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

（ 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.]

Haha, Ino is definitely both of those things!

（ despite their difficulties of which she was the primary architect, she loves her best friend. there's nothing she wouldn't do for ino, and they've only become closer since the clinic opened.

she's smiling, to think of her, but the gaiety of the expression can't quite shake the sadness, the worry for naruto. it drops after a moment, and she gestures to her door where it's exuding gentle light up ahead. he's spent enough time with her now that he could probably pick it out of the row without too much difficulty — it's a traditional sliding door, a fusuma, with its panels painted in delicate colours, highlighting a scene of cherry blossoms and birds. she stops before it, gently reaching out to rub her thumb across one of the little birds, and then she nudges the door aside, and gestures for him to step across the threshold, disentangled from her now.

the interior is as vast as if it were a world entirely of its own (though a keen eye might note that the distance almost seems painted in a sort of sumi-e style, losing more colour the further it gets) but in the immediate area, the landscape is lush and verdant, the taste of the air like spring. there's all the requisite sounds of a lively forest. the soft chirp of distant birds, the burbling of a nearby stream, the song of the wind and the hum of buzzing insects. they're in a clearing that has three odd logs in its middle, and the landscape is pitched and scarred with damage, scorches on the grass, cracks and rubble that look like a shockwave or maybe a small, localized earthquake in the ground. still, somehow, there are places where stubborn little flowers have grown through the dirt no matter how dire the damage.

to the east of the logs, the trees began to bleed and shift, give way to the sterilized cleanliness of an office that somehow seems not at all out of space, even though trees are bent over it like a roof, casting whispering shade. the space is neat and exacting, walls lined with medical textbooks, a few pictures. a window overlooks the hokage monument but oddly, the view through the window clearly reflects a sunset, whereas the rest of the vast expanse of the space is clearly early morning.

her tethers are as easily identifiable as his are, notable for being the only real 'items' in the office that aren't the books themselves. a sculpture of the will of fire, a holographic impression of her team seven photograph — currently featuring only a tall, white-haired man with a mask. a vase of assorted flowers, and a tiny little slug figurine that looks more alive than it has any right to. she surveils the area with a sort of fond weariness, and spreads her arms out to her sides. ）

Well, here we are.

[The door fits her really. He stops outside of it for a pour of several long moments, simply regarding it, like surveying a painting in a gallery. There aren't many places on the Frontier with fusuma, so he takes the time to appreciate it in that silent way of his.

When it's opened, he bends very slightly to duck through, and he's prepared to not only stop on the other side, but remove his hat. But it isn't a single room, like his own, or a house, or a building. He's rooted in place just inside the doorway, though not for the reason he thought he would be, his arm lowering slowly to his side again.

He's not shocked by any means--he's old enough to have traveled the Frontier over several times--but he's surprised all the same. Areas lush like this are few and far between, coveted things by dangerous beings who have hidden them away, or forests with the danger all within. His chin is lifted higher than usual; he peers around from below the raised brim of the hat. Both eyes clinically take everything he can see in slowly, from one side to the next. He doesn't move, transfixed and polite.

It's been a while... to have everything like this together, uncontrolled by artificial weather engineering. It feels like a world with air he has never breathed before in his excruciating long life.]

It's very beautiful, [is all he can find to say, voice humbled.]

It's a place near my village. I used to train here.

（ it was the first place, actually, that team seven became more than just their designation on paper. sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, she can almost picture naruto and sasuke sharing the contents of a bento. it's funny, how something that seemingly is a manifestation of part of her own soul can make her homesick for something she no longer has. this is almost like a moment frozen in time.

and naruto is still missing. she hasn't forgotten that. it's the whole reason she's agreeing to this now. is that selfish? she needs to be at her best, and she's finally convinced that soulmates are a necessary step to that. she would never forgive herself if her shadow were to ruin her chances of finding him.

she takes a deep breath, and then heads over to her office, gesturing for him to follow after her. ）

And my office at the clinic, of course. Come over here, I'll explain my tethers too. It's only fair.

[He turns new eyes onto the area after the explanation. It’s not a bad place to train, open and seemingly peaceful. At least from the opinion of a man who spent part of his training doing it in a facility. For a long moment, he looks at the flowers trying to grow out of the blemished land.

Then his steps fall in beside her, quiet except for the sounds of the spurs on the back of the boots.]

I didn’t explain mine.

[Well, one maybe. He really only explained the bad things… But he’s hesitant to tell her an explanation isn’t necessary because he thinks she’ll be offended by his distance again. And also? As little as he says about himself, he is still interested in others. He’d like to hear whatever she might tell him.

