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How was it--
How was it that she didn't drink ever but still managed to wake up with the hangover from the seven burning hells?
Katsuko whimpered and clutched her head, which throbbed in time with the fucktard who was punching her door. When the knocking didn't go away she cursed and kicked her blankets off, rising from her nest of pillows and wraps on the floor like the recently awakened undead.
"Comin'," she muttered, too quiet for the person on the other side of the door to hear. "Don' get your panties in a twist. Kami on a pogo stick, it's too early for this."
The walk to the door took much longer than it should have, seeing as she nearly tripped over her feet several times. Stupid long pants. Stupid clumsy feet.
She got there somehow, and started twisting and tugging on the stubborn handle until it finally gave way and she came face to face with---
Gorilla Man. Oh shit.
No, wait, Ryo-something. Ryouma.
Ryouma who was glistening with sweat, bronzed and tan from long hours outside. Katsuko's eyes traveled from his t-shirt, soaked and clinging to a substantially more healthy body than she'd seen last time, to his lean angular face also glistening with sweat.
Niiiiicccceee.
Very much awake now, Katsuko gave a lazy grin and leaned against the doorjamb. She crossed her arms to hide the scars on the insides of her forearms. "Yo. Yeah, I remember you. You look...better than last time. Got the mission scroll?"
Ryouma firmly squelched the impulse to ask her what, exactly, looked better, and held out the scroll. "Personal delivery from the boys downstairs. Intel says it's both urgent and straightforward, which I think is supposed to mean fun. Me, I like the ones where we're sexing up the ladi--er. That is, killing's good, too." And they never gave him any of the other sort, not counting the gay nightclub one with Kakashi. There hadn't been any ladies, and the mission part had sucked. And he wasn't thinking about Kakashi, anyway. That was the point.
"I didn't read it yet," he confessed, as Katsuko uncrossed her arms to accept the scroll and slit the seal with a thumbnail. "Thought we should probably go over it together. Save time that way."
And it saved explanations about his illiteracy, usually. He peered over Katsuko's shoulder anyway, for curiosity's sake. The brief itself was composed of several neat blocks of text running down the right-hand side of the opened scroll. He picked the symbol for eliminate out of the mess of kanji and and moved on to the small water-color map folded inside the scroll. The blueprints tucked beside the map could wait for later; the map itself was startlingly familiar. "Plains Country, between Fire and Lightning? The bit I was in, we called it Swamp Country, mostly. Or Mud." Damn, he'd been glad to move out of the wetlands and into the clean cool mountains of southern Lightning Country, when he was posted to the Dainichi Nyorai Temple. He reached over her shoulder to tap its spot on the map. "I spent five years there, give or take." And another handful of days a month ago, but that was done with. The scars were gone; he shouldn't let the memories linger much longer.
But, speaking of scars... Katsuko had an impressive collection of her own. Cigarette burns and deep puncture wounds marred the crooks of her elbows; thin white lines like claws raked up her fore-arms, cutting through the pale lick of burns. One or two of the twisted trails looked disturbingly familiar. Acid?
Ryouma pulled his hand back. "Sorry. I'll shut up. Go ahead and read."
Did it say something about her that she was used to hulking sweaty men looking over her shoulder? Gods, by the time Nori and Beni had stopped their growth spurts they'd topped Sensei, and that was saying something. At least they'd learned that calling her "Midget-chan" would result in black eyes and bloody noses.
Sharp sting of clean male sweat as Ryouma edged closer, but Katsuko's attention was caught by the eerily familiar terrain of the mission map.
"We're supposed to eliminate this guy called Masahiko, who's set up base in Plains Country. He's raising an army to challenge the lord of Cinders Country, apparently, and calling himself the 'Arashikage'," she snorted, reading further.
"Agents Ueno and Tousaki were chosen for their working knowledge of the northeast terrain and infrastructure, as Masahiko is a--"
Former Cloud-nin
Katsuko's lips sealed into a thin line as her nostrils flared, clenching the scroll hard enough for the paper to crumple.
Fluorescent light gleams off Hidden Cloud forehead protectors as the woman in white talks with the prison guards; low nasty laughter echoes in the halls as the young boy in cell 11b screams himself hoarse.
Scarred, callused hands hold her down while the Kumo jounin stubs out his cigarette in the weeping needle wounds in the crook of her elbow--
It took a while for her to find her voice. "...As Masahiko is a former Cloud-nin."
She was going to raze this fortress of Masahiko's to the ground.
Her tone was casual--relaxed, even, as she turned and gave Ryouma the map and the blueprints. "We're supposed to leave in fifteen minutes. I'll get ready and meet you outside my room?"
