Disclaimer: I own neither Naruto nor Highschool DxD, and make no profit writing about them.

(AN): I got lots n' lotsa reviews to the last chapter in a very short time. A little odd.


Her hands were freezing cold.

Valerie examined the uneven tips of her fingernails, wondering idly if she should peel them off to keep them short and out of the way or just leave them to grow. The choice was in her hands, and she could pick one or the other without having to worry about what someone else might think.

There were a lot of choices in Valerie's hands lately.

Sometimes, she wondered how she was supposed to deal with them. Even if she had to hold off from wandering about publicly, Valerie had so many other new decisions to make she barely noticed. Food, clothes, books, conversation, games, and so on and on. Her life was full of new liberty, and sometimes it felt like she might tumble out into empty space without all the constraints she was used to.

Valerie knew very little about living life without limits, so she just focused on taking things one day at a time. If she tried to look beyond the immediate present, the vast uncertain future would surely daunt her.

"Whazzat?" Naruto mumbled in his sleep, rolling on his side and cuddling his pillow. A thin trickle of drool hung from one corner of his mouth. It was cute, in an odd way.

Smiling at the redhead, Valerie folded her hands in her lap and fidgeted about in her chair until she was comfortable. They'd only been in Gehenna for a few days before Naruto ran afoul of some enemies he'd made and ended up poisoned. He was supposed to make a full recovery very soon, but until then Valerie was content to just sit in his company.

Maybe it was a little unfair of her to leave Gasper alone instead of taking up her old mother hen role, but Valerie knew that Rias would look after the little boy excellently; and Valerie was exactly where she wanted to be. Watching over the young man that had come to save her despite never having met her before.

Naruto's generosity still boggled her mind. He'd swept into her life like a whirlwind, catching her up and carrying her away to a place and a life that she could have only dreamt of before. And he hadn't even asked her for anything in exchange. She'd prodded him as often as she dared about if he expected to be paid back with servitude or other favours, but he'd been very clear that he had no use for such things.

Rias and Naruto both seemed to have a strange kindness that precluded debts. As strange as it was, they honestly didn't seem to want anything from her beyond friendship. It was baffling and humbling at the same time, and just made Valerie all the more fond of them.

If only that fondness was enough to offset the difficulties that her appearance seemed to have caused. Rias had concocted a false story that would explain her presence without getting Naruto in trouble with his parents, but that hadn't prevented issues from cropping up with the Gremory heir's fiancé.

Ravel scared Valerie. Just a little bit.

At least her Sacred Gear had finally quieted down. The power Valerie drew from the mutated bishop piece that Naruto had given her was enough to force the artifact to be silent, and the blonde had never been so well fed in her life. She still had very little desire to try and wield the thing, but if Naruto or Rias asked her to, Valerie would do her best.

"Back again I see."

Quiet as it was, the sound of Ravel's voice broke the comfortable silence like the crack of a whip. Valerie could feel her heart lurch into a higher tempo at the sound, and she forced a polite smile on her face as she turned to consider the other blonde. "Good morning."

Ravel stared back at the newcomer, lips thinned as her blue gaze met slitted red eyes. There was no warmth in the younger girl's face, but very little coldness too. It was a cautious sort of expression, conveying very little but watchful tiredness.

Eventually, Ravel exhaled a long sigh and let her shoulders slump. "The same to you." She hailed back, striding into Naruto's sickroom and taking a chair on the opposite side of the bed. She could always act prickly and venomous, but there wasn't really any point to such a thing.

"Stop looking like I'm about to bite your head off." Ravel muttered, shifting her focus from Naruto's sleeping face to Valerie's pale features. The new Bishop was like a frightened little rabbit and looked like she'd keel over and die any second from anxious suspense. "I'm not even mad at you anyway."

Silent minutes passed after Ravel's declaration, where the younger blonde deliberately ignored the older one, and Valerie slowly began to unwind. It was only after Ravel felt like Valerie wouldn't have a nervous breakdown that she allowed herself to meet the dhampir's red orbs straight on once more. "The Vampire in a Box is looking for you again."

