Kumogakure, Jounin Apartment #53
A month had passed since Mina was released from the dungeons of Konoha's Torture and Interrogation Department. She grimaced when her fingers passed over the last of the sutures on her scalp. The mint co-wash stung as it seeped into the cut. This was the first time she had been able to properly wash her hair in weeks.
Normally, she only used gentle co-wash made for curly hair and an excessive amount of conditioners. However, the weeks of buildup made her skin crawl. Practicality overtook vanity when she grabbed Darui's harsher shampoo and massaged a glob of it into her hair. Her fingernail hit the stitches again, and she growled. With or without approval to use her chakra coils, this was getting ridiculous. It felt good to focus on the small remaining laceration. A soft green glowed in the dim bathroom before changing to bright blue, electrifying the water.
"Ah!" she yelled, recalling her chakra and shutting off the water.
"What happened?" Darui asked, rushing into the bathroom.
"Nothing, I'm fine. Your shampoo just sucks."
Darui scrunched his nose as he looked her over. "You used your chakra, didn't you? The specialist told you, you have to go through chakra therapy before you can use jutsu again. Especially medical ninjutsu."
He flipped the warm water back on and pulled the shower head down.
"I can wash my own hair," she grouched. "I'm not an invalid."
"I like the view." He traced a line of escaping bubbles between her breasts to emphasize his point.
Mina snorted in response, leaning her head back into his gentle hand while he rinsed the remaining suds from her hair. He turned off the water and picked up her purple bottle of conditioner.
"I thought you said it was a ridiculous routine?"
Darui shrugged. "You need something normal. Consider me a newfound expert in ridiculous haircare routines."
His fingers were strong and soothing as he worked in sections to distribute the conditioning masque. The smell of vanilla and lavender filled the small space with every pass of his hand. All too soon, he was finished, gently clipping her hair in a sloppy twist.
He handed her a bathrobe, helping her shrug it on.
"I thought you liked the view?" she teased with a raised brow.
He grazed his hand along the valley of her breasts, opening the front of the robe. Mina's heart sped up underneath his touch. She brushed her fingers against his forearm, desperate to feel more of him against her skin. He pulled her into his chest, tilting her chin toward him.
She looked into his eyes and caressed his cheek. He leaned into her touch, nuzzling her palm with his nose. Her eyes widened in surprise before returning the gesture. She closed her eyes when he leaned in. His lips were soft but dominating against hers, an unyielding shield against the world. Her breath caught as he moved down her jaw, landing on her pulse. He gently sucked against it. She exposed her throat, giving him the access he craved, surrendering to his control. His lips curl in a slight smile against her skin. He held the back of her neck and left another soft peck on her lips before resting his forehead against hers.
"You're beautiful," he whispered against her lips. "I will always think you're beautiful. Whether you spend hours on your hair or shave yourself bald. You will always be beautiful to me."
"Darui—" Mina breathed out. The butterflies flit about her stomach. Her heart pounded against her chest when he kissed her tenderly. The edge of his calloused thumb scraped her cheek once more before he moved down her body.
He trailed a path down her abdomen, caressing the long raised scar. His other hand traced the white line on her hairline. Bringing her hands to his mouth, he laid a gentle kiss against the new scars along her wrists.
"Even your scars are beautiful."
"Darui—" She started to close the robe to hide the scar she hated most. He stopped her, placing his hands on her bare hips and dropping to his knees.
"You are even more beautiful because of them. They mean you survived." He kissed his way down the jagged edge on her ribs. "My strong, beautiful queen." Rising off his knees, he kissed her pulse once more.
"Darui—" He silenced her with another kiss on her lips, brokering no argument.
His sure hands closed the front of the robe once more, tightening the sash. She watched in bewilderment as he left the bathroom, closing the door behind himself.
Kumogakure Municipal Hospital was absolutely frigid as Mina's steps echoed down its corridors for the first time in weeks. She opened her office door and groaned at the large stacks of paperwork that had accumulated in her absence. Paper seemed to float off the desk to the ground, mocking her. Without a doubt in her mind, this was C's doing. He always foisted off his paperwork on her during their apprenticeship with S. 'A Senpai's Prerogative,' he always claimed. Now that she was unable to be of use in the emergency department downstairs, C was taking full advantage.
