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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYSWyjyFiWS
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Title: midnight talk533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDt2UYVDwtR
By: Kanae (Goth-Punk88 @ ff.net)533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlhCZdKjcgg
Rating: T533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaSyC55MuWO
Word Count: 1.462533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtrpjt8VgNo
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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb1L8T8Rn2P
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“Sasuke…?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡShtuDEYOdz
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8l0papQwpS
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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?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe8ZsK544bk
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTm9mDMPh37
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“Why would they hate you, Sasuke?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡixDPtWS1Yb
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXDjXPePgH6
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“… I almost killed their mother, didn’t I?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSv2ezHBiee
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So this is what this was about, huh?533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJYADnu82VJ
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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.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXsvT3PUq3i
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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…”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlPzG82U44b
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“Sasuke—”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9FgP4CLHCE
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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?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXdnCxcIsjC
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmpeXiCWPWl
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It makes her frown, her hand slipping down his hair and to his neck.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8uYI6KzGIk
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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.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwPUcUTbz4P
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgrrTsYADOH
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMpLteu9so2
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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?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjbW2wgOUYx
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGnmkMJJVNH
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“No,” he agrees thoughtfully, voice soft. “You are not, Karin… But you are no devil, and I—”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVONO3jGf8U
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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.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4iqjkUJ07S
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtzfkHGnSj0
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe3xkj4ViPP
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Not when she had already forgiven him a long time ago.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFonLbbzNUL
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She would not play his game.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡql5X9hJXgt
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“If you feel that way, then why are you with me, Sasuke?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDnFPaw8drs
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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.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ751fQCGez2
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNRfk3jKmsd
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“Is that all this is to you, then? You not wanting anyone else to have me?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2RtD07n91k
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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.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2hYXhPvXdJ
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgBwpf496bm
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“Then let me hear it, Sasuke.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6y8sDWmMzd
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcdJW8g5STX
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡstLR1IDZ2Z
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“Karin…”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdLv6OxmWyW
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And so, she does not back down.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVos25ZtNtx
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“Say it.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIeWAz1oq0B
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKbtEPBv58V
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When his obsidian eyes open again, what she sees in them steals the breath right off her lungs.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ58efaA2gsW
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“Karin, I…”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLgKWwk0Vnb
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1ub5mlntwF
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0PixijNXs2
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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:533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX0toAJ6MGn
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“It’s the same for me,” her voice an intimate whisper meant for him and him only. “Always.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuwK6eIXfNf
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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,”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLWo24tgbt6
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“… How can you know that?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVW6trpaxrM
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“Don’t you trust me?”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM1YrDt1Ovx
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Sasuke says nothing; he does not need to. Karin smiles. “Then trust me on this, Sasuke.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNAPl7ebfWl
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡID4BlQQ0Yu
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“…Alright.”533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpix0aHTblV
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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.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb3a1gKvhCm
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You idiot, Karin thinks, fondly. They love you, already.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkQQXN82EJW
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As did she. And that was all she needed to know to quiet down her own fears; her own insecurities.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyXmHtCYNHt
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We will be fine, she knew.533Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpIJLPrKjs5
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They would be.
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tags: fanfic, karin, naruto, sasukarin, sasuke
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