Falling in love is so hard on the knees.
AEROSMITH
Naruto is navigating the ANBU headquarters like a rat; having to test tunnel after tunnel after tunnel just to find the exit he needs. These corridors were built as if their sole purpose was to confuse and hide. (He thinks it is entirely too too easy to get lost, and wonders how anyone can find their way out for missions. Maybe this exact reason is why the ANBU are so reputed.)
Naruto finally locates his room (Containment Area: 3-R7 - He should really commit that to memory on the chance of having to come here again, Kami help him). The door is open and Hanabi is already inside of it, holding a stack of papers that looks suspiciously like something he should know about.
He wants to sit down, but the only useable chair is beside her (and with the shadows her face casts glancing up at his entry, he doesn't think that is a good idea), the mate to it half-way embedded in a nearby wall.
Chakra aside, he'd rather have a seat on the floor, thank you. (There's obviously an interesting story on the how of why that chair ended up a chakra-building exercise, but this is an interrogation room, so he doesn't pay that any heed.)
He decides that standing next to the table between them and leaning on it is a good enough solution, but there's a small cup of water that's mocking him, halfway full and so damned delicious looking that he nearly moans when he grabs it, only one gulp needed to clear the entire mess of his throat.
"Gah!" His neck tightens, and if Hanabi told him that there was a small serpent trying to strangle him Naruto would actually believe it. He grabs his neck, choking and his body wracked so violently with coughs that he has to grab the edge of the table beside him just to steady himself.
Hanabi scoffs at him and sits down in the chair (that isn't attached to the wall). She thinks little of this Uzumaki she's been assigned to. Who else but a fool would drown like that some mysterious glass laying out in wait?
She wants to ask if he's alright - good manners alone would call for it - but he doesn't look like he's dying or anything, and besides. This is the acclaimed Uzumaki Naruto (as much as she'd rather not know). What water could bring him down?
His last cough was even more vocal than the one before it, and ends with a wonderful string of spit that he shoots into the cup, giving a happy little glare that almost seems triumphant when finished.
.. "What if that was posion?"
Hanabi is pretending to not be too interested when Naruto looks at her a little in shock, but she actually finds the potential trauma funny and a little smile slips out. This is, afterall, the ANBU headquarters. These guys are nuts.
Naruto is grinning at her when she looks (and he wills his throat to stop that burning sensation which makes him want to scratch out his lungs - until it actually does so), so she turns back to her papers again - their assignment in loving detail (oh joy).
When the room becomes uncomfortable quiet - and with him, it seemed to be anything but - is the moment she decides to see what he is doing, and finds Naruto leaning over the back of her, his hands resting on her shoulders as he stares down into her lap. (This is where she is holding their report, but she has the odd desire to blush even though he can't see down through the high neck of her shirt.)
"So .." He kneels down behind her - to better read, she'd guess - and crosses his arms over her shoulders, "What Mising-nin Cat do we have to capture today?" He smells lightly of paint and it is easier to ignore this (and in essence, to ignore the fact that he is invading her personal space) with her eyes firmly trained on the papers.
Naruto is looking her shoulder and his eyes begin to burn as they run over the rows of ink between Hanabi's hands. Kanji; the experimental letters of those who dip ink as a priest would dip souls, grinning fouly when the lines caress all edges of white and black. (He has a desire to hiss, but doesn't in the end.)
He closes his eyes and rests his chin on her neck, already dizzy from only a few words, and pretends to sleep.
He can't figure out yet whether or not she knows, when she turns her head to him and stares with those seeing eyes (of which even quicksand can not catch all things the way she can).
He can't figure out yet, whether or not she knows. Her generation wasn't privileged to the classified information that his life is, but he wouldn't put it above her for her to possess this intell anyway. To know of that deep snarling beast lying beneath his gut; someone of whom he can no longer distinguish himself from. Of who he's forgotten a time when they were not.
Was it his body to begin with? Was it ever really his? The Fourth moved Naruto's soul in this way, and who is to say that there was a soul of Naruto's own in the start? Naruto doesn't think he will ever be sure.
After the mission ends, he will be at home and kneeling on the floor with a bottle of ink (that brings to mind spilled blood, even when it is contained so by glass) and parchment that lies too fresh and flat to calm his rapidly beating heart.
He will spread the paper between his knees and dip the brush, refusing to give fact to the physical pain reading Kanji brings. Every time his eyes tried to manage the words, they would start to blur and he'd hear screaming in his head. Sometimes the letters would morph into distinct shapes that always made his insides burn and his head hurt.
And it scared him shitless when he recognized the morphing kanji as seals he should have no business remembering. Seals that made him feel small (as if there was no end to the world), and he could distinctly smell fire thickly in memories that weren't his.
He will blow across the paper as the letters are drying and cool the flames of his past with warm human breath - a thing that feels like fire and yet is anything but.
When he tells her he can not read, Hanabi does not laugh, and that says all the things in the world to him.
t i t l e - s u m m a r y
INK
a colored liquid or paste used for writing,
from enkaiein, "to burn in".
Before 'Infiltrate'. (Chapter 12)