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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPv2wsQTyNK
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Title: midnight talk410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTWfEjfRdW0
By: Kanae (Goth-Punk88 @ ff.net)410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaScr4NUXzF
Rating: T410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgtIJqNmBrQ
Word Count: 1.462410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCNdlFxsmrk
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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRcwwEFjHhN
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“Sasuke…?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcOEUitmmZW
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8h7pMf10r2
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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?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbHHX2m4HXO
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4xcB9SDnfW
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“Why would they hate you, Sasuke?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD2uIvvRuNg
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfAoe1tBjtB
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“… I almost killed their mother, didn’t I?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPQSN14FkHO
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So this is what this was about, huh?410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAGkQxTxm5x
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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.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ21s9nLRhsm
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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…”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ55R0UtbLJZ
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“Sasuke—”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrlcLkttzAB
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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?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNYWSxY6kiE
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj76tDmZ9dD
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It makes her frown, her hand slipping down his hair and to his neck.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbGdKGID0AW
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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.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHzZL94mOt0
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ21MSb8V8v4
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8xYXkzVrq2
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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?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt8gYrP6xti
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCAAiN4dR48
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“No,” he agrees thoughtfully, voice soft. “You are not, Karin… But you are no devil, and I—”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyvGQsxc0H0
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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.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWIYVd4CBNp
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZkAGnZGyrH
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJJPW1hbyix
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Not when she had already forgiven him a long time ago.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKJypYSbLln
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She would not play his game.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1J6DHzyhoF
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“If you feel that way, then why are you with me, Sasuke?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcmzsQTp9BJ
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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.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl6en4d3l11
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVlAI1Ooocs
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“Is that all this is to you, then? You not wanting anyone else to have me?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT97CZcCCSa
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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.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhlU8d2RMcB
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrF2h5tzaNp
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“Then let me hear it, Sasuke.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAPyxrq7ocu
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBzabI1cxhH
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnb7jYmb2IJ
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“Karin…”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpMGd7nSSry
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And so, she does not back down.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAmGIIaCnOx
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“Say it.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9fq9jYNitO
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqRRHTEeM6c
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When his obsidian eyes open again, what she sees in them steals the breath right off her lungs.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDXVhFUVIhT
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“Karin, I…”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGro0nn7N2E
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrUS9hXmWEE
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkuwEB9iVKz
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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:410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyM9jK3Ovtv
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“It’s the same for me,” her voice an intimate whisper meant for him and him only. “Always.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCU3XcrRnzC
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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,”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe1FU9bFovG
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“… How can you know that?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWvFpx8ZZaZ
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“Don’t you trust me?”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw8TZUyfico
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Sasuke says nothing; he does not need to. Karin smiles. “Then trust me on this, Sasuke.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm0v0fZ3UXu
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKML1LE7v0n
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“…Alright.”410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjAfjZ43fPl
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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.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHLsPs5sOza
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You idiot, Karin thinks, fondly. They love you, already.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsyUZSLrRtK
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As did she. And that was all she needed to know to quiet down her own fears; her own insecurities.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWcsvK2P3ir
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We will be fine, she knew.410Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ91X94nCP8I
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They would be.
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tags: fanfic, karin, naruto, sasukarin, sasuke
ns 15.158.61.18da2
