Raidou rubbed the back of his head--it ached for some reason, he wasn't quite sure why--and found a nice wall to lean against. He had to kick a guy out of the way to do it, but unconscious people seldom complained.

"Hey," he returned, and tried to salute. He gave up when he realized the arm with his tattoo was busy being pressed against damp brick. "How's your... you?" He squinted, trying to see Tsume clearly in the gloom. "Y'look okay."

She didn't really. But she looked better than the people on the floor, and he was pretty sure most of the blood wasn't hers.

Raidou grinned crookedly and laughed. "We won! 'cept the-the-the damn Uchiha took all m'stuff. B'stards."

"S'all good!" Tsume sang out. "They give it back in the morning." Her smile faltered. She sighed. "Thass another bar I can't go in no more, though." Wearily, she plopped down on a cot. The fact that it was occupied didn't bother her. She just sat on him.

Carefully, she lifted one hand to her split lip. Blood came away on her fingers. That was the definite downside of having sharp eyeteeth: great for biting, but when someone popped you in the mouth... with a billiard ball...

She glanced up at Raidou. "Did your fangs get you, too? Gotta watch 'em." He definitely looked bloody. She should really get up and make sure it wasn't all his. In a minute.

That blood was hers.

With careful attention paid to every move, Raidou scraped himself off the wall and staggered the three steps it took to reach Tsume. "Don' have fangs," he said, very slightly confused, and let gravity pull him to his knees. The concrete floor was cold through his wet jeans. He wrinkled his nose slightly and decided not to let anyone spill anything on him in the future. Ever.

"An' you're bleedin'," he added, gesturing at his own face. He gave her a closer look, now they were roughly on eye level. "Eyebrow, too. An' your head. Y'need to learn t'dodge better, lil' boss."

He cast a glance around for any kind of cloth. There was his own shirt, but it was dirty now, and he was still wearing it. Finally, with careful concentration, he ripped a long strip free from the guy Tsume was sitting on and inspected it. In the dark, it looked pretty clean.

"'m not much of a medic," he murmured, "but this'll do for a bit. Hold still?" He caught Tsume's chin carefully with one hand and set about gently cleaning the cuts on her face.

He was her size, on his knees in front of her. She reached out, trying to be extra careful, and brushed her fingertips across his cheekbone where he'd gestured. She didn't know why he'd said she was bleeding there. His skin was whole.

He stilled for a moment. She stilled, too. Then he relaxed, and she relaxed. She ran the very tips of her nails over his eyebrow where he'd pointed, then down the side of his face, skimming them across his lower lip.

No. No fangs.

His hand was careful on her chin. Calluses gave his touch a sheathed edge. She let him blot at the blood, and as the scent lifted off of her, she could smell him instead. It curled around her, warm and drunk. Slid between them like his scars slid over his flesh. Her fingertips drifted, exploring, tracing the edge of skin where it melted and poured.

His scent spiked. A muscle jumped in his jaw, creating a hard line of shadow. She moved to touch it, and his hand closed around her wrist, fingers overlapping at her pulsepoint.

For a moment, she did nothing. For a moment, she remembered a partner at her back, goading her into a spar she needed, a shinobi slaughtering the people who needed to die, a man carrying two children and then her familiar.

And then she remembered looking at him just like this, face to face, remembered pain that wasn't supposed to be there and his scent curling around her. Her eyes widened fractionally. She stiffened, pulling away, watching him warily. "Let go." There was no growl in her voice.

Raidou froze.

A crowded moment of realization did the icy work of a good night's sleep and several pints of black coffee.

Very carefully, he turned his head left, enough to hide his scar in shadows, and loosened his grip. One hand fell away from her wrist, the other dropped from her face. He let them hang by his sides, and bit the inside of his cheek.

"Sorry," he said, very quietly. The memory of her touch drew ghost lines over his face. "I didn't mean to..."

