Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Highschool DxD and I make no profit writing about them.
(AN): Let's see if I can make a quick update once more.
A slightly rusted silver bell jingled cheerily in greeting as Akeno slipped inside the slightly dingy butler café. She felt Rias and Naruto squeeze in behind her, pushing up against her back to try to silently encourage her to move out of the way so they could get away from the rain, and after a moment of hesitation she stepped to the side.
"Finally." Naruto complained under his breath, shaking his windswept crimson strands like a dog and sending cold droplets flying all over the place. A few icy beads slapped against Akeno's chilled cheek, and she snapped out of her stupor with a grimace.
"Please don't." She hissed back, unzipping her carmine overcoat and passing it to her quietly fretting mistress. In a strange way Rias' protective anxiety seemed to drain her own nervousness away – almost like as long as Akeno had her to worry on her behalf then she didn't have to think too deeply about negative outcomes.
If she had a therapist Akeno rather suspected that kind of statement would raise a few flags. There were so many ways to spell out dependency these days it was almost sad.
Brushing away idle thoughts and angsty musings, Akeno squared her shoulders and scanned over the half-full bistro.
Apparently, the owner had underestimated just how loyal their customers were, since they'd decided to send most of their staff home due to the rainstorm and now didn't have enough workers left to properly service everybody.
"Here we go." Akeno muttered, tracing a dozen unfamiliar lone faces in search of her cousin before giving up. Maybe Suzaku was running late? The thought was a bit disappointing, but she supposed she could give the woman the benefit of the doubt. Akeno herself was technically a few minutes late on account of the weather.
Slim fingers curled around Akeno's bicep as Rias gently took hold of the shorter woman, leaning in so her lips brushed over the still-cool curve of Akeno's ear. It made the Queen shiver for multiple reasons, most of which weren't appropriate to be thinking of during a long-overdue domestic confrontation. "Tosca and Yuuto have a table for two right next to the front window. Koneko is in the booth closest to the counter."
Which only left Ravel and Sasuke, Akeno finished silently, narrowing her eyes and scanning over the dimly shaded booths in the back by the fire exit. Sasuke would want to guard the second exit and keep his back to the wall, so the options were pretty limited.
A single lightbulb in the far corner fixture flickered on for a second, banishing the shadows for an instant before giving out again. It wasn't long enough for human eyes to craft a coherent image out of the contrasting illumination, but Akeno's greater than mortal vision saw perfectly well now that her gaze had been drawn, and she sucked in a tiny breath.
Suzaku lazily raised a hand in welcome, a cryptic little smile curving up the corners of her mouth. If she'd been anyone else Akeno could have just stiffened her spine and powered on through the nostalgia, but Suzaku was more than just a childhood friend. Suzaku was Akeno's cousin, and she had Shuri's face.
It had taken Akeno a long time to get passed seeing her mother in the mirror. Over time she'd come to focus on the minor differences and see past the similarities. But with her mother a decade and a half gone the details had grown fuzzier, and Akeno couldn't draw the line between the overlapping mental pictures of her living cousin and her dead mother.
"She's in the back by the fire exit." Her voice was just a little bit faint, thinned out by the shock and long buried sorrow. The feeble tone of her words wasn't enough to draw Naruto's attention, but Akeno could practically feel the scorch of Rias' teal stare.
Naruto saved her from awkward questions though. The redhaired man hissed through his teeth, hunching his shoulders and leaning towards his two companions. "The plan's gone tits up then. She's just chillin' back there with them, and they look like they've got sticks up their asses. Do you think she said something to them?"
'Them' being Ravel and Sasuke, who seemed determined to mimic emotionless statues carved out of ice.
Perhaps Akeno should have expected things to go this way. She knew if she were the one in Suzaku's place, and if she found out about Rias' little safety net; that she'd make a point to crash it. Either as a threat, or simply to make the point that she wouldn't be kept at a distance.
Which meant that there was nothing to do except roll with the punches and try to take back some control.
Clenching her jaw, Akeno took her overcoat back from Rias and folded it over her arm. If she couldn't have strength then she'd at least try to have the image of it. "I'm going to talk to her. You two stay back." Then bowling over the protests of her best friend she stepped forward.
In the end, despite her better judgement; Rias didn't follow.
