Century: Ten Times Ten

A collection of Naruto snapshots by Zhang Sizheng

For Novocain

The Second Decade: the Wilful, the Wicked and the Wanton

11. Red

Minato has never been particularly fond of the colour red. It's red and red is the arterial spray of a misplaced bullet, the life in blood before it is parched to rust, the agony streaking his abdomen when a madman has a knife and just won't fucking let go… and these are all sisters of the ultimate reason he despises it.

But he meets his wife, who isn't his wife yet, but he meets her—yes. And she's red too—red like a heart still beating beneath a soft breast, red like the first passionate cry of daybreak streaking the sky, red like… like what might be love, yes, it's love, love so strong he loves her will you marry me?

She will. She does. And he likes that, yes, likes having her warm presence by his side in the dim morning-dusk, and fighting over the tiny bathroom sink, or seeing her firebrand hair glinting on an opposing building, her sharp eyes which aren't red but the colour of greenleaf the colour of life anyhow sighting down the barrel and pulling the trigger and the hostage isn't so much as grazed by the bullet but she snipes the maniac through the shoulder good and proper yessss

She's red. She's red, from marvellous head to delicate toe, his wife his lover his… Kushina's red.

And so is the pale Rookie they meet later. They both meet him, Minato and Kushina, and Kakashi's a red boy for all that his hair and skin and eyes are chrome of differing shades—silver hair and grey eyes and pale, pale skin that flares in the darkness when…

But there is the one eye, his left eye, his blind eye… there's a ruddy tint to it. And that relieves Minato because he thought—he's not sure what he thought but it was something to do with red-red-red-why-aren't-you-red-when-i-think-i-think—

So he reclines on the bed and watches them, his red lover and his red wife:

Kushina's tongue is red as it darts out, paints Kakashi's lips, which are a bitten red; his eye blinks in surprise, and that's red as well, as is his unsteady flush when he winds his thin hands into her red mane…

The feeling in Minato's gut is heavy, red with love and red with shame.

It's a blood world.

But he finds himself not caring as their hands draw him down. Hers are lacquered blue, he notices, before he is swallowed by their mouths.

12. Glow

Kakashi smells it.

He's not sure how, but he smells the life growing in Kushina's womb and knows—somehow—that it's not his. And he feels a little frustrated and a little thwarted and not a little foolish as he draws away, dresses himself, ignores the tangle of limbs and bodies sitting up in bed, quilted covers falling from flushed faces and shoulders. He shuffles to the door and twists the knob sharply, slipping out even though we haven't seen you for two weeks, you brat, get back in here, c'mon—

The door slides shut on Kushina's confusion and Minato's concern

But Kakashi won't fuck a pregnant woman. He won't fuck the mother of a child when the child's not his—belongs to the man who kissed him good morning at two pm yesterday and yawned his way through dinner but woke up when he saw Kakashi sprawled over—and then… yes…

He might let Minato fuck him, would let Minato fuck him, but he thinks with resignation that This, whatever This is, has been a long time coming and he should damn well know when to let go.

So he liberates a beer from the fridge and watches the clock tick forty slow minutes. The day has dimmed from afternoon and into velvet twilight before he slips back into the bedroom, leans against the wall. Watches with a half-smile (only a little bitter) as pheromones and sex scents and afterglow tumble over each other and into his senses. And he's not a bystander—in a way, he's participating. And in a way, he wishes he wasn't.

Because she's always vibrant and always a firebrand on his skin. With child, even across the room, twining and twisting with their yellow-haired lover, she is ten times the flame on his skin, and fifty times the heat in his belly. Though that could've been the alcohol, he admits as Minato tongues a lazy trail from the hollow of Kushina's throat, traces her jawline. Nips twice, before she seizes his hair roughly and bruises their mouths and—

Kakashi's gut tightens with longing.

Twice, he moves towards them. Twice, he moves away. (They don't notice.)

He doesn't approach them again.

