@a-rrose - Tumblr Blog

hi, welcome to my blog ♡

this is where i'll be posting my fics, reblogging chaos from numerous fandoms, and posting whatever else my brain decides to throw into the void. fair warning, i love my dark haired angsty anime men, so you can expect lots of posts about them!

˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

୨୧ masterlists

To Bleed a Thorne // Levi Ackerman x fem oc reader

| 18+ | canon-divergent • slowburn • angst • smut • mystery • dark • psychological |

Rain Made of Storms // Naruto Uzumaki x fem oc reader x Sasuke Uchiha

| 18+ | canon-divergent (aged up) • love triangle • slowburn • angst • smut • mystery • dark • psychological |

₊‧꒰ა ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

ᯓ★ before you follow

♡ this blog contains mature themes ♡ please check warnings before reading anything ♡ minors, respect any age boundaries listed on individual works ♡ asks, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated

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ᡣ𐭩 final note

whether you’re reading quietly, liking posts, sending asks, or screaming in the tags, i appreciate you! though, coming from someone who used to be a ghost reader and is now a writer, your interaction is truly priceless to me and is always appreciated <3

i write purely for the thirteen year old girl who still exists in my heart, despite my intentions to bury her when i was a later teen. she persevered and clawed her way back out, and here i am presently—a young, successful adult finding herself and navigating early adulthood—writing fanfiction and cackling in my little writing chair under my sunset lamp (and concerning my cat... but we don't need to talk about that).

welcome in ♡

-arrose

Rain Made of Storms // Chapter 1 (prologue) - The Harvest

PLAIGARISM IS ILLEGAL

Pairing: Naruto Uzumaki x female oc reader x Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto) 18+ explicit content

Genre: canon-divergent (aged up), hella slowburn, love triangle, angst, eventual smut, mystery, dark, psychological

Warnings: 18+—profanity, canon-typical violence, implied mass violence, bloodline persecution, attempted capture, self-destruction/suicide as a wartime protocol, implied death, fear, trauma, Orochimaru fuckass-related harvest implications, DARK themes, idk canon-typical naruto stuff

Word Count: 3782

Status: Ongoing

Masterlist // Next Chapter (coming soon!)

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Chapter 1 - The Harvest

Read Rain Made of Storms on AO3

The sea breathes against the black rocks and fine sand as it always does, dragging foam over the shore in long, pale streaks. Fishing boats knock softly against the docks and against the waves farther out in the ocean. Children run barefoot through narrow lanes slick with saltwater and puddles, the only evidence that remains of last night’s storm that has long since been chased away by fluffy clouds and a warm, bright sun. Smoke rises from cookfires. Prayer bells chime somewhere near the old temple, squawking seagulls dominating the skies as the villagers roam the streets; bodies lean into jewelry stalls, hands graze ripe and juicy fruits, hungry eyes skim over fish freshly caught an hour ago.

Everything looks alive.

That’s the mercy of it—of this quiet village surrounded by water.

The morning moves the way mornings always move in the village—slowly, as the rest of the population stirs awake to catch up with the early-risers. Doors slide open to let the fresh air in. Windows welcome the warm rays of sunlight. Fishing nets are untangled. Old women sit beneath awnings with their hands folded over baskets overflowing with bitter greens, harmonious laughs erupting from their mouths. Men barter over the price of fish. And somewhere in the distance, someone laughs too loudly, and somewhere else, a mother scolds a child for stepping too close to the tide pools.

Nobody in the village is prepared.

The first wrong thing is small enough to be overlooked, after all.

It’s a bell—one that does not answer its usual call.

There are many bells in the village. Temple bells. Dock bells. Prayer bells. Warning bells set high in the watch posts beyond the outer roads that surround the island. Their chimes are old and familiar to all the villagers, each one distinct enough to be recognizable from anywhere on the island. The bell to the east is thin. The bell on the harbor is deep. The temple bells sing in solemn harmony.

Today, the north bell does not sound, even when it should. Not even after the western bell sends another ring its way.

The northern path is the first to catch mainlanders, the first to taste foreign fruit, the first to tell the village when strangers are coming through the Traveler’s Port. Every arrival is announced without failure. Every merchant caravan. Every wandering monk. And every time the bell to the west rings, the northern bell responds, followed by the chimes of the eastern then southern bells.

This morning, the northern bell stays silent.

Most of the villagers don’t notice, their ears familiar enough with its chime to drown it out altogether. A fisherman wipes his knife against his apron. A girl bites into a plum and lets the juice pool in her hand and run down her wrist. Two boys chase each other between drying sheets strung out in the backyard, their feet slapping drying stone.

But near the old temple, an elder pauses. His hand tightens around the string of prayer beads at his wrist. A woman at the fruit stall looks up a moment later, not toward the customer who appeared before her, but toward the rooftops. Her eyes narrow, and her pulse jumps. But she says nothing. She only gathers the child beside her with one hand and reaches beneath her sleeve with the other.

Then, from the northeastern part of the village, a dog begins to bark.

Once.

Twice.

Then it stops.

Abruptly.

The morning shifts by a degree so slight it would be easy to mistake it for a chilling gust of wind. The seagulls scatter from the rooftops all at once, wings flashing white and grey against the clear sky. The wind changes direction. Smoke from the cookfires grow thick and heavy and drop, polluting the air in the village. At the docks, ropes tied around the fishing boats groan under newfound immense strain, though the tide has not changed.

And beneath it all—this quiet, routine, familiar way of welcoming the morning—something unfamiliar taints the air.

It’s not loud. Barely apparent.

But there.

A foreign chakra signature slips through the village like light slivering beneath the crack at the bottom of the door.

Those who cannot sense the chakra continue their routines—

Those who can grow still.

But not all at once, for that would be far too obvious. And this village is old enough to know that fear, when shown too quickly, becomes an invitation to seize.

A jeweler lowers a silver chain back into its tray. A temple attendant stops sweeping. A woman selling seaweed broth turns her face away from the crowd and murmurs something to the employee beside her.