Akeno was hyper-aware of the sound of her boot heels clicking over the worn dusty tile floor. The steady tap seemed to spur the slowly building thrum of her blood in veins, and by the time she stood next to Ravel and stared down at Suzaku, she could feel her pulse pounding in the hollow of her throat.
"Go." She told Ravel and Sasuke, refusing to turn her gaze away from her cousin for even an instant. It was pretty rude of her if the displeased little huff Ravel made was any indication, but Akeno couldn't force herself to care. She'd apologize later, at some time when she couldn't feel the walls falling in beneath the combined weight of apprehension and reminiscence.
Suzaku cocked an eyebrow Akeno's demand for privacy, but she didn't make a fuss about it. She kept quiet while Ravel shuffled off to another table, only giving an amused little grin when the blonde devil fired off a last poisonous glare.
Warmth seeped into her skin as Sasuke paused on the way by, clasping Akeno's forearm in a deceptively gentle grip. He didn't say anything, but at that moment he didn't have to. Akeno knew without even looking at him what the man was silently offering.
A promise of gore and massacre. All she had to do was ask, and he'd move to cut Suzaku's head off in less than a second. He'd probably kill everyone in the room without hesitation if she asked.
Akeno didn't think that those kinds of thoughts should make her belly tingle the way they did. Another thing to bring up with her nonexistent therapist.
Wordlessly she shook her head, and with a final squeeze Sasuke drifted away like the morning mist fading under sunlight.
Sliding down into the booth across from her cousin, Akeno merely watched as Suzaku considered the crowd with a calculating expression.
"You're a bit paranoid, aren't you?" Suzaku chuffed a quiet laugh, sweeping her long, unbound, ink-dark hair over her shoulder. The half-a-dozen amethysts in her little golden lily-shaped hairclip glittered at the motion, and for a brief second Akeno's focus faltered.
That tiny sign of weakness was enough, and Suzaku smiled with an open air of melancholy. "You're still a greedy little magpie I see. It's good to see that you're the same as ever, Akeno."
The lack of proper honorifics was deliberate, and Akeno wasn't sure how she should respond to it.
On the one hand, it could just be a bit of deliberate arrogance on the part of her childhood-friend-turned-clan-head. No amount of dressing down could hide the fact that Suzaku was a woman of power. It showed in her effortless authority and Suzaku had made the point to seek out Akeno's pre-planted backup with whimsical ease. If she was trying to unnerve Akeno, it was working.
But on the other hand, maybe Suzaku really was here in good faith. Maybe she really did reach out for the sole purpose of reforging ties with a woman that had once been close enough to be her sister. In that scenario Suzaku was just being deliberately familiar, destroying as much formal distance as possible in an effort to reconnect.
Cold logic learned from years of political games and suspicion urged Akeno to assume the former. A little seed of delicate optimism well-watered by the sad wistfulness in Suzaku's eyes begged her to believe the latter. The conflict grew so tight in Akeno's chest she could barely force herself to keep breathing, and she deliriously wondered if it really was possible to die from a breaking heart. "Suzaku."
"I bought you a cup." Suzaku pointed out airily, her fingers tapping along the gleaming tabletop in vague rhythm. Some mostly-forgotten song filled the air between them as Suzuku hammered the nails of one hand against hardwood, providing half a background theme while her other hand mixed cream and sugar into a steaming cardboard cup. "but I can't promise that it's any good."
Akeno swallowed back the urge to laugh and accepted the drink without complaining. It was one thing to assume that Suzaku was fundamentally treacherous, but it was another to live her life like she was part of a poorly written political drama.
Her cousin wasn't going to poison her drink right in front of her, so with a sour smirk Akeno lifted the paper rim to her lips and drank deep.
The taste of jasmine and lemon and honey blazed over Akeno's taste buds, drowning her in a flavor out of the dusty halls of recollection. For half a heartbeat she was five years old again, sitting at her mother's knee at the Himejima shrine. The Akeno of yesteryear's memories listened with one lazy ear as her mother regaled her with ancient tales and mostly forgotten lore, not appreciating at all what Shuri was trying to teach her.
Akeno would never be able to go back to those carefree innocent days where the only thing she cared about was remembering enough about Shinto rituals to keep her mother from grounding her. She'd lost everything except her heartache and a cousin she wasn't sure she could trust.
