As the Facility Turns

[slug_sannin]

Who: Tsunade, Folken Lacour de Fanel
Where: Tsunade's room
When: Friday of touch swap test
Summary: Going back from off again to on again
Rating: PG for some swearing
Warnings: gratuitous fluff?



Tsunade closed the laptop and pushed it away. She didn't physically feel tired, but her body was acting as though it was. Her grip on things would fail, or she would tip over, but she never felt any of it. The hazy fog over her thoughts was the clearest give away that she had over done it. Her surgery on Haku probably wouldn't have been that draining, if she hadn't immediately turned around and cut off all feeling and reaction from a certain troublesome man's favorite bits. Indefinitely.

Alone in her room, she smirked at the ceiling. Revenge was so very sweet sometimes.

Her door was unlocked, an open invitation for her visitor. She didn't worry much about the other subjects coming into her room anymore. They needed her alive and unharmed too much, and for the most part, the subjects had limited interest in attacking her. The only exception to the rule was still dead, and it appeared that Konan would not be returning. It left an uncertain feeling across her shoulders and in the pit of her gut. She never did develop the heart of a killer, she was a healer in the end.

Hair was caught at her eyelashes and she pushed it away very carefully, since she couldn't feel what she was doing, and waited for Folken to bring dinner and whatever it was that he had made for her.

Folken walked through the halls with a rustle of robes, the scent of freshly cooked meat wafting behind him. Though rabbit was fast becoming repetitive, despite his experimentations with cooking and seasoning, it was still far preferable to the ration bars. For the first time in days, the pain in his chest had abated enough for him to wish to spend time concentrating on preparing a meal, as a celebration.

What better way to celebrate than sharing with the one you adored? Folken was hopeful that a resolution could be found, after so many weeks of misunderstandings and strained avoidance. He would find a path that would please them both. He had to.

He brushed the pocket at his hip, checking that the gift he'd worked on had not fallen out along the way. Though he could not feel the lump, he had taken the precaution of wrapping it in paper, so that a touch caused it to rustle. He had spent far too many days painstakingly putting this offering together, concentrating in an attempt to distract himself from the pain, to just let it fall. He hoped that Tsunade would appreciate the gesture.

Her door moved when he rapped it with his metal knuckles. That was a good sign. He pushed through it quietly, shutting it behind him before striding to the desk to put down the food. He leaned upon the metal surface, looking at her carefully.

"My dear, do you realise that you have bruised your face?"

"Huh?" Tsunade was not known for her eloquence at the best of times, and she was far from at her best. Her hand moved up to touch her face out of reflex, even though she wouldn't be able to feel anything. "I must have hit that desk harder than I thought. No wonder L wasn't amused. How bad is it?"

The medic sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed, face tipped up for Folken to inspect. It was so easy to fall back into this pattern, letting him come to visit her when she wasn't feeling well and trusting him to take care of her. Her hair fell back from her young face, still so trusting after the weeks of hurt and avoidance between the two of them.

Folken let out a small sigh at the sight of her like that, even as he moved to sit beside her on the bed. His fingers came up to frame her face, hardly daring to touch for fear of misjudging the pressure, or worse, catching her skin with his newly resharpened claws. He tilted her head, looking closely at her left eye, examining it from several angles.

"Your left eye socket has been bruised." He said quietly. The closeness of their faces meant there was no need for loudness. His eyes lingered upon the darkening mark. "However, it is only minor bruising. The deeper layers are not damaged, and it should not swell enough to affect your sight. I doubt it would be particularly painful if you were able to feel it."

Reluctantly, he pulled away, straightening his back. His fingers slid from her face, his hands folding neatly in his lap. His gaze left the bruise to meet her eyes, large and amber. He smiled, the tattoos at the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly, at the opportunity to be this close to her once more. She was so very lovely.

