(no subject)
[Memories]
There had been an explosion ten miles south during the night, a mission assigned to jounin who shouldn’t have received it for too many reasons, and it had gone exactly as anticipated. A special thing to impress and frighten the clientele, earning the payment and creating a reason never to stray from Kumogakure all in the two hours of planning and ninety seconds of execution. Six people died. Their lives were calculated and assigned worth. Three were targets, one was collateral damage, and two didn’t warrant any recognition at all.
When it was all over and done with, stones fell and crumbled over the ground that had once harbored a shrine carved out of limestone. Six men were dead but only three really mattered. The others were nameless and buried that way, burning up into sour dust that cloyed at the back of their throats even after the bones were gone. The three jounin shared a look and didn’t say anything to each other. The journey back to Kumogakure was silent and they preferred it that way.
Miki waited to go home until the report was given and their tall, vicious captain had yelled at everything that breathed and made the medics blanch. He didn’t know how she’d done it, edges of something he couldn’t understand playing behind her eyes and in her slashing hands so used to ending lives.
Home wasn’t, not really. His sisters would have been loath to lend him a futon, though Miki knew they had the room, and his mother no longer spoke to him. Right now, home consisted of stealing Kano Masahiro’s keys, eating his food, and sleeping on the roof until someone yelled at him. Occasionally the traps gave him trouble, but Masahiro never did. It was out of some misguided sense of friendship, or at least something equally twisted, but the end result was that Masahiro let Miki come and go. Sometimes they saw each other, rarer still they spoke, but mostly there was just the silent acknowledgement of each other’s presence.
Confrontation would have made something of it, Miki knew, and he didn’t want to make anything of it. They had a balance, Masahiro and he, a line they hadn’t drawn but had been defined through nothing but shared experience they hadn’t wanted. That line kept them from breaking, or at least Miki thought it did. Likely they were already gone, too damn broken to snap any more pieces off.
All shinobi were damaged in some way or another, but Miki thought he was more than that, thought he was crazy and wondered if that was a boon or a curse. It bothered him that he didn’t know.
It had been six months since the assignment on the border. His wrist had healed far faster than his head. The bones hadn’t been shattered, just broken. It hadn’t been impossible to fix. Their medics were good and he was a jounin with potential who needed his hands and a soft smile when he chose to show it, which mattered more than it should have when the medic in question happened to be female.
Miki didn’t know if Masahiro still had nightmares and hadn’t asked. It wasn’t good form to question things when the answer wasn’t wanted, when the answer would have brought something up that there wasn’t an easy or peaceful way of getting though. He didn’t remember his dreams, a good turn in his profession that his sensei had warned him never to take for granted. Miki never did.
What had happened on the border, the collection of events that had defined too many things and would for the rest of their lives, was done. Over. Miki had moved on. His wrist had healed quickly and he’d had the scar removed because it was one too many things to deal with, staring at the place where the bone had shoved through the skin.
It had happened and it had ended-one mission among a hundred others. Miki knew his duty as a jounin and did it well. Compared to the stories he knew, the stories his teammates told when they were drunk on sake and bad memories, it had been nothing.
No one had died. Bones and sanity had been the only casualties on the border. Nothing that was really necessary in their profession, nothing that couldn’t be mended or replaced.
Any handicap could be dealt with. It just took practice.
Miki thought about those things when he disabled Masahiro’s traps, finding two unfamiliar wires and misguiding the one that shocked him and sliced through his glove but not cutting the skin. Closing the door behind him, Miki put the traps back up and thought about adding one of his own, but decided not to. It wasn’t his home, but Masahiro’s, the tired jounin with the ponytail and tattoos of black thorns around his arms. And while Masahiro happened to be a very patient and forgiving sort of person, Miki thought it wise not to test said patience, else he run out of free food.
Eying the walls instead of his footing, Miki tripped over something heavy and, despite some quick maneuvering, crashed into the ground. He grabbed at a bookshelf and came away with several loose paperbacks and no support.
“You’re heavy,” Masahiro commented.
Miki rolled off him. “You are on the floor….why?”