“Go home.”

The employee frowns. “Why—?”

“Now.”

Across the stand, a mother orders her child to do the same. Then another villager down the street does the same.

Still, no one acts irrationally or chaotically.

Not even as five men appear at the mouth of the northern road.

They don’t come dressed as soldiers. That’s the second wrong thing. There are no banners. No uniform. No armor of any kind. No headbands marked with a village crest despite their intense combined chakra—which is the third wrong thing. No declaration. No shouted demand for surrender.

Their clothes are plain, their faces half-shadowed by large woven hats. They could almost pass for travelers, if travelers moved with such silence and intense chakra. If travelers arrived without the bell at the Traveler’s Port being rung. If travelers carried sealing tags stitched into the inside of their sleeves for easy access.

They step into the village.

The marketplace, once vibrant with life, noise, and villagers scattering about, has come to a halt.

One of the outsiders turns his head—

Away from the center of the marketplace, and toward the old bloodline quarter.

It seems the villagers come to a conclusion then—one drawn from years of wisdom, practice, and knowledge of the ancient bloodlines that live quietly here—though the conclusion is not grasped fully. Not understood with the weight it carries, affirmed by the crushing presence of the chakra of the outsiders before them.

Mothers reach for their children. Elders step away from the open streets. Doors close, softly at first, then faster.

The outsiders don’t stop them.

They do not care about the doors that close in the fishermen’s district. They do not care about the cooks, the merchants, the children with plum juice on their hands.

They simply do not care about the village… as a whole.

Only certain houses. Only certain names.

It is then that the prayer bells begin to ring wrong.

—

The old bloodline quarter of the village hears it first.

Doors shutting. Curtains snapping shut. Children whining from being pulled inside by hands that tremble too violently to be gentle. In the brief space between a sharp exhale and an anxious inhale, the narrow lanes surrounding the oldest houses in the village grow vacant. Stalls are entirely abandoned. Bowls of broth sit still steaming on tables. Half-counted coins are left on the counter.

Life in the village has entirely retreated.

And within the oldest houses, behind walls carved with symbols no outsider of the bloodlines has ever been taught to read, the sacred bloodlines are summoned.

The ones who made it home in time, at least.

Private messengers move through hidden corridors established beneath the bloodline quarter, concealed from foreign eyes, their sandals striking damp stone, their voices low and urgent as they carry the meaning of the bells' misaligned chimes from one house to another. Lori. Arashi. Then the smaller branch families. The keepers of old archives. Soldiers. The elders whose bodies have long since weakened, but whose memories still hold techniques never seen by paper.

They do not gather at the temple.

No—

That would be too public.

They gather beneath it, the sacred bloodline families pooling into the underground chamber where only matters of utmost importance have been deliberated. Beneath the prayer wall, the offering room, and the stone floor of the temple worn smooth by generations of knees and bowed heads. The chamber is older than the temple itself. It’s circular on the inside, built from dark, dense stone veined with pale mineral lines that faintly shine when chakra moves too close. There are no decorations. Only a few low candles scattered throughout the room and pooled in the center of the large, round table.

The bloodline elders stand in silence around the table. Clan heads and advisors do the same. Nobody sits. They do as the elders do. Their presence has weight here—

House Lori. House Arashi. Branch Vaelith. Branch Seryn.

Old names. Ancient names. Guarded names. Names spoken softly in the village due to respect, and never spoken of at all beyond it.

The last elder to arrive is bleeding from the mouth. He does not wipe the blood away.

“The enemy has breached the north watchtower,” he reports.

No one asks how. The question is irrelevant.

Another elder steps forward, her hair bound in silver cords, her palms pressed together so tightly her knuckles have grown white. “How many?”

“Five seen in the market. More scouted moving through the treeline. More seen coming in at the docks.”

“And their target?”

The bleeding elder closes his eyes, as if trying to escape the horrifying reality before him.

The chamber grows silent.

“The carriers, undoubtedly.”

The air tightens with the collective understanding of every person inside the chamber, even though no further explanation comes. An invasion can be survived. A siege can be endured. A war can be negotiated or resisted or at least fought.

But this is not war.

The woman with silver-corded hair looks toward the oldest among them, a man so old and thin he seems carved from a grave, his eyes gone grey with age but still steady. Sharp. He has not moved since entering the chamber. He has only listened.

Now, he lifts one hand.

“Destroy the records first.”

No one argues when the High Patriarch speaks.

Along the chamber walls, men and women turn toward the side passages. Within moments, the first group moves out, venturing deeper into the underground bloodline quarter. Toward family archives hidden underground and behind false walls. Toward scroll rooms sealed beneath deceptive floorboards. Toward memory stones, teaching tablets, marriage records, birth ledgers, ritual maps, anatomical studies, training diagrams, bloodline histories, and every written proof that the Lori and Arashi names have ever existed with power worth stealing.

“Burn what can burn,” the High Patriarch says. “Break what cannot. Salt the ink. Leave nothing whole enough to be deciphered.”

A younger elder flinches. “There are centuries kept in those rooms, High Patriarch.”

The High Patriarch does not flinch.

“Ensure the chakra catalogues are completely destroyed.”

The younger elder bows. “Yes.”

The next order from the High Patriarch comes even faster than the last.

“All soldiers step forward.”

This time, the chamber stirs.

The Arashi fighters step forward first. They are easy to recognize even before they move, not because of their distinct maroon clothing, but because of the pressure their chakra places on the room. It pushes outward by nature. Even contained in a chamber, it strains. It hums under vibrant skin and bone like thunder waiting for permission to rumble after a lightning strike.

The Lori fighters move after them, quieter, their chakra sinking inward until even the chamber seems to lose track of where they stand. They don’t look as dangerous. That has always been the mistake outsiders make.

“Your orders are not to defend the village,” the High Patriarch begins. “The village soldiers will handle that.”

He looks at them all.

