Chapter 6
She snapped back to reality when she felt the cold, withered hand of her grandfather grab her elbow suddenly. Her breath got caught in her throat and her spine snapped straight. "Don't make a scene," he hissed so lowly that it was only audible to her.
The sound of her teeth grinding together assaulted her inner ears. She couldn't unclench her teeth no matter how hard she tried. Her face was screwed up in anger, though she doubted anyone noticed. All the people in the crowds were looking at each other or milling about with any number of differing emotions on their face.
She only had one emotion available to her. "But gramps-"
"If you make a single sound more, I will make you so heavy that you won't be able to stand for weeks."
Kurotsuchi bit back her tongue and closed her eyes. She felt a hot wetness on her cheeks. Was she crying? Too many emotions that she had thought were long gone began to bubble up in her chest. Sadness, anger, frustration, fear, doubt, and above all, helplessness. As she glared at the teenager next to her, him waving out to the crowd and blowing raspberries in an utterly humiliating display of juvenility and childishness, Kurotsuchi felt the most intense sensation of helplessness well up inside of her.
No, that's not right. She wasn't helpless anymore. She was a fucking adult now. She could do whatever she damn well pleased.
And it would damn well please her to shove a katana down his throat and look him in the eyes as he choked on his own blood.
Oh, it would please her greatly.
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Mei, being the one standing on the other side of Kurotsuchi, was the first one to sense the incredibly fluctuating chakra signature to her side. Mei glanced over and saw streams of tears pouring out of the girl's eyes like miniature waterfalls and a face that was more tortured than many of the people she'd seen dying on the battlefield. Something was very wrong.
As soon as she noticed this, she walked up behind Jiraiya and quietly said, "We have a problem," interrupting his speech mid-sentence.
Without changing his facial expression in the slightest, Jiraiya nodded ever so slightly and immediately pivoted away from the point he was making with promises of more minute details trickled down by the elite shinobi. By the time they had turned around, there were only four members of the contract standing in a line.
Kurotsuchi was gone, having brushed past her grandfather, leaving him flat on his ass on the ground next to a confused Naruto.
"What's going on?" he asked, looking over to where he had last seen Kurotsuchi's fleeing form.
Jiraiya took charge of the group, saying "Everyone, body flicker down to the room right now," in a stern and domineering voice.
The leaders and their charges paired up without a second buffer and vanished from the rooftop, leaving a citizenry confused as to what happened. Soon, they would begin to filter back to their homes with confusion, doubt, and trepidation in their hearts. Never before had something like this happened. Nevermind a 6-way marriage, few remembered a time when five kage were in the same general vicinity and there wasn't a war going on. The general populace would debate, argue, and whisper in hushed tones as to how they thought it was going to shake out. There would be a hundred different conspiracy theories by the time the sun set and a hundred more by the time the sun rose. Some could agree, some were indifferent, and others still couldn't accept allying with any of the other big five. The next week or so were of vital importance to the people's perception of how things might shake out.
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Naruto almost stumbled forward, but he was held steady by the grip of Tsunade. As soon as Onoki was down, she said "What's going on?" with a hint of frustration in her voice. Things had been going so well. What could have happened to exacerbate the ire of the girl from rock? Honestly, it was that girl that made her the most worried for the future of the alliance. The rest were either staunchly pragmatic or indifferent to the contract, but Kurotsuchi was excitable and acted on emotion in a way not wholly unreminiscent of the teenager whose shoulder she was grabbing. So when Kakashi brought the two of them in front of her, covered in tar and paint, but laughing their asses off, she couldn't help but feel a load lift off her shoulders a little bit. If they could work things out, then maybe peace could be achieved.
Now, the weight came crashing back down, heavier than ever.
Onoki brushed himself off grumpily and stood as straight as his age would permit with his arms crossed over his chest. "Oh, don't tell me your 'spymaster' didn't tell you about this. Anyone who's anyone knows that there's been an impromptu kage meeting since a few weeks ago. If your spymaster doesn't know what's going on, then he isn't worth his salt."
Tsunade desperately wanted to admonish him for shifting the topic of conversation, but she knew that there wasn't time for that. Instead, she turned to look at Jiraiya and lifted an eyebrow.
He splayed his hands to the side and shrugged. "Of course I knew that there was a meeting in leaf, but I had no idea what it was about. I only just managed to pull up dossiers on the five women and I only had about half a day to do it."
"And?" Mei asked.
"And what?"
Mei sighed. "Since his lordliness," she pointed at the grumpy Onoki, who was turning his head away from all of them. "Isn't talking. What do you know about her? She was fine when she got up there and suddenly, her chakra went wild."
"Wait, what?" Naruto asked, interjecting himself in the conversation. "Why did that happen?"
"That's what we're trying to figure out, kid," Ai muttered.
"Well it has to be something you said, Jiraiya," Shibuki said. "There's nothing else that could have happened to have upset her so."
Everyone turned to look at the slight man, making him almost flinch. He wasn't used to speaking out too often and everyone in the room had a sort of 'unassailable' vibe going around them.
