More kinkmeme stuff, hoshit.
In the Middle
Rating: Mature
Genre: Drama. Not sure if the timeline is anywhere near right, but eh!
Characters/Pairing: Chiyo/Tsunade
Spoilers: I don't think there are any.
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi. Standard fanfic disclaimers apply.
Notes: This is yet another 'fic I wrote which sprang out of redbrunja 's epic kinkmeme.
They meet in the middle.
Between their two countries -- their two villages -- she with a brother gone and she with a brother still living, Tsunade of the Leaf (not yet, as she would be called someday, Godaime Hokage) and Chiyo of Sunagakure.
Tsunade kow-tows; the polished red nails of her small feet curl down and scrape at the mat upon which they stand; she beckons, invites her enemy in to sit with her for tea as they wait in this land of birds and sky and withering fall grass perishing from the absence of rain. It is late in the war; the battles drag on, invisible blood runs between them, between their loyalties, but they meet here, in this world, in this sanctuary; they meet with bruised hearts, they meet with the muted voices of unspoken loss. They meet as women, they meet as soldiers; a shinobi does not show emotion; a shinobi is a weapon. (In the morning, Tsunade blots her tears with the other side of the rag from which she's cleaned a wound -- a leg, this time, and it had to be amputated beneath the knee.)
Chiyo is coming to Konohagakure for diplomatic reasons, but her eyes are hard; scrutinizing. The leech-gatherer, she calls Tsunade, when she thinks she cannot hear (but can); she's picking flowers for a funeral -- a boy, this time, no older than --
Tsunade hears, and curses under her breath. Crushes a flower underfoot. Kicks a hole through the nailed boards of the rickety compound; there are robed ladies inside lighting incense and saying a prayer for the dead and dying, aiding their souls on their journey toward the afterlife, and Tsunade huffs out hard . . . stands there, with her hands pressed to either side of the doorframe and her lips open in a silent o; she exhales so hard that the wisps of hair around her face lift up. Puff of breath out.
Tsunade wants to laugh. She really does. Laugh in disgust, at this foolishness. Laugh in exasperation. Laugh away that feeling, that vice that's squeezing the hell out of her throat, but a shinobi does not show emotion. Rule number -- she forgets which.
She thinks of Jiraiya, that big idiot. When did he ever abide by that rule? When did Orochimaru? Or maybe Orochimaru has. Maybe he has too perfectly, she thinks with a flash of unnamed ache; no, never mind. Damn, she's got to get to work.
"I never expected to encounter a child such as yourself," the woman tells her.
A child such as me could run her fist straight through your stomach, Tsunade thinks. Bites her lips and holds her hands behind her back.
She doesn't hit her. Doesn't crack her bones open. Serves her tea, and smiles, rather.
I want to be back in the midst of the fighting, she writes to the Third, who writes back to inform her, predictably, that as valuable as her strength is (her strength!), she's needed in this makeshift hospital now -- no, not even a hospital, really. It's a war camp. It's a fucking refuse pit, Tsunade thinks; where they dump their broken "weapons", where the bodies pile high and sometimes the stench of human decay and shit wafts over all the gardenias. She looks out the window and paces; wants to go out to the gardens and start ripping those things up.
Wants to tear off the ladies' dresses and tell them to get to work. Stop praying. There's a man with his chest open two rooms down.
Get in there, you little idiot, and drain the poison!
Poison inside, everywhere, she thinks wryly. Maybe that's what's wrong with her. Maybe that's what inside, killing her. Maybe that's why she hurts like she does, continually, even though she isn't one of the ones who is bleeding. Maybe. That's it. It's what this tightness is.
Tightness, like so; when she at night she closes her eyes and raises her hips up; sticks her fingers into herself, jabs herself in this torturous pleasure that leaves her sweaty and hot and a sickly kind of teased, with the body in glistening rapture and the mind in misery. Tsunade massages the hell out of her clit and arches up, pants and calls his name -- Dan. Imagines that he's on her, now, warming her, making love to her.
Comes, and gasps. Shudders. Rides down the waves, until she's lying there cold.
Nothing but a mess between her legs to show for it.
They come in every day, many as young as her brother.