He winced at the way his words slurred clumsily, and pulled back. He felt sober, but alcohol made his thoughts slide through blurred lines and end up in unhappy places. He lifted one hand carefully and dropped the bit of bloody cloth next to her.

"Sorry," he muttered again, and began to stagger to his feet. "I'll be... over there."

Frustration twisted through her, though she couldn't have said why. Disappointment. Self-directed anger.

She reached out and poked him in one of the bruises she'd left on his shoulder during their spar, hiding under his shirt. "I didn' say leave," she slurred too loudly. "I jus' said leggo. An' you did." She sat back, still upset but not sure why. She glared at Raidou. That might make it better.

It didn't.

She rubbed her wrist absently and glowered at the man she was sitting on instead. The scrap of cloth lay in a little bundle, alone on the man's stomach. She picked it up and sniffed it, wrinkled her nose, and put it back down. "I didn't mean leave," she mumbled again.

Raidou settled back down on his knees with a faint wince. It was mostly for show; he couldn't feel much through the blanket of general numbness a few too many shots had left him with, and definitely not one old bruise.

"You," he said slowly, "are very confusing." He sat back, planting his rump on his heels, and tilted his head to look at Tsume through the gloom. Even above him, she still looked very small; hard lines of muscle hidden away by the loose cut of her overlarge hoodie. With bruises dappled across her face, and her hair soaked down and matted with blood and thrown beer, she looked a whole lot closer to the teenage boy he'd seen her as earlier. With some misery thrown in on top.

Raidou sighed and took back the rag she was holding. "An' I can't figure out if you hate me or not." He lifted one hand. "Can I finish fixin' your face?"

She looked at him, surprise written in eyes so pale they were almost pupils without iris. "I don' hate you! I jus'..." She frowned, trying to puzzle through her thoughts. "Don' wanna have sex with you again," she finished triumphantly. She rubbed her mouth, stared at the blood that came away on her fingers, and tongued the split. Copper skimmed her tastebuds. She wrinkled her nose. "An' sometimes I forget we're not. Or... I think..." Memories skipped and slid, taking comprehension and language with them. "We did. Are. Something."

She was even confusing herself, now. Tsume shook her head, sending beer droplets flying, and pointed imperiously at Raidou's cloth. "Yes. Fix my face. What's wrong with my face?"

Raidou stared at her, lost in a sea of words without a map. But he managed to understand two things. "It's bleedin'," he said finally, and waved the red-splattered rag as proof. "An' I don't want to have sex with you either." That, at least, he was sure of.

He knelt up again, catching himself on the edge of the cot when his balance wobbled, and studied her face. Blood cut a crisp line down from her left eyebrow, blurring only when it reached the edge of her tattoo. He decided to start there. "Hol' still."

As he worked, the words I don't hate you! settled gently in his chest and dragged up a smile.

He was cleaning her face. And smiling. And there were two of him. She squinted to make him one again. "You're weird," she said at last. "A... flea...mite...crotch...hair." She grinned.

Then sobered. "Why'd'you think I hate you? 'Cause if I hated you, you'd know." She giggled. "Boy, would you know. I'd like..." The world tipped. She struggled her way perpendicular to it again, unconscious of the hand she braced on Raidou's wrist to do so. "Like..." She tapped her fingers. "Like I'd bite you."

Except she had.

"Harder." Her smile took over her face, and her too-large teeth made it look even bigger.

Raidou dropped his hand to flick one of her fangs. "Very scary," he told her solemnly, and turned his attention back to getting the non-tattooed red off her face. It was proving more tricky than he'd originally realized; most of the blood had dried and didn't want to yeild to a simple cloth. "'specially with the insults. Makes me all... scared."

There was probably a more intelligent way to put that, but he'd be damned if he could find it.

He sat back, glared at Tsume's eyebrow, and spat on his rag. "Nex' time, you aren't allowed to get hit," he muttered, as he applied it to her cheekbone. "Not once. Y'dodge, y'hear?"