"Well Jiraiya," Tsunade said, turning to him. "What did you say?"
His face had been screwed up in concentration for a little bit when she looked at him. "I don't know. Her introduction wasn't as long, but I couldn't find anything as noteworthy as the others."
"And she wouldn't go bipolar over a shortened introduction," Temari quipped.
"Perhaps it was something to do with Naruto's introduction?" Gaara put forward. "If it was happening around that time, then it might not have had to do specifically with her."
Jiraiya looked like a man scrambling for his own sanity. "But I didn't do anything then either! I introduced him to the populace, made them feel for him, then I told… them…" Jiraiya began to trail off as he began to make connections between what he thought were once disparate facts. He turned to Onoki, who was still shoving his nose the other way. The old man's refusal to speak wasn't just due to his stubbornness. He was… ashamed?
"Onoki…" Jiraiya said lowly. "You didn't…"
"I didn't have any other choice, child!" Onoki shouted. "There was no one else eligible other than her and I made sure that my son wouldn't tell her the truth!"
"Well it looks like that went by swimmingly!" Jiraiya shouted back. "How could you think this was a good idea?"
"I didn't have any other choice, child!" Onoki reiterated. "You think I wanted to do it this way? Anybody else would have flat out refused me or tried to kill him! At least this way, I had some control over her."
"Except it looks like you don't, old man."
"The contract was originally made 16 years ago, child!"
"HEY!"
The room went quiet at the sudden outburst from Yugito. Her mouth was curled in a snarl and her eyes looked murderous. "I, for one, am quite annoyed at being left out of the loop. Would you kindly explain to me just what's going on?"
Onoki crossed his arms and turned away from them while Jiraiya pinched the bridge of his nose. "Kurotsuchi's mother," Jiraiya breathed out. "Died in one of the battles Naruto's father was present."
"She didn't just die while he was there," Onoki spat out. "She was killed by his hand."
The room went quiet as the inhabitants digested the meaning of what was said. Naruto was struck so hard by it that his knees feel out from under him, forcing him to sit down in a chair. Fu's eyebrows scrunched together. "That's…"
"Fucked," Temari finished. "Like, really fucked."
Mei crossed her arms and huffed. "Oh, please. This continent has been ravaged by war for so long that everyone has buried their friends or loved ones. Honestly, she's being quite petty."
"Have you ever lost anyone?" Yugito asked.
Mei's eyes narrowed as she looked at the militaristic woman. "Is that supposed to be a joke? I grew up on a battlefield. Of course I've lost loved ones."
"And I bet no one asked you to marry the son of the ones who killed your friends."
Mei waved it off. "The sins of the father should not carry on to the son. It shouldn't matter what his father did to her mother. Especially not when the balance of the world hangs precariously over the tides of war."
"Even so," Yugito offered. "Would you be able to marry the son of a man who killed a person you loved?"
Mei tapped a finger against her elbow rhythmically. "If I had to…" She gritted out.
Yugito closed her eyes and sighed. "Well it doesn't sound like Kurotsuchi lived on a battlefield. Any of the fighting she did, I doubt it was to destabilize the balance of the big five. At this point, she's actually rather naïve to how the world works. Can you blame her for running?"
"Yes, I can, and I will. Even one naïve as her has to know how important this is." Mei took a moment to take a deep breath and collect herself. "I doubt we were the only ones who saw her outburst. Why are we even debating over this? We should be trying to find her."
Naruto stood up suddenly, a resolute look shining on his face. "You're right. We should go."
"Split up?" Fu asked. "Or maybe a… tracker?" She trailed off as she saw the fleeing tail end of Naruto burst out of the door and down the hallway of the building, an idea of where to find her already in mind.
"No! Ahh… shit. He's gone." Tsunade turned to Jiraiya. "Do you have any tracking toads?"
He nodded, already biting his thumb. "Yup," he said, before slamming a palm on the table, releasing a puff of smoke and revealing a small toad smoking a pipe far too large for it.
"Ah, boya. Watcha callin me out here for?"
"Do you smell the paint?" he asked.
The toad grew indignant. "Waddyou take me for? Of course I can."
"Well," Jiraiya said, showing the way. "If you'd lead?"
The toad sighed and got up. One could practically hear the creaking of his joints. "Okay, okay, off we go," he said before jumping off and landing on the ground. A few seconds went by before he jumped again, making it to the door. He turned around, eyeing everybody. "Waddya waiting for?"
Tsunade leaned over to Jiraiya. "Should we just call Kakashi?"
"I heard that!" The toad shouted. "Ain't nothing a dog can do that a toad can't! Now get your asses in gear. We're going turbo drive," the toad said before jumping out the door and into the hallway. This time, only a second passed before he jumped again. By shinobi standards, he was moving a snail's pace.
Tsunade pinched the bridge of her nose. "I swear, on one side, I'm pressured by shady, backdoor dealings of dubious moral nature, and on the other, it's incompetence on the greatest level."
Jiraiya sighed into the palm of his hand. "I know, I know. I'll call a faster one next time."
"I heard that!"
