It’s Just That Any One of Us Is Half Without Another One Is You – Chapter Six

Sakura flopped down under one of the trees that ringed the twenty-sixth training ground, panting and laughing a little as Naruto and Sasuke larked off across the clearing. Where “larked off” involved the two of them trying to, variously, incinerate, electrocute, suffocate, and dismember each other.

It was good to train with her team again; it pushed her, and it made her push herself. But she knew she’d never have quite the kind of stamina and reserves they did, even if she trained and conditioned for years. Not least because they’d undoubtedly spend the same time also training and conditioning! She wasn’t sure they could actually make themselves stop, by now, not when they were in each other’s company.

She was glad that Sasuke was back with them, too. Back where she and Naruto could protect him, not that she would breathe a word of that to him. Or to Naruto, for that matter, who probably didn’t need any encouragement. But some of the things she’d read in the secure files had not made her sleep any better at night. Orochimaru was increasing his pressure on the village, and it had only been luck that Hagane Kotetsu hadn’t died five months ago, retrieving Shizune from the hands of four Sound-nin who’d seized and tortured her for Sasuke’s location. Only the fact that Tsunade-sama had shouted down her advisers and gone with the mission herself had saved him, and ensured that Shizune could still walk.

And still they didn’t know where Orochimaru’s hideout, which she refused to dignify with the name of “village”, was. One research facility had been located, and several nodes in his message system, but the only Leaf agent to get any further had been killed before he could report back.

Sasuke was still in danger, and so, increasingly, was everyone around him. It was Sakura’s job to figure out how that could be stopped. For her team and, these days, for the village.

Naruto finally buried Sasuke under too many Shadow Clones to dodge. Sasuke gave in with bad grace, and they came to collapse beside her in the shade.

“That’s good,” Naruto declared after a few swallows from the water bottle. “Training with Neji just isn’t the same.”

“Of course not.” Sasuke swiped the bottle from him. “A one-trick pony like that.”

“So is Jiraiya-san going to stay for a while?” Sakura put in, sliding easily back into the habit of deflecting them from conversation-interrupting scuffles.

Sasuke looked disgruntled. “Who the hell knows? I think he thinks it’s good for me to deal with the unpredictable, or something.”

“Well,” Naruto said after a moment’s thought, “it is, isn’t it?”

Sasuke groaned just a little as he passed the water back to Sakura and let an arm fall over his eyes. “Why couldn’t it be you that went off with the pervert, instead of me? Tsunade has got to be easier to deal with.”

“She totally is not!” Naruto insisted roundly. “She’s a fiend. A demon! She actually turned my jacket pink!”

"It was only an illusion," Sakura noted in the interests of fairness. "And only after you bleached her coat lime green."

Sasuke was looking at them with an expression of faint betrayal. “The whole world is insane, except for me, isn’t it?”

Sakura leaned back on her elbows laughing softly as the boys argued, warmed by a wave of affection for her teammates. And, at the same time, frustrated, because just loving her teammates wouldn’t help her do what needed to be done. It certainly wouldn’t have any effect on Orochimaru.

Now maybe, she mused, thoughts turning darker, if she’d been like Sasuke had once seemed set to become, if she’d done nothing but resent them, resent the attention they got, maybe that was something Orochimaru would take notice of. She was pretty sure he’d been at least partly to blame for that episode of Sasuke’s. And, in all honestly, there were times when she did feel some of that, when she wanted the same brute strength they had on tap, when she wanted to be as flashy and eye-catching as they were. But she dealt with it, let herself feel it deep inside and then went on, because she loved them a lot more than she resented them. She’d never let herself fall to the level of the slime Orochimaru seemed to take delight in hiring on. Potential wasn’t reality or execution; feelings weren’t actions.

But I could use that.

The thought whispered through the back of her mind, where plans and strategies lived, and her eyes slowly widened, staring up at the rustling leaves and their shadows.

The Hokage was frowning. “How do you think you can get in, though?”

“We know where some of Orochimaru’s message drops are,” Sakura stated, hands folded behind her as she stood straight in front of the Tsunade-sama’s desk. “If one of Sasuke’s team leaves a message for him, I think he’ll at least agree to meet me.”

“If I recall correctly,” Tsunade said dryly, “that was how the last agent of ours to try this got killed. What would make your plan any more than throwing away another of my people?”

Sakura looked over at Kakashi-sensei, leaning against the wall and half hidden by the coat rack. He was the one who’d gotten her this meeting after all, and her sponsor in Intelligence. He just opened a hand, palm up. So it was up to her to convince the Hokage.

All right, then.

Sakura closed her eyes and reached for the place she kept the things she didn’t let out. Anger, mostly, the part of her that wanted to crush things into nothing or rip them into shreds. She thought about all the passing flashes of resentment, when Naruto and Sasuke both got extra training and she didn’t; when Sasuke executed the techniques her research turned up, the ones she just didn’t have the chakra capacity to perform; when Naruto effortlessly made Sasuke respond to him; when people murmured about the success record of their team and never once mentioned her; when her parents cheerfully assumed that she was doing filing for the Intelligence center, and she was forbidden to correct them.

She unlocked the cave she kept all that in, all the curses and spitting rage and pure, unadorned selfishness, and she opened her eyes and looked at the world through spite.

Tsunade rocked back in her chair. “Sakura…”

“Why shouldn’t I go to Orochimaru?” Sakura asked, hard and raw. “No one in this village will ever take me seriously as long as the boys are there. Why shouldn’t I go somewhere they will? What has Sasuke ever done but reject and ignore me? Orochimaru can have him.”

And then she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered and let the panic growing at the back of her mind that insisted she loved her teammates and she was important to them sweep away the coldness. When she looked up again, Tsunade was staring.

“I see why you recommended her for Intelligence,” she said to Kakashi, not taking her eyes off Sakura.

“I thought she’d be good at it, yes,” he murmured, and came to rest a steadying hand on Sakura’s shoulder.

Sakura took a few deep breaths. “If you give permission, I’ll need some help from one of the specialists in deep cover. I can do it, I can act like that for a little while, but I know there are ways to make it stick better than I can right now.”

“Make it stick, huh?” Tsunade didn’t look happy with that.

“The techniques in question also help buffer the agent,” Kakashi put in. “There needs to be something real there to work with, though, otherwise the altered consciousness is too obvious to someone who knows what they’re looking at. The risk, here, won’t be Orochimaru. It’ll be Kabuto. And Sakura’s ability to act as though that resentment is all she feels is our best potential weapon against his knowledge.”

Tsunade growled, eyes flashing hot. “That bastard.” She brooded for a long moment and finally looked up at Sakura. “Are you sure about this? Really sure? It will take months, at the least, possibly more than a year before you can get word to us about where Orochimaru’s bases are, and we can gather enough strength to attack without warning him. I’ll believe you and Kakashi, if you both say you can do this. But are you really sure you want to sacrifice this much?” She reached a hand over her desk and finished softly, “We can find another way.”

“We’ve tried other ways,” Sakura said quietly. “They haven’t worked. And it’s getting worse. My team is in danger, and they’re one of the things I care most about in the world.” Her mouth twitched in a not-entirely-successful smile. “I know it’ll be really hard to remember that while I’m busy denying it. I know I’ll probably need… help, after. If I survive. But I want to do this. Just…” she swallowed. “Don’t let the boys know where I’ve gone. That I’m undercover, yes. But not where.”

“Not until the end,” Tsunade promised. “They’d both kill me if I didn’t let them go along to finish it and extract you.”

That thought made the tightness in her heart relax and settle, and Sakura smiled for real. “Yes.”

Tsunade sat back with a sigh. “All right, then. Do it.”

“This technique is a subtle one,” Miuhara lectured, as if this were just another exercise. “It doesn’t force any response, it just encourages one or another, according to the key we set today. You’ll probably have to make pretty continuous, conscious decisions about what to say and present; this is just a little aide. It should also help you hold part of yourself free of the new template. That said, the longer you use it, the more it burns in, and the greater the backlash when you break it. If you can, try not to break it until you’re back in the village and our own division’s medics can support you.”

Sakura clasped and unclasped her hands and nodded quickly. “I understand.” And she was glad she’d been assigned to Miuhara, for this. Having some instruction from a familiar agent, one she knew was experienced, helped her hold on to her resolution.

“All right, then!” Miuhara clapped his hands. “Let’s get started.”

Sakura seated herself in the center of the bare, underground room and concentrated on her breathing while Miuhara drew circles of seals around her on the slate floor. She could do this, she told herself firmly.

“Now.” Miuhara knelt at the gate of the seal. “Find the thoughts you need to encourage, and we’ll imprint them as the key.”

Sakura nodded and folded her hands into the Snake, closing her eyes to concentrate.

What she needed for this, she had decided, was to pretend that the past two years hadn’t happened. That she was still the weak one, taking what comfort she could in controlling her little puddle of chakra precisely. That she was still the ugly one, compensating as best she could with soft manners and girlish clothes, and always right on the edge of snapping, of shouting at someone, of shouting at the whole world because she was the one who was smart, who was right, who knew what she was doing. And no one ever noticed, because she had to not put herself forward, had to be hesitant and only halfway offer help, and then be self-effacing when someone asked; otherwise everyone would think she was showing off, and she’d be twice as ostracized as before. And here she was teamed with Naruto, who was an absolute idiot and bulled right through all those nets of expectations and didn’t seem to care; she’d been able to tell herself it was just him compensating for being a dreadful ninja, up until they went into the field and she saw him use techniques she knew were A rank! And then she was so jealous she could hardly breathe. All the more so, because the other member of the team was the boy she wanted to notice her; if Sasuke noticed her, then she wouldn’t have to feel like trash in front of the prettier girls. And it just figured that this one hope of hers, dropped right into her lap when every other girl in class would kill to be on Sasuke’s team, ignored her completely. Acted like she was totally useless. Paid attention to Naruto but never to her! And the more she tried to hold on to the hope of romance, the more furious she got, deep inside.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to show all that on the surface, for once, instead of hiding it away? To show them all.

“Now the Ram,” a calm voice broke into her reflections, and some part of her had been waiting for this, and she slid her hands through to the Ram instead.

It felt like a douse of ice water over her brain, and she yelped.

“Yeah,” Miuhara said, scribbling one more seal across a paper laid over the gate. “The closing kind of stings. Hold still, now.” The paper burst into flame and Sakura held herself still against the tingle that itched down her nerves and through her mind. “Done.” Miuhara sat back, satisfied. “Okay, come out of there and try it.”

Sakura picked her way through the lines of ink and wove her hands through the thirteen seals that initiated the Heart In a Net technique.

“I’m Orochimaru’s agent,” Miuhara said, cold and suspicious. “Why should we trust you?”

Sakura drew herself up and gave him a look of utter contempt. “Because I can give your master what he’s failed to get for himself all this time. Sasuke won’t come after me on his own, but Naruto is enough of a fool to do it, if they get wind of where I am. And he’ll bring Sasuke with him.” She leaned against the wall and smiled, hard. “But I’d better get a lot out of the deal. More than the Leaf would ever give me.”

She knew it wasn’t true. But it could have been. And it felt exhilarating to let the rage and contempt show, like flying, unsupported and without anchor on the wind.

Miuhara nodded. “Good, that rang true. Now break it.”

Sakura formed the five seals of closing with precision and had to shake her head vigorously as the film of anger/strike back/bitterness/show them all slid away. “Ugh.” She pressed her hands over her face and said, fervently, “I am so glad I’m not there any more.”

“Mmm. You’re going to be there for a long time, on this mission.” Miuhara dusted his knees off, watching her narrowly. “Still think you can do it, now you know what it will be like?”

Sakura touched the love for her team that she held in her heart, and the bright rage against those who threatened them. Those, she was reassured, wouldn’t go away no matter how she covered them up or disguised them. “Yes,” she said quietly, straightening. “I do.”

Miuhara smiled. “That’s the last test, then. Go look over your notes one more time before you burn them, and have your farewell with your team. I’ll make sure even your sealed records say you’ve been a clerk, and that’s already your public cover. You’re ready to go.”

As ready as she’d ever be, at any rate.

She went out for yakiniku, that night, with Sasuke and Naruto, and all three of them scuffled over the food like kids. They tossed little illusions at each other and wove complicated wire traps, competing to see who could snatch the most perfectly cooked meat. Sakura and Sasuke decreed that Naruto couldn’t use more than one Shadow Clone, and Naruto insisted in return that Sasuke couldn’t use his Sharingan to see which bits of meat were illusions. Sakura agreed with a virtuous air, and promptly attached chakra threads to three pieces while they were arguing. She captured all three of them, too, to loud protests from her teammates.

When the last bite had disappeared, they sat together over their tea, quietly.

“So, you’re gonna be gone for a while, huh?” Naruto asked, finally.

“A couple months at least.” Sakura sipped her tea, rolling the heat over her tongue. “If it’s a harder nut to crack than I hope… maybe a year.” Somewhere in between the two was her own guess, but they should know her worst-case estimate.

“Had to happen just as soon as we’re all back,” Sasuke grumbled under his breath, and wouldn’t look at them. Sakura smiled softly.

“Take care of each other while I’m gone, okay? Since I won’t be here to keep you both out of trouble.”

That made them both look at her, Sasuke with eloquently raised brows and Naruto with an open mouth. “Keep us out of trouble?” he echoed in disbelief. “Who was it who made the plan to hold Kakashi’s books hostage against a candid photo, huh?”

Sakura laced her fingers under her chin and batted her eyelashes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sasuke snorted. “So the trouble won’t be as well planned until you get back, is what you mean. You’d better hurry, then.”

“I’ll do my best,” she said, wrapping the warmth of their confidence around her.

She was unfortunately sure that she’d need it.

And all her plans and preparation had come to this moment, to an underground base and a carved stone hall, and one of her village’s legendary Sannin watching her from the shadows of torchlight with a small, cruel smile.

“So? You say you can bring me Sasuke, for a price. What price is that?”

Sakura shifted her shoulders under the weight of her chuunin uniform, minus the forehead protector, and pulled up a glare out of the hot, sullen reservoir in her stomach. “Power. That’s what you offered Sasuke, isn’t it? So I’ll claim the bargain instead.” She smiled a little, hard and sardonic. “But not that seal’s power. I’m not interested in anything that will make it easier for someone else to control me. Not ever again.”

“Hmm.” Orochimaru made an interested little sound. She thought he was amused. “And in return for this, you will serve me?”

“I’ll serve my own interests,” she answered coolly. “You should understand that’s a lot surer.”

He actually laughed. “Well, well. Perhaps I’ll like this bargain better, after all.” He came closer, looking down at her, predatory. “Very well, little kunoichi. I’ll give you power, and you’ll give me Sasuke. After,” he added, “I’m sure of you, of course.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I expected that. Just don’t push it too far.”

Rage and the freedom of saying exactly what she thought whirled in her heart, and if much of that rage was against the creature in front of her… well, he didn’t have to know that.

Not until the end.

She pushed those thoughts down as far as she could, underneath the older anger at the limits her village had hung on her, and followed him deeper into the complex.

It’s Just That Any One of Us Is Half Without Another One Is You – Chapter Five

“So,” Kakashi said, perching on Tsunade’s file cabinet despite Shizune’s blistering glare as she tried to put away the promotion files. After a year of dealing with him, Tsunade was positive that he did annoying things like that just to be annoying. Which was, well, annoying. She already had Jiraiya to stir things up, and he sure as hell didn’t need an understudy. What she hadn’t figured out, yet, was how to stop him. She was sure something appropriate would come to her in time, though.

“So, what?” she asked, just a bit suspicious.

“So, what are we going to do with my team now?” he asked, in an obnoxiously reasonable tone. “They’ve all three been promoted; Konoha had a good showing at the exam this year. Normally, I’d suggest you keep them together as a high-level team, given how well they already work together. But I’m sure you saw what happened during the exam.”

Tsunade leaned back in her chair, frowning. She certainly had. “He drew hard on the fox’s power when he thought Sakura might have been hit with something fatal. It’s definitely triggered by protectiveness, right now.” Her mouth curled. “Temari, the Kazekage’s sister, was up in the box with us and she had a seal out and ready like that.” She snapped her fingers. “She’d have used it, too, if Sasuke hadn’t sat on Naruto to calm him down. I think Gaara expected something like this might happen.”

“I spoke with him, after the exam,” Kakashi offered, crossing a foot over his knee. “He offered us copies of Sand’s scrolls on the tailed beasts and their hosts, but he didn’t have much more training than Naruto.”

“Which is undoubtedly why he’s had such difficulty controlling that damn tanuki of his.” Tsunade sighed. “At this rate we may have to negotiate with one of the villages of the other great nations.” And she didn’t even want to contemplate what kind of concessions they’d demand in return for training someone else’s host, but something had to be done and done soon.

“You know,” Kakashi said, slowly, “I’ve looked through the scrolls myself. The one thing that’s repeated over and over is that a host has to know himself, know his own chakra, and be able to manipulate both his and the beast’s chakra very finely.”

Tsunade considered that, and then considered Naruto, and groaned. “We’re doomed.”

“Maybe not.” Kakashi laced his hands over his knee as he shifted it out of Shizune’s way just in time to dodge her irritated swat. “I’ve been thinking. The ninja who learn to know and control chakra the most finely are generally the medics, aren’t they?”

Tsunade blinked. “I… suppose that’s true, yes.” And then she frowned and held up a hand. “Wait just a minute. Are you suggesting that we train Naruto as a medic?”

“It seems like the best way to achieve what he needs without having to go to Hidden Cloud or Hidden Rock. Or worse, Hidden Mist.”

Tsunade settled back in her chair, reaching for the kunai weighing down some files to turn it absently through her fingers as she thought. “I suppose it might work,” she murmured doubtfully, “but who could possibly handle him during that kind of…” She trailed off and directed an extremely suspicious look at Kakashi. He spread his hands, eye crinkling up all smiley and innocent. “You bastard,” she growled. “You’ve been planning on this! You scheming, evil-eyed shit! You—”

It took her a solid minute and a half to run out of names to call him. The stark understanding that no one else could teach Naruto a healer’s arts, and deal with the kind of screw-ups his power might produce, drove her to dredge up words she hadn’t used since the last time she’d been up north of Earth Country in the winter.

“You already like him, though,” Kakashi positively wheedled when she finally ran down. “And it would definitely reassure the village to see the Nine-tails’ host learning healing.”

She threw the kunai at him, dead center, and snarled when he evaded it. Shizune caught it on the rebound and put it silently back on top of its stack of paperwork. “Okay,” Tsunade growled, after a long, furious glare during which she tried and failed to think of any other possible teacher. “Okay, fine. I’ll do it. That kid is the only thing that can drag me into this kind of insanity, and it will serve him right when he gets to be Hokage and has to deal with it all himself!” She sat back, glowering at him. “All right, if Naruto is staying here to be trained, what about his team?”

“They’ll all set up a howl if two go out without their third,” Kakashi noted dryly. “So they all need to be reassigned for a little bit. It isn’t entirely uncommon for the year after promotion to be a time for advanced training. I thought Sakura might enjoy a stint with Intelligence; it’s suited to her skills.”

Tsunade looked at him narrowly. “True enough. That only leaves the other problem child. We’ve kept those three together for Sasuke’s sake this long; what can we do now to keep him from backsliding?”

“Well,” Kakashi murmured, examining his nails. “I thought we might make use of Sasuke’s competitive streak. If we give him a teacher equal to Naruto’s, and one who has a character similar to Naruto’s, I think that should keep him progressing nicely.”

Tsunade stared at him, eyes widening as those specifications sank in. “Equal to…? Similar to…?” Finally she couldn’t help herself any more, and burst out laughing until she had to hold her stomach and Shizune finally demanded to know what the joke was.

“Myouboku Mountain’s Monk of the Toad Spirits… also known as the Toad Sage…. is here!” A long white tail of hair flounced and wood geta managed to hit the dust with a firm clack.

“You’re what,” Sasuke said, very flatly. It wasn’t even a question. There was no possible question in the world to which that was the answer.

Sakura’s eyes were the size of saucers and the Hokage had a hand over her face. Naruto, on the other hand, was hanging over someone’s front gate laughing like a hyena. Sasuke gave serious thought to setting his butt on fire with a Fire Blossom.

“I know he doesn’t look it,” Tsunade sighed, “but this idiot really is my old teammate. Jiraiya, meet Uchiha Sasuke. Sasuke, meet the Toad Idiot.”

“You’re so cruel, Tsunade,” the old man actually pouted. And they expected Sasuke to walk around being seen in public with this guy?

Naruto finally caught his breath a little. “No, no, he’s actually really good. He’s the one who taught me the Rasengan! I bet you have lots of fun traveling with him.”

“I’m not sure I want to be anywhere near someone who teaches things you think are interesting,” Sasuke pointed out dryly.

“Hey, it was totally my own idea to do a panty raid on Temari-san,” Naruto huffed, crossing his arms. Sasuke contemplated this.

“I think that was my point.”

“If it helps, he also taught the Fourth, so he’s not actually as useless as he likes to look,” Tsunade put in. “And there’s the other side of this too.” She folded her arms, brows drawing down. “Even after a full year, we’re still getting probes from Hidden Sound, and most of them happen when you’re in the village. Orochimaru obviously hasn’t given up. And if you’re not going to have a pathologically overprotective beast host right at hand, who can be counted on to follow right after any kidnapping, setting forests on fire with his chakra as he goes, Jiraiya is the next best thing.”

Naruto looked smug until she flicked him over the ear. “That wasn’t actually a compliment, brat.”

Naruto glowered at her, rubbing his ear, only to perk up a second later. Sasuke would never understand Naruto’s mood swings. “Hey, I bet he can teach you summoning!”

Still flustered by Tsunade’s remark about overprotectiveness, and the little curl of warmth it had caused, Sasuke crossed his arms. “Uchiha don’t use summons.”

“You’re the last Uchiha, I don’t see why you can’t do whatever you please and call that what the Uchiha do,” Jiraiya said mildly.

Sasuke was struck very still, unprepared for that kind of insight after all the clowning.

Jiraiya rested a hand on his shoulder, dark eyes holding Sasuke’s. “Don’t limit yourself inside your own mind.”

Slowly, Sasuke nodded. Maybe this would work after all.

Sakura,

You have the library handy, maybe you can tell me. Is it possible to request a rescue mission from one’s own tutor? I’ll pay for it out of my own pocket. We’ve spent the last week in the red light district of this town. The only ninjutsu practice I’m getting is figuring out how to haul his carcass home from the bars! Yesterday I used Transformation and turned him into a cat long enough to get him home; a neutered cat. The day before that I used a new wind jutsu to roll him along the street. Neither made him stop. I think he’s trying to drive me crazy.

Sasuke

Sakura folded the letter away, giggling helplessly. She wondered how long it would take Sasuke to catch on that he was already in training. Another week at least, she wagered with herself; he could have a very one-track mind once he got an idea in his head.

She wondered a little whether even being taught by someone who seemed a lot like Naruto at sixty would be able to shake that.

Sakura was out in the courtyard of the Intelligence complex, working on advanced concealment techniques with a handful of other newcomers, when an explosion rocked the morning. Everyone looked up with a jerk as smoke billowed out of the top of the administrative center, but Sakura relaxed as an orange blur emerged. She could practically hear the cackling.

“Get back here, you brat!” Tsunade-sama’s voice echoed down the block. “That was my favorite coat, you little shit! I’m going to turn everything you own baby pink for a week!”

“Oh, Naruto,” Sakura sighed, even as her mouth quirked up helplessly. At least he was getting along with his teacher. In fact, she worried just a little sometimes that Tsunade would be a bad influence on him.

“Demon fox, huh?” One of the other newcomers, Shimasu, eyed the way Naruto had gone and shook his head. “Kind of explains a few things, doesn’t it? Are we sure that thing can’t get out?”

A chill tingle of anger rushed over Sakura and she had to take a moment to unset her jaw and smile at him with complete insincerity. “Oh, there’s no need to worry at all. Naruto only draws enough of the Nine-tails’ chakra for aspects to emerge when something he truly cares for is threatened.” She clasped her hands demurely. “The village did a good job, there, I must say. After the way he’s been treated, there’s almost nothing here he cares for that way.” The last sentence came out edged with ice and Shimasu’s head jerked up.

“Who do you think you are?” he demanded, straightening up to loom over her. “I have five years seniority as a chuunin, missy, and…”

Enemy, the back of Sakura’s mind whispered to her, threat to the team. Familiar calculation flickered through her thoughts as she eyed Shimasu coolly. She had watched him joking and shoving with some friends. His attacks were strong, but his defense was weak. If it came down to a confrontation, a binding seal would immobilize him for her to get behind him and then she could take her time getting the sensory-blocking technique Fuunotora-san had taught her right, and that should take care of him. And… he was backing away. She’d need to work fast…

“Sakura.” Miuhara’s hand fell on her shoulder and she blinked up at their trainer. He looked amused and relaxed, but there was a gleam of something else in his pale, sharp eyes. “That’s some impressive killing intent, I admit. Work on hiding it.”

Right, she wasn’t with her team, they weren’t in the field anymore, and, um, she probably wasn’t supposed to treat another Leaf-nin like an enemy. Even if he kind of was. Only not that way, she told herself firmly, and took a breath, cheeks a little hot. “Yes, Miuhara-san. I’ll work on that.”

And she would, of course. No sense letting a threat to her team know she was coming.

Naruto wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Hey! Did Gamakichi step on you? I told him to step on you when he delivered this. How’s it going with you and the ero-sennin? See, you should have let me teach you Sexy no Jutsu before you left, it’s the best way to get his attention.

Tsunade-baachan is a slave driver, I think it must be an old-person thing. She makes me sit and MEDITATE for, like, hours, and the fox chakra itches. But I can already do chakra transfer, as long as it isn’t for something really fiddly. So? What about you, what can you do? Come on, tell me, or I’ll tell Gamakichi to lick you next letter I send!

Naruto

Sasuke folded the paper up again, neatly, and wondered how Naruto managed to actually hold a conversation in a single letter. He’d complain about Naruto putting words in his mouth, except… he usually got them right.

He tucked the letter safely away in his pack and lay down, firmly ignoring Jiraiya’s knowing grin on the other side of the fire. Reacting would just encourage the man. If Sasuke was relieved enough at the distraction to smile at a letter from his teammates, well that wasn’t to Jiraiya’s credit, was it?

He pulled his pack over to use as a pillow, listening to the soft crackle of paper that all the letters from home made.

Naruto let the last history scroll roll closed on the words that described too calmly how a band of extremists from Hidden Mist, opposed to both bloodline talents and hosts, had broken through the guards while his mother was giving birth and damaged her seal, releasing the Nine-tails. “So. That’s why people don’t like me,” he said, low, looking down at the scarred surface of the table in the little, wood-paneled room beside the Hokage’s office, where he studied.

“For a long time, now, hosts have been the sacrifices of their villages, one way or another.” For once, Tsunade-baachan wasn’t yelling. “Konoha has tried to honor ours, but when the Nine-tails escaped and your mother was lost…” she sighed. “I think Sarutobi-sensei made the wrong choice. But some people are idiots, and his journals say that there was a lot of loose talk right after the attack. People saying Kushina-san had failed, or that she should never have tried to have a child since it put the seal in danger. He didn’t want them taking that out on you.”

Naruto’s hands closed into fists. “My mother didn’t fail.”

Hands closed over his, stronger than any hands had a right to be, strong like the vast voice locked inside him, strong like maybe his mother’s would have been, and Tsunade-baachan shook him a little. “Of course she didn’t fail! Kushina-san was a hero, a greater hero than her husband! She gave her life to hold and guard Konoha’s most dangerous weapon, and I honor her memory.”

Naruto sniffed and swallowed. He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t. “How come the hosts don’t have a monument, then, huh?”

“Maybe we’ll make one.” She scruffled up his hair. “Then you’ll be on two monuments. One with your mom and one with your dad.”

Naruto finally looked up, and if his grin wavered a little Tsunade didn’t show she noticed. “So, hey,” he said, sturdier, latching on to a much easier question for distraction, “we used to have a lot more beasts, didn’t we? Why’d the First give so many away? I mean,” he prodded his stomach, frowning at it, “the fox is really, really strong. Wouldn’t we have been the strongest village if we’d had more?”

“We might have.” Tsunade-baachan sat back in her chair on the other side of the table. “Or we might have scared the villages of the other great nations so much they’d have allied to get rid of us. That’s what my grandfather thought, at least. We did get a lot of treaties out of those gifts.” Her mouth twisted. “Even if half of them fell apart a generation later.”

Naruto jammed his chin into his hands, frowning harder. “When I’m Hokage, I’m going to find a way to make everyone quit fighting like that. Why can’t we just have a match, like at the chuunin exams, instead?”

Tsunade sighed. “Because the side whose team lost would want to do it again, with a stronger one, and sooner or later we’d be using whole armies again. That’s kind of what a war is, kid. And as soon as people get killed, you have revenge getting into it, and it never ends.” She leaned across the table and poked him in the stomach. “You know that already. Look at the way you reach for all of this, the moment you think one of your team is being hurt, or in danger of dying. Like when Sakura went down, during the exams.”

Naruto growled, and then jumped, startled. This time, he could really, actually feel the surge of the fox’s hot, raw chakra. "…oh."

“Most people don’t have a demon beast to draw on,” Tsunade-baachan said, raising one brow at him, “but everyone reaches deeper like that when the people they love are hurt. Everyone. Think about that.”

Naruto thought about it, and chewed on his lip, and scowled, and finally burst out, “I’ll find a way anyway! I don’t know how, but there’s got to be something to get people to stop!”

He expected the old bat to scoff, but she just smiled. “Maybe you will. Now.” She rapped the table and rose. “Time for your meditation exercises.”

Naruto groaned pathetically, but she showed no mercy and just pointed at the cushion on one side of the room. Naruto dragged himself over to it with a deep sigh and arranged his hands in the reverse Bird, and listened to the distant growl of the fox inside. One thing he would say, though never to Tsunade-baachan: it was getting easier to tell when the growl was the fox’s and when it was his.

Maybe more people just needed to do this.

Naruto,

If you don’t stop telling that toad of yours to jump on my head with the letters, I’m going to fry him.

And no, of course it’s not your fault that a surgery you were assisting at failed. Unless, of course, you were actually the one bonding in the new bone and you somehow forgot to mention that part. Quit being an idiot. You’re not actually incompetent, at least when you pay attention. And you do that more these days.

Stop worrying.

Sasuke

The owner of Ichiraku Ramen set down Naruto’s bowl and smiled across the counter. “There, now, that’s more like it. You’ve looked down for days. Cheer up! I made the ramen extra spicy for you!”

Naruto tucked the letter into his jacket and split his chopsticks. “Yeah, sometimes you gotta remember the good stuff in life!” He scooped up his first slurp of noodles with a tiny smile.

Sasuke had to admit, if only to himself, that Kakashi-sensei had been right. His team could keep him sane. He really missed them, having to deal with Jiraiya day in and day out. Naruto was comfortingly straightforward, by comparison, and he was positive that Sakura would have slapped Jiraiya very satisfyingly at least once a day.

And he wanted to be where Sakura was, getting the run of Intelligence, so badly he could taste it. He wanted access to secured records so he could find out where Itachi had gone, and what he was doing, and how Sasuke could finally kill the man and avenge his family.

Before the man could do it again and kill his… his team. His team, that was all. (Family dies. Family betrays. Not family.)

He shook his head sharply to settle his thoughts, and one of his lines of ink went astray.

“Redo that,” Jiraiya told him, glancing over. “Summons aren’t like ninjutsu; they don’t go away until you dismiss them or the summoning seal is disrupted, and even that’s chancy. You should have the dismissal right on hand the first time, and formally written as a seal, in case anything goes wrong. Decided what you want to try for, yet?”

“Hawks,” Sasuke answered shortly, reaching for a fresh sheet of paper. The thought had come to him about a week ago, watching one circling over the hill they were on. It seemed appropriate to make a contract with another creature of legendary eyesight, after all. Besides, then he’d have his own summons to send letters by.

“Hmm. Sharp-eyed, so single minded they fly into cliffs on the hunt, no sense of humor… I can’t imagine why this didn’t occur to the Uchiha years ago.”

Sasuke considered trying out his new Chidori Senbon on his teacher, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t stable enough yet, and he’d just be more annoyed if Jiraiya dodged it. Maybe, he thought as he turned back to his brushwork, a hawk would be willing to pick up one of the damn toads and drop it on Jiraiya’s head.

That was a Naruto sort of approach to the problem, but right now he was irritated enough not to mind that.

Sasuke,

It sounds like you’re making a lot of progress, even if Jiraiya-sama is aggravating. We’ve had a bit of a stir, here, and I don’t know if Naruto will tell you about it. Someone brought their little girl to the hospital with a broken arm, while he was assisting, and the medic asked him to do the anesthetic for her. I guess the father was really wound up, because he started yelling that no fox demon was going to touch his child. Well, there was the mother of a little boy in to have his tonsils out just in the hall and she started yelling at the father that he was disloyal to Konoha to say something like that about the Fourth’s own son. So there the two adults were, howling and screeching at each other, and Naruto in the middle just doing the pain-suppression. I was so proud of him! Well, in the end, the little boy came wandering in and sat down with the little girl, and by the time the parents got done yelling Naruto was spinning tops for both of them on the floor and they’d both stopped crying. I’m told that the father looked very shamefaced when he took his daughter home, as well he should. I honestly think the mother alarmed Naruto more, though; he still doesn’t know how to deal with that.

I looked in the files, after you mentioned it, but none of them that I could get my hands on had any information about where Itachi is now, or where Akatsuki might be based. There’s speculation that it’s in Water Country somewhere, but it’s all just rumor, nothing substantiated.

I did find something else, though. Keep an eye out, okay? When Tsunade-sama said that the Sound-nin keep showing up looking for you, she wasn’t joking.

Sakura

Sasuke frowned over Sakura’s letter. He hadn’t thought Tsunade was joking, exactly, but he hadn’t seen the slightest sign of Sound-nin anywhere in the last five months. He was much more interested in those rumors about the Akatsuki base. Maybe Jiraiya would agree to a trip into the Water Country if Sasuke said he’d heard the bars all had gorgeous servers or something.

And Naruto was an idiot. He should have just used the first anesthetic seal on the loud-mouth father, so he could do his work in peace and quiet. There was no excuse for that kind of thing.

Sasuke pulled over a sheet of paper and a pen to explain to Naruto in detail what he should to about that kind of interference next time, eyes glinting.

“Naruto! Did Tsunade-sama let you go for the day?” Sakura slid onto the bench of the dango shop across from him, pinning a case of papers firmly under her heel. Probably top secret or something, she was getting really into that stuff these days. Naruto pried himself upright from his sprawl across the table with a groan.

“She’s a killer. We don’t need assassins any more, all we need to do is have her train people. They’ll drop dead in a month. She had me transferring chakra all day, in different proportions, if you can believe it, of my chakra and the damn fox’s.”

Sakura’s brows rose. “Naruto, that’s a really advanced technique.”

He blinked. “It is?” The old bat hadn’t told him that. “Huh.”

“Well, here, you’ll like this, then.” Sakura fished an envelope out of her pouch. “Sasuke’s latest letter came, and he said to share this one with you.”

Naruto straightened up more, reaching for the letter eagerly. It really helped, these days, to hear from Sasuke. Who’d have ever thought, two and a half years ago, when they’d all first met? He blinked at the opening lines and read aloud, bemused.

“May all the spirits of my ancestors look on me with favor and preserve me from this utter asshole. Striking him dead would be favorite; it can’t be hard the way he lives. No sooner were the words ‘Water Country’ out of my mouth than he hauled us off to Wind instead. We’re doing laps around the central desert, practicing a different set of elemental techniques with every one. Do you know what they drink out here? Whatever it is, it makes him sing.”

Naruto had to stop then to put his head down and laugh.

“Have you ever heard Jiraiya-sama sing?” Sakura asked, curious.

“Yes!” Naruto gasped, “that’s why I’m laughing!”

Sakura leaned her chin in her hand, grinning. “So, is Sasuke right when he says the donkeys can carry a tune better?”

Naruto wrapped his arms around his stomach, sniggering too hard to answer as he imagined Sasuke’s response to Jiraiya’s sentimental caterwauling. Sakura just shook her head, smiling, and stole his glass of water for a few sips.

“Well,” Sakura said when he finally caught his breath, “at least he should be more satisfied with his actual training, now. And being around Jiraiya-sama seems to be good for him, in a way.”

Naruto wiped his eyes and stole back his water. “Yeah, he sounds a lot more human, these days. Less like he has one of those Uchiha fans stuck up his ass.”

Sakura mock-glowered at him. “Tsunade-sama has had a very bad influence on your language, Naruto.”

Naruto cocked his head, grinning, and waved the letter. “Seems to be a Legendary Three thing, since Sasuke’s is getting just as bad.” Sakura snorted and Naruto paused. “Um.” He fidgeted a minute, looking down at his napkin. “Sakura-chan? Does that… bother you?” He snuck quick looks up at her as he twisted his napkin into a knot.

“That you and Sasuke are being taught by two of the Three and I’m not?”

Naruto winced at the way she knew exactly what he was talking about. That couldn’t be a good sign, could it?

She steepled her hands together, looking at her fingertips. “I’m a little envious, sometimes,” she admitted, softly. “But then I think… all three of us had to give things up for the training we’re getting now. Sasuke has to be on the road while you and I get to stay together here. You had to start training in healing, and I know that was never a goal of yours. I don’t have a legendary tutor all my own, but, you know, I also don’t have a legendary enemy after me personally and I also don’t have a demon fox sealed inside me I have to figure out how to deal with.” She looked up at him with her mouth tilted. “I’m kind of okay with those things. And I do like working with Intelligence; I think it carries a lot of weight with them, that Kakashi-sensei recommended me.”

“Well, that’s because you’re awesome, Sakura-chan,” Naruto mumbled, looking at his napkin again. “I always thought so.”

She actually smiled at that, instead of passing it off or smacking him in the shoulder, and that made him have to drop the napkin before he actually ripped it.

“So, go on and read what else Sasuke says,” she said lightly. “I thought the part about the camels was pretty good, and he’s got a new form of Chidori.”

Naruto spread out the letter again with a little relief. Sakura was awesome, but Sasuke was easier to understand any day.

Sasuke leaned back on the rail of the boat, looking up at the sky above them. It seemed endless, from this angle, the blue only broken by a few hazy veils of cloud. He wished his life were more like that sky.

Annoyingly familiar weight settled beside him with what had to be deliberate thumps and creaks. “Looks like we’ll have a good, clear passage,” Jiraiya remarked, all bluff and cheerful.

Sasuke give his teacher a Look, and Jiraiya just smiled, perfectly sunny and impervious.

“Ah, there’s the true Uchiha glare. What are you so pissy about this time? We’re heading for Water Country just like you wanted, aren’t we?”

“For your purposes,” Sasuke pointed out with precision. “Not mine.”

Jiraiya waved a finger at him and took a drink from his jug. “Nonsense, my purposes are yours! We’re going to investigate!”

“No,” Sasuke said. “They’re not the same. You’re always trying to get me to change the way I look at things, or think about something. Like the way you keep reminding me of my clan, but always in a way that would push me away from our traditions.” He snorted as Jiraiya raised his brows. “Sakura may be the best at this, but that doesn’t mean I don’t use my brain too.”

After a long moment, Jiraiya leaned back against the rail beside him and looked up at the sky. “You have the potential to be a fine shinobi. And a very powerful one. But you’ll never realize it if you pay more attention to the past than the present.”

“I’m not going to forget my clan!” Sasuke snapped.

“And here you said you used your brain,” Jiraiya mused and took another drink while Sasuke glared at him. “Of course you won’t forget them. But you should blunt the memory a little so it doesn’t cut you.” He quirked his eyebrow at Sasuke. “The Uchiha had many things to be proud of, and one madman doesn’t erase that. You don’t have to prove every bit of their honor all by yourself.”

Sasuke flinched. It wasn’t fair how Jiraiya could spend all his time acting like a drunk buffoon and then turn around and do things like this. See and say things that felt like a knife going in past his guard. Only without hurting. Exactly.

Jiraiya clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, come on, then! We’re at sea; time to work on water techniques, maybe see what you can make of them combined with that Chidori of yours.”

Sasuke sighed and did as he was told. The part of his brain that wasn’t thinking about conductivity and possible applications of steam, though, wrapped those words about the honor of Uchiha around his heart and took comfort in them.

Naruto, Sakura,

We’re coming back to the village for a little while. Found absolutely nothing about Akatsuki in Water Country, though Mist seems to have had yet another civil war. It sounds like it’s about time, too, the last Mizukage and his cohort must have been really twisted. I’m almost surprised Akatsuki wasn’t here, [blot that might have started with an I] they’d have been right at home.

See you soon.

Sasuke

 

A/N: Given how much time Madara spends, in canon, getting other people to do his dirty work, it never sat right with me that he was the only one involved in the attack on Kushina. So here he stirred up the Mist fanatics to attack instead.

It’s Just That Any One of Us Is Half Without Another One Is You – Chapter Four

Sakura sat in the candidates’ balcony of the large, enclosed, Sand arena and waited for the next individual match to be announced, and tried to calm herself down by mentally reviewing the profiles of her possible opponents. Gai-san’s team had taken this season’s exam also, and included Hyuuga Neji, who seemed to have waited out the whole year to take the exam again with his teammates. She’d be in trouble against Neji, since she didn’t dare close with him and his field of vision made it almost impossible to hit him from a distance with her speed. The rest of that team, she thought she could handle. Two of the Sand teams had made it to the final part too, and one from Rain. Out of those teams, there were two people she thought she’d really have trouble with: the brown-haired woman from the team they’d met at the middle of the second round, and a thin red-haired boy from Hidden Rain. He had some kind of bloodline talent she’d caught a glimpse of on their way out of the fortress; she’d seen him dissolve and a sword pass through him, and then the red mist where he’d been reformed and he’d casually knocked the chuunin guard unconscious. She could think of ways to deal with that, but most of them depended on resources the arena didn’t have handy.

As for the woman… Sakura had a feeling she was what Sakura might be in another handful of years. But she wasn’t there yet.

Lee had already won against one of the other Rain genin, punching right through the other boy’s water barriers. Two Sand-nin from different teams had fought each other nearly to a standstill, blades against a taijutsu style Sakura had never seen before, heavy on ferocious kicks. Tenten had had a hard time, at first, against her opponent’s illusions, but had eventually overwhelmed him with a downright rain of lethal weaponry which had done Sakura’s heart good to watch. Her teammates, she thought wryly, had given her a taste for overkill. The dark-haired Sand woman had just finished wiping the arena with the third of the Rain team, whose wind-driven shuriken had been no match for her absolute precision and control with body replacement and wire-guided weapons. She’d won using only a technique of the very lowest level and she’d made it look easy. Sakura really hoped they were in different matches for the next round.

And, if only, please, she didn’t have to face her own team…

“Next match! Haruno Sakura against Raisu Kurosuke!”

The red-haired Rain genin bounced to his feet and trotted toward the stairs down to the arena.

Sakura stood very still for a moment, ruefully reflecting on the old advice to be careful what you wished for. But only a moment before her mind started ticking down the things she’d already thought about this opponent and presented a conclusion. Can’t cut, need to enclose; not wind, not earth, need water or fire; can’t create enough water to enclose or enough fire to ensure an effect; therefore… She turned briskly to Naruto. “Can I borrow your jacket? I promise I’ll have it cleaned really well after.”

Naruto looked mournfully at his bright orange sleeve before sighing and tugging the jacket off. “Sure, Sakura-chan.”

She stuffed her arms into the sleeves as she hurried down the stairs.

Her opponent squinted at her as she came out onto the sand. “Doesn’t that clash a little?”

Sakura’s face turned hot; all right, so orange didn’t exactly go with red or pink. She could just imagine what Ino would say. “This is a match, not a fashion show,” she snapped.

The examiner’s mouth was twitching as he tried to keep a straight face. “Begin!”

Sakura threw a kunai straight for Raisu’s center of mass and snapped the jacket off her shoulders. As he smirked and dissolved into that cloud of red mist she remembered she sprinted in close and swiped her extremely improvised net through the mist.

Or she would have except that the mist dodged, flying apart wildly. It took nearly thirty seconds for Raisu to come back together, well out of arm’s reach. Or jacket’s reach. “You’re good,” he said, eyes narrowed. “Okay, we do this the hard way, then.” He stalked toward her, solid all the way.

Sakura smiled tightly and tied the jacket around her waist to keep it handy.

He wasn’t any faster than her, she decided after a few exchanges, but he didn’t seem to notice shallow cuts; more disturbing, she couldn’t see that they were bleeding, which hers certainly were. It was time to try something more energetic, then. She used chakra to give her feet more grip on the shifting sand and slapped an explosive seal onto his arm, spinning away with only a scratch. Raisu cursed and dissolved again, mist flying apart with the explosion. It took him almost a minute to come back this time, and he was panting.

Sakura’s eyes narrowed in satisfaction and she flicked out a handful of tags, slapping a few onto her shuriken.

Raisu was trying to keep the distance open, now, and he had better aim than she did, but he didn’t seem to have the chakra control to raise his traction. Her arms were getting badly cut up but twice more she got an explosive tag close enough to make him dissolve, and each time he took longer to return. She was getting noticeably light-headed from blood loss, but she calculated that he would run out of strength first.

After the third note, he returned only to collapse to the sand on all fours and gasp, “Surrender…”

“Winner is Haruno Sakura!” the examiner announced, appearing beside them. “Do you require medical attention?” he asked Raisu more conversationally.

Raisu shook his head. “Just… rest,” he said raggedly.

The examiner hauled him up by an arm over his shoulder and off toward the stairs. It took Sakura a moment to follow them.

She’d won.

She collapsed beside her teammates and tugged off the jacket to hand back to Naruto. “Thanks,” she sighed. “That was just the thing.” She let her head fall against the bench back.

She could hear the Rain jounin scolding Raisu. “I told you you needed to work more on techniques that don’t rely on your bloodline. Ninjutsu practice first thing, when we get home.”

“Good job, Sakura-chan!” Naruto enthused, bouncing a little beside her. He fished a water bottle out of his pack and pressed it into her hand.

“Good thinking,” Sasuke said, more quietly, tugging on her shoulder to make her sit up so he could bandage her arm.

She drank and listened to the sounds of Neji demolishing one of the Sand genin, and couldn’t stop smiling.

She wasn’t smiling three matches later, when the second match of the second round came up as her against Fuunotora Chie. Who turned out to be the brown-haired woman. “Shit,” she muttered, hands checking her kunai and seal tags uncertainly as she stood.

“Just remember what I told you,” Kakashi-sensei murmured from behind his book, lounging on the bench behind theirs.

“What, that reading porn helps a person relax?” she snapped, sharp with nervousness. Kakashi’s eye crinkled up.

“That too, but I meant the part about finishing what you start.”

Sakura blinked, remembering a training session almost a year ago, after that mission with the bandit troupe. Kakashi-sensei had set Naruto and Sasuke to practicing defense with each other. Her, though, he’d set a different exercise: to punch into his palm, full force.

She’d thought she’d been doing all right until he’d made her slow down, move through every part of the strike until she stopped with her fist against his hand. “Now finish it,” he’d said. “You aren’t done with the blow yet; finish it.”

So she’d shoved a little more and suddenly realized that she’d never released her shoulder, hadn’t completed the shift in her stance, hadn’t, more importantly, completed the shift in her chakra. When she had, she’d felt a kind of openness she wasn’t familiar with in her taijutsu workouts—but did know from ninjutsu training, when she completed a set of hand seals and released a technique. Kakashi had smiled. “Yes. Like that. Do it again.”

For the first time, that day, she had broken a sparring post without chakra-armoring her fist first.

Sakura took a breath and let it out. All the way out. And then she nodded to her teacher and walked calmly down the stairs.

Fuunotora smiled at her faintly as they took their places on the sand. “It seems we’ve come around to our fight after all.”

Sakura bowed a little, silently, as the examiner called “Begin!”

Fuunotora’s hands flashed through seals and the sand at their feet twisted into a rope, whipping toward Sakura’s knees. The familiar tension of a fight quickened her thoughts, her eyes, her calculations. A chakra rope, she decided as she swapped herself for a stone behind Fuunotora, but taking form from the element around them rather than only Fuunotora’s chakra. Perhaps Fuunotora didn’t have chakra to spend creating a lot of some element either. All right, then. She wove her hands as quickly as she could through the seals for Dragon Burst; perhaps she couldn’t generate enough water to enclose Raisu, but she could make this sand a lot heavier. A layer of water fell over them and the rope singing around toward her slowed considerably; enough to dodge easily. Fuunotora dropped the technique and and they were both still for a moment, watching each other measuringly.

This time it was Sakura who attacked, feeding enough chakra to her feet to speed and steady her as she lunged in, kunai poised to slash. Fuunotora sprang over the line of her attack and tossed a seal onto the ground. The sand flashed startlingly hot under Sakura’s feet and steam hissed up all around them, turning Fuunotora into a shadow as she landed again.

Sakura didn’t often indulge in appreciating an opponent’s skill; in fact, she’d previously considered doing so a symptom of testosterone poisoning. But now she found herself grinning as her thoughts flashed faster and her hands came together in the Ram. Fuunotora fought with her brains, and that Sakura could appreciate.

Her sense of chakra bloomed outward, brushing against a sleek, poised coolness sliding up behind her shoulder, just slow enough to leave the mist undisturbed. Sakura dove for the sand, catching back a hiss at the lingering heat against her palm as she scythed a leg toward Fuunotora’s shins. Her shoe brushed fabric as Fuunotora dodged, and then she was twisting hard to evade the pattern of kunai coming toward her. Speed, her mind noted calmly, was almost equal, slightly in Fuunotora’s favor.

By the time they both regained their stances, the mist was fading, sucked away by the thirsty air and sand. They stilled, watching each other again, calculating, and Sakura felt a thrill of exhilaration as their hands came together in perfect unison, seal on seal, shaping illusion. She almost laughed as they completed it together, even though she knew her opponent was not, now, where Sakura’s eyes said she was.

The reverse was also true, after all. It would be a battle of skill against skill, to see who could control her chakra most finely, shape the illusion most unpredictably. “Right!” Sakura said, eyes gleaming, and was answered by a tiny smile from Fuunotora.

They stalked each other through the rough stone columns and sand, attack after attack, kunai and seal tags and delicate ninjutsu traps of quicksand or concentrated light, each trying to bracket where the other really was. Sakura’s breath was coming quick and her skin was tingling with awareness. She shaped a gust of wind to discharge towards her, and yes! there was a break, a swirl of air that nothing she could see should have caused, there, her opponent was there!

Her spear-hand met only emptiness, though, and understanding hit her mind like a hammer—it had been a counter-trap. She twisted, grabbing a shuriken since she was out of kunai, trying to regain her stance, trying to turn and meet what had to be coming…

Hands found her shoulders and blackness swept over her.

She came up out of the black slowly, muscles gradually feeling less leaden and more like they belonged to her, enough so, eventually, for her to lift a hand and rub her eyes open.

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto practically pounced on her. “You’re awake, are you okay?”

Sakura propped herself up on an elbow; she was lying on one of the benches at the rear of the balcony, with Naruto’s jacket folded under her head. “Yeah,” she mumbled. “Think so.” She sat up a little gingerly, but everything still seemed attached and working.

And Fuunotora was standing at the foot of the bench, with a fresh bandage across her shoulder.

“You came very close to winning that one; you’re fast and strong, as well as smart. You’ll be very good, if you keep going,” she said, dark eyes level. Sakura snorted, hearing the question buried in that cool statement. Considering how many kunoichi retired once they had kids, she supposed the question wasn’t entirely unjustified. Still.

“Of course I’m going to keep going. This is my work.” She smiled a bit wryly and waved a hand at Naruto, and Sasuke who was lurking behind him. “And this is my team, and I’m not leaving them.” Naruto beamed, and Sasuke looked away only to glance back at her, hidden and sidelong, and she sat back, satisfied.

Fuunotora was smiling too, faint and pleased. “Good.”

Okay, maybe the boys had a point about appreciating a good opponent.

“So did I miss any matches?” Sakura asked Naruto, as Fuunotora moved off to rejoin her own team at the balcony rail.

“You missed Neji and Lee, because that went kind of fast. Lee said that his honor demanded he fight Neji with everything he had, and he started opening up that Eight Gates move of his, and Neji got really pissed off at him and shut down his whole chakra system, one, two, three!” Naruto paused, thoughtfully. “Or one through sixty-four, I guess, since he had to hit all the chakra release points. And then he bawled Lee out for being an idiot and never thinking ahead, and said he should have used his taijutsu to break Neji’s footing, and they were going to train until Lee got it right if it killed him. And then Gai-sensei got all weepy about his students’ passionate teamwork, and he and Lee started coming up with how many times they were going to run around Suna backward, and Neji walked off in a huff.”

Sakura could totally see why and decided, not for the first time, that Kakashi wasn’t actually the most infuriating teacher they might have gotten.

“So now we’re just waiting on the last match to be announced,” Naruto finished, cheerfully.

Sakura nodded, but there was something nagging at the back of her mind. Tenten had fought the Sand genin with the taijutsu in the first match of round two. Then it had been her and Fuunotora. Then, apparently, Lee and Neji. That only left…

“Next match!” the examiner called. “Uzumaki Naruto versus Uchiha Sasuke!”

Sakura’s breath stopped as Naruto and Sasuke nodded, unsurprised, and made for the stairs. Memory fell on her like a collapsing wall, her horror and hideous feeling of helplessness as her teammates launched killing techniques at each other and didn’t even hear her when she tried to stop them. The smooth stone balcony under her feet was the hospital roof, the tension of the exam’s final part was the fear in the wake of the invasion and discovery of Uchiha Itachi in their very village. She stumbled to her feet and up to the rail, clutching it like a life-line.

Naruto and Sasuke walked out into the arena, facing each other, and Sakura’s hands clenched, white knuckled. Not again. Not again. They couldn’t do this again.

Naruto produced two Shadow Clones and held out a hand in what was recognizably the start of Rasengan… and waited.

Sasuke stared for a moment and then actually clapped a hand over his face in what Sakura had no trouble seeing was utter disbelief; Sasuke had always had trouble believing it when Naruto acted like himself yet again. Sakura felt her chest relaxing and her breath starting to even out again.

“You are such an idiot! When you have an advantage you use it, you don’t just stand around waiting!” Sasuke yelled, incensed.

“That wouldn’t do what it needs to do, though,” Naruto argued. “We didn’t do it right, last time. This time we’ll do it right, and it will work.”

“What will work?” Sasuke asked, sounding a little lost though Sakura would bet he was trying to sound exasperated. She’d never been sure if he understood just how transparent that pretense had become, this year.

Naruto waved his arms so that his own clones had to duck, most definitely exasperated. “Last time we fought was all wrong! It was like you thought I was him or something! Of course it didn’t work! But I’m not him, I’m me, and you’re you, and this time we’ll do it right.” He held out his hand again, chin up, giving Sasuke a challenging grin. “Come on. This time it will work.”

Sasuke stood staring at him for a long breath, and Sakura hoped, hand pressed to her lips, that no one else watching knew enough about them to understand what Naruto had just said. How much of his heart he’d just held out to Sasuke, open handed, daring Sasuke to match him. Daring Sasuke to fight him all out, not as enemies, not as a shadow of Itachi, but as friends. Boys, she thought, blinking back the prickle of water in her eyes. Finally Sasuke huffed out half of a laugh and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah, fine.” He set his feet and held down his own hand in the stance for Chidori, and suddenly the arena was ringing with the fierce surge of their chakra.

Chidori and Rasengan met in the middle of the arena and the air tore apart, and for one suspended moment the two concentrations of chakra strained against each other. And then the moment broke and both techniques slipped and careened into the arena walls.

“Are your teammates always this… vigorous?” Fuunotora asked, clutching the rail a little way down as the whole balcony shook.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Sakura admitted, mouth quirked. Down in the arena, Naruto and Sasuke were standing, locked hand to hand still. She thought Sasuke might just have smiled, just a little, before he blew fire right into Naruto’s face. Naruto yelped and rolled over the sand with no sense of control or dignity that Sakura could see, only to come up grinning and produce dozens on dozens of Shadow Clones. Sasuke’s eyes narrowed, and then he was weaving through the Narutos, spinning and sliding aside from each attack like a leaf on the wind, bursting one after another of them. It was a beautiful bit of work, right up until the end when he abandoned elegance and dove on the real Naruto and put him in a head lock. She couldn’t swear to it, but she thought he might have been giving Naruto a noogie when Naruto eeled around and threw Sasuke over his head.

Sakura buried her face in her hands and laughed, helplessly, feeling herself trembling in the wake of relief, of release of the fear she hadn’t realized she’d been holding onto this long and this hard.

“Something very bad happened between them, didn’t it?” Fuunotora asked from beside her, voice neutral.

Sakura took a few breaths to make her voice come out mostly steady. “I guess both Sand and Leaf know how that goes.” And truly, Sasuke’s crazed brooding last year had reminded Sakura more of Gaara than she really wanted to think too hard about. Watching a fellow shinobi lose himself was terrifying, and she’d come out of those mad months with far more sympathy for Temari and Kankurou. For Sand in general, really.

After a moment of silence, Fuunotora said, softer, almost inaudible over the crashes and explosions out in the arena, “I see.”

Out on the sand, Naruto and Sasuke were doing their best to beat each other into pulp, but only in the way she saw them do at least once a week at home. The arena was pitted with craters and littered with kunai and shards of rock by the time they paused, both of them panting for breath.

“Gotta work on that endurance training some more,” Naruto taunted.

Sasuke managed a snort. “And you need to work on that intelligence training some more.” He hauled himself upright and threw a fistful of kunai, which Naruto nimbly ducked, dancing aside from the trailing wires.

“Dragon Fire?” he scoffed. “I can blow that away.” He shaped the Rasengan again, fast and smooth Sakura had to admit, and stood cockily among the wires, waiting.

Sasuke’s mouth quirked just faintly. “Let’s see.”

“Oh boy,” Sakura murmured. She knew that expression.

And, indeed, instead of fire, it was the crackling brightness of lightning that grew in Sasuke’s hand. And for one critical moment, Naruto stood still, surprised.

He’d barely gotten out half of his howl of protest before lightning flashed down the wires and grounded into him with a brilliant flash and smell of scorching.

Too experienced with Naruto to leave anything to chance, Sasuke pounced on him and held a kunai to his throat. “Surrender.”

“Bastard,” Naruto groaned, smoking. “Yeah, yeah, okay fine.”

“He’s still conscious after that?” Fuunotora asked, startled.

“That’s Naruto.” Sakura told her wryly, getting up. “If this were just their own training match, they’d go another round after this.” She hurried to the top of the stairs to meet them as Sasuke hauled Naruto briskly up.

“That was so cheating,” Naruto was arguing.

“We’re ninja, you idiot,” Sasuke told him, disgusted, “there’s no such thing.”

Naruto pouted at him and Sakura rolled her eyes as she helped him over to a seat.

“Actually,” Kakashi-sensei put in, turning a page of his book, “both of you need to work on distance attacks. If you can adapt Rasengan and Chidori, that’s a good start.”

“Huh.” Naruto looked thoughtful. “Wonder if I could throw it…”

“Next match!” the examiner announced. “Hyuuga Neji against Uchiha Sasuke!”

Sasuke looked down at Naruto for a long moment and finally said, “Guess training against your crazy endurance is useful after all.” He turned and stalked back down the stairs, leaving Naruto to make faces at his back.

“Such a jerk,” Naruto muttered, but Sakura could hear the downright affection in the insult.

Facing a Hyuuga, Sasuke fell back on his fire techniques as Neji pursued him around the arena. Sakura sighed a little, resigned to the fact that Sasuke never would think to use small traps to mire an opponent’s feet in this kind of situation; she supposed she was lucky he was remembering to use wires to tangle Neji long enough for some of the flame strikes to get through.

“He’s gonna turn it around,” Naruto said, leaning over the rail beside her, eyes fixed on Sasuke. “You can tell. But how?”

“Heavenly Spin uses a lot of chakra,” Sakura said thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s trying to wear Neji down before he moves?”

“Oh! Yeah, that makes sense.” Naruto grinned fiercely. “Right… about… now!”

Neji sprinted for Sasuke again and this time, after two steps away, Sasuke stopped dead, spun in place down to one knee, and met Neji with one empty hand at guard and a kunai that glowed and crackled.

“Hey!” Sakura sat bolt upright. “I thought he couldn’t use Chidori more than three times in a day, still!” She was going to wring Sasuke’s neck if he wasn’t keeping her up to date on what he could do. Who was the mission strategist, here, after all?

Naruto was snickering. “He only hit me with half strength, you know. I’d have been a lot more fried otherwise.” He leaned his chin on his palms, smiling down at the arena.

Neji was down, tremors radiating from where the kunai had sunk in. “I surrender,” he growled out.

Sasuke thumped down cross legged on the sand, panting. “Good.”

Neji accepted a medic’s help up the stairs as the winner was announced, but then waved him off just as Naruto had. “He jarred my inner coils, but I can handle that just fine on my own given a little time. Good timing,” he added grudgingly to Sasuke, and limped over to his own team.

Sasuke sat heavily, elbows on his knees, head hanging. Naruto seemed not to notice, demanding, “So, what did you do? How did it work?”

Sakura stifled a laugh at Sasuke’s faint groan and took pity on him. “He waited until Neji’s chakra was too depleted to repel the lightning chakra, and used the kunai to channel it into Neji’s chakra system.” Sasuke nodded, and she added, “That was a good improvisation, using the weapon as a channel.”

“Got the idea from the wires,” Sasuke mumbled, eyes closed.

“Next Match! Fuunotora Chie against Matsumura Souji!”

Down in the arena, Fuunotora and the taijutsu specialist were facing off. After several long moments of staring at each other while the spectators started to shift and rustle, Matsumura lifted both his hands. “I forfeit,” he announced in a clear, carrying voice.

“Do you have a reason to offer?” the examiner asked after a startled moment.

“I am familiar with Chie-san’s skills. They are greater than mine. I don’t believe it’s necessary to demonstrate that again.” Matsumura nodded politely to the examiner and turned to make his way back up the stairs.

“In that case, I suppose we’ll continue straight to the final match,” the examiner concluded, brows still raised. “Final match! Fuunotora Chie against Uchiha Sasuke!”

Sakura hissed. “That bastard! He did that on purpose, so Sasuke wouldn’t have a chance to rest!”

“A display of good strategy, in the broader view,” Kakashi-sensei murmured, infuriatingly calm.

Sasuke heaved a deep breath and stood before Sakura could strangle their teacher. “All right.”

“It’ll be a lot like fighting me,” Sakura told him hastily. “Only worse.”

Sasuke’s mouth quirked. “Wish me luck, then.”

“You’re blushing.” Naruto nudged her, as Sasuke went back down the stairs.

“Oh, shut up,” she muttered, hands over her warm cheeks.

This match was drawn out. Sasuke, vaguely sensible for once, waited for Fuunotora to come to him, Sharingan active to pierce any illusion and track her ninjutsu. Fuunotora worked around the edges of his stance, opening little pits under his feet to make him shift, setting wire traps he had to use up attention and strength to undo, dodging his fire techniques and kunai alike. In the end it came down to Fuunotora’s chakra control, as Sakura had been afraid it would. When Sasuke finally sidestepped into one of her little pit traps to avoid her shuriken, Fuunotora snapped it closed again around his foot with an efficient reversal in a single hand seal and sprinted up behind him to slap her hand against his spine. Sasuke slumped unconscious and Fuunotora let him down to the sand.

“That was what she got you with, at the end,” Naruto said. “I, um, kind of freaked out a little when she did it the first time.”

Sakura followed his sidelong glance at a slightly scorched patch of stone and elbowed him gently. “Sap.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know it was just sleep?” he defended himself, indignant. “I mean, the spine! You can do all sorts of bad shit to someone that way!”

“Winner of the tournament! Fuunotora Chie of the Sand!” the examiner announced.

Naruto made a horrible face and Sakura found herself laughing. “It’s a better end than the last exam had,” she told him, inarguably. “Come on. Let’s get Sasuke up here to sleep it off while they decide who passed.”

It’s Just That Any One of Us Is Half Without Another One Is You – Chapter Three

“So why do we only have big exams for chuunin? I mean, the genin exam is just, like, the finals at the academy, and I don’t even know how you get to be jounin, why aren’t those like this too?”

Kakashi thought just a little wistfully of the days when a really brisk pace meant Naruto didn’t have the breath to chatter. These days, even a good, hard run across sand and through canyons wouldn’t do it. “A public exam for genin would be boring for everyone. Except, possibly, the students, and they should be keeping their minds on their work anyway. As for jounin promotions, no sane village would be willing to show those kind of advanced techniques openly. Chuunin is the only level that’s interesting and useful to watch without giving too much away.” He paused and eyed his students, and finally added, “Normal chuunin, anyway.”

“Oh.” A breath of silence and then, “So, Gaara will be there, right? I want to see him again!”

“After the exams, you might be able to see him privately,” Kakashi allowed.

Naruto nearly tripped. “Wait, huh? Why can’t I see him? We’re friends!”

Sakura swung closer for a moment and fetched him a smack on the shoulder without breaking stride. “He’s the Kazekage, now, Naruto, and he’s the host of the exams this season. You don’t want anyone thinking that he favored Leaf, do you?”

Naruto rubbed his shoulder, frowning. “But he does favor us,” he objected. “I mean, we’re allies right?”

Sometimes, Kakashi thought with a hidden smile, Naruto’s simplicity really did see right to the heart. “We are,” he agreed, as Sakura sputtered over how to explain hidden village politics to her teammate. “And that’s exactly why the Kazekage can’t be seen to do anything special for us during the exams. Some of the other villages will already assume he would, and will be looking for signs they can use to discredit Sand. The host must appear to be neutral, just like the examinees must appear not to be cheating on the first part.” As Naruto frowned deeper in puzzlement, he tried, “You don’t want anyone thinking you passed because of favoritism, either, do you?”