Her door opened again to C, who was whistling an annoyingly peppy tune. He carried in another huge stack of papers tall enough to cover his line of sight and stopped short when he saw Mina.
"Oh shit. You're back already," he said, dropping the stack on her desk and preparing to run away.
"C! This is all your crap! We're co-department heads. Half of this is yours!"
C continued to speed walk down the hospital corridors, carefully avoiding orderlies and nurses. They scattered in Mina's wake as she angrily stalked after him.
"C! Get your lazy ass back here!"
By the time she made it to the stairwell, he was out of reach, safely ensconced in the busy emergency department. Mina growled and slammed the fire door to the stairwell behind her. Several hours passed as boxes of paperwork were stacked on a cart and dragged away to the medical records department by a genin apprentice. Night had fallen by the time Mina looked up from a cleared desk. She carefully stretched her writing hand when there was a timid knock on the door.
"That better not be you with more paperwork," she warned lowly.
C chuckled nervously when he opened the door, with the smell of beef teriyaki drifting through the opening.
"Peace offering," he said, holding up a bag of take-out.
She rolled her eyes when he took the seat across from her anyway. He pulled two boxes from the bag and placed one in front of her. Chopsticks and condiments followed, laid out in his orderly way next to the boxes.
"How's it been while I was out?" she started, opening the box of take-out. She moved one of the condiment packets slightly to the right. Watching for his unease, she smirked.
C frowned, quickly moving the condiment packet until it was straightened. "Busy, but normal for us. Some of the civilian doctors quit."
Mina put down her chopsticks haphazardly, causing C to wince. "Really? Did they say why? And did you offer to increase their pay any? I think the civilians usually stick around for money."
"That was the first thing I did. Second thing I did was talk to Mabui; she said to just hire more staff. But from where? Not many civilians want to come to our mountains."
"We lose any specialists or just general practice?"
C chewed thoughtfully before leaning back in his chair. "Just one specialist, a pediatric cardiologist. She was the only one I could get a real excuse from. Said that her village up north was going through an epidemic of chickenpox. And before you ask, yes, I did offer to sponsor a mission with some medics."
"She decline or something? If it's who I'm thinking of, it's a shame she left."
"She declined the medic assistance but did accept aid. So we sent her with a genin team full of medical supplies."
"Alright; so who else?"
"Just general practice. To be honest, I'm not sad to see them go. It was Watanabe, Mitsu, and Kairi."
"No big loss there."
"Agreed. We'll need to start looking for a new pediatric cardiologist soon, though."
"It's not like they grow on trees," she grumbled.
Mina kicked back in her chair, pushing the food to the side. She looked out of the window, across the clouds at the Raikage's tower. C followed her gaze.
"He loves you, you know," he said quietly.
"What's not to love?" Mina asked sarcastically with a short laugh.
"I'm serious. Darui is madly in love with you. Like eternal, forsake all others, the one and only for him, madly in love with you."
Mina sighed and scrubbed her hand down her face. She stalled for time by adjusting the ear loops of her surgical mask as it sat beneath her chin.
"I thought he's been acting odd. I thought maybe it was, well, you know."
"No. He loves you. Has loved you. Mina?"
"Hmm?"
"Don't break his heart. He's not like the rest of us, content with one-night stands or friends with benefits. He wants you. Only you."
Mina stayed silent, crossing her arms over her chest, continuing to look out of the window.
"I filed your expense reports for you. And your treatment logs," she finally said, packing up the box of teriyaki.
C sighed. He wouldn't get anything out of her. Nothing real, in any case.
"Thanks. It was hard being down a medic. The academy just started shurikenjutsu. I'm personally traumatized by the sheer inventiveness."
Mina laughed. "They were so bad last year. Remember that one kid who managed to bend the blades while electrocuting himself?"
He nodded and laughed with her. "Yeah, I remember him. Yugito-senpai told me they held him back a year. Gods, that woman is a saint to be headmistress."
"Thank the gods. Can you imagine that in the field in five years? 'Taichou, I appear to have lost control and zapped my entire team,'" Mina sniggered.
"No. I don't know why Samui-senpai actually wants to be a genin sensei."
"I think she's just tired of running ANBU intel. She wants to give Ay-sama a reason to have someone else do it."
C shrugged in response, shoveling rice into his mouth.
