Disclaimer: I still don't own Naruto. I don't suppose I've made any efforts toward such an ambition, but nonetheless, the manga and the anime are not mine and neither are the characters in this story. You can't sue me...at least I hope you can't...
NOTE: this takes place under the premise that Orochimaru did NOT kill Kin as a sacrifice to raise dead hokages. Don't get all flamerific on me.
The first night he came in, I desperately wanted him to go away. I took this job hoping not to see familiar faces, and though I'm fairly sure he still hasn't recognized me – our last encounter was when he was thirteen – Nara Shikamaru makes an impression. Or rather, he made me make an impression. In a wall. With the back of my head. It took me about twelve hours to come to, and when I did, my gut was filled with a self-doubt I had become unaccustomed to. I was the sole kunoichi in the three-man cell that had entered the chuunin exams for the Hidden Sound Village that year and I was under the impression that I was a tough girl. That was when I was known as Kin Tsuchi.
And now, eight years later, I'm a barmaid. In the wake of Orochimaru's attempted Konoha take-over, I denounced my loyalty to the Sound. If it weren't for a few certain favors to a few certain feudal lords I never would have made it out of Rice Country without assassination attempts.
Technically, I'm a missing-nin and I'm shocked that they didn't snag me in the first year here, having wound up so close to Konoha and all. Hell, I used to run missions for Orochimaru – that should have been enough to have at least one ANBU squad after me. But neither side pursued me, leading me to believe that, as I'd suspected the morning when I came out of my Nara-induced coma, I was not only disposable and on the verge of being brainwashed back in the Sound Village, but I was also not a threatening enough adversary to cause any sort of alarm elsewhere. I'm nobody now – at least I'm trying to be nobody. I've gone through innumerable aliases, but these days, if someone asks, I'll usually tell him my name is Kichi.
It's Saturday night and he's here again with a couple of buddies. "Hey Kichi," he calls, "you know what I like, can you bring a few bottles over?" Every time he walks through that door I ask myself why I haven't moved. It's too risky, I tell myself, to stay in a place – to work at a place – frequented by a former opponent from the Leaf. But I'm still here, so I bring Nara his sake and hope that he won't notice me watching him all evening like I tend to do.
Just as I turn from his table, though, Nara grabs my wrist and I spin back to face him. I don't usually get to look at him face to face like this. I tend to watch from a distance – partially out of suspicion, and partially, I've come to acknowledge, out of nostalgia: this man is the only Kin Tsuchi left in me. As per usual when he comes by the bar, his coffee-colored hair is down, messy, but away from his face just enough that he's managed to catch me in his dark-eyed gaze.
It's a gaze I first noticed when I was fourteen at the preliminary rounds for the final matches of the chuunin exams. While other genin seemed to be engaging in some sort of anticipatory act regarding their impending matches – sparring with teammates, talking strategy with his or her sensei, or pacing around nervously – Nara was lying on the ground just outside the stadium. His head was propped in his hands, his face pointed at the sky.
I'd left the arena for a smoke, having little other recourse for dealing with stress. My teammates were not friends, my sensei – Orochimaru – was cold and unavailable; despite the confident facade that I was planning on wearing for whomever my opponent might be I knew that I would probably lose. I also knew, however, that my purpose in the chuunin exams was something larger than winning or losing a match, despite the personal pride that was at stake. I had convinced myself not to care about gaining chuunin rank, only the small assignments that would lead to the betterment of the Hidden Sound Village. I was fairly sure my role involved mostly gathering intelligence, since the assassination of a certain Uchiha Sasuke – a shinobi about my age that Orochimaru was particularly infatuated with – had been called off.
Nara noticed me, turned from his cloud watching, and asked why I was smoking before a match. I immediately glowered at the boy, assuming before our eyes even met that his question was meant to belittle me. But my assumption was wrong – his question was sincere.
"Kichi," Nara speaks, breaking me out of my trance. "Your hair looks nice tonight."
The complement isn't completely unexpected, it's not the first nicety he's ever offered me. When we first met as genin, I wore my hair long past my waist. I always tied it back – I thought this was the simplest way for a female shinobi to keep her hair. I chided kunoichi who seemed to spend so much time making themselves look nice. When I finally came to Fire Country, the first thing I did was cut my hair and sell it – it's amazing what "virgin" black hair can get you on the street. With the money I bought new clothes, burned everything that I'd kept from my life as a shinobi, and began my pursuit of a new existence.
