Author's Notes: special thanks to Demonic Angel Clone and for their reviews, which encouraged me to write despite being too damn busy lately. Apologies for the delayed uploading. My life has been "interesting" lately.
Disclaimer: First thing I'd do if I did own Naruto or any of the affiliated characters would be to buy a car. I need a car. Or Catbus.
Being the bloodstained right hand of a power-hungry feudal lord wasn't such a bad job. It kept him busy, a roof over his head, food on the table, and away from the squabbling of the Hidden Villages. It did put him right in the middle of squabbling feudal lords, but they were more easily intimidated, and as easy to kill as mice. Shinobi tended to be much more wilful and stubborn, like the woman he had found in the forest.
With Kimimaro as a political weapon, much could be accomplished in a small amount of time, but not without catching the attention of the Raikage. Intervention by Kumogakure would mean nothing but trouble for a feudal lord, and Kimimaro was unlikely to be able to protect his life. Discretion was in order.
From intelligence gathered, there was some kind of revolution in the works. Details were sketchy, but it seemed that Kumogakure no Sato and/or Kirigakure no Sato were involved. This would, undoubtedly, interfere with his patron's plans of the carefully timed "accidental" deaths of his political rivals. Whether this interference would be beneficial or not was not certain, but it was best to assume not. But, at the same time, it would be dangerous to eliminate the Kirigakure no Sato shinobi, as it would undoubtedly arrest the attention of Kumogakure no Sato.
But that was a consideration for later. Now, he needed to focus on the task at hand. A hand-carriage bobbed smoothly down the road, the carriers quietly grunting in time to keep their rhythm smooth, and an armed guard following closely. Warriors, but not shinobi.
With a sound that would probably unsettle anyone else, a protrusion of bone slowly extended from the palm of Kimimaro's right hand. Once it had extended to his satisfaction, he swung his arm, easily re-familiarising himself with the adjusted weight and balance of his arm, which he knew all too well. The sound of the bone whistling through air was pleasing.
He moved.
Ino drifted awake, roused by the chirping of a bird somewhere outside. There was a lot more light in the room than she remembered seeing before. It seemed like morning. And she needed to use the bathroom.
It felt like her fever had gone down some, and she felt much stronger than the last time she was awake. It still hurt to move, but she could move. Bracing herself for the pain, she sat up. It hurt. And it took a while, but she managed it. She eased her legs across the edge of the bed, wincing as a superficial wound on her left thigh and right calf flared. She tested her legs on the floor, guessing that they could support her weight, and carefully rose to her feet.
The dizziness and nausea hit her like a sledgehammer, sending her sprawling to the ground clutching her head. The feeling was so intense that she was tempted to hit her head on the floor repeatedly to make it feel better. And the fact that she was laying down again didn't help much. She felt sick.
The thought that there might not be a bathroom to be sick in never even occurred to her. Moving shakily on hands and knees, she went off in a random direction, hoping for the best. She managed to find a corner of the room. No bathroom there. She followed a wall until she found an edge, which turned out to be a doorframe, and found herself in a short hallway. The second room she found appeared to be what she was after. She shuddered her way in and found the sink. She hauled herself up to it and retched. Not even bile would come up but the retching continued, unperturbed.
It was a few agonising minutes before the retching stopped, and she was left slumped against a wall, shaking and trying to withstand the pain of her screaming stomach muscles. Once she could move again, she went about the next order of business.
Kimimaro wound his way through the forest, back to his home. He quite liked it, actually. His benefactor had gone to some trouble to create a house which was both out of the way and supported modern comforts like plumbing and electricity. Kimimaro didn't like electrical lights, or anything else fuelled by the esoteric force. He didn't mind the water though.
The worst part of his job, he reflected, was the blood. No matter how cleanly he hit, or slashed or stabbed, there was just no getting away from it. His right side had taken the worst of it this morning. A violent gash of red stood out against the white of his shirt and his fair skin. Running water helped with that, a bit. Blood was stubborn, though, and always seemed to leave a stain. Wearing black would have ended this problem, but he was opposed to wearing black on principle.
He came to his house, a few kilometres outside a small village which fell under his employer's authority, and let himself inside. He stripped off the bloodied shirt and dropped it in the hall. He had other shirts- this one was an acceptable loss. Food. He wanted food… but that could wait for a while.
He stopped at the end of the hall. The injured woman was laying face-down on the floor of the main room, making uncomfortable noises. What was she doing?
A few of her wounds had opened up, by the look of it, and some of her bandages were coming undone. All of them were old and yellowed, so it was about time he changed them.
