Me: I do not own Naruto.
Naruto: Yeah! Believe it!
Me: ... *cries*
Naruto: Oi, oi, oi! What are you doing?! *runs around, waving his arms in the air*
Me: *sniffs* Take a look at my blog and review please! *runs off with tears streaming down her face*
Naruto: Ahh! I don't know what to do! I don't know how to handle this!
Sasuke: Hn. Dobe.
Last time:
'Oh.' Kasumi had time to think before the darkness claimed her. 'Oh, that was his plan.'
She fell to the floor and was lost to the abyss.
Orphanage
She had met Haku when she was young.
Really, really young. Kasumi couldn't remember that time very well, because she had suppressed most of it - normal, the therapists had said - but she thought that maybe she was five. Perhaps six. Not seven, not seven for that was when the blood and the pain and the running had started, but maybe six.
Her Okaa-san had been the one to bring her to the orphanage.
"Okaa-san?" Kasumi had asked. "Why are we here?" It was been dirty and crowded and smelly and she remembered distinctly that she hadn't liked it.
Her Okaa-san, her wise, beautiful Okaa-san, had smiled at her kindly. "These are children who have lost their families." She had explained patiently. "I want you to talk to some of them. I have some cookies, why don't you give it to them?"
Now, looking back on the experience, she wondered if her Okaa-san had known what was going to happen, had wanted to give her a look of what her life could be. It wasn't unheard of for a 'feeling' to extend for years and her Otou-san had been the one who married into the clan.
Kasumi had pouted, but she had adored her Okaa-san and no one said no to Yuna Fumei. Sighing tragically, she had took the box of cookies and wandered into the orphanage.
In disdain, she'd looked at the poor living conditions and asked herself why anyone would want to live here. But, at the time, she hadn't understood that they hadn't wanted to, they just had nowhere else to go. She had learned that much, much later, when she had lost her own family.
"You're a freak!"
"Yeah, you should leave!"
"You abnormal, disgusting monster!"
The voices had been loud and openly mocking, but no one had noticed. It had been normal for orphanages; the caretakers certainly couldn't be bothered. Kasumi had been raised in a loving, caring environment though, and she had snapped her head towards the shouting immediately.
She remembered the scene vividly. A ring of three large, muscular boys stood surrounding a huddled figure in the corner, yelling and hitting the poor kid. Bullying, she had thought. Kasumi had been bullied when she had been younger, but her brothers had scared them all away.
It had been obvious the boy in the corner didn't have brothers, so she had stomped over, a scowl on her face.
"Hey!"
As one, the bullies had turned and tried to glare her down, but Kasumi hadn't been fazed, secure in the knowledge that her Okaa-san was right behind her. "Leave him alone!" She had demanded.
"Aww..." One of the brutes had said. "Look at that."
"She thinks she can take us on." His friend had said, cracking his knuckles ominously.
"Shall we teach her a lesson, boys?" The leader had sneered, face twisting unpleasantly.
Kasumi had raised her chin, plastering on a disdainful look that she had seen her mother train on those she didn't like. "Like you could." She'd retorted.
The leader had narrowed his eyes, raised his fist, but before he had been able to bring it down upon her, Yuna's smooth, cultured voice broke in. "Children." She'd said and there was a trace of warning in her tone. "I hope there's nothing wrong."
Kasumi had taken childish pleasure in watching the bullies go white and scamper off without another peep. "Humph." Kneeling down next to the wide-eyed boy, she'd smiled at him kindly. "Want a cookie?"
"I - uh - yes." The boy had stuttered and she had smiled wider, because he was so adorable!
"I'm Kasumi." She'd said as the boy ate the cookie like he was starving. "What's your name?"
"Haku." The boy had said quietly and that was how they'd become friends.
Liar
Haku had been kind and sweet and so, so adorable.
Kasumi had liked him at once.
"Ne, ne, how are you doing?" She'd asked, a few weeks after they had met. In those weeks, Kasumi had repeatedly begged her mother to bring her to the orphanage and laughing, she had agreed, despite her father's stern eyes.
Kasumi had really, really loved her mother.
"I - I'm doing good, Kasumi-san." Haku had said quietly as she gave him the apple pie that her mother had made that day. It hadn't taken Kasumi long to realize that Haku didn't get enough to eat and that she should bring him food every time she visited. "Thank you."
"No problem!" She'd grinned, much more cheerful and open with her emotions back then. "Those bullies haven't been bugging you, have they?" She'd added, worried.
They tended to do that when she hadn't been around and she hadn't liked them very much. She never had asked why they called Haku a freak, but then, she hadn't really cared.
"N-No." He hadn't been able to look into her eyes.
