To Trowarx: I must admit, I like when people react to the way I portray Sasuke. :P I'm a deviously little pixie when it comes to that in fact. (Of course not, he won't get his way.) Thank you for your review and rest assured! :)
To CosmicBloomNinja: I usually use a mellow Indie soundtrack when writing, but I listened to Say Something. Then, I lost control and ended up putting it on "repeat" while writing my other fic. XD Thank you for the compliment and for your lovely review :) And for the song! It has proven itself very effective. :P
To Guest: Dear NejiTen fan, I'm smiling with fondness at your comment. I have planned and written a NejiTen scene before you reviewed. :D 3 Please scroll down and enjoy! ^_^ Thank you for your review!
-X-
Sasuke Uchiha listened to the noises of the mansion, howls and ghostly rasps that accompanied the creaking of the slats beneath his steps. The hall seemed to address his soul alone. Now that he was the last. Now that Itachi was dead.
He let his fingers trace the wooden frame of the portraits of his ancestors collecting dust along the way. The ceiling light's glow barely reached the somber faces and attires cast in thick paint. The oldest paintings were cracked but the red eyes entranced by power remained the same.
In his younger years, Itachi would hold his hand reciting the Uchiha family history in a low casual tone that filtered the crimes and bloodied hands that built the estate and their name. Deliberately, he would dust the portraits with words that held little truth about the monsters they were. Uchiha were not in organized crime, they were articulate politicians. They never took part in the prohibition or the war, they merely enjoyed the quietness of the country side.
Abruptly, Sasuke stopped in front of his parents' portrait, the muscles of his jaw working. Clenching, unclenching. Itachi never reached their portraits after their death. He claimed their stories weren't yet written with both of them alive, still carrying the name and pride of the Uchiha family. That was the first time Sasuke noticed that his older brother's eyes withheld the red glow of the family founders despite the layers of his soft smile. There was also something else, something that didn't belong with the straight angular faces of their ancestors. He remembered looking down at his hands, searching for the faintest stain of blood.
Sasuke still loved him then, still believed in the good of their name.
Itachi still smiled, that last night he showed him the portrait. He then peeled it off his lips when he admitted years later that they were all monsters. They fought the world, the law and everyone standing in their way. But they mainly fought among themselves.
The smile never returned until his little brother shot him. Twice.
Smirking, he passed his parents' portraits walking towards the parlour under the quivering light and flickering shadows.
The day he killed his brother, he understood: it was crime, revenge and bile running in their veins. He just had to make sure Sakura Haruno didn't change that. He just had to destroy the last piece that tied him to his crime before he could disappear anklet and Uchiha ghosts left behind.
After all, Uchiha didn't get caught.
They killed among themselves, they killed one another. Nothing less, nothing more.
He just had to make sure Sakura Haruno understood that.
-X-
Assaulted Perfection
by Clementive
-X-
Arrogantly, Ino Yamanaka never thought it would be this hard. She thought hard belonged to people that failed in succeeding anything. She wanted to believe she did succeed in something.
Ino let her sweaty forehead fall onto the edge of Sora Morino's desk. She groaned, her stomach howling for a purge. A liberation would calm it, filled as it was. Her tongue felt raspy, the feel of rich food still on her teeth. Her nose filled with the overly sweet pancakes, despite the tray she had pushed away. Faintly, the lock of a door clicked behind her. Trough her bangs, she saw Sora stepped away from the now locked bathroom of her office, unflinching.
She was holding true to her words; she let another medical student get her a tray at the cafeteria for breakfast. She never let her out of her sight and the day had just begun. Her purple uniform revealed the burned tissues of her arms, her office, her past military life and various moments of Tenten's childhood. Neat, except for files, folders and post-its threatening to fall out of balanced in strategic points in the room.
Sora was going to war after all; this was how she handled things.
"Hospital food is disgusting," Ino muttered for good measure, closing her eyes, holding her sides. Her cheeks paled under her disgusted frown.