He’s already being nosy and looking anyway. The politeness is a front and cannot hide his curiosity.]

（ she waves a hand dismissively. ）

Ah, that's all right. You've got that whole mysterious aura to uphold, after all.

（ he can be as nosy as he likes, it's not going to stop her teasing him. he's the first person to be in her soul room like this, and the intimacy of it all is making her a little nervous, shifting between that light playfulness and the solemnity of memory.

she stops where grass gives way to linoleum flooring, and gives her desk a fond little smile. gesturing towards the hologram — ）

My first teacher, Hatake Kakashi. （ it's strange, seeing him posed alone without any of them. she hopes he's all right back in konoha, that being hokage isn't wearing on him too badly now. at least he has tsunade to guide him, and the peace achieved by the measures following the 4th war will hold. ） The sculpture is the symbol of my village, and represents all the people there. The little slug is for my current teacher, the Lady Tsunade, and probably also Katsuyu — she's my contract partner from Shikkotsu Forest. I can't summon her here, sadly... healing large amounts of people at once would be considerably easier if I could.

（ it doesn't mean she isn't planning for disaster contingencies, but there are limitations on her here she hasn't needed to deal with in her own world. the flowers are last, and maybe that's telling — her expression softens as she reaches out to touch the leaves of a garlic bloom. for courage, ino told her once. the bouquet is a little mismatched, nothing a professional florist would put their name to. besides the garlic blooms, there are yellow daffodils, snapdragons, the dazzling pink of peruvian lilies, each flower tells a story — but she won't bore him with details of hanakotoba. ）

Ino.

[As expected, he does not reply to the first bit because she is RIGHT. He could come off the mysterious aura a little, he’s dead. And also not on the Frontier anymore.

It’s now her turn to endure the feeling of someone else standing inside her soul. The weight of his presence is a tad heavy in a background sort of way; strong, quiet. There is still something rather dark about his existence nestled in her space, but it’s at least not devouring.

His eyes look over Kakashi when he stops in front of the tether. If Kakashi is here this way, D suspects the man must have been a formidable first teacher. After some of the pieces of things Sakura has said, D is surprised to see any form of smile. But he’s glad.

The sculpture holds his attention next. The hidden village… And then he peers at the slug, though there is no judgement or teasing on his face.

The flowers, though, cause his brows to pinch ever so slightly. The blooms of garlic are quite soft and playful, but… why… did it have to be garlic, of all things? The other ones don’t even bother him at all, and the arrangement itself isn’t bad.]

She’s important to you, [he says softly, not a question really.] Did you have many friends?

[The other tethers… two teachers, a contractual partner, a whole community. Work…? Duty. Of course they were maybe compassionate, but it isn’t exactly the same, he thinks. It’s not a peer, a friend.]

I had the ones I needed.

（ it isn't like she doesn't care for the other members of her cohort. but she's also not going to go casually hang out with kiba, you know? ）

Sasuke and （ a brief hesitation. she bites her lip, and then: ） Naruto are here.

[He pauses to turn his head toward her. It feels like anything he says will just be platitudes, so he opts to not say anything about it.

He glances again at Kakashi, thoughtful.]

I hadn’t known you and Sasuke were familiar with each other, but now it seems to make sense.

（ she gives him a sidelong glance, expression altogether unreadable, and then her gaze slides away. she focuses on the little slug, carved so carefully from the depths of feeling in her soul, and she wants to reach for it. it's almost a reflex, that yearning for maternal comfort that her own mother had rarely given her. ）

We aren't close. （ there's a strange gravity to the words, a finality, like the severance of an anchor at sea. something she has been trying for years not to acknowledge but that's all but written into her dna now — the knowledge he would have killed her never strays far from her mind. ） But we used to be, a long time ago.

（ says the nineteen year old, to the millennia-old eldritch vampire guy. ）

[People coming and going in your life, he understands that. As the person who comes and goes more often than not.]

Perhaps you can try again. To get to know the people you’ve become and the people you’re going to be.

[Separately. The finality is still there, but it can be an acceptance maybe instead of something bitterly acknowledged, something wedged in.

He remembers what Sasuke had been like when they met on that single occasion: to the point, logically so; pridefully bound; distantly chilly. It’d be hard to connect with, and he can’t force that onto anyone, so he doesn’t try to convince her any more than that.

He looks over her collection of tethers.]

It seems like you have a strong foundation to become the person you’re hoping to be.

（ the first statement, while kind and certainly true, only gets a tired huff of breath.

the second — ）

I've worked hard to be what I want to be, where I am. （ no special kekkei genkai, no talented clans. her skill has come from practice, not prodigy. ） So, thank you. For recognizing that.