"I'm just next door," Ryouma said, jerking his head. "Three seventeen. I guess you're the one who's been yelling through the walls that I'm not good enough to sing along to Shuriken Force." He grinned briefly, though he was pretty sure it didn't reach his eyes.
No shinobi could've missed that pause, the set jaw and the clenching fist. Katsuko had her own "working knowledge" of the north-east and of former Cloud nin, and he could take a good guess at where her scars came from. Were they the kind that knitted determination and resolve into healing flesh, or fear?
What were his?
He hesitated, right hand almost drifting up to touch his left biceps, where an acid trail twisted its way through his ANBU tattoo. Pushing up his sleeve would be the easiest thing in the world. But if he was wrong... And even if he was right, what good would that do? Hey, Katsuko, wanna see me with my shirt off? We can be hurt and scared together!
No. Not now, at any rate. Not like this.
"Fifteen minutes," he said. "Time for breakfast and a shower, even. Unless you wanna join me for one--or both--of 'em?" He took a step backward, still grinning, and reached for his door-key on the chain at his throat. "Seeing as how it'll be rat bars and blood-baths from here on out..."
Ooooh, he moved fast. Smooth-talker, this one. It'd be foolish to take that offer seriously.
Katsuko rolled her eyes. "I'm hardly fit company in the morning," she drawled, motioning to her tousled hair and disheveled clothing. "Unless you wanna get kicked out of the cafeteria for letting a hobo in HQ, I'd suggest eating alone."
She didn't mention the shower.
Giving Ryouma a nod and a tired smile, she closed her door. She stood there for a moment, one hand on the knob, staring into nothing. After a moment or two, she shook herself and went to get changed.
Ryouma took the lead on the way out of Konoha, but after the first mile or two--when Katsuko kept up easily, breathing as freely as if she were walking through the market--he let her set the pace. By mid-afternoon he was panting and sweat-soaked again, and she was still fresh and cool. When he called a break at Sansetsu Falls and tore his mask off to plunge his face into the icy water, she dabbled her fingers in the pool at his side and watched him curiously, as though he were doing something strange but very interesting.
He slicked his wet hair back, slid his mask on, set his teeth, and took off again.
Katsuko kept pace.
By twilight Ryouma was staggering, certain of his idiocy and not quite sure he cared. They'd covered roughly a hundred and eighty miles in ten hours, running on nothing but chakra and pride. Katsuko hadn't taken any soldier pills; Ryouma hadn't, either. Which was far beyond stupid, but showing weakness in front of Sharingan no Kakashi was one thing. Breaking down in front of a slip of a girl with big hazel eyes and a warm alto voice was something else altogether.
Of course, falling down didn't exactly reach the height of coolness, either. Ryouma made it to a boulder before his legs gave out and dropped him, wheezing, onto a chill stone seat. It had rained here, not long ago; the air his heaving lungs raked in was thick with moisture, and the damp seeped slowly into his trousers. He put his head between his knees and fought not to throw up.
After a while he remembered to shove his mask back again. That helped, a little; at least he wasn't breathing sweat-stale ceramic. He fumbled for his canteen, gulped down half a bottle, and croaked, "Remind me not to try showing off for you anymore. I think next time it'll kill me."
An hour after their break at Sansetsu Falls, Katsuko remembered that most ninja didn't have her fucked-up chakra reserves and actually needed to slow down once in a while.
The fact that Ryouma didn't had her looking at him in startled puzzlement as the miles flashed by. Why didn't he stop for another break--or at least take a soldier pill?
The answer--showing off for her!?--made Katsuko choke and spit out the mouthful of water she was taking from her canteen.
Of all the idiotic male things to do--
She capped the canteen and ambled over to Ryouma's boulder, leaning down to look into his flushed face and grinning a lazy grin.
"Tousaki, it's gonna take a lot more than a good run to impress me. For starters, catching us some dinner that isn't rat bars. That'd be good."
"I changed my mind," Ryouma rasped. "Maybe I'll throttle you instead."
He levered himself up anyway, stretching against the burn in his trembling muscles. Dammit, she still wasn't even breathing hard. And while his chakra was only a flickering candleflame, hers was--
Oh. There was the difference. Not just a bonfire; more like a forestfire. With his own chakra opened up to it, Ryouma could practically feel the heat against his face. Where was she getting it? There wasn't nearly enough muscle in that lanky body to produce a tenth of that amount of physical energy, and she couldn't be compensating by providing overwhelming spiritual energy, either. Bloodline Limit, maybe. Though he'd thought he knew most of the Konoha bloodline clans, and Ueno wasn't a name he recognized...
