best way he can help his village is to take a couple of well paying missions in the interval.

He has tried teaching, but Baki is the only one who has ever come close to mastering the typhoon of blood. Most of the others have suffered from chakra feed back and blown themselves to bits. Those that have survived learning the technique are mainly medical nin, and they never bothered to learn the deadliest applications, leaving the typhoon an incomplete healing tool in their hands.

Deep down, it angers him that the technique he took such pains to invent will die with him. The wind and the earth are the two greatest elements in the life of the hidden village. He merely has brought the wind element to a one shot killing art. That so few could be true enough friends with the wind in Suna is a blow to his ego. Wind and earth, opposing forces, but plenty sand nin can master the earth. Is the wind that hard to tame?

He’s going to need the time this simple escort mission will give him to think about his technique.

…

He’s never seen anything so white in his life. That’s his first thought when he sees the other two non-merchants with the caravan. This is a B-rank mission, but the commission was good enough for him to ignore the lack of challenge. It’s a simple mission. Protect the caravan from bandits as they make the journey between the breakaway Country of the Rice, or what ever that splinter country is called, and the Wind Country. So many new countries have declared themselves free of the five great nations that he hasn’t bothered to remember the names.

But now, all he can think is that he’s never seen anything as white as the skin of the two siblings sitting quietly in the last wagon. It’s just observation of the new phenomenon that keeps his clear blue eyes straying towards the strangers. Observation and fascination. Soon they will be underway, and he won’t have time to look at the odd people.

The properly wind-burned caravan boss blathers on about the two pale skinned siblings being his son and daughter. The Suna jounin isn’t impolite enough to say that anyone with two eyes can see that the blond foreigners are obviously not related to this desert born merchant.

That can wait for when they discuss the journey later as men. If the eighteen-year old war veteran mentions anything now, he might scare away the fascinatingly pale creatures.

…

Travel is slow during a tentative truce. He has time to find out more about his protectees. The girl is older than her brother (Yashamaru’s eyes are stone blue, darker and more thoughtful than her sparkling teal eyes), but otherwise they are so alike they might be twins. Both are retiring, but the girl is brave enough to go with him to collect firewood one night.

She is also, he discovers, brave enough to ask if he is a man or a woman. The question offends him so much that he takes his blank gaze from the surroundings and tries to transfix her with a glare, saying coldly that he is male, thank you very much. She laughs innocently, and he is surprised how much that simple sound reminds him of his genin days, before he learned that kunai slid through flesh and jarred against bone with alarming ease.

The surprise paves the way for a strange warm feeling that fills him as she apologizes blithely. He finds himself saying that kohl is typically worn around the eyes of the inhabitants of the Wind Country, both men and women, unlike other areas. She nods wisely, as if she should have known. After all, she tells him, she has seen a few Noh dramas before, and Kibuki players occasionally wandered through her home village one their way to the theaters in bigger cities. It’s not like this is the first time she’s seen a man wearing make-up.

He nods, and goes back to scanning the surroundings. It takes him until late into the night around the camp fire to realize that the warm feeling is happiness. He’s missed it.

…

Bandits are common in war torn areas. They will attack anything worth stealing. Rounin samurai, more cautious, will wait to check if any of the escort is competent. Shinobi will first ask who is paying them to take the bounty before they do anything.

When the caravan cuts into the Earth Country to avoid a massive storm that is sweeping the Wind Country they meet bandits. He kills the company of destitute farmers with little trouble, other than that caused by an amateur with a sword. Five shuriken sever the veins in the neck, wrists, and under the boy’s unprotected arms as he rushes desperately at the group. The ninja of Suna is congratulated, and the girl cleans the scratch where the boy stabbed at him unexpectedly.

The she says his eyes are like ice. He gazes at the thirteen-year old bandit, still bleeding to death, and wishes he knew what “ice” was. From the girl’s tone of voice he feels that she doesn’t like it. His only response to the comment is that sometimes amateurs are lucky enough to get a few swings in, but this wasn’t a difficult mission. She just looks away over the twenty corpses of the peasants, ready for burial detail.

The young jounin turns away, pouting. That night he drifts off to sleep wondering what ice is, and dreams of the lovely blond girl putting kohl around her eyes, and singing in the old language of Suna. He can only catch the tail end of the song, /gaara no sabaku/, before she races away with the wind.

In the morning he reminds himself that he doesn’t believe in omens or visions, or any of that mystic nonsense. Certainly not love of the desert. Shukaku’s land doesn’t have room for love.

…

One night, around the camp fire, once the females have retired, he and the caravan boss are able to talk as men, late into the night. The siblings are refugees from the Rice Field Country. They were once part of a ninja clan, but their real parents had no wish to live in war, and abandoned the clan to live as peasants.

