To Promise Forever, a naruto fanfic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything but Kiri. Anything you recognise will most likely belong to Masashi Kishimoto. I'm just playing with his sand castle.

If you receive this, then you have signed up to that stupid letter programme. I've been forced into it by my Kage (I may or may not have failed a mission on purpose) and since I promised to at least write for a year, you better start answering soon. I dislike letters. I don't even know where to start.

Shishou says the beginning; so here it is. My name's Kiri (don't you fucking dare laugh) and the rules say I can't name my village directly. I'll give you three clues. My Kage's a woman, it's damp and we like sharp teeth. If you guess right, I'm sure I can try to send you a cookie for you to choke on. (And maybe they'll get through custom if I make a few extra for whoever is reading this shit.)

I'm gonna end this here before it becomes more of a swear-fest.

You better answer soon.

Kiri,

I don't want to do this either, but my female Kage can also be very persuasive. I haven't failed a mission though, that'd be too troublesome.

I can't give you my name –I doubt the one you gave me is even real. You can pick whatever you want to address me as, but please avoid picking my village, like you did with yours.

Waiting for the cookies,

Kiri was torn between wanting to shred the letters to pieces and strangling the person on the other side. (How dare they make fun of her name?) These were leaf-nins, no sweat. There were only two female Kage, after all –and only a leaf nin would write on proper letter paper. Hers had been sent on the back of flyer she had picked up in the streets.

She guessed she had to bake those cookies now. (Would it be considered incorrect to slip cyanide in? –nah, too garlicky. Perhaps Datura?)

Little fucker,

I bloody well hope you aren't making fun of my name, or I swear that the next thing to come through this letter fuckery is going to be an explosive tag. Shishou says I can't write that –apparently it's a threat. Fuck no. it's a promise dude.

Here are you goddamned cookies. I hope they are stale by the time they get to you, or that Screener man has eaten them all. Maybe it's Screener Woman?

What do you want to talk about next?

Kiri-san,

Thanks for the cookies. I appreciate the seal work that went into keeping them dry and fresh, and I made sure to enclose something of equally stimulating value. Do you wish for the seal work back? It must have been rather expensive.

I can assure you that I treat you alias with utmost respect. It was a great help in determining where you came from, and I thank you in turn for abstaining from naming me Konoha. Really. I do.

Maybe you could tell me about your Shishou? You've mentioned him (or her) quite a few times.

Yours,

Little fucker.

Politeman-san,

Keep the seal. Got others here, so it's cool. Use it to keep alive, it'd be stupid of you to survive the Fourth only to die on a silly ass mission because you didn't have a med kit. Which I've joined to this letter. No doubt you have your own, but standard med kits differ slightly from Village to Village. Never know when it might be useful.

You better treat my name with respect, dude. I'd hit you when I meet you otherwise. I still have to pick a name for you, seeing as I'm trying them all out at the beginning of letters and you aren't giving me any indication as to whether or not I'm any closer to what you'd like your sorry ass to be called.

Shishou's great. Small man, short as fuck but with the meanest right hook in all the history of the Village. Taught me some of what I know before the Fourth. I haven't officially been his kid for a while now, but he's always teaching me shit. I make fun of his gravity defying hair.

And you? Do you have a Sensei, or a Shishou? Perhaps you are an old man –are you a Sensei or a Shishou?

Thanks for the dango. We don't have them here in Kiri. Weather is not adequate for growing some of the ingredients and import makes it too expensive for mere shinobi to use sugar. Trade?

Keep safe, politeman-san. Wouldn't want to lose my pen pal now, would I?

Kiri.

Kiri-san,

Thanks for the seals work and for the med-kit. My clan grows its own medicine, so it is always interesting to see what other people work with. Trading's good. What have you got in mind?

I don't care much for any nickname you might give me, as long as they are not something I would oppose to. I suppose I should indeed tell you a little about myself before you chose one.

I have a son but my wife was one of the Fourth's casualties. He's somewhat grown now, I guess. Seventeen, though he's already seen a war. He is currently involved in a relationship with a girl from another Village. I belong, as I have already said, to a clan. We are well known in our village, and have been respected for a long time. I'm grooming my son to take over my duties soon, though he is too lazy to really want to. I don't currently have a genin team, if that is what you are implying, and the only person I have taught recently is my son –and then it was on the techniques pertinent to the clan.

I guess I'm neither a Shishou nor a Sensei, although I did have a team of three little cute Genin fifteen years ago. One of them died in the Suna-Oto coups, but I'm lucky enough to still have the other two with me. What about you? Will you be taking a genin team now that you are out of your Shishou's shadow? He sounds like the kind of man who would have lead a battalion in the Fourth.

I shall endeavour to keep safe, be it only so that no one else will have to suffer your deplorable syntax and vocabulary. Ensure that you do too.

Politeman-san.

Clan Head-chan,

I'm properly pissed! Whoooo! It's the twenty first of July –summer solstice. Fucking summer solstice. See the awesome doodle at the bottom of the page? I'm away on mission tomorrow (fucking Kame-festival) so I won't be in the Village for a good six months. I'm doing some basic tracking I'm not allowed to talk to you about, since we may not be at war anymore but we aren't still uberly clean with each other. Bullshit.

I like being drunk. Three cheers for Moonshine! Do you want some? I'd send you some, but sealswork always makes it awkward for alcohol. They get a funny taste, you see? I think you could get some wherever you are. Hahahaha, I'm so buzzed. Does this letter even make sense?

Anyway; back to the mission. I'm going tomorrow, so since I want your letters to get to me, you'll have to use the doodle at the bottom of the page. Copy it onto whatever you are using to write to me (I picked this poster coz it's my faaaaaavorite. I hope you'll hang it up in your little lonesome house and think of me. Bruuuuuuuuuuv) and then just push your chakra in. Blood's nasty. Don't do bloodwork –half the time it blows up in my face! I had a pretty face, but then Shinobi happened.

You still have a pretty face, right, Clan Head-chan?

I don't care about my face. You can't even see it since I'm writing letters. People say my face is nicer than my personality, but I don't believe them. I know I'm great. That's what Shishou always said. (Then he'd hit me round the head afterwards, so I don't think it counts too much.)

I suppose some stuck up is going to be reading this and blanking half of it out –but I DON'T CARE!

My name's Kiri, just Kiri, because we don't know why my mom and dad are. Shishou says I was found on the church steps, which is bollocks because I know I was found on the seashore. I was three –but I remember. I used to live in a cool place, and then it got blown up by scaredy cats. I know Kirikagure helped, but I don't CARE. It's not like I knew them. I'm just peeved that they blew up the books on that island. I really wanted to read them. Doesn't matter though –I found what I was looking for by myself, and Shishou always said it was better that way. That I had become who I was because I could, not because I had to.

Shishou died a year before the Fourth. People think I'm crazy because I still talk to him, sometimes. Shishou says it doesn't matter what the other idiots think. I can see Shishou, coz I trapped his soul before he left. He gave me hell about it for a little bit, but he was happy I did it in the end. Shishou was always scared he'd die. He's happier now. I think he'll want me to let him go soon. I don't want to. Does it make me a bad person?

I had other penpals before you ya know? I don't even know why I'm telling you this. I had a few. Three I think. (Shishou says seven, but I don't believe him.) They gave up on me, coz I swore too much and got drunk and didn't reply for weeks and they didn't want to have to deal with a neurotic twenty five years old. I don't like people. I don't like anyone –not even my village. They don't want me to take on a genin team coz I've "served my country". That's just a pretty word to say I fought in the war and didn't come back whole. They think I don't know they try their damn best to keep me away from all the Academy graduates. Shishou would have pushed me right in with them, but the fucking Godaime wants to be kinder to this generation. Like the war hasn't ruined us all. Fucking bastards. I hate them. I hate them all.

One day, I'll watch the village burn.

Kiri-san,

Are you alright? That must have been a killer headache, if your letter was anything to go by.