“You defend the bloodline houses. You delay capture. You destroy routes behind you if necessary. You do not allow the enemy to access the archives. You do not allow them to access the elders.”

No one misunderstands.

“Most of all, you do not allow them to access even the dead.”

His last order chills the chamber more than the rest.

Not even the dead…

Because this enemy has not come only for the living’s chakra. Even a cold body can be useful if the hands are cruel enough.

The silver corded-woman inhales, and when she speaks, her voice is gentle. Though it is an order that leaves her lips, it does not sound like one. It sounds like fate inevitably on its way to seal their lives.

“If capture becomes certain, you know what must be done.”

No one answers. They know.

Every bloodline soldier in the chamber was taught the final rite before they were taught their first killing technique. Not because anyone believed it would be needed—not truly, at least. Not in this age. Not in this quiet village surrounded by water, where the outside world feels distant enough to become a myth. Where the sacred bloodlines are far enough removed from civilization that they themselves become a myth.

But these old families have not survived all these years by blindly trusting distance.

The final rite is not spoken of often, nor is it written in any records. It is not practical to perform before children. It lives in the body, in the chakra pathways, in the last place an enemy can reach before death.

The High Patriarch’s gaze moves between each of the soldier’s eyes.

“If you are taken, you end yourself. If you are restrained, you end yourself.”

The candles in the center of the table bend low, cowering under the weight of his orders.

“If your body is about to fall into their hands, living or dead, you destroy anything that can be used.”

A soldier near the front closes his eyes. Another reaches for the prayer cord around his wrist. A third exhales a shaky breath.

The High Patriarch’s voice hardens, as he gives his final command to the soldiers.

“You do not die intact.”

The last hope for survival breaks.

The soldiers bow as one, then they leave.

There are no speeches. No cries of honor. No promises of victory. No high spirits. They move into the passages beneath the temple and disappear toward the houses bearing their names, toward streets where outsiders are already walking with sealing tags and destructive jutsu sewn into their sleeves, toward homes where children are hidden in cupboards, beneath floors, anywhere small enough for their terror to fit.

Only after the soldiers are gone does the chamber turn toward the ones who have not been allowed to step forward yet.

The young.

The untrained.

The unfinished.

The ones old enough to understand the situation, but not old enough to be trusted with carrying it out themselves.

Maela Lori-Vaelith stands beside one of the stone pillars, her fingers curled so tightly into her sleeves that her nails pierce through the fabric. She is only seventeen. Too old to be comforted. Too young to be useful in the way she wants to be—and by only a year. Her chakra is folded down so hard inside her body that her skull aches with it in a debilitating migraine.

Across the table is Vaeren Arashi-Seryn, looking ready to tear the chamber apart with his own two hands. He is freshly eighteen by a day, broad-shouldered and shaking with the effort of remaining still. His chakra presses outward with every breath, angry enough to make the mineral veins in the walls glow around him. Two older Arashi men stand close—not touching him, but near enough to stop him if he runs for the stairs and tries to take matters on the surface into his own hands.

His eyes are on the exit.

Maela knows it, because hers are too.

The silver-corded elder looks at them first. Then at the others gathered behind them. Seven young carriers in total from the two houses. A few more stragglers from the branch families. Some barely past childhood. All old enough to bear names the enemy wants. None trained enough to protect their names from being taken.

“You young ones are to leave through the lower tide passage,” she says.

Vaeren’s head snaps toward her. “No.”

An older man behind him snarls his name.

“I said no,” Vaeren affirms, louder now. “You need fighters. I can fight.”

She raises a hand, and Vaeren stills. “What we need are survivors of the sacred bloodlines.”

“But I can fight!” the boy yells.

“You can burn,” the elder says. “You cannot control the ash yet, young House Arashi boy.”

Vaeren’s jaw clenches. The pressure of his chakra swells, and several people from House Lori nearest him brace without meaning to. Maela feels it in her teeth. In all her bones. In the old fear beneath the room.

But the elder, ascending from House Lori herself, does not step back.

“If they take you alive, you do not know enough to stop them. If they kill you, you do not know enough to make your body useless. You are not being spared because you are weak. You are being sent away because you are incomplete.”

Vaeren has a look in his eyes that says he would rather be called weak.

The High Patriarch suddenly turns to Maela. “You—”

She straightens immediately.

“You will keep all them hidden as long as you can,” he orders.

Her mother is not in the chamber. Neither is her father. They are somewhere above, scurrying around House Lori and Branch Vaelith, destroying what her family has spent generations preserving. The knowledge makes her stomach twist violently, but she keeps her face still because that is what she has been taught.

Containment is not disappearance. But right now, she wants to disappear so badly it feels like a prayer she hadn’t realized her soul had been longing for.

But she perseveres, and gives a curt nod to the High Patriarch upon receiving her order. Because that is what Lori-Vaelith daughters are taught to do. Hold. shelter. Swallow the shaking before anyone can see it, and lend a steady hand to those who cannot bury it themselves.

A sound suddenly tears through the ceiling above them. Stone dust falls from the chamber roof. Someone screams in the temple overhead—unsettlingly audible given the layers between the chamber below and the floor of the temple above. The candle flames around the room bow sideways as a wave of foreign chakra overtakes the rest of the village.

This meeting is over.

The silver-corded woman grips Maela by the shoulders and turns her toward the lower passage.

“Maela, my dear, do not dare use your true names once you leave this chamber.”

Maela stares at her, face stoic.

The elder’s fingers tighten around her shoulders and a look of desperation flashes across her face.

“Do you understand?”

A thousand things move through Maela’s heart. Fear. Confusion. Rage. The sudden, childish thought that if she obeys, if she stops being Maela Lori-Vaelith of House Lori and Branch Vaelith, descendant and grandaughter of House Lori’s elder, then the girl who was born in this village will die before her body ever does.

Above them, another explosion shakes the temple. More dust rains from the ceiling along with a few broken pieces of stone.

Maela knows it’s time to leave now.