They were ignored, but strange things are happening in Rice, now. The ninja families are being decimated, children kidnapped, parents slaughtered. Darker rumors mutter about snakes being able to shed their skin under the waving rice stalks, now that the veil of protecting leaves is no more.

The clan the girls can trace their heritage to has been effectively wiped out. Their parents sent the brother and sister as far from the slithering shadow that darkens the land of rice fields as they could. And so they are to go to the heart of the Wind Country, and eke out what living they can there.

He nods, and says that if the caravan is willing to report all they have heard about the menace to the council of the Hidden Village he can see to it that they at least have a place to stay for a few days, before they move on. He can’t think why he’s being so stupid as to promise to escort these unvetted merchants to the hidden village, but he’s confident if they turn out to be spies he can kill them all.

It is obvious that the hormonal boy is only eighteen.

…

As they turn south into the Wind Country more questions flood from the girl. The culture and mannerisms must appear very different to these farmer children, he thinks smugly. In the Wind Country even the lowest cattle driver holds himself like a prince. These are hard people, who have the honor of surviving the desert and the four winds.

From the north, he explains, riding along easily next to the wagon with the two foreigners, comes the Mountain’s Blast, the freezing wind of night. From the east blows the Storm’s Warning, wet and heavy every spring. South is the Sun’s Caress, the mildest, laziest breeze that only stirs at mid-day. From the west is where the worst winds, the winds the desert is famous for, reside. The west wind is Shukaku’s Breath, and it strips flesh from bone with its rage filled heat.

The girl asks why the west wind is so angry. He smiles confidently to himself, and replies that the greatest shamans of the wind country imprisoned Shukaku long, long ago, and the desert demon does not like to be imprisoned. The boy looks thoughtful, but the girl has a properly surprised expression in her large teal eyes. He feels smug that the simple children’s story has impressed her so much.

Those who survive the world of the wind know that to walk the desert is to walk in the untamed lands where the spirits are still free to roam, he tells her. If a man can survive that, then the wind welcomes him into its heart, the sand is his ally, and the machinations of men can hold no fear for him. The desert strips you down to your core, he concludes. You cannot lie to yourself under the empty sky, the way you can in softer lands.

…

They stop at a stand one day that is selling grilled goat. The siblings look shocked as the men from the Wind Country buy portions of meat for everyone. The ninja looks at their expressions curiously. They tell him that in the Country of the Rice Fields they could not afford to have meat except on special occasions. They certainly never would have dreamed of eating meat from a useful animal like a goat.

He buys them an extra portion each, and smiles to himself as the girl exclaims excitedly over the flavor. He can’t believe that at fifteen and seventeen neither of them has tasted goat before. He goes to bed feeling warm again. He might get used to happiness, he thinks.

…

A child learns from those who are older, and more experienced. The quiet boy is watching him, he realizes, as he pushes the two nearest merchants down to avoid the kunai whistling above their heads. Just bad luck that they camped in the same ravine as a couple of injured Leaf nin. Worse luck that they saw the Sand symbol on his forehead protector, which he keeps around his neck ever since his first mission and that puppeteer from Rain tried to strangle him with poisoned wire. These shinobi from Konoha must believe that the entire caravan is composed of Sand nin. The truce doesn’t matter when you’ve got a comrade bleeding to death in a shallow cave a few meters away.

Two more kunai fly over his head and the wind catches them for him, responding to the barest touch of chakra. His hands shoot out and there is the sound of ripping cloth as the first kunai embeds itself in the armored green vest of the jounin in the group. The second one is in his grasp, and a third slides out from his red earth colored sleeve as he dashes for the scarred shinobi using the razor wing knuckle blades. The boy is probably as half as old as he is, and the smell of cigarette smoke hangs heavy around him like an armored vest.

They connect in a flash of steel stuck sparks, and for a few brief moments there is a contest of strength before the razor boy whirls, and jabs low with the knife bladed knuckle dusters, using them like daggers. He jumps, kicking out at the kid’s head, his eyes calculating the situation.

A swinging upper cut that rips through cloth, and strikes off the mesh covering his thigh, even as his boot smashes into the brown nose, confirms his suspicion that he’s run into one of the infamous Konoha taijitsu specialists, and the rest of the four man cell are likely to be just as impervious to sense. Oh well, it shouldn’t take long to kill--

Shuriken speed past him, deadly stars of death heading straight for the wagon. His crystal eyes widen in alarm, and he jumps back, calling up a wall of wind from his palms (fingers to Rat, slide into Dragon, flip down to Dog, and those are all the seals he needs) to knock the shuriken away. The boy is still watching him, his slate-like eyes surveying the shinobi’s movements. The Sand nin is standing by the wagon now. The two leaf nin capable of walking are at last using their brains and assessing the situation.

He can kill them both in five minutes, but not without losing some of the civilians in the caravan. His mission and his reputation war for a minute before he quickly forms the seals of the rat, dog, monkey, and rat again. The wind, glad to be of service under his chakra’s guidance, grabs the frail boy from the cave, and drags the Leaf nin to the Sand jounin before the other three can blink.

