Author's Notes: This was buried for almost three years somewhat (I really can't remember anymore) on my fanfic folder. I wanted to do a three-part story and also I wasn't satisfied on how this one ended but here you go. The music inspiration for this one was Two Pieces by Demi Lovato.
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There's a boy lost his way looking for someone to play
There's a girl in the window tears rolling down her face
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two pieces
part I: lost children
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His footsteps are soft, quick, and soundless, yet heavy, as if his feet drag his body like it's just a burden of flesh and bones. She senses him first before she sees him. His chakra a mellow blue light edged with discord and ire, but warm nonetheless.
Karin squares her shoulders, her chin jutting up.
"Welcome back Orochimaru-sama," she greets her master. She doesn't acknowledge Kabuto, and pretends that the boy with the familiar chakra is simply not there. It's all about presence, she thinks.
Orochimaru-sama smiles—smug, sadistic, and satisfied—a corner of his lips curling up on one side too high. Kabuto waits, patiently. It's what he mostly does. He smiles too—is smirking, she corrects herself. The boy looks at her. Looks down at her with his cold, deep, dark obsidian eyes. She doesn't meet his gaze. She is busy trying to be busy in working on the constructions of Orochimaru-sama's smile.
"Karin, this is Uchiha Sasuke. Please take care of him," Orochimaru-sama says, his smile spreading into a grin.
Her eyes twitch, her neck becoming stiff. She looks at this Uchiha Sasuke.
(There is now a name to a face.)
His gaze does not waver.
"Sasuke, this is Karin. One of my very good followers."
Her throat turns dry, barren.
Uchiha Sasuke says nothing in reply, but he freezes her with his stare.
She could look away, but she doesn't. He doesn't either.
Memories come in waves. Suddenly, there is a name to a face. She remembers scrolls, a bear, a forest, a team lost, and a girl saved by a boy as if like in a fairytale. A faraway past forgotten and a girl she buried on mounds and mounds of dirt and mud. The buried girl's eyes open. She knows this boy, fondly. She tries to claw her way out but Karin closes the girl's eyes and buries her back. The buried should stay buried.
Karin lets a sneer work its way out on her face, her own sordid smile modeled to come in pair with Orochimaru-sama's own.
"Heh... So where's this new guy going to be placed?" she asks, her tone casual and smooth.
Orochimaru-sama puts a hand on Uchiha Sasuke's shoulder. She stares at it. It's possessive. And they all know it.
Orochimaru-sama shakes his head, then he says, with a lilting voice, "No, no, no, Karin-chan. Sasuke-kun is a very prescious addition. He is special."
Uchiha Sasuke frowns. Understanding dawning on the crease of his brows and forehead. He knows. Karin knows it too.
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(It is a promise, of pure and utter horror. This horror is made up of bodies, a stack of bodies–marked, and they keep piling up. They are hers to clean, to cut, to dispose, and to stack like book on shelves. They are nothing but bodies and they are for Orochimaru-sama to own. And Uchiha Sasuke will be one of these bodies. Karin imagines the ear-splitting scream he'll make and the redness of his blood smearing the gurney and the floor.
She can almost smell it.)
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Orochimaru-sama orders Kabuto to show Uchiha Sasuke his room and says no more. There is nothing else to say. He leaves with a flourish. Kabuto does as he's told. Uchiha Sasuke follows. She gives him a last sidelong stare before he disappears down the corridor where Kabuto leads him.
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He doesn't spare her a second glance.
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Karin knocks her head on the wall. She feels like she wants to laugh at herself. But she doesn't. She can't. The sound won't come up her chest.
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It's their first and second meeting. She calls it circumstance. Or maybe a bit of serendipity if she were fatalistic.
It's their first and second meeting. But Sasuke doesn't know this. He doesn't need to. She doesn't expect him to, so Karin forgets and buries the memory.
She can't forget about owing him, though. His gentle smile haunts her―
―(more than the buried girl does).
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One night he goes somewhere he's not supposed to be.