"It's fine." Akeno rasped, setting her cup back down and clutching her hands tight around it to hide her shaking fingers. "But you need to stop adding the sugar." It was an old argument that she hadn't thought about in years. Green teas were supposed to stand alone without much in the way of additives, but no matter how much she'd complained as a girl her cousin just kept on putting sugar in anyway.
Suzaku had always been stubborn about the silliest little things. It had driven Akeno half-crazy with frustration, but it always made Shuri laugh.
"You're twenty years too late with that argument." Suzaku chuckled, pointedly taking a sip of her own steaming drink. Then she looked Akeno in the eye and smiled. "No one's ever been able to make me change."
That mild little boast was just a joke on the surface. But the meaning under it ran deep, and a very old, very tired scar inside her finally began to ease. The imagined bitterness on her tongue finally faded, and all that was left behind was the sweetness. The air finally stopped tasting like grief, and finally started tasting like hope.
"Well that was underwhelming." Tosca noted dryly, flipping her hood up and stuffing the ends of her twin-tails beneath the collar of her jacket before stepping out into the rain. "I have to say, that was one of the most painfully boring mornings of my life."
Yuuto rolled his eyes before following her, keeping his hands shoved in the pockets of his dark green windbreaker. "And you wonder why nobody likes you. To think you were doing so well too."
"You know me. Always have to be a disappointment."
The laughter that bubbled up in the back of Yuuto's throat was swept away by the wind.
Truth be told Tosca wasn't exactly wrong. They'd been press-ganged into spending the entire morning lurking around a hole-in-the-wall bistro, waiting for the Himejima clan to do something worth fighting over. Instead everything had been mostly tame. The only thing that had been remotely exciting was how Suzaku showed up early on her own without any kind of backup.
Beyond that, Yuuto and Tosca had spent the last few hours sitting on a pair of wobbly too-tall chairs, drinking cheap coffee, and watching Akeno talk to her cousin. There'd been no drama and no tears, and once dinnertime rolled around the two young women had parted on good terms.
Happy endings all around was what Naruto would say.
Yuuto wasn't entirely sure how much faith he was going to put into that idea since he'd practically been able to see the gears turning behind Rias' eyes when she told him he could leave, but it was out of his hands. Either Suzaku really wanted to be allies or she was going to try to stab them all in the back. The only thing he could do was wait and see.
Which was probably for the best. Yuuto's last big personal decision had ended in blood and fire. He wasn't qualified to take the lead on anything.
"You're brooding again."
Hunching his shoulders together, Yuuto frowned mulishly at the slick pavement. "I'm not." His denial sounded weak to his own ears, but at least Tosca dropped it. He didn't have the patience to argue with her over Roland's death again. Maybe she was right that the priest had chosen to fight for something he believed in, but that didn't change the fact that he'd died because of Yuuto's recklessness.
The blond Knight kept his head down as he followed Tosca through the streets, trusting her to guide him back home without getting them lost.
It was only when they took a left down a side alley rather than turning right onto an open lane lit by street lamps that Yuuto shook himself back to full alertness. "Wrong turn." He reminded her, a touch of sharp edges in his tenor. Tosca didn't react, and Yuuto raised his voice while reaching for her shoulder. "Tosca!"
The second before his fingers reached her she spun around, her gaze hard and earnest. "Who's next?" she prodded, leering lightly at the way Yuuto reared back in surprise.
"Who's what now?" He sighed in exhausted exasperation, his breath a faint mist that floated up between their faces. Was it too much to – just once – accept that the daily drama ended neatly without throwing something else in Yuuto's lap?
Clicking her tongue at Yuuto, Tosca huffed. "Gremory. Phenex. Leviathan. Tepes. Kyou-youkai." Every name that fell from her lips hit him like drops of lethal venom. "Now Himejima. So, who is next?"
Blood and ashes. Yuuto had known she was curious about the secrets they'd been pretty obviously keeping from her, but he didn't know that she'd get so damn interested that she'd outright ask. "I don't know what you're talking about." He deflected uneasily.
Wrong answer.
Tension hung silently between them, vibrating harshly as the glint in Tosca's eyes shifted from eager to vicious. "Fine." She snorted, shoving by Yuuto. "Keep your secrets. But remember, just because I like to play around in the basement with Gasper making batteries out of lemons doesn't mean that I'm blind. Galilei taught me more than just the quickest way to dissect a cat."