If they hadn’t been running, he was sure Naruto would have crossed his arms. “Of course not! I’ll pass all on my own!”

Sasuke, running silent and efficiently beside Naruto, rolled his eyes, but Kakashi saw the corner of his mouth twitch up.

“Well, at least we missed the round held in Hidden Rain,” Sakura put in, diplomatically changing the subject. “Ino said there were people following them around every second they were there. Sand-nin should be a lot nicer to us, I’d think, after the Hokage’s policy of contract-sharing, this year.”

“Don’t relax too much,” Kakashi cautioned them. “Sand is an ally, probably our closest ally right now, but this isn’t home. It will be good training for all of you.” He paused and his mouth quirked behind his mask. “And don’t be surprised if you hear a bit of grumbling over those joint missions.”

“Why?” Sasuke finally spoke up to ask. “It’s bringing money back into their village, isn’t it? And it’s only the contracts coming out of Sand that we share with them, so the other villages shouldn’t have anything to complain about.”

“The grumble you’ll be most likely to hear is about ‘babysitting’,” Kakashi said dryly, leading them up a striated cliff wall before they could get too deep into what he recalled was a dead-end canyon. “Those missions are where the genin of less experience or ability are getting assigned, these days. It’s a good deal for everyone: our genin get some seasoning under Sand chuunin or even jounin, the contract fee is split according to rank so Sand usually gets more of the money, and it takes a little of the pressure off us while we’re short-handed. But the fact is, those contracts still come from Wind citizens and even the Wind government, and there’s some lingering resentment over that.”

After a long, quiet moment, Naruto said, “People can be kind of dumb, you know?”

“A fact of life that any future Kage has to deal with,” Kakashi murmured.

He was actually starting to look forward to seeing whether, and how, Naruto would deal with it.

Naruto crawled through the desert scrub, grinning all over his face. He’d hated the first part of the chuunin exam, last time. A paper test! What kind of ninja needed paper tests? Well, aside from Sakura-chan, because she was just that brilliant. This one, though? This was like being allowed to play the biggest practical joke ever.

He spotted the first target in the distance, standing with her back to a stone formation, and paused to think. This test was like an obstacle course that they each had to get through without being spotted, but at the same time they were supposed to be marking each watcher they saw with a special seal-tag. Like paint-bombs, only not as colorful; too bad, really, paint bombs would have been more fun. They’d all been told that something would happen, after each run, to make it clear how many tags they’d been able to place before they finished or got caught, but no one knew what it was, and he’d just have to leave a bunch of tags stuck on behind him to see. After considering all the angles for a minute, he flipped his hands through the summoning seals, bit his thumb, and set his hand down quietly. Gamakichi puffed into being and looked around brightly. “Hey!”

“Shhh,” Naruto told him, finger pressed to his lips. “We’re sneaking. Here.” He held out the tag, blank side up. “Lick this for me, will you?”

Gamakichi sat back on his hind legs and gave him a skeptical look. “You want me to what?”

“I need to stick it on that ninja over there,” Naruto explained. “And if I use any ninjutsu that close she’ll sense me, I’m not very good at hiding my chakra techniques, and I didn’t think to bring any glue, and I told Sakura-chan not to help with this test and Sasuke wouldn’t have anyway.”

Gamakichi looked between the watcher and Naruto a few times and grinned a toad-grin. “I’ll do it, as long as I get to come along.”

“Deal,” Naruto promised.

Gamakichi spat stickily on the end of the tag and crawled onto Naruto’s shoulder. Naruto eeled along the sand and scrub, freezing every time the watcher stirred. Finally, he was close enough to hold up the tag so the end pressed against her vest as she shifted her weight again. Perfect! He crept back into the shadow of the stones and over a shallow hill before he and Gamakichi slapped triumphant palms and he went in search of his next target.

There were twelve in all, and Naruto tagged nine of them. He couldn’t figure out a way to reach the other three without using genjutsu or ninjutsu, which, honestly, would just get him spotted anyway, and he figured that getting past everyone unseen counted for more than tagging everyone. At least that’s what missions seemed to need, more often. So when he popped up at the end of the course to grin at the judge, he was pretty satisfied. And it was someone he knew, too! “Temari-san, hi!”

“Ah, it’s you.” She looked him up and down, mouth quirked. “Not bad. I didn’t think you’d be any good at sneaking.”

Naruto drew himself up, indignant. “I am really good at sneaking! At least when I don’t have to use chakra,” he added.

She snorted. “Well, let’s see how you did on the other part, then.”

Gamakichi and Naruto watched with interest as she pulled out a paper tag bigger than the ones he’d used and held two fingers in front of her lips in the initiation seal, whispering a few quick words.

Across the course, nine puffs of smoke rose, virulent blue and pink and orange, followed by some faint cursing.

Naruto stared in delighted disbelief and finally burst into laughter. They’d been paint bombs after all! “That is so cool!”

Temari-san snorted again, tucking away the tag. “You would think so. Honestly,” she shook her head, “my brother likes you way too much. I’m hoping you don’t become Hokage any time soon, or we’ll be screwed at the negotiating table.”

He gave her a wounded look. “I wouldn’t do that, Temari-san.” And then he blinked. “Hey, hey, wait a minute. You mean… the smoke was Gaara’s idea?”

She crossed her arms and gave him an exasperated glare of the kind he was way more used to getting from his own teachers than foreign shinobi. He figured that was a yes. He also felt like his grin might spit his face in two. Gaara was figuring out how to play tricks and have some fun! Temari-san sighed and waved a hand at him.

“Go on, then. Shoo. Find your teammates, all three of you passed, congratulations.” Her lips twitched unwillingly as she looked out at the drifting, multi-colored smoke. “I guess we owe you this much, at least. Gaara is… doing better these days.”

Naruto caught her hand for a moment. “I’m really glad, Temari-san,” he told her. And then, before she could stop starting at him with wide eyes and smack him with that gigantic fan of hers or something, he dashed past her to find Sakura and Sasuke.

One down!

“The second part is a simulation of a nighttime raid,” a tall Sand-nin explained to all the first round survivors. “Your objective is at the center of the test area; you are required to get in, find the scroll that matches the chakra imprint of the one given to your team, and get back to your starting point. The objective will be guarded by chuunin of at least two years seniority. If you encounter other teams, you may ignore them, assist them, or hinder them.”

Sasuke exchanged looks with the other two. Naruto was grinning like the idiot he usually was, and even Sakura looked like she was trying not to laugh. Sasuke snorted and voiced the thought for all of them. “No problem.”

They re-sorted their gear quickly: a handful of Sakura’s concealing seal-tags went into Naruto’s pouches, far more subtle than anything he could do with his own genjutsu; one more of Sasuke’s chakra-sharpened kunai was added to Sakura’s thigh holster, her extra edge in hand-to-hand with any guards; Sasuke slipped a few extra packets of Naruto’s chakra-free chemical experiments, explosives, hallucinogens, and sleeping powder, into his arm wrap. When the examiner at the gate let them in they slipped through, Sasuke on point with his Sharingan activated, Sakura behind his shoulder, Naruto at the rear to guard their flanks. It was comfortable and familiar, and Sasuke felt none of the tension he had during their last exam—only a cool crinkle down his nerves, familiar from this past year of missions.

He didn’t like to admit it, but perhaps sending them to the last exams to fail had been the best thing Kakashi-sensei could have done for them. They wouldn’t be where they were now without the furious determination to overcome that failure to push them forward. It was a familiar motivation for him, especially, worn smooth and hard in the years since the massacre.

The thought flickered through his mind, that Naruto and his idiot insistence, Sakura and her calculated plans, pushed him further than thoughts of Itachi alone ever had. He caught the thought and stuffed it away for later. A mission wasn’t the time to think, not about that.

The test area here was completely unlike the Forest of Death. It was a range of shallow dunes and hills around a craggy plateau. Their target was at the top. It was a good location, defensible, with clear lines of sight even with night falling. Around them, the other teams flickered through the dusk and vanished into the folds of the land—vanished from normal sight, at least. Sasuke watched their paths and led his own team down into a dry wash that wound a little away from the plateau, avoiding the obvious approaches most of the others had chosen.

The impersonal observation he had been trained to while using the Sharingan noted down all the signs that surrounded him, relevant and not, waiting for the clues that would let him sort between the two. Sakura was silent and sure on the patches of sand, a bare breath of chakra whispering about her feet, maybe not even noticeable to him if he hadn’t known her so well. Naruto moved at a crouch on the softer footing, almost as silent, using his hands to steady him; his chakra burned and sang through the night, but somehow it fit in with this bare land the same way it did into a forest of their own country. The night air was growing cold fast, cold like he’d never felt even on their mission north into the Lightning Country. Sakura was starting to shiver.

That needed action. He fought a brief struggle with himself over the obvious answer, but Sakura was part of his team, and they were damn well going to win this year, and there was no one to object any more. He stopped and beckoned her closer. “Watch,” he mouthed silently, not trusting even a whisper in this open land and still air, and held out his hands. As she watched intently, he shaped the seals for Inner Fire and laid one suddenly-warm hand on her bare arm. Her eyes widened in the starlight. She followed his seals slowly, and he only had to correct her once before he saw her chakra settle into a new form and she straightened, shivers subsiding. He nodded and would have turned back to their path except for her hand on his arm in turn. “Thank you,” she mouthed, eyes steady.

He told himself she couldn’t know it was a clan secret and was just glad to be warm. He would be too, if he was that thin. He nodded briskly and looked for Naruto. Naruto slid down from where he’d been standing, still and on guard, a little up the slope from them. He grinned and clapped Sasuke’s shoulder in passing as he fell back into his position. It was in passing, so Sasuke didn’t have to figure out what to do about it, which was a relief right now.

They slipped through the night, quick and steady, avoiding the one team to cross their path—one of the three from Hidden Rain. One of them was actually complaining out loud about the dryness of the air. Sasuke and his teammates looked at each other with mutual disbelief and went around. That lot would probably eliminate themselves without any help.

The steep sides of the plateau were trapped all the way up. The best handholds were mined with contact-explosives and the whole face was seeded with more explosives triggered by chakra. Naruto shrugged when Sasuke finished tallying everything he could see. “Me first, then,” he whispered, and slung his rope coil firmly around his waist. Sasuke and Sakura took cover under some of the dusty brush at the foot and waited.

“Why can’t he act serious more often,” Sasuke muttered, exasperated, as he watched Naruto scramble up the cliff from one precarious hold to another, making it look easy. It was absolutely infuriating to have a competent rival one moment and a loud-mouthed, eye-blinding idiot the next. The problem hadn’t gotten better in the past year, no matter how often he pointed out that a bright orange, attack yelling ninja was just plain not a proper ninja.

"At least we got him to wear decently dark pants lately?" Sakura offered comfortingly, though her eyes danced even in the moonlight.

"The jacket is still orange enough for three," Sasuke grumbled, and he was pretty sure she was stifling a laugh at him. Her chakra looked that way. He was completely right about Naruto’s damn jacket. Sometimes he wondered whether Sakura teasing him was really any better than her mooning over him had been.

The climb up, once Naruto let down the rope, went quickly. The creep past the outer guards went more slowly, but one of the Sand teams had made it ahead of them and gotten overconfident. The scuffle when they were discovered covered Sasuke’s team’s dash to the wall. “Split up to get in, meet in that room,” Sakura mouthed, pointing to one of the windows above them. Sasuke nodded and ghosted down the wall toward a tower while Naruto fished out two of Sakura’s illusion seals. Sasuke climbed, planted some explosive tags on the level where his team would meet and, when they went off, slipped through the window two levels up. The one guard who had stayed at his post was distracted enough for sleep powder to take care of, and when found would concentrate attention on the wrong floor. He came down the far staircase and met the other two in Sakura’s chosen room. Naruto was snickering over the brief chaos down the hall. Sasuke had thought that would probably amuse him. Not that that had been part of his calculations, of course.

Sakura gave both of them an admonishing head shake and nudged Sasuke back on point. The path through to the “treasury room” was almost insultingly easy. Sasuke found himself thinking that this couldn’t possibly be more than a C-rank mission and then had to remind himself that it was supposed to be. The guards on the “treasury” were already knocked out, and inside they came face to face with another Sand team, older than the ones who were caught outside. Sasuke tensed as they whipped around, one huge shuriken and paired knives ready and poised while the third member kept sorting scrolls in an alarmingly disciplined way. Sakura stepped out to the side, giving them all weapons clearance, and showed open hands. “I propose we not interfere with each other,” she said, low. “It would take time and might attract attention if we fought here. We’ll both do better, at this point, to ignore each other for now and start back while the other teams are starting to distract the guards.”

There was a flash of yellow by the dark-haired woman sorting scrolls and she whispered. “Got it.” She stood and cast an assessing eye over them. Sasuke thought she was noticing their lack of any injuries. Finally she nodded to her teammates, who relaxed. “She’s right. No sense maybe getting injured when we already have our objective and are first getting out. Let’s go.” She nodded to Sakura, who waved Sasuke and Naruto to one side with her. Sasuke was just as glad; the sharpness of the woman’s gaze reminded him uncomfortably of Mitarashi, and that was no one he wanted to fight if he didn’t have to.

He’d gone to visit Mitarashi, before they left. He still wasn’t entirely sure why; he certainly didn’t like her personally, she reminded him way too much of Naruto. Only a lot more crazed. He’d lay money down that she’d spent time in ANBU, if she wasn’t in still. He’d just felt like he needed to see her, was all. She, for her part, had insulted his ninjutsu abilities, challenged him to a sparring match, and dragged him along to the dango shop once she’d finished wiping the thirty-seventh practice ground with him. He’d put the whole experience down, in his own mind, as good preparation for this exam and tried not to think about the things she’d yelled at him while fighting, about recognizing a mindfuck when he saw it and getting his head out of his ass. He was doing perfectly fine, and when his team passed handily everyone would know it.

As soon as the other team was out of the room, Sakura pulled out their own scroll and dove for the heap in the middle of the room. “Watch my back.”

It seemed to take longer than three minutes, but Sasuke was familiar with that effect and counted his heartbeats as he and Naruto flanked the door, one looking out and one in just in case any traps activated. Finally there was a flash of red light and Sakura was beside them again with two scrolls in hand. “Let’s go.”

It actually took longer getting out, because the other teams were arriving and the halls were more full of fighting as some were discovered, but they weren’t seen, they didn’t trip any traps, and soon they were back into the cold night air at the bottom of the cliff, looking at each other a little blankly.

“Is it supposed to be that easy?” Naruto wondered.

Sakura laughed softly. “Well, like I’ve said before. We are a really strong team.”

The satisfaction gleaming in her smile was a reflection of Sasuke’s own.

Old Wine

It was over, everything except for collecting the bodies of the attackers. Intellectually, Neji knew that was exactly why Hiroki said it; the wired exhilaration of having survived again did often unhinge people’s tongues.

It didn’t make the silence that spread through the courtyard any less infuriating, when Hiroki joked with another of the younger cousins, “Hey, almost too bad Neji’s so good, huh? He could have moved a little slower and been clan head for real instead of just behind the scenes.”

The weight of the silence spoke of years when that hadn’t been a joke, however tasteless and disrespectful, and the watchful memory of those years among the adults of the clan. Hinata’s mouth was a little tight, but she ordered a courier to be sent to Intelligence, notifying them of the attack and the bodies to be examined, with perfectly level grace. She was going to ignore it.

Neji… couldn’t do that. He very much doubted she’d let him give Hiroki the trouncing he deserved for that, but Neji couldn’t ignore it.

And that was why he spun on his heel and strode across the courtyard to stand eye to eye with her, his clan head, his wife, the cousin he had once tried to kill.

“Neji,” she said softly, reaching out a comforting hand to him.

He sank down to his knees before her and slowly bowed until he could spread both hands out flat against the earth. Far enough that his hair, ends still stiff with the blood of their enemies, brushed the ground at her feet. Little hisses of shock snaked around the courtyard. It was not the bow of a modern shinobi, even one of a noble clan. This was the way one claimant for the clan had surrendered to another, in the days before the seal, when cousin had fought cousin and sister had fought brother to lead the Hyuuga. It was a gesture not used for generations, and then only for the loser of a succession fight to publicly acknowledge his defeat and submission to the victor.

“Neji,” Hinata protested. “Stand up. There’s no need for something like that!”

“It seems necessary for some,” he answered quietly.

“You’re my consort, not my opponent,” she said more sharply. “You have not defied me. I won’t have you bowing to me like that.”

Neji kept his hands spread out and still under her eyes, kept his own eyes on the ground. “There was a time when I did,” he pointed out.

He could hear her inhale and imagined the flash of will in her eyes that most likely accompanied it. “Very well, then,” she said, soft but clear in the absolute silence of the courtyard. “You were given a command by your clan head. Do you intend to disobey it? Stand up.”

Neji bowed his head lower for a moment and murmured, “Yes, Hinata-sama,” before he rose to stand before her. As he’d rather expected, there was a glint in her eyes that promised trouble for whoever got in the way of her sense of right. It was one of the things he loved her for, even if he did sometimes think it made her too stubborn about realizing what the clan would and would not accept or understand. He gave her a tiny, hidden smile, a reminder; he would protect her, always and from anything, and that included disrespect within their clan. Of course. The glint eased into exasperation. “Honestly,” she breathed, just between the two of them, and touched his hand softly.

Neji regretted her irritation, but when he cast a glance around the courtyard there was no doubt to be seen, no careful neutrality. A little shock in places, especially among Hiroki and his friends who were, perhaps, young and foolish enough to be surprised that Hinata truly ruled him. But there was no doubt. He turned to take his place at Hinata’s shoulder, calm and blank-faced. The point had been made. The submission that, by all rights, she should have demanded of him years ago had been given, and witnessed by the clan.

Neji watched as the Hyuuga put their compound back to rights and smiled faintly with satisfaction.

End

It’s Just That Any One of Us Is Half Without Another One Is You – Chapter Two

To: The Fifth
From: Kakashi
Re: Bandits

There weren’t twenty of them; there were thirty. Fortunately, only sixteen of those were actually missing-nin. Unfortunately, three of the sixteen were jounin. Will be late getting home due to Naruto’s broken leg, Sasuke’s broken arm and ribs, Sakura’s bruised kidneys and blood loss. Please have a medic and a new mission on hand. The only team-building they can do in the hopsital is pranks, and then Shizune will try to poison me again.

Journey breaks, these days, meant a chance to train more. Going out on their third mission in two months certainly drove home the urgency of their village’s need for shinobi who were as strong as they could be, so Sakura didn’t grudge it. Not that that seemed to be the consideration that drove the boys the hardest, of course.

“Show me that Rasengan some more. I want to watch it with the Sharingan and see how it works.”

“Only if you show me how Chidori works.”

“Not that you’ll be able to do it, but fine.”

Boys, Sakura thought in disgust, and tried to pretend that she wasn’t just as interested in both techniques as they were. Kakashi-sensei had known what he was doing, teaching Sasuke Chidori, she decided, watching. It was a technique that required focus, something to cut and pierce at close range, tightly aimed. It was Sasuke all over.

She could see ways to use that.

She leaned back against her battered green pack, taking small sips from her water bottle. That was the kind of thought she would have tried to avoid a year ago. It still felt strange, to look at her teammates and see tactics instead of romantic candle-glow, or, in Naruto’s case, a haze of furious red. But Kakashi-sensei said that kind of thinking was her strength and she should use it, build on it. He kept asking her to think of things that brought that way of seeing out. Part of her preened over being recognized as the brains of this team.

Part of her sulked that she wasn’t being recognized as a strong arm, for the team.

She sighed and rolled over, tucking under her pack with a practiced curl for shelter from the rain of splinters as Chidori tore apart a tree. She was becoming a good shinobi; surely that was enough to satisfy anyone.

She rolled back up and watched again as Naruto prepared for the Rasengan.

Five minutes and another couple trees later, she was staring at Naruto thoughtfully, absently twisting the cap of her water bottle in her fingers. “It’s not that you’re good at this,” she said, thinking out loud. “It’s that you figure out ways to use the couple tools you’ve got, like the kage-bunshin, to do anything you need to.”

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto protested. “I am so good at this!”

“No, she’s got a point,” Kakashi-sensei murmured from under his tree and behind his book. “The only reason the multiple shadow clone technique doesn’t kill you is your chakra reserves. You took that fluke and made it work for you, though, even to mastery of an A-rank technique.”

Sakura nodded. “That’s what I meant. You… you don’t see any limits on how you use what you’ve got.” And she could use that, too. Naruto would never think there wasn’t a way to do something; he’d always find one, just like Sasuke would never move off a target. And Sakura herself… well, she might as well admit it, she would always want to direct, and maybe, just maybe, she could now. That was a really nice thought. Sakura smiled at both the boys, suddenly excited in a new way that had nothing to do with either romance or anger. “We’re going to be a really strong team.”

Kakashi-sensei winked at her from behind his book.

To: The Fifth
From: Kakashi
Re: I have a bad feeling about this

I think someone is tracking us. I’ve sensed what I’m fairly certain is the same presence on two separate missions, now. Send someone to shadow us on the way in.

Naruto hadn’t known what Kakashi-sensei meant when he’d grumbled about “government work” at the start of this job. He was starting to get it now, though. They were up in the Lightning Country, and they’d snuck past the border, which had actually been a lot of fun, and they were perched outside the fortress of the merchant lord they’d come to sink. The guy had an army of his very own, which wouldn’t have been all that much of a problem since none of them were shinobi, but there were Cloud-nin mixed in there with them. Real Cloud-nin, not renegades or deserters! And Sakura-chan said that meant that all the bad things this merchant’s shipping did to Fire shipping, like piracy and sinking and ships that just disappeared, was really done by the Lightning government, and so they absolutely couldn’t let any of those Cloud-nin know it was them, Leaf-nin, who had come to destroy the guy’s fleet.

That was the part Naruto didn’t really understand. Wouldn’t it be better to know that the Leaf wasn’t going to stand for that? Sasuke rolled his eyes when Naruto said that, but that was just Sasuke being his natural jerk self and it didn’t mean anything. Naruto was actually a little glad to see it. Sasuke was a lot more himself now they were out on missions again, all about training and getting stronger. That was the kind of thing Naruto understood, that was the kind of attitude he could get behind, because it meant they could all train together, and sometimes he could show Sasuke up, which made it a lot easier to take the times Sasuke showed him up. Though he wasn’t completely sure Sasuke understood about that, and sometimes he got all brooding and shit, and then Naruto had to do Sexy no Jutsu at him to make him stop, and nearly getting a Chidori shoved up his nose was totally worth the look on Sasuke’s face. But anyway, Sakura-chan said they had to keep it quiet, and he trusted her. She was definitely the smart one, maybe even smarter than Kakashi-sensei, because Sakura-chan was just that awesome.

But keeping it quiet was a lot less fun, and a lot more trouble.

“We need to destroy a minimum of three quarters of his ships, and definitely these five that are armored,” Kakashi-sensei tapped the sketch of the harbor, spread on the shadowy brown floor of the pine grove they were camped in, “without letting the Cloud-nin get a look at us. Thoughts on how to accomplish that?”

“If we take a day to write out explosive seals, we could have enough to do all the ships,” Sakura-chan suggested.

“We’d have to get them all set, a handful to a ship, within a very short time,” Sasuke pointed out. “If any are found, it will start a search for more.”

“Naruto’s multiple Shadow Clone technique might do for that,” Sakura-chan said, but she sounded doubtful, and Naruto pouted.

“I could totally do it,” he said. “There aren’t that many ships.”

“You couldn’t do it and be quiet,” Sasuke declared. “You couldn’t be quiet to save your life.”

“More to the point,” Kakashi-sensei cut in as Naruto scowled, “it’s to save others. If you’re discovered, you’ll have to kill whoever spotted you. There’s no other choice, on this mission. We’ve been active in the field for seven months straight, now, and we have to assume that Cloud has the means to recognize us, even though you’re all technically genin and wouldn’t normally be in the bingo books yet. They might even have shown pictures of the most likely operatives to the regular soldiers. We can’t afford to be recognized.”

After a long pause, Sakura-chan asked, hesitant, “We… have to kill just on the suspicion?”

“Yes,” Kakashi-sensei said, and there was no room at all for argument in that.

Naruto swallowed hard. Maybe he hadn’t known what Kakashi-sensei meant when he talked about government work, after all.

“If Cloud knows that Leaf did this, they’ll take it as an excuse to attack openly,” Sasuke reasoned out, cool and detached in the falling dusk. “Killing a handful of sailors or Cloud-nin to keep that from happening actually keeps the most people alive. Especially our people. It only makes sense.”

“There should be a way to do it so we don’t have to kill them either,” Naruto protested. “Can’t we, I don’t know, talk to them or something?”

“Not often.” Kakashi-sensei sighed and sat back against one of the tall, straight pines. “I doubt you got this part of it in history class. Our most recent treaty with Cloud was actually offered as a way to get their field commander inside our village. Under the pretext of negotiations, he tried to kidnap Hyuuga Hinata so they could study the Hyuuga bloodline talent. Her father killed him. So Cloud demanded his head for the ‘offense’, threatening to go back to war if they didn’t get it.”

Naruto’s eyes were huge, and so were Sakura-chan’s. Sasuke was looking down at his knees. “What happened?” Sakura-chan whispered.

Kakashi-sensei’s voice was quiet in the growing dark. “The clan head’s twin brother offered his life in his twin’s place, since he was marked with the seal that would bind his cells at death and lock them from any medical technique that might pry into the Hyuuga genes. It was done, and his head was sent back to Cloud with the remaining emissaries. They left a binding treaty behind, witnessed by representatives from Rock and Sand, so even when they realized what we’d done they didn’t dare repudiate it. We and they have raided each other since then, in covert operations like this, but we’ve kept any excuse for open war out of their hands.”

“And… we have to keep doing that now.” Sakura-chan’s arms were wrapped around herself, and her jaw was tight. Naruto came to a new resolution right then and there.

“Someday,” he said, firmly, “there’ll be another way to do it. When I’m Hokage, I’ll make it happen.”

“When pigs fly, then,” Sasuke snorted. “You are so naive. And we still need a fast, quiet way to plant the explosive tags.”

“Hey!” Naruto yelled, and then crossed his arms. “I’ll find a way to do anything. That’s my strength, Sakura-chan and Kakashi-sensei both say so.” He preened.

“Just not a quiet way,” Sasuke shot back, all dry and sardonic and stuff. Naruto didn’t used to know what that meant, before he met Sasuke.

“Both of you cut it out,” Sakura-chan ordered, sounding annoyed, but that was okay because Naruto could see she was trying not to smile, and that was a lot better than how she’d looked while Kakashi-sensei was talking. “Okay, look, if we plant the tags on the outsides that should blow good holes in all of them except the five armored ships. So if we do the regular ships first, that’s one armored for each of us and two for Kakashi-sensei, and very little chance of the tags being spotted before we set them off.”

Kakashi-sensei smiled. “Good. Now, how are you going to keep yourselves unseen, while you plant tags in the armored ships?”

“Camouflage fabric for when we need to take cover, but that won’t do for when we’re moving,” Sakura started out.

“We’re on water, what about that light-bending reflection technique Kakashi-sensei picked up in Hot Springs Country two missions back?” Sasuke suggested.

“I bet they wouldn’t notice the tags at all if I went in as a girl,” Naruto put in, grinning, and scored a point to himself when Sasuke actually groaned.

Maybe this could be a little fun after all.

They’re following Sasuke. Coming home through Water Country instead of overland, to keep away from Sound. -K

Sasuke stood with his team in front of the Hokage’s desk and kicked Naruto’s ankle when he fidgeted.

The Fifth steepled her hands and looked at them over her fingers. “This is something that would have to be done before you attempted the exams again, but I’d hoped to take a little more time to study the seal. Unfortunately, we’ve confirmed that you’re being followed, and there’s only one group that’s likely to be behind it.” She looked disgruntled for a moment. “Though we haven’t caught the bastards yet.” She took a breath and laid her hands down flat on her polished desktop, looking Sasuke in the eye. “It’s your choice whether to attempt this procedure now. I must tell you that the other person who’s undergone it so far is… not unscathed. Mitarashi’s chakra still hasn’t recovered completely, and I’ve begun to fear that it’s permanently scarred.”

“Then why did you attempt it on her?” Sakura asked, frowning, and blushed as soon as the words were out of her mouth, adding hastily, “Hokage-sama. I mean, if I may ask.”

Sasuke thought Sakura made a lot more sense when she forgot to be polite.

The Fifth’s mouth tightened and her fingers laced. “Because I made the mistake of telling Anko how close I thought I was to finding a way and she knows how closely Sound is watching our village. She threatened to kill herself to remove a potential security breach if I didn’t attempt it at once.” She passed a hand over her forehead and muttered, “I don’t even have enough shinobi to spare one for medical watch on someone of her skills.”

Considering what he’d seen of Orochimaru, and what he’d heard since, Sasuke thought Mitarashi made plenty of sense, too. There was really only one point that he wanted cleared up. “If I chose to wait, what happens then?”

“We’ll have to take you off your team and keep you in the village until the operation is stable,” the Fifth said, soberly. “It’s the only way to make reasonably sure you aren’t taken.”

“No,” Sasuke said instantly, and then had to pause, taken aback by his own surety. It didn’t change, though, when he prodded at it cautiously, in his mind. Any thought of staying here, of being left behind while Naruto and Sakura went out on more missions… no. Just, no.

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be right,” Naruto agreed, arms crossed. “Sasuke is one of us!”

Sasuke rolled his eyes, easing back into familiar disgust with the simplicity of Naruto’s worldview. This time, though, the idiot had the right answer. How was Sasuke supposed to keep getting stronger without his team to work with, after all? It was only practical to stay with them.

Sakura was chewing her lip. “If it’s still dangerous, though,” she started, and he glared at her. Did she really think he was a coward? She glared back, hands on her hips. “I’m not saying you’re scared or anything like that! I’m saying, what if this damages your chakra? What if it leaves you weaker? If you can prevent that by spending a mission or two on the sidelines, it only makes sense! You have to balance the costs with the gains, honestly.”

Sasuke glanced aside at that. If this were a mission, he admitted grudgingly, he would accept her evaluation. That was her part.

“What are the odds, if you do this procedure now?” Kakashi-sensei asked quietly from where he leaned against the wall of the office.

“I judge there’s an eighty-five percent chance of full removal with no chakra scarring.” The Fifth looked at Sasuke as she said it, not Kakashi. “In another three months, I believe I could increase that to at least ninety-five.”

Naruto looked daunted and Sakura screwed up her mouth. She didn’t immediately say it wasn’t worth it, though. Kakashi-sensei was silent, and Sasuke looked back over his shoulder, curious. His teacher met his eyes, gaze level and waiting.

Sasuke thought about that look and prodded again at his feeling he shouldn’t leave his team. Slowly, he said, “What good is an anchor if I let go of it?”

The corner of Kakashi-sensei’s eye crinkled, the sign of his hidden smile.

“What anchor?” Naruto demanded, bouncing a little on his toes, on the scent of a secret.

“The one you are around my neck,” Sasuke muttered.

“Hey!”

Naruto went to punch him in the shoulder and Sasuke avoided it disdainfully, hooking out an ankle to trip Naruto into a chair as he deserved, except that even idiots could be quick on their feet and Naruto hopped over it. They were just starting to settle in for a proper round of it when Sakura pushed them apart, cheeks a mortified red.

“Stop that, the both of you! Not in front of the Hokage!”

Naruto straightened up looking hangdog. The Hokage in question, on the other hand, looked like she was trying not to laugh. “So.” She paused to clear her throat and managed, more seriously. “What is your decision?”

Sasuke drew a long breath, a little amazed by how easy it felt. “I’ll do it now. I don’t really want to leave this team.”

The Fifth’s eyes softened and he tried not to shuffle or fidget like Naruto would have. “All right,” she said quietly. “I need a week to prepare and clear my schedule. You three are off duty until then.” She nodded to Kakashi, dismissing them.

As they walked out of the administrative building, Naruto said stoutly, “We’ll come with you, when you go in to do this.”

“Not into an operating room, Naruto,” Sakura admonished. “We’ll wait outside, then.”

Part of Sasuke pointed out that there was no need, and it would be a waste of their time. But another part, the part that kept thinking about the number eighty-five and the floating, corrosive rage that came to him whenever he’d activated the seal, was glad they’d be there.

As it turned out, they were in the operating room after all. Sakura wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Tsunade-sama had come banging through the library yesterday afternoon while Sakura was distracting the boys with some fascinating camouflage illusion techniques she’d found. The Hokage’s hair had been half out of its ties, and her eyes had been blazing.

“I have an idea!” she’d declared and thumped a hand down on their table, leaning over them. “Naruto! Do you want to help out with this operation?”

Naruto had looked downright alarmed, and frankly so had Sasuke. “Me? But I don’t know anything about healing!”

“Doesn’t matter. I just need you to supply chakra to me.”

“Oh.” Naruto had settled. “Well, yeah, sure.”

Sasuke had blinked at him. “‘Yeah, sure’?” he’d echoed, disbelieving.

Naruto had looked at him, puzzled. “Well, yeah. The seal is a problem. Tsunade-baba’s gonna get it off you. If she needs some of my chakra to do it without hurting you, what’s the problem? It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

After a moment, Sasuke had looked aside. “Nothing you do makes sense, why should this be any different?” he’d muttered. Sakura had expected Naruto to fire up at the insult, the way he usually did, the way the two of them always bickered and snapped, but instead Naruto had leaned back in his chair, tipping it up on two legs, and just grinned. He’d looked… satisfied.

Tsunade-sama had smiled and ruffled Naruto’s hair. “Kind of figured you’d say that.” Naruto’s grin had turned downright smug.

“But..!” Sakura had nearly pulled her own hair in frustration. When was she going to get Naruto to actually think about these things before he jumped in?! “Tsunade-sama! Naruto’s chakra flow isn’t smooth enough for any medical application, and how can he possibly learn that fast enough?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tsunade-sama had waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll take care of it with seals. Here, look at this.” She’d pulled a sheaf of paper out of her obi and spread it out on the table. “See? The Three Gates gathering seal linked to the Dragon at Dawn seal will smooth any spikes out, and if the whole thing is buffered through the Summer Rain chakra dispersal seal the level should be constant.”

Sakura had traced the complex figures with a fingertip, starting to understand; it was a brilliant piece of work. “But Tsunade-sama,” she’d finally said, with what she later recognized was unfortunate innocence in anyone dealing with Tsunade of the Leaf, “these seals have to be held externally. In fact, if I’m reading this right, it’s the chakra control of the person holding them that will make it all work, and they’ll have to be familiar with the chakra of the person sourcing. And Kakashi-sensei left on that short-term solo job with a caravan to Grass…”

Tsunade had smiled down at her like a cat with a plump tuna of its very own. “That, Sakura-chan, is where you come in.”

And so here she was, kneeling outside circles on circles of figures, hands folded in the Rat seal, breathing slow and steady to help give her a rhythm she could smooth the wild riptide of Naruto’s chakra into. She’d been right; the seals were a brilliant piece of work and she’d never have been able to do this without their structure. As a scholar, she was lost in admiration and a little envy.

As the person having to breathe steady while one of her teammates lay barely more than arm’s reach away and screamed, and another of her teammates sat in the circles of seals biting his lip until it bled and digging his fingers into the floor, she was only trying her damnedest not to break.

“Cauterize!” Tsunade snapped at last, visibly glowing hands still pressed hard to Sasuke’s back over the Gate of Limit and the Gate of View, and Shizune—her only assistant, and they really were that short-handed weren’t they, and why was she thinking about that at a time like this—stepped forward and traced layer on layer of medical seals over Sasuke’s shoulder, fast and grim. Sasuke’s screams finally subsided into hoarse, senseless, gasping. Tsunade was chanting under her breath, presumably to Sasuke, “Down… that’s right, bring it down… no need to go bleeding your goddamn chakra all over the landscape you stubborn bastard, bring it down…”

Tsunade-sama certainly had an unusual bedside manner, Sakura thought very distantly and almost giggled. Stress, she told herself, and pressed her hands together tighter.

“Done,” Shizune declared, running light fingers over each major chakra release point in turn. “Okay, it’s steady. Head is good. Hands are good. Spine?”

Tsunade breathed out and slowly, warily, lifted her hands. “…good.” She ran down the chakra points herself, nodding, and finally turned to Sakura and Naruto. “All right, we’re done. Naruto, get yourself buttoned up again so Sakura can let the seals go without blowing the whole top floor off the hospital.”

Naruto growled, and Sakura looked up at him, startled, and abruptly alarmed. His eyes… his eyes were strange.

“Naruto!” Tsunade barked. “Sasuke is safe!”

Slowly, the strangeness in Naruto’s eyes went away and the tension in his hands eased; there were actually holes in the tile floor where his fingers had been. Tsunade came and rested a hand on Sakura’s shoulder. “Okay,” she said calmly. “Let it go, easy now.”

As the pressure of Naruto’s chakra ebbed out of the channels the seals created, Sakura slowly pried her hands apart and eased into the formal release. “Kai,” she whispered, distantly surprised by how rough her voice was. And how she was shaking. Tsunade supported her and said, matter-of-fact. “Good work, both of you. Naruto, I know we pushed it with this, but you need to work on your control. Sakura, for you it’s your endurance.”

That cool, ruthless, teacherly evaluation actually steadied her. Sakura took a deep breath and said, in a more normal voice, “Yes, Tsunade-sama.”

Tsunade smiled. “Now, come on, and see for yourselves that he’s all right.” She actually laughed as they both scrambled past her to Sasuke’s side. Naruto took his shoulders, looking down at him fierce and intent, and Sakura laid a hand over his heart, letting out a shaky sigh at the feel of a strong, even pulse under her palm.

“We won’t know for sure until he’s recovered enough to work out a little, but all the signs are very good so far,” Tsunade told them.

“The way he was screaming, though…” Naruto muttered, not looking up.

“Orochimaru sank some of his chakra into Sasuke’s,” Tsunade-sama said quietly, coming to stand beside them. “Like fangs. And it mixed a little into Sasuke’s, like poison in the bloodstream, or a parasite. Getting that out was… not easy.” She smiled down at Naruto, and it suddenly came to Sakura that Tsunade-sama looked exhausted too, pale and damp-haired with sweat. “I don’t think even I could have done it and kept his chakra from hemorrhaging without you to supply a transfusion.”

Naruto looked up at that, eyes so wide and defenseless that it made Sakura’s breath catch. Had she really just imagined that feral strangeness? “He’s really going to be okay?” he begged.

Tsunade rested a hand on his head. “I think so.”

Shizune returned with a rolling cot and made to lift Sasuke onto it, but Naruto scooted in and picked Sasuke up himself. “I’ll do it,” he muttered, gruffly.

Sakura scrubbed a fast hand over her eyes, telling herself it was just the stress that was making her react this way, and swallowed the lump out of her throat. “Can we stay with him until he wakes up?” she asked, only a little husky.

“I imagine that would be for the best, yes,” Tsunade agreed, and shooed them after the cot as it rolled out. “Go on. Don’t forget to drink some water and stretch while you wait.”

There was some comforting bustle getting Sasuke settled in a small recovery room, and one of the orderlies brought a pitcher of water and, after a long look at them, a stack of rough white towels. Sakura buried her head in one for a few long breaths.

“You okay, Sakura-chan?” A hesitant hand rested on her shoulder.

Sakura managed a smile for Naruto as she looked up. “Yeah. I’m okay. Just tired out.”

She let him fuss and pour water for her, and watched Sasuke’s chest rise and fall with his breathing, and promised herself that she would never, ever, ever go into medicine as her specialty. Ever. A battlefield would be easier to handle than this. Anything would be easier.

When Sasuke’s eyes finally opened and she saw him coil up, tense as he always was, and then actually relax when he saw them there beside him, she had to let Naruto distract Sasuke while she scrubbed the towel over her face again to wipe away the water in her eyes.

From: Tsunade
To: Kakashi
Re: Naruto

KAKASHI, GET YOUR ASS RIGHT BACK HERE IMMEDIATELY, I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU. WHAT THE HELL WAS SARUTOBI THINKING?!

Tsunade had her hands over her face. “So let me get this straight,” she said through them. “After the attack, after Minato-kun sacrificed himself and his child to ensure the Nine-tails was hosted and sealed again, Sarutobi-sensei decided that no one should air it around that Naruto was Minato and Kushina’s own son. Okay. That’s not all that unusual, in fact the Hokage’s children usually don’t really want that played up. I’m glad someone benefited from the lesson of my own childhood embarrassments. Fine. Great. It’s really fucking stupid that no one ever told Naruto who his parents were, but whatever. But! Then! Then he actually forbids anyone to talk about the Nine-tails or its hosting at all! Which just ensures that none of the next generation understand about the tailed beasts, or knows why their parents are acting like such assholes to this poor kid, or have the chance to decide they’re going to be cool and rebellious by making Naruto out to be a hero like Minato-kun requested as his dying wish! And Naruto didn’t even know what he was until he was told by a traitor two years ago, and even then no one fucking told him what it meant! Have I got all this right?”

She still hadn’t looked up from her hands, which was making Kakashi just a little nervous. “Yes, I think that’s about it,” he agreed, calculating whether it would be faster to leave by the door or the windows if the legendary Tsunade-hime lost her legendary temper.

She slammed her hands down on the desktop, which cracked, and glared at him. “Well that stops right now. I hereby repeal Sarutobi-sensei’s order of silence regarding the Nine-tails. That attack and the results of it are going to be taught in school, Kakashi.”

“I’m sure the curriculum committee will have an interesting time with that,” he murmured, smirking, and added more cautiously, “And what do you want to tell Naruto himself?”

Tsunade opened her mouth furiously, stopped short, and slowly closed it again. “You’re his teacher, Kakashi,” she finally said. “Will it help or hurt, at this point, to know who his parents were?”

It was Kakashi’s turn to be quiet for a while, thinking. “Naruto has made a lot of progress. He has the acknowledgement of his team. He’s made connections with some of the other genin. He’s even made a friend in the new Kazekage. He isn’t as desperate as he was.”

“But?” Tsunade asked softly.

“But,” Kakashi agreed, “most of the village hasn’t changed their minds. A lot of the older shinobi haven’t. I think… I think it might be best to wait until after he passes the chuunin exam. That might be enough acknowledgment that it won’t hurt him as much to know that he’s the son of a hero and even that didn’t stop our people from treating him like trash.”

Tsunade winced. Kakashi felt much the same way, but he continued steadily.

“If he’d known from the start, it might have been a talisman for him; if it had been public, it might even have stopped some of the hate. Or at least muffled it. But to tell everyone this late in the day… it has to be at the right time.”

Tsunade rubbed her forehead. “For someone with children and grandchildren of his own, Sarutobi-sensei could be a real idiot about how to deal with kids,” she muttered.

“I believe that is why Asuma tries to get people to forget his family name, yes. Or one reason at least. And what about the Nine-tails?” Kakashi added.

“We have to actually train him, and train him soon,” Tsunade said, so flatly that Kakashi felt a stir of alarm.

“Tsunade-sama, why, exactly, did you call me back so abruptly?” he asked slowly.

“I drew on Naruto’s chakra while I was operating to remove Orochimaru’s seal from Sasuke.” She crossed her arms, tight. “The fox itself came out just a little, then.”

Kakashi’s fingers bit into the edge of the desk as he surged forward a step. “What?“

“I think it was just bleed-through, as the seal is made to permit. But he changed a little, physically—his eyes and his nails both.” She looked understandably grim. “Kakashi, Naruto had no training or guidance at all, thanks to his mother’s death, and he’s had this thing in him since he was born! And Sarutobi-sensei’s order of silence means he’s never even studied any of the scrolls left by other hosts. I think the fox is starting to resonate with Naruto’s emotions, and when that happens some of its consciousness or nature gets through along with its chakra.”

Kakashi scrubbed his hands through his hair, completely understanding the vehemence of Tsunade’s summons home, now. “We have to train him,” he agreed. “Get him as much teaching as possible, anyway. Maybe Sand has some resources they can lend us. But maybe not until after the exam for this, either.”

Tsunade frowned. “And if his emotions get stirred up during the exam?”

Kakashi snorted. “After what happened when the One-tail’s host went through last year, I really doubt anything Naruto does will stir anyone up much.” He slid his hands into his pockets and crossed his fingers. "Besides, the next exam is hosted in Sand, and they owe us one."

“Mmm. Well, I suppose it was triggered, this time, by his desire to protect his team. That’s a positive sign, I think.” Tsunade spun her chair around and stared out her wide windows, over the colored tiles of the village roofs for a while. “All right,” she said at last. “After the exam, we tell Naruto about his parents and the background of his demon. I’ll get some of the ANBU with their heads on straight to seed the information about his parents through the village, and send out an official notice repealing the Third’s order or silence. We’ll make a big deal about whatever training we find for Naruto, to calm everyone down.” She spun back around to glare at him. “And I’ll personally rip off the nuts of anyone who tries to further alienate the host and guardian of our village’s most powerful defense.”

Kakashi’s smile would have showed his teeth if not for his mask. “As you command, Hokage-sama,” he said, for once without any hint of irony. It was a shame they hadn’t gotten Tsunade back sooner, really.

He just had to get his students through the exam, and they could start setting things a little back to rights.

(Not) Limited by Blood

Look, I never claimed to be in control of the bunnies I get from this fandom.

This takes place when Sasuke et. al. are about 19.

Sasuke stood out on one of the curving verandas that every building in Tanigakure seemed to have and wondered distantly how soon he could get out of here. He pressed his forehead against one of the veranda’s smooth wooden posts and closed his eyes, breathing in the faint, rising cool of the river flowing through the bottom of the valley. He wanted to be gone from this place.

Not because Hidden Valley was a trial to stay in or anything. It was a pleasant village, and if the sloping sides of a deep gorge seemed like a precarious place to build a village, at least the floor and lip of the valley were thick enough with trees to make him feel at home.

Not because the mission was going badly. It was going fine from what he could see. Valley’s council had agreed to relax the border controls between River and Fire countries, to allow larger groups of Leaf shinobi across as long as they presented proper notice of their mission at the border, instead of having to wait for approval from the village. The Master of Valley even seemed a bit charmed by Kakashi, and even her most uptight councilors seemed to approve of Sasuke.

Oh yes. Sasuke knew why the Fifth had sent him along. Over half the council were members of the Yasumori clan, and Yasumori was a clan like Hyuuga, like Uchiha had been—old and dignified. The longer he was here, the more Sasuke found himself falling back into old habits, found formalities coming easily to his lips, found himself reading at a glance the little indications of clan politics, of who was supporting or feuding with whom. It was exactly what Kakashi needed as he dealt with the Yasumori, so here Sasuke was.

And it hurt.

Every time he bowed at just that angle that said he was a son of the senior branch; every time one of the Yasumori unthinkingly cleared the way for him in response; every time he recognized the tiny grimace that said Yasumori Koujirou really wanted to disagree with Yasumori Michiru no matter what their clan head had told them about solidarity in front of outsiders; every time he saw those things and looked by reflex for familiar eyes, eyes like his, and found only the green and hazel of Yasumori, it hurt.

Maybe it would have been better if Naruto or Sakura had been along on this mission. Maybe they would have been able to remind him that he was someone else, now, building a new clan and not the son of an old one. Maybe that would only have made it worse; he didn’t know. All he knew was that he thought he might give his soul to look into eyes like his own tonight, and the last of those in the world were both traitor and dead.

“Sasuke?”

Kakashi’s voice startled him, but he stifled a flinch (because a noble didn’t show his reactions like that) and raised his head. It was starting to get dark and his teacher was a shadow in the cool dimness under the veranda roof. “Is there a meeting?” he asked steadily.

Kakashi’s visible brow quirked just a bit. “No meeting. And it looks like that’s just as well.”

Sasuke flushed. He should be concealing his hurt better than that. “I’ll be fine,” he insisted. “It’s just…” He bit off the explanation.

“Hm.” Kakashi came to lean silently on the veranda rail beside him, looking down over the curved roofs below them, fading away into the gorge as dusk fell. Only a few lamps had come on, yet, to re-trace the outlines of the village. It was quiet here where the guest houses stood, and the soft rush of the river below blended with the murmur of people a handful of steep, wooden streets away. “It’s just what?” Kakashi asked, just as Sasuke was relaxing again.

“Familiar.” It slipped out without thought, and Sasuke gave his teacher a quick glower for getting that out of him.

“I did wonder about that,” Kakashi murmured, not minding the glare at all which was just typical. “Unfortunately, I was the only jounin free to send on this one and you were the only noble of a senior branch free to come. At least the only one I could trust to tell me all I need to know.”

That confidence in him warmed and hurt, both. “I’ll be fine,” Sasuke repeated, with determination if not quite as much surety as he’d have liked.

“Hmmm.”

Sasuke stiffened at first, but the sound wasn’t doubtful; just thoughtful. Of course, that wasn’t any less alarming for anyone who knew Hatake Kakashi.

Even knowing that, though, he wasn’t prepared for Kakashi to straighten and casually push up his forehead protector, looking down at Sasuke with his Sharingan uncovered. After days on end of furiously suppressing his desire for his own clan, the reminder that there was another Leaf shinobi with Uchiha eyes hit Sasuke like a fist in the gut and stopped his breath just as surely.

“I wondered,” Kakashi repeated quietly, and lifted a hand to rest on Sasuke’s shoulder, warm and sure, just holding him.

Sasuke caught his breath again in a deep gasp, and a confusion of words and thoughts tumbled up to his lips. “Sensei… I mean, senpai… I… Kakashi-san…” In his heart it was none of those, but he didn’t dare say it. It would be too much.

Kakashi’s hand tightened, strong and reassuring, and the tangle of want in Sasuke was joined by a simpler, more familiar heat that made his breath hitch a little. He swayed forward before he caught himself, uncertain. He thought Kakashi smiled just a little behind his mask, and a thumb stroked up and down his neck gently.

“It’s all right,” Kakashi told him, soft as the deepening dusk. “You’re my team here, Sasuke; you know I’ll take care of you.” And then Sasuke just had to stand and stare, because he hooked a finger over the edge of his mask and slid it down.

When they’d all been younger, his team had schemed wildly to get a glimpse of their teacher’s face. As they’d gotten older, Sasuke had come to understand there was no great mystery, only an entrenched habit of concealment; and he could understand that perfectly well, and had stopped trying to get past it. And now here it was, set aside for him just as easily as this. It was the simplicity of it that let the heart-deep words slip out as Sasuke leaned closer, hands coming up to Kakashi’s chest, the way he would have called any of the older cousins.

“Kakashi-niisan.”

His teacher smiled, a startlingly clear curve of firm lips. “Yes.” He tipped Sasuke’s chin up and kissed him, slow and easy, watching him with that half-lidded red eye, and Sasuke’s heart turned over and sped up. There were things he’d never had the chance to learn but had still heard about; things about how the sight of the Sharingan could be used in bed. The way Kakashi’s tongue stroked over his and swept through his mouth made him wonder if it had all been true, because before long he was clinging to his teacher’s shoulders and panting for breath thanks to that slow, wet slide.

The street lamp outside their guest house came on, casting the fineness of Kakashi’s profile into relief as he finally drew back, making the silver of his hair shine as he tilted his head toward the door. “I think this is better carried on inside, hm?”

Sasuke swallowed and murmured, husky, “Yes, Kakashi-niisan.” He expected Kakashi to turn the lights on when the door closed behind him, but the room stayed fully dark, and Sasuke’s eyes widened as he understood. He took a breath and activated his own Sharingan, and a flash of hope and excitement ran through him as the shapes of the room faded into his sight, dim against the shifting brightness of Kakashi. The thought of having an older clanmate again (kind of; close enough!) to guide and teach him made him shiver—hard enough that, when Kakashi held out his hands, Sasuke stumbled going to meet him. It had been so long.

He was caught and pulled close against the heat of Kakashi’s body, feeling it and seeing it, and when Kakashi’s hand slid down his back to just the right place to support him he knew he was being seen the same way. “Please,” he whispered, and lifted his face to meet Kakashi’s mouth on his.

Their clothes ended up scattered across the room, a vest flung over one chair, Sasuke’s shirt dropped onto the low table, Kakashi’s pants kicked into the corner, and when Sasuke finally got to feel the the sleek heat of Kakashi’s skin against his own he moaned. He could see every shift of response in Kakashi’s chakra as his hands traced over the solid muscle of his teacher’s back and shoulders, and knowing he was just as bare to Kakashi’s eyes, to his Sharingan, was enough all by itself to make him hard.

And it wasn’t all by itself.

Sasuke came up onto his toes, body arching helplessly taut as one strong hand closed between his legs and calloused fingers stroked his cock knowingly. “Kakashi-niisan,” he gasped, wanting, almost pleading, and Kakashi’s fingers tightened as he caught Sasuke’s mouth in another kiss, deep and hard. Sasuke lost it all in a second, coming with a strangled groan as heat wrung him out fiercely, over and over, until he was leaning against Kakashi and gasping for breath. “Wha…”

“Mm. Now maybe we can take it a little slower,” Kakashi-san murmured against his ear, and Sasuke could hear the smile in his voice, see it in the shift of his chakra. He was sure his hot blush was just as visible, and felt the vibration of his teacher’s chuckle through the broad chest he rested against.

“Yes, Kakashi-niisan,” Sasuke managed, a little embarrassed and a little delighted with the teasing. It felt good, intimate and casual and like clan.

He let Kakashi guide him down to the bed, watching the tight, patient coil of his teacher’s chakra, the focus of it. That focus was in the hands that slid down his body, slow and sure, spreading his thighs until he gasped, kneading the drawn muscles of his stomach until they relaxed into heat, cupping his ass and squeezing just once, hard enough to make him moan. He reached back, for once a little shy next to his teacher’s experience, watching with the clarity of the Sharingan and the dizziness of the heat in him to see what Kakashi liked, what his chakra brightened for. He trailed his hands down Kakashi’s chest to stroke lightly over his cock and was answered by a low sound and swift downward shift of chakra. That gave him an idea, and he licked his lips.

“Kakashi-niisan? Can I…?” He slid his fingers down the length of Kakashi’s cock.

After one still moment, Kakashi’s fingers slid through his hair and tipped his head back for a slow kiss. “Yes,” Kakashi murmured into his mouth.

Kakashi’s hand slid through his hair as he settled between Kakashi’s legs, and Sasuke leaned into his fingers. That made the coiled lines of Kakashi’s chakra ease before Sasuke even touched him, and fresh heat curled through Sasuke. If his teacher wanted to guide him in this, too…

“Kakashi-niisan.” He rested his cheek against Kakashi’s thigh, looking up at him. “Will you show me?”

“Show you?” Long fingers stroked lightly through his hair again, and Kakashi’s voice sounded perfectly casual, but his chakra was still flowing in tight, poised lines.

“How to do this for you.”

For one instant, Kakashi’s chakra coiled even tighter, as if he hadn’t expected Sasuke to see what he wanted. But then it relaxed all at once, spread out into the soft edges of acceptance. The flicker in it matched the flash of wry amusement in Kakashi’s voice. “Yes. I think that will do. For both of us.”

Kakashi’s hand slid down to cup Sasuke’s cheek and guide him down, and the heat in Sasuke’s stomach turned heavier. He opened his mouth and slid his lips down Kakashi’s cock, and moaned as Kakashi’s other hand wove into his hair. This was good. He gave himself up to the signs of Kakashi’s hand against his head, of the long fingers wrapped around his jaw, of the flow and flare of Kakashi’s chakra, moving as he was shown until the thickness of Kakashi’s cock was sliding in and out of his mouth, over his tongue, slow and steady.

And Kakashi was careful with him. Didn’t press him down too far. Kept his hands gentle, even as his breath was coming faster and deeper and his chakra was falling and brightening. It was good, good to feel that, good to trust it, good to watch that sharp, red eye on him in the darkness and know he was being seen by kin, by clan.

(Close enough!)

And then Kakashi’s hand was sliding under his chin, lifting his head. “Enough,” his teacher said, husky. “Come here.”

Sasuke slid back up Kakashi’s body and was caught tight against him, kissed hard as he wrapped his arms around Kakashi’s solid shoulders. The room spun as Kakashi turned them, laid him down, but that was all right because Kakashi’s chakra was steady, a stable anchor like Kakashi’s weight over him. The rush of heat as strong hands slid down his thighs and caught his knees to spread him wide open, so wide, drowned his thoughts and he moaned openly, pinned down under Kakashi’s gaze.

“Mmm.” It was a satisfied sound. “I thought this might do for both of us, yes.” Kakashi’s smile was clear. “Well, since my hands are busy, why don’t you get me ready, Sasuke?” he teased. “I think your vest is by the bed.”

Sasuke flailed wordlessly for his vest and fished in the inner pockets. Knife oil, muscle salve, no, ah there it was. He slicked his fingers with gel and reached down to slide them over Kakashi, completely unable to help the soft moan when he thought about the cock in his hands sliding inside him.

Knowing Kakashi, that was probably the idea.

And his breath cut short again as Kakashi’s eye on him sharpened. “Now,” Kakashi told him softly, and Sasuke grabbed for his arms, fingers closing tight as Kakashi’s cock pressed against him, into him. Slowly. Very slowly.

“It’s all right, Sasuke,” Kakashi murmured to him as he gasped. “I see you. I’ve got you.”

Shudders were running through him under Kakashi’s hands. The stretch of it was hard, just on the edge of too hard but never past it, because Kakashi was seeing him, every flicker of response in his body and chakra, and that had Sasuke making little moans of want, low in his throat. The thick slide opening him just kept going; as soon as Kakashi was all the way in he was drawing back again, smooth and slow, never pausing, fucking Sasuke so steadily that he was half out of his mind with the rush of sensation.

And it just kept going.

His throat was dry with panting for breath he never caught, and his legs were trembling in Kakashi’s hold, and it took him forever to even think to free one hand from their frantic grip on Kakashi’s shoulders and reach down to fist around his own cock. Kakashi made a husky sound at that, and thrust into him harder, and Sasuke’s stroke tightened at the rush of heat. “Kakashi-niisan,” he whispered, pleading.

“Look at me, Sasuke,” Kakashi ordered, velvety in the darkness, and Sasuke looked up to meet the intent eyes above him, caught by that familiar red, focusing his own gaze on it.

And it changed, spinning into the scythe wheel of Kakashi’s Mangekyou Sharingan, the deepest power of their clan.

Response slammed through Sasuke like a wave crashing up the shore and he groaned as fire flashed down every nerve and wrung him fiercely until he was breathless, senseless, aware of nothing but heat and the eye that locked his gaze. His body was wringing down so hard he was barely aware of Kakashi driving into him deep and fast, but he saw the answering brightness flash through Kakashi’s chakra, spilling through like a waterfall. Pleasure sang through him until he thought he might break before it peaked and dimmed slowly with the ebb of their chakra.

They were both still for a long moment before Kakashi gently eased Sasuke’s legs down to the bed again and stretched out, drawing him close. Sasuke lay quietly against him, feeling completely limp and more at peace than he’d been since they took this mission.

“It’s true, you know.”

Sasuke made an inquiring sound, and Kakashi’s hand came up to cradle his head against Kakashi’s shoulder, careful and tender.

“For the sake of Obito’s gift to me, I was affiliated with the Uchiha. There was no other lawful way to respect his wishes. I never claimed anything of the clan, but the fact remains.” His thumb rubbed slowly up and down the tendons of Sasuke’s neck as Sasuke stiffened, mind blank. “You know who your family is now, Sasuke. But if you need clan, too… remember it’s here.”

Sasuke wrapped his arms tight around Kakashi’s chest and whispered against his shoulder, “All right.”

It was a shock. And yet it wasn’t. He’d never suspected it was official, but Kakashi was his teacher, the one he went to when he’d found something new in the clan records, the one who understood what the Sharingan saw and did. The one who had held him and seen him tonight, the way one of his clan would have if there had been time. Sasuke let his breath out and edged closer on the bed.

Kakashi relaxed too, and his lips brushed over Sasuke’s forehead, and Sasuke settled into his teacher’s arms as easily as he would into any of his kin’s.

End

It’s Just That Any One of Us Is Half Without Another One Is You – Chapter One

A number of things in the second part of Naruto never made sense to me. Itachi’s sudden retconning into a good guy, despite the stunning and villain-consistent cruelty of his previous treatment of Sasuke was the biggest one. The abrupt shift of the story from a classic shounen bildungsroman focused on team-building to convoluted politics involving Naruto’s solitary apotheosis was another. But the thing that just niggled at me was the utterly ham-handed way everyone, and especially Kakashi, handled the aftermath of Sasuke’s confrontation with his brother. So what, I wondered, what if Kakashi had shown the common sense god gave a small chicken, had shown any of his normal perceptiveness, in handling Sasuke after Sasuke’s set-to with Naruto on the hospital roof? What if Sasuke hadn’t left after all? What would it make of the characters, if they stayed a team for longer? And what if the story remained one about a human’s need for others? This is my answer.

Note on translation: I have translated Iwagakure, the hidden village of Earth Country, as "Hidden Rock" rather than "Hidden Stone", so as to distinguish it from Ishigakure, the hidden village of the unnamed country between Wind and Earth. I have also translated kekkei genkai as "bloodline talent", rather than "bloodline limit", because the grammatical incorrectness of that makes my soul itch and the most meaningful literal translation ([contextual noun] limited to inheritance by blood) does not make a suitable noun phrase in English.

So: We pick up midway in the manga, just after the confrontation on the roof, just after Sasuke has thrown off in a snit. Lights. Camera. Action!

Kakashi eyed the tree where Sasuke had finally dug himself in after vanishing from the hospital roof and stifled a sigh. Every team, he reminded himself, was its own unique experience. It was only his imagination that this year’s Seven was deliberately working to be especially so.

He climbed quietly up on Sasuke from behind, and really the boy needed to break that habit of ignoring his surroundings when he brooded. At least he’d put his back to something solid this time. Kakashi supposed that was progress of sorts. “Hey.”

Silence. Not even a twitch among the dappled, gold leaf shadows.

Kakashi found a branch a quarter turn around the tree, leaned on the trunk, and propped a casual foot against it—the better to propel himself out of the way if Sasuke lost it again and went for Kakashi like he had for Naruto. “You shouldn’t really be out of the hospital yet,” he tried, speaking from his own lingering aches and twinges. Itachi’s Tsukuyomi had lasting after-effects, which, he was guessing, had been a lot of the reason for the fight. “The medics get upset about losing track of a patient.”

More silence. Kakashi mentally checked down the list of approaches that had already failed in the last twenty-four hours, and settled on a blatant appeal to sentiment. Surely there must still be a little of that, after the past year.

“People worry, you know.”

“Then they don’t understand,” Sasuke finally answered, flat.

A flash of familiar exasperation tightened Kakashi’s mouth behind his mask, but he didn’t think an admonition to grow up already would go over very well right now. Not right after Sasuke had faced his brother and been reminded of that bloody night all over again.

Actually… maybe that was the best place to start after all. To show that someone did understand. Now he thought about it, maybe he should have started there a year ago. At the time, he hadn’t known just how much Sasuke himself had seen that night; he should have re-evaluated when he’d found out.

“I was ANBU then, you know. I was on the squad that was sent out to hunt Itachi that night,” he said, staring out through the branches and over the roofs of the nearby apartments, seeing again the blood spattered and pooled relentlessly all the way across a compound that took up a sixth part of the village. “We started from the compound, to see if we could pick up any hints of where he might be going.” And every member of the squad had come back from that mission dead-eyed, cold down to the marrow. Two had turned in their masks that year; Kakashi had been one of them.

“They weren’t your family.”

A finger of cold slid down Kakashi’s spine, because Sasuke’s empty, even tone was a perfect match for the way most of the team had spoken that night, as they sifted bodies and parts of bodies for the track of madness. “No, they weren’t.” He took a breath against the memories, wondering what memories Sasuke was looking into, starting to be afraid that he’d drastically misjudged his own student’s state of mind all this year. But the words reminded him of when it had been his parents, and that suggested another step he could take. Slowly, feeling his way into what this might mean, he said, “There are people in this village who have walked into blood and death like that. There are people who know the pain of betrayal by their own friends, their own team, even their own blood. There are people who fought for nothing but revenge, though not many who lived beyond it. They fought in the Third War.” His voice was soft, now, realizing the truth at the same time he spoke it. “That’s what you’ve seen. What you’ve been in since that night. War.”

Leaves rustled beside him and he looked over to see Sasuke finally looking up at him. And maybe he knew how to answer the blankness in those eyes, now. “There are people in this village who know what that’s like. And who can tell you some of how to survive it.”

“I don’t care if I survive,” Sasuke cut back, low and intent, “as long as I kill Itachi.”

Kakashi looked down at him, thoughtfully, for a long moment. He hadn’t been able to turn Sasuke away from that determination. If he’d understood sooner where Sasuke’s head and heart were, he might not even have tried. If this had been war time and a comrade had said that to him…

“Do you care if you die before you get to him?” he asked, cool. “That’s where you’re headed right now.” In war… in war, he would even have let one of his squad members use a curse seal—just not unawares. Not without understanding exactly what it meant.

“I need more power!” Sasuke flared up. “It’s always going to be a risk, but I need more!”

Kakashi leaned back against the tree, sure of his way now. “There’s always more power to be had, if you look for it.” He snorted as Sasuke stared at him. “Power isn’t the hard part. What you need right now, to keep you alive long enough to strike your target, is an anchor.”

“An anchor? What the hell good is something that holds me back going to do?!”

Kakashi waved a hand, increasingly cheerful as he exasperated his student further. Any emotion was an improvement right now—anything that got Sasuke out of that dead, blood-dripping place in his head. “You’re thinking about it the wrong way. Not an anchor that you have to carry with you in a race. An anchor that can hold you against the current.” He glanced down again, eye as dark and hard as it would be while he laid down mission parameters for one of his squads, and watched Sasuke go still in response. “You don’t need to run toward revenge. Revenge is a rogue river in flood; it will take you to the end, like it or not. What you need is a way to not drown. Something to hang on to so you can pull yourself out when you’re going under and dry off and rest your muscles before you dive in again.” Because Sasuke would dive in again, he could see that now. Better to forge him the anchor and trust his own blind determination to make him use it to keep himself alive.

