This is for Tenten Week.
Prompts used: hero, glamour, survival, weapon of choice and "any pairing but NejiTen, young lady".
I know I always say this whenever I publish a new fic, but this is different from what I have written so far. There are two parallel stories; one is happening in the present and the other in the past. The present is in italics and the past is in regular font. I hope it won't be too confusing.
I had fun with this one. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did! :)
Warning: There is some cursing.
-X-
Chasing Light
by Clementive
-X-
Tenten exposed her neck, pulling her wavy hair at the top of her head. She twisted it securely ignoring Ino's narrowing her eyes at her from across the changing room. Her own blond bomb hair disappeared under a wig.
"You should bomb your hair, sweetheart."
Other girls thought of glamour and she thought of bloodbath and Chicago miles away, rising above it all. Unlike them, she lived in the past.
"I like it long and so does Dei."
Tenten gave her a small smile. Ino carefully sat down at her make-up station as not to wrinkle her Greek laced dress.
"Dei and his stupid art. As if Greek tragedies were art," Ino sniffed, her voice pinched, painting her lips in bright red in a swift movement. "And now he's fumbling with the Sabaku family, I swear." She rolled her eyes, her white arms folding in a mock dramatic manner.
Tenten's smile turned to ice, frosting on the corner of her mouth.
His face flashed in her mind, composed, smirking, as he leaned towards Deidara during her act. The lines of her first act rasped through her when she saw the scorpion tattooed on his neck.
"OI!" a man pushed forward, puffing and sponging his bathing forehead. "Do you want to lose your job, Ino? No? Then, stop gawking at me and do something about your beauty, cuz that's the only thing I like about you, doll. Tenten, do something about your lips pronto. You're up in ten and it's mister Deidara! Do you copy that?"
The curtains quivered back into place, an uneasy silence hushing them back in their routine.
The mirror blurred with her movements, but her thoughts buzzed filled with killers and whispery lines that rimed and paced her last act. All those years Tenten wanted to uncover a demon, she dressed like one, played one. She chased it in her nightmares, hauled it out of her mind in a cruel world where only the lines of every tragedy made sense. To her and to the dead. She had fled Chicago, their blood still warm on her hands. They weren't meant to meet again; a killer and a survivor. She paled her face, following down the curve of her nape.
Under the light, her skin shimmered, the moonlight of his eyes following her and darker orbs widened in childish excitement. They never got to grow up and their killer sat, listening to her verses that signed her very last defeat; a tragedy.
When Tenten donned her weapons, when she left the streets and the gang, she decided to enact the fall of fictional characters. She could bring them back with a single verse, let them die, soaked in their own blood in a tensed silence. She liked how she disappeared behind each mask. Neji would have seen through them. Lee would have believed them. It made each of them worth it; a constant reminder that the only weapon's weight she knew and carried now was revenge. Her aim was still perfect, she made sure of it.
Delicately, Tenten smoothed the dark rings under her eyes, stretched the curve of her eyes. She heard the whistling bullets above the turmoil of the other actors, the rumbles of the public. Her eyes blinked in the mirror with each explosion she heard.
Tonight was different.
Tonight a murderer was sitting on the front row of her theatre.
Tonight it was about her tragedy that deepened her voice, glittered across her cheeks and veiled her eyes.
Of all the heroes she had played, of all the saving and struggling she thought Neji and Lee deserved, she believed in revenge. She was an actress of outrage, destroyer of her own legacy as long as she avenged them. She couldn't be a hero; there was no one left to save. So, she acted and lived to bring them back in the smallest ways. She cheated death with a mask of glamour that never glittered as brightly as the other girls. Past the haunting chorus of fallen characters, she was the tragedy itself. Death. Revenge. Hell.
Tenten smiled at her reflection, brushing red on her high cheekbones.
