[Challenge] [Fiction][Naruto] It's Different
Title: It's Different
Challenge #3: The Title Says Everything
Series: Naruto
Rating: PG 13 for implied stuff
Word Count: 1862
1147pm 092607
There had been something odd with the lighting at the banquet table. The way the lamps were positioned about the spartan hall cast oblique shadows over the revelers’ faces. Were their voices somehow muted, they would have seemed a gaggle of grinning faces plotting something heinous, a ghastly pantomime show instead of a small and solemn wedding party. He would completely blame it on the lighting, but that would be foisting equal blame on his own two eyes. He couldn’t read the expression on many of the guests’ faces, but it had nothing to do with the acuity of his vision.
Not that many of their opinions counted, anyway. As it was, he didn’t have to sit long to muse on what lay behind the politely joyous facades. Her small hand crept up his arm, her voluminous sleeve slowly dragging across his thighs. She smiled a small secretive smile when his eyes shifted to her direction. He resisted throwing back a smirk. Her grip was tremulous.
When he rose from his seat, subtly dragging her up with him as he went, his face was back to its usual gravity. There was some ceremony or another that involved thanking these people for their presence that auspicious day. He wasn’t particularly thankful or attentive when he did so-none of them were threatening, despite their varying degrees of disapproval. (And there were merits to having an incorrigible, inflexible dobe for a best man.) He allowed his attention to linger on the woman walking before him-a blatant breech of tradition on their first day as man and wife-on the oddly nondescript annulus that served as her family’s emblem, lost among the multihued details of her uchikake’s flamboyant design.
The silent walk home was another ceremony, one as old as the clan itself, perhaps. She lead the way, her elegant figure emblazoned on the vermillion skies, in excruciating little steps punctuated by the slap of wood on stone. Today was the longest day of the year, and traces of it still bled the horizon. The Uchiha compound was still touched by this late dusk, and the multitude of paper lanterns that dotted its corners seemed bleached and impotent against the waning sunlight.
She stopped at the doorway of the main house, a tad breathless, her eyes slightly questioning, the greens grey under the lighting. He stopped a feet from her, watched as she chewed on a lip.
The doors were unbolted. She discovered it was so, when she took the initiative to welcome herself into her new home. Grimacing at his disinterested stare, she tugged at a hand and led him in. Her hands were shaking.
More paper lanterns lined the halls and the stairway, each one lovingly made by her students. She was treated as every other jounin-sensei was treated by their assigned genin-cell: with a certain pugnacious mischievousness. But they worshiped her, in truth, followed her about like starved mongrels. They hated him.
She didn’t stop moving again, thereafter, but she did hesitate at the second floor landing. A foot instinctively stepped towards the darkened termination of the narrow hallway, the long-unused boyhood room he had once shared with a once loved, once hated brother. (Where he had dragged her into last time, that first time. Despair was a vicious slave master and he fell into its cycles, in turn meting out an unrelenting rhythm unto her soft, yielding flesh, coating his seething rage with a viscid, toxic passion. Once, he had succumbed to it, only once; it was then and it was still a done damage.) Her grip tightened, callused fingertips digging painfully into his knuckles, then she pivoted, tottering at the weight of her layered raiment, and pulled him to the master’s room.
The mednin kept on, even inside the darkened room, till she reached the windows. Sakura peered out into the dreamy in-between-ness of indigo and the limpid incandescence of the lamps. She still retained the quiet air of competence that characterized her in the field, the solid determination she had honed through a myriad of battles with Death. (He had been one of those she had reclaimed from the implacable god.) But he had known her for a very long time, and he could easily see the timid little girl of nearly fifteen years ago, overlaying the semi-legend of the Leaf mednin . He never figured what made her bloom into that strong, unyielding woman. He had been told he somehow influenced this metamorphosis, but everybody knew he was out of town those days she began training, so how could that be? He never asked her.
As far as he knew of wedding days, men customarily lavished platitudes on their brides. He hadn’t yet, and he would be a fool and liar not to comment on her glowing beauty-even now, tired as she was. She’d say, he was known to be both, anyway, and that she expected him to say nothing. Besides, he had been staring at her all evening. If that wasn’t blatant enough a praise, he didn’t know what else would satisfy her.
Sakura turned back to the rest of the room, blinking away a sense of disbelief (probably), and allowed her gaze to roam to various details: the light linen sheets she had washed at least three times to restore to their immaculate white, the heavy wooden furnishings she had stripped and varnished, the seamless flooring they had taken apart and replaced, the walls. . .
Ah, the walls. He had whitewashed them years ago, along with every other room in the compound, though this was actually one of the few spared from the carnage. She left the walls alone.