What's so bad about the Summer Solstice? I heard the Kame-festival was a sight to see –my son's girlfriend wants us all to go next year.

I hope you didn't get into too much trouble for the moonshine. It's not legal to possess it, so I prefer sake. Not quite as potent as your 200 proof alcohol, but it's enough to get buzzed. Have you ever thought about studying the reasons why the taste is affected by sealswork? I suppose it'd make for an interesting theoretical knowledge.

I have scars on my face, but not from the Fourth. I got mine in the Third, which I suppose you are a little too young to remember. I was in a squad with two friends. One of them almost died in the war.

Your following two paragraphs were, as you supposed so well, blacked out by someone. I suppose you were telling me things I shouldn't know, so please don't do it again in the future.

From what I've read, your personality isn't that bad. It's rough and unpolished, but then shinobi aren't meant to be sensitive people. I don't think I'll stop writing soon, so sorry. You're stuck with me for a little longer. It's been two years already since we started writing, so I feel like I have invested too much in you to let you go now. By the way –think you could show us around the Kame festival next year?

You haven't sent a letter last week, so I assume your mission is being a little tricky. I hope it goes well. The war has left everybody with scars, some more visible than others. Konoha has its fair share of jonin, ANBU and even chuunin who are not allowed in contact with genins or Academy students. If it weren't for my son and my rank, I think I would have been forced to retire from the forces after the war. There are only so much horrors someone can take.

Your last sentence was blacked out. Please be careful. Someday, someone is going to shut you up if you carry on like this.

Your shishou sounds like someone who had a higher rank in Kiri than I first thought, if you compare him to the Godaime. Have I met him?

Keep safe,

Clan Head-chan.

He got no reply to this letter. None to the one the following week, and again to the one the week after.

Kiri-chan,

I really hope you are just being busy and this silence is not the proof of your death. I'd be really disappointed if my sudden pen pal and provider and all profanities were to die.

Konoha is slowly seeping out of Summer. It's my favourite season, since it becomes warm enough for me to lay outside in the grass and watch the clouds. The summers in Konoha are very warm, but broken through at regular intervals by thunder storms. It is really a nice place to be in the summer, although it can get too hot. I hope to be able to show you one of our thunderstorms one day; I get the impression you'll like them.

It's like the sky suddenly opens, the rain beats the grounds and everything stills for a second. There's no one around in the streets, no sign of life or even shadows moving in the flashes of lightning. Thunderstorms are something I enjoy greatly. They bring life to Konoha, stop it from burning to a crisp under Fire's hot weather. After the rain, the earth smells of petrichor and the world seems so much brighter, like the water has washed away all the dullness and left a brand new world behind.

I imagine that, as a Mist-nin, you see the rain very differently. I read that summers in Mist got very heavy, with the average humidity percentage climbing higher every year. It must be hard to work in those conditions, with the climate making you clammy and it being more taxing to breathe. I guess that's why Mist nins adapt so well to places like Kumo, where the altitude is so high it makes it harder on the lungs –did you know that the reason between the failure of the Iwa-Kiri shinobi exchange from after the Third War was because the Iwa nins couldn't adapt to the Kiri weather? That's a perfect example of why some Villages have never been invaded. Sadly, Konoha wasn't so lucky…

Enough rambling. I hope to receive a letter from you soon, and that your mission hasn't gone to hell.

Waiting,

Clan Head-chan

On the tenth week, he stopped trying.

Why have you stopped?

Kiri-san,

Sorry. I was under the impression this was to be a two way system where you replied to my letters. Seeing no forthcoming answer, I supposed you didn't want to pursue this stream of letters. It has, after all, not been compulsory for you to write back for over a year now.

Clan Head-chan.

Sorry. Mission's not going too well. Paper's water logged, charcoal tip doesn't work and cold is making steel brittle. Please keep writing. Drop the "san".

Shikaku doubled checked the slip of letter she has sent previous to this one, a curling feeling in his stomach. Yep. He was right. (His reply was written within minutes of Kiri's response.)

Kiri –are you writing using blood?

Charcoal tip doesn't work.

I bloody well hope it's the blood of whoever you've killed and not yours. I'm sending a medic pack through the seal.

Weather in Konoha is nothing like the one you sound like you're having. It's winter, so brisk and cold. There are no cloud cover to provide rain, or snow, but it's better than having to traipse through mud and water. Though I guess you are a water country shinobi, so you'd be used to it.

One of the games I prefer to play is Shogi. I hope you'll prove to be a fearsome opponent in the future, because we are playing when we meet. This gives you four months, doesn't it? Better brush up.

My son's getting married soon. He got his girlfriend pregnant, and since she is a Suna official they are going through with it. I think he planned it all that way –I just hope he won't regret it. He's smart enough to know, I think, when he is in love and when he isn't.

Things here in Konoha are troublesome. I'm leaving the haori to my son as soon as he's married, but I'll remain on the council for the Hokage. She's a fearsome woman, but a good leader. The war showed that, if nothing else. Things have quieted down at the boarders, and shinobi are moving more freely across the five nations. I hope your mission isn't too tedious, because there is the Ice festival coming up in Konoha. It's in early February, three months from now. Think you could make it? I'd be pleased to offer a place to stay, and my son would be glad to finally meet you. You wouldn't think he's an adult with the way he's been whining to talk to you.

Anyway, see you later Kiri. Stay safe.

I'll try to make it to Ice.

Shikaku sighed with the letter as the medic kit he had promised Kiri poofed away through the seal.

It's always like that. Always, every time he had sent something since she has left on that bloody mission. One line answers, a sentence –perhaps two. Shikaku may be a genius, but there is nothing in between the lines. Just the blankness of a shinobi who has lived survived the War.

But that tells him enough.

I let shishou go.

Did he want to have his soul released?

(Can you make it to the Ice festival?)

Yes and yes. I won't be able to reply for the next month. I'll write when I can.

Do you need help –I could arrange for vacation and come give you a hand with whatever you are doing? It's been a long time, Kiri. Is everything alright? Is there something I can do to help?

You can't come. Mizukage would kill me if she knew. I've joined an anchor seal. If things go wrong I'll use it. Please don't stop writing. How are the deer?

The silence was long. He carried on sending letters though, because letters meant that she knew he was alive and she knew someone care and he knew she needed that. Everyone needed that.

(If she let her shishou go –who was there for her?)

You've been on that mission for five months now. Are you okay? Do you need anything? Can you tell me where you are?

My son's asking after you again. I think he wants to talk to you. Shall I free up letter space?

I'm in Grass. Not yet.

Grass? You crossed Fire Country and didn't tell me? You weren't on the papers, Kiri. You haven't legally been on Konoha protected land. What are you doing? Are you in trouble?

Someone needs to do the War's cleaning up.

Who's with you? I can't believe we missed more than a three man cell. The borders have been lax, but not that lax. Why didn't the Mizukage Godaime tell us about you?

I'm alone. I'm not officially there. Shikaku –please stop asking questions. If they find out we've been talking without them over our shoulders, they'll get rid of us.

How do you know my name?

I'm done in Grass. I'll be in Otafuki within two weeks. Meet me there if you want answers.

Kiri. Who are you?

He got no answer –didn't think he would. But Shikaku had not been Jonin commander of the Konoha forces by sheer force of his laziness. He was bright, he was smart; hailed as a genius amongst his generation. Shikaku Nara wasn't somebody to be trifled with, not even now after he had outlived two wars. (But was his loyalty with Konoha or Kiri?)

In all fucking honesty, Kiri didn't expect to see Shikaku in Otafuki. The man was a battle hardened shinobi, not a genin she could trick into exposing himself. (But she wasn't tricking him into exposing himself. She was genuine in everything she said.) She knew Shikaku would be looking underneath the underneath, drawing probabilities and statistics as to whether or not this was a trap. She had done so herself, as she had sent that letter.

Kiri wouldn't have come.

(But here she was, waiting in a cheap inn with her headband stored deep inside her bag and the seals over her body hiding away the injuries she had gotten fighting the remaining Zetsu clones scattered around Grass.)