Chiyo knows something of potions and poisons, and Tsunade serves her tea -- serves with hands that tremble from too many nights without sleep, from a pillar struck in secret in the blue-grey morning after another one died on her, another one -- and she's washed them, her hands, cleaned and scrubbed and painted her ten nails, but perhaps the infection has gotten to her. Perhaps that's why there's this tremor coming on. The palsy; it could be.
Chiyo's son is dead. Tsunade has been informed of this. Dead son, killed by a Konohagakure ninja; man's wife is gone, too. There's a baby in there somewhere, buried under the mission reports; really just a name.
Poisons and kunai and strings; that's all they come to each other as, these women, serving tea and serving falsehoods.
The woman doesn't like her. Doesn't respect her. She looks up and down the length of her body severely, and Tsunade feels herself redden, and she can't say why. She must look so foolish. She's out of her element like this, in this stupid costume, in this stupid space. She's no diplomat, not her. And she's never had a real lady friend; boys. Jiraiya, her brother. Those sorts of boys -- silly and stupid and wonderful and alive.
Alive.
"You shouldn't be here," Chiyo tells her on the third day, when the sky looks like it holds a little rain. "This isn't your place."
She takes a bite of onirigi and says, mouth full, "It isn't mine, either."
Tsunade starts to turn, starts to go. But she hears a sound behind her -- a snort of contempt, and she turns on her heels abruptly. "My place is between you and whatever your goals are. My place is an ointment in the blood that you filled with venom. That's my place."
The woman does not reply, only stares at her, still holding the onirigi in her chopsticks.
It does rain a little, onto the starving grass.
The wind blows Tsunade's hair as she kneels to dig the next grave. She's lost count of the number of these by now; too many. Their side, her side. Every shinobi is the same, when they're beneath the soil. Dan, Nawaki. She buries her dead, and every sliver of herself that goes down with them. Jiraiya and Orochimaru are gone, busy elsewhere, in battle. And here she is, entrenching the dead. Entrenched by the dead.
There's a full moon casting its light through an unclouded sky when the woman yanks the covers from Tsunade.
She jerks to attention, scuttles back against the bed; kicks out and knocks Chiyo to the ground with the broad swing of one foot. Because the truth is --
The truth is, Tsunade was interrupted.
Something in the tea, she thinks -- the tea she served. Something in it, perhaps, is affecting her, because she's flushed and she feels dizzy. Or maybe it's fever, contracted from a patient. Could be that. Could be that the cooks have been playing a practical joke. Tsunade feels her mouth hang open, slack in surprise, and then --
Chiyo cuffs her in the jaw.
"That's for kicking me," she says.
It is then that Tsunade gains respect for Chiyo.
"What are you doing in my room?" she demands.
"Who did you lose?"
"Excuse me?" She grinds her teeth.
"Who did you lose, girl? Was it a father? A man? Your mother, perhaps?"
"That's none of your concern."
"Don't lie to me that way, and more importantly, don't lie to yourself! It's all of our concern!" The older woman throws her head back, stands tall for her diminutive stature, and staring at her in the moonlight, Tsunade thinks with certainty: this woman is mad. "A kunoichi -- pah, a shinobi -- isn't a person unto himself, girl. Haven't you learned that yet?"
A tool, a weapon. An instrument for use by the village, Tsunade almost blurts.
"My son is gone," Chiyo says, "when I go out, those I take with me . . . are wood and strings. Knives. I've no husband to keep me warm. Get out from under there."
When Tsunade does not move, Chiyo yanks the sheets aside; bunches them, so the sound of the tearing fabric is loud. "Get out from under there," she repeats. "And stop pretending you're all alone."
I am, Tsunade thinks, before she can stop herself.
A brittle grin cracks the older woman's broad flat face; crow's feet are already sprouting around her eyes. Chiyo is not pretty. Not even handsome. Her body is all hunched and hard and small; she spreads her thick knobs of fingers and opens herself, as if to embrace the girl before her. Tsunade stares back through narrowed eyes; a shinobi does not show emotion. This is her enemy here, the one with whom she exchanges the pretense of courtesy when it's necessary, but nothing more.
"Come closer, girl," says the woman from Sunagakure, in her laughing croak of a voice. "Come closer. And don't look so startled."
Come closer, she says. Come closer, you hear. You hear: Put away all those formalities. Put away all those dresses, all that tea. Put away those lies. Uncover your emptiness. Dig up those slivers you buried today, Tsunade. Dig them up.