Sasuke is special, he is precious, etcetera, etcetera might be in his head but there is something that Karin calls order and rules and responsibility. They fall on her shoulders. And it is non-debatable, whether he is Uchiha Sasuke or not. He's only been there for a few weeks.
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He is setting foot inside the specimen room when she finds him, the doors groaning with his every push.
Karin feels something leap inside her.
And then she is reaching for him before she knows it.
Her hand curls around his arm, her nails digging into his skin. She pulls him. And it happens way too fast just in one breath that she doesn't even know what did happen. She only remembers a snarl, the gust of wind whizzing past her ear, and her hair whipping her face.
When her daze subsides, she sees angry obsidian orbs leaning close to her face.
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Her breath hitches.
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Sasuke has grabbed her by her shirt, his knuckles gripping the cloth tightly bunched up. Their face too close for comfort that she can feel his breath on her cheeks. He glares at her heatedly. She glares back, ignoring the warmth―the heat―that coils in the pit of her stomach.
"That place is off limits. You can't go in there," she hisses.
Sasuke scoffs. "Orochimaru said it himself, I'm free to see anything around here."
"I doubt this one covers that permission."
"I doubt you're even someone who can make that kind of call."
Karin snorts. It is funny. "I am."
"What?"
"I am someone who can make that kind of call."
Sasuke's glare hardens. She thrusts her chin forward and raises her brow, challenging him, goading him into doing what he thinks he can do to her.
Orochimaru-sama finds them in such a position. He laughs, amused.
"My, my, how interesting. What are you two playing at?"
The grip on her shirt grows tighter. Sasuke doesn't take his eyes off her even as he speaks to Orochimaru-sama. "She said I'm not allowed to go in there."
Orochimaru-sama shrugs. "I don't remember saying that."
She thinks she heard it wrong. It had to be wrong. "But Orochimaru-sama, that's—"
"Karin-chan, I thought I made myself perfectly clear," Orochimaru-sama warns, his tone low and dipping.
Her jaw drops.
―
(This is not how things are supposed to be. This is not how they do things. There is order and rules and responsibility. Orochimaru-sama set them into stone. She's lived by them. Kabuto lives by them. Otogakure lives by them. But Uchiha Sasuke just walks all over it.)
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She glares at Sasuke again. There is an arrogant smirk on his face. She wants to wipe it off. He finally lets her go.
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Karin makes a cheek.
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The next days she makes a point to never ever cross paths with Sasuke ever again, except when it's necessary, which is as rare as snow storms in the desert.
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It's about over a month.
He finds her first. Or seeks her. Or comes to her. The point is—
Her hands are caked with blood and grime. Her back is drenched with sweat. Her hair sticks to her neck and her face. Her knees are swollen and red for kneeling too long on the floor. She smells like a month-old dead fish and excrement. She smells rotten. The bodies have rotten. Dead and alive they both rot. They crowd the laboratory. And she has to move them. She needs to move them. They're all waste now. She would have to make a trip to the diggers later.
Sasuke is watching her scrub the blood and pus off the floor from behind, his gaze sending pinpricks all over her skin. If she were not outranked― seriously?―she would have sent him off with a go the fuck away, you bastard!, but because she is she would have to swallow this; and even if in some case ranks are thrown away to the shithole, she doubts he would do what she tells him to. Nothing can stop her from patronizing him, though.
"Suppose you stare at me like that, all day, do you think some kind of miracle will happen?"
He doesn't respond to her jibe, but she could tell he is still looking because she can feel it, and he doesn't try to hide it anyway. She considers that he must be brooding―something she learned that seems to be his hobby―but then if he just wants to go brood he should go brood somewhere else where she won't be bothered. There's plenty of room in Oto, surely he knows this.
Karin sighs heavily. She looks over her shoulder to glare at him.
"What do you want?" she says, spitting the words.
Sasuke studies her carefully, his eyes sweeping her whole form, and it makes the hair on her nape stand all too aware in discomfort.