Questions to ponder when she wasn't watching him with idle curiosity, waiting to see if he'd fall over.
He tried a step, just to see if his knees buckled under him, and was faintly surprised when they held. With his lungs no longer threatening to burst into flame at any moment, he could finally get a good look around at the clearing he'd half-chosen, half-fallen into. Budding trees broke the wind; spring came later here than it did in Konoha. But there were a few snow-drops and crocuses scattered through the clearing, and the stream at one edge ran deep and clear over the rocks, free of ice. There was a pool under a willow tree that looked particularly promising...
"Start a fire," he said, flapping a vague hand at Katsuko as he shucked his pack and limped toward the stream. "Pitch the tent. I'll do my best." He stripped off arm-guard and one long black glove, gazed thoughtfully down at the shadowed water and the flicker of dark shapes beneath, and then sank slowly to his stomach on the grassy bank.
It was kind of nice on the streambank, with the grass cool against his cheek and the purple sunset fading over the hills. If he died, maybe she'd leave him here.
Katsuko was unimpressed. She slid off her mask with a snort at Ryouma's retreating figure and vague hand-waving.
"Don't fall in and drown," she called after him as he flopped down on the bank, and tangled her fingers together in the seals for her clones. The standard twenty that she usually made, the smallest number she could manage without any pain, would be overkill for setting up a campsite.
Calmly, she funneled the suffocating mass of her chakra into twisted too-small pathways and concentrated on five clones. The pain was brief, fleeting, and the speed at which the copies set to work assured her that she had saved time at the expense of momentary discomfort.
Unbuckling her swords, she laid them by her pack and started unfolding her bedroll, glancing up at her partner. He was still lolling around by that streambed of his. After a moment to appreciate the view that tight ANBU trousers offered, she called out.
"I hope you didn't fall asleep watching the fish. Then I'd have to push you into the pond."
Ryouma had all sorts of snappy comebacks dancing on the tip of his tongue, but he also had dinner sliding gratefully into the deep pool beneath the willow. The big trout was tired from its upstream battle through the shallows and rapids; it lay nearly still in the calm water, resting. Ryouma set his teeth against the urge to retort--and scare the fish off--, and slipped his hand very slowly into the stream.
It'd been colder the last time he did this, he told himself as his muscles spasmed. The fish had been smaller then, too, and he'd had three bellies to feed. And last time, they'd been walking their way into a trap.
Things would be totally different, this time around.
He tickled his forefinger up and down the length of the trout's belly, coaxing the supple body into a trance. He'd been too careless last time, settling down to strip off his armor and tend his wounds on an unsecured battlefield without even sending a clone to keep watch. The ambush he and Tsume had sprung on the bandits had rebounded disastrously; he had only three headstrong shinobi and a pack of ninja hounds to thank that he was still alive.
It wouldn't happen again.
Two fingers slipped under the gills. The fish awoke to its danger, too late; Ryouma flipped it out of the water and stunned it with a swift blow to the head. One was enough, he decided. He could live on rat bars.
He rolled over. Katsuko was watching from only a few feet away, brows quirked curiously. Ryouma hooked his fingers under the trout's gills again and held it up dripping. "'Fraid I'm not quite up to the task of rustling up pie in the wilderness. Hope you don't complain if your dinner stares at you."
Her curiousity sparked when Ryouma didn't respond to her jibe; Katsuko wandered over to see what was so interesting about the stream. She plopped down a few feet away from him to avoid breaking his concentration, and so was witness to the fascinating art of fish tickling.
Sensei had taught her and Nori and Beni how to fish with the regular pole and bait, but he'd also told stories about people who could lure fish into a trance with their bare hands, coaxing the unwary things to a sudden and violent doom. That Ryouma was one of those people was...impressive.
His long lean arm muscles flexed as he slid his hand into the pool, and Katsuko watched in blatant appreciation. Thank the gods for sleeveless uniform shirts. She was so absorbed in the study of male upper-body anatomy that when he bashed the fish on the head she jerked in surprise, but recovered enough to raise her eyebrows as he rolled over and displayed his prize, streamwater dripping down to his elbows.
"Fish eyes are the best part," she smirked, and leaned forward to take the offering. As Ryouma extended his arm to hand it to her her attention was suddenly caught by the whorling scars at his elbow.
That scar pattern...acid?
Her eyes followed the raised tissue as it tracked up his arm and neatly sliced through his ANBU tattoo.
It looked recent.