“You’re talking about the team.” Sasuke eyed him mistrustfully. Not a surprise, that, after his vicious little set-to with Naruto.

Kakashi shrugged. “Maybe. For some people it’s their team. For some it’s their family or a lover. For some it’s the village. For some it’s something as simple as a pet. The thing you fight for, fight to come back to. Without that, you’ll drown and fail your mission.”

Of course, it was his team, for Sasuke. He had nothing else but them. But better to let Sasuke figure that out on his own.

…on the other hand, and considering Sasuke, there was nothing wrong with a little bit of a hint.

“We put people in teams in the first place because no one person can do everything it takes to complete a mission. Everyone has their weaknesses. You need to get out of the current. Naruto needs to stop running off the edge of cliffs. Sakura needs to trust herself to move. But your weakness is also your strength. You focus. Naruto doesn’t quit. And, because she stands still, Sakura sees more than either of you.” He cocked his head at Sasuke. “I said power is always handy if you look around for it. The fastest way to find it isn’t to ignore your weaknesses or even work to overcome them. It’s to use them. And that,” he added quietly, “is also the nature of war.”

Sasuke was staring at him now, eyes slowly widening, focusing again on his one goal; the goal, again, not his stubborn, muddled idea of the means. Kakashi hid a smile to see that. Maybe it wasn’t what would be healthy in a normal child, even a normal ninja child, but nothing in Sasuke’s life was especially normal.

“Survive. Use anything.” Abruptly Sasuke slammed a hand down on the branch under him, with such violence that it broke off and he had to cling to the trunk as it fell. He didn’t seem to notice, hunched like one of Fire Country’s great southern hunting cats against the tree. “That’s why! That’s why he said those things! So I wouldn’t see it, so I wouldn’t see how to win!”

“Who said?” Kakashi asked casually, hands poised to lock a knock-out seal around Sasuke if it turned out to be necessary.

“Itachi,” Sasuke hissed. “Live, he said. ‘Cling to your wretched life,’ he said.”

Kakashi took a slow breath, in and out through his nose, and knew anyone watching him right now would see exactly how angry he was, even with just one eye to judge from. So much for the imperturbable Hatake Kakashi. Of course, it was always his teams that had been able to get to him, too. “To make you ashamed of doing what any good shinobi would,” he murmured. “To blunt your edge.” This, though, was his chance to turn Sasuke in a new direction, to make sure he didn’t charge blindly to his own destruction. He leaned abruptly around the turn of the tree and caught Sasuke’s shoulder in a hard grip, turning the boy to look at him. “Are you going to let him?” he demanded harshly.

Sasuke straightened, and that black gaze burned back at him. “No.”

Kakashi nodded, accepting his student’s determination. “All right, then. Back to the hospital to get you checked, and checked out. And then…” he smiled suddenly, behind his mask. “Then we go and find Sakura.”

Sasuke, who had already started to screw up his face in response to the part about the hospital, blinked. “…Sakura?” He’d probably expected Naruto; Kakashi wondered when those two would admit just how much they defined themselves by each other.

“Of course,” Kakashi said, airly, waving Sasuke after him as he strolled back down the trunk. “I told you, you have a serious case of tunnel vision. You and Naruto are really very alike that way.” He smirked at the faint growl behind him; it was a competitive growl, again, not an infuriated one. “What you need is strategy, and that’s what Sakura is best at.”

“So, what, I learn it from her?” Sasuke hazarded.

“Nope.” Kakashi tilted his head back to look over his shoulder. “You learn to use that tunnel vision of yours, and you learn how to listen to her when she tells you where to aim it.”

Sasuke followed along, frowning to himself. A considerable improvement over homicidal rage toward his teammates, Kakashi congratulated himself. Indeed, he had to work a little not to whistle cheerfully as he strode along, hands in his pockets. If they could just come together again, then next year his team was going to sweep the chuunin exam like a broom. And by then maybe the inkling in the back of his head, about how best to train them all, would have turned into an actual plan. He already had some thoughts about how it all needed to come together.

The only real question he could see was who would try to kill him first: Tsunade for the student he planned to give her, or Sasuke for the tutor Kakashi planned to give him.

As they turned down the dusty street to the hospital, he found himself whistling after all.

Four sets of eyes watched the two go, hidden among the leaves.

“Fuck,” Tayuya spat, disgusted. “There goes our chance.”

“The kid doesn’t have to come willingly,” Sakon murmured. “Orochimaru-sama just said to try that first, to keep it quiet. We’ll keep watching for an opening.”

They faded back into the shadows of the tiled roofs and were gone.

Kakashi and Sasuke stalked each other through the training ground, in and out of the trees, flickering through the shadows. Neither of them used any but physical techniques, for both of them had their Sharingan active. Sasuke had hesitated over that, but Kakashi wasn’t about to let the enemy deprive one of his subordinates of his strongest weapon, and he’d waited calmly until Sasuke gave in to the logic of the exercise and activated his too. The chuunin exam had done his students good, Kakashi observed; he had yet to spot Sakura, who was mission control for this exercise. If she honed this talent for stillness of hers, she would be second to none at infiltration some day.

Of course, he had yet to spot Naruto either, but that was most likely because the note informing the boy of his team’s renewed training was still chasing him around the village while he searched stubbornly for Sasuke.

He also hadn’t seen Tsunade, and he expected to know the minute she got his other note, the one about modifying his currently assigned mission. He hoped Naruto would get here first, so he could start things back on track with his team before he had to explain his logic to his new Hokage.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Naruto dashed out of the edge of the trees and screeched to a halt, looking around a little wildly. “Kakashi-sensei!”

Kakashi signaled a break, tugging his forehead protector down over his eye again, and smiled to himself as Sasuke touched down across the clearing, wary. “There you are. You know, punctuality is very important to a shinobi; you should work on that.” He let the smile show as both Sasuke and Naruto gave him identical looks of disbelief at the utter hypocrisy of Hatake Kakashi lecturing anyone on punctuality. It was important for a team to have common interests to bond over, after all.

The boys caught each other’s eyes and looked away.

Predictably, it was Naruto who offered the first peace overture; Kakashi had only had to teach him once about the value of a team. He jammed his fists into his pockets and looked sidelong at Sasuke. “You done being a jerk yet?” he muttered.

Sasuke stiffened. “I’m not…” He broke off. Whatever self-deception Sasuke sometimes indulged in, Kakashi acknowledged, even he could recognize that magnitude of untruth when it started to come out of his mouth. Sasuke looked down, mouth tight. Finally, softly, he said, “No. Probably not until Itachi is dead.”

At their age, that would have made Kakashi go bang his head against a rock a few times, but Naruto’s face cleared at once. “Well okay. As long as you’re just being a normal jerk.”

Sasuke looked up at that, expression blank for a breath. Slowly, though, the blankness melted into something sardonic and challenging. More edgy than usual, but closer to his normal expression than they’d seen all week. “As long as you’re being a normal idiot.”

They smirked at each other and Kakashi really couldn’t help rolling his eyes.

And in that sliver of distraction, Sakura popped out of her grass-covered dugout, eyes blazing in her dirt-smeared face, and slammed her hand down on a prepared seal. “Now!” she barked.

Sasuke whipped around in pure, unthinking response and drove a kunai toward Kakashi’s diaphragm.

Startled, reacting from a cold start, snapshots of thought flashed through Kakashi’s mind. Sakura had never stopped watching. Sasuke had never de-activated his Sharingan. His elbow was coming down on Sasuke’s forearm with full force, and Sakura’s seal was slowing his responses, and he didn’t know if he could pull it in time—unintended consequences. The kunai kissed his ribs as he twisted. Sasuke wasn’t going to recover his stance in time to deflect the elbow strike.

Naruto’s foot struck his arm, pushing the blow harmlessly aside, and all three of them spun away from each other again.

Kakashi straightened, hand pressed to his ribs; the cut was shallow, but noticeable. “Well, now,” he murmured, and broke into a smile. “That was a bit more like it.”

Sakura actually punched the air with triumph before recalling herself and clasping her hands demurely. She couldn’t erase the grin on her face, though, and Sasuke nodded what might be thanks to her. More hesitantly, he glanced over at Naruto. “Your timing’s getting better,” he offered gruffly.

Naruto had his hands squarely on his hips and was glaring. “And yours is getting worse! What the hell was that?”

“That,” Kakashi intervened lightly, “was your new training regimen. To take advantage of your particular strengths and learn to use even your weaknesses.” He cocked his head at Naruto. “You jumped right in without thinking or asking the first question, just like Sasuke took the opportunity that Sakura saw without caring for the consequences. And that’s why this exercise worked.”

“Huh.” While Naruto worked through that, though, Sakura’s grin had melted into a thoughtful frown.

“Isn’t this a dangerous way to operate, Kakashi-sensei?” she asked, hesitant. “I mean… it will mean we’re all getting even more unbalanced, as shinobi.”

“Shinobi are unbalanced,” Kakashi said quietly. “We teach you all of the basics that we can, but after that you have to start concentrating on what you’re good at. And accepting what you’re bad at. You just have to trust the team you’re in to balance it out.” He ruffled her hair with a wry, hidden smile behind his mask. “That’s what reality is, Sakura. This is how it goes once you’re out of the classroom.”

Her pale eyes were shadowed as she looked up at him. “Oh,” she said very softly. And then she took a breath and straightened her shoulders. “All right, then.”

Sasuke was unquestionably a genius, and Naruto might well be the greatest idiot savant the world had ever seen, but Kakashi thought that, of all his students, Sakura might be the best shinobi in the end.

All four of them looked up as a cloud of birds suddenly rose from the administrative quarter of the village and a wordless yell drifted faintly over the trees. “Ah,” Kakashi said brightly, “that would be my appointment with the Hokage.”

Tsunade, fifth Hokage of Konohagakure, slapped a hand down on the scrap of paper in the middle of her desk, glaring daggers at Kakashi. “Explain,” she growled.

“Team Seven was assigned to me so that I could keep an eye on both Naruto and Sasuke,” Kakashi pointed out. “If I’m to fulfill that mission, already in progress, then I need to keep the team with me.”

Tsunade crossed her arms and sat back, looking skeptical. “You know how shorthanded we are! And, while none of them were advanced to chuunin, they all demonstrated plenty enough power to start taking missions solo.”

“As you said, none of them were advanced.” Kakashi turned a hand palm up. “The final decider in that test is maturity, isn’t it? Do you really want three people of their demonstrated power running around and not learning the maturity to wield it well?” He looked meaningfully out the window of her office, to where the mangled cisterns on top of the hospital were just visible.

Shizune, standing behind Tsunade’s shoulder, grimaced. "Tsunade-sama, perhaps he’s right. At this rate, there will be people thinking Naruto and Sasuke are already out of control."

"Mm." Tsunade laced long, fine fingers under her chin, elbows propped on the padded arms of her chair. “That isn’t a nice thought. But neither is the idea of Cloud or Rock deciding to invade us because we’re suddenly taking fewer contracts and must, therefore, be weakened. And they’d be right,” she added, dourly. “Why the hell did I let that brat talk me into this?”

Hearing the helpless affection under her exasperation, Kakashi had to stifle a grin. Yes, he rather thought she’d agree to his tutoring plans a year from now. She’d yell about it, but she’d agree. “They are quite strong,” he offered. “I can take on A and even some S rank missions, with them as my team.”

She cocked a brow at him. “S rank?”

Kakashi hesitated, but she was, after all, Hokage now. She probably needed to know. “It will be beneficial if they face serious danger together. That’s always been the circumstance under which they come together as a team and support each other. And if they don’t come back to that, if Sasuke and Naruto, especially, don’t remember how to trust each other again, we’re going to lose Sasuke.”

Shizune hissed between her teeth, and she reached out to clasp Tsunade’s shoulder protectively. Tsunade’s entire body had frozen, breath stilling, eyes icy. “He would go to Orochimaru?” she asked, very flat.

“That has become less likely,” Kakashi said, picking his words carefully as he spoke to this, Orochimaru’s old teammate. “Sasuke has some alternatives, now. I believe that he will pursue his course from within the village.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “But unless he can accept Naruto’s and Sakura’s support, he’ll be killed when he finally confronts his brother.”

“Damn Uchiha Itachi to reincarnation as a worm for a hundred lives,” Tsunade muttered. “The village was already weakened by the death of the Uchiha clan, and now this!” She planted her elbows on the desk, fingers driven into her hair, and was silent for three breaths. “All right,” she said, finally, not looking up. “The four of you are going to get the hardest, nastiest missions short of ANBU work, you realize that?”

“I planned for it,” Kakashi agreed calmly. “If you can give me a week to settle them back into training, that will be useful.”

She glared at him some more. “A week he wants! Why don’t you ask me for the peaches of immortality while you’re at it?” She flipped through the mess of binders on her desk, frowning ferociously, until Shizune extracted one quietly and handed it to her. “All right, you can have a week," she snapped, paging through it. "Not more! And then you’ll leave directly for Tajimura, up north.” She pulled out a red folder and tossed it across to him. “They’ve been having serious trouble with bandits, and the local garrison thinks that it’s a band of missing-nin from Cloud and Mist.” She gave him the tight smile of someone justifiably palming off a problem on someone else. “There could be as many as twenty in the band.”

“I’m sure it will be a learning experience,” Kakashi murmured as he read.

“And send both Naruto and Sasuke to me, before you go,” she added. “I want to have a look at their seals. Jiraiya said that Naruto’s had been interfered with, and I’ve got to find a way to undo that curse seal on Sasuke, too.”

Kakashi nodded. “That seal really isn’t a temptation I like put in the way of any genin, especially not one as driven as Sasuke. Not if there’s any choice.”

Her mouth twisted. “That too. But, more urgently I think, Mitarashi Anko plans to kill herself, rather than let hers be activated again.”

A chill stroked down Kakashi’s spine again. War. It might be coming to them again. “I’ll tell them to see you,” he agreed quietly.

“So?” Jiroubou asked. “What did it say?”

Sakon rolled the message strip into a tiny cylinder and breathed fire onto it. "It’s from Kabuto. Orochimaru-sama couldn’t hold out and had to transfer into a new body. It says if the Uchiha brat comes willingly, fine, but if he won’t then look for a time we can take him without getting anyone on our trail." His mouth curled. "I suppose taking an unwilling host is distracting for a while. We should be polite and not lead any of Leaf back to Orochimaru-sama’s doorstep."

"And this is all from Kabuto?" Tayuya asked, suspicious.

"Mm. I think, perhaps, we should go back and confirm our orders, if there isn’t an opening soon."

The four of them looked at each other and nodded. No sense getting killed for it if this was really a scheme of the damn doctor’s. And surely the Uchiha kid wouldn’t be much harder to take, even if they waited a bit.

A Time and a Place

Kakashi watched Iruka making tea with tight, jerky motions, nearly stomping back and forth through his small kitchen. It didn’t look at all serene to him. And Iruka hadn’t even noticed that he had a visitor sitting in his window.

“You need to choose your time and ground better, Iruka. I thought you knew that,” he said, finally.

Iruka spun, tea splashing over his wrist, shuriken suddenly in the other hand. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Kakashi refrained from rolling his eyes. “I’m here to answer your question, because I’m a nice guy.”

“Nice?” Kakashi supposed he’d earned the way Iruka growled that, considering how he’d slapped Iruka down in the meeting not an hour ago. But that was no excuse for not thinking, and he straightened out of his slouch, meeting Iruka’s glare.

“Iruka,” he said quietly. And that was all, but the outrage slowly drained out of Iruka’s expression and he sat down heavily at his kitchen table.

“My apologies, Kakashi-san,” he said to his tea cup, “for disappointing your expectations.”

Not, Kakashi noted wryly, for yelling at him in public, but that wasn’t the part he’d really minded. “So.” He leaned back against the windowsill again. “Now that you’re not being insubordinate and losing control in public, let’s try that again. Do you really think my team isn’t ready for the exams?”

“How can they be?” Iruka demanded, firing right up again, waving the hand not clenching his tea. “It’s barely been a year! They’ve only had a handful of missions! How can they possibly be ready for promotion?!”

“They’re not.” Kakashi’s mouth quirked under his facemask as Iruka stared at him. “They’re not ready for promotion. But they are ready for the exams.”

Iruka stared at him. “You… you, you mean you’re… but…!” Kakashi leaned forward, hands on his knees.

“Iruka. Listen to me. Those three are outstanding, but they also have very serious weaknesses. The only, and I mean only, time I’ve seen them draw together to cover each other the way a team needs to do in the field is when they’re in danger of their lives. That’s also when all of them advance by leaps and bounds you have to see to believe. So. You’re a teacher. You tell me: what should I do to help them progress and become what they can be?”

Iruka looked back at him, torn. “But…” Finally, he whispered, looking down, “But Naruto…”

Kakashi could see the fine tremors running down Iruka’s arms from how tight he was holding his shoulders, and sighed. He’d been pretty sure that was the real problem, yes. As gently as he could he said, “You knew what you were training them for, Iruka. You knew what they would be, once they graduated. Including Naruto.”

Iruka thumped his tea down, sloshing still more over the edge, and buried his face in his hands. “I’m never having children,” he said, low and violent. “Never.”

Kakashi didn’t point out that it was pretty much too late. He slid off the window and came to stand beside Iruka. “Hey.” When Iruka didn’t look up he nudged Iruka’s hands aside, wrapped his hand around Iruka’s chin, and lifted it. “Naruto is finding himself. He’s starting to move forward based on confidence instead of blind, dumb determination. And the three of them can work together; they’ll look out for each other in the exam.” Quieter but firmly, the tone he knew made Iruka respond, “You need to let him walk on his own, now.”

Iruka closed his eyes, stilling under Kakashi’s hand as some of the tension ran out of him. “Yes, Kakashi-san,” he said, husky.

Some people, Kakashi supposed, might feel guilty about using Iruka’s lingering bond to his ex-commander like this. But no shinobi ever would. It was what worked, and it was what his comrade needed. That was all that mattered. “Good.” He slid his hand down to Iruka’s shoulder and gave him a brisk shake. “And that means you’re not going to lose control in the middle of a meeting in front of the Hokage again, are you?”

Iruka flushed red and looked down, finally, it seemed, realizing exactly what he’d done. “No, Kakashi-san.”

“Better.” Kakashi slid one hand up to knead the nape of Iruka’s neck, hard, until he gasped and tipped his head back and finally relaxed. “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Kakashi murmured. “Family tend to do things like that when the kids are involved. Just try not to do it again.”

“Yes, Kakashi-san.” Iruka smiled up at him, just a little wry. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry.” Kakashi let him go with a last squeeze of his shoulder and stepped back. The imp of mischief nipped him and he grinned and let his tone turn just the slightest bit insinuating. “After all, you know how I take care of my teams.” He hopped out the window while Iruka was still sputtering and turning red, chuckling.

That should give Iruka something to distract him from his concern for his little brother. Kakashi did, after all, take good care of his teams.

End

Life Lessons

Umino Iruka loved to teach. He really did. He’d taught at the Academy for years, and with every new class he felt again the wonder of shaping Konoha’s future through his students.

There were also weeks when he needed to remind himself of this strenuously to keep his hands from closing around their skinny, little necks.

“All right, everyone, settle down, Kiba tell Akamaru to let go of Ino’s bag. Today we’re talking about trauma-care within your team.”

“Aw, we’ve done first aid already,” Shikamaru grumbled, not quite under his breath.

“If you graduate and take on field jobs,” Iruka continued, as if he hadn’t heard, “there will come a time when you or one of your teammates will not be in their usual state of mind. You may have been in a fight and almost died. Your teammate may have been captured and tortured. It isn’t unusual to need people you know and trust around you, after something like that.”

“So, what, we’re supposed to pack along a teddy bear?” Kiba muttered and Naruto snickered. Iruka gave them his second-best glare and continued when they shut up.

“Your textbooks list several chakra techniques that may, if you develop the control for them, be used to soothe your teammate until competent medical help is available. We will be practicing those today. There are also three pressure point techniques that are safe for novices. We will practice those tomorrow.” Fortunately, the worst they could do to each other with those was fail; he made a mental note to ask Hinata not to demonstrate any more advanced techniques she might know from her clan’s teaching to her classmates.

“Wait a minute, you mean we have to, like, let someone touch us?” Ino protested with a look of distaste at her deskmate, Chouji. A wave of sniggering and blushing swept the class and Iruka braced himself. This was exactly why he hated this unit.

“That brings us to the third option discussed in this chapter,” he said, commanding himself sternly not to blush; teachers didn’t blush damn it. “There will not be a practical exercise for this option, but your homework for tonight is to write three pages on the possible signs that the third option is called for or appropriate. Some people respond to some kinds of trauma or threat with a need for sexual contact. We’ve already discussed, earlier this year, some differences between civilian attitudes toward sex and shinobi attitudes. Among shinobi it is both acceptable and appropriate to offer that contact to your teammates if you are able and willing to do so. This chapter covers some ways to determine whether one of your teammates needs that kind of contact.” The dead silence that had struck the room dissolved into squeals and whispers and exclamations. Sasuke, recipient of several rather predatory looks, drew even further in on himself than usual, and Naruto was making gagging faces with Shikamaru. Iruka soldiered grimly on.

“Recognizing the signs is extremely important, because it is equally common for a person to desire non-sexual contact with teammates after experiencing stress or trauma. No one who cannot demonstrate their knowledge of the signs listed in your textbooks will be passed for a field assignment, so pay attention to your reading and take good notes. Now.” He swept them with his very best glare to silence the whispering and giggling. “Everyone open your books to page seventy-two and start copying out the first seal.”

He sat down at his desk while the class settled into their usual restless order, books open, brushes moving.

“Naruto, stop trying to paint Shino’s jacket and work on the seal.”

"Aww…"

Sometimes moving the wrong places, but it looked like the work to fooling around ratio was about seven to three today, which was about as good as it ever got.

Ino passed a note over to Sakura and they both looked back at Sasuke and giggled, pink-cheeked.

Okay, maybe six to four. He sighed to himself. He really hated this unit. And talking about the homework tomorrow was going to be worse.

Iruka didn’t lift his head from his hands when the door to the teacher’s room opened and closed. Uncharacteristic inattention to surroundings, his memory recited, or unresponsiveness, especially if it appears deliberate.

“Iruka? Hey, you okay? What did the little monsters do to you today?” Shizuka’s voice came closer and was punctuated by a papery thump.

“Yeah,” he said, low, “it’s just that time of year again. That unit, you know.”

“Oh shit, I totally lost track of time! That’s this month?” Her steps went to the window and the vertical blinds rattled across them.

Ensure as much privacy as possible without obstructing exit routes. “Yeah.”

Her steps came back and the chair beside him scraped out. “Want to talk about it? Or just go get a drink?”

Offer verbal contact first, along with an alternative form of communication or connection if your teammate is unwilling or unable to speak.

Iruka took in a shaky breath and let it out. “They don’t know. They think it’s funny. Just like when we do the first aid unit, and the ones who have never broken anything laugh over the lesson on improvising splints. And next week we have to cover torture and rape recovery. Why do we try to teach them this so early?” Why did he have to go through this, trying and failing to reach them, year after year?

Shizuka sighed. “Sometimes I wonder too.” She touched his wrist lightly. “You want a hand with this?”

Do not attempt to answer questions. He could nearly see the letters on the page. Initial physical contact should be at a neutral location. (Caution: this may be influenced by your teammate’s specific experience.) He put his head down on his arms and laughed, rough and helpless. “You’d pass the test with flying colors,” he told her, husky. So many wouldn’t, not for real, not until it was real and that would be too late.

“Bad year, huh? Should I stay?” she asked him gently, “Or should I get that slacker Hatake in here for you?”

Your teammate may be unable to ask for contact. Offer several possible courses of action. Iruka bit his lip. After a moment he managed, quietly, “Door two?”

“You got it.” She squeezed his shoulders as she stood. “Just wait a little.” And she was gone. Shizuka was a good shinobi, and a good teacher, Iruka reflected. She cared. That was a hard quality to find sometimes, though he did his best to teach it to his students. It was always during this unit that he despaired of getting through to them. He knew that, he knew it was coming, and his failure hit him like this every year anyway.

“Yo.” A warm hand fell on the back of his neck and Iruka jumped, startled out of his drifting thoughts. “You look like a wreck. Who is it this year?”

Iruka’s muscles locked. Everyone knew; it would be someone. He’d fail some one of his students.

Over his head, Kakashi sighed quietly. “Come here.” He put a hand under Iruka’s arm and levered him up out of his chair, leading him over to the battered couch tucked in the corner for emergency naps. He thumped down onto it and pulled Iruka tight against his side.

And hooked a finger into his facemask, tugging it down.

“Kakashi-san,” Iruka said, rough, looking up at him, a little of the fear in him unwinding, letting him straighten. His old commander had always trusted him, and obviously still did.

“Who is it this year?” Kakashi demanded quietly, dark gaze level.

Iruka swallowed. “Hinata,” he whispered finally. “Hyuuga Hinata. If she’s ever taken I don’t know if there will be enough of her left to make it back. And…” he bit his lip.

Kakashi kneaded the back of his neck with a strong, calloused hand. “And?” he pressed.

“…Sasuke.” Iruka closed his eyes. “I can’t even say that he isn’t broken already. He should be! And all the boys can think is how they want to take him down a notch and all the girls can think is how cute he looks, and…” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Fuck.”

Kakashi smiled at that, startlingly clear without his mask. “Very eloquent.” He caught Iruka’s chin, making Iruka meet his eye. “You can’t do this for them. And that isn’t your fault, or your failure.”

There was no room for argument in his voice and Iruka leaned on that, trying to believe it. “I know,” he said, low, “I just—” he broke off because Kakashi had pressed two fingers to his lips.

“Enough.”

That was an order, and Iruka subsided. Kakashi had been his first commander after Iruka’s jounin-sensei had passed him, and Iruka knew, ruefully, he’d never quite gotten over that. Kakashi knew it, too, and had no qualms about using it. “I think you need some distraction,” Kakashi declared. “So, which will it be: do I get you drunk or do I take you to bed?”

Offer several possible courses of action Iruka’s teacher-memory reminded him, and he had to press his head against Kakashi’s shoulder while he laughed. This wasn’t exactly the textbook approach, but it worked. That was what the field always had to teach his students, and it would be no different for this. “How about both,” he decided.

“Taking shameless advantage,” Kakashi tsked mournfully. It wasn’t as effective when you could see the quirk to his lips. “Your place, then; I’m out of booze.”

“Speaking of taking shameless advantage,” Iruka said dryly, feeling a little more himself.

Kakashi smiled and tugged his facemask back up as he stood. “Have to keep my reputation up. Come on.”

Iruka followed him out the window and over the roofs, holding on to the calm he’d regained. He’d need it for next week. But that, as Kakashi would no doubt tell him, and scold him for forgetting, was what a person’s team was for. They would learn, his students. He would do what he could and life would do the rest.

And they’d all live with that, however they could.

End

Hall of Mirrors

The old men were arguing over killing him.

“If your dog runs mad you kill it yourself.” Paulo’s voice was flat.

“This is my son you’re talking about, not a dog.” The old man managed to growl even when he still couldn’t sit up without help, which might have been all heartwarming and shit except Xanxus noticed he wasn’t arguing about the “mad” part.

“Boss, this can’t go on.” Staffieri sounded wrung out, but that was for the Ninth. Not for him.

“If we knew why he did this…”

“What do you mean, ‘if we knew’?!” Rizzo cut Martelli off. “He’s crazy, why the hell else would he have done any of this to the Family that took him in?”

Xanxus laughed at that. He couldn’t help it. The voices on the other side of the screen went silent, wary, as if they still had cause.

He couldn’t sit up without help either. Not without help to cut the straps that tied him to the hospital bed.

After a long moment of silence Martelli drew the screen back and all seven old men stood there looking at him. Well, six and one old woman, counting Purezza, though he’d only call her that if he wanted a good fight.

He actually half respected Purezza. Damn shame she hadn’t been Boss.

He snorted at the way they looked at him, all sober and weighty. “What kind of morons are you, anyway?” he demanded, voice still harsh from screaming while the damn Rings turned his guts inside out. Harsh anyway, with disgust. “If I’m not the best, what am I?”

“You’re my son,” the old man started and Xanxus’ lip curled. After all this.

“No. I’m not.”

“Blood claim or not, you’re the adopted son of the Vongola.” Staffieri sounded impatient, but not as impatient as the look Xanxus shot at him.

“That and some hard cash will get me a coffee. Or maybe just get me run off for cluttering up the pretty shop front.”

“Isn’t it time you stopped living in the past?” Martelli asked quietly.

Xanxus met Martelli’s eyes and spat over the side of his bed. “The past doesn’t go away,” he said over the sounds of outrage from the rest. “You can lie to yourself if you want, but don’t fucking do it to me.” He turned to stare up at the ceiling, which at least didn’t mince out mealy-mouthed platitudes in face of fucking reality. “You think anyone was going to accept a whore’s son if he wasn’t better than everyone else? If he wasn’t worth it? You think that old man can take a kid off the street and ram him into one of the biggest, strongest, wealthiest Families there is and have it all be sweetness and fucking light just because he’s your precious boss and he says so?” The laughter shook him again, high and harsh, because they did still think that. He could tell.

If anyone ever asked for proof the world wasn’t fair, he could point to the fact that their own stone blindness hadn’t killed any of these stupid fuckers off yet.

“Your own damn Rings say otherwise,” he said into the silence when he finally caught his breath. “So untie my hand and give me a knife, since you’re obviously too damn cowardly to kill me yourselves.”

“No,” the old man said after a long moment, and Xanxus rolled his eyes. Of course not; that would actually be decisive action. God forbid. “Perhaps I was a fool. Perhaps I still am. But,” he continued before Xanxus could agree wholeheartedly, “I will not permit you to weaken this Family.”

Xanxus looked down at that, teeth bared. “Couldn’t do it worse than you already have.”

“You will continue to lead the Varia,” the old man said, not answering, never answering, “because the Varia are needed. You say you must be the best or be nothing, but Sawada Tsunayoshi has shown that you are not the best.” A smile, an actual fucking smile, twitched at the old man’s mustache. “You appear to be second best. So it seems fitting, by your own lights, that you be second in the Family’s leadership.”

For one breath, incandescent rage slid through Xanxus’ veins, familiar and warm, and he hovered on the edge of calling his Flame, raw as his hands were, of finally killing the whole stinking lot of them. The old man wasn’t in any shape to stop him now. But that would mean an immediate fight with Sawada, with his father pitching in this time, and Xanxus wasn’t recovered enough yet, himself, to win that. He slumped back against the bed, utterly disgusted. Fine. Sawada was even more pathetic than the old man, but at least he could fight when he was driven. Best to wait, recover, let the old man die and get the hell out of the way so Xanxus and Sawada could have a proper fight with no interfering Cervello this time. “For now,” he said, staring at the ceiling again, and his mouth twisted into a crooked smile at the disgruntled shuffling from the other old men.

He wouldn’t lie. Let everyone else wrap themselves in fluffy dreams. He knew what the world was like. Only the best lived at their own will instead of someone else’s.

He would be the best.

End

A/N: I’ve used the Guardians from the Generations arc, because until and unless Amano coughs up some redeeming characterization, I refuse to imagine the Ninth with a passel of Guardians named after desserts.

Blood and Thunder

Chrome swore under her breath as she worked her makeshift lockpick. Theoretically it should not be difficult to escape from the guest room Katou Julie had been foolish enough to leave her in and rejoin her Family. The lock on her door, however, was giving her considerably more trouble than that Shimon lecher had, and the soft wire that strung the seat of the armchair had never been meant for this use.

There’s something about him, though, Mukuro murmured in the back of her head, and a memory of Katou flickered in her mind’s eye.

Besides having an ego bigger than he clearly thinks his cazzo is? she asked tartly as the wire slipped yet again.

Laughter. Such language from my innocent little Chrome!

She rolled her eyes.

You played him beautifully, he assured her. As always. But I want to know what that oddness in him is; see how much you can draw him out when he returns.

Chrome wrinkled her nose, but agreed. It was nothing she hadn’t done before, after all.

She had to bite back considerably stronger words when Katou pushed open the door, barely missing her nose, and her wire jammed completely. But, looking up to meet opaque, distant eyes over that annoying smirk, she felt a moment of chill and drew a little tighter into herself, wondering if Mukuro was right.

Chrome grumbled silently as she pulled on the stockings of her new uniform, slowly because her abdomen still ached from Spade’s little “demonstration”. There’s no need for this. He thinks we’re separated, and I’m enspelled. He doesn’t guard himself at all. I could take care of him at once.

Mukuro wrapped tighter around her soul, an iron grip holding her out of the abyss that opened up the moment Spade’s power had touched her, and murmured, Before he could abandon that body he holds? He’s careless, yes, but far from unskilled.

Chrome tightened her lips, stuffing her feet into her new boots. She wanted her own boots. And her proper uniform. And she wanted to cut off the hands of the creature who dared touch her, and she wouldn’t mind too terribly if she got the hands of Shimon’s philanderer instead of Spade’s.

But her Boss would mind. And it was Spade Mukuro wanted. She pulled the annoyingly innumerable buckles tight and said nothing.

Mukuro twined his presence around her silence, purring to her, Lull this arrogant first Mist of the Vongola for me. In time he will be ours.

It wasn’t difficult.

Chrome had never danced a waltz, but she imagined that what she and Mukuro did was what it would feel like. As he stepped back, she stepped forward. As he stepped forward, she stepped back. Always in unison, turning and turning on this floor that was her body. It wasn’t difficult at all to dance the same steps with Spade, drawing back far enough for his will to direct her body. It wasn’t difficult, but it was completely different.

This time, Mukuro was pressed against her back and took just the same steps she did; she could almost feel his arms along her own, directing them both lightly, familiar and close. That was the only thing that kept her from pulling back completely in disgust from the too-thick, clay-like chill of Spade’s presence.

It wasn’t difficult, but she didn’t like it at all.

Even with Mukuro’s constant whisper of support, she kept far enough back that her expression went slack and her eyes went blank, but Spade didn’t seem to think that odd.

Sloppy, Mukuro remarked, watching over her shoulder as Suzuki fought Hibari. He’s let himself lapse into complacency, into thinking the world will go just as he wills it. I doubt he’s at all sane any longer; not surprising if he’s been disembodied all this time. He snorted as Chrome stirred against him, close enough to taste her flash of wry comparison. I’m quite sane, little one, merely enraged.

This close, Chrome could feel the heat of that constant rage, soothing and familiar, binding them closer the longer she endured Spade’s clumsy possession. The promise in it, of cleansing fire to end all this, warmed her heart.

Chrome stiffened inside herself when Spade finally stepped forward and confronted with her fellow Guardians, pulling her along. Mukuro-sama? she asked, tensed. If any time was the moment to strike, surely this was it, when Spade would be distracted. Ideally, before Hibari finished brushing aside Sawada’s protests and attacked her to break the containment she held around them. She didn’t worry that he would kill her; she wasn’t so foolish as to meet him head on. But she would have to push aside Spade’s control to act.

Mukuro was watchful and still in the back of her mind, though. Not yet.

When Spade retreated from Yamamoto and spirited her away with him, Chrome sighed and acknowledged that perhaps she didn’t have the natural temperament of the Mist. She kept expecting Spade to stand and fight. Eventually. Surely he must have to sooner or later, or where was their opening going to come from?

Not yet, Mukuro whispered to her, pressed tangible and insubstantial against her back.

If Chrome had been in control of her jaw, it would have been clenched. Someone, she observed rather acidly, has been reading too much ecchi.

Poor taste, indeed, Mukuro agreed with a hint of amusement that made her want to glare at him. And a bit of nonsense besides. Ropes are no more use against you than against me. Clearly you’ve hoodwinked Spade even better than we’d thought.

That consolation was true enough to settle her temper a little. Enough to listen to Spade again, as he gave her entirely too much information, even for an enemy who was tied up. He likes the sound of his own voice too much.

A common failing in those with grand plans. The wry twist in Mukuro’s silent voice finally made her smile. And then he tensed against her. It’s coming.

Chrome stopped listening to him. She had to. Spade stepped back, and she stepped forward, and the rush of her senses, bright and sharp again after days on end wrapped in distancing fog, pounded down on her like a cataract. She could almost smell the shreds of Spade’s power on her, an oily catch in the back of her throat. She could almost hear the singing of her Ring, beside her, coiled in on itself and waiting to be reborn. Every coarse fiber of the ropes bit into her wrists, and the floor under her knees was so hard it took up the whole world. Her voice, when she could force words out, was thin, and it was just as well she was supposed to be intimidated and timid. The nerve-wringing disorientation as she rode that first brutal spike of the returning world probably looked similar enough to a fool like the one in front of her.

Mukuro hissed, suddenly clear again in her mind, and when had he been muffled, why hadn’t she noticed? She jerked her mind back to the present and just barely caught herself from restoring her organs as they disappeared, gritting her teeth on the sudden rusty tang of blood in her mouth. “Don’t come,” she gasped, turning inside herself, reaching out the thought of her arms to him, stepping back as he stepped forward. The world spun under their feet, unfolding out and out and out, every facet ready at their fingertips, and Mukuro laughed with the breath she breathed.

And the world was Mist and vengeance.

End

Vantage Point

It ended the way sparring with Xanxus generally did: the room was a smoking ruin and Squalo was on his knees for her, out of breath and holding still because there was a warm muzzle resting between his eyebrows. And, of course, he was hard, but that was normal when it came to sparring, too. There was nowhere that Xanxus was more herself than in the middle of a fight, and what she was was amazing. All in all, Squalo figured that if he had to go out, doing it at her feet looking up at the sleek lines of her legs and the wildness in her eyes wasn’t a bad way to do it.

But this wasn’t going to be the day that happened. Xanxus looked him over, flicked the safety back on, and holstered her gun. “Come with me.” The command was peremptory; she gave no sign of what she was thinking. Squalo rolled to his feet, adjusted himself discreetly, and followed after her without question since she was already striding away. Not towards her quarters, he noticed, stifling faint regret, but towards her office. Oh well. Sometimes the mood to fuck took her after a good fight and sometimes it didn’t. Wasn’t his place to complain either way. They were going towards her office; maybe she’d had a breakthrough on the Cizeta job.

At the door, Xanxus waved him ahead of her. “Inside.” She still wasn’t giving him any sign of what was on her mind. That may not have been a good thing; was she annoyed that he’d managed to land a strike on her? But wounds didn’t usually bother her, and this one barely even qualified for the title—the slice across her thigh had been a clean one, hardly more than a scratch, and had already scabbed over. Squalo puzzled over the curt command as he entered her office and brought himself to rest at attention. Xanxus pulled the door closed; he thought she may have even locked it, though the tumblers were well-oiled and the click of them was soft.

She eyed him again and snorted. “Strip.”

It wasn’t worth trying to figure out what was on her mind, he decided, hastening to obey as quickly as he could make his fingers undo buttons and zippers and laces. Maybe she was in the mood after all. He wasn’t going to dare presume (though his cock did). “Boss,” he said, once he was standing naked for her.

Xanxus made a circuit around him, running her eyes from the top of his head to his bare feet. “Mm.” She pointed—at her desk? No, her chair. “Sit.”

Baffled, Squalo obeyed, easing himself down into her chair. The leather creaked as it took his weight; the seat was adjusted for her height and not his, but he didn’t complain. Not that there was anything in the world to complain about, because Xanxus was unbuttoning her shirt and letting it fall, undoing her bra and discarding it. Squalo made a sound, watching avidly as she undid her skirt and let it slither down her legs and then peeled out of her panties.

Her mouth curled; she came around the desk and pushed the papers on it aside to sit herself down in front of him. Squalo stared at her, hearing himself make another sound when she lifted a knee and planted her foot squarely on the armrest of the chair, spreading her knees wide and displaying herself. “God, Boss…”

She leaned herself back on one hand and draped the other across her thigh, running her fingers over the cut he’d given her, still looking at him, still silent. Squalo looked back, drinking in the slope of her breasts and the lushness of her body and the sheer unthinking arrogance in the tilt of her head, aching with how much he wanted her. Her mouth curled, finally. “Touch yourself.”

His breath quickened. “Yes, Boss.” He dropped a hand to his cock, fisting it.

Xanxus made an impatient sound. “So I can see.” She seemed to consider her orders a bit more and added another clarification. “Slowly. And don’t come till I tell you.”

A shudder walked down Squalo’s spine and he groaned. “Anything you say, Boss.” He spread his knees wider for her and loosened his fingers around himself, running them up and down his cock and hissing between his teeth as he slid them over the head of it. He dropped his other hand down to play with his balls, determined to give her a good show, if that was what she was after.

Her eyes rested on him, heavy as a hand, as he worked himself for her. Her color was running high again, like it always did after a sparring match, and her eyes were half-lidded and gleaming. “What goes through your head when you’re on your knees for me?”

Squalo’s cock twitched in his hand as her question reminded him of the moment barely past; he saw her eyes sharpen. “That I’m yours.” He had to string the words together carefully, thanks to how dizzy the heat running through him was making him. “That it would be a good way to go, if that’s how you wanted to end it.”

Xanxus made a soft sound, one part hunger, one part satisfaction. “Would it?”

“Anything you want from me is good, Boss.” Squalo ran his thumb over his head, back and forth. “Because it’s you.”

“Mm.” She ran her hand up her thigh and tucked it against herself, sliding her fingers between her folds. She was already wet; the sight dragged a groan out of him. “That why you get hard when we fight?”

“Sort of, Boss. Sort of not.” He couldn’t quite tear his eyes away from the slow back-and-forth of her fingers or the way she circled her clit and traced the shape of herself.

“Tell me.” Xanxus’ voice had dropped, gone husky; his cock twitched in his hand, responding to that tone. Squalo gasped and pressed his fingers against the base of it: not yet, she hadn’t given him permission yet. “What gets you so hard?”

“You, Boss,” he breathed, hearing the sound she made then. “It’s you, when you fight, there’s nothing else but you. That’s what you were made to do, and you’re so… so…”

“So…?” she prompted when he faltered, at a loss for words.

Squalo raised his eyes to hers. “Beautiful.” It was the truth, whole and perfect. “You’re beautiful, Boss.”

Xanxus stared at him; she’d stopped moving her fingers. “Beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” he repeated, because he never had lied to her and he wasn’t going to start now. “It’s the way you move and fight and how you look when you fire a gun, and your strength, and… you. It’s just you, Boss.”

She stared at him, eyes gone opaque. “You are one crazy son of a bitch.”

Squalo could feel the ice creaking beneath his feet. He shrugged at her and himself; if he had to go, having this be the last thing he ever saw wouldn’t be so bad, either. “Maybe, Boss. But I’m a happy one.”

He breathed a little easier all the same when that earned him a ghost of a smile.

Then she raised her foot and prodded his shoulder, digging her toes into it. “I didn’t give you permission to stop moving.” Squalo didn’t even know what the sound he made then was, but it made her smile again. He nodded and began running his fingers up and down again, breathless.

She watched him, holding her own fingers still, before saying, “So. Anything I want.” That was skipping right over the things that had confused her, but there weren’t any surprises there. She began stroking herself again; he had to wet his lips again. The corner of her mouth kicked up. “So that’s what you’re thinking when I’ve got you on your knees.”

It sounded like a dare; maybe it was. Maybe she wanted to see how far he was willing to go. Well, for her, he was willing to go all the way. “Sort of.”

Xanxus made a satisfied sound, like she’d expected as much. “Tell me.”

Oh, God. Squalo took a breath, steadying himself against the surge of adrenaline. “Sometimes,” he began, daring a glance at her eyes. They were dark. “Sometimes I think about you. How you stand over me. And what would happen if you decided you wanted me right there.” Dangerous territory, that; her eyes narrowed. He plunged on. “If you decided to pull me to you right there and have me put my mouth on you while I’m still on my knees, when it’s perfectly clear how completely you own me.” He couldn’t help moving his fingers faster; just talking about it conjured up the image for him, how it would feel to put his face between her thighs and taste her on his tongue while she stood over him.

Xanxus made a sound; the hardness was fading out of her eyes. He went on. “I think about how you would pull my hair to tell me what you wanted.” She was moving her fingers faster, stroking them over her clit. “How I’d still be able to smell the gun smoke, how it would be on your skin. How you would sound, whether you would want me to put my fingers in you. Whether you would let me touch myself, or if you’d tell me to keep my hands off my cock. So I think about that. Sometimes.”

Xanxus hummed something between her teeth and pushed a finger into herself. Squalo groaned, watching her. “Go on,” she said, voice low and rich, as she worked herself open right there in front of him.

“God, Boss.” Squalo swallowed, hard, and slowed his hand down lest he explode. “Okay, um.” He wet his lips. “I think… I think about what it would be like if you decided to wear one of your toys, maybe even while we fought. And how it would be if you decided to push me over and pin me under you so you could fuck me with it.” She made a low sound and slid a second finger in with the first; this seemed to be working just as well for her as it did him. Squalo kept going, the words spilling out of him. “Maybe you’d make me suck it first, just grab my head and fuck my throat to get it good and wet, before you pushed me over and pulled my ass into the air and put it in me.” She liked doing that, maybe even as much as he liked having her do it. She groaned now, listening to him describe it. “It would be so good to be on my hands and knees while you rode me, so good to have you fuck me hard, for just as long as you wanted.” He was breathless, half-giddy with the fantasy he was spinning and with his fingers on his cock, and from watching Xanxus fuck herself on her own fingers, three of them now sliding in and out of her, gleaming and wet. “I’d scream for you, Boss. And anyone could walk in and see me begging you to take me harder.”

That did it; Xanxus groaned, hips jerking against her own hand as she arched, eyes squeezing shut. Squalo moaned, watching her and pressing his fingers hard against the base of his cock, until she sagged against the desk, panting, fingers still tucked between her thighs. She opened her eyes again after her breathing had steadied. “That’s what you think about?”

“Sometimes, Boss.” He raised his eyes to hers. “Boss, please, I can’t—please, Boss, let me come.”

Her mouth quirked. “That what you need?” Squalo nodded, swallowing hard as she took her hand away from herself and spread her knees wider. “Come here.”

“Oh, God,” he breathed. “Yes.”

She snorted and pulled him in against her when he surged out of the chair. “You think you can fuck me?” she asked, wrapping a leg around him and closing her hand on his nape.

“Yes,” he said, nearly shaking with how much he needed her, how close she was, her body radiating heat against his.

Xanxus made a satisfied sound and reached down to guide his cock against her. “Come on and show me what you’ve got,” she said as he moaned. She gasped when he let his hips snap forward, burying himself in her. “Fuck, yeah…” She dug her nails into his nape. “C’mon, fuck me now.”

“Boss…” Squalo planted his hands on her desk and bit down on his lower lip, doing as she ordered, driving against her, hard and deep. Xanxus hissed and wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deeper and groaning as he fucked her. It was almost unbearable to be inside her after spending so long talking and touching himself; Squalo could taste blood from where he was biting down on his own lip to keep from coming too soon.

“What else?” she demanded, hoarse. “Tell me what else you think about.”

“You,” he gasped, hitching her hips against his. “Putting your hand on my chest and pushing me down. Pulling your skirt up and then riding me just like that.” He licked his thumb and got his hand between them to rub it against her clit; he was shaking with the effort of holding himself back from the edge. “You when you come, the way you sound and the way you smell and taste, how you feel around me, God, Boss, I never stop thinking about you, I belong to you, I have you ground into my bones, I—”

Xanxus arched under him, groaning as her body wrung tight on his. “Now,” she gasped. Squalo obeyed, orgasm slamming into him like a fist and knocking the breath out of him as it whited out his vision altogether.

He was draped against her when he came back down again; she was holding him up and still had her hand on his nape. Squalo hardly dared to stir against her as the words he’d babbled to her began to come back to him as his head came clear again.

“That’s what you think about?” Xanxus’ words were slow, her tone thoughtful.

Squalo stared past her shoulder to the papers strewn across her desk, contemplating his own mortality. “Yes, Boss.”

Xanxus tightened her grip on his nape. “Oh.” It could have meant anything. “Oh.”

He nodded, hardly daring to breathe.

Xanxus slid her thumb over his nape. “How long?” she asked, when he shivered.

“Since the beginning.” It was only the truth.

Xanxus hissed something between her teeth, profane, and tightened her grip when he would have pulled away—to do what, he wasn’t sure. Apologize, perhaps. “You…” she started. Squalo could count the number of times he’d heard her sound that confused on one hand and still have fingers left over.

“Me, Boss,” he agreed.

She snorted something and loosened her hand, flattening and spreading it in the space between his shoulder blades. Squalo’s breath caught in his throat when she kept going, smoothing her hand down his spine and back up again. “Boss,” he breathed, very close to trembling. She kept touching him, fingers slow against his skin, and a shudder rolled through him.

She didn’t say anything at first, just kept touching him till he was trembling against her. “You’re mine,” she said at last, curving her palm around his nape again. “Aren’t you.”

Not really a question so much as a statement, that, but it needed answering. “Yes, Boss.” Squalo wet his lips. “Heart and soul and body. Yours.”

Xanxus sucked in a breath, but didn’t say anything else.

It was a long time before she let him go.

A Love for Living Dangerously

Squalo wasn’t a fan of letting his boss go off to dinners at the main house all by herself—not because she couldn’t take care of herself, far from it, but because sometimes she didn’t take care of herself out of some perverse stubbornness of her own, and he hated watching that happen. Not that he really thought the old man or his sons meant badly, not really, but it was God’s own truth that neither Enrico nor Massimo or even the old man really understood Xanxus. They just didn’t get the fire or the strength of her and kept trying to shape her into something she wasn’t while they called it love.

To make things more difficult, Xanxus didn’t have any kind of sense when it came to her family, not really. She trudged off to dinner with them whenever they called and Squalo couldn’t find some reason to get her out of the commitment. She didn’t trudge back afterwards: usually she came back in a rage, either a quiet one that left her lips pressed together tightly and didn’t break until she’d broken something—a glass, somebody’s arm, once a chair—or a loud one that ended with bullets flying and Squalo sparring with her till they were bloody, sweaty messes who couldn’t move any more. And even after her temper had cooled off she went around brooding for days, until she managed to shake off whatever it was her idiot family had said or done this time.

When the invitation showed up, Squalo scrambled to find a plausible reason for Xanxus not to take part in celebrating the end of Federico’s peripatetic education, but couldn’t. For a wonder, all the Vongola’s many enemies were quiet or licking their wounds and the new batch of Varia recruits hadn’t yet begun trickling in. There was nothing to excuse Xanxus from attending the dinner in Federico’s honor, and if Squalo were any judge, the old man had planned it that way, the cagey bastard. Wasn’t anything for it, anyway, except to wait till Xanxus had left to rush around, laying in antiseptic and bandages and putting the good glasses away in exchange for the cheap mismatched stuff that wouldn’t destroy the Varia’s budget when Xanxus smashed it. No sense in not being prepared, after all, and it kept Mammon from bitching about the waste.

When Xanxus came in, Squalo was settled on the couch, prepared for the worst and ready to come up fighting if he had to. He wasn’t prepared for Xanxus to given him an appraising look as he greeted her, or for her to stride over to him and plant a heavy hand against his chest to hold him in place as she looked down at him. Squalo looked back, baffled, because she wasn’t swearing and she wasn’t wearing that pinched expression that was the other normal result of extended exposure to her family.

She started plucking at his clothes instead, undoing buttons and pushing his jacket off his shoulders. Squalo moved to help, automatically, until she grunted at him. “Hold still.”

Squalo blinked and did, puzzling over this strange mood until she leaned closer to push the jacket down his arms and he caught the scent of the wine on her breath. That explained a little of what was going on. Wasn’t unusual for the old man to serve drinks with dinner, though Xanxus usually sneered at wine and went straight for the harder stuff, scotch and brandy and vodka, things that put a fire in her eyes and never seemed to affect her aim, no matter how much she’d had.

So that was one mystery dealt with, but it still didn’t explain why Xanxus was bent over him and undressing him with her own two hands, concentrating so hard that there was a line drawing her brows together as she peeled Squalo out of the t-shirt he wore under his uniform. It obscured his vision for a moment as she pulled it over his head.

It never did to take one’s eyes off Xanxus, even for a split second. While he was shaking the hair back from his eyes and wondering why Xanxus was having that much trouble clearing his hands—she couldn’t be that drunk, could she?—Xanxus moved, hiking her skirt up her thighs and setting her knees on either side of Squalo’s hips as she twisted the shirt around his wrists, using it to bind them together.

Squalo went still with surprise and the way all the blood in his body rushed straight to his cock. “Boss?” he said, careful to keep his voice neutral, careful not to assume or presume anything until she gave him some kind of hint about what she was thinking—

“Shut up.” Her hand fell away from his wrists and circled around his throat, not tight enough to keep Squalo from sucking in a startled breath as her thumb stroked up his carotid artery and pressed against the underside of his chin, tilting it up.

Squalo opened his mouth to hers, groaning against it as Xanxus’ tongue swept against his and his cock throbbed in his pants, achingly hard just from this. Her mouth still tasted a little bit of wine, something sweet and complicated and meant for desserts. She kissed him slowly, like she meant to take her time with it—fuck, Squalo thought dizzily, she probably did.

That thought pulled another groan out of him. So did the way Xanxus’ fingers tightened on his throat, subtly, as he shifted his arms, settling the bundle of his wrists behind his head more comfortably. She had to have felt the way his pulse sped up at that and the way his breath hitched; he certainly felt the way her mouth moved against his, curling a bit as he stilled beneath her obediently.

Her other hand swept up his side and splayed itself over his ribs, counting them off and tracing over the patterns of old scars and newer ones, running over the places where the keloids were still shiny and pink and the places where they’d already faded to white. She’d given him some of those scars herself, but she touched them all, fingers wandering over them impartially as she kissed him, until Squalo felt shivery inside his own skin, sensitized to every light brush of her fingertips.

He groaned again when Xanxus lifted her hands away from him and pulled away from his mouth. When he lifted his head and looked, she was drawing back from him, stripping out of her shirt and unhooking her bra. That was worth losing her hands on his skin, definitely, so he stared, drinking in the paleness of her skin and the fullness of her breasts until he realized that she was watching him. Her eyes were dark when he met them; she looked like she was weighing something in her head.

Squalo raised his eyebrows at her since he wasn’t sure whether her proscription against speaking was still in place. Xanxus huffed out a breath and leaned in again. Her breasts were soft against his chest and her teeth were sharp when they closed on his lip. Squalo just groaned with that, closing his eyes and shifting under her, spreading his knees wider and trying to relieve some of the tightness of his pants. Xanxus’ teeth tightened against his lip, enough to sting, as she growled something at him, a warning. Then her hand slid down his stomach and over the front of his pants.

Squalo shuddered at the warm, heavy pressure of it; it took an enormous effort to keep his hips from lifting and rolling against her hand. He trembled with it, panting for breath, and was rewarded when Xanxus huffed again and stroked her tongue over his lower lip. “Don’t you dare come yet.”

Squalo thought she might have been waiting for a response and managed to eke out a strangled, “Yes, Boss.” He’d guessed right, because she grunted her approval and thumbed the button on his fly and pulled the zip down. Squalo groaned with relief as she did, head falling back as she reached inside and pulled him out. Her fingers moved over the shape of his cock, still slow, like she was learning the shape of him. There was something curiously impersonal about it, something almost clinical in her expression, but that didn’t stop pleasure from dancing over his nerves until he had to bite down on his lip himself to keep from rocking into that methodical touch.

He was on the verge of begging by the time Xanxus glanced at him again. Her eyes were still unreadable, dark beneath her lashes. “Enjoying this?” she asked as her thumb moved back and forth over his head.

Squalo thought he might have whimpered, something inarticulate and hoarse climbing out of his throat and passing for yes.

Her mouth curved, just faintly, and her fingers wrapped tighter around him. “You can come now,” she said as she stroked him hard.

Some lightheaded part of his brain wanted to protest, wanted to ask about her, but he couldn’t, not when the heat contracted on him at the casual command. It tore through him as he bucked into her fist, coming so hard that his vision whited out and his throat felt scraped raw with the sounds he made.

Xanxus was still perched over him, one hand gripping his shoulder for balance, when he came back down. When Squalo looked up at her dazedly, she was watching him. Her expression would have been unreadable even if his brain hadn’t just melted out his ears.

Squalo had to swallow a couple of times and wet his lips before he could manage speech. “Fuck, Boss…”

Her hand was still between his legs, sticky fingers playing with skin that was almost oversensitive, dancing on the edge of what was bearable. “You like this,” she said, finally. It was half a question and half a statement.

There was no way in hell he had the kind of brains left to manage this kind of conversation, so he didn’t bother trying to puzzle his way to the right answer. Squalo rested his head against the bundle of his wrists and gave her the simple, true one instead. “I love it,” he said as her fingers moving over him made his cock wonder whether it might be able to get up and go again.

Xanxus’ fingers froze on him and she stared at him. Then the hand on his shoulder gripped tighter, enough to maybe leave a bruise and to penetrate through some of the haze fogging Squalo’s brain. “Do you?”

“Fuck, yes,” Squalo breathed as something hot and possibly suicidal uncurled in the pit of his stomach in response to the way her eyes sparked. “Anything you want, Boss. That’s just fine by me.”

There was no way she could mistake his response, not when his cock was twitching in her hand, answering the way her eyes had flared and the way her fingers were digging into his shoulder. Xanxus stared at him for a moment before her hand loosened on his shoulder and slid sideways, wrapping around his throat tight enough that Squalo could feel his pulse beginning to pound. Her grip was tight enough to constrict his breathing; black spots swam in front of his eyes and his cock throbbed in her fist.

Just when he wasn’t sure whether he was going to last much longer without sliding down into unconsciousness, her grip eased and he was able to suck in a lungful of air under the weight of her hand and her stare. “Your man,” he told her, hearing the hoarseness of his own voice, when he caught a second breath. “You can do whatever you want with me.”

The seconds ticked past as she looked down at him. Then she snorted and stood. “Lie down,” she said as her hands went to her skirt.

“Yes, Boss.” Squalo couldn’t quite contain his smile as her skirt slid down her hips and her panties followed it. He wriggled around, stretching out on the couch and hooking his wrists over the arm of it, and watched her—bare and gorgeous and more dangerous than any three men put together—as she hooked her fingers in the waistband of his pants and underwear and dragged them down his thighs. Xanxus just rolled her eyes at him when she caught him doing it, and threw a knee over his hips to straddle him. Then she sank down on his cock with a low, breathless sound.

Squalo groaned, fingers clutching at the cotton of his shirt as her body wrapped around him, tight and slick, and fixed his eyes on Xanxus. She leaned over him, eyes half-lidded and lips parted, and planted a hand on his chest as she raised herself up and rocked down on him again, fucking herself on his cock. Her hips moved fast, the pace of them urgent as she panted over him, until she bore down on him. She ground against his hips as she slid her fingers down between her legs to stroke herself until her body seized on his, wringing tight. Squalo watched her, breathless with the way her muscles rippled around him and how she groaned, arching over him, riding it out.

She seemed a little surprised that he was still hard when she opened her eyes again. Squalo shrugged at her as best as he could with his hands bound up—wasn’t like he was going to come off fast again the second time. Xanxus snorted at him, rocking against him and making a sound that was almost pleased as his cock slid deeper. Squalo sighed at that, shuddering as the slow rock of her hips added to the pleasant tension threading through him.

Then her hands spread against his chest. “The fuck am I doing all the work for?” Her teeth were showing between her lips, just a little.

Squalo couldn’t quite help the laugh that bubbled out of him. “Sorry, Boss.” He drew a knee up, planting it against the cushion, and rocked his hips up to meet hers, driving a groan out Xanxus as he pressed deeper, fucking her harder. He let the sounds she made guide him as she arched and flexed over him, her eyes going hazy, until his thighs were burning and he was panting with how close he was.

Xanxus looked down at him when he made a sound, something inarticulate and entreating, and her teeth showed again. “Put your back into it,” she told him, and gasped when he obeyed, hips slamming up against hers, cock driving against her harder and faster. She swore, something inarticulate, urging him on as she ground down against him. She gripped his shoulders and panted as he spread his feet wider and fucked her, trying to find the angle that would send her off again, until she gasped, arching over him and shaking as she threw her head back, eyes squeezed shut.

Squalo groaned, hips jerking against hers as he chased the same edge she’d found, heat and need twining through him, but it wasn’t until she’d opened her eyes and looked at him and curved her fingers around his throat again to hold him that he found it. He groaned as pleasure swept him down, breaking him into a thousand pieces with its fierceness.

It took him a long time to pull himself back together. Xanxus was still spread over him when he finally managed it, sprawled across his chest in a lazy drape, and his arms were numb with how long they’d been trapped over his head. “Jesus, Boss,” he managed, finally.

Xanxus grunted something against his shoulder, apparently not inclined to move, and didn’t stir when he lifted his arms and shook them free of his shirt. Squalo grimaced at the tingle of blood flowing back into them, and then realized that he wasn’t sure where to put his hands now that they were free.

Well, if she were going to kill him for his impudence, she probably would have done that already this evening, he decided, and tucked a hand under his head as he settled his other arm around her.

The curve of Xanxus’ back went tense under his hand and then relaxed again; her breath gusted against his throat, warm, as she snorted. Since she couldn’t see him, he permitted himself a smile before indulging his curiosity. “So who did you kill at dinner?” That had to have been what had put her into such a relaxed mood. “Enrico?” He was probably her least favorite family member; Squalo had a bet going with himself over how long it was going to be before Enrico finally met with a fatal accident.

Xanxus’ breath brushed against his throat again as she huffed. “Didn’t kill anyone.”

“Huh.” So much for that theory. “Maim him instead?” This was Xanxus, after all.

“Don’t be an idiot.”

Squalo raised his eyebrows at the ceiling. “Sorry, Boss.”

Xanxus left him to wonder what had happened for a while longer before she finally said, “Federico wants to meet you.”

It didn’t quite register at first that that was her explanation. When it did, Squalo blinked a little at the ceiling, wondering at it. “Okay.” He’d figured that it would have to happen sooner or later; everyone knew that the old man was going to leave it all to his youngest son. Professionalism and his own curiosity made him ask, “What’s he like?”

“He’s not actually an idiot.” Xanxus stirred against him and Squalo realized, belatedly, that he was stroking her back.

But she didn’t tell him to stop and he liked living dangerously, so he kept going, running his hands up and down the sleek curve of her spine. “That’ll make for a refreshing change.”

Xanxus didn’t answer him immediately, but when she did, it was to say, “Yeah. Yeah, I think it will.”

And when Squalo finally met Federico Vongola a few days later, he understood what she’d meant.

Basic Advanced Search

After a good deal of back-end work which I hope was invisible to my visitors, there is now an Advanced Search page! All stories have been given genre tags that can be used to search for, for example, all Fluff stories or for Romance stories in Prince of Tennis. You can find the link to the search page in the header.

Cat’s Cradle – Omake Two

Yohan woke slowly.

He was warm, and the light through his eyelids was soft, and his pillow was a very odd shape… oh. That was right. Kazuki had made him sleep.

He rubbed his eyes and looked up, sleepily, and yes, his brother was looking down at him with a gentle smile and there were fingers stroking his hair back from his face. “Aniue.”

“Feel better now?” His brother leaned down to drop a kiss on his forehead.

Perhaps because he was still half asleep, impulse became action without thought and Yohan lifted his face so that the kiss met his mouth instead. Kazuki made a startled sound even as his hand cupped the back of Yohan’s head to steady him. “Yohan?” he murmured, drawing back.

Thought woke again, urging caution, but desire had woken also with that soft brush of lips, the same desire he’d fled rather than admit after their battle. But Kazuki was here now, in any case, and Yohan wanted so much. He leaned up on one hand, laying the other on his brother’s chest entreatingly. “Aniue… please?”

After a long moment Kazuki’s hand rose to curve around his jaw, lifting his chin, and Yohan couldn’t help the way his breath cut short in a rush of want. Slowly, watching him, his brother leaned down again to kiss him, gentle and easy, and Yohan leaned into the kiss, lips parting under Kazuki’s. The invitation was taken and Yohan made a soft sound, half hope and half pleading, as his brother’s kiss deepened.

He wanted this so much.

Kazuki reached out to gather him closer until Yohan was half lying against his chest, haori sliding down his shoulders. And pliant. Utterly pliant in his brother’s arms. When Kazuki’s hand urged his chin up further, Yohan let his head fall back, and when his brother’s lips traced down his bared throat he gasped, a shiver running down his body.

“Yohan,” Kazuki murmured, lips brushing his throat, “did you want me to take the clan back from you?”

It was the question and the desire he’d run from at the time, and it shook him now. “I don’t…” he whispered, voice taut with the arch of his neck. “There are so many things I want to do. To change. But…” His brother kissed his throat again and he gasped, shaking. “For now… just for now, please. Please, Aniue.”

He had been conquered, in that battle. Beyond technique and skill was the heart, and when the heart could no longer drive all skill failed. Kazuki had conquered his heart, and given no quarter. And in his brother’s conquest, he had tasted the sweetness of being guided and commanded by his brother’s will and love. The sweetness of belonging and shelter and rest.

“Please,” he begged, hands sliding up to cling to Kazuki’s shoulders. “Just for now…”

His brother’s fingers slid into his hair, cradling his head, and Kazuki kissed him, deep and intent. “Yes,” he said quietly. “For now, then.”

Yohan relaxed into the kiss with a sigh, surrendering to his brother’s care and guidance, and kissed back soft and open. Kazuki’s hands stroked down his arms, over his back, drawing him close and holding him, and Yohan moved with them willingly.

“Do you want more than this?” Kazuki murmured against his mouth, and Yohan flushed hot at the thought.

“Yes,” he breathed, and Kazuki smiled.

“We’ll need some place with a bed, then,” he said, low, holding Yohan against him. “Because I’m not going to lay you down on the bare tatami. And,” he added, “we need something to make it easier for you.”

Yohan made a breathless sound, shivering, and his brother laughed softly.

“Come, then.” He straightened Yohan’s clothes with gentle hands and pulled him to his feet. “Show me.”