She nods at her grandmother.

“I will protect the carriers.”

Across the table, Vaeren’s eyes are wet with fury.

“And when do we come back?” he yells in fury.

No one has an answer, and that is enough. His face changes, and Maela sees the exact moment he understands that he is not being sent on a mission he will inevitably return from; he is being exiled from his grave before it is dug.

The High Patriarch steps forward at last. His frail hand gently closes around Vaeren’s wrist as their eyes meet, and for one breath, the pressure in the chamber eases.

“You carry House Arashi blood in you,” he says. “And Branch Seryn.”

He then looks to Maela. “And you carry House Lori and Branch Vaelith blood.”

His gaze moves across the other children who remain.

“You are not children today. You are what remains if we fail.”

The High Patriarch then reaches into his sleeve and removes a small black seal, folded into the shape of a square. He releases Vaeren’s wrist and reaches for Maela’s, pressing it firmly into her open palm. The paper is warm.

“What is it?” she asks.

“A route that will burn after opening,” the High Patriarch replies.

“Where does it lead?”

“Somewhere that is not here.”

A scream echoes from above, closer. Louder than the first.

The lower passage opens behind them with a groan from the heavy stone. Cold air pours up from the dark, wet and sharp like salt flakes, smelling of seaweed.

The young carriers are ushered toward it one by one. Some cry. Some do not. One boy shakes so violently that he vomits against the wall and apologies until someone drags him forward despite his body’s instinctual protest. A girl no older than thirteen keeps repeating her mother’s name until she’s out of breath.

Maela does not cry. Vaeren does not move.

For a fleeting moment, their eyes meet each other from across the table. They know each other, but not well. Not intimately. Not yet. Their houses are old allies, old opposites, old balances like yin and yang. Heard each other’s names in lessons about what containment must withstand and what release must defend.

Now their names are being buried in the same breath.

But they are the two oldest of the young carriers. They know their roles.

“Vaeren,” Maela says.

His eyes cut to her. The chamber shakes again. One of the children begins to wail. The temple bells above crack into a wild, broken, unfamiliar sound.

“We have to go.”

For a moment, it seems like Vaeren will refuse anyway. Then someone above screams his family name, and all the color from his face drains in the moment preceding its echo off the chamber’s walls.

The older men beside him seize his arms and shove him toward the passage before he can run toward the sound. He fights them once, violently enough that one of them nearly hits the wall, but then the old man says his name one more time—not just Vaeren, but the full name, the true name, the name that belongs to his blood and bones and every fibre of his being and ever storm that came before him.

“Vaeren Arashi-Seryn.”

And he stills.

“Live, my grandson,” the High Patriarch says.

The passage swallows the young carriers whole, dense stone sliding back into place with a final, heavy thud.

Above them, the bells keep ringing until they no longer sound like bells at all.

---

a/n

i hope you all enjoy! this is gonna be a super super long one. feedbacl is welcome!

-arrose

a-rrose

To Bleed a Thorne // masterlist

Last updated May 27 2026

Visit my page for the most recent version of my masterlist!

This story is 18+ due to explicit content, mature content, and dark themes.

When your mom and uncle vanish the night before your twelfth birthday, you descend to the Underground's darkest corners searching for answers. What you find binds you in the web of a spider and reveals a truth you can reach only by spilling blood.

What once had you seeking answers now has you seeking forgiveness, torn between the man you were sent to betray by Erwin Smith and the one you learned to love.

Through every mission and every loss, the slowburn continues.

Because this time, you’re not fighting for vengeance.

You’re fighting for someone worth bleeding for.

| Levi Ackerman x female oc reader | 18+ | canon-compliant • slowburn • angst • smut • mystery • dark • psychological |

Chapters

—please let me know if any links stop working

Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3

Chapter 1 (prologue) - Where the Thorne Took Root

Chapter 2 - The Last Tradition

Chapter 3 - Fury Ignited

Chapter 4 - If You’re Looking for Ghosts

Chapter 5 - The Pit

Chapter 6 - No Regrets

Chapter 7 - The Spider

Chapter 8 - Fracture

Chapter 9 - The Wrong Move?

Chapter 10 - Ash and Ember

Chapter 11 - Erosion

Chapter 12 - A New Task

Chapter 13 - The Year Changes

Chapter 14 - Fifteen Matches

Chapter 15 - Aftermath

Chapter 16 - His Thorn

Chapter 17 - Eclipse

Chapter 18 - Where the Line Blurs

Chapter 19 - Chess

Chapter 20 - Sheath

Chapter 21 - Hinge

Chapters 22+ are in the works!

———————————————————————

author’s note

i hope you all enjoy my story :) it’s gonna be a long one so buckle up for the journey ahead of us. i intend not to brush past any character development, so there will be some stretches in the beginning without our husband levi. however, once he comes back into the story, the slow burn is going to burn agonizingly slow and baby that angst is gonna huuurt. consider this your official forewarning.

all writing featured in my masterlist is created and written solely by me. i alone own all original characters, plots, and ideas featured in my writing. under no circumstance is anyone allowed to copy, steal, and/or use my original characters, plots, and/or ideas without my permission.

much love,

arrose 🫶

Rain Made of Storms // masterlist

Last updated May 27 2026

Visit my page for the most recent version of my masterlist!

This story is 18+ due to explicit content, mature content, and dark themes.

In a house full of storms, you are the quiet rain.

The overlooked daughter. The useful sister. The shinobi everyone calls hardworking because they do not know what else to call someone without power. Your chakra is quiet. Your past is sealed. Your bloodline is a secret no one dares to speak aloud.

But when an ancient power begins to stir beneath your skin, the life your parents built for you starts to crack.

Between the boy who sees too much and the boy who stays through time, you are pulled into a truth buried before you were born—

A truth tied to Orochimaru, a destroyed, distant homeland, and a name that was never supposed to be yours.