"How would you like it cooked?" Katsuko turned her attention back to his lean, angular face and watchful gaze, raising an eyebrow. "Raw, burnt, or extra burnt?"
She could do campfire cooking like nobody's business, but he didn't have to know that.
"Burnt," Ryouma said. "With oozing bits in the middle where it's not quite cooked through, and crispy bits on the outside where it fell in the fire." He sat up, reaching for his glove and arm-guard again, and decided that fully armored could wait for the combat zone. Katsuko had a clone on watch at the edge of the clearing, anyway. Four others were bustling about collecting wood, building a fire, setting up a tent, and...digging a latrine pit? Damn, the woman knew how to delegate. As he watched, the clone with the tent finished ramming the last stake into the soft soil, checked the rain-fly, and then headed off to the perimeter to begin setting traps.
His esteem rose a notch. Clearly, she knew what she was doing. The lazy eyes belied a sharp professionalism, for all that she was even newer to this than he. So...what was she like in a fight?
Or in bed?
Professional, he reminded himself. Just because Kakashi hadn't died when they slept together on--after--a mission didn't mean that Ryouma could let his balls overrule his brain. Besides, Kakashi was--different.
And he wasn't thinking about Kakashi.
It was probably a moot point anyway. Katsuko seemed to have studied in the Inuzuka Tsume School of Shooting Ryouma Down. Dealing with that could be fun too, in its own way. He mustered up a bright smile as he unbuckled his other arm-guard. "So beyond breaking men's hearts, what's your fighting style? I'm guessing you don't just wear those swords for show. Any nin- or genjutsu?"
Katsuko looked up from her staring contest with the trout, lips quirking in a grin. "I fight with a katana in one hand and a kodachi in the other," she said, hunting around for a flat rock. One of her clones padded over and started setting up a cooking spit.
"S'called Hyoho Niten-ryu, from Wind Country. I incorporate wind and fire jutsu in there, too, and anything involving explosion tags and large destructive ninjutsu." She eyed the fish, which still gave a determined wriggle or two, and bashed its head against the rock she'd found until it stopped moving.
The campfire snapped and crackled in the growing darkness. Katsuko pulled out the knife hidden in her arm guard and started cleaning the fish. Her eyes glinted as she glanced up at Ryouma.
"I have a larger chakra capacity than normal, which means I can pull off area-wide techniques with more ease. The techniques that require...more finesse...are harder for me. Much harder."
She speared the trout on the cooking spit the clone handed her and dismissed the copy, waving away the smoke.
"What about you, eh? You look like a real killer. Ladies and otherwise." Raised an eyebrow and let her eyes travel along the rugged angles of his body with obvious appreciation.
She must've graduated from Tsume's school with honors. Cold one minute, hot the next, blatantly checking him out as she wiped fish guts off her hands... What happened to 'You're a dirty little boy' and 'That don't impress me much'? The compliment wasn't much, but he was pretty sure it was the first personal comment in nine hours that wasn't at least vaguely insulting. So either she really liked fish, or...
He was just that hot.
He smirked. "You'd better believe it. I like getting up close an' personal. With different results, of course..." He held his hands out, palms up, long fingers spread. "I'm a ninjutsu specialist, but I rely on taijutsu to get close enough to use it. If I can touch the enemy, I can kill 'em." A faint note of pride colored his voice, despite everything. He hadn't meant to kill Kuromaru, and Kuromaru hadn't died. And Ryouma would be more careful, now, just as he'd be more cautious about taking his armor off, just as he'd become more cautious about letting his attention stray. He could still fight. He was still useful.
And he was also the man who had, at least according to the lower sorts of gossip, attacked two comrades with his hands full of putrid chakra. Ryouma touched his fingertips to his palms and stared at the new flesh where Haruichi's forbidden healing technique had regrown even his ruined nailbeds. "I don't," he said, and stopped. Tsume and Kuromaru had known it was an accident. Kakashi had never even needed it explained. He couldn't expect that of anyone else.
"I don't know what you've heard," he said at last. "But you should know-- I'm not careless. I saw my worst nightmare, a month ago, and I won't see it happen again. You don't have to worry around me."
He dropped his hands into his lap, anyway.
There was the faintest hint of defiance when he talked about his jutsu, mixed in with the pride and the way he spread his long, long fingers. Katsuko wondered what kind of jutsu would allow people to kill with one touch. There had been the Morishita twins, but they'd relied more on tainted chakra than any secret techniques or seals. Ryouma's chakra didn't carry the weight and roiling inky wrongness of taint, anyways, so that ruled option one out...
"I saw my worst nightmare, a month ago, and I won't see it happen again. You don't have to worry around me."