Yohan led the way through the house to his bedroom, still flushed with the way Kazuki kept a hold of his hand, fingers twined through his. Once the door was closed behind them, Kazuki caught him close again, kissing him deep and slow, loosening his robes to slide them down his shoulders. He shivered at that, at the long, knowing fingers that traced over his bare shoulders and chest. “Aniue…” He couldn’t quite meet his brother’s eyes.

“So shy.” Kazuki took his chin and tipped it up again, holding his eyes. “There’s no need.”

The command in that simple gesture set Yohan trembling, and he swayed against his brother. “Yes, Aniue,” he whispered.

Kazuki kept him occupied with kisses as he pulled loose belts and ties until Yohan stood with all his robes in a heap around his feet. “Now, then.” He pushed Yohan gently down to the bed and stepped back, shedding his own clothes swift and graceful. The line of his body, as he returned to kneel over Yohan and press him down, made Yohan’s mouth dry; he knew his own strength was second to none, but the sheer grace of Kazuki’s movement stopped his breath. His brother’s hands stroked down his body, slow, and he shivered with the intensity of simply feeling that on his skin. Kazuki gathered him close, one hand supporting the curve of his back as he arched up helplessly into the sleek heat of Kazuki’s body against his.

"Shh," Kazuki murmured to him. "Now you need to trust me, and relax for me, little brother." One hand kneaded the small of Yohan’s back, easing the building tension in him, and Yohan obeyed with a shaky breath. He lay pliant against Kazuki’s chest as his brother searched through his bedside nook, and turned his face into Kazuki’s shoulder. He gasped at the first touch of warm, slick fingers, and Kazuki held him closer.

Those fingers circled his entrance, slow and gentle, until his breathing evened and his body relaxed, and it was his brother’s patience and care that made his face heat as much as the first slide of fingers inside him. "Aniue…"

"All right?" Kazuki asked softly, cradling him close. Yohan nodded, not looking up, and his brother chuckled. "All right, then." Still soft, but more commanding he added, "Look at me."

Yohan looked up, breathless, and moaned as his brother caught his mouth, kissing him hot and deep and intent. The answering heat in his body turned sharp as Kazuki’s fingers pressed in again and he gasped, trembling in his brother’s arms with the unexpected surge of pleasure.

Kazuki kissed Yohan again and again as his fingers moved in and out of him. The sensation of being touched inside made Yohan flush, and Kazuki worked him slowly until Yohan was moving with him, until they were twined tight together, and Yohan was kissing back and making wanton, pleading sounds low in his throat. He didn’t have to control himself; he knew his brother would judge their pace, would know when he was ready. All he had to do was surrender to Kazuki’s hands, and that was such an unspeakable relief that he was dizzy with it.

"Now," Kazuki murmured, finally. Yohan made a faint, protesting sound as Kazuki slid around behind him, but subsided, soothed, when his brother’s arm wound around him and drew him back snugly into the curve of Kazuki’s body. "It’s all right," Kazuki said softly in his ear as he guided Yohan’s leg up and forward, spreading him a little open. "I have you."

"Yes," Yohan agreed, low, and shivered at the feeling of Kazuki’s lips curving against his nape. And then Kazuki was pushing into him, and he was gasping, clutching the sheets as he was stretched, pushed open, filled. It was shocking. It was incredible. "Aniue!"

"Shh." Kazuki rocked just a little, in and out of him, holding him tight, and Yohan shuddered with the sensation. "All you have to do is follow. I’ll take care of everything." One hand stroked down Yohan’s stomach to close between his legs.

Yohan moaned with breathless submission to Kazuki’s word, and let his brother’s hands guide his body until he was spread out half on his stomach, gasping with each driving thrust, rocking into his brother’s strong hand. Kazuki took him slow and sure, until his nerves were singing like strings under a master’s touch. Pleasure wanted to speed ahead, but Kazuki’s touch held him back, let the heat build slowly, until Yohan was panting under it with an edge of desperation.

"If your heart needs someone to rule and protect you," Kazuki whispered against his ear, "remember that I’m still your elder brother." His mouth closed on Yohan’s neck and he sucked hard enough to raise tingling heat.

Hard enough to mark.

Yohan cried out as pleasure broke through him, a storm of heat striking again and again as his brother gasped against his shoulder and drove into him harder, faster. It was good, so good, to be held so tight, to feel Kazuki’s body over his, and he lay, panting, until Kazuki shuddered and stilled.

After a long moment, Kazuki kissed the back of his neck and eased them apart, turning Yohan gently and gathering him back into his arms. Kazuki stroked his hair and cradled him close. "It’s all right."

Yohan realized that his eyes were wet.

Kazuki kissed the tears away and rocked him slowly. "You are my beloved brother and I will always be here, to guide and support you in whatever way you need," he murmured.

Yohan’s breath hitched again and he nodded against Kazuki’s shoulder. It was a while before he could stop crying, though. Kazuki held him through it all and dried his face on a corner of the sheet. "Better?" he asked with a soft smile.

Yohan nodded; he did feel better, wrung out but at peace. "Thank you, Aniue," he said, husky.

Kazuki pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. "Hush."

Yohan smiled shyly and did as he was told, and lay quiet and content in his brother’s arms as the evening drew in.

End

Cat’s Cradle – Omake One

Saizou wanted to pace. Unfortunately Juubei was already taking up most of the room.

"How could he go back up there?" Juubei demanded of thin air, and possibly any gods who might be listening, and whirled to stalk back across the room. "What is Kazuki thinking?"

"He did win last time, you know," Toshiki pointed out from the couch where he was sitting with his feet tucked up. "He says Yohan isn’t focused on destruction anymore."

"And none of us know what he is focused on," Juubei growled. "On top of that, he’s still living in the middle of the Beltline! The whole thing is dangerous!"

Saizou scrubbed his hands over his face. He kind of wished he could have an attack of screaming nerves himself, not because he thought Kazuki couldn’t make short work of anything he encountered in the Beltline but because he did know Yohan. Unfortunately, his sense of duty, which he swore got him in more trouble than his sense of humor ever had, insisted that something had to be done about Juubei before he exploded. Or took off after Kazuki. Possibly both. "Juubei," he said, standing to catch Juubei’s arm as he paced past again, "that’s enough. You know perfectly well Kazuki can handle anything up there."

"Can he handle Yohan?" Juubei snapped, shaking free of his hand, and an answering snap ran through Saizou as Juubei put his finger right on Saizou’s own greatest fear.

He caught Juubei’s shoulders and swung him around until his back hit the wall, and held him there. "I said that’s enough." His voice was low and hard, driving down his own reservations along with Juubei’s. "Kazuki doesn’t want us trailing along up there, so we won’t. Nor will we make the kind of fuss that says we doubt his judgment and ability. Is that understood?"

Juubei was staring at him, eyes wide. "Saizou…"

"I said," Saizou said quietly, "is that understood?"

After a frozen moment, Juubei swallowed. "It is." His voice had turned husky, and Saizou noted with some interest that he was a bit flushed. Come to that, he supposed he hadn’t shown this face to any of them since the betrayals and heartbreak of the winter. He hadn’t thought it was called for, and half expected that it would remind the others of things they didn’t really want to think about.

He thought he had a pretty good idea why Juubei was responding to it now, though.

Well, they could both use some distraction…

He tightened his grip on Juubei’s shoulders, pinning him against the wall, and leaned in to kiss him.

Juubei didn’t know where this was coming from. The only thing he could say with any surety was that the levelness of Saizou’s voice, the unsmiling line of his mouth, the ruthlessness of the hands that had pinned him so abruptly, all shook him, reached down into him and turned him hot and breathless. The kiss took firm possession of his mouth, and he heard a low, wanting sound in his own throat.

"Yes," Saizou said quietly, drawing back. "I think that will do." He stepped back, releasing Juubei to lean against the wall, and crooked a finger. "Come with me." He led the way into the bedroom and Juubei took a breath and followed him.

Saizou stripped off his clothes, unhurried, and the easy confidence of every gesture fixed Juubei’s eyes on him—at least until Saizou turned, mouth quirking, and raised a brow at him. Juubei flushed, hands fumbling now and then as he undressed. Saizou paced back to him and closed a hand on the nape of his neck. "So?"

A shudder ran through Juubei at that sure grip, and his voice was unsteady when he answered, "Yes."

Saizou smiled faintly and nodded to the bed. "Lie down, then. Face down."

"What…?" Juubei found the breath to ask, and lost it again when Saizou’s hand tightened.

"Do as I say," he said, low and even. "You know I won’t harm you, Juubei."

Heat clenched his stomach at the stillness and calm of Saizou’s expression and Juubei went to lie down as he was told, head spinning. Saizou’s weight dipped the mattress as he settled beside Juubei, stretched out half over him. One lean arm snaked around Juubei’s chest, fingers spread over his heart, and Saizou reached up past Juubei to the bedside nook. Juubei buried his head in his arms as glass clicked and rattled, breath coming short. Long fingers pushed between his cheeks, slick and cool, massaging his entrance hard, and he moaned. Saizou was usually a slow, gentle lover, but his touch didn’t coax this time, it demanded; it required that his muscles relax and yield. It scorched his senses, being handled this way, and he didn’t even know why.

"Kazuki rules us gently," Saizou said in his ear, so conversational that it took Juubei a moment to make sense of the words. "He commands little, when he could command everything." A soft laugh huffed against Juubei’s neck. "Of course, we give him everything without that, our loyalty, our hearts, our lives. Our obedience." A shiver ran down Juubei’s back and he gasped as Saizou drove two fingers deep into him. "You, especially. You were raised to serve, Kakei Juubei, and Kazuki has always known he’s your master." It was three fingers, now, working in and out of his ass, stretching him hard, and Juubei moaned into the sheets. "It was a friend he needed most, though, for all of the time he’s known you, so he doesn’t think to command you; especially you." Saizou raked his teeth slowly over Juubei’s earlobe, fingers driving deeper, and Juubei was panting hard for breath now. "I’m not Kazuki; I’m not your lord. But I can promise you this. Here and now, your body and your mind will both answer to me."

His fingers thrust into Juubei’s ass hard, and twisted, and his other hand slid up to gently pinch Juubei’s nipple, and Juubei bucked helplessly between his hands as sensation and response pulled his nerves tight. "Yes!"

"Good." Saizou kissed the back of his neck gently. "Up on your knees."

Juubei was shaky as he pushed up onto his knees, and bent to rest his head against his forearms, panting. Saizou moved behind him, pushing his knees wider and wider until it was only Saizou’s hands wrapped around his hips that steadied him.

Those hands tightened and Saizou held Juubei still as his cock pushed in, hot and hard. Juubei gasped for breath against the sheets, dizzy as Saizou’s words echoed through his head, promising. Saizou’s hips flexed against Juubei’s ass, driving him in deeper. "Stop thinking. Just feel."

"Saizou…"

Saizou’s voice turned cool and level. "Juubei."

That tone tumbled Juubei back down into raw heat and he moaned openly, trembling under Saizou as Saizou fucked him hard and sure. The iron control of Saizou’s pace made him whine as pleasure coiled tighter and tighter, low in his stomach; he could barely move, spread out like this, hips caged in Saizou’s hands, only feel the slide and burn as Saizou’s cock worked in and out of his ass. He was shaking, lightheaded with panting for breath, when Saizou finally took one hand off his hip and reached down to wrap it around his cock.

"Nnn!" Juubei’s hands fisted on the sheets, hips jerking helplessly into the pleasure of that strong hand sliding over him.

"Let go," Saizou ordered, voice hard, and Juubei nearly screamed as heat flashed through him in response and wrung him out, wild and rough and ruthless, and he surrendered to it. Saizou’s pace finally broke and he drove into Juubei fast and hard, drawing the shudders of pleasure out and out until Juubei was panting hoarsely, whole body shaking. When Saizou finally let him down against the bed he could only groan faintly.

Saizou chuckled, breathless, and worked slow hands over Juubei’s ass and thighs, kneading them. "Better now?"

This, of all things, was what made Juubei’s face heat, the inarguable evidence that Saizou had done this to take care of him. "Yes," he said softly.

"Shh." Saizou settled over him, warm and solid, caging Juubei down again though more gently. "It’s my place to look after these things. Now go to sleep."

"But…"

Saizou’s voice was kinder this time, but just as authoritative as before. "Do as I say, Juubei."

Drifting already in the aftermath, Juubei finally decided what was going on; Saizou was his elder, and spoke as such. Of course he submitted, as was only proper. "Yes, Saizou," he murmured, eyes sliding closed.

Saizou smiled ruefully as Juubei drifted into sleep and rubbed his back gently. Juubei was probably going to be just a little sore after that. He’d been a little rougher than he’d planned to be, but it had been so good to find that release of tension in answering Juubei’s need. To forget his fears for Kazuki in making Juubei forget his. And he couldn’t help a satisfied grin at how thoroughly he’d made Juubei forget. He curled around Juubei, hand stroking up and down his body absently, and let himself doze too.

At least until he heard the front door open and close.

"Toshiki?" Kazuki’s voice drifted through the bedroom door as Saizou fished his pants off the floor and pulled them back on. "Where did Juubei and Saizou get to?"

"They decided to distract each other," Toshiki said dryly. "At length. Loudly too."

"Hey, at least it worked," Saizou protested, slipping out and closing the bedroom door behind him. A quick once-over showed Kazuki was smiling and at ease, and he tried to hide how much that made him relax. From the tilt of Kazuki’s smile he didn’t think he was wholly successful.

"For a second there, I thought it was going to work by the two of you getting into a fight, not bed," Toshiki snorted. "I still can’t believe you just ordered Juubei to calm down and he actually listened."

Kazuki’s brows went up. "Ordered him?"

"And then into bed," Toshiki added as Saizou cleared his throat and tried not to shuffle. "Which also worked. I was speechless, which may be why they apparently forgot I was still here."

Saizou could tell he was going to have to make that up to Toshiki some time soon.

"It worked?" Kazuki looked half disbelieving and half amused; and, under that, perhaps just a little disturbed.

Saizou shrugged, a bit self-consciously. "Juubei needed someone to do it, and you weren’t here." And he needed to defuse Kazuki’s worry. He came to Kazuki and sank gracefully to his knees, turning one of Kazuki’s hands over to kiss the palm. "Will you forgive my presumption, my Prince?" he murmured.

Kazuki laughed softly at this bit of flamboyance. "Well, since it seems to have calmed him down, I suppose so."

"My lord is gracious." Saizou grinned up at him.

And that was the secret, of course. Saizou let it be half a game, with Kazuki, so Kazuki didn’t worry about losing his friend inside his vassal. It was all a matter of balance.

Saizou tipped his head at the bedroom. "He’ll probably be even calmer if you’re the one who wakes him up."

"Probably," Kazuki agreed and leaned down to tip Saizou’s head up and drop a kiss on his forehead.

"That was fairly impressive," Toshiki admitted as Saizou came to drop into one of the armchairs. "What I saw of it."

Saizou laughed; so that was it. "I’ll remember to invite you next time, I promise."

Toshiki smiled. "Do that."

Saizou eeled around to sprawl comfortably over the chair. The underlying problem of Yohan and his unpredictableness hadn’t been dealt with, and he honestly couldn’t see how it might be, but at least he had another card in his hand for fixing the immediate problems.

He’d have to remember how Juubei responded to that tone of voice.

End

Cat’s Cradle – Appendix

I extrapolated a good deal, based on canon, and thought it would be well to post an overview of the result.

Canon

Canonically, we know that there are multiple branches of the Fuuchouin clan and style. There is the main house, the Fuuchouin, also referred to as the "omote", the front or face. There are the Kokuchouin, also referred to as the "ura", the back or hidden. There are the Western and Eastern branches. We know that the family name associated with the Eastern branch is Toufuuin. The family names are written as follows, translating 風 (fuu) as "grace" for ease of reading.

風鳥院 (Fuuchouin): House of the Bird of Paradise, or, more literally, of the Graceful Bird.

黒鳥院 (Kokuchouin): House of the Black Swan, or, more literally, of the Black Bird.

東風院 (Toufuuin): Eastern House of Grace.

We also know that, during Kazuki and Saizou’s fights, both as children and as adults, they use techniques named the Dance of the Red Bird and the Dance of the Green Dragon, respectively.

We know that the Houses have hallmarks to their style, that the main house focuses on beauty and grace, that the Western style focuses on strength, and that the Eastern style focuses on speed. (see Voodoo Child 14)

We know that the Phoenix is a secret technique, handed down among the women who marry into the Fuuchouin main house.

Extrapolation

Names

Based on the pattern of names above, I have assumed that the family name associated with the Western Fuuchouin will be 西風院 (Seifuuin), the Western House of Grace.

Four Beasts, Four Houses

The Green Dragon and the Red Bird are two of the four cardinal guardian beasts found in Chinese astrology and myth and imported into Japanese literature. The Green Dragon is the beast of the East and the Red Bird the beast of the South. Based on this, and on the characters who use those two techniques, I have made two assumptions. One is that there are two other Dances within the Fuuchouin clan repertoire: the Dance of the White Tiger (the western beast) and the Dance of the Black Tortoise (the northern beast). The other is that the four Houses of the clan are symbolically and perhaps philosophically aligned with a beast and direction to each. The Eastern Fuuchouin are seen to use the Green Dragon. This suggests that the main house, represented by Kazuki using the Red Bird, is aligned with the South.

If this is so, it gives the Western Fuuchouin the White Tiger, and places the Kokuchouin in the North with the Black Tortoise.

Ura and the North

Based on the assumption above, and the hallmarks of the three styles that are noted in canon, I also extrapolated that the hidden techniques of the black strings were not the original hallmark of the Kokuchouin. The hallmarks of the other three have some relation to their symbolic beasts. The Red Bird of the South is a creature of elegance and grace, for example. The astrological associations of the tiger and dragon (metal and water) have led to them becoming a common metaphor in the martial arts for straightforward attack versus the indirect, which lines up reasonably well with strength versus speed.

Thus, the mark of the Kokuchouin style should be something having to do with the associations of the Black Tortoise. These are longevity, stability and wisdom; winter; and water. Based on this, I made the supposition that the hallmark of the northern style is endurance. Following this logic, the Kokuchouin must, at one point, have been an integral part of the Fuuchouin circle of Houses and had their own regular scrolls and techniques. The techniques of the black string, then, must have been, at first, not associated with any one House, and only placed in the keeping of the Kokuchouin later, thus turning them into the ura, or hidden House and apparently displacing their traditional style.

Four Principles

This is total extrapolation, based on the foregoing. I needed to figure out what the four Dances might actually do, so I decided that, logically, they should express the spirit of their quarter and particular style. It’s hard to imagine an attack that expresses grace or endurance, though, so I reached a little further. The techniques we see in canon seemed to me to divide into four basic functions: bindings that capture, strings that cut like Rain Shower, strings that strike like Comet, and deflections like Jade Shield. I aligned these with the four hallmarks of the Houses, resulting in: East/speed/cut, South/grace/deflect, West/strength/strike, North/endurance/bind. Thus I assume that the Dance of the Green Dragon is a powerful cutting technique while the Red Bird is an equally powerful deflection, which explains why they cancelled each other out both times.

Dragon and Phoenix

Now the fun part. First of all, the Red Bird of the South is not the Phoenix. Those are two different mythological entities. The Phoenix is a more inclusive creature, showing all five of the cardinal colors, and has been used to represent the Empress during imperial periods.

About those five colors. There are actually five guardian beasts that can show up, to go with the five elements of the Taoist cosmology. The fifth is earth, in the center. This is associated with the Yellow Dragon, who is used to represent the Emperor.

Thus, for a truly united clan, there should be a fifth Dance, and the nature of that technique should match the association of the element of earth: unity. The principle I chose to go with this Dance was, in a way, the first one Kazuki mentions; when he fights Akame, the thing that allows him to win is his understanding that it’s the vibration imparted to the strings that gives them strength. Thus, the principle that runs under and unites the other four is vibration or resonance. In accordance with my assumption that the Fuuchouin lost their balance, their unity and harmony as four Houses, when they assigned the Kokuchouin to the hidden techniques, I also posited that the Kachoufuugetsu, the ultimate technique that expresses the Fuuchouin’s valuation of beauty above all, was something that replaced this earlier Dance. Originally, my theory goes, what the heir to the clan had to demonstrate was his understanding of unity and balance, not simply of beauty. The conflict was probably embedded in the clan’s origin, of course, given that the main house, the source of the entire clan, is named for the Bird of the South, the graceful and elegant bird. The primacy of the southern aspects simply swung too far and unbalanced the whole.

When the center has returned and the Dragon and the Phoenix are united, in the persons of the couple who lead the entire clan, they should produce perfect harmony.

Invented Techniques

There are only a few string techniques named in canon, really, so I had to invent some more.

Butterfly: Similar to Flower Dance though not as powerful, this technique sends strings slipping on sidelong vectors, like the flight of a butterfly, to get through a straightforward defense or attack.

Mountain Lake: An advanced defensive technique that reflects, rather than simply blocking, the opponent’s attack, as perfectly as the water of a still lake reflects an image.

Sunrise: In the best tradition of Getbackers Physics, this technique sets strings to reflect the available light at the opponent, blinding them to one’s movements. Sunrise in Spring is the particularly Toufuuin variation, which does so very quickly, creating a flash more than a glare.

Flowing River: Deflects an attack upward, just as a river swirls at the bends, and strikes through the space thus created like the fast current in the river’s center. (This is essentially Yang style’s Fair Lady, only with strings.)

Winter Gale: This is a two-pronged attack; even if it does not bind, or freeze, the opponent it is meant to blind them with a wall of strings, as with a heavy snowfall, so they can’t attack accurately.

Blossoming Plum: This is an offensive technique meant to be used while under attack, just as the plum blossoms while the winter frosts are still hanging on; it takes momentum from the opponent’s attack to strike more strongly.

Night Forest Web: This is a defensive technique designed to entangle the opponent’s strings, as one is entangled in the spider webs spun at night while walking through a forest.

Cat’s Cradle – Epilogue

Kazuki walked through the house grounds as evening fell, nodding to the little knots of people he met. They bowed and murmured his name respectfully, but without the edges of fear or hope or anger so many had shown at the beginning of the week.

Almost all of the four Houses that remained were here for the celebrations surrounding Yohan and Toshi’s wedding; Kazuki was fairly sure Yohan had extended the compound even further than usual for the occasion. There had been feasts and receptions and, this being the Fuuchouin clan after all, competitions every day. Maiya had distinguished herself, and not only because she had nearly caused her opponents apoplexy when she casually stripped down to her fighting array. Even without the hidden techniques, her skill at the binding forms that Yohan said were the hallmark of the Northern House was outstanding. There were even murmurs starting about reconstituting the Thirteen Strings—Maiya among them. Saizou had trounced Seifuuin Koshijirou in their own match, which seemed to satisfy both of them. Toshi had fought three of her own House to a standstill, and Kazuki had had to smile at the approving sounds the onlookers to that match had made. Fortunately, Toshi hadn’t seemed to catch any of the details, most of which concerned what strong children she would bear.

And Kazuki… well, Kazuki had had a match with Yohan.

They were accustomed to each other after a year and more of training together, of course; that hadn’t been the point of this fight. No, this had been a demonstration for the clan. They had worked up through the simpler techniques all the way to Kachoufuugetsu, and when Yohan had reversed the Empty Moon onto him, Kazuki had yielded. The watchers had been silent, after, maybe shocked, maybe frightened, until Kazuki had laughed and caught Yohan up in a hug. The shock and fear hadn’t survived the sight of the clan lord flushed and flustered and having his hair ruffled. Yohan had given Kazuki a distinctly exasperated look, after, but softness had lurked behind it.

Now it was the last evening of the celebrations, and Kazuki had one more duty to fulfill before it was over. He was looking for Toshi.

He found her in one of the inner courtyards, brushing the sleeves of yet another outfit straight, and had to chuckle. “If I can delay your appearance for just a little while,” he called to her.

“Kazuki-sama!” She paused and came to look up at him with a glint of mischief much like her brother’s. “I suppose I should say Onii-sama, now.”

“I’d be quite pleased if you did. It’s a good moment for it, I believe; before you go out, I need to show you something to keep for the family.” She cocked her head at him, questioning, and he waved for her to walk with him.

“There is a technique that appears in none of the regular Fuuchouin scrolls,” he said quietly as they paced through the halls and out into the gardens. “It has been a hidden technique of its own, passed down among those who marry into the Fuuchouin main house. It’s called the Phoenix.” He glanced at her, curious. “Have you and Yohan found any mention of it in your researches?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

Kazuki nodded, not entirely surprised. “My mother, in her wisdom, taught it to me and so preserved it for the moment it would be most needed. I give you her words to me: Flowers are beautiful, but they can only abide in one place. The wind in nimble, but it has no will. The moon gleams from on high, but it has no warmth. However, birds not only shine beautifully, but have freedom and agility… They fly freely of their own will, and because of their warm wings, they can soar as high as they wish.” Kazuki stopped beside one of the pools and turned to Toshi. “It is not an art of strength, but of compassion and resolve. And now the heart of Fuuchouin comes to you.”

She nodded solemnly, eyes fixed on him as he took a bell between his fingers. He showed her the steps of it, so deceptively simple, and guided her from one to the next until she cast the Phoenix up into the sky and he could feel that it was right.

Toshi stood in the shadows of the trees, looking at the feather between her fingers. “This form… to complete it could take my life,” she said softly.

“If necessary, yes,” Kazuki agreed, voice steady.

“But what if…” She chewed her lip. Finally her chin lifted. “Yes. Kazuki-sama, please come with me.” She spun around and set off through the grounds toward the main court where Yohan and the heads of the Houses were waiting. There she waved off the compliments and smiles that met her and plunged into a whispered conversation with Yohan, hands shaping the air. Yohan listened and frowned and nodded, and finally rose and came with Toshi to Kazuki.

“Aniue,” he said. “Toshi wishes to give a gift to our clan. Do you approve?”

Kazuki could only imagine one thing she might want to do, and stared at her. “Toshi…!” He didn’t dare even look at Saizou, who was already eying his sister suspiciously.

“It can be done,” she insisted, eyes alight. “I know it can be done.”

Kazuki pressed his lips tight. “Give me your word that if it doesn’t go as you think it will, you’ll break off.”

Toshi nodded. “I promise. I’m not courting death at my wedding, honestly!”

Kazuki sighed; the glitter in her eyes still made him nervous, but she had given her word. “Very well. I approve.”

Yohan and Toshi moved out into the open center of the court together. Murmurs ran around the perimeter as people noticed the bell and feather in their fingers. Saizou started making his way around the edge to Kazuki, frowning faintly. Toshi lifted her head and raised her voice to be heard by all.

“There are many who could not be present to celebrate with us; but they are not gone.” She held out her hand to Yohan, in the sudden silence, and he wove his strings out around her in the taut framework of the Yellow Dragon. Kazuki’s eyes widened with sudden understanding, and he leaned forward, watching Toshi gather her strings within that enfolding, magnifying resonance and cast them upwards. The song of them, actually audible, spilled over the watchers and beyond, though the entire compound.

And the Phoenix descended.

And the Dragon rose to meet it.

Kazuki pressed a hand to his mouth, eyes blind with sudden tears. He could feel his mother’s presence, and his father’s, and those who had watched over him growing up. Saizou’s arms closed around him and he turned to bury his head against Saizou’s shoulder, feeling the hitch of quick, choked breaths in Saizou’s chest. His family was here, and he had their blessing.

He blinked his eyes clear and looked up to see the glimmering presence of the Dragon and Phoenix whirling together over the clan. Yohan and Toshi were standing below, in each other’s arms. As the forms they’d called together faded, Kazuki heard soft sobs and the swell of softer words, laughter, remembrance, not only in the court but from the rooms and gardens beyond it. As Yohan and Toshi moved back to the platform where the heads of the Houses and their councilors sat, Kazuki watched people part before them and bow deeply, ungrudgingly to them both. “It will all be well,” he said softly.

“Yes,” Saizou agreed, as Juubei and Sakura and Toshiki slipped in through the crowd to find them. “It really will.”

Kazuki met his brother’s eyes across the court, as his little House gathered around him, and smiled, open and free.

It would all be well.

End

 

A/N: The translation of Kazuki’s mother’s description of the Phoenix is by Jane, direct from the manga.

Cat’s Cradle – Chapter Four

“You want to what?” Saizou yelped, staring at his little sister while Toshiki snatched for his coffee mug before it could hit the floor.

She lifted her chin in that way that made his stomach sink because it wasn’t just stubborn. That was her “doing the right thing” expression. “I want to marry Yohan.”

Saizou sat down with a thump in the nearest kitchen chair. “But you can’t… I mean that’s… Yohan?”

“It will stop the clan elders arguing over whether he should marry Fuuchouin or Kokuchouin blood, everyone in the clan knows me or at least knows of me, and Yohan won’t have a wife who isn’t a warrior,” she listed off briskly. “And besides, I…” she looked down at her hands, clasped on the kitchen table, “I… want to.”

“You’ve already agreed to this?” Saizou asked, feeling a little dazed.

“Well no. Not exactly.” She reclasped her hands. “It would mean I couldn’t serve as your voice any more, so I wanted to talk to you first.”

Saizou scrubbed his hands over his face. “Toshi…” His little sister wanted to marry Yohan. His little sister wanted to marry Yohan. Toshiki patted his shoulder with a heartless chuckle, but he also gave Saizou back his filled coffee mug. Saizou clutched it and tried to make his brain work.

“Onii-sama, do you… really dislike him?” Toshi asked hesitantly.

Saizou took a fortifying slug of coffee. “It’s more complicated than that,” he muttered. “I know he’s changed, Toshi, but I’ve seen him do horrifying things.” Some of them had been done to Saizou himself.

“I know.”

Saizou looked up, startled, and Toshi met his eyes levelly. “I know. He told me some of them. When I asked why Takeo-san and Akihito-san were being so stubborn about getting a Fuuchouin wife. But he has changed since then. He’s…” she looked down again, cheeks pink, “he’s kind. And brilliant. And he really wants to do what’s best.”

Saizou groaned. Under her hard-headed presentation, his sister was an idealist at heart; if those two had bonded over that it was all over except the question of what flowers she’d wear for the ceremony.

Still.

“Toshi, are you really sure about this?” he couldn’t help asking.

She glared at him. “Onii-sama, you are so—”

“Toshi,” Kazuki interrupted, hands sliding over Saizou’s shoulders. “Let us talk this over among ourselves.”

She sat back with a huff, still looking daggers at Saizou. “Oh all right.”

Juubei, who Saizou could just tell was hiding amusement behind that deadpan look, pushed away from the doorway where he’d been leaning. “Ane-chan asked if you would like to visit, the next time you were in Lower Town,” he offered.

As she left with him, spine almost as stiff as his, Saizou let his head drop back against Kazuki’s stomach. “What the hell am I going to do?”

“You’re going to stop panicking and relax,” Kazuki told him.

“Easier said than done.”

Toshiki turned a chair around and sat, resting his arms across the back as he regarded Saizou. “I know you’ve forgiven him, even if you can’t actually deal with him very well,” he said. “So what’s got you so knotted up about this?”

“It’s my sister!” Saizou waved his hands, unable to find any stronger words than that.

“And it’s my brother,” Kazuki murmured, arms folding around his shoulders and drawing him back again. Saizou bit his lip.

“I don’t mean he’d do anything to her,” he started.

“Shh.” Kazuki pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “I know. It’s just that they’ll be very close, and they might hurt each other. And we don’t want that to happen.”

Saizou craned his head back to look up at Kazuki. “How are you so calm about this?”

Kazuki smiled down at him. “Because I’ve watched them falling in love for half a year.”

Saizou opened his mouth and closed it again. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“They’ve also been studiously avoiding admitting it, the whole time,” Kazuki pointed out. “And if you’d mentioned it to Toshi before she did, who knows what would have happened?”

Toshiki rested his chin on his arms with a wry grin. “Always a step ahead.”

“Because he cheats,” Saizou muttered.

“Well, if you want to see for yourself, why don’t you come with me, the next time she visits him?” Kazuki returned.

Toshiki laughed out loud, probably at Saizou’s expression, Saizou admitted ruefully. “I yield,” he sighed, and lifted one of Kazuki’s hands to kiss the back.

“Good,” Kazuki said comfortably. “Because it’s about time you did see them for yourself.”

They obviously had Kazuki’s blessing already, so Saizou tried not to worry. Too much.

“Are you sure…?” Saizou asked for the sixth or so time.

“We’re far from the only ones watching those two,” Kazuki murmured, nodding to a Kokuchouin retainer as they slipped quietly up the stairs. “Besides Maiya, and sometimes even Takeo these days, at least half of Yohan’s retainers find an excuse to keep an eye on them. Yohan won’t notice us in the crowd. This should do.” They emerged onto one of the second level open rooms and Kazuki knelt behind the balcony half-wall and gestured Saizou down beside him.

Peeking over, he could see Toshi and Yohan sitting on one of the garden benches below.

Toshi was teaching Yohan string figures.

“Now the little fingers go all the way over to get the thumb string.” She illustrated, and Yohan followed but missed one side. “Ah, keep the tension on the string! Here.” She shook her string off her fingers and helped Yohan recover his, fingers dancing over the web of his strings as she directed. Yohan was looking studiously at his hands, but he was also smiling in a way that a loop of tangled string really didn’t deserve.

“There! The butterfly.”

Yohan did it a few more times and regarded the figure between his hands. “The Butterfly is also your favorite form, isn’t it? Your fighting pattern always comes back to it.”

Toshi’s mouth quirked, and her fingers flickered through three figures in quick succession. “Well, actually… the Flowing River is my favorite. Enough that Onii-sama said I needed to stop using it so much.”

“Ah. The Butterfly is your reminder, then.”

Toshi smiled, fingers slowing again. “Yes, exactly! It helps me to remember the indirect approaches.”

Yohan tipped his head, looking at her for a long moment. “Saizou is wise. But you should use Flowing River more often, I think. To deflect and strike through the center that way is very true to the heart of you.”

Toshi’s fingers stilled entirely, and the two of them just sat there looking at each other, apparently oblivious to anything else in the world. Saizou slid down behind the half-wall with a quiet sigh.

“They really are totally in love, aren’t they?”

“They do seem to be.” Kazuki settled beside him, shoulder touching his. “I’ve found them training and researching and talking about philosophy and history and even gardening, but sooner or later it always seems to come down to this.” He gestured at the silent, absorbed couple below them.

“I should have known the very first day,” Saizou muttered. “When she hustled him for a match.”

Kazuki pressed a hand over his mouth, eyes dancing. “Does it run in the family?” he asked, once his shoulders had stopped shaking with laughter.

“Seems to.” Saizou shook his head, rueful.

Yohan’s voice drifted up from below. “Show me another one?”

“Come on,” Saizou whispered. “I don’t think I can take much for of the syrup before I drown.”

They had slipped down the stairs and back out through the house, all the way to the bridge on the outer path before he put a finger on what was oddest about the whole afternoon. “Yohan really didn’t seem to know we were there,” he said finally.

“Mm.” Kazuki perched on one of the railings. “That does seem to happen a good deal; every now and then I’ve surprised him walking into the room when he’s with her. He seems to focus on her very exclusively when they’re together.”

“The Beltline was a lot… quieter, today, too.”

“Yohan’s is the strongest will here,” Kazuki said quietly.

“You’re saying he quiets it for her.” Saizou crossed his arms and leaned against the other railing, considering that.

“More than that. I think she quiets him enough that the effect blankets the entire Beltline. It’s been getting calmer and calmer over the past few seasons. But yes, nothing in the Beltline dares approach her any more.”

Saizou sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m talking myself into this, aren’t I?”

“I hope so. I think they’ll be good for each other.” Kazuki smiled gently at Saizou. “I wouldn’t have encouraged it if I’d thought otherwise.” His smile quirked. “And just in time, too.” He nodded back down the path to where their siblings were coming, side by side.

“They’re practically holding hands,” Saizou groaned.

Kazuki laughed out loud. “I had no idea you were still such a traditionalist, Saizou!”

The children were close enough to spot them, by then, and Toshi was giving Saizou a look of mingled apprehension and suspicion. “Onii-sama? What are you doing here?”

He looked at her, and the way she drew a protective step closer to Yohan, and the way Yohan turned toward her without hesitation, and heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Okay. Okay, fine. If you really want him that much, you can have him.”

Toshi lit up like sunrise. “Onii-sama!” She dashed the few steps up the bridge and threw herself into his arms, nearly sending both of them over the rail.

And then, just as quickly, she skipped back to Yohan, smiling up at him. “I do! I would! I mean…” she glanced down and back up, suddenly shy. “If you want to.”

Yohan was looking back and forth between Saizou and Kazuki. “Saizou?” he asked.

He didn’t hesitate, though, about taking Toshi’s hands in his, and Saizou snorted wryly.

“Yeah. Not that it looks like the two of you really need it, but you have my blessing.”

Yohan looked back at Toshi and smiled like Saizou had never seen before, sweet and happy and young, and Saizou had to swallow tightness out of his throat for a moment.

“I would be honored if you would marry me, Toufuuin Toshi,” Yohan said softly, and Toshi laughed up at him.

“I would be honored to accept.”

When it looked like they might just keep standing there, staring at each other, Saizou murmured dryly, “Scaring up the family members for this ceremony is going to be a project.”

Toshi looked away long enough to stick out her tongue at him, and Saizou laughed. It was good to see his sister so happy.

“Family, yes.” Yohan looked up at him again. “Will you choose another to act in your place with the clan, then?”

The thought that Saizou had been trying not to look at ever since Toshi first spoke to him darted up again. He could choose another. Or he could… not. He could return to Yohan’s side himself, to this smiling gentle-eyed Yohan who he was trusting with his little sister.

To Yohan, who had trapped him in service and torment for eight long years.

To Yohan, who had all the deadly grace of the Fuuchouin line and had held him with more than force alone.

Saizou’s hands clenched tight, and he had to swallow before he could speak. “I… don’t know. Let me consider.”

Yohan nodded slowly. “Of course.”

Kazuki came to Saizou and linked an arm through his. “I’ll take Saizou home, then, and you two can decide how you want to announce this to Takeo.”

Yohan’s eyes on Saizou were still grave, but a tiny smile curled the corner of his mouth, and Toshi had a definite light of mischief in her eyes. “We’ll think on that, yes,” she murmured.

As Kazuki led him back toward the gates, Saizou was aware that the decision he had made today had been the easy one.

Kazuki and Toshiki and Juubei had held and comforted Saizou while he wrestled with his past, with the braid of fear and sympathy and pain that still ran taut between he and Yohan. He was grateful for them, desperately grateful for the peace and shelter that belonging to Kazuki gave him. But he knew that he couldn’t live out his whole life never going beyond that shelter.

In the end, Saizou had come to Sakura for a second opinion.

Sakura sat him down in her sunlit kitchen and made tea for them both, and listened as he told her things she already knew, things she had sifted out of his heart while he held her under the curse seal, and things he was only starting to become aware of. Chief among them, of course, the knowledge that he truly did want to return to Yohan’s side.

Saizou drove his fingers into his hair. “Sakura, you’re the smart one around here. Tell me why I’m even considering going back?”

He didn’t honestly expect her to give him an answer, but she looked at him soberly for a long moment, arms crossed over her stomach, and finally sighed.

“He betrayed you. He held leadership over you with one hand and with the other denied everything that it means to lead. But you can’t forget his brilliance, or the security of being led by such a powerful spirit. It draws you back, even when you fear to be betrayed and cast aside again.”

He lifted his head and stared at her shocked to his bones, shaken by the blunt truth of her words. “How… how do you know?”

She came to him and rested her hands on his shoulders. Her smile was faint and shadowed. “I recognized that expression.”

The world tilted and slid sideways and suddenly he heard another name behind the “he” she’d spoken. “Sakura…” He stared at her, reaching out to gather her closer, needing to comfort the hurt hiding behind her small smile. He knew that smile and that hurt.

She leaned against him and sighed, arms folded around his shoulders. “He did come back to us. He came back and he cared for us, little by little, more and more, and now we’re safe in his hands, and I’ve forgiven him, truly I have, I know the pain he carried that drove him away, but…” She took a deep, unsteady breath and let it out. “I recognized how you looked, just now.”

Saizou rested his cheek against her stomach. “You have a great heart. I don’t know if mine is that strong.”

“It is,” she said softly against his hair. “You just want it to make logical sense to you, too.”

After a moment Saizou chuckled, ruefully. “I did say you were the smart one.”

Sakura took his face in her hands to make him look up. “I believe in you,” she said, steadily. “I believe that you will never betray Kazuki, by this. And I believe that you will not betray yourself, either.”

Saizou closed his eyes, letting her words fill him. Sakura believed in him. He held on to that like a lifeline in a storm. “Thank you,” he whispered.

She leaned down and kissed him softly. “Go see him. Find what it is you need to know.”

“Far be it from me to disobey the word of our House’s councilor,” Saizou murmured, wry.

“Really?” She looked down at him with a tiny smile. “Well, then. Go see him tomorrow.” She took his hands and pulled him up and off toward her bedroom.

Saizou stood in the door of what he thought might be Yohan’s favorite room, the one that overlooked the waterfall. Both Kazuki and Toshi mentioned this room frequently. Yohan was sitting by the open screens, back to the door. Saizou wasn’t in the least surprised, though, when he murmured, “Come in, Saizou.”

He came silently and sat across the way from Yohan, looking out over the water too, his hands clenched on his thighs.

“I have already said I will not force your service again,” Yohan said after a while. “If you object…”

“It isn’t that,” Saizou interrupted, tightly. “If it were, I’d just choose another to speak for me and be done with it.”

Finally Yohan looked at him, quiet and clear-eyed. “What is it, then?”

Saizou dropped his head, eyes closed. “It’s that I do want to return,” he said, low.

“I know your heart belongs to Aniue,” Yohan said tentatively, as if he were feeling his way into this tangle too. Saizou huffed half a laugh.

“That’s less of a problem than I thought it might be, now that more of the clan has met Kazuki and seen how completely he’s released the clan to you. No one will think there might be a conflict of clan loyalty.”

“So for appearances. What of reality?” Yohan asked.

That was the perception, cutting straight to the core, that drew Saizou so. “If Kazuki should ever choose to command something of me that conflicted with your orders, it’s him I would obey,” he said quietly. “But Kazuki loves you. He trusts the clan to you. I believe he would not do such a thing.”

After a long moment Yohan said, “You entrust yourself greatly to our hands.”

A shudder raked through Saizou, and he wrapped his arms around himself. “I… want to.”

The past hung in the silence between them, the pain both of them had carried, had shared in a twisted way, and the fact that Yohan had been responsible for Saizou’s.

“Perhaps,” Yohan said at last, “we should take wisdom from your sister.”

Saizou looked at him blankly, unable to make any sense of the words.

“You have not fought me since that first time, when I defeated you.” Yohan held Saizou’s eyes as he started. “Perhaps it is time you did.”

Saizou swallowed, years of fear clamoring that it was pointless, hopeless, that to fight Yohan would only mean destruction—that or the shame of knowing there was nothing, nothing at all, he could do against Yohan.

But there was no glint of amusement or irony in Yohan’s eyes now, nothing of those years, only quiet waiting. And perhaps that was Yohan’s point. Saizou took a shaking breath.

“You both have that ruthlessness, you and Kazuki,” he said, husky. “All right.”

“Come, then.” Yohan rose and led the way back out through the house to the same training ground where Toshi had demanded a match. Now the remark about his sister’s wisdom made sense. Yohan stood in the center of the space, bell gleaming between his fingers, and simply waited.

Saizou took a breath, and then another, and sent his strings flashing out in the Winter Gale.

It was a strange fight. He felt as though he were fighting himself as much as he was Yohan, fighting the drag and twitch of fear in his muscles, fighting ghosts of the past that told him to cower behind the Jade Shield and not dare strike out. He fought past that, as well as Yohan’s attacks, and breathed freer with every attack, twisting aside from the Rain Shower to return it with the Blossoming Plum, blood singing every time an attack drove Yohan to step aside.

He knew Yohan was not fighting with his full power, that this was a training match and not a true battle. But the knowledge didn’t hurt; it was what they’d set out to do after all, to take each other’s measure on this ground, and Yohan’s grace called to him the way Kazuki’s had the first time they fought. He gave himself up to that grace again and let the rhythm of the match take him, moving through the forms like flying, hovering, watching for the opportunity to dive.

At last, Yohan spun his strings out into a form Saizou didn’t recognize, and he tensed, wondering if Yohan would use one of the hidden techniques on him now. In a flicker of decision he chose to meet Yohan’s lunge head on, seeking to entangle his strings in the Night Forest Web. Yohan’s strings didn’t close on him, though. Instead they drew taut just out of his range and sang.

Saizou thought he cried out; he couldn’t tell. Sound and more than sound poured through him, halted him as surely as a binding but without holding him, cut through him like a knife but without touching him. He felt like it should be tearing his body apart, crushing him, but the force of it flowed through him without pause or pain.

When it released him his legs wouldn’t hold him up and he stumbled down to the ground, stunned. Yohan walked back to him and Saizou took a breath and looked up. “What…?” he managed, voice rough.

“What are the four principles of our art?” Yohan asked in return.

Saizou blinked at him. “To cut, to reflect, to strike, and to bind,” he answered, slowly. What was this, catechism?

“And so the signature forms of the four Houses, each one particularly and powerfully expressing one of the four principles,” Yohan agreed. “But there is a fifth. It is the core and root of all the others. Resonance.”

Saizou’s eyes widened; that was what the unknown form had done, then. Passed the resonance of the strings into his body, far more powerfully than any technique he’d ever heard of.

“That,” Yohan said softly, “was the Dance of the Yellow Dragon. I believe that it used to be the Fuuchouin succession technique, before Kachoufuugetsu—before the hidden arts were laid on the Kokuchouin—the proof that the heir had mastered the deepest root, as well as the highest reaches, of the art, and comprehended their unity and harmony.” More softly still he finished, “Toufuuin Saizou, do you accept it?”

Harmony. To conquer without injury. Saizou buried his face in his hands and laughed, breathless and helpless. Yohan was Kazuki’s brother after all. “Yes,” he whispered at last, and looked up again, smiling, at his clan lord. “Yes.”

Yohan smiled, small but pleased and bright. “I’m glad.”

Saizou bent his head and let his new knowledge settle into his heart. Yohan had found a place for life instead of the death that he’d worn like an over-robe for all those years. He would care for Fuuchouin and bring it harmony, and Saizou was welcomed, not bound, at his side. It fit; it made sense; Kazuki was the Master of his House and heart, and Yohan was the Master of his clan. His honor would be safe in their hands. He let out a trembling breath, feeling himself truly relax.

Yohan touched his shoulder. “Come back inside.” Now there was a hint of amusement in his eyes, but it was lighter than it had been before. “Aniue won’t like it if I send you back to him in this condition.”

Saizou snorted and levered himself upright. He could foresee his life getting complicated, between those two. To say nothing of what would happen when his sister mixed in.

Saizou’s first meeting with the rest of Yohan’s councilors wasn’t particularly comfortable. He hadn’t expected it to be. He remembered Seifuuin Koshijirou, after all, who seemed to feel it was his spiritual duty to never make anyone comfortable if he could help it.

“Saizou,” Koshijirou greeted him, on the engawa outside the room they would meet in. “I see you’ve finally regrown your courage.”

Saizou gave him a glittering grin. “Koshijirou. Well, you know how it is. It’s astonishing what it can do to people when they actually resist instead of licking the feet of whoever presents himself.”

Koshijirou laughed, apparently perfectly pleased. “It’s good to have you back.”

Some people, in Saizou’s opinion, had really bad hobbies.

He heard the patter of running feet behind him and habit braced him by the time Maiya’s weight landed on his shoulders. “Saizou!” Having failed to knock him over she swung down beside him and he blinked at her.

“Maiya-chan. You’re dressed.” Koshijirou snorted, and Saizou had to admit Maiya wasn’t entirely dressed by a long way, but she had added a pair of prettily printed hakama to her usual, desperately scanty, outfit; by contrast she nearly looked demure.

Maiya beamed at him. “Well, now Yohan lets the weather change here, it gets cold sometimes. Besides, Toshi blushes if I’m not.”

Toshi, coming behind her at a much more sedate pace, blushed demonstratively. “It’s not that I want to interfere, Maiya-san, it’s just…”

Maiya waved it off. “Oh, don’t worry. If I need to fight, it’s easy enough to get these off.” She patted her thigh and Saizou heard the chime of her leg bells, apparently still in place under the fabric.

“Wasting time chattering about fashion can wait,” grumbled an old man, who Saizou decided must be Seiji, as he stumped past them into the room. Maiya giggled in her most mendaciously brainless fashion and jiggled her breasts at him, and Saizou watched with interest as his neck turned red. Maiya must not like him very much; Saizou didn’t discount that.

After all, the man must be completely oblivious not to have realized that they’d spend most of this meeting talking about fashion. Toshi would make sure of that.

He nodded to Maiya, gestured Toshi in ahead of him, and went to take his place at Yohan’s right.

The actual marriage contract was settled quickly, despite Seiji’s occasional grumpy noises, presumably at Toshi’s participation; the families were already allies and more, after all. The marriage would only reconfirm Toufuuin’s place within the Fuuchouin clan.

“Framing this as some kind of new alliance will only lead to further division,” Saizou said firmly to Kokuchouin Gorou’s suggestion, ignoring the sidelong glances of the Fuuchouin elders. “Toufuuin serves our clan lord willingly, and I won’t suggest it might be otherwise.”

Finally no one could think of any more clauses he needed to reject. Saizou sat back and opened a hand discreetly to his sister.

Toshi’s eyes sparkled.

“Well, then, let us discuss the ceremonies themselves,” she said brightly.

On mature consideration, Saizou decided thoughtfully, he wasn’t entirely surprised that Maiya and Toshi were getting along. They had very similar senses of humor, under certain circumstances, and the clan elders had obviously been getting on Toshi’s nerves for a while now. He was reasonably sure she didn’t actually want a modern wedding with church trappings, and had only suggested it to see the colors Seiji and Akihito would turn, but she had no compunction about using the specter of it as a bargaining chip to wring out every single outfit, ornament and moment of display tradition afforded. Saizou just smiled blandly and agreed to every single demand. By the time they were done, the celebration had expanded into a week long festival, and Takeo was looking appalled at the notion that it would have to be hosted here in the Beltline.

“Your sister is a dangerous woman to cross,” he murmured ruefully to Saizou as they all stood to go.

“She certainly is,” he agreed with a brilliant smile.

“I wish I had known sooner that she favored Yohan-sama for herself.” Takeo cast a thoughtful look over his shoulder to where Yohan and Toshi were saying temporary goodbye at great length.

Saizou snorted. “You and me both. But I think it’s for the best. She loves his idealism and Yohan needs a bright heart in his life, and Kazuki doesn’t actually live here.”

Takeo stopped and looked at him for a long moment. “You know Yohan-sama well,” he finally said.

“Yes,” Saizou agreed, quiet. “I do.”

Takeo smiled. “I had wondered whether your return to the clan council was wise.” He bowed deeply. “Forgive me for doubting you, Master of Toufuuin.”

Saizou’s mouth quirked. “You didn’t doubt me any more than I did. For a while there was cause. But we’re both healing from it, Yohan and I. Toufuuin will be well; and so will Fuuchouin.” His smile widened. “All the more after the entire clan sees Yohan, and Yohan and Kazuki together, at this circus of a wedding.”

Takeo paused, brows lifting, and looked back at Toshi again, this time with open respect. “I… see.” He smiled, small and rueful. “I will do my best to follow my lady’s program, then.”

“Usually wisest,” Saizou agreed, and clapped him on the shoulder companionably.

After all, trimming Toshi down to size was his job, and he didn’t intend to let it out to anyone else.

Takeo nodded to him and moved off after his fellows, and Yohan and Toshi finally emerged from the room. Saizou traded identical grins with his sister. “Go tell Maiya about your victory, then,” he told her. “I’ll catch up with you at the gates.”

Toshi laughed and ran the other way down the engawa.

“Saizou,” Yohan said quietly, looking after her. “Thank you.”

Saizou shrugged. “It was her choice. I just agreed to it.”

“You did—to all of it.” Yohan turned that even gaze on him. “That’s why I’m thanking you.”

Saizou hesitated for a moment, but at last he took a slow breath and knelt down in full salute at Yohan’s feet. The body memory of heart-pain from the many times he’d done this before pulled at him, but he pushed it away with the crisp cool of the fall afternoon here and now and the memory of the new Dance Yohan had shown him. “It is my duty and my honor,” he said firmly.

“Saizou.” There was startlement and wonder in Yohan’s voice, and Saizou smiled to himself. Neither would have shown, or even existed, two years ago.

He stood and gave Yohan a brighter grin. “Of course, you realize, as your big-brother-in-law, I’m going to tease you now. That’s my duty too.”

Yohan looked up at him, startlement softening into a smile. “Is it? Perhaps I’ll look forward to it, then.”

The trust of those words kept Saizou company all the way home.

Cat’s Cradle – Chapter Three

Kazuki had expected to see more of Saizou’s sister, as Toufuuin’s acting Master came and went from Yohan’s home. What he hadn’t expected was to see her at Yohan’s instead of his home.

When he visited Yohan to find he and Toshi pouring through some ancient scrolls, he was only surprised. When he found them out in one of the winter-bare gardens, experimenting with forms, he was amused. When he found her arguing vociferously with Yuuri over whether the object forming techniques should remain hidden, and Yohan watching with quiet interest, he was impressed with her dedication.

When he found her listening to Yohan play koto he started to wonder.

“Trading more techniques?” he asked as Yohan closed the piece, stepping softly into the room. Both of them started a little, looking around, and his brows went up; Yohan always knew when someone else was in his house.

Toshi shook her head ruefully. “It wouldn’t do any good. I don’t play; I was just listening.”

Kazuki blinked. “You don’t?” He knew not all the Houses were as strict in their training as the main House was, but he’d thought everyone at least learned koto. It was the root of their art, after all.

“Oh, I have the basic skills,” Toshi waved a hand. “I can follow a written piece of music well enough I suppose. But I just don’t have the ear for music the way you two do.”

Yohan promptly looked out the screens, coloring faintly, and Kazuki stifled a smile. “That must have made training frustrating for you,” he said, drawing attention away from his brother’s embarrassment at being complimented, even indirectly.

Toshi’s dimple flashed as she smiled. “It was. So I argued with Otou-sama until he let me do something else for basic dexterity exercises.”

Yohan looked back around at that. “What did you do?” he asked, head tilted curiously.

“Well… here, I’ll show you.” Toshi uncoiled a string and looped it around her hands. Her fingers flashed back and forth through the string and she pulled her hands apart to show a squared web of strings between them. “This is the butterfly.”

Kazuki looked again and saw the broad upper wings and the narrow lower ones. “String figures?”

She shook it loose and her hands darted together again. “And this is the koto,” she grinned.

Well, Kazuki supposed it was a good dexterity exercise at that, though he couldn’t imagine it was as good for fine control as playing. Yohan, though, was looking at Toshi thoughtfully. “You normally go faster than that, don’t you?”

It was Toshi’s turn to color. “When I’m practicing seriously, yes. Onii-sama wouldn’t agree it was good training until I could make a figure faster than he could get one of his strings into it to stop me.” She looped the string around her hands again and paused for a breath.

This time Kazuki could barely see her fingers moving and the string sang as her fingertips plucked and shifted it. All in a flash, the long string closed into an oval knot between her spread hands. “That’s the tortoise,” she murmured, holding it up.

Yohan smiled, faint but true.

Toshi coiled her string up and asked them to play koto again, and Kazuki obliged. But he remembered that smile.

The next time Kazuki visited Yohan, though, the young woman he saw there was not Toshi. As he came out into the inner garden, he found Yohan in rather stiff conversation with someone Kazuki decided, after a minute’s thought, might be a cousin on his mother’s side, a girl a few years younger than Yohan with the same straight, heavy hair their mother had.

“Aniue.” There was a definite note of relief in Yohan’s voice, and Kazuki was fairly sure the girl heard it too.

“I must be keeping you from your business, forgive me,” she murmured, not looking up. “I should be going.” She bowed and shook her long sleeves back into place with a gesture that made Kazuki nostalgic.

“Not at all,” he told her kindly. “It’s good to see you and know you are well.”

A slight gesture from Yohan brought a Kokuchouin retainer to escort her out and Yohan sat down on the engawa with a thump, careless for once of the disorder of his robes.

“What’s this all about?” Kazuki asked, amused.

“They really are trying to marry me off!” Yohan drove a hand through his hair. “It started with Gorou, who wants me to marry a Kokuchouin girl to mix the bloodlines again, and then Takeo and Akihito decided it should be a Fuuchouin girl instead, and the lot of them have been dragging every girl they can find out here to parade past me.”

Kazuki managed to turn his laugh into a cough but Yohan glared at him anyway. “I ought to tell them I’m going to marry Maiya,” he muttered.

Kazuki sat beside him, setting down the bundle he’d brought, and leaned back to enjoy the early summer sun. “She is one of the people who’s closest to you, after all,” he agreed, though he was reasonably sure Maiya was too much Yohan’s sister to be his wife.

“And she’s a warrior,” Yohan added, frowning in the direction the girl—the latest girl apparently—had left. “None of these will even look at me!”

“You are the clan lord, after all,” Kazuki reminded him gently. “And they were undoubtedly raised to know what’s proper.”

Yohan frowned down at his hands. “I don’t want a wife I could ignore.” As their mother’s council had been fatally ignored, hung unspoken in the air between them.

“Maiya would certainly not stand for being ignored,” Kazuki murmured, seeking to lighten the shadow over his brother today. To his surprise, that shadow only deepened.

“I frightened her, though,” Yohan said, low.

Kazuki frowned and wrapped an arm around Yohan, drawing him close. “What do you mean?”

Yohan was silent for long moments. “It was when you were coming through the Beltline, last winter,” he finally said. “All I could think of was that you were coming, at last. And I would kill you. Or you would kill me. It didn’t matter to me which, then. If I’d killed you, I’d just have died after, because there would have been nothing left. I was… I felt… intoxicated with it. And I kissed her. I’m not even sure what I was thinking, any more.” He took a deep breath and let it out, shaking. “And I frightened her.”

Kazuki’s eyes had been widening all through Yohan’s speech, and now he turned and pulled his brother tight into his arms. “I expect so, yes,” he said quietly, breath stirring the fine, fair strands of Yohan’s hair.

“These proper, retiring girls they bring to show me,” Yohan whispered, “they’re afraid already.”

“Someone will come who isn’t afraid,” Kazuki said firmly. If he was right, someone already had, after all. But he wasn’t sure enough of that to say it yet. He stroke Yohan’s hair back and tipped his chin up. “Do you want to spar, today?”

Relief flickered in Yohan’s eyes again. “You brought flowers, though,” he said, glancing at the package Kazuki had set beside them.

“The calla and water lilies will bloom for a while yet,” Kazuki told him. “And even when they don’t, there will be other flowers.” He smiled. “Sometimes I think that’s the true lesson of ikebana. There will always be flowers still; they just won’t be the same ones.” Now that Yohan had finally agreed to let Kazuki teach him this, it would keep.

“Then yes.” Yohan closed his eyes for a moment. “Please.”

Kazuki pulled him up off the engawa and toward the practice grounds.

Their matches were a joy to Kazuki, especially now that Yohan had regained his balance and his mastery of their arts without the stigma. The song of Yohan’s strings was light and fierce, now, not dampened by despair. Today they played out a match of subtlety and maneuver, rarely striking directly, layering form on form to create attacks from blind spots. The last one Kazuki only escaped by casting down the Comet to break it, and he spread his hands, laughing.

“My loss.”

Yohan was smiling again, relaxed. “In a way.”

Kazuki refastened his bells and ruffled Yohan’s hair. “Stop fishing for compliments, little brother,” he scolded. “You’re still stronger than I am.”

Yohan’s smile quirked and he murmured, “In a way, Aniue.”

Kazuki was still smiling when he made his way into the outer gardens, expecting to find Juubei there. What he found, though, was the girl he’d met this afternoon in low-voiced conversation with a woman at least ten years older.

“…should have seen the way Yohan-sama smiled at him,” the girl was whispering. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

The woman sighed. “As if it weren’t bad enough that we have the memory of their mother to compete with. I’ve heard this before, that Kazuki-sama has grown to be Hana-sama alive again.” She looked up to see Kazuki standing at the foot of the bridge and her eyes widened. “Kazuki-sama!” She bowed, hastily but with grace. The girl was more flustered and nearly lost a shoe, turning to make her own bow. Kazuki returned it, politely ignoring both the gossip and their discomposure. As the woman rose he finally recognized her as a second cousin he’d met sometimes during festivals; the girl must be her younger sister, then.

“Megumi-san, it’s good to see you again after so long,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

“And you as well, Kazuki-sama,” she murmured, cheeks red. She nudged her sister aside as Kazuki crossed the bridge, and he left them to recover their composure.

He didn’t turn toward the gate yet, though. He headed back around the compound, though the trees, to find Maiya.

If she couldn’t ward this genteel assault off directly, he was fairly sure she’d still be perfectly willing to interrupt these would-be marriage interviews in her own inimitable fashion, and he had no intention of leaving his brother to deal with this alone.

One of the things Kazuki treasured most were the moments when Yohan relaxed for him, enough to sleep. Sleep was a demonstration of both trust and hope, for his little brother, and the sweetness of having Yohan asleep in his lap made Kazuki’s entire world soft and bright. It didn’t happen very often, even now.

Yohan had started out, today, insisting he was fine, but Kazuki had kept an eye on him as he guided Yohan through the little steps and choices of creating a flower arrangement and had seen the droop in his shoulders. Once the delicate stalks of lavender were arranged in their holder, he’d insisted that Yohan rest and Yohan had finally agreed. So when the door slid open, as Yohan’s sleeping weight rested against his shoulder, he looked up with a frown, ready to warn off whoever dared to intrude.

Toshi stopped one step into the room, fingers pressed to her lips. It was a long moment before she managed to drag her eyes away from Yohan, long enough that Kazuki started to smile, and when she finally did she pointed to herself and back to the door, head tipped in a question.

She probably didn’t even realize she was nibbling her lip, or that so much tenderness was plain to read in her eyes. It was that that decided Kazuki and he shook his head with a smile and freed one hand to pat the tatami beside him lightly. She crossed the room on tip toes and sat beside them silently.

“Yohan doesn’t always sleep enough,” Kazuki murmured, breath barely stirring the air of the room.

“He drives himself,” Toshi whispered, frowning. “Only… it’s him so it doesn’t seem that way.”

Kazuki smiled, pleased with her insight and sad at the truth of it. “His skill and power let him accomplish things no one else can, sometimes even with ease. But that doesn’t mean he drives his heart any less hard, pursuing those things.”

“Yes. Yes, that.” Toshi’s hand reached toward him for a second before she caught herself and tucked it back into her sleeve.

“I’m glad to know someone else visits, who will care for him.” Toshi blushed at that, and Kazuki caught back a chuckle before it could disturb Yohan. “You have your brother’s protective streak. I imagine it will stand you in good stead.”

Toshi looked at him sidelong. Kazuki hid his amusement carefully. She was opening her mouth, probably to ask if he was teasing, or how much he knew, when Yohan stirred against his shoulder and rubbed his eyes.

“Aniue?” he murmured.

“Yes.” Kazuki stroked back his hair, fingers gentle. “And Toshi, too.”

Yohan smiled, small. “I thought so.” He sat up, drawing his robes straight again, and he and Toshi looked at each other with pleased expressions.

Kazuki was starting to wonder if the entire world except him was blind, that no one else seemed to have spotted this going on. “Well, now that your research partner is here, shall I leave you to it?” he asked, lightly.

“Oh, you don’t have to go, Kazuki-san,” Toshi said quickly, but Kazuki noticed that Yohan hadn’t answered and smiled.

“No, it’s all right. I don’t want Juubei to worry if I stay too long.” He leaned forward and kissed Yohan’s forehead and rose. “Take care of him,” he added to Toshi in parting, meeting her eyes for a moment and watching them widen.

“I will,” she promised.

Kazuki left them to it and made his way back out through the house, satisfied.

Kazuki had, so far, been mildly amused by the clan’s efforts to find Yohan a bride, mostly because Yohan himself had been more exasperated by it than anything else. At the end of the summer, that changed.

He didn’t find Yohan out in the gardens, or in the room by the waterfall, or even on the training ground, and finally went in search of Maiya instead. He found her outside one of the interior rooms, sitting beside a barely open door and chewing her lip. She looked up as he approached and he stiffened at the worry on her face. She beckoned him closer, pressing a finger to her lips. Kazuki settled silently beside her and peeked through the door.

The first thing he saw was Yohan’s back, and the things he’d learned in the last year made him frown; Yohan was tense, shoulders too straight to be anything else. Looking past that, Kazuki’s brows went up. In a half circle around Yohan sat the Fuuchouin councilors. Toshi sat to his right and Seifuuin Koshijirou to his left; between those two were the three surviving Fuuchouin elders and their new Kokuchouin compatriot.

“It would be reassuring to all if you took one of the Fuuchouin girls as wife,” Fuuchouin Takeo was saying, persuasively. “Surely if you wish to repair the breach between the Houses that would be the best way.”

That argument Kazuki hadn’t heard before, and he frowned. How long had they been pressuring Yohan on those grounds? He drew a string out delicately, not letting his bell chime, and cast it through the door to Yohan’s ear. “I’m here for you, if you wish,” he whispered down it.

Yohan’s shoulders relaxed a fraction and he nodded, as if to Takeo. “It would do little to reinforce the unity of the clan if it is evident that my Fuuchouin wife and I never speak.”

“It would lend legitimacy, at least,” old Seiji grumbled, and Kazuki’s mouth tightened. He stood and nodded to Maiya, who knelt, grinning, and slid open the door for him to step through.

“And what cause do any have to question the legitimacy of my heir and successor?” he asked, settling back to the tatami beside Yohan. And, carefully, just a bit behind him. He lifted his brows in calm question at the councilors, who gaped back at him.

“Kazuki-sama!”