Valerie twitched at the dig at Gasper's agoraphobia, but let it go unchallenged. Ravel wouldn't be the first devil in Gehenna to have called her kinsman that, and none of them had done it maliciously. It was just a little friendly teasing, and whatever issue Ravel had with her, Valerie had seen no indication it extended to Gasper.

"Umm, well…" Valerie trailed off, looking to the side as she denied the implied suggestion that she leave as submissively as she could. She didn't want to earn Ravel's anger, but she had no intention of moving from Naruto's side until the redhead woke up again.

Humming at that, Ravel let the denial pass without so much as a twitch. She leaned forward in her chair, propping her elbow on Naruto's bed so she could rest her chin in her palm. The blonde's other hand poked into the unconscious Gremory heir's side with a sense of familiarity and boredom.

"You shouldn't expect too much." Ravel told the other Bishop as she continued to prod her fiance's side. Sooner or later he'd stop being lazy and finally get out of bed, but until then she had a mission to irritate the hell out of him, conscious or not.

Valerie blinked at that, tilting her head to the side in thought. Was she supposed to take that as a conversation starter? Or was it some sort of obscure warning? "I don't know what you mean, like umm?" The dhampir questioned slowly.

Bitter anger crossed Ravel's face, drawing her brows together as she poked Naruto's side harder than was really necessary. "I mean that you shouldn't expect too much from him."

"In what way?"

Huffing at the older blonde, Ravel leaned back in her stiff wooden chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She prodded the inside of her cheek with her thumb, mulling over how exactly she ought to convey her point. "I'm going to go make an educated guess here and assume that right now, you probably feel like Naruto is the best thing since sliced bread."

Pink flushed Valerie's cheeks, and she ducked her head in a wordlessly embarrassed response to the jibe. She wouldn't quite put it like that, but the sentiment was accurate. Rias had arranged for it, but Naruto was the one that had come to save her. She didn't think she'd ever forget to be grateful for that.

"That's why I say you shouldn't expect too much from him." Ravel sagged, looking much older and much more exhausted than her thirteen years warranted. "Naruto is like the sun." she added after a beat, one corner of her lip curling up in reluctant fondness. "He lights the world up, makes everything warm and worthwhile, and you can't help but want to follow him."

Valerie couldn't help but feel like there was a 'but' in there, and she was right.

"But just like the sun, he's never going to be tied down. Sooner or later, he'll disappoint you. I don't know if he's too selfish, or if he just doesn't think, but everything Naruto does is in one way or another is based on what he feels like in the moment. If something catches his eye, he'll be off without a second thought or word for you."

Swallowing thickly, Valerie steeled herself and drew her spine straight. She disliked confrontation, and she hated the idea that she might make things worse for Naruto by talking back to his fiancé, but the dhampir didn't want to sit quietly by and let him be badmouthed either. "I understand that you're upset with me." She began hesitantly, words gaining strength as she plowed on. "And while it was never my intention to do anything to cause problems, please don't take the anger you feel towards me out on him. He doesn't deserve it."

The look that Ravel gave Valerie was enough to make the red eyed girl sit back in shock, mouth dry. It was a look that glittered with nostalgia and pity. "I told you, didn't I? I'm not mad at you. I'm not even really mad at him. I'm just disappointed."

With another sigh, Ravel turned to stare out the window with a distant detached focus. "That's all I ever seem to be."


When Naruto woke up, it was with a hypnic jerk. One moment he was dreaming about living in a house made of cotton candy, and the next he was awake and sweating. "Someone's got it out for me." He complained, pinching the front of his pajama top between his thumb and forefinger and peeling it away from his soaked chest.

Gross.

He didn't feel quite up to snuff, but he was well enough to roll out of bed and pad into the private bathroom that was attached to the sickroom. Just like the room he'd been recuperating it, it was impersonally decorated and reminded him of a hotel. Not that the décor would stop him from having a decent shower.