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Naruto burst out of the tree line and into the grassy meadow breathing hard and his mind in turmoil. The sun hit him like a brick to the face and he had to shade his eyes quickly. He'd been running through the trees for a good five or so minutes before he came to where he wanted to be. To his right was the rest of the meadow and a large tree overhanging a medium sized pond, and to his left were three wooden poles firmly stuck in the ground. On top of the middle one was a hunched over individual hugging her knees to her chest. On the pole next to her was a katana stuck sliced into the base of the wood.
He opened his mouth to shout out to her, but as he took a step forward, his foot squelched on the ground. It hadn't rained for days. There shouldn't be mud. When he looked down and lifted up his foot, there was purplish pink paint stuck to the bottom of the soles. His visage went grim and a frown marred his face. Looking at the paint made his stomach queasy because just minutes prior, he had associated that paint with the laughing grin of Kurotsuchi.
She was a strange, brusque, rude, and abrasive person. But the more he talked to her, the more he found her personality to be infectious. There weren't many people he could let loose around. In fact, other than maybe Shikamaru, he always found himself holding back a part of himself when interacting with people. He had just met her and they grated on each other's nerves, but he couldn't find it in himself to dislike her. They were alike in too many ways.
And now, with the paint staining his foot, he realized he didn't know what he was going to say. What could he say? How could he say it? How could he say sorry to the fact that his father killed her mother? He didn't want to hurt her. He wanted to talk with her more. He wanted to… He wanted the marriage thing to go well. He wanted them to be friends.
Instead of shouting out her name and running towards her like his body had been telling his mind to do, he instead walked toward her in a more sedate pace. He didn't sneak up on her or try to mask his presence. He just needed time to figure out what to say.
He couldn't find them. Not the words, nor the way. So when he stood behind her, mouth agape and throat struggling to find words, he felt like an idiot. He always knew he wasn't the smartest of the bunch, but it was only then, standing behind someone who was hurting because of him, unable to apologize or even to say anything that he felt well and truly like an imbecile. Like a dobe. Maybe Sasuke was right all along. How could he bring back the Uchiha if he couldn't even find the right words?
Naruto took a deep breath and hopped up on the other stump next to her. He was on her right and on her left was where the katana was stuck. He looked up to the sky with the birds chirping and the leaves rustling in the breeze. He could feel the wind on his arms because he had shucked away his tar logged coat a while ago. It still covered his legs and other bits not covered by the coat, but at least it was possible to move that way. Since her clothes weren't stained anymore, but paint was still stuck to her skin, he could only guess that she ran to the house for a change of clothes.
Why wasn't it raining? Why wasn't the sky crying? Why did the birds chase each other around without a care in the world? Couldn't anyone but him see the pain the girl was in?
No, he was the only one. The only thing that could comfort her in that moment and what was he doing? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.
"The… the weather's… nice," Naruto said lamely. He didn't know what else to say. There was nothing else to say. Everything from the quiver in his voice to the words he chose told her everything she needed to hear for her to understand.
And even so, she said nothing. Her eyes were dead and they didn't see the world. There were unwiped tear tracks on her cheeks. He took a deep breath and said "I'm-"
The sound of a blade being pulled from a stump and the air being cut. He blinked and there was a sword digging into the skin of his throat. "Don't say it," she said. "If you say 'I'm sorry', I think I just might have to cut your head off."
Naruto put a finger on the dull part of the blade and pushed it away from his throat. He started to scramble for words. What could he say? What?! "I… I didn't have many friends growing up. Can you believe that?"
It was like the strength to hold the sword vanished from her arm. It fell to the ground where it sunk a few inches in.
Naruto nodded. "It was… I don't know, maybe you didn't have friends either so you can relate or something, but it was hard, for me. I didn't know why the parents didn't let their kids talk to me. So it was… hard. It was, you know, it was because of the demon sealed in my gut, but I didn't know that back then. I thought it was… just because of me. I didn't have parents to tell me I was special or really anyone to comfort me, so… I wanted attention."
He looked to the side to see if she was still paying attention. Her eyes were open, but he wasn't sure if she was listening. Even so, he continued on. "I used to do so many stupid fucking things to get attention because when people were looking at me, they were acknowledging me. It was like, I was invisible unless I pressed their hand. Being looked at, even if it was with annoyance or malice, it made me feel like I existed. And then, when I was older, like… only about three years ago almost… I met someone who looked at me. The real me, not the one that everyone else saw. I think I only really realized it when he- when he put himself between me and a giant shuriken before telling me to run away. I realized that… I could exist. And, I started to make more friends who looked at the real me until… until it didn't feel so bad sleeping in an empty house anymore. It would always hurt though. And that's why… you know, now that I think about it, this whole… thing. It might not be so bad anymore. I can… I can have a family. In a real fucked up way, but still. I can wake up and talk to someone about nothing. I can go to bed knowing I'm not alone. I can…" Naruto sighed, hanging his head down. "I don't know where I'm going with this anymore. But… I don't want to hurt you."
