The Kill

Every time you touch me, touch me like this is the last time

Every time you love me…

Love me like you'll never see me again

Like you'll never see me again….

One moment I'm lying there. There in his arms, where the peace floods me like a river. Whose waters wash over me so that I am rocked, rocked, rocked away from harm. In the cradle of something impenetrable yet beautiful enough to be gentle. Something like Love.

I'm smelling him, the scent of him prevalent and familiar. Tasting his skin, the after taste of his love in the back of my mouth. A greedy aftertaste that lingers in a bare shoulder resting next to a pair of lips, in a chest pressed to an ear, a finger curled around my own, a hip pressed against a hip, a leg thrown over.

And I study the planes of his face, the sleeping face awash with effulgence. An extraordinary beauty. A pure Summery light dancing across that Sampson's jawbone. And perhaps I am the Delilah here, but between us I think we are each other's weakness.

I would never hurt him, intentionally. Though, I think part of it is that I don't fully understand him and I don't fully know where this is taking me, taking us. If it will fill the emptiness, till the barren fields that have dried and cracked over like clay jars set aside to be forgotten in a crackling heat wave.

But part of it is that sleeping face. And the light that comes from it. Knowing that I put it there, that it was a piece of me that cut into his face and slipped a little glow beneath the skin, sewing it up with a kiss. The smile belongs to me, that hangs ripe from those cherubim lips like fat purple grapes waiting to be taken down. I'm thinking this and overcome with some boiled sense of purity.

I wrap my arms tighter around his waist, trying to be spooned a little bit inside of him. As if I could meld us together into one being that simply has only to exist in a lonely tent, on a forest floor, in a postcoital haven of treasure boxed love. Our hips grind together a little, the harder I press, his grip suddenly tightens on my hand and he moans a little in his sleep. A deep throaty sound that takes me back to peaks, and plains, and healing the foot.

Then from outside the tent comes the sound.

It happens so quickly, that my heart freezes in it's trappings and I cannot react. But almost instantly Kakashi has disappeared from beneath me, and is crouching on his haunches at the tent door armed and ready, a kunai held at throat level, pointing outwards like an omen. His face creased, eyes cold and calculating, the way he only gets when he's being Sharingan Kakashi. The Legendary Copy-nin. Good at what he does because he is cold, icy, distant, and doesn't mind a quick bloody kill.

The sudden change in him unnerves me. But somewhere inside something calls for me to move, and I fumble to get dressed. Kakashi dresses quickly, the kunai always poised for a sudden strike, and as he lowers the hitai-ate down over his eye; he's at the tent opening again, calm and waiting.

But I can't seem to get over this intent fear that seems to be knotting my wrists together, and looping my tongue around itself. My hands are clumsy, and I can't seem to remember what article of clothing goes where. Or what the zippers and the buttons do in the cyclone center of my panic.

The only sound besides my hopeless shuffling is Kakashi's steady, even breathing. His one visible eye shifts like a tracking beam left to right, and I can almost see the gears whirring, clicking, clacking, dissecting, analyzing in that amazing skull.

"Kakashi." I whisper. His jaw tightens, a muscle in the kunai holding forearm flexes taut and strong against the blue cloth sleeve. "The others are gone." he says carefully. "Genma. Asuma. Raidou. They're all gone."

I watch his face, watch the way he says the words, careful and structured as if he doesn't like the taste of them. As if he is testing the weight of them and they are large metal anvils. The fear in me turns to panic. Then comes the sound again outside of the ten, and this time I recognize it as the pounding of several pairs of feet dropping down from the trees. I grab a kunai firmly at the ready.

"Well, if the other's are gone then who's that outside the tent?" I whisper. "You think they might have come back for us?" Kakashi looks at me, then his one eye burnt black like burned sugar, holding a sweetness that wants to linger but is being purged out.

"Not at all." he says, and with that he slinks outside of the tent. I follow behind him. The campsite is empty. There's not a sight of human life besides us and the bowled over tents of the others left behind to lie on their sides and die, lemon yellow carcasses.

Kakashi stands stock still, marvelously still like a Grecian statue. The kunai waits patiently at his side, while his eye scans the surrounding area. My heart is throbbing like a tribal drum, a dance to an endangered beat, screaming for blood, promising blood. Ba-boom. Quiet it. Quiet. Remain calm….

The sky above the clearing looks like alabaster. Carved rock hard and inviolable, the perfect shade of robin's egg blue. The wind whips the leaves on the surrounding trees into a slave's dance of green, and pushes languidly at Kakashi's wolf's mane of hair.

Still, he doesn't move and I feel him straining to listen. And I can feel the panic beating against the walls of my brain, exclaiming it's siren's song loud and desperate to be heard. Outside of my head it's too quiet. The hairs on the back of my neck are erect. It's coming. Something's coming. Something…..

