Come and Sleep
A little background provided by Wikipedia: "Kitsune are commonly portrayed as lovers, usually in stories involving a young human male and a kitsune who takes the form of a human woman. The kitsune may be a seductress, but these stories are more often romantic in nature. Typically, the young man unknowingly marries the fox, who proves a devoted wife. The man eventually discovers the fox's true nature, and the fox-wife is forced to leave him. In some cases, the husband wakes as if from a dream, filthy, disoriented, and far from home. He must then return to confront his abandoned family in shame."
I.
The village was experiencing a demon problem.
The first sign was rain on a sunny day.
"The foxes are breeding, m'lord," Ebisu warned the village Elder, leaning out the window as water hit his face.
Sarutobi, who was the current head of the village only because of emergency lack of an heir, embraced his returned authority out of retirement with the eagerness of any ninety year old man. Which amounted to total ambivalence. "Fine day for a wedding," the Elder mused as he lifted his cup to his lips.
"Sir?" The assistant was taken aback.
"Yes, dear boy?"
"What are we going to do about it?"
"Nothing at all."
"But the heir has been gone for almost three days!"
"You mustn't jump to conclusions. Even foxes fall in love. And Minato is a very adventurous person." Ebisu gave him a look. "Alright, the boy is rather on the straight and narrow, isn't he? All the more reason not to worry about him. Pour me another cup of tea, won't you?"
Ebisu cast a worried glance at the former Third Warlord even as he obediently reached for the kettle. "Green, m'lord?"
II.
Ebisu relaxed when Minato came home the next day. Of course, his fears were unfounded.
And yet, the heir apparent's behavior was very strange- not in any serious way of course- but when at the last warrior council, hadn't he, when asked what his opinion was on a well tax, looked dazedly up from his plate and shrugged, before going back chiseling a necklace of stone. The other members averted embarrassed eyes, as the red stone flints flicked to the floor, chip, chip, chip. Oblivious, Minato smiled as he worked.
III.
The second sign was when the influx of strange travelers appeared at the town pub when strange noises started coming from the forest, as though the strange visitors were drawn by the commotion.
Almost all of them were drunk.
"Think this one will get the King with child? Another beer, please!" A woman with unearthly green skin called.
"I sure hope so, I came all the way from Snow Country. Though an excuse to party with the King of the Forrest is good regardless," the man/woman confided. It turned to Kurenai, who had been watching avidly. "What do you think?"
Caught, Kurenai gave a helpless shrug. She directed her attention to a hooded man lounging on the table when he began pouring unintelligible sounds out of his mouth without pauses. "What, Sir, I'm sorry? Can you speak slower?" She leaned in closer. The man made a struggling face and contorted his mouth a different way and tried again. He gave up and took a handful of something out of his sleeve and gestured at Kurenai. She furrowed her brow. "No, no, you cannot pay me in acorns. I don't even work here."
She was interrupted as a black, scaly arm reached out and took her by the shoulder. A face with no pupils peered at her. "Are you here for the wedding too?"
"I'm- going to get some air," she gasped before rushing towards the exit.
The pupil-less man shook his head in affront. "What's wrong with her?"
The man with the acorns answered in a voice as fast as the flow of water, but it appeared to make sense to his scaly familiar, who nodded in affirmation. "True, the moon is high. She might be menstruating. Thanks, I was worried it was me."
IV.
"Sarutobi, how did you balance love and your job?"
The Village Elder chuckled and ruffled Minato's blonde hair, something the man hated. "I never took either seriously."
Minato rolled his eyes.
Sarutobi looked up and leaned forward. "Minato, you won't have to worry about that for a while, but I assure, it'll be easy as pie once you find the right girl." Sarutobi went back to his card game.
Minato looked even more troubled.
The sun streamed in the forest, painting the world different colors. Even the grass looked red.
"Why is red always around you?" Tsunade asked. The medicine woman found her friend to be personable in female form. She knew Kushina was a demon, though of what kind she didn't know. She had seen Kushina in another form only once, as a human man, short dark hair and broad shoulders and dark, smoldering eyes. She had found his purposeful sexual charisma so disturbing she had point blank told Kushina never to do that again. Kushina relented, though amused, and only met Tsunade as a woman. Even then, Tsunade detected an element of seduction as all Kushina's movements, which she ignored. Women didn't interest her.
"It isn't," Kushina said.