And you are left caught between the life built to hide you and the storm born to find you.

| 18+ | Naruto Uzumaki x female oc reader | Sasuke Uchiha x female oc reader | canon-divergent (aged up) • love triangle • slowburn • angst • smut • mystery • dark • psychological |

Chapters

—please let me know if any links stop working

Read Rain Made of Storms on AO3

Chapter 1 (prologue) - The Harvest

Chapters 2+ are in the works!

———————————————————————

author's note

i hope you all enjoy my story! ALL CHARACTERS ARE AGED UP. it's gonna be a super super long one. SO MUCH lore to establish, dynamics, characters, relationships, all that good stuff. there will be a few chapters in the beginning before naruto, sasuke, and the other shinobi are introduced, but please don't fret; they will be entering the story quickly!

to give the most bland rundown (for clarification purposes), this is a story wherein reader falls for Sasuke first, he leaves the village (canon), reader’s feelings for Sasuke remain, Naruto trains with Jiraiya then returns to the village (canon), then reader later falls for Naruto. They are not a throuple in this story—reader will love both separately. I haven’t worked out who reader is going to end up with as endgame, and honestly, this story is already so layered that the endgame ship is the least of my concern. Lots of pining, yearning, and angst tho :)

enjoy!!

much love,

arrose

how do we feel about me making a Naruto universe fanfic? i was thinking something like naruto x reader AND sasuke x reader. would be canon-compliant for sure, and i was thinking of an angsty slowburn love triangle sort of thing?? don't even know how the story would end or who reader would end up with, if she even would end up with one of them :,) . aged up characters but it would align with the canon plot. lots of yearning. HEAVY on the angst and longing. would be a fem oc reader insert like my Levi Ackerman x fem oc reader story To Bleed a Thorne, so reader would have her own name, designated personality, and abilities, but physical descriptions will be kept minimum other than AFAB. also did i mention angst?

lmk what yall think. im balls deep in Naruto Shippuden rn and it's so good im literally obsessed. the author voices are screaming at me to make a damn fic. im gonna make the fic for myself most likely, but would yall read it if i shared?? lmk

#naruto shippuden #naruto #kakashi hatake #uchiha sasuke #sasuke uchiha #sasuke x reader #naruto x reader #naruto fanfic #naruto uzumaki #naruto x you #kakashi sensei #hatake kakashi #naruto x reader angst #sasuke x reader angst

To Bleed a Thorne // Chapter 21 - Hinge

PLAIGARISM IS ILLEGAL

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x female oc reader (Attack on Titan) 18+ explicit content

Genre: canon-divergent, hella slowburn, angst, eventual smut, mystery, dark, psychological

Warnings: 18+—proofread and edited once, no beta reader chat, profanity, mentions of death, psychological tension, distress, self-loating, manipulation, power dynamics, injury, mentions to blood, blade, implied homicide, reader has very low self-esteem, negative self-talk, potential missed warnings idk, idk canon-typical aot stuff

Word Count: 3935

Status: Ongoing

Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter (coming soon!)

---

Chapter 21 - Hinge

Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3

The Confessional is colder.

It’s late. Or early…

You aren’t sure.

The same fire burns, but it does not warm the room when you return. It merely illuminates it—casting sharp lines across the stone walls that have heard every order given, every confession dragged from trembling mouths.

No different than yours tonight, as Damon reports to Silas. You stand behind him, completely overtaken by his shadow, as he chronologically details the fight between you and Morin. Though you’re not touching him, you feel steadier with him at your front, creating space between you and Silas.

You don’t have it in you to sit—to look any smaller than you feel right now. Sitting implies comfort, and you are anything but.

You feel pathetic as you stand before him.

Your throat is bandaged. Not carefully. Not like the only other time you fell unconscious, after you were the victor of fifteen consecutive matches in The Pit. This time, it’s patched just enough to stop the blood from marking Silas’s floor, and the shirt he bought for you. Your wrist is also wrapped tight, bone set back into place with brutal efficiency. Your ribs ache in protest every time you breathe, but you don’t let your shoulders slouch before him.

You can't. Not after your failure. Not as disappointment and self-loathing creep into your mind and begin their relentless taunting.

And Silas?

He doesn’t even look at you. Rather, he studies the unlit cigar between his thick fingers instead, rolling it slowly as if the outcome of tonight will be any different if he wills to be. He lets out a heavy exhale, and Damon stops talking.

“That’s enough, Damon,” Silas says at last, eyes still fixated on the thick cigar between his index finger and thumb. “What of the shipment?”

“The shipment passed,” Damon answers.

Silas nods once, approving. His eyes look beyond Damon’s figure—without more than a few specks of dirt on it, notably—and settle on you. You’re filthy, mud splattered about your skin, Morin’s dirty bootprints littering your clothes, dirt littering your hair and the inside of your nose and ears. Dark bruises are noticeably blossoming across your visible skin.

“And what of Morin?”

You freeze, and draw a deep breath in through your nostrils. Your ribs wail.

His question drags the fight back up from where you’ve already begun trying to bury it. The taste of your own blood in your mouth. Morin’s possessive hand around your throat. Damon moving from behind your back to save your life.

Damon already laid your failure at Silas’s feet for inspection, and now Silas wants to hear you bleed it out yourself.

You scoff. “I believe Damon told you that part, Silas.”

He looks wicked. His eyes darken slowly, something cruel being brought to life behind them, his tongue dragging across his thin lips. You cannot decipher the look he gives you—whether your failure disgusts him, or if seeing you broken before him pleases something far more cynical.

Does he want to punish your failure… or consume it?

“I want to hear it from you,” he affirms.

The wound on your throat pulses beneath the bandages. This sick bastard already knows, and he wants to hear you say it anyway.

“Engaged, then withdrew,” you reply.

Silas’s eyes finally lift to you. They are not soft, and you watch them narrow into calculative, analytical, slits as they drag over your body. Over the wrap on your wrist. The bandage on your throat. Before they finally settle on your eyes, his piercing gaze slicing through the atmosphere and directly through you.