The taller ninja shrugged. There was a bandage across his cheek and a collage of bruises stretching from his neck up the side of his face until they disappeared under his shaggy bangs. Masahiro’s ponytail was in the process of dying a tragic death, and there were dark, rust-colored things matted in his white hair. His uniform was bloody and there was a bottle of rubbing alcohol next to his hand, half empty.
It didn’t say nice things about Masahiro’s latest mission.
“Landed there,” Masahiro said. He covered his face with his arm. “Goddamn door,” he muttered.
“You’re drunk,” Miki stated, brushing his uniform off, even though there was no dust. Masahiro kept his apartment insanely clean, considering how little time he spent in it.
“Am not.”
“Yes, you are.”
Masahiro shifted his arm down and gave him a reproachful look. Miki stared back at him. It went on for a minute. Finally, Masahiro sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “Maybe a little,” he admitted.
Miki shook his head. “How much is ‘a little’?”
“Fuck off, Miki. Not your problem.”
“You never drink.”
Masahiro snorted and rolled over to face the wall, away from Miki. “I drink when people die,” he said shortly.
There really wasn’t anything to say to that. If nothing else, it explained the blood and the vacant, haunted look where Masahiro’s eyes were supposed to be.
Bad mission. Worse than his, probably, but Masahiro’s always were. Somehow the world made them that way. It was another thing Miki didn’t want to know. There were a lot of things he chose not to learn. He regretted it sometimes, like when he came to what passed for home and found a teammate drunk on the floor and didn’t know who his real friends were, or if Masahiro even had any in the Hidden Cloud.
Miki just snatched up the rubbing alcohol, eying the clear liquid distastefully and shaking his head. Most of it was gone, and that didn’t seem like Masahiro, who kept his things in better repair than most shinobi his age. “How bad are you hurt?”
“Go away.”
Bad, then.
“Did you see a medic?”
“Fuck off.”
“Did you?”
“Yasuko-sensei. Now go away.”
Miki eyed the back of his head. There was a lot of blood in Masahiro’s hair, all of it dried and probably a good portion of which didn’t come from an enemy. The fact that it was dry was a good thing, but blood loss never mixed well with being intoxicated. At least it wasn’t painkillers or speed, though. Small favors to be thankful for. Miki looked at the rubbing alcohol again and realized he couldn’t find the cork. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been drinking this.”
Masahiro kicked the wall and didn’t answer.
That was probably an affirmative. The label on the back said it was a ninety-five percent alcohol content, which explained one too many things that Miki hadn’t wanted to know.
Karma said you reaped what you sowed, which meant it was a bitch, because Masahiro had been the one who tried to keep everything together when the mission on the border went more than south and Akira, who neither of them wanted to so much as hear the name of again, hurt them both. Then Miki had done something incredibly stupid, and Masahiro had tried to put the pieces back again.
If either of them deserved a bad turn, it was Miki, who had shoved him away too many times. Instead Masahiro got one hard mission after another, too many dogtags and too many scars to become bad memories when the lines faded away. Somehow they had both stayed alive, but sometimes Miki wondered if what they had lost on the border was something they needed and couldn’t get back.
Whatever they’d lost, it was too damn broken to fix anymore, no matter what Masahiro tried.
Setting the glass bottle down on the counted, Miki opened a cabinet, dodged a trap with a thin and very sharp wire he hadn’t seen before, and started fishing around through the cans and little packages of dried herbs, looking for something that would sober up his…. whatever the hell Masahiro was to him.
There was little chance he would find anything useful, seeing as Masahiro never drank except when he was in danger of breaking, but Miki looked anyways. His braids fell into his eyes and he pushed them away, beads clicking against each other in melodic annoyance.
“’m sorry, you know,” Masahiro said, voice muffled against his arm.
Miki looked over, one hand about to close the cabinet full of dried spices. “For what?”
“I said I’d protect you, an’ I didn’t.”
“When?” Miki asked, eyebrows furrowed.
Masahiro twitched-a shuddering motion that went through his whole body and didn’t stop completely even when it reached his boots. “On the border.”
There were a hundred things he could have said to that. Miki considered about six of them. He shut the cabinet with more force than necessary. Then he kicked the wall because it was there, even though he really wanted to hit something human, something that could hurt.