She'd asked him a question, it took it a little while to penetrate through the general mists of alcohol. He rubbed a coppery fleck away from the corner of her mouth and tried to think. "An'... well..." the corners of his mouth drew down unhappily. "Mos' people hate the people tha' hurt them. S'common sense."

Tsume wrinkled her nose as he scrubbed her clean. She'd forgotten how it felt to be five. He was apparently determined to remind her. She batted at his hands, and when he stopped for a moment she settled down again and presented her face, looking elsewhere while she waited for him to go back to cleaning.

"I dodge jus' fine. An' 'sides, if I hated everyone that hurt me, I'd hate lots of people!" She reeled back, arms flailing as she dragged up one sleeve and pointed to a jagged scar along her forearm. "See that? Kuromaru did that when I was... was..." She couldn't remember. Her thoughts chased themselves for a moment, then finally wound down like a top. When they settled, the answer came. She smiled. "Fi'teen! I was stoppin' a fight." She shook her head sadly. "He hated my genin team, too..."

As if just then remembering her arm was bare, she lifted it again and pointed once more. "Took eight stitches! And Ma told Waki-sensei that it was a stray dog, not Kuromaru, 'cause it gets complicated when ninja attack ninja, or summons attack ninja, and he's not quite either under law, so..." She trailed off.

She'd had a point.

A good one.

She dug a gently curved nail into her scar, watching skin dimple. Oh yeah! "Eight stitches." Had that been her point? It was probably close enough.

Raidou's thoughts crossed as somehow Kuromaru entered the picture and confused him completely. There were rumours about Inuzuka and their dogs, but he wasn't exactly interested in hearing them confirmed.

Not even if it would win him the latest betting pool. Some underneaths you just didn't need to see.

"But I don' think Kur'maru hurt you like I did," he said slowly, alcohol making him stubborn. Well, more stubborn. He wiped away the last line of crusted red under Tsume's chin and let his hand drop. She still wasn't clean, but it was the best he could do. "Still don' know why I did," he muttered unhappily. "Never thought I--" he grimaced and broke off, looking away. The urge to apologize again rose up, but he knocked it away. He'd done it once--twice now--and it hadn't made a difference.

"'Course not," she said, blinking at him as his scent whipped into distress. "I never had sex with Kuromaru. I mean... ew. Y'know he's an animal who turns into a human, right?" Sometimes she thought people might get confused about that.

True, there were rumors about what people did with their summons...

She was very glad the Inuzuka were civilized.

But that was less important, right now, than the smell coming from Raidou. She didn't quite understand it. Drunken logic made things hard to piece together. He was upset at hurting her. He was upset about sex. She was sure of that. But he was so upset...

She remembered that night, and took a stab in the dark. "I was kinda weird." That was putting things mildly. Her stomach knotted at the way she'd acted. She shoved it aside. He couldn't know why. "When... when you and I..." Her gaze flicked elsewhere, and landed on the sleeve of his sweater. She swallowed. "I mean, y'know, I freaked out on you, and I'm sorry." Her mind muddled through excuses. "I was... there was this..." Nothing seemed right.

She picked at a fuzz on her hoodie and didn't look at him.

She was sorry? Raidou stared up at Tsume and skipped right past confusion to land in the echoing fields of complete incomprehension. Nothing made sense. Well, except for the bit about Kuromaru, but he wasn't thinking about that anymore.

"S'not your fault," he said finally, helplessly. Around him the damp gloom of the prison cell closed in, filling his lungs with cold moisture and his ears with the shallow breathing of unconscious men. He hunched his shoulders and tried to find the words. Tsume blaming herself was just wrong.

"S'my fault. I should'a stopped. I don' know why I didn't stop." He felt sick. He wished he wasn't drunk anymore. "'m a bastard," he whispered finally, eyes dropping to look at her hands. "Shoul' probably be executed with the other rapists."