“What…”

"When did you…"

Through the sudden, chopped off babble, Takeo said, “Your heir, Kazuki-sama?”

“Indeed.” Kazuki smiled, serene. “You may say that, during the previous ten years, I was the proper Master of Fuuchouin. But I have given over that responsibility to my younger brother. He has even completed the Kachoufuugetsu,” he added, just to prick them.

He could see Takeo and Akihito shift uneasily, reminded of Yohan’s strength and ability to master techniques he had only just seen, and felt the tiniest bit revenged for Yohan’s tension.

“A proper succession should have been approved by the clan’s councilors,” Seiji said, gruff.

“Well, then, what is left but for you to approve?” Kazuki asked, and sat calmly while the debate ran aground for a silent moment on the double edge of his question.

Finally Takeo sighed. “What you say may be true. But, Kazuki-sama, a child of the hidden House…”

Kazuki felt Yohan drawing taut again, beside him, and he’d had more than enough of this. He rose, smooth and abrupt, and stood over them. “Yohan is the child of my mother and my father,” he stated, cold and low. “What do you imply?”

They started back from him, even the head of Seifuuin. They remembered the sweetness of the child, no doubt. But he was not a child any longer. He had been, for ten years, Kazuki of the Strings, the Prince of Terror, most feared of the four kings of Lower Town, and he had no intention of tolerating this foolish obstruction.

Finally Yohan stirred and looked up at him. “Aniue,” he said, quietly.

Kazuki looked down and saw the faint light of amusement in Yohan’s eyes, though none touched his face. He sniffed and settled back to his knees. “Very well.”

And if any had doubted that Kazuki had truly given over rule of the clan into Yohan’s hands, they should not doubt it now.

“My honored elder brother has been a long while among rough elements,” Yohan murmured in his most formal periods. “And he is now unaccustomed to having his will crossed.”

Kazuki choked down a laugh at the irony of such a statement from Yohan, of all people, but it did its job. He could see the councilors’ expressions changing as they really looked at him, at his clothes even, which were very much not traditional or formal—as Yohan’s were. As they thought about what kind of clan lord he might make now. Yohan had a talent for this kind of maneuver, Kazuki thought with pride.

Takeo cleared his throat. “I intended no insult to Hana-sama, I assure you, nor does anyone doubt Yohan-sama’s birth.”

Kazuki followed the advantage while they had it. “My brother is blood of Fuuchouin, the highest of Fuuchouin, and yet raised among the Kokuchouin. Who else could possibly heal our clan? Who else would have the knowledge and the compassion to to do?” And if Yohan was still new to his compassion, well more shame to the clan that it took that long for anyone to show it to him.

“Even so, it would soothe the clan if he had a wife of Fuuchouin rearing,” Akihito murmured, and Kazuki started to wonder if he really would have to do something drastic to one of them to break through this stubbornness.

Before he could decide how to convey the offer to Yohan though, Toshi, who had been quiet so far, interrupted, slapping a hand down to the tatami beside her knee. “I will hear no more of this!”

Kazuki blinked, wondering for one shocked moment if she was actually going to put her own intentions forward here and now.

But no. She rose and stood in front of Yohan, facing the elders. “Kokuchouin Yohan is the Master of Fuuchouin and the lord of this clan! Toufuuin has acknowledged him and will tolerate no more of this insolence!”

“Are you so sure of your brother’s feelings in this?” Akihito asked sharply.

“I speak with his voice, in this as in all else,” Toshi shot back with such iron certainty that Akihito subsided. “Toufuuin follows Yohan-sama.” She gave Koshijirou a narrow look, and he gave her back a sardonic smile.

“Our clan lord is the strongest wielder of our arts living,” he observed. “Seifuuin follows him.” Obviously his tone added.

“I have no intention of challenging the Master of my House,” Takeo started, exasperated.

“Then you will say no more of this,” Toshi cut over him. “Your council has been heard. Now be silent.” She stalked to the outer door and threw it open, pausing in the doorway to glance imperiously over her shoulder. Koshijirou bowed to Yohan and joined her with a smirk at the elders, who, after a few glances back and forth, gave in and followed. Toshi saw the last of them out of the room, turned and bowed to Yohan, and closed the door after her very firmly.

“Well,” Kazuki said after a moment. “She knows how to get things done.”

“She does,” Yohan said, low, looking aside. Kazuki turned and gathered him close, protective.

“How long has this been going on?” he asked against Yohan’s hair.

“Ever since I refused the last woman less than twenty years my elder they found to parade in front of me,” Yohan sighed, leaning against Kazuki’s shoulder wearily. “A few weeks.”

“At least Toshi sympathizes,” Kazuki offered.

Yohan laughed softly. “She complains whenever one of their visits interrupts one of ours, at any rate.”

Kazuki hesitated, but who else was going to speak with Yohan about these things? “She likes you, I think.”

Yohan looked up at him, startled. “She… does?”

Kazuki really couldn’t help smiling at his surprise, and stroked his hair back gently. “She visits almost as often as I do, doesn’t she?”

“She helps me research some of the lost techniques.” It was more a question than a statement, though.

“And she talks with you. And she listens to you play. And she defends you from your unwanted suitors,” Kazuki added.

Yohan actually blushed. “You really think so?” he murmured, fingers fidgeting with the edge of Kazuki’s sleeve.

“I’m almost positive.” And he was definitely positive that Yohan liked her back, which seemed a much better start than he had with any other candidate.

“Oh.”

Kazuki smiled, satisfied that he’d done his duty as a big brother. Now he just wondered when one of them would manage to bring the topic up.

Cat’s Cradle – Chapter Two

Saizou trudged up the stairs of Yohan’s compound, trying to not think and just admire the falling leaves instead. He was also trying not to curse himself out loud for an idiot, and a pathetically spineless one at that, which at least helped distract him.

His nerves were practically twanging.

Fortunately, Kazuki was already nearly at the gates, as Juubei had said he would be.

Unfortunately, Yohan and Maiya and Yuuri were all with him.

“Saizou?” Kazuki stepped forward, frowning.

He swallowed down his nerves and waved a hand lightly. “You’re usual escorts were called away, so I came instead. Makubex needed them rather urgently, and Sakura kind of told Juubei off for hesitating, so they went.”

The frown got deeper. “He shouldn’t have asked you to come!”

“Oh, he didn’t.” Saizou grinned. “Just looked all nobly conflicted, the way he does you know, and I couldn’t take the brooding any longer so here I am!”

Kazuki and Yohan gave him such identical looks, sober and piercing and too perceptive for anyone’s good, that he twitched before he could stop himself. The urge to kneel down in greeting to Yohan scraped against the urge to pull Kazuki behind himself and attack. Both were well out of date, but he’d had them for a long time after all. He could feel his smile tilting grimly out of his control.

He relaxed minutely as Kazuki came to him, steps light, understanding in his eyes. “Well, then…”

Yuuri snorted. “Not even going to say hello to your betters? Your manners have gone to hell.”

It was the last little snowflake, floating down on the mountain of Saizou’s self control, and in a breath it all came crashing loose.

Faster than thought his feather was between his fingers and his strings flashed out, slamming Yuuri back against the nearest wall and binding him there. When he shouted and struggled to reach his own bells, Saizou pulled the strings tauter.

“I am no longer constrained to tolerate you, and if you wish to know who is the superior I’ll be very happy to demonstrate,” he said, flat and cold. His fingers itched for the ura techniques, with the urge to spin his strings into a spear and drive it through Yuuri’s stomach and pay back just a little of the hell the past eight damn years had been.

“Saizou.” Kazuki’s voice cut through the ice of his rage, soft but unyielding, calling him back.

One breath, and another, and he made his fingers relax, called his poised strings back. He turned on his heel, leaving Yuuri tied up right where he was, and stalked back to Kazuki’s side. “As my lord wishes,” he said, low and clear. He wanted everyone present to know exactly where he stood, and what Yuuri owed his continued existence to, because it wasn’t Saizou’s own patience!

Kazuki smiled up at him, just a bit rueful, and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Yes.”

“Wow, Saizou is actually really strong!” Maiya put in, chirpily, trotting around Yuuri’s trussed up body for a better look, and Saizou rolled his eyes. Well, he’d always known she had a really low sense of humor.

“I did tell you,” Yohan murmured. Saizou looked around to see him reach out and lay his fingers on Saizou’s strings, damping and loosening them until Yuuri slid down to the ground, coughing. The sight lit a spark of vengeful satisfaction in his heart.

Yohan’s glance chilled it again.

“So, do you intend to withdraw the Eastern House from the Fuuchouin?” Yohan tipped his head as if merely curious. “Or will you give your House over to another leader? Now that you serve another, yourself,” he added, nodding to Kazuki.

Saizou froze.

He hadn’t thought. He’d known Kazuki had given over Fuuchouin to Yohan, and he’d never thought. His heart had said it was all over, that everything was all right now, but he’d placed Toufuuin under Yohan, and Yohan, not Kazuki, was the clan lord then and now.

The clan lord he, the head of Toufuuin, couldn’t serve any longer.

“You will withdraw them, then?” Yohan asked, watching his face.

But Kazuki had no wish to rule more than their tiny House of Fuuga, now. How could he demand Toufuuin leave their clan with no place to go?

But he couldn’t abandon them. He couldn’t, the very thought clawed at his heart. His sister, his aunt, his little cousins, the old councilors who had supported him as their lord even while hell was breaking loose… “I can’t,” he whispered, and there was a certain cool sympathy in Yohan’s eyes but no mercy, and the familiarity of that sent a shudder down his spine.

“Enough,” Kazuki said sharply, shaking his shoulder a little. “Surely there’s a third way,” he added more gently as Saizou stared down at him.

Yohan opened his hand, palm up. “If Toufuuin is content to have no place in the Fuuchouin councils, well enough for them. But the other Houses will begin to ask about it soon.”

Saizou took a slow breath, eyes fixed on Kazuki’s, on the hope they held out. “Let me consider this,” he said, suitably formal if a little hoarse. Yohan made a careless gesture of agreement, but it was Kazuki’s smile that made Saizou’s chest unclench. “After we get home. Which we should do soon, or Juubei will come up here after both of us.”

Kazuki nodded and bid Yohan farewell and drew Saizou out the gates and down the steps as Maiya got the groggy Yuuri back on his feet. Shock and satisfaction and fear chased themselves through Saizou’s head and he stayed close to Kazuki all the way home.

He’d known it would be trouble, to come up here.

When Juubei and Toshiki got home, Saizou was still sitting on the couch staring at the ceiling. Toshiki took one look at him and went to fetch down the sake cups.

"Saizou," Juubei started, already sounding guilty, and Saizou sighed and looked down.

"You didn’t ask me to go, I chose that myself, and you couldn’t have changed my mind once I decided, so none of that."

Juubei closed his mouth with a snap and Saizou’s lips quirked. He didn’t often use that tone with any of Fuuga, but he was the eldest of them, and, like Kazuki, he’d been raised to command, if only his own House. "Better."

"What happened?" Toshiki asked, passing out filled cups.

Saizou let his head thump back again.

"Yohan says Toufuuin needs to send someone to the clan council soon," Kazuki supplied, leaning forward from where he’d been cuddled against Saizou for hours to pour for Toshiki in turn.

"And I can’t," Saizou said quietly. "I can’t face him; not yet." Maybe not ever. He didn’t know.

"Here’s where those hidden techniques could actually come in handy," Toshiki murmured dryly. At their startled looks he waved a hand. "Well, if you could create a string duplicate, the way Maiya can, and send that in for you…"

Saizou chuckled at that. "If only."

"Wait," Kazuki said, straightening. "Perhaps that’s a good idea."

"Excuse me?" Saizou blinked at him.

"Not a string doll, no, but could you send a proxy in your place?" Kazuki’s eyes turning brighter. "Surely there’s precedent enough for that."

Juubei made a thoughtful sound. "Indeed, there is. My own family has done that on occasion, when the head of the House is too old or incapacitated to easily attend on the Fuuchouin, and sends his heir to act for him."

"Is there anyone from Toufuuin you could send to act in your place?" Kazuki asked.

"Maybe," Saizou said slowly. "It would have to be someone who could hold their own, and also not get too carried away and promise the House to things without checking with me." He started to smile, shoulders loosening as he told over the possibilities in his head. "That might just work." He finally took a swallow of the sake. "I’ll speak to my family."

“Don’t be silly Onii-sama,” Saizou’s sister said composedly from her seat at the low table beside Sakura. “Of course you can’t deal with him. I knew that already.” She took a delicate sip of her tea, hands folded genteelly around the thin ceramic. “It will have to be me.”

“You are the most impertinent snip ever to breathe air,” he told her, ignoring the way Sakura and Kazuki were both stifling laughter. “Are you sure everyone agreed to this, or did you just steamroller the lot of them? Again.”

She gave him an injured look he didn’t believe for an instant. “Everyone agreed, even Great-uncle Keiji. Our aunt is needed to run the House and school while you’re away. And the twins don’t want to do it.”

Saizou snorted at that. His aunt’s two little boys would agree to anything that would give them more time to play, and while he thanked whatever beneficent providence had kept them out of the compound the night the Kokuchouin attacked, he really hoped they’d grow up eventually. He didn’t doubt Toshi had told them being the acting head of the House would be a great deal of troublesome work.

“I’m your nearest blood, and I have the strength and right. Stop arguing, Onii-sama,” she directed.

Saizou sighed. No one ever won when Toshi really set her feet over something. “All right, if he agrees to this it’ll be you.”

“Good. More importantly, though,” she set her tea down and looked at him, sober. “Are you sure this is wise, Onii-sama? This is the man who destroyed the main house and half our own. Will we really still follow him?”

“It wasn’t Yohan who destroyed the main house,” Kazuki said quietly from where he stood at the window. “Not alone.”

Toshi frowned a little. “Well, no, it was all of the Kokuchouin, but…”

“Kokuchouin was the hand. But the force that destroyed us was our own fate.” Kazuki had that distant expression he got whenever he spoke of this, the one that made Saizou’s heart ache. “For three hundred years, the Kokuchouin were the shadow sacrifice of the Fuuchouin. Every death, every curse passed to them.” Kazuki turned away from the window to look at them directly and Saizou heard Toshi’s breath catch under the weight of those clear, sad eyes. “No fate can be evaded forever, though. And finally the fate of Fuuchouin burned through our shadows and returned to us. I mourn my family, as I have for eleven years. But the responsibility was ultimately our own.” He smiled, tiny and heartbreaking. “So will you not meet Yohan yourself and open your heart to judge what kind of clan lord he will make now?”

Toshi bowed over her knees. “As you say, Kazuki-sama.” Her voice was steady but Saizou could see the way her sleeves trembled and recalled that she’d never met Kazuki before either. She was composed when she straightened, though, and Saizou had to hide a proud smile when she looked up. “Onii-sama?”

“He isn’t seeking destruction any more,” he said quietly. “It isn’t for fear that I can’t follow him now.”

Her eyes slid to Kazuki and her nod was perfectly understanding. “Of course. Well, go make introductions, then, and I’ll handle it.”

That was his little sister all over. “Tomorrow,” Saizou specified, just to keep her from having her own way in absolutely everything. It was a big brother’s job.

Toshi sniffed, not fooled for a moment. “Slowpoke.”

On reflection, maybe Yohan and his people deserved her.

Today Saizou was alone as he walked the halls of the new Fuuchouin house, and when he reached a room standing with its screens open to the inner garden, Yohan was alone too. It was a courtesy he hadn’t entirely expected, and when Yohan welcomed him, quiet and formal, he felt the tug again—the helpless conviction that, in another place and time, Yohan would have been a leader he could gladly follow.

He settled across the mats from Yohan and took a breath. “I cannot abandon my House,” he started out. “They have trusted me to lead them, and I cannot simply give that over to another’s hands now.” Another breath. “I do not wish to sever my House from the Fuuchouin clan. We are of Fuuchouin, part of that whole. I will not break that circle.”

Yohan’s listening stillness turned shadowed for a moment, but he nodded, accepting Saizou’s reasons.

Another breath, deeper this time. “At the same time…” And now even formal language failed him. It couldn’t contain this. Saizou closed his eyes, hands locking on each other as he remembered the ice and irony of Yohan’s eyes watching his struggle to save Kazuki by betraying him, knowing its futility. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t. I served you under duress for too long. It would always be between us.” He managed a shaky smile. “And do you really need a head of Toufuuin who can’t help hesitating every time you give an order or even suggestion?”

“It would make things more difficult,” Yohan allowed. “So? Have you found a third way?”

Saizou swallowed down the chill memory that seemed lodged in his throat. “Another of my House will act for me. My sister will attend clan functions, meet with you and the council.” His mouth quirked up crookedly. “As if I were very ill but not dead yet, as Juubei put it.”

“An acting master of Toufuuin.” Yohan cocked his head, and Saizou thought there was genuine amusement in his faint smile. “I think that will be acceptable, yes.” The old irony glinted in his eyes for a moment. “And if the Western House and the council think that it’s only because of your bond to Aniue, well they’ll understand that too.”

Since that was the conclusion his own sister had reached, Saizou figured he was right. And if that meant that no one but the two of them ever knew the whole tale of hate and love and hope and cruelty that had bound he and Yohan together for those years, well Saizou was perfectly happy with that. He bowed slightly, as much as he could bring himself to which wasn’t much. “I will bring my sister to meet you, then.”

“Saizou.” Yohan was gazing out over the garden. “You love Aniue?”

It was one of those Yohan questions that was really a statement, so Saizou just waited for the rest of it.

“How?” Yohan looked back at him, suddenly looking very eighteen, and Saizou had a truly horrible moment of wondering whether Yohan was about to ask him to explain the facts of life. In preference to his foster siblings, which, actually, Saizou could completely understand…

“How did you know?” Yohan finished, softly.

Saizou let his breath out. That was a complicated question, too, but not nearly so horrifying. “I suppose it was love at first sight, after a fashion. Well,” he added, relief making him babble a bit, “it was ‘wow she’s cute’ at first sight. I kind of mistook Kazuki for the Fuuchouin daughter. Right up until I asked for a match with the heir and the cute girl bounced on down, all smiles.” He smiled ruefully. “I like to think that surprise put me off my stride a little, but the truth was Kazuki would have defeated me outright if he hadn’t been having so much fun with the match itself. He was grinning the whole time. I guess it was the smile that caught me first.” He pressed a hand over his heart. “I wanted to see him again. I did, a few times. And when everything came apart…” he flinched from those memories, of Yohan’s terrifying strength brushing past every attack and defense, of running like a rabbit. “Well. When I found him again, he still had that smile. He made a place for himself and the rest of us, carved it out of the chaos and kept it safe for us. He made a home with that smile, with his heart, with the way he saw and knew each of us, and I couldn’t turn away.”

And that was more truth than he’d quite meant to speak to Kazuki’s brother, who was looking outright wistful for once.

“Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he really is strong enough to command obedience, if he wanted to,” Saizou added, easing toward the less loaded side of the question. “Even when he’d suppressed the stigma, no one dared cross him.” Saizou snorted softly, remembering the times he and the others hadn’t even gotten a chance to step in because their opponents were busy cowering already. “Not even us, when you get down to it. It’s just a good thing Kazuki is a kind man, you know, because not a one of us has been able to defy or disobey him for as much as two whole days put together.”

“Yes,” Yohan murmured. “I saw that. At the time, it was just one more thing to try to break.” He was quiet for a moment before adding, “I didn’t succeed.”

Saizou took a long look at Yohan, sitting quiet and still with his head bent, watching his own hands on his knees, and remembered all the moments when Yohan’s pain and conflict had matched so well with his own that he’d almost screamed with the unbearable sympathy it had roused in him. “You have some of that, too,” he said, low.

Yohan looked up at that, brows raised. Saizou sighed.

“You remember how I was with Yuuri and Maiya, right?” He smiled, tilted, at the shadow of distaste that twisted Yohan’s expression. “Yes, it was pretty sickening, sucking up to them, playing the clown. But by throwing away my dignity I kept my pride, secret in my thoughts and heart. You, though…” He took a long breath and let it out. “You let me keep my dignity, even guarded it from them sometimes. It was my pride you broke between your fingers. And you wouldn’t have been able to do that if you hadn’t seen to the heart of me, the same way he does.”

Yohan’s eyes were shadowed. “I see,” he said slowly.

Saizou stood. He didn’t think he could take very much more of this. “I will bring my sister to greet you,” he said again, reaching for the shield of formality, and turned to leave.

“Saizou.”

He glanced over his shoulder, but Yohan was looking out at the garden again.

“Your sister’s pride will come to no harm here,” Yohan said, sitting with straight shoulders again.

After a moment, Saizou smiled a little. “I have faith that it will not.”

And if his faith was mainly in Kazuki and Toshi herself, at the moment, perhaps it would come to be in Yohan too, a little, by and by.

Saizou walked beside his sister, occasionally giving a brief lecture on the nature of the Beltline as they hiked upwards.

“These, for instance, are not real.” He pointed to the approaching shadowy robes. “You have to pay attention to intent.” There were an awful lot of them, though. He wondered, as they worked their way through, whether Toshi herself was drawing attention. For this meeting she was dressed, not in a maiden’s long sleeves and bright colors, but in the quiet layers of a grown woman and the long, silvery-fair hair they’d both gotten from their mother was tied at her neck with a single ribbon; demure as she looked, though, determination and pride lit the air around her. In this place, she was practically a beacon. Privately Saizou also thought she was fighting with especial ferocity to defend her new finery; she was always like that about new clothes.

“Does he live up here because he secretly wants to be a hermit?” She leaned against a handy pillar to catch her breath and straighten her haori.

“Actually, I think this is the only place he’s ever really felt at home.”

Toshi stopped and turned to stare at him, eyes wide. “Onii-sama…”

Saizou’s mouth tightened. He’d said it already; it wasn’t for fear that he couldn’t serve Yohan. He just knew too damn much. He sent his strings flashing past Toshi’s shoulder to cut apart the last robe and turned back to their path. “Let’s go.”

He was twitchy about this whole thing. This was his little sister, after all, and it was Yohan he was about to introduce her to! He tried to quiet his own mind by observing her objectively, noting the firmness of her step, the maturity of her willingness to take up this duty for their House. It kept getting lost, though. This was Toshi; he’d seen her as a toddler, running down the hall in nothing but soap suds after escaping from her bath; he’d surprised her in front of a mirror, when she was eight, making faces in an attempt to find a way to smile without showing the dimple she hated; he’d stolen her hair ribbons to teach her fast reflexes and tickled her until she shrieked and flailed because sometimes she was just too serious for her own good. She couldn’t possibly be ready for this!

Here they were, though, at Yohan’s gate, and clearly expected as Kokuchouin retainers bowed them inside.

Yohan was waiting for them in one of the outer rooms.

Saizou watched the two of them while he performed the formal introductions. Yohan looked perfectly calm, though maybe a little withdrawn; Toshi had a faintly worrying set to her jaw. Sure enough, once they’d both expressed their pleasure in meeting at last, the bow she gave him was the one she would give the head of a strange House, not her own clan lord. Yohan raised a brow at Saizou, and all he could do was turn a hand up helplessly. Toshi obviously had her own agenda here.

“You are welcome within Fuuchouin,” Yohan prompted her.

“I am most pleased,” Toshi murmured. “But before I accept I must ask you something.”

Both brows went up this time. “Even though the head of your House has already chosen this?” Yohan sounded curious, even a bit amused.

“Onii-sama is Master of Toufuuin. I will follow the path he chooses for us,” Toshi said composedly. “Onii-sama is also too forgiving for his own good sometimes, and I saw some of what happened to him while he served you these past few years. So I must ask you: where do you mean to lead Fuuchouin now?”

“Ah.” Yohan laid his hands on his knees and looked out the screens rather than at them. “I intend to bring the fourth House into the light.”

Toshi’s shoulders stiffened. “You wish to uncover the hidden techniques?”

Yohan shook his head briskly. “No. Not that.” His voice turned soft and distant, and sent a chill up Saizou’s spine. He’d heard nothing but that tone for a long time. “The hidden techniques were created as the ultimate weapons of war. They care nothing for grace or beauty—or the soul of the user. Only effectiveness. Let them remain hidden.” He took a breath in and turned back to them. “No, binding those techniques to one of the Houses was where Fuuchouin took the wrong turning. They corrupted the true strengths of the Kokuchouin and left the other three Houses unbalanced.”

Toshi sat back, staring at him. “Unbalanced?”

Yohan cocked his head at her. “The mark of the Eastern House is speed, yes?” When she nodded he tapped a finger on the floor. “Speed.” He traced a circle clockwise, naming the quarters of it. “Speed, grace, strength…” He tapped the fourth quarter. “And the mark of the fourth House, it’s true mark, is ‘endurance’. To endure the dark and cold just the same as the warm sun, and live on.” His eyes darkened. “That was corrupted when the hidden techniques were given into the Kokuchouin’s hands. Their endurance was turned toward eternal darkness and death, the reverse of their true strength.” He lifted his hand and spread it. “Without endurance, the other Houses fly away, ungrounded; cut off from the light, Kokuchouin sinks ever down until there is nothing but pain and terror left. We have seen what fate that tempts,” he finished quietly.

Toshi was quiet, contemplating her hands, folded in her lap. Saizou couldn’t blame her; he felt breathless. Was this the turn Yohan’s thoughts had taken since Kazuki touched his heart and breathed life on it again? It was… stunning.

“What, then, would become of the hidden techniques?” Toshi asked slowly.

Yohan’s mouth tightened but he answered evenly, “Let those come to it who choose it. Those who are willing to become the shadow of our Houses in order to guard them. Not children.” Those last words sharpened abruptly, though Yohan relaxed again when Toshi nodded vigorously.

“Yes. Not children. Only those who have already mastered the techniques of one of the Houses.” She paused for a considering moment before nodding firmly and looking up at Yohan. “One of the four Houses.”

He actually smiled at that, and Toshi smiled back, and they both actually looked their ages though Saizou wasn’t fool enough to say so to either of them. Maybe they would all get through the day without any catastrophes at all.

“Well then! There’s only one thing left.” Toshi’s smile turned downright sunny. “I’d like a match with you.”

A yelp of protest escaped Saizou before he could stop it and his sister gave him a stubborn look. “It’s the only way I can be completely sure, Onii-sama.”

Yohan, damn him, had that glint of amusement in his eyes again. “You are one who believes that the soul is revealed in battle?”

“Of course.” Toshi lifted her chin, sitting straight and proud. Saizou buried his face in his hand with a faint moan. A little voice in the back of his head pointed out that she sounded an awful lot like he had when he’d challenged the Fuuchouin heir and met Kazuki for the first time. He told that voice to shut up.

“Well.” Yohan glanced between them. “I have no objection. Provided the head of your House consents.”

Saizou caught Yohan’s eye and had to breathe through a rush of panic. Yohan had promised to guard his sister’s pride.

He wouldn’t hold back.

And, yes, Yohan was good enough to defeat Toshi without killing her. Possibly even without injuring her much. But Toshi was strong and determined, and maybe even faster than Saizou was. She wouldn’t make it easy.

“Onii-sama?” Toshi said quietly, and it was the level calm in her eyes that broke him down. She knew. And she was still determined to do this.

Saizou swallowed. “I consent,” he managed, low.

Yohan nodded and rose. “Come, then.” He led them out through the gardens to an open ring littered with the signs of previous matches—splinters and broken ground and shattered stone. Saizou watched as his sister shed her haori and outer kimono, and tried not to hyperventilate. Toshi was serious about this. She unfastened a feather from her hair ribbon and stepped out into the ring.

Yohan drew a bell out of his sleeve. “Very well then, let us begin.”

Saizou watched them, biting his lip hard. He tried to tell himself this was just another sparring match, and a friendly one at that, but couldn’t quite get past the fact that the last time he’d seen Yohan fight he’d gone down without a ripple under that overwhelming, ruthless strength. The memory tightened his throat and made his fingers shake until he twined them together, white-knuckled. There was no sign of the black strings or the hidden techniques today, he told himself as strings sang and flashed across the open space.

Toshi stumbled and blood ran down her arm, and Saizou bit down so hard his lip bled too. He couldn’t interfere; this was Toshi’s decision, and she was still focused on Yohan, eyes bright and sharp. She drew her strings back in and sent them out again in the Butterfly, slipping and floating through Yohan’s barrier. He caught them short and reflected them back with the Mountain Lake, and she cast a dazzling Sunrise in Spring with a second feather and spun aside under its cover. Yohan turned with her, smiling faintly.

So was Toshi.

Saizou took a deep breath, and remembered the way Kazuki had wrung him out their first match, and how much fun he’d thought that was, and sat on his hands. Literally, since if Toshi caught him toying with his feathers he’d be her next target.

It was a hard life being a big brother.

There was blood running from more than one cut when Toshi set her feet in a stance that caught his heart and spun her strings out around her in the Dance of the Green Dragon. That was the last technique he had taught her, before he hadn’t dared any longer for fear the hidden techniques he’d learned would corrupt what he showed her. The signature of Toufuuin.

Yohan nodded a little and his strings flashed and glimmered into the Dance of the Red Bird.

Toshi smiled outright at that and lunged. Strings rang and caught, seeking to cut, seeking to reflect.

And Yohan wove a new shape from a second bell. It filled the space around the Red Bird, and Saizou had never seen it before, but there was only one thing it could be.

The Dance of the Black Tortoise.

Toshi’s strings struck and were deflected, and Yohan’s strings closed down, binding her in place. Toshi seemed too busy staring to entirely notice, and Saizou couldn’t blame her.

“Oh,” she said softly, as Yohan released his strings. “It’s… beautiful.”

Yohan held up his hands, a bell caught between the fingers of each. “Grace and endurance.”

“Yes.” Toshi’s smile turned brilliant. “Yes, I see.”

Yohan contemplated his bells for a moment. “The Black Tortoise I found in the scrolls. There is one more Dance I hope to discover, though, one I’ve only seen mention of. Never a description yet.”

Toshi sucked in a breath. “The dragon of the center…”

“The Yellow Dragon.” Yohan nodded. “We will see.”

Toshi drew herself up, torn clothes and dripping blood and all. “It’s a good path you’ve chosen. I will be most pleased to follow it.” She bowed to him, this time as to her clan lord.

Yohan’s faint smile flashed again, maybe a little softer this time. “The acting Master of Toufuuin is most welcome.”

Saizou forced his knees to hold him up and stood. “I’m delighted we all agree, now can we maybe go get washed up, Toshi?”

“Maiya,” Yohan called.

Maiya popped out of the trees across from Saizou, and almost gave him heart failure. “Yes?”

“Ask Kakei-san to attend us please.”

She caroled agreement and vanished back through the trees with a wave. Saizou, noting the way Yohan very nearly rolled his eyes, grinned briefly. And then he caught his sister’s expression.

Toshi stared after Maiya, wide eyed. “She… Her, um… clothes. Are missing?”

Yohan sighed. “Maiya thinks it’s amusing to dress like a character from one of her manga.”

Toshi contemplated this and finally turned to give Saizou a suspicious look. “You never mentioned this, Onii-sama,” she stated rather ominously.

“You get used to it after a while?” he offered.

“Hmph!” She tossed her hair and stalked back toward the house, only slightly impaired by a limp.

Yohan gave Saizou a puzzled look. “What was that?”

Saizou sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Toshi doesn’t like thinking her big brother looks at girls. Ever. It’s a sister thing.”

“I see.” Actually, Yohan looked even more puzzled. Not that Saizou could blame him, really. They followed Toshi more slowly and with less stalking, Saizou collecting Toshi’s haori and kimono on the way. By the time they caught up she was sitting on a bench in the outer garden having her last cut sewn up. Yohan’s physician gave him a quick look over and nodded with professional satisfaction before bowing himself out.

“You should hang your clothes up properly, you know,” Saizou told her, shaking out her kimono and holding it up for her to put on. “And don’t lift your arm that high, you’ll tear the stitches!”

“Oh, stop fluttering, Onii-sama,” Toshi huffed. “You sound like Juubei-san.”

Saizou opened and closed his mouth a few times. “I do not.”

“You do so.”

“Do not.”

“Do so!”

Their exchange was interrupted by Maiya’s peal of laughter. “You see, now,” she told Yohan, “that’s what siblings sound like.”

Yohan eyed her like he would a patch of quicksand in his path. “Maiya…”

“She’s only teasing,” Toshi seemed moved to reassure Yohan, smiling as she shrugged into her haori.

“Ah.”

“I like you,” Maiya declared to Toshi. “You got Yohan to smile. He doesn’t smile often enough.”

Toshi blinked. “Oh.” She glanced between the laughing Maiya and the now extremely deadpan Yohan. “I’m… glad I could help?”

“I will be pleased to see you here whenever you wish,” Yohan told Toshi in a very firm changing-the-subject tone. Toshi collected herself, recalled to the formalities.

“I will be honored to attend, at your word.” They exchanged parting bows and Toshi nodded to Maiya after a moment’s hesitation, and turned toward the gates.

Saizou paused in the act of following her and looked back. “Yohan.”

Yohan stopped looking after Toshi and looked at him inquiringly.

“You deserve Toufuuin’s service.”

Yohan was still for a moment and then rose swiftly and came to Saizou. He lifted a hand to brush his fingertips across Saizou’s forehead, and Saizou hesitated, the instant urge to jerk away fading. That motion… that was an unbinding. There was nothing left to unbind, though, nothing except… except memory. They looked at each other for a long moment and Yohan finally murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Something inside Saizou loosened. Maybe it was memory after all. “Thank you,” he said, husky.

When he turned to follow his sister out the gates and back home, he found he wasn’t as worried, anymore, about what future she would find here.

Cat’s Cradle – Chapter One

Kazuki didn’t think it was his imagination that this spring was more beautiful than any he remembered. Circumstances might be adding shine to the season, to the faces around him that looked up at the clearing light and the drifting petals, but they were circumstances everyone shared, that everyone felt even if they didn’t quite know the reason. He wondered a little whether Yohan let the seasons of the Beltline turn, let himself see and feel this.

He wondered things like that a lot these days.

Did Yohan let the changing season touch his House, was he learning happiness now, had he let go that crane, the child’s paper wish, and taken up a Fuuchouin’s bell for his strings? As the breeze came up, touched with sun and green, Kazuki wondered. And he could find out, of course. There was no reason he couldn’t visit Yohan; they were neighbors after a fashion. More importantly they were brothers.

He also wondered whether Yohan would see it that same way.

It was the flowers that decided him, finally. A few irises had taken hold in one corner of the plaza outside the apartment building where the cement had cracked and water pooled, a striking composition by the hand of nature itself, and they reminded him of Yohan’s taunt about flower arranging and their mother’s death. At the time it had only been meant to enrage him, but looking back he thought Yohan’s faint regret when he said he couldn’t arrange flowers had been genuine.

Well of course he couldn’t! He’d been raised in Kokuchouin, and Kazuki very much doubted if the fine arts of the main house were taught there. Koto, dance, flower arranging, calligraphy. Though, his mouth quirked at the memory, Yohan had clearly learned to compose poetry one way or another.

Kazuki knew those things, though. And surely it wasn’t too late.

It was just as well, perhaps, that the others were out today. Kazuki left a note saying that he had gone to visit his brother and would be back shortly, and walked out into the bright day to cross Lower Town and climb upwards.

He understood the nature of the Beltline much better now than he had at fourteen. The monsters there were shadows of the souls that lived in the place, and he felt neither fear nor satisfaction in clearing them from his way. On this trip he saw only a few people he thought might be real, and they didn’t come close, fading away into the Beltline’s fluidity. He concentrated on his path and it wasn’t too long before the steps of Yohan’s compound were under his feet.

The trees were still in summer leaf here, but at least it was the small daytime moon overhead and no flowerless petals skirled past him on the wind. It was a start, he supposed.

The doors opened as he reached them, with no hand on them, and Kazuki smiled. Yohan knew he was here. He followed the path that presented itself through gardens and over pools, through stands of pine that had not grown on the main house grounds; and yet the place was familiar. He wondered if Yohan had created a home here that was both the omote and ura compounds. That would be a hopeful sign, he thought.

At last he reached a room with its screens standing open, overlooking a low waterfall beyond. Yohan sat alone looking out at the water, still and collected. “Aniue,” he said quietly.

“Yohan,” Kazuki returned, smiling.

“Why have you come?”

“Because I wanted to see my brother again,” Kazuki said gently, coming to sit beside him, setting down the small box he’d brought along. Yohan looked at him, solemn and wary but with a shadow of hope at the back of his eyes that gave Kazuki heart. “Besides, there’s something I wanted to bring you,” he continued, opening the box and lifting out the small arrangement of iris, water, and stones.

Yohan actually blushed. “I didn’t…” he started quickly and then stopped, not looking at Kazuki.

“I know that already.” Kazuki set the flower quietly before them; as deeply as the Phoenix had touched Yohan’s heart, he’d known then that Yohan had lied about their mother being the one dead “flower” he had arranged beautifully. “It’s spring.” He touched Yohan’s shoulder gently. “What does the poet’s heart say of that?”

After a moment, Yohan said, softly, “In the spring chill, / as I slept with sword by pillow, / deep at night / my elder brother came to me / in dreams from home.”

That caught at Kazuki’s heart with the hint that he was indeed welcome here. “You are home now. And courage and friendship come to you and bloom for you.”

Yohan reached out and touched a petal lightly. “Truly?”

“Life changes us, just as the seasons change the flowers.” Witness the fact that after just five minutes in Yohan’s company the language of Kazuki’s childhood was coming back to his tongue again. He smiled. “Truly.”

Yohan darted a quick, uncertain glance at him, and back at the flower. “I thank you,” he murmured.

“There’s no need.” Nor could Kazuki think of better thanks than being able to sit with his younger brother this way. Remembering his earlier thought, he added, “Did you ever learn the koto?”

Yohan’s mouth tightened. “No.”

“Would you like to?”

Yohan finally looked up at him, startled. Kazuki waited, patient, while Yohan regathered his composure. “I would like that,” he finally said, and looked back down at the flower. “Aniue.”

This time the title had less of the bitterness that flavored Yohan’s every word about the past, and Kazuki cherished the shy hint of acceptance in it.

That was more than enough to compensate for the argument he was sure would break out at home as soon as he told them he intended to visit the Beltline more frequently.

Kazuki flexed his fingers, making sure the ivory picks were secure on his fingertips. “The more you hear, the more you’ll be able to play music by ear, but the way we speak of it is in numbers.”

Yohan gave him a sidelong look. “Numbers?”

“Mm.” Kazuki smiled. “One for each string. Listen. One.” He plucked the first string. “Two. Three.” Up the rank he went, and then stilled the strings with his hand. “And if I say ten-nine-eight, five…?” He played the little turn quickly.

Yohan blinked, tilting his head. “Oh.”

“Here.” Kazuki scooted over, patting the tatami in front of the koto.

Yohan was stiff, at first, prone to plucking the strings too hard, but by the end of the day he could run up and down the full tally of thirteen strings and make them ring clear. Better still, his shoulders had stopped stiffening each time Kazuki set his fingers over Yohan’s to guide them.

Yohan frowned faintly at his fingers, touching thumb and index finger together as if testing the sensation, which Kazuki expected was just a bit numb from the pressure of the picks. “Does it have application?”

Kazuki firmly stifled a sigh. He shouldn’t expect to undo the habits of years in a handful of days. “Several different ones, I would say. Here. Rest your fingers on the strings down at the end.” He shifted around back in front of the instrument and thought for a moment. "Midare Rinzetsu", he decided; he thought Yohan would like the energy and sweeping runs of it better than the slow, melancholy sweetness of the simpler compositions Kazuki had first learned.

It took concentration; it had been a long time since Kazuki had played regularly, and Yatsuhashi’s music was always a challenge. He didn’t look up until the last notes, measured and resonant. When he did, though, he smiled. Yohan’s expression was distant, fingers still resting lightly at the base of the strings, but there was a tiny breath of wonder in his voice as he sighed.

“It really does feel just like our strings.” He blinked and looked up at Kazuki. “This is why you always speak of the song of someone’s technique.”

“Exactly,” Kazuki agreed softly.

“I didn’t know.”

It was only an observation, with no particular emotion in it, but it twisted Kazuki’s heart all the same. “That was wrong. How can anyone be expected to understand our arts without this?” Kazuki bent his head over his hands, resting on the strings. “It’s been wrong for so long.”

Yohan’s voice turned dispassionate again. “I expect the division started here, actually.” At Kazuki’s startled look, he gestured at the instrument. “The left hand and the right are both necessary, but they do very different things, don’t they?” The distance in his tone turned darker. “And while the right hand strikes the notes and draws the eye, it’s the left that controls the sound.”

“Yes,” Kazuki said slowly. “I wouldn’t be surprised. But both hands are needed, and no one could play if they ignored the left hand techniques.” A sudden thought came to him and his mouth quirked. “Well, then, perhaps the new song of Fuuchouin will be a bit more… modern.”

He bent over the koto again and struck the opening of Sawai’s “Yume”. This time he listened to more than just the music, and smiled at the sound Yohan made as his left hand flashed over again and again to pluck the strings, melody weaving back and forth between his hands.

When he sat back this time, he had to shake out his left hand. “I like Sawai’s compositions very much,” he said, breathless, sweeping his hair back, “but they’re very demanding!” He smiled at his brother. “I believe you can master it, though.”

Yohan flushed just a little and concentrated on rearranging his sleeves, and Kazuki let it go, satisfied that Yohan had heard what he meant.

Another day, another lesson. Yohan’s touch with the picks was getting lighter, and Kazuki thought about that as he listened. Yohan had yet to even attempt one of the more passionate compositions, gravitating instead toward the delicacy of the oldest, most abstract music.

“Yohan,” Kazuki said softly, as his brother finished, “what is it you fear?”

Yohan’s head came up quickly, and his eyes were wide. Kazuki shifted around to sit beside him, arm around him. “Everyone has their own style, their own favorite music,” he continued, feeling Yohan’s tension, “but there’s music you refuse even to attempt. The music,” he finished, quietly, “that would take from what’s inside you and set it free on the air.”

Yohan laughed, soft and harsh. “Do you really think that’s wise, Aniue?”

“I do.”

Yohan glanced at him, still tense, but a little less rigid, perhaps startled by Kazuki’s firmness.

“This is where our arts began,” Kazuki touched the koto’s strings, “but setting our passion into these strings will draw no blood. What is there to fear?”

“Myself.” Yohan looked away, hair slipping down over his face. “I doubt someone like you understands that.”

Kazuki was quiet for a moment, and his voice was cool and light when he spoke, drifting over the memories he never lingered on willingly. “You were not the only one marked with the stigma, little brother. I know that fear. But that seal is lifted now; it’s the passions every one of us deal with that you face now.” His lips quirked. “If they weren’t, you wouldn’t hear their reflection in that music you won’t touch.”

Yohan was still for a long breath. “Everyone?”

Kazuki softened at the innocent unknowing of that question. “Everyone.” He drew Yohan closer and murmured, “You’re no demon. You never were. You’re a child of the world, like all of us.” He shook Yohan gently. “So stop trying to escape from life. Both hands are necessary, remember? Pain and joy both.”

Yohan looked up at him, and Kazuki’s brows rose. He expected the flash of startlement at his rather peremptory tone; he’d meant to rock Yohan out of his habits of thought a bit. What he hadn’t quite expected was the flash of yearning, of… happiness? Yohan looked down again before he could be sure.

“Yes, Aniue,” he murmured.

Kazuki had more than usual to think about as he left that day.

Kazuki sat with his hands folded and listened to Yohan play.

Another might have wasted time in wonder that, after a mere few months, Yohan was able to play complex compositions with such firm skill. In fact, when Kazuki had considered that at all, he had wondered how frustrated Yohan must be that his progress had been so slow. The cleansing of the stigma had thrown a blanket over the absolute purity and simplicity of Yohan’s perception and art, had left his brother uncertain, and his temper the same sometimes.

No, what caught Kazuki’s breath short today was the way Yohan played.

Yohan had obeyed him, so meekly it had taken Kazuki aback, and chosen a composition that showed his heart. “Tori no You Ni” demanded a light hand and could easily have been turned into another performance of delicate technique. Today, though, Yohan played with his eyes half closed, swaying with the force of the music. The force of his strike, the timing, the clarity and vibrato he drew from the strings wrung Kazuki’s heart. There was grief in the song, wild and passionate, rushing like the wind under straining wings. There was wanting, so intense it almost tore the constraints of the strings themselves. Yet they held.

When Yohan finished, he turned his face quickly away from the instrument and Kazuki rose and came to wipe away the dampness on his brother’s cheeks. “This,” he said gently. “This is what the koto teaches us.”

“This…” Yohan swallowed and said, husky, “this is the Phoenix.”

“It’s the source of it, yes.” Kazuki stroked his hair back.

And then he frowned. This close he could see dark smudges starting under Yohan’s eyes. “Yohan, have you been sleeping poorly?”

Yohan waved a hand shortly. “I don’t have time to sleep right now. I need to re-learn half my own techniques, and half the servants with the cursed seal don’t want to be freed, and…” He broke off blinking as Kazuki touched a finger to his lips.

“In other words, you haven’t been sleeping enough.” Kazuki shook his head at Yohan. “You have to take better care of yourself than that.”

“In what time?” Yohan asked flatly.

“Right now.” As Yohan just stared at him, Kazuki smiled and gathered him closer. “No one will disturb you while I’m here, will they?” He tugged gently until Yohan rested against him, stiff and startled. “So sleep. I’ll see nothing happens while you do.” He eased Yohan down to his lap, smiling as Yohan looked up at him, apparently at a loss.

“Aniue… But…”

Kazuki trusted his intuition and scraps of experience so far and said, very firmly, “Hush. Rest now, little brother.” He knew he was right when the stiffness when out of Yohan, and settled Yohan’s head comfortably in his lap. “Sleep.” There was so much he couldn’t restore to Yohan, but this he could give—an elder brother to watch over him.

He stroked Yohan’s hair gently, steadily until Yohan’s eyes closed, and his breath finally evened out into sleep.

Kazuki had less experience than Yohan with imposing his will on the Beltline, but he focused intently on the quiet, the isolation, the sunlit calm of this room, on turning away all worries and concerns. And, as minutes slid by and the sun moved slowly across the tatami, warming them, the only sounds were running water and the light, shifting song of birds beyond the screens.

The sunlight was slanting downward, and the air was cooling before he heard the scuff of feet out in the hall, and an approaching voice.

“Finally found you, honestly Yohan it’s not like you have to hide…”

Kazuki snorted softly to himself as Maiya slid a screen aside.

“There you are!”

“Maiya. Quietly,” he said, low.

She looked at Yohan, curled up asleep, and pressed a hand to her lips. “Sorry!” she whispered. Slipping in she closed the screen silently. “You actually got him to sleep?”

“He certainly needed it.” And he wasn’t exactly blaming Yohan’s people, but his voice was cool on the observation.

Maiya sighed, folding down to the tatami, long sleeves flipped expertly out of the way. “I know. We do try. He just doesn’t listen.” She smiled wryly, looking down at him. “Well, not to us anyway.”

Kazuki was quiet at that confirmation that he wasn’t imagining things. Yohan really did seem to want Kazuki to guide him, and even scold him, like an older brother. Well, Kazuki thought he could do that; he was very glad to, in fact, to reclaim this little bit of what they might have had. He smiled down at Yohan, stroking back his hair again.

“I… never did get a chance to thank you.”

Kazuki looked up at that, brows raised. Maiya was looking down at her hands.

“You saved us. All of us, in the end.”

“That was my duty as the head of this House at the time,” Kazuki said quietly.

“I know. Even so.” Maiya set her hands on the tatami and bowed profoundly. “For Yuuri’s life and mine. For the soul of our brother and Master. For the existence of our very House. I thank you most humbly, Kazuki-sama.”

“And for the care you’ve taken of my brother, I thank you as well,” Kazuki told her gently, and smiled when she looked up, eyes wide. “Only continue to stand by him, and that will be all the return I could ask.”

She ducked her head again, and murmured, husky, “I will.”

Yohan finally stirred, rubbing his eyes. “Maiya?” he yawned, and sat up blinking. Kazuki steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Good morning!” Maiya chirped, and Kazuki had to swallow a smile at the distinctly exasperated look Yohan gave her. If nothing else, she would surely help him learn to deal with people a bit less formally.

“What is it, Maiya?”

“Ah. Well.” Maiya coughed delicately. “You do remember that Gorou-san wanted to speak to you?”

Yohan sighed. “I remember.” From his tone he would rather not.

“Something troublesome?” Kazuki asked, sympathetic, tugging Yohan’s kimono and haori back into order.

“Since I have yet to work out exactly what it is he wants, I don’t know yet.” Yohan sounded irritated by that, too.

“Well, perhaps it will be something cheerful like marriage candidates,” Kazuki soothed. And then had to laugh at the horrified look Yohan gave him, eyes flicking ever so briefly to Maiya. “And when you’ve chosen, I’ll teach her the Phoenix,” Kazuki teased gently.

“I… I’m sure it isn’t that,” Yohan managed past his unaccustomed flusterment.

“You’re evil Kazuki-sama,” Maiya said, admiring.

“Only in a good cause.” Kazuki relented, smiling. “Whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll deal with it well.”

Yohan collected himself. “Will I see you Friday, then?”

“Of course.” Kazuki leaned over to press a quick kiss to Yohan’s forehead. “And before that, if you need me.”

That made Yohan color just a little. “Thank you, Aniue,” he murmured.

Kazuki rose, pleased with his new insight and the opportunities it offered to protect and cosset his brother. “For now, though, I should get home before the others worry so much they come looking for me.”

Maiya grinned at that, looking past his shoulder. “Too late.”

Kazuki blinked and looked around and sighed. Indeed, Juubei was standing in the open screen across the room. “Juubei.”

“You weren’t back at the usual time.”

“I am perfectly capable of walking here and back without coming to any grief,” Kazuki pointed out, though he knew quite well that this simple fact would have no impact on Juubei’s protectiveness. Juubei didn’t dignify the observation with an answer, simply waiting for him quietly. Kazuki shook his head, giving in. “Take care of Yohan, Maiya,” he directed, in parting.

Maiya looked back and forth between Kazuki and Yohan, thoughts moving behind her bright eyes. “Of course, Kazuki-sama,” she agreed, leaning over to twine her arm through Yohan’s. When Yohan glanced up at Kazuki and failed to pull away, she and Kazuki exchanged a look of understanding and complicity. Maiya, Kazuki was satisfied, would borrow Kazuki’s name as often as necessary to make Yohan take care of his health at least.

Kazuki swept up Juubei as he left, well pleased with the day’s progress.

Gradually, Kazuki had started to see more people than Yohan, when he visited, sometimes Maiya or Yuuri, sometimes someone from one of the surviving cousin branches who nodded to him uncomfortably, sometimes one of the silent Kokuchouin retainers. Today the man who opened the gates for him was startled out of his usual unobtrusive quiet to stare at Juubei, pacing at Kazuki’s shoulder.

“This really isn’t necessary you know,” Kazuki said one more time as Juubei followed him into the summer green of the Fuuchouin compound.

“We can hardly guard you, as is our duty, if we aren’t with you.” Juubei paused by one of the outer pavilions. “I can wait here if you wish, though.”

Kazuki sighed, running a hand through his hair. It was about time he started binding the length of it back again, he noted absently. “I should leave you to Maiya’s company.” Juubei gave him a perfectly bland look and Kazuki couldn’t help a laugh. “Oh, all right.”

He left Juubei in the outer gardens and went to find Yohan. He found his brother in one of the inner rooms, today, looking out across a small, raked courtyard, hands folded on his knees.

“Aniue. May I beg a favor of you?” Yohan asked, more formally than he usually spoke these days.

“Of course.” Kazuki settled beside him, curious. Yohan’s face was very still.

“Spar with me.”

Kazuki took a breath. In a way, he’d been expecting this for weeks; their conversations over the koto had always turned, sooner or later, to the application of the Fuuchouin arts. To the distinctions and interrelations of the omote and ura techniques. “If you wish.”

“I don’t entirely know where I stand anymore,” Yohan said quietly. “You’re the only one strong enough to test that against.”

“I understand.” Kazuki stood and held a hand down to his brother. “We can both find out.”

And he did understand. For those first few weeks after he’d sealed away the stigma, when he was younger, he’d felt as though he couldn’t quite see properly any more. As though nothing was exactly where he’d thought it should be. As memory had faded, he’d forgotten the disorientation too, but it had come back to him after the recent troubles, after he’d wakened and then rejected the stigma. He truly wasn’t sure what he himself was capable of now, and as they walked out, beyond the delicate groves of trees to an open, grassy ring, he wondered how this would end.

They started slowly, with the simple barriers and direct strikes that children of the clan might use. Both of them controlled those techniques easily, only just touching each other when a strike slipped through. As they moved faster, turning around each other, they worked up the scale of complexity and one strike and counter built on another and sang through the air around them, Rain to clear the Mist, the Red Bird to ward away the Comet, strategy and power twining together into a single strand. It was intoxicating and, even as Kazuki felt his art wavering on the edge of his ability to grasp, he was almost laughing.

Yohan, though, was frustrated; Kazuki could see it in the tightening of his mouth, the tension in his forearms as his control, too, faltered. One moment his attacks were hard enough to push Kazuki’s strings back but too hard to slip past; the next they flowed through like water, like light, but too slow to catch him.

Kazuki hesitated, hand poised to form the Flower Dance, looking a question at Yohan. Were they ready to try the final scroll? In answer Yohan’s hand flashed up, sending the form darting for him first. Kazuki breathed and stepped into it, and threw the Whirlwind back at him.

Both of them were bleeding by the time they regained their stances.

Kazuki felt none of the crushing power that had marked Yohan’s strings the last time they’d fought, but moment by moment Yohan’s fingers steadied and, slowly, the line of his mouth relaxed. Kazuki nodded to himself and pushed harder, faster, spinning the Empty Moon around his brother. A breath passed as it closed.

Another.

When the countersurge of Yohan’s strings undid the sphere, Kazuki laughed out loud even as Yohan’s strings closed around him in turn.

Kazuki shook back his hair as Yohan released him, and went to catch his brother in his arms. “You watched me for a long time, didn’t you?” he murmured as Yohan stiffened, startled.

“What…”

“You didn’t use the black strings at all today,” Kazuki pointed out. “Only the omote techniques.”

Yohan shrugged. “It never made any difference to me where a technique came from; they were all the same.”

“Once you saw them, yes.” Kazuki smiled as Yohan’s eyes shifted, even it it was a bit sad. “I was the only one you could have learned most of that from.” He shook his head as Yohan started to speak. “I’m honored to teach you. It’s my job, after all; you’re my heir, aren’t you?”

Yohan opened his mouth and closed it again, eyes a bit wide. “Aniue.”

Kazuki rested his hands on Yohan’s shoulders. “Better now?”

Yohan actually smiled a little. “Yes.” He glanced down and back up, collected but Kazuki could read the shyness in his reserve now. “May we do this again?”

“Of course,” Kazuki told him gently.

He was sufficiently distracted by his pleasure at this development that he didn’t think what it would look like to Juubei when he emerged from the House scuffed and bloody, and had to spend a solid five minutes talking him down. Juubei didn’t quite mutter under his breath, but he looked like he wanted to as he briskly sewed up the cuts before letting Kazuki go another step.

“You’ve seen me in considerably worse shape from training, when we were younger,” Kazuki pointed out, wincing a bit but holding still.

Juubei actually glowered at him and Kazuki sighed, resigning himself to another few days of overprotectiveness. As Juubei led the way back down the steps of the Fuuchouin House, back stiff, though, Kazuki paused, attention caught.

“Kazuki?” Juubei looked back, as though he was contemplating carrying Kazuki home bodily, but Kazuki didn’t mind that at the moment.

He reached up and touched the delicate leaves of the maple that grew by the steps. They were just barely tipped with autumn red.

“It’s all right,” he told Juubei, softly. “Everything’s all right.”

A Theme in Pentatonic – Coda

It had been years since any of them had celebrated the seasonal festivals, but this year Kazuki demanded everyone come along to one of the city shrines for Setsubun. If they were a proper House together, they should act like it, and for all of them propriety included tradition and the festivals.

He’d had to threaten Juubei with a celebration at home, with Juubei playing the Oni, before he agreed, but once they were in the middle of the laughing, shoving, shrieking crowd Juubei lost his stiffness and shoved back with a will. Kazuki laughed as much at that as at the scramble for thrown candies.

They all fetched up, panting and disheveled, at the edge of the crowd, for once focused on nothing more momentous than comparing who had caught what, and brokering trades of favorite sweets. Sakura leaned in Saizou’s arms, laughing as Kazuki stole sweets out of Juubei and Toshiki’s piles while they dickered.

"There," Kazuki declared, as they found a bench to sit on and eat, in the chilly falling evening. "Wasn’t I right about coming out to this?"

"I still don’t know why you insisted," Juubei half-grumbled.

"To regain our future," Saizou supplied, catching Juubei’s hand to lick off the sticky ends of his fingers. Juubei and Sakura both blushed at that, Kazuki observed with some amusement.

"Regain our future?" Toshiki asked.

"The past is gone," Saizou said softly, leaning back under the shadows of the trees. "It can’t be returned. But the future… that we can create or relinquish by our own actions. Once you’ve let it go, you need to work to get it back again."

Kazuki slid an arm around him and pressed close. "We’re touching it again now," he whispered.

Saizou smiled and held him as the other three gathered in around them, close and warm. "Yes. We are. And I’m more grateful to you than there are words to say, for that."

Kazuki touched Toshiki’s shoulder, laced his fingers with Juubei’s, looked up to meet Sakura’s smile. "I couldn’t touch it without all of you."

"Then walk forward to it," Sakura said, soft and clear, "and we will be with you."

Kazuki nodded. It was the beginning of spring, and a new year, and he finally felt there was a way forward there to be found.

"Together."

End

A Theme in Pentatonic – Interlude Six

Kazuki was humming as he climbed the apartment stairs and slipped in the front door. It had been a good day to be an information broker. He was considering getting a nice cup of tea when he spotted Saizou, sprawled on the couch as if he’d been dropped there.

“Saizou?”

Saizou opened one eye and smiled. “Kazuki.”

“How is your family?” Kazuki asked, cautious. Saizou’s visits to Toufuuin didn’t normally wear on him this much.

Saizou waved a reassuring hand. “Oh, everyone’s fine. My sister, especially.” He stretched out his legs and groaned.

Kazuki’s concern dissolved in a laugh. “Did she demand a match?” He’d heard a lot about Toufuuin Toshi over the years.

Saizou smiled up at him, ruefully, as he came to perch on the arm of the couch. “I like to think she was being charitable, actually, and helping me work off stress. Or I could be completely wrong, and she just wanted to kick my ass for being gone so much.”

“Saizou.” The worry crept back. “You know I never want to separate you from your family…”

“Of course I know that,” Saizou told him, voice gentle. “And I’m less separated from them now than I used to be.” He leaned his head back again and looked up at the ceiling. “Yohan left them pretty much alone after he’d gotten me, but I never wanted to remind him more than I could help.” His mouth quirked. “Ironic, that the last thing he ever promised me was to protect them as part of Fuuchouin. In return for services rendered, of course. At least he’s still done that.”

Kazuki could almost taste the bitterness of Saizou’s words when he spoke of his “services” to Yohan. He reached out to brush his fingers through Saizou’s hair, seeking to soothe. “That’s over now.”

Saizou closed his eyes under the touch. “I suppose so,” he said quietly.

Which told Kazuki, once again, that it wasn’t over. Of all his people, Saizou had been the most viciously wounded, even worse than Kazuki had been himself he thought, and more insidiously. He slid off the arm of the couch and down into Saizou’s lap, sliding his arms around him and pressing close; this comfort at least he could offer.

Saizou started at his weight, but it was only a breath before arms closed tight around him, half-desperate in their strength. “Kazuki,” Saizou breathed against his hair.

Every protective impulse in Kazuki urged him to gather Saizou to him, to hold and reassure him, but Kazuki knew from personal experience that protection wasn’t always what was needed. This time, instead, he made himself relax and lean into Saizou’s chest, let himself be cradled in Saizou’s arms. The catch of Saizou’s breath told him he was right. “I always trusted you,” Kazuki said softly. “And I was never wrong.”

Saizou caught him closer with a rough sound in his throat. Kazuki rested his head on Saizou’s shoulder, content to be here, to accept the shelter of Saizou’s embrace. When Saizou lifted a hand to touch his cheek, Kazuki smiled up at him and nestled closer. The tenderness of Saizou’s touch, of his mouth on Kazuki’s when he lifted Kazuki’s chin and kissed him, made Kazuki’s heart catch and his breath flutter in his chest.

And this was what Saizou needed. To know he could still offer tenderness and care, to know Kazuki accepted it and wanted it. And he did. Oh, he did.

“Kazuki,” Saizou whispered against his lips, and drew back to look at him. “May I have the honor?” he asked, formal and courtly in the way that always made Kazuki blush. It was such a contrast to Saizou’s usual jesting.

“Of course,” Kazuki murmured back, lashes lowered, and gasped softly as Saizou caught him up in his arms and stood, carrying him through to the bedroom.

It took rather a long time for Saizou to undress him, since he paused at every turn to scatter kisses down Kazuki’s shoulders, across his chest and down his stomach, to caress his hips and thighs and press a slow, open mouth to the inside of his knee. Kazuki was panting by the time Saizou finally got around to his own clothes, and felt like his whole body must be glowing with the pleasure of Saizou’s touch. Feeling the length of Saizou’s body against his, finally, as Saizou gathered him close, made Kazuki moan. Saizou caught the sound in a slow, gentle kiss, and another, and another until Kazuki was more breathless than before.

“My heart,” Saizou whispered between kisses. “My lord. My love.”

Kazuki twined his arms around Saizou and gasped as long fingers slid down his back and further down between his cheeks, caressing and stroking his entrance. “Saizou…”

“I always loved you,” Saizou said in his ear. “Always, I swear it.”

“I know. I knew.” Kazuki shivered as Saizou’s fingers eased away and returned slick and cool. “Saizou, I love—ahh…” Saizou’s fingers, opening him, were slow and sure, almost unbearably slow and sure.

“Thank you.” Saizou smiled down at him, soft and happy, and kissed him again, swallowing another low moan as his fingers pressed in again, deeper.

Kazuki let himself go, gave himself up to Saizou’s hands and the pleasure they brought, and the bright wonder in Saizou’s eyes was more reward than the pleasure itself. When Saizou finally settled against him and pressed into him, Kazuki was so warmed, so relaxed he barely felt the stretch of it; all his senses were caught up in the easy slide, the gentle care of Saizou’s hands, the tenderness of his kisses. It was almost too much for any one person, and he couldn’t do other than answer with everything that was in him, all the passion and all the pliancy. When pleasure spilled over it was just one more strand of heat and sweetness in what Saizou had woven between them.

Saizou gasped against his mouth and caught him closer, stilling, and Kazuki made a pleased sound, hands stroking down Saizou’s back. Slowly, slowly, the heat eased, and Saizou’s hands caressed him back into cool, stroking the last tremors from his body and leaving him cradled against Saizou’s chest, quite relaxed.

Eventually Kazuki regathered enough breath and thought to murmur, “You have remarkable self control.”

Saizou’s chest moved under his cheek as he chuckled. “I have remarkable inspiration.”

Kazuki colored a bit at that, and snuggled closer.

Saizou added, quieter, “And I’ve wanted for so long to use that self control to bring you pleasure and not harm.”

Kazuki looked up at him, reaching up to stroke back fair, damp hair. “You bring me pleasure just being beside me.” He had to smile as he admitted, “This pleasure was especially impressive, though.”

It was Saizou’s turn to blush, and Kazuki curled up in his arms, satisfied with a job well done.

If he had to do it again, he wouldn’t object, of course.

A Theme in Pentatonic – Four

Sakura was more impressed with Saizou the more she watched, after he returned to them. He was very smooth about turning attention aside. Today he was egging Juubei and Toshiki on with a laugh to a contest of who could strike most accurately at the greatest distance. It was hard to even spot the moment when he eased himself out of the competition and stood back.

No wonder he had hidden his troubles from them so well for so long.

That wouldn’t do now, though. The Kokuchouin no longer held his heartbeat and will hostage. There was no reason for this any more, and it would do him no good to continue the habit. She expected Saizou would deny he was doing it if the others confronted him directly, though, especially if it was Kazuki.

That left her. Just as well, perhaps; they had unfinished business, he and she.

Sakura slipped up beside her quarry on soft feet until she was close enough to be heard by no one else when she asked, “Why do you hold yourself apart from us, Saizou?”

He stilled, laughter dying, eyes turning dark and distant though he didn’t look at her. “Is shame so hard to understand?”

“No harder than forgiveness,” she pointed out. She sat down beside him on the broken wall he’d been watching Juubei and Toshiki from, hands folded in her lap, and waited. Saizou couldn’t hide from her after what they’d been through, and eventually he would realize the sense of that.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to believe it,” he finally said, quietly. “I just don’t understand. I stole your bodies and bound your wills. Your very hearts! I set you against your allies. And you forgive me for that, just this easily?”

Sakura was quiet too for a little, marshaling the words she needed. “It’s true. You did that. But you didn’t do it for ambition or hatred. You did it to save all our lives.” She looked up at his hard profile. “Toshiki thinks it was only justice, considering he did much the same to Kazuki; he’s almost grateful to you. And you healed Juubei’s eyes, which no other technique could have done. And above all,” she laid a hand on the one he had clenched, “you didn’t bind our hearts. You held them safe, inside your own.” He ducked his head a little and she smiled. “Yes. How else could we have seen what was in your heart? I knew; that was why I spoke, and told Kazuki why you had done all that.”

“But that doesn’t make up for…” he started softly, and she cut him off, brisk.

“No. It doesn’t. Nothing could. But we forgive you anyway.” When he finally turned to look at her, eyes wide and defenseless behind his glasses, she let her smile turn teasing. “There’s only one thing I haven’t forgiven you for, out of all that. And that’s the uniform.”

He turned red, and she smacked him on the shoulder with the backs of her fingers.

