La Belle Dame Sans Merci: 38:
"Almost Enough"
Naruto wakes the next morning with Sasuke's hand on his shoulder, a light, cold touch. Ice, melting.
"Let's go," Sasuke says, dropping a bread roll on his face.
"Agreed," Naruto mutters, swinging his legs over the edge of the couch and making short work of the offered breakfast.
"Orochimaru-sama?" a timid voice asks, heralding a redheaded youth stepping into the pavilion. "The preparations are mostly finished."
"Good," Sasuke replies. "I'll be back outside shortly."
When the stranger has bowed and left Naruto chances a questioning glance at Sasuke, who explains it is almost noon.
Stepping out into the bleak sunlight, Naruto discovers that, startlingly, this appears indeed to be the case. Most of the Sound camp has packed up, and he spots Neji and Shikamaru in a group of foreign ninja, the Hyuuga apparently dealing out instructions.
Funny that Neji and Sound took so well to each other. On the other hand Naruto supposes they have nothing personal against each other, mainly because Neji simply does not do personal, and their cold views on usefulness, hierarchy and abstracted morality should be rather compatible.
Shikamaru looks bored and disgusted, but then Shikamaru always looks bored and disgusted.
Naruto directs his attention back to Sasuke just in time to see one of the men from yesterday's mini-council rush up behind him, leaking lethal intent all over the last sprinted meter. Just in time to see Sasuke's hand snap out behind him, crush its way straight into the attacker's torso.
The entire campsite seems still, quiet, watching suspended and with baited breath as Sasuke pauses for a moment before jerking his hand sharply, ripping the beating heart out of the other ninja. Who stands upright for a second more, eyes glazed, before falling in a bleeding heap at Sasuke's feet.
Sasuke drops the still pulsing heart on the ground like so much garbage, continues on his way as though nothing out of the ordinary has occurred. Perhaps it hasn't.
They travel for some time, swallow the other group of Sound ninja, return to Leaf.
"I'll stay with them," Neji offers.
Sasuke nods. "You too, Naruto," he stipulates, moving swiftly after that towards the Hokage Tower, a disgruntled Shikamaru in tow.
For obvious reasons they are let in at once; people want to live, the guards being no exception, and this desire compels them not to disagree with ninja who have red eyes, even if the Hokage has not given orders to the effect these red-eyed ones are to be granted immediate passage. Which, in this case, she has.
"They're here," Sasuke says, looks at his old teammate and thinks she isn't at all as much like Sakura as people tend to assume. Not at all.
"And how are they?" she inquires, fighting a headache, fighting the impulse to reach for her sake.
"Hard," Sasuke says. "Scared. Obedient. Useful."
"That is…" she stops herself, searching for words, not finding the ones she wants. "Good."
Necessary arrangements are set up in short order. Sound, understood as a separate entity and busy at work construction a modest village of their own, growing like a cancer at the eastern part of the Leaf Village wall, is to be governed by their Orochimaru-sama and a council of seven delegates.
Councilor status is won through trial by fire, simple matches, though not to the death. That would be too wasteful, with war upon them.
It is quickly stipulated that at least four of the council seats must be reserved for Sound ninja, but the remaining three are open for anyone who can fight and win. On Tsunade's insistence and with Sasuke's amused agreement, Morino Ibiki claims one of these seats for himself. Surprisingly well tolerated for a Leaf citizen, Neji takes another (my wife will be horrified).
In return the Leaf Council of Elders must admit a Sound ninja amongst them (tsunade snorts; the elders' only authority is to choose the next hokage in case the previous leader had not decided on an heir). Probably they would not have gotten away with so little, probably they would have had to sacrifice more in order to annex Sound, had it not been apparent Sasuke has sway with Tsunade (of a fashion), that Leaf's strength is more solid, and had Leaf hands not helped build the newfound Sound home.
After some negotiation, consensus is reached that concerning crimes involving both Leaf and Sound citizens, the perpetrators are to be judged and sentenced according to the laws of the victim's village. This does lead to some rather tragic-comic interludes before the system is assimilated into the general consciousness.
If you steal in Sound and are found out, no one will expect else but for the victimized individual to reclaim their property and beat the thief senseless.
It is not wise for mischievous Leaf children to nick anything from Sound.
On the other hand, the man from Leaf who slew a drunk Sound ninja is not punished, because if you cannot even protect your own life in times of peace, what good will you be on missions, and what does Sound exist for if not war?