Yuuto stood in the rain alone for a long time after that, staring off after her and wondering when it had all gotten to be so complicated.
Slow curling warmth seeped into her skin, soothing away all the stresses of her day until she felt satisfied and boneless. It seemed like every single muscle fiber in her body had all let go at once, and even forcing her eyes open took herculean effort.
Ravel blinked lazily, idly studying the pale tendrils of her hair floating on top of the bathwater. "Today went better than you were expecting, hmm?"
The soft hum of consideration her fiancé replied with buzzed over her cheekbone, and Ravel turned slightly so her ear wasn't plastered right up against Naruto's wet chest.
She enjoyed the closeness of cuddling quietly in the bath with him, listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat for hours; but she drew the line at trying to carry on a conversation that way. It was too distracting.
"It went alright, I guess." Naruto eventually decided, letting his right arm slip off the porcelain rim of the tub so he could run his fingers through the loose bobbing strands of Ravel's mane. "Maybe I'm just getting paranoid in my old age."
She slapped his hand away with a snort of amusement, observing with a half-lidded gaze as Naruto drew idle circles beneath the surface with his free hand. It played at being a distraction, and she pretended not to notice when he shifted his other arm behind her back so he could settle a possessive grip along the curve of her hip.
"Let me guess. They don't make 'em like they used to, and us young whippersnappers don't know how bad things really are."
Laughing quietly at her mocking old man accent, Naruto brought one knee up to rest his empty hand on. The air seemed abnormally cool to his water-slick thigh, and they both watched the goose bumps surging over his tanned flesh. "You got it right on the nose." He murmured. "It wasn't like this the first time."
Ravel frowned, reaching over to take his hand between both of hers and hide them all beneath the last remnants of bubble bath foam.
She'd known for years that Naruto had lived twice, but he didn't talk about it all that often once things with Ophis had settled down. And the few times he did weren't usually in a tone of tired nostalgia.
It was hard to keep in mind that while he seemed like he had always belonged in her life with her, he hadn't. Once upon a time Naruto had belonged to somewhere else. Ravel would never send him back for anything, but she could spare him a little sympathy. "How was it?"
"Cleaner." Naruto sighed after a beat, tilting his head so he could rest his cheek along the crown of her golden head. "It was hard, don't get me wrong. Fuck, it was so hard. But I didn't have to second guess everything. I didn't have to wonder if people were lying so often, and I didn't have to do it all the time myself."
"Are you talking about Suzaku or Tosca?"
"Does it really matter? It fits both cases."
Ravel flared a wordless surge of low-key pyromancy from the soles of her submerged feet, heating the water back up to a proper steaming simmer. "I think it does. You won't be able to settle anything if you don't at least define what's really bothering you."
"Now." The blonde continued, pausing for a second to gather her thoughts. "The Suzaku issue is pretty simple to put away. You might be the heir to the clan, but most people wouldn't expect anything tangible to come from that for at least a couple hundred years. That goes for most of us. As a human Suzaku doesn't have a lot of time to work with. Is she really going to spend the rest of her life pretending to be friends for some undefined benefit? I don't think so. She's probably sincere."
"Or she might just want to pretend long enough to get our guards down and then kill us all." Naruto pointed out with a bite of black humor. "But I suppose I can give her the benefit of the doubt and not assume she's going for Danzo redux."
"Danzo redux?"
"You know, Danzo two-point-oh? Himemura Suzakanzo? Shijima Danzaku?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about right now, but it had better stop."
"I'll workshop it."
Naruto looked down at her with a smug leer that refused to be shaken when she glared back with a peeved expression.
Then she twisted his nipple.
"Alright, alright!" The redhead pouted, rubbing at his chest in an effort to chase the sting away. "No one but Sasuke appreciates the old Konoha jokes. Oh well. I suppose I can't win 'em all."
"That doesn't stop you from trying."
The sound of Naruto's laughter rang out again, bouncing off the tiled walls of the shower stall to echo hollowly across the rest of the opulent washroom.
It was good to see some of the weighty shadows slide off his face, Ravel reflected, but she'd known even before asking what the real problem hanging around his neck was.
