A/N: Dear Santa. I'd love to own Naruto. - GL
I was going to wait to update, but heck, why not.
*Dear readers. If you are thrown by this chapter, I ask you to remember there is a companion story titled 'Guardian' from Neji (as a ghost's) point of view, and it will explain more. I humbly request you trust me as an author and ride this story out with me. If I lose you after this chapter, I am sorry - maybe next time?
That being said: lemons ahead.
Kunoichi
XII. Kunoichi
The green of the tattoo is ominous against her firelit skin.
Although it is what he expected to see, he still feels the weight in his chest when she confirms his suspicions.
He knows they all have their ghosts and burdens and secrets.
He even knows she can handle her own.
That doesn't stop him from recognizing that she is a threat to herself.
When she says nothing more, he raises his eyebrows to her.
"Care to explain?"
She holds his steady gaze and there is no sound or movement for a full minute, save for the flicker and crackle of the fire.
Finally, she puts down her tea and rises slowly. He watches her cross to the fireplace, resting her hand on the mantle to steady herself and gather her thoughts and words.
"I am a Kunoichi of Konoha," she says slowly, her eyes on the flames. "I am an inheritor of the Will of Fire, and a survivor of the Fourth Shinobi War. I am not afraid to die."
"No," his voice is clear from his seat behind her. "But why are you afraid to live?"
Her world stills to nothing.
"You are prepared to die for your village," he continues. "Why are you not also prepared to live for it?"
She shakes her head. "Every day I am alive, I live for my village."
"Do you?"
Her look is sharp but he is unphased. "I do not question your loyalty to Konoha. I do question the stability of a shinobi who is actively seeking their death."
"I will not die without cause," she says with steely conviction.
He raises his eyebrows at her.
"And what is your cause, Tenten?"
Silent war is waged in the airspace between them.
The air pressure shifts, and she feels him yield – if only a little bit – to allow her to speak.
"What is driving you?" he asks in a softer tone. "Help me to understand."
She isn't sure if it is the unmistakable note of honesty and respect for a fellow soldier in his voice, or the residual effects of the poison, or the antidote, or the alcohol, but suddenly she can't hide what she is – what she has become anymore.
She has to step out of the shadows.
She crosses the small space and stands directly in front of him.
Without breaking eye contact, she calmly unties the belt of the robe, and lets it slide off of her shoulders before she tosses it to the couch.
She performs the necessary hand seals, and releases the concealment jutsu.
Kakashi's eyes grow wide.
She is a battle-hardened kunoichi of Konoha.
Her physical training is second to none – Gai saw to that.
She is hard lines and defined muscles and marred skin and soft silk.
As much as he appreciates this, it is not what rivets his indivertible gaze to her.
It is the elaborate black tattoos that run the length of both arms, splay across parts of her back and vine down her legs.
Kakashi's eyes widen at the delicate intricacy of it all even as he recognizes he inscribing hand with foreboding.
His eyes trace their pattern even to the small space between the hem of her shirt and her underwear.
Following his gaze, and in the interest of full disclosure, she yanks the tank top over her head and lets it fall unceremoniously to the ground, just as she did when Sasuke demanded to see the results of her visit.
Except there is nothing else under her tank top.
The tattooing winds around her bared abdomen and under her full breasts. The green of the caged bird seal is prominent on the pale skin above her heart in stark contrast to scarred flesh and winding onyx.
She holds her arms out to him for inspection, wrists up.
He leans forward in his chair and gingerly runs his index finger along a line of chakra infused ink embedded in her skin, interpreting the complex seals and designs.
"Summoning tattoos?" he asks quietly, tracing the marks on her arm.
"Weapons summoning," she affirms.
Kakashi finds he has nothing to say.
Orochimaru has his summoning tattooed on his arm. Sasuke has a weapons tattoo on his wrist.
This is an entirely different level – more extreme than anything he has ever seen.
As he looks up, he is surprised to see someone staring back for a change – an echo of the person he once remembered living behind those large, hazel eyes. To see her now in this so markedly altered body, so scared by wounds, pain, ink, and time – he can only ask one question.
"Why?"
Her smile is small and sad.
"Because I am a Kunoichi of Konoha."
