Naruto Ficlets
Its been forever since I posted fic! I'm still working on my responses from the latest fix meme; I will post them! But in the mean time, here are some fix responses to prompts with various characters. pairings and moods. Hope you enjoy!
Prompt: Dark fic
Characters: Ino, Sakura
Title: Perfect in Memory
It’s rather perfect, Sakura thinks, in a sick sort of way.
“Let me get this straight. You mess up someone’s memories, inserting yourself there?”
Ino grins. Sakura remembers the drop in her stomach the first time Ino grinned at her like that. Trouble always followed that grin, but there was usually something rather likeable about trouble when Ino was around.
Usually.
“And then you use that trust to get them into bed…”
“And let them tell me their secrets. Yes.”
“Why not just mind-meld them into telling you in the first place?”
Sakura wouldn’t put it past Ino to do things the way she does just to mess with people, but Ino shakes her head. “The mind doesn’t work that way. It’s not a compulsion. Its….”
“Disgusting.”
“Thanks, but no. And its not just sex, you know… It’s mostly not sex, actually; more’s the pity. It’s art- creating the memories, anyway. You’ve got to get people to trust you. But it’s hard sometimes. You can get to like them, these people who know you so well.”
“They don’t know you at all,” Sakura objects. Unexpectedly, Ino reaches out, get way too close, and tugs Sakura’s hair tie back. It comes off easily, sliding down, falling out.
The bottom of Sakura’s stomach drops out. It’s a surprisingly familiar feeling.
“I saw you once, in the schoolyard. But I was too scared to tell off those bullies. You seemed like a nice enough girl though, so when they asked me if I would do this, I said sure. Thought it’d be more caring than- but that’s stupid, huh?”
The knife goes in one smooth gesture. She’s not even sure where Ino had been hiding it up until then.
“I would have told you what you wanted to know,” is all she can think of to say, which, well- obviously. Obviously, she’d tell her best friend everything. That’s why Ino was here. Was thirty minutes ago at the bar the first time she’d seen her oldest friend?
“The thing of it is,” Ino says, and her voice is sounding further
away. “You do this, and you don’t really know the person, but they know you. So much better than they think. And that sucks.”
Selfish Ino as usual, Sakura thinks, and then- and then she doesn’t think anymore.
Prompt: Hurt/Comfort
Characters: Kiba, Rock Lee, off stage Neji/Hinata
Title: She Her Bloom
The bride’s beautiful.
She would be, damn her. No, Kiba thinks, that’s not fair. If Hinata thought her being ugly’d help him, she’d- well, it wouldn’t help and she doesn’t know and what’s the use of Hinata not being gorgeous?
“I think you’ve had too much to drink, my friend.”
Lee sits down beside him.
“You haven’t had enough, if that’s what ya think.”
“I haven’t had any. I promised Neji.”
Kiba raises his glass to avoid discussing the groom. After a moment, Lee starts again, “She’s a rare flower, a gift to any who see her bloom.”
Kiba groans; he’ll need more alcohol if poetry’s in the offing.
“But,” Lee says, arm around Kiba’s shoulder. “Konoha is garden of many delights. Come, there’s a bar I know.”
“Why’d she hafta be gorgeous?” he mutters, allowing Lee to help him through the door.
Prompt: Death fic
Character: Sakura
Title: Persistent Remembrance
When she’s an old woman, she will think, “I can’t remember it clearly.”
No, Sakura promises herself, she will think, “I can’t remember it at all.”
Through the flap of the medic tent she watches Naruto drag Sasuke’s body back from their fight. He’s gotten his arms up under Sasuke, but he can’t- or won’t- lift him up. He drags him through mud, grunting.
No one moves to help, Sakura least of all. She blinks and pretends she is not here. She blinks and pretends not to know either man. She blinks and pretends she does not love either one.
Prompt: Baby fic
Character: Shikamaru and Kiba
Title: Adventures in Babysitting
The baby is about the only thing they have in common, Shikamaru thinks. Well, he needs to amend that. They have the baby, deadly job descriptions, and a desperate drive to protect their friends. But what with the fact that every ninja feels the way they do about those last two, they basically have a baby in common.
Kiba’s surprisingly good at taking care of babies. Knows when to clean them, when to feed them, when to comfort them and when to let them cry. Says it’s from whelping. On day three of babysitting, Shikamaru doesn’t care.
He thinks he may have just found a new best friend.
Prompt: First Time
Characters: Hinata and Neji
Title: The First Time is Not the Last
The first time you say you’re sorry is the hardest. You don’t even know what you’re sorry for, but a friend’s face has turned hard- and every face you know is a hard one.
Knowing why is even worse, because you still dream horrible dreams of the night you were taken, when unwanted hands reached for you. Somehow this horror is not done even once you are back in own bed though, because this night is the one responsible for a good man’s death. A father’s death. Somehow, it is. Somehow, as everything eventually is, it is all your fault.