"Liar!" She'd accused right away and he'd blushed crimson.
"It - it's okay, Kasumi-san. It really is."
She'd frowned, but agreed meekly even as she'd plotted to tell Okaa-san. She would know what to do to stop those mean bullies.
"Why are you here, Haku?" Kasumi had asked, the young, naive girl that she had been sheltered and protected by her family from the cruelties of the world beyond their simple, happy life.
Haku had paused, a flicker of surprise passing through his eyes, before smiling sadly and shaking his head. "My parents are dead."
"Oh." She'd gasped, horrified. The girl that she had been had been utterly dependent on her loving, kind parents and her strong, protective brothers. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be." He'd said and she hadn't understood, but she had understood that he had been sad and she had said nothing more on that subject.
"What do you want to happen to your body after you die?" She'd questioned, one day, maybe eight months after they first met.
Haku had given her a quietly curious look. "Why?"
"Well, it's strange, you know." She'd kicked her feet out, smiled at the small pond they had termed 'theirs'. "Everyone wants something different."
"What about you?"
"After I die, I want to be cremated and I want my ashes to be flung out to sea." She'd declared, so sure, so confident back then as only a child could be. "That's what my Taishi-nii-san said real shinobi of the Mist do."
Haku had laughed, eyes soft. "In that case, I'd like that, too." He'd said and she had beamed at him, happy, so happy.
And so it'd gone. She'd visited the orphanage every few days with food for Haku and she had spent the hours there talking and laughing with him.
He had been her first true friend.
But then, things had started to fall apart.
Forlorn
"Kasumi-san?" Haku had said to her around a year later. "Are you alright?"
"Huh?" She'd glanced up, embarrassed. "Yeah. Of course, I'm okay!"
"Liar." He'd said in a gentle tone, repeating what she had said to him so often. "What's wrong?" He'd leaned forward, watching him with those kind brown eyes and she'd felt her resolve to not tell him melt.
"I - I - my family..." She'd started out hesitantly and he'd nodded for her to go on. "I - there have been nasty rumors going around."
Haku had frowned, looking concerned. "Rumors?"
"Mm-hm." Kasumi had nodded, brow furrowed. "Some people are saying that my family... that my family is cursed."
"Cursed?"
"Yeah. Because, you know," She had leaned forward so she could whisper into his ear, "we have a bloodline ability."
"Ahh." Kasumi hadn't known what bloodline Haku had had, but she had known that he had one. Her Okaa-san had told her. Haku's frown had deepened and he had looked genuinely distressed.
"Haku-kun?"
"You need to be careful, Kasumi-san." He'd said to her. "Really, really careful."
Kasumi had nodded and they had spent two more hours together before she had left. As the time when her Okaa-san was supposed to arrive had approached, the dark clouds above had finally relented and snow, pure and sweet, had fallen down from the heavens.
"Haku-kun! Look!" She'd called out happily, smiling so widely her face had hurt.
Haku had been smiling, too. He had reached out and cupped his hands together and a perfect snowflake had landed on his palm. "Look, Kasumi-san."
"It's so pretty..."
"Yes. I love the snow." He had told her.
She had laughed. "I do, too!"
She had waved goodbye cheerfully and he had waved back, a small smile on his face, but his eyes had conveyed his worry.
Two days later, her world was painted blood-red and she had willingly shoved him to the back of her mind in favor of survival.
Five years later, she found herself face to face with that little boy that had been her first friend, the one that wanted to kill her now.
Irony, at its worst, she supposed.
Blood
Kasumi was abruptly snapped out of her distant, fuzzy dreams of a boy with a kind smile and the ice-wielding man that he had become by her bloodline.
It wailed, the long, painful cry of a wounded animal, the painful sob of a grieving friend.
Gasping, she bolted upright and instantly regretted when her body gleefully reminded her that it had been pierced with several sharp, sharp senbon and that her pain-receptors were working just fine.
Hissing out a breath, she took a quick evaluation of her body. Multiple senbon sticking out of her, unsurprising, what looked like two dozen cuts, but other than that... nothing major. Kasumi pressed her lips together, narrowed her eyes, gathered up her strength, and with hurried, fluid movements plucked out all of the senbon, placing them lightly on the ground.
She got herself up on her knees. Forcibly ignoring the distracting pain, she ran her eyes over the battlefield.
She wasn't where she had collapsed, she noticed that immediately. Quite far from it, in fact, as she was near the very edge of the bridge, a place that was decently remote from the danger zone. She briefly wondered who had been the one to carry her away, the one who had removed her trench coat and laid her down on it, but dismissed the thought as unimportant when her bloodline gave her a nudge coated with desperation.