She didn't taste much, she merely calculated the number of calories. She feared sugar and fat. A part of her refused change because then, she would need to adapt to how people would look at her. Would they look less? Would Shikamaru even take a second look after her?
She gulped.
Her body cried for the release, her brain humming excuses. There were bathrooms down the hall; one on the left next to the elevator, the other farther down the hall. Nausea rose along with the pulse reverberating at the back of her throat. She forced herself to swallow it down.
She needed to wait for now.
"Food is food, Blondie," Sora waved the matter with the back of her hand, her eyebrows furrowed as she remained focused on her screen. "I'll schedule you for First-Aid course tomorrow, you will need to get here one hour early. I'll pick you up like today, just warn your father. For the love of God, I'm not going through another explanation session with him."
At times like this, Ino could feel the piercing eyes rummaged through her, seizing her with cold awareness of the monster beneath her skin. Her eyes spoke louder than any of her comments. I know who you are, they shouted. I know what you are doing to yourself, they yelled.
"There still fifteen minutes before you start organizing my folders, do you have any questions?"
Ino looked up, wetting her dry pale lips.
"In fact, yes. Why is it your folder cabinet the only place in your office that looks like a war zone?"
Sora smirked icily as she shifted her attention towards her, spinning in her chair.
"I may have gone very sloppy when Tsunade barged in my office to yell at me about a certain amount of money missing from our budget. You have fourteen minutes left on that chair, Blondie, make it worthwhile."
She seized her again, with a single glance. There were no barriers when it came to facing the ex-military medic. Ino wanted to stare back her, nauseous and edgy, and tell her could she could keep it down without her locking any bathroom doors. She wished she could tell her she didn't need this.
Except she got to a point that she did and Sora scarred arms had everything to do with war casualties.
Except a part of her was still calculating between hisses a path to the bathroom and the woman in front of her knew more about survival than she did.
She dropped a pink uniform on her laps forcing Ino to lean back against her chair.
"This is your uniform."
"It's hideous!" She gasped, wrinkling her small nose. Her fingers run over the coarse material. "What the hell is this material, cheap-rug turned into an uniform?"
"I hate being yelled at," Sora simply answered handing her flat white shoes with the same smirk tugging her lips.
It was barely 7 o'clock and her perfection was already assaulted.
-X-
Tenten Morino threw two gummy bears in her mouth, ignoring the impatient snap of her father's newspaper. Images of black and white arguing characters filled her mind. Normally, they would soothe her but between Neji's tensed body and her father's occasional glares over the Gazette of Konoha, they didn't.
She felt like the western movie was unfolding in her living room instead.
She was the target, the damsel in distress and they were the shooters. The idea of being on the script for once was foreign, plastering awkwardly onto her skin. She still felt like the ugly duckling caught unaware on someone's camera.
She wondered why no one would stop the filming, why Neji wouldn't cross his arms and snort at some inaccurate medical or psychological fact in the movie. Or why her father didn't leave for work instead.
"Would you two stop glaring at one another, please?" She said tensely, her hazel glance remaining on the screen. "I'm trying to watch a movie here."
"Sure," her father hissed. "The moment he walks out of my house with all of his goddamn flowers. Men don't deal with flowers, girly."
"They are your daughter's flowers, Mr. Morino," Neji replied coldly, his eyes narrowing.
"Because you hurt her, you goddamn bastard!"
Tenten let the bag of gummy bears when she was pulled in the chaotic rise of their voices. They clashed against one another, loud and with her still between them. She sucked in for air, noticing the way both men tried to push behind them. A part of her mind darkened, understanding the stage directions; they wanted her out of the way. Their voices were around her, not part of her. She was being excluded from the script again. She was the role with two lines that appeared for the fight and that rains of bullets would mask.
She wished she had her gun to fire between them. She never asked for more than to be the one for once to tease the trigger with her finger.
