logs | d | a december catchall (open & closed)

（ shinobi instincts are a helluva drug, and she's been running on bruised hypervigilance for days. it takes all her not-inconsiderable restraint not to shunshin away from him when he gets in close near her neck, but her heartrate ticks up just a little all the same. what do scarves and garrottes have in common? too damn much this morning, apparently.

at least he gives her something else to focus on, and as she lifts her fingers to curl in the warm fabric — ）

Eddie. Yes. He's returned. He, um, got lost? I think.

（ not touching on the other part just yet. ）

[Sakura is extremely valid in her defensive response, even though a silly, striped scarf is all that D leaves her with. It is warm, though. And thankfully doesn't smell like much except all the ridiculous leather he wears.

Without trying to drag her along, allowing her the space to follow of her own will, he turns and leads the way.]

I think your friend might be alright then. [It isn't said with complete surety, but with an optimistic kind of reassurance.] I'll help you look for them.

[As if to tell her that, despite this "sure, they're probably okay," he won't dismiss the idea they should keep an eye out.]

When was the last time you have spoken or seen them?

I appreciate the reassurance.

（ it's said flatly, an obligatory sentiment rather than a genuinely heartfelt one. she's trying to control the way fury just crawled along all the tenketsu in her body like the race of a fire along dry brush. ）

But this is a friend I grew up with. I can sense his energy in my world, and up to a few days ago here. It may be that he's gone.

（ at this point, it would almost be the best-case scenario. her memory of her time in the forges is not a pleasant one, but naruto is far too powerful to get captured like that.

isn't he?

(but then, she would have said the same of sasuke, and the jail disproved that theory neatly.) ）

[It doesn't seem to bother him. He understands. She's frayed thin, and it's difficult not to think the worst in any situation in this place.]

Naruto?

[He doesn't know Sasuke and Sakura have history still, but he does remember Naruto unintentionally mentioning being a shinobi specifically. And Sakura had told him about herself. It's an educated guess that he had politely never done anything with before.]

I do not think a young man like him would simply be gone so easily. [Naruto just had that Energy about him.] I know you must believe in him as well. That he's here somewhere even though you cannot feel him. Steve said the same, and Eddie returned.

It's not the same thing.

（ it's the first time, perhaps, that her tone has had an edge to it, sharp as spun glass. one hand is clutched in the scarf, the other is gripping so tightly at the strap of her medical bag that her knuckles have gone bloodless in her black gloves. ）

Steve didn't know whether he could feel Eddie or not. （ she read that post, because she's Like That. ） It's not about believing in him. It's — I'm sorry, can we talk about something else?

（ or she is well and truly going to lose it. ）

[Rather than talk about something else, D ends up not saying anything at all. He continues walking ahead, but doesn’t look back at her and doesn’t say anything more. She might find it irritating, or she might believe he could be angry; it’s neither. Only an opportunity to give her space.

The doors rise to greet them and then fall away as he passes through, pulled by a single invisible thread toward the one fashioned for him. One of these doors belongs to him.

It towers a bit over the others in the area: double doors with an alabaster marble frame carved into intricate, elegant Gothic designs, steepled into a gentle arrowhead shape; the wooden doors are varnished dark, almost black, and threaded through from the outside hinges to the middle seam with sturdy, decorative iron; the backing of the door handles are equally elegant while the handles themselves are loose, curved rings.

Beautiful beyond imagine, structured and flawless… but too perfect, too cold somehow in its lack of imperfection. A door so gorgeous and so unnerving.

He comes to a stop in front of it, and then he turns to glance finally at her.]