The solution to this little problem is very simple, he tells them. They let the caravan through the ravine, and as far as the next stream, and he will stay there with their friend until the caravan is out of harms’ way. Then, if they want to do this the safe way, they can leave. If they want to fight him, he’ll start by killing the wounded kid in his grasp. And then he will murder them, or they will murder him. It’s all quite simple.

In other circumstances he knows that this would illicit a laugh from at least the razor wing kid. They are all still young enough to be foolishly merry during a battle. But they’ve also seen too much death not to understand the eyes of a fellow killer. The wounded jounin spits blood, and pulls out the kunai. There is a gasp of suppressed pain, and then he rises from the ground, panting.

“One Suna ninja to protect a caravan of civies?” the chuunin asks. “Even with a truce on that’s crazy.”

“One four man cell attacking an unknown target with one of you so badly wounded he isn’t even conscious? Don’t talk to me about crazy.”

“We protect our own in Konohakagure,” Razor Wing Kid grins, as he pulls out a cigarette. “What’s a wind user doing fighting hand to hand?”

“Evening the odds.”

“Not much of a talker, are you? We’re planning on the safe way, if you were curious. It is a truce, after all,” smoke fills the clear air. “Seriously, you’re gonna be dead, man, if you don’t stick to long range moves with your wind elements. You’re good, but you’re not a taijitsu type.”

“No,” he replies in agreement. “The weakness of the wind element is that it is most useful at long range. Most ninjitsu users are so good they don’t need to worry about annoying taijitsu. On the other hand, the favorite trick of a leaf nin, after the kage bushin, is the art of replacement. I wanted to act fast, and take you down before one of you idiots hit the civilians, thinking they were shinobi, too.”

“Funny to think that the poisoners of Sand care about civilians,” the third Leaf nin comments. He is non-descript, until the dark bags under his eyes can be seen. The kid should be in a hospital, not out on a mission.

“The desert cares for its own.”

“Like that blond babe was from the Wind Country,” the razor wing kid chooses a really bad time to open his mouth. Blank blue eyes become freezing cold, and suddenly the hostage screams, as blood dribbles from his mouth. The Sand nin has closed his hand into a fist.

“One should speak of women with respect. It is a lesson every child in Suna learns early,” the red haired teen comments emotionlessly. “It is good for you that I have time to teach you this very important lesson, or you shall never deserve to be married to a good woman. Now, refer to ladies as mere “babes” again, and I shall have to do something really drastic.”

The hostage drags in breath through tears of pain as the jounin releases his fist. The razor wing kid and his sensei exchange worried glances. Sick boy measures the jounin with his eyes.

“You’re used to single cell work, aren’t you?”

“We get by with what we have in Suna,” he comments with no apparent interest.

“Wind and sand? Not much to get by on,” Razor Wing Boy really, really wants to have his throat slit.

“I think your civies reached their point,” Sick Boy says before the Sand nin’s deadly hands can grasp at the chakra that controls the wind.

He looks up, and sees Yashamaru standing alone in the ravine, looking uncomfortably curious. He’s disappointed, and yet mysteriously glad that his brave girl hasn’t come. He doesn’t want these immature Leaf shinobi to even look at her with their disrespectful eyes.

…

A few days later, Yashamaru asks, in the company of his sister, what it takes to become Sand shinobi. He feels a sudden jolt of cold down his spine, and for the first time in his life, tries to avoid the subject. Yashamaru persists in his quiet way. In the end he tells the boy and his sister the truth, feeling like he’s raping them somehow.

All it takes to be a Sand shinobi is the ability to kill, and not feel it.

…

He asks the Third if he, the leader and most powerful man in the village, is serious. They are a security breach, after all. The Third raises a black eyebrow, and smiles, as if to remind him that he brought the security breach into Suna in the first place.

The Sandaime Kazekage turns his back on him, and stares out the window, before telling him that he is a jounin of Sunagakure, correct?

He answers yes, wondering where this is going. Is he being tested? He realizes he deserves it for practically promising two unknown people a home in the hidden village. Obviously the Third is still trying to decide his punishment. He prays it doesn’t mean killing the siblings. He likes them (brave girl a bit better than her brother), but he is a shinobi of Sunagakure first, and for always. The safety of the village matters more than his personal feelings.

As if reading his thoughts, the Third asks if he will do whatever the Sandaime asks of him.

He nods, his face expressionless. So he is going to have to kill them.

Good, the Third replies, not turning around, yet he must have seen the nod, somehow. This is the greatest man in history he is speaking with, after all. He hears the suppressed laughter in the Third’s voice as he receives his orders. He is to go out to the Star Watching Festival tonight, and accompany the two new comers, and above all enjoy himself.

The kohl rimmed eyes stare at the Kazekage, and he knows his jaw has dropped.