Behind me a flock of birds burst into flight. Kakashi spins around to face me. I see the slight flick of his wrist, but I don't register what the action connects to until I feel the violent arms encircle my neck from behind. The violent hands wielding a kunai that bites into my neck a little, before Kakashi's thrown kunai dives into the violent eyeball with a dead thunk. The assailant screams and falls away into oblivion.

The air is suddenly a color rush of chaos. I think Kakashi says "Behind you!" before I turn and come face to face with a foot. I duck, and the owner of the foot falls to his knees in the cavity of space created. But grace has escaped me and I plunge the kunai through the back of his neck, wrenching it free without much thought.

They're coming from everywhere, now.

From the trees torpedo five more. "Genjutsu!" I catch two of them, their bodies rendered motionless, their expressions immediately taking on the slack disbelief of alternate reality horror. But three substitute just out of reach, One of them appears a tangled web of body heat and chakra radiation behind me, the other radiates in front. As they swing I throw my body to the floor and can't hide the somewhat giddy smirk that pins itself to my face at hearing their idiotic bodies clunk together. Now just where was that other one?

Behind me. He wrenches my arms back tight, and twists before I can react, and in the throes of the pain, I can't do anything but scream. I feel a thick boot in my back and he pulls back on my arms using his foot to apply pressure with the force of something ravenous. The hungry fire that spreads through my shoulder blades licking and devouring scorches me alive.

When something pops and corkscrews loose blackness crowds in on my consciousness; cutting my vision into fringes, like little cut out paper snowflakes. I'm no longer aware of my body or the pain, now. All solidity has become a dull ache in the back of my mind, as the tormentor still gripping my useless arms pulls me neck back by my hair, until his dry stubbly face is electroshocking my own. And cheek to cheek he whispers to me "Mmm, girl." before something hard and sharp connects with my skull, rattling it out of it's comfort zone. Wet warmth begins to drain down my chin onto my neck, but I can't be sure if it's a tongue or a lick of blood.

There's a ringing fierce and shrill in my ears, and the foggy in and out focus of my vision is the only thing that counteracts the pain. The man releases his grip on my arms, but for some reason the rest of my body refuses to move when I beg it to. It's too much pain just to turn my head, and now I'm sure it's blood pooling in the creases of my neck, an oasis of red at the dip of my collarbone.

I just lie there, pressed flat and thin, a body bag of dust on the fringe of returning to it's likeness. I feel rough hands lock like shackles around my ankles, where the imprint of those "sorry" kisses now feels like a very vivid dream. But I can't resist as he drags me towards the other men. There are about ten or twenty of them. All snarling eyes and jack o' lantern teeth smiles. They are lions, they are vultures. And Kakashi's lies forlorn like a piece of shredded meat in the middle of them.

One of them holds him up, strong arms cupping his arms behind his neck, and the other take turns hitting him. A jeer. A punch. A kick. A cheer. A huge boot to the gut connects so powerfully that the sound echoes through the trees, scaring the birds into flight again. And Kakashi bends over, soundless and vomit's a rush of blood into the grass.

"Leave him alone!" I scream. They turn to me some livid with indignation, some hungry with anger. One smiling.

"A girl?" the smiling one asks me. He steps towards me then with slow suspenseful footfalls. Behind him the man holding Kakashi's arms pulls him upright. His eyes lock on mine for a second and then I see something there, that I have never in my life seen thee before. Fear.

"And a pretty one at that." coos the smiler. "You his lover, eh? I guess him to be the leader. They're all dressed similarly in dark lightweight clothing. But something about him, about his scent, about the look in his eyes is different. Pure thirsty malice. Pure animal. .

His eyes are on me. Studying me like a lion about to give chase. As if reading my mind, licking his lips he says his eyes flashing like dancing flames "Delectable prey." He nods to a man behind him a small cluster in the pack, and from his blackness the droid pulls something long, shiny. Something metal like a metal rod…a metal bat. A…God, please no.

"Stop. She's a woman. Didn't your mother teach you any respect?"

Kaksahi speaks out bodly, spitting blood out of the side of his mouth. The leader turns back to look at him, looks at me and his laughter is rich and full. "So, you'd rather I take you instead let me guess, Loverboy?"

"That would be ideal."

I try to say NO. DON'T. STOP. But I don't. I don't say anything. I can't say anything. Because the man holding the bat cranks his arm back. And the brute is still holding Kakashi's arms behind his back. And Kakashi is just standing there, looking directly into the leader's eyes. And God, please no. .