Presses the cool-perspiring aluminium to his hot brow, licks away the salt collecting on his upper lip and closes his eyes, aching so hard so lonely.

And sitting by the wall in the darkening bedroom, he listens to their sleepy murmurs before he closes his eyes, lapsing into a doze. He's not an intruder, he isn't he isn't he isn't. Not here.

Dreaming.

13. Contrast

For all that her hair is bright and red, Kushina is a jackdaw.

She loves beautiful ideas, beautiful objects, beautiful men. Steals them. Hides them. Hoards them.

Her hair stays beneath her cap, so the mark doesn't see her. And because he doesn't, she sights swift and sure and steady, her forefinger on the trigger; two bullets steal his health and his freedom. And she goes home to her two lovers, of whom the world does not know.

She loves her hair, because it is bright and long, because she told her Mama, I want to grow it out and it was the first and only request her mother granted her before the laughing man ran her over with his big truck, oh Mama.

She loves the law, because it chased the laughing man and he exploded with his big truck in a maelstrom of heat and light and shrapnel (she still bears a scar on her neck). And like the law, she will steal the freedom and health of others like him with her silenced rifle (she keeps that as polished as she dares, because it too must stay hidden) and she loves her beautiful men.

Minato and Kakashi are golden and argent (summer and winter) and both hers—one a secret husband, one a secret love, and both her lovers to be kept close to her heart and hahaha the world will never know.

But never is shorter a length of time than she thinks.

14. Feather

Falling hurts. The farther you fall, the harder you fall, be you insect or stone or a human toppling from your prideful high pedestal, or a heart tipping from the peace-paved path and down into what some people call love, and what Minato calls a painful assfuck with an extra side of prostate.

At least, that's what he most associates with the first time he realises Kakashi is set on staying with them, doesn't mind being chained to a married couple nearly ten years his senior. Wasting his youth and beauty on their tired eyes.

Minato would like to be the soft down from a robin's bosom. He wants to drift on the wind, to fall even more slowly than sakura petals do—slower than three centimetres a heartbeat. He wants to be borne back up to the unbroken path and walk it with his two lovers.

But you pay a price for love, and falling so fast, so hard, reaching terminal velocity in the darkness and waiting for the dead-pact, the impact that kills… well, it's a hurt in the future. An ache that will come in ten seconds or ten thousand or ten million.

It doesn't hurt now, Minato says, bent over the wing of the armchair from which Kushina is holding court. The gleam in her eye speaks of sex and satisfaction and sheer, amused wickedness as Kakashi prods gingerly—apologetically—at the abused ring of muscle and Minato doesn't wince. He is lying.

Kakashi senses it. It's probably why he delivers a stinging slap to Minato's right buttock.

Minato howls.

Kushina howls.

Minato sends little spearpoints of angry emotion in the direction of his cackling wife (she laughs like a crow, or maybe a jackdaw) and cranes his neck. Still, he cannot see anything but Kakashi's chin so he settles for spearing Kakashi's left clavicle with a death stare.

As it lifts in a shrug, the scar bisecting it ripples faintly.

He lies still for all of the next two dozen heartbeats—he counts—before telling Kakashi to let him up. Kakashi presses down lightly—reassuringly—before the pressure lifts and Minato sighs and tries to stand.

He takes two steps before realising that the reason the world is wobbling so much is due to the way his knees refuse to lock. He has time for a resigned fuck before he's tumbling towards the ground.

Idiot. He's not sure if it's Kushina or Kakashi or himself who says it, but he's suddenly not falling; he's caught and he knows it would have hurt if he'd hit the ground.

It's comforting, he thinks as Kushina rolls out of the chair to run a hot bath and Kakashi licks the salt from Minato's jaw, wincing at the stubble stripping his tongue.

He has two lovers to catch him, and to bear him back towards the sun.