So you get use to saying it. A mantra. A litany. For years you speak- haltingly, but you speak. And for years you get nothing back. But what do you expect?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
“I’m sorry,” he says to you, not long after Naruto leaves the city, after- after everything. Already taller than you, he leans down, presses a kiss to your unmarred forehead, a gentle pressure that lasts only a second or two.
Rising back up, he waits for you to speak, but waits in vain. Awkwardly, he raises his hand in a half-gesture of farewell and quickly turns-heel to walk away.
Your fault you cannot get him to stay.
Prompt: Angst,
Character: Shino
Title: There is a Person I do not Know
His father calls it just a stage. His mother calls it a fixation. His team- well, what do they know?
Shino wonders if its normal to feel so disconnected. His friends get so fired up and he- he’s just here. A home for insects; his body’s just a hive and his mind’s not much better.
He still gets up each morning. There’s a numb sort of an idea in the back of his mind that says, This won’t last forever. Fixation, stage, whatever they call it, its just temporary. He lets the word fall into the rhythm of the insects buzzing and let’s muscle memory take over as his mind drifts far away.
Prompt: AU
Characters: Ino, Naruto, Kiba
Title: Team 10
Her father had been furious, of course. His daughter with that thing that had attacked the city and inadvertently killed most of the Yamanaka Clan all those years ago? But he had performed no mind jitsu to rearrange matters more to his liking, and so now Ino wondered. What did they see in Uzumaki that would combine so well with her that the sure thing of an Ino-Shiki-Cho team would go overlooked?
She glanced over at Sakura sitting by Chouji and Sasuke, still waiting for their new sensei to arrive. It was rather lonely feeling, sitting here without Chouji or Shikamaru. She’d never thought about it; her family had always just assumed, but then this morning word came there’d been a testing mistake and Shikamaru and not Uzumaki was the lowest scoring student, and, as the 10th student, was the one with no place with only 3 3-man teams.
And then, of course, there was Sakura, who hadn’t talked to her in over a year. Ino’d had to resort to squabbling over Uchiha just to get her to say a thing to Ino. And now that Sakura had gotten what she’d wanted-Sasuke! It just-
“Sucks, huh?”
Ino jumped, then felt guilty. She was a ninja, a real one as of today. Ninjas didn’t jump. Uzumaki didn’t seem to notice though.
“What does?”
“That,” he spit out, pointing to her ex-best friend. “He’s got the prettiest girl in the school hanging all over him, and he doesn’t even notice.”
“She’s not that pretty,” was all she could think to say. Again, Uzumaki didn’t notice. Someone else did though.
“Careful Naruto-kun, I think you hurt Ino-san’s feelings,” Inuzaka said elbowing the boy beside him. “’Sides, its Uchiha-sama; everything he does is perfect. All the chicks are hot for him, even Ino-san here.”
“I’m not,” she said automatically. After thinking about it a moment, she found it true, even. Inuzaka and Uzumaki turned to stop staring at Sakura and start stare at her. It was an entirely different kind of stare, though.
“What? Can’t a girl have an opinion?”
“Oh, she can. I just didn’t expect such an unusual one.”
“I hope they fail!’ she blurted out, feeling a little bit defiant and a little bit annoyed and guilty all around for thinking such a mean thing. Its rubbish of course; she can hope whatever she wants, but Sakura’s read all the scrolls in the school’s library, and Sasuke’s some genius and Chouji- for all people teased him about his cheek markings- was certainly no slouch in the fighting department. It doesn’t matter a thing what she hoped-
Except, perhaps to them, because they broke into manic grins at hearing that.
“Well, I don’t know ‘bout that,” Kiba said, cuffing the other two on the back, “but we’ll probably pass as a team before them.”
“Why’s that?” Ino asked, trying to shove his arm back off her shoulder.
“Because there’s a jounin-sensei waving us down and they’re still cooling their heels. I think our new teacher is here.”
Prompt: Threesome
Characters: Sasuke, Hinata, Hanabi
Title: Fate in all its Permutations
After Uchiha-san flees the Leaf, Hinata can’t help wonder what her father thinks. How relieved or angry he must feel. She’s not sure when she first realized but he’s always had plans for her, for Hanabi. At clan functions the three of the them, the young Uchiha and the Hyuuga girls, would be pushed together, an awkward threesome of sullenness and little conversation. Overhead adults would gather to make innuendos. What would any children look like? Which girl might make a better daughter-in-law, and the subtlest question of all- where would they live. Who would succeed as heir and who would be pawned off in this particular marriage had never been decided, but years of work went into making a connection to Konoha’s only other gekki clan. One rash boy was all it took to rend her father’s future apart. The action is sure to eventually doom Uchiha-san to be outcast from the city of his birth,eventually if not right away, but Hinata can't help but smile. Perhaps a chance for all three's freedom has been created in the end.