"STOP IT, I SAID!"
Tenten watched them slowed, eyes slightly widening as they took in the threat in her eyes, the firm set of her jaw. Then, she shoved them both of the sofa. A sadistic part of her wanted them to feel the spring that didn't quite fit under the leather surface. She wanted them to feel it, beneath their weight. Incoherent, uncomfortable, squeaking. But still present. Still trying to learn the harmony of the whole.
"Stop it," she repeated in a growl not giving in as she pressed her fists on her hips leaning towards them.
They blinked, watching her with mild curiosity and uneasiness. Did she look different as she took the lead? Did she have the wild unflinching look of the heroines that allowed their hair to come undone and dance around them? Quietly, deadly.
"Dad, I can handle myself," she clenched her jaw glaring back at Ibiki. "I have a gun, I can use it and I'm not afraid to. If Neji misbehave you can be certain, I will fix it by removing important vital part of his masculinity."
Neji paled, inwardly flinching when Tenten turned her glare towards him.
"Neji, this is my dad. You are going to pretend to like the man just for my sake, do you hear? No matter how brash and insulting he is, you're going to pretend." She straightened her back, drunken from the power surging in her veins. "And you are not totally forgiven so you'd better keep sending more flowers."
She spun on her heels, roughly yanked the cassette out of the outdated tape deck. The two men still held their breath when she stopped once more in front of them.
"Now, dad, Neji and I are going to watch this movie in my room."
The doorbell interrupted the surge of curses on Ibiki's lips. She kissed his cheek, moving out of the room Neji in tow in the aerial gate that could have been Sora's.
"Goddamn it, kid, if you close that door..."
She turned towards him, ready to tense once more with Neji's hand in hers. Instead, she took in the awkward pleading in her father's eyes and the memory of the day in the park came back to her.
"Do you think I will be as tall as you, dad, when I grow up?" She asked as she made her way to the swings.
"Hell no, Ten. You're all little and thin like your mother," her father growled crossing his arms over his chest. Her pink schoolbag seemed out of place in his big palms. "What kind of question is that, anyway? Did someone laugh at your height, kid?" A savage glint animated his face and she shook her head gravely.
"No, dad, I just want to keep birds from crapping on me when I'm a grow up. Is this like a job? Do people retire from protecting their kids, dad?"
"Why are you thinking about that, kid?" This time, Ibiki's voice was so low, she often wondered if she had imagined his scarred face blank and grave.
Maybe this was about sharing roles. Neji squeezed her fingers, the answer forming on his lips polite and light as he watched her intensely.
"The door will remain open, Mr. Morino."
The doorbell rang again and she nodded stiffly.
Tenten thought she would need to glow in Neji's aura. She reached the hand of the staircase and thought about the gun beneath her mattress when she felt his arms around her waist. She smiled at him over her shoulder and it didn't matter anymore. She could glow on her own, splattering her warmth in his eyes and her love of movies in his schedule.
It was about sharing.
"Kiss me, cowboy, and don't stop until I authorize you to."
He chuckled softly, against her lips pushing her towards her room. Feline-like, she sat on his laps letting the world spin around her with the feel of his fingers on her scalp and his scent enhancing the sensation of her body.
The tape laid forgotten on her unmade bed while Inoichi Yamanaka entered the living room.
-X-
"Would you like some scotch, Yamanaka?" Ibiki asked tensely moving out of the way of his friend before slamming the door.
"It's rather early for alcohol," Inoichi raised a brow, his voice trailing in a curious intonation.
"I should have had boys," he replied in a shout instead directing it towards the staircase.
"I heard that!" Tenten yelled back. "Mom will not forgiving you if you meant it!"
"Like hell, I meant it, kid! I just hate your boyfriend, that's all."
"Great, dad, just great. Now he wants to close the door."
"Don't you dare, girly!"