Tsunade made a noise of assent, rolling her hair between her fingers. "So, why Mr. Man, huh?" She was startled when Kushina blushed. "I can't believe it! Some modesty? What is happening? Are you becoming a real woman, after all this time?"
Kushina smiled wolfishly, and her mouth split along the seams to reveal fangs. Tsunade stopped teasing in distaste. "Nhh." Quite frankly, the idea of meeting Kushina in her demon form scared her.
"That's what I thought," Kyuubi said, teeth gaping.
"It's so gross when you mix forms like that. Just pick one at a time, won't you?" Tsunade begged.
Kushina looked confused. "I don't see why."
Tsunade thought. "It's just not natural."
Kushina flopped back on the felled tree, picking bark with her claws, which even in her human form she didn't retract. "It's all the same."
Tsunade was silent. She hadn't even known Kushina was capable of such serious sounding words. But after a moment it became clear no more was forthcoming, and Tsunade allowed a smile and an, "I see. And the man?"
Kushina shrugged. "I've fallen in love before, and I will again. I want him. So I want him."
The blond woman, older than Kushina in appearance but eons younger, her life so much shorter that the demon before her, watched in envy. Kushina would have the chance to experience love over and over again, and Tsunade had missed her love by a fraction. Her husband had died young. She didn't have the limitless time to risk her heart again and again. She was getting older every moment, and soon she'd die. But it was good to watch a beautiful demon, to be friends with her. She maybe lived through her to some extent.
"Terrible," Tsunade remarked, and at Kushina's calm gaze, elaborated. "To be one of your conquests. Knowing what that's like myself, I can just say, there's no escape for the poor boy."
The demon smiled. "I think he rather likes it." Kushina bit at a falling leaf as it passed her by slowly.
V.
The third sign was more frightening than the previous.
The well water turned red.
The people murmured amongst themselves- what did this mean?
It was one brave soldier who took a glass of the liquid, red as wine, and threw it on the table of the Third Warlord, eyes defiant.
"Something has to be done! A fox has conceived! And where is the Fourth Warlord in our time of need?"
Away, the Third Warlord was about to say, but caught himself.
At business, he said instead.
VI.
He gave the necklace to her in the dark of night.
"I can't come as often now," he warned her, "they're getting suspicious."
The woman tossed her head, haughty and humble, and when she bent her neck low he felt lucky as the devil himself. He slipped it over her neck. She raised hey eyes, and he looked at her, a tousled woman warm with red eyes, the red stones of the necklace in-between two brown breasts.
"Who cares about them?" she asked, and pulled him down with a jerk to the arm.
It wasn't his first with her, but still, though below him, he felt like he was being eaten by something hungrier than he could control.
"We are beholden to nobody," she told him when there were done, and she grabbed his hands, maybe harder than she had to, to seal the truth of the words.
The Fourth Warlord returned stumbling into the village early in the morning.
VII.
The spiral appeared on his neck where she'd bitten away at him. He tried to hide them by putting on a cloak with a high collar, embroidered with red flames.
It made him think of her.
When the villages approached him, teary and angry, hungry and beaten down, accusing a demon has cursed them all, the crop has failed for the past three months- can't he do something?- he replied with her confidence, "Yes, I will take care of that demon." It seems like power has flooded his veins.
Word spread quickly the future Fourth Lord had promised to kill the demon.
Anything he said, he could get away with.
He was beholden to nobody.
VIII.
When he went back to her, a week later, she was angry.
"I told you," he protested, angry, "I told you! I can't be coming all the time!"
She looked down, and her gaze was more feminine than it had ever been, resentful and excited.
"Hey," she blurted suddenly, dropping her hands to her sides and glaring at him, "There's another one of us coming. A baby."
She had wanted to tell him for the past week, it was obvious, and he was too pleased and embarrassed to say anything. So was she and they were silent.
Instead, he slouched down and so did she. They sat side by side, staring at the river that ran by their forest home, which had been blessed be the resident demons from miles around.
"Wow," he said, and he grabbed a clawed, tanned hand.
IX.
He brought her soup because it was good but mostly because it was new and human, which amused her.
"Meso?" she asked.
"Miso," he told her, "And that's a Naruto." He pointed to a fishcake.
"Uh-huh," she said, feigning disinterest. But she eyed it curiously.
X.
