Kumogakure Jounin Apartment #53

It was past noon; it had to be, Mina thought, as she snuggled against Darui's warm body, basking in the familiarity. Their legs intertwined beneath the sheets, his arm around her waist, her nose squished against his chest. Hot breath blew against an errant curl on her forehead. She didn't remember getting home, much less putting on clothes then taking them off.

"You're up early," he mumbled with his eyes closed.

"I'm naked."

He hummed in the back of his throat. The callouses on his hand rasped against her waist when he caressed her curves.

"Did…I didn't go streaking through Kumo again, did I? I know I didn't drink that much."

His restrained laugh rumbled his chest against her cheek. "I wrapped you up and took you home. No one saw anything."

"Oh, well, that's a relief. The last thing I need is to be the source of more gossip."

"C was still here an hour ago. If you want gossip, a threesome between us would turn heads."

"Please, everyone is well aware he doesn't have any interest in that."

"So we tried to convert him with our wicked debauchery."

Mina snorted and snuggled closer. "Is that so? A bisexual threesome?"

Darui glared down at her. "Dull."

"You think he'd top you?" She laughed when he grimaced.

"If you need proof of dominance, I'd be more than happy to give a demonstration."

She absentmindedly stroked his cheek with her thumb. "I love you. You know that? I missed your humor, your smile. You've always had a beautiful smile."

"I love you too." He kissed her and pulled the covers back over her shoulder. "I'm sorry I didn't come for you sooner."

"I get it. You never received the distress signal. It's protocol."

"You're my partner. I should have—"

"Darui, you couldn't. Kumo has less of a claim over me than Konoha."

"Marry me."

She huffed an unamused laugh and drew small circles on his chest. "Go back to sleep; you're loopy."

He pulled back and tilted her chin up to face him. "I was serious, Mina. Marry me. I've been thinking about it for months now, researching it in the legal library when I had time. It would separate you from the Hatake clan. You'd be under the Lightning Daimyo's protection as his niece-in-law. The Fire Daimyo would have no choice but to relinquish your citizenship to the Land of Lightning. Noble traditions would demand it as a daughter of a lesser noble family marrying into a greater one, no matter what the Hokage of Konoha said. It's an easier angle than shinobi tradition."

"Darui. You're not funny. And this isn't a proposal, this is sounding like a…a contract. It's not romantic at all."

"Sorry, should I have brought roses and chocolates to our bed?"

Mina glared at him in response. Jerking open the bed covers, she freed herself from his grip. "I'm not marrying you as a means to an end." She wrapped the throw blanket from the end of the bed around herself and slammed the bedroom door behind her.

The hallway was colder than their bed as she stalked to her room. Darui's sluggish footsteps trailed behind her and stopped at the bedroom door. She didn't look up from her dresser as she threw clean clothes onto the unused bed.

"The answer is still no," she muttered angrily under her breath.

He walked over and stroked his hands down her arms. "Sorry—"

"Can we wait until after the jounin council this afternoon? Please? You dropped a bomb on me. I need time to process that. I'm still irritated by the way you went about it. And there's just a lot going on in general right now."

"That was dull."

"Ya think?" She sighed and turned around.

The bite marks and hickeys from the night before were dark against his skin under the sunlight streaming through the open curtains. A small pair of electrical burns were on the backs of his arms. They streamed out in a web, like light pink raised veins against his skin.

Mina could feel the heat in her cheeks as she grabbed his arm to fully assess the damage. "You didn't mention this last night," she quietly complained while healing the burns. "I would have healed them then. I didn't realize…"

Darui shrugged. "It's a compliment to make you lose all control like that."

"You know my body too well. Even after months of…you—"

He leaned down and kissed her. "I know your body better than I know my own. I know if I do this," he kissed the side of her neck, his lips lingered against her pulse, "you forget to breathe."