The conflict seems to have paused, though. At least, it refrains from escalating. For the now.
xxxxx
It is almost a day before Sasuke can fetch Itachi. He glimpsed the child earlier, a bundle in Kakashi's arms; a distinctive shook of silvery hair in the crowd.
Now it is evening and he is scaling the familiar stairs, Naruto on his heels.
Itachi is awake when Kakashi eventually unlocks the door, a shouting package rocked easily by the grimacing Jounin.
Who has found, surprisingly, that he isn't so comfortable with the sleeping jutsu and who has, consequently, spent many nights hushing and soothing.
…means I love the kid too, in a way. So he has said, and apparently he means it. Discovered this rather startling fact quite recently. Has decided to stop lying so much to himself, so doesn't bother denying it.
(not lying isn't the same as telling the truth)
The less you have, the more precious it becomes?
No, that was never how it was, not for him.
Furthermore Itachi isn't his, and perhaps Kakashi does not even want him to be. This is something – he fumbles for the concept, shaking his head almost at the irony – something selfless.
The kid stops bawling, finally, and Kakashi eases his grip. Something tugs at his heartstrings, leathery and unbendy though they may be, as Itachi proves he has learned to smile. Slowly, seriously, as those few other times, he inches the corners of his mouth upward, staring straight and solemn into Kakashi's face.
Kakashi knows not to pay too much attention to this (that way danger lies) and does not hesitate to hand the baby over to its parent.
Sasuke accepts it rather uncomfortably, looks down into the little face, and his expression is – just strange. No other words for it, just weirdness.
"Poor kid," Naruto mutters, teasing, anguished, inspecting the boy over Sasuke's shoulder. "You're going to make for such a lousy mother."
"I am not," Sasuke retorts reflexively, not shifting his focus from the child.
"Yeah right, bastard," Naruto dismisses. "Hey, Kakashi, you smell strange."
Kakashi lifts an eyebrow; Sasuke belatedly looks up, tilts his head contemplatively and breathes in deeply through his nose. They are all aware Kyuubi enhances Naruto's senses, but not to what exact extent.
"Anko," Sasuke establishes, stepping back a pace and hushing absently at Itachi. "Did you sleep with her?"
"Yes, actually," Kakashi says. "Do you mind?"
"I believe not," Sasuke says thoughtfully. "Thanks for looking after him."
Kakashi just nods, a swift movement Sasuke mirrors. He walks home with Itachi on one arm, Naruto beside him carrying a bag stuffed with milk and diapers.
"So," Naruto mumbles, dumping his load in the kitchen and following Sasuke into the bedroom. "Where do we put the kid? Also, aren't babies supposed to be pretty damn noisy?"
"That's what sleeping jutsu are for, imbecile," Sasuke retorts.
"Right," Naruto replies, rather dubious about the moral of this reasoning but unfairly tempted by the prospect of uninterrupted sleep.
Quite soon the baby has been fed and tucked in in a makeshift cradle, a sweater for his blanket. While certainly not the kind of luxury heirloom cradle Sasuke slumbered in during infancy, it definitely looks a good deal cozier than the sterile social service ones Naruto had to endure. Not kid should ever have to suffer through those, the white metal creaking that no one cares for you, no one at all.
Then they are alone in the shady silence, he and Sasuke, whom he is so intimately familiar with and who has undergone so many drastic recent changes. Does that matter?
Giving birth, if not assuming dictatorship over a pseudo-village, has got to have some impact on you, right?
Sasuke looks a question at him, and yes, this time Naruto knows the answer.
"I," he says. "When I saw you in Sound. You were brilliant. So fucking wrong. And I wanted. So much."
(to fix)
Sasuke snorts at him, but it's an absent noise. More immediate, more focused, is the line of tension, the certain expression, so keenly recognized even on minutely different features.
He's tense and overloaded, chakra pushing for an outlet, muscles straining to be used.
He'd forgotten quite what if feels like, to be intimate with someone while wearing a male body. So much the same, so very different. Naruto is a quick study, for once.
"Heh," Sasuke mutters a long time later, shifting ineffectively; panting still, sweat-slick. He could push away; isn't chained anymore by the exhaustion and ache that means you're helpless and you can't get up and you will lose.
Rolling over, he looks down at Naruto's flushed, whiskered face. It remains relaxed for just a second before the tensions snaps back.
Naruto hears it clearly though Sasuke does not speak: Maybe I should do you sometime for a change, huh?