Her eyes finally met his. There was a certain flash of something in those pale greens, in the tiny shift of her eyebrows. The expression was gone before he could decipher it. (Did years with the Sound nins somehow deteriorate his ability to pick up on social cues? It seemed so.) She smiled, and via those excruciatingly tiny steps, reached for him. Halfway, she murmured his name. Only then did he move to meet her, tilting down his head to accommodate her. It was the same chaste kiss she’d been giving him over the last eight years.
(Excepting that time. Always, excepting that time.)
She murmured his name again, and brushed callused fingers across his cheekbones. The splash of worry on her face was undisguised now-he was wondering when she’d run out of fuel. This was the real Sakura: a highly intelligent and keenly perceptive mednin, a monstrously strong fighter and a formidable tactician, a kind-natured and deeply, deeply insecure young woman. She waited for him to speak first.
Sasuke said nothing. Instead, he reached for her-to shut her up, maybe? He took her lips with his, before they could issue forth useless words, and coaxed them open with a subtle nudge. She jerked away, an odd, spastic movement borne of a divided mind. He decided for her and held her steady, a firm grip to each arm to forestall escape. She was tight, tense,
(quivering like one of those dying hearts she was prattling about, during one of those countless pockets of wasted time she fancied expendable for lets-catch-up-with-old-times sessions. Seventeen years old and still a damnable liar. Liar and faker. Feigning innocence and all puffed up with bravado. Let’s save Sasuke-kun. Let’s help Sasuke-kun. Self-satisfied fool didn’t say so aloud, but she practically effused her life mission to wrench her “former” team mate from “darkness.” Former being the operative word, why did she have to be so damn annoying? What would it take to puncture her egotistic belief that she could make everything well again?
He wasn’t a disease process. He wasn’t Sasuke-kun. He was cold, cold, cold. Dangerous and nameless death. He existed in a narrow avenue, a precarious balance point between vengeance and self-annihilation. He was calm and unruffled, but he really wasn’t. He had enough instincts of self-preservation that he would strike at anybody, anybody, who disturbed this equilibrium. He would swallow her whole and make her see, make her feel. Make her feel what enthralled him for years. Ice and fire; rending, searing, crushing her every facet. Dribbles of diamonds to trace his paths about Hell.
He would.
He would.
He would but
He couldn’t.
Because he operated on rules of give-and-take. Because he didn’t “owe” people. Because he knew she could give as much of the fight as he was willing to give. Because he knew she could humiliate him, grind him to dirt, as fairly as he could.
But he wouldn’t.
Because she wouldn’t.
He couldn’t.
So he relinquished her, eyes whirring, searching. Not for an edge in battle, it was the chance of escape he sought. Exodus from the bloody-walled room, the room once shared with a brother, once loved, once hated.
Hated.
Hated.
And always,
loved.)
Sakura was unmoving, as he was, their lips mushed together like two lumps of mud. He tried pushed her away, but he was met with resistance from the deceptively loose hold she had about his neck. He twisted his head away; she allowed that, one of her hands creeping down to stroke the small of his back, as one would a cat’s belly. Relenting, he rested his head against her, ignoring the various hair ornaments poking against his temple. This seemed to please her, and the gentle stroking strengthened into a hypnotic kneading of the muscles running parallel his spine.
Fighting the cloud of relaxation, he became. . . sullen. She read him as damn minutely as she did her enemies and textbooks. To vindicate himself, he latched on to her nearer ear. When the gnawing softened into a more generalized nuzzling, she sighed, wriggled loose, and planted a firm, short kiss on his mouth.
Sasuke’s char-black eyes bore at her, as if such a stare could divulge answers-or more precisely, what he wanted was her permission. She smiled impishly, not unkindly, and sighed once more.
“It’s different,” she said.
He nodded, even though it wasn’t a question. This seemed to please her, anyway, and she lead him away from the window by a hand. At some point, she brought that same hand to her obi, and turned to answer his gaze with her own, his lips with hers.
As the layers of silk fell away, it was her, this time, who deepened the kiss. And then. . . It wasn’t like eight years ago.
(Because though she had allowed him the same eight years ago, he was far less kinder to himself back then. He took what she gave, but he took angrily and fearfully. He didn’t want to take what she gave as gift, and so took it as plunder. Nonetheless, it had been a gift. No matter how he accepted it, it remained so. It took years before his pride was worn down enough for him to realize this, to be grateful to her.
Some would call her victim, but she was far braver than he was that night. Both of them, seventeen. Both of them, liar and faker. He didn’t get to run away that night. And her. . .
She was still there, wasn’t she? )
It was different today.
October 7, 2007 (2:36pm)
Geh. I'm not sure what I was really aiming for in this piece. Oh well. I meant for it to become a lemon, but I ran out of time and steam. (Besides, the only thing holding together this rambling string of words is. . . I dunno what, actually. Eheh.)