Mina started, "Darui said he'd be a genin sensei too. He thinks it would be good experience. I guess Ay-sama was telling him he needed a more rounded file to impress the Daimyo when the time comes to hand over the reins. For a smoother transition."
"Man, I would not want to be in his shoes. That's a lot of responsibility."
"He loves this village," Mina said with a shrug, looking out of the window again. "He has everyone's best interests in mind. I think he'll be a great Raikage. He's honorable, level-headed, and kind. He's forgotten more jutsu than some people learn in a lifetime of study."
C blinked rapidly, taken aback. He opened his mouth to comment before closing it.
"Darui's a good man and a good partner. I'm maybe the luckiest person in the village that Mabui paired us together as genin apprentices," she added quietly.
"Wait a second, are you in love with him?" C asked in shock. "I would've never thought you would but—"
"What? No, of course not. I'm not in love with anyone. I like my freedom way too much. I love him, but I'm not in love with him," Mina quickly denied. "I literally slept with J like two months ago."
"Well yeah, but you can sleep with whoever while pining for someone else. And that was more like six months ago."
"I've been busy," Mina defended.
C held up his hands in surrender. "If you say so." He looked behind her at the clock on the wall before standing up. "That's the end of my dinner break. Work on healing those chakra coils so you can get back to work."
"Gods, you're so lazy," she joked, moving around the desk and planting a kiss on his cheek.
"Take care of yourself," he said. He quickly hugged her before closing the office door behind him.
The clouds surrounding the jounin apartment building muffled the sounds of night training above. The occasional bird flew by, making its nest in the rocky cliff face. Winter came early in the high mountains with unpredictable snowfalls, especially in early October. It would blow and pile up on the window sills and balconies. Cold winter air from the Land of Frost would rush through the buildings, freezing everything above ground.
Mina listened as it blew cold and crisp through her cracked window. She didn't want to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she would be assaulted by an onslaught of memories. With those memories came questions. Darui had shown her the personnel file Samui gave him. None of her questions had been answered when she read it. Even Darui admitted it seemed incomplete. Killer Bee's return from Genbu Island was delayed due to the snow, and until then, she wouldn't be able to get any real answers.
Unable to stand the uncertainty anymore, Mina got dressed. If Samui didn't want to hand over her full file, she would get it her damn self. Darui was on his weekly night shift as part of his bodyguard duties for the Raikage that night, instead of being asleep in the room next door. She tied her hair back and threw on Darui's oversized black hoodie on top of her uniform. Looking to her closet, she quietly dragged out the medical mannequin she toted to the academy on Wednesdays for demonstrations. It wouldn't hold up to his inspection, but it would buy her seconds to leave if and when he came to look for her.
'Besides,' she reasoned as she tucked the mannequin into her bed, 'It's not like my file is squeaky clean like his. What's one more reprimand?'
The ANBU personnel archives were in the middle of a steep crag, reachable only by chakra. Mina braced herself against the howling wind when she opened the door leading out of the jounin apartment building. She buried her nose inside of her collar and cinched the hood drawstring around her face. The warm smell of Darui's hoodie settled her nerves for what she was about to do. With a muttered curse against the weather, she bounded across the bridged network to the edge of the village.
The rock face of the mountain on the village's edge was slippery by design. One misstep or slip of chakra would land an infiltrator ten thousand feet below to a horrible death. If there was anything left, the buzzards would pick the corpse clean. She had been in this building a grand total of three times. Most incidents where Kumo ANBU required a medic's assistance happened in the Raikage's tower where the Torture and Interrogation department was housed.
Mina crouched low on the top of the mountain, waiting for the ANBU guard to pass. Like her, they were miserable in the winter gale, and quickly went back into a heated guard hut carved into the limestone. Silently, she slipped down the crag. Small icy pebbles loosened and fell below.
'One-thousand feet, two-thousand,' she counted slowly in her head as she carefully climbed down, not trusting her chakra coils to hold out. 'Three-thousand, four, and door.'
She hopped over to the enclave, placing her hand on the seal. With a burst of lightning, the door opened. A small sigh of relief escaped her lips before she walked into the cold archives. Rows of files and cabinets filled the vast storage facility. Each was tucked away in its own category, carefully coded with the ancient language from the Land of Lightning back when it was divided into the Land of Mountains and the Land of Clouds over a thousand years ago.
