Characters: Karin, Naruto
Summary: Maybe this time will be different.
Pairings: NaruKarin
Author's Note: I like the idea of NaruKarin, especially after Karin's reaction following her first encounter with Naruto.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
The warmth radiates across his skin as though he's captured the sun, caught it in his hand and rubbed the light across his flesh until it pinpricks with solar radiance. When Karin shoots her eyes across at him in the middle of the night while she is being transported to Konohagakure, he seems to glow, more luminescent than the moon above them.
So this is the "dobe" Sasuke occasionally spoke of in softly harsh terms, when the sunlight was fading and the four were resting, exhausted, around a sickly cook fire.
Personally, Karin doesn't think of Uzumaki Naruto as a "dobe". If anything, his is the first truly good face she thinks she has seen since her departure from her doomed village. She knows she's never seen warmth like this before.
Or someone who's willing to be so friendly to her, despite of where her loyalties lie. When they occasionally stop for rest, Naruto is truthfully the only one who doesn't seem uncomfortable with Karin in their midst, the only one whose words aren't awkward.
His friendship is ready for anyone who is willing to give in kind. From that, Karin can tell that he is lonely, just as Sasuke was. However, in stark contrast with Sasuke, who wished for nothing more than to revel in loneliness and wallow in self-pity, Naruto seeks to put balm to his own hurts by obtaining the friendship and closeness of anyone willing to give it. Maybe he can see that she is lonely, like him.
Karin can't deny that she finds Naruto to be a comfort, nor that the warmth off of him is a bit dazzling. She has spent her life in cold and damp places, in the bowels of laboratories and the underground bases of Otogakure. To feel at all warm is a new and almost frighteningly pleasant experience for her.
But she can sense a darkness in this boy, too. She can sense that somewhere there is a coldness. It's like a separate being has been caged inside of Naruto and soon she learns that that's exactly what it is—something alien inside him. He has his own darkness, his own cold spots, just like Sasuke.
However, this is how Karin knows that Naruto is nothing like Sasuke, because Sasuke uses his darkness and coldness as a weapon and Naruto seeks only to conquer it and eradicate it. His own darker urges, he represses. He doesn't think he has to rely on these things to succeed.
And Karin is glad that Naruto isn't like Sasuke. She doesn't want someone like Sasuke, not anymore. She can still remember blades of cold light cutting through her flesh and rending her body. She can still see the manic, utterly insane gleam in black eyes, and can remember witnessing Sasuke's final departure from the realm of the whole and the sane.
And when he left her on the ground, she discovered just how cold Sasuke could be.
Just how cold he had always been, with her too blind to see it until it was almost too late.
Karin wonders if maybe Sasuke had counted on the fact that she would be blind to his true nature.
But she's not blind anymore. And Naruto, Naruto is just warmth incarnate. A source of light without any need to hurt others to increase the intensity of it.
So Karin accepts his friendship, and basks in the glow of his smiles, and doesn't squirm away when he reaches across the hospital bed to briefly squeeze her hand, doesn't look away when he stares.
Maybe this time will be different. Karin wants so much to believe that maybe, this time will be different, and she can be happy.