15. Clink

The wind chimes over the kitchen window always irritated Kakashi. But he keeps them there because he'd laughed so very hard when Minato came in from hanging them up with no less than four blood blisters, and… well. If that didn't say sweat and blood and laughter and love, what didn't?

Blood blisters. Really.

The breeze rustles a soft melody from them, and Kakashi resists the urge to throw something. He likes silence. Peace. It's just like Minato (and Kushina) to invade his little apartment and hang up noisemakers so that he's never free from noise.

He can't get away from them. He's not sure he wants to, either. Even with Minato looking more and more thoughtful as time goes by—even with the life swelling Kushina's belly—even with…

There's a knock on the door.

Kakashi goes to answer it, because he knows only Kushina makes enough racket through a closed door to drown out a storm of wind chimes in a gale.

He opens the door to let them in, and smiles into their kisses.

16. Lipstick

She only ever colours her mouth with two shades. She loves the bright red ones, of course, but it's always frustrating when she looks in the mirror to find that her bitten mouth clashes jarringly with her violently shaded hair.

For everyday use, she blocks the pink from her lips with a flesh-shade that shimmers very slightly and throws all attention to her green eyes and red hair so that it's almost as if she is fully featureless beneath the curve of her cheeks.

She's still beautiful, of course—she takes care to be, is vain in a way she hates to admit to.

She only ever applies the second shade when marking someone. It is an obscenely dark purple that borders on mangosteen, and looks almost black against her clear, redhead's complexion.

Today is no exception.

She applies it after priming her gun—two languorous swipes send colour into her bloodless-looking mouth. Blots her lips on the orange handkerchief Minato gave her five years ago, when she cried over her father's death.

And when she sights and places her finger on the trigger, she proceeds to chew away all the purple from her lips. Stains her even, white teeth two shades lighter than a mangosteen's dark shell-skin.

Chews extra-hard, because she can't get a shot in now, with a rash young Rookie breaking and running to apprehend—you stupid boy, get away Kakashi was never this stupid

And there's the flash of something bright Thank God it's sunny out and she changes her angle—just a little—and the bullet takes off half the blond Rookie's ear and strips several inches of hair and scalp away, but breaks the tendon in the forearm of the mark's knife-wielding left hand. That's all she needs. Choking and scrabbling at the stump of his ear with blood-slicked hands, the Rookie stumbles away from the mark, and that's as clear a shot as she's going to get—

The boy is still sobbing. She can hear it from here.

He's probably traumatised, but she accepts a new handkerchief from Minato and wipes off her bitten mouth and fills it with a colourless sigh. She doesn't forget to kiss Minato, to blot it.

17. Bait

Many worms writhe out the last of their short, dark lives on a cruel silver barb. Some of them are tugged bloodily to pieces by the jolting of the gluttonous fish's mouth. Minato stares blankly at the pulpy brown-pink-grey annelid—still moving, a little, a little feebly, dirt-tainted blood dripping onto his denim trousers. He'd spent the last five minutes coaxing it onto the end of his hook, and wonders why he chooses to accompany his old mentor fishing now when there're rumours of a nasty ring of dealers preying on secondary school kids. (Minato knows they're not rumours, because he's Superintendent Namikaze and why he was wasting his day off doing something that had nothing to do with his job he didn't know—)

But there's a lesson to be learned here, he thinks, as he gives into a fit of compassion and attempts to free the maimed worm from the hook he'd spitted it on. There's a way to avoid unnecessary bloodshed to net these bastards…

He'd need someone smart and steady, though. Kakashi—

No, not Kakashi, of course. Not Kakashi. Kushina would kill him.

Impossibly, the thought makes him grin.

He excuses himself, the idea lighting up the dark thoughts cobwebbing his mind. It puts a spring in his step as he walks away; he doesn't see Old Jiraiya shaking his head and rolling up his line before kicking the now limp deadbait into the water, where it sinks and is probably eaten by some smug bottom feeder.

Or just not eaten at all. What a waste.