Finally, when the violence-tinged impulses had passed, he tried speaking. His voice was almost even. “That’s over. And it’s been over for a long time, Masahiro.”
The taller ninja tried to laugh but the sound was all wrong. Too many bad memories, too much alcohol. “You keep sayin’ that, and I don’ think you believe it any more than I do.”
Miki tried breathing through his nose. It wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. “Did you take anything besides the alcohol?-which was a very stupid idea, in case you had forgotten.”
Masahiro shook his head, still facing the wall. He had discarded his armor and weapons. There were kunai sticking out of the walls at various heights. “You can’t just deny it ever happened, ya know.”
“I could, if someone would just drop it,” Miki said tightly.
“Don’ blame the drunk guy,” Masahiro murmured.
“Be quiet and don’t throw up.”
In the end, Miki found nothing useful but a rag and canteen of dirty water. He used the rag to clean his face off and dumped the old water out of the canteen. One of them had to have a clear head, and it wasn’t going to be Masahiro this time. Miki rinsed and refilled it, stalking over to Masahiro even though most of him just wanted to leave the man there for bringing up things that neither of them really wanted to think about.
“Turn over,” and Miki just grabbed his shoulder and jerked when Masahiro didn’t move. He gripped the front of the taller jounin’s vest and pushed him against the wall, where he would-hopefully-be able to stay without help. He held the canteen out. “Drink.”
Masahiro gave him a very dirty look.
“Do it now or I will pour it down your throat.”
“You’re a bastard,” Masahiro muttered, but he snatched the canteen anyways, coughing when he drank too quickly.
“People keep telling me. Can you stand?”
“No,” Masahiro said, closing his eyes.
Well, that was just great. Miki thought about that for a minute. Masahiro had a few inches and a couple pounds on him, even if he was skinny. Getting him up would be a trick, especially if he was going to be an ass about it. He eyed the taller shinobi and decided that was more than likely.
“You stopped talking for a while, when we first got back,” Masahiro said suddenly. His eyes were only half open. “When we didn’t know if your wrist could be fixed.”
“I told you to shut up about that,” Miki warned.
He snorted, covering his mouth. There was blood on his gloves, dried blood from Masahiro’s last mission, whatever it had been. “Can’t,” Masahiro said. “’cause you never said anything about it, so I had to.”
Miki’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You told the brass?” he demanded. “You told them?”
“No,” he said, looking at his hands and the filthy gloves he was wearing. “Didn’ tell them. You know that. Akira would’ve…” the sentence trailed off. They both knew what Akira would have done.
Masahiro shook his head. “I didn’t tell. But you can’t keep pretending nothin’ happened.”
“It’s over.”
“You really think that, Miki?”
“Yes,” he growled, “and you will, too.”
Masahiro shook his head. “I tried to keep you safe,” he said. “I tried an’ it wasn’t enough. And ‘m sorry, even if you don’t want it.”
There were too many things to ignore, information that wasn’t wanted or needed. Miki was used to compiling and analyzing information, had considered going into Intel when he was younger, before sensei had showed him the illusions he’d come to master. The trick was finding the important pieces in the bulk. Most information was useless, but right now, everything was screaming at him. He wanted to hear none of it, none at all.
And Masahiro just would not shut up.
In any other situation, it would have been a bad idea, but Miki couldn’t make himself think objectively. It was probably wrong here, too, but Miki had never been a good person. His fist clenched and impacted in Masahiro’s face, the second strike to his neck.
The taller ninja coughed and Miki grabbed his shoulders, forced him down and straddled his hips while Masahiro shuddered and looked up at him in confusion fused with pain. He saw something in Miki’s face and his eyes widened.
“You-” he started.
Miki leaned forward and smothered the protest with his mouth. Under him, Masahiro thrashed, but the after-effects of his mission, blood loss far more than alcohol-he was a shinobi despite everything-, made Miki the stronger one now. They were both back from missions but Miki wasn’t hurt and Masahiro was. It mattered.
You should’ve let it go, Miki thought, kissing his teammate and feeling him shudder. Should’ve just dropped it.
“Please don’t,” Masahiro whispered, when Miki let him breathe again. “Please don’t.”