The mist was gone from her location - did that mean Zabuza had been defeated?
A flicker of navy and black caught her eye and she turned to see a limp figure on that ground. Sasuke? Was he okay? Pieces of ice encompassed the ground around him - remnants of the ice mirrors? Was Haku defeated? Sasuke was still, motionless; was he alive?
Safe. Alive. Clearly impatient, her bloodline tugged at her to realize something; something important. Very important. Look.
She didn't want to look, because there was no way for this to not be bad news. Frowning, she directed her eyes further left and for a bare second, felt her heart stop beating before freezing outright. The scene in front of her could have been taken straight out of her nightmares.
Zabuza stood, bloody and wounded, in the center of the bridge, large, ferocious-looking dogs holding him down. Kakashi stood not even a meter away, hand thrust out, and one eye betraying abject horror.
And Haku, Haku stood in the middle, hands outstretched like he could stop the death raining down on them all by sheer will, Kakashi's hand plunged inside his chest, blood - his blood, her first friend's blood, Haku's life blood - dripping down his baggy clothing in rivers, falling down to pool at his feet, on the bridge...
Kasumi thought that - for all of her composure, poise, control - she might have screamed if someone hadn't beaten her to it.
"HAKU!" Naruto yelled and numbly, blankly, she glanced further left to see a shocked Tazuna and her blonde, distraught teammate on the cold, hard ground. "HAKU!"
Dead. Her bloodline told her and this, this was why she had sealed it away all those years ago. Dead.
Naruto really should know better, she thought to herself, feeling abnormally cold despite the temperate weather conditions. They were ninja and ninja killed; ninja died. Ninja got soaked in blood - red and wet and copper and hot - all the time. Ninja didn't get attached, ninja didn't cry.
Ninja were meant to be emotionless tools that spilled blood - on yourself, on others, on the ground, pools and pools of it until the mist was tinted pink and the rivers weren't clear anymore - and went on missions and killed in the middle of the night for others.
Ninja weren't supposed to cry. Ninja weren't supposed to mourn. Ninja were supposed to get the job done.
Kasumi closed her eyes momentarily and found that part of her that was hard and unyielding, even more unbreakable than those mirrors, even colder than that ice, and pulled it around her like a cloak. Priorities.
Priorities. Who were the priorities? Tazuna, Naruto, Sasuke.
She disregarded the fight starting to play out in front of her eyes once more, paid no attention to Tazuna after affirming that he was unharmed, and after visually checking Naruto over and finding that he was fine, focused on Sasuke. Neglecting her own wounds - they weren't that bad, anyways - she dragged herself over to the dark-haired Uchiha, taking no notice of the pain her body tried to inform her of.
Upon reaching him, she blinked down at him. Senbon through the neck, through the arms, through the torso, through the legs...
Kasumi reached out and gently lifted up her injured teammate, resting his head on her lip. She resolutely ignored the red, red blood all over the bridge, on her pants, on her hands...
Gingerly, slowly, she slid a senbon out from his neck and let it clatter to the ground.
Plink. Loud. One.
Drip. She ignored that.
Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Plink, plink, plink.
Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop. She ignored those, too.
She needed to heal these wounds now. They were small, but could be detrimental later on. Mystical Palm Technique. How to perform it again? Ox seal and then tiger. Yes, that was right.
Kasumi formed the necessary seals and concentrated and watched as pale green chakra gathered around her hands. She placed her hands over Sasuke's neck and watched as the small holes in his pale skin healed.
Slow. Absurdly slow.
'I really must,' she thought to herself, 'practice my medical ninjutsu more. This rate of healing is hardly going to be useful to me in combat or in the case of severe wounds.'
That done, she turned her concentration on the senbon sticking out of his chest. One out, two out, three out...
Plink. Plink. Plink.
It was cold on the bridge.
Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.
She was healing the wound on Sasuke's knee when a gentle touch to her cheek made her still. She glanced up, found herself looking into dazed black eyes.
Drip. Drop.
"Sasuke-san." Kasumi said, feeling a light strand of hair flutter against her neck as a cool breeze blew across the bridge. "You're awake."
He frowned at her, eyes strangely shrewd despite being cognizant for less than a minute. His hand shifted so it cupped her face. Gently, gently his thumb - calloused, warm - brushed against her ice-cold skin. "You're crying." He said and dully, she realized that she was.
How... strange.
She drew back, having finished healing Sasuke to the best of her ability, and started to heal herself. It didn't take her long to finish healing the small scratches and holes in her skin. Kasumi wasn't vain, but that wasn't why she healed her face last.