Her fingers wandered over her own skin, unable to feel what she was doing. L probably wouldn't appreciate having to deal with a black eye, but she truly didn't have the chakra to spare. She'd have to wait until tomorrow to fix it. Hopefully Folken was right and it wasn't too painful for her partner. "I'll have to take your word on it. I don't think I could heal a paper cut right now. I'd rather not pass out, I have no idea what that would do to L."

Amber eyes roved over to food that Folken had brought with him. She wasn't hungry herself, but it did smell good. At least they could still taste. "Thanks for coming by, Folken. Nutrition bars are even worse when you can't feel what you're chewing. And the company is nice." Tsunade smiled a bit, trying to keep the situation from deterioraiting. At least she wanted him back as a friend, even if the rest was too broken to fix.

"Shall we eat, then?" Folken asked, with a hint of amusement at the way she was staring at the meal. Arranged on a cookie plate he had liberated a few weeks ago from the cafeteria, the food steamed lightly, tempting. He brought the dish over to the bed, leaving it between them as he sat further back on the bed.

"Good company always improves the taste of a meal." He claimed, offering her the first choice. "Except, perhaps, for the nutrition bars. I have tried soaking them in a stock made from leftover rabbit, but they are stubbornly resistant to soaking up flavour." He took a bite of a small scrap of rabbit, eyes closing briefly to savour the taste. "Whoever invented them was either particularly inept in the culinary arts, or sadistic." It was so easy for him to slip back into their easy conversations, as if nothing had happened. He kicked off his shoes almost without thinking, pulling his long legs up onto the bed. The present rustled, but he thought it best to wait until Tsunade had sated her hunger before distracting her.

"I'm betting on sadistic. They may be idiots, but they seem to be really focused on making us miserable. It seems like just another example." Tsunade nibbled at the rabbit, trying to be careful to not accidentally bite herself. If she bit herself too much, she had no doubt that L would return the favor. She settled back next to him, reaching over to snitch a bite that looked particularly appetizing from his plate. "Have we tried grinding up the bars to see if we can do something else with them?"

There was no reason to be close to each other, since they couldn't feel anything they were doing, but it was still a habit that had Tsunade shifting over a bit, moving in closer under the pretense of sharing. "Maybe Al and Willow have some ideas, since you and Axel are so focused on the weapons end of things. Nice claws, by the way."

Folken held out his right hand for her to inspect, turning his body nearer to better display the retipped fingers, gleaming and wickedly pointed.

"They are an approximation of my original fingertips, before the Consortium saw fit to modify me." He replied, demonstrating their sharpness by skewering a piece of her food to replace what she stole. "However, I strongly suspect an intern files the edges every night, as they blunt far quicker than steel should." He sucked the meat from his finger, careful not to pierce his lips.

"As for the nutrition bars, I tried grinding one between some pebbles from the river to see if they could be remoulded, but the result was rather gritty and would not form an acceptable paste with water." The experiments, conducted with multiple bars ground to different consistencies and precise volumes of water, had wasted most of an afternoon before Folken had become sick of cleaning out the failed creations. Cooking had never been his passion and no sudden solutions had sparked in his mind. He had found spending time working out how to tan leather in the bathroom far more absorbing. Which reminded him...

"I have something for you." He said, shifting to pull out the small, paper-wrapped bundle, passing it to Tsunade. "I hope you find these of some use."

It was more difficult to unwrap them when she couldn't feel anything, but Tsunade managed to pull the paper loose to reveal a pair of leather gloves. Her eyes went wide, picking them up to examine them. "How . . . " Careful to not damage them while she couldn't feel what she was doing, she pulled one on. They fit perfectly. Somehow, Folken had found the size of her hands.

She opened and closed her hands, listening to the leather squeak with a pleased smile. "This is amazing, Folken. How did you do this? I love them! I don't have enough chakra here to keep from taking damage all of the time, and my hands have been getting torn up." A gloved thumb ran over her knuckles with a bemused expression

"Thank you so much. This must have taken forever!"

