A/N: I can and will cut a bitch over SasuKarin. Like, you have your OTP's, and those diehard ships that no one really likes but you still love them the same. Ugh, Kishimoto, I should cut you. Like what the bloody hell. Why couldn't they have a meaningful angsty reunion? Hm? God. This is some headcanon shit in the works, y'know.
home is the womb that holds the soul
home is the place where one is whole
- aisha patterson
They sat on the edge of the river in a tense silence.
Or well, it was tense for Karin.
She still couldn't read Sasuke worth a damn.
Every few seconds she'd swivel her eyes over to Sasuke in suspicion, anxiety, and a bit of cluelessness. The sunset bathed his snow-pale skin in a myriad of different colors that almost made her head spin. He was too beautiful…and strange, and too-quiet, and moody, and irritating-
Karin paused her thoughts there, breathing deeply.
On one hand, she was still entirely bitter at the fact that he'd forced himself on her self-exiled trip to the ruined Land of the Whirlpools, but on the other hand, all of her affections and insecurity tied knots in her throat, threatening to choke her to death because Sasuke was with her at sunset.
It was a cheesy sort of romantic that she would have dreamed about if she were any cynical.
But she wasn't. She was heartless and cruel and helped cause pain and she accepted it. There wasn't nothing that was going to change about it. If anything, she'd thought Sasuke would sooner prop her up against the wall of a storage room in the hideout and breathe hotly against her neck before he would watch the sun set with her.
Although, the outline of the ruined village before her made her stomach ache like a seasickness, in longing that made her tongue sour.
She wanted no kisses, no sweetness from this boy. She was too sick, stomach too raw to handle it.
.
.
.
"What are you doing?"
Karin jerked her head sideways and straightened her back, bumping her head against the top of the window frame, and began seeing stars. Before she could tilt to either side of the windowsill, a chilly hand at her elbow stilled her.
So he'd been going through more experiments, lately, she mused. Karin blinked, trying to find her vision again, and found Sasuke's skin to be entirely too pale. "Damn it, Sasuke," she hissed, gingerly brushing at the top of her fiery locks. "What the hell does it look like I'm doing?"
"It looks like you're about to do something stupid, actually."
"As if you should be talking to be about stupid."
"Where are you going?" he asked this time, eyes trailing to the backpack strapped to her shoulders and the hair hiked up into a pony tail at the back of her head. "And don't bother lying. You wouldn't need supplies if you were going somewhere close by."
She jerked her chin downwards, towards the grassy fields that where characteristic of Otogakure. "I'm going to the Land of the Whirlpool, if you must know, " she huffed silently.
The redhead wasn't look at his face when he answered, "I'll come with you."
Karin snapped her head back to Sasuke's face, dangerously close to bumping her head again. "Why the hell would you want to do that?" she snapped. "Stop wasting my time. I don't need you, Sasuke."
His grip on her elbow tightened, and he leaned her closer to him, an almost imperceptible move. Her heart quickened. "It is unsafe for you to travel that far away without any protection, and I know that Orochimaru has yet to teach you any useful ninjutsu or genjutsu," Sasuke said. "I'm coming with you."
Sasuke let go of her arm and righted her on the windowsill again, turning away from her and leaving the closet. "I'll be back in a few minutes to get some things. If you leave, I'm going to hunt you down."
.
.
.
The view of the ruins from across the lake was astounding - it was a destructive sort of beauty that twisted her heart in strange ways.
Behind them was an old part of the destroyed village, where civilian farmers now worked the land for crops. They paid no attention to the two teenagers that had made their way to the riverside and made themselves a seat for the better part of the afternoon.
Her thoughts were spinning, turning, whirling around in her head faster than she could process. This had once been one of the lesser shinobi villages, but only in name. They had a myriad of powerful shinobi that stood under it's belt spoke for itself. This was where she should have grown up and grown strong. Kusagakure couldn't have held a candle to this burning ember of fiery-haired people.
Karin's eyes fluttered closed, and she brought up old memories of a woman with bright red air and vivid blue eyes, the rest of her face too marred to make out clearly. She'd only known her mother for a few years, but her lab work earlier that day had only sprouted new questions in her head.
Was this where her mother lived? And how long had she been here before she left for the Hidden Grass Village? How much of her family died here? How many people had scattered across the world away from here.
How much of her family had she helped Orochimaru experiment on?
"Why did you want to come here, Karin?" Sasuke asked her, snapping her out of her reverie. Karin shrugged, attempting nonchalance.
"No reason," she murmured breezily. "I just needed to see this place with my own eyes."