Based on the golden light that seeped through the bathroom's frosted glass windows, it must be some point in the middle of the day. Lunchtime hopefully, because he was hungrier than a pig.

Hopping into the shower, Naruto bit back a little girly squeal as he was splashed with the initial rush of cold water. He was a man damn it, and he could tough it out until the water warmed up a bit. He'd had to deal with a lot worse as a shinobi, and he'd never live it down if anyone caught him cringing like a sissy over a little cold water.

As soon as the shower spray hit lukewarm, Naruto quickly scrubbed his body clean and leapt back out of the shower. Maybe on a different day he'd spend a little more time relaxing, but he had a lot of questions that needed to be answered. He'd been in and out of it for a few days, and had no idea what was going on with his friends or with the city his dad had asked him to look over.

Naruto whistled a low tune as he toweled dry, padding back out into the room and digging around for something to wear. Someone had been thoughtful enough to leave him some undies, blue sweatpants, and an orange hoodie, but apparently, they'd forgotten the socks.

Oh well, he couldn't win them all.

He was a step away from the door when it swung inward at breakneck, smashing into Naruto's face and making him clench a hand to his nose. "Are you trying to kill me?" the redhead wailed at Rias, making his aunt smile guiltily and wring her hands.

"Sorry!"

"Uh, I think I've broken something. It might be my dignity."

Sighing at the dramatics, Rias reached up to pat the top of Naruto's head in mock comfort. "There, there. It'll be ok. You'll make it through. One day."

Grinning at the shorter redhead, Naruto gave his stinging nose one last massage before letting his hand fall down to his side. "So, what's the latest and greatest?" he questioned, pushing at Rias until she took the hint and led him from the room. "I'm assuming that Ravel's fine too, since no one was in my room crying. What's the news from the office?"

Rias winced.

"That bad huh?" Naruto muttered, shuddering as a new thought suddenly occurred to him. "Please tell me that Mom didn't go on a roaring rampage of revenge and kill everyone there." The Mona Lisa reproduction they passed seemed to look down at the pair with a mocking smile.

Shaking her head with amusement, Rias shot her nephew a deliberately deadpan teal glare over her shoulder. "No, Naruto. Grayfia didn't massacre the entire Azmarin bureaucracy because you got yourself poisoned. She was as elegant and self-controlled as ever. In fact, she even finished vetting the rest of the government employees while you were unconscious."

"Oh." Naruto interjected a tone of false disappointment, moping and frowning at the floor. "Well that's too bad. Here I was, hoping that she would get really upset if something happened to me. But I guess that I'm just not that important."

Rias snorted.

Shrugging, Naruto decided to resume his questions a little more seriously. "But besides that particular drama, everything's fine right? I'm not going to get back to the office and find out that half the city caught on fire or something, am I?"

The Ruin Princess slowed to a stop in front of a familiar door, and Naruto felt a prickling of foreboding that only intensifies when she turned to offer him a vaguely apologetic expression. "Naruto, you won't be going back to the office. Sirzechs says things are changing on the war front and he intends to send you elsewhere. That said..." A certain cool austerity entered Rias' face, and with a jolt Naruto realized she had more similarities with Granny Venelana than just physical looks. "Don't you think you have other problems to deal with right now?"

"I don't really catch your drift." Naruto hedged, blue eyes skating away from his aunt's face to dance across the surface of Ravel's door and then further down the corridor. "Is she still kicking up a fuss?"

Heaving a sigh, Rias reached out and gave Naruto's ear a sharp tug. "She's not making a 'fuss'." The redhaired girl stated dryly when her nephew whipped back around to glare at her offending hand. "I know you don't really understand her, but I've done all I can already. Ravel has real feelings Naruto."

"Well obviously, I didn't think she was a robot or something."

"Let me finish. She has real feelings, and just like anyone else you're not always going to understand what's going on in her head just by looking at her. You have to talk. She's already made some sort of watchful peace with Valerie on her own, but that doesn't mean that whatever upset her in the first place doesn't matter. In a relationship of any kind you need to be able communicate. Otherwise it's just going to fall to pieces."