And here he was, knocking on her door.

Kiri opened the wooden panel to show an empty corridor, a piece of paper slipped under the bolted 4 of her room number. Kiri grabbed it, careless, when a slip snagged and trapped under the rusty number. She cursed and snatched away the annoying torn corner, crushing it inside her hand as she read the neat, lazy letter.

Dinner at Hotel Mizoka? 2030 hours?

She tucked it away with a glance at her watch. (It was three fifteen.)

She wasn't what he had expected, having heard in fact very little about the so called apprentice to the Yondaime Mizukage. Her name was something he had gleaned from Kiri shinobi in Konoha, confirming that she, indeed, had been called Kiri by her highly unimaginative parents. She came from Uzushio, or so he had heard, and this hunch was confirmed by the blood red hair tumbling down her back in a tightly wrapped braid. He would bet his hand she had senbon in there. (It was still slightly damp, but it looked brushed and cared for. Not a common occurrence, if the split ends and coarse texture were anything to go by.) She was wearing a cleaner set of clothes than the one she had travelled with, the evidence clear in the way they were slightly rumpled but not dusty or torn from travelling by treetops. He supposed she had taken the time to wash and change –not that he blamed her. Kiri still had blood under her fingernails. Green blood. Her fingertips were red from scrubbing down harshly, and he supposed she had tried her hardest to get rid of it.

But for all the oddities and the dissonance, his eyes were drawn to her face. (She had told him, and he had been warned by those he spoke to.) Kiri was scarred.

It wasn't like his scars, thin lines of pink flesh which stretched across his visage and modelled it. It wasn't like his scars, which highlighted his figures and leant to his influence. It wasn't like his scars, obtained in a battle and bearing the trace of determination and endurance. His scars were oozing with confidence and freedom, with the knowledge he had gotten them whilst saving his friends and the casual grace of someone who didn't care about his scars.

Kiri's scars were a deformity –running deeper than her skin and etched into the way she moved. She had two scars, he supposed, from a T&I building somewhere in one of the five Villages. They stretched at the side of her mouth, pulled and tugged at the line of her lips and deformed her face into a permanent smile. It was an ugly smile, one which would have made him shudder had he not been used to working with Ibiki Morino.

She had another scar, longer and sharper, which stretched along her forehead, slipped off her nose and cut her face into a slant. He supposed that one was from a sword user, no doubt laying somewhere dead in a ditch with his bones turning to dust. It was still pink, unlike the silver smile, but less jagged looking and definitely less painful than them.

And then Kiri had five, long and deep marks –very much like claws or teeth from a rabid animal- across her neck, stretching from her jugular to her trachea. (It was a wound meant to kill, and Shikaku was amazed she still stood before him.)

(Her scars were not like his, not in any way. Her scars were a deformity she bore with shame, a mark of her failures and a brand of her shortcomings. Her scars were the roots of her snarl, the reason to her caustic nature and the quiet, never ending screams which tore from her eyes and drilled into his soul. Kiri wasn't rough like he had first thought –Kiri had been roughened, roughened by time and trial and error, roughened by the world and roughened by the nightmares in her steps.)

"_Shikaku Nara."

Her vocal cords hadn't been exempted from the slash that had cut across her throat, her voice raspy and broken, straining against scar tissue he couldn't see. Shikaku wondered how it felt, how she still felt, waking up and being reminded of what she couldn't face in her voice, in her gait, in her persona, in her demeanour, in her reflection. (He remembered the shame, before he had come to accept his scars for what they were –the price to his teammate's lives. He had learnt to be, not proud, but impartial to his scars, as he was impartial to the shape of his knees or the lengths of his legs. He had learnt to make the scars on his face his, to learn them and accept them in a way she hadn't yet.)

"_Kiri. Take a seat?"

She shrugged and tugged a chair out with her foot, her hands hanging by her side uneasily. She looked ready to flee. (He could only see her face and the tips of her fingers –all scarred. Shikaku wondered if her skin was also a patchwork of silver lines under her black clothes.)

"_I'm going to go for Sake. Do you want Moonshine? I think they have it on the menu."

Kiri snorted.

"_I have to remain sober, so Absinthe please."

Shikaku had never thought he'd hear someone say that, but if Kiri was anything like the inveterate drinker she seemed to be (a regular lover of moonshine and grain and Bacardi), then he supposed Absinthe maybe somewhat of a reprieve for her.

"_there's a jutsu that allows you to metabolize alcohol quickly, you know? Tsunade sama devised it."

"_I know, she lives up to her name, even in Kiri. We pay close attention to Konoha, since it is the only other Village with a female Kage."

"_what do you think, then?"

The night dragged on, and with every sentence that passed, uncannily relaxed and casual, her tension grew. She knew why they were here, and she was too smart to believe Shikaku had decided to come to Otafuki Gai just to talk to her and get to know who she was. Eventually, as her Absinthe began to buzz slightly in her veins and Kiri felt herself slip slowly into the casual trust that had permeated their letter exchange, she decided enough was enough.

"_what do you want to know?"

She realised her question was odd, especially since it came in the middle of one of Shikaku's sentences and cut him off completely, but Kiri was humming with tension. His eyes darkened as they rested on her, on the near empty Absinthe glass, the water container trickling softly onto an empty spoon, the sugar long gone; and Shikaku decided that indeed it was time for answers.

"_shall we adjourn?"

Kiri seized him up, assessing whether or not she could take him on –or at least escape him, but must have found herself lacking because she immediately stalled. (Where was the trust from the letters, the casual assurance that one word was needed and they would cross the Nations to help one another?)

"_where to? Your room?"

Her tone had been biting and slightly edgy, but Shikaku refused to allow himself to be antagonised by a girl almost half his age. (Alright. Nearly three quarters of his age. She was still thirteen years his junior though.)

"_if that's your wish."

She was thrumming with adrenaline, her chakra sluggish in a way that didn't bode well for her. She could feel the seal she had applied over the wounds she had gotten fighting Zetsu slip slightly, and idly Kiri wondered if the blood had finally disturbed the ink. She acknowledged, from the way the room was spinning a little too much, that it was probably good time to begin moving before she bled out on the carpet of the dingy restaurant, and arbitrarily decided that, indeed, Shikaku's room would do.

"_how far?"

"_up the staircase across the hall." Kiri snorted, because it was so Nara to invite her to the lobby of his hotel, but she followed him dutifully and dragged herself up those damned stairs. "Can I use your bathroom?"

Shikaku eyed her strangely, motioning to the adjacent door as Kiri swept through his rented room without a look and locked herself in. It was quiet for a second, followed by a muttered curse she was clearly trying to muffle and some throwing up. It stopped after a few minutes and Kiri apparently turned the tap on, the muffled sound of roaring water piercing through the think wooden door.

"_there is a spare toothbrush in the cabinet" he eventually said, eyes trained on the flimsy furniture as if he could see through it. He heard the door open and close, a muffled sigh of relief and some serious brushing before the tap ran once again and Kiri finished up. The door jiggled.

"_Kiri?"

The wooden panel slid aside as the woman stepped out, smelling of mint and dragging a wet hand through her blood red hair.

"_sorry. Shall we get going?"

She looked much better now, more alert and aware of what was going on than five minutes ago. He wondered if maybe she didn't hold her alcohol as well as he had thought but kept those ideas to himself. He could detect a little of something like ink and blood, he mused as she stepped past him, stood in the middle of the room –unsure. He sunk down on his bed.

"_when did you realise who I was?"

"_when you spoke about your son. There aren't many inter Village relationships, and out of these only Shikamaru was part of a clan and in line to become the head. And you? When did you realise who I was?"

"_when you compared your Yagura-san to the Mizukage Godaime. You wouldn't have done so, not even if you didn't like her, unless he had been Mizukage himself."