（ as it happens, the silence is exactly what she needs. it allows her to sort herself back to center, to anchor herself to other thoughts that are less directly dire. the hush between them is comfortable rather than fraught — and she finds herself sinking into it in much the same way she's tucked her chin down into the warmth of the scarf. her shadow feels like a livewire, flickering like the hot, bleak pulse of electric chakra, and it's the lull in conversation that settles it.

but it means she isn't minding where they're going, or paying much attention to their surroundings at all. it's poor form, for a shinobi, but the part of her that's come to associate d's presence with safety can't be bothered to care.

by the time they come to a halt outside the strange, foreboding door, she's an extra half-step forward before she realizes he's stopped, and her inattentiveness brings her well within arm's length of it. she blinks, taking it in, craning her head a little to see all the way to its top. the dark stain of the wood and the marble's alabaster sheen are starkly at odds in a way that seems metaphoric to his own presentation, cold beauty offset by the warmth of woodgrain.

she reaches out, nearly mesmerized, the pads of her fingers cresting along the whorl of an elegant plane that no human hand carved into relief.

mercifully, perhaps, her shadow is silent. ）

A little imposing, isn't it?

（ is her verdict, finally. she sounds more like herself, at least, the ire extinguished. ）

Could use a hat.

[She sounds a bit more like herself, and he is thankful. But he won’t forget it’s hiding the hurt and the worry.]

Perhaps a pink feather.

[He reaches out to loop a few of his fingers into the iron ring of a door handle and pulls outward. The door opens with a gentle grating, and he waits to the side so she can enter the swallowing darkness first.

What he closes behind them is now a single, old wooden door with a turning knob. The interior doesn’t look anything like the door which greeted them on the outside. Instead, all that exists is a small and modest room, a place with the air of no permanence. Sparse, something befitting a nomad’s life. It’s easy to tell what is a tether and what isn’t.

The large portrait over the desk demands attention first with how it takes up space. The man painted on the canvas feels alive. There is something very divine in the energy of his gaze; he has become more than a simple being and may even be a god. He casts a clinical judgement on Sakura from above, and the interest is chilly and calculating. The long, dark hair, the curve of his burning eyes; they are very familiar.

On the desk is a single addition: a small, wooden box with a hinged lid, closed.

Reaching up, D removes his hat, but doesn’t move any farther inside the room from his place near the door.]

（ it pulls a very faint smile out of her. such a simple thing. it's nice to be listened to, to be remembered. she's definitely getting him a feather, when she's not standing awkwardly in his soul room taking everything in like a child at a shrine. the air tastes... unbreathed, almost, old, as if this room has been shut away for a very long time with only the encroaching torture of the ages for company. she half expects to leave footprints in dust on the floor as she steps forward lightly, save that there is no such detritus.

of course — the portrait is situated in such a way that it can hardly be ignored. it almost swallows the room for how it draws the eye in, and she studies it with her mouth turned faintly down at one corner. instinct and intellect are in agreement — this feels like the man he's hunting. no other title could suit this man but king. d had said he existed before time, and she can almost feel it, the weight of that history. the cruelty, and the cost.

the similarities aren't lost on her, either. there's a lot to be said for genetic phenotypes, but — she can't imagine d wearing this same cold expression, though. even at his most remote, there is something so achingly gentle in him that could never be replicated here.

if the portrait's gaze has a weight, it does not bow her. neither divinity nor immortality mean much to her these days, she simply tilts her chin upward to observe the picture back, and then turns away. her body does not quite obey her as she'd intended it to — there's a force at work, something beyond physics. the obstruction almost feels physical, less chains and more like the gravity of the room has increased on her until only strength keeps her standing, but once she's done it, the moment is broken. she exhales, slow and even. and now that she's facing d, she gives him a faint look, eyebrows raised. he was testing her, wasn't he? ）

He seems friendly.

（ it sounds braver than she feels. but it's more than a little glib, and her fingers have curled in against her palm. funny, how making a fist can be a comfort.

what can she say? she'd punch that asshole too. ）

[There is another kind of weight D feels which isn’t the beautiful man’s gaze Sakura doesn’t bend under. The only other person he has had in this little room is Set, and he felt it then too.

The feeling of someone’s whole being inside of him, in his chest, not unlike holding a baoding ball. She sits distantly at the edge of him, taking up some sort of intangible space.]

The way he makes you feel, [he says after a moment,] is the way you will still feel once we are connected.

[This was the warning, not entirely an attempt to scare her. A caution to the things she is going to notice when they’re bound together. A dark and powerful hidden energy, dominating, thirsty, but extremely alluring and sensual. Flirty, elegant.]