Quietly surprised that she had recovered enough to move around already, he made his way over to her. She protested at being carried back to the bedroom, trying to cover herself up as she did so. Not that there was much she could do about it, she couldn't even get there by herself. As soon as she was on the bed she twisted in what must have been a hugely painful way, and tried to roll the sheets over herself.
'Listen…you,' she started 'I think I need to explain a few things to you. About how to treat people,' she glared at him, darkly hinting at what might come to pass. Rather than rebuff, or even concede this point, Kimimaro pulled the sheets off her before she could stop him. 'Hna…!' she covered herself with her hands again. Ignoring her, he opened a drawer on the bedside table and took out several rolls of bandages.
'I'll do it myself!' she snapped, feebly trying to snatch one of the bandages from him. She missed, but she had a look in her eye that said she was going to resist as strongly as she could. Fighting claw-and-tooth, as it were.
'You can't reach your shoulder.' At his words she stopped talking, and stared at him with an odd look on her face. Her guard was down now. He guided her into a sitting position on one side of the bed, sat behind her and started undoing the bandages which were almost falling off on their own by now. She even gave him a few quiet tips about applying bandages.
As the bandages fell away Ino was once again very conscious of the fact that she was almost completely naked in the presence of a man. A man stripped to the waist, she reminded herself. With uniformly fair skin and tightly coiled muscles over a wide frame and… what was she thinking about at a time like this? Such thought had to stop now.
His hands worked dexterously, but he didn't wrap the bandages tight enough. Maybe because he was afraid of wrapping them too tightly and cutting off circulation, or because he had never been taught how to properly. She advised him to wrap the more tightly, which he did. He seemed like a good listener, if not a sparkling conversationalist.
It seemed like he really was treating her lightly. He was still, as ever, unmindful of her gender and uninterested in her femininity. It was more than a little mortifying, but he was only trying to help. Awkward though he was, he was sweet in that very limited way. She almost wished he would blush and look away from her. Even if only to feel like it wasn't her that should be embarrassed.
What was she doing? Saying she could wrap her own bandages when she barely had enough strength to swat at a fly. Cringing and trying to hide like a toddler from a dentist. Telling him off for treating her indifferently. She was starting to feel like a complete fool.
At a time like this she should be trying not to impose herself on him too much. He had saved her, maybe just on a whim, but he seemed committed to seeing it through now. It would be horrible to make him regret it. She sighed and helped him loop a bandage around her waist. All-up, she had three light cuts, four deep cuts, a stab wound in her shoulder, and numerous scrapes and bruises. Some of them would probably leave scars.
She wondered how her back looked. She didn't think she had any scars on her back, but she wasn't too sure. She couldn't remember every injury she had ever suffered. She thought briefly about asking the man if there were any, before deciding against it. She was naked, she reminded herself once again. And he was half-naked. Probably not the best time for provocative questions. Besides, she was injured. She was in no condition to be…with a man…
Sometimes she just wanted to strangle that part of her mind.
Bandaging complete, Kimimaro gave the woman back the sheets, got a clean shirt, and headed for the kitchen. She had been surprisingly cooperative, after her initial defiance. Showing a firm hand seemed to have worked.
He was out of fish broth, but the woman could probably manage rice or millet or vegetables, or…something. The question was, what did he have on hand? Precious little, it seemed. He was going to have to go into town. Hmm, he needed to find some women's clothes as well. The clothes she had on when he found her were…unserviceable. Bloodstained, torn, worn, encrusted with mud. They were well and truly write-offs. He could probably use them as a reference, so he wouldn't need to be careful about showing them to the tailor- it was unlikely that the people who had attacked her would be lurking around a town as small as this. Anybody would notice their presence.
He had a few apples left, they had that look that apples tend to get just before they start to dry out, but they were still fine to eat. They weren't much to look at, however, so he peeled and cut them into slices and arranged them neatly on a plate. A proper meal could wait for a few hours, but he should at least feed her something for breakfast, late or not.
He swept back into the bedroom, armed with apple slices and placed them on the bedside table wordlessly. She looked at him with a complicated expression which changed as he watched. She must have been hungry, since she ate a slice of apple thoughtfully before he even left the room. It was good that she was eating. He was forgetting that she had been unconscious until yesterday. The apple would probably be more than enough for breakfast. But he was still hungry.
Along with groceries…plus clothes…he had enough money on him to pay for everything. He could afford to get himself a meal while he was there, too. It had been a while since he ate anything he hadn't made himself.
He went to the front door. He wasn't wearing a shirt. He went back to the kitchen, got the shirt from where he had left it on the bench and put it on. He didn't so much sneak a glance, as he did happen to catch a glance at the woman. She had watched him go past, and had one of those looks he couldn't identify again.