True to his observation, her breath was frozen in her lungs, her head lolled back, giving him greater access. She closed her eyes and toyed with the waistband of his boxers on his hips.

He continued to trace the curve of her neck to her shoulder. "If I do this," he bit down gently, adding new bitemarks to the collection on her skin, "your nipples harden."

"Darui—"

He cut her off with his lips against hers. When they finally pulled apart, he dropped his forehead against hers. "You know mine just as well. I'm not asking you for monogamy, Mina. I'm asking you to be by my side for the next eighty years. I want to raise our children together, I don't care how we have them, birthed or adopted. If you would have me, we would build our home together in these mountains. Piece together all of the second-hand furniture so we can fix it up ourselves."

She gave a watery laugh and absentmindedly touched the hand-painted iron footboard of her bed—their first experiment in furniture restoration. Years ago, they realized they could save money to spend on luxury vacations on the coast and in the ski resorts of the Land of Frost if they bought their furniture second-hand. Despite salary increases, they continued their tradition of fixing any new piece together.

"What do you think our enemies would say if they found out the Raikage couldn't afford furniture?" she joked. She watched him carefully for his reaction after throwing out the reminder of his position.

"I swear I will love you until the last breath leaves my lungs, and my soul leaves my body. Marry me because I know you feel the same."

"Promise me it's not because you're afraid I'll leave," she whispered, hiding her face against his chest. "Promise me it's not a trap."

"Will you leave me again?"

She shook her head against him then looked up to meet his eyes. "I swear, I won't leave you again."

"I promise. I want to marry you because I love you more than I ever thought it possible for one human to love another." He gently wiped away the tear that escaped down her cheek.

She brought his lips down to hers and kissed him. When she released him, she hid her face in the crook of his neck and nodded. "I love you. I don't want anyone else…haven't for years now…I just want you. Marry me for me not for some sense of honor, or obligation. I only want who you are as a person, Darui. I don't need anything else from you.

"Marry me so we can welcome our children into our family in five years. Marry me so we can watch them kick ass at the chuunin exams in twenty years. Marry me so we can retire in thirty years and laugh together at the academy children running late in the mornings. Marry me so we can lay out on a beach in sixty years, all wrinkly and pruny still watching that sunset in the height of summer."

He smiled at her and bumped the tip of his nose against hers. "Sorry. You can't propose to someone who already proposed to you. Tradition says you have to at least give me an answer."

"I think we're beyond tradition."

He laughed. "Fair enough. The answer's yes."

"Mine too. But you're telling C. I can't stand his 'I told you so's.'"

"Deal."

The summer sun was beginning to set beneath the mountains by the time the jounin meeting wound down. Department heads were given instruction to prepare for attack. Mandatory evacuation drills for civilians and shinobi alike would be performed weekly. The goal was to be able to safely evacuate the entirety of the village in less than ten minutes to the tunnels that ran along the roots of the mountain range.

Academy fortifications would be completed within two days. Years of accumulated junk had blocked some of the low-priority evacuation tunnels beneath the classrooms. Many teachers had turned the stairways to the tunnels into storage closets, blocking the trapdoors entirely.

Mina continued to lean against the back wall of Ay's office with her arms crossed over her chest. There was a current argument about the transportation routes of potatoes. She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples to ward off the incoming migraine.

"Headache?" Tsu asked as he crept next to her. "You probably need to eat more potatoes."

She snorted in response as the three jounin around the map on the command table grew louder in their arguments. "They could have hashed this out without the rest of us around."

"You know those three, they like to feel important. I wanted to apologize for last night."

Her eyes sought out Darui's from across the room at the head of the command table. He stood up and stretched as the arguments continued. Neatly dodging an uncapped red marker as it flew from the map, Darui sighed. Mina stifled a short laugh at the unamused look on his face when his eyes met hers in the crowded room.

"Mina?" Tsu asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry for last night. For grabbing you. I was already fairly drunk."