After he has been dismissed the Kazekage sighs quietly. The most ruthless jounin in Sand, and he, the Third, has to order the eighteen year old boy to have fun. Such dedication to the village is admirable, but the poor kid seems to forget that he still is a kid, and not a killing machine for the glory of Suna.

…

The Star Watching Festival is a celebration of darkness and light. Unlike in other countries, in the Wind Country, and in the Hidden Village of Sand in particular, they have no set date, merely waiting until the sky is free of sandstorms during the autumn. In other countries there are legends of lovers who cannot meet by the Sky River if the Lord of Storms forbids it. In Suna the legends are older, darker, filled with hope and blood, less drama and more demons. This is the land of Shukaku, after all, he explains to the siblings as they gather together under a lantern, Baki joining the group.

What about the lovers, then? The brave girl wants to know.

Some lovers die, some live, some curse in sorrow, and drink themselves to death, others live in joy, some who deserve to live forever are cut off in their prime, others watch the flower of love wither as their relationship goes on, he shrugs. The stars are the ancestors, they are the spirits, they are chakra, they watch over everyone, and ask questions of men when Shukaku’s breath has stripped them to the bone. There is no room for love in that. Only remembrance. The Star Watching Festival is about light and dark. Music, stories, dancing, and laughter competing with introspection, murder, death, and despair.

They move off together through the crowd, finding the children’s story tellers, and the sweet fruit sellers, and treating the girl and boy to everything that the village of Sand has to offer the civilians. By the great bonfire the music thrums, and pitches men and women to their feet to move in a most unseemly fashion.

His brave girl is grinning like a shining star, and he discovers that happiness is infectious, but he doesn’t care. That night he forgets that he has a mission to slay the nephew of Fire Country’s daimyo. It is days away, and the blond girl is holding his hand. He promises himself, when the war’s over, he’ll kiss her and court her, and do his best to make her happy forever. If he survives. If he doesn’t, then he hopes some other man makes her laugh in the startled beautiful way she does, when he drags her out to dance.

…

Teal eyes fill with tears, and he just wants to look away. He doesn’t want her to ask, so of course she will. Why not her. What’s wrong with her that makes her brother better? Baki’s watching from the sidelines, and he knows he has to keep his reputation up at this moment.

He turns his back on her, saying that she came too late. That she’s too old to be a Suna shinobi. He hears her yelling that Yashamaru wasn’t too old, and he sighs internally, because the quiet boy is watching too, and he will hear the jealousy in his braver sister’s voice.

Cold black steel slices through the air, and cuts a lock from the blond head. He’s covered the distance between them in less than seconds, and she hits the ground before her hair can begin to fall. He’s on top of her, and has pinned her wrists with one hand. The other has a kunai at her throat. Her frightened eyes are looking into the freezing clearest blue, lined with careful black. Fear has her limp as a rabbit in the hawk’s grasp.

He leans down to whisper in her ear. He can feel her shaking beneath him, and he hates himself for doing this to her, but it’s important, and for her own good. He tells her, in the coldest growl he can manage, that he could have killed her in five seconds. Yashamaru can put up enough of a fight at the moment to stall him along for thirty. She’s just too weak, even for a genin. It may not seem like it, but there is a war going on outside the Hidden Village. He only trains people who can survive.

He leans in closer, his body completely flattening hers to the ground. Her sweaty skin smells mysteriously of carrots, and the dry scorching smell of the desert sand. His lips flick across her ear lobe as he breathes the next reason why he won’t train her. She is needed somewhere other than the killing fields. He doesn’t know where yet, but she is needed there, and he’s not going to keep her from that. She means more to him than just another meat shield. Because, and she has to make no mistake about this, in the long run, that is all any ninja is. From the stupidest genin to the Third. They are all weapons that are going to die full of kunai.

He pushes himself off her, and stands again. Tears are on the edges of her lashes. He looks towards her quiet brother, and gestures to say that they need to get underway. He leaves Baki to pick the failed student up. He’s never been more relieved in his life that someone can’t fight for Suna. It means he won’t have to watch her die.

…

She hits him. He returned to Suna two days ago, with Yashamaru covered in blood, but alive. He made no comment, other than to say that his newest student was a quick learner. Once he left the hospital room he heard Baki say that it was high praise, coming from him.

So, when they meet in the market today, and she hits him, he doesn’t bother to block the blow. He just looks at her, trying to tell her with his eyes that this is why he could never teach her. She’ll have to help Suna in other ways. Her angry glare hurts worse than the sun, and she turns away without saying a word.

…

He’s twitching from the pain as Head Puppeteer Chiyo-sama injects the antidote into his blood stream. She comments caustically that amateurs shouldn’t try to take on a team with the Slug Princess on it. He manages to bite back the retort that she wasn’t doing so fantastically against the woman’s swinging fists. He was fine until that Rain ninja decided to play with that acupuncture parasol. Weren’t Rain shinobi supposed to hate Konoha more than Suna?