Fixing her stare on the far side of the enormous bowl-shaped bathtub, Ravel decided she finish her job as her fiancé's self-appointed therapist and cut to the heart of the matter. "There's nothing we can do about Suzaku. Rationally we should give her some rope and leave it to her to decide if she wants to hang herself. Which is what I think you wanted to do in the first place. You don't have to try to be more ruthless than you actually are. That's what I'm here for."
Naruto's eyebrows rose at that. "I know. But just saying that doesn't mean I can just turn it off, you know? I believed in other people and I still want to, but it doesn't change the fact everything went shit-shaped when I did. So, then I try to avoid that pothole, and I end up feeling like an oh-so-edgy mega-jaded teenager."
"Moron." The blonde sighed fondly, primly shaking her finger at him. "It's not a one or the other proposition. It's okay to put some faith in new people. Just keep one hand on guard and it's fine to offer the other. Which incidentally is probably how you could solve your Tosca problem too."
The redhead sagged, and when he grimaced a little bead of glittering moisture clung to the corner of his perfectly carved jawline. "Do you want me to just spill my guts to her? How could I? Maybe If it was just me, I could take risks, but for some stupid reason you've all decided to make me the boss. All I have to do is fuck up once and it's all over for everybody, and everything would be my fault."
Very slowly, Ravel exhaled; expelling stress and trickles of dread until all that was left was her racing mind and the emptiness in her lungs.
Maybe she'd been too selfish or too ignorant, but Ravel couldn't deny anything right now. They'd shoved all their plans and nebulous hopes into Naruto's pockets and expected that he'd just smile and take everything without doing more than offering obligatory complaints.
They'd all forgotten that Naruto was just a living man, prone to a living man's doubts and a living man's frailties. He wasn't some steel vessel that they could pour their dreams into and expect that he'd never crack open.
Naruto was just a mortal being. Sometimes it was okay to be weak. But before she could tell him that, before she could cobble together some magical little speech that pacified his insecurities Naruto began speaking again.
"But I suppose you've got a point. I can keep bitching about my poor wittle feelings all I want but at some point, I'm going to have to actually do something. Suzaku's not my friend, but that doesn't mean she's my enemy. I'll make nice and not waste my time trying to spy on her over some plot I made up in my own head. Tosca is my friend, but I suppose I've been a pretty shitty one what with the whole keeping obvious secrets thing. To get a little you gotta give a little I guess."
"Good." Ravel gave a relieved grin, pleased to see the magnetic energy that animated Naruto at the best of times finally flowing back into him. "You'll have to clear it with the others, but I don't think you'll have any problems. At least as long as you keep it to entry level information. It's not like we enjoyed keeping her totally in the dark."
Smirking at the blonde, Naruto kicked his heel along the bottom of the tub until he knocked out the plug. "I was getting tired of Yuuto moping around about her anyway. And who knows? Maybe once she settles down she'll stop cockblocking him."
The rubber bottoms of her slippers slid almost soundlessly over the polished floor. Only a few random squeaks here and there betrayed Valerie's presence. But it probably wouldn't have mattered even if she stomped and squealed around every corner.
Right now, with the thick blanket of midnight gloom wrapped around her, Valerie was just a forgotten ghost. The only thing in the universe that remembered her right now was the Grail, which never quite shut up.
That didn't quite bother her anymore. At least not in the same way as it once did. The low muttering in the back of her skull was almost comforting now.
Smiling secretively at the always-present song of death and stardust, Valerie stepped out onto the veranda. The ivory light of the moon greeted her, hanging in a pale slice that cut a gaping wound in the indigo belly of the evening sky.
The whispers hummed a little louder.
"Come on. It's not like it's going to hurt me, and I won't even tell anyone." Gasper begged, drawing the older blonde's attention when his voice cracked. The exaggerated grimace that crossed his coltish face made Valerie smother a laugh.
Leaning back against a cherry wood pillar, Sasuke scoffed around the faintly smoking cigarette perched between his lips. "Puberty strikes again, Valerie." He added a greeting, cocking an eyebrow in curiosity at the sight of her.
Fair enough. It wasn't often they had reason to breathe the same air, clouded with tobacco smoke or not.
"Sasuke. Gasper."