She looked bleak, her limbs hanging around her, letting go, deflated. Her broken chest barely heaved. Perfect. For each Greek downfall she had enacted, her shoulders hunched forward, her back bent. She thought of the streets of Chicago and its monsters prowling around the prohibition. They still glided across her skin during whistling overbearing nights, her sweaty sheets tangled between her legs. She clenched her jaw and Ino rightened her wig. She had to blink away the thoughts of scrapping food from rich neighbourhood because there they would be, she knew, her ghosts. They always waited for her. She didn't need to sleep anymore to join them. The nausea rose in her throat hurling the fluttering savage image of them lying in the middle of the streets.
She blinked again.
"Stop daydreaming, Tenten. You have been amazing tonight, don't you dare drift, darling. You're like the star." Ino's high-pitched voice forced jealousy out of her voice, but her blue eyes met hers too forcefully.
Her cheeks paled beneath her makeup. She didn't need a mask; the tragedy was all too fresh within her bones.
"Yes. Swell," Tenten muttered tonelessly, reaching for her heavy necklace.
"You know I have seen the Sabaku brothers in the papers... They should have at least send the one that wasn't so plain looking," Ino said in a whisper, rolling her eyes while heavily leaning back against her chair. "Ugh, I can't believe they are even related, you know. His shoulders and chest are the only things going for him while... Gaara," she blushed and Tenten wondered where the stage began and ended with Ino. "Even the sister is beautiful. I can't even remember this one's name."
In haste, she turned fully towards her and Tenten felt her breath stopped at the back of her throat. Her heart hammering verses into her skull, drying her lips with the acidic smell of gunpowder.
"You look pale."
"It's the puppeteer." Her voice didn't waver, her vocal cords echoing dust of steel.
"Mhm," she nodded, caressing the bridge of her nose with a brush. "They say Dei is trying to stick a deal his family for you know... some boozy stuff. You think he will choose a girl? Protection from a Sabaku in this city, that would be swell, yeah?" She stilled, contemplating her cleavage and the hollowness of her body. "I bet Chicago is even better than New York."
The girls all came to Deidara to both hide and shine. Beauty wasn't eternal, though, and they still hoped at least love was. Tenten didn't.
Hope died with Neji and Lee. Love rest in their graves. She would follow the outline of the tragedy, clinging to sparse verses that rung truer than the sticky emptiness of her apartment.
The weight of her handgun brushed her inner thigh, her Greek robes pooling at her feet and Tenten let her hands fall from her throat. She traced her pulse, humming to herself. The metal was the only thing still anchoring her in her role and letting Ino drag her into her enthusiasm and dreams. After all, New York was a city of dreams, maybe that was why The Puppeteer crossed path with her again. Maybe that was her dream coming true and her nightmare finally slipping out of her.
Tenten titled her head back towards the spotlights. It didn't feel any different from red curtains lifting over her personal tragedy and her weapon of choice. She had always chosen them so careful back when it mattered. One last time, she leaned forward the mirror, inspecting her makeup under the bright lights.
"I guess I won't leave him a choice," Tenten murmured mostly to herself.
She was finally ready for the final scene. She would need to flee after tonight.
Ino's pale glance hesitated over her face, noticing the tigerish curl of her lips. She shivered; Tenten's skin glistened in blue hues under the harsh light devoid of shadows and emotions.
She looked dead.
-X-
"Please, state your full name for the records."
He is distracted by the halting sound of the typewriter, her eyes of steel still boring through him. He wants to shrug it all off as he has planned to. The tip of a pen beats the notepad and he chuckles thinking of nothing but the streets and how he got tangled in his own strings.
"The Puppeteer," he smirks, lifting his rattling handcuffs in the wincing light.
"Your civil name," the chilly voice snaps.
He knows death isn't the final act, so he laughs. She had taught him at least that; only heroes fall while tragedies carry on. He decides it's a comedy, that the masks are reversed and that he will see her again under the brightest spotlight.
"Kankuro of the Sabaku family. I'm probably paying for your wages by the way, old man. Is that coffee coming? Or at least a good cop who will bring me one? No offence but you're obviously the bad cop."