As the medic nin starts to stitch up his shoulder, she tells him he’s going to have to head for Suna if he wants to keep the use of his right hand. He winces as the needle jabs into flesh and tries to remember how those tendons were slashed. Everything is a pain filled haze, but he’s pretty sure he ripped a man’s stomach out recently. It would explain the acid burns on his left arm, at any rate. Anything is better than thinking about the fact that these are stitches made with thread from old uniforms, and not stuchers. About how low their medical supplies have fallen at the front.

He thanks Chiyo-sama brusquely as she tells him she’s done all she’s willing to do, pops a few soldier pills, and heads back to Suna for a real hospital’s help.

...

When he comes to, he’s surprised to see the old lady again, and her puppeteering genius of a shadow. Shouldn’t her grandson be in Suna? he wants to know muzzily. He was at the dry river when he went to rest in the shade. Chiyo-sama hits him with the flat of her palm, and says he was found by another returning team, and brought to Suna.

She knew he lived on the edge, and didn’t like healers to waste their chakra, but he might have told them that he had a piece of shuriken buried underneath his left shoulder blade, and that the stitches from the last field operation had come lose. Was gangrene the fashion among youngsters these days?

He winces. He forgot. He’s been using three soldier pills a day since that crazy trap user nearly crushed his leg in a landslide. That was two missions ago? Three? In a war you count each mission finished when you end up in the field hospitals. He wonders in a detached way, exactly how much damage he’s done to himself while he was high on stimulants.

Chiyo-sama tells him to listen to the nurses, and not do anything for the next couple of weeks. Not even if the Kazekage asks. Not that the Third would, she sniffs. The Third is smarter than his shinobi, after all.

…

He can’t help it. He asks jokingly if she’s impressed by his scars as she tidies up around the medical bed. She gives him a hard, piercing glare, which he almost quails from. He looks down at his bandaged arm, as she angrily fluffs the pillow he was using. He wants to know why she came, if she just came to be angry. What he asks is if she’s going to speak to him ever again.

She pauses, and flicks some of her blond hair away from her face. A devilish smirk that has no place anywhere near a woman’s expression greets his question as she gazes at him. If Shukaku was female -- he thinks, suddenly both terrified, and strangely attracted. She leans over his bed and tells him one word: Beg.

As she saunters out, he wonders what his brave girl has been learning while he was away.

…

They talk more, now. He’s no longer her protector. She, in fact, protects him. Protects him from thinking about the war, his comrades dying because he wasn’t a god and couldn’t save them by any mortal means, the stink of the hospital, Rule Twenty-Five. She protects him from it all, her lively conversation, her simplicity, her happiness are weapons that stave off the world.

When they talk, even when they talk about the war, it’s as if everything is happening elsewhere. Her brother is playing medic nin somewhere behind the Fire Front, since he can’t teach Yashamaru at the moment. Baki is doing Shukaku knows what, but he is confident in the young man. Baki is going to make jounin soon, the way things are going.

She is always thirsty for stories. He loves telling her them. It’s something he can do from his bed, which he otherwise is itching to leave. She plays a mean game of shougi. He doesn’t, and wishes he knew why he finds her tactics so fascinating. Maybe he has some kind of intellect fetish. One day she brought squares of paper with her and taught him the art of origami. She threatens flower arranging next, and he coldly tells her he is not a woman, despite the kohl. They both laugh, drowning in good memories.

While she’s with him, he can create a kind of peace in his head, where happiness can bubble, unhindered by the needs of Suna. When she leaves he makes what plans he can to see to his village’s safety.

…

Another truce, and this time he’s watching her re-forge kunai. Funny to think, but it’s only been two years. He’s a man now, by the reckoning of the outside world. She’s still a girl, in his blank eyes. A girl testing the balance of shuriken.

Outlined by the fire, her shadow rippling in the heat, she picks up a file, asking if the war is ever really going to end.

He shrugs. There are only three great powers left, Leaf, Rock, and Sand. Eventually one side or the other is going to run out of bags of meat to kill.

Is that what he really sees people as? Her question sounds scared, and she is trembling again.

He comes closer, so he can see her expression. When he’s throwing knives at some Leaf nin, before executing a Rock shinobi sneaking up behind him, and then unleashing the technique of the sickle wind -- When he’s doing that, then he has to. He is a shinobi, after all. A walking weapon. When he has to put people’s lives in the balance, when there really is no good choice, then yes, he thinks that about people.

When he doesn’t have to worry about life and death, though, then he can remember that shinobi are just men, with likes and dislikes. Friends and loves. Just like him. Just like anyone.

She tells him he doesn’t seem to have many friends.

He holds up his two favorite students as examples. Yashamaru has survived to chunnin, and now the young man’s equal with him and Baki, in his eyes.