The younger dhampir gave an offhand wave before making one last effort to swipe Sasuke's cancer stick. "Come on, I'm not even human! I'm old enough to drive, I should be old enough to have a puff or two."
"First of all," Sasuke muttered as he tilted his head back to keep his mouth out of the range of the short boy's grasping hands. "You're just barely old enough to drive in this country, and you certainly don't look like it. Secondly, even if you could I don't want to put up with the complaints I'd hear about it." The Pawn laid a heavy palm on top of the Bishop's head and forced him to settle down. "So, deal with it."
"Asshole."
The pouty little curse was the straw the broke the camel's back, and Valerie couldn't contain the storm of giggles riding up her throat. "Oh, they grow up so fast." She wiped an imaginary tear away. "Just yesterday he was biting my ankles and today I have to wash his mouth out with soap."
"Yeah sure, mom." Gasper rolled his eyes, running a hand through his shoulder length golden mane before flouncing across the deck. Once he had his back to the wall, Gasper plopped down cross-legged on the porch and peered up at her. "So besides torturing me, what brings you out here?"
Valerie shrugged loosely, the collar of her blouse crinkling around the white column of her neck with the motion. She didn't really have an answer for the young devil.
A year ago she would have blamed the restless buzz under her skin on knowing that Ravel was sharing a bed with Naruto, but she'd come to accept that he deserved to have what he wanted. Valerie knew she could do better than the roast chicken bitch, but the other woman didn't quite grate in the way she used to.
If Naruto wanted Ravel for her body or her low cunning or her money, then he should take her. That was just how it should be, and she wasn't bothered by it.
She wasn't.
Sometimes her blood just ran hot and hungry in her veins. It was probably a quirk of being a half-vampire. On some instinctive level she craved sex and violence.
But she wasn't going to bother Naruto when he hadn't called for her, and she wasn't going to kill anyone when she knew it would upset him. So for the moment there was nothing she could do but wait until the ache in her fangs settled back down.
The whispers hummed a little louder.
"Wandering." She finally offered vaguely, shifting her ruby stare from Gasper's amaranth gaze to the sinister crimson of Sasuke's slowly spinning Sharingan. It amused her in a morbid way to see how the proof of their inborn viciousness lived in their eyes.
It was almost deliriously poetic. Like reality itself bent to accommodate her and those like her, marking them out for Naruto to see.
Gasper was gentle now, and Valerie hadn't really had reason to yet, but sooner or later Naruto would need them to cross the line. As for Sasuke, well; he was already Naruto's pet monster. The most useful of them all if she was being honest.
For now.
Valerie fully intended on proving she could handle the power of the Grail. Once she did, there wasn't anything she wouldn't be able to do for Naruto.
The redness in Sasuke's eyes flickered, like he couldn't quite decide if he wanted to keep showing the two Bishops exactly what he was or if he wanted to hide the war-hungry beast. Eventually the Sharingan faded to black again, and the Uchiha burnt up the butt end of his cigarette with a relaxed burst of sorcery.
Valerie was kind of disappointed to see the venomous carmine shade go, but she supposed deception of that sort came effortlessly to him - just like it came easily to her and Gasper. They had the same nature; trickery and transformation.
The man would have been a good dhampir.
Perhaps she'd make him one once she better mastered her Sacred Gear.
Naruto only deserved the best after all, and the possibilities were endless once she fully understood the principles lying under life.
"I'm going to head in."
"Same. I have a few more rounds of DOTA waiting me."
She smiled cheerily at them. "Goodnight then. Sleep well."
The whispers hummed a little louder.
(AN): 5100 here. Passed through and edited a couple of times too so ideally it's up to snuff. I tend to like to leave certain things ambiguous, like the exact details of Suzaku and Akeno's conversation. Keeps me from being written into a corner when it comes to their backstory. Hopefully that doesn't trigger too many people into frothing rages if they were expecting a chat about babylife.
Other than that, everything else just kind of popped in. Didn't plan to have Tosca get curious and mad, but she did. Planned to have Naruto and Ravel have mindless sex in the bath, but instead it turned into character development and fluff. Wanted to do an fillierish Valerie/Sasuke/Gasper scene just to have an odd combo of characters goof off on screen and ended up reinforcing how fucking obsessive and crazy she is.
Fun times all around.