Tsume froze. Panic coiled in her gut.

But--no. He didn't--he thought he--

She recoiled. Stared at him. And then punched him in the shoulder. "What did you jus' say? 'Cause I thought you said you raped me, an' you did not!" She was appalled. Offended that he thought he could have. "You were... not ANBU! An' I was ANBU! You couldn't have raped me if you wanted to! An'," she continued, sure this would end any budding argument, "you were drunk. Like--" Comparisons escaped her. "Blueberries! With... spice!"

She glared at him.

Raidou stared. The echo of Tsume's words crashed around the tiny room, splintered off metal bars, and made a few men moan. It did something much more drastic inside Raidou's head. He opened his mouth. He closed it. He opened it again. Finally, he managed, "huh?"

The man squashed beneath Tsume groaned quietly. Raidou couldn't have paid attention if he wanted to.

"I didn'--?" Fuzzy memory quashed sudden euphoria. "But I--you were hurt. And bleeding! An' Kuromaru said somethin'! An'--an--an what the hell do blueberries haf'ta do with anythin'?"

Down the hallway a clipped voice rang out. "If you people don't be silent, we'll come in there and justu your drunken heads off."

Raidou ignored that, too. The kyuubi itself couldn't have dragged his gaze from Tsume's shadowed face.

She twitched her gaze first one way, and then the other. How was she supposed to explain the hurting and the blood? But she had female relatives. More than a few. Enough to have picked some things up. Enough to bluff, maybe, to someone who wasn't a woman and couldn't smell a lie.

"I--I jus' went too fast. It didn't hurt that much. An' I was spotting." Did that lie work? It felt awkward on her tongue.

She glowered and subtly steered the subject away. "'Sides, blueberries are like bein' drunk! They're all... sweet an' juicy." She gave a decisive nod, and really wished he'd stop looking at her. Her gaze remained on his collarbones, just barely visible in the way his sweater fell.

Raidou wished she'd stop talking about fruit and blood in the same breath. But his shoulders relaxed slowly as he listened to her reasoning. His total knowledge of women came from one crazy genin teammate, his mother who'd been far too busy to explain the intricacies of... well, most things, and whatever liaisons he'd found himself in during the war. Female bleeding hadn't tended to crop up as a topic of general discussion.

He hadn't raped her.

He breathed out slowly, a weight lifting from his soul, and bowed forward a little as relief made him dizzy. Tsume's knee come up a little fast, but he was too busy dealing with other thoughts to mind resting his forehead on her.

"Nex' time," he mumbled, words breaking up hoarse against the fabric of her khakis, "tell me that bit first."

She flinched when his forehead landed on her knee. But he didn't move, didn't do anything, and didn't smell like sex. She relaxed slowly, settling her hands butterfly-light on his skull. Her fingers combed gently through short, filthy hair.

"I didn't know at the time." And that was perfectly true. She hadn't known it would hurt. Hadn't known she'd bleed.

She'd hoped so badly that everything would be normal. It took years to realize it wouldn't ever be normal again.

She breathed softly and stroked his hair, his skull, the nape of his neck. His scent wound around her, earthy and subtle. Her brow brushed against warm brown locks as she bent forward. An inhalation brought emotions, injuries, stress, relief all swirling into her lungs. She petted again. "Everything's all right." She just wasn't sure who she was talking to.

Raidou laughed very softly, warmth bleeding into his skin from her hand and her breath. For the first time there was no fear in the brush of body-warm air across his neck. It was simply another part of Tsume. "Sure, lil' boss," he mumbled quietly, "everything's all right."

At some point he was sure he'd be embarrassed about this; big strong ninja didn't kneel before their teammates and get petted. But right now he was too relieved, too grateful, to care.

And for a woman with claws, Tsume had very comforting hands.

