Disclaimers: A, I don't own Naruto.

Bleeding Martini
By Areku1993
Chapter ten: Lilies, Orchids and Mistletoes

It was midnight when Kiba woke up. He sat up and rubbed an eye, leaning over to switch on the light. Running a hand through his hair, he glanced at the clock and winced. "Midnight... How nice..." He got out of bed in his pajamas printed with little puppies (Puppies were his weakness) and went to the next room over to check on Martini. Hinata had offered to let the Inuzuka's stay at the Hyuuga's mansion until their house was rebuilt. And it had been chaos whe it was discovered the Hyuugas were cat lovers.

He pushed open the door and noticed the bed was empty. For a moment, he was hypervenilating, but Neji walked by yawning and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "The river..."

Kiba regarded Neji's back with a look. Why was he up? He looked down the corridor. Ah. Bathroom.

Kiba, careful not to wake anyone, slid out into the cold October night and stole off to the river, leaving Akamaru inside. He didn't want to scare the wits out of Martini, and a giant dog creeping up on you at midnight was frightening. But a human creeping up on you at midnight was even scarier.

He made his way through the trees until he saw the moonlight glittering off the water. Ah, the river. How many times he swam in it during summer he didn't know. But tonight was not a night for swimming.

He broke out of the trees and into the clearing around the riverbanks. "Martini-sama?" He called quietly. Kiba's keen hearing picked up strangled sobs and the swish of a liquid in a glass bottle. "Martini-sama?"

"Go away, Kiba-kun." Was the response.

"Martini-sama, I want to help." He looked around and kept ducking around trees. Where was she? "What's wrong? Where are you?"

"I said go away, Kiba-kun."

"I don't want to go away until you tell me what's wrong!" He replied, ever persistant. He sniffed the air and blinked. How had she erased her smell? His left ear twitch, and he turned that way. That was where the sound waves of her voice were coming from...

"GO AWAY!"

Kiba found himself facing an monster; it had the body of a dragon, and it was as large as one, but the enormous horns of a bull, and a gold ring going on one nostril and circling out of the other. It snorted at him and bent its head close, it's grapefruit-sized yellow, unblinking eyes focused directly on his face.

"Your images don't f-fool me!" He called over the breathing of the bulldragon, his voice faltering slightly. Knowledge was only useful if you could resist believing what you saw.

The bulldragon disappeared. "I forgot you knew. But just go away. I don't want to talk to you right now."

"Why?"

"Because I'm busy, Kiba-kun."

"But M..." Kiba looked at the sky. "Martini-chan..."

From her stop by the waterfall, Martini turned. Had she heard right? Chan?

"...The waterfall..."

Kiba sprang forward out of the bushes to land next to her by the water. The image of a lantern next to her provided a flickering light. "What's wrong, Martini-chan?"

She looked at him; Kiba noticed the small trails of water on her stiffening face. She smiled. "I found some more tears to cry. But I'm done now."

"Why were you crying, then?"

"It's just..." Martini looked at the water and swirled it around with her finger. "...Aufer was my best friend..."

Kiba sat down and looked into the water. He blinked slightly and said, "You don't need to prove anything, Martini-chan."

Martini bent her head to one side. "What do you mean?"

"We're on this mission to protect you. You can cry, you can be scared, hell, you could want to kill us all. But you'll never change in our eyes. You were hiding your emotions when you said you wouldn't cry earlier, when you really wanted to sit down and cry until you puked. It's okay."

Martini looked at him, then at her feet. "I know."

"No, you don't, which is why we're here right now."

Something floated by in the water that caught Martini's attention. She dipped her hand into the water and pulled it out; a lily.

"The lily..." Her voice trailed off as she smiled. She turned her body to Kiba and took his hand. "The flower of the zodiac sign Cancer. In the profiles Tsunade gave us, you were born July seventh, no?" She pressed the flower into his palm. "That's a Cancer. Same as Akamaru."

Kiba blinked. Where was this coming from? He looked down at the flower in his hand. "When were you born, Martini?"

"... March fourth." With a delicate shimmer, a flower appeared in her hand, which she twirled by the stem several times before it disappeared in gray smoke. "The Orchid. The Japanese symbol for conquest."

"How do you know this?"

"I was interested in flowers once I moved to Sunagakure. They have so many flowers there! In Sunagakure, flowers are loved because they're exotic. They get lots of imports. As I grew, I never went to school, really, so I kept myself busy by looking up flowers in dictionaries."

Kiba's eyes shone bightly in the dim light as he remembered something else his elder sister had told him about the orchid. "The orchid isn't the symbol for conquest. That's a nasturtium. My sister told me. The orchid is the symbol for love, refinement. Beauty."

Kiba noticed her blush, as she obviously knew this. "And you know what else?"

Martini looked up. "What?"

Kiba reached up into a tree and broke off a leaf, holding it above them. "The mistletoe is the only flower that means 'kiss me.'"

Afternotes: AHAHAHAHAHAHA SUSPENSE! -Points and laughs maliciously-