She smiled jaggedly, revealing the famous sharp teeth of Mist shinobi. (The smile tugged at her scars, making them bunch up in a chilling way. It wasn't kind and it wasn't reassuring, not with those too sharp canines and silver smile and the haunted gleam in dark, dark eyes.)

"_so" he carried on. "Uzushio?"

Kiri relaxed, sitting on his bed beside him as she scratched the back of her neck.

"_pretty swell, right? One of the few survivors, though I'm nowhere near the level of destruction the others have shown. Namely your half-blood Jinchuriki brat."

That was a lie, and both knew it. Destruction was the sole reason she had been sent to track down the remaining Zetsu corpses across Grass. Silence, and then;

"_so, now that you are here and I am here, are you going to turn me in?"

Shikaku felt something tighten his stomach. (She was too close, way too close.) Of course, Kiri was sat on the bed with him, but it wasn't like they were actually touching. The forty years old man knew the particular brand of look Kunoichi adopted when on honeypot missions (not that she would have done any, with those scars) but Kiri displayed none of them –a strange sort of vulnerable innocence in her eyes.

"_Shikaku?"

He was forty, the Jonin commander of the Konoha Shinobi Corps and had a son closer in age to her than he himself was. (Something lurched when she said his name in that torn voice of hers.) She was twenty seven, had scars on her face she hadn't come to term with and more on her souls than she cared to admit. Their knees were touching and they were sat in a dingy hotel room, above the room where they had dined half an hour ago. (When he leaned over the expense of the bed and carefully threaded his fingers through hers, she tugged him sharply and stumbled over to his lips.)

It was messy and wrong, noses knocking and his neck protesting at how sharp she was gripping it. (Gosh, it felt like he hadn't done this in ages.) He reclined slightly against the headboard, and she tilted her head to the side, her nose brushing those silver lines on his face. (He could feel the bumps and crawls across her skin from where their lips didn't fit properly. It was disgustingly easy to push it to the back of his mind.) Their fingers untangled, and she allowed him to slip one hand under the hem of her shirt and the other to carefully begin undoing her braid. Senbons stumbled out and clicked onto the floor, forgotten in favour for the trail of warmth she was drawing on his neck. Kiri bit down on his pulse point, breaking the skin with those too sharp teeth of hers and Shikaku couldn't help but tighten his fingers on her hips. She would have bruises tomorrow. Shikaku dragged a hand through the spilling blood red hair.

She was thirteen years younger, her legs straggling his hips as she carefully, innocently, reached out for the light switch. (He stopped her, because the scars may be tugging at her face and marring it –but she was Kiri and he had loved her through those damn letters first.) His hand swallowed her wrist, so dainty and small; so used to wielding a brush like some might a kunai. Kiri shifted slightly in discomfort.

"_Shikaku, I…"

Words trailed off when he stroked her spine.

"_It's irrelevant."

Shikaku smiled when she bowed her head and dipped in to bite at where she had left a mark.

Of course, the following morning was far less inspiring, when Kiri realised her seals had slipped in the night and Shikaku woke up to her slowly bleeding out on the bedspread. (She didn't mind that much, especially if it mean Shikaku would place his warm hands on her hips again as he had done when he was stitching her back up.)

She joins them for the Ice festival.

(There's a genjutsu on her face the whole time.) Shikaku watches as she talks to Shikamaru, then Temari, whose pregnancy is increasingly showing. His son's interested in the woman in a way only Nara can be, with a sort of lazy inflection that tells Shikaku all he wants to know. Shikamaru sees the genjutsu for what it is, but Temari is the one to bring it up, as they are leaving the house.

"_so" the Suna Kunoichi says, casually swinging the hand holding Shikamaru's whilst she hobbles along. "Why the genjutsu?"

Kiri stiffens slightly, before chuckling. There is a dispel, performed without hand signs (which makes him laugh, because she is showing off a little) and Kiri remains dutifully staring at the ground for a tad too long. Her red hair's out, flowing freely in straight strings around her face but Temari has put something in it that makes it softer than he remembers. Kiri then squares her shoulders, proudly tilting her chin up and stares down his son and his girlfriend with cold, hard eyes. (Hurt, scared eyes.)

"_got a problem?"

Temari takes a step back and Shikamaru stiffens, but the genjutsu is up the second after and it all seems like a bad dream. Her scars look fainter than the last time he has seen them, Shikaku notices, though maybe it's due to the semi penumbra of the evening. He isn't too sure, but he doesn't care too much anyway. (She is Kiri, and he loved her through letters before he saw her face anyway.) An awkward silence descends, one Shikaku breaks.

"_they have dango." Kiri's attention immediately flits to him, and within a blink she is near him, eyes wide and smiling like a lunatic. (She looks younger without her scars, even younger when she smiles. He feels dirty and stained when he remembers she is thirteen years his junior.)

"_really? Can we buy some? Please?"

He can tell his son is drinking in the sight, because right now Shikaku is smiling and his eyes are softer than Shikamaru ever remembers them being since his mom died. Shikamaru doesn't begrudge him his happiness, not when the girl is more shattered than his dad. Temari squeezes his hand, and he realises that there is a glow to the two there wasn't before. (They make it seem so easy, being together. Shikaku's smiling down at Kiri, who's beaming up at him since he agreed to buy her dango.) But then Shikamaru knows it isn't easy. (His dad's eyes have that self-depreciating tint to them, like he hates himself as much as he loves the woman before him. Kiri's teeth are too sharp for it to be just aesthetics and there is a faint glimmer around her face which brutally reminds him of her scars.)

"_I am feeling quite hungry. Shall we eat before the fireworks?" questions Temari, pulling Shikamaru out of his musing. (Temari's always hungry, lately, and Kiri is a little jealous. Women lose a lot to the Shinobi lifestyle.) Shikaku and Kiri fall behind, the soft chatter of the Mist-nin filling in the grunts of assent his dad gives, sometimes. Shikamaru wonders how they all fit together.

(When he turns to ask them a question, Kiri is holding his dad's hand and he looks about to kiss her. Temari giggles quietly behind her hand at his look at astonishment. He has never seen his dad like that.)

"_what are you doing with an old man like me?" Shikaku whispers softly into the night, the fireworks long dissipated through the darkness and Kiri's bare back shining in the soft ambience of the room. There's only the moon illuminating through, but tonight is a clear night and he can see the welts across her skin, like silver rivers in the soft light. His fingers trail over them, comforted in the knowledge Kiri is asleep when she doesn't react. She is always jumpy when it comes to her scars, her rudeness pulled across herself like a shield when she cannot hide behind a genjutsu.

He allows his hand to trail across her warm skin for a little bit, testing how the hard calluses fit against the hollow of her back. She has wide hips for such a small woman, and they create a dip in her spine that is accentuated by her breast. They push her body up, and Shikaku thinks she cannot sleep on her front often. It's too uncomfortable, especially with the way she cushions her head against her arms. Eventually his hand stills on a large scar he has felt multiple times. It's big and wide, as wide as his hand and shiny –like a burn. It sits between her hips, low down enough for Shikaku to understand what it means for Kiri. He feels drowsy in the warmth, sufficiently satiated and comfortable with the woman by his side to attempt sleep, so Shikaku leaves the calluses nestled in the warm hollow of her back and wonders at how well they fit over the scar and the pain –as if they belonged there.

"_what are you doing with a broken tool like me?" she whispers back, quietly. Shikaku freezes, because he isn't used to being caught off guard. She turns on her side, tugging her legs up closer to her body and curling inwards slightly. It's so childish, so scared and lonely that Shikaku doesn't hesitate in dwarfing her with his arms and his chest. She refuses to stiffen at the touch, and Shikaku realises that, more than actions done and word said, what evolves between them is made of missing things. (Her missing skin and his missing youth. Her lack of recoil and his lack of walls. Her refusal to lie and his refusal to be blind.) Shikaku wonders how missing bits can make a whole.

He doesn't reply to her question. Not verbally, at least. But his hands are warm against her back and her blood red hair almost looks as black as his own in the darkness.