Maybe I could expand this into a 3 chaptered fic. Maybe.
Challenge #3: The Title Says Everything
Series: Naruto
Rating: PG 13 for implied stuff
Word Count: 1862
1147pm 092607
There had been something odd with the lighting at the banquet table. The way the lamps were positioned about the spartan hall cast oblique shadows over the revelers’ faces. Were their voices somehow muted, they would have seemed a gaggle of grinning faces plotting something heinous, a ghastly pantomime show instead of a small and solemn wedding party. He would completely blame it on the lighting, but that would be foisting equal blame on his own two eyes. He couldn’t read the expression on many of the guests’ faces, but it had nothing to do with the acuity of his vision.
Not that many of their opinions counted, anyway. As it was, he didn’t have to sit long to muse on what lay behind the politely joyous facades. Her small hand crept up his arm, her voluminous sleeve slowly dragging across his thighs. She smiled a small secretive smile when his eyes shifted to her direction. He resisted throwing back a smirk. Her grip was tremulous.
When he rose from his seat, subtly dragging her up with him as he went, his face was back to its usual gravity. There was some ceremony or another that involved thanking these people for their presence that auspicious day. He wasn’t particularly thankful or attentive when he did so-none of them were threatening, despite their varying degrees of disapproval. (And there were merits to having an incorrigible, inflexible dobe for a best man.) He allowed his attention to linger on the woman walking before him-a blatant breech of tradition on their first day as man and wife-on the oddly nondescript annulus that served as her family’s emblem, lost among the multihued details of her uchikake’s flamboyant design.
The silent walk home was another ceremony, one as old as the clan itself, perhaps. She lead the way, her elegant figure emblazoned on the vermillion skies, in excruciating little steps punctuated by the slap of wood on stone. Today was the longest day of the year, and traces of it still bled the horizon. The Uchiha compound was still touched by this late dusk, and the multitude of paper lanterns that dotted its corners seemed bleached and impotent against the waning sunlight.
She stopped at the doorway of the main house, a tad breathless, her eyes slightly questioning, the greens grey under the lighting. He stopped a feet from her, watched as she chewed on a lip.
The doors were unbolted. She discovered it was so, when she took the initiative to welcome herself into her new home. Grimacing at his disinterested stare, she tugged at a hand and led him in. Her hands were shaking.
More paper lanterns lined the halls and the stairway, each one lovingly made by her students. She was treated as every other jounin-sensei was treated by their assigned genin-cell: with a certain pugnacious mischievousness. But they worshiped her, in truth, followed her about like starved mongrels. They hated him.
She didn’t stop moving again, thereafter, but she did hesitate at the second floor landing. A foot instinctively stepped towards the darkened termination of the narrow hallway, the long-unused boyhood room he had once shared with a once loved, once hated brother. (Where he had dragged her into last time, that first time. Despair was a vicious slave master and he fell into its cycles, in turn meting out an unrelenting rhythm unto her soft, yielding flesh, coating his seething rage with a viscid, toxic passion. Once, he had succumbed to it, only once; it was then and it was still a done damage.) Her grip tightened, callused fingertips digging painfully into his knuckles, then she pivoted, tottering at the weight of her layered raiment, and pulled him to the master’s room.
The mednin kept on, even inside the darkened room, till she reached the windows. Sakura peered out into the dreamy in-between-ness of indigo and the limpid incandescence of the lamps. She still retained the quiet air of competence that characterized her in the field, the solid determination she had honed through a myriad of battles with Death. (He had been one of those she had reclaimed from the implacable god.) But he had known her for a very long time, and he could easily see the timid little girl of nearly fifteen years ago, overlaying the semi-legend of the Leaf mednin . He never figured what made her bloom into that strong, unyielding woman. He had been told he somehow influenced this metamorphosis, but everybody knew he was out of town those days she began training, so how could that be? He never asked her.
As far as he knew of wedding days, men customarily lavished platitudes on their brides. He hadn’t yet, and he would be a fool and liar not to comment on her glowing beauty-even now, tired as she was. She’d say, he was known to be both, anyway, and that she expected him to say nothing. Besides, he had been staring at her all evening. If that wasn’t blatant enough a praise, he didn’t know what else would satisfy her.
Sakura turned back to the rest of the room, blinking away a sense of disbelief (probably), and allowed her gaze to roam to various details: the light linen sheets she had washed at least three times to restore to their immaculate white, the heavy wooden furnishings she had stripped and varnished, the seamless flooring they had taken apart and replaced, the walls. . .
Ah, the walls. He had whitewashed them years ago, along with every other room in the compound, though this was actually one of the few spared from the carnage. She left the walls alone.