-X-
Men who knew weapons the way she did yearned to be heroes. In cities built on entertainment and feigned glamour, it was all they could hope for to feel like men, each bullet accounted for. Either shine or die.
Tenten descended in the darkness of the basement, her hand lifting her skirt above her ankles and her heels hesitated on each step. He would be no different. She couldn't leave him a choice now that she had seen him again after all those years. She smiled bitterly, it had to be fate. Deidara's theatre, The Explosion, itself was a stage, its spotlight aimed at beautiful girls and boys while he laundered money in the basement.
The air reeked of rust and spilled alcohol, sticking to her feebly glittering skin. The pipelines echoed each of her steps; she felt like she was entering a tomb. Tenten rubbed her stiffening arms, her heels clipping softly onto the cement. Her body didn't bend in the shadows as it used to. The scent of the kill didn't bring her eyes into focus. She fell back, instead, against lines she had said one hour ago. Fingers hovered the metallic curve of her weapon. She paused, her movements broken by the sound of his voice.
She cuddled her tragedy like most clung to survival with ferocious zeal as if nothing else mattered and she was frozen.
"What are you doing here?"
Tenten whelped, fingers pinching her arm. She caught a glimpse of white hair and she blinked, pain rippling through her chest. Her back hit the moist walls, the growls of the man holding her into place vibrating through her.
She screamed louder, catching flashes of raw light reflected in spectacles. Warm air rushed by her side, a door slamming open behind her. She recognized his shadow, anger wrenching her insides, blurring her senses. Her breath itched in her throat. Tenten kept her act up, even if it scorched her throat, tears stinging at the corner of her eyes.
"What the hell, Kabuto?"
"She was lurking around, sir." Kabuto released his hold on her, watching her carefully with implacable cold eyes.
"Jesus Christ, let her go, we don't want any trouble." Kankuro Sabaku snapped, but his voice drawled as he made out details of her old fashioned dress and thin waist. "She's one of Deidara's girls, you fucking idiot! I hope you didn't leave a trace on her."
The hands left her sides, but the suspicion anchored in Kabuto's body lingered. Tenten faked a gulp of air, a few coughs, her insides still burning. She allowed herself a quick glance at Kankuro Sabaku. He didn't look anything like his siblings. He didn't have the intimidating aura his younger siblings shared or their coldness. His feelings fell easily in the lines of his face, his gait almost lazy. Their eyes met briefly and she leaned back against the cold wall, loose locks sticking to her neck and forehead.
"Kabuto, get the bags in my car and go home. I will take care of this."
"I don't think it's wise."
"I don't think you want to argue with me."
The steps retreated from them and Kankuro joined her in the darkness. He loosened the tie around his neck, moistening his lips. Her gaze avoided the scorpion, the roughness of his features, focusing instead of the pipes above his head.
"I'm sorry. I usually don't curse in front of a woman. Are you hurt?"
"No, sir." Her voice shook, her arms closing around her chest.
She played the meek woman, glancing down at his polished Italian shoes. Her fingers hesitated on the curls out of her severe bun, frizzling and framing her face.
"What are you doing here, doll face? The show ended an hour ago." He nudged her softly, not quite touching her and she remembered why they called him a puppeteer.
Kankuro Sabaku could ease anyone in his strings, his face titled towards the shadows, overflowing with emotions. She heard him pull the trigger laughing.
Tenten shuddered and he took a step back, frowning slightly.
"I just... I just wanted to see for myself if the rumours were true."
His smugness turned to amusement and his body ticked barely grounding him. Next to his siblings, she would have overlooked his presence. He noticed too much, shuddering with a vivacity that made it difficult to imagine him with a gun in his hand. Too alive, too unstable.
"What rumour?" He laughed broadly, but the look of his eyes hardened.
"I don't want to go home, actually," Tenten murmured, clasping nervous sweaty palms in front of her.
She had lost where her footing between reality and her act. The jerks of her body felt too natural, her vacillating tone, too honest. She looked up at him through thick eyelashes and he titled his head on the side. The gel in his hair glistered faintly, the coins in his pockets ringing.