Upon his return, the entire village was herded about the gate, eyes dark, arms crossed. He reached out to his people, but they backed away. Confused, he looked at them with a beseeching smile. They looked at the ground, and seeking out the eyes of just one, he failed to find anyone willing to look him in the face.
"What? What?" He begged of his people, smiling his old smile, sure to win their old favor.
It wasn't to be one. At the silence that met him, he confided quietly, "Today is a very happy day, you know." He kicked the ground, sending red dust flying, feeble and speech rolling. He felt a little dizzy. Never had he imagined the best thing to happen to him would also be the worst, that the child he would bring in the world he would bring in as a secret.
A low whisper made it's way down the crowd, and a baby was passed to Minato. For a strange, dizzying moment he thought they were giving him his own child, not even born yet. He accepted it with a gaping mouth. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked, irritated but simultaneously caught by the baby's fat cheeks.
"A hermaphrodite," answered a farmer grimly, the words dropped like a stack of cards, crumbling on the floor.
"We've been cursed!"
"It's against nature!"
Minato held the child to his chest. He raised his head helplessly to confront the stares of the village.
This was something he couldn't fix. He couldn't kill the baby, he knew that.
XI.
Everyone wanted him to take the responsibility. Well, there's nothing anyone could do for it. He was no God. Was it his fault the baby was born wrong? No, he thought angrily, rage burning beneath his chest, but the image of his own child in the belly of a woman not really a woman, really neither male nor female, plagued him.
An abomination? Was it an abomination, to love outside the kind you were born into? Though she could speak as well as any woman, though admittedly, less, could wear her human body just as well, no, better than any other woman?
And, they wanted him to get the damn demon. They kept reminding him- That was the root of all the problems, of the red well water and now the child and it would only get worse if the curse continued.
He fancied chopping off a demon head and marauding at to the unknowing villager's that it was his wife's. He pictured himself raising it high. 'I have killed the beast!' he would cry. Would they cheer? He smiled.
Though, he doubted she'd let him kill her kinfolk. Not that she herself didn't all the time, but he was just a human. It would be an insult.
Minato rolled over in bed.
Minato wanted to run back into the forest. It was warm there. He never wanted for anything. His wife was good and beautiful and it was so cold without her.
The dark lines of the village seemed warped to him now, the straw thatched roofs offensive and crude. He cried bitterly throughout the night.
The next morning, Sarutobi confronted him. "Good lord, Minato, you entered into this obligation knowingly! Pull yourself together!"
He was to be the Fourth Lord in four days.
XII.
"Umino," Minato said, "To what do I owe the pleasure?" He ushered the man into his tent.
The man, honest looking but nervous, went straight to the point. "M'lord, when are you going to kill the demon?"
Minato paused. "That is none of your concern." A terrible smile was plastered to his face.
"With the highest respect my lord, it is. We're starving!"
Minato stared him down, and with surprise, Umino looked away. He left angrily.
XIII.
The next time Minato went out to the market, whispers followed him everywhere.
Tsunade pocketed her herbs with watchful eyes, worry lines around her mouth.
The next time she went to meet her friend, she brought it up. "Kushina-"
"Kyuubi," Kyubbi demanded, dressed in red and looking especially human. Tsunade ignored her, knowing her change of titles and character were as random as a passing storm.
"Minato isn't doing well. The village- they don't take well to such-" Tsunade didn't know what to say. The look on Kushina's face was so bored, she realized the woman could never fathom human psychology. She only wanted, wanted, wanted. She tried for one last time. "He is so weak, Kushina. Humans are so much weaker. He needs his family, his village, his people. He needs so much more support. He won't know what to do without their approval. Can't you understand that? And he can't let them down, or you. It's an impossible deal."
Kushina smiled tenderly. "It's his weak kindness I love, I think."
XIV.
Minato packed nothing but headed for home. The village was nothing to him now, he just needed to go somewhere where he didn't have to think. He wandered through the forest surrounding the village, looking for the place where he slept with his wife. It seemed to be getting harder to find.
XV.
His wife was in bed with Sanji of Umino. The man in his bed was sleeping. His brown face was sleeping in a disgustingly un-self-conscious manner, his mouth open. Minato wanted to break his skull open.
She looked at him apologetically. "What was I supposed to do? I can't shape-shift so I couldn't be expected to fight him. I'm with child. He had an axe. He said he'd take matters into his own hands. I hope you don't take this personally."