She just looks exasperated, and asks scathingly if she counts as a friend, or did he intentionally leave her out?

He turns his face away, saying that she can be a friend if she wants. He was hoping for love, instead, though. He’s blushing. She tells him she needs to think about it.

…

It’s been far too long, he knows, and punches yet another set of targets, before slamming wind blades into cut and abused stone. The practice grounds are a great way to work off frustration, especially when Baki says he will not spar with his mentor. Baki watches from a very, very safe distance, his arms crossed in juvenile arrogance. His former sensei throws the occasional throwing star at him, in an attempt to provoke a fight, but he is too wise to take the challenge. When Sensei gets that cold hard look in his eyes he doesn’t hold back or tolerate weakness.

Eventually, his anger is exhausted, and he picks up his weapons, and starts to clean up. Baki hops down a moment later to help. They work together in silence, until finally he has to ask if he could have been any more of an idiot. Baki’s answer is not reassuring. Apparently girls find idiocy to be very cute and sweet.

He growls, and decides to go ask the Third for a good mission that will take his mind off everything. He needs the focused buzz of adrenaline right now.

…

It’s been five weeks and three days, and he finally sees her again. She sighs when he grabs her arm, and tells her to stop avoiding him. She points out that she wasn’t the one who took a mission that lead to the Water Country. She would have liked to see him earlier but he wasn’t there.

Does this mean she’s had time to think? He asks, trying to keep the surge of fear from overpowering the optimistic hope.

She nods, laughs at his expression, and leads him to a dango shop. He notices, like any surrounding aware ninja, that she wants to have the discussion in public. In a place where he can’t throw kunai at her. Bad sign. She promises to pay for the food. A symbol of independence from him. Bad sign. She chooses a table conveniently near the entrance. She can get away quickly after delivering her verdict. These are all incredibly bad signs.

She tells him, with such straight out honesty that there can be no underneath this underneath, that he is not a good person. He is not cruel, but he is cold and efficient. A machine, and people were not meant to be machines. He will kill young boys, or wounded men. It does not affect him the way it would destroy her. Therefore he is a bad person.

But that doesn’t mean he isn’t also a kind one. He cares deeply for Suna. When he talks of the wind and sand, it’s almost like listening to holy writ, coming from his mouth. And he is kind to her -- has been kind to her -- in so many little ways. He doesn’t want her to become a bad person like him. She understands that now. Which is why he won’t let her help Suna the way he helps Suna.

What he didn’t understand was that she didn’t want to become a shinobi to help Suna, or repay the debt. She didn’t want to be helpless, she tells him, when he left on missions. She didn’t want to be left wondering if he was going to come back or not. She wants him to stay alive, despite his focused and sometimes downright terrifying personality

He scares her a little, even now. He’s very intense about everything. He doesn’t relate well to other people. Many of the shinobi of the Sand would be honored to fight with him, but very few know him. He is incredible. Powerful. And such friends with the wind that he’s barely friends with anyone else.

Which is the first thing that she’s going to fix as his girlfriend, she tells him, eating one of the round sweets. He needs to get out of his shell more. He gapes at her, and she smirks, saying that the Third told her the best way to trap him would be to take him by surprise.

…

He tries very, very hard not to question the Third when he is summoned to the briefing for his newest mission. It’s a simple assassination, and has nothing, nothing to do with the question: why are you interfering in my love life?

He asks anyway, because the Kazekage is giving him such a knowing glance. The Iron Sword of Law may be the technique that has made the Third so famously powerful, but personally he feels that the Third’s most dangerous technique is the ability to look as though he’s reading a person’s thoughts. And that he finds those thoughts amusing. It’s scary to think that this legend is only thirty.

The Kagekaze for his part, shuffles paper, and comments that when a pretty girl asks for help, it’s rude to turn her down. And he was rather amused by the project, to tell the truth. Apparently the brave girl thought becoming a shinobi would help get him to notice her. Now, both he and the Kazekage know that he was already noticing her -- and the Third tells him that he needs to work on that blush, because it gives everything away -- but why tell the poor girl that, when the young so enjoy emotional trials?

Besides, he knows how much his ruthless jounin is a secret stickler for tradition, and it would hurt his pride to be asked, rather than do the asking. So the Kazekage just told that sweet girl how to chase him down. Okay, so he hadn’t counted on girls needing to sort out their emotions after they had gotten the confession they wanted, but -- the Third shrugs, and says it all has turned out for the best.

The blank, icy look of his jounin is laughed at. And the jounin’s question about Rule Twenty-Five is waved away. If he ever wants to be Kazekage he needs to learn to see underneath the underneath. He needs to be able to help the whole village. He needs to know what it is to care for something smaller than the village. All that focused attention of his is great, but there is more to life than Suna. Suna cannot be Suna, cannot be worthy of protection, if the people of Sand don’t allow themselves to experience both sorrow and joy, and live their private lives.

