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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRXocLKADYO
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Title: midnight talk531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcbWToXRDPR
By: Kanae (Goth-Punk88 @ ff.net)531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYeC1NiTRE2
Rating: T531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVgs6EIXRF5
Word Count: 1.462531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmdYjfZmPqh
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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyzso9AdV2t
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“Sasuke…?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxlhtdP3JMn
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNBxG7pckw5
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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?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm6d7M6hcFQ
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmEPzxkNPVH
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“Why would they hate you, Sasuke?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW7Rf5dl6Xb
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFuwmDtsjXJ
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“… I almost killed their mother, didn’t I?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQt8OKdyxd1
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So this is what this was about, huh?531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6EgL0d2NPq
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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.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5wK8Brq4Zm
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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…”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcaT6JgC6dn
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“Sasuke—”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfuFiyzLIJu
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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?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa3cOAWTSEj
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0hAJg4sapX
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It makes her frown, her hand slipping down his hair and to his neck.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtZd1JqqYI8
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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.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIik46p5gli
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo7tntSqKTb
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2oZxAtiQOv
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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?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJPXwSKkeJA
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXis8Xup0Hi
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“No,” he agrees thoughtfully, voice soft. “You are not, Karin… But you are no devil, and I—”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfk3Zv7S1Ie
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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.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvCW7Ruo91t
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8qxyTH8Nv4
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0eDgLiFLqG
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Not when she had already forgiven him a long time ago.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUyxFbtfVCo
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She would not play his game.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB0GmXsNEqp
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“If you feel that way, then why are you with me, Sasuke?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTvVV63g5oh
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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.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB4165BP3zZ
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2aycsyUtmY
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“Is that all this is to you, then? You not wanting anyone else to have me?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtz9aYlipvb
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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.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsCHDJELZfA
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd6cjXJrSTV
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“Then let me hear it, Sasuke.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe01wAa18WB
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPIEvLv88sL
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIoOcyXR5GZ
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“Karin…”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA5NRSme8Wq
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And so, she does not back down.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgLcF2Ja9kO
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“Say it.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKm1nBVrzI0
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwCFg7uhTlm
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When his obsidian eyes open again, what she sees in them steals the breath right off her lungs.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJNQGixWXTI
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“Karin, I…”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHSYt1zl4OY
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8XyecX5k6j
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKDQA7Kcq8I
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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:531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMvsEaSm4lM
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“It’s the same for me,” her voice an intimate whisper meant for him and him only. “Always.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcTo66w03zC
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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,”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsJ10YWoMBD
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“… How can you know that?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMw8iMq1CBB
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“Don’t you trust me?”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8mSXo5mkAa
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Sasuke says nothing; he does not need to. Karin smiles. “Then trust me on this, Sasuke.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7eda6YgfM9
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBolhRIOBTR
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“…Alright.”531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡonG7aeijvT
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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.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEQKY16GhJR
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You idiot, Karin thinks, fondly. They love you, already.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9rZVAOKLGA
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As did she. And that was all she needed to know to quiet down her own fears; her own insecurities.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOTH83XoPK4
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We will be fine, she knew.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHehsn2HAKx
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They would be.
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.end
tags: fanfic, karin, naruto, sasukarin, sasuke
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