Shikamaru, Temari and Shikaku are the ones to visit for the Kame-festival. Kiri has tarried and deflected, done her best to make sure she would be on a mission of some description when the festival came rolling, but it is her Godaime (gosh she hates her) who forces her to stop running.

"_it will be in honour of Yagura-dono, this year. As his pupil, you must attend."

Kiri's eyes widen, and there is fury rolling in those dark orbs but she doesn't lunge at the woman across the desk. Yagura died at the hand of the Rebellion and their leader believes she has the right to commemorate his passing?

She is escorted out of the Mizukage's office by two Swordsmen. (Kiri makes the silent promise not to turn up.)

The Konoha nins lodge in her flat because the hotels are too expensive but Kiri doesn't say a thing. (She never does –she never did.) She motions for Shikamaru and Temari to use the bedroom at the end of the corridor, and Shikaku is the only one to see the minute tightening of her eyes when her hand touches the brass knob. The room's bare and stuffy, like no one lives in there, but there is a bo staff in a corner as well as a scarf. (He realises this used to be Yagura's room.) She motions for him to drop his stuff in room where there already is a futon and he realises that this is her room. (The walls are a white plaster, there is a closet in a corner and the only signs of life are the weapons aligned neatly on the vanity.) Shikaku remembers that Yukino used to keep creams there, and it makes him smile slightly.

Kiri's house is a small flat, with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living room which doubles as a kitchen. It's barely large enough for a table and a couch, but Shikaku notices that the TV must have been replaced by a bookshelf. There are three of them in the living room, two in Yagura's empty room and four more squeezed together in Kiri's. The shower has got a large tub of 2-in-1 shampoo and body wash, as well as a hard sponge, a metal mesh and a brush. He figures she uses them when she can't get the blood out. The kitchen is small enough that only Kiri works in it to cook them dinner (Temari didn't offer again after opening to fridge to see three severed fingers and a butcher's knife), but it's painfully obvious that she can hardly remember where things are. (Apart from the weapons, of course, like the senbon in the dead flowers, the kunai in the fruit bowl, the shirukens in between the fridge and the counter and the thin wire running through the room at throat level) She opens cupboard and looks through drawers in order to find plates on the first night they are here.

Shikaku realises that Kiri is probably in ANBU, with the amount of time she seems to spend away from her home.

(He notices the pale blue tattoo at the nape of her neck that night.)

Temari forces the woman to go Kimono shopping with her the next day. It leaves Shikaku and Shikamaru the time to see the Godaime, bringing her a message from the Hokage. Terumi Mei greets them with warm eyes and an open smile but neither Nara are fooled by her kindness. Whilst not untrue, the Godaime soon steers the conversation towards a different topic.

"_tell me, Shikaku-san. Where are you lodging?"

Flairing a trap of some sort, he answers wearily.

"_I wonder often about Kiri-san. I trust you know she is one of our most… elite ninja."

"_I wasn't aware elite nins did the cleaning up."

Shikamaru eyes his father with a weary surprise, wondering what the man is talking about as the Mizukage stiffens. Her eyes become more alert, and her voice drops another octave as she leans forward to rest her chin on her threaded hands, elbows on her deep, dark desk.

"_how interesting. Has Kiri been telling you that, then?"

"_she doesn't need to speak in order for it to be clear."

"_yes" Mei replies, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs with a slightly teasing look. "Lovers have a special way of communicating."

Kiri wears a high collared kimono to the festival, with long sleeves in which Shikaku watches the whole of her weapons disappear. It would be considered conservative, with the only skin showing being the tips of her fingers and her face, if it weren't for how it clung to her skin and her upper body (it should almost be a sin, with the way it prevents Shikaku's brain from working right). Temari does her hair up for her, twisting it into two buns and Kiri stabs left over senbons through them. He doesn't really care, too busy gaping at her. (She looks like Mito Senju.)

There is that goddamned genjutsu on her face again, because he knows Kiri is aware of his son's and his wife's uneasiness towards her scars. It shimmers softly against her skin and Kiri smiles at him beautifully when he slips his hand through hers. (He can see the scars crinkling in his mind and Shikaku finds that it doesn't matter too much anymore.)

She tells him she hates that festival, later on in the evening when she has had too much moonshine and he is helping her walk home. Shikamaru is thrown over his shoulders, Temari too pregnant to do anything but laugh at her husband, and Kiri can still walk so he is only holding her hand in order to make sure she doesn't wander off and lose herself in the crowd. (She likes doing that, she wrote to him once. It makes her feel insignificant and lonely in a way that stops her from thinking about Yagura, her scars and the Wars.) She tell him she hates the festival as they are walking home, but it is when it's only the two of them that she tells about Shishou and the Ambush and the Godaime and the Scars and the Darkness and the Purge. They are alone in her room, squeezed on a too small futon when he realises that those scars, her smile isn't the result of some high class mission gone wrong. It's the mark of her own Village. (It's the price she paid for being the prized pupil of a manipulated man.) Her breath is heavy with vapours, but he knows she isn't drunk enough that she doesn't know what she's doing. Kiri wants him to stay, to understand, and so she doesn't lie.

Shikaku refuses to turn a blind eye to what she chokes out.

The following night, as they squeeze on her too small futon and she lies tucked under his chin, Shikaku tells her about the Third Great Shinobi War. At first, Kiri laughs, because she has lived through that one as well, fought through the end of it in fact, when the Yellow Flash decimated the ranks and all she owed her life to was the fact she wasn't front line fodder. (She lists the names of those she lost to the Yellow flash, going through her mental checklist of all the people who have left her behind forever and ticking them off with her fingers. Seventy three, she tells him. She rattles facts about those people, and he feels himself grow ashamed. The Yondaime is their hero, but he is Kiri's nightmare –Akane was twelve. He loved apples and I knew him because we got in a fight over whose sensei was better. Neomi was his female teammate. She had a little brother, Yaku. He was good at genjutsu. The Yellow flash got him too. Kaoru was my teammate before I apprenticed. He was sent to the frontline because he was a close range kenjutsu fighter; one of the best of our year. Kaoru had always wanted to become a Swordsman, but he lasted barely a week before his body was sent back in pieces. I still go to his grave, sometimes, to clean it. Nobody else survived to do it.) Shikaku carries on, and soon Kiri understands he isn't telling her the story of the Third. He's telling her his story. She listens.

(Shikaku got his scars saving his teammates from an Iwa nin's Earth Claws. He was twenty one and it took him three months to get a medic to look at them –because they were superficial scarring and it wasn't a war priority. When the system got around to it, the war had already been over for thirty seven days. It took him twenty one weeks to look in a mirror without punching it and a year before he felt comfortable enough to chat women up. He met Yukino when he was twenty three, fell madly in love within a month and she was pregnant before either knew it. He married her on the spot.)

Kiri understands what he is trying to say. It's all mumbled and rumbled, his voice jolting around as he speaks because he understands that he's letting her in too far, that she could bolt and never come back –and why the hell is he talking about his dead wife anyway? Shikaku wants to hit his head as he realises what he's doing, but he ploughs on. Kiri understands.

She lasts the whole of the following morning's breakfast with him without her genjutsu, eventually fleeing into the kitchen when his son and his wife enter the room and busying herself with cooking. He sighs when he feels the quiet simmer of the genjutsu take over the room. (A journey of many steps)

He is surprised when she drops it as she is washing the dishes, letting the chakra disperse before she moves onto drying them. Temari stiffens slightly when the safety net slips away, but Shikamaru only observes the silent conversation going on between Shikaku himself and their host. They exchange a murmured argument, before her adamant voice cuts in and closes the debate.

"_Yagura-shishou taught me enough that even I realise monstrosity don't have their place at the dinner table. Now put these away and get packing. Godaime-sama" the word is spat out with such violence Shikamaru recoils from his eavesdropping "has given me another mission."

"_where to?"

"_classified. Even I don't know yet. She'll tell me when she hands over the scroll tomorrow."

"_you want us gone by then?"