“I won’t hurt you.” It was more than Akira had promised, but not much. It was enough for Miki, though, and he ignored what Masahiro said next, eyes showing fear and old recognition, bad memories.
This was probably wrong, but at that moment, Miki was probably more intoxicated than Masahiro, amount of alcohol consumed notwithstanding. Sometimes emotions were stronger, despite shinobi training. Sometimes memories strangled.
It didn’t help that Masahiro was looking up at him with fear, that he was shaking with pain and bad memories, where his body remembered an old hurt even when his mind didn’t want to. Instinct that wouldn’t let him forget made something appealing out of his face and Miki kissed him again, biting his lip and drawing blood. The taste was bitter.
“Don’t pity me,” he hissed. “Don’t you dare pity me!”
“Please stop,” Masahiro begged. “I don’t-ngh!”
Miki’s fist doubled up and slammed into Masahiro’s stomach, forcing his breath away. It was the fastest way he knew to make someone stop talking, and he desperately needed Masahiro to shut up. Talking had made this happen and talking would make it worse. Miki knew that in the way he knew it would have been just fine if Masahiro hadn’t opened his idiot mouth for once.
Masahiro shook under him, and Miki hit him again. This was wrong, and it made him a liar.
Miki really didn’t give a damn right now. He wanted-needed-to hurt somebody, and Masahiro was just there.
The sad part was they might have been friends in a different place. That was the part that made Miki pause, one hand in Masahiro’s hair and the other poised to strike his throat and perhaps ruin his voice permanently. Not a small part of Miki thought that such an action wouldn’t have a tragic ending, but he didn’t move to finish the blow.
They really were fucked up. Shinobi weren’t good people, but you weren’t supposed to hurt your teammates, not like this. At the thought he slowed, lowering his fist and resting his forehead against Masahiro’s, trying to breathe slowly and unable to remember how to.
“You never had to protect me,” Miki wheezed, glaring into the Masahiro’s frightened eyes, the exact shade of green as his own. “I never wanted you to.”
Masahiro shook his head.
The silence and the frail peace they had created didn’t last. Masahiro shook when Miki hit him again, held him down and made him take it, crying out when a blow got too close to breaking something, but he didn’t fight back. He knew it was better to relax during a beating, to avoid tension that made it worse and to try to protect his face, but Miki’s grip in his hair didn’t let him. Old memories made it worse than it would have been to anyone else, but Miki didn’t stop, didn’t want to and didn’t know what the consequences would be if he did.
What was happening wasn’t going to stop, though. It changed things, made them worse.
This made him a bad person, but Miki knew he’d reached that point a long time ago. Akira had helped, but Miki knew he couldn’t blame everything on that man. Some of it was just him.
Miki hit him and Masahiro reacted, never screaming but getting close sometimes, the strangled sound of half hidden pain that they both knew too well. It ended after a while with them both shaking, staring at each other. Miki rolled off Masahiro and put his back to the wall. He looked at his hands and saw that they were bloody.
It was Masahiro who spoke first, voice shaky, forcibly slow, “we even?” he asked quietly.
Miki started to shake his head, to deny that there had ever been anything that had needed to be settled, but stopped.
Maybe it was better this way. If there was a reason, then it was better. Maybe not for him, but it would make a difference to Masahiro. “Yeah,” he said after a beat. “We’re even. Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
He was lying but Miki let it go. He didn’t know what else he was supposed to do.
It struck Miki as wrong that most of their conversations were like this-biting and angry, one of them hurt and snarling and the other trying to help but getting shoved away. We could do better, he thought. We could try.
“I think we could have been friends,” he said, leaning against the wall, “if things hadn’t happened how they did.”
Masahiro watched him for a long time in silence. He shook his head. “Yeah. We could’ve been.”
“Did I mess that up?”
“I don’t know,” Masahiro said. He closed his eyes. The right one was turning black, and there was blood dripping from his nose.
Miki nodded once, reaching out to touch him, brushing Masahiro’s bangs out of his eyes.
The other jounin flinched but didn’t jerk away. “Please don’t,” Masahiro said quietly. “I can’t deal with this right now.”
“Okay,” Miki said, letting his hand fall back to his side. “Okay.”
Masahiro nodded shakily.
It was a start.
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1/1/09