"Don't worry about it. I'd already forgotten, to be honest."

"I'm assigned to the forward defensive team. Just wanted to make sure there weren't going to be hard feelings."

"Why would that be an issue?"

"Darui is the commander of the forward defensive team."

"So?"

"You're the only one oblivious to the way that man looks at you, you know that? He would not hesitate to end anyone he thinks might hurt you."

Mina broke Darui's gaze and turned to glare at Tsu. "I told you and C last night, he's not like that. He's not the jealous type. He's a Kumo-nin through and through."

"Jealous, no. Protective, yes."

"Aren't most men?"

"Gods, it's like talking to a wall. You know what, never mind."

Mina shrugged in response, but when she turned her attention back to Darui, he was frowning.

Ay slammed his fist on the table, stopping the argument between the supply jounin. "Finish this argument on your own time. I trust your collective judgment. Or beat it out of each other. Either way, enough of this drivel. Mina, C. Medical status."

Mina stood to her full height off the wall and approached the table. C laid a stack of stapled paperwork on the corner.

She held one up in her hand. "Everyone come get a packet, we have a bit to go through."

C picked up half of the stack and handed it out to the jounin the back. "First page, you'll note that everyone will be submitting to a health evaluation in the next four days."

Mina perched herself on the end of the table as she addressed the room. "Yes, that means everyone. We've assigned each unit to a jounin medic in specific time slots. These times are not optional. If you don't show up, we'll hunt you down. Make sure your shinobi are well-hydrated for the labs. We're trying to conserve our sterile needles and can't afford double sticks if we can't find anything that day."

C loudly flipped two pages past the schedule. "Okay, these are our current supplies in estimate. You may not know this, but we import a few drugs from the Land of Wind, especially certain analgesics. Obviously, we will need to begin to manufacture those in house, if possible. As it stands, we have a two year supply under normal circumstances, and one year—?"

Mina shook her head. "Six months. A six month supply under war-time conditions. We will be relying on genjutsu when these run out and in the field."

Ay tapped the table. "What do we need for the manufacturing process? These drugs are an integral part of surgeries, aren't they?"

Mina nodded. "Yes, sir. The herbs that go into their creation are a proprietary plant of Sungakure. They grow it under lock and key in their greenhouses under heavy guard."

"Our risk analysis a few months ago showed that it was not worth the estimated casualties to obtain the plants. It was a better use of our resources to research new drugs with our native species," C added.

Ay stroked his goatee. "I see. And the genjutsu?"

"The next page, sir," Mina said, flipping through the packet. "All medics from every unit will be sent for additional training in field techniques. This will include the anesthetic genjutsu series developed by S. We can no longer afford skill complacency."

She glanced behind her at Darui who subtly nodded his head.

"I will be sharing skills that I learned during my captivity in Konoha during these training sessions."

R spoke up near the window, "Captivity? You weren't their captive. You were there willingly. You could have come back any time. What I really want to know is why we're risking all of this for you. Raikage-sama, why not send her back? Darui too. My department calculated the potential casualties to be well over two-thousand. Not including civilians."

Tension was thick in the room, sparking against the walls as the jounin shifted their feet restlessly. Mina looked down at her hands and locked her fingers together to avoid showing their shaking. C meandered back to her and laid a comforting hand on her knee.

Ay stood up from his desk, his hands on each side as he gazed at the assembled crowd. "Mabui, how many Kumo shinobi have Darui and Mina rescued over their careers?"

"Official count and Kumo only, sir?"

"Yes."

"Over five-hundred active-duty Kumo shinobi."

"The others?"

"Add to that, perhaps, one-hundred and fifty-six mixed civilian and foreign shinobi as well. Not counting the academy field trip incident. That would add another three hundred to their total count. We never received official numbers from the Kiri jail break, either, sir."