Mina pulled a small flashlight out of the kunai pouch on her thigh and walked over to the archive catalog. She flipped through the large cabinet, yanking open the drawer labeled 'active-duty shinobi.'
"M, M, M," she mumbled to herself, searching for her name. "Gotcha. Row P-18, file 43."
Row 'P' was over ten minutes away on the other side of the vast room filled with traps and silent alarms that Mina carefully avoided. When she finally reached it, she dropped down and activated the lightning seal on the cabinet before searching for file 43. Storing her prize in the hoodie pocket, she quickly exited the facility and went back to her apartment.
As soon as she locked the apartment door behind her, she exhaled in relief. ANBU wasn't waiting for her at their kitchen table like the time she'd been caught tampering with the Raikage's protein powder. As she told them, she'd been diluting it with powdered milk, not cocaine. The man was prone to kidney stones and she was tired of treating them. Or the time she convinced Darui that Raikage Tower needed a facelift with spray paint when they were fifteen. She smiled when she thought of that. It was a rare treat for Darui to go along with her escapades. Of course, she voluntarily took the fall for that, allowing him time to hide from the ANBU guards.
Laying the file out on her desk, she carefully broke the encryption on the edge.
Personnel File
Name: Mina of Kumogakure
D.O.B.: June 30, 46
Rank: Jounin
Registration: CL5599
Classification: Medic-nin
Secondary Classification: Tracker
Assigned Mission Partner: Darui of Kumogakure
Mission Partner DOB: January 6, 45
Assigned: August 1, 56
"Come on, get to the good stuff," Mina murmured, flipping the page. Her heart pounded when she heard the distant security door to the building open and close. She read faster, hoping it wasn't Darui. Page after page of reprimand statements fluttered past as she moved through the file. Her academy scores fell out, and she hurriedly shoved them back in. Surveillance photos of her jounin test lay in neat photo protectors. Near the end of the stack sat a mission report from thirteen years ago. The bottom of the page had been hastily torn off.
Mission Report #003425
Date: September 12, 54
Time: 1300
Shinobi: Osoi of Kumogakure; CL4582
Location: Teshio River between Land of Frost and Land of Hot Springs
During a routine patrol, Team Killer Bee found an injured child in shinobi garb approximately eight years of age on the banks of the Teshio River. Under Commander B's direction, aid was rendered. Commander B provided an emergency chakra transfusion using the Hachibi's chakra. During that time, Medic S inserted IV with plasma: three units; morphine: half-unit. Medic S then used medical ninjutsu to seal large abdominal wounds, including the repair of several internal organs on the left side of body. Spleen was removed in an effort to control hemmorhaging. hammorhajing. hemorhagging. blood loss.
When the child became more lucid, she reported her name as 'REDACTED' Iwa-nin closed in on our position at that time. In the best interests of the wounded child, Commander B determined we were to evacuate immediately with the child to Kumogakure.
The child regained full consciousness at the Land of Lightning border outpost. The child then gave her birthday as June 30th of 46. At that time the child also told—
The door to the apartment opened. With shaky hands, Mina stuffed the personnel file underneath a stack of heavy medical textbooks.
Darui knocked gently on her bedroom door. "Mina?"
"You're home early," she said before opening it to him.
He simply nodded tiredly. "Raikage-sama woke up early. Are you okay? You sound like you just ran to Suna."
"Oh, do I? Just reading scary stories, must've been more scared than usual, I guess," she joked.
"At three in the morning?"
"Darui, I am fine. Go to bed, you look exhausted."
A long yawn escaped him before he nodded. As he padded to his own bed, Mina walked behind him and kissed his shoulder before walking back to her own. He stopped in the middle of the hallway and looked back at her.
"Sleep with me tonight," he said groggily.
Mina climbed into his bed at his invitation and held up the blanket for him. He pulled her into his arms and promptly fell asleep.
AN: Thank you for reading; if you have the time please leave a comment.
Again, apologies for the goof last week when I posted Part 5 before posting Part 4. The error has since been remedied. So if you were confused by last week's update; go back and read through Part 4. It'll probably make a bit more sense. Thank you to Amaterasu53 for pointing it out in the first place. I screamed in horror.
I wish I could use strike-throughs, but ffn does not allow them. Osoi of Kumo cannot spell.
Beta'ed by: CherryBerry12