"…?"
"Each day I am alive it is for my village," she said, eyes scanning his. "For my comrades. So that Sai can finally be 'Sai' and live to see his children and the life Danzo tried to steal from him. So that Sasuke can atone and return to Sakura who has worked her whole life to be the kind of person and kunoichi I could no. So Shino and Kiba can continue to bicker, and the Ino-Shika-Cho trio reaches the next generation, and that legendary alliance and its bond keeps the village strong. So Lee and Gai can live to be youthful into old age. So that Hinata can live to change the Hyūga clan, and makes sure this," she taps her fingers over her heart "is the last Caged Bird seal ever imprinted on any living soul." Her expression softens. "So Naruto can finally become Hokage, and keep the hate out of Konoha."
She pauses and there is steel under velvet in her tone.
"I put myself on the line so that they don't have to. I have nothing left to lose; they have everything to lose."
Something passes between them and she can see the depth of his new and sudden understanding.
But there is another ghost in her gaze, and something inside him lurches to see Rin in her eyes and hear her echoes in this abject determination and conviction.
The night she was killed is always sharp in his memory. He can still see his her racing alongside him, trying to tell him that something was wrong. He can hear her trying to reason out what had been done to her even as they fled from their pursuers. He did not know that in those moments, she was weighing her own life against the survival of village.
Against his own life.
To Rin, there would only ever be one answer to that question.
He sees that same resolve in Tenten's eyes.
That is when he knows with bone-deep certainty that for these two kunoichi, it was never a question in the first place.
Eyes heavy with the regret of being unable to prevent the eventuality of her sacrifice drift to the stark symbol so representative of all of the ugly of the shinobi world.
It is the only color inked into her skin.
The rest of the winding symbols are ink-black, and a combination of lines and shapes and inscriptions and seals and a hundred other things that he knows only one person could have put there.
"Orochimaru."
"Yes."
"What else could he possibly have taken from you in exchange?"
"Nothing," she meets his gaze steadily. "My life is already not my own."
"He always demands something in return," he says darkly.
"Then perhaps," her expression is wistful, "it is not what he took from me but what he denies me." She flicks her wrist and a fistful of shuriken appear between her fingers. "I am much harder to kill, now." Another flick of the wrist, and they are gone.
"At what price, Tenten," he asks her quietly. "And to what end?"
There is a heavy silence between them as they lock eyes not as once-teacher to her generation, or even as Hokage to ANBU elite, but as souls leveled and equalized by death in their lives.
When she speaks, it is with a gravitas far beyond the journey of twenty-some summers.
"I already paid my price."
He listens. Her voice is low but steady.
He does not expect the frank confession.
"My heart died on the battlefield, Kakashi. This body," she glances down at herself, "is all I have left to defend my village. Pain is nothing. Time is nothing."
Her eyes search his face.
"When death comes, I will welcome it. Until then, I endure to protect everything he sacrificed his life for until I can die as a shinobi and be with him again."
And with that single admission, she is more vulnerable now than she has been with another human being since she woke up all tangled limbs and naked skin and shared breath in the strong arms of the beautiful, brave man that became her other half.
Kakashi drops his gaze to his hands, folded in his lap as he sits hunched in the chair, shoulders bowed with the weight of burdens owned and shared.
What can he possibly tell her?
He sees her fingers reach for his own and follows them as she gently takes his hand and rests his palm on the damning mark engraved upon her as it once had been on the forehead of one of the bravest heroes and greatest losses of the Fourth Shinobi War.
When she speaks, it is as one familiar with the weights on his heart.
"We both know something about sacrifice and masking pain… don't we, Hokage-sama?"
And without knowing many of the particulars, he suddenly knows everything.
His finds his palm lifts and his fingers ghost over the sharp unyielding lines of green, hints of a heartbeat detectable under his fingertips, for all her claims that it had stopped on the battlefield.
Her hand raises to his face and tentative fingers trace his cheek through the mask, a butterfly-gentle touch begging forgiveness over permission.
Reciprocity.
He is aware of the minute and charged distance between his palm and the firm and full breast resting under the space below his arched and inspecting fingers.