He replies stiffly that he has no plans to be Kazekage. The Sandaime of Sunakagure raises an eyebrow, and shrugs. He may not be as powerful as the Third right now, but he is the only one to master the technique of the Bloody Typhoon. And he is already known for his ruthlessness. Paired with a bit of love he would become a kage that would do Suna proud. And the councilors who favor the conservative end of the spectrum like this young shinobi more than their current kage.

The Third is told that unless the Third dies the ruthless jounin of the Sand will follow him despite what the councilors say. He knows, after all, that he is a bad person. It is better that a good man wield him like the weapon he is.

The Third just sighs, smiles, and wishes him good luck.

…

They share their first kiss, a chaste peck, guiltily stolen with the taste of summer peaches still on her lips, behind a fruit stand at the Tuesday market. He’s a shinobi, and they don’t like doing anything publicly, and she’s still a young woman who has to be mindful of her reputation.

The next kisses shared are more intense, as the two awkwardly come to terms with physical attraction. He’s fucked women before, high on adrenaline, thinking they’re both going to die in the next morning when the rush happens, or they meet the Grass squad that they’ve been trailing.

Most often he’s been only half right. The women die, and he’s still alive. But it’s been that way since he was thirteen. That’s normal. He doesn’t know how to handle a woman during peace time, and he’s worried that he’ll break some unknown female law.

She, for her part, is a lot more innocent than she pretends. She doesn’t know where this is going. Doesn’t know about the kunochi who come silently as a squad hides in a trench, only to cry out a few hours later as their blood sprays wet and warm from their throats.

He likes kissing her. She always tastes like whatever she’s been eating most recently, and her scent is overlaid with the smells of the earth. Sometimes wet and moist from the green houses. Sometimes hot, parched, and baked by the sun, as is natural. She never smells of blood and death. She never kisses like she’s desperate to feel anything through the numbness of having seen too much, and knowing that it will either never end, or end too quickly.

…

At the Star Watching Festival, two years later, they manage to separate themselves from Baki, Yashamaru, and their small crowd of other friends that he’s only just barely begun to accept. They find a flat rock that still holds the sun’s heat, and lie down, hands clasped the whole time. They neck a bit, but mainly watch the fires spread out below them, or roll over to look at the stars spread out so high above. They whisper and giggle to one another, telling stories and asking questions. It’s their Star Watching ritual. It will always be this way.

As the rock loses its heat, she snuggles closer to him, and he tells her about the blind monk who was following the Way of the World and ended up talking to Shukaku (and came out of the experience alive, he points out. That’s the important bit).

His arms wrap around her, and they share warmth. She asks why he talks so much about Shukaku, when all of the stories depict it as some sort of devil. He tells her that Shukaku is a devil, but he is the devil of the desert. He is their devil. The people of Suna are proud of him.

She chuckles and asks for a new story. He growls and nibbles her ear in response, only to get a mouthful of blond hair. Serves him right, she tells him, laughing so loudly that someone might find them indulging in such indiscreet behavior. He tells her the story of the wind fox who came to the desert in the guise of a blond woman, and how she fought a wandering warrior, and when the warrior chopped off her blond hair she turned back into a fox, and should he chop off that hair just to check that he’s not entered into a bestial relationship?

…

That creepy Sasori kid (he still plays with dolls, for crying out loud, and he’s over twenty) is hiding a smile behind his hands as Chiyo-sama roundly chastises the ruthless jounin of twenty three like a three year old. He’s ruining his girlfriend’s reputation. She isn’t even a kunochi. There aren’t allowances to be made for this sort of thing.

They are indecently close in public, and people have seen them kissing. There are rumors that she’s left his house early in the morning. Now he may be a powerful shinobi, and likely candidate for the ANBU, but the poor girl doesn’t have parents to protect her reputation or virtue. Either he lay off with the romantic nonsense, or marry the girl. She’ll end up getting harassed by her neighbors.

He nods resignedly. When he wants to cuddle (they haven’t even slept together yet) he’ll just have to sneak into her home. He likes watching her as she sleeps. She manages to even breathe beautifully. It is at this thought that he knows he is besotted.

He tells Chiyo-sama, cutting her off in mid-rant, that they will be getting married soon. He had been planning to wait until the war ended, but that didn’t seem to be happening, so if he survives his first month as ANBU he’ll marry his brave girl.

Chiyo-sama looks shocked at his bluntness. He can’t help it. Muscles rarely used move, and he smirks, before saying that he intends to have lots of teal-eyed, blond, bouncy children with his future wife. It’s a good thing that he’s faster than Chiyo-sama. Poisoned needles follow his high speed retreat from the powerful shinobi’s apartment.

It doesn’t matter. He just made a joke, and the mirth feels so good.

…

It broke out of the compound!

It’s heading for the residential district!