There were only two scratches. Haku had gone easy on her. Her fingers brushed against something wet and she froze for a long heartbeat, before methodically smoothing healing chakra against the stinging wounds.
Sasuke, having pushed himself to a sitting position, watched her with those dark, dark eyes.
That done, her hands fell down to fold themselves on her lap. Kasumi stared blankly at Sasuke and wondered what she was supposed to do now.
It was so cold on the bridge.
"Hey." Sasuke said and shuffled closer. He placed his hands on her bare arms and she became conscious of the shivers that wracked her body. Why was it so, awfully, cold?
Sasuke drew her closer, into his warm, warm arms, and in some small part of her mind, Kasumi thought that this was incredibly uncharacteristic of him. Sasuke showing affection? Was he alright? He didn't have a concussion, did he?
A hard, vicious tremble tore its way through her body and she stared, almost uncomprehendingly, at the blood on the bridge. It was amazing, it honestly was. How one kind, sweet, sad boy barely become a man could have so much blood contained in his body.
How it could splatter against the wood of the bridge in such a savage, malevolent pattern.
Sasuke muttered a curse as a particularly violent tremble shook her body and hauled her closer to the warmth of his body. He smelled like blood and steel, she thought to herself listlessly. But underneath that, was the scent of fresh ozone, like a thunderstorm on a hot summer day, and cool mint.
It didn't suit him... and yet, it did. Kasumi rested her face against his shoulder, stared at the noiseless world beyond the barrier of ice.
It came to her slowly, was a realization that came not as a harsh slap, but a gradual understanding... this apathy... it wasn't right, was it?
Oh.
There wasn't something wrong with Sasuke. There was something wrong with her.
Something light and cold landed on her cheek and Kasumi glanced up to see hundreds of white snowflakes falling to the ground, coating the blood-stained world with an odd purity, almost like a layer of innocence, of beauty.
Pretty. It was a lie, of course, but it was a lie that she wouldn't mind accepting... just for now. Only for a minute.
"Hey." Sasuke muttered in her ear again. His voice was husky, soft, muted in the quiet intimacy of the falling snow. "It'll be okay."
If he felt the tears falling drop by drop onto his neck, he gave no indication. None at all.
Next time:
Naruto and Sasuke waited quietly, patiently, and she thought, 'Yes. I do owe them an explanation, don't I?'
Me: *sniffs* Poor Kasumi-chan. Let's see, stuff gets explained next time! And all of my lovely reviews!
.cake: Nooo! Don't die on me! See, see, stuff gets explained up there! ^ So don't die! XD I'm delighted you like my story, hun! Thanks for the review!
Rosy Fire: Lolz, it's okay. I'm happy you like AS! And yes, after 14 chapters, Kasumi's last name is finally reviewed! Cheers~
OatsandHoney: O.O No, no, no! Don't die! I didn't mean to kill anyone! Read and enjoy! XD, thanks for the review, hun!
TamashinoSuzume: Ah, I'm so happy you like! The Chunin Exams... I'm writing that part right now. :3 Let's just say it'll be interesting! Thanks for the review, sweetie!
lostfeather1: Kasumi-chan finally broke down. But it's okay cause her teammates are going to be there for her! And if I may say so myself, Sasuke's reaction was swoon-worthy. Aww... thank you so much! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
Kronus96: Lolz, I love the way you put that. Friends with the slackers, :D. *le gasp* You, my friend, are a very good guesser! Oh, you're very welcome! And thanks for your review!
TheQueenofGoodbyes: Lolz, yup, there's drama! Was there enough drama for you? I'd say there was a lot of drama this time. Thanks for your review, hun!
starrat: Oh, thank you! Hope you liked this chapter!
Guest: Yeah, I thought that analogy would be one Naruto could refer to. Lolz, thanks for the review!
bonitalito: Ah, thank you! I hope you liked this chapter!
ShikiUploadz: Kyaa! Please don't kill me! Or, wait, who are you trying to kill? O.O Either way, please put that guy away! See, see, I updated! Things are explained! Up there! ^ Please don't kill anyway, lolz!
Guest: Lolz, yes. Sasuke is very, very curious. And stubborn. Thanks for the review, hun!
Nikita: Aww... thank you so much! Your review made my day! Hmm... romance, huh? *smiles mischievously and points up* No worries! I shall be a ninja and sneak in romance! And Haku... yes, I've always thought of him as an innocent. Breaks my heart. Thanks for the review, hun!
Bella-swan11: Yup, yup! We'll find out what happens after Kasumi passes out next chapter. Thanks for the review!
Me: Okay! *takes a deep breath* Stuff happened! Take a look at my blog and review! Oh, and so much thanks to my beta! Cha~