Saving Grace

Watching myself when I"m taking strides....

and it feels like sabotage when I'm pulling triggers back on myself

And it feels so real from the outside looking in

And it feels so real from the outside

From the out

Tyrant.....

Kakashi won't answer any of my calls. It's been a week. Soon the mission will start, we'll have reconnected and I won't be able to take the way he'll look at me when that happens if it's going to be the same way he looked at me then, crumpled on the floor with that hate. That coarse unadulterated hate that frothed out of his eyes and bubbled onto me, overflowing. Burning me like splashed acid.

In the bathroom at Asuma's apartment I study my reflection carefully in the mirror. The woman that looks back at me has contrived a sort of regal majesty about her. Her crimson eyes are calm, knowing. Her hair falls thick and dark around her shoulders, a graceful crown. The slightest smirk tickles the corners of her lips. The inevitable can sometimes be a release.

Especially when it comes to Kakashi. I would do anything to make him happy. I know that, now. I will do anything to put things back together. To slide them evenly into their perspectives and make everything the way that it was before. My heart pounds like a criminal against it's cavity. I can feel it's veiny hands around the bars of my rib cage wrenching them back, threatening to break free. Cupped in the palm of my hand the pills are restless. Ecstatic. They chirp to me sweet nothings. Promising this will surely fix it.

I trace the bulge of my belly with my empty hand. I'll make him happy enough to love me again.

"Kurenai." the bathroom door bangs open, a killswitch piercing the vice-like grip of whatever spell had been holding me and Asuma comes in hot eyed and wild faced. He's half dressed, pants unbuckled and left to hang open like rifled through grocery bags, goods barely concealed, may' be previously getting ready for bed but now here.

A neck vein sticks out curling around his throat, explosive tubing and when he reaches behind him and closes the bathroom door like he doesn't want anyone to hear, even though we are the only ones here, I know something is going to give. Someone is going to end up floored. Someone is going to bleed. And I can guess who it will be. In my hands the pills have begun to melt. Their liquid coatings run and blend together down my arm. The color is a very impressive red.

Asuma and I face one another. I get a grip on the kitchen sink and the air between us is thick. Asuma's eyes burn holes into me and his hair is wild and he still has that wildness about him. Clinging to him as if he just rolled through a field of it. The stench of anger is impossible to suction from clothing from skin from bone. It permeates. It erodes and decays.

His eyes are locked on mine when he says "Anko called and told me what happened with you and Kakashi." I can't take my eyes off of those hot ones. Burning, charred, tar metal black. Burning. No words come to me. We stare face to face for one nanosecond, for one year of electrified silence.

Then he uppercuts me in the jaw, and as my knees buckle from the force, and I slip down, I think not like this. I can't let it end this way. The hand gripping the sink finds a bar of soap. Asuma looms over me snarling, poised for another attack and I chuck the soap at him. It doesn't hurt, but it takes him by surprise. And while he fumbles I bolt for the door as fast as I can. "Stop!" he grunts behind me.

I feel his hand clap against the back of my neck like a giant metal maw and the scream dies in my throat when he jacks me backwards. My hands instantly go, a protective casing, against my belly. My thoughts go to Kakashi and suddenly all of the feelings I had before now, before Asuma bolted into the bathroom are gone. Are bloodied and evaporated. And I can't help feeling that this baby just might be my saving grace. The one thing I have to hold on to in this world. The looping twine, forever linking me to Kakashi without risk of burn out or lost love.

So as Asuma chucks me face forward towards the tub, I grip the shower curtain desperately, but my own body weight destroys my balance and I'm knocked to my knees again. This time knocking my head painfully against the tub.

The blow makes my head spin. My skull erupts and I fight against the curtain of darkness that rushes over me. Asuma looms in and out of focus above me, his static-y shadow and the volume of his gruff voice seeming to be too far away for touch. I close my eyes and he kicks me in the stomach. The pain just barely breaches my fading consciousness. I can't move. The umbilical cord between my brain and body has been severed. And I feel out of my skin, even as he leans in to my face, gnashing teeth and flaming eyes like two devilish lamps glinting out of his skull.

I think I raise my hand up. I think I mumble a desperate "Please." before he kicks me again and then I black out completely.

For the rest of forever it seems I shift painlessly in and out of consciousness. And that night I float up above myself. Up above, on the outside looking in on a woman as she drags her ruined body through the dark empty space down into the basement. And overcome with pain, drowning in fervent tears, lies flat on her back, legs spread in welcoming of imaginary male hips, to offer with life shortening pain and full grunts a gift. That she pushes from down deep inside her and with shaking hands, she pulls it out of herself. A thick blob of once breathing tissue that slips wet, red, and ready from between her knees.

Yes, yes, I am an evil, horrible malicious person. Don't you just love me?LOL. Sadly these are the way things will end for poor Kurenai for now, but there is more to come!!! Stay tuned for the next few chapters of Passing Strangers. *says in announcer-ly voice* To Be Continued....................Review as usual plz. ^.^