"Boyfriend trouble?" He asked finally.
"No, two best friends."
She drew him in, his hand pressed against the side of her head as he pinched the bridge of his nose with his other one. His chest shook with laughter, her mind detonating with two lifeless bodies, the drugs drenched in their blood.
"Cat fight or what?"
Slowly, she shook her head, pressing her lips together.
"Is Dei- I mean mister Deidara around? He always let me stay when there's trouble."
Kankuro smiled again, glancing furtively at his watch. She had watched Deidara leave with his favourite girl. He never came back before the morning when he was busy, but Kankuro didn't know that.
"He's on an errand. How about a drink while we wait for him? Deidara will have me hanging by the neck if I let you go alone as shaken up as you are. Just don't tell him about Kabuto, yes? It will be our secret."
Winking, he pointed at the lit room behind them and she could see the barrels of alcohol pushed against the walls. The worn carpet muffled the sound of her heels when she stepped in. Kankuro gestured towards a seat in front of a pool table. Turning his back to her, he poured her a drink. She licked her lips. She didn't want to shoot him his back to her.
Every good tragedy needed a dead hero an audience could watch agonize.
"Thank you," Tenten smiled sweetly when he handed her the glass, her eyes of steel reflecting nothing but the ghosts she carried within.
The alcohol stung her lips as if she were kissing death.
-X-
He thinks if they aim the light in his eyes, he wouldn't be sitting in the darkness for nothing, no one. It would mean something again; the talking, the handcuffs, the drugs in his car and the chase. Searching for himself, searching for the right words that would condemn him and bring her back to him. He wants her body broken against his, bullets silenced and the drugs dusted in the mist.
He drowns in the in-betweens, the endless pit between his name and who he is. He's the first son of the Sabaku family but is known as the third siblings. Gaara and Temari always come before him.
He has never had a problem hiding his true nature before. She had been better than he. He narrows his eyes in the darkness, looking straight at the one-way mirror.
"Do you understand the implication of the two manslaughter charges, sir?"
He still feels her gun in the crook of his stomach, her breath on his leans back against the hard chair, peeling the memory of her off his aching body.
"Is she here?"
"Who?"
"Tenten," he spits her name.
He remains emotionless, but his insides boil, his stomach churns and he is ready to pounce and drag her down with him if he has to. If it means touching her and showing her his way and their equally bloodied palms trapped in it.
"You little rats aren't good at giving your civil names, are you?"
He winces. He can't even hang on to her name. Heaven. He should have known. He closes his eyes.
"I want a lawyer. I changed my mind."
-X-
Tenten noticed how Kankuro distracted her from the laundered money still lying on the desk in stiff piles of money. He moved his hands and the barrels of illegal alcohol washed over her. She had to blink to stay focused. His deep voice both soothed her and unsettled her. Until a few hours, it had clung, distant, to his laughter when he shot them. When Temari then shot her. When the world ended and the scars its ruins had left never healed. She wasn't a warrior anymore, she realized, watching him across the bleakness of the room. She was just one more survivor, one more victim with a personal tragedy.
Often, he looked at his pocket watch from the corner of his eyes. She wondered if they were both waiting for something. Both held back by their true nature; two artists of crime.
He wanted to listen and she didn't want to talk.
"I won't eat you, doll face. Come on, tell me about your family."
She hesitated thinking he knew who she were and only wanted to wrap his strings around her, but his eyes trailed on her neck, on her face, his lips curved in a half-smile when they settled on her moving deep red lips. He didn't recognize her with her feminine curves and make-up.
"I'm sure your family is so much more interesting, though."
He paused, his hand shaking on the cork of a whiskey bottle. His glance hardened but his smile didn't waver.
"Humour me."
Based on the roles she had played, Tenten invented herself. She erased the little girl raised by the gangs of Chicago, the hunger and the emptiness sitting next to her real name. She told him of a working class family and four siblings that she loved. She invented the death of parents she never knew, masked the absence of schooling with years attending a Christian school.