We're both women. We both know.
We both know the pain of a healer, the pain of a kunoichi, the pain of loss.
We know war wounds and heart wounds. We know how it feels when the men don't take us seriously. We know how hard it becomes, when you pretend and pretend: the pain of a woman, and the pain of a weapon.
And suddenly there are no barriers between them, no pretenses; they are honest enemies. They will be honest enemies tomorrow.
But Tsunade, still flush, still certain something was in her drink (did this woman slip her -- but no, that's absurd) beckons -- and Chiyo inches forward, joins her on the bed; hot press of two bodies -- two tools. This nin from Suna has hands harder and more callused than Tsunade's own, and she takes Tsunade's slim fingers and twists them; massages the chakra centres where the muscles have cramped.
Leans down and blows on them, as if they're fresh coals from a flame.
Tsunade pulls her flimsy nightgown over her head -- tears it, more like; it's wet from her body, and while the sky lies replete with mist outside, she reveals herself and all of her complexities: her agonies. Their names: Dan and Nawaki, Orochimaru and Jiraiya, the kind and the gentle, the clowns and the beasts; all these slithering, grinning ghosts. But what does Jiraiya even know. Off in a world where the true rains are coming down, most likely. Back off with the orphans not his own.
Tsunade spreads her legs; opens herself, shudders at the realizations that come to her--
The children she will never have.
The man she will never, can never, marry.
The world she can never explain herself to, not really. The world she owes no explanation -- even as it asks for her, and will ask for her again. Here in her blood it is; Uchiha and Senju, cursed blood, and her blood stays inside, while the blood of all others spills around her. Blood: her great fear. She knows now the cause of her trembling; yes.
And now she trembles for another reason.
Why? she asks wordlessly; as Chiyo takes Tsunade's large breast in her firm hand. Why? Why does it always have to stay inside me? Why can't I bleed a little, too?
This is how you bleed, the woman's touch answers. This is how we bleed.
She of the lifeless, dry puppets -- carrying them like she'll someday carry her old bones, if she -- if they -- live long enough for that; drying away in the desert, where the blood and tears evaporate quickly. And those hands which manipulate the strings of the puppets are on Tsunade; they know chakra control, know how to draw these things out.
Each touch that passes over her skin is a jolt; on her tits, her thighs. These aren't Dan's hands. They never will be. His were warmer; softer, actually. Large and sweaty.
She would've said, once, that they were the hands you'd pat a baby's head with. Their baby, which will never come.
She jolts and spreads herself further, cries out as Chiyo buries her face between Tsunade's muscled thighs and curls her tongue past the blonde hairs; laps at the dripping wetness and reaches up, rubs in vague circular motions around the lips. This isn't your first time with a woman, Tsunade thinks, and truth be told . . . it's not quite her first, either. She and Shizune, once, but --
The mouth on her clit burns away that train of thought.
Oh god, she almost gasps; almost goes cliche just like that.
She doesn't, actually, say anything. Just moans. Because kunoichi are taught how to pick flowers, how to disguise themselves; they aren't taught how to fuck men, or women. How to be fucked. How to be fucked over. Just be a weapon. Just remember that. Tsunade squirms on the bed; presses her cheek to the pillow and nearly sobs from the force of it -- as those practised puppeteer's hands inspect and pry open her pussy. As those fingers jab at her; nothing delicate to it, it's almost mechanical, almost an art, as she's pulled and stretched, as she's poked and licked and sucked.
"Look down here, girl," Chiyo commands, and Tsunade looks.
"Not at me. At --"
This.
Her muscles are as tight and wound up as they ever were after any battle. "Fuck," she grates, as the fingers invade her, drag out her sticky wetness and smear the insides of her thighs with it. She clenches hard. Before she knows it, she's on her hands and knees, with the soles of her feet shoving into the bare mattress, with her body shamelessly open, spread out. No barriers. No secrets. Her big tits press against the pillow as she presses her strong arms down on either side of it -- supports her weight with those arms that she's trained to punch through mountains but that forever fall so short of feeling powerful enough to hold everything that's inside her -- and Chiyo pushes up behind her with the ease of someone for whom fucking is just a warm-up.
When you've seen what I've seen, done what I've done -- what we've done --
What we've done --
Then fucking is nothing at all.