She looks at him strangely.

"_you wanna stay in Water country?"

Shikaku shrugs, but there is an undercurrent of tension in his shoulders that belies the casual movement.

"_why not?"

"_it's dark, damp and dreary."

Temari chuckles at the three Ds, but Kiri's already moving on.

"_I would have thought you wanted to be away from Konoha as little as possible, with the baby due soon and all that..."

"_he isn't due for at least a month, and I do admit I'm still tired from the trip here."

Kiri shrugs at Temari, before turning back to her boyfriend. (It's wrong. Shikaku is far more than just her boyfriend.)

"_stay if you wish. I don't mind. Just lock the door when you leave and clean out the fridge."

Shikaku winces as Kiri hides a snicker, and Shikamaru wonders if this is, unlike what he thought, not the first time they have been in this situation –or have had this argument.

Watching Kiri pack is what finally allows all the piece to click inside Shikamaru's mind.

Watching the woman pack is very much like watching Naruto perform his Kage Bushin –done so thoughtlessly that it baffles him with the ease at which the hard task is performed. It begins a little like this;

"_Shikaku? Can you get me the scrolls please?"

Something comes sailing over Temari's head, landing in the hands of the red headed woman who uses its momentum to unfurl about three metres of it. The catching and the unrolling is done in one single movement, carelessly executed in a way that belies years of using the same movement again and again. He watches attentively, curiosity picked. (Kiri's hands are well worn by weapons, but she has none strapped to her back. Her chakra pool is consequential but her tight chakra control would be lost on battle ninjutsu. Her muscles are developed too differently for her to be a Taijutsu user. Shikamaru suspected genjutsu mistress, especially with the way she layered hers on every morning –but what use would blank scrolls be to genjutsu?) She puts a finger to the paper closes her eyes and focuses her chakra.

It's unlike anything Shikamaru has ever seen, partially because it is so instantaneous and raw, but also because the woman before him is doing Fuinjutsu without ink. He has heard of people who forwent brushes, like Mito Senju or the Fourth Hokage, but always had they used ink. Sometimes blood; but blood work proved to be too imbalanced for anything to work properly. Blood seals were more patch up work than anything. But here he is, standing before this scrap of a woman who is creating a seal out of thin air, pulling it from her memory and tracing it down with chakra. He can see her trail, glowing a faint red (it's the same shade as her hair) and it's his dad's voice which enlightens him as to what the hell is going on.

"_she's creating a storage seal. No need to pack if she can just seal it. It's much lighter that way as well."

He half turns towards his dad, because Shikamaru remembers that last year, for his birthday, his dad passed along a sealing scroll and ohmykami it was Kiri. She made it for him, as a birthday present. His eyes widen, as his mind races. He feels like an idiot for not having noticed it all sooner. (Whenever his dad bought dango, a scroll could be seen soon after. Generally, they were standard purpose sealing scrolls. He remembers one which his dad had on his arm –anchor seal, he had told him. Shikamaru hadn't really bothered to understand, assuming it was for him to serve as a protector to some Konoha shinobi on a high ranking mission out there, but now he realised it was for Kiri. She had been the one to devise it, using his father as a safeguard for when her missions turned south.)

She had been in his life for three and a half years and Shikamaru had met her only a few months ago.

"_any news from Kiri?"

Shikaku glanced over to his son, sitting opposite him at the breakfast table. Whilst he had moved out of the Clan Head house when he had handed over that spot to Shikamaru, Shikaku often had the visit of his son on weekends for a lazy meal and a game of Shogi. It was unusual for his son to ask after her though.

"_she's still out."

"_really?" Shikamaru seemed surprised. "I didn't think, since Konoha makes sure its shinobi come home at least once every three months, that Kiri would allow for a team to do a five months mission."

"_Konoha allows undetermined length of solo missions."

"_that's most probably because the ANBU don't come ba-" Shikamaru cut himself off from finishing that sentence, the answer sprawled out before his eyes. "What the hell? Why?"

"_the Godaime would like to move on, to forget about the war, but Kiri is a glaring reminder of the Past."

"_why? Because she fought in the Third and the Fourth?"

"_she was the pupil to the Yondaime Mizukage. Some of the population actually would rather see her as Godaime than Mei Terumi."

"_what about Kiri?" interjected Temari from the doorway as she walks in with her baby son. She's got dark circles under her eyes, so Shikamaru takes him off her as soon as she is near enough. Shikaku shrugged, motioning for his grandson to be handed over to him.

"_she isn't interested. She's started the paperwork to move, so I think she's out on that suicide run until Konoha replies. Depending on the answer, she's coming back or not."

Eyebrows shot up.

"_that's a bit harsh." Temari pointed out. "Even for the Mist. Bloody Mist, okay –I would have understood. But Mist? After all the work the Godaime has put into changing its image? I wouldn't have thought they'd stoop so low."

"_it's Kiri's own fault as well, isn't it?" ah, Shikamaru. Always the one to bring out the sore points.

"_she just takes it. Doesn't refuse the missions, doesn't say no. She goes along with it. Part of the reason why Konoha is so worried about taking her in –they don't want another massacre on their hands when she snaps."

When she snaps.

Shikaku notices discrepancies within Kiri, things that change and morph and mutate all the time. He wonders why.

Shikaku notices that Kiri is only the snarky woman from the letters when she doesn't layer her face with genjutsu. He notices she doesn't do it inside her Village ("Won't give them the fucking satisfaction", she says, one day when he asks her.), he notices she doesn't really mingle. Sure, there is the odd night when she drags him out to some kind of bar and drinks herself into oblivion, but often enough Kiri just stays in the village long enough to pick a mission. Shikaku notices Kiri is at her most violent and rude inside her home Village.

Shikaku notices, on one of the few occasions when he takes her out to a resort in Hot Water, that Kiri isn't always snarky when she doesn't have her genjutsu on. She doesn't wear it when it's just the two of them, lost in a public crowd –and he realises that, in the days they spend lounging in Yuukagure, Kiri doesn't bite as much. She smiles at him and laughs in the street when he holds her hand. (But when people point at her face, she doesn't hide those teeth of hers.) Shikaku loves this side of Kiri as well.

Shikaku notices that Kiri wears a genjutsu around Konoha. She does it with a wry grin and a shadow in her eyes, because she might not wear it at home, when it's just the two of them, but she pulls it on over her face when in the streets like she might a coat –or an ANBU mask. Shikaku sees Kiri change when the genjutsu is on, change from a caustic and harsh woman into a careless girl. He wonders if that was who she was, before she lost her Shishou to the Rebellion.

Shikaku also notices Kiri doesn't wear her genjutsu on missions. He knows, because there is a whole squad of Shinobi following Mei Terumi when she visits the Godaime Hokage, and only one is a woman. Their eyes catch at the gates, her in the arriving party and him in the welcoming one. When they take up shadows, Shikaku makes sure Kiri has got someone he trusts. After all, it wouldn't do for the rumours about them to go ramping around Konoha.

Shikaku notices Kiri is downright rude when on missions. She doesn't speak, not often at least, and when some Kiri shinobi bristle at the casual air between the two female Hokages, Kiri just takes it in stride. Her poker face is good and her grasp on Shinobi politics better –Kiri's alcohol tolerance is praised by the Mizukage, who pushes the girl to drink with Tsunade-sama. Shikaku can swear there is a venomous look hidden deep inside her eyes, but no one else comments on it.

Kiri does join the Hokage and the Mizukage inside the hot springs, at the latter's invitation. There is a private room with sake and steam and a nice bath Sakura has excavated in a moment of anger. (Later on, Kiri spits and snarls and fumes at him in the comfort of his own home. She is livid with anger, because the Mizukage has been making fun of her by forcing her to undress and show her scars in front of Tsunade-sama, someone Kiri respects.) Kiri's poker face is good, and her grasp on Shinobi politics better. She drinks and plays poker with them, pretends she is the first to pass out from the alcohol and loses to Tsunade sama. The woman is so startled she forgets to rebuke the Mizukage for bringing an entourage of ten shinobi on a peaceful visit to Konoha. (Kiri might hate the Godaime, but she loves Kirikagure for all it reminds her of Yagura-shishou.)