You may look around, [he adds quietly, like he thinks she is waiting for his permission for some reason.] When you’re ready, you may touch whatever you like.

…There is something else.

[And then he doesn’t answer for a moment, as if hesitating.]

You will hear another voice that isn’t my own.

（ always one more thing, huh? fleetingly, she thinks of naruto and kurama, and then that thought is shoved almost violently aside. she can't think of him right now. her shadow is already a strangling vine. she can't help him by letting herself be dragged beneath the ocean of grief and rage churning wine-dark around her now.

she reaches up, and begins to unwind that scarf from about her shoulders, neatly folding it, smoothing one hand against its finespun cloth. ）

What is it?

[It feels like Kurama is the better option here maybe. His lips thin ever so slightly.]

A parasite. It's called a Carbuncle. [Is this weird? It's weird. It's... fine. Why was this not what he lead with? Men are stupid.] It shares my left hand.

It's sentient, and it can speak.

[Sakura continues to know angsty, dark-coded men with weird (or lacking) left arms.]

（ you do not want to know the mental image you put in her head by calling it a carbuncle, wow, gross. she might have a strong tolerance for disgusting bodily functions but you never forget lancing your first boil and apropos of absolutely nothing, now she's just imagining a humungous talking abscess. d really knows how to talk to girls, huh.

her gaze darts to his hand, expression... mostly unreadable, but what is readable there is definitely... something that would have been an ew if she didn't have several years of doctoring behind her. subtle. but, you know.

weirdly, she will be less weirded out by the truth, because at least she's encountered something similarly in her own world (thanks, deidara) but for now? definitely the grosser option. ）

When you say 'shares'...

[Honestly… it is better she has this mental imagine, however brief, going into this specifically. Because it isn’t incorrect.

He stands there for a long stretch of time without moving or saying anything, and then he slowly raises his left hand, turning it over, palm up. While he has a full glove on the right, his left hand has only the sweep of a collar of clothing along the back near the wrist. The pale skin is open and bare to the world.

Then suddenly, without warning, the flesh begins to shift and twist. Out of the skin comes a putrid, cankered face—two eyes, a nose, a mouth with few teeth. Wrinkled, craggily. The voice that comes out of the mouth is croaking and old, but entirely more jovial than D’s own. It laughs—cackles even. Smiles wide, amused.]

Oh, she IS a looker! [it says.] Boy, you out-did yourself this time, D! Pleased to meet you, and don’t worry! The pleasure is all mine! Wow, not really ever used to getting introductions… Uh. Left Hand! No, no, Lefty. Would love to hear a good-looking woman like you call me Lefty!

[D truly does not say anything. Daddy might have been no big deal. But this thing? May change her mind.

Sorry to Sakura who does not deserve this.]

（ well. ）

（ that's

sure a thing.

sakura stares at the hand for a moment, just. completely blank. her expression and emotional response entirely on lockdown. finally, she opens her mouth like she's about to speak. closes it again.

she's certainly not the shallow child she was as a girl, so she's not going to shriek and/or immediately try to punch... it? — but this is like the worst parts of deidara and madara's creepy chest-face put together and given sentience and weirdly hitting on her and she needs a goddamn minute about it. processing... processing...

finally, her attention slides from the hand, to d, to the hand again. still about as expressive as a rock. ）

Um. （ #nailedit. ） 'Lefty'. Hi. It's nice to meet you.

[D really just left her to fend for herself with this monstrosity, but she is doing amazing.]

Bob...? [This absolutely sounds like a stage whisper to D even though she is standing right there.] Should I have said Bob? No, maybe Marvin? What's a sexy-sounding name? H... Hector! Is it the face? It's the face, isn't it?

She greeted you.

[It's the first thing D has said so far. The juxtaposition between the two of them is sure something--so long as the person gets over the fact there's a face on the palm of D's left hand.]

Right, right. Touchy... Don't mind me! Just a little, uh... mutual sharing with the big guy. Sakura, was it? Pleasure's all mine. What I wouldn't give to get my mouth--

Leave her alone. [There is a harder edge to his voice than usual. He squeezes his left hand into a fist, stifling the other voice.] ...Try not to pay him any mind.