L gingerly raised her hand from the side of the room, and waited for Ay's nod. "When I was captured in Iwa, Darui and Mina came for me. I didn't think I would last the week in Iwa's interrogation unit. They got me out to the safehouse. And they went back behind enemy lines to retrieve my husband's…my husband's body. How many would have died if I had been broken, R? I know more about the logistics of Kumogakure than anyone else in this room, including Raikage-sama.

"I made the choice to go rogue and go to Iwa to rescue my husband without any back-up. I left my three children with my mother-in-law. Would you have sentenced them to be orphans? I wonder, would you have come for a rogue Kumo-nin and shown them not only mercy, but grace? Our future Raikage did. Our head combat medic did. I would fight beside them and in front of them a hundred times over rather than turn them over to Konoha for a sure death."

R looked abashed. "I wasn't seriously suggesting we turn over Darui. Just the Konoha-nin."

Darui stood up from the head of the table. "In what way is she a Konoha-nin? After six years of loyal active-duty service in Kumogakure, I only see a Kumo kunoichi. When your civilian father had that stroke, she was his medic. He came home to you in good health that same evening. Who else in this entire village would have been capable of that? You begged her to heal him with jutsu instead of letting the medication take its course. She did it because you're a Kumo-nin."

Mina watched as Darui held steady eye-contact with R, letting the other man shrink before him. She wanted to shrink. She wanted to shrivel up and hide underneath the carpet in shame and embarrassment because R wasn't wrong. As much as she wanted Darui to be right, R was. Or at least he was half right. Truth be told, she felt she didn't belong anywhere. In her worst moments, she didn't feel she belonged at Darui's side, that she didn't deserve him. Her hands shook inside her pockets. She avoided glancing Darui's way again when she felt his eyes turn toward her, instead turning her attention to the chipped wood at the corner of the conference table.

"No. My apologies. Darui. Mina." R scuffed his foot along the plush carpet.

Ay stared at R. "In any case, we are charged with funding Orochimaru's assassination on their Hokage as well. Simply handing over Darui and Mina would not slake their bloodlust. Continue Jounin Medic," he ordered brusquely.

"Yes, sir," Mina said. She continued through the packet then hopped off the table. She thought she was able to hide her shaking hands from the jounin in the room. Except Darui, who had yet to take his eyes off her. Offering him a half-cocked grin, she walked back to the edge of the crowd.

Another hour passed before the meeting adjourned. Most of the jounin passed by in a blur. There were a few who shook her hand and congratulated her on an espionage mission well-done. C had yet to leave her side, and she was grateful for his presence. The reminder of Konoha was still too raw. He was an excellent conversationalist and a buffer against the well-wishers that pressed in on her space.

"Thanks, C," she whispered when the room finally cleared.

He shrugged. "You've done the same for me. What are friends for?"

Darui slipped his arm around her waist from behind her. "Ay-sama released me for the night. Let's go home."

A bag of scrolls hung over his shoulder, and she looked at it pointedly. A soft pink blush rose on his cheeks as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"Well. Mostly released me. I have to review these at some point tonight. Stamp and seal of approval and all that."

Mina laid her hand against his cheek, reaching up on her toes to kiss his lips. "Busy man," she joked. "We can turn my room into an office, if you want. I have the better desk."

He hummed in his throat and kissed her again. "I like that idea. It'd be easier to seal than the living room too."

"Exactly. Let's pick up dinner, since I'll be deprived of your company for the rest of the night."

Hours later, they had rearranged her bedroom into a working home office. The day bed was lifted into a couch. Every throw pillow in the apartment covered its back. Darui's desk was moved from their room into the new office.

Mina yawned widely by the time the clock hit nine-thirty p.m. "Sorry. I can keep going."

Darui shook his head and kissed her cheek. "You have months of sleep to catch up on. Go to bed."

Her heart fluttered in her chest when he kissed the inside of her wrist. "I love you."

He laced his fingers through her hair and kissed her thoroughly. "I love you too. Go to bed, wife."