"I think I've seen you somewhere… Have we met before?" There is nothing amiss in his question, it is plain curiosity, but it drops on her like cold water because she did not expect him to even have a sense of familiarity―because that was once, just once―and now her brain is running over on countless possibilities and excuses.
A sound of broken laughter pours out from her mouth, dry and bitter. "No shit."
Karin shakes her head.
"Never pegged you for someone who uses cheap pick-up lines."
Sasuke scowls at her. "I'm serious."
She rolls her eyes. "Yes, yes. You're always serious."
She turns her attention back on the fetid bloody floor, the soapy water has become muddy in color; it sloshes back and forth, back and forth as she scrubs it hard, harder, harder and harder, but the smell, the grime, and the stain sticks and dries onto the floor and onto her.
"I just thought you look familiar, something about your red hair―"
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She breaks a nail.
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"Fuck!" she screams in pain, but he doesn't seem to notice this because he's responding to her with indignation, not exactly with words, but his chakra flares a bit.
"You…" he growls at her and she ignores him.
She raises up her hand to her face, looks at the broken nail, more like busted; half of it has come off peeled, her finger bleeds and the blood and the grime and―damn it―the pus from the floor and the bodies glaze over it.
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He visits her again later that night, letting himself in her room, and she is tempted to tell him that he's violating etiquette and breaking rules. But then she remembers that breaking rules is another one of his hobbies, so she teases him instead.
"You want to spend the night with me, Sasuke?"
He brushes her comment off.
"How's your finger?"
Karin rolls her eyes. She wonders if he's really worried or just curious, because if he is that would be a very big surprise. Sasuke's mostly self-absorbed if not detached, same as all of them. Because there's no space for worrying over somebody else in a place where you live or die another day is decided by the divine judgment of an aspiring immortal. Taking care of one's self is already a big burden as it is.
Attachments are distractions. People like them learned this well.
"It's fine. I'll live. Don't tell me you came here just to ask me that."
Sasuke doesn't respond but he shrugs and leans against the wall near her door, which is left hanging open, creaking. Karin feels the need to close it. She almost tells him to do so, but she stops herself. She bites her tongue and sighs.
"What do you want, Sasuke?" she asks while she throws the book she had been reading on her bedside table.
Sasuke remains silent as he stares at her. The space between his brows forming creases.
"I think I remember now."
"What?" she snaps, defensively, because she thinks she knows what he's getting at and if she is she wouldn't know what to do with it.
"Red hair, red eyes, glasses, a scroll, a bear, and a Kusagakure headguard," Sasuke remarks, rather accusingly. Karin opens her mouth to retort but rethinks it.
"Tell me," a pause then a frown, "where you under Orochimaru since that time?"
The side of her lips twitch. It makes Karin curious as to what Sasuke thinks he would gain from this piece of information. There is nothing to be had from the past, no matter how much someone ruminates over it.
"I don't understand," she says to the space by the door.
Sasuke grumbles incoherently.
"You were a participant of the Chuunin Exams, weren't you? I... We met at the Forest of Death."
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(She has only known his face.)
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Karin is suddenly distracted with the image of flower beds and tries not to think of a girl who fell for love at first sight and hero worship. Her finger starts to ache again. The shadows grow longer. Karin feels tired of pretending that she's not pretending that she's pretending. She doesn't even think she wants to play this game with Sasuke.
So she offers him the truth. Something for his smile. For old time's sake.
"No. I was taken in by Orochimaru-sama after that."
He looks at her with contemplative eyes, lips pursed, arms tucked, and ever wondering curiosity.
"Why are you here, Karin?"
It's the first time he addresses her by her name, and it makes Karin smile her own lopsided smile, which is for once, not a mirror of that of Orochimaru-sama's.
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"Shit happens," she tells him.
Sasuke nods.
"Why are you here, Sasuke?"
She hears him grunt.
"Shit happens."
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We're only lost children trying to find a friend
Trying to find our way back home