All along, her heart ached, her eyes picking on the faintest steps outside the room. The pipelines hummed softly, taunting her.
"So, it's not about a boyfriend, but you still don't mind sitting with a total stranger. Are you engaged?"
"Men are possessive, sir, I wouldn't be acting if I were."
His dark eyes shone with amusement as it slid down her silhouette and he nodded his head in agreement.
Kankuro poured her another drink and she felt the pull of his charm again. The way he handled words and served them as if there were meant to be the only thoughts that could fill her. Before speaking, he always leaned back against his seat, toying with silence, gripping the impatience in her. More than once, she found herself leaning forward, her gun against her thigh only a distant reminder of what she had planned to do.
"Drop the sir. Call me Kankuro."
He stepped in front of her, forgetting the weight of his pocket watch in his jacket. Lurking in and out the mystery of tightly wrapped around her, Kankuro forgot about the money on the desk, the car waiting for him at the Mexican border. He planned to escape monsters and chase light tonight. He forgot himself and his plainness in her small smile, her hesitant silence, her small frowns that damped her charcoal eyes.
"Alright, Kankuro," her lips hardened, her chin shook as she took the glass he was handing her.
She ignored his hand too close from hers or the proximity that left her both fierce and shaken while his retreats left her dizzy, blinking and gasping.
"You must think, I'm a bore," she blushed, gnawing at her below lip as her fingers nervously played with her gloves. "Here, I am talking and talking. You must have more important things to tend to rather than listening to someone like me who rambles about the siblings I barely see."
He shrugged deliberately slowly, smiling wolfishly while his glance remained on the cups of ice clicking against his glass. Each time, she mentioned her imaginary siblings, he stiffened tucking at his tie or rubbing the tattoo on his neck.
"Why are you on the run?"
"What?"
Tenten froze, tossed against the back of her seat as he leaned forward his eyes piercing through her. They reflected the dancing light above them and she fought with herself to remind still. If his hand brushed her thigh, he would feel her gun.
"You're one of Deidara's girls," Kankuro said lowly rubbing his hands together as if he were sharing a secret. She paled looking down at his flexing fingers, expecting them to be drenched in silky red. "It's no secret, he only takes in the ones who have nowhere else to go because of what happens here, in this room. Do you know who I am, Tenten?"
"Yes," she muttered, her tone hoarse.
The light swayed in front of her eyes, his face growing with shadows the alcohol in her veins softened. She shuddered.
"Then why are you here with me?"
Tenten closed her eyes, waiting for waves of nausea to wash over her at his proximity. He smelled faintly of cologne and pines. The metallic scents of blood and the gunpowder didn't emanate from him as she had imagined. She almost leaned forward to rest her forehead in the crook of his neck. He didn't smell of rotten leaves and flesh scorched by the sun.
She felt cheated of her tragedy; her villains wasn't the devil with rough edges and flames skinning her alive.
"Everyone has a personal tragedy," Tenten whispered and his glance met hers as easily as it had done all night. "We are all running away from something. We are all... both hopeful and hopeless, I guess. What are you running from, Kankuro?"
"I'm not running away, I'm chasing light."
She smiled slowly and he clenched his teeth, his glance altering between her veiled face and the bottles of contraband alcohol lined up on the walls in a cabinet.
It was the first time in years someone had moved his strings of a puppeteer.
"I have everything I want here."
She glanced up swiftly and caught the bitterness hardening his smile. Her gun was almost weightless now.
She had waited long enough.
-X-
He decides he doesn't care if he adds bodies to the charges, if Temari's howling voice buries his confession. He feels no guilt and since she's not there he doesn't have to pretend.
He leaves nothing out so she would walk in red-faced and tell him he can't survive this. He can't survive justice, the truth of them, the death of her smile. He can't survive having met her again. He keeps talking, taunting her. When he is done, he knows she is not there. And he knows his father will pull the right string. He will be free. This is how his world works.
"What happened then?"
"I shot them. Clean in the head in case they were wearing a lifejacket."
"You mean a bulletproof vest?"