The fingers press deep, stretch; the necklace dangles above Tsunade's chest. Her nipples are so hard, the force of this fuck slides her forward until the bed rubs them almost raw and she pants, pants, pants. That mouth works busily, works without hesitation, works with knowledge and skill and the secret awareness of all those torn barriers; stress relief, this, and oh. She.
She comes.
Coming always has this effect on her wherein it puts her back in touch with her body; or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe it puts her out of it and all its hot itchy needs. Maybe it shoves her out so she can breathe and think. It grounds her, regardless, and she closes her legs and crawls forward. Collapses. Flat on the bed, and panting for air.
Chiyo holds her for perhaps an hour more; shhhs her. I'm not making noise, idiot, she almost says several times in reply, but something hot that's not blood is running down her cheeks, her arms. Something that might herself is pouring onto the bed; filling the emptiness with loss and the loss with emptiness. Something like that.
Her body aches.
Shhhhh.
Fingers in her long blonde hair.
Everyone tells her it's so beautiful.
Tsunade wakes sometime later.
Wakes, or not; she's not sure she ever fell asleep, but the sound of soft rainfaill can be heard outside (real rain, now, like what he must be under) and a half-light shades the room like a scarcely-remembered dream.
A fogged, alcohol dream that's about to leave on its journey into nowhere, into nothing but the halls of memory. Endless. Engulfing.
Chiyo is gone.
They're all gone. As ever.
Tsunade touches her necklace and looks out the window.
A sparrow beats its wings against the quiet downpour. The air smells earthy.
The ground is alive with the scent. Alive, funnily, even as it's all made up of death.
Even as we're all made up of --
A shinobi has no emotions, remember?
Tsunade smiles. Turns her tear-stained pillow over, dresses, and goes to fix her hair.
She will make the strength to play-act through another eternity, if it's what her society asks. She can. Wear away another corner of her heart; powder it and make certain it's clean. Polished. Go out into the world. You'll never know the secrets we keep.
Thank you, she thinks with closed eyes.
Thank you. You and all like you. All kunoichi, all shinobi, all who bleed, who know the puppet strings for the dolls that play in the endless drama of love, despair, and life.
Rating: Mature
Genre: Drama. Not sure if the timeline is anywhere near right, but eh!
Characters/Pairing: Chiyo/Tsunade
Spoilers: I don't think there are any.
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi. Standard fanfic disclaimers apply.
Notes: This is yet another 'fic I wrote which sprang out of redbrunja 's epic kinkmeme.
They meet in the middle.
Between their two countries -- their two villages -- she with a brother gone and she with a brother still living, Tsunade of the Leaf (not yet, as she would be called someday, Godaime Hokage) and Chiyo of Sunagakure.
Tsunade kow-tows; the polished red nails of her small feet curl down and scrape at the mat upon which they stand; she beckons, invites her enemy in to sit with her for tea as they wait in this land of birds and sky and withering fall grass perishing from the absence of rain. It is late in the war; the battles drag on, invisible blood runs between them, between their loyalties, but they meet here, in this world, in this sanctuary; they meet with bruised hearts, they meet with the muted voices of unspoken loss. They meet as women, they meet as soldiers; a shinobi does not show emotion; a shinobi is a weapon. (In the morning, Tsunade blots her tears with the other side of the rag from which she's cleaned a wound -- a leg, this time, and it had to be amputated beneath the knee.)
Chiyo is coming to Konohagakure for diplomatic reasons, but her eyes are hard; scrutinizing. The leech-gatherer, she calls Tsunade, when she thinks she cannot hear (but can); she's picking flowers for a funeral -- a boy, this time, no older than --
Tsunade hears, and curses under her breath. Crushes a flower underfoot. Kicks a hole through the nailed boards of the rickety compound; there are robed ladies inside lighting incense and saying a prayer for the dead and dying, aiding their souls on their journey toward the afterlife, and Tsunade huffs out hard . . . stands there, with her hands pressed to either side of the doorframe and her lips open in a silent o; she exhales so hard that the wisps of hair around her face lift up. Puff of breath out.
Tsunade wants to laugh. She really does. Laugh in disgust, at this foolishness. Laugh in exasperation. Laugh away that feeling, that vice that's squeezing the hell out of her throat, but a shinobi does not show emotion. Rule number -- she forgets which.