Is he looking at the damage, or something he finds beautiful?

“Withdrew…” he repeats slowly.

He reaches for the breast pocket of his tailored suit coat. He fishes in it for a moment, then pulls out a box of matches. He strikes the end of the match against the box and it ignites, the sound cutting through the silent room. The walls greedily swallow it.

He doesn’t move to light the end of his cigar, eyes instead fixated on the small, flickering flame. His lips curl into a slight smirk, amused.

“And why did he withdraw?”

Silence stretches.

Herein lies the fracture.

Because Damon moved. Because if he didn’t, I would have died.

…

Because I failed.

Your lungs fill slower this time—more shallow, carefully measured against the sear in your ribs.

“He overcommitted,” you respond, disconnected. It isn’t entirely a lie, but it isn’t the truth Silas is looking for. The one he senses you’re shielding from him.

His gaze doesn’t leave you.

The match flame flickers out between his fingers. He drops the charred stick into the tray beside him without his eyes so much as flickering away from you. You don’t think he’s blinked.

“Overcommitted,” he echoes.

The smoke from the fire is growing suffocating. Your nostrils begin to burn again.

“And?” he continues.

Your jaw tightens.

Damon doesn’t move from in front of you. But he doesn’t entirely shield you from your fate with Silas like he did with Morin.

“He underestimated me,” you state, feeling the need to defend yourself before Silas.

Another partial truth. One Silas doesn’t appreciate.

His smirk fades.

“And yet,” he murmurs, calmly, “you stand here wrapped like a casualty.”

His words don’t sound cruel, they’re merely observational, but they sting as they seep into you through your open wounds.

“I… miscalculated.”

His gaze drifts down the line of your bandaged throat, the tight wrap around your wrist, the faint way your breathing tests your ribs. He watches you sulk in the confession, your eyes showing the self-loathing you’ve been berating yourself with the moment you regained consciousness in the dirt, Damon’s rough hands and deep voice rattling you awake. His gaze is slow and unhurried, deliberately cataloguing every ounce of disappointment you have in yourself.

He’s never seen you this way before, never so hesitant, never so guarded, never so pathetic, and he intends to milk every last drop of it before swallowing it whole. It’s another part of you, one he intends to learn and memorize and control.

“I thought you were certain that you were ready,” he says. It is not a question.

Your spine straightens instinctively, pride yearning to defend itself in front of Silas.

“I was,” you affirm.

But it’s too late.

“Are you no longer?” he asks.

The trap he set is subtle.

Your pride flickers, but you swallow it before it can speak for you. You know Silas knows you feel it trying to claw its way out, and the only option you have is to not let it control you. It’s the only thing left you can do that proves you’re still worthy of his investment. That you can still be useful.

“I was ready for him to fight,” you answer slowly, carefully. “Not to end.”

Absolute silence.

Damon remains still as stone in front of you, his form hardening before your very eyes.

Silas’s eyes narrow slightly, seemingly a mix between annoyance, disbelief, and amusement.

“And why,” he begins, “did you prepare for a man like Morin to settle for anything less?”

The truth is that you believed he would measure you first. That he would savour the exchange. That Morin was a man who would like to carve his meals slowly, savoring the taste of the carnage he greedily absorbs. You thought he would enjoy the dance.

Instead, he chose execution the earliest chance he got.

“I thought he would want to make an example,” you explain. “Not a body.”

Silas studies you in the long, suffocating silence that follows. His gaze sharpens, and he clenches his jaw. His cigar is long forgotten between his fingers.

“Men like Morin do not need to make an example,” he replies. “Only erasure satiates them.”

Damon shifts before you—you feel it against your front. It’s not in movement, but in presence. A subtle flexion of his muscles that respond to the tightening in the air.

Silas rises from his chair. Damon steps back until he is at your spine in the same way he was mere hours ago, and Silas settles so close before you that you can feel the heat from his heavy exhales. He doesn’t touch you, but occupies your breaths. His shadow stretches across your boots, flames from the fire wildly flickering from behind his large, towering frame.

“You wanted to be seen as an opponent,” Silas says quietly. “Morin saw a threat. And threats are swiftly removed.”

Silas shifts slightly, his gaze peering over your left shoulder to Damon. His movement is small, but the gravity in the room responds dramatically. Your lungs grow tighter. Inhaling begins to feel like you’re breathing through a straw. Your heart accelerates. Your fingers vibrate in response to your weary hands. What is happening?

“And was that threshold real,” Silas asks Damon, sounding borderline accusatory, like he’s trying to evaluate something, “or imagined?”

Damon’s jaw has been set from the moment you both entered The Confessional, and it does not grow slack now. Not even in the face of Silas, who does not hide his evaluation.

“Real,” Damon replies.

He inhales a sharp breath before he continues.

“She would have died, Silas.”

Silas’s gaze does not waver. He stares intently at Damon, seemingly weighing the answer as carefully and methodically as he does with all the currency that passes through his hands.

“And you are certain?” he presses.

“Yes.” Damon’s answer is cold, detached, and blunt, as they usually are. There is no pride or heat, just undeniable, irrefutable, objective fact.

Silas watches a moment longer. His lips purse. Then, he nods. It’s curt, but decisive.

“You followed instruction. That’s good, Damon.”

Damon tilts his chin up to Silas.

“Useful as always,” Silas says. “I can rely on you.”

His gaze shifts back to you. His eyes are slightly lighter this time. Almost tender. Slightly concerned. Relieved.

“And I am glad that she remains alive,” he adds quietly, spoken like an afterthought he may not have intended to share. His statement sounds sincere.

Silas turns away and reclaims his seat at the head of the table with unhurried precision. The chair thuds as he sits in it. His eyes find Damon again.

“You intervened at just the correct moment. Precise as ever.”

The most praise you’ve ever witnessed Silas bestow upon Damon. And Damon accepts it the same way he accepts everything: without reaction. Nonetheless, you feel his presence behind you steady. It does not need pride or possession to operate, but it seems to value unambiguity.