And just like that his cheerful, teasing demeanor was gone and he'd withdrawn into himself like a turtle retreating into its shell, staring down at his hands.
Katsuko stared. That was quite possibly the fastest mood swing she'd ever seen, not counting the ones her mother was subject to during "that time" of the month and possibly Haruichi's little bouts of irascibility.
"Hmmm," she said at last, noncommittally, and rotated the spit so that the fish browned evenly on both sides.
Kill with just a touch, huh?
Putting on her best I am reserving judgment on this for now face, Katsuko leaned back on one hand and crossed one knee over the other, bouncing her foot.
"You don't have to worry around me."
"So what kind of jutsu," she asked, eyes narrowing. "Kills with a single touch?"
Maybe she hadn't heard. Ryouma hadn't seen her around HQ since their collision outside the weight-room; he hadn't heard her name, either, even though she'd moved in next door. Maybe she was one of those Kakashi-like loners who avoided human company and its inevitable gossip, although she seemed comfortable enough around him. If she hadn't heard, he didn't have any misunderstandings to correct. But if he needed to explain...
"Human Flesh Melt technique," he said. "Fire and Water chakra, mixed up and twisted. They're not complementary elements; they don't like workin' together. It...ends up bein' something like a three-week-old battlefield, compressed down into three seconds. I've made Inuzuka throw up from the smell." He grinned faintly. Even now, it was still funny.
The rest of it wasn't, really, even for the fourteen-year-old boy who'd danced in triumph as his Academy sensei fought back their nausea at the first results of his developing jutsu. He'd been so desperate to prove himself, back then, to fight his way free of the clannish disdain that still saw him as bastard-born gutter trash, unworthy to wear Konoha's sigil and shed his blood for his home. Hell, he was still trying to prove himself. It really shouldn't have mattered what she thought of him, but he found himself moving anyway, shoving up off the damp ground to wander closer to her seat by the fire, just so he could watch her eyes.
"I've got another jutsu, the Human Body Destruction, that'll dissolve a two hundred pound man into sludge inside of five minutes. That one's not so useful for combat, though. Takes too much chakra. The Nikutai Tokasu feeds on my opponent's chakra, instead. Konoha Hospital found a way to burn it out, but before that, nobody'd ever survived."
And Kuromaru had lost an eye and an ear anyway. Ryouma shoved his fists into his pockets and kept his eyes on Katsuko's. At least she wasn't looking away.
An image flashed unbidden through Katsuko's mind of Kuromaru and his missing eye and ear. The news about the Inuzuka pair having a rough mission a month ago.
The darker, quieter whispers about one of their own going rogue, using a rot jutsu on his teammates.
Of course, she'd heard those suggestions from some of the nastier elements of ANBU. She'd taken it with a healthy dose of skepticism then and she wouldn't let it affect her judgment now.
"Ah. I see. You're talking about those rumors." She rotated the cooking spit once and hmm'ed softly.
"Things happen, during missions," she said at last. "The target does something unexpected, you trip and stumble--and sometimes your teammates get caught in the crossfire. You can't avoid it any more than they can. The best you can do is pull yourself together and make sure it never happens again."
She looked at Ryouma's face, not his hands. It wasn't like she had room to judge him for losing control of a lethal jutsu. Wasn't that what she was in danger of every time she used her chakra? One misstep, one break in her concentration in the middle of an exhausting fight and her energy would rebound--burn her up from the inside out and leave not even the dogtags behind.
"I guess that's what happened. You say I don't have to worry. I won't. I'll even remind you not to pick your nose when the jutsu's activated, I'm that kind and considerate." The fish was done. Katsuko slid it off the skewer onto a napkin. Flicking her knife open, she sawed the big trout neatly in two and plopped the second half onto another napkin.
"Careful, it's hot," she warned, holding it out to Ryouma. "So what kind of experience did you say you have in the northeast? Five years around here is a long time to camp out. Were you stationed at a base?"
She spoke like she knew what she was talking about, echoing words he could've sworn he'd hammered into dozens of shinobi over the years. Pull yourself together. Let it go. Keep on movin'.
Maybe I'm not so pretty anymore, but I'm alive.
And Kuromaru was, too.
"Right," he said, and took his fish.
It was hot; he juggled it briefly, hissing in surprise at the sudden warmth seeping through the cloth napkin to sear water-cooled fingers. Who packed napkins for a mission, anyway? Maybe she was more girly than Tsume after all. Ryouma cheered up a bit more.