Naruto clenched his jaw, stepping back with a sense of frustration. "Look at you playing therapist." he sighed, stepping past Rias to lay his hand on the polished silver doorknob of Ravel's bedroom door. "I'm not going to disagree, since you're right. But maybe you should be looking in the mirror before you get on your high horse. You can't even admit you want to jump Sasuke's bones. So stop trying to be my guidance councilor and sort out your own issues first. "

He left Rias gaping after him when he slipped into his fiancé's room.


Listening to the way that Gasper gave a pleased little hum under the explorations of her fingers, Valerie once more combed back the shining golden strands of her kinsman's hair. She'd managed to hold on for a few hours after her strange little conversation with Ravel before caving to the guilt of ignoring her best friend and deciding that she probably should spend more time with him.

Gasper was settling in well in his opinion, but in Valerie's he wasn't doing all that well. There wasn't much of a difference between hiding in her wardrobe all the time in the Tepes castle and being holed up in a cardboard box in the corner of her new bedroom. Coaxing him out required patience and persistence on either her part or Rias', since Gasper wasn't quite ready to trust anyone else.

Valerie nodded when the little blond Bishop punctuated his description of something he'd encountered called a 'computer' with a little gasp. "That sounds lovely, Gasper. I'm sure if you ask Rias she might be willing to get one for you." If there was something she'd learned in the days since moving in with the Gremory can, it was that they were filthy rich and had no compunction against splurging a little bit. If Gasper wanted a 'computer', Rias would get him one without a second thought.

"Ahh, well..."

Tweaking her friend's nose, Valerie grinned when Gasper gave a soft squawk and tried to push her hand away. "Now, now, what did I say about our new friends here?"

"I need to give them a chance." Gasper recited by rote, face scrunched up as he rebelled against the suggestion. "But they're strange and scary, Val!" The eleven year old dhampir looked like he wanted to crawl right back in his cardboard box and hide at the thought, which only made Valerie sigh in fond exasperation.

"But I thought you were a man?" she teased, prompting Gasper to puff right up and throw out his bony chest.

"I am a man!" With the delicate features of a prepubescent girl and clad in a sundress, Gasper didn't exactly exude masculinity, but Valerie played along. It felt good to be able to fall back into a comforting familiar routine without having to worry about when the next meal would be, or if her new Sacred Gear would keep trying to drive her mad.

"Well, does a man run away from his friends?"

"No!"

"And is he scared of meeting new people?"

"I don't think so." Gasper mumbled, excitement draining away at what he knew was another lecture.

"And is he afraid of going outside?"

"No." the blond boy admitted sullenly, fiddling with the hem of his green sundress.

A firm knock at the door cut off any further exchange, and Valerie gave up prodding at Gasper for the moment to rise to her feet and crossed the room. "Hello?" she greeted as she opened it a crack, smiling at the person she found on the other side. "Yuuto."

Letting the door swing entirely open, Valerie stepped to the side to make room for Rias' Knight and the delicious lunch tray he was carrying. The mere smell of the beef stew was making her ravenously hungry, and sharpened the appetite she'd discovered when she made the transition from a blood based diet to more varied one.

They hadn't spoken at all during the diplomatic trip Rias' peerage took to her father's castle, and in the few days since arriving in Gehenna they hadn't spent much time together. Neither of those facts stopped Yuuto from smiling like a fairytale knight, grey eyes twinkling as he handed her the lunch tray with a flourish. "We hope the two of you enjoy the meal."

"We will." Valerie reassured him, bowing with thanks.

After accepting her gratitude with a polite nod, Yuuto turned about on his heel and left the two dhampir alone. It wasn't in his nature to push if he wasn't welcome, and just forcing Gasper to be in the same room for a short time was about all he was willing to do.

Blood red eyes glittered as Valerie took in the steaming bowls, and after inhaling another lungful of the scent, she looked over her shoulder for Gasper. The boy's chair was conspicuously empty, and he must have vacated it in the time when her back was turned and before she'd opened the door. Still, the blonde didn't have to look far for him.