Minato swallowed heavily.
XVI.
After going down to the river for an hour he came back suitably collected. He needed to- get things in order, under control, something. He felt like he was going crazy.
"Kushina, we can't let him go back to the village. If he gives news of you- with child especially- they'll all know what I've been doing these past months."
Kushina lolled over in bed and ran clawed fingers through strands of red hair. She looked too satisfied, full in the grip of post-coital bliss. "Well, obviously," she remarked.
Minato stared at her. A thick coil was knotting in his stomach. He bit his tongue, clenched his fist.
"Well-," he began thickly, diverting his anger to something else, another issue. "I don't think I can do it. He's my goddamn subject, Kushina."
"That's fine," she said, "I can do it easily."
Minato winced.
XVII.
Minato came back after a couple hours and Umino was gone. He didn't ask and she didn't tell. He started to whittle at another necklace for her, facing away from her. He couldn't look her in the eyes.
"You have to go back and settle this. You told them you'd kill me. If you don't come back, they'll come looking for me. We'll never be safe."
He drew a hand through his hair. He remembered how it was when the first met- he didn't exactly know the first moment of their meeting, but he remembered the falling in love part. He remembered sneaking to meet her, remembered being introduced to her friends, the wonderful beings of the forest, each more magical than the last, showering gifts upon them, nectar, honey, wine instead of water, the right to swim in the rivers without fear of drowning, days without rain for the rest of their life so sunshine may always fall upon their marriage. He remembered how beautiful was his secret world. It wasn't feeling so secret anymore, and he was scared the beauty had died as well.
"We could move," he suggested. How he'd love to run away, start again.
Kushina was obviously offended. "Well, it's my damn forest, isn't it? If you don't want me to kill all the villagers to avoid trouble, baby be damned, you better come up with an excuse. I certainly don't care what happens to them, and I'm not moving."
He nodded.
XVIII
When he came back, Minato climbed up the mountain top.
"Good people of the village," he called, and they gathered at his feet, trustworthy feet. "Good people, I will go search in the forest as long as it takes. I will find the demon. And I will kill it."
The cry of pure gladness and gratitude was all he needed. He exhaled.
XIV
He brought a knife when he headed into the forest. He was sure that would be all he would need. Kushina would never harm him. This would be quick.
XX
When he entered the forest house, he took off his coat. He took his pack off and placed it on the dusty floor.
"Hello, darling," he breathed with difficulty as red eyes pulled him down.
Kushina slid off the deerskin bed to meet him. The knife was secure at his hip. He checked it with his fingers anyways. He hoped his expression betrayed nothing.
"I missed you," she whispered.
"Yes," he said.
She smiled, red eyes glowing. "Come here," she said, pulling him to her.
"Yes," he agreed, helplessly, glad this would be so easy, he didn't have to lure her near- and he thought so until her warm, deft fingers closed on his hip, trapping his hand on the knife with her own. His breath stopped.
She kissed his neck. "Human men never do last long," she mused forlornly, long red hair trailing across his cheek. The pressure of her hand over his own on the knife never let up. "Don't let go," she warned him and she kissed him, "you'll need that if you want to kill me."
He had really known all along he wouldn't be able to go through with it.
XXI
"Kushina."
"-Kushina."
"-Kushina!"
"Nmmph. Wha?" the woman called from the pillow, rolling onto her back with a lusty roll of the hips and a stretch of the arms. Satisfaction was etched into the movement of her sinews.
"I need to go back," Minato said, aware of how terribly he was ruining the morning mood. All night, they'd made a violent, continuous love and all of the next day. Time passed by so entirely when he was with her. "My people are waiting for me. I still have to figure out what to do. What to do next."
The woman leaned up and looked up at him, bemused. Minato was struck by how masculine the tilt of her head was sometimes. Even when she had been rolling her hips, a libido that was not entirely womanly seemed to seize her. A lazy smile stretched her mouth. "Boy, don't you know-" she cracked her back, and her tanned breasts jiggled, the nipples pointed at the ceiling, red and small, "the village won't expect you back by now?"
He was seized by understanding, as cold as death, and he couldn't bear to look. He made himself, anyways. His hand was wrinkled and paper fine like parchment left out in the sun.
"Ss been a while, time passes faster. Foxes luck. Thought you knew," she sighed dreamily as she curled up to go back to sleep.
