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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCyw3hAmzdI
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Title: midnight talk457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtGF6F3Oj4c
By: Kanae (Goth-Punk88 @ ff.net)457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt5qxNbuRBV
Rating: T457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPeSH2WILSo
Word Count: 1.462457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡytNGXkp6Kn
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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWiN9aNemRy
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“Sasuke…?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡozJZVQK5mp
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdftbNrnd5h
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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?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcQYATlFBrB
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuEgCWm0EU3
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“Why would they hate you, Sasuke?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXMtgDmFDTz
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjsR6iZfB6o
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“… I almost killed their mother, didn’t I?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoUTHdR3v38
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So this is what this was about, huh?457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV8vOEVxgul
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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.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbME171587J
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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…”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF55H5pb5vI
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“Sasuke—”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0IYxicxENd
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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?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSOjpT5X6L2
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaCpW8BOK2y
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It makes her frown, her hand slipping down his hair and to his neck.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmABxaCPMHn
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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.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMun33sm5xI
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEGb7TqtKjw
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGaYIoh62SU
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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?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgPeHO2WIPV
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSzIeUM0Jd5
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“No,” he agrees thoughtfully, voice soft. “You are not, Karin… But you are no devil, and I—”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQCggMjvQZP
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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.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡup3Rr38955
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi6XXN5Krvx
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmB7TmDywGe
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Not when she had already forgiven him a long time ago.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkUkxyfUA8J
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She would not play his game.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB3PfPpVeGl
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“If you feel that way, then why are you with me, Sasuke?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeNfPsZarZN
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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.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzyb1U3aOqD
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ30AjC0SchD
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“Is that all this is to you, then? You not wanting anyone else to have me?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFAJrHY1BRv
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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.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2o088b6GjW
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoE47qxCwda
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“Then let me hear it, Sasuke.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡulHgwrbqfY
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTy652erc8X
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzT4An89sSj
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“Karin…”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBKo2otvGig
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And so, she does not back down.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkhaP7pWPCC
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“Say it.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSVlW5Br8HE
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqEsv3V8ytl
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When his obsidian eyes open again, what she sees in them steals the breath right off her lungs.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ06ICeNdvEV
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“Karin, I…”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3ISalqlexP
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgIyhu9iPhr
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9M712hxBop
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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:457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgsbQEsfVXW
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“It’s the same for me,” her voice an intimate whisper meant for him and him only. “Always.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9A2E2cbvND
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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,”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEX6G0rpuPl
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“… How can you know that?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvBJIG58tJs
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“Don’t you trust me?”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQVoocs66u8
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Sasuke says nothing; he does not need to. Karin smiles. “Then trust me on this, Sasuke.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN6Kl2nB3WM
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvgteZXOqEk
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“…Alright.”457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8lEqN0WKQ6
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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.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoyB6k3XP6E
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You idiot, Karin thinks, fondly. They love you, already.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKMatxUV3k7
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As did she. And that was all she needed to know to quiet down her own fears; her own insecurities.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPJscmgwE4B
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We will be fine, she knew.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXJPv8yBu6U
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They would be.
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tags: fanfic, karin, naruto, sasukarin, sasuke
ns18.217.185.57da2