Folken smiled, carefully taking one of her hands to double check the size. It was pleasing to see that he had not lost his ability to accurately gauge dimensions.

"I had noticed the damage to your knuckles a while back, but until recently there were no materials available to make suitable protection, though I did experiment with some designs." He could only watch his fingers run over her gloved ones, as if watching a memory. "When the reset comes, you will have to tell me if there are any seams digging in, so that I may make adjustments. As for the time it took, I appreciated having a consuming task to fill my hours. My new claws came in useful for punching holes in the leather."

He could not feel her, but he was still able to smell her. Bowing his head towards her, he inhaled her clean scent, her hair tickling his nose unnoticed. The small sneeze that overtook his as he sat upright had him blinking in surprise.

Tsunade hadn't been able to feel him leaning in close to her, but she did startle when he suddenly sneezed. "Thanks again, Folken. I'll try them out after the reset. I hate not being able to feel anything." She stretched her hands out, admiring the rabbit skin gloves. Some girls would want flowers or jewelery, she wanted gloves so that she wouldn't wreck her knuckles when she punched things.

"How are you doing now, since we've been taking care of Haku? Any infection or soreness I need to tell them about?" Her hands fell into her lap while she turned to study the man. She still wanted to lean into him, but there was no point. It would just make L uncomfortable.

"My temper has improved as the pain has receded." Folken responded, with a self-deprecating quirk of his eyebrows. "There does not feel as if an infection has set in, though the pectorals are still tender. I find that I am restricting my arm and wing movements in order not to pull at the healing skin, a futile gesture." Her increasing closeness had not gone unnoticed, and had the test not been what it had been, Folken would have gladly wrapped an arm around her shoulder and held her close. But now, all that would do would alert Haku to his activities. Folken was private enough he would rather less people knew of his every gesture.

"Use them to the limit." Folken encouraged, nodding at the gloves. "If they break, I shall construct another, stronger pair. One cannot know the true strength of anything until it has been pushed to the edge of it's durability." He glanced away, the softness on his face replaced by a faint worry.

"I hope that I have not stretched what we had between us past it's limit."

And so it started. Tsunade nervously wet her lips and shifted. This was the hard part, talking about what had happened. Why did it seem like the only time she talked to him was when she was hurt or they were trying to recover from a fight? "I don't know, Folken. I'm just so tired of the constant avoidance and hurt feelings. I have plenty of things going on here that make me feel worn down and miserable, I don't need another one."

She tipped her head back so that it was resting against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. "My world is so different from yours. Your problem is that you are constantly forgetting what I am. I'm not from your world, and I am nothing like the women from your world. I can't change, and I wouldn't even if I could. I don't want to be like that, I like running my own life. And you shouldn't want me to change. It doesn't work that way. You either want this version of me, as is, or yes, it's too broken."

Though he could not feel his own body, still, it was as if his heart was being squeezed. That was not the worst she could have said, but the situation was still bad. He leaned back as well, resting his back on the wall away from her, staring at the corner of the ceiling.

"I have never met anyone like you." He began, his voice slow. "Even my wards, who were fierce warriors, had not half of your independence. That was one of the many things that drew me in, despite my initial reservations. You are no subservient lover, expecting protection. You defend me from harm as often as I have tried to defend you. You challenge me, constantly, making me re-evaluate my stances. I would not want you to change, rather, myself. I wish to shed this arrogance that inevitably leads to my downfall." His eyes drifted away from the corner to rest upon her face, upon the pale curve of her neck, the fall of her hair.

"As you have no doubt noticed, I am an incredibly stubborn man. The quality has been of use to me, but in this case, it prevents me from moving as easily as I wish to. I have changed, Tsunade, since I first came here. My world view has been shifting if fits and spurts from what it originally was, but I am afraid that no crashing revelations have overwhelmed me." He let out a breath of a chuckle, though there was no humour behind it. "That is something I am glad for, since it has happened to me a few times in the past, and each time it is devastating to have one's entire world order crumble." His face looked pained.