Kurotsuchi's face contorted on itself. Her face went red and a new wave of tears welled up behind her eyes. She reached down, grabbed the sword, and swung upwards, stopping at his throat again. Her arm was shaking, leaving a few angry red lines on his throat and beginning to stain the edge of her sword red. "I… I… I want to hate you so bad right now. I want to be able to watch you bleed out on the grass and spit on your bleeding, fucking corpse. You weren't the only one who had it hard. My dad had to raise me by himself because of your dad. When he was away on missions, I had to be taken care of by the neighbors and they treated me like glass, like a precious doll. Do you have any idea how many times I wanted to scream and bite and tantrum every time they snuck off to a corner where they thought I couldn't hear them and whisper 'Oh, poor girl', 'mom got stuck by the fourth hokage', 'such a terrible thing, and to the granddaughter of the kage too'. It was-" The tears fell out of her eyes like a river and a sob choked her throat. "Everyone… they sucked up to me. Their smiles were fake. Their tears were fake. Their words were fake. Everything about everyone and everywhere was fucking FAKE! And when I was in an empty house, crying myself to sleep, the only thing I could think of was a mother I don't even remember the face of. And I remember hate."
Her arm fell down again and her face slackened, though it wasn't due to an emotional mask she put on. Just the process of showing emotions was too taxing on her. It took too much energy. "Everyone hated the fourth hokage, but I hated him the most. It didn't matter if he was dead because I would always hate him for taking something away from me that I never even got to understand. You think you were alone? Well so was I."
Naruto's nose flared up. "What the fuck are you talking about? You have a dad! You have someone who loves you unconditionally and would never let you go! You have someone who would cry if you died! You're not alone! I didn't have any of that!" he screamed.
Kurotsuchi's nose flared up too. "You can't understand the pain I've been through! Everyone always trying to take advantage of me! Everyone never meaning what they say! I was worse than nothing! I was sub-human. I was a stepping stone! A way to better peoples' careers!"
"And you also had people who loved you! I didn't!"
"And it wasn't my mom's fault for that! My mom didn't take anything away from you! My mom didn't put a fucking demon in your gut! My mom didn't do a single goddamn, motherfucking thing wrong! SO WHY DID YOUR DAD KILL HER?"
"i don't know. i never knew him. he was just the guy who put a fucking conglomeration of evil and hatred in my navel and peaced out! you think i love my dad? i didn't even know who he was two days ago! I DON'T KNOW WHY HE KILLED YOUR MOM, BUT HEY, GUESS WHAT? SHE'S NOT COMING BACK!"
Kurotsuchi looked like she had been struck in the chest by a club. The shock on her face was soon replaced with a snarl. "The fuck did you just say?"
Naruto slouched, all anger evaporating from him like a pan of water left out on a hot day. "Nobody's coming back. I can't change that. You can't change that. Nobody can change that. I can't apologize for something that my dad did, but I can say one thing," he looked her straight in the eye, expressing all the sadness, anger, and fear in those eyes of his with one look. "I like you. And I don't want you to be hurt."
Her breathing became staggered. Anger was choking her throat. She screamed like and animal and pounced on him, pushing him off the log and onto the grassy floor. She put her knees on his shoulders and punched him in the face. The first one hit him like a rock. Kurotsuchi's eyes widened at the realization of what she'd done before anger took hold once more. Her fists fell on his face like hammers. His features were soon slick with blood and puffed up from the bruising. That didn't matter to her. The blows kept raining over and over and over. Even when there was no strength in her arms and her knuckles were ripped up and she was sobbing uncontrollably did they stop making any damage.
She had to palm the grass with both hands to keep her torso up, so she couldn't do anything to stop Naruto from spitting out a wad of blood and turning his face to her. His eyes were swollen shut, so he couldn't see anything, but she got the feeling that he knew where her eyes were. "Do you feel better?" he asked scathingly.
She took a few shaky breaths. "No... I don't." Her voice was measured and even. Sense was returning to her.
"Get off me." It wasn't a question or him asking her to. There was no please or thank you. He was not gentle in saying it and he was not kind.
Kurotsuchi nodded and backed up until her back was pressed against the log with her ass on the ground. She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her forehead on top. Naruto sat up too, opposite her. "So?" he asked.
Kurotsuchi didn't look up. "So what?"
He sighed and laid back down. His face hurt just from talking. That girl packed a punch. "So are you still in this thing?"
She was done. Exhausted in every way that could be defined. "Yeah… sure."
Naruto got up to his feet and slowly walked towards her before extending a hand. "Can you get up on your own, or do you need help?"
Kurotsuchi raised her head from her knees and stared at the hand. It was rough and calloused. A hand that only knew hard work and determination. It was attached to the son of the man who killed her mother. It was attached to someone she had just brutalized the face of. It was attached to someone who didn't see her as the sum of her title.
She took the hand and it pulled her up. She could have stood up on her own if she wanted to though.
At their full height, he was about a head taller than her. Blood was dripping out of his face and was starting to stain his undershirt. She couldn't tell what he was thinking because of how bad his face was messed up. What could she say? What should she say? "I'm-"
"Ah!" Naruto grunted out, holding a finger up. "If you say 'I'm sorry', I might just have to cut your head off."