"Spent the last five years up on the border, off and on," he said, burning his mouth on his first bite of flaky white flesh. "Combat missions mostly, back before the treaty with Cloud; then I got promoted to jounin and commander of the Dainichi Nyorai Temple Base. We ran surveillance on Lightning's Camp Chiwabe, on top of any missions Konoha wanted done up there." He swallowed another bite and grinned at her. "Too bad you weren't up there when I was. Six-month stints with a bunch of other guys got old really fast."
Dainichi Nyorai....?
The name sparked something in Katsuko's memory. During their stint on the border patrol, Beni had gotten a bad infection, one that Sensei's basic first-aid chakra jolts couldn't heal. They'd had to stop in at a hidden base along the perimeter of Lightning Country, the first visit of several to that particular outpost.
"This Dainichi Nyorai base," she asked curiously. "Did it have an old Buddha statue in front of it that you had to toss a special coin into the offering box to open? My chuunin team would get supplies from there sometime. One of the medics there saved my teammate's life."
The base had been one of the few reminders of the life and people back in Konoha, and she'd looked forward to the the infrequent visits all the way up to...All the way up to the ambush.
She peered at Ryouma, trying to match his face with the shinobi she'd seen there. The commander? The man who'd been in charge back then looked nothing like the jounin who was sitting in front of her now. That commander had had a face that looked like it could have been carved out of granite, with a crescent scar on his cheek and an utterly terrifying scowl that sent Katsuko scuttling behind Sensei whenever they were in the same room together.
That commander had been shorter than Ryouma, too.
The memories were frustratingly hazy, but Katsuko managed to dredge up the image of a scowling young man who'd been the lieutenant when she visited. If she imagined a Ryouma with longer hair and a bone to pick...
Her mouth dropped open. "I remember you! You were the second-in-command!"
"Oh hell," Ryouma said. "You met me then?"
He might as well give up on ever attempting to make a good impression. Seventeen had not been a good year in any way that mattered. Misao's death in the early summer, Yondaime-sama's in the early fall, an assignment to Dainichi Nyorai Temple under Uchiha Hideaki three days after the Yondaime's funeral. He'd arrived at the base determined to make a difference. He'd found Uchiha, commander of the base for the past eight years, stubborn, hide-bound, arrogant, and utterly convinced of his own superiority. Uchiha hadn't bothered to hide his disdain for his new gutterborn second-in-command. Ryouma hadn't bothered to hide his loathing.
He'd started growing his hair out then, too.
So... Seventeen, grieving, defiant, half-mutinous, and well on his way to growing a bad first attempt at a mullet. Best way in the world to be remembered.
Of course, she couldn't have been older than, what, fourteen? Fifteen? And probably far too concerned about an injured teammate to pay much attention to a glowering older boy. Subtract five years and maybe three inches of height, take away the slim curves and add a bit of babyfat to the thin cheeks, and...
"I thought you were a boy," he said. And had again less than a month ago, but he didn't mention that. "I mean, that stick-up-his-ass little blond kid had a longer ponytail than you. Is he still alive? I would've sworn he wouldn't last more'n six months on the border..."
He stopped, as memory flickered again. "I thought you didn't. When the redhead dragged the blond kid back to the base, that last time, I wasn't sure they were alive. They had your sensei's tags, and yours. The redhead swore you were still alive. But your sensei's body wasn't even there, when we went out to scout, and there wasn't a trail to follow. We tried, anyway, until Uchiha ordered us back."
It wasn't the first time Ryouma had ever disobeyed a direct order, but it was the first time he'd glared furiously into a pair of spinning Sharingan eyes and watched the world melt around him. The doujutsu-induced coma lasted eight hours. By the time Ryouma woke up again, an ANBU team from Konoha was already heading out to piece together a trail that led them nowhere.
He'd heard rumors about the liberation of the experimental facility six months later, as the winter snows were closing the passes. Had Katsuko been one of those poor wrecks the ANBU rescued?
What had she gone through to stand where she was now?
"I guess," he said, and cleared his throat. "I guess I can see why you joined up. I'm sorry we didn't get to you earlier."
Stick-up-his-ass blond kid. Nori.
The redhead. Beni.
Katsuko stifled a grin at Ryouma's nicknames for her boys teammates and watched the gears start to turn in his head as he struggled to remember Team Miyamoto's last visit to Dainichi Nyorai. That he'd thought she was a boy didn't bother her--she'd preferred it, back then, less hassle that way--but the rest...
But the rest he put together--
She should have just kept her damn fool mouth shut. Katsuko turned away, eyes shuttered as she fought the urge to spring up, start running and never stop.