“I thought so! It was your idea!” She’d had her suspicions when she realized the thing left her bare from hips to the bottom of her breasts.

He turned redder and looked everywhere except at her. “So, I, um, I guess now you’re going to tell Juubei and I’d better get ready to be a pincushion, huh?” he asked, meekly.

Sakura sniffed. “I don’t need my little brother to look after my honor or avenge my slights. I can do that myself.” Now he looked genuinely alarmed, and Sakura made a thoughtful sound, head tilted as if considering the appropriate retribution. He slid off the wall onto his knees, hands clasped entreatingly.

“I’m so very sorry, I honestly am, I don’t know what I was thinking. The curse seal must have been affecting my brain or I’d have never done it, I swear,” he said with becoming earnestness.

Sakura gave him a cool look, ignoring the fact that her brother and Toshiki had both stopped their little game and were staring. “Well. I suppose I might let you make it up to me.”

“Anything you say; anything at all,” he assured her.

“Very well, then.” She couldn’t entirely stifle the smile that crimped the corners of her mouth. “Kiss me.”

Saizou stared up at her with his mouth open.

“You did say anything,” she pointed out.

“You… but… Sakura,” he murmured, hushed.

She smiled softly and held out a hand to him. “I’m waiting.”

He took her hand slowly, wondering eyes never leaving her face. “Yes, ma’am,” he finally said, husky, and leaned up on his knees. Long fingers touched her cheek softly and she bent her head to meet him. The kiss was soft and reverent, and he ducked his head after, pressing another to her hand. She stroked his hair gently and gave her brother a steely look over his bent head.

Juubei blinked and turned back promptly to his contest with Toshiki, and Sakura relaxed, pleased.

That was that taken care of, then. She’d certainly waited long enough.

Saizou knew Sakura was getting impatient. She was too well-bred to show it openly, but they’d grown up in the same kind of houses and it was there to see in the angle of her head when he hesitated to put his arm around her, in the way she turned toward him and then looked up when he was slow to take the invitation. They both understood it.

So when he finally gathered his courage to ask, he didn’t need to explain. He’d brought some fresh strawberries to the pretty, airy apartment she kept high enough up the central building of Mugenjou to catch the breeze and see the sun. He watched her easy grace as she washed them and sliced a few, and remembered that same grace turning away countless men with such indifference few of them even managed to protest before she was out of sight, and he finally had to ask.

“Why me?”

Her knife paused against the cutting board for a moment before she made the last two slices and turned to wash the blade. “Because you see all of me.”

That wasn’t the kind of answer he’d expected and he blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

She smiled over her shoulder as she took down a plate for the strawberries. “Most men, especially here, only see that I have curves. They don’t see any more of me than that. That’s boring.”

Saizou looked away guiltily from the curve of her breast against her arm and cleared his throat. “I imagine so.”

She didn’t even seem to notice, and went on calmly. “But the men who do come close enough to know me… well. To Toshiki, I’m almost as much of a sister as I am to Juubei. And Kazuki respects my strength, he honors my council, but he doesn’t look at surfaces at all.” Her voice softened and turned low. “He sees deeper. And that’s as it should be, but… the surface is real too.” She stroked a hand down the line of her hip. “This is me, also.”

Saizou had to swallow. “It is,” he agreed.

She looked up at him and smiled. “That’s what I mean. You look at me and see both. I like that.” Her gaze fell to her fingers, which were re-arranging strawberry slices more precisely than was really necessary, and she murmured, “Do you?”

“Do I…?” Saizou’s brain finally kicked in and he blinked. “Do I like it? Of course!” He’d kind of thought the thing with the uniform made that obvious—more obvious than it should have been, but people who thought they were going to die before they could be pounded for their temerity did crazy things.

He could see the breath she took before she looked up, chin lifted, and said, “Show me.”

That hit the off-switch on his brain again for a few moments. When he spoke his voice was husky. “Show you? That I like it?”

She colored a little, but her eyes were level. “Yes.”

He crossed the kitchen quickly, catching up her hands. “I’m sorry,” he murmured ruefully against them. “I shouldn’t make you doubt yourself when it’s only me I’m doubting.”

“Do you doubt your welcome?” she asked softly. When he shook his head she stepped closer. “Then what else matters?”

He had always known that Sakura was the one with the brains. He should, he thought, rely on them more often. The thought was distant, though; most of his attention was taken up with the faint sweetness of strawberries on her fingers.

Show, hm?

Sakura’s eyes widened as he drew one of her fingers into his mouth, lapping the strawberry juice slowly off it. “Oh.” Her flush deepened.

“You’re beautiful, Sakura; all of you,” he said softly against her fingertips. “I would be honored to show you how beautiful you are in my eyes.” Conscience twitched at him and he paused. “You, ah… you really don’t mind? I mean, Kazuki…”

A spark of amusement lit her smile as she looked up at him. “Kazuki-sama has a generous heart. I’m sure he won’t mind sharing.”

This was so manifestly true that he almost forgot she hadn’t answered his actual question. “Yes, but I mean, you’re sure you won’t mind…?”

Her smile gentled and turned serene. “I’m part of Fuuga too, you know.”

Yes, and this did seem to be the pattern of their little House. Saizou gave up and smiled back. “Okay, I’ll stop asking silly questions.”

“Good.” She caught his hand and stepped backward, toward an open door and the corner of a bed that showed through it.

Saizou followed her.

Sakura slid out of her dress and turned her back to Saizou. “Will you undo this for me?” A glance over her shoulder showed he was blushing a little, which charmed her quite unreasonably. Saizou’s diffidence could be frustrating, but she was more than willing to put up with that when it also made his fingers, undoing her bra, so light, so careful. She leaned back against the warmth of his bare chest with a soft sigh as he slid the straps down her arms.

“Sakura,” he murmured against her shoulder, husky, arms closing around his waist.

She rested her head back against his shoulder so she could whisper in his ear, “One more thing to go.”

His laugh puffed warm against her skin and he slid his hands obligingly down to her hips and eased her panties down. She liked it very much that Saizou knew how to laugh at all these little games. She liked it even more when his hands slid back up and over her stomach, up her ribs, to stroke her breasts slow and gentle. The touch sent enticing little shivers down her body to strike heat between her legs, and she made an approving sound.

Saizou released a shaky breath and she turned to twine her arms around him. “Shh,” she murmured. “It’s all right. You’re one of us, Saizou; you’ve always been one of us, even when it hurt you so much you wanted to die from it.” She held him tighter as he tensed. “We are Fuuga. Be with us.” She leaned back and smiled. “Be with me.”

He closed his eyes for a breath, smile turning fragile and soft. “Gladly.”

She backed toward her bed, hands sliding down his arms to catch his hands and pull him after her. That made him laugh, and the tension was gone from his movement as he settled onto the bed with her and drew her close. Sakura felt like purring with satisfaction as they traded slow kisses, twined together on her rumpled sheets. The reverence of his hands on her made her breath catch and the open wonder in his eyes made her press closer, torn between offering passion and offering comfort.

When his tongue slid down her collar bone to dip between her breasts she decided passion was appropriate.

“Saizou…” She gasped as his hand stroked down her stomach, muscles shivering under his palm, and long fingers slipped delicately down between her legs.

“Sakura,” he whispered against her breast, husky, fingertips easing between her folds. She moaned softly as he stroked her, light and sure, and pleasure tightened low in her stomach. He followed every shift of her body as if she’d spoken aloud, fingers now firmer, now lighter, now dipping down to tease inside her, fingers sensitive and sure.

There were definitely advantages to a lover from the Fuuchouin clan.

This lover of hers certainly knew what he was doing, and seemed determined to pleasure her. His mouth closed on her nipple and she arched, pressing up into the wet heat of his mouth. His fingers slid further into her, deep and slow, and hers flexed, digging into his back as her breath caught. She gasped out loud when he dragged his fingers back up, stroking slickly over her and rubbing slow, and her nerves tingled in response.

“Saizou.” She wound a leg around his hip and pulled him down against her, catching his low laugh in a demanding kiss. “Now.”

“Yes, my noble lady,” he teased, and gasped when she nipped his lower lip in retaliation. “Sakura…”

She rocked her hips up, smiling to feel his hardness against her. “Now.”

His agreement this time was heartfelt. She laughed softly and spread her legs wider, sighing with the pleasure of his weight over her, savoring the lean solidity of him, letting her hands wander over the line of his shoulders and down his back to feel the flex of his rear as he pressed into her. The thick, solid slide of him inside her eased the taut hunger his fingers had started and she moaned, pushing up to meet him.

He would have gone slow, but she didn’t want that right now and let her whole body flex, rocking up wantonly, taking him deeper, driving their pace faster. Saizou groaned and caught her closer, body answering hers. “Sakura!” His long, driving thrusts finally answered the heat in her and she gasped as pleasure started to build again.

“All of you,” she said against his shoulder, starting to pant for breath. “All of you, Saizou.”

He kissed her, hot and passionate, in answer, and she tightened her arms around him, kissing back just as open and hungry. She wrapped her leg around him, grinding against him, and shivered with the first crest of pleasure. Saizou thrust deeper and she bucked against him, gasping as sensation turned bright, swept out through her and clenched her body tight. Saizou’s breathless moan made her smile and she reached up to run her fingers through his hair as another wave of pleasure rippled through her. She was starting to relax when he stilled over her, gasping, shuddering, and she gathered him close again.

They lay for a while that way and she carded her fingers through the length of his hair in back, trailing down his spine.

“Thank you,” he finally said, breath tickling her throat.

“Mm. Thank you too.” She kissed his forehead. “You’re not going to be so difficult about it next time, are you?”

His shoulders shook with a laugh. “No. I promise I won’t.”

“Good,” she said firmly. “Because you belong to us, and I’m not having any more of this foolishness.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured, meekly enough except that she could feel his lips curve against her shoulder.

Well, that was Saizou. And he wanted her, wanted this, after all.

His arms tightened around her and she settled against him with a pleased sigh.

A Theme in Pentatonic – Interlude Five

Toshiki liked being with Juubei, cherished the opportunity to feel wanted, needed. He liked it when Saizou was with them, because Saizou knew that sometimes you really did need to laugh, in bed. But sometimes it was good to belong only to Kazuki, for a while. That was how he thought of it, anyway.

He hadn’t realized that Kazuki knew that.

There really wasn’t any other way to interpret Kazuki’s smile this afternoon, though, or the glint of his eyes under his lashes as white teeth nipped the end of his string and long fingers slowly drew the first one out. There definitely wasn’t any other way to interpret it when the weave of that string caught Toshiki’s wrists and pulled them together over his head.

“Kazuki?” he asked, abruptly breathless, holding very still. Not that he thought the strings would cut him, he’d been captured by Kazuki’s strings once, years ago, and he could feel they wouldn’t—nor let him go either. And that… that made his whole body taut and still and waiting.

“You like this,” Kazuki murmured, a statement not a question. His smile got a little wider as a shiver spilled through Toshiki, under his fingertips.

Toshiki had to swallow before he could answer, “Yes.” He moaned outright as the strings flashed and sang again and the net of them caught his thighs, lifting them, spreading them wide. By the time Kazuki delicately looped and fixed his string, Toshiki could barely move and he was dizzy with the rush of blood to his cock. Kazuki’s fingers stroking his entrance, slow and slick, made him shudder and moan.

“You’re beautiful like this,” Kazuki said, smiling at the breathless sounds Toshiki made as those fingers pressed deep into him.

“I’m yours, like this,” Toshiki gasped, muscles trembling as he tried to rock into the slow thrust of Kazuki’s fingers and couldn’t. Heat twined up his spine.

Kazuki’s eyes darkened. “You are, aren’t you?” he said, soft and thoughtful. It seemed an odd way to say it, but Toshiki was too dizzy with the feeling of being held and bound and touched like this to quite reason out why.

He couldn’t help whimpering when Kazuki’s fingers slid out of him. “Kazuki…” The hard stretch of Kazuki’s cock pushing into him made him groan, and the slow deliberate slide in and out of his ass told him that Kazuki intended to keep him right where he was for a while. “Please, yes,” he gasped, and the velvet huskiness of Kazuki’s laugh set him shivering.

Sensation closed around him like water over his head and he lost track of time as Kazuki drove into him slow and strong, gentle hands stroking over the taut muscles of his chest and stomach, sliding down to squeeze his ass firmly now and then, and spread him wider. Wound in Kazuki’s strings, he couldn’t do anything but take it, feel it, know that he’d given himself completely into Kazuki’s hands and they had closed on him.

It was that knowledge, the sweetness of it, that finally became more than he could take, and he cried out, broken and breathless, as slow-drawn pleasure snapped into fire and wrung out every nerve he had like a rag. He felt like he was going to melt with the heat of it, and when Kazuki’s steady fucking finally turned rough and fast he didn’t even have the breath left to moan.

He lay panting and dazed as Kazuki slowly released him. When Kazuki unbound his wrists, only to close his hands around them, fingers stroking gently, Toshiki flushed. “How did you know?” he asked, a little uneven.

“Mm.” Kazuki settled against him, thumb sliding over the inside of his wrist. “I was recalling the other day what you looked like, the first time we met. Do you remember?”

Toshiki snorted. “Of course I remember. I challenged you, and you toyed with me. Though I didn’t figure out that’s what you were doing until the end.” The end, when the delicate figure nearly dancing just beyond his reach had laughed, bright and pleased, and sent strings singing out to bind him in place so easily it had undone him.

“I wanted to watch you,” Kazuki pointed out, “of course I drew it out. But I was thinking of how you looked at me, then.” He was quiet for a moment before he said, low, “Should I have held you by me, when I turned to follow Ginji-san? Should I have demanded that?”

Toshiki’s breath caught and he had to close his eyes against the knowledge of the difference that would have made. “Anything you commanded, I would have done,” he said, husky.

“I knew that.” Kazuki’s voice was tense. “That’s why I didn’t. Should I have?”

“I…” Toshiki swallowed and spoke his heart. “Yes,” he whispered. “Please. That’s past, we can’t change it, but please. Hold me by you.”

Kazuki breathed deep, in and out, shoulders relaxing, and nodded. His hands tightened on Toshiki’s wrists. “You’re mine,” he said, quiet but sure. “I won’t open my hand again.”

Toshiki wasn’t ashamed of the sound that pulled out of him. Kazuki lifted his head and smiled down at him.

“I had thought there was a difference between having you like this,” he drew a finger down Toshiki’s chest, “and leading you. But there isn’t, is there?”

“Maybe for some people, but not for me.” Toshiki’s mouth quirked. “Not for any of us, really.”

Kazuki closed his eyes and asked, softly, “Truly?”

Toshiki had to wonder what Kazuki was really asking. He thought about what Kazuki had just told him, the reason he hadn’t commanded them back then; thought about the fire in Kazuki and the terrifying edge it used to have; thought about his own old rage, and the assurances that had finally quieted it. And then he tugged his wrists gently loose from Kazuki’s hands and wrapped his arms around him.

“We won’t leave you,” he whispered against Kazuki’s hair. “Never again. We won’t let anything drive us away from you.” He smiled wryly. “Not even you.”

Kazuki’s breath caught against his shoulder and slim, strong arms locked around him in answer. “Toshiki…”

“I’m sorry we didn’t see,” he said, soft. A faint laugh shook Kazuki.

“None of us saw. Can we forgive each other?”

“Already done.” How could he do anything else? Kazuki took such care of him, had given him so much. How could he not return every bit of that he could?

They lay together in comfortable quiet until the sound of the front door, and the others returning, roused them to smile at each other and get up and go out to help make dinner.

A Theme in Pentatonic – Three

Kazuki felt a stray breeze brush his cheek and sighed. Saizou seemed determined to be the most troublesome one of all for him.

Juubei had been the first to detect him shadowing them, never coming close, only watching, but never leaving them. Kazuki had tried, once or twice, to drift closer, but every time Saizou slid away. Thinking about it, Kazuki didn’t suppose he was actually surprised.

Part of him had always known that Saizou felt differently about their past than he did. That Saizou wanted his clan back. He had been the one, after all, to suggest that Kazuki form a new House. Once Sakura pointed it out, Kazuki could see perfectly well what Fuuga had been. At the time, though, that knowledge had been one of the things he turned his face from.

So he also understood why Saizou held back now, why he couldn’t trust the thing he most wanted. Kazuki had lived the same way for a long time. Kokuchouin had forced Saizou to plant the seed of falseness in his hope for a new clan, claimed he could save Kazuki only by betraying and defeating him, and Saizou had been burned too painfully to even try grasping hope again. Kazuki knew that mind so well it hurt.

And he would not let Saizou stay there, not even if it meant flexing his own old burns. He would be what he needed to be.

“Kazuki-san?” Makubex had paused to look back at him, smiling, eyes questioning.

“I was just contemplating the view,” Kazuki murmured. “Go on ahead a bit, would you?”

Makubex stilled for a moment before smiling a bit wider. “Of course.” He caught Toshiki and Juubei and drew them along with him, a quick glance bringing Sakura after, trotting out into the plaza behind the building where they lived. Kazuki wondered, ruefully, when Makubex had started looking so much like Ginji to him. They both had that vision that a leader needed. Kazuki drew a slow breath; despite Sakura’s insistence, he had a hard time feeling he had any of that himself.

Perhaps, though, he could borrow some of it from their example.

He watched them. It had been his purpose for so long it came naturally now, though now he watched from the shadows. As was only fitting, really. He still wasn’t sure if this was his prize or his penance, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop; not even when every hand Kazuki laid on Kakei’s arm, every smile he gentled for Uryuu, made Saizou’s heart tug. The heart he’d given for Kazuki. To Kazuki.

That part hadn’t hurt. To die for Kazuki’s sake was more than he’d deserved by the end. What hurt was being alive again. Alive to see Kakei’s simple confidence that Kazuki would permit his protection despite being the strongest of them all. To see the flush of pleaure on Uryuu’s face whenever Kazuki asked even the simplest thing of him. To see Sakura’s smile as she sat beside Kazuki and he listened to her words. The worst were the nights, the ones when he couldn’t quite keep himself from seeing, from hearing the way Kazuki sighed as he stretched and relaxed into Kakei’s hands, the way Uryuu gasped as he surrendered himself to Kazuki. The way Kazuki laughed as he knelt over them.

Kazuki was the prince Saizou had named him, no question. He was ally and clan lord and liege to the Eastern House. Part of Saizou told him he should be there with Kazuki, that he was heir to one of the daylight schools and belonged at his clan lord’s side under the sun. But all those years as a changeling, vanquished and stolen by the shadows, answered that this was his place now and he had no right to call Kazuki his lord.

“How long were you planning to stand there watching?”

Saizou’s head jerked up, startled. Kazuki stood with his back to him, head cocked, apparently watching Uryuu playing tag across the plaza with Makubex while Kakei and his sister looked on tolerantly.

“Saizou?” Kazuki murmured. “I asked you a question.”

Saizou winced. He supposed he’d put this particular weapon in Kazuki’s hands himself, admitting his love and loyalty in such an undeniable way. “As long as I can?” he tried anyway, hoping against all just desserts for mercy.

Kazuki’s head tipped down a little. “And if I tell you that you no longer can?” he asked quietly.

It took Saizou a few moments to unlock his lungs and speak after that. “Then I will not,” he said, husky, and stepped back deeper into the shadows, swallowing pain as best he could.

“Saizou.” Kazuki turned at last, and the irritation in his tone made Saizou’s stomach turn over. “Come here.”

Saizou wavered for a moment on one foot, startled. “Kazuki…?”

“I said,” Kazuki said, soft and sharp, “come here.”

That tone reversed his direction before his brain caught up with the rest of him, and he stepped, halting, out into the light. Kazuki was, he reflected ruefully, nothing if not ruthless when he thought there was cause. Saizou smiled, wry and crooked, and murmured, “I am here, my Prince,” acknowledging the accuracy of Kazuki’s chosen approach.

Kazuki sighed, sounding rather exasperated. “I never thought you would be the most stubborn one. Do you really not trust my forgiveness? Or theirs?”

“Do I really deserve it?” Saizou shrugged. “I… don’t think so.”

“You gave your life to protect mine,” Kazuki told him gently. “More than that. You gave your very soul, for years. What kind of leader would I be to you if I failed to acknowledge that?”

The clarity of those words, of Kazuki’s vision, were like a punch to the chest. “When I said that people would fear your gentleness,” Saizou said, quick and breathless, “I didn’t know the half of it.”

Kazuki considered him for a moment, calm as he was in the heart of battle, and when he moved the grace of battle was in each step he took toward Saizou. Like any of the fools before him, Saizou was caught by that beauty and stood unguarded as Kazuki laid his hands on Saizou’s shoulders.

“If this is the only way you’ll hear me, very well.” The soft voice bound him like Kazuki’s strings would have, unable to move. “I order you, then, to come forward and stand beside me. You gave yourself to my service long ago, and I do not release you.”

Shock unstrung Saizou and he sank down to his knees, staring up at Kazuki. He knew, heir to the main house or not, that Kazuki had never wished to retake that place. He’d said it often enough, that he was no longer the lord of Fuuchouin. But for this, for him, Kazuki had laid his hand on that mantle again. Saizou bent his head, outflanked and overwhelmed, and answered low and rough, “Yes, lord.”

“It’s a very different House we have, here,” Kazuki said gently, resting one hand on his head. “But I love it all the same, and I won’t leave one of my own wandering in the dark.”

Saizou pulled in a harsh breath and let it out, shaky. Gentleness and strength, yes; those were what had always bound him to Kazuki—guard against one and fall to the other, turn to the second and be utterly conquered by the first.

Willingly conquered, he had to admit.

“So, are you done lurking?” Kakei asked from behind them, perfectly casual, and Saizou snorted as he pulled himself to his feet.

“Yeah, I suppose I am…” His eyes widened. “Wait. Wait, you. Um.” Shit; Kakei didn’t need his eyes to spot a person, even now he had his vision back, and it was possible Saizou hadn’t concealed his presence as thoroughly as he should have—had he known all this time, that Saizou was watching? Watching… everything?

Kakei looked back at him, completely bland and expressionless, and Saizou clapped a hand over his eyes. The wicked edge in Kazuki’s laugh only confirmed it.

“Aw, look, he’s blushing!” Uryuu grinned and elbowed him in the ribs.

“Shut up,” Saizou told him, heartfelt.

“What?” If anything Uryuu’s grin got wider. “I thought you liked listening to me.”

Saizou made a pathetic sound. They really did intend revenge: they were going to kill him of embarrassment.

“Well!” Kazuki linked his arm through Saizou’s lightly, not that he fooled himself that he’d be able to get away. “Why don’t we talk about that, then?”

He was doomed, Saizou decided fatalistically as he was surrounded and chivvied off toward an apartment building he knew very well by now, listening to Kazuki’s soft laugh and Uryuu’s shameless suggestions and Kakei’s distinctly smug silence and Sakura’s fading giggles as she and Makubex strolled on.

Willingly doomed, he had to admit.

In the end, they spent more of that first night talking than anything else. They held him the whole time, hands stroking gently over his back, fingers lacing through his, but mostly they just lay and spoke of what had happened after he’d died.

He still couldn’t quite take it all in. He could believe that Juubei would put himself between Kazuki and the Kokuchouin siblings, and even that he’d survived doing it. That was actually the easy part. That Kazuki had defeated Yohan, though…

He stared up at the ceiling and decided he needed coffee before thinking more about that. Easing out from between Kazuki and Toshiki he pulled his jeans back on and went looking for the kitchen.

Obviously, he thought as he watched his brain-helper brew, it was true. After all, here they all were alive and with all parts attached and everything. And without any trace of the black thread; he’d checked that, as surreptitiously as possible. Which brought it all down to this Phoenix technique Kazuki spoke of, the true heart of Fuuchouin, the hidden heart. Down to Kazuki’s heart and how all-encompassing it was.

Actually, when he thought of it that way, it all made perfect sense. It was never Kazuki’s power alone that made him truly terrifying. Saizou sipped his coffee and contemplated that truth. If Kazuki’s mercy could gather even Yohan to him, perhaps Saizou wasn’t as much of a stretch.

“Saizou?”

He looked up and had to smile. Kazuki stood in the door of the kitchen, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, holding a robe around him. Even just woken up, with his robe falling half off one shoulder, Kazuki managed to look elegant and poised. “Hey. Just thought I’d get some coffee.”

“Mm, good idea.” Kazuki came and stole his mug for a sip, giving him such a teasing look that Saizou laughed; he’d never seen Kazuki quite this relaxed.

“Well, all this did some good for you, at least.” He brushed his fingers against the cut ends of Kazuki’s hair and finally said what he’d been wanting to say ever since he’d seen it. “This wasn’t necessary. It isn’t as though you ever lost to me.”

“At the time, I thought I had lost everything to you,” Kazuki said softly, eyes darkening for a moment.

Saizou was quiet for a moment, thoughtful. “You cut your hair for the loss of your people… but not for your family?”

Kazuki’s smile was crooked. “I couldn’t fight for my family. But for Fuuga,” he reached up to touch Saizou’s cheek, “for you, I could.”

“I’m honored,” Saizou murmured, a bit rueful. It was true. To be Kazuki’s target or his treasure, either was an honor.

“You’re being foolish,” Kazuki corrected in a firm tone. “Even then… even then I still believed in you.”

Saizou flinched a little.

“Was I wrong to?” Kazuki demanded, holding his eyes. “It was for my sake, from first to last. Do you think I’m cruel enough to hold that against you still?”

“Of course not.” Saizou ran a hand through his hair, trying to find words for why Kazuki’s faith in him could still hurt. It was times like this he remembered how much younger Kazuki was.

“Then stop this nonsense,” Kazuki told him and pulled him down to a kiss.

Saizou made a startled sound; even having watched them, he wasn’t quite prepared for Kazuki to offer him this intimacy so easily, so quickly. His hands came up to Kazuki’s hips to steady him and one found skin instead of cloth. Kazuki’s robe wasn’t belted, he recalled hazily. “Kazuki…” he half protested against Kazuki’s mouth.

“Hmm.” Kazuki drew back and looked at him with a thoughtful light in his eye. Finally he smiled in a way that made Saizou downright nervous and backed up a few steps, enough to bring him into the light from the window.

His robe was very definitely not belted.

Saizou swallowed eyes helplessly drawn to the lean, elegant lines of Kazuki’s body, framed in the folds of soft, red cloth and lit by the morning sun. “Kazuki…” he tried again, husky.

Kazuki smiled, gentle and sweet and perfectly ruthless, and held out his hand. “Come here, Saizou.”

Saizou gave himself up for lost. If Kazuki wanted him there was no way he’d be able to resist. He followed Kazuki those few steps and sank to his knees on the cool tile floor looking up at the beauty of him, hands sliding up Kazuki’s legs to find his hips again. Kazuki looked entirely pleased, and ran his fingers through Saizou’s hair.

“Yes.”

Saizou didn’t have any more words; instead he bent his head and closed his mouth over Kazuki’s cock, shivering with the soft sound Kazuki made. He’d had dreams like this, even years ago, and scolded himself in the morning. Kazuki had been too young, and Juubei would have carved out his liver with a spoon, quite rightly.

Now Kazuki was positively purring, rocking forward into his mouth, and the slide of his cock between Saizou’s lips made Saizou moan himself. His hands slid over the curve of Kazuki’s rear, up the line of his back, back down to stroke his thighs, and the flex of Kazuki’s fingers in his hair, the weight of him on Saizou’s tongue, was making his jeans extremely tight.

He closed his eyes, just feeling the texture of Kazuki as he sucked harder, listening to the breathless gasps of pleasure above him and enjoying the knowledge that he was the one coaxing them out of Kazuki. That knowledge was enough to eclipse everything else, and so it took him a moment to process it when Kazuki’s hands eased him back.

“What…?” He looked up at Kazuki, panting a little.

“I want more.” Kazuki took his shoulders and tugged him up. His eyes danced as he undid Saizou’s jeans and Saizou couldn’t help the shiver of relief that ran through him. “Turn around,” Kazuki murmured.

Saizou blinked and turned, and realized that he’d been edged right up to the kitchen table. “Um…?” Kazuki’s hands settled on his shoulders and pressed him down and his breath caught. “Kazuki…!”

“Do you not want this?” Kazuki asked gently, hands stroking up and down his bare back.

“No, I… That isn’t… I just didn’t think…” Actually, now that he was thinking of it, Saizou’s brain might just be melting. “But I mean, are you sure?” Kazuki’s hands were still stroking his back, soothing, and when he glanced over his shoulder Kazuki was laughing silently.

“I’m very sure.” Kazuki’s hands slid down to ease Saizou’s jeans down off his hips and Saizou’s eyes widened as the thickness of Kazuki’s cock slid between his cheeks. “See?”

Saizou shuddered, subsiding the rest of the way down to the table. “Yes,” he agreed, husky. “It’s just…”

“Shh.” Kazuki leaned over him and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the nape of his neck, sending another shiver trailing down Saizou’s spine. “You’re mine. You have all of me.”

That undid him, and yes, it was really no stretch at all to imagine that Kazuki’s compassion had conquered Yohan too. He put his head down on his arm and said quietly, “Yes. Please.”

The rustling of cloth he expected, and the warm slide of Kazuki’s palms over his ass. The low click of something glass being set down, though, puzzled him enough to look around and when he saw the open jar sitting beside them on the table he just stared. “You… planned this?”

“Well, we didn’t get around to it last night,” Kazuki told him, bright and innocent, as slick, cool fingers stroked against him. Saizou laughed helplessly into the crook of his arm until they pressed in and his breath caught.

Kazuki was gentle about opening him up, and it wasn’t until Saizou was panting again that his fingers started to move differently. The sheer fact of having Kazuki’s fingers inside him was momentous enough that it took him a while to understand why those movements plucked at his nerves. The ripple of fingertips as they drew back was what Saizou finally recognized, and groaned as electric response tightened his body.

Those were the motions to control strings.

“Mm. I thought you might like that.” Kazuki sounded pleased, and his fingers twisted in the gathering motion for Autumn Rains, curved at the angle that set a barrier. Every stroke and gesture was from an enclosing technique, and Saizou moaned with the rush of heat that realization brought.

“You don’t need to capture me any more,” he gasped, “I’m yours.” Hell, he’d been Kazuki’s since they met.

“Good.” Kazuki’s voice was low, now, and Saizou swallowed, anticipation crinkling down his nerves as Kazuki’s fingers drew back. The press of Kazuki’s cock, hard and big against his entrance, pulled a wanting sound out of him.

Kazuki held him steady against the table and fucked him, rode him, slow and hard, and Saizou’s thoughts broke up into little bits. He remembered the brightness of Kazuki’s eyes, that first meeting, and the sharpness that surfaced when they fought; Kazuki’s rare ease with Fuuga, the moments when the bleakness around his mouth smoothed away; his own hunger as he watched Kazuki move, watched all the arrogance of Lower Town fall before him. Every thrust twined him tighter into the grip of that grace and strength, and it was right, it was finally what he’d wanted from the start. He moaned openly as pleasure spilled over and swept through him like the tide, fierce and hot. Kazuki’s gasp fell over him like sunlight, and the sudden roughness of Kazuki’s rhythm, driving into him, trailed extra ripples of pleasure down his nerves.

He made a low sound when Kazuki finally eased out of him, and Kazuki settled against his back again, arms sliding around him. “I’m so glad you’re back,” Kazuki murmured against his shoulder.

Saizou rested his cheek against the table, smiling for real, for the first time in far too long. “Yeah. Me too.”

Even if he was recalling, belatedly, that Juubei and Toshiki were two rooms with no doors away, and that Toshiki was probably going to tease him unmercifully, and that he probably didn’t really deserve all this. He was still glad.

A Theme in Pentatonic – Interlude Four

Sakura had kept her word to come and visit them, and Kazuki was glad of it. She was usually the calmest thing in the apartment.

He settled next to her at one of the windows, chuckling as Juubei and Toshiki started arguing over the best way to contain the little gang that had sprung up a handful of blocks north, scribbling building outlines on a piece of paper and pulling it back and forth between them.

"Makubex can model the stability of that building for them in a few seconds," Sakura murmured. "But of course they won’t ask him to."

"I think they have more fun arguing," Kazuki agreed. "Even if it means they have to come home to do it where he won’t hear." He cocked his head at her curiously. "We’ve seen more of you, too, since then."

None of them spoke much of what they did and didn’t remember from their fight through the Beltline, but everyone knew what then meant.

She looked at him with a faint smile. "You called us back together."

"I didn’t mean to hold you, after," Kazuki murmured, half apologetic.

Her glance turned direct. "Didn’t you? After fighting so hard to reclaim us?"

Kazuki opened his mouth to insist that he wasn’t selfish enough to put his wants before theirs, only to close it again as he looked around the room. They were here, and not because he had demanded it. It wasn’t only his wish. Maybe it really was all right, even after all the trouble following him had brought them to.

"Kazuki-sama, you’re so stubborn," Sakura sighed, shaking her head. "I didn’t leave my childhood home only for my brother’s sake, you know."

About to protest the title she used, Kazuki tilted his head, surprised. Of them all, Sakura was the one he had asked the least of because she had always stayed by her brother; he had thought Juubei was her reason for being here. "What was it, then?" he asked, quietly.

Sakura looked down at her hands, fingers pleating her scarf. "My own honor." Her voice was cool and low. "I understand why our father chose to serve Fuuchouin still even under the Kokuchouin. He acted for the good of our whole House; that was his duty. Juubei won’t accept that, even now, but… Juubei has been bound to you and only you from the moment you met. If you hadn’t been the heirs to your Houses, if the world itself had been completely otherwise, he would still have dedicated himself to you." She looked up, and Kazuki almost leaned back from the purpose and determination showing under her habitual calm, deep as the ocean. "Duty wasn’t enough for me, though. And Juubei wasn’t the only one who watched you all those years. There is light in you Kazuki-sama. Light and joy. Nothing has destroyed that, not all of the fire and death and terror we’ve come through. I chose to follow that light and make that service my honor." She smiled, serene and immovable, very like her brother. "Do you understand now?"

In a way, of course, it made every kind of sense there was; Sakura was a true daughter of her House, and her honor was as iron as Juubei’s. Still… "What about Makubex?"

"I love Makubex like a brother. I will always support him." Her eyes fell again and she added, softly. "When it seemed that you… you didn’t wish our service, he gave us a place. His vision is a bright one, and I’m glad to do anything I can to help him reach it." She paused for a breath and her spine straightened, chin lifting to meet Kazuki’s eyes straight as a sword. "But you are my lord."

It was every bit as inarguable as Juubei’s insistence on staying at his side, and Kazuki couldn’t quite find it in him to protest the company he’d wanted so badly for so long. His smile was rueful, though; however traditional Sakura insisted on being she was rather overstating things. "You’ve chosen a lord without a House, Sakura. That’s in Yohan’s hands now."

Her gaze didn’t waver. "Kazuki-sama, what do you think this is?" She waved at the room, at the four of them, and Kazuki stilled, startled. She laughed softly, probably at his expression. "What did you think Fuuga was?"

"I hadn’t… thought," Kazuki murmured, staring wide-eyed at the past. For years, he’d thought only of the clan he’d lost, and of the fear that the tiny remains of his life and love would be taken too. And even when he faced Fuuchouin again and set his hand on it, well in the end he was not the one who could lead it in a new way and he’d placed it in the hands of one who would.

Sakura laid a hand over his and said again, with emphasis, "There’s light in you that doesn’t die. That’s what we follow."

In a way it felt like going back on his decision. As the head of his House and clan, he’d chosen to relinquish it, to give it into the care of its next lord. He hadn’t meant to save anything aside. And yet… This was not Fuuchouin. This was something new. He wasn’t the heir to the House, taking up his inheritance. He was just Kazuki.

And apparently that was enough to make a leader nevertheless.

"I’m very fortunate to have your wisdom, Sakura," he said softly, laying his other hand over hers.

"It is my honor." And if the words were formal, her tone was light again. He caught her eye and the flash of satisfaction in them, and couldn’t help laughing. At least, among his people, he had one who was willing to take her chosen lord politely to task, if it was needed.

That was really a very comforting thought.

A Theme in Pentatonic – Interlude Three

Juubei was puzzled.

Moreover, he was puzzled by Kazuki, which didn’t usually happen. Well, hadn’t happened in years at any rate. And had certainly never happened in bed.

He listened, always, for what Kazuki’s body told him Kazuki wanted, and took some quiet pride in providing whatever it was. And being right. But today there was a tautness in Kazuki’s muscles as he stretched against Juubei’s body that was new, restless, unwilling to be soothed. “Kazuki,” he murmured, stroking his hands down the slim, strong line of Kazuki’s back, meaning to ask if there was something wrong, but the words were lost in a short gasp as Kazuki’s teeth closed on his throat. Not painfully, not roughly, but firm enough to mark him. Juubei tipped his head back, accepting it, and he had to admit the tingle when Kazuki closed his mouth there and sucked slow and deliberate was… good.

“Juubei,” Kazuki said softly against his throat, and hands settled on his shoulders and pressed him back, down against the sheets. Juubei eased Kazuki over him, gathering him close, and a shiver dragged down his spine at another nip. In fact, Kazuki’s mouth was moving steadily down his body, hot and wet, open-mouthed kisses and occasional bites that made the muscles of his stomach jump. Juubei spread his legs far enough for Kazuki to settle between them, though something in the set of Kazuki’s shoulders under his hands said that that was not all Kazuki wanted.

Juubei was really quite puzzled.

Not so puzzled that he didn’t respond when Kazuki’s mouth closed on his cock, hot and slow. The pleasure coaxed a low moan from him and he lay back, relaxing into the touch; that much he could tell Kazuki wanted from the way his hands stroked over Juubei’s thighs.

When long, slim fingers stroked further back between his cheeks, though, he couldn’t help starting.

“Ka… Kazuki?”

“Is it all right?” Kazuki asked quietly, fingers still but pressing gently against his entrance.

Juubei’s face turned hot. No wonder he hadn’t understood what Kazuki’s body told him. “I’ve… never…” he managed, stifled.

“I know.” Kazuki’s cheek rested against the inside of his thigh, and his fingers were poised to withdraw or… not.

If this was what Kazuki wished… The light press of Kazuki’s fingers there put a flutter in his stomach, and his voice was husky when he answered, “Yes.”

Kazuki made a distinctly pleased sound and his mouth closed over Juubei’s cock again, coaxing back the hardness startlement had stolen. Kazuki’s fingers slid away and when they returned they were slick, cool. Juubei held down another start with determination. He knew perfectly well that Kazuki was a gentle lover; Toshiki’s body told him that, over and over. There was no reason for alarm, no reason for his breath to stutter as Kazuki’s fingers rubbed his entrance hard and slow and eased gradually into him.

The feeling was unfamiliar but… good. Slick and slow, like Kazuki’s mouth on him. And if Kazuki wished this, then it was right. Gradually, his hips started to rock a little, down into the press of Kazuki’s fingers, up into the heat of his mouth. Kazuki laughed low in his throat and drew back to murmur, lips brushing Juubei’s head, “You take well to this.”

Juubei could feel his face getting hot again.

Kazuki’s fingers eased free and Juubei was half startled by the sound of protest that caught in his throat.

“Shh,” Kazuki soothed him, and strong, gentle hands urged him to roll over. “Almost ready now.”

Juubei found himself on top of two of the pillows, propping his hips up in the air, and buried the heat of his face in the sheets. “Kazuki…”

Kazuki’s hands slid up and down the backs of his thighs, spreading them apart, and finally stroked over Juubei’s lifted rear. “You look good like this,” he teased, lightly.

Juubei’s whole body flushed this time, heat tightening through him at the thought of Kazuki looking at him spread out this way. Of Kazuki enjoying looking at him this way.

Kazuki’s hands tightened. “I want all of you, Juubei,” he said, low and husky, and that shook Juubei more than anything else.

“You have me,” he whispered.

“Thank you,” Kazuki told him, soft, and the bed shifted under his weight.

When blunt thickness pressed against Juubei’s entrance, his breath cut short with anticipation and a hint of trepidation he would have denied to his dying day. Kazuki felt so big. He knew this worked, but… it felt so…

Kazuki pushed.

So thick. So solid, sliding inside him, stretching his muscles hard and slow, and he realized the gasping noises he heard were coming from his own throat. He understood perfectly now why Toshiki liked this so much, liked having Kazuki, and sometimes Juubei, inside him like this. It was so intense, so intimate, and the gentle care in Kazuki’s hands kneading slowly against his lower back was so sweet it unstrung him. He needed that care right now, was wholly reliant on Kazuki’s gentleness, and knowing that set his cheeks burning, wrung a moan from him.

“Yes, Juubei,” Kazuki answered, panting. “My Juubei.” Kazuki drew back and pushed into him again, and again, and again, and Juubei shivered against the pillows, eased into pleasure by Kazuki’s hands on his body, relaxing and guiding him. The slow, relentless slide in and out pressed pleasure through him, made his nerves taut with sensation. When a hand reached under him to close on his cock, slick and firm, a shudder ran through him. Now he was moving with Kazuki, spreading his legs wider, yearning toward the pleasure building with each stroke.

“Kazuki…”

Kazuki leaned down, grinding deep into him, and pressed an open kiss to the nape of his neck. “My Juubei,” he whispered, fingers tightening.

That was all it took, and heat struck down Juubei’s spine and burst, raking through him in quick, hard waves. He moaned openly, shocked by the feeling of Kazuki’s cock deep inside as his body tried to tighten. It felt like he was pinned in place. It felt wanton and hot, and drew the pleasure out and out for timeless breaths.

He lay, a little stunned, panting for breath as Kazuki closed his hands on Juubei’s hips and drove into him harder, faster, sending tingling shocks skittering down already sensitized nerves. Kazuki’s moan, the way his fingers tightened sharply, made Juubei shiver. When Kazuki’s weight settled against his back he made a soft sound of contentment. This was good, to receive this pleasure from Kazuki, to give way to his wishes and his care; this was right.

“All right?” Kazuki murmured, hands stroking down his arms, over his ribs, slow and easy.

“Yes,” Juubei said softly, hoping his tone would tell Kazuki what there weren’t words in the world to say. Kazuki’s lips curved against his shoulder so perhaps it did.

He stifled a grunt as Kazuki shifted back, sliding out of him, and his muscles twinged a little. Kazuki kneaded his rear gently for a few moments, which made him flush again but helped considerably. He was only a touch gingerly as he turned onto his back again and reached out for Kazuki, who settled against his chest with a contented sigh.

“My Juubei,” Kazuki repeated in tones of rich satisfaction, twining his arms around Juubei’s shoulders.

“Yours,” Juubei agreed quietly, hands tracing the lines of Kazuki’s body again, listening.

After all, he wanted to be sure he recognized this mood the next time it came.

A Theme in Pentatonic – Interlude Two

Toshiki knew what he wanted; he just didn’t know how to ask for it.

This would be a lot easier if it were Kazuki, but Kazuki had been away on work for the last two days and he and Juubei had never been good at saying what they meant, to each other. In fact, they usually had to have just finished beating the daylights out of each other or be otherwise under duress, he admitted to himself ruefully. So he took his time getting undressed for bed this evening, turning over possible approaches in his head and rejecting them one after another.

"Toshiki," Juubei said from behind him, "is something wrong?"

Toshiki turned to stare in absolute disbelief, at least until he spotted Juubei’s fingers hovering over his needle case on the dresser. Of course, if Juubei noticed he would think it was some kind of danger sign. He sighed. "No, it’s nothing like that. I just…"

Wonderful; how to finish that sentence?

Juubei cocked his head, giving Toshiki a very direct look for a blind man. "What?"

Toshiki took a breath and let it out. No way through but forward, and at least that was a way he was familiar with. He came to stand by Juubei, one hand against his bare chest. "Juubei. Take me to bed?" he asked, low.

Juubei was still under his hand for a moment, and then his own hand lifted to cup Toshiki’s jaw. "Is that what it was?"

Toshiki nodded.

"Is that what it’s been the past few times?"

Toshiki groaned, knowing Juubei would feel the heat of Toshiki’s face against his palm. He should have known. "You noticed?"

"I noticed you were… hesitant at moments. Even with Kazuki." Juubei’s thumb brushed the corner of his mouth. "I didn’t realize why. I hadn’t thought this would be something you wanted from me."

Toshiki let his head thump down on Juubei’s shoulder. "You annoy the hell out of me sometimes," he said quietly. "You always have. You’re too proud for words, you’re highhanded, you think you’re always right, and someone really needs to take that poker out of your ass. But you’re my friend, you’re the one I fight beside, you’re the one who brought me back." Very softly, he finished, "I want this."

"Then of course," Juubei said, as easily as that, and Toshiki let go a breath of laughter. When he lifted his head Juubei pulled him closer and touched his cheek again, finding his mouth.

The kiss started out slow, but Toshiki knew it wouldn’t stay that way; not with the two of them. They pressed closer, kissing deeper, tongues stroking and pushing against each other until they were almost swaying, wrapped hard around each other’s bodies, mouths locked together.

"Yes," Toshiki gasped, breaking away to slide his open mouth down the line of Juubei’s throat. This was what he wanted. Love between them had always been half a fight. Juubei growled in agreement and pushed Toshiki down onto the bed, following swiftly. Their hands stroked over each other’s bodies as if seeking holds, and Toshiki moaned as Juubei’s closed between his legs, firm and hot. He pulled Juubei in tighter, moving against him.

Juubei kissed him hard and said, husky, against his mouth, "Stop worrying. I won’t let you go."

A sharp shiver ran through Toshiki. "Juubei…"

Juubei’s free hand stroked up and down his back, slowly, sliding down to his thigh and back up, pressing, and Toshiki shuddered with the sudden release of tension. He needed to remember, he thought lightheadedly, that he was not the only one trained in hands-on techniques.

"I’m a healer first, even here and now," Juubei said, low, and Toshiki pressed closer, breath quick and light.

"I know. That’s why I asked."

"Ah." Juubei pressed him back against the bed and both hands stroked over Toshiki’s body, firm and confident. Toshiki could feel the pressure of Juubei’s touch in his very blood, demanding that his body give up its strain, its tension and fear, and he moaned as his body obeyed. When Juubei gathered him close again he was lax, muscles uncoiled, dizzy with the release.

"It’s…" Unlike his hands, Juubei’s voice was uncertain. "It’s good to know you need me. As I need you."

"Always." Toshiki laughed, husky. "I said it, didn’t I? You’re the one who brought me back."

"Yes. And I won’t let you go again. You have my word."

Toshiki pressed closer, reassured; apparently they could say what they meant after all, if they spoke with their hands. "Yes."

It was less frantic when they touched each other this time, slower and hotter, and his body was already taut with pleasure when Juubei’s fingers pushed between his cheeks, slick and slow. He buried a groan against Juubei’s shoulder, hands sliding down to grip the tight muscle of Juubei’s ass, rocking into that easy thrust. It felt good, sure and strong, something he could trust to without hesitation.

There was still such a thing as too slow, though, and finally he ground his hips against Juubei’s and gasped, "Juubei, now."

Juubei chuckled, breathless. "All right." His hands slid up the backs of Toshiki’s thighs to catch his knees and spread them wide, and then his cock was pressing into Toshiki’s ass, slow and hard.

"Yes." Toshiki’s arms tightened around Juubei’s shoulders. "Yes." He moaned as Juubei drew back and thrust in again, moving over him, fucking him hard and steady. The stretch and slide of it spilled heat down his spine, and he relaxed into it, into Juubei’s presence and solidity and care, the things he’d always cherished.

"With you," he gasped. "Always."

Juubei caught him closer. "Yes."

The sharper angle stole his breath, and he bucked up into Juubei’s thrust, and again, and moaned openly as pleasure flashed down his nerves, breaking through him like a wave. Juubei gasped, over him, and drove in deeper, again and again, and when the shudders of heat finally faded they were locked together, panting. Toshiki relaxed with a soft groan, and Juubei eased back from him.

"Mm, don’t go." Toshiki stretched out and pulled Juubei back down over him with a satisfied sound at his weight.

"I won’t."

They lay, twined together comfortably, and Toshiki settled the peace of the moment, of the things Juubei had promised him, into his heart where they wouldn’t get lost. This was his place, and he was wanted here. Needed. Valued.

And he would stay.

A Theme in Pentatonic – Two

Toshiki walked quietly beside Kakei through the familiar sounds of the Lower Town. “Makubex is everything you said he is,” he finally said.

“You’re content to help him, then?” Kakei asked, cutting to the heart with his usual bluntness. Toshiki’s mouth quirked, hearing it again.

Only for a moment, though.

“Is this what Kazuki wishes?” he asked, low. And he had to ask Kakei, because he hadn’t been able to get an answer out of Kazuki any time over the last few days. Kakei was quiet for almost a block.

“Kazuki will not stay to lead without Amano Ginji as his beacon,” he said at last, “but that does not mean he doesn’t wish our home safe and well. It pleases him that we support Makubex.”

“Lower Town’s new beacon,” Toshiki mused.

“Not so powerful a one that Kazuki will follow it, but worthy of our help.”

Toshiki smiled at the undertones he heard in that. Kakei would support Makubex all right, no doubt with all his strength, but there was only one person he would follow. And if that pleased Kazuki, well that was good enough for Toshiki, too. “All right,” he agreed, and paused on the streetcorner, looking around at the bright chaos. It took him back, and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing; maybe he should go back and try again. “I should find some place to stay, here,” he murmured.

Kakei cocked his head and Toshiki had, again, that odd new feeling, that blind eyes were measuring him, considering. “It’s good to stay close,” he said, finally. “Come back with me, for now.”

Toshiki stopped himself before he asked if Kakei was sure. Kakei was always sure, and if that got a little wearing it was also comforting right now. Familiar. He followed his old friend and rival down narrow alleys to broader streets into a tangle of shorter buildings with washing strung window to window overhead. On one side of a cracked concrete plaza they went up creaking iron stairs to an outside door in the top floor. Toshiki approved of the high ground. The rooms inside opened up, free and airy, half the interior walls knocked out long ago, much newer windows open to catch the breeze as evening came on.

Kazuki was standing in the middle of the second room, turning and smiling to see them.

“Juubei! Is Toshiki staying, then?”

“Yes,” Kakei said firmly, while Toshiki stood and stared.

“But…” He was trying not to sputter, and that didn’t leave him with much else to say.

“I said it’s good to stay close,” Kakei told him. “This solves the problem between us, doesn’t it?”

Toshiki was suddenly remembering exactly why he found Kakei’s habitual surety so frustrating. How was a person supposed to answer it? “I can’t…” he tried, only to be cut off by Kazuki’s hand on his chest.

“Do you object?” Kazuki murmured, knowing eyes holding his, and Toshiki flinched under that question, reminded now of exactly why he had followed Kazuki so long. That one question was everything he had tried to take by force from Kazuki, everything Kazuki had no need to force from him, laid bare as a drawn blade between them. He closed his eyes.

“No.”

“Good. I’ve missed you.” Kazuki’s voice had no edge of triumph in it and Toshiki shuddered with the gentleness of his defeat.

“Let me stay,” he begged, softly. Kazuki had been the one to release him, but he had been the one to leave; he knew better now. If only Kazuki would take him up, it would never happen again.

“Of course you’ll stay.” Kazuki’s hands closed around his face and he opened his eyes to meet Kazuki’s, bright and pleased, forgiving him before he even asked, and his arms closed around Kazuki before he could think. When Kazuki only laughed, softly, he breathed again, light-headed at being allowed this.

He started a little when Kakei’s hands closed over his shoulders from behind, but they only smoothed across his back, stroked down his arms, palms open, and that wrung a wanting sound from him. It had always been love and hate both, between he and Kakei.

“You’re Kazuki’s knight,” Kakei murmured in his ear, as if he hadn’t noticed. “You’ll stay.”

This time the surety was entirely comfort.

Toshiki bent his head to Kazuki’s kiss, breath catching just a little as Kakei’s hands slid under his shirt and across his stomach. This was everything he’d wanted for years and he felt like the world’s own idiot for running away from it for so long. Even that thought unraveled, though, under the slow heat of Kazuki’s mouth and the small sound of satisfaction he made. He didn’t think, after that, just let them strip away clothes until he was caught between the heat of their skin, light-headed with the sweetness of just being here. Wanted. It was almost too much to take in when they nudged him back toward the bed and Kazuki’s eyes laughed at him.

“Juubei?”

“Yes.” Kakei settled onto the bed and pulled Toshiki down over him. That made him awkward again, for a moment, unsure how they fit, but Kakei’s hands were patient, stroking down his body, spreading him out, and when he felt the bed dip as Kazuki settled behind him he understood and shivered. Kakei’s hands smoothed the shiver away.

In fact… they were easing away all of the places where his muscles still ached and trembled, firm, knowing fingers pressing and stroking here and there until he was just about draped over Juubei’s body, breathing deep and slow.

“Kakei… what…?” he managed.

“Shh,” Juubei told him, hands still passing over him. “Your punishment was harsher than mine; you aren’t entirely recovered yet.”

“It was only what I deserved,” he muttered against Kakei’s neck.

“Don’t say that,” Kazuki said, quick and soft. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“You deserved to be thoroughly beaten for being such an idiot,” Kakei agreed, matter-of-fact, “but not to die.”

Toshiki couldn’t help laughing at that. “Juubei,” he sighed. Juubei just made a self-satisfied sound, and Toshiki snorted again. Comfort and annoyance; yes, he was home again.

“So,” Kazuki murmured, hands sliding up the back of Toshiki’s thighs. “Is our Toshiki ready for me, Juubei?”

Juubei’s hand settled at his nape. “He is.”

“Toshiki?” He could hear the smile in Kazuki’s voice, and it made his voice husky.

“Yes.”

“Good.” That was nearly a purr, and Toshiki moaned as slick fingers pressed between his cheeks, rubbing firmly over his entrance. The touch wasn’t rough, by any means, but it told him that Kazuki didn’t intend to be terribly patient. The heat of that thought rushed up his spine like a river and set him panting softly.

“Please,” he whispered. “Kazuki.”

“Yes.” Kazuki’s voice was darker this time and an entreating sound caught in the back of Toshiki’s throat as strong, slender fingers pressed into him, again and again, working him open. They played his body with the same precision and grace as Kazuki’s strings until he was gasping, hips pushing up into the slow thrust of Kazuki’s fingers fucking him. Juubei caught his mouth and swallowed his moan as those fingers drove deep and twisted, and he shuddered as Juubei’s hips ground up against his.

Kazuki’s fingers withdrew and palms stroked up his back. “I always saw you, Toshiki,” Kazuki murmured to him. “I always knew you. I’m sorry I was careless of you, my friend.”

Toshiki groaned openly as Kazuki’s hands spread him open and Kazuki’s cock slid into him slow and hard.

“My Toshiki,” Kazuki said, husky, “stay with us.” The promise of being wanted, being Kazuki’s pulled a whimper he couldn’t be ashamed of out of him.

“Kazuki doesn’t leave things, not in his heart,” Juubei said softly against his ear, and Toshiki could hear perfectly well the relief in his even tone. It was what Toshiki felt himself, after all.

That and heat as Kazuki fucked him, slow and strong, never quite stopping, until he was panting, moaning against Juubei’s shoulder. “Please,” he begged, breathless, spreading his legs wider over Juubei’s hips, and gasped as Kazuki drove into him hard enough to rock his ass up in the air. “Please, yes…”

Kazuki’s hands closed on his shoulders, pressing them down, and his long thrusts turned faster, rougher. “Juubei,” he bit out, breathless.

Toshiki moaned as Juubei’s hand closed around both their cocks and stroked, sure and hard. It was too much, too good, caught and welcomed home between them, and he buried his face against Juubei’s neck, breath torn short as the heat took fire and pleasure wrung him out ferociously over and over again. The whole world was the press of their skin against his, their movement, his as he bucked and shuddered in their hold.

The sound of Kazuki’s moan sent an extra last shiver down his spine, and he thought he could have just sprawled there forever while Kazuki’s hands stroked slowly up and down his body. Juubei’s breath was coming quick now, though, and he mustered a grin as he reached down and batted Juubei’s hand aside, stroking him quick and firm until he arched under them.

Juubei, he was distantly amused to note, didn’t make any noise, and wasn’t that just like him. The thought made him snicker and Kazuki made an inquiring noise against the nape of his neck as he eased back.

“Nothing.” Toshiki took a few moments to untangle himself from Juubei, and he was glad when Juubei promptly pulled him down between them again. “So,” he said, finally able to wind an arm around Kazuki, finally, finally, “this is where you both live?”

“This is home,” Kazuki said quietly, reaching across him to tangle fingers with Juubei. “Will you stay?”

“Of course…” Juubei started, in his inarguable tone, only to be silenced by a look from Kazuki.

“I want to hear it from Toshiki,” Kazuki said, firm.

“I’ll stay as long as you want me. As long as you’ll have me.” Toshiki was light-headed with how much he wanted it; he couldn’t believe Kazuki even needed to ask.

But maybe that told him something he hadn’t realized about Kazuki. Who was smiling at him, soft and pleased.

“Welcome home, then,” Kazuki told him, and he had to close his eyes until he could catch his breath again.

“Yes. Yes.” He lifted Kazuki’s hand and kissed his fingers, and managed a smile that didn’t feel too shaky. “I’m back.”

It was a promise.

Working for Makubex was strange and familiar. Being back in Lower Town was familiar enough, and the basic business of keeping order hadn’t changed. The twisted things that came down from the Beltline were hideously familiar, and fighting beside Juubei was pleasantly familiar, though he missed the fluid chill of Kazuki’s strength behind them. It was good to have a purpose he could trust again, though. And it was good to go home, after all the fires were temporarily put out, and know that Kazuki or Juubei and sometimes both would be there.

He found himself smiling again, and only realized then that he’d stopped years ago.

Sometimes he thought he was the one of them who really needed a keeper.

“Toshiki?”

He looked up from his rueful contemplation of the sky out the window and felt that smile tug at his mouth again. “Kazuki.”

Kazuki came to fold up on the couch beside him, running carelessly graceful fingers through Toshiki’s hair as he sat. “Is everything well?”

That casual caress still made him breathless and it took a moment to reply. “Everything’s fine. I like working with Makubex. It’s good…” he cut that thought off before it could get all the way out of his mouth. He was not going to whine in front of Kazuki.

Kazuki just smiled at him. “What’s good?” The brush of his fingers against Toshiki’s cheek drew the words out of him.

“It’s good to be needed,” he said, low, looking down at his hands.

“Oh, Toshiki.” The breath of a laugh in Kazuki’s voice made him flush and it didn’t help when a cool hand on his cheek turned him back to face Kazuki. He only had a breath to take in the fond smile on Kazuki’s lips, though, before he could barely breathe at all. The weight of Kazuki’s presence, normally so smoothly concealed, intensified abruptly, singing in the very air around them. “Who am I?” Kazuki asked, quiet and cool.

Toshiki had to swallow before he could speak, and the name he spoke wasn’t his friend’s or lover’s. It was the name still feared down every street of Lower Town, the name of the one he followed. “Kazuki…”

“I don’t need anyone to protect me. Not Juubei, and not you.” Kazuki softened again, and the pressure of him eased. “But having people people I love close… that’s good to have.”

“You have it,” Toshiki promised, husky.

Kazuki smiled like the sun coming up. “Thank you.” His arms slid lightly around Toshiki’s shoulders, and Toshiki took a shaky breath, catching Kazuki tight against him.

“I’ll serve you with all my life, I swear it,” he murmured into Kazuki’s shoulder, reminded by that moment of open dominance of everything Kazuki was to him.

Kazuki pressed closer and whispered, “Just be with me. That’s all.”

Toshiki stilled, suddenly remembering the way Kazuki hadn’t looked at them when he’d told them they could leave if they wanted. “Was that…?”

Kazuki made an inquiring sound, drawing back a bit to look at him, and Toshiki shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, mouth quirking as he spread his hands against the slim line of Kazuki’s back, reassuring himself and… and maybe Kazuki too. “I’m just a fool, that’s all.”

He hadn’t seen.

“No more than any of us,” Kazuki said softly, and yes, now Toshiki thought he knew what that darkness in Kazuki’s eyes was.

“Kazuki…” he hesitated, but he honestly couldn’t imagine how this had happened. He lifted one of Kazuki’s hands and murmured against his fingers, “If you wanted us to stay, why didn’t you hold us by you?”

Kazuki shook his head sharply. “I couldn’t do that! How could I demand something like that?”

Toshiki blinked. The words fit together but they didn’t make any sense at all; wasn’t Kazuki their leader? Wasn’t it his right, the right they’d given him when they chose to follow him? He could feel Kazuki’s muscles tense, though, so he left it for now and only promised again, low, “I won’t leave again. Not ever.”

That made Kazuki relax and settle against him, and there was so much wonder in being allowed so close, in being wanted, that he set aside the oddness and just held him.

“Yes,” Kazuki sighed, hand sliding down Toshiki’s chest to rest over his heart. “Now you’re here.” He smiled up at Toshiki with a hint of teasing. “Now you’re mine.”

Toshiki smiled back, though he’d never been more serious. “Always.” There had never been a time when he wasn’t, however he’d twisted and betrayed that trust, and Toshiki promised all over, silently, that he would serve and stand by Kazuki until the day he died doing it.

And perhaps, his sense of irony couldn’t help pointing out, after. He’d done it once already, after all.

Even as Kazuki drew him down to a kiss, though, the thought lingered in the back of his mind that he should find out why Kazuki thought he didn’t have every right there was to keep his own people.

A Theme in Pentatonic – Interlude One

Sakura walked with her hands clasped and her eyes down. She knew Makubex had run ahead with Juubei to leave her with Kazuki. Kazuki didn’t walk out with them very often, and Makubex had taken his opportunity promptly, leaving her with a meaningful look and a bright smile as he tugged Juubei off.

Sometimes, Sakura wished Makubex were a little less perceptive.

“Are you well, Sakura?” Kazuki asked, after they’d walked a few blocks in silence.

“Surely Juubei would say if I wasn’t,” she murmured, hoping to slip aside from this.

He only smiled. “Probably he would. Unless he thought it would worry me, of course. I still don’t see you very often, to check for myself.”

“You could come to visit.” It slipped out before she could catch it.

“I…” Kazuki hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said, at last, low. “It’s just that Mugenjou pulls at me, when I’m here, and it pulls harder the closer I come to the center. To the Beltline,” he added, lower. “And Makubex is a good friend, he’s becoming a wise leader, but he isn’t Ginji-san, to hold that off from me just by being present.”

Sakura bowed her head. Perhaps she had no excuse to reproach him, even in her heart, because she’d felt the pull he spoke of, the temptation to exaltation or despair or both. And she remembered the ease of following Kazuki, of trusting her honor to the brightness of his spirit. Could she grudge him, that he needed that ease also? “Perhaps I will visit, instead, then,” she said softly.

“You’ll be welcome, always.” Kazuki’s smile was bright. “You, of all people.”

That, she hadn’t expected to hear, and the surprise of it made her start.

“Sakura?” He paused, turning toward her, concerned. “What is it?”

“I…” Her voice caught in her throat and she swallowed, but could find no words.

“Sakura.” Kazuki caught her hands and drew her over to some crates stacked by the wall, guiding her down onto one. He looked down at her with a faint frown. “Sakura, surely you knew that. You and Juubei have been with me from the start.”

She tugged her hands free and clasped them so he wouldn’t feel them trembling. “It had seemed, when you left, that we had no more claim on you.”

And she had hoped, for one bright moment, when he returned, when she saw that the bond between he and her brother was still so strong. But he had returned only to Juubei, it seemed.

She tried hard not to begrudge her brother that.

“Sakura!” He sounded so genuinely shocked that she looked up. “You have always had a claim on me. You always will!” Perhaps he saw her doubt, because he bit his lip. “Maybe it isn’t the same one that it used to be. But never doubt that you are one of those who will always be in my heart and have the right to call on me.”

His words settled over her shoulders like a blanket on a cold night, and suddenly she was smiling. It was a complete contradiction. He said that they were not bound as they had been. No longer liege and vassal. But in the same breath he spoke of her rights in the language of their childhood. “One of those?” she asked, still wanting the reassurance of hearing him say it. “Who are we?”

His smile was completely unselfconscious, warm as sunlight. “The ones who stood at my side and made this place a home instead of a prison,” he said, so gently that she blushed and lowered her eyes again.

It was enough. He might fear to say it, fear that it would pull him back into Mugenjou, but Fuuga was still his heart. They had not been abandoned after all. The knot in her chest that not even Makubex’s renewed smile had been able to undo completely loosened at last.

“Ane-chan,” Juubei called, reappearing at the corner of the road. She stood and brushed off her skirts.

“We shouldn’t make them worry.”

“If you ever find a way to stop him, do tell me?” Kazuki murmured ruefully, as they walked on.

Light-hearted with relief, she laughed.

Makubex was waiting for them at the corner too, with a satisfied smile. Warmed by their care, Sakura linked her arms with both Makubex and Kazuki, leaving her brother to trail behind them with a faintly bemused look.

The world felt right side up again. Her leader didn’t take nearly enough care for himself, and her lord refused to admit that he was, but that was all right. It would all be all right. She had a proper place, and knew it, and stood firm in it again.

Everything else could be dealt with in time.

A Theme in Pentatonic – One

After the shouting was over and the rush of people had ebbed away again and all the wounded had been marched back to Gen’s back rooms by a frowning Ren, Kazuki had a chance to finally think about what he had found by returning to Mugenjou. He listened to the crunch and hush of medicines being mixed, to Ren scolding Emishi, to Sakura’s quiet as she sat beside Juubei, and hoped that this time he and Juubei could say what they meant, to each other, and not what they feared.

His search for a way to start that was preempted, though, when Gen stumped over to Juubei and gave him a look of professional disapproval.

“You turned your own arts against yourself; you should know better than anyone what that means. It was only the luck or fate of this place that you missed the critical points but you came close enough to shock even your system badly. I don’t know,” he added, more quietly, “if your eyes will recover.”

“No matter,” Juubei said evenly, and Gen grunted without either surprise or agreement.

“At any rate, if there’s to be any chance you’ll need to rest for at least a week. Take this once a day,” he handed Sakura a small, blue glass bottle, “and don’t do any of these things.” He passed over a closely written sheet of paper.