Naruto hasn't ever much thought about that. Sex was exclusively about girls for years, at least consciously, and the concept seems strange. Being inside Sasuke, in whatever incarnation, is brilliant, but he's… He hasn't always been sure Sasuke likes it.
On the one hand that makes for a very good incentive to try it out himself.
On the other there are suspicions he does not want confirmed, and his not being unused to it doesn't mean he likes pain, and he doesn't want it associated with their bedroom any more than it already is (than it has to be, we being who we are?).
"Yeah?" he mumbles, words slurred around his short breath. Willing but uncertain, reluctantly but desperately uncomfortable.
Until Sasuke gives him a lazy, knowing smirk and adds, like it's a normal thing to say and not blatant bait, not the best and worst turn-on ever, "You know, Sasuke's never done that."
Talking about himself in the third person was a habit he outgrew early, like all marks of childhood, but saying, I've never, would be a lie. Orochimaru's memories might not be the ones linked most firmly to this body, but they are mine all the same.
Abrupt as lightning Naruto drags Sasuke completely atop him, eyes dark and positively glazed with possessive desire, thighs falling open.
Sasuke opens his mouth to snicker but is intercepted by a demanding tongue.
xxxxx
Jiraiya sighs. Not unusually, Tsunade has a point. Also not unusually, that's largely bad news.
Honestly, though, he probably should corner Naruto, find out how the kid's doing, make sure everything's alright. Keep his mouth shut, or at the very least minutely censored, about Uchiha.
Getting some more info on Sound and Itachi wouldn't hurt either, and regardless of personal feelings Kyuubi must be monitored.
All of which means he bitches about it a fair bit but eventually directs his steps towards the accursed Compound – they should have burned all of it down years ago, a decent burial for all the lost souls and a firm order to those same ghosts to stay dead.
He walks fast and scowling through the sub-village, the endless rows of dead homes, looking for the single inhabited house. Heh, it's just a matter of time before the buildings start decaying – if they can't be torched, at least they could be put to use. God knows the administration is in dire need of more space.
Eventually he finds the right dwelling (there's a limit to how long his pride will allow him to stall), and, sighing again, scratching at his head, he adjusts his chakra cloaking and steps forward to knock.
Naruto opens on the fifth rap, looking sleepy and happy with some kind of worn bathrobe over his pants.
His face closes, goes anxious, when he registers who's come. "Jiraiya? What's happened?"
"Nothing, brat. Stopped by for a chat, is all."
"Okay?" Naruto says, a little warily. "Are we, um. Let me grab some more clothes first, alright?"
"Just step aside," Jiraiya tells him gruffly. "I came to talk, I said. We might as well do it here."
"I suppose," Naruto says doubtfully, lets him in. "Shield your chakra and keep your voice down, okay?"
The reason behind the request becomes obvious in a moment, when Naruto hurries to close a door, mercifully obscuring Jiraiya's brief view of a messy bed, a black head buried among its pillows.
"They're both sleeping?" he asks, relieved and disappointed that the child's kept so conveniently away.
"Yup," Naruto affirms. "Let's keep it that way. I mean, good luck trying to talk over the shouts of, 'Get the fuck off of my property!'"
Remembering basic manners (remembering old days with a big kind hand ruffling his hair and a booming voice telling him how to be helped along) Naruto offers him a seat and breakfast.
"Alright," he says eventually, when they are both seated. "You wanted to talk…?"
"Yeah," Jiraiya said. "I know we have – are of different persuasions, regarding important matters. I set out to ascertain everything worked out."
"It does," Naruto says.
"I see," Jiraiya replies, striving for non-committal.
Naruto said, Anything you do to Sasuke's child, I will do to you.
("i am," naruto says, and doesn't let go. "sasuke and i are what we are, to each other. i'm not letting you do anything to a helpless kid, and don't even think about touching his. do I make myself clear?")
And Naruto can't take it back, can't say he's sorry, even though he is, because he did not mean to stand with a punishing hand around a loved mentor's throat.
And Jiraiya can't exactly take his words back, nor say he's sorry, even though he is, because he never meant to have to threaten a child.
"Right," he says at length. "Look after yourself, kid."
"I will," Naruto says. "Thanks. For everything."
Jiraiya nods hastily, averts his face as he leaves with a (last, significant) clasp of his hand around Naruto's shoulder.