He remembered. Not just that they'd met before, but that--that there had been an ambush, that Sensei had been killed, that she'd been captured and brought to--
She didn't need to think about the labs right now. Best to save it for tomorrow, when she needed a memory that would propel the force behind her lethal jutsu.
But she'd always wondered how Beni and Nori had gotten away safely. Gotten help. They never talked about the ambush with her, just looked at her sadly when they thought she didn't notice. It was--
It was...good. To have some of the blanks filled in. To know that someone had looked for her.
"I'm sorry we didn't get to you earlier."
"They...there was an underground testing facility. Near the border." Katsuko put her fish down and stared into the dark. "They kept me there for six months. It's the reason why my chakra is so distorted. It was part of the experiment."
The expanse of skin from the inside of her wrist to the crook of her elbow ached at the mere threat of remembering. She rubbed at the throbbing scars, knowing it wouldn't help but needing to do something.
"I was. By the time they came and rescued me, I was the only Leaf ninja left. Everybody else...All my friends..." Finishing that sentence would be bad. Katsuko closed her eyes and forced the memories away, cramming the pain and hurt into a tiny little corner of her mind.
She looked up at Ryouma, slowly. "But thank you. For looking for me."
When Ryouma woke up with his head splitting and his vision spinning, stiff and cold from being dumped on the couch in the living area while an injured boy occupied his bunk in the barracks-room, he'd gone straight for Uchiha. Hauled off and hit his commanding officer, because you didn't leave a kid alone like that, hurt and scared and praying for rescue...
He'd broken Uchiha's nose. He wished, now, he'd gone for the man's neck. And then gone out again to look for her.
"I should've looked harder," he said, and sank down beside her. He hesitated for a moment, and then reached out, slowly enough to give her plenty of warning. His fingertips ghosted over her shoulders, finding strong muscle laid over bone. She tensed, but it wasn't the rigid withdrawal he'd have expected from Kakashi or Tsume; she seemed too drained to flee. Which meant maybe she wanted nothing more than for him to go away, but she was a kunoichi; she could stab him in the ribs if she wanted him to move. His arm slipped over her shoulders and drew her in.
"Just so you know," he murmured. "The captain who kept us from goin' after you tried to break me back to genin after I broke his nose. He got recalled, instead, when the ANBU got to us. Last I saw of him, he was heading back to Konoha in disgrace. That's pretty poor comfort, but... Well." He grimaced. "No, it's still pretty poor."
He could feel her breathing, deep and slow, against his side. As if she were fighting for control, maybe, or for strength. He fanned his fingers over her shoulder, and gripped tight. "I've...been in places where I thought no one was comin' for me. Still can't sleep alone without a light on. That was under the shadow of Mount Rishiri, just north of where we're heading. So I figure we both got a reason to give 'em hell, right?"
Katsuko's hands came up, hesitantly, as she returned the hug. Pressed this close, she could feel the hard muscle of Ryouma's chest and that sharp clean male scent she'd noticed earlier. She concentrated on that like a lifeline, desperately not thinking about labs and needles.
This was...nice. Comfort given freely, and nothing expected in return. How long had it been since someone had given her a hug? Much too long, if just this made her want to bury her face in his shirt and keen like a little girl lost.
Concentrate. Concentrate on something, don't let the grief and pain win out--
His arms.
Giving in to the curiosity that had gnawed at her since she'd seen his arms at the stream, she placed her fingers on the whorling acid scars at his elbow and traced up. His muscles jumped, but he didn't move.
Boldly, she followed the raised tissue with the pads of her fingers, pausing to press her palm where the scar marred his ANBU tattoo. More scarring was visible just underneath his sleeveless black uniform shirt, an inch-wide strip of pale new skin where the old was flayed away.
Cloud ninja were always very fond of using acid for interrogations.
"I guess Kumo hasn't gotten any more creative with their torture techniques." Her tone was drought-dry. "But yeah. We'll burn that place to the ground."
Her grip tightened.
"I dunno," Ryouma said. "I got two teeth, a nipple, and another tattoo to pay them back for. I sure hope you're not missing anything of the sort. Although I guess you can see my screwed-up tattoo and raise me one screwed-up chakra system, but hey, at least we're both still pretty."
Katsuko laughed. She really was pretty, he realized, when her smile softened her sharp features and lit her eyes like sunlight. He grinned back at her and, moved by sudden impulse, bent his head and pressed a kiss to her brow.
He wasn't breaking any rules. He was just...making up for half a year of screaming into the dark.
At least this time, neither of them was alone.
