Author's Note: I just saw Ninja Assassin not too long ago and got the idea for this series. It will contain complete one-shots with varying ratings but it'll be M overall so make sure to check. I also need to thank Viennacantabile, my fabulous beta, for all her help and I hope everyone reads, enjoys and replies!
We Are Not Ourselves: Tightrope
Three months after the fall of the Ozunu clan, Raizo still gets up at five A.M. He still does two thousand crunches every morning, runs four miles, practices his weaponry and mediates, all before Mika rises for work.
She asks him why, sometimes. Why he can't seem to relax when they're all dead and there's no one after him now, and he can't find it in himself to correct her. She doesn't understand just how deep Ozunu's influence went, and still goes, in some very dangerous circles, and when it gets down to it, he doesn't really want her to.
Mika still believes in abstract concepts like justice and fairness and bad people eventually getting their due when everything in Raizo's life has led him to discern otherwise. He doesn't tell her that though. He doesn't say that there are other clans. That there are other ninjas and other leaders who, though they may enjoy Ozunu's absence, won't be too happy with the example he's set for their own followers.
He doesn't tell her because he doesn't want her to change. He doesn't want her to revert back to the scared woman she was when he met her and because he likes to look at her and pretend—every now and then—that she's right.
Instead, he tells her he'll try to unwind more. That he'll enjoy his new life but he still gets up before the sun rises. He still runs, he still practices, he still scans every face he passes on the street because he's got more than himself to look after now.
Raizo cannot lose his edge.
-0-
Men look at her.
She's bent on one knee, tying her shoe, with the white stick of a strawberry sucker nestled in the corner of her mouth when Raizo notices one such man. They're in the park—she's got the day off, he's on lunch break from his job as a clan liaison at Europol—and he notices the man when the man notices them. Raizo gives the guy, who's standing around thirty meters in front of them, a withering glare that he's almost certain he won't be able to make out from this distance.
It's not like he hasn't noticed that Mika's a beautiful woman. The clan had been able to beat a lot of things out of him but noticing a pretty girl hadn't been one of them. He can see why these men do it but that doesn't mean he has to like that this same situation occurs every time they leave the house.
When he considers it further, Raizo doesn't even think it's the looking itself that bothers him. It's the intent. Whereas men—like the one staring slack-jawed at her now—see Mika and think things Raizo can't bring himself to guess at, his own appreciation of her beauty has almost always been somewhat clinical.
The memory of them in a hotel room crosses his mind suddenly and makes him frown.
"What's up?"
He'd been aware of her finishing and standing up next to him but he only turns toward her when she speaks. He smiles—just a little—and throws an arm around her shoulders. She beams at his touch and that sort of makes him want to frown again and squeeze her tighter at the same. He makes his face completely neutral.
"Nothing much."
She scoffs. "Now that I don't believe."
He laughs and then he does squeeze her shoulders. He doesn't know why he didn't do it when the idea first crossed his mind. There's nothing wrong with it because they're friends and this is what friends do, right?
He's not sure. He's never really had one before.
-0-
When he tells her he's never been to Paris—he actually has, but it was on business he'd rather not speak of with her anymore—her eyes widen and she falls across the end of his bed thoughtfully.
He thinks of it as his bed but it's in her guestroom, the one he'd been able to afford leaving two months after he'd moved in but she hasn't brought it up and so he doesn't either.
"We should go."
The thought of them walking down some nameless Parisian back alley is strangely appealing and the fact that he wants it is distressing.
Raizo shouldn't want anything.
"Hey," she calls, eyeing him curiously. "Did you hear me?"
"I can't," he starts, and hurriedly moves to finish when she opens her mouth to speak. "My job."
He sees her accept his reasoning and narrow her eyes in thought as she rolls onto her back. The white tank she's wearing rides up and he can see the slight pillow of flesh on her lower abdomen. The skin on the back of his neck tightens and he feels flushed but her face shows no sign of understanding when she lets her head fall to the side to take him in.
She not only doesn't see what's happening because he's not easy to read, but also because she doesn't really pay close attention to anything outside of her books. He imagines it's how she was before he showed up in her life and her face was always inched in worry. Mika's obliviousness scares him but it's a good sign too. It means she's leaving his world and going back to her own.
She toes her tennis shoes off. "Well, how about the movies, then?"
He nods, and that night they sit in a darkened theatre watching something he doesn't really pay attention to. She's smiling a lot and every now and then she jumps and grabs his arm in glee. He can smell her perfume—something light as linen—and even though he's staring at the screen all he can remember afterward is her.
-0-
His eyes pop open at the smell of bacon and he walks out of the room to see Mika up and about. She smiles at him.
"I beat you this morning."
-0-
He calls her name from the doorway and narrows his eyes when she doesn't answer.
Mika's here, he knows she is because her car's in the lot and her messenger bag is in the same spot by the door where she always drops it. He listens for a moment and hears something coming from her bedroom. Raizo moves across the floor quickly and pushes her door open without a sound, looks across the room to see the back of Mika's head as she lies back in her tub. She hadn't answered him because a pair of headphones are resting in her ears.
He sighs, frustrated by her unmindful behavior because he could've been anyone, but that's why he's here, right? So she doesn't have to worry about such things. He relaxes his stance and lets his eyes linger on her neck and shoulders, the only skin visible above the lip of the tub. Her left arm is curled up under her head and her hair is up in a banana clip. He finds himself studying the curve of her ear and laughs ruefully. He's about to step out when he turns back.
Her breathing has changed slightly. It's deeper than it was a moment before and he steps closer. He's worried but there's something else under it, something he vaguely recognizes. Mika turns toward him and Raizo gets ready to disappear if need be but her eyes are screwed shut and he risks staying still. Her mouth opens on a gasp and the sound sends a spiral of heat shooting up his spine. He can't see her right hand but he knows exactly where it is.
Back when he was growing up, getting caught in any sort of sexual situation was grounds for a punishment that—after seeing one person suffer through it—had been enough of a deterrent for him to last a lifetime. Raizo doesn't know exactly how he feels about what he's seeing but he knows he shouldn't be here, he shouldn't be watching this and he should be leaving this room right now but she's biting her bottom lip and he can't move.
She sinks a little further into the bath and he's disappointed until she pulls her leg up and dangles it over the tub's edge. He sees that her toenails are a soft, baby pink because Raizo notices everything but his eyes are focused on her face now. She looks like she does when she's got a lead on something, focused, and he realizes he's so hard he feels dizzy.
He grips the doorjamb tight enough to break it, listens as she starts to gasp for breath and then she 's coming and this is when his legendary grace fails him. He almost smashes into the door in his haste to get out of the room.
-0-
He's sitting at the breakfast table with his computer when she finally flits out of her room in a robe. She smiles when she sees him and he smiles back as she pours herself a glass of orange juice and disappears out of the kitchen. She comes back a moment later with some books and sits across from him. They work quietly for awhile and he almost thinks he can forget it. That he can pretend he never saw anything at all.
Then she puts her right hand on his shoulder and asks, "Are you all right?" He has to force himself to look away from it.
"Fine."
His voice sounds tight to his own ears.
-0-
He begins to rise at five A.M. again every morning. He does two thousand crunches every morning, runs four miles, practices with his weaponry, and meditates, all before Mika rises for work. There are days though, when he finds himself thinking about skin, warm and smooth, or of slanting his mouth over lips parted on a moan, or of a damp leg skidding along the rim of a bathtub, and on those days he gets up an hour earlier, meditates longer, runs further, and works harder.
He's got more than himself to look after now.
Raizo cannot lose his edge.