18. Arch

The asphalt tilts to the sky. Kakashi feels the hammer of the bullet miles before the pain closes in on him and sets his world afire.

An explosion in the back of his head. The lights flowering in his vision are the trees and the field and the eye searing klaxon-lights splintered over and over—the rest of the world fades to a black as scarlet as the arterial blood gushing from his chest.

There's no time to scream. To sigh. To say well, fuck—

19. Shot

Too slow. A hole in the fuckface's shoulder, fuck, that should've been a hole in his eye, how dare he how dare he—

Kushina is screaming, screaming without sound or noise or anything, just a constant, thin stream, a voiceless haaaaaaaaaaa that utterly fails to express the chasm that just yawned in her chest as she rakes the bastard with bullets two, three, four times over.

He drops. Like a stone. Like a bullet dropped from twelve stories, just before it hits the ground and blows a hole in the pavement. He drops like that.

The wounds they open are little spurts of tomato juice spilling out of a waterlogged juicebox, the dark logo on the dark madman's T-dark shirt darkening further and serves you right, fucker—that's not her voice, it's a hoarse, breathless, raging cry for the dead asshole's second death, and maybe his third and fourth and

Someone's pulling her back from the ledge, where she'd been ready to leap twelve floors and grow wings from her soul and soar like an eagle while her stupid, slow body plummets deathward. Someone's shouting what the fuck's wrong with you, Uzumaki and she throws away the strangling arms with insane strength and sprints, then stumbles down the emergency staircase and onto the road and into the park where her young lover lies in a blooming, purplish flower that suffuses the grass around him with its sickly red stench.

Kakashi's eyes are closed and she saw him fall away from the spurt of blood, all signs point to a grim, grim conclusion ohgod please let it be looking worse than it is please …

She finds the pulse, erratic and spidery beneath her hands. She pinches him, hard.

No response.

None.

But he's alive he's alive he's alive

She sets his head in her lap, ignoring all the first aid procedure she's learned since grade school. Wads up her jacket, pressing it tightly against his unresponsive heartbeat, which is strongest where the gunshot—

Where it…

I slipped, she says in response as her partner, some two hundred feet away, rolls the mark's body over and stares accusingly at her. I was surprised and forgot to take my finger off the trigger.

Bullshit, he says.

Yeah, she says. Whatever, she says. Get a fucking ambulance for Hatake here or you'll fucking be next —

Crazy bitch —

She might be arrested for manslaughter. Her own teammates might take her away.

That's fine. With the blood Kakashi's losing right now… she doesn't think she wants to be around when her partner reports to Minato.

She presses her hand into the bullet wound. If she presses hard enough, it might take in her finger. She could touch Kakashi's heart.

She chooses instead to rest her yarn-red head against his red-spattered one.

I just… slipped.

20. Play

They're moving slowly through life now. So slowly, in fact, that it feels someone's hit pause and they've been frozen since Kakashi got hit and almost died—could still die, really.

But they visit weekly still because it takes time to wake up from any deep sleep. For one girl, it took a hundred years and violation and the plaintive cries of the newborn she carried to term while dreaming. But Kakashi's not a foolish girl pricked by a spindle; he's a man with a hole through his heart, growing older and frailer as the colour pales from his colourless skin wake up please kisses don't work come back because

They have a son (his name is Naruto). When he's two months old, they bring him to see the man who'd been there and… wasn't, not anymore. And Naruto frets and sobs, but Kakashi doesn't wake (but it's not like he's a woman and he's only been asleep five months, not a century of thorns and swords).

They're still waiting for someone (they'd wait a hundred years, if they could) to press play. And sometimes, in their brighter moments… well, they think it'll be Kakashi who does it.

Granted, they don't think much, anymore. They just hope.

It's all they have left. That and a basket full of memories, quicksilver moments slipping through wicker fingers.

Come back. Please.

End. Broken will, wicked tears, wanton fury.