Uneasy, Inoichi watched the dynamic of the Morino family, his fingers fidgeting on the edge of the coffee table. His daughter never spoke back at him, never yelled, never uttered the slightest word out of place. The measured their interaction, the way they knew their relationship would bloom. There was a formula, a calculated order to respect. They bathed in perfectly balanced silence that contrasted violently with Morino's savage ways of demonstrating his affection for his daughter. They spoke, acted out of love with chaos that left them out in the open, unordered with emotions piling between them, but never diving them.
He cleared his throat making the large man turned back towards him. Without being invited to, he sat down on the sofa.
"What is it, Yamanaka?" Dark eyes focused back on him, the scars around his mouth's thinned in a snarl.
"It's about the Uchiha, he went after Sakura."
"No proof, no case, you know the drill, Inoichi." He answered harshly, pouring himself a drink of dark liquid. "His anklet recorded him at the Uchiha mansion all day."
"I think he's going after her because she has something related to Itachi that he wants."
Ibiki rolled his eyes, setting the glass on the mantel shelf of the fireplace.
"He's not after her heart, I didn't think I had to explain this to you, Yamanaka. He may be a killer but he's still gotten testicles and all the male mumbo-jumbo that goes along with that. If he's after the kid's cherry, it has nothing to do with Itachi's murder."
"You said it yourself that, there are still missing pieces in Itachi Uchiha's murder. What if she has something that could convict him?"
"Then, she would be withholding evidence in an ongoing investigation and I would be arresting her."
They fell silence for a moment, staring at one another. Yamanaka didn't work for the government, his office was smaller than Ibiki Morino's but they shared the same grip on the criminal mind. They both knew Sasuke Uchiha wasn't the type of criminals to leave things to chance. Rubbing his hands together, Inoichi wondered how it was that Ibiki was direct in every aspect of his life except when it came to him.
He used to blame it on a quiet understanding that resulted in challenging one another. They were the assaulting mind of one another. The one that contested findings and proofs until the criminal was convicted and behind bars. Seeing him with his daughter and thinking how he was with his, he wasn't sure anymore.
He devoted himself to the silence of the mind and he wondered if he took it too far, at some point. With Ino. With his wife.
"There's something we're missing, Ibiki." he insisted looking down at his hands. "It doesn't make sense that he would then go after my daughter asking after Sakura. He's desperate."
Morino merely shrugged, still not touching his drink.
"Desperate means sloppy. He will make a mistake if that's the case. Just like when he learned that Itachi was an undercover cop. That's how we caught him remember? Letting that Karin girl alive. Uchiha have always been impulsive, it's in their goddamn nature."
-X-
Her skin itched beneath her uniform. Every time she moved, the texture would rub against her sides and she would feel too large, too tall, too loud. Too imperfect wrapped in clothes that partly revealed, partly concealed her.
Huffing impatiently, Ino pulled other files out tagging them properly. She clasped her lips shut in case she would give in and snap at Dr. Morino that she was bored. That this felt beneath her. However, she knew that Sora wouldn't even look away from her screen while pointing out that going College would have made the difference in the matter. Unflinching, still seizing her.
She pushed her heavy locks back in a messy bun at the top of her head.
"Are you done, Blondie?"
"No," she growled, rolling her eyes.
"Hn. Get me the Mitarashi file at the reception."
"Anything else, your Highness?" Ino mocked staring back at her.
"Yes," Sora's green eyes pierced through her. "The attitude. Drop it."
Blushing with anger, she slammed the door behind her with lips pinched. She hated the way everything within Sora Morino's reach was redefined, renamed and then waved away with coldness. She repeated it like a mantra; everything she hated about the hospital from the unordered files, to the color of the walls. She listed everything over and over again. As long as, for once, she wasn't listing herself and all her asymmetries and imperfections.