I turn away when the thing connects. It sounds like bones being crunched in a large black jaw. I scream. I'm crying. Sobbing. "Stop! Please!" The man who dragged me boxes me over the head again. And the ringing comes trembling back in, but I don't care. All I see now in front of me is blood. Lifelessness. Limp. Face down. Blood. Blood. Blood.

"Hit him again."

"No! NO!" A slap. A punch. Something hard and violent against the side of my face. I bite my lip, but there is only his blood. All I see…all that I can hear is the dull thwack of metal against bone. The breaking, tearing, the life..less..ness…..

"Again." I scream. Again. Again. Kakashi is not moving now. Not even the twitch of a finger. The beast holding his arms has released and still he does not move. And those vultures. Those grinning jackals standing sentinel around his body. Around his…that…destroyed beauty. The sobs are ringing out of me. Are ripping me open. I try to get to my feet. Try to claw my way towards him, but the ever present violent hand knocks me breathless again. And the fire bloom of pain spreads openly blossomed along my shoulders, now. I'm crying.

The leader kicks Kakashi in the stomach. But there is nothing. No resistance. No oomph of pain. No movement . Nothing. He grips the beautiful silver head and lifts him up. The mask is full of blood. Enough to possibly drown in. The man peels it down, and smears the blood away from those delicate features almost tenderly with his hands.

Kakashi flinches at the touch. He flinches. And I can see that one eye rolling back like slot machine screens in his head. But moving. Struggling, but moving now. "Kakashi." I breathe.

"Lookie here, men." says The Leader. "We've got ourselves a pretty boy ninja." he flicks a kunai out from somewhere hidden and holds it up to the light inspecting it, turning it over and examining it's casing as if he had never laid eyes on anything so miraculous before. The sunlight bounces off of the stout blade and magnifies his maniacal grin, until it gleams horrifically wide and bright, a devil's lantern.

"This is just a personal opinion of mine." he says, guiding the kunai slowly, a missile towards that extravagantly placed together face. I notice Kakashi's ragged breathing, the rough rise and fall of his chest. The Leader grins impossibly wider "But I never did think shinobi were meant to be pretty."

There is no blood left in my body. There is nothing. Nothing. Only a shard of a prayer, a fragment of faith so tiny and sharp in itself that it cuts my hand to hold on to it. Only God, please. He digs the tip of the blade into Kakashi's cheek, pressing in just enough to draw a bead of blood, then draws a careful line up, up, up into his hairline; the blood coming quickly to soothe the wound as if assuaging a scorned lover. That rolling brown eye closes and Kakashi swallows hard.

No.

"Any last words?" asks the Leader. The silence is an axe murderer. A grave digger. A pall bearer. The silence is a savior. "Yes." says Kakashi simply.

"Look me in the eyes."

He reaches up slowly warily for the hitai-ate and pushes it aside. And Leader's eyes get sucked into that one red one. And time has ceased to exist for us. And the toma begin to spin in the eye, whirling, whirling, whirling. And I don't know what Leader sees there. If it is a painful life, or a sudden death, or resurrection and after. But his face becomes something else. Something new. Horrified and different. And he tries to back up. To pull away, but I can smell it in the air. The blood coming. The heat. The heat. The crackle. The….chakra.

The chakra.

The smell of burning flesh, and I see the white hot electricity frothing in that slowly charring palm,.where the flesh is seared and peering back to make way for the electricity. I see it in the nanoseconds before the actions become too fast to follow.

"Lightning Blade!" Palm to chest, explosion of light. I will never forget the smell of singed body fat beginning to cook and curdle like bacon. The consistency of the chakra touched blood, thick and heavy spilling and raining in the air like syrup. The other men fall like night over Kakashi, then as their leader convulses dying on the ground. Dead.

I will never forget the look in Kakashi's eyes. The determination, the…adoration. The Love. When he looks at me. When they are all on him. Hitting. Stabbing. Kunai. Blood. Kakashi. And he looks at me and says "I can read the other's chakra positions from here. I'll substitue you there, Kurenai."

Like it is all okay. Like nothing matters but this. Like it does not matter that as he speaks, they are stabbing him, the life juices dripping out of him. "No, Kakashi! Don't you dare!" I scream at him. I choke on sobs. Raging. But the vision of him becomes just that. As time pulls to transcend space and location. And I am caught in taut bands of chakra. And those deft fingers forming hand signs. And those lovely, lovely eyes giving me that effulgence, one last time for this journey. For this. "Stop! Don't you dare!"

But he does.

Well, well, well, how do you like me now, eh? LOL, jk. But yes, sometimes things go for the better or the worse. Poor KakaKure…but the story's not over yet. Well, not quite. But feel free to get ur revenge by hating me already, MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ONWARD!!! Next chap. REVIEW as usual my pretties ^.^