"You're cheesy," she laughed, going to bed all the same.

He smirked as she walked out of the room. "You like my humor."

"I do."

A bag of scrolls lay strewn on the forest floor. An Iwa-nin's blood soaked the leafy litter and fed the sparse grass that begged for sunlight. The dead nin's fingers curled lifelessly around a long sword. Mina panted with her back against a tree, her eight year old hands sweating in the thick leather gloves. Shisui's chubby cheeks were splattered with droplets of blood.

"See?" she exhaled. "Easy peasy."

Shisui grinned. "I bet we can take more."

Bisuke whined and licked Shisui's pinky.

"As fun as that sounds, let's just deliver the scrolls then head back home," Mina replied. "Nii-chan might be home when we get there."

Uhei huffed and picked up a scroll in his mouth.

"Come on, Mina. Don't you want to make jounin? Everyone knows you have to fight a little to get there."

"She's a medic," Bisuke argued. "And the mission leader."

Mina shrugged. "Nii-chan does alright for us, nowadays. I'm in no rush."

"But I am. Come on, Mina, please?"

She shook her head and stuffed the spilled scrolls back into the satchel. "I don't know. I just have a gut feeling…"

"What if we took the more open route and didn't purposely seek them out?"

Mina crossed the bag over her shoulder. "Well. I suppose it couldn't hurt. I know you want to take higher missions…"

Dead crows filled the meadow as they dropped like flies from the sky. Sparks flew as Mina's tanto clashed against a shinobi's kunai. Lightning pulsed along the blade, and he screamed in pain haloed in blue light. She couldn't see Shisui anymore. His smell floated in the air tinged in iron. Uhei barked behind her. By the time she turned, his teeth were latched around an Iwa-nin's throat.

A bomb exploded from the shinobi Uhei grabbed. Mina screamed as shrapnel flew in the air. Sulfur mixed with iron. Shisui's spearmint smell floated in the trees. Attracted to the glowing scarlet of his sharingan, ten enemies hungrily descended on him in the boughs.

"Shisui! No!" Mina screamed. "Stop! Leave him alone!"

In a coordinated joint attack, earth jutsu carved space beneath the trees. He couldn't hold them off. She watched in horror as he fell forty feet to the hole below.

Uhei's mangled body lay crumbled beneath a tree. Mina's body moved on its own, far too late to snatch him from thin air. He bounced unconscious on the ground. She jerked him by the collar, scooped Uhei up in her arms.

"Bisuke!"

The mutt jumped up and bit down on Shisui's hand as Mina expended precious chakra to flash-step them all away from the meadow. Cold stone surrounded them in the cave they landed in. Stalactites dripped with water from the nearby underground source of the Teshio River.

Mina panted as she lay Shisui and Uhei side by side.

"Assess, assess," she reminded her shaky hands. "Triage."

Bisuke laid down and whined next to her.

"Keep look out," she curtly ordered. Bisuke licked Uhei's wet nose then walked away.

She shook her head to clear the worst of the chakra exhaustion. Shisui's head wound was bleeding profusely. His skull was cracked in the back of his head. Uhei's wounds bled profusely. Tears mixed with Shisui's blood as it ran down the cracks of the stone floor. The bone knit together slowly, requiring vast amounts of chakra as the wound resisted healing. Nausea rolled in waves as her chakra drained into his body.

"Stop…please stop…just stop bleeding…" she begged. "Shisui, please don't bleed out."

By the time his wound finally closed, Bisuke bounded back to them.

"Iwa-nin are out there. Maybe seven from what I could smell."

"Roger."

Shisui blinked his eyes in the dim light.

"Sit up slowly, you still have a concussion," she lied, downplaying the injury she had just healed. "Drink a little water. I need you to take it as easy as possible."

"Mina," Bisuke woofed.

