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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡteuaWX5rjt
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Title: midnight talk501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG4bXWBmz3n
By: Kanae (Goth-Punk88 @ ff.net)501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtA5sUVc90j
Rating: T501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzRSI1cq6g2
Word Count: 1.462501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡITncu4J8N0
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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeAkP9sywwG
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“Sasuke…?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtozYANIOcB
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNnABf1TK2Z
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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?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdLMtpBiKRF
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkGjACX6Zyo
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“Why would they hate you, Sasuke?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZSX33nAjMG
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc6giYcqQ9o
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“… I almost killed their mother, didn’t I?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmnF3v5ANgc
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So this is what this was about, huh?501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGxx36m4unj
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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.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuw8LhvWGRH
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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…”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgYCHkwfjrZ
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“Sasuke—”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqFzkyiw9Wa
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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?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ92VHmGuvRq
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPtY1btWKt9
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It makes her frown, her hand slipping down his hair and to his neck.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPLqS2znndY
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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.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXZkKNfexvz
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3z0tKk3r3y
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuVorqeS5Sv
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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?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlPw9EMkhEh
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdDAT72mZOU
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“No,” he agrees thoughtfully, voice soft. “You are not, Karin… But you are no devil, and I—”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKtiF2pPh8U
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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.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd5y23SqPSN
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFMc7uZicOk
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYSwRi9zb8r
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Not when she had already forgiven him a long time ago.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLPeELF7Xgk
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She would not play his game.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEfZJQHu7sH
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“If you feel that way, then why are you with me, Sasuke?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYC1OHffnuT
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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.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBtdPcafE1l
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYMhsnblavO
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“Is that all this is to you, then? You not wanting anyone else to have me?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRANfmeqqgp
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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.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsLkRmUJgDn
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRpYVg22lKg
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“Then let me hear it, Sasuke.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbcblN5syD2
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2q4n2taFhV
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI5gy8moJie
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“Karin…”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvjtg0m3Uj5
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And so, she does not back down.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5khCxTgV5m
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“Say it.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyAFbc3Z6wM
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtNQumiA2zZ
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When his obsidian eyes open again, what she sees in them steals the breath right off her lungs.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1oWYg18QzF
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“Karin, I…”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAa86gt0tvZ
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSP2033hKuX
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1gKoSGLtoY
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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:501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMDD5DLRVNa
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“It’s the same for me,” her voice an intimate whisper meant for him and him only. “Always.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhhSchU5MWv
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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,”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqsSUylVEKb
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“… How can you know that?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ26YIbLGVXg
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“Don’t you trust me?”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡspLOJQwIzD
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Sasuke says nothing; he does not need to. Karin smiles. “Then trust me on this, Sasuke.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX6FvAmF0iC
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKkX8MBWE57
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“…Alright.”501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsZQ4qitpc6
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYW152YLd5U
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You idiot, Karin thinks, fondly. They love you, already.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKatqXgDgEy
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As did she. And that was all she needed to know to quiet down her own fears; her own insecurities.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXl7u1XwGHC
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We will be fine, she knew.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkVliDWwLQz
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They would be.
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tags: fanfic, karin, naruto, sasukarin, sasuke
ns216.73.216.33da2