His glance hovered the door on last time. If she shows he will tell her; it's not about justice or survival, it's about the streets, the darkness that bathed them and set them apart. He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands, his chest shaking with crispy laughter.
Grimly, he understands he can't walk away now. The chase ended when handcuffs circled his wrists and she stood by him. Lost, frail, but hard as ice. It feels all too real now; the sweating walls, the drawl of the police office, the rattling of his chains, his confession. He thinks if he reaches forward he would touch her flickering body. 'Then what? Then what?' he locks his jaw. She still tastes like ashes and it's his world, not hers that is bursting into flames.
"Bulletproof vest?" The voice presses him again.
He snaps.
"I see you little assholes aren't very good at handling street talk, heh?" Unflinchingly, he leans forward in the light, his dark glance piercing through him.
His smirk is deliberate, ice cold.
"I'm telling you that but you know what? I will walk right out of here. Fill that notepad all you want but my brother will shoot you in the head, my father will bury your sorry-ass of a cadaver and I will stand by like only a fucking free man can. Do you know how long this comedy can go on, asshole? Forever. Because I'm the one pulling the strings. Guess you should have learned that street naming system, huh, asshole?"
-X-
"I'm no hero, kid, I can't shelter you here indefinitely from whom you're running away."
"It's not like that, I told you." Tenten smiled politely and he wished she didn't.
She slipped from between his arms, standing up. He winced, listening to her fumbling with her clothes and jewelry. Whenever she felt cornered, she relied on vain gestures that covered her whole. He wanted to destroy the wall dividing them and she wanted to scream that he was no different; he wanted to be a hero. He ought to, she screamed inwardly. Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense. Otherwise, nothing would.
She wished she hadn't held on to what Neji called 'principles' and that she had shot him, his back to her like the animal who murdered the friends she treated like siblings.
There were moments she would relax against her seat and Kankuro would think that he had her; the girl who built her beauty based on the way she let lines fall on her tongue. Then, she would retreat, as if pinching herself from a bad dream, drenched in sweat and utterly lost.
"Yeah, right best friends." Kankuro said bitterly swallowing his drink in a single sip.
He hesitated following her wobbly gestured that steeled, resolution straightening her back. He licked his lips, uncomfortable in her silence.
Then, he understood, glimpses of her prior childish roundness falling back into place. Light scorched his throat when she rose her arm, silver blinding him, binding him to her. He had never known her name. She caught the recognition splintering his face and she smiled. Chicago's scent of gasoline and lost crimes in the smog rushed back to them and both their tattoos burned.
The war never truly ended.
"Alright, I lied. It's about you killing my best friends."
Her gun kissed his right temple before he could reach for his own gun.
-X-
"Do you know what prohibition means or did you really think you will walk out of here with no charges after all that drug we found in your car. Do they teach you to weigh it in street school?" The cop sits on the table letting each brick of white powder fall in front of him. "That's 5K worth."
"When did the bad cop good cop get old? I've seen it at the pictures just last week." He yawns, playing him.
The pacing alters behind him and he picks at his nail, listening to the amplifying breaths. He smirks inwardly. Soon, the cop will break, spill his guts and he will fracture his skull against the harsh truth of the streets.
"You don't seem to feel remotely guilty."
"I guess that means I don't."
"You walked in here, ready to confess!" The man yells, knocking his chair off. "What the fuck happened?"
Two hands reach out from the darkness and push his feet off the table. Loudly, he curses because he only knows how to navigate the street. He survives in the darkness because he must. Not that he has grazed light, everything is different.
"You little shit."
He laughs, finding his footing again. He knows insults. He knows hurt. But they don't go together, not when it comes to him. Or her. Or chasing light in the trail of shadows he gave her.
"What the fuck happened?" The cop pants.
He never answers, his jaw moving over empty laughter. It doesn't fill his throat and chest. His eyes stung, their corners unwrinkled. Empty. Empty. He should have never grazed light. All he knows is darkness, emptiness and loneliness.
