| Morning, Alone [Katsuko] |
[Feb. 23rd, 2010|03:05 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | katsuko | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
[[Takes place the morning after Let's Not Speak of It Again]]
She should really be freaking out right now.
Like, now.
Any second.
Katsuko stared up at the ceiling of the inn, breathed a bit, and failed to freak out. A small breeze filtered in through the opaque rice-paper windows, making her shiver and pull the linen sheets up over her bare torso. The human-shaped lump beside her let out a soft sigh, barely audible amidst the early dawn noises of the old ryokan.
She stilled, not wanting to wake her partner, and glanced over at the other side of the futon. Ryouma’s dark brows were relaxed, the usual lines of tension in his angular, lean face smoothed out in sleep. It made him look younger, more innocent, and for a brief moment Katsuko could see him as a carefree teenager--a civilian, even. Some rake who was apprenticed to a respectable trade, and whose biggest concern was whether pretty Hanako would dance with him at the spring festival. Someone who’d only heard of shinobi in ghost stories and plays.
Katsuko’s lips quirked in a fond smile as she leaned over, callused fingers ghosting over a stray lock of hair that had fallen into Ryouma’s eyes.
He frowned in his sleep and rolled away from her with a drowsy murmur. Her outstretched hand hovered in empty air for a few moments, then slowly withdrew.
The last time she’d tried to spend the night with someone had been more than a year ago, on the anniversary of the ambush and Sensei’s death. She’d broken her no-drinking rule for the evening, trying to drown the memories of thunderstorms and Hideki-sensei’s blank, unseeing eyes in an alcoholic haze. That had been her first mistake.
The bar she’d gone to had been friendly and anonymous, with bass-heavy dance music that rattled her teeth. The clientele had been equal parts civilian and low-ranking shinobi, all of them fresh-faced and eager to take life by storm: her second mistake.
Her third and final error in judgment had been going home with one of them, a tall, handsome young man with the shiny still gleaming off of his special jounin uniform. It'd been late, and Katsuko had been drunk, and Naotaka (he’d never told her his family name, and she’d never told him hers) had a nice voice and an endearing stutter that developed whenever she looked his way. He’d graduated from the Academy a year after Katsuko and specialized in the kind of fuuinjutsu that kept him in the village, guarded as a precious resource; the calluses on his hands came from gripping wooden calligraphy brushes, not kunai, and his skin had been as pale and smooth as any civilian’s. He’d been drawn in by the way she carried herself, he’d told her as they wove their way back to his apartment; he’d been enthralled by the lazy, coiled confidence of her gaze and the lethal fighter’s grace of her gait. Katsuko hadn’t cared about that, hadn’t cared about anything except getting naked and horizontal as soon as possible. It had only been later, fumbling with each other’s clothes in the bedroom of his fifth-story walk-up, that his hands flinched as they traveled across the old battleground of her body and she’d realized: he’d never killed anyone in his life. The promise of danger was intoxicating to those who’d never tasted the real thing, never had bitter fear clogging their throats as they stared death in the face; Katsuko had all the allure and glamour of one who had until she’d stripped herself bare and exposed the reality of her scars.
Naotaka’s face had been like an open book, a cavalcade of emotions in painful clarity. Puzzlement as his fingers traced raised, uneven tissue where he’d expected to find smooth skin, followed immediately by shock. Revulsion, even, and a sort of horrified curiosity as he’d gazed at the thick slashes across her belly that made her feel like she’d been strapped to the lab table all over again: pinned like a beetle to a card, her skin flayed open by uncaring hands.
The pity was the worst. Naotaka looked her in the eye for that at least, with a wretched sympathy that made her ache to snap his neck. She’d left, instead, with a curt, “Stick to civilian girls next time,” and a veil of glacial composure that lasted until she’d gotten back to her own apartment and put a fist-sized hole in the wall.
She’d never liked that wall.
Ryouma—and last night—had been different, better. He hadn’t looked at her with anything close to disgust, hadn’t touched her like the walking wounded. Scars were something they shared, physical and otherwise; Ryouma had been fascinated by hers, he’d said, and any doubt that he wasn’t just being considerate of her feelings had vanished with the first kiss.
It really was too bad that they couldn’t change who they were. ANBU rarely lived long enough to form close relationships; besides that, Katsuko had some Cloud scientists to kill. Even if she didn’t suspect that Ryouma would run for the hills at the first sign of emotional attachment, Katsuko simply didn’t have the time, energy, or sufficient reason to pursue certain heartbreak.
It had been nice, though. To feel want again, and to be wanted. To share the night with a comrade who understood what it meant to fight through fire and emerge whole, if not unscathed.
But everything had an end.
In a few hours they would have to wake up, resume their duties as Hunters behind the white masks. Ryouma would say something, she would say something, and everything would be back to normal—or at least, the way it had been before last night. Once they returned to Konoha, Katsuko would say her goodbyes and step out of Ryouma’s life as easily as she’d stepped in.
It was easier facing that thought than she’d thought it would be, but she’d never had any claim over him. Why miss something she’d never had?
Katsuko breathed out, a resigned exhale too small to be a sigh, and slid out from underneath the covers. Her clothes were in a neat pile by her pack where she’d left them, tucked into a small corner of the room. She rubbed her hands across her face, once, and got up to start her day.
Life went on, and so did she. |
|
|