Her mouth pressed into a line and she hung her head down in shame. Funny, she thought she didn't have any tears left. Her body proved her wrong when a new stream flowed from her eyes. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I'm sorry." She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against his sternum. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Naruto wrapped an arm around her back and held the muttering girl. "It's okay, I know you are."
Kurotsuchi cried into his chest softly. Gone were the choking sobs. In their place was a quiet somberness. She wouldn't be able to tell because of the blood on his face, but Naruto was crying too. "It's okay," he mumbled. "It's okay."
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Yugito looked at Kurotsuchi's room with an even expression. Almost everything in the room sans the bed had been torn up, splattered with paint, and thrown about haphazardly. She'd already seen it a few times and had even thought of tidying it up a little bit, but she always held off on doing so. It wasn't like she owed the girl anything. She got on her nerves, in fact. The room stank of acrylic, so she took a deep breath in the hallway before stepping in. She got to the closet and opened the door, revealing orange tracksuits that had been torn to shreds and brutalized. Right under them were a pair of clothes completely covered in paint. Yugito could only assume those were the ones that Kurotsuchi had body flickered into administration wearing.
The tall woman turned around and looked at the rest of the room. God, that girl had a temper. That was dangerous. How was such an excitable girl still be alive in her profession? Finding out you were marrying the son of the man who killed your mother or not, some displays of emotion were far too much. Yugito shook her head, allowing the air trapped in her lungs to escape through her nose. She really hoped there were a pair of pajamas laying around somewhere for Naruto to use. She wasn't much for the idea of sleeping with him in the buff.
'Oh my, young kitten. For you to toy with the notion-'
Yugito took a page out of Tsunade's handbook and pinched her nose to stem the oncoming headache that came with dealing with her demon. 'Could you please not do this right now?'
She could hear an exaggerated sigh come from her mind. 'Oh, if you insist. I still don't see why you won't see him as a potential bedmate.'
'I don't know,' Yugito bit back sarcastically. 'Maybe it's because I've known him for less than two days, tried to kill him in that time, almost succeeded in killing him, practically carried him back here when he covered for me, and maybe also the fact that he's a decade my junior. That about sum it up?'
Matatabi clicked her tongue. 'All I hear are excuses. He's a ravaging young man. You have to sink your claws in him before someone else does.'
Yugito closed the door behind her with an air of finality. 'I'm fine on my own, thank you very much.'
'Oh, honey. I think we both know that isn't true.'
The woman walked downstairs just in time to see Fu fly into the house through the door excitedly. The girl briefly relayed to the large party taking up the living room that she had seen the two people being hunted in question sitting down and talking in a training field. A collective sigh of relief swept through the house and Fu flitted off to relay the information to the few individuals still actively searching for the two. Yugito shook her head and sat down at the kitchen table, passively looking at the various heads of state and harem members try to begin conversation.
It was awkward and weird. She didn't want any part of it.
"Yugito, can I talk to you?"
Yugito scrunched her eyebrows together. Matatabi never referred to her as anything other than 'kitten'. Well, she didn't anymore. Back when they were still hostile, Matatabi often used more choice words, but those days were long past. Yugito nodded and crossed her legs over themselves, working herself into a meditative pose.
As soon as she closed and opened her eyes, she was in front of the giant two tailed demon death cat, Matatabi. The bars holding her back were gone, though the process through which they went away wasn't exactly the norm. Then again, there wasn't really any set 'norm' to speak of. There was the ideal way, which is how Bee managed, and there was the way one does when one fails the ideal way, which is how Yugito manages.
Matatabi got up on all fours and began pacing around. "You know I worry about you kitten."
Yugito sighed and nodded along with the cat's speaking. "Yes, I know."
"And you know how I'm worried about how you don't have any friends."
Yugito shifted her weight to her back foot, crossed her arms over her chest, and quirked a brow. "I have friends."
"Bee's students don't count."
"What about Daru-"
"Ai's personal bodyguards don't count either."
"Well what abou-"
"Teammates you occasionally go on missions with don't count either."
Yugito bit the inside of her cheek. The past few years, things had been getting better for her. The villagers had stopped treating her with downright animosity about ten years ago, when she was around 20 or so and she had worked hard enough and often enough that their indifference began to slowly switch over to respect and or admiration. That being said, she never developed a personality that one might consider 'sociable' throughout all those years. She was almost the complete opposite of the other Jinchuuriki of her village, who treated everything with a perceived flippancy and became friends with everyone.
The Jinchuuriki sighed. "Why did you call me here?" she asked, cutting straight to the chase.
"I think you know why I called you here."
"If you're just going to parrot back to me what you've already said, I might as well go back and get myself something to eat. Tomorrow is going to be a long day."
Matatabi walked around her to block off the exit and sat down, shaking the ground qne unbalancing Yugito a little bit. "I was having fun. Perhaps that's my fault, but I truly am serious. You have a good chance here. Try to connect, why don't you? Why not learn a little bit about the guy you're sleeping with? Can't hurt."
