Disclaimer: This is yet another one of the oneshots I wrote back in 2010 (april, to be exact) and that I never posted outside of my own livejournal. I read this over today and while I did not alter anything (even left some odd-sounding lines the way they were in order to keep intact the flow of the story) I did fix a couple of grammatical errors here and there, so I decided to bring this one over here, too. So if this seems familiar to anyone, that is the reason.

That said... warning for databook spoilers, I guess? And for exploring a Karin that has not yet built up her emotional barriers.

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Five times Karin cried in front of Sasuke

(and one time she didn't)

by Kanae

1.

There's something missing in her chest—a certain beating that did not seem to be there anymore, and though she absentmindedly registers its absence she cannot really bring herself to attempt to look for it. She lacks the will, she lacks the drive.

She lacks a lot of things, now.

A family, for example.

And friends. A place to call home. A life.

Where she stands now—alone and unscratched amidst a riot of slaughtered bodies—it's like she even lacks a past. It's like her memories were melting down and pooling on the floor along with the crimson stains that were beginning to dry. She does not know what's left—if there was anything left, that is. She does not even know what difference it would make if there wasn't.

She was completely and utterly alone.

And that's how he finds her.

She had felt their presence even before the snake-like man addressed her with his raspy voice, but in the state of numbness that she was in, she had barely registered the fact that one of the chakras that had arrived was anything but unfamiliar.

Yet when she hears his voice, something clicks in her head. And it's with slight disbelief that she turns around only to find him there. He, out of all people. The boy that had touched her in such an incomprehensible way, the boy whose smile she had spent weeks trying to leave behind, the boy who her mind insisted she would never see again but something—something stubbornly persisted such would not be the case.

That he was not out of her life. Not yet.

Obsidian meets red, and though something inside of her attempts to light up—like a match, weakly attempting to light itself only for a rush of wind to deem all its efforts useless—the sensation is gone before she can even attempt to bring herself to care. It leaves a trace however, like an echo of something that could not quite come to be.

The emotion does not leave him as fast as it leaves her though, and his eyes light up with recognition and surprise—but she watches it all as if it were alien to her. As if she were watching everything from behind a thick, damp glass.

She is not exactly sure of how it happens, and it's only later that the words that were said would reach her—but all of a sudden she finds herself walking behind the boy and the man, her head bowed and her eyes open but unseeing, barely noticing the blood staining the ground just like it had tainted her missing heart and her life.

When her knees give up under the weight of heartache and of disuse due to all the hours she had spent crouched and hiding, the solid wave of pain that assaults her thighs travels though her body like a shot of awareness and sets something inside of her in motion.

She is struggling to cope with her awakening senses when he suddenly reaches out to her.

"Hold on tight,"

A gasp of surprise leaves her lips as she is no longer laying helplessly on the ground but rather being carried and securely held against his back. All she can see is black and pale skin, and her brain seems to register it with alarming clarity, her eyes no longer blinded to her surroundings.

Then the warmth of his back caresses her own cold skin through the fabric of his clothes, and she finds herself relaxing, her arms coming to loosely circle his neck and her head lowering to rest against his shoulder.

He is… warm.

She does not know what she means—his chakra, his back, his eyes. She does not know it, and she does not really mind, either. It was the first sensation she was truly feeling after everything that had happened, and the pieces of her shattered heart were starting to come together again and all the horror and the pain and the despair come to her in unstoppable waves.

The tears start falling then, her sobs being muffled by his shoulder, her hands clutching the collar of his shirt with all the strength she thought had left her. Her body shaking with all the life she thought had abandoned her.

Karin holds onto him as her emotions pour out of her like a storm that had been waiting to rain down and Sasuke remains silent, wordlessly carrying her. But the hold of his hands is firm against the skin of Karin's exposed thighs, and the warmth that spreads through them to every fiber of her being, fighting off the heartbreak, means more to her than any words ever could.

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2.

Some of the numbness remains hours later when she sits on a foreign bed, her back against the wall, her hands limply laced together on her lap, her eyes once again starting to lose trail of the world surrounding her. Her ears replaying angst screams she would rather forget, so she almost misses the sound of the door opening just as she misses the motion of his approaching chakra.

"You need to eat,"

He tells her, and it takes her an uncannily long moment to notice the plate of soup he was holding on one hand. Its smell reaches her then, causing her stomach to churn instantly, so she feebly shakes her head before averting her eyes back to her entwined fingers.

"I'm not hungry."

"You still have to eat. You won't achieve anything by starving yourself to death."

He does not sound impatient, or annoyed—he does not sound worried, either. Rather, it's like he had already expected her disposition. The tone he used reminds Karin of the one her mother used to employ on her sometimes and her eyes sting painfully before drying up again, the arid feeling somehow stinging even more.