Mm.

[He’s too horrifically enhanced by nature to speak about improving through hard work, but he has seen a lot of it in the humans he’s met.]

Did you want to show me anything else?

[Instead of… asking her whether or not she wanted to now add him of all people to the mix of herself. She’ll get mad…]

No, that's pretty much it. I'm afraid I'm not terribly exciting.

（ well, a lifetime of comparing herself to naruto and sasuke will do that to a girl. ）

But, do you still want to...?

[He looks at her pointedly without looking at her pointedly. She is really going to chastise him for how he is about himself, then turn around and say this about herself? And ask him this?

In front of his salad?]

Yes.

[He isn’t sure if she realizes he would have not wasted his time coming if it wasn’t going to be a yes.]

Are you ready?

（ bitch she'll also do it in front of your steak, white-woman-laughs-with-salad your way out of that. ）

Yeah. We can go back to yours if you'd prefer, or... I guess it's just as easy here, right?

There’s no need. This is fine.

[She did this and will endure having him touch her inside soul things.

His eyes shift to each of the tethers. It probably doesn’t matter at all what’s touched, the end result is the same. And yet, he hesitates in consideration anyway. Will she judge what he goes for? Does he have to pick something with arbitrary meaning?

Is this how Set felt trying to decide what to touch behind his door?

The flowers are sweet, but he isn’t a fan of the garlic bloom. And he finds himself too much of a horror to taint them by his touch. The representation of her village feels… too distant, more personal to her alone. The image of Kakashi has the same air.

Reaching out, he twines his long fingers gently around the sculpture of the slug to scoop it up. It’s like a part of her he respected and admired: her willingness to become stronger, to heal and especially to heal children. He cradles it politely in his palm.

It’s the same motion as what he experienced before, but the feeling is different here. What washes over him is strong and feminine. The little piece he can sense of himself fits into a notch of her, and he can hear the toil of the Shadow in him, slowly, become less and less.

He shares the brunt of himself for a moment before it levels out. She is thwarted suddenly with that same weight of him except stronger. There is something wicked in him he can’t help, a part of him he has somehow managed to lock below the surface. It’s a miracle he can subdue the monstrous side of him; the voice of it is so loud at the core. A dark, extremely sensual, and powerful energy. It heats her up at the thighs and rolls up body to her neck, makes her feel how beautiful and seductive she is, makes her crave a warm red thirst she’s never had. She’s aware of how much power she has in her draw alone.

Above the primordial and carnal aura, the whole of him is old and tired. Ten millennia settles in the middle of her, quiet and lonely and sad. She has walked a thousand lifetimes, seen lands changed, left behind countless people only to return to meet their great, great grandchildren on their death beds. The subtle desire for death has now been satiated minutely by being here. He’s finally died after so long of living.

And at the end is a piece of him which knows he isn’t finished, however. A sweep of humanity passes through her. A compassionate soul feeling many ordinary things: hope, and sorrow, and anger, and happiness, and loyalty, and fear too.

It finally all goes silent like subsiding ripples on water, and a solid piece of him is left settled firmly in her somewhere.

A familiar, craggled voice hesitantly says, So, uh… did it work? and it resonates inside her head.]

（ she didn't quite know what to expect. had just sort of stood nervously by as his attention shifted between her tethers, settling on the slug. when he touches it, she's braced for... something.

(so little in her world is ever won without violence.)

instead, it's almost a genjutsu. the scorch of sensations that have no originator but him, that sensual heat, the weight of that age. that's the thing that almost drops her to her knees — the inexorable onward crawl of time, the way it settles over her like a flood. the human mind, ultimately, is only as strong as the will that captains it — if she'd tried this any younger she thinks it would have swallowed her whole.

her knees do wobble, just a little.

what he leaves behind in her ought to feel like a splinter. something foreign, overgrown, cocooned in protective tissue. instead, it simply feels as if she's pulled back the curtains on something that was already there. it's terrifying, exhilarating, exhausting, exciting all at once. the emotions are a kaleidoscopic web, and touching one thread sets off a gentle thrum throughout. she stares at him for a long moment, and then in loud incredulity: ）

Excuse me, you're how old?

[Damn, this is the only thing she has to say? I think you’re losing your touch, D.

There is a resounding, commanding, “Quiet,” in their heads as he gently places the slug down and turns to face her fully.

He has no reason not to answer like he usually wouldn’t answer on the Frontier. Those people were not tied to the deepest parts of his spirit.]

Ten thousand years.

[Sorry for the old age. He watches her with concerned scrutiny.]

Are you alright? You should sit down.

I'm fine.