Yugito sighed as she bent her knees and rocketed into the air, vaulting straight over Matatabi's monolithic body and landing in between the giant cat's tails. "Even when you're being serious, you can't be serious," she said, already beginning to stalk off into the hallway.
"Yugito…" Matatabi called back with a slight air of agitation.
The woman stopped midstride. "I'll talk to him," she said without looking back. "But I'm not making any promis-
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-es." Yugito snapped open her eyes and planted her feet on the ground. Her entire body tensed up and searched the surrounding for what was wrong. Fu, who had tapped her on the forehead, backed off suddenly with both palms facing forward.
"Woah, sorry about that," Fu said with wide open eyes.
Yugito let her body relax and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "What time is it?" she asked.
"I think it's about 8ish. Naruto and Kurotsuchi are almost back. You were like that for a while so I was checking if you were okay and…"
Yugito waved her off with one hand and rubbed her eyes with the other. Talking while in the mindscape was always a crapshoot for her. Hours could be seconds and seconds could be hours. For all her experience with it, she could never anticipate how time would progress outside of the mindscape. Looked like this time, it was around six or seven hours. "It's fine. Dinner?"
Fu pointed to the kitchen counter, which had more than a few microwavables stacked on top of each other. Evidently, there had been a 'feast' while she was talking to Matatabi if the amount of boxes were of any indication. "Everybody gone?" she asked.
"Mei and Temari are getting some sleep. I think Naruto and Kurotsuchi should be here soon. The rest of the kage are gone."
Yugito got up and started scrounging around in the kitchen for a few leftover bites. Her body still ached from the morning and there was nothing more she wanted to do than to fall into bed and call it an early day.
"So, uhh…" Fu started off unsurely, jumping up slightly to sit on the edge of the counter. "Why are you awake anyway?"
"Huh?" Yugito asked through a mouthful of still warm macaroni.
"I mean, you had a, uhh… let's call it a big morning. You've been groggy all day. Why're you still awake?"
Yugito shrugged. "I'm not falling asleep before Naruto."
Fu tilted her head. "Why?"
"We are sleeping together. I need to set some ground rules."
Fu's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "Excuse me?"
Yugito rolled her eyes. "We're sleeping in the same bed. All the other rooms are taken and mine has a queen bed, so he's sleeping with me. 'Sides, he's already slept there this morning."
Fu whistled to the side. "You sure about that?" she asked, wincing a little bit.
Yugito let her tired eyes trace back to the lithe girl. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well… I mean, he and Kurotsuchi seemed pretty close on the way back. I was thinking that they'd be in the same bed. It is bigger after all."
Yugito didn't quite know how to react to that information. She didn't have too much time to ponder what it meant, as the two subjects of conversation opened the door and walked inside slowly, both wrapped in a thick layer of tension and high octane emotions.
"Hey guys," Fu said as loudly as she dared with sleeping ninjas above her. "Get everything worked out?"
Kurotsuchi looked down and to the side and Naruto gripped the back of his neck. "Uhm… yeah, I guess."
A pregnant silence filled the room. Everyone expected everyone else to fill the silence with their own thoughts. "So uhm…" Fu started off unsurely. "How is the bed situation going to work?"
Kurotsuchi's eyes widened and a red blush stained her face. "The room," she gasped out.
Fu was quick to respond with "Oh but don't worry, Temari cleaned up the room. Or, well, as best she could. There's no salvaging the clothes, though. Sorry."
"Wait, what happened?" Naruto asked.
"I…" Kurotsuchi started. "I… through a… tantrum… when I changed my clothes."
Yugito smirked, remembering the scene she had walked into. "Yeah, unless you have a sealing scroll full of clothes up your ass somewhere, you're going to need to go shopping tomorrow."
Naruto sighed and looked at his present state of dress. "And I'm also going to need help with the tar."
Kurotsuchi was quick to shake her head. "It's not real tar. It should rinse off with water."
Naruto sighed in relief. "That's good. I thought I was going to be up for hours wiping this shit off me," he said, ending in a grin with a few huffs of laughter.
Kurotsuchi let a small smile show through, which she was quick to stamp down. "I'm… it's been a long day," she said. "I'm going to bed."
Before she could take two steps, Naruto stepped forward and grabbed her shoulder. "Ah wait," he said quickly. She turned around to look him in the eyes, to which he blushed a little bit. "Do you… uhm… Would you want… me to… come with you? To bed?"
Yugito and Fu shared a look while Kurotsuchi shook her head. "No," she said. "I… need time to be alone."
Fu hopped off the ledge of the counter and bounced her way to Naruto as they both watched Kurotsuchi dart upstairs together. She made a long whistling sound. "So… uh… are you two, like, together now?"
Naruto's unfocused face scrunched up in confusion. "Huh?" he asked, looking down on Fu.
Fu backpedaled on that question wildly. "No, it's just that uhh… you know, you two were gone for a while. Like, a really long time. And you just asked if it good to sleep with her…"
Naruto's face stayed scrunched in confusion for a few more seconds before a bright red blush took over his face. "N-No, I didn't mean it like that."