The sheets crease as he sits down by her side, and when he extends a spoonful of hot soup towards her she cannot really avoid looking at him, even though she desires to.

"Eat,"

He prods her on, voicing out what his eyes had been silently edging her on to do. Her brows are slightly furrowed and her lips are curved downwards in a display of stubbornness that she was barely noticing, but she already knew that she had lost the battle, so she gives in and parts her lips. He makes sure that she drinks all the contents of the spoon and she can't help but to flinch as the hot liquid makes its way down her throat.

He seems to notice it, because he tilts his head slightly to the side as he observes her.

"Is it too hot?"

She nods, her features still contorted with discomfort, and this time before offering her another spoonful of soup Sasuke blows some air on it, and Karin can barely swallow the contents down because even though they're now cooled down Sasuke no longer only reminds her of her mother, but it's almost like she can see her—sitting right there where he was, cooling the soup down in the same manner, trying to convince a sick Karin that if she drank it all, she would feel so much better the following day, and her dad would—and her dad would—

—Her dad had been lying above the marred body of her mother when Karin exited her hideout underneath the stairs, his face unrecognizable under all the blood, a deep gash almost cutting his body in half so that Karin could almost see his intest—

Sasuke barely has enough time to move out of the way as Karin suddenly sprints up and desperately runs past him and into the small bathroom of the room she had been assigned to, only managing to hold back the contents of her stomach for long enough to reach the sink. Once there the soup she drank flows backwards all the way up her throat which is left aching with a bitter sensation that makes her cough dryly and painfully, her eyes blurring with unshed tears.

By the time her stomach turns up on itself again and she has to lower her face down into the sink, his warm presence wordlessly slips behind her and his hands reach out to hold her hair back so that it would not get dirty.

It is only when she is sure the worst of the wave of nausea has passed that a panting Karin finally dares to raise her face. Her eyes meet Sasuke's on the wall's mirror.

She finds no disgust in them, no pity—not a trace of sympathy, either. What she finds there is something else entirely, a single emotion clearly reflected on them for her to see.

Karin recognizes it as understanding, and it reaches her to the core to the point where silent tears begin to run down her cheeks and mix with her sweat.

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3.

She is restless, and after twisting and turning on the bed for the best part of two hours Karin gives up altogether. She would not be getting anywhere as long as her heart continued to feel like it was getting smaller and smaller inside of her chest—as if squeezed by an invisible force that took her breath away and filled her with uneasiness.

She remains like that, limp and motionless for a long, long while. Until finally she closes her eyes tightly and forces herself to move against her better judgment, picking up her glasses from the night-table as she swung her legs around the bed, her naked feet meeting the cold ground and causing a shiver to run down her spine.

However, she still does not bother to put her sandals on. She does not want to waste any time, does not want to risk losing whatever amount of courage she had gathered.

His room was located three doors away from hers, down the corridor, and only when she is facing the wooden door separating them does she start second-guessing herself.

Why had she come here? Not being able to sleep did not give her the right to interrupt Sasuke's rest. He had helped her enough already even when no one had asked him to, had been patient even when she did not know how to welcome his aid. She did not have the right to ask for anything else out of him, he had already done enough. And still—

Her knocks are soft, her knuckles barely brushing against the wood—but to Karin, they're loud, yet somehow not as deafening as the beatings of her heart which was trying to quiet down her thoughts and her insecurities, its beatings telling her that she needed to do this—if she did not reach out to him now, then when would she learn how to do it?

So she knocks. She knocks on his door and he opens it before Karin has the enough time to stop. It was almost like he had been expecting her, waiting for her, because he does not look surprised as his eyes meet hers. He simply steps aside and walks back to his bed, graciously laying down with his body almost pressed against the wall, leaving an empty space wide enough for someone else to fit in.

On the days they have spent together and since her technique sharpened, Karin has unexpectedly become able to understand silences even better than she can understand words, and Sasuke's silences were always particularly strident to her ears. So it's quietly that she steps in the room and closes the door behind her, her feet soundlessly moving across the cold floor and towards the bed, which creaks slightly as another weight is added onto it.

She spends the night listening to his placid breathing as if it were a lullaby and does not even notice when the oppression on her heart fades away and breathing becomes easier, the air wiping away all the uneasiness with relaxing ease.

On the morning, when she wakes up only to find herself reflected in his obsidian eyes, she sees rather than feels the trail of dried tears covering her cheeks.

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4.

Had Karin known what was about to come she would not have intruded in the first place. But she could not hold it back—the curiosity, that certain something irking her and stirring underneath her flesh, prodding her to ask him, why. Why did he seem to know everything she was feeling? How come he could understand it all so well?

He had given her a look, then. Had turned toward her and had regarded her with those dark eyes of his sporting a look that Karin had been unable to read, but that she now understood—he had been sizing her up. He had been deciding whether it was worth to reply.