He was in that silly little box again.


"Yo."

Ravel twitched at the sound of Naruto's voice, but decided to leave him hanging while she worked her way to the bottom of the page she was on. It wouldn't kill him to wait half a minute, and in general she felt like she was done jumping to satisfy her fiance's fancies.

Finishing off the last paragraph, Ravel groped over the small round table beside her armchair until she grabbed hold of her little green bookmark. In the little piece of paper went, marking where her reading had been halted. It was too bad she had nothing to mark where her life seemed to be halted.

The Bishop settled her hands demurely in her lap, lifting her head to meet her fiance's gaze and smile politely. "What can I do for you?" For days Ravel had raged until all the fire and anger inside her burned out, and now all she had left was a creeping chill in her heart. There were only so many times she could be forgotten and shunted to the side before she decided it was best to just stop caring any longer.

Naruto frowned, shaking his head at the blonde before circling around the room to grab the nearest empty airchair. He dragged it across the floor with the faint squeal of wood-on-wood until it was near Ravel, but still out of kicking distance if he accidentally riled her. Then he plopped down and stared at the girl with an expectant gaze. "What's on your mind?"

"Nothing." Ravel lied, reaching for her book and cracking it bake open. It was too little, too late, and she was done trying to talk out the same old dance with him. Only a madwoman would keep trying the same thing and hope for a different result, and whatever else she was, Ravel certainly wasn't crazy.

A tan hand slapped over the open pages, carefully but firmly pulling the book out of Ravel's grip.

"I know that's a lie." Naruto sighed, tossing the book onto Ravel's bed before he settled his elbows on his knees. "And you know that's a lie too. It's not going to help if you just try to pretend like nothing ever bothered you, so let's just get it all out in the open. Tell me what got you upset so I can fix it, or at least apologize and explain myself."

The blonde strands of Ravel's hair were laying straight and unbound down over her shoulders, but that didn't stop her from making a short abortive motion to tug at a drill curl that wasn't there at the moment. "Naruto, I can't just repeat myself over and over again. If you didn't listen to me before, I doubt you're going to listen now."

Naruto blinked in confusion, running a thumb over the skin of his knuckles. What did she mean by that? Digging back through his memories he could really only remember one time Ravel had blown her stack at him, and that was because of the whole acting like an overprotective knight thing he'd been doing. "I'm not really seeing how I treated you like a kid?"

"You didn't." Ravel agreed blandly, crossing her legs and causing her pink skirt to ride up slightly. The alternating stripes of her kneesocks drew Naruto's gaze for a split second before he dismissed them. "But if you recall, I told you I wanted to be treated as your friend, your Bishop, and your future wife. How is running off to the human world without so much as a word doing any of that?"

Cocking a slender red eyebrows, as if to question if that was all, Naruto nodded in acknowledgement. "I didn't think it would be anything to write home about. It's not like I was leaving forever or anything. I was just popping up to the human world for a day or so."

A swell of irritation sparked in Ravel's gut at the nonchalant mien her fiance assumed. "Well you thought wrong." she shot back sharper than she intended, before making herself take a steadying breath and force down the burst of anger. "Look, maybe it doesn't matter to you, but we are engaged. That makes us partners. What kind of partnership is it when you run off whenever you like, and make a big important decision like adding someone to your peerage without even doing me the courtesy of a phone call before doing so?"

"I'll tell you what kind of partnership it is." Ravel mercilessly cut off Naruto when he opened his mouth to try and get a word in. "It's a partnership of formality. One that exists in name only in order to provide me with a little fiction that I can't even pretend actually means something. I would never make such an important appointment or go on such a risky adventure without your input. But you didn't even make the effort to warn me, much less as for my opinion. I had to find out from Rias where you were. And I realize that by the standards of Gehenna I don't have any sort of legal standing beyond glorified property, but I had expected better than that from you. If you're not capable or willing, at least be honest with me so I stop expecting you to be different."