As the young teen started to babble on about the confusion that just happened, Yugito finished whatever she was eating and walked up to the two of them. "Okay, that's enough," she said. "Get showered and go to bed. There's a long day tomorrow."
Naruto's shoulders sagged downwards. "What is it now?"
"We're starting our trek towards sand. It should take a few days, but it doesn't hurt to start things off with a good night's sleep."
Naruto pulled at his clothes. They were covered in blood, sweat, and black tar. He really wished there was another guy in the house he could borrow the clothes of right then and there.
Yugito clapped him on the back. "You can borrow some of my clothes," she said, guessing his thoughts. "They double as pajamas anyways, so it's not like it matters."
His blush renewed. Before he could protest, Yugito pushed him towards the stairs and followed after him, saying "It's not like we have much of any other option. You're not sleeping in the buff. Not when I'm in the bed too."
"Wait, which bed am I sleeping in?" Naruto asked. Honestly, things were just so confusing to him in those moments.
"Mine," Yugito said simply, starting to step up the stairs.
"I can take the couch."
"You're not taking the couch when you can sleep in a bed. I still owe you and I'm not letting it go."
"Owe me for what?"
"For almost killing you this morning."
Naruto opened his mouth to argue back, but his words got caught in his throat. "It's been a long day, hasn't it?" he finally settled on.
She clicked her tongue in agreement.
00000000
"You couldn't have worn something sexier?"
Yugito sighed and leaned her head back against the headboard. In her hands were a pair of knitting needles clacking away at a blue scarf she'd been working on for a few months now. It wasn't a particularly difficult pattern; it was just that she was normally too busy to work on it with any regularity. Despite the fact that if anybody saw her working with yarn they'd come to the immediate conclusion that it had to do with her more 'cat-like' tendencies, Yugito was ultimately glad she had the distraction available to her. Sometimes it was better knowing you had a hobby than it was actually practicing the hobby.
'Is there a mute button on you?' Yugito quipped back. She was wearing the underparts of the second pair of clothes she brought. They were practically a pair of pajamas, with the slight deviation of being resistant towards stabbing.
"I'm sure that other woman has some on her. What was her name again? Mei? I think that was it. Anyways, she looks like the type to shlep around lingerie no matter where she goes. You know, just in case."
Yugito busied herself with untangling a knot from the yarn she was working with. 'And just how do you expect that conversation would go? 'Oh, hey, I know we don't know each other and we're from previously 'at war' nations, but I'd really appreciate it if I could borrow your underwear. Why do I need it? Well, I plan to seduce a person half my age. Yes, it's the one you're thinking of. Oh yes, and the more skin showing the better.'
Matatabi chortled out a few strangled huffs of laughter. "And here I was thinking you didn't have a sense of humor."
'Just a strong sense of sarcasm.'
"Witty too."
'You flatter me.'
Matatabi settled down and laid her head on her paws. "Baby steps, I suppose. Still though, it's rather brazen of you to offer him your unwashed clothes as a replacement of his own."
Yugito laughed a little, getting back to a row of stitches on the scarf. "Yeah, right," she muttered.
Matatabi cracked open a single, interested eye. "You respond as if you think I was joking."
'You were, though.'
"I wasn't."
Yugito looked up from the stitches into nothingness. 'Wait… I washed those clothes.'
"You planned to wash those clothes."
Yugito's eyes went wide as saucers. 'I… oh, shit.'
Before she could jump up and switch out the clothes she left behind for Naruto wear, the door opened slightly before stopping barely an inch ajar. "Oh, uhh… sorry, are you decent?" Naruto asked.
Yugito gulped down the spit in her mouth. "E-Err… yeah."
As the door opened more fully. Naruto walked in, pulling at the hem of his shirt and looking generally uncomfortable. Although she was a little bit taller than him, his physique was wider by a significant proportion. The clothing stretched around his torso so much that it was practically a second skin, showing off the burgeoning muscle definition he had been maintaining.
Despite her dry mouth, Yugito felt the need to gulp again. "S-So, uhm… ground rules, then." Why was she stammering? He wasn't the first cut male she had seen in her life. But seeing him straining against her clothes with a slightly demure attitude and a downturned gaze made her throat stumble over itself.
Naruto nodded, grabbing one of his elbows with one hand and pulling the hem down as far as it could go with the other. Yugito gulped again. "Erm, no spooning, no cuddling, we share the blanket, and look the other way."
Naruto nodded silently again and approached the bed slowly. Yugito got herself comfortable and turned away from him, closing her eyes already. He turned off the lamp light and got under the blanket next to her.
She stilled her breathing and tried to will herself to sleep. Her body was tired and so was her mind. By all means, she should have been out like a light by the time her head hit the pillow. That didn't happen though. She stayed awake through the seconds which turned to minutes which turned to tens of minutes. The fact of the matter was that she couldn't fall asleep, no matter what she tried. She was too nervous.
Her!
"Hey, uhm… Yugito… are you awake?" Naruto whispered under his breath.