Silas’s gaze returns to you, and whatever warmth existed in his voice evaporates before your very eyes.

“You got to command,” he begins, “and now you understand what commanding costs.”

His eyes hold yours long enough to ensure the lesson has carved itself deep enough in your skin to last a lifetime.

“Do not let it happen again,” he orders lowly, voice deep and steady. A warning, undoubtedly.

“I won’t,” you manage to exhale.

Silas studies you for one final, long moment. You feel watched by him. Like how you did when Morin had you on your knees, knife dragging down your body. He’s looking into you, exploring the depths of your darkness for an answer that matches the expression on your face you try so hard to conceal.

It’s not fear. Nor humiliation. Not even pain.

It’s something quieter. Unclear. Unresolved.

Silas’s eyes narrow slightly.

“What else?” he asks.

The image of forest green against stone flashes in your mind. That other feeling of also being watched… but in a different way. Measured. And what bothers you most of all—you don’t know why.

You hesitate enough for Silas to notice, though you don’t intend to.

“People were observing,” you say at last. “From a rooftop.”

Silas stills, and the temperature in the room drops once more. You expected him to have a reaction, and the fact that he says nothing—eyes locked onto yours, fingers still pinching the fat cigar—is chilling.

“I think they saw everything,” you continue.

Damon’s presence tightens into alertness behind you.

Silas finally blinks. “Did you recognize them?”

“No.”

He hums. “And yet you noticed them,” he murmurs. “What did they look like?”

“They were too far to see clearly,” you begin. “There were three. I could see only their top halves. They wore forest green cloaks."

Silas’s gaze rounds your hairline before it settles on your lips. He licks his, and smiles faintly.

“And you, Damon?” Silas asks, his gaze still not leaving you.

“I did not see anything, Boss,” he tentatively replies. “But it seems like you are not the only one who gathers data around here.”

Damon’s implication makes the air shift, and you suddenly feel strange.

Silas blinks again.

“You’re both dismissed.”

He turns away and waves his hand.

“Leave.”

And you do. You turn on your heel in sync with Damon, and wordlessly trail out behind him.

As the door to The Confessional closes, three certain truths clarify in your mind:

Another unknown, faceless, nameless ghost is on your trail,

Damon did not fail,

And Silas has not made it clear whether he decided you did.

—

An hour later, the street is quieter here than most places in the Underground.

It’s not the brittle quiet that settles over bars when a blade is drawn, nor the tense hush that crawls through alleyways cast in shadow when a deal turns sour. This quiet is softer—more apprehensive—worn tender by years of small, quiet lives trying very carefully not to be noticed.

A small house sits at the end of the rugged street, the framing long since surrendering its shape to time. The mortar of the brick stoop is crumbling in some places, rusted hinges barely keeping the ancient door upright. One of the front windows is patched with cloudy glass that softens the glow of the lanternlight inside into a dull haze, dark colored curtains framing the figure just beyond the window like a painting.

There’s a sort of cozy, homey energy that exudes from the house. It’s the sort of place that nurtures the last of the humanity in the Underground, keeping it safe from the criminality, drugs, prostitution, and boozing that has long since dimmed a once unique way of living.

A man stands across the narrow street for a moment that stretches longer than it needs to, his gaze lingering on the crooked doorframe, the weak light behind the glass, the quiet evidence of a life lived carefully in a place that does not reward care. There is no gang of men at his back, no blades flashing beneath the torchlight that cowers in his presence, no warning shouted from alleys before he spills blood into the dirt.

The street does not yet understand the weight of what has arrived. It continues to exist as it always has—slowly, cautiously, and small—the way it learned to in this place where survival depends on remaining small and insignificant.

The curtain stirs behind the cloudy glass, the soothing lanternlight shifting with it. The figure beyond it is a bit clearer now—the slow, frail old man sat comfortably in a chair reading literature.

Across the street, the other man watches. He chooses not to rush the moment—rather, he lets it bloom like a flower soaking in the warm rays of the sun upon the first warm spring day.

The faint ache in his ribs reminds him of the girl. The way she moved reminded him of a stubborn fire that refused to extinguish even as the breath was stolen from her lungs. The memory of her curls somewhere deeper in his chest—a darker place where the ache has not reached. It warms him like a small, amused flame.

So this is where she emerged from.

The man is sharp with focus.

His gaze is fixated on the house. The soft lantern glows, the fragile warmth spilling from its windows and onto the streets. It defies everything the Underground has spent decades becoming. Here, in this little house that looks more caved in than structured, that warmth seems to push back against the rot around it, however quietly. As if tenderness, when protected long enough, might begin to soften the harshness around it.

The man feels repulsion.

He crosses the street without hurry, the dirt of the stilled street stirring beneath his heavy boots. The torchlight nearest to the house flickers once in the draft of his passing, then settles. By the time he reaches the stoop, the whole street seems to have grown sparse, every caved pillar and darkened window holding its breath as it draws away from him.

The man stands before the door for a moment. He exhales. Then he lifts his hand and knocks softly.

Far too soft for what it intends.

Inside, a floorboard creaks. The blurred shape behind the window shifts, then disappears from the man’s view. A moment later, footsteps approach. They’re slow but not apprehensive—foolishly unguarded by the familiarity of someone who believes home is allowed to remain familiar once night has fallen.

A bolt slides free from the inside.

The door opens only a few inches at first, warm light spilling through the narrow seam and cutting across the dark, a small chain stretched tight between the frame and the door. An old man fills the small opening, boney shoulders barely filling out a worn sweater, age gathered into his features. There is caution and exhaustion in his eyes. The kind of someone who has lived long enough in the Underground to know that it does not manifest on your doorstep and knock without reason.

His gaze falls onto the man before him and his face tightens into a mix of disappointment and annoyance.

“It’s quite early. What is it you need?”