I had to put aside the cold personality that I had worked so hard to develop. When I first started training for the Hidden Sound Village, Orochimaru would tell me I was too soft to be a shinobi. "Kin," he said once (he always addressed me by my family name, despite my lack of family), "kindess doesn't suit a kunoichi. And mercy certainly doesn't either." He was ridiculing my hesitation to attach an exploding note to a rabbit. "We're done for today," he said, "and tomorrow. We will continue when you harden up a bit." So I did.
But as mercy may not suit a kunoichi, coldness does not suit a homeless girl in need of mercy. When I found this mercy – at the home of an old woman for whom I did chores and menial labor in return for room and board – the coldness began to melt away. That woman took better care of me than I took care of her garden. During my time with her I received much more than food and shelter.
She talked to me about my life, and when I refused to give her much in the way of detail she told me about her life. "When I was your age," she said to me, "I used to enjoy flower arranging. Do they still teach flower arranging in school?" I told her that I had never been to school. With that she decided that she should be the one to teach me a thing or two, starting with flower arranging, since "a pretty girl like you should know a thing or two about flowers."
But I'm sure that Nara remembers a different me. If he remembers me at all, he remembers Kin: the crude Sound girl with the long hair, only distinguishable from her male teammates by her gender. Kin wasn't terribly skilled or terribly pretty or terribly noticeable at all.
I may be nobody these days, but I do work as a barmaid and looking nice makes for better tips. And tonight "nobody" has her hair pinned up in a few knots, with slippery strands falling out around her face and at the back of her neck and behind her ears tickling her shoulders.
"Thank you, Nara-san," I tell my one-time adversary, wondering if he will let my wrist go anytime in the near future.
"Kichi. My name is Shikamaru," he sighs, drawing out the syllables in his name as if daring me to taste them. He slides his hand down to squeeze my hand. "You, of all people, should know that." Nara winks at me and lets go.
Of course this induces a sizzling panic in me, and when I feel my heart beat in my stomach I begin to think that I might have swallowed it. His touch still tingles in my palm. I'm glad my boss isn't around. But more importantly, that wink makes me wonder if he knows more than he's let on during the past two years. I realize I'm still frozen in place next to Nara's table and briskly walk toward the back room nodding at my coworker on the way and mumbling that I need a smoke.
I lean against the back of the building, which is notably cool in contrast to the stifling heat of the July air, and suck on my last cigarette. I don't really need a cigarette right now as much as I need to be outside – to be away from Nara. I told you, I tell myself, he's known all along. He's been waiting, gathering information, tonight's the night. I let out a petite chuckle as I take another drag from what I've determined may in fact be my last cigarette ever.
Not that death has ever been something that I was terribly afraid of. Shinobi know that death is always at the door with a battering ram. We're prepared at any moment to breathe our last breath and curse the name of he who caused it to be as such. Coming to fear life was something that I struggled with, and continue to find difficult.
That day when I woke up in the clinic after being pummeled by Nara, I found myself privy to a secret conversation between Orochimaru and Kabuto. Kabuto was a strange man, I sensed it the first time I met him. I didn't trust him – though, of course, that comes from knowing that someone is a double agent. However, there's also something unsettling about watching a young man hang on your sensei's every word as if he were hearing some sort of divine prophecy. And then there was this way I always felt that Kabuto was about to hump Orochimaru's leg.
"It's almost time," Orochimaru told Kabuto, and from the corner of my barely-opened eye I saw an eerie smile spread across Kabuto's lips.
"I can have her first, right?" Kabuto asked his master, adjusting his round glasses and glancing toward me as I shut my eyes. They still believed me to be comatose. Kabuto continued. "I mean, it would be such a waste for her to die without somebody getting some use out of the girl."
I opened one eye again, slowly, to see Orochimaru's eyes narrow, as if he felt betrayed by the fact that his lapdog might have a desire that did not involve pleasing him. "Kabuto," he began, voice lowered almost to a growl, "you may do what you like with Kin Tsuchi as long as she is in proper condition for the sacrifice. Without her death, the resurrection jutsu cannot be complete and the assassination may fail. I will destroy this village, starting with Sarutobi."
I knew I was a tool. All shinobi are tools; it's the nature of the game. But in addition to the fact that I was not prepared to be sacrificed, in addition to the fact that I was not prepared to be used in a mission that would destroy a kind leader – Orochimaru's former sensei, no less! – and a peaceful village, I was not that kind of tool and I knew that if Kabuto wanted to violate me he had the force to do so. My fear of life started in that room, when Orochimaru left me with Kabuto. I knew that I had a maximum of an hour before losing what little dignity I was left with to that creepy little man.
When Kabuto found out I was awake he raped me. He laughed afterward thinking I didn't know what was coming next, and left me in the room alone, mumbling something about what a pity it was as he shut the door behind him. I jumped out the window and ran for home.