"I want to promise you that from today I shall never act that way again, that I shall be exactly as you wish me to be, but I fear that promise will be broken. I am moving towards being what you need me to be." He was clenching his hands into fists, not noticing the half moon marks of his nails in his flesh palm. "Did I offend you when I thought that you had agreed to my proposal?"

"It wouldn't be very fair of me to make you change after saying that I'm not willing to. I just want you to meet me in the middle. I can't conform to your world, and I know you're not from mine." Mindful of her strength, Tsunade reached down to unfist his hand, sighing at the marks on his skin. "Watch it, would you? Haku's not really in a state to tell you if you've hurt yourself."

Even though she couldn't feel it, she held on to that hand. "Scared the hell out of me, Folken. Shinobi don't get married very often, especially not jounin rank, and never at 16. I figured if I rejected your proposal, you wouldn't want to have anything to do with me anymore. It was a decision I didn't want to make."

"I am not so stiff with pride that I would cast off these emotions because a rejection." Folken replied, looking down at her hand in his. It was so small, so delicate, encased in leather. "It was the misunderstanding that threw me off balance. To be honest, I was incredibly surprised when I believed you had accepted." His large fingers wrapped around hers. "In this place, where each day there is no guarantee that what we knew from before still holds, where every bond is fleeting, I just wished for one that would be unbreakable, for as long as the Consortium allowed us to be together. It has been subsequently explained to me why that was a foolish notion, both for assuming you would see it as I do, and that such a vow is required."

"You're too hung up on making things official." Tsuande gave him a glare from the corner of her eye. "Can't you just believe that my feelings are real because I say they are? Do you have to have a big ceremony in order to believe me? Because I sure as hell don't need something like that. Titles and vows don't change anything. This isn't some fling just because I won't marry you. I don't do flings, or fleeting bonds. Can't I just say I love you and have you believe it?"

And there was the crux of their misunderstandings. She didn't need anything other than his word to believe that this was real and solid. Folken, for his part, seemed to need that offical stamp of acceptance. It was enough to give her a headache. Actually, that headache was probably being experienced by L. She owed him an apology later.

"I think... no, I have not doubted what it is you feel. I know you well enough to know you would not tolerate carrying on such a deceit. That was the very reason why I thought that I may be able to ask such a question. Even when, in that instant I realised you did not wish it, I had no doubt about your feelings. It was only your subsequent avoidance that began to call questions into my mind, fleeting ones." What he wouldn't give to be able to feel her. His other senses were turned intently towards her, watching and listening to the subtle changes as he talked.

"Even if it would scandalise my brother, I would be happy for this to never had to be officialised, if I were allowed to have back what we once shared. This time apart has brought back to me again how precious what we have is."

"I don't give a damn about what your brother thinks. There are plenty of other people that don't approve, and I don't give a damn what they think either. I've never lived to follow someone else's rules." Tsunade desperately wanted to touch him, but she kept her hands at her sides. L didn't need to be a part of this. She did lean towards him, her voice softening. "Is that what you truly want? To go back to what we had? Because I've missed you, Folken. I'm tired of fighting with you."

Was she willing to try this yet again? Considering how much it tore her apart each time it fell apart, which it seemed to do with alarming frequency? She studied those unique, beautiful eyes and smiled. Yes, she was going to try this again. Her stubbornness was one of her best traits.

Her smile was met with an answering warmth from his eyes as he leaned in towards her, close enough for their breath to mingle, not quite touching their foreheads together.

"I want everything you are willing to share with me." He stated, voice light as a breath, "And I will give you all I have to give."

"Sounds like a deal to me." She couldn't feel it, when she leaned in close enough that their lips brushed. This test was rapidly becoming one of her least favorite. Instead she resettled on the bed, using his leg as a pillow since her body was still trying to collapse, even though she couldn't feel how tired she was. There was nothing she could do but wait this out.

"Is it Sunday yet?"