At least she wasn't the only one not getting any sleep. "Yeah," she said with her full voice. "Having trouble falling asleep?"
She could hear the crinkling of the sheets as he nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I think I'm thinking too much. I'm tired, but my brain won't turn off."
Yugito took a deep breath and sat back up in bed, reaching over to turn on a lamp light. She had to wince away the stars that showed up in her vision from the sudden brightness, but once they were away, she turned her head to her bedmate. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Naruto sat up quickly and pressed his back to the headboard. "You're, uhh… how old are you?"
"29."
He nodded. "Right. Sooo… have you ever been, you know, in love, before?"
Yugito took a while to answer. Unknown to him, that was a hard question to her. One she'd rather not think about, dwell on, and especially not verbalize to someone she had just met. "Once," she said finally.
"And what did it… feel like?"
Yugito leaned her head back and looked into nothing. "It felt… like the best thing I could describe. No, it was so great that I couldn't even begin to describe it."
"But…" Naruto couldn't look her in the eyes. "How did you know?"
Yugito shrugged and laughed a pitiful laugh. "How could I not? I was… I think I was a little bit older than you are now when he talked to me. Nobody had ever talked to me before like he did. It was like, he cared about me. But… he cared about me, not the fact that I was powerful or a Jinchuuriki. Until that point I had told myself that I was probably going to be alone forever. Nobody would understand me. Nobody would love me. But then he did," Yugito's voice cracked. She shouldn't talk anymore. Why was she talking in the first place anyway? She didn't want these memories anymore.
"What happened? Is he… still around?"
Yugito shook her head. She didn't cry about it anymore, but it was always hard to talk about. "No, he's dead."
Naruto was struck into silence. "Oh… I'm sorry for your loss."
She couldn't help the blackened laughter bubbling from her lips. "My loss? You misunderstand. I was in love with him for all of two days. Just long enough to tell him I love him. Just long enough for him to take advantage of me and throw me away. Just long enough to be treated like a trophy."
For a few moments, the only thing audible in the room was the sound of their breathing. Naruto didn't know what to say and Yugito didn't feel like saying anything. Again, why didn't he know what to say in times like this?
He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm… I don't… I won't pity you."
Yugito first looked at his hand, then traced it up to his face, landing on his eyes last. His eyes were earnest. They were uncertain and trying to understand everything, but failing everywhere they went.
"It's just that…" he continued on. "You're, like, the most kickass person I've ever met. And I've met a lot of kickass people. You're a Jinchuuriki like me, but you've mastered your tailed beast. You've been alone for a long time, but you grit your teeth and you persevered. You're also strong, stronger than I am at least. Strong enough that I had to trick you to even get on even footing. And even then, you blew me away. The more I learn about you, the more I respect you."
Yugito looked him up and down a few times. He smiling now. Not a particularly big or intense smile. Not a smile that held hidden pity. It was a real smile. He was trying to understand her. And that was so much more than anyone had ever done for her.
"So even if people were dicks to you in the past, you'll get through it. Because you're strong. And if it helps at all, then at least know this: we're always going to be together. From now on till death do us part. And it feels good to know that I'm bound together with such a great person."
Her hand shakily fell on top of his on her shoulder and squeezed his fingers. They were brought down to her lap where she clasped the other around them. A few droplets of moisture from her eyes wetted them and made them slippery.
Why did what he said feel so good? He wasn't a wordsmith or a poet. He wasn't in love with her and he wasn't trying to console her. It was just that he spoke from the bottom of his heart. And she really liked that.
She sniffled once and only once. Wiping the tears off on her shoulder, she gulped down the knot in her throat and looked back at the man whose hand she was holding. "Thanks," she said, showing off a rare smile. "And if you think you're in love with Kurotsuchi, then you probably are. I think that's just the way it is. Then again, I don't really know any other way."
His cheeks burned up a little and he brought his attention downwards. "I… we talked together for hours. A lot about nothing. Just… the things we went through. What an average day was like, favorite colors, best friends, what we were trying to do. I want to talk to her more. I want to get to know her more… but…"
The woman pulled his arm towards her until she could wrap her arms around his shoulders and put her chin on top of his head. "But…"
"But I get the same feeling when I'm with Fu and… when I'm with you. I actually really like being around you guys. And I want to do it more. Is that weird? How can that be love?"
Yugito took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Who knows? Maybe it is love. But you can love people in different ways. Nothing has to be romantic or physical. You'll only really know for sure when you're in the moment."
Naruto pressed his ear against her chest. He could hear her heartbeat. It was slow and steady and loud, like a drum beating consistently, keeping the entire world to its proper rhythm. He fell asleep against that chest. All his troubles seemed to slip away, brought into line by that beating and made to seem unimportant.
Yugito leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes as well.
Neither of them dreamed much that night. They slept deeply and soundly, tucked in the embrace of each other's arms.
00000000
The burrows were finished being dug. The puppets were in place and so were the explosives. Now, all they had to do was to wait for the most opportune moment to strike. Deidara chuckled himself to sleep.
Things would go off with a bang.