（ it's a bit brusque, accompanied by a shake of her head. the last thing she wants now is some indication he thinks she's weak. ）

Just — surprised.

（ longer than the history of her world. chakra has only existed for a thousand years. he predates all the bloodlines, all the feuds, all the countries... the sheer immensity of the timeline has her stricken. and he's listened to all her little problems without complaint, huh? it must all seem so petty. there's a little flicker of self-admonishment evident in the soft touch of their connection, and she folds her arms, defensive. ）

Is that... （ the thirst, the lust, the... everything ） really how it is for you all the time?

[She is so stubborn and for what? But he doesn’t press even though he can now actually feel her momentary adjustment from everything dumped on her.

The questions he expects, and this time, he can’t dodge them when the other person has a deeper perspective into who he is. So he just gives her his undivided attention.]

It’s a part of who I am, yes.

[It is with him all the time, and all he has is a blanket of composure over the top, the threads perfected by how long he’s lived.]

It’s not something I can change.

（ well, then, he'll likely feel little pinprick of annoyance, too. her expression flattens out, and she comes over to where he's standing. puts one hand down on the little slug sculpture, and shifts it further back on her desk. more because she's a bit particular about where everything is than out of concern that something might happen to it. once she's standing just a handspan away, chin tilted up to look at him properly, she says — ）

I'm not asking you to change. I don't want you to. （ she's been down that road before, hasn't she? begging for someone to walk a different path. better to accept what is than what could be. ） It's just a lot for one person to have carried by themselves for so long.

（ fathoming that span of time is... difficult, but not impossible for a mind like hers. she's working through it, calculating and assessing and picking a path through the thorny tangle of its weight. it's like having your back to a mountain, feeling its shadow over you, knowing that the entire sum of your life's work and love and loss is only a grain of sand to its towering peaks.

in some ways, it makes his compassion all the stranger. all the sadder. she thinks of someone like kaguya, whose lifespan seemed so alien then, and how it had only made her cold. is she like the lords of his frontier? someone who has forgotten connection, forgotten care...

her mouth turns down at one corner in bleak unhappiness and hurt on his behalf, and she reaches out to let her fingers snag against his elbow, squeezing just faintly. ）

Thank you for trusting me.

（ is all she says, through the ache of new awareness. ）

[I CANT FIND MY POINT GIVER WAS IT YOU gently beats you up if it was in thanks while i yell at the sky!!!

If D is offended by the shifting of the sculpture, he doesn’t show it (typical), although he doesn’t appear to mind her in his space. She’s now also buried somewhere in his core, so there isn’t any point in being irritated by closeness. Besides, he’s standing in her soul.

He has little right to try avoiding intimacy.

The gaze he gives her is gentle, but focused in the usual way of him not being ashamed of making direct eye contact. He looks over the face peering up at him.]

I would rather it have been me than anyone else. [Mr. Bears Burdens Alone.] Humans should be able to enjoy their lives without worrying about eternity.

[It wouldn’t feel right or fair to put that kind of weight on people whose lives are so short already.]

You’re welcome. [There is a hidden thanks too somewhere in there.] I’ll try explaining what I can.

[Since he knows if he offers her the idea he doesn’t mind looking for a way to reverse it if she gets too uncomfortable, she’ll be cross with him. Still there, though.]

If you frown like that, you’ll get wrinkles.

（ it reminds her, almost uncannily, of her conversation with jonas. where she'd spoken about shinobi, and why they do what they do and he had essentially asked her, what about you guys? their job is to spare others from the horrors of war, but... they were children too, once.

he must have been the same, lifetimes ago. ）

Just because you can stand something doesn't mean you should have to.

（ the words are gentle, the sentiment something she thinks she'd say to naruto and sasuke if she was ever able to meet them before their worlds darkened. her fingers tighten against his arm, and then she pulls him into a hug.

this height difference is ridiculous, truly. smushed against his chest, deeply uncomfortable. he smells inoffensive, like leather conditioner and whatever he uses to wash his hair. it's comforting, in a way, even if literally no one should be this tall!! and broad!! it's rude to her, personally.

when she pulls back, she rolls her eyes and shoves at him a little. ）

What, is Lefty going to object to a little natural aging? Joke's on you, one of my techniques causes premature aging anyway.

（ mitotic regeneration is powerful, but cell division still has a limit. she's pretty sure she found a white hair the other day (promptly plucked out). maybe one day she'll be like tsunade, the hard truth of a body ill-used in decades of combat, concealing the evidence beneath a henge. but for now? now, she is determined not to care (too much) about it. ）

d | a december catchall (open & closed)

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i will neither confirm nor deny

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