She thinks of Jiraiya, that big idiot. When did he ever abide by that rule? When did Orochimaru? Or maybe Orochimaru has. Maybe he has too perfectly, she thinks with a flash of unnamed ache; no, never mind. Damn, she's got to get to work.
"I never expected to encounter a child such as yourself," the woman tells her.
A child such as me could run her fist straight through your stomach, Tsunade thinks. Bites her lips and holds her hands behind her back.
She doesn't hit her. Doesn't crack her bones open. Serves her tea, and smiles, rather.
I want to be back in the midst of the fighting, she writes to the Third, who writes back to inform her, predictably, that as valuable as her strength is (her strength!), she's needed in this makeshift hospital now -- no, not even a hospital, really. It's a war camp. It's a fucking refuse pit, Tsunade thinks; where they dump their broken "weapons", where the bodies pile high and sometimes the stench of human decay and shit wafts over all the gardenias. She looks out the window and paces; wants to go out to the gardens and start ripping those things up.
Wants to tear off the ladies' dresses and tell them to get to work. Stop praying. There's a man with his chest open two rooms down.
Get in there, you little idiot, and drain the poison!
Poison inside, everywhere, she thinks wryly. Maybe that's what's wrong with her. Maybe that's what inside, killing her. Maybe that's why she hurts like she does, continually, even though she isn't one of the ones who is bleeding. Maybe. That's it. It's what this tightness is.
Tightness, like so; when she at night she closes her eyes and raises her hips up; sticks her fingers into herself, jabs herself in this torturous pleasure that leaves her sweaty and hot and a sickly kind of teased, with the body in glistening rapture and the mind in misery. Tsunade massages the hell out of her clit and arches up, pants and calls his name -- Dan. Imagines that he's on her, now, warming her, making love to her.
Comes, and gasps. Shudders. Rides down the waves, until she's lying there cold.
Nothing but a mess between her legs to show for it.
They come in every day, many as young as her brother.
Chiyo knows something of potions and poisons, and Tsunade serves her tea -- serves with hands that tremble from too many nights without sleep, from a pillar struck in secret in the blue-grey morning after another one died on her, another one -- and she's washed them, her hands, cleaned and scrubbed and painted her ten nails, but perhaps the infection has gotten to her. Perhaps that's why there's this tremor coming on. The palsy; it could be.
Chiyo's son is dead. Tsunade has been informed of this. Dead son, killed by a Konohagakure ninja; man's wife is gone, too. There's a baby in there somewhere, buried under the mission reports; really just a name.
Poisons and kunai and strings; that's all they come to each other as, these women, serving tea and serving falsehoods.
The woman doesn't like her. Doesn't respect her. She looks up and down the length of her body severely, and Tsunade feels herself redden, and she can't say why. She must look so foolish. She's out of her element like this, in this stupid costume, in this stupid space. She's no diplomat, not her. And she's never had a real lady friend; boys. Jiraiya, her brother. Those sorts of boys -- silly and stupid and wonderful and alive.
Alive.
"You shouldn't be here," Chiyo tells her on the third day, when the sky looks like it holds a little rain. "This isn't your place."
She takes a bite of onirigi and says, mouth full, "It isn't mine, either."
Tsunade starts to turn, starts to go. But she hears a sound behind her -- a snort of contempt, and she turns on her heels abruptly. "My place is between you and whatever your goals are. My place is an ointment in the blood that you filled with venom. That's my place."
The woman does not reply, only stares at her, still holding the onirigi in her chopsticks.
It does rain a little, onto the starving grass.
The wind blows Tsunade's hair as she kneels to dig the next grave. She's lost count of the number of these by now; too many. Their side, her side. Every shinobi is the same, when they're beneath the soil. Dan, Nawaki. She buries her dead, and every sliver of herself that goes down with them. Jiraiya and Orochimaru are gone, busy elsewhere, in battle. And here she is, entrenching the dead. Entrenched by the dead.
There's a full moon casting its light through an unclouded sky when the woman yanks the covers from Tsunade.
She jerks to attention, scuttles back against the bed; kicks out and knocks Chiyo to the ground with the broad swing of one foot. Because the truth is --
The truth is, Tsunade was interrupted.