Sakura read down it and pursed her lips, looking down at her brother dubiously. “Thank you, sir,” she said all the same.

Kazuki slipped out of bed and looked over her shoulder. “Well, then, it seems that after I’ve wrapped up this job I’ll be back for a while,” he said dryly.

“Back?” Juubei asked, and perhaps only the two of them heard the crack of hope in his voice. Kazuki took a breath.

“Of course,” he answered, voice as cheerful as he could make it. “After all, no one else will be able to make you follow the doctor’s orders, will they?”

Sakura pressed a hand over her mouth, eyes dancing. Juubei was silent, though, and Kazuki made himself reach out, resting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You need me here. So I’ll be here.”

Juubei still didn’t speak, but his muscles relaxed under Kazuki’s touch.

“Perhaps you should take him back to your own apartment, then,” Sakura suggested, smiling up at him with a light of mischief. “A little extra distance between him and his work won’t hurt.”

“Ane-chan,” Juubei objected, but Sakura kept looking at Kazuki and he finally bowed his head.

“If you think that’s for the best, Sakura,” he murmured.

She laid a hand over his, on Juubei’s shoulder. “I do.”

He was glad to have Sakura’s blessing on this renewal of an old friendship. And perhaps… perhaps more than that.

“I don’t want to be away from Lower Town,” Juubei grumbled.

“Nonsense,” Sakura said firmly. “Kazuki-san may not live in the heart of Mugenjou any more, but he’s only moved to the edge of Lower Town.”

“…oh.” Juubei subsided.

Kazuki fought for a moment with simultaneous pleasure that Sakura had kept that much track of him and the twinge that Juubei obviously hadn’t. “Rest here while I close this job,” he told Juubei. “I’ll come get you when that’s done.”

And they would see what it was going to take to repair hearts and bodies both.

As Kazuki had expected, having been a spectator the last time Juubei got a cold, Juubei spent exactly one day in bed before he was sneaking out of it every time Kazuki’s back was turned. Kazuki was fairly sure that one day was only because he’d been concentrating on readjusting his senses, because he moved as silently as ever when he did get up.

That didn’t make Kazuki any happier about it.

“How are your eyes going to have any chance to heal if you don’t rest?” he remonstrated, catching Juubei moving methodically through the kitchen, cataloging dishes and cans with his fingertips.

“I doubt they will,” Juubei answered, sounding perfectly serene about it. “And that’s as well. I raised my hand against you; it’s just and right that I be punished for that.”

Kazuki touched Juubei’s cheek below the wrap over his eyes, just about ready to howl with frustration except that he didn’t do such things, any more than Juubei did. They’d both been well taught. “I don’t like to see you hurt,” he said instead.

Juubei rested his hand over Kazuki’s. “I am not in pain.”

Kazuki sighed. That complete equanimity was as comforting as it was frustrating, to tell the truth. That was the Juubei he’d known for so long, this serenity and not the harsh, driven edge Juubei had shown when they fought. Juubei had always been a rock, standing firm in any stream of events, even the madness of Fuuchouin’s fall.

Of course, the tiny, resentful part of his mind that he tried not to pay too much attention to said, the foundation of Juubei’s serenity was still intact. His family had not fallen, and he had left it of his own will to follow the one tradition had bound him to. Even in exile, Juubei knew he was walking the straight path of his house and clan, following…

…following Kazuki.

Kazuki felt his breath stop for a moment. Without him, Juubei had not been himself. Now that he was here again, Juubei was at ease. Secure in his place in the world.

“Kazuki?” Juubei asked softly, hand closing on his shoulder.

Kazuki wrapped his arms tight around Juubei and pressed close, reassuring himself that they were both here and alive and as safe as anyone could be. Husky, against Juubei’s shoulder, he murmured, “Did it truly trouble you that much… No.” He took a breath. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have to ask that.”

He knew the answer already, in his heart. The Kakei family was proud, a samurai House who kept their traditions. It must have driven Juubei half-wild to be masterless. Kazuki understood perfectly, in the abstract.

It was only when he faced the fact that Juubei’s master was him that it made him flinch away.

So instead he concentrated on the living warmth of Juubei against him, on the comfort of Juubei’s arms slowly sliding around him, on the soft pleasure lurking in Juubei’s voice when he said Kazuki’s name. That was enough.

After a week, during which he had been only marginally successful in making Juubei rest, Kazuki had to admit that Juubei was probably as recovered as he was getting, at least for now. Juubei was moving easily and his non-visual perception had made a leap forward such as Kazuki had never heard of before.

He just hoped that advance would hold outside of Mugenjou.

The moment he was sure Juubei was going to be all right was when Juubei cocked his head to one side and turned to him with a faint frown, as Kazuki was dressing for the day. “Kazuki? You’re favoring your right hand.”

Once it was pointed out it felt like the faint ache and twinge got deeper, as if pleased to be noticed. Kazuki sighed, twisting his wrist carefully. “Yes. I suppose there’s still a bit of forearm strain.”

“Sit down.” Juubei pushed him down onto the edge of the bed and knelt down beside him, taking Kazuki’s arm in his hand and running a thumb down the length of the inner tendon. He made a disapproving sound as Kazuki’s fingers twitched. “You’re the one who should have been resting more.”

Kazuki couldn’t help laughing; this was so familiar, this physician’s grumpiness. “Well you’re fully recovered, at any rate! I’m fine, Juubei.”

Juubei paused, head bent, fingers resting on Kazuki’s wrist. Finally he said, low, “Allow me this.”

There was a plea in those even words, and it caught at Kazuki’s heart. “Of course…” he started, impulsive, and then paused himself.

It touched a chord in him, seeing Juubei at his feet, waiting on his word. Part of him could not help feeling that it was good and right, it was their familiar fate as the heirs of their Houses. Kakei was vassal to Fuuchouin.

But that thought, that way, led back into the fire.

Juubei was still waiting.

Kazuki’s jaw tightened and he took a slow breath. Forget their Houses; this wasn’t a House before him, it was a person! Juubei. He lifted his other hand and rested it on Juubei’s head.

“Yes.” As he said it, his voice turned fierce, finally saying what he had spent years turning away from. “You are mine.”

The sudden openness of Juubei’s face as he lifted his head, the husky note in his voice as he said, “Kazuki…” settled in Kazuki’s chest and he laughed, softly, and slid down off the bed, pleased when Juubei’s arms caught him. Juubei’s mouth was soft, under his, startled perhaps, and Kazuki took ruthless advantage of that, kissing Juubei deep and slow until he moaned, arms tightening hard around Kazuki. Kazuki made a satisfied sound at that.

“Kazuki,” Juubei murmured against his mouth, breathless.

“I will allow you a great deal,” Kazuki purred back, enjoying the way Juubei’s breath hitched. “Because you’re my own.”

And why on earth had he waited so long to say that? He couldn’t really recall just at the moment. Never mind their pasts, he could have Juubei just as himself, and that would be all right.

Juubei’s hands spread against his back, supporting him, and Juubei turned his face up to Kazuki. “Kazuki… may I…?”

Kazuki shivered, pressing close, half laughing with the dizzy pleasure of the way he’d found to have this. “Yes.” He let Juubei lift him back up to the bed and tugged Juubei after him. If he could have managed to undress without letting go, he would have. Finally, after a few tangles of arms and legs and cloth ended in laughter—an open smile from Juubei was just as good—he leaned back, sighing, as strong deft hands trailed slowly over his skin, just as if Juubei had never touched his body before.

In fact, the familiarity of the touch was what soothed him, relaxed him until he was arching up against the weight of Juubei’s body, arms twined tight around him. “Mmm, Juubei…”

Juubei’s voice was husky as murmured, between kisses, “Do you have…?”

Kazuki stretched to reach the little bedside nook, purring as Juubei’s hands slid over his ribs. “Here.” He dropped the green glass jar into Juubei’s palm.

It was very different, to feel Juubei’s hands kneading gently up his thighs, to be gathered close as Juubei’s fingers touched him more and more intimately, to hear Juubei’s breath come quicker as Kazuki made a soft sound against his shoulder and shifted closer. The few other men and women he’d been with had been… well, they’d been brief, and most of them rather in awe of him. This was Juubei, who grumbled at him when he didn’t eat enough, who had guarded his back faithfully for years, who needed jokes explained to him. This was his Juubei, touching him now with complete reverence and no hesitation.

“I missed you so much,” he whispered against Juubei’s ear, breathless. Juubei’s arms tightened around him.

“I beg your forgiveness,” Juubei said, low, in the most abject form, and Kazuki moaned as Juubei pressed slowly into him.

“Wasn’t your fault,” he gasped, and laughed a little as Juubei’s silence disagreed with him. Juubei protected him even from himself.

Usually.

“I didn’t want to leave you,” he offered, softly, sliding his leg up to wind around Juubei’s hip.

“Shh.” Juubei’s hands slid up his back, kneading hard and slow, and Kazuki gasped as muscles he hadn’t realized he’d tensed unwound again; it put an edge on the rise of pleasure as Juubei’s cock worked slowly in and out of him. “I lost my way, and I was a fool for letting it happen. But you brought me back to it. My life and honor are yours. Always.”

That skirted close to the things Kazuki didn’t dare think of too hard, hoping not to tempt fate. So all he said, as Juubei’s hand slid down between his legs, was “Stay with me?”

“Forever.” The intensity of Juubei’s voice wrapped around him like another hand, and Kazuki let that touch carry him over the edge, moaning openly as pleasure swept through him, deep and slow and thorough.

The catch of Juubei’s breath, the way his head bent, made Kazuki smile, reaching up through the brightness of it all, to run his fingers through Juubei’s hair. “Juubei,” he murmured, low, and rocked up into the next thrust. Juubei gasped, body arching taut as he drove forward harder, and Kazuki made approving sounds. He pulled Juubei down against him as he started to relax, and murmured in his ear, laughing, “I said say to stay with me, didn’t I?”

He could feel the heat in Juubei’s face against his shoulder. “Kazuki!”

Kauzki laughed again and cuddled closer, happier than he could remember being in a long time.

And as long as fate and his enemies didn’t notice, perhaps he could keep some of it.

The Flower and the Bird and the Wind and the Moon

Saizou named him Prince of Terror. Kazuki never objected. It was true enough, and if some of the terror that had lodged in his bones for years seeped out to touch the people they fought, the ones who threatened even the tiny corner of life he had managed to cling to here… well, perhaps that would mean less for him which was all to the good as far as he was concerned.

It had started when he opened the door to the Beltline. What he saw there swallowed even the terror of the night of his House’s death. By the time he found his way back out to the hard light of Lower Town’s day, it was running in his very blood. And yet, he knew that it would take more than the strength of terror to hold back the Beltline. What that might be, he didn’t know.

Two years later, he met Amano Ginji for the first time.

“I want to follow him.”

“But why?” Toshiki demanded, throwing his hands out. “Why should you surrender to this Amano without even a fight?!”

Kazuki sighed softly. He barely understood it himself; how to find words for others? All he knew was that, the first time he met Amano Ginji’s eyes, the band of fear and rage that had locked itself around his heart the night his family died had loosened a little. That was one of the things he didn’t speak of, though, so instead he said, “He has a good future in his eyes. I want to see it.”

“Kazuki!”

He opened a hand palm up. “I won’t force anyone to follow where they don’t wish to go. You may consider Fuuga disbanded. All of you are free to go where you wish.” It wasn’t as if he were anyone’s leader. Not really. It would be a joke to think he was—a lord with a charred shell of a House behind him in ruins.

Juubei took a step toward him. “We’ll follow you, of course. But… are you sure of this man?”

Kazuki smiled, feeling again the touch of ease Ginji’s presence had brought. “Yes.”

Saizou was silent, arms folded, watching him.

In the end, two stayed and two left. Kazuki tried not to dwell on how much he missed them; he’d had no right to keep them, after all.

He believed that for years.

Kazuki watched with a rather jaundiced eye as the leader of the Fire Children sneered at Ginji. The Fire Children were a large gang, but they had perhaps three or four people of significant strength among them. Everyone else were hangers on. Hyenas following behind some rather scruffy lions to snatch at their leavings.

Ginji waited for the second bombastic challenge to be done with and said again, “You’re stealing from people in our territory.”

The Fire Children’s leader nearly stamped his foot and growled, “Who the hell cares about them?!”

At that, Ginji’s face finally hardened and lines of light crackled briefly around his hands. Kazuki frowned. That wasn’t necessary. Not for scum like this.

If Ginji lost his temper, though, that wouldn’t matter.

Kazuki stepped forward, out of the knot of Ginji’s people, to stand at his shoulder and cast a cold eye over the Fire Children. He didn’t see any need to waste patience or manners on them.

A stir rustled through their crowd, and Kazuki heard his name in it.

“Kazuki… Strings… Prince…” the rustle whispered, and they edged back. Kazuki turned his head to look at the leader, letting his bells chime, and had the satisfaction of watching him edge back a step, too.

Ginji was looking over his shoulder with a rueful smile. “Kazu-chan,” he said softly.

“You didn’t really want to fight them, Ginji-san,” Kazuki murmured, quiet but letting himself be heard. "Leave them to me." As he had rather expected, the Fire Children misinterpreted that entirely, and the whispers rustled again. “Terror… Follows him…” He smiled back at Ginji with a hint of mischief.

“Well,” the Fire Children’s leader tried to bluster over the noise. “Not like there’s anything worth going into those streets for anyway.”

Ginji rolled his eyes a bit as he turned back and Kazuki had to hold back an actual laugh. It had been a while since he’d laughed.

He’d forgotten how good it tasted.

Kazuki stood in the evening drizzle that had come on with sunset, looking up at the dark bulk that loomed above Lower Town. The Beltline. Babylon City. The answers were still there, he knew; he felt it like a weight in his senses. He hadn’t been able to reach it, when he’d been younger. Could he now? Was he strong enough, now, to find the source of wrongness in this place, and why his mother had sent him here?

Arms folded around him from behind, so warm it was shocking, and the faint light that accompanied Ginji’s presence nearly all the time now fell around them both. "You’re getting cold, Kazu-chan," Ginji murmured.

Kazuki let his questions go on a slow sigh and leaned back against Ginji. "I know." He tipped his head back to smile at his friend and leader. "Thank you for coming to find me." And drawing him back from the dark and cold of his thoughts, the way Ginji did for him so often.

Ginji’s answering smile was soft, the sadness in his eyes muted for a moment as they stood together.

Sometimes Kazuki thought he could stay forever, this way.

“I have to leave.”

Kazuki stared, feeling like he’d taken one of Ginji’s own blasts to the chest. Shocked and frozen and not sure whether he could even feel his heart beating. “Ginji-san…”

“Why the hell should you have to leave?” Shido demanded, disbelieving. “This isn’t because of that damn punk is it?”

Ginji wouldn’t look at any of them, just smiled, one of his sad smiles, the ones that could heal a heart or break it. Kazuki was starting to be afraid they’d all be broken by this one. “Not really. Midou just… showed me something,” he said quietly. “I have to leave Mugenjou. If I don’t…” He shook his head, and wouldn’t say anything more, no matter how they pleaded with him.

Three days later, he was gone.

“I don’t think I can stay.” Kazuki looked out over the buildings of Lower Town, the place that had been theirs for so long he’d fooled himself it would just keep on that way. He should have known better. “With Ginji-san gone… there’s no one but him I could follow.”

“Then why don’t you lead yourself?” Juubei demanded, behind him. “It wouldn’t be that great a change, and you’ve led before.”

“I can’t do that.” He wasn’t fit to lead, he didn’t deceive himself about that any more. If he had been, would his House have fallen? Would Toshiki and Saizou have left?

Would Ginji have gone?

“I’m not leaving here!”

Kazuki ruthlessly stifled his flinch at that. Juubei was his oldest friend, and if he wanted to walk a path apart from Kazuki now, Kazuki wouldn’t stand in his way. “Whatever you want to do,” he murmured.

When his only answer was the abrupt rustle as Juubei left, he leaned his forehead against the broken wall and wished just a little that he could still cry.

Three days later, he was gone.

End

Like Chile on the Tongue

Squalo’s eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets. “Oh sweet Jesus, Boss,” he said, staring.

Xanxus’ lips peeled back from her teeth. “Yes?” She leaned back on her elbows, mother-naked. “Was there something you wanted to say?” Her eyes glittered beneath her lashes, practically daring him to object.

Squalo swallowed hard. And here he’d thought that the thing with the cock ring had been exciting. Maybe he should have seen this one coming when it’d become clear that she was digging into the catalogs.

“Well?” she said.

He wet his lips. “No, Boss.”

Xanxus arched an eyebrow. “No?” Her voice was husky, practically a purr.

The thing was nestled between her thighs, jutting out from them, thick and blunt. He couldn’t see any straps holding it in place, which meant that the other end was–

“Oh fuck,” he moaned as his cock throbbed in his pants. “Boss…”

Xanxus’ eyes passed over him, head to toe. She smiled, lips curling slowly, and crooked a finger at him. “Come here.”

Squalo stumbled his way to the bed, knees weak just from looking at her, and stopped short when she grunted at him. “Boss,” he said, breathless with the anticipation singing through him.

Xanxus’ eyes moved over him again. “Strip.”

“Yes, Boss,” he said, even as he scrambled to obey the order, struggling out of his shirt and hopping on first one foot and then the other as he tugged his boots off.

Her eyes stayed on him until he’d shucked out of his pants and underwear, hooded under her lashes. “Mm,” she said when he was finally naked. “Eager, aren’t you?”

Squalo took pride in the fact that he had only ever given her the truth, and so he nodded, not entirely trusting his voice for the answer.

Xanxus huffed, but the sound of it was grudgingly pleased. “If you’re so eager, then suck it.”

Squalo couldn’t move immediately because something in his brain shorted out just at the thought. “Boss…” His voice was hoarse in his own ears.

She made an impatient sound and spread her knees wide, gesturing. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

“No, Boss,” Squalo said, and lost no more time scrambling onto the bed with her and kneeling between her legs. From this angle he could see how it fit into her, the pearly white thickness of it holding her open and gleaming slickly where her body folded around it. “Oh, God,” he whispered. Xanxus made an impatient sound and he bent his head down to stroke his tongue against the base of it, tracing the tip of it against her skin and the dildo, tasting her on it. Xanxus’ breath hitched at that and she spread her thighs wider, tilting her hips up as he explored the shape of it with his tongue. It was thick, fitting snugly against her clit, and tapered to a stylized head that was smooth under his lips.

Xanxus watched him run his mouth over the smooth column of it. Her eyes were dark; she kept them fixed on him, avid as he ran his tongue around the head. “Go on, then.”

Squalo obeyed; it was thick enough to fill his mouth and stretch his lips as he stroked his mouth down the shaft, taking as much of it as he could before pulling back, slow, letting his lips drag against the smooth silicon of it. Xanxus watched him, cupping a hand around one of her breasts and playing with it as Squalo bobbed his head over the dildo. “That really the best you can do?”

She said it like a dare, but reached her other hand down to him, resting it against the back of his head, heavy. Squalo groaned as the weight of it demanded more of him. He sucked in a breath as her hand guided him down the dildo and it nudged at the back of his throat. It had been a long fucking time since he’d had to do something like this.

It was worth it for the way Xanxus’ eyes flared and the sound she made when he relaxed his throat muscles and swallowed the thing, going all the way down it till his nose was pressed against her. “Look at you,” she said, fingers curling in his hair as the scent of her filled his nostrils. Her hips lifted, pressing the dildo deeper, and she made an interested sound as it shifted against her.

Squalo moaned, too, when her fingers tightened in his hair again and she lifted him up, not too far. He wasn’t surprised when her hips rolled up again, sliding the dildo between his lips, fucking his throat. She groaned, her breath coming faster as she moved her hips, and his cock tightened between his legs. He reached a hand down to it, pressing his fingers against the base, going lightheaded with the shallow breaths that were all he could manage as the dildo slid over his tongue, watching her.

Xanxus teeth were set against her lower lip, pressing down and chasing the color out of it, and her eyes went narrow as her breathing turned uneven. “Fuck,” she said, breathless, “fuck, fuck…” Her skin was beginning to gleam, breasts shifting with every panting breath she took, but she didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Finally she hissed her frustration and said, “Give me your fucking fingers.”

Squalo moaned around the dildo and circled his fingers around the base of it, pressing them against her clit. Xanxus groaned, hips rocking up and grinding against his fingers, and her entire body shook as she finally came.

Squalo couldn’t help whining, watching her, cock aching with how unbearably sexy she looked and sounded, dizzy with wanting her and with how breathless he was. But he didn’t move until Xanxus opened her eyes again, the gleam of them dark over the color of her cheeks, and showed her teeth as she pulled him the rest of the way off the thing. Squalo gasped for breath as it slipped free of his mouth. “Oh, fuck, Boss,” he said, when he could manage it.

Xanxus drew her knee up and planted a foot on his shoulder, pushing him over. “You can do better than that,” she announced. Squalo pretended not to notice how husky her voice was, despite the petulance of her words.

He caught the little tube she pitched at him then. “Boss?” He glanced at the label–oh. Oh, yes.

“Get yourself ready for me.” Then she seemed to stop and consider the order. “On your knees. So I can watch.”

Squalo couldn’t help the sound he made at that, hoarse, but it just made her smile. “Yes,” he breathed, and rolled over to plant his knees against the mattress, spreading them wide as he flicked the cap of the lube open and slicked his fingers. The rhythm of Xanxus’ breathing changed when he canted his hips up and reached down and back, turning faster as he stroked his fingers between his own cheeks. Squalo permitted himself a grin since he had his forehead pressed against the sheets and his face tucked against his forearm, and gave her a show, circling his fingers slowly, working the muscles loose before he pressed the first one in.

It’d been a long time since he’d done this, too. Thank fuck for muscle memory and the fact that he could hear Xanxus’ soft breaths behind him. He could imagine her eyes on him, watching him play with his own ass, stroking his fingers in and out of himself, spread open and wanton for her. That thought was almost hotter than the pressure of his fingers; it made him groan and his cock twitch, full and heavy between his legs.

He wasn’t surprised when Xanxus spoke, her voice rough. “How long are you going to take?”

Squalo let his fingers slip out of himself with a last flourishing twist that made him gasp. “I’m ready whenever you are, Boss.”

The mattress dipped and moved as she did; Squalo moaned as her weight leaned against him just briefly, soft breasts pressed against his back and the dildo smooth against his hip while she retrieved the lube. “Boss…” He craned his head, trying to get a look at her, and caught a glimpse of her sitting on her heels, wet fingers slipping over the dildo, meditatively slow. “Oh God, Boss, please…”

“Mm,” she said and moved again, coming up on her knees and reaching for him.

Her hands closed on his hips, holding them, and her thumbs curved over his ass, spreading it wide. Squalo panted, closing his hands on the sheet and gripping them, and gasped at the first cool slide of the dildo stroking against him, rubbing between his cheeks. Xanxus made a sound behind him, a considering, thoughtful one, and moved her hips again, slowly. Squalo shuddered at the teasing thickness of the dildo as it moved against him but not in him, taut with how close it was. “Boss, please,” he groaned. “Please, I want it, please…”

“Do you really?” she asked, all idle curiosity except for the vibrant huskiness of her voice.

“God, yes, please…” Squalo groaned as she kept sliding it against him, deliberately slow. “Please, Boss, put it in me. Fuck me, please…”

“Mmm.” She drew back and Squalo moaned as the blunt head of the dildo came to rest against him. Xanxus gripped his hips tightly, holding him so that he couldn’t push back against it, and he whined. She laughed; the sound of it was wicked and satisfied. “All right,” she said, and pushed into him in one smooth movement.

Squalo heard the sound that she made, breathless and pleased as her thighs pressed against his and she ground against him, but he couldn’t focus on it, not when the sharp stretch of his muscles had all of his attention and he was gasping for breath at the feeling of being filled up so completely. Then Xanxus drew back and rocked it into him again, before he’d had a chance to adjust to that first burning stretch. The feel of it was too raw to recognize as pleasure at first, which was probably the only thing that was keeping him from coming on the spot. He gasped for breath, gripping the sheets with white knuckles as Xanxus ground against him, making low, pleased sounds with every minute shift of her hips.

Then Xanxus’ fingers flexed against his hips, digging into them, and she made a sound that was low and hoarse. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck.” The dildo ground deeper as she pressed against him, and the mattress shook as she shuddered, coming off again.

Squalo closed his eyes, imagining it: how her back would be arched and her face would look, fierce in her pleasure, and him on his knees for her, with that dildo buried in him, all the way to the hilt. “Boss,” he moaned. “Boss, please…”

Her fingers dug into his hips. “Yeah,” she said, voice gone smoky and deep. “Fuck, yeah.”

Squalo’s breath caught as she drew back, pulling almost all the way out of him, and escaped him on a cry as she thrust into him again, the dildo sliding in at just the right angle and raking pleasure up his spine. Xanxus grunted at him as he writhed in her hands, moaning in his throat as he tried to shift his hips, and held him in place. “There, huh?”

“Yeah, please, oh–!” Squalo moaned as she rocked into him again, fucking him at that angle with hard, sharp thrusts that sent pleasure stabbing through him. “Fuck, Boss…!” She slammed into him again, faster and harder, and he lost it, all the world narrowing down to the fire that raced through him, turning him inside out with the force of it as he cried out, keening and wordless.

Xanxus fucked him through it, hips pounding against his, dildo driving against the way his body tried to wring closed on it. She cursed as she did, the profanities rolling off her tongue in a fluid moan. Squalo sagged in her hands, gasping for breath as the short jerks of her thrusts sent sensation rolling through him, like aftershocks following an earthquake, almost too much to stand when all his nerves felt like they’d just been scoured clean. Xanxus just swore at him, too, and hitched his hips higher, holding them up as she fucked him, grinding against him and seeking her pleasure again, until she found it and her voice faltered and fell silent. Squalo’s hip stung as her fingernails dug into them, breaking the skin in a couple of places as she shook.

His muscles felt like they were made of jelly; when she released her grip on him, Squalo sprawled against the bed, groaning as the dildo slid out of him and sent one last shudder walking up his spine. “Fuck,” he said, low and reverent. “God, Boss…” He forced himself to curl onto his side, away from the wreck of the sheets, so he could look at her.

Xanxus was still panting, chest heaving and skin gleaming. As Squalo watched, she reached a hand that was trembling just a bit down and pulled the thing out of her. Squalo couldn’t help the little sound of appreciation he made as she did, especially at the sight of the bulbous shape of the end that had been inside her, large and glistening with how wet she’d gotten. No wonder she’d ground against him so hard; that thing must have been pressing against all the right places.

Xanxus looked at it for a moment and then dropped it, snorting. “Lot of work, just to get off,” she said, sounding vaguely dissatisfied.

Squalo stepped on the stab of his disappointment. “I guess so.”

She flicked a glance at him, one that was indecipherable. Then she snorted again. “I’ll have to get one with a vibrator in it.” She settled herself against her pillows and stretched, long and hard, and spread her knees again as she gave him a pointed look. “Get your lazy ass over here and make yourself useful.”

Squalo knew he was grinning and couldn’t make himself stop. “Yes, Boss,” he said as he marshaled his wobbly muscles and shifted himself over to bury his face between her thighs.

He really was the luckiest bastard in the world.

Anger Management

The heir to the Vongola would never do anything so crass as eavesdrop, not least because the Vongola had people for that. But, as Federico told himself, if he happened to be in the right place at the right time he could hardly help what he overheard, could he?

Although one did have to wonder, sometimes, whether there was any such thing as the "right time" when it came to Xanxus. Considering his adopted brother’s nature, there probably wasn’t. The way Federico looked at it, though, that was all the more reason to keep an eye on Xanxus. Especially when Xanxus was being let to roam unescorted through parties these days, and especially when not everyone in attendance happened to be particularly friendly.

Though there was "not particularly friendly" and "outright stupid," which, Federico thought, annoyed, he would have expected the Orsini to have taught their kids to distinguish. If they had, he couldn’t tell it from the way they’d managed to corner Xanxus, a half-circle of them facing him down and offering their opinions about how much he looked like the Ninth—or, rather, didn’t. It was right about the time that Taddeo Orsini said, thoughtfully, "How d’you suppose that a bit of street trash managed to fool the Vongola Ninth into mistaking her brat for his bastard?" that Xanxus lost what little control of his temper he had.

Federico stepped in as Xanxus snarled and launched himself at Taddeo—before Xanxus had lit his Flame, which was something, anyway—and gave Taddeo one of his mild, friendly looks as he held Xanxus back. "I’m sorry," he said. "I was just passing by and couldn’t help overhearing something about my family. What was it that you were saying?"

The Orsini did tend to be stupid, and petty, and small-minded, but they had all the cunning native to those who were intrinsically bullies. When confronted by someone both older and clearly stronger than they were, Taddeo and his little pack of thugs shuffled their feet and denied saying anything, while Xanxus strained against Federico’s hands and growled like a feral animal.

It was that last that made Federico angry; Xanxus had been making progress lately, and now these little bullies had sent him right back to the place he’d been when they’d first adopted him. "Are you quite sure?" he asked, letting his voice go sharper. "I could have sworn that you were saying something about my brother and our father. It sounded like it was a positively fascinating conversation."

"It was nothing," Taddeo said, sullenly. "We were just talking."

"I’m sure you were." Federico looked them over, trying for the look of cool disdain that his father managed to toss off so effortlessly. It seemed to work, judging by the way they glared at him. "It would be good to remember that loose talk often leads to trouble," he said, putting an edge on it that made a couple of them—the smarter ones, he suspected—look nervous. "But as it so happens, I was looking for my brother. I’d like to speak to him privately, if you don’t mind."

They took the hint, which was good. Xanxus didn’t seem to be in any mood to let himself be dragged away, but Taddeo and his little back were willing enough to disperse. They slunk away, shooting nasty looks at Xanxus as they went.

Xanxus didn’t relax even after they’d gone. Federico couldn’t make himself be surprised. When he loosened his grip on Xanxus’ shoulders, he left his hand on one, hoping that the human touch would ground his brother. "You’ll have to deal with them, one of these days."

Xanxus growled again; the shoulder under Federico’s palm vibrated with it. "Could have done it right now," he said, finally, and looked up at Federico, eyes dark. "If you hadn’t interfered."

"Could you have done it without killing them, though?" Federico returned.

The look Xanxus gave him then was purely puzzled. "Why would I want to do that?"

"Dad doesn’t like it when we start wars without his permission," Federico said, dry, and got a blank stare for his pains. Well, that was Xanxus, so Federico clarified it for him. "If you had killed Taddeo Orsini just now, the Orsini would have been able to declare war on us for it. Even if you’d have been doing them a favor. Get it, pup?"

Xanxus growled, though Federico wasn’t sure whether it was for the nickname or a reaction to something else. "The Vongola could destroy them."

His conviction regarding the Vongola’s strength was touching, if perhaps a touch optimistic, but that was a lesson for another day. "So?" Federico said. "We don’t want to destroy them." His conscience prodded him, and he added, "Mostly, anyway."

The joke sailed over Xanxus’ head, just one more sign that the kid really needed to lighten up, and he gave Federico another puzzled frown.

Federico sighed and came at the problem from a different angle. "Anyway, you’re going to have to get a grip on that temper of yours," he said and tried not to smile as Xanxus’ eyes began to glaze over at the familiar lecture. "It makes you vulnerable."

That was a slightly different approach than their father usually took; it caught Xanxus’ attention again, the way Federico suspected other lectures, no matter how kindly-meant, didn’t. "Explain," Xanxus demanded, frowning at him.

"What is there to explain?" Federico asked him. "As long as your temper leads you, all anyone has to do is make you good and angry, and then point you in the direction they want you to go and stand back." He rubbed his chin, thinking. "I’m pretty sure that’s not what the Orsini brats were doing, but some of the other Families probably wouldn’t mind sacrificing one of their spares just to have an excuse to declare a fully-justified war on the Vongola." It wasn’t a particularly pleasant thought, of course, but it was true enough.

Xanxus wasn’t stupid; his eyes turned sharp, and then thoughtful, as the point sank home. All he said, though, was, "Some people need killing."

Federico snorted and ruffled his hair. "Not going to disagree, pup." And he’d let the point ferment in Xanxus’ head for a while before they came back to it. As Xanxus protested and tried to escape the hair ruffling, he added, "Let’s see what kind of spread the Valetti have put out, eh? And then maybe we can borrow their back lawn and spar for a while."

The possibility of food didn’t seem to interest Xanxus much, but his eyes gleamed at the prospect of a fight. "Yeah, sure," he said. "Okay."

There was that crisis dealt with and the beginnings of a lesson administered. And, if they played their cards right, they’d leave another lesson behind them after they’d sparred. Not bad for an evening’s work, all things considered.

Just let the other Families try and tell themselves that Xanxus wasn’t a Vongola after they’d seen his Flame.

Federico kept his grin under wraps and let Xanxus lead the way towards the buffet table, pleased with a job well-done.

end

All-in-one reading

I have finally done something I’ve wanted to add to the archive for a while. It is now possible to view an entire arc as a single document and save that all-in-one document as html or pdf for later reading! (The print-ready minimal styling will apply to the pdf since you’ll need to go through your browser’s Print function to save as pdf.)

At the top of each fandom or arc index page is now a link to view that set of stories all-in-one. You can, of course, view an entire fandom worth of fic in this way, though I don’t recommend that for the high-density fandoms like PoT or KHR or FMA! And if you want to use the all-in-one format just for reading online, there are also comment links at the bottom of each story.

Keeping Up with the Vongolas

Tsuna stepped out of the car and tugged his jacket straight. He still wasn’t used to the suit.

“Big place,” Yamamoto remarked, emerging behind him. It was certainly that; the huge building looked to Tsuna as though someone had taken at least four separate mansions and pushed them together.

“It’s the main House,” Basil said, closing the car door. He smiled cheerfully at Tsuna. “Don’t worry; you’ll be used to it in no time!”

“Hmph.” Hibari climbed out of the back and looked around with a gimlet eye. “So where’s Xanxus?” His hand flexed, already prepared for the grip of his weapons.

“Looks like he’s coming,” Kusakabe said, closing the door behind Hibari and nodding at the stairs the led down from the house, or House rather, to the drive. Hibari smiled.

“Ah, you don’t think you could maybe wait just a little while…” Tsuna trailed off at the look Hibari gave him, which conveyed quite efficiently that Hibari would be willing enough to warm his teeth up by biting Tsuna first. Tsuna held up his hands. “Just asking.”

Xanxus was followed by Squalo, Gokudera, someone Tsuna didn’t know, and someone else he couldn’t see clearly. “Sawada.” He nodded briskly at Tsuna. “Good, you’re all here. This is Tazio,” he jerked his thumb at the young man with the bright grin beside him. “He and Gokudera will show you around.” He glanced at Hibari as he stepped forward, clearly not interested in a tour of the House, and snorted. “Got someone else to settle you in.”

The fourth person in the party stepped forward and Tsuna started. “Mukuro!” Beside him, Hibari turned very still.

“Sawada,” Mukuro greeted him with a smile, eyes sliding toward Hibari. “And I see you brought me a present; how thoughtful.” He laughed, flickering aside as Hibari lunged for him, and they were gone.

“That should keep him occupied for a while.” Squalo showed his teeth. “Give him a chance to shake the kinks out after the long trip.”

Tsuna shook his head, a rueful smile twitching at his lips. “It was very thoughtful of you.” Kusakabe just sighed and pulled the rest of Hibari’s luggage out of the trunk.

“He’s the one you’re thinking of for the Varia?” Tazio asked, looking after Hibari and Mukuro. At Xanxus’ nod he laughed. “I want to watch that.”

Tsuna couldn’t help laughing a little too. At least one of them was fitting in right away.

After an extended tour of the house which mostly left Tsuna confused, they fetched up in a pleasant sitting room with the current boss of the Vongola and his heir. Tsuna was glad he’d seen a picture last year or he might have blurted out the thought about not looking like a mafia boss, and then all the other old men in the room would probably have laughed. Except for the old woman, whose expression was alarmingly similar to Hibari’s, and who might have done something more extreme.

“You know Squalo and Gokudera,” Xanxus said, from where he was slouched in an arm chair. “You met Tazio. Levi and Ceirano are away, you can meet them later.” He waved at the older people. “They belong to the old man.”

The slim, neatly suited man standing beside the Ninth made a faint grimace, as if he’d refrained from rolling his eyes, and the lean, dark, elegant man sitting to one side with an ankle crossed over his knee quirked a tiny smile, either at his companion or at Xanxus. “We’re the Ninth’s Guardians,” he supplied. “I’m Rafaele Martelli. That,” opening a hand at the man standing by the Ninth, “is Gianni Staffieri, the Ninth’s right hand.” He went around the room with graceful introductions. The alarming woman was Maria Purezza. The large, quiet man with dark, thoughtful eyes was Paolo Gemello. Apparently he had a twin, Piero, who wasn’t here today and there was a Michele Rizzo who was off taking care of family things. Though why this information should cause everyone in the room to grin or snort or roll their eyes, Tsuna wasn’t sure.

He supposed he’d find out over the next few months.

“And of course, you know Iemitsu and Reborn,” Rafaele finished with a wry smile.

“Well, I thought I did,” Tsuna couldn’t quite help muttering under his breath with a somewhat exasperated look at his father, who looked his part in a dark suit far more serious than anything he’d ever worn or even seemed to own at home. His dad stopped looking serious and looked perfectly, infuriatingly innocent instead, and Tsuna positively glared. At least until he noticed the startled looks around the room. Then he flushed and straightened. A faint sound made him glance over at his own immediate boss, and Tsuna surprised a dark look on Xanxus’ face for a breath. Some of the things Reborn had hinted at without saying suddenly came together in Tsuna’s head and he stole a fast look at the Ninth.

Sure enough, the Ninth was looking rueful. Like the byplay between Tsuna and his dad was familiar in some not completely pleasant way. Xanxus was now looking out the window, brooding. Tsuna reminded himself that these signs were why he had really agreed to take this job in the first place, and pulled himself together. “I’m very glad to meet you,” he said, nodding politely around the room. “This is Yamamoto Takeshi, who’s agreed to work with CEDEF,” Yamamoto bobbed a cheerful nod to everyone impartially, “and this is Kusakabe Tetsuya, who is here with Hibari Kyouya.” Kusakabe nodded silently and Tsuna cleared his throat. “Hibari-san seems to still be out with Mukuro.”

“This is the one you want for the Varia?” Gianni asked Xanxus, one brow raised dubiously. “Will he really be willing to dedicate himself to the Family?”

“He’s dedicated to exactly what he needs to be: completely destroying his enemies.” Xanxus didn’t stir, but Tsuna thought he looked like he was hunching down further in his chair.

Tsuna tried not to let his growing disturbance show and interjected, “If Hibari-san was willing to come at all, it means he’s considering the Family, and whether it’s a thing he wants to preserve. If he agrees, he’ll be completely dedicated.” He shrugged with a rueful smile at the older people. “Hibari-san doesn’t do anything half way.”

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Xanxus relaxing a little from that still tension, and decided that had been the right move. Squalo was looking at him with approval, which was a good sign anyway.

Hibari took that moment to stalk in, looking a bit battered and scorched but just about gleaming with satisfaction. “And this is Hibari-san,” Tsuna introduced him with as much aplomb as he could muster.

“Mm.” Hibari glanced around with only mild interest, though he paused and looked twice at Maria before turning to Xanxus. “These Varia. Where are they?”

Xanxus grinned at that, clearly entertained. “Show you tomorrow.”

Hibari drew himself up, and Tsuna was resigning himself to a fast trip to wherever the Varia were when Maria stepped in.

“Tomorrow,” she snapped. “You’ll have to fight all the unit captains to convince them. Get some sleep first. It would be absolutely pathetic if you lost just because you were too stupid to gather your resources properly.”

Hibari actually stopped and cocked his head at her. “You then, instead.”

She crossed her legs, lip curled. “After dinner, boy.”

Hibari considered that for a moment, while Tsuna held his breath, and finally nodded agreement and settled into the chair Kusakabe pulled up for him. Clearly, Tsuna reflected, there was a good reason Maria had reminded him immediately of Hibari; at least they might keep each other occupied.

“All right, Chrome?” Squalo asked quietly, and Tsuna realized there were two new people in the room, not one.

A slight young women had slipped in behind Hibari, and Tsuna started a little when he saw her eye patch and noticed her hair style as she nodded to Squalo. “Um…?”

Xanxus flicked his fingers at her. “This is Chrome. She’s Mukuro’s host out here.” He raked a look up and down her and grunted, turning back to the gathering while she found a chair and let herself down into it with a rather tired sigh. Tsuna caught a frown on Paolo’s face, and had to stifle an exasperated sigh of his own. Even he knew that, when Xanxus sounded like that, it meant he’d looked and was satisfied Chrome was all right and just didn’t want anyone to notice he cared. Really, whatever had happened between these people before he came must have been huge if it had left this many misunderstandings lying around.

“Well, you’re quite welcome, here, Tsunayoshi,” the Ninth said, gathering all eyes back to himself, and Tsuna relaxed to see the faint smile under the Ninth’s mustache.

“Thank you, sir.” It was Xanxus Tsuna looked at as he finished, though. “I’m glad to be here.”

The next morning, Tsuna barely had time for a piece of toast before Hibari set down the tea he had somehow extracted from the kitchen here with a click and demanded to know where the Varia were. Tsuna paused to fill his coffee cup before trailing along after the resulting crowd, figuring he would want to be awake enough to duck when Hibari started throwing things, and people, around. The way Xanxus and Squalo were both smiling as they led the little parade only confirmed his wariness.

They left the main House and crossed down a hill to an annex set back on its own. A bit to Tsuna’s surprise, though only a bit, Xanxus stopped outside the door and waved at it. “There you go. Have fun.”

Hibari didn’t dignify that with a reply; he just stalked inside. There was definitely, Tsuna decided, a glint of anticipation in Xanxus’ eyes as he strolled after. Kusakabe sighed and muttered, “Cavallone and Romario were a lot easier to deal with.” Tsuna gave him a sympathetic smile, swallowed the rest of his coffee in a long gulp, and followed along.

There was a lot of black clothing, inside, which Tsuna had started to get used to, and a lot of leather, which he hadn’t.

One of the men in the leather tried to stop Hibari, who was by now stalking a ways ahead of everyone else. “Hey! What are you doing here?”

Hibari gave the man a dubious look and a fast, hard swing of one tonfa, and snorted when he went down. “I thought you said there were strong people here,” he said over his shoulder to Xanxus.

“Keep going. You’ll find them at this rate.” Xanxus would never look bland, but he was as close to it as Tsuna had ever seen.

Hibari sniffed and stalked on with Kusakabe a respectful distance behind his shoulder, and Xanxus prodded the downed man with his toe in passing. “Pay more attention next time,” he ordered briskly, and strode on after Hibari before the man quite finished groaning an agreement.

“I know you said the Varia was more demanding than the other branches,” Tsuna said quietly to Squalo, “but…”

“He got off lightly.” Squalo didn’t look at Tsuna, eyes following Hibari and Xanxus ahead of them. “He should have known with one look that Hibari was dangerous.”

Well, all right, Tsuna couldn’t really argue with that.

“Most people are paying better attention,” Yamamoto murmured behind Tsuna, and when Tsuna looked around his eyes were bright and focused, tracking over the growing number of people in the hall. Squalo grinned.

“There are strong people here. You should think about it.”

“Hey,” Tsuna protested this attempt to poach his friend, the latest in an ongoing series. Yamamoto laughed.

“I’m staying with Tsuna. But I’ll come visit a lot, how’s that?”

Squalo gave him an exasperated look. “What the hell do you think this is, a neighborhood slumber party?”

“Hadn’t thought of that. Do you think it would be fun?” Yamamoto smiled at Squalo with innocent cheer and Squalo growled and stalked further ahead.

Tsuna shook his head. “He should be glad you are staying with me.”

Yamamoto laughed, and Tsuna reflected, not for the first time, that his friend had a fairly evil sense of humor once you got to recognize it.

The next room they came into was obviously their destination, because Kusakabe and Xanxus were leaning against the wall beside a fascinated Tazio, and Hibari was in the middle of it, tonfa hammering into another unfortunate in black leather. More people were quietly slipping in, and most of them seemed content to watch.

“So what’s this?” A slight blond man had appeared beside them, and his smile instantly put Tsuna on edge.

“Your new boss, maybe.”

The smile flickered. “Him?” The man gave Hibari a hard look as he kicked his latest opponent into the wall and something cracked. “I’ve never seen him here before. Is he from another Family? A hitman?”

“No.” Xanxus didn’t look away from Hibari. “He’s not from the mafia at all.”

The blond man was still for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was cold. “What kind of a joke is this?”

“No joke,” Squalo put in, leaning beside Xanxus. “Go see for yourself, Bel. Looks like Hibari’s done with the small fry.”

Indeed, Hibari was looking around disdainfully as his half-conscious challenger was helped off to the side.

“We’ll just see, then,” Bel murmured, and strolled toward Hibari, a sudden fan of small, wicked looking knives appearing in his fingers.

“Um.” Tsuna edged closer to Squalo and murmured. “So, you said Varia aren’t actually supposed to kill each other, right?”

Squalo bared his teeth. “Usually.” Just when Tsuna was relaxing a little, he added, “Course, Hibari isn’t Varia yet.” He shrugged at Tsuna’s glare. “You think Hibari wants anyone going easy on him?”

Tsuna slumped against the wall with a faint groan. Yamamoto laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’s Hibari. He’ll be okay.” Kusakabe didn’t look away from Hibari, but he nodded a silent endorsement of this.

Tsuna tried to hold on to that thought, but it wasn’t easy when he saw the things Bel’s knives could do, and watched Hibari’s blood start running. “Why?” he asked, soft and harsh, as they watched and did nothing.

“The Varia are the best,” Xanxus answered, voice a little distant. “And this is the mafia. Negotiations are a big part of it, yeah, but they only happen because they’re backed up with guns and knives every second. You want to see less bloodshed, Sawada? Then we need the threat of the Varia in hand. And that means no mercy here and now.”

Tsuna looked up at him, lips tight. “You know I’ll try to change it.”

Now Xanxus glanced down at him, a wry tilt at the corner of his mouth. “Okay,” he said eventually.

Tsuna took a breath and nodded and stayed where he was, watching silently as Hibari and Bel fought. And if he sighed with quiet relief when Hibari found the wires and smashed Bel into the floor three breaths later, well no one but Yamamoto heard him.

Hibari made considerably shorter work of the rather flamboyant man with the colored hair who stepped up next. Tsuna wondered if there would be trouble when he faced what was obviously one of the arcobaleno, but when Mammon turned out to be an illusionist Tsuna just winced and hoped Hibari would let him get away in the end. He was pretty sure he would. Mostly sure, anyway. Probably.

"Um. Does Hibari not like illusionists?" Tazio asked, cautiously, a few seconds later, over Mammon’s chopped-off grunt as the first tonfa found him.

"He’s still pretty mad at Mukuro," Tsuna sighed, clinging to the wall with his eyes closed as the floor disappeared. He opened them again when he heard the crack and thump. "I think he’s kind of taking it out on this one."

"You were totally right, Boss," Tazio told Xanxus with assurance as Hibari chased Mammon across the room. "This guy will like the Varia."

Xanxus just snorted.

In the quiet after Mammon disappeared, though, the person who stepped up next was an old man. Tsuna glanced over at Xanxus and Squalo, who had straightened a little and were watching closely.

“So,” the old man said, looking Hibari up and down. “You’re strong. That’s good. Seems like you can think while you fight, and that’s better. But you’re not mafia. Why do you want to serve the Vongola to begin with?”

Hibari gave him a blank look. “Serve?” He pointed at Xanxus. “He said I could find the best here.”

“Is that all that matters to you?” the old man asked quietly, and a chilly crinkle ran up Tsuna’s spine.

Hibari actually paused and seemed to be considering it. Finally he smiled. He gestured with his chin at Xanxus. “He’ll make something that works properly. I approve of that.”

The old man’s brows were raised as he glanced at Xanxus. “Are you sure about this, boy?”

Xanxus was trading an extremely sharp smile with Hibari. “Yeah. He’s the one I want.” He shrugged impatiently when the eyebrows stayed up. “He’ll keep everyone on their toes. Me too.”

“All right,” the old man sighed. “It won’t be official until I’m satisfied he’s not actually crazy, but all right.” He gathered up the other people in the room with one look and announced. “The Varia has a prospective new boss. See about it.”

The room broke up into excited conversation, some of them crowding around Hibari, though not too close, and a few, who Tsuna privately considered the smartest, heading for Kusakabe.

Squalo pushed away from the wall and stretched, grinning. “So. Is it lunch time yet?” Tsuna laughed a little, helplessly, knowing that Hibari would agree completely with that casual attitude, and that Yamamoto probably would too.

Maybe he’d have lunch with Gokudera, for his daily dose of sane-person.

With Hibari settled in, for Hibari-values of the concept, Tsuna had a few days of relative quiet to actually learn to navigate the huge House. He supposed it wasn’t any harder than learning his neighborhood, at home, he just had to learn it faster.

Knowing full well that Reborn was waiting in every office or sitting room he had to find, perfectly willing to shoot him if he was late, lent something extra to the effort, of course.

“Don’t you have other things to do these days?” he asked Reborn, panting a little as he dropped down into his chair.

“I don’t leave jobs in the middle, and you’re obviously not finished yet,” Reborn told him over a sip of the poisonously strong coffee all the mafia appeared to favor.

A man Tsuna hadn’t met before laughed. “You’re a hard task-master, Reborn! No vacations, even?”

“Certainly none of the kind you would recognize.”

Since that resulted in a certain amount of laughing and elbowing, Tsuna wasn’t entirely surprised when the man was introduced as Michele Rizzo, the Ninth’s Sun Guardian. He’d definitely gotten the impression that Michele and Kyouko’s brother had a certain approach to life in common.

Xanxus shifted impatiently in his own chair. “Screw Reborn, I have better things to be doing.”

The dark look that flickered over Michele’s cheerful face caught Tsuna’s attention.

“You have nothing better than the business of this Family to be doing.”

The spark that lit in Xanxus’ eyes made Tsuna wince. Clearly this was another person Xanxus didn’t deal well with. And apparently vice versa.

“Your business,” the sneer that accompanied that said volumes about Xanxus’ opinion of Michele’s ‘vacation’ activities, “is none of mine.”

Michele slapped a hand down on the table. “Damn it, when are you going to take some responsibility and do this job right? If Federico had…”

“Michele,” the Ninth said firmly, and Michele bit off the rest of it, but Xanxus was already leaning over the table, teeth bared.

“Where the fuck do you get off talking to me about responsibility, or about Federico? You’re so cock-proud of all your damn bastards, but your precious son couldn’t keep the boss you really wanted alive, could he? Who should be taking the responsibility for that?!” Michele started up from his chair at that, and Squalo was moving forward from where he’d been leaning against the wall, and Tsuna wondered a little despairingly just how often Xanxus and his father’s men had to be pulled off each other.

From the weary slump of the Ninth’s shoulders and the resignation in the tight set of Squalo’s mouth, he didn’t think he’d like the answer to that.

“They’re both dead now, and after all Federico did for you you’re just going to throw away everything they worked for!” Michele was almost shouting, and Tsuna could hear the pain behind what he said, it was clear in every gesture.

The old, dark pain in the hunch of Xanxus’ shoulders was louder to him, though, and that was what had brought him here in the first place. He hesitated, but this was exactly the kind of thing he was starting to realize he would keep needing to do for a long time and it wouldn’t get any shorter for delaying. He let the still calm that Reborn had taught him was the first unfolding of his Will rise.

“Rizzo-san.” Tsuna’s voice cut across them, and he took a slow breath as everyone turned to look at him, reminding himself to use Italian. “That wasn’t what Xanxus said. And it wasn’t what he meant either,” he said, quietly.

Xanxus stiffened. “Sawada,” he said, low and harsh, and Tsuna saw the alarm behind his frown, the fear of what Tsuna’s intuition would pull into the open.

“It serves nothing for them not to know,” he said quietly, and waited, watching Xanxus, watching him understand that Tsuna was waiting for his consent.

Xanxus growled out a curse and flung himself up out of his chair, stalking out of the room with tight shoulders. Squalo gave Tsuna a distinctly “better you than me” look and followed him. Tsuna watched him go with a tiny, wry smile, at least until Michele made an indignant sound behind him.

“Why that little…!”

“No,” Tsuna said low, turning back. “You don’t understand. That was Xanxus telling me that I can say whatever I feel I need to.”

Michele frowned at him, obviously not making the connection and Tsuna sighed.

“Xanxus doesn’t set his heart out where people can find it easily. You’re not like that, I can see,” and he could see a faint flicker of startlement as Michele met his eyes, “but this is Xanxus. When he said that he blamed you in some part for Federico’s death, what he meant was that he loved Federico too. The thing he most cares about is the one he’ll try to ignore. When he turns his back, that’s when you know he’s listening.”

Michele scrubbed a hand through his hair. “That’s insane,” he said, rather plaintively.

“Actually,” Rafaele put in, looking enlightened, “that’s one of the best descriptions I’ve ever heard of Xanxus in a nutshell.”

“How am I supposed to deal with someone who’s all backward like that?” Michele demanded, aggrieved.

“He isn’t asking you to deal with him,” Tsuna pointed out. “What he wants is for you to understand him. He won’t believe in it, but that’s what he wants.” He stood and nodded politely to the older men and turned to go look for Xanxus, because he was only half done with today’s work. And today’s work was only the beginning. The nonplussed expressions on almost every face told him it would be a long project, reconciling Xanxus to the Family he was inheriting and vice versa, though he did take some encouragement from Rafaele’s soft, rueful snort as he left.

Tsuna checked both Xanxus’ rooms and the east terrace before finally running him down in his office. Squalo opened the door at his tap and waved him inside after a long look, slipping out himself. Tsuna smiled, warmed by that silent vote of confidence. “Xanxus,” he said quietly.

Standing looking out the window, Xanxus stirred but didn’t answer. Tsuna took a deep breath and let it out.

“I’m not going to stop, you know.”

A harsh laugh shook Xanxus’ shoulders. “I got that part, yeah.”

“If I’m going to be your outside adviser, my job is to see the things you don’t isn’t it?” Tsuna stepped softly closer.

“Is it your job to share them with the whole world?” Xanxus asked tightly.

“It’s my job to use what I see however will serve you and the Family best.” That much, Tsuna was sure of, from the things Reborn had said about how Tsuna’s father served the Ninth.

Xanxus just growled, one hand curling into a fist against the window.

Tsuna watched him, thinking again about the things Reborn had told him about the First and the Vongola traditions; about the things his father had told him of the Ninth and his ideals on the few occasions Tsuna had been able to pin him down about the Vongola Family; about what he knew of Federico, the brilliant son who’d been the first to accept Xanxus, and of Xanxus’ past. Intuition stirred again, and he thought that no one who’d been beaten down that hard would believe in kindness or care he couldn’t see and touch. Tsuna understood that. He also understood, a little, when Reborn and his father insisted that the Family was everything, but he thought neither he nor Xanxus was here just to protect an ideal. Finally he said, quiet, “I’ll serve the Family, yes. But I came here for you. Not for an abstraction.” He crossed the office and folded his hands around Xanxus’ fist, tugging it away from the window as Xanxus looked around at him, startled.

“Sawada, what…?” Xanxus broke off as Tsuna knelt down at his feet, lifted his hand, and brushed his lips over Xanxus’ knuckles.

Tsuna knew the history of the gesture; it was one of the things he’d pried out of his father after quite a few beers one night had turned the conversation sentimental. It wasn’t the Ring Xanxus wore that he kissed, it was his hand—the man and not the office. From the sharp intake of breath, he knew Xanxus had understood.

He stood up and looked at Xanxus steadily. “Not for an abstraction,” he repeated.

Xanxus stared at him, for once shocked out of any defensive temper, and Tsuna smiled up at him quietly. Xanxus finally recovered himself enough to scowl, and added a growl for good measure when Tsuna laughed softly.

“Yes, Boss,” Tsuna agreed to that unspoken acceptance.

This was his job and his place, and he had a good grip on it now.

After the upsets that most of the Family provided, Tsuna found CEDEF unexpectedly restful. Most of them even seemed sane.

“So,” Yamamoto said, tipping his chair back on two legs, teacup cradled between his hands, “we’re not part of the Vongola but we work for them?”

“Essentially,” Oregano agreed. “You might think of us almost as an allied Family.” She smiled. “Though a very small one.”

“And, like the Varia, we answer directly to the Vongola boss,” Turmeric added.

Tsuna sketched a few more lines on his growing table of organization and shook his head at the spaghetti-mess it was. “This all seems awfully complicated. We’re separate, but the head of CEDEF has to know everything that’s going on because he might have to take over as second-in-command, or even act for the Vongola boss at any second!” Why had he thought this was a good idea, again?

“When loyalty and betrayal are two sides of one coin,” his dad said quietly, arms folded against the table, “the outside adviser is also the person the boss knows is absolutely loyal to him.”

Tsuna thought about Xanxus, and his hands, which had been nervously turning the pencil over and over, stilled. “Yes,” he agreed softly.

“So what kind of work do we do?” Yamamoto asked, breaking the silence, and Tsuna smiled gratefully at his friend. Yamamoto would always bring life back to the practical.

“Lots of things,” Oregano said. “Scouting, negotiations, courier work… Anything that needs a touch of authority but that the boss or the heir shouldn’t be seen doing.”

Yamamoto laughed. “Anything the Vongola are interested in, but don’t want to look interested in?” He cocked his head at the older members. “Or anything they want to show an interest in but only sideways?”

Oregano blinked and Turmeric nodded slowly. “That’s a very good way to put it.” He smiled faintly. “I won’t be surprised if you get sent out often for negotiation.”

“Anything I can do to help out,” Yamamoto agreed, cheerfully, causing everyone to look twice at him and Tsuna to grin wryly. He supposed it took a little while to get used to Yamamoto.

“Yamamoto-san?” Basil’s voice drifted up the stairs.

“Up here,” Yamamoto called back. Basil ran lightly up and through the door.

“Lal Mirch is, ah…” He hesitated.

“Yamamoto!” Lal’s voice didn’t drift so much as march. “You’re late for training, get your sorry ass down here!”

“Impatient,” Basil finished.

A huge grin spread over Yamamoto’s face. “Yes, Lal,” he called back, lilting. “Coming.” He turned the grin on Tsuna. “Want to watch? She said she’d make an obstacle course for me today.”

“Better you than me,” Tsuna said fervently, though he got up to follow after Yamamoto willingly enough.

The rest of CEDEF trailed along, and Tsuna relaxed at the warmth of their obvious amusement. He liked this feeling, of being accepted, being one of them. He liked that they took Yamamoto’s enthusiasm as much in stride as they did Lal’s hard-as-nails dedication and cutting sarcasm.

It was still a little weirder that his dad was involved, but he’d just have to manage that.

This time, Lal had made the course for Yamamoto on one of the open hillsides beyond the House. It appeared to involve explosives, as well as traps and obstacles, and Tsuna shook his head ruefully as they watched Yamamoto fling himself into it, leaping and slinking and ducking.

And laughing, when he had the breath.

Lal was a demanding trainer. She reminded Tsuna a lot of Reborn, that way, only with less bland-faced evil and more shouting. She accepted no excuses and she drove anyone who fell under her influence without a hint of mercy. Tsuna could tell that she was just a little bemused that Yamamoto seemed to enjoy that.

“Swords really do make you crazy,” a new voice said, behind Tsuna, and he turned to smile at Gokudera.

“Did you help Lal make the course today?” The occasional explosions did suggest it.

“Yeah.” Gokudera’s eyes were fixed on Yamamoto’s progress, rather darkly. Tsuna’s smile gentled.

“Yamamoto likes pushing himself, and stretching as far as he can go,” he explained, the way he hadn’t quite had the nerve to yet, to Lal. “He didn’t used to get much opportunity for that, I think.”

“Doesn’t look much like he’s stretching,” Gokudera observed, still sounding rather sour. He added, far quieter, enough so that Tsuna wasn’t sure he’d been supposed to hear, “Does everything come easy to him?”

Tsuna looked at Gokudera a lot more sharply, suddenly wondering.

Yamamoto came out the other end of the course, smoking and bruised but still grinning, to face Lal’s critique. It was loud enough to be heard up the hill and included a lot of terms like “reckless damn idiot” and “charging in like a thundering elephant”, and Yamamoto bobbed his head with earnest attention to each one. Tsuna’s mouth quirked, rueful; Lal was taking a little longer then most of CEDEF to catch on to Yamamoto’s sense of humor. Gokudera, who Tsuna suspected hadn’t gotten it yet either, growled and stalked down the hill to join them. He gestured sharply at the course and then at Yamamoto and planted his hands on his hips, glaring. Yamamoto spread his hands innocently, but Tsuna noticed that his smile had turned more sincere and less teasing.

This time Tsuna was really watching, and so this time he also noticed the way that blunted the fine edge of Gokudera’s irritation.

Before he could consider the implications of that too deeply, though, Turmeric moved up to stand next to him, and Tsuna turned his attention to the older man. When Turmeric said something it was usually worth listening to.

“Takeshi will be very good at negotiations, here. It’s something you should probably keep in mind.”

Tsuna laughed. “Yeah, I don’t know anyone else who can keep smiling like he does.”

“That’s not quite what I mean,” Turmeric said quietly. “It will be an advantage, yes; but his real strength at the table will be, well…” Turmeric’s mouth quirked a bit as he looked down the hill to where Lal and Yamamoto and Gokudera were walking the course, arguing and gesturing over bits of it, “his strength.”

Tsuna looked up, curious. “What do you mean?”

Turmeric looked out over the hills for a moment, and when he spoke he sounded a little distant and maybe even a little sad. “Negotiations, in our world, are not always a matter of reason. Maybe not even often. Unless you have the strength to win it as a battle, you won’t usually win it at the table, either. A successful negotiator is a threat.” He finally looked down at Tsuna, serious. “Takeshi will be the threat in your hand.”

Tsuna flinched from that, lips pressed tight. “I don’t want,” he started, only to break off as Turmeric rested a hand on his shoulder.

“I know you don’t. And we like you for that, Tsuna. But I also know you’ll do it when you have to. And that,” he finished, gently, “is why we also trust you.”

Tsuna took a deep breath and let it out. “If I have to,” he agreed, low.

That was the promise he’d given Xanxus, and now he understood it was the promise he had to give the people who would work under him.

“Whatever I have to do,” he said quietly, looking up at the House above them.

Another day, another meeting. Tsuna was starting to feel like he’d taken on that civil service job the school counselor had kept hopefully suggesting, after all.

“Those Pozzo Nero assholes won’t back off until we make them!”

With some significant differences, of course.

“We might at least try to negotiate first,” Gianni answered Xanxus, rather dryly.

“Why?” Maria asked, with a glint in her eye that looked just like the one in Xanxus’.

“Because we aren’t the Pozzo Nero; we’re the Vongola,” Paulo said firmly.

“That doesn’t mean rolling over and being nice to scum,” Tazio shot back just as firmly.

Xanxus leaned forward, hand closed into a fist on the table. “I’ll negotiate with them the way they understand,” he growled.

Tsuna stifled a sigh. Why did he always get to be the reasonable one? “Xanxus,” he put in, “they are in the middle of a city.” A city full of innocent bystanders that might be caught in the fire. And if they were, that would be very bad for Xanxus, even if Xanxus didn’t seem to understand that yet.

Xanxus turned to look at him and Tsuna’s thoughts froze. He suddenly felt like he’d stepped off the edge of a cliff without realizing it. Xanxus’ eyes on him were cold and shuttered.

“So what?” he asked, low and vicious, and cut his hand at Gianni and Paulo, somehow including Tsuna in the gesture. “I know what the fuck I’m doing, and I’m not going to let them get away with the same shit the goddamn Cetrulli pulled!”

The magnitude of his misstep cut off Tsuna’s voice. He hadn’t meant to take their side against Xanxus! But of course, now, too late, he could see clear as day that that’s how it would look to Xanxus. And not just Xanxus; even Tazio was frowning at him. So Tsuna did the only thing he could think of that might calm Xanxus down.

“Yes, Boss,” he murmured, bowing his head.

After a moment Xanxus made a wordless, frustrated sound and turned to look at the Ninth, who sighed.

“You make a strong case. Very well.”

Tsuna stood slowly as the meeting broke up, still a little shaken. He wasn’t quite sure what to do now.

It was almost comforting when Reborn landed on his shoulder and cuffed him across the back of the head. “Idiot.”

“Shut up, I know already,” Tsuna muttered, watching Xanxus and Squalo disappearing through the far door.

“So, what are you waiting for?”

Tsuna blinked at Reborn, who smiled faintly.

“You’re his adviser, aren’t you?”

Xanxus’ adviser, yes. The one who’d promised to stand by him. The world snapped back into place and Tsuna took a deep breath and smiled back. “I’m waiting for some privacy.”

Reborn hopped down onto the table. “Well, then.”

Tsuna slipped past Maria as politely as he could, trying not to flush at her sardonic glance, and out into the hall. He wasn’t entirely surprised to find Xanxus, just one corner away, leaning up against the wall with his arms folded tight and Squalo speaking to him, low and intent. Squalo looked up and his mouth tightened. Tsuna ducked his head apologetically, and Squalo rolled his eyes and beckoned with a quick jerk of his head.

Xanxus noticed that and looked up, expression freezing again the instant he saw Tsuna.

“Boss,” Tsuna protested, taking the last few steps quicker. “I said it for you, not for them!”

Xanxus’ shoulders hunched faintly, and Tsuna reached out, resting a hand on Xanxus’ chest.

“I swear,” he said, softly. “It’s you I’m thinking of.”

“Me, huh? Nothing about all those civilians in that city?” Xanxus asked, low and edgy, not looking at him.

“Them too,” Tsuna agreed, easily. “But I can tell you one thing I wasn’t thinking of at all, and that’s that you’d be careless. Or screw up. Or not succeed.”

“That’s three things,” Xanxus said after a moment, but the line of his shoulders had relaxed, and Tsuna smiled.