"Whoa now, hold on there!" Naruto brought his hands up in a slow down gesture, palms open and flat. "Look, I didn't know you felt that way and I'm sorry. I just didn't think it would matter all that much. It's not like I'd get upset if you decided you needed a couple of days off. It'd be one thing if you were moving somewhere else or getting a new job, but I just don't see how it would make you explosively mad."

Very slowly, Ravel let her golden eyebrows climb up to her hairline. "You don't see it, hmm?" Although she'd been trying to keep calm and simply detach from the whole issue, Naruto was unconsciously but very effectively needling her, and her tone was rolling in sarcasm. "Let's put the shoe on the other foot. So you don't think you'd have a few questions if I up and vanished for two days and came back holding hands with some strange man you'd never met before?"

Naruto pictured that image in his head, and felt a few prickles of angry heat buzz in his head. Fair enough, she did have a point there. Certain questions would need to be asked, and he'd be pretty damn suspicious either way.

"We've been engaged for a few years now, Naruto." Ravel continued on when it became clear the Gremory heir was getting lost in his own head. "If you decide you want a harem, fine, whatever. I might not be the biggest fan, but it's your prerogative as a pureblood noble of good standing to do so. But I expect that even if you do that you still treat me with some respect. I'm the one that's supposed to be your wife, and I'd hope you'd consult me before making decisions about your life. At the least, I'd expect that you'd show me a little more affection than some woman you just met a few hours past. If you can't even casually hold my hand after all these years but you're willing to with Valerie Tepes right after meeting her, I'm not exactly holding out hope for this marriage."

"Ravel, I'm thirty-five. Not fifteen."

"So?"

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Naruto leaned back in his armchair and gave a slow sigh. "I'm a thirty-five year old former human, Ravel. I still have some hangups. Maybe someone who was always a devil wouldn't have them, but to me if I tried to do something like that to you I'd feel like I was taking advantage of you like some gross kiddy diddler. Maybe it'll be different when you're a few years older, but I can't promise that. Valerie on the other hand is already well on her way to adulthood. So even if I was getting all hot and bothered over her - and I'm not saying I am - then she'd still be a 'safer' target."

Ravel kicked him, aiming right for the kneecap.

"Hey!"

Slapping a hand against her developing chest, Ravel mustered up a glare full of fire as she stared down her errant fiance. "Naruto, it doesn't matter how old you are or what you once were. You're a devil now. If you have hangups like that, you have to start getting over them. Otherwise the next ten thousand years are going to be very painful for you, and probably for me too."

A pink flush coloured the Bishop's cheeks, and she looked off to the side. "Like, I'm not bothered at all by the age gap. I'd even do some things with you now."

Shutting his eyes, Naruto knuckled at his left temple. Insecurity and jealousy. He should have known. "Look, I can't promise that I can change. It's not a switch that I can just flip on and off whenever I want. But if you can be patient with me, I'll try."

Despite the age difference, Ravel had a point. He couldn't keep obsessing over human cultural scruples and expect to have a happy marriage. And while he still didn't really agree with her need to know where he was at any given time of the day, he could see her point about not calling her up and getting her input on recruiting a new person into his peerage. All relationships were about compromise, and he couldn't keep going around like some free spirit anymore.

"Well I suppose that's the best I can hope for right now."


(AN): Another 5000. I'll post this before bed.

Valerie Edit - I made a minor switcheroo for Valerie and Gasper's Evil Pieces. Valerie gets a Mutation bishop, and Gasper has two regular bishops. I originally made Valerie a regular bishop for the sole reason that it felt weird if Rias and Naruto both had mutation bishops. But then I realized I could just give Gasper two regular bishops, because Rias had both pieces free, and give Valerie a mutation bishop. It makes more sense this way.

Sirzechs' obsession with blood purity - Keep in mind that the genetic purity really does matter. We already know from Sairaorg that not every pureblood gets their clan powers. So saving their lives over every else is quite important for the genetic stock.