With infinite tenderness and respect to the irrefutable evidence of her many sacrifices, he traces the thin blue veins that dart between the arcs of black lines, across to her sternum and down the valley between her breasts to follow the black markings and lay the flat of his hand on the curve of her hip. His thumb traces an arc over the intricacies etched into her skin by weapons, time, and ink.
He leans into the palm at his cheek, and watches her closely as he hooks the finger of his free hand into his mask and pulls it down around his neck.
And now he is naked to her, too, for all his clothing.
Strong fingers trace the planes of his cheek in understanding – in the ache of sorrow shared, and dreams forsaken if not forgotten.
The years between them are suddenly inconsequential.
They are two bleeding, broken beings, two ephemeral souls tied to this life for the sake of others, and ready to retire their morality without hesitation, should it protect those precious to them. She lowers her mouth to his as he raises his to hers.
Their world and the order inside of it fractures beautifully and irrevocably.
Lips brushing in question are soon crushed and pressed together heatedly.
She has only had one lover, and she had been his. Everything they knew they had learned from each other.
He never speaks of past loves, but he is no stranger to what is to come.
There is a hunger now in the touches and she nips at his bottom lip. He groans and hauls her to him, standing and scooping her up in one motion before flash stepping them both to his room. They tumble onto the bed and his mouth is on hers and then pressing heated kisses down her neck and to her breast. She arches against the starburst of sensation radiating in swirls traced by his tongue around the sensitive apex. Echoes of the intense pleasure reverberate in the nerve endings of her core, and he presses against her rising hips with a moan.
He can feel threads of chakra along the tattooed markings, even as he cups and suckles one full breast while running a hand down her side. She shoves the vest off of his shoulders and pulls the shirt over his head. He leans over her so she can work his pants over his hips, while he rubs the pad of his thumb over the utilitarian cotton of her underwear before slipping it beneath to stroke her slick heat. He hears her breath catch on a hiss and he only has a moment to smirk before she yanks him down to her and kisses him fiercely. He feels her fingers close on the length of him and he instinctively knows that this particular hunger is something neither of them suspected lurked in their beings or that they were even still capable of feeling.
He groans as her thumb traces over the tip and then traces the path down and up again in an excruciatingly deliberate motion. She gasps at the feel of strong fingers plunging into her warmth, and the calculated and coordinated rotation of his thumb that threatens to shake her painstakingly maintained self-control to nothing.
She isn't certain quite when or how he removed what little remained of her clothing, but later inspection will reveal the use of a very sharp object.
He pulls her hips toward him, his body moving without conscious intervention.
A moment of clarity – of caution – and he pauses to take in her naked and sprawling beauty.
It was a sight he had never anticipated, and while he sure as hell appreciates it, he hesitates.
"Are you-" is as far as he gets. He meets her eyes in understanding and kisses the palm pressed to his lips.
Instead of replying, she pulls herself to sitting, hair tumbling from the quickly crafted bun, legs wrapping around his middle and arms around his neck. He wraps his arms around her back and for a moment they simply stay suspended in time. Through some mutually intelligible and no doubt infinitesimal signal, he lifts her by her hips and buries himself with in her.
The sensation of her enveloping warmth – her full breasts rubbing against his chest, her long hair sweeping over the hands that cup her bottom and pull her onto him again and again – it takes his breath away. He pitches them forward and once her back is on the mattress, the tone changes. Insistent. Driving. Primal. Devouring. She writhes beneath him, and he doesn't stop until he feels her arch against him and convulse around him. His release comes with hers, and light explodes behind his eyelids and something unclenches in his chest.
They collapse in a tangle of sheets and sweat and naked limbs. There is no more room for regret in either of their lives, and somehow they both know that is not where this will end.
Stranger still, they also both know that this – whatever it is fated to become - it isn't over.
He holds her to himself, wondering how something that should be weighing on him found him feeling lighter.
She looks up at him and he wonders if there are right words to say – because if there are, he certainly doesn't know them.
Instead, she speaks for the first time since they kissed, and it is exactly the right thing to say.
"Sleep."
He drops a kiss to her temple, and then her shoulder, and they both surrender to the unknown without question, in the comfort of the other's embrace, and the kindness of a deep and dreamless sleep.
Next Chapter: Unfinished