Something in the tea, she thinks -- the tea she served. Something in it, perhaps, is affecting her, because she's flushed and she feels dizzy. Or maybe it's fever, contracted from a patient. Could be that. Could be that the cooks have been playing a practical joke. Tsunade feels her mouth hang open, slack in surprise, and then --
Chiyo cuffs her in the jaw.
"That's for kicking me," she says.
It is then that Tsunade gains respect for Chiyo.
"What are you doing in my room?" she demands.
"Who did you lose?"
"Excuse me?" She grinds her teeth.
"Who did you lose, girl? Was it a father? A man? Your mother, perhaps?"
"That's none of your concern."
"Don't lie to me that way, and more importantly, don't lie to yourself! It's all of our concern!" The older woman throws her head back, stands tall for her diminutive stature, and staring at her in the moonlight, Tsunade thinks with certainty: this woman is mad. "A kunoichi -- pah, a shinobi -- isn't a person unto himself, girl. Haven't you learned that yet?"
A tool, a weapon. An instrument for use by the village, Tsunade almost blurts.
"My son is gone," Chiyo says, "when I go out, those I take with me . . . are wood and strings. Knives. I've no husband to keep me warm. Get out from under there."
When Tsunade does not move, Chiyo yanks the sheets aside; bunches them, so the sound of the tearing fabric is loud. "Get out from under there," she repeats. "And stop pretending you're all alone."
I am, Tsunade thinks, before she can stop herself.
A brittle grin cracks the older woman's broad flat face; crow's feet are already sprouting around her eyes. Chiyo is not pretty. Not even handsome. Her body is all hunched and hard and small; she spreads her thick knobs of fingers and opens herself, as if to embrace the girl before her. Tsunade stares back through narrowed eyes; a shinobi does not show emotion. This is her enemy here, the one with whom she exchanges the pretense of courtesy when it's necessary, but nothing more.
"Come closer, girl," says the woman from Sunagakure, in her laughing croak of a voice. "Come closer. And don't look so startled."
Come closer, she says. Come closer, you hear. You hear: Put away all those formalities. Put away all those dresses, all that tea. Put away those lies. Uncover your emptiness. Dig up those slivers you buried today, Tsunade. Dig them up.
We're both women. We both know.
We both know the pain of a healer, the pain of a kunoichi, the pain of loss.
We know war wounds and heart wounds. We know how it feels when the men don't take us seriously. We know how hard it becomes, when you pretend and pretend: the pain of a woman, and the pain of a weapon.
And suddenly there are no barriers between them, no pretenses; they are honest enemies. They will be honest enemies tomorrow.
But Tsunade, still flush, still certain something was in her drink (did this woman slip her -- but no, that's absurd) beckons -- and Chiyo inches forward, joins her on the bed; hot press of two bodies -- two tools. This nin from Suna has hands harder and more callused than Tsunade's own, and she takes Tsunade's slim fingers and twists them; massages the chakra centres where the muscles have cramped.
Leans down and blows on them, as if they're fresh coals from a flame.
Tsunade pulls her flimsy nightgown over her head -- tears it, more like; it's wet from her body, and while the sky lies replete with mist outside, she reveals herself and all of her complexities: her agonies. Their names: Dan and Nawaki, Orochimaru and Jiraiya, the kind and the gentle, the clowns and the beasts; all these slithering, grinning ghosts. But what does Jiraiya even know. Off in a world where the true rains are coming down, most likely. Back off with the orphans not his own.
Tsunade spreads her legs; opens herself, shudders at the realizations that come to her--
The children she will never have.
The man she will never, can never, marry.
The world she can never explain herself to, not really. The world she owes no explanation -- even as it asks for her, and will ask for her again. Here in her blood it is; Uchiha and Senju, cursed blood, and her blood stays inside, while the blood of all others spills around her. Blood: her great fear. She knows now the cause of her trembling; yes.
And now she trembles for another reason.
Why? she asks wordlessly; as Chiyo takes Tsunade's large breast in her firm hand. Why? Why does it always have to stay inside me? Why can't I bleed a little, too?
This is how you bleed, the woman's touch answers. This is how we bleed.
She of the lifeless, dry puppets -- carrying them like she'll someday carry her old bones, if she -- if they -- live long enough for that; drying away in the desert, where the blood and tears evaporate quickly. And those hands which manipulate the strings of the puppets are on Tsunade; they know chakra control, know how to draw these things out.