Time settled gently around them, bringing little more than shadows and a tiny sliver of moonlight through the barred slit of a window. None of the other men stirred. Raidou breathed slowly, suddenly weary down to his core, and tried to summon up the energy to move.

"'m'knees are starting to ache," he admitted finally, breaking the moment. "Think we can toss your friend off his cot to make some room?" He had no intention of letting Tsume sleep alone in a cage full of morally-ambiguous ninja, no matter how un-rapable she claimed to be.

Tsume pushed herself upright, looking tiredly around the room. "I think we can toss him." He wasn't very big. "But I don't think there's enough room for us both." Not unless she laid on top of Raidou and--

Her stomach knotted. She lifted a hand to rub it over her eyes. "Definitely not enough room for both of us."

Raidou eyed the cell's layout and considered. The cots were bolted to the floor--a preventative against them being hefted and used as weapons--so he couldn't just drag another one over. But he didn't want to leave her alone and exposed, either. Especially not with several men around who'd surely be nursing a grudge when they woke up.

And she looked a little tense.

Raidou tried to think around a brain filled with the fluff of exhaustion and the pleasant blur of alcohol, and gave up. "Well," he said, standing up to grab the shoulders of Tsume's human-cushion, "you're pretty small, so how about you take the cot, and I'll sit? That way I don't have to lie on the floor and get puked on in the morning."

If he was lucky, she wouldn't be thinking straight enough to point out he could sleep on a different cot.

She watched the man she'd been sitting on get moved to the floor, and nodded sleepily. "You sit there," she said, and pointed to the corner, where the head of the cot met the wall.

The other two ends were open; they made her more comfortable. She wasn't trapped.

Her sleeves fell down over her fingertips. She lifted one, using it to rub at her face again. Alcohol was catching up. So was exhaustion. Images of a half dead child had finally been burned out of her mind. She just wanted to close her eyes.

Raidou's lips twitched in the shadow of a lopsided smile. "Yes, little boss ma'am. Right away." He bowed formally, and kicked Tsume's former cushion-nin neatly aside, drawing a low groan from the man. "And you shut up," he added, voice laced with tired black humour. "The princess-boss here needs her beauty sleep."

He dodged Tsume's half-hearted cuff with more luck than actual skill, and folded himself into the corner. It wasn't comfy, and it didn't put him in a place where he could really guard her side against the rest of the room, but it was better than nothing. And he wasn't sitting on cold stone.

Raidou yawned, cracking his jaw, and leaned his head back against the wall. "I draw the line at letting you have my sweater for a pillow," he mumbled, "just so you know. I'm not that nice."

"Who said anything about wanting your sweater?" Tsume grumped, plopping down on the cot and falling sideways until her head hit his ribs. She felt him jump, but ignored it. Her legs curled close, hands tucking near her chest. The steady thump-thump of his heartbeat made her drowsy. Steady breathing lulled her into safety.

Whether it was sleep or unconsciousness, she was out before she'd even really settled. She didn't dream.

Raidou blinked and looked down at her. Wrapped up in the soft folds of her overlarge hoodie, with her legs tucked up and her hands held close, Tsume looked even younger than a teenager. Unless you noticed the shadows under her eyes, or the fading streaks of dried red scraped over her face.

Or the dogtags around her neck.

"Y'better not snore," Raidou told her quietly, and dropped a careful arm around her slim shoulders, settling her close. She mumbled something incoherent and turned just enough to jam her nose against his sweater. "Or drool," he added, and cast a glance over the still room. Weariness dragged at his bones, pulling his attention to a multitude of bruises. He could feel the crackle of old blood down the back of his neck.

That was probably from whatever had left the ache in his head, he guessed, still drunk enough to be amused. He dug his shoulders back, trying to get comfortable against brick, and gathered his remaining chakra close. He couldn't sleep, not with Tsume half-gone against his side.

With that firmly in mind, Raidou closed his eyes and fell right out of consciousness.