Her brilliant smile had faded, when he glanced down at her firelit face again, but it wasn't quite gone. She looked...thoughtful. Pleased, with an edge of uncertainty. He could erase that uncertainty, he knew. Kiss away the tension seeping back into her mouth and make her laugh again, make her moan, make her forget her scars and her fears and everything but his touch. But where would that leave them, on the other side?
And they still had a mission waiting for them. Ryouma rubbed his palm briefly across the loosening muscles in her back, pulled away from her hug, and pushed himself to his feet. "There's one good thing about way too much chakra," he observed, as the last clone came padding back from setting its traps and took up a guard stance at the north edge of the clearing. "Besides runnin' me into the ground, I mean. Clones get night watches, and you get to sleep!"
The nearest clone flipped him off.
Katsuko glared at the copy. "I am not that rude all the time. Go do your job."
It pulled up its mask to give her a dirty look and turned around again. She snorted and and arched back in a stretch, feeling her skin pull as she yawned. Any awkwardness that remained from what had happened a moment before had vanished, as far as she could tell. The warm press of Ryouma's lips against her forehead lingered, a pleasant touch-memory that brought a small smile to her face.
Ryouma was an okay guy.
"It's late," she said, craning her neck to look up at him. "And we've got a long day ahead of us."
Knowing how much like her mother that sounded, Katsuko grinned up at him to soften the blow. "Good night. And thanks."
Scooping up her pack, she went into the tent to change.
Whoever had invented ANBU traveling tents had obviously been deeply concerned about portability, and not at all about how to fit a tall woman and a much taller man inside. At least, Ryouma reflected as Katsuko zipped the flap closed behind her, they wouldn't have to share the space with Kuromaru, too, this time. And as...eventful as sharing a tent with Tsume had been, it'd be nice if Katsuko was a little less touchy as a bed-companion.
Of course, a little more touchy would be fine, too...
He groaned at himself, stripped off his sweat-sticky armor and blacks, and splashed down into the stream for one of the coldest baths of his life.
Rinsed, if not exactly clean, he pulled his trousers on and picked up his shirt. It was still damp; it smelled of sweat and exhaustion and chakra over-burn. He hesitated a moment, one hand lifting to graze his patchwork pectorals. Then he bundled the rest of his armor into his shirt, tucked the unwieldy package under one arm, and slipped into the tent.
Katsuko was already curled into her bedroll, watching the firelight flicker against the tent wall. Her clones had laid out Ryouma's blankets next to hers, with his pack at the head for a pillow. Even in the fire-shadowed darkness, he could see the eyebrow she raised as he crawled in shirtless.
"Sleeping in a turtleneck feels like strangling," he said, dropping his bundle and turning to zip up the door. "Just be grateful I'm a good boy and kept my pants on. You're not gonna try and molest me in my sleep, are you?" He rocked back on his heels and grinned at her.
The light wasn't very good; maybe he was making a fool of himself for nothing. But she'd traced his scars earlier, comparing them to her own. If she wanted to see...
We made it through, before. We'll do it again.
The flap opened and Katsuko looked up, expecting to see Ryouma in his basic traveling blacks.
What she got instead was shirtless, shiny Ryouma ducking with a grin into the tent. Her eyebrow raised of its own volition. She opened her mouth to say something sarcastic and biting when the light flickered against the canvas walls and...
Dear Kami, all the scars.
Katsuko didn't realize that she'd sat up until cool night air shifted over her shoulders. Her eyes caught on the smooth, pale slashes running across Ryouma's stomach. They stood out obscenely white on the bronze of his skin. The acid marks on his arm were still visible, but now she was able to see where the tattoo on his chest had been sliced away. Her breathing sounded unnaturally loud in her ears, rasping into the quiet.
Almost unaware of what she was doing, she moved forward. Gods, the pain he must have gone through--
Her hand settled gently on his left pectoral, the small dimple where his left nipple used to be framed in the space between her thumb and forefinger. Katsuko spread her fingers and stilled, looking down at her own arms.
Her unbandaged, uncovered, scarred arms. She looked up and met his gaze frankly, sympathy in her eyes.
"Are the ones who did this to you dead?"
"Tsume got two of 'em," Ryouma said quietly. "Kakashi got the last. I just got rescued." He smiled faintly at her. "I guess we got that in common, too."
But Katsuko's face shuttered, sympathetic warmth fading into tight-lippednothing. She dropped her hand. A muscle leapt in her jaw; she gripped her scarred elbows, tucking her arms close against her body, and scooted backward. "Good night," she said, and curled into her blankets against the wall.
Ryouma let his breath out slow and soft. "Good night," he said. He crawled into his own blankets, and tried not to think about who was waiting in Katsuko's nightmares. | |
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