“They count as one.”

Xanxus looked at him now, with the kind of exasperation Tsuna often saw; it was very welcome, and his smile got more cheerful. Xanxus snorted and shrugged his hand off, straightening. “If you want to help, go pry Hibari and Ceirano away from each other and bring them down to my office. We have planning to do.”

“Yes, Boss,” Tsuna murmured, just a little teasing, and slipped off down the hall, grinning, when Xanxus growled at him. The grin faded a bit as he paced down halls and stairs toward the practice rooms.

He would have to be more careful, from now on.

Tsuna sat in the outer room of the suite he’d been given and chewed the end of his pen as he sorted his words. It was turning out to be more difficult than he’d expected, when he wrote to Kyouko. He didn’t want to alarm her, but if he didn’t say anything about the dangers here her next letter might just inform him that she’d bought a plane ticket.

He’d attempted to suggest that she might like to simply stay in Japan, the way his mother did, instead of eventually joining him in Italy. She’d smiled at him sweetly and told him not to be silly, and there’d been just enough edge under the softness of her voice that he’d never mentioned the idea again.

He was trying to find some un-alarming way to mention that Hibari had had another go at Mukuro today, and a sparring match with Yamamoto after that had certainly alarmed Tsuna, when someone knocked on his door. “Come in!” he called with momentary relief.

It turned to curiosity when his visitor turned out to be Paulo Gemello. He hadn’t spoken very often to Paulo, though he struck Tsuna as quite like Turmeric—quiet but thoughtful. Tsuna fetched his guest a drink, still getting used to the sideboards everywhere, and looked inquiring.

Paulo turned his glass in his hands, looking down at it. “I wanted to ask you something, man to man,” he said finally.

Tsuna made the sort of generally acknowledging noise one made to such a vague statement.

“We haven’t worked with you long, but it’s already clear you’re a kind young man. You take thought for the people who might be hurt. You hold on to your optimism, even in this world. Those are good qualities.”

Tsuna felt a ‘but’ coming, and reflected ruefully that the Ninth’s Guardians seemed to have a lot of attitudes in common with the Tenth’s, really.

“I have to wonder,” Paulo said slowly, “if that gives you as clear a view of Xanxus as you’ll need.”

Tsuna sat very still for a long moment, feeling a chill uncurl in his stomach. He found himself wanting to point out that “nice” did not mean “fool”. To point out that it was this old suspicion that made Xanxus so volatile. But that would not, he thought, make Paulo understand. He looked at Paulo, really looked, seeing the tense lines around his mouth, the unhappy tightness of his eyes, and felt his stillness sliding into the calm of intuition.

So what he said, instead, was, “Why did the Ninth lie to Xanxus?”

Paulo stiffened, abruptly frowning.

“You’re angry,” Tsuna said quietly, watching him. “You don’t like it that I should accuse the Ninth of doing something like that. Even though it’s true.”

“Of course I don’t, he’s my Boss and I protect his honor as well as his life,” Paulo stated firmly.

Tsuna cut off whatever he’d been going to say next with, “Then why do you think it’s acceptable to accuse my Boss to me?”

Paulo blinked at him, startled out of his anger. “I… But…” He took a deep breath and set his hands on his knees, quiet for a moment. “I see,” he said finally.

“Do you still have doubts about my perception?” Tsuna asked.

After a moment, Paulo’s mouth quirked up. “Perhaps not. That was an effective demonstration.”

Tsuna sat back with a sigh, releasing the tautness of seeing that way. “I didn’t choose this work just because it’s what my dad does, or because Reborn insisted. I chose it because I met Xanxus and saw how badly he’d been hurt, and that I could do something to help. That’s what I’m here for. So yes, I look for ways to keep the innocent out of harm’s way. And I believe we can succeed in protecting what’s important without losing ourselves. Because those are the things I need to do to help Xanxus, and the Family.” He hesitated a moment and added, half apologetically, “I’m afraid the way some of you are with him really doesn’t help.”

Paulo ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand Xanxus,” he admitted. “My brother says he does, but I honestly don’t see how. And I certainly don’t see how someone as kind and,” he smiled a bit wryly, “as clear-sighted as you can give him your loyalty when he doesn’t give his back.”

Tsuna stared at him startled. “He does, though!” Paulo’s look of puzzlement made him laugh a little, helplessly. “He does. He’d rather be hung by his toes than say it out loud, but surely you’ve watched him with his people? Seen how protective he is of the Family?”

“Possessive, maybe,” Paulo muttered.

“Well, yes, that’s where it starts,” Tsuna admitted. “Xanxus protects what’s his. Maybe that isn’t the way everyone does it, but if it works why does that matter?” Paulo hesitated, and Tsuna added, softly, “If you hold the past against him, we’re going to need to talk about who else made the mistakes that led to it.”

Paulo’s mouth tightened, but there was a glint of respect in the look he gave Tsuna. “Well. As long as you can tell me you’ll watch over him, I’ll do my best to let it go.”

Tsuna smiled, quiet and serene. “You have my word.” And if he meant to watch over Xanxus in a different way than Paulo meant it, he didn’t really think he needed to say so right now.

Reborn, he reflected with a secret grin, would probably approve.

Two months after arriving, Tsuna had asked, a bit anxiously, whether the property damage bill from Hibari’s training with the Varia would be a problem. Squalo had stared at him for a long, blank moment and then burst out laughing. Watching Xanxus and Hibari fight, and eyeing the rubble and splinters they left behind them, Tsuna finally understood why.

“Now, you see, he has the right attitude,” Ceirano said as Hibari ducked under Xanxus’ fire to drive the end of his tonfa into Xanxus’ stomach. “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing all the way.”

“I thought that was ‘worth doing right’,” Tsuna ventured.

“That’s what I said.” Ceirano suddenly sounded distracted, though, and a moment later he strolled off. Looking after him, Tsuna saw Reborn sitting on the terrace rail watching Xanxus and Hibari.

Tsuna shook his head, a bit bemused that anyone, even another hitman, would court a training session with Reborn on purpose. Though he supposed he wasn’t really surprised that Xanxus’ Guardians all shared with him a certain cheerful bloodthirstiness.

“Barbarians, the lot of them,” Mukuro murmured behind his shoulder.

Each in their own way, of course. “Mukuro,” Tsuna greeted him, turning a little.

Mukuro looked him up and down. “And not even an apology for entangling me with them.”

“That wasn’t my idea!” Tsuna defended himself roundly. “That was my dad; I would never have thought of doing anything so crazy.”

“Ah. So you, sensible creature that you are, would only think of doing something like coming after a notorious criminal with a pitiful one or two followers. Oh, yes, and a baby.” Mukuro gave him a silky smile. “You match the likes of Xanxus very well after all.”

“I’m glad to see you’re settling in here, with him,” Tsuna offered.

Mukuro raised a supercilious brow. “And what, precisely gave you the impression that I am?” he asked coolly. “I am merely…” The other brow went up. “Sawada?”

Tsuna finally got a hold of himself and managed to stop laughing. “Ah. Sorry.” He wiped his eyes. “It’s just you sound so much like him.”

Mukuro actually blinked at him. “Like who?”

“Like Xanxus,” Tsuna smiled. “You sound just like him when he’s trying not to admit he likes something.” He paused a moment, considering. “Only with more syllables.”

“Mukuro?” he ventured after a moment when Mukuro just stood and stared at him, perfectly still.

Abruptly he wasn’t talking to Mukuro any more. Chrome wobbled a little as she regained her own feet, catching her balance on the arm Tsuna quickly held out.

“Just like,” Tsuna murmured, mouth quirked.

Chrome looked at him, grave and quiet. “Mukuro-sama takes care that we are well.”

Since that could have been either agreement, that Mukuro wasn’t fooling anyone with his careless pose, or a warning, that Mukuro wouldn’t brook any interference from Tsuna, and Tsuna really couldn’t tell which, he just nodded. The very faint smile that flickered around the corners of Chrome’s mouth as she turned away made him wonder if it was actually both. He supposed no one could have Mukuro in her head so much and not grow subtle herself.

Sometimes he just had to look around and wonder how a normal guy like him had ended up here.

Tsuna had never been a fan of parties, even, or especially, in his own honor, and despite the dangers of the mafia world he couldn’t help a tiny, wistful wish that Kyouko had come this year instead of next. She was much better at these things. He, on the other hand, was eventually reduced to hiding in a corner with his drink.

Rafaele looked faintly amused when he found Tsuna there. “So,” he leaned against the wall beside him, “how is your debut going?”

Tsuna gave him a dour look. Despite their difference in years and nationality, Rafaele reminded him an awful lot of Yamamoto sometimes. “It’s going just fine,” he said, repressively.

Rafaele laughed softly.

“Though it does seem as though everyone expects me to be crazy.” Tsuna cast an eye over the Vongola allies moving through the room, chatting with each other, many trying to keep one eye on him and another on Xanxus, and muttered into his glass, “I really hope that someday everyone realizes just how hard they’re making my job.”

Rafaele sighed and when he spoke again his voice was far more serious. “We’re trying to understand, Tsuna. That much I can promise you.” He rested a hand on Tsuna’s shoulder. “It’s good that you’ve come.”

Tsuna studied his drink again. “I wish,” he said softly, “that it didn’t take waving someone who’s obviously harmless in people’s faces to make them take a second look at Xanxus.”

“First of all, I very much doubt anyone trained and approved by Reborn is harmless.” When Tsuna looked up, Rafaele’s tilted smile matched the briskness of his tone. “And second, you might consider it a compliment to Xanxus. All his hard work in keeping us from thinking he might feel gently for the Family paid off.”

Tsuna frowned stubbornly. “No. That isn’t a compliment. He hides it out of fear, and for his own family not to notice is…” he couldn’t quite think of a right word that wouldn’t be insulting and finished a bit lamely, “a bad thing.”

Rafaele was quiet for a moment, eyes dark and unfathomable. “You’re right,” he said finally. His stillness broke into a wry snort. “I don’t know how we’ll manage to deal with someone who’s trying very hard to deny all of this, but we’ll just have to find a way.”

Tsuna looked out over the room. “He can’t possibly be the only difficult person any of you have ever had to deal with.” His eyes fell on Yamamoto and Gokudera, apparently arguing. Or at least Gokudera was arguing, waving his hands vigorously enough to endanger unwary passers-by. Yamamoto was just listening, perfectly attentive, and smiling.

Speaking of difficult.

“He certainly isn’t,” Rafaele sighed. “But after Timoteo he’s… disconcerting. I’m grateful we have Squalo around too, you know.”

Tsuna, watching Gokudera glare, was reminded of his comments about sword-idiots all communicating in their own universal language and stifled a snort of amusement. Catching another wary glance from one of the men in the room turned it into a sigh. “If you don’t want this Family alliance of yours falling apart because everyone is afraid the heir is a mad dog, you need to stand behind him,” he said bluntly, suddenly tired of trying to put it more delicately.

Maybe he’d been with Reborn too long.

“You make a good case,” Rafaele murmured. “I’ll speak with the others.”

“Thank you,” Tsuna said softly.

Rafaele patted his shoulder again and strolled off, elegant and casual as always, and Tsuna sighed with relief as eyes drew away from him to follow Rafaele instead. He’d known this wasn’t going to be a simple job from the start, and after a bare week here he’d known it was a bigger one than he’d thought, too. But at least he felt like he’d made a good start on it.

He glanced back over at Yamamoto just in time to see him catch one of Gokudera’s waving hands before it smacked a passing ally. Gokudera didn’t seem to notice, though Yamamoto’s eyes were dancing with silent amusement. He was glad that Yamamoto was settling in, too, and only hoped that Kyouko would find it as easy when she joined him. He didn’t think he could have handled it to know following him into this job had made his friends and loved ones unhappy.

Gokudera finally noticed that Yamamoto hadn’t let go of his hand, animated words and gestures trailing off into startled quiet. Tsuna smiled and turned to move through the room again, nodding and speaking calmly to the Family allies as they slowly came closer.

It was a good start.

End

Withdrawal

“I am going,” Hayato said, low and deadly, “to kill you.”

Yamamoto just smiled, the bastard, cheery as if Hayato had offered to take him on a fucking picnic. “Okay.”

Hayato growled as he snapped his wrist, laying one bracketing pattern of explosives around Yamamoto while he thumbed the jets on a second set and sent them diving at angles into the smoke. They didn’t go off and the smoke swirled around the line of Yamamoto’s sword as it stilled.

Hayato positively hissed at him and reached for a grenade. Yamamoto, the bastard, laughed.

Rocket bombs. Sticky bombs. Mini bombs, which he did his damnedest to stuff down Yamamoto’s pants. None of them worked, at least insofar as none of them rendered Yamamoto a smoking, unconscious body on the floor of the training room whose pockets Hayato could rifle.

It was time to get serious.

Yamamoto’s eyes widened satisfyingly when Hayato went for his box and slammed the Flame Arrow cartridge home. Yamamoto dodged once, twice, closing in on him, and Hayato snarled and fed in his Cloud bullets to saturate the field and force him back. Yamamoto’s smile was sharp as he reached for his own box, and Hayato cursed softly under what breath he had left as that damn swallow made for him.

In the end it wasn’t the swallow that got him, though. And it wasn’t the sword. No. It was the goddamn dog that Yamamoto sent behind him to trip him, and that was just the last straw. Hayato howled with absolute fury as Yamamoto came down from above him, and shot him right in the face with Flame Thunder.

After a few breaths, Hayato managed, with a groan, to haul himself up onto his knees and crawl over to Yamamoto’s body and get down to his real business.

There was nothing in Yamamoto’s jacket pockets. There was nothing in his pants pockets. There wasn’t even anything in his shirt pocket, and Hayato finally pounded a fist on his chest in outrage. Yamamoto coughed and levered himself up on an elbow with a small groan of his own, but Hayato didn’t have time to appreciate that right now.

“Where are they, you asshole?!” he yelled.

“What?” Yamamoto smiled at him, sweet and wry. “You didn’t think I’d actually keep them on me? I threw them away.”

Hayato stared at him and flopped over onto his back, feeling the exhaustion of absolute betrayal. “I hate you.”

“Your endurance is already getting better,” Yamamoto offered, sounding hopeful.

“I really hate you.”

“And it looks like we worked off most of the jitters, at least.”

“I hate you so much.”

“Tsuna agreed with me,” Yamamoto positively wheedled.

“You threw away my cigarettes.”

Yamamoto leaned over him and kissed him. Slowly. “You taste better now,” he murmured against Hayato’s mouth.

Hayato glared up at him. “You’re going to have to do a whole lot better than that.”

Yamamoto just smiled. “Okay.”

Hayato made a grumpy sound into the next kiss, but settled a little as warm, sword-calloused hands slid under his shirt. He was still not impressed with the campaign to make him quit smoking, but at least Yamamoto was taking his responsibility for this mess seriously.

End

Naked Truth

As they returned to Muramasa’s suspiciously ill-concealed hiding hole, Byakuya turned away from the mindless chatter of the swords. He could only stand to listen to their foolishness for so long, and today had been more than enough.

“Where are you going?” Kazeshini demanded instantly, and Byakuya glanced over his shoulder.

“To sleep.”

Predictably, Kazeshini sneered. “Humans.”

Assumptions were a weakness, but Byakuya had no intention of reminding any of these about that. He walked down the tunnel that led to his temporary ‘room’, feeling the heat of Senbonzakura’s suspicious glower on his back.

“I will watch him,” his sword told the rest, and light steps stalked after him. Byakuya didn’t respond in any way.

He did leave it to Senbonzakura to close the door behind them and listened to the faint slide and clack of armor as his sword slumped.

“I don’t like this.”

“Is there a problem?” Byakuya asked evenly.

“I know why it’s necessary.” Senbonzakura came away from the door and moved to light the candle lamps. “But the very idea that I would run wild this long, or that you would tolerate it…!” He tossed down the taper sharply, making the flames flicker. “It offends our honor.”

“Our honor lies in our duty.” Though Byakuya couldn’t entirely disagree. The pretense grated on him, as well. Senbonzakura sighed softly and Byakuya turned to see him lean against the wall, head down. He knew his sword shared his pride, his determination to deal with this intrusion of the family’s past, and frowned a little; was there something else wrong, then? “Senbonzakura?” He moved closer, and Senbonzakura looked up, eyes rueful behind his mask.

“It just wears, sometimes. Forgive me.”

Byakuya quirked a brow. “Forgive you for your loyalty? Most certainly not.”

That made Senbonzakura laugh a little. “Yes, ma—” He caught himself and finished, sober again, “Byakuya.”

Ah. Was that it, then? Byakuya considered their situation and smiled faintly; unexpected benefits, perhaps. “There are other ways than speech,” he murmured, coming forward until he could rest one hand on his sword’s shoulder and set the other on the edge of his mask. Behind it, Senbonzakura’s eyes widened, and Byakuya could hear the intake of his breath.

“Yes.” It was barely a whisper. Senbonzakura’s eyes closed as Byakuya’s fingers tightened.

Slowly, Byakuya lifted the mask away and laid it aside, smoothing back Senbonzakura’s long, sleek hair. His sword shivered under his touch, eyes opening to look up at him with unmistakable hunger. Byakuya closed his hands around Senbonzakura’s face and swallowed his gasp in a slow kiss. Senbonzakura’s mouth yielded and opened under his, and, as Byakuya kissed him again and again, formed silent words against his lips: yes and master and please. Byakuya smiled. The thought of reclaiming his sword this way, too, pleased him, and he ran two fingers down Senbonzakura’s side, where the armor ties were.

“Yes?”

Even through the armor, he could feel Senbonzakura shiver. “Yes.”

Byakuya turned briefly to cast the kidou Falling Snow over the closed door; there would be no unexpected visitors while that lasted. He wanted to take his time about this. Indeed, he had to. Zanpakutou didn’t wear clothes—their form was what they were. To change that was a delicate undertaking.

So he went slowly, unfastening the sode, opening the robe and folding it down, unknotting each cord of the dou one by one. Senbonzakura stood still under his hands, chest heaving quick and light as the armor came away piece by piece. Byakuya set each aside with care; it was his own armor, after all. By the time he came to the last layer of cloth, Senbonzakura was trembling, bare hands winding tight in Byakuya’s sleeves.

“Master,” he said, low and husky, eyes wide, and Byakuya drew him close.

“You are mine,” he murmured. “My sword. The edge of my soul. No matter what conjurer’s tricks a mad and masterless sword plays against us, we will not be parted.” He slid a hand into Senbonzakura’s loosened hair and kissed him again, fierce. The passion of his sword’s response calmed the fury that even he had had trouble holding back this long.

Briskly, now, he unfolded the futon Muramasa had provided for his lone human associate and stripped away the last of their clothes. Senbonzakura went willingly when Byakuya pressed him down, and sighed on a soft note of pleasure as Byakuya’s hands stroked slow and firm over his body.

It was a strange thing. Byakuya could imagine so clearly his sword’s pleasure, the building warmth within him; almost, he fancied, he could feel it himself, a delicate echo in his soul. Perhaps it was even so. The slackening of those long, sleek muscles under his hands sent a curl of warmth through him as well. This was his.

When Senbonzakura started arching up into his hands, increasingly abandoned, Byakuya extracted the vial of sword oil he kept tucked into a seam of his pillow. He hid that more carefully than anything but his own thoughts, here. Zanpakutou needed little of the care mortal steel did. The rituals of care and cleaning were for comfort, and sometimes for vanity, not necessity—a gentle reinforcement of the bond between a shinigami and his zanpakutou. To find such a thing here would make even the fools outside suspect both of them immediately. Senbonzakura laughed, breathless, as Byakuya uncapped it. “It’s good to feel your touch again,” he said softly, and Byakuya smiled a little at the faint color rising over Senbonzakura’s cheekbones.

“Indeed.” He held Senbonzakura against him and rubbed his entrance slowly, gentle as he had ever been with a lover of his own kind. Senbonzakura’s body yielded to him at once, though, and his sword’s sudden flush and half-lidded eyes said all was well even before his low moan drifted on the room’s still air.

“I am yours,” Senbonzakura breathed, hands working against Byakuya’s shoulders. “I am of you. Your will is mine.”

Heat spiked through Byakuya at those words, that acknowledgment, and he caught Senbonzakura closer, fingers driving deeper. Perhaps, he thought distractedly, this pretend estrangement had worn on him worse than he had thought. The press of Senbonzakura’s body against his and the low, wanting sounds he made were far more satisfying than Byakuya had expected them to be. “You are mine,” he agreed, husky.

Senbonzakura made an eager sound as Byakuya turned him over and gathered him back into the curve of his body, rubbing slowly between Senbonzakura’s cheeks. A little more of the oil to ease his way, and Byakuya was pushing in, breath coming harder with the fierce heat of his sword around him.

“Please,” Senbonzakura gasped, and Byakuya could only answer him, thrusting in deep on one long flex of his hips. They moaned together.

After that, Byakuya didn’t hold back, and the echo of heat, and the way Senbonzakura pushed up to meet each thrust told him this was right. This was his zanpakutou, and they were not apart. He sheathed himself in his sword, hard and sure, again and again, and knew the pleasure winding through him was both of theirs.

“Master…” Senbonzakura’s panting breaths hitched as Byakuya kissed the nape of his neck, open mouthed. “Yes…”

“Yes, my sword, my edge.” Byakuya slid his hand down Senbonzakura’s stomach to close between his legs, running oil-slick fingers firmly up and down his sword’s length. Senbonzakura bucked helplessly under him and muffled a low cry in the bedding, and Byakuya groaned as his sword’s body tightened. He pulled Senbonzakura’s hips up and thrust into that tightness deep and hard, again, and again, and then the oddly doubled pleasure was too much to resist and he caught Senbonzakura close as heat shuddered through him, raking his nerves.

They lay twined together for a while, panting softly while Byakuya stroked Senbonzakura’s hair, savoring their satisfaction. Finally Byakuya eased his sword back over and touched his bare face gently. The curve of Senbonzakura’s lips made Byakuya smile too. “All is well?” he asked.

Senbonzakura lifted Byakuya’s hand and kissed his fingers. “All is well, my master.”

Byakuya nodded approval of this and held his sword closer.

They had a little time, yet, and only a fool would give up the truth before he had to.

End

Benefits of Friends

Renji blinked and looked over. “What, you’ve really never…?”

Ichigo couldn’t help bristling. “That’s perfectly normal, you know!”

“Ah, right.” Renji leaned back on the grass again, arms crossed behind his head. “I keep forgetting how damn young you are.” After a contemplative moment he looked over again, frowning. “Wait, so are you asking…?”

“Not asking a damn thing,” Ichigo muttered, setting his back more firmly against the scratchy bark of a tree and looking fixedly off into the distance, not in any state of mind to appreciate the sunlit day or the soft rustle of leaves here at the edge of the Court of Pure Souls. He heard Renji snort.

“Yeah, whatever.” Louder rustling made him look back to see Renji climbing to his feet and briskly swiping grass bits out of his hakama. “C’mere, then.”

“Wha…?” Ichigo stiffened as Renji pulled him away from the tree with a hand at his back. How did people manage this without panicking? What was he supposed to do with his hands, anyway? When he finally settled them gingerly on Renji’s sleeves he looked up to find himself eye to… chin with Renji. “Um…”

“Nah, up here.” Renji’s smile was crooked as ever but his fingers were gentle as he set a knuckle under Ichigo’s chin and tipped it up. Ichigo still couldn’t stop his hands tightening on Renji’s sleeves.

“Renji…” His voice had turned husky, too, and he hadn’t meant it to.

Renji’s smile untilted for once. “It’s okay.” He leaned down and Ichigo’s breath sucked in as Renji’s mouth brushed his, light. And then again. It made shivery little feelings run down his spine. He gasped outright when the tip of Renji’s tongue brushed his lower lip.

“So, you going to let me in?” Renji’s voice was low and quiet and Ichigo had to swallow.

“I… um.” Another quick breath. “Yeah?” And the way Renji smiled at him was positively embarrassing, so he was kind of glad to close his eyes as Renji leaned down again.

The embarrassment frittered away to nothing when Renji’s tongue slid into his mouth, because sensation was suddenly everything. The slow, wet slide sent heat rushing down between his legs so fast he was light-headed. It would have been obscene, that wet softness filling his mouth, if it didn’t feel so good.

When Renji finally drew back Ichigo found himself breathing fast, clutching Renji’s arms, pressed up against him. One big hand was cradling the back of his head, supporting him, and okay, yeah, that was kind of a good thing.

“Good?” Renji murmured.

“Yeah,” Ichigo managed after a moment. “I, um. Thanks.”

Renji’s smile slid into a more familiar grin, toothy and sharp. “Hey. My pleasure.”

Hot face and uneven breath and all, Ichigo couldn’t help laughing at that.

Asking Renji had been a good choice.

End

Demanding

Xanxus has legs that just don’t quit, and she dresses to kill more literally than most women do. When they’re on a mission, it’s all boots to the knee and sleek leather pants that hug the muscles of her thighs and the curve of her ass and hips. There’s a lot to be said for that, but even more to be said for what passes for her business attire, since she’s perfectly willing to trade the leather pants for skirts that are short enough to be practically indecent when she crosses her legs and they creep up her thighs. Squalo’s pretty fond of those skirts, actually, especially when Xanxus crooks a finger at him and says, “Come here,” as she uncrosses her legs and spreads her knees wide.

He does, and drops to his knees for her. What Xanxus wants, Xanxus gets, and that’s just fine by Squalo, who jumps to obey his boss’s every whim. Most people suppose that it’s because Xanxus is the dictionary definition of volatile. Fewer people suspect the truth, and Xanxus herself is not one of them. Squalo doesn’t mind that; he’s her man every way it matters and a few it doesn’t. As long as she allows that, he’s good.

Xanxus isn’t much for the things other women like, foreplay and kisses and soft fluffy shit like that, so Squalo doesn’t bother much with the preliminaries. When he sets his hands on Xanxus’ knees and slides them up her thighs, feeling the power in the solid muscles under creamy skin as he rucks her skirt up, it’s more for him than for her. Xanxus raises her hips when he hooks his fingers in her panties and draws them down, and makes an impatient sound as he takes his time about it. Squalo doesn’t mind that, or the hand that descends onto his head, gripping his hair and urging him forward. Squalo goes willingly, burying his face between her thighs as she spreads her knees wider. He breathes in the damp, musky scent of her, and she tightens her fingers in his hair, growling at him, voice gone husky with demand. Squalo runs his hands up her thighs to lift her hips and leans forward to taste her, tongue sliding against the slick folds of her cunt and stroking against her clit.

Xanxus’ growl changes to something like a moan as she rocks up against his mouth as Squalo laps at her. She’s already wet, must have been thinking about this for a while before she put down the file she’d been reading and beckoned him over, and she makes a half-gasping sound when he slides his fingers up into her. He fucks her on them as he mouths her, tongue flicking against her fast, the way she likes it. She’s tight around his fingers, muscles already fluttering as he strokes them against her, three of them twisting and curling inside her. It’s no surprise to him when she comes off fast, shuddering and bucking against his mouth with a breathy little groan that sets Squalo’s cock throbbing in his pants.

She’s got him trained well; some women want to have a moment after they come, but Xanxus isn’t that type. More is never enough for her, so Squalo keeps his mouth on her, tongue moving against her, sliding against her clit and between the folds around his fingers. He works her until his jaw aches, while Xanxus gasps above him, head thrown back against her chair, sooty lashes fluttering over her eyes as she grips Squalo’s hair and the arm of the chair, white-knuckled.

Just when Squalo thinks he’ll die if he doesn’t get off soon, Xanxus pushes him away from her and plants one booted foot on his chest, pushing him over. He lands flat on his back and stays there while she stands and strips out of her blouse and that skirt. “Well?” she says, standing over him and wearing nothing but those boots and a challenge in her eyes.

That’s his cue to undo his pants, fucking finally, and he can’t help groaning in relief as he does, shoving them and his underwear down his hips. Xanxus wrenches his shirt open herself as she kneels astride his hips, so close to his cock that he can feel the heat of her. She rakes her fingernails down his chest, casual as a cat sharpening her claws, and Squalo grunts at the sting of it. He doesn’t let that stop him from raising his hands and palming the lushness of her breasts. Xanxus arches into his hands as he plays with them, the only thing truly soft about her, and rocks over him, frustratingly close, until Squalo can’t stand it any more and moans, “Boss, please…”

That’s what it takes to get her to reach down and take him in hand, calloused palm wrapping around his cock and guiding it into her. Squalo groans at the slick heat of her body as she settles over him, one sure swift movement that nearly drives him out of his head. Xanxus plants a hand on his chest, pinning him down and balancing herself as she rides him, hips rocking over his, fast and hard. She does this for herself; it’s Squalo’s job to brace her, one hand on the curve of her back and the other free to fondle her breasts. He bites his lip as he does, trying to hold out against the scorching heat of her body and the way she looks as she takes her pleasure from him. Xanxus scowls as she drives herself down against his cock, as single-minded for this as she is for everything else, until she hisses at him to touch her. Squalo slides his hand down from her breast to the tautness of her stomach and then presses them against her clit, stroking hard, and that sends her off again. She groans as she comes, arching over him, wild hair damp at the temples and her chest heaving as her muscles ripple around Squalo’s cock.

She’s the most beautiful damn thing Squalo’s ever seen, especially when he drives his hips up against hers and she gasps as each ragged thrust wrings another spasm of pleasure out of her. Squalo groans, watching her, feeling the gathering pressure of his orgasm building, and finally she looks down at him. It’s the satisfaction in her eyes as she surveys him and the possessive quirk of her lips that undoes him. Another groan rips itself out of his throat as his hips buck under hers and pleasure comes crashing down on him like a tidal wave, rolling through him relentless and fierce.

When it finally lets him go, he’s as limp as a jellyfish washed up on the tide, and can only pant for breath as he stares up at her. But Xanxus doesn’t really care much for the afterglow and climbs off him, stretching shamelessly, with only the faintest of wobbles in her knees. Squalo pretends not to notice that, though he does take a certain workmanlike satisfaction from seeing that she’s not as unaffected as she thinks she is.

Then Xanxus kicks him in the ribs. “You gonna lie there all day?”

“No, Boss,” Squalo says, with a wheeze, and rolls to his feet to get them some towels to clean up with. He’s just chivalrous like that, and besides, Xanxus is perfectly capable of lounging at her desk mostly naked if he doesn’t.

And while Squalo really wouldn’t mind that at all, it’d be hell on his productivity.

– end –

Under the Sky

It wasn’t unusual for Xanxus to storm into her office, possibly destroying things in her path depending on how much of a snit she was in, but today her lips were tighter than usual and her glare was sharper. Squalo took his feet off the table, getting ready to move if he had to, and tossed the file on the latest Leone sprig aside. “Something up, Boss?”

Her lip curled up in a snarl. “Total assholes.” She pronounced it like a sentence of death.

“Lots of those around, yeah,” Squalo agreed, still waiting to see if the death would be literal this time or not. He tensed a little, feet under him, when she turned that glare on him.

“Like you’re not just as fucking bad, whenever you forget your goddamn place.”

Ah. That. Someone had tried to get fresh with the Vongola daughter again. Squalo really had to wonder just how many morons one world could hold, that word hadn’t gotten around yet just how bad an idea that was.

Of course, in a way, he couldn’t blame them. And this was, just maybe, the opportunity he’d been hoping for.

He leaned back deliberately, looking up at her. “I’ve never once forgotten my place.” As she took a step toward him, hand flexing around the butt of her gun, teeth bared, he added, “I said it before, didn’t I? Loser serves the winner.”

That stopped her and she stared down at him for a long, intent moment. “He does, huh?” she finally asked, perfectly expressionless. Squalo smirked.

“He could.”

Hell, if he’d wanted to live a long, safe life he’d never have joined the Varia.

The hard, warning glitter in her eyes as she reached down, wound his tie around her fist and yanked him to his feet with it sent a shot of heat through him. Which just confirmed that he was in exactly the right place, even if it wasn’t a sane one. “Prove it,” she demanded.

Squalo was more than ready to prove it and he went easily when she hauled him down to a kiss, opening his mouth for her and resting his hands lightly, respectfully on her hips. He hissed, cock twitching, as she bit at his lower lip, and she was smiling when she drew back.

“Maybe.” She turned away, giving his tie a final jerk which he interpreted as a command to follow her back out into the halls. After they’d gotten a few odd looks, he tried to tone down his grin a bit. God knew Xanxus would probably shoot him if she turned around and saw it, and while that was pretty exhilarating in its own right he was hoping for something a little different tonight.

She led him into her room with every appearance of unconcern and threw the lock on the door firmly. He was about to get either laid or killed, possibly both, and as long as the second followed the first he wasn’t sure he’d care. This was Xanxus, after all, and he already knew he’d follow her till he died, most likely at her own hand all things considered.

She spun around and looked him up and down, hands on her hips. “Lose the clothes,” she ordered.

Squalo shrugged and stripped out of his coat and shirt, kicked off his shoes and pants, skinned out of his underthings. He spread his arms, smiling a bit mockingly. “And what now, Boss?”

Her eyes gleamed as she looked him up and down. “I guess it’ll do.” She set a hand on his chest and shoved him back onto the bed. Squalo stretched out and made himself comfortable, watching under his lashes as she undressed; Xanxus had zero respect for anyone who cowered.

Of course, she was also capable of shooting a person for insolence, but that just kept life interesting.

“And keep your hands to yourself,” she told him as she climbed onto the bed.

Okay, that was a bit disappointing. Nevertheless, Squalo murmured, “Whatever you say, Boss,” and reached over his head to wind his fingers into a pillow. Her smile gained an edge of approval. Her shoulders also relaxed, though he doubted anyone less dedicated to Xanxus-watching would have noticed it. On reflection, it didn’t surprise him; given her mother’s work, she must have had to fight men off before she came to the Vongola. Well, if that was the way this had to go, he didn’t actually have any objections.

In fact he nearly groaned out loud when she slid a hand down between her legs, fingers stroking slowly back and forth as she considered him. Wary or not, he should have known Xanxus wouldn’t be shy. “Fuck, Boss,” he breathed reverently, and yeah, that did it, and thank God he already knew how much she liked the way he always, always gave her her title.

She swung a leg over, straddling him, and reached down to wrap her hand around his cock, head tilted as she weighed it in her palm. With some effort, he kept himself from rocking up into her hand; this was her show and if he tried to run it he’d be dead without even a last ride to show for it.

He couldn’t keep himself from the shocked sound he made when she lifted up and guided his cock against her and pressed right down onto him, though. He wasn’t fucking surprised when she hissed and slowed almost immediately.

If Xanxus had ever fucked anyone before, he was pretty sure he’d have known about it by now.

Calculation flickered through his head, even as he trembled with the urge to push up into the tight, tight heat that was closed around the head of his cock. No one told Xanxus what to do, and she’d already made it clear his role here wasn’t to give suggestions. If she pushed herself now, though, who knew if they’d ever get to do this again? So… he’d just have to not-suggest and rely on her temperament to do the rest.

Actually, that would be pretty damn easy.

He let himself gasp, let himself shiver under her, hands fisting tight in the pillow. “Boss,” he said, tight and pleading, “oh fuck Boss…” He let his hips lift just a tiny bit before he made himself lie still again, and damn but that took willpower.

From the way Xanxus was smiling now, slow and dark, it showed.

“Hm.” She rocked up and just a tiny bit more down onto him and gasped out a laugh at the sound he made.

A little bit. And a little bit more. It was practically torture, and Squalo’s skin was slick with sweat from the effort of lying still under her as she worked herself down onto him slowly. He didn’t make any effort to hold back his gasps and whines, and by the time she was all the way down he was shaking and panting. Her eyes stayed fixed on him the whole time, nearly glowing.

And that was almost hotter than the grip of her body around his cock.

She planted her hands against his chest and rocked over him, slowly, not lifting up, just… moving. Grinding. That would probably have driven him crazy even if he wasn’t two thirds of the way there already.

“God, Boss, please,” he begged, and moaned when she rocked up and back down, fast. The edge of a purr in the sound she made nearly made him come right there and then.

She rode him slow and hard, and pleasure nailed every sense he had to the edge of bearable. The shift of her breasts as she moved, the flex of her thighs against his hips, the little sounds of pleasure low in her throat, the scent of her hanging heavier in the air until he could almost taste it as he panted, open mouthed, for breath—all of it grabbed him by the spine and fired his nerves until he was trembling on the edge.

“Please, Boss, please let me touch you,” he gasped, because the tiny portion of his brain that still worked told him he never wanted to leave this woman unsatisfied.

“Mmmm.” The huskiness in her voice made him shudder. “All right.”

Squalo freed one hand from its death grip on the pillow and swiped his tongue messily over his thumb before sliding it between her folds to rub over her clit. She arched over him with a hiss, nails biting into his chest, and he rubbed harder, panting, dizzy with the wild heat of her, the body knowledge that he belonged to her. She jerked against his hand, driving down onto him faster, and Squalo’s breath was hoarse and desperate in his throat when she groaned and her body tightened ferociously.

He finally broke and drove up into her helplessly, barely able to gasp as orgasm caught him and wrung him out like a rag over and over.

When the world stopped exploding behind his eyes he eased his hand away and let it fall back against the bed. He wanted a chance to do this again, after all, and if that meant obeying her without question in bed as well as out of it, well hell; that was a fucking bonus. “That about what you had in mind, Boss?” he gasped, looking up at her.

She bared her teeth. “Something like. I guess.” She was breathing hard, too, which he took some satisfaction in, though he wasn’t surprised at all when she hauled herself off him and sprawled back on her pillows, planting a foot on his hip and shoving him aside. He resettled himself out of arm’s reach to catch his breath.

“Well, then. Any time you want, Boss.” He glanced over at her, catching her eye and added, lower, “Anything you say.”

The satisfaction that flashed over her face and the faint curve that her mouth settled into nearly made him feel ready for another round. Later, he decided, crawling out of bed to go hunt for a towel. Later, when she decided she wanted his service again. The thought coiled, hot, at the base of his spine.

The law of the Vongola. The loser served the winner. He’d meant that with all his body and soul when he’d said it, and being able to follow the scorching flame that was Xanxus’ will was all the reason he’d ever needed.

End

Between One Moment and the Next

“My hand is at your heart.”

The fingers resting so casually on his chest froze him for half a breath, and maybe that was what made the difference. When his muscles unlocked and he slashed at Aizen, sure and fast as he was Aizen didn’t even dodge this time. His hand caught Ichigo’s wrist and held it easily over his head. The world blurred and Ichigo’s back slammed into a wall, and those fingers on his breastbone held him there. The world sharpened around him as he struggled against them, breath coming faster.

“Don’t be foolish,” Aizen murmured, and Ichigo stiffened as Aizen’s leg slid between his thighs and pressed up.

Ichigo choked on a curse, eyes wide at the twist of heat low in his stomach.

Aizen smiled faintly. “Don’t worry; the others don’t see us. Not for the moment.” His hand lifted from Ichigo’s chest to catch his jaw instead and he completed Ichigo’s shock by kissing him, deep and intent.

Confusion spun through his mind, but when Aizen’s hand slid slowly, firmly, down his throat, only one response sang through Ichigo’s body; his hips jerked helplessly against Aizen’s thigh.

“You see,” Aizen murmured against his mouth, “you need this.” He took Ichigo’s other wrist and pulled it up to join his sword hand, pinning them both against the wall over his head. “You fear your own power.” Long fingers tugged loose Ichigo’s hakama and slid under to wrap around his cock. Aizen’s eyes held his like chain wrapped around his will.

“You need to feel a greater power control yours.”

The weight of that power was locked around him, hard and hot as Aizen’s fist around his cock, and Ichigo bucked into them both and moaned with dark, tempting pleasure when he couldn’t break either grip.

“I’ll let you feel it,” Aizen told him, cool and even as he held Ichigo easily against the wall and jerked him off hard and slow. “And then we will fight. Feel free to use every iota of your power. I will subdue it.” Pleasure pulled at Ichigo’s nerves, answering Aizen’s perfect assurance, his promise. Aizen leaned in closer and finished, softly, “And then, only then, I will bring you back to this wall and turn you around and let you feel the rest. Look forward to it.”

He caught the low, harsh sound Ichigo made under his mouth, pinning Ichigo firmly in place as he shuddered with orgasm. When Ichigo hung limp in his grasp he drew back a bit and smiled. “Tie your hakama again before I break the illusion.” And he was standing back where they’d started.

Ichigo pressed back against the roughness of the wall and stared at the sky and tried not to think about what had just happened.

Or why he had let it.

End

Tools of Persuasion

Dino moaned a little, low in his throat, as Kyouya pushed his knees wider against the cool, rumpled sheets. Tonight promised to be something special.

He was used to Kyouya tying him up, of course. His tie, Kyouya’s tie, a handy belt, they all brought the same glint to Kyouya’s eye and Dino quite enjoyed the results of that glint. Tonight, though, after Kyouya stripped off their clothes with as much disregard for lost buttons as ever, he had turned Dino face down and tied his hands to the top of his bed with his own whip. With the pillows shoved under his hips and Kyouya’s knees holding his spread wide he could barely move. And Kyouya was taking his time, now, hands kneading Dino’s ass, spreading his cheeks wide, one thumb rubbing hard and slow against his entrance.

Kyouya only took his time about anything when he was savoring some particularly telling move.

“Mm, Kyouya…” Dino gasped and jerked as two long fingers pushed deep into him, slick and swift. And he was very glad Kyouya had taken the time to pad where the leather of the whip crossed his wrists, even if Dino was pretty sure he’d used Dino’s own shirt to do it, because he couldn’t help tugging as Kyouya’s fingers worked him open until they were plunging in and out of his ass quick and hard. Dino tried to push his ass up higher, to get more, but Kyouya had him too strategically pinned, and just laughed

That was Kyouya all over. Dino did love the evil little bastard.

He made a protesting sound, though, when Kyouya’s fingers slowed and slid free; he really hoped Kyouya wasn’t going to tease him tonight.

“What?” Kyouya purred, and the wicked lilt to his voice made Dino shiver. “Don’t you want this?”

The cool hardness of metal slid between Dino’s cheeks, a long shaft of it, and Dino’s eyes widened. “Kyouya…! Are you serious?” That couldn’t really be…

Kyouya made a thoughtful sound as the metal slid back and forth and back until a rounded end teased against Dino’s entrance. “I don’t generally like the round tonfa shape, but I suppose they do have their uses in,” he paused delicately and nudged the end just barely into Dino’s ass, “special circumstances.”

Dino moaned helplessly, pulled taut between the whip and the tonfa, and again, louder, as Kyouya slid that smooth, heavy shaft deeper into him. “Oh… oh fuck, Kyouya…”

“Indeed,” Kyouya murmured. He pulled the tonfa back and pushed it in again until his knuckles around the handle pressed against Dino’s ass. And again. And again. And Dino was gasping, moaning wordlessly with each thrust, because he could see it in his mind’s eye, the faint smile that must be on Kyouya’s face as he knelt behind Dino and drove the tonfa into Dino’s ass just like he drove it into Dino’s stomach when they fought, fucking Dino relentlessly on his weapon. The hardness of the steel and the way Kyouya’s fist pushed Dino’s cheeks apart on every stroke pulled whimpers out of his throat and he spread his knees even wider, begging for more.

“Mmm.” Yes, there was that smile in Kyouya’s voice. “You look good like this. Maybe,” he leaned down to purr in Dino’s ear, “maybe next time we fight I should do this just as soon as I win.”

Heat shuddered down Dino’s spine at the thought, and burst between his legs, and he groaned into the sheets as orgasm ripped through him and wrung him out around the steel shaft Kyouya drove deeper into his ass, fucking Dino short and hard until he sagged against the pillows and his bonds, panting.

“Holy fuck,” Dino managed eventually.

“I’m flattered,” Kyouya murmured and nipped at his ear.

“Almost enough to make a man lose on purpose,” Dino said, laughing a little. He yelped as Kyouya bit down harder.

“Don’t even think it,” he growled.

“I said almost.” Dino wriggled a little. “So, um. Think you can untie me, now?”

Kyouya didn’t growl any more, and reached up to untie the whip, and Dino thought he’d gotten off lightly for the on-purpose crack. Until, that is, Kyouya pulled his hands together at the small of his back and held them there. “Now that you’re warmed up,” and, yes, the growl was still in his voice, hotter and lower, “I’m sure you can take something more… serious.”

Dino grinned into the sheets for a moment before the hard stretch of Kyouya’s cock pushing right into his ass made him moan again.

Sometimes he loved being the only one who really knew how to handle Kyouya.

End

Bonus AU ending:

“Almost enough to make a man lose on purpose,” Dino said, laughing a little.

He yelped as Kyouya swatted him on the ass.

“Don’t even think it,” Kyouya growled.

“I said almost.” Dino added, in a thoughtful tone, “It is awfully tempting sometimes, though…”

Kyouya’s growl turned lower and hotter, and Dino grinned into the sheets for a moment before Kyouya’s hand came down again and the quick sting across his ass made him moan. This time Kyouya wasn’t stopping either, which, he had to admit, had kind of been the idea. Hot as it was to be tied up and fucked after he lost a round, it was sometimes even hotter to be tied up and spanked. By the head of the disciplinary committee, no less. Once he’d even convinced Kyouya to take him to the Namimori prefect’s room and spank him on the couch there for old time’s sake, bent over Kyouya’s knees behind the locked door.

Dino had come to terms years ago with being kinky when it came to Kyouya.

He arched his back a little as Kyouya’s hand smacked down sharply, again and again, pushing his ass up higher to take it. It made Kyouya purr with satisfaction, and his spanking turned slower, harder, more deliberate, making Dino’s whole ass heat and throb. He knew it was probably turning pink under Kyouya’s hand—Kyouya liked to see that and Dino liked feeling his ass burn for a while after.

The last smack was hard enough to make him grunt, bucking under it, and then he had to moan, shuddering, as Kyouya’s hand slid down his ass and between his legs, palming his cock.

“Now that you’re warmed up,” Kyouya murmured, other hand rubbing slickly between his hot cheeks, “I think it’s time we did this for real.”

Dino sucked in a breath and gasped as Kyouya’s cock pushed into him, so thick and hard it stole his voice.

Sometimes he loved being the only one who really knew how to handle Kyouya.

End

Sugar and Spice

Squalo detested parties and everything they stood for: crowds of politely smiling people standing around, pasting thin veneers of civility over longstanding feuds and plotting to stab each other in the back, and only attended them under duress. Nevertheless, it was at a party that his life changed forever.

He couldn’t remember, after, what the occasion had been, but his attendance as the head of the Varia had been mandatory. So Squalo drifted through the crowds of people with a sneer fixed on his face, staying aloof of the double-dealing and politicking and counting down the minutes till he could escape and wondering whether he should have killed Tyr after all, if this was to be the legacy he’d inherited, until a commotion had erupted on the fringe of the crowd.

Squalo’s first real look at the Ninth’s adopted daughter was of her standing over Vittore Barassi with a clenched fist and a thunderous glare. Vittore himself was on the ground, clutching a bloody nose and damn near howling. The howl changed to a squeal when Xanxus drew a foot back and kicked him in the balls. As every man in the room cringed, she spat on Vittore, though the gesture almost seemed to be an afterthought, and said, “Touch me again and I’ll rip it off.”

That was the kind of thing that would be an empty threat in the mouths of most women; as Xanxus turned on her heel and sailed out of the room, Squalo couldn’t help but be sure that she’d meant every word of it.

Squalo remembered to breathe again as the Ninth came forward with apologies for his daughter’s behavior, profuse as they were insincere, and the buzz of conversation resumed. He’d heard that the boss’s daughter was a real spitfire, but that didn’t begin to do justice to Xanxus.

He passed the remainder of the party in a thoughtful kind of a daze.

 

 

It didn’t take too much time spent hanging around the main house to figure out that Xanxus was as proud as Lucifer and had a hair trigger temper to boot, and was probably more than a little bit crazy. She was spoiled rotten, too, probably because it was easier to just give her what she wanted than to argue with her.

It was just as clear that marriageable age or not, Xanxus wasn’t going to stand for being traded off to some mafioso whelp in order to cement an alliance or a trade deal. Not that Squalo thought that the Vongola’s old man was that stupid, of course, but it sure seemed like plenty of other Families were. On the other hand, the Ninth did seem to be at a loss for what, precisely, he was supposed to do with his daughter.

She should have been a son, Squalo thought privately, after a handful of weeks of watching her skulk around the main house, snarling at her brothers and terrorizing everyone who crossed her path. She was bold and dark and astonishingly real in comparison to her adopted brothers, and she would have made an incredible Tenth. Squalo could imagine what it would be to follow a will like hers, dense enough to bend reality around it, and the thought made him shiver sometimes as he watched Xanxus.

Fascinating as she was, though, Squalo didn’t actually fall in love till the day that she turned on him, wheeling on him even faster than he’d suspected she could move, and slammed him against the nearest wall with a gun under his chin. She fixed him with a burning stare, and demanded, “What the hell do you want, you fucking stalker?”

The swiftness of it shocked Squalo; no one was supposed to be good enough to get the drop on him like that, not even the Ninth’s daughter. It startled him into honesty. “You,” he said.

Xanxus sneered at him. “The fuck makes you think you’re good enough?”

“What makes you think I’m not?” Squalo retorted, letting the steel slide down out of its sheath under his sleeve as he hooked a foot around her ankle and swept her feet out from under her. He dodged the blast of Flame that would have taken his head off as she went down, and brought the blade up, aiming for her throat.

Xanxus caught the sweep of it on the barrel of her gun as her eyes caught fire, and she actually laughed as she came rolling to her feet and closed with him.

Squalo was dimly aware that he’d lost his damn mind somewhere along the line, since one did not pick fights in the hallways of the main house like it was the Varia’s headquarters, and one especially did not pick fights with the boss’s daughter. He couldn’t really care, not when it was taking all his considerable skills to keep up with her. Xanxus fought like a demon, using dirty tricks that nice mafia girls weren’t supposed to even know existed, and didn’t seem to care when his sword caught her arm and laid it open, since that gave her an opening to press. She was magnificent, and Squalo couldn’t even make himself mind when his boot caught on a rug and he went down.

Xanxus pounced, landing on his chest and pinning his wrist under a knee as she planted the muzzle of her gun right between Squalo’s eyes. The half-crazy glitter in her eyes said she was going to pull the trigger, and Squalo exhaled, because fucked if this wasn’t the perfect way to go, better than anything he’d dared to hope for previously.

The Ninth’s voice came cracking into their little tableau like ice snapping in the winter. “What is the meaning of this?”

Xanxus didn’t look away from Squalo. “He annoyed me.”

“Then he should apologize,” the Ninth said. “There’s no call for open warfare in the corridors.”

“I don’t want an apology,” Xanxus retorted. Her finger was hovering over the trigger still. “Blood’s better.”

“You’ll have to make do with one,” the Ninth told her, exasperation dripping from every word. The floor vibrated under Squalo’s shoulders as he approached them. His face appeared over Xanxus’ shoulders; Squalo suspected him of being torn between irritation and entertainment. “You may not kill the head of the Varia, no matter how much he’s irritated you.”

Something went sharp in Xanxus’ eyes. “What’s the Varia?”

So the Ninth hadn’t told her, even though his sons knew. Squalo wondered why he was surprised, for a moment, and then cast it aside with a mental shrug. Wasn’t like that was important just now, not when there was something bigger and better demanding his attention. “Not mine any more,” he said, and lifted his free hand to fumble at his throat, pulling the insignia pinned there free of his collar. Xanxus let him do it, and took it from his fingers when he offered it to her. She eyed it curiously, muzzle never wavering from its spot between his eyes.

The Ninth protested, of course. “You can’t be serious.”

Squalo smirked at him. “Law of the Vongola,” he said, and returned his eyes to Xanxus, who was examining the insignia. “Law of the Varia, too. Loser serves the winner.”

“Yes, that’s very true,” the Ninth said, “but Xanxus isn’t going to take over the Varia—”

It was the wrong thing to say, or maybe the right one. Xanxus’ eyes flashed. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she said, and her fingers curled around the little pin. She rocked back on her heels and stood in one easy movement, and kicked Squalo in the side. “Take me to the Varia,” she ordered. “Show me what they are.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Squalo gasped, and pushed himself up off the floor.

Xanxus smiled at that, like she liked the sound of it, and after that, not a thing the Ninth said or did could budge her.

– end –

Six Pomegranate Seeds

Yue felt with his other self. He felt the warmth and satisfaction Yukito felt at lying snugly in Touya’s arms, felt the bright bubble of Yukito’s amusement as Touya tried to reach the lamp without letting go, even almost felt the soft pressure of Touya’s mouth against his.

But only almost, because feeling that warmth himself had sent him sinking down again, frightened by his own response, letting Yukito, who had practice with this and no loss weighing his memory, be the one to answer.

Even the echo of Touya’s weight and warmth settling over them made him gasp, and Yukito’s soft laugh was at him this time. His other self didn’t see why they both shouldn’t have what they wanted. He conveyed, at every opportunity, the idea that Yue obviously wanted to be with Touya.

He did. Oh, he did. But the fear wouldn’t leave him, not even with Touya’s promise. If Yue had to admit what he wanted, finally, he wanted to be with Touya, not just his ghost! If only Touya weren’t mortal. If only Yue weren’t immortal. If only he could cling to Touya’s warmth wherever it went, even out of this world. If only Yue had Clow’s power to change what he was. He closed immaterial eyes and sighed, retreating a little further from the sweetness of Touya’s hands against Yukito’s skin.

"…last night before we stay over with family," Touya’s words drifted down to him like snow, low and amused and suggestive, the way he could hear them himself if only…

"Were you thinking that should make a difference?" Yukito asked, mischief nearly sparkling.

"We’ll be in Eriol’s house, Yuki! Ruby Moon would probably try to watch!"

Yue frowned into nothingness at the thought. Ruby Moon had no right. Eriol should see to the manners of his current creations, even if, Yue had to privately admit, he had no history of doing so as Clow.

As Clow…

Yue’s eyes widened on interior darkness as Yukito’s closed on the lamp’s glow above and his lips curved under Touya’s.

Family gatherings were always pretty lively. With three magicians, four magic creatures and a ghost, Touya supposed they couldn’t be anything else, and he was pretty used to it by now.

"Kero-chan! Wait until you’re out of the car to change!" Sakura glared at the full-sized creature stuck half in and half out of their car.

"But I smell pudding!" Keroberos protested, rustling his stuck wings and flailing his paws.

Yuki had a hand over his mouth to stifle his laughing at the sight of Sakura pulling on her idiot sun-tiger’s paws while her husband pushed from inside the car. Touya didn’t take the time out to laugh. He had to admit, it was funny, but any minute now…

"Ah! And you brought snacks for me, too!" Ruby Moon bounced down the front steps and latched on to Touya’s arm. He rolled his eyes. Ruby never got tired of that joke.

A large, white wing cut abruptly between them.

Touya backed up until he no longer had a faceful of shining feathers, spitting out a stray curl of fluff. Sure enough, Yue was standing beside him now, glaring icy death at Ruby Moon.

Ruby pouted. "You’re so stingy, Yue. He has magic again, now; don’t you know it’s nice to share?"

Yue’s palm started to glow with ice crystals and Touya sighed. This was why Ruby never got tired of the joke, he was sure. He slipped around the wing still extended in front of him and laid a hand, gently, on Yue’s wrist. When Yue relaxed a hair, and Touya was sure there wasn’t going to be any immediate destruction, he shook his head at Ruby Moon. "Since you have someone to feed you a lot more then enough, isn’t it greedy to ask for snacks from other people?"

Ruby laughed. "Oh all right."

Yue glowered some more as Ruby skipped back up the stairs to lean on Eriol’s shoulder; Keroberos finally emerged from the car with a muffled squawk from Sakura, who he landed on; and their mother appeared, perched on a gate post, waving as their father’s car pulled up. Touya snorted a helpless laugh.

Just another family party.

Lunch was finished, Yuki had helped Keroberos decimate dessert, Sakura was whispering in a corner with Kaho while Li looked uncomfortable, and Yue was walking off down one of the mansion’s corridors with Eriol. Most of these things were not cause for alarm, but Touya had gotten increasingly edgy about just how much of Clow Eriol still was, and exactly what had happened between Clow and Yue.

Touya slipped after them.

It wasn’t that he intended to eavesdrop or anything like that. It was just that Yue always seemed to be ruffled after he talked with Eriol, and this time Touya wanted to know why. Yue wasn’t easy to soothe under the best of circumstances, and when he was ruffled he withdrew all over again, Yuki was uncomfortable, and Sakura worried. Touya watched as Eriol ushered Yue into one of the sitting rooms and settled against the wall, in the shadows across from the open door.

"What was it you wished to discuss?" Eriol asked, settling onto a small, brocaded couch by the long windows, in clear view of the door. Touya had his suspicions right then, but stayed still and quiet. Just in case Eriol didn’t know he was there.

Yue didn’t settle. He actually paced a few turns through the room. "I don’t want to go on," he said, low voice huskier than usual.

Eriol’s eyes narrowed for a moment. "Go on?"

Yue folded his arms tightly. "When Clow died, I went on. I didn’t know how to do anything else. But things that live don’t go on forever." He gave Eriol a brief, silver glare. "Clow didn’t." After a silent moment he continued. "I don’t want to go on again. I don’t want to sleep and be cold and wait, and know I have to lose again." He turned to face Eriol full on, wings flaring out. "When Touya leaves this life… tell me how to follow him."

Touya had to grip the wall to stay standing. He’d known that the time before Sakura had been bad, but this…! It took him a moment to recognize the amusement in Eriol’s raised brows, and then he had to stifle a furious growl.

"Even after years of practice, it’s still strange to be surprised." Eriol smiled and leaned back in the cushions. "I was going to speak to you about this today, to warn you." Dark eyes were kind, in a distant sort of way. "Unless you put a good deal of effort into stopping it, you’re going to pass away when Touya does, already."

Yue looked as stunned as Touya felt. "I am?"

Eriol shrugged. "You accepted the gift of his magic, to support you, years ago, until your Master could do so. To be honest, I had expected him to recover more of it by now. I believe the reason he hasn’t is that you are still bound to his magic for your life, rather than taking it from Sakura-san, even now that she’s grown strong enough."

"But…" Yue stammered, "he is recovering now. I thought… "

"He is," Eriol agreed gently. "But too slowly. He should have regained more of his strength by now. Unless he were still giving it to you."

"Oh." Yue was quiet for a moment. When he spoke his voice was steady. "So I will go with him?"

"Yes."

Yue nodded. "Thank you for telling me." Wings flashed in the glass doors to the garden, and he was gone.

After a moment, Eriol added to the air. "I meant to talk to you about it, too, of course. It still amazes me, sometimes, how things work out."

Touya finally shook himself and pushed away from the wall. "Without interference, you mean?" he asked as he crossed the room to the wide garden doors. The jibe was absent, though. He was thinking about Yue, not Eriol, or even Clow.

He found Yue out by a clump of birch trees, looking up at the moon. Yue’s arms were loose at his sides and he was smiling. Not the quick, furtive smile that came when he had been surprised by some good thought or happening, but the clear, steady smile of someone who was happy. The contrast made Touya’s chest tight. "Yue."

Yue turned and Touya didn’t think it was only the moonlight that made his eyes bright. "Touya." For once, Yue’s voice was not merely low, but soft. Touya was stunned wordless by the fact that the promise of being able to stay with him could make Yue so happy, so at ease. It was finally crystal clear to him what Yue’s reserve really meant. It had been unspeakable fear of being happy only to lose it all. He crossed the clearing in two quick strides and gathered Yue close.

He didn’t often touch Yue without some invitation; Yue’s usual coolness didn’t make it easy, and his flusterment at other times made Touya go slowly. But seeing that cool eased, seeing what Yue could be, should be, made Touya…

Well, it made him blazingly mad at Clow Reed, for one thing.

"I didn’t realize how bad it was," he said quietly. "I’m sorry."

Yue’s hands closed on his upper arms and he leaned back far enough to blink at Touya. "You didn’t… Oh." Bright eyes slid aside. "You… heard?"

"Yeah."

Yue looked at him levelly, some of his usual reserve folding back around him. "Do you mind? That your magic won’t completely recover?"

Touya snorted. "Of course I don’t mind. I can see Kaa-san again, what else would I need it for?" He laid a hand lightly on Yue’s back between his wings. "I… would rather you could be happy living on. But if you can’t be," he shrugged and smiled, "living my life with you is what I want to do. Doing the next bit together will be good too."

Yue tucked his chin down a bit, smile sneaking back. Touya brushed his thumb over the unaccustomed curve of Yue’s lips, and felt a little rush of warmth that Yue let him without flinching. "Tell you what," he said, a little teasing, "why don’t we go back in. And we can tell Ruby Moon that I’m yours for good and there’s no snacking allowed, ever."

A gleam lit Yue’s eye. "Hm."

Yeah, Touya had thought that idea would appeal to Yue. "Come on."

He left his hand resting on Yue’s back as they turned toward the lighted windows, and Yue’s feathers brushed delicately over it.

Yue could feel Yukito with him, feel Yukito’s unrestrained approval of how good it felt to rest in the circle of Touya’s arm as he leaned back against the window, and had to stifle a perfectly silly urge to blush.

Though perhaps it got away from him just a little when Touya, who seemed to have all his attention on the game of cards his sister was playing with Kaho, Spinel and Keroberos, eased him gently closer. If anyone asked, Yue was fairly sure Touya would explain he was only doing it for the sake of putting a permanent stop to Ruby Moon’s jokes. Sometimes he thought Touya had spent too much time with his other self, to learn that kind of innocent excuse making.

Still, it did feel very good. And if Keroberos cocked a knowing and affectionate ear at him more often than usual, and Sakura smiled like sunrise whenever she looked at him, and Eriol looked amused by the whole thing… well, perhaps that was all right. Perhaps it was all right to feel this happiness, to cherish it even.

This time, it would not be taken from him.

End

A Better Trap

Sebastian was a demon who appreciated artistry, and that was why he liked his current master so much. To be sure, Ciel’s early efforts had been a bit rough. It had taken a year or two before Ciel realized that simple physical feats wouldn’t trouble Sebastian and turned his ingenuity to devising more subtle traps and conundrums.

They were both careful not to overplay their game. These tests and traps should be unpredictable, and Ciel scattered them through the years they’d been together with a charmingly random hand. Every now and then, he dropped one in Sebastian’s way and Sebastian smiled sleekly under the weight of his master’s eyes as he unraveled it.

Or, sometimes, rarely, did not. Those were the best.

He was never eager for them; that would be gauche. He was simply watchful. Which was why his senses tingled this morning as he laid out Ciel’s tea. There was a certain promising thoughtfulness in Ciel’s glance that gave him hopes.

"Wait," Ciel told him, as he tucked the tray under his arm and turned to go.

"Yes?" Sebastian turned back, attentive, the perfect servant as always.

Perhaps the show frayed just a fraction as Ciel rose from his chair and strolled to Sebastian’s side, lips curved faintly. But only a fraction.

Ciel leaned forward and murmured in his ear. "This is an order. Until I tell you you can stop… resist my orders."

Sebastian’s eyes widened.

Ciel stepped back, watching him with measuring eyes as the binding of their contract tightened. A spell had no mind; it didn’t care whether an order was possible or not. It merely followed its logic, and that logic compelled him to obey the master he was bound to. To obey by resisting, to resist by not resisting, but not to resist was to disobey.

The bindings tightened gradually, a little further for each breath that took no action to fulfill the order he’d been given, until the razor heat of the spell cutting into his very essence made him sway on his feet.

It felt so sweet.

To be caught by the sharpness of his master’s mind, for him to be caught like this! To be compelled and required to obey the will of another was pleasure enough, especially with their endless games of command and insolence to give it spice. To be this utterly helpless, for all his power, in the grip of mortal will and desire, was pure delight. Yes, this trap was very sweet indeed.

The binding tightened, relentless, until he couldn’t move, could only gasp for breath, until his knees gave way and he sank down to the carpet at Ciel’s feet. The thrill of feeling that force across every particle of him built and built as Ciel only watched without making any move to release him, climbing towards the crest.

Just before he lost himself in it, Ciel smiled, slow and sharp. "Enough. You can stop."

The pressure vanished, leaving him hanging, and the glint in Ciel’s eyes, the cruel perfection of his timing, struck through Sebastian like lightning. The beauty of his master’s ruthlessness seared into him like the fire of his own realm, completed him, left even him wrung out and trembling.

"Yes," he had to take a second breath to complete it, "my Lord."

"You may go," Ciel told him coolly, and seated himself back at his desk, picking up a letter off today’s correspondence.

Sebastian drew himself up and bowed quite correctly. A smile of secret delight curved his lips as he closed the door behind him.

He had chosen very well indeed, this time.

End

A Good Show

Sebastian stood in front of his mirror and adjusted his cuffs minutely. Aesthetics were important. He was currently a butler, and a proper butler was always perfectly turned out.

The tick of his pocketwatch marked the minute and he strode briskly down the hall to wake his master.

He amused himself with his own flowing patter about breakfast and tea; really, it was no surprise the British of this generation were dabbling about calling his kind; they had a natural, or perhaps national, talent for ritual. He slid on Ciel’s shoes, stifling a snort at the childish way Ciel rubbed the sleep from his eyes. How many among the English underground, he wondered, would be afraid of Earl Phantomhive if they saw him yawning around his fist in the mornings?

Fortunately, the child did not have ascendancy in his latest master.

"And, of course, Lord Randal will be here this afternoon to speak with you about the smuggling through Kent." he finished.

Ciel stood and Sebastian’s eyes widened, drinking in the change as the light of Ciel’s soul flared and focused, hard as sapphire.

"Yes." All trace of petulant laziness was gone from Ciel’s voice and his eyes were sharp and bright above a faint smile. "We must receive him properly." That smile gained a malicious curve for one breath. "See to it."

Sebastian’s mouth curled in answer and he bowed deeply before Ciel’s bared edge. "Yes, my lord," he murmured, not to the order, which was a given in any case, but to acknowledge the appearance of a master worthy of his contract.

Aesthetics were very important.

End