Fury overtook him, and as he went to grab her throat, she turned and made eye contact. He stumbled over his own legs, suddenly frail and old beneath him, and he fell onto his wife helplessly. She smirked with loving misunderstanding. She wrapped her arms around him, soothingly, making shushing noises.
"It's ok. Now you can be old like me," she breathed, hands on his ancient back, "I still want you. Until you die."
XXII.
"You bitch!"
Blood ran down her arm.
"You bitch!" she repeated, her pretty face stretching into a scream inhuman. Her temper was unleashed and for a time it would continue un-diluted. "You bitch! You cut me!"
Blood ran down her chest.
Minato stumbled against the wall of the tent.
Blood ran down her hips.
A knife was stuck in her abdomen, sticking up ridiculously as blood bubbled forth. She wasn't dead, she wasn't even hurt, but she was angry.
"You BITCH!" She cried, slipping in the blood, but grabbing on to the bedpost as she went to grasp the knife and pull it out of herself nonetheless. "I'm going to cut YOU!"
Minato turned and ran out.
XXIII
He was scared she would follow him.
Not that he was scared she'd hurt him, because if she did, she'd take him home with her and heal him and be angry at him, and then be gradually angrily forgiving, and then just lovingly resentful.
He was just scared she'd catch him and then he would never be able to say no to her again.
So he ran as fast as he could, on his old, old legs.
Of course it had been dumb to stab her with a knife.
Like that did any good. What a futile gesture.
That alone would make getting caught embarrassing, like a guilty child.
He burst upon the clearing of the village just as he realized he was young again, his legs strong and long.
He didn't turn back as he went to open the gate. She couldn't follow him here.
XXIV.
"My people!"
The crowd stared, rapt.
"Blood!" and he opened his palm, where he had stabbed the knife into his wife's stomach, a smear of crimson that stunk of the wet woods and mushrooms and the odor of sex and dusty jars, but a hundred times multiplied.
They all cheered. The demon was dead.
And then the Fourth Warlord, four days since his proclamation to kill the beast, fell from his feet and died in front of them all.
XXV
On the wet forest floor, a woman crawled on her hands and knees, entirely naked, pushing a wet object out of her body. The knife lay discarded some ways back, the wounds already gone.
"Fuck!" she cried and her voice cracked deeper than her human voice for a moment, "God damn man was good for something, at least-", and her form flickered to that of a giant beast. Shaking her head, "No," she determined, and set her legs apart, pushing, pulling at soggy leaves. At last the baby fell out on the forest floor.
Gasping, she reached for it, bit the cord clean, opened the placenta with her teeth, and cleaned her child with her tongue, covered him with kisses as he screamed for the first time.
"Mhm, Naruto," she crooned, and rocked the child, who gazed up at her red eyes in wonder, the scream shocked out of him. "I know," she said, "Frightening," and she blinked her glowing red eyes, as a sharp grin curled her mouth, teeth as long as fingers apparent, "but I grow on you."
Naruto gurgled, following her eyes with his own.
A/N: This story is very loosely inspired by this legend- "Ono, an inhabitant of Mino (says an ancient Japanese legend of A.D. 545), spent the seasons longing for his ideal of female beauty. He met her one evening on a vast moor and married her. Simultaneously with the birth of their son, Ono's dog was delivered of a pup which as it grew up became more and more hostile to the lady of the moors. She begged her husband to kill it, but he refused. At last one day the dog attacked her so furiously that she lost courage, resumed vulpine shape, leaped over a fence and fled.
"You may be a fox," Ono called after her, "but you are the mother of my son and I love you. Come back when you please; you will always be welcome."
So every evening she stole back and slept in his arms.
Because the fox returns to her husband each night as a woman but leaves each morning as a fox, she is called Kitsune. In classical Japanese, kitsu-ne means come and sleep, and ki-tsune means always comes."
Thus the name of the fanficiton. That excerpt comes from Wikipedia's article on "kitsune", by the way. Though, in the story, it was Minato leading the double life differing from the legend.
Another reference is the Kitsune wedding when it rains on a sunny day, which I also got from Wikipedia… lol. And, to be honest, I was definitely thinking some Lady Macbeth as I was writing this.
If you liked/didn't understand/or have comments/criticism/praise, R&R, that means review, thank you :D And- opinions- should I get rid of the blurb at the beginning/end?