After gathering a few things in the Sound Village I spent two years wandering around paranoid, never staying in the same place for more than a week. Then I overheard some sloppy messenger in a Water Country alleyway conveying news to my would-be-assassin.
"Orochimaru-sama wants the search for Kin Tsuchi to end stat," he said. "That bitch is assumed dead at this point, and even if she is alive he doesn't give a shit about her whereabouts. Someone will take her out sooner or later. She's not worth the Sound's time."
Eventually my wanderings brought me to Fire Country where I somehow found that kind old woman. And, apparently, Nara found me.
"You know, those things'll kill you."
It's Nara. I should have known he'd follow me out here. Nothing gets past him.
"And you won't?" It's all over for me as those words slip from my tongue with more ease than they should have. I seem to have lost some of my better judgment during the time I've spent in my new career and now he'll definitely have questions.
I have my own questions. I don't ask them.
"No," he states. He doesn't ask any questions either. He just looks at me. There's pity in his eyes, which sits uneasy in my stomach. There's something else there, though. There's sincerity – a certain genuineness that I haven't seen in anyone's eyes (let alone those of a man in an alley behind a pub) since I was a child. Or, perhaps, eight years ago, when Nara first brought my proclivity toward smoking into question.
His hand reaches for the cigarette which I was about to return to its place between my lips; he pulls it from my fingers, throwing it to the pavement and grinding it out with the bottom of his boot. "Cigarettes, however, will kill you. It's a troublesome habit."
Nara slides his fingers along my jaw line to gently lift my head to face him. I'd been watching the cigarette. He locks me in his gaze again as he brushes my hair out of my eyes and tucks the stray strands behind my ear. I shudder.
He draws his hand away. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..." he begins, shrugging. Nara starts to turn away, but I grab his wrist. He's been pretending, and for some reason – perhaps unknown to both of us – he's chosen tonight to end the charade.
"Stay, Nara-san." More words pop out of my mouth without my permission. I haven't needed anyone in a long time but I'm beginning to suspect that this man has become someone for whom I've developed a need – a sneaky, undercover need that sat quietly in the back of my brain until that simple touch brought it out bellowing.
Nara tilts his head toward me, smirking, before correcting me again, "Shikamaru," he states, inching closer to me. "Say it," he says tenderly, not telling me, but inviting me.
I begin to repeat the name but before I can finish his lips are pressed against mine and my hands have found their way to the back of his neck where my fingers have tangled themselves in his thick, dark hair. A part of me is shouting that this is a trick, that a Konoha shinobi is exploiting this moment to gain my trust so as to have me assassinated; or, at best, he's attempting to use me for information on my former village. But for this moment – a moment that feels like passion – I'm willing to ignore my inner skeptic.
Nara pulls away, just slightly, leans his forehead against mine and looks at me. The eye-contact he makes with me is earnest. There's raw, unassesed emotion behind his eyes, not pre-mediation. There's a long pause during which we just hold each other and breathe. A mix of nicotine, sake, Nara lingers in my mouth.
"Kichi," he says, "do you trust me?"
"I don't trust anybody," I tell him. And it's true.
"I'm sorry it had to be this way for you," he says, sighing. There's another pause, and this one is as dense as the haze that even the moonlight struggles to penetrate. "I have to go now." He lifts his face to look at the sky, and moves a hand to the small of my back, encouraging me to rest my head in the crook of his neck. He runs his fingers along a few strands of my hair. He knows.
And then he leaves.
"I want to trust you," I whisper as he turns the corner. His scent still clings to the heavy mist that hangs in the air like a meteorological time-bomb.
I go home half-expecting to find ANBU waiting for me, but my apartment building is as silent as always. My neighbors are like ghosts.
I don't sleep. I lie in bed with fingers wrapped around a kunai – the single item left to me that Kin once owned – eyes fluttering shut every hour or so only to snap open when a moth flies into the window pane.
He shows up at the bar again on Tuesday. I bring him his sake and he pauses in his story (he's discussing the "troublesome" nature of his mother and how beneficial it would be for this buddy of his to get out of his family's house) to wink at me, just as he had the night before. Only this time, the gesture doesn't induce a stifling paranoia.
I collect some dishes from various tables and return them to their designated spot behind the bar. I still wonder why I didn't skip town the first time Nara showed up in this place, let alone the second or third. Furthermore, why didn't I take off when he became a regular? Started calling me by my first name and ordering "the usual?" I claim to be a woman whose past is buried but perhaps there's something about Nara that wields a shovel in response to this defense-mechanism.