At the end, he had closed his eyes and had turned away to look over the horizon instead. His voice had reached her afterward, and he had continued to speak without his voice quivering or trailing off a single time—it was completely even as he narrated to her how he had lost his own family, like he was speaking through a wound that had already closed.

But Karin knew better than that. She knew better than that, because had it closed he would not be where he was today—he would not be alone with that man and there would not be so many shadows dancing behind his eyes whenever he wasn't looking at her.

Her sight blurs.

How had he been capable of smiling at her with so much warmth and with such clear eyes just mere months ago? How had he been capable of reaching out to her in such a way when she could barely handle herself and the pain of mourning?

How?

"…Does it get easier?"

She inquires in a whisper, her voice barely audible even to her; so when her question is met with silence she simply thinks that Sasuke did not quite catch it—but still she cannot bring herself to voice it again. He takes her aback when he suddenly speaks over the murmur of the wind against their hair, his eyes still set on the horizon and looking at things she could not see.

"You have to find the answer to that yourself."

The ghosts of his past do not stain his voice, but Karin can feel them with the most clarity in that moment, disguising themselves in his silence and in what remained unsaid.

The tears that leak from her eyes that afternoon are not due to her own pain.

And they are both aware of that.

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5.

She falls loudly on the ground, her limbs a clumsy mess of pained muscles assaulted by cramps. Her hair is sticky due to the sweat and it glues to her forehead and neck. The friction it causes itches, but Karin's fingers are curling and trembling sporadically, and she can't manage to remember how to move them properly.

She has not worked this hard since, well, forever. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to train, and if her mind had almost forgotten it then her body had forsaken the action altogether. She was completely exhausted, and every inch of her anatomy felt like it would explode with the slightest of movements, causing her eyes to blur and tears to leak out of them as she blinked to clear her sight.

"That's enough for today. We have to go back now."

His voice is slightly breathless as well but he's nowhere near the state Karin's in, even though he had been the one to work the hardest. The exhaustion is so great that it possesses every cell of her body until there's no room for anything else, not even for a single remain of heartache; and despite that there is something else building up inside of her as she watches him—something else that takes the place that heartbreak used to occupy and that makes her attempt to prod herself up despite her trembling arms and legs.

At the end—when her knees shake so much that she can barely stand on her feet, Sasuke reaches out one more time and offers her his hand, helping her to rise up again.

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0.

She chuckles loudly, the sound resounding in her lungs and reverberating through her insides. By her side Sasuke is smirking, and as her shoulders heave up and down with mirth and her stomach begins to hurt in an all too right way—the small hairs on her arms and neck standing up at the feeling of the amusement emanating from Sasuke's chakra, the words pour out her lips before she can even register their existence.

"I've found my answer,"

Sasuke turns towards her then, and though he remains silent Karin can feel his curiosity as if it were corporeal, so she replies to his unasked question with honest eyes and a genuine smile.

"It does get easier."

He rewards her revelation with a long look, her eyes holding his. It's slowly that his lips curve upwards in a mystifying smile, its edges sharper than they needed to be, a certain glint possessing his eyes and adding darker corners that weren't there a moment ago.

"Hn, is that so?"

Karin does not hesitate to nod, and as they both look away and focus once again on the sky above them, the silence that befalls upon them is as bittersweet as Sasuke's smile had been. But Karin pretends not to notice it, because she understands.

She had found her reply, but it was the opposite of his. It had not gotten easier for him, not for a single moment, and she could see that clearly now. She could see the rancor and the pain he carried with him wherever he went, and she also knew that such feelings would bring him hardships in the future.

She knew that with as much certainty as she knew that no matter how much she would like to, she could not reach out to him in the way he had reached out to her, because he had closed himself off a long time ago and banging on his walls would only push him further away.

So she would have to wait. Wait until he was ready to let her in. And meanwhile, meanwhile she would stay by him—would help him fight his loneliness without a single cry of war that would announce her intentions.

Because her answer—the answer she had found, it was not only for her. It was for him, as well.

It does get easier.

One day she would make him see that, too.

—

.end

My original author's notes from when I first posted this, back in '10: "This idea hit me on the way to university three or four weeks ago, and yesterday I decided to sit down and get it out of my system. It was way, way differently in my head as far as writing style goes, but at the end each vignette decided to develop into a drabble—and I'm not sure if it was for the best, but who am I to stand in the way of the fic? I got the inspiration for it from all the thoughts I've been having of chibi!SasuKarin thanks to Maybe Next Time. Truthfully, I'm not particularly proud of my work in this one, but I decided to dare and share it either way~ hopefully you guys enjoy the picturing these scenes as much as I do."

Current me still feels the same way, so I figured including that was appropriate.

Thanks for reading!

- Kanae