Kiri's poker face is good enough that she belies nothing when Tsunade summons her to her office. Shikaku is asleep next to her when the summon comes in the middle of the night, and she wonders if the rumour mill will go rampant the following day. He says nothing when he wakes and learns of the intrusion, but there is a tightness around his eyes that cannot be ignored. (It is well known ANBU are dreadful gossips.)

Kiri goes to the Hokage, because she has an inkling of what the woman wishes to discuss. There are scars on her face and silver whispers across her skin, but it's the gashes on her souls that open again when she is told that her transfer to Konoha has been refused. Kiri is ANBU, she has come too close to Village secrets that even the Peace cannot unveil and her lack of paper trail does nothing for the Hokage's trust.

The woman takes it well, all things considered. (She takes it well for someone who is about to be sent on suicide missions for the rest of her life.)

She doesn't tell Shikaku that she's been refused. Instead, when he asks her about what the Hokage wanted, Kiri changes the subject. She talks about, maybe, Shikaku getting a permanent passport for Mist. She wonders if, perhaps, he could look into trying to join her on a few missions. She doesn't tell him about the blonde woman shattering Kiri's hopes to live past thirty, but he doesn't need to be told.

The following day, Kiri asks for an undetermined permission of stay inside Leaf. This time, it's Shikaku who pushes the papers through, rather than her. He goes to the Godaime Hokage and tells her, in a few words, that he's courting her and it would really help if she could come to Leaf at least more often than once a month. The Hokage says nothing. (Shikaku is one of her most trusted allies, so she does, eventually, give Kiri an almost free pass into Konoha.)

Shikaku doesn't need to ask the Godaime Hokage why she is so reluctant to allow Kiri in. (An alliance with Kiri no Sato is far more important than the happiness of one of her nins, be they Jonin commander and a good friend.) Tsunade hime doesn't ask why Mei is so hell bent on getting rid of Kiri. (Shikaku doesn't offer a reason, but her apprenticeship to the Yondaime isn't a state secret. Tsunade feels, somewhere in the corners of her mind, relief at the knowledge that Naruto would never attempt to evict Sakura from the village like Mei is doing with Kiri.)

Most of all, though, Shikaku notices that when Kiri laughs, her voice doesn't sound as ripped as when she speaks. She's bought dinner from a ramen stand somewhere in the Village, bringing it back to his small house at the edge of the woods. Kiri loves the deer, and they are sitting outside in the fading sunlight eating dinner when a younger foal approaches them. She holds her breath when he comes closer, wearily nearing this new woman. Kiri allows him to, still as a statue in order not to frighten the fragile thing. Her eyes are shining and all her attention is on the young animal, who promptly decides she is not a danger and bumps the back of her hand with his nuzzle. Kiri laughs softly and he is mesmerised by how comfortable she looks, with her hair down and her shoes off, sitting casually of the porch and the soft light from the dying sun unable to eclipse the softer smile on her face. She's happy then, with her hand stroking the foal's neck and Shikaku next to her.

He commits this instant, all of her –from the tangles in her hair to the half-eaten ramen bowl on her lap, he commits it all to memory. She's never seemed so right.

Kiri leaves Konoha with the Mist entourage, guarding her Mizukage like she is loyal to the woman. She turns around as the gates close, just to see Shikaku standing there, looking. Their eyes catch and silent words are exchanged. (They both know this could be the last time she sees him, because they'll be in Mist by nightfall the following day and she has a mission two days after that.) Kiri turns back to the road.

(Gosh she hates them all.)

At first, Kiri writes often. Almost every day, they share letters and snark at each other like they did when she lived with him. Then she gets sent away, away on a mission across the five nations. They meet in Otafuki Gai again, despite Kiri not being on the papers, and she leaves the following morning with a sharp smile. Her mission's taking her to the confines of the land, all the way through Fire and Grass and Rain and Earth, to the Fang Country. She doesn't tell him much else, but he knows she is still hunting remaining Zetsus down. It is a sad truth that the War hasn't left those lands, it still rages in the west, at the Northern Boarders of Wind. The smaller countries, those without a Hidden Village, have all been tainted and defiled by the presence of the Zetsus. They were used as bases in the war, bases that even remain as of today.

Shikaku wonders when Kiri won't come back. (It's a matter of time, really, before the letters cease completely.)

Still, the following month, as he is reading newspaper with his morning coffee, Shikaku notices the article about the strange disappearance of an entire town in Fang. The official explanation is a tsunami –because that's all the gooey green stuff permeating the earth could be; mud and lime from the sea. Shikaku thinks it odd, partially since Fang is nowhere near the ocean.

Kiri thinks about Shikaku often, when she is on those missions.

She fucking hates to admit it, because she is a hard ass Kunoichi battling to stay alive, not some damsy drippy princess –but bloody hell she misses him. She misses the comfort and the security he offers, the way he'll just hug her and block out the world. She misses his laugh and his big hands that'd dwarf hers and make her feel twenty nine again, not bloody a hundred.

Kiri tries to avoid it, but she knows she's fucking in love with that damn Nara. (She doesn't mind. Not too much.)

That's why Kiri tries her damn hardest to keep up with the letters, because she knows he worries if she doesn't reply. She tries to arrange meeting times, both in Otafuki and Konoha, because she knows he wants her to be part of his life in ways she cannot, not anymore. (She's living on borrowed time, aware that she's going to die in the field and bloody hell; she's avoided death for two years now. Her luck will run out.)

Kiri also knows he'll be fine. She isn't an idiot, and whilst she isn't a Nara, she can see as well. She sees how much his son loves Shikaku, how willing he'd be to do anything for his dad. She knows Konoha isn't like Kiri, knows it'll take care of him in ways she cannot.

But most of all, Kiri knows that her death will finally give Shikaku peace. She's opened his eyes to another side of the world he hadn't seen yet, to a messy, dark side which he didn't need to see. She's shown him things he doesn't like, and she knows that as long as she remains by his side, Shikaku will never be content inside Konoha's walls again. (She cannot belong to Konoha, and her presence is tearing him apart in ways he doesn't deserve to be. Kiri wants to hug and tuck Shikaku away from the world –and she knows he'll laugh if she ever tells him. He's seen too much of the world to be tucked away from it.) In a way, in a very, very dark corner of her mind, Kiri awaits for the day she'll never come back. She knows it'll be the day she sets him free.

Kiri's invited to the one year anniversary of Shikamaru and Temari's son. She promises to come, wincing when she realises it collides with the time she is meant to be in Honey but she decides that, bloody hell –she'll make it. She'll take two weeks off this two year haul through the nations and go spend them in Konoha, where her permit allows her a week's residence for every month she isn't there. (She hasn't been in Konoha in a year.)

Kiri leaves Honey at the beginning of spring, a bounce in her steps as she crosses the Kaizoku Sea. She bounds by Kirigakure, takes the time to dust her apartment before she's out again and hiking across Noodle. It's a day's run to get to the Fire boarder, and an extra two and a half to get to Konoha.

Kiri never makes it.

(They find her body near the Modoroki Shrine, on Nagi Island. It's out of Fire and Wave jurisdiction so no retribution can be exacted, but the governing bodies of the place allow the shinobi to track her assailants. They find a lead back to Honey, where they discover a wrecked apart nest of Zetsu and a fire still licking at the underground base. The seal barrier surrounding the place is active, and they have to wait for three days before the flames die and they are allowed in. Kiri was nothing if not thorough.)

Her funerals are held in Kiri the week preceding the Kame-festival. Shikaku is invited by the Godaime Mizukage, who allows him to empty Kiri's apartment of the books she kept in there. They all belong to him, he learns, according to her will. Shikaku sits through the funerals, hating every second of it as his clothes soak in the humidity and chill him to the core.