Her eyes finally met his. There was a certain flash of something in those pale greens, in the tiny shift of her eyebrows. The expression was gone before he could decipher it. (Did years with the Sound nins somehow deteriorate his ability to pick up on social cues? It seemed so.) She smiled, and via those excruciatingly tiny steps, reached for him. Halfway, she murmured his name. Only then did he move to meet her, tilting down his head to accommodate her. It was the same chaste kiss she’d been giving him over the last eight years.
(Excepting that time. Always, excepting that time.)
She murmured his name again, and brushed callused fingers across his cheekbones. The splash of worry on her face was undisguised now-he was wondering when she’d run out of fuel. This was the real Sakura: a highly intelligent and keenly perceptive mednin, a monstrously strong fighter and a formidable tactician, a kind-natured and deeply, deeply insecure young woman. She waited for him to speak first.
Sasuke said nothing. Instead, he reached for her-to shut her up, maybe? He took her lips with his, before they could issue forth useless words, and coaxed them open with a subtle nudge. She jerked away, an odd, spastic movement borne of a divided mind. He decided for her and held her steady, a firm grip to each arm to forestall escape. She was tight, tense,
(quivering like one of those dying hearts she was prattling about, during one of those countless pockets of wasted time she fancied expendable for lets-catch-up-with-old-times sessions. Seventeen years old and still a damnable liar. Liar and faker. Feigning innocence and all puffed up with bravado. Let’s save Sasuke-kun. Let’s help Sasuke-kun. Self-satisfied fool didn’t say so aloud, but she practically effused her life mission to wrench her “former” team mate from “darkness.” Former being the operative word, why did she have to be so damn annoying? What would it take to puncture her egotistic belief that she could make everything well again?
He wasn’t a disease process. He wasn’t Sasuke-kun. He was cold, cold, cold. Dangerous and nameless death. He existed in a narrow avenue, a precarious balance point between vengeance and self-annihilation. He was calm and unruffled, but he really wasn’t. He had enough instincts of self-preservation that he would strike at anybody, anybody, who disturbed this equilibrium. He would swallow her whole and make her see, make her feel. Make her feel what enthralled him for years. Ice and fire; rending, searing, crushing her every facet. Dribbles of diamonds to trace his paths about Hell.
He would.
He would.
He would but
He couldn’t.
Because he operated on rules of give-and-take. Because he didn’t “owe” people. Because he knew she could give as much of the fight as he was willing to give. Because he knew she could humiliate him, grind him to dirt, as fairly as he could.
But he wouldn’t.
Because she wouldn’t.
He couldn’t.
So he relinquished her, eyes whirring, searching. Not for an edge in battle, it was the chance of escape he sought. Exodus from the bloody-walled room, the room once shared with a brother, once loved, once hated.
Hated.
Hated.
And always,
loved.)
Sakura was unmoving, as he was, their lips mushed together like two lumps of mud. He tried pushed her away, but he was met with resistance from the deceptively loose hold she had about his neck. He twisted his head away; she allowed that, one of her hands creeping down to stroke the small of his back, as one would a cat’s belly. Relenting, he rested his head against her, ignoring the various hair ornaments poking against his temple. This seemed to please her, and the gentle stroking strengthened into a hypnotic kneading of the muscles running parallel his spine.
Fighting the cloud of relaxation, he became. . . sullen. She read him as damn minutely as she did her enemies and textbooks. To vindicate himself, he latched on to her nearer ear. When the gnawing softened into a more generalized nuzzling, she sighed, wriggled loose, and planted a firm, short kiss on his mouth.
Sasuke’s char-black eyes bore at her, as if such a stare could divulge answers-or more precisely, what he wanted was her permission. She smiled impishly, not unkindly, and sighed once more.
“It’s different,” she said.
He nodded, even though it wasn’t a question. This seemed to please her, anyway, and she lead him away from the window by a hand. At some point, she brought that same hand to her obi, and turned to answer his gaze with her own, his lips with hers.
As the layers of silk fell away, it was her, this time, who deepened the kiss. And then. . . It wasn’t like eight years ago.
(Because though she had allowed him the same eight years ago, he was far less kinder to himself back then. He took what she gave, but he took angrily and fearfully. He didn’t want to take what she gave as gift, and so took it as plunder. Nonetheless, it had been a gift. No matter how he accepted it, it remained so. It took years before his pride was worn down enough for him to realize this, to be grateful to her.
Some would call her victim, but she was far braver than he was that night. Both of them, seventeen. Both of them, liar and faker. He didn’t get to run away that night. And her. . .
She was still there, wasn’t she? )
It was different today.
October 7, 2007 (2:36pm)
Geh. I'm not sure what I was really aiming for in this piece. Oh well. I meant for it to become a lemon, but I ran out of time and steam. (Besides, the only thing holding together this rambling string of words is. . . I dunno what, actually. Eheh.)
Maybe I could expand this into a 3 chaptered fic. Maybe.