Whatever else you say about Uchiha, and Jiraiya says a lot (traitor, whore, murderer, slut, criminal) he apparently keeps Kyuubi in check. Jiraiya isn't needed for anything here (was needed, with another dark-haired prodigy, when he was young and couldn't measure up, and yes, he supposes he does know the exact moment when everything went wrong and fell apart, slipped from his eternally grasping hands).
He says, because he is old now, and realizes with a kind of blunt horror that borders on resignation and disgust both that he has nothing to leave behind, "He isn't really Sasuke anymore, you know."
"Yes he is. Orochimaru, too, but – but he'll always be Sasuke."
"That's – strange," Jiraiya admits. "The way you can think that. The way he is that. The merging jutsu finished, didn't it? Should he be them both, in equal measure? Or even more Orochimaru?"
He's always found it funny he doesn't have any trouble speaking the name. Feels the burn of it, though. Always.
And he is helpless against the bitterness, against how cheated he feels, because if anyone should be coming back… it's not fair that it was just Uchiha. Not when it could have been Jiraiya's precious person too, and holy shit, if he hadn't long since drunk himself into immunity against humiliation it would scorch him now.
"I believe," Naruto says, slowly, kindly. Impossible to refuse or refute. "That that's because, probably, he was welcome as Sasuke."
(he wasn't as orochimaru?)
"Huh," Jiraiya says. Last word, significant, without looking, because he lost too much too long ago, and perhaps it's just as well that he won't leave anything behind (knows the pain of being left behind).
Naruto looks after him for a long time before returning to his tea and his bed and his family.
xxxxx
Anko steps slowly onto the street, shading her eyes from the glaring sun – it's stupefying warm for late fall.
Her skin itches, sweat lining the fishnet of her shirt, sticking to her skull. The seal is a weak pounding, a more fevered pulse beating against the skin at the base of her neck.
She's feeling pretty good, all the same.
Hums a tone absently as she walks towards the bread shop, returning the occasional wave and nod from subordinates and colleagues. There wasn't anything at home to eat this morning; she's been meaning to restock but hasn't gotten around to it for a while.
Inside the administration building, chewing devoutly on her bread roll, she finds Morino Ibiki and essays a greeting.
He gives her the kind of amused, disgusted look practiced by everyone who's ever had younger family members that have not yet learned not to talk with their mouths full.
It cheers her, in the little ways that might matter after all.
"Everything going good?" she asks after she's swallowed. "Any new missions looking interesting?"
"Nothing much yet," he replies. A fatherly kind of tone, strangely and familiarly. "I was thinking of establishing myself as one of the Sound Councilors."
"Yeah? What'll Uchiha say about that?"
Ibiki shrugs. "His opinions are of very little interest to me. I believe we will be able to work together as professionals."
"Huh," she says, feels the seal itch acutely.
"Let us hope so, at least," Ibiki replies, with a rough, straining sort of kindness to his dry tone. Nods awkwardly, continuing towards whatever meeting or mission he is to handle. Leaves her to recline lazily on the nearby couch, stretching out with a practiced kind of magic to cover it entirely despite having a body that really should not be large enough to accomplish this. She throws a leg over the sofa's back, lights a smoke.
It's a bad habit, but what do you do? She needs something to occupy her hands.
There are several rather pressing issues she would rather not devote her thoughts to. A self-proclaimed Hidden Village of Sound established so very close, only a wall away from Leaf. Will I visit it? Walk the streets, fight and laugh with the people who created his dream?
(embodied and died for a vision she was cast away from)
All under the leadership of Uchiha Sasuke, whom she still thinks of as Orochimaru-sama, even as she curses herself for it. That's getting old.
Iruka slips into the staff room after a while, nodding surprised greeting. With sarcastic amusement she notes his gaze traveling up her mostly exposed thigh and the dull blush cresting his cheeks as a result of this unauthorized visual exploration.
Snorting, she reaches for the pack of cigs previously thrown onto the table; discovers her arm is too short for the endeavor and swings her legs back towards the floor, sits up properly so she can get at the precious sticks.
Entering, Kakashi looks up from his book just long enough to follow Iruka's gaze up her leg before she is decent again. He says, "Morning", and she is surprised the sound does not grate on her ears.
"Good morning," Iruka smiles, and Anko offers an indolent wave, liberating a cigarette.
She remembers Kakashi's hands, still a little tanned and not as steady as they were once but compensating for it adequately, capable around the child she glanced at from only a little bit of distance. Creepy dwarf, but not her problem.