The man on the stoop does not answer immediately. His eyes move over the old man's face with patience that should not exist at this house, tracing the age in him, the strikingly mirrored features, the weariness, the flicker of something that had obviously been hope before the door opened and the Underground stole it.

The man’s mouth softens into something meant to be unthreatening. Neighborly. Faux tenderness laces his voice and conceals his intent.

“I have news about your girl,” he says.

The old man stills. Not fully—not in the way prey stills when it sees a starving predator—but in the smaller, sadder, more shocked way of a heart being struck with hope despite itself. Despite years of wisdom and experience trying to contain it. His fingers tighten softly around the frame of the door. He does not speak. His eyes search the stranger’s face on his doorstep, looking for a glimpse of something trustworthy.

The man effectively suppresses a smirk.

“What about her?”

The words landed exactly as intended.

The man lowers his voice, as if he speaks too loudly, the lie will reveal itself.

“She’s alive.”

A breath leaves the old man so quickly it is soundless, the only indication of the words escaping his lungs is the way his diaphragm caves in on itself. The relief that washes over him is fast and unguarded—a genuine response. One so intense it could not be contained, even as the old man’s logical suspicion follows close behind, slower but wiser.

The old man’s features draw tight once more.

“Who are you?”

The stranger’s gaze does not leave his.

“Someone who found her in bad shape. She told me where to bring word. She’s not in any shape to make it back tonight.”

The lie is smooth. Not because it’s pretty, but because this old man is practically milking it out of the stranger, seamlessly fabricating something out of nothing. It tastes sweet as honey on the man’s lips as it spills from them.

Something in the old man’s face shifts at that. It’s not trust—not yet. But enough yearning to wound the quiet enticement of sound judgment. And enough fear to squash it.

“She’s hurt?”

The man lets the question exist in the space between them for a beat too long before he performatively sighs.

“May I come in?”

The old man hesitates.

And in that hesitation lives the man he once was before fatherhood, grandfatherhood, when age hollowed his joints and softened the ferociousness of his hands. The smuggler who spent years slipping goods between the surface and the Underground does not vanish simply because his back aches now when he rises too fast, or because his mornings have grown quieter.

But his hope has been starved long enough.

It weakens him now in ways famine never could—after she left and never looked back.

The old man still remembers the rattle of the doorframe when she slammed it shut, his wife’s quiet gasp, the tremble in his own voice when he asked if they should call after her. The worry that it would be the last time he ever saw her—alive, anyway.

The old man’s shoulders grow slightly slack and his fingers loosen against the edge of the door. His eyes soften—just barely—as something unbearable pathetically crosses his face at the suggestion that his beloved granddaughter is near and breathing and wants to come home and is delayed merely by injury instead of absence.

And the stranger watches it happen. He watches love overtake the honed instinct of a now quiet old man who once was the Underground’s most skilled and tenured smuggler in his prime. He watches the judgement bend, then cave, then entirely reshape itself beneath the old man’s longing.

“If she’s hurt,” the old man says carefully, steadily, as if he’s doubting the resolve in his own words, “why did she not come herself?”

The stranger lowers his gaze just slightly, shaping his expression into something quiet. Respectful. The sort of face people wear when delivering news to a beloved they know will leave them wounded.

“She tried,” he begins, his voice quiet and low, faux sympathy soothing. “But she’s in no shape to be moving through the streets. ‘N’ you know it’s unwise for her to travel without being able to defend herself… not after the enemies she’s made, as you might’ve heard.”

Fear deepens the lines already carved into the old man’s face. It’s a helpless kind of fear—the kind reserved for the people one cannot protect anymore.

“Where is she?”

“Safe for the moment,” the stranger replies.

The man believes his words may be poorly chosen, too vague. He should have been more prepared to enter a verbal bargain with this old smuggler, but mindgames are a skill rendered underdeveloped in his criminal mind that has only needed to rely on brute force. He never needed to be smart. Only strong and fierce. Always the first to draw the blade and pierce the skin of his enemy.

But he sees something shift in the old smuggler’s bones, some instinct that has outlived his youth and bloodshed and the decades spent carrying contraband through roads where one wrong step meant lifelong imprisonment or death. It stirs now, faint but persistent, desperately warning the old smuggler to not open the door any wider.

But hope—now given the footing of a shape, a name, a face—is relentless.

And the love for his granddaughter—that kind of love makes fools of men who know better.

And so the old man closes the door a bit and reaches for the chain, metal softly scraping in the quiet of the Underground where noise rarely exists as the beast absorbs it.

He opens the door and steps aside.

The stranger walks in—

And the door shuts behind them.

Final.

---

a/n

hiiiii my lovely readers! i survived the semester and am back from my hiatus woohoo! i hope you all enjoy this chapter, i honestly think it's one of my better ones. feedback is welcome :)

i think time away from the story has cleared my head in the best way possible. coming back to this chapter with a fresh mind helped me a lot during the editing process, and i was able to make this chapter transform into something much better than the original draft. i won't yap about the details too much, but i will leave yall with this: a lot more is coming, and baby it's coming soon!

i hope everyone's doing well.

take care <3 arrose

ochacoca

never seen a more accurate thing on tiktok

azranissu

Everyone in my DMs, I am not avoiding you, I am simply in a losing fight with my coursework at the end of this spring semester. The amount of projects and exams I have is sickeningly abhorrent. I pop on Tumblr for <5 mins at a time to remind myself that I am, in fact, a flesh and blood person with hobbies whose existence is not solely centered around coursework (then I spam some reblogs) which explains why I am “active” but not answering yall. Pls don’t hate me 😣 and good luck to my fellow students out there, and to those who have already finished their final exams, I congratulate you for maintaining the strength to finish your semester.

Also y’all best believe I got the next chapter of To Bleed a Thorne COOKING in my Google Docs rn and it will be published sometime after I finish my finals (… or they finish me). Just like… 2-3 more weeks hopefully 😁

f-tality0

Quick Choso drawing while I work on some stuff

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art by Rox

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aot masterlist °꩜⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

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