He goes back to her flat and locks himself up for a day, just him, her books and the dust left behind.

It's a year and three months after her death when he gets around to reading what she's left him. Shikaku is taken aback by it.

Some books are old, older than the Third War, and it is with a start that Shikaku realises they are books scavenged from Uzushio. He remembers Kiri telling him of a mission, long ago, during which she used a modified jutsu to breathe underwater and explored the ruins of her home. He figures that's where she found them, and he's rewarded for his thoughts when he finally manages to decode the seals engraved in the covers of each tome. They are there for protection, having preserved the fragile paper from the mould growing all over Kiri and more than likely form the waves when Uzushio fell under the sea.

Then there are other books.

Under the seemingly bland covers and uninspiring titles ("Painting without a brush", "The Art of Chakra Projection") lie books written by Kiri, all in her tight, slanted scrawl that looks half illegible and half angry. They are all treaties on Fuinjutsu, everything she has managed to scrape together from years and years of research. Shikaku remembers the ease with which she drew seals with her chakra, the barrier that kept the flames (and her victims) inside and the levels of destruction the mystic Uzushio could unleash upon the lands.

He hides the books in the deepest corners of the Nara library and never speaks of them again.

Shikaku was the first one to write I love you down, and he was also the first to say it. (She's never far behind, though.)

They are laying down in the dark and this time he's pretty sure she's asleep. She's facing him, and her chest is rising and falling softly with the covers. They pool over them, drowning the two in an ocean of fabric that hides Shikaku's hand on her bare hip.

"_I love you." he whispers it in the night, too low for even him to hear it. It's more like a breath leaving his lips than a sentence. He stills regardless, because Kiri's eyes have just flown open and ohmygod he's forgotten how to think for a second. They are so dark, capturing his own and holding him in place when he feels like fleeing. It's stupid, he tells himself, because he is forty three and a shinobi. He doesn't flee from thirty years old Kunoichi.

"_I know."

Her scars tug horridly when she smiles, and the yawn that follows only makes them stretch and bulk, but Shikaku's past seeing them. All he focuses on is the soft plum flesh of her lips and the content glow of her face. She's happy.

"_I love you too." She eventually murmurs back, once she snuggled in the covers and has her head tucked against his chest. Shikaku feels a breath leave him, carrying all the tension from his muscles and replacing it with a silly stupid warmth that makes no sense.

Kiri's smile against his skin is worth it though.

Shikaku also finds letters, with the books. They are written on proper paper, and sealed with a black wax that make it all too formal. There's the imprint of a turtle on the wax, and he supposes it's either Kiri's or Yagura's. (He misses their first letters, when she'd write on the back of whatever she could find. He still has her poster.) He opens one of the letters, by curiosity, one day.

Shikaku,

If you are reading this, then either I've died or my stupid courage stopped running and I caught up to it. Or maybe I gave this to you after an amazing bout of mind blowing sex (not that it's ever not mind blowing) and my cerebral functions are still impaired.

Regardless, you are reading this –so I guess it means I have to be kind of truthful.

I fell in love with you when we were writing those silly letters. It's stupid, because I hardly knew you then; but you didn't give up on me, no matter how rude or how late my answers were. I guess it was the first time someone stuck by me like that, without reason. Shishou didn't put up with me out of the goodness of his heart, no matter what I like to think –so really. You were the first.

You are the first in so many ways.

I had never been in love before. Sure, I'd thought I was in love, having pined after boys (and then men) as I grew up, but I'd never felt the kind of all-encompassing safety and happiness that you gave me whenever you were around. Hell, just seeing you made me feel safe in ways that were totally inappropriate for a self-respecting Kunoichi.

I'd never given someone a key to my flat before. I know it may sound silly, but my flat had been my space for so long, it'd been somewhere only I could exist for years and for me to let you in was like saying you were allowed to see me at my worst. And you did, see me at my worst I mean.

You were also the first not to flinch at my scars.

I know we've discussed this already, and I know you don't think I should hide them away –but I'm so fucking ashamed of them, because they mean that I failed, I failed Shishou and Kiri and myself. I hate them, because it's a reminder that my own village will not hesitate to carve my flesh out and that means I'm just a tool. I know shinobi are tools, but sometimes I wish we could be humans as well.

Thanks for making me human, thanks for not flinching, thanks for taking care of my flat key, thanks for clearing out my fridge, thanks for putting up with my wild drinking habits, thanks for introducing me to dango, thanks for allowing me to be part of your family and thanks for letting me fall in love with you.

Fall in love. It's such a silly expression. I think they say fall, because it happens so quickly. It's like one day you are happy, friends and everything is swell and then bam –surprise, you suddenly get slammed in the face with those feelings and you hit the pavement with a sharp crack. Being in love is being open to pain, I guess.

Thanks for loving me back and making that pain go away.

There are others, like that one. Written at intervals; when she was on mission, when she was in Kiri, when she was here, in Konoha. There are letters pages long, laughter in her words as she details some thing or another to him. There are short ones, just a few sentences.

He realises some of them are letters she never sent.

(I love you. It's silly, because I've never met you before, but I love you so damn much because you stick by me, you put a smile through these letters and you give me a little bit of sunshine. I love you, and it's silly, because you probably think I'm some sort of idiots –but I love you so damn much I have to be pissed to be able to write it to you.

I'm fucking scared shitless that you'll stop writing now, but I'm drunk and scared and alone and I really wish you were here with me tonight. Sorry.)

Shikaku keeps them all in a black shoe box, in the top shelf of his wardrobe. He doesn't know why he does, but he keeps them there, out of sight but never out of mind. Her books are hidden in his clan library, her letters and all the stuff that was in her pack (like Yagura's bo, her stuffed turtle or even his letters) are on his shelf –but Kiri's in his mind, on his own memorial stone, a bright name beside the one of Yukino.

He loves her, loves them both, really, and that's what makes him smile when he's eighty nine and dies in his sleep.

Shikaku,

It's three days before Shikadai's one year old birthday party. I've got a ring in my pocket, because I know that if I don't do it, then you won't. I'd like us to get married in autumn. I've always loved the ways the leaves turned the same blood red as my hair. It made me feel like nature was okay with me, somehow. Like it was giving me a chance to be myself, tainting its colours to mine and loving me as well –telling me it's okay to have scars and be ugly as long as I could see and accept the beauty around me.

It's silly, right?

The ring's heavy in my pocket. I don't think I'll have time to give it to you.

Yeah, this time, it's my blood I'm writing with. (It's the same shade as autumn and my hair, but don't you think it's so pretty? I'm glad it's your face I'm seeing in the blood loss, even though mine's prettier.) I'm sorry I couldn't stay safe, but I'll tell you a secret if you promise not to be sad. So? It's a promise? (The Promise of a Lifetime.)

I'm setting you free.

You must think it's the fever talking, but I'm honest. I'm setting you free. I can't belong to Konoha, and that's just not fair to you. It's incredibly unfair and selfish of me to tear you apart like that, to make you love me and wait for me when you have people loving you in Leaf. I know you are probably thinking I'm an idiot, but I'm dying and I'm allowed to say what I want.

What I want is for you to smile.

Not every day –gosh that'd be creepy. I want you to smile at my funerals, because Kiri drew a smile on my face but you were the one to make it true. I want you to smile when you think of me, because you aren't torn in two now that I'm always with you.

I'd like you to smile, please. I'd love for you to smile and dote upon your grand kids (Shikamaru better give you more than one) and be happy for the rest of your life. In fact, I want you to. I want you to smile and be happy. I also want you to say I love you again, Shikaku. To someone who deserves it. It's killing me to write that, because bloody hell I don't fucking share and you are mine, but I want you to be happy again. Say I love you to someone who deserves it and mean it, like all the times you told me I love you.

I'm saying goodbye, but it's not the end. You don't need any Fuinjutsu to hold my soul.

For all Shikaku is the first to write and say I love you, Kiri is the one to promise him forever.

(And really, he doesn't mind.)