（ it's lucky d stops the weird parasite when he does because sakura was definitely gearing up to give him a less-than-charitable piece of her mind when he closes his fingers over him like a vice. she just gives d a sort of... eyebrows up, 'what the fuck, sir' look, and then almost tiredly: ）

Is that the last surprise? Or do I need to find a chair?

（ aka: are they going to be doing this a while, or are they good. ）

[Left Hand would have deserved any piece of Sakura's mind she gave it really. But it annoys D just as much as it would annoy (and will...?) Sakura. His face doesn't change, but it seems like... he may be... equally as Tired.]

That's all.

[The rest are things she will simply have to experience, things tied to he vampire side of him unfortunately. At least she has no more weird nasty parasite surprises... And only has to deal with a picture of dear old Dad.]

Go ahead.

（ she looks back at the tethers, a museum snapshot of items that define a life. there's a story here, in this room that tastes so much of the dust in the air. but as stories go, it's melancholy and lonely — it cleaves to the soul like poetry for lonely hearts. her gaze lingers longest on the photograph, but at length she tears her gaze away. then she comes over to him, and takes him by the hand (singular) for now. her fingers tighten a little, meant as comfort. ）

Come see my room first. All this worry for me, and how I'll react to things, or if I can handle it. Don't you think you should see what you're getting into, too?

[D allows her to look at the room and the things inside for as long as she likes. He doesn't comment on anything, whether frustrating or mysterious. He doesn't explain the photograph of the young woman and the boy, the scroll, the horse, or the hologram of the woman with the familiar and kind eyes. He doesn't say anything about the wooden box.

Likewise, he lets her take his hand. He pauses long enough to look over her face briefly, thoughtful, and then he curls his fingers to return the handhold while lifting the hat back onto his head. The free hand opens the single, worn wood door behind, and he waits for her to go first.]

（ she walks through the door, but halfly backwards, turned so she's more-or-less facing him, her movements sure and certain despite the terrain. the lack of a verbal response is a little worrying to her — silence has been used as a weapon against her so often in her life it's hard not to take it as the bite of a blade at her throat. uncertainty and anxiety gnaw at her — was this the correct choice or not? once those forbidding doors have closed behind them, she pivots on her heel so they're side-by-each as they head towards her door. ）

I hope you aren't allergic to flowers. There's, um... let's just say there's a few.

（ look,,, ）

[For what it’s worth, he doesn’t look mad, or displeased as he follows her along, keeping his pace from being too quick. But… when does he ever really emote greatly enough to know? Sakura had been right; he isn’t cross with her.]

It’s something I can deal with. [If Dad is going to alter him to be OP, the least that could happen is he only wrinkles his nose at particular ones.] I don’t mind them.

[Inwardly closing his eyes at so many people here with flowers… At least it might not be roses…?]

I don’t mind if they’re yours.

（ has anyone ever told this man he's endearingly terrible? this is the worst thing that's ever happened to her, maybe, and it's because he's being nice. literally just that. no other reason. sakura blushes to a hideous contrast with her hair, which makes her sort of... ruffle it forwards on the side closest to him with her free hand so she can use it as a curtain to hide behind.

she hasn't done that since she was a little girl. ）

My best friend is a florist. She, um. Taught me a lot.

（ about so many more things than just flowers, but that's neither here nor there. in the distance, at their quick clip, she can see her door in the endless rows of them. funny, how she always seems to know just where it is. ）

[It kills me repeatedly to have her question the kindness with so much surprise.

He doesn’t call out the cute and shy behavior any more than the zero times he has previously, only walks alongside her through the doors, looking at each one.

He really doesn’t think he has said anything worth that kind of response actually, so the joke is on him. He is only being kind as people should to each other…?]

It takes kind hands and skill to work with flowers.

[Or they’ll snap? They’ll die. He’d probably make the worst arrangement honestly.]

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1/2

not me forgetting to hit enter on the second part lmaooooo

me like no that's valid actually

here is my tag, it is one word and a O_O icon, pls accept

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