Summon the nin dogs! Run! Run! The prisoner wants a hostage.

She is just coming home with noodles for the dinner she’ll be fixing for herself and her brother. She doesn’t even see the man coming. He knocks her down, groceries falling from her bag. He smells of blood and shit and urine, a combination that makes for madness. Her mind screams at her as he grabs her by the throat.

Silent as shadows, a masked trio is just /there/. The man screams that he’ll kill her. The leading mask, a fierce hawk with swirling red designs is behind the two of them before she can shriek her surprise at being captured. Needles coated with something that gleams an unpleasant yellow in the dim light stab into the man from all directions. She feels the breeze ruffling her hair.

The masks and the madman are gone.

When he shows up two days later there’s a burn on the outside of his hand, and the faint whiff of madness is clinging to him as well. She asks what the burn is for, and he shrugs, saying that his captain is right: he should be better than to let civilians get in danger.

She tells him to take a shower.

…

Sometimes she sits up with a jerk on her futon, screaming. When he’s not there Yashamaru comes to comfort her. When he is there, he does. Either way, she’s dreaming of their deaths. Her brother is rational. Despite his abilities he’s not usually sent on dangerous missions. Sand has lost too many full medics already, not to worry about what will happen if the shinobi with basic skills are lost.

When he has been there holding her in her sleep, he is honest with her. He faces death every day on regular missions. When he sits torture duty (but he’s never told her about that part of his new job) it’s a different kind of death. But it’s for Suna. It’s for her. He’s out there dieing day by day to keep the village safe. She can’t seem to get it through his head that she’d much rather that he was safe.

…

It’s actually been five months since his initiation onto the ANBU. But the invitations are out (the Third rolled his eyes and said: “Finally” when she stopped off to give him the invitation personally). The mission schedules have been cleared by the various shinobi in charge (the ANBU captain gave him a piercing look, and said that sane people didn’t want to come back after they were married, and he’d have been refused, only they were so short staffed). Her brother is doing all of the cooking (she had tried to help but was shoved to another apartment to be measured for her kimono). Baki has promised to get him well and truly sloshed the night before (he glared, and said that nothing of the kind will happen). The wedding is tomorrow.

She feels butterflies in her stomach.

He just wants to get everything over with, and wishes that people would stop making such a fuss. It’s giving him a deep, gut wrenching terror that no genjitsu user could hope to duplicate.

At midnight on the day before the wedding he gives her the “husband’s gift.” It’s traditional for the husband to give the wife a gift that becomes her property forever more, to dispose of as she chooses. Traditionally in Sand, everything else under joint ownership of the couple technically belongs to the husband. He gives her the large clunky wooden box that has survived fire and thorough soakings filled with all of his mother’s formal clothes and jewelry.

His mother has been long dead, a mission where she ended up in little pieces. And it didn’t protect the genin she taught. Because he was the one who found them all bleeding on the sand together. His father was dead even earlier. He doesn’t know what happened, really. There’s some rumors about being a spy, and others about him sacrificing himself for his friends, and others about him committing seppuku. His father, as far as he knows, is a rumor.

A dead one, though, and so he has every right to give his peasant from Rice the old, beautiful silks, and the hair ornaments that will look so lovely on her, jade and turquoise wrapped in gold and copper. She smiles at him, and tries on one of the robes, red silk and gold thread chrysanthemums. The obi is black lined silk, and pale pink with red and gold chrysanthemums. She looks gorgeous, the kami of autumn, clear eyes sparkling by lantern light. The fact that the old robes were worn by women who were taller than she is doesn’t matter.

He weaves a rope of topaz beads and golden drops through her pale, dried grass hair. His arms slide around her slim hips, and turn her toward the mirror. For the first time she sees the same radiant, exotic goddess he’s always seen. The topaz hiding in her hair matches his eyes. They are bathed in lantern light and shadow.

They both silently agree that all of her landlady’s measurements for her wedding kimono are sadly going to have been a waste of time.

…

He is surprised to find that women can make an incredible amount of noise when they don’t have to worry about being caught. Or perhaps his brave girl is just noisy, and the other ones were quiet.

He isn’t going to bother to conduct an experiment because she .:gasps:. when his fingers press into her lower back.

And she w.h.i.s.p.e.r.s a prayer when he kisses along her jugular.

And when they twine fingers she /hums/, and arcs against him.

And she moans}{moans}{moans}{moans, and it’s like a flutter in her throat. A caged butterfly that tries to break free when he enters her.

He rocks back from her satisfied !shout! when she comes

When they’re both finished, and drifting to sleep, he rests his head against her chest. Her heart beat is the loudest, most important noise that she makes. It’s the first time he’s made love to someone who isn’t desperately trying to affirm that they are living. They didn’t need to, this time, he thinks sleepily. She knows she’s alive. She is the warmest, most tangible life he’s ever been surrounded by and held in his arms.