He should have never grazed her skin.
-X-
The weight of her gun didn't comfort her, easing the coldness back into her veins. Her body pulsed with anger, she gulped on saliva like it was acid. He watched her closely as a cornered lion ready to spring and pounce. His muscles flexed under his shirt, he let it show as he always did.
"I expected the devil."
Her body jerked, nervous and unstable, feet falling with difficulty into an impatient pacing. It had seemed easier across the smog of the night; bodies thudding onto the ground, screams oozing out of her the way blood did out of them. On stage, tragedies didn't waver.
She didn't expect tragedy to be a man. A breathing dying man. She pointed at his heart, their eyes meeting.
"I was young," he mocked a sigh, the cool barrel of her gun nudging his sides. "Mistakes happen, just like you pointing this thing at me." Tenten meant to break each rib with each shove.
He chuckled in chorus with the bullets of her memory and he smirked coolly, his hands brushing her thin wrists. Brutally, she pulled away, her eyes widened and her breathing shallow, imprisoned in her chest. His hands limply fell back on his laps.
"Once you kill someone there is no going back, you know? Before you know it, you have to live with glamour and bloodshed and swear on your dead mother's grave that this is freedom. Could you wear pearls and gloves over your bloodstained hands, doll?"
He leaned back against his seat, slipping back into his old habits of destroyer of dreams. The streets of Chicago still reigned over his emotions and he couldn't take his eyes away from her. He should have recognized her. Her beauty froze her features, enhancing the velvet of her eyes of steel. Her movements rang with weapons. They called her the Weapon Mistress in the streets.
"They were young too, you know."
The gun quivered in her hand and Tenten stepped back from him, inspecting his face. She still searched for the villain, the devil, the murderer. Anyone but the man that believed in chasing light despite living in the darkness.
"Maybe I didn't kill them, kid. What do you know? Maybe it was one of your bullets from when you were fighting my sister."
She had always too focused on Neji and Lee's blood to remember her own. It had always been their death above her pain. Her glance fell onto the money on the desk and she blinked. Chasing light. Escaping. Running away. She sucked a breath before looking at him.
"You were planning on running away, weren't you?"
His smooth smile froze on his lips and his nostrils flared. He hadn't played death in too long. She rose the gun again. This time it didn't quiver.
"You're delusional."
"Then, why did your minion walk out of your office before you did? Why did you send him back without the drugs or the money? Does your sister know? Does your brother? It's one happy family you've gotten yourself, Kankuro. Too bad you're going to miss the next happy, happy reunion."
"Weren't you going to kill me?" he asked grimly pulling at the sleeves of his jacket.
"Probably not, the gun is just for show," she laughed humourlessly, waving the gun, mocking him. "Why don't you tell me about your family? Feeling a little overshadowed by your siblings, is that it, Kankuro?"
He knew he wouldn't survive his answer. He knew he didn't have the right to.
It's about you.
It's about them.
It's about pulling the strings of death holding us in the darkness while chasing light.
He bounced onto her anyway, knocking her off her feet. They rolled on the carpet, hitting Deidara's desk, as he gripped her wrists. Her hair spilled out of her bun, her laboured pants warming his cheek. Kankuro froze. Their heaving chests compressed the gun barrel between them.
"I'm sorry, doll," he rasped.
-X-
As he expects, she isn't waiting for him when he walks out of the police station. The air of the night brushes by him and there is nothing left of her. She is miles away, deaf to the radio reciting the charges that have been dropped against him. She drives her windows down, the wind beating the last lines they shared out of her lungs. He can only imagine her.
He is a puppeteer, the king of the poorest streets with his shadow trailing in the richest ones. She doesn't want to hear any of it, he knows. If she had known nothing but glamour, she would have taken his arm, but she's still wrapped in the tragedy that set them apart, cast them as enemies.
Whistling to himself, he begins his slow chase towards her.
It's not over, he don't have to be heroes, Andromaque or Pyrrhus.
He wants her to know that: they don't have to be anyone but themselves.
-X-
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