Remembers those same hands on her waist, and other places. She knew it was stupid to sleep with him, knew it when she did it, because she's never been able to look a person in the face without disgust after sharing their bed (they're not orochimaru, they're not) but finds to her surprise she is not averse to Kakashi's presence.
They did what they did, and he was fine at it and she is fine with it. Might do it again, should she stumble upon him at the right time and place.
How strange.
A person she does not mind working missions with, or having lunch with, or sleeping with.
She represses a tactile flashback of staring with adoration at Orochimaru, knowing she existed through his will alone, even when things turned bad. The honor of being selected, the comfort of being his, exclusively his.
How, afterwards, people couldn't reach through the spiky self-sufficiency.
How I didn't want them to. Except now maybe I don't mind so very much, if the contact's brief.
xxxxx
Kankurou is sweating like a horse in labor, panting like a bitch in heat, thick hair and makeup that's running after all sticking to his face in pudgy flakes. He leans his cheek against the wall of the cave, hoping for dampness that isn't blood or sweat or urine. The sun is utterly merciless above them, and he cannot allow himself a single whisper of chakra to divert the heat.
He turns his head, looks at the figure hidden but waiting like destiny further inside the cave.
It was a shit choice, but Gaara killed Jounin before he'd outgrown diapers, and a kin-slayer Kankurou does not want to become, so when it turned out the opposing leaders weren't hunky-dory either but just as cold and murderous as Gaara's ever been – well, crappy choices have to be made too.
At least Gaara isn't solely at fault for his sins, and while there is a very real risk that he might kill Kankurou – he shrugs, aware a burning desert watered with the blood of civil war is not a life to be missed.
He allows himself a brief thought of Temari, pictures her blond and laughing among trees and water and friends.
It's a far cry from this sun-burned hellhole, which is good. Their sister at least should be spared this.
He slinks back into the cave, bestowing a quick, aggressive glance on Gaara before sighing in disgust and bending to check his sole surviving doll. He'll be able to fix the others, in time, if he can retrieve the parts. There are certain definite pros about having inanimate subordinates.
They'll be the only ones intact, he's ready to bet. The sand itself has been torched, then drenched again and again in blood so thick it becomes blackish.
The desert is thirsty, though. Kankurou once thought of it as benevolent, in a stern stark fashion, but the voice of their land has whispered in Gaara's ears for years now, and he knows quite well how his little brother has reacted to those commands.
Their father said once, He killed Shiori.
Kankurou was confused at the time, kneeling with Temari in front of the only parent left to them, skin scratchy from the heavy material of their mourning clothes, eyes from a child's hysterical tears – wasn't Gaara only a baby? Hadn't Mother died in childbed, through cursed fate and bad luck?
Three years later Gaara stared empty lack of empathy through the gigantic bleeding hole his sand had ripped through the middle of a shocked Jounin, and Kankurou realized their father had had a point.
Fucking snake bastard who killed him (sure, father was a fucking bastard too, but he meant well, sometimes, and he was our fucking bastard), but at least that one's fed the worms now. His father hasn't, which is grim consolation: the body will have dried out with dignity, buried in sand which harbors no life at all.
"Mother is speaking to me again," Gaara announces, sullen behind him.
"I don't hear anything," Kankurou sneers.
"She's hungry," Gaara lets him know. The implication does not need to be spoken: she is to be fed, whether it's by you or someone else doesn't matter.
"Soon," Kankurou promises him, calculating furiously, forcing sickness into effectiveness. "Soon."
He's not going to say: Fucking great, you little bastard. Tell her to shut the hell up, we're all hungry.
"Naruto," Gaara says then, wistful and lost and so childish Kankurou understands that cruelty comes naturally to him. Children are always the cruelest, the most creative in their malice. "He told me not to listen to her."
"Naruto's a good guy," Kankurou says. Naive little shit, but tough when it matterd.
Kankurou will need to be as well. Not that he really worries about that – he has waded through blood, backstabbed and dueled, for months. Will for years, he knows that, provided he lives that long.
He thinks he probably wants to stay alive and find out, hopes to be proven wrong about what that survival is likely to entail.
"She's hungry," Gaara whines again.
Kankurou kicks the doll into the wall and stares out into the punishing brightness, at the burned, sacked village beneath them, repeats the promise, the vow that'll condemn him if there is any justice in this world: "Soon."
xxxxxxxxxx