ONESHOT - SASUKARIN; MIDNIGHT TALK
Fellow SK shippers and I have been discussing how do we envision Sasuke and Karin as parents; and while I was thinking about that I was hit by a sudden mental picture. And so, this little drabble-turned-one-shot was born.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVNmvsNxN6R
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Title: midnight talk537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj3jYndLp7c
By: Kanae (Goth-Punk88 @ ff.net)537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdwTqp22iDg
Rating: T537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2gS5EDAS0f
Word Count: 1.462537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTKcH2tdEfZ
Author's Notes: Takes place post-series.
midnight talk;
A spark of alert flashes through her consciousness, briskly pulling her back from slumber. For a moment, she is disoriented—but then she feels it. That ghost of a caress, his finger absentmindedly tracing that particular spot above her left breast. The spot that was buried underneath bite marks but that he somehow never failed to find.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpzmhg1zAlR
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“Sasuke…?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNSNG1fTI9h
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He does not reply straight away; rather, his body speaks for him—the hold of the arm circling her waist strengthening, his fingertips pressing against the tender skin of her hip and his toes coming to rest against her ankle. But when his voice joins his body language, it is nothing more than a mere murmur.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTxWhVCEdx8
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“…What if I’m not a good father, Karin?” he inquires, his breath tickling her bare breast. “What if… they hate me?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlGWhQwGWsE
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His free hand travels from her collarbones to her swollen belly, and Karin has to resist the urge to swat it away out of annoyance at his insecurities. Letting such a thing get to him, this was so unlike him.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUeZGTaF6M6
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“Why would they hate you, Sasuke?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlIZt30d4k3
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His fingers move up, up and come to lightly trace the tear-shaped scar that both of them knew only too well, and she feels it again, then—that fluctuation in his chakra. That drop of mud that had sent ripples to what used to be a peaceful current and that had pulled Karin back from her own rest.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLyRzCajUwB
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“… I almost killed their mother, didn’t I?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwc0WY4O9xT
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So this is what this was about, huh?537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCxEqWiPVmM
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Karin sighs, raising her hand and letting her fingers entwine with locks of Sasuke’s jet-black hair. “We’ve been over this before, Sasuke.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ90lRf9sXlC
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“I know,” he acknowledges, but his chakra is still stirring and his voice is still a strained whisper. “I know, Karin. But…”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0S8LMAjg31
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“Sasuke—”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG6EVKMyir7
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“—What I did was… still is unforgivable,” he says, his voice gaining strength in order to overpower her complaints. “What right do I have to be the father of your children, Karin?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBki19Y2P7k
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Their eyes meet, then. Karin’s glasses lie discarded on the nightstand, but she does not need them—not when he was this close, with his head lying on the crook of her neck. Not even the darkness of the room could prevent Karin from reading the look in his eyes as clearly as she could read the turmoil swimming inside his chakra.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyPmjWe0zYq
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It makes her frown, her hand slipping down his hair and to his neck.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBKLT9UvCRD
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“Don’t be stupid, Sasuke. This isn’t about rights—you are the father of my children, whether you like it or not. It’s too late to turn back, now.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxWHiMPRiUc
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I wouldn’t turn back even if I could, is what remains unsaid, but Karin hopes Sasuke will be able to pick it up from her gaze, from her touch. It is an undeniable truth that Sasuke should know well by now, and Karin is not going to indulge him by voicing it aloud.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡASo2ewBpYf
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So focused is she on her thoughts that she misses his movements. When his warm fingers come to lay against her cheek, delicately, as if afraid that she would disappear with the lightest of touches, Karin finds her breath leaving her in the form of a stifled gasp.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ65ZoQv6h5s
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“Why…?” he asks, his eyes boring into hers, and Karin finds her edges rounding and becoming cotton-soft under his touch and the urgency behind his gaze. “Why did you give me a second chance, Karin? Why… why do you allow me to stay by your side, despite everything I’ve done?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr8FOlpjOCY
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“I’m… no saint myself, Sasuke,” Karin finds herself muttering, but anything she may have added slips through her mind and remains forgotten, as Sasuke pushes back the bangs from her forehead and begins to trace the contours of her face.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH2EjXCZHDB
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“No,” he agrees thoughtfully, voice soft. “You are not, Karin… But you are no devil, and I—”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcDLUjIJLvf
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“A man,” Karin cuts in, firmly, and Sasuke’s fingers halt their ministrations. “You are nothing but a man, Sasuke. And men make mistakes.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR8qoGLodHg
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“…Mistakes that could’ve cost your life, Karin,” Sasuke reminds her, his eyes narrowing. Karin’s mirror his look, faded annoyance beginning to come back to life yet again.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwSF5Znlu81
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How many times would they have to go through this before Sasuke let it go? When would he learn that clinging onto the past never did any good? All his mistakes—all the pain he caused himself and those surrounding them steamed from that stubbornness of his, from that apparent incapability of living the present for what it was. And Karin—Karin refused to let him continue to chastise himself in her name’s sake.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDYIBEEUnEF
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Not when she had already forgiven him a long time ago.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMpjffxx5hX
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She would not play his game.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfPvTtLnFqz
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“If you feel that way, then why are you with me, Sasuke?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX1oKC352yk
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“… Because I’m selfish,” he replies after a breath, and his fingertips are tracing her lips, now, “I’ve always been selfish, Karin. You know that well.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlWDbno6E9P
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A ghost of a smile curves the corner of Karin’s lips, but she forces herself to hide it before he could have the chance to notice it through his touch. It was no time to humor him; not yet, at least.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMgu5TcuJkB
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“Is that all this is to you, then? You not wanting anyone else to have me?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5A0cduUiWo
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“No,” Sasuke states, and he is frowning, as if indignant by the suggestion alone. “You know that’s not how it is, Karin.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZMTWb1rK7Q
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Oh, she knew. Of course, she knew, she would not be with him otherwise. But Sasuke needed to learn how to say it; because while she did not need to hear it, his children would.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuls7vnUZOR
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“Then let me hear it, Sasuke.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6pklWKIz4y
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There is hesitance showcased in his eyes and expressed through the way his fingertips linger, unmoving, ghosting over her cheeks; but Karin did not allow herself to feel like she was being unfair to him, asking him to say words that she had yet to say aloud herself. But the difference was that Karin knew how to do so; she had not forgotten.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTS3lv0w63P
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But Sasuke? Sasuke had. And Karin knew that was one of the thorns that kept jabbing at him whenever his eyes flickered across her swollen belly. A thorn embodied by the scar that remained as a memento right above her heart.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3rCWHAzMhp
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“Karin…”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwOd6Ij3BDP
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And so, she does not back down.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaV4KZNwPIa
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“Say it.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx938E5nNFk
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Sasuke heaves in a sigh and closes his eyes for a long moment, defeated. Karin reaches out, then—reaches out and traces his face with the same adoration with which he had been tracing hers, using her warm touch as encouragement.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ18wolYZpeA
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When his obsidian eyes open again, what she sees in them steals the breath right off her lungs.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzNu1GaLwRi
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“Karin, I…”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ837w5DaXrW
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His voice fades into silence as the words stumble over each other inside his throat, inexperienced, alien to his lips but overpowering in their truth—and so Sasuke leans in and lets his lips speak wordlessly directly to Karin’s own, which answer their call with a hunger that would never cease to set his very veins aflame.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbGu03y4W1v
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When they part, Karin’s arms, which were circling his neck, hold him in place; and so he lets his forehead lay against hers, his lips lightly brushing her own with every word he spoke.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtV8GHcRcm0
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“I want you, Karin,” are the words he says aloud, but Karin hears beyond them and into the feelings he expressed through his kiss—through his gaze, through his touch. And it is to them that she replies:537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhjvE4JK7iX
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“It’s the same for me,” her voice an intimate whisper meant for him and him only. “Always.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡllbIETeJpi
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Her name leaves his lips in the form of a shaky breath, and Karin holds him close, gives him solace in the modest curve of her breasts. “They won’t hate you, Sasuke,”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5gxcnxjAZ9
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“… How can you know that?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3KC7dlYbuQ
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“Don’t you trust me?”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMaP1kVwtQo
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Sasuke says nothing; he does not need to. Karin smiles. “Then trust me on this, Sasuke.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoz5StgYZaW
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There is no way they will hate you, is what Karin tells him without words as she plays with his hair. Not if you look at them the way you looked at me just now.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6k83YWeAWa
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“…Alright.”537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5lUF8SV4EQ
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Karin’s gaze darts to his face, and she is pleased to see a peaceful expression taking over his features and reflecting on his chakra. The sight softens her smile, and she feels a surge of warmth expanding through her body as Sasuke unconsciously places his palm over her belly, the chakra of the two beings resting inside stirring to answer his call.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeVcOnczPH7
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You idiot, Karin thinks, fondly. They love you, already.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEQWR9cW8rN
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As did she. And that was all she needed to know to quiet down her own fears; her own insecurities.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVsTvshH26P
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We will be fine, she knew.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3YS7NjxDFx
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They would be.
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tags: fanfic, karin, naruto, sasukarin, sasuke
ns216.73.216.176da2