Each touch that passes over her skin is a jolt; on her tits, her thighs. These aren't Dan's hands. They never will be. His were warmer; softer, actually. Large and sweaty.
She would've said, once, that they were the hands you'd pat a baby's head with. Their baby, which will never come.
She jolts and spreads herself further, cries out as Chiyo buries her face between Tsunade's muscled thighs and curls her tongue past the blonde hairs; laps at the dripping wetness and reaches up, rubs in vague circular motions around the lips. This isn't your first time with a woman, Tsunade thinks, and truth be told . . . it's not quite her first, either. She and Shizune, once, but --
The mouth on her clit burns away that train of thought.
Oh god, she almost gasps; almost goes cliche just like that.
She doesn't, actually, say anything. Just moans. Because kunoichi are taught how to pick flowers, how to disguise themselves; they aren't taught how to fuck men, or women. How to be fucked. How to be fucked over. Just be a weapon. Just remember that. Tsunade squirms on the bed; presses her cheek to the pillow and nearly sobs from the force of it -- as those practised puppeteer's hands inspect and pry open her pussy. As those fingers jab at her; nothing delicate to it, it's almost mechanical, almost an art, as she's pulled and stretched, as she's poked and licked and sucked.
"Look down here, girl," Chiyo commands, and Tsunade looks.
"Not at me. At --"
This.
Her muscles are as tight and wound up as they ever were after any battle. "Fuck," she grates, as the fingers invade her, drag out her sticky wetness and smear the insides of her thighs with it. She clenches hard. Before she knows it, she's on her hands and knees, with the soles of her feet shoving into the bare mattress, with her body shamelessly open, spread out. No barriers. No secrets. Her big tits press against the pillow as she presses her strong arms down on either side of it -- supports her weight with those arms that she's trained to punch through mountains but that forever fall so short of feeling powerful enough to hold everything that's inside her -- and Chiyo pushes up behind her with the ease of someone for whom fucking is just a warm-up.
When you've seen what I've seen, done what I've done -- what we've done --
What we've done --
Then fucking is nothing at all.
The fingers press deep, stretch; the necklace dangles above Tsunade's chest. Her nipples are so hard, the force of this fuck slides her forward until the bed rubs them almost raw and she pants, pants, pants. That mouth works busily, works without hesitation, works with knowledge and skill and the secret awareness of all those torn barriers; stress relief, this, and oh. She.
She comes.
Coming always has this effect on her wherein it puts her back in touch with her body; or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe it puts her out of it and all its hot itchy needs. Maybe it shoves her out so she can breathe and think. It grounds her, regardless, and she closes her legs and crawls forward. Collapses. Flat on the bed, and panting for air.
Chiyo holds her for perhaps an hour more; shhhs her. I'm not making noise, idiot, she almost says several times in reply, but something hot that's not blood is running down her cheeks, her arms. Something that might herself is pouring onto the bed; filling the emptiness with loss and the loss with emptiness. Something like that.
Her body aches.
Shhhhh.
Fingers in her long blonde hair.
Everyone tells her it's so beautiful.
Tsunade wakes sometime later.
Wakes, or not; she's not sure she ever fell asleep, but the sound of soft rainfaill can be heard outside (real rain, now, like what he must be under) and a half-light shades the room like a scarcely-remembered dream.
A fogged, alcohol dream that's about to leave on its journey into nowhere, into nothing but the halls of memory. Endless. Engulfing.
Chiyo is gone.
They're all gone. As ever.
Tsunade touches her necklace and looks out the window.
A sparrow beats its wings against the quiet downpour. The air smells earthy.
The ground is alive with the scent. Alive, funnily, even as it's all made up of death.
Even as we're all made up of --
A shinobi has no emotions, remember?
Tsunade smiles. Turns her tear-stained pillow over, dresses, and goes to fix her hair.
She will make the strength to play-act through another eternity, if it's what her society asks. She can. Wear away another corner of her heart; powder it and make certain it's clean. Polished. Go out into the world. You'll never know the secrets we keep.
Thank you, she thinks with closed eyes.
Thank you. You and all like you. All kunoichi, all shinobi, all who bleed, who know the puppet strings for the dolls that play in the endless drama of love, despair, and life.