After all, it was his clever blow that helped me discover that my purpose in life was no purpose worth mentioning. For three years after leaving the Sound Village I would wash my hands every night, scrubbing until they bled. I ached to undo the deaths I'd caused in the name of Orochimaru, and yet, I smelled death on my own skin constantly. Sometimes I still do.
If I ever had a chance at anonymity, it's gone now. Nara knows I'm watching him tonight. He's watching me, too. Every time he hears my voice as I take an order, I catch his head swiveling, if slightly, from the corner of my eye. I wonder if he's been watching me like this for an entire two years without my noticing.
"Kichi," he calls my name and I turn on my heels a little too quickly. "Can we get a refill over here?"
"Of course, Nara-san," I tell him, knowing that the rush that comes with speaking the name he wants me to say aloud will bring a blush to my cheeks, illustrating a vulnerability that I am not ready to admit to anyone but him.
"No rush," he says, "and Kichi you know..."
I cut him off, quickly spitting out "I know, I know," and turning back toward the bar to hide the red that's risen in my face, thankful that I wore my hair down tonight, hiding the color spreading at the back of my neck.
The bar closes at two a.m. Nara and his friends had left around midnight but when I leave to lock up he appears beside me, taking me by surprise. I drop my keys and he picks them up for me, sliding them into my hand and letting his fingers loiter in my palm just long enough to let me know that the touch is intentional.
"What are you doing?" I ask him with an edge to my voice that I hadn't intended but find appropriate as my mind spins with Kin's frustration at Kichi's weakness. Nara's been hanging around here for two years and I've been deluding myself into thinking that he wouldn't recognize Kin Tsuchi just because she'd cut her hair and wore a little make-up and wasn't dressed in any sort of standard-issue shinobi uniform.
"Checking up on a girl," he states, smirking slightly. He has his hair tied up tonight and I don't blame him. The humidity sags in the air like a melted gelatin dessert.
Nervously I fumble with the keys, finding the one I need and attempting to turn it in the lock but suddenly it's jammed in a way that it hasn't since my second week of work here. Nara's hands ease over mine, guiding them away from the keys. He gives the double doors a shove with his shoulder, and I hear a muted clacking sound as the doors are locked. He puts the keys in my jeans pocket and runs one hand up my side and around my ribs to my back where he pauses before taking a step closer to me, grinning as if he's pulled off a magician's trick.
"Why?" I force myself to continue questioning him. I can't help but feel that I'm somehow in danger and that I should be making better efforts to keep my desire in check.
"When Tsunade-sama discovered that a missing-nin from Sound had taken refuge here, it was to be to certain that you were really done with Orochimaru," he says, softly, confirming my suspicion that he had, in fact, been assigned by his village to spy on me. "Then," he continues, "it was to make sure that Orochimaru wasn't coming after you."
With this statement he pulls me in close to him, and I feel the gears in my head turning, processing this information. Konoha has known of my presence in the Fire Country and they protected me. Or rather, he protected me...continues to protect me.
"Now," he breathes into my ear, his cheek sticking to mine, "it's because if I don't see you for too long I don't know if you're okay. And wondering if you're okay is very, very troublesome."
He kisses my neck and I'm glad his gaze has moved away from my eyes where tears have begun to swell, threatening to spill onto my cheeks. But, inevitably, Nara does look up at me, and at this point despite my best efforts, the tears come. He reaches up with both hands to wipe them away with his thumbs and kisses me, gently at first, and as I fall into him, licking the salt of sweat and tears away from my lips. As if the sky has finally found catharsis as well, there's a crack of thunder and cool rain pelts down on us, soaking through our clothes in a matter of minutes.
We stand there in the downpour, and after a while Nara pulls back and says something indiscernible through the sound of rain hitting roofs, windows, and pavement. But I do see his smile quite clearly and ask him to repeat himself.
"Do you trust me?" he asks.
"I don't trust anybody," I tell him, just as I told him the night before. He slumps slightly, tries to hide an obvious feeling of dejectedness. "But I want to trust you, Shikamaru." I finish, saying his name slowly and finding it pleasant as it rolls from my tongue.
With this his smile returns to his face for a moment before his lips graze mine again and he whispers in my ear, "That's good enough for now."
NOTE: Kichi is a Japanese (duh) name meaning "fortunate." I spent an unhealthy amount of time looking up a name that adult Kin might choose to call herself. Coincidentally, it also looks like Kin Tsuchi mushed together.
Thanks to the amazing leafygirl for keeping me motivated to write this fic even when it started giving me some trouble. Go read her stories now! And of course, thanks again to my beta Lauren for catching stray commas, putting yellow caution tape around my plot-holes, and keeping Kin/Kichi from being unjustifiably emo.