She turned left, her finger already pressing vigorously the button of the elevator. As she waited, she narrowed her eyes at the sign red faced babies screeching at the top of their lungs. The maternity ward left her bitter and hollow with the incessant high-pitched cries but with mother's giving birth next to paling fathers. It was a mixture of happiness and hunger. Roughly, she pressed the button again. She ran her palms up her naked quivering arms.
"You know, I feel like this hospital doesn't give your fashion taste any credit."
Her first instinct was to duck in the elevator but Shikamaru fell into step with her, smirking broadly. The door closing made a whooshing sound as they closed and she stammered his name. He pressed the button for the eighth floor, leaning back against the metallic handrail. Her eyes took in, the stains of yellow paint smeared across his cheek, arms and clothes. The paint still smelled fresh and she almost leaned in, searching for the tobacco.
"At least, we are past the troublesome "why are you avoiding me?" scenario," he cocked his head on the side, his amusement glinting in his orbs.
"I wasn't avoiding you," her blush spread to her neck. "We agreed to 'slow'. In my book, slow means not seeing each other everyday." She cleared her throat, her fingers shakily rectifying her bun slouched against her crane.
She could barely breathe thinking of him seeing her in this uniform. Shikamaru was chaos but she wasn't. She gasped when in two quick steps, he reached her, grabbed her arm. Golden waves fell around her.
'God, I must look terrible.' She thought and waited for his softening features to give in to disgust. She knew she would have.
"In my book, there is no such regulation, troublesome woman."
His lips grazed hers, his eyes quickly evaluating her reaction. Her heart hammered in her chest, her hands fisting his shirt. She didn't pull him in or push him away.
She wanted time to still and let her think this through, but Shikamaru was all about sluggish manners, walking through windows and graffiti executed with stained hands. The doors quivered and Shikamaru hit the button of another floor interrupting the cry of protest of an elderly woman.
Ino giggled, locking her fingers behind his neck.
"So, are you here on another daddy's rescue mission?"
"Nothing as troublesome as that, I'm painting the walls of the nursery with Sai. Two rescue missions in two days doesn't concord with my book's regulations"
"Yeah, but now, it sounds a lot less romantic."
He chuckled pressing his lips on her forehead before she twisted away from him. She leaned back against the metallic wall, her hair tickling his shoulder and neck. Easily, her fingers slipped through his when she raised her head to look at him, he reached past her to press another random button.
"We can't keep doing this forever, Shika. Dr. Morino probably thinks I bailed on her by now."
"I know we don't know where we stand but I wanted to compliment your uniform. And kiss you. A lot as troublesome as it is."
Ino blushed letting his arms pushed her back against his chest.
"Any objections in your troublesome book?" he muttered against her lips. She closed her eyes, pretending for a moment as his tongue rolled on her lips, that she didn't look as tired and ugly as she felt. She breathed in the tobacco still rolling in mouth, tasting him as demanding and gentle as she dared.
She pretended she didn't plan to aimed at the bathroom the second she stepped out of Sora's office and that she didn't think of his presence as troublesome when he sneaked up on her.
The elevator doors' slid open startling them. They broke apart clearing their throat as two nurses gave them disapproving looks. Rigidly, Ino pressed the button for the first floor. Shikamaru pressed his lips against her ear.
"Will you leave your window open tonight? Or do I have to assault it with tiny troublesome rocks until you open it?"
The door slid open once more and she smirked at him, batting her pale eyelashes at him.
"It depends on my mood. I have a thing in my book against dirty hands touching me, though."
She slipped her hair over her shoulder stepping out of the elevator and he couldn't help but smirk and cross his arms as she disappeared in the crowd.
The door of the elevator whooshed shut and he leaned back against the handrail.
He could still see glimpses of the old Ino, assaulting his mind with the feeling of the lips and hips of the new feminine one. Shikamaru didn't know how dangerous it was to be more attracted to him than she was of him and he didn't care.
After all, he could repaint her, over and over until she holds on to the pieces herself.
-X-
Please, let me know what you thought! :) I'm done with exams, so updates should be faster now.