"Bisuke, find us another exit. We'll try and give them the slip." Tears fell in earnest at her lack of chakra by the time she turned to heal Uhei. Packets of styptic powder were in her hand when Bisuke barked from the other side.

She held Uhei against her chest while tearing a packet open with her teeth. They didn't make it far out of the cave before their pursuers caught up to them.

"Shisui!" she called, throwing Uhei into his arms with no notice. She dragged him by the collar and stuffed him beneath a mulberry bush. This was one fight he couldn't help in. He was far too injured.

The air conditioning unit kicked on in a series of bangs along the duct work. Veiled stars peeped beneath the sparse clouds as they rolled past Darui's home office window, formerly Mina's room. His arm was over his forehead as he stared at the ceiling from her daybed. He didn't dare glance at the small alarm clock to his left, it was well past two a.m. As it had been for the last week, though he refused to take the prescription sleeping pills C had given him. Not that he would mention that to Mina. A small break was all he needed before he could return to his work.

Scrolls littered the desk in oversized piles to his left. A messenger had brought even more after Mina had gone to bed. Missives, requests for aid, schematics of the village wall, and guard rota all fell under his purview these days. Each one was carefully sorted, the worst of the requests were sent to Ay to review in the morning. The Raikage would then assign ANBU to those. The worst of the worst missions, Ay would run himself. Everything else was assigned by Darui, Mabui, or Samui. Combat-oriented missions were Darui's.

There was a whimper from the other side of the wall, and he could hear Mina moan in her sleep. "Shisui, stop," she cried in her sleep.

Darui ran a rough hand over his face. "Fuck," he whispered. It had been the same dream for the last week whenever he wasn't in the same bed as her.

Though she insisted that the Uchiha didn't rape her, her dreams said otherwise. The law demanded otherwise. 'A shinobi shall be convicted of rape in the first degree if he or she has sexual intercourse with a person who is under the influence of a genjutsu…' Gods knew if that dog used another genjutsu on top of his mind control to make her forget a violent rape under his hands. Clearly, the man enjoyed control enough to erase his genin teammate's memories. Why wouldn't he try for force if she refused his advances? Mina could be easily overpowered and outclassed against combat-oriented jounin. Like himself. Like Shisui Uchiha.

"Please stop…"

The sheets rustled next door, and Darui squeezed his eyes shut. The therapist that cleared her said she should be allowed to sleep through her night terrors. It was the brain's way of processing trauma.

He couldn't do it. He could not lay there and listen to this man rape his woman in her memories. Not again. Not for another night.

"Shisui, please don't…" she quietly sobbed.

He rolled out of the daybed and opened the adjoining door to their room.

"Mina," Darui whispered, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. She whimpered again. "Baby, it's a nightmare."

Her eyes cracked open against the night. "Darui?"

"It's me," he confirmed. "Can I hold you?"

She nodded sleepily against the pillows and made a paltry attempt to scoot over. He lifted the covers and laid down next to her. She rolled over, snuggling into him. He exhaled at the familiarity of the escaped curls tickling his chin from beneath her scarf. She had never been more perfect than she was in her imperfections. His heart rate slowed when he held her. His mind stopped the endless rota of the day when the puffs of her breath cooled against his bare chest. Every tense muscle in his body relaxed at the feel of her against him. Even the lightning that ran through his chakra channels calmed in her presence.

"I love you," she murmured, kissing the base of his throat. "Stop thinkin' so loud."

He kissed the top of her forehead and held her closer. "I love you too."

Her breaths evened out against him, and her thigh went slack against his hip. She snuggled closer in her sleep until her lips met his skin and she sighed in her sleep.

"He won't touch you again, I swear it," he tonelessly whispered in the dark. "He won't have another chance to put his dirty hands on you."

AN: Thank you for reading! If you have time, please leave a comment.

I've been debating on whether or not to continue posting this fic